For most link builders, international link building poses many challenges such as language and cultural barriers. In addition, they also need to effectively target their audiences for a better impact on the search engine. For international link building you need to have a strong analytical ability, since the links you're building are international for you but they are local for the market you're targeting.

Garrent French in one of his blogs has listed quite a many valid points that one need to know to understand international link building better:

• Identifying Your International SERPs Competitors – Link builders should understand the competitive search landscape to make efficient, targeted link search decisions.
• Prospecting for International Link Opportunities – To get all the link prospects link builders need to analyze top occurring sites for a keyword space and exporting applicable backlinks.
• Qualifying International Link Opportunities – There are basically 7 qualifiers for the consideration of the link building community such as country code top level domain, prospective page located within country folder, Geo-location based on IP address of site, site language, physical address posted on site, physical address of owner and prospect's backlink profile includes geographically related sites.
• Acquiring International Links – As we know that there are two different categories for link opportunities. Firstly, existing link opportunities like directories for submission, relevant conversations to join in comment thread to get a link. Then there are content based link building opportunities, where link builders analyze links from target sites, creates better content and then get in touch with all the people who linked to competing content and request a link.
• More International Link Building and SEO Resources

Read more at: http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/the-international-link-building-guide.html

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Guide To International Link Building

One of the most common problems that most webmasters face, is the type of link request email template to use when they contact other webmasters to request a link.

According to an interesting post at Wiep.net, the perfect link request email template would look like this:

{Greeting} {Name},

{Opening/ Introduction}

{Explanation of why your website is relevant to the one you’re contacting}

{Close},

{Your Name}

However, it doesn't work like this, since your contacting individuals and every person is quite different from the other. Therefore, you need to follow a different approach for every individual. It is possible that you may automate or customize certain things, but this approach can't be applied for link requests in general. At times, using email templates can result in lower link conversion rate.

If you don't agree with me, then have a look at the following factors:

• Type of Industry – Every industry such as tech, banking or automotive, requires a different approach, language and level of explanation.
• Kind of Media – Approach required for bloggers or other webmasters are quite different from traditional media.
• Profession of the Targeted Person – Link request must be send according to the profession of the person you're emailing.
• Gender of the Person – This factor is not just important for addressing the person but you can use this information for so many other things such as leveling.
• Age – An individual who is above 18 years will communicate on a different level than a 80 year old person.
• Areas of Interest – This is another important factor for personalization. It will indicate that you've been following the person you're contacting. However, stay within your limits and don't go overboard.
• Proposition – You must be very clear about your main intentions/goals before contacting the other webmaster. You should know whether you are just interested in the link, or trying to establish a new relationship, or you aiming at a guest post.
• Other Factors – If possible, go through the articles written by the person you're trying to reach. You must also have a brief history about the guy you're contacting. These points will help you in determining whether there is any relevance between your website and the link of the other website.

Most webmasters consider link request similar to email marketing, but this is incorrect. Generally, when you use email marketing as a tool of contacting with your customers, you already have a relationship with them and you're emails can't be personal.

Following are some of the several ways you can use during a link marketing campaign:

• Relevant Websites – Most webmasters waste their time by contacting irrelevant websites to obtain a link. The only solution to this problem is to remove every irrelevant or low quality websites.
• Test Skills – As, we have already discussed that no two individuals are the same, you still can test your skills. For example, try to contact the person with a link request without revealing your email. In this way you can ask the person about his opinion about the email you sent. Try this step a few times to get a better picture about the person you're contacting.
• Outsource – If you're not interested in link building then hire someone who can do it for you. You can focus on your website optimization, content marketing or anything else that interests you.

In short, sending out a link request is similar to closing a sales deal. If the person you're contacting doesn't like your email then you won't be able to get that link. Therefore, keep in mind the above mentioned points to send the perfect link request email.

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Perfect Email Template for Link Request

A post at Search Engine Journal elaborates on the arrival of LinkVooDoo, a tool, that plays a very important role in link buying or link exchange campaigns.

It is a free tool (so don't have to worry about the cost factor) and has the ability to measure the quality of a website and tell the users how valuable is the link from a particular website.

The first focus area is “link diagnostics.” Here is how it works:

• You need to enter the full URL and click “Get Report”.
• Choose the report type (It depends on you whether you want to go for Quick or Full one).
• In the pop-up choose “Open with” + “Java(TM) Web Start Launcher”.
• Wait till the site gets crawled.

After crawling the site completely, users have the freedom to see the link report for the URL submitted (It is recommended to perform this step). Have a look at the following “Backlink PageRank” distribution graph:

Last, but definitely, not the least, the trust score gives you a far more better insight on what your site has achieved so far and provides you various regions where you could have performed better with it! Following features are kept in mind while calculating the score:

1. Alexa rank of the site
2. Backlinks and outgoing links
3. Domain age
4. Social bookmarking, and more!

Check it out!

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LinkVooDoo- A Backlink Checker and Website Evaluator

Jon Henshaw of Raven SEO Tools fame, has piled up some very interesting tips on how you can get the most out of your Delicious.com bookmarked links.

Here are his tips on how one can create a Dofollow Link on Delicious:

1. Try to be the first person to bookmark the link. That way you'll be able to control the anchor text that's used in the link.
2. After you bookmark the link, have at least one other Delicious user bookmark it. Have that account use similar tags, but don't completely copy each other. Also, it's probably wise to mix up accounts that bookmark the same links, and you may want to consider having the other account use a proxy server or different IP.
3. Although step two is all you need to do, it may be helpful to actually build a few links to the "Everyone's Bookmarks for" page, just to make sure it gets spidered, referenced and rated by search engines.

“After doing some investigation, it appears that Delicious intentionally removed the nofollow attribute from the “Everyone’s Bookmarks for” page. If a unique link has been bookmarked by more than one person, this page becomes accessible via a link on every account that bookmarked it. The link then has two dofollow links on it, one of which uses actual anchor text instead of the URL.”

Try them!

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Create a "Dofollow" Link on Delicious

Peter DaVanzo's ideas are always worth reading, at least once! This time, the guy has managed to come with few ideas to help everyone turn their LinkBait launch into a huge success. Here are his ideas:

1. Create a brand for your product. Make others feel that the product is worth having in their kitty! If it is free, then people will think that it is worthless. So try to create an impression that it is not less than any other product or service of its kind.
2. Don't convert your ideas into Blog posts because they will then be perceived as low value! That's what he thinks. Craft a website that provides a dedicated coverage of your product, service or idea.
3. Brand it… Create proper logo so that a brand recall is created in the minds of your clients.
4. Never give advertisements on your page in the beginning itself. You will have plenty of time to put your ads later on.
5. Get attention of people who are related with your industry. Try to connect with them. Comment on their blogs. In other words, let them know your name and your existence in the market.
6. PR emails are recommended by this guy!
7. Expand your communication channels and be everywhere on the Internet world.

For full coverage, tune in to his blog

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LinkBait Launch Cycle!

A majority of search engines are of the view that the process of providing reciprocal links refers to 'spamming.' Yahoo, in their Search Content Quality Guidelines, has also given certain examples of content that they don’t want to include in their search engine. Here is one of them:

• Sites cross-linked excessively with other sites to inflate a site’s apparent popularity (link schemes)

Yahoo’s patent application that deals with link manipulations is equipped with a big section on reciprocal links:

Abstract

A method for identifying reciprocal links is provided. At a particular host, the set of hosts which link to the particular host and the set of hosts to which the particular host links are determined. The intersection and union of the two sets of hosts are also determined, and the sizes of the intersection and union are calculated.

The concentration of reciprocal links at the particular host is calculated based on the sizes of the intersection and union. A ratio of the intersection size to the union size is used to determine the concentration of reciprocal links. The particular host’s rank in a list of ranked search results may be changed as a result of identification of a high concentration of reciprocal links.

More info at Huomah

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Yahoo! On Excessive Usage Of Reciprocal Links!

Link Building is getting popular day by day. It is the process of creating inbound links to ones own website. It forms one of the ways to make your site popular. It is has certain advantages like: getting quality traffic from relevant sites in order to increase the sales, your site will also be seen as a valuable resource, increases credibility of your site, the website gets wider search engine exposure and also gets indexed by search engines properly.

Now you can also build links while monitoring Twitter. Have a look at this article by Julie Joyce:

Here’s a scenario: Jane gets on Twitter and tweets about wanting a coupon for a company that I’ll call ABCWidgets, because yes, I am that dorky. The staff of ABCWidgets, being all forward-thinking, are monitoring Twitter to see what’s being said about them. They see this tweet, respond to Jane with a 10% off coupon, Jane buys what she wants, then blogs about this fantastic thing that’s happened to her. There’s a really nice legitimate link, brought about by simple good service and the desire to tell others about it.

There are many other positive takeaways from keeping an eye on social media: simple brand monitoring to know what people are saying about your company, the chance to right a wrong before it gets worse, the opportunity to personally connect with a past, present, or future client. With services such as Twitter, where people can quickly and easily make a statement without flowery clarifications, things can go downhill quite swiftly and it’s becoming crucial to identify and respond to issues as fast as possible, before someone else steps in with an offering that’s going to cost you a customer for life. What if, instead of ABCWidgets responding to Jane, their main competitor, 123Widgets, saw Jane’s tweet and responded with their own 15% coupon for switching to their company. A lovely opportunity has been lost for a client who practically had it handed to them.

And, of course, deeper customer engagement can trigger links.

Let’s say that Jane has a blog that’s new, and she rarely updates it unless something spectacular happens. Her blog has a PageRank of 0, and no backlinks. How will getting a link from her blog really help ABCWidgets?

It’s a link built out of the most basic linkworthy thing possible, and in the end, that type of link will mean the most. It may not up ABCWidget’s PageRank, it may not even send any sort of decent traffic, but it does represent the fact that Jane is now a satisfied customer. Jane continues to order from ABCWidgets, as do several people that she tells about this, both online and offline. When Jane’s ordering from them, do you think they care whether her link is technically “beneficial”? I can assure you that they don’t.

This type of link is obviously hard to quantify. As I said, it may send no decent traffic…it may send zero people to the site, in fact, but it’s sent a real human being there. So how would you make the case for this type of link building to a client? As you probably know, many people are ruled by simple numbers. If you can’t show an increase in something (PageRank, SERPs, page hits), a client might not be able to understand the power of a link like this, so you need to be prepared to explain it. Politely, of course. This isn’t anything that will involve a discussion of keywords to be used in anchor text, of site/page placement, or anything else that you may do when you’re building links. It’s simple link goodness.

With certain segments of the population being a bit reluctant to fully embrace social media, you may be up against roadblocks when you’re trying to convince a client that monitoring what’s said on Twitter may result in a fantastic link, so just be nice and monitor it yourself for those curmudgeons. It really won’t take too much out of your day. Services like TweetBeep allow you to set up alerts that can run every hour or every day, and if someone does tweet about your brand, you’ll be notified, you can notify your client, your client can respond, and everyone will engage in a giant group hug.

So what are you waiting for? Use Twitter to attract links and build brand!

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Build Links With Twitter!

Linking schemes are getting quiet popular these days! It is all about the game of getting more and more traffic to your website! People do everything increase link popularity… Money factor!

Now here is another news from the hub of “linking schemes.” Backlinks.com has allowed Google to index User IDs, Passwords, Link Sites, etc.

This is an example as to why one should not participate in “linking schemes”.

Read more at Sphinn.

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Data Compromised By Backlinks.com

The hullabaloo was mainly initiated by New York-based advertising agency, MediaWhiz, launching a new product, namely Inlinks. The functionalities of the product are fairly outright, it enables advertisers to purchase advertisements on specific keywords. The product is essentially a smooth-functioning paid text link service that makes it extremely hard for Google and other Search engines to detect the paid links.

Inlinks seems quite successful in its primary objective of bringing together bloggers and advertisers in a paid-link arena. Once an advertiser searches the keyword, or anchor text they want to be linked to, on the application's tool bar, it (the tool) goes through its database of content looking for blog posts with that particular text and gives a listing of all such posts arranged according to Alexa score, PageRank and date of post. The advertiser can then select the blog post and rent the links at the price quoted. The starting price for many of the links is around $10/month. These links aren't ghost links, but full blown links without any quotation mainly for SEO purposes.
Matt Cutts has been heading the Google army in lashing out against this tool. When TechCrunch reported on Inlinks, Matt Cutts replied to them via e-mail. Here's what he said:

“Google has been very clear that selling such links that pass PageRank is a violation of our quality guidelines. Other search engines have said similar things. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has also given unambiguous guidance on this subject in the recent PDF at http://www.ftc.gov/os/2008/03/P064101tech.pdf where they said: “Consumers who endorse and recommend products on their blogs or other sites for consideration should do so within the boundaries set forth in the FTC Guides Concerning Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising and the FTC’s guidance on word of mouth marketing,” as well as “To date, in response to this concern, the FTC has advised that search engines need to disclose clearly and conspicuously if the ranking or other presentation of search results is a function of paid placement, and, similarly, that consumers who are paid to engage in word-of-mouth marketing must disclose that fact to recipients of their messages.”

“Oh, but you say your blog isn’t in the U.S.? Maybe it’s in the UK? Then you’ll be interested in 'http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2008/uksi_20081277_en_5#pt11' which covers unfair trade practices and specifically mentions “Using editorial content in the media to promote a product where a trader has paid for the promotion without making that clear in the content or by images or sounds clearly identifiable by the consumer (advertorial).”
“But you’re not in the UK? I believe many of the unfair commercial practices directives apply through Europe, e.g. 'http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/rights/index_en.htm' to prohibit misleading or aggressive marketing.”

“The reality is that accepting money to link to/promote/market for a product without disclosing that fact is a very high-risk behavior, in my opinion.”

The whole comment made it quite obvious how Matt Cutt, and apparently Google on the whole, is more than just displeased by this tool and its functionalities. But what seemed particularly surprising was Matt stressing on FTC's (Federal Trade Commission) 'guidelines'. Surprising because these quotes are 'FTC's suggestions and in no form guidelines or requirements and moreover, no where in these 'suggestions' can we see a single word on the aspect of 'paid links'.

As far as Matt's seemingly morally perfect stand on how 'promoting a product without disclosing that fact is quite unacceptable' goes, it just does not seem in sync with Google's own methodologies. How come then Firefox is not required to display that Google is paying it billions of dollars to be the default search engine on every search? In fact, Google has been so discreet about the same that even many Firefox developers aren't aware of the same.
Such hypocritical statements from Google's top executives really show the reputed company in poor light. Google really can't talk about ethics and morals in advertising on the Internet, when it has itself indulged in some of the most deceptive advertising methods ever seen. One can point out that there's been no dearth of Google Adsense advertisements that have not been labeled as advertisements.

The problem for Google is that there's absolutely no way it can detect inlinking advertisements if they are done properly and Matt Cutt's statements concede this fact. If it would have been any different then Google would not have called for the help in the form of paid link forms that were meant to catch hold of people who pay for their links. It seems unlikely that Google wants to itself live in accordance to FTC's 'guidelines'. Matt's comments seem anything but a ridiculously lousy joke to cover up for their helplessness.

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InLinks, New Paid Links Service And The Controversy Around It!

Normally I tend to receive a lot of mails from people asking for link exchange, some even request a link from my blog and some from my websites. I end up throwing these emails in trash, and there are a lot of reasons for that. I would like to discuss on some of them.

Mistakes in sending a link exchange email

Not all link exchange emails are thrown in trash box. Some mails are rejected because they are not written in the right manner, some because they don't offer professional touch, and yet some because they are based on some other category.

Earlier we discussed about as to how one can do effective link building via blog comments . Now its time to know the basics of writing a link exchange email to pitch your target audience.

1. No Templates… Please!
   
   If you are really interested in writing for a link exchange please, don't use templates. Write them in your own words.
2. If the website of the other person is about Web Design, then never send the link exchange request for a cosmetic company.
3. Make It Personal, But Don't Over do it
   
   Hello Mr. Shawn…

   It sounds really personal and effective too. Isn't it? These days, even telemarketers make some effort to establish a rapport and direct relationship with the users. Then why should mailers be left behind?

   Avoid using Sir/Madam…

   The same goes with email. Address the person from his/her name. It makes great sense to outline a connection with the same person, if such kind of relationship isn't already established. Involve the person in your conversation and try to establish a direct contact with him.

   For example, "I read your Blog/Article very often and wanted to ask you a question…." Bla Bla Bla…

4. Never make grammatical mistakes.
   
   No one expects that you should be a William Blake, Niccolo Machiavelli or Shakespeare, but grammatical mistakes screams "unprofessional".
5. Tone
   
   If you don't know someone well, then it is recommended that one should use formal language as to give it a professional tone. At the same time try to limit your conversations, otherwise the impact can come over as "not serious" one.

   Remember that you are not dealing with the person face to face, so there is no need to show emotions, expression, and gestures in the mail. So, keep it precise and clean, yet professional at the same time.

   Be careful while using humor in it. What should sound like a joke to you may sound like a mock to the other person.

   If in doubt, play it straight.

6. Message Title
   
   So much depends on the Headline! It should be catchy, yet at the same time effective and professional too!
   
   Put yourself in the recipients shoes and then think that he might be busy, he might be focused on his own work, he even might not have time to clear the inbox… One more email might prove to a be big problem for him… So keep the title catchy to tempt his nerves to the limit.
7. What's In It For The Other Person

   Outline the benefit to the recipient, but at the same time, try be as concise as possible. He should not think that you are doing any kind of advertisement for your products and services.

I hope my tips will prove helpful to you! Start mailing…

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How To Craft A Good Link Exchange Email?

“Creating outbound links on your site, or "linking out", is topic for Day 3 of Links Week by Google. Linking out happens naturally, and for most webmasters, it's not something you have to worry about. Nonetheless, in case you're interested about an otherwise simple topic that's fundamental to the web, here's the good, the bad, and answers to more advanced questions asked by our fellow webmasters. First, let's start with the good…

Relevant outbound links can help your visitors.

• Provide your readers in-depth information about similar topics
• Offer readers your unique commentary on existing resources

Thoughtful outbound links can help your credibility.

• Show that you've done your research and have expertise in the subject manner
• Make visitors want to come back for more analysis on future topics
• Build relationships with other domain experts (e.g. sending visitors can get you on the radar of other successful bloggers and begin a business relationship)

When it comes to the less-than-ideal practices of linking out, there shouldn't be too many surprises, but we'll go on record to avoid any confusion…

The bad: Unmonitored (especially user-generated) links and undisclosed paid advertising outbound links can reduce your site's credibility.

• Including too many links on one page confuses visitors (we usually encourage webmasters to not have much more than 100 links per page)
• Hurts your credibility—turns off savvy visitors and reduces your authority with search engines. If you accept payment for outbound links, it's best to rel="nofollow" them or otherwise ensure that they don't pass PageRank for search engines. (As a user, I prefer to see disclosure to maintain my loyalty as well.)
• Allows comment spam, which provides little benefit for users. Also, from a search engine perspective, comment spam can connect your site with bad neighborhoods instead of legitimate resources. Webmasters often add the nofollow attribute (<rel="nofollow">) to links that are user generated, such as spammable blog comments, unless the comments are responsibly reviewed and thus vouched for.

See Jason Morrison's recent blog post about keeping comment spam off your site to prevent spam in the first place.

Answers to advanced questions about outbound links

When linking out, am I sending visitors away forever?!

• Hmmm… visitors may initially leave your site to check out relevant information. But can you recall your behavior on sites that link to good articles outside their domain? Personally, I always come back to sites I feel provide commentary and additional resources. Sometimes I stay on the original site and just open up the interesting link in a different tab. It's likely that with relevant outbound links you'll gain repeat visitors, and you won't lose them forever.

Yesterday's post mentioned that descriptive anchor text is helpful in internal links. Is it still important for outbound links?

• Descriptive anchor text (the visible text in a hyperlink) helps accurately inter-connect the web. It allows both users and Googlebot to better understand what they're likely to find when following a link to another page. So if it's not too much trouble, try making anchor text descriptive.

Should I worry about the sites I choose to link to? What if their PageRank may be lower than mine?

• If you're linking to content you believe your users will enjoy, then please don't worry about the site's perceived PageRank. As a webmaster, the things to be wary of regarding outbound links are listed above, such as losing credibility by linking to spammy sites. Otherwise, consider outbound links as a common sense way to provide more value to your users, not a complicated formula.”

Formula is depicted by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead, Google

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Linking Out: You Just Have To Apply Common Sense

A couple of days ago, we had elaborated on the importance of link architecture in one of our blogs. The fact is that ample light has been thrown on the issue of Link Building as well as on the knowledge of Links on the Internet! Let us see as to what the Official Google Webmaster World has to say on the issue:

“We hope that you're able to focus on helping users (and improving the web) by creating great content or providing a great service on your site. In between creating content and working on your site, you may have read some of the (often conflicting) link discussions circling the web. If you're asking, "What's going on — what do I need to know about links?" then welcome to the first day of links week!

Day 2: Internal links (links within your site)

Internal linking is your homepage linking to your "Contact us" page, or your "Contact us" page linking to your "About me" page. Internal linking (also known as link architecture) is important because it's a major factor in how easily visitors can navigate your site. Additionally, internal linking contributes to your site's "crawlability" — how easily a spider can reach your pages.

Day 3: Outbound links (sites you link to)

Outbound links are external sites that you're linking to. For example, www.google.com/webmasterslinks to the domain googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com (our lovely blog!). Outbound links allow us to surf the web — they're a big reason why the web is so exciting and collaborative. Without outbound links, your site can seem isolated from the community because each page becomes "brochure-ware." Most sites include outbound links naturally and it shouldn't be a big concern. If you still have questions, we'll be covering outbound linking in more detail on Day 3.

Day 4: Inbound links (sites linking to you)

Inbound links are external sites linking to you. There are many webmasters who (rightfully) aren't preoccupied by the subject of inbound links. So why do some webmasters care? It's likely because merit-based or volunteered inbound links may seem like a quick way to increase rankings and traffic. Answers to your questions like, "Are there no-cost methods to maximize my merit-based links?" are provided on Day 4."
For more information, visit

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Link Information From Google's Point Of View

According to the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog:

“Keep important pages within several clicks from the homepage"

Although you may believe that users prefer a search box on your site rather than category navigation, it's uncommon for search engine crawlers to type into search boxes or navigate via pulldown menus. So make sure your important pages are clickable from the homepage and easy for Googlebot to find throughout your site. It's best to create a link architecture that's intuitive for users and crawlable for search engines. Here are more ideas to get started:

Intuitive navigation for users:

Create common user scenarios, get "in character," then try working through your site. For example, if your site is about basketball, imagine being a visitor (in this case a "baller" trying to learn the best dribbling technique.

• Starting at the homepage, if the user doesn't use the search box on your site or a pulldown menu, can they easily find the desired information (ball handling like a superstar) from the navigation links?
• Let's say a user found your site through an external link, but they didn't land on the homepage. Starting from any (sub-/child) page on your site, make sure they can easily find their way to the homepage and/or other relevant sections. In other words, make sure users aren't trapped or stuck. Was the "best dribbling technique" easy for your imaginary user to find? Often breadcrumbs such as "Home > Techniques > Dribbling" help users to understand where they are.

Crawlable links for search engines:

• Text links are easily discovered by search engines and are often the safest bet if your priority is having your content crawled. While you're welcome to try the latest technologies, keep-in-mind that when text-based links are available and easily navigable for users, chances are that search engines can crawl your site as well.

  This <a href="new-page.html">text link</a> is easy for search engines to find.

• Sitemap submission is also helpful for major search engines, though it shouldn't be a substitute for crawlable link architecture. If your site utilizes newer techniques, such as AJAX, see "Verify that Googlebot finds your internal links" below.

Use descriptive anchor text:

Writing descriptive anchor text, the clickable words in a link, is a useful signal to help search engines and users alike to better understand your content. The more Google knows about your site—through your content, page titles, anchor text, etc.—the more relevant results we can return for users (and your potential search visitors). For example, if you run a basketball site and you have videos to accompany the textual content, a not-very-optimal way of linking would be:

To see all our basketball videos, <a href="videos.html">click here</a> for the entire listing.

However, instead of the generic "click here," you could rewrite the anchor text more descriptively as:

Feel free to browse all of our <a href="videos.html">basketball videos</a>.

Verify that Googlebot finds your internal links

For verified site owners, Webmaster Tools has the feature "Links > Pages with internal links" that's great for verifying that Googlebot finds most of the links you'd expect. This is especially useful if your site uses navigation involving JavaScript (which Googlebot doesn't always execute)—you'll want to make sure that Googlebot is finding other internal links as expected.

Here's an abridged snapshot of our internal links to the introductory post for "404 week at Webmaster Central." Our internal links are discovered as we had hoped.

I would like to givemy views on the same:

Link architecture— is a technique of internal linking on your site. It forms the most important step in the whole process of site design if the user really wants that his or her site should get indexed by search engines.

• Link Building is an important part of Search Engine Optimization.
• By this, one can get other websites to link to your website, and that too free of cost!
• Link Building should be geared up with quality backlinks. This is vital in determining the rankings of a site.
• Therefore, creating backlinks is the most vital aspect in order to promote and enhance your website with the search engines.

Click here to subscribe to our RSS feed to get a daily digest of news around search engine industry. PageTraffic SEO Blog is updated four times a day and is ranked as one of the best search engine resources blog by Pandia!

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Importance Of Link Architecture!

A series has been announced by Google! It is based on the ever controversial topic of LINKS!!

Lets see as to what the official website has to say on the issue:

“We hope that you're able to focus on helping users (and improving the web) by creating great content or providing a great service on your site. In between creating content and working on your site, you may have read some of the (often conflicting) link discussions circling the web. If you're asking, "What's going on — what do I need to know about links?" then welcome to the first day of links week!”

Day 2: Internal links (links within your site)

Internal linking is your homepage linking to your "Contact us" page, or your "Contact us" page linking to your "About me" page. Internal linking (also known as link architecture) is important because it's a major factor in how easily visitors can navigate your site. Additionally, internal linking contributes to your site's "crawlability" — how easily a spider can reach your pages. More in Day 2 of links week.

Day 3: Outbound links (sites you link to)

Outbound links are external sites that you're linking to. For example, www.google.com/webmasterslinks to the domain googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com (our lovely blog!). Outbound links allow us to surf the web — they're a big reason why the web is so exciting and collaborative. Without outbound links, your site can seem isolated from the community because each page becomes "brochure-ware." Most sites include outbound links naturally and it shouldn't be a big concern. If you still have questions, we'll be covering outbound linking in more detail on Day 3.

Day 4: Inbound links (sites linking to you)

Inbound links are external sites linking to you. There are many webmasters who (rightfully) aren't preoccupied by the subject of inbound links. So why do some webmasters care? It's likely because merit-based or volunteered inbound links may seem like a quick way to increase rankings and traffic. Answers to your questions like, "Are there no-cost methods to maximize my merit-based links?" are provided on Day 4. – by Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead

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Links Education Straight from Google!

FROM MY PEN……..

One of the easiest ways to get loads of targeted visitors is via blog comments. Commenting on blogs can be fun, and is one of the amazing ways to drive traffic to your business!

When talking about commenting on blogs, let me tell you that I am really against promotional messages. Here I want to give more emphasis on posting quality content and information that will benefit others. This is the perfect way to bring loads of traffic to your blog.

These days, many blogs are enabled with comment moderation. This feature ensures that the comment won't be published until it gets approved from the owner itself. So if your comment is spammy, trust me, there are chances that it won't get published!

The only way you can get success is to post on blogs that receive good traffic. It is really hard to find these blogs. But if you would go with my advise then I would recommend doing a search such as: "your niche + blog" on Google and find the ones that seems to be really popular.

If you want to gain more amount of traffic, then it is recommended that you should create your blog and market it! Post it up to blog directories. Make sure to invite your visitors to comment on your blog. You can also run your own community and secretly advertise the thing! SECRETLY!

Here is a list of "not to do" when you indulge yourself in commenting on blogs.

• Never write "nice post" or "I agree" and never follow these comments with a link. It will become obvious that you are trying to get the juice out of these comments… just try leaving these kinds of comments on any blog and they will be deleted. That's for sure.
• Make sure the content of your comment is of "quality value." Mis-information, any kind of grammatical errors, or even bad language, written in an unprofessional way will reflect badly on you. It will only do more harm than good.
• Never overload the text with an ocean of keywords… The owner will surely get to know that it is advertising done in some other format.. Do not think that it is you who knows the ABC of keywords.. everyone else does!
• Never post your comments all at once. When I get to notice that the same person ” XYZ” is indulged in commenting on a number of posts, all in a row, then I make myself pretty aware that this person is FAKE!
• It is never advised that one should post the same comment across multiple blogs. Use variations…

Let us have a look at as to what all we can do in order to enhance the quality of our search!

A. To find the blogs that are relevant to your niche, you can add keywords like:

"how to" +"keyword phrase"

"problem" +keyword

B. To search for the "help" words in the post title, you can add these in titles: to your search query

intitle:"how to" "keywords"

intitle:"how can I" "keywords"

intitle:"tutorial" "keywords"

C. One can even search for the blog posts where some discussions are going on…

intitle:"problem" +keyword +"1 comment"

"tutorial" +keyword +"2 comments"

Doing these can prove to be really beneficial as far as your business enhancement is concerned! So what are you waiting for.. posting Blog Comments can be really tedious.. But if it is done in the right way (LIKE I HAVE MENTIONED! AHEM AHEM..), then trust me.. you will find yourself in the midst of SUCCESS!!!

Click here to subscribe to our RSS feed to get a daily digest of news around search engine industry. PageTraffic SEO Blog is updated four times a day and is ranked as one of the best search engine resources blog by Pandia!

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Link Building Via Blog Comments- Power Tips & Tricks!

Tedster, administrator of the WebmasterWorld, recently posted a thread at WebmasterWorld.

The thread was related to the discussions that were going around an updated Google patent named Information retrieval based on historical data.

In any event, Tedster has indicated a lot of abstracts that are new in this document. I would like to extract some of them.

…if the content of a document changes such that it differs significantly from the anchor text associated with its back links, then the domain associated with the document may have changed significantly (completely) from a previous incarnation. This may occur when a domain expires and a different party purchases the domain… All links and/or anchor text prior to that date may then be ignored or discounted.

So now you got it right! It states that it is not just about changing the domain name registration information. It is because of this fact that a lot of people who buy sites, try to keep the same form, same style as well as the same category of content on that domain.

We know that "Don't get links too quickly" because it seems unnatural. Now here is the written proof with us:

The dates that links appear can also be used to detect "spam," where owners of documents or their colleagues create links to their own document for the purpose of boosting the score assigned by a search engine. A typical, "legitimate" document attracts back links slowly.

A large spike in the quantity of back links may signal a topical phenomenon (e.g., the CDC web site may develop many links quickly after an outbreak, such as SARS), or signal attempts to spam a search engine (to obtain a higher ranking and, thus, better placement in search results) by exchanging links, purchasing links, or gaining links from documents without editorial discretion on making links. -Tedster

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Updated Google Patent Hints At More Linkage Penalties!

Few days back I was contacted by Indian business daily Mint reporter Seema Singh, regarding my views for a story on Internet traffic/website popularity.

This Tuesday I was quoted in her story "A meritocratic system allows new sites to overthrow old ones"

"Bangalore: So, what makes a website popular—a headstart, bells and whistles, or talent and novelty?

However, in the case of Google, one of the main reasons it became a hit way back in 1999 was its simplicity and speed in search, said Kaushal. “But if we consider some other examples like Myyearbook.com, it became instant hit just because of its novelty and offerings, which were unique; same goes for Twitter (a social networking and microblogging site).”

Since we have been doing SEO for 8+ years now, I can say that there has been a change, in the trend in how pages become popular? The same rules which governed traffic when we started have changed over the years. Previously it was more with word of mouth, chat, search engines, emails and all. Now with the social networking sites coming up, pages become more popular by featuring on Digg, Youtube, Blogs etc.

Click here to subscribe to our RSS feed to get a daily digest of news around search engine industry. PageTraffic SEO Blog is updated four times a day and is ranked as one of the best search engine resources blog by Pandia!

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My Quote In Mint Newspaper

Over at Search Engine Journal, Ann Smarty has evaluated some really beneficial tools that will assist you in determining the characteristics and tactics for page outlinking.

SearchStatus or SEOquake:

Both these Firefox browser extensions visualize 'on-page nofollow attribute usage'. This is accomplished by highlighting or striking through links that use rel=”nofollow”attribute.

Iwebtool Visual PageRank:

This particular tool visualizes “on-page internal toolbar PageRank distribution". In addition to this, it also shows the external links and links using rel=”nofollow” attributes.

Web Developer:

This tool is in the form of a Firefox browser extension that enable you to visualize each link's full address and properties, along with (linked) images and alternative text.

Crazy Egg:

This tools helps in the visualization of on-page links click-through via a “heat map” i.e 'overall on-page links popularity' or “confetti” or 'on-page link popularity depending on the referral' .

To know more about such helpful tools, visit Search Engine Journal.

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Tools to Determine Page Outlinking Characteristics!

Many Webmasters often have this illusion that the easiest way to obtain backlinks is to get them from the blogs are floating around the Internet. However, over at the Webmaster World, a thread explains why it is not so easy to do the same. The debate seems to be focused on the ethics of obtaining backlinks from blogs. Some say it is worthy and there are other who disagree.

Here is what the Webmasters at the thread have to say on this topic:

“A post with the intention of getting an easy link is spam in my book and on my blogs would be treated accordingly.”

“Producing something definitive, original, or authoritative is (blog)link worthy. What's spammy about that?

Looked at from that direction, blogs are one of the last places you can obtain an honest link. It generally holds true to the original web excitement over hyperlinks where a document is studded with references to other documents illuminating the current text you are consuming. It's from this original conception of the what the web could be that PageRank was conceived from.

What are blogs linking to and what can you produce to fit that general trend?”

“Get the PR7 links if you can, but ALSO work on getting links from all across the PR spectrum. The more sources your links come from, the more stable your PR will be. You'll be less vulnerable to "Easy come, easy go" ranking fluctuations.

I once had a link from a PR8 page, a "What's New" page on a UK university site. For a few glorious weeks my site was PR7, then it crashed to earth. The PR it has now is a lot more stable because it's based on a broad variety of little links, not one heavyweight.”

“One thing to keep note of when getting blog links is that they lose a significant amount of juice, popularity, credit, or whatever you want to call it, once the blog post falls off the home page.

If you're in the early stages of building a site and you have many links coming from blogs it's likely you'll see rankings swings positively correlated with when links move off the front page.”

“I have many blog posts written about my e comm site. They are genuine posts as people who have used my site write about the positive experience. I have never solicited a blog link.

These links are mostly all I have for my e comm site. They help in pushing my site to the no 1 to 3 position for most key phrases relevant to my site. I may mention, that the site is not in a very competitive niche though.. “

“Well in my opinion guys, if your site is getting a backlink from a quality blog post, with unique and relative content, it weighs more than a backlink from some other website even,,
But getting a backlink from a blogs side panels or bottoms may be dangerous as that will create a bit form of Google Bombing.

I ' wud me more than happy to get a link in a reputed blog posts, for my sites, than getting them from general websites and directories (that are without content generally).”

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Backlinks from Blogs Increasingly Getting Difficult to be Counted!

Ann Smarty over at Search Engine Journal has posted quite an informative post in which she has compiled a commendable list of link building queries. Along with this list, she has also taken efforts to suggest some effective search tips.

Here are some of the Link Building Search Queries:

1. keyword sponsors.
2. keyword sponsor charity.
3. keyword "submit url" / "submit * url".
4. keyword "add website" / "add *website".
5. keyword "submit site" / "submit *site"
6. keyword "suggest website" / "suggest * website"
7. keyword "recommended resources "
8. keyword bookmarks
9. "add comment" keyword / "add * comment"
10. keyword "leave a comment" / "leave * comment

The benefits of inurl: search operator:

1. inurl:tag / inurl:tags
2. inurl:forum / inurl:forums

Using restricting queries to help simplify search results:

1. region: (in Yahoo!) and loc: (in MSN/Live advanced search)
2. intext:keyword
3. intitle:keyword

To learn more about the link building queries and searching tips, read the full post by Ann Smarty

Click here to subscribe to our RSS feed to get a daily digest of news around search engine industry. PageTraffic SEO Blog is updated four times a day and is ranked as one of the best search engine resources blog by Pandia!

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A Guide to Link Building Queries!