Black Hat SEO Will Cost You

It’s not often that SEO makes the news. However, in the last two weeks, SEO has been a big topic in several mainstream media publications.

Two weeks ago the New York Times wrote how JC Penney used scammy link building to craft a successful online holiday shopping season. When the reporter contacted Google about the tactic, the top rankings disappeared.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal wrote how Overstock.com paid college students for inbound links to their site in another questionable SEO campaign.

Finally, today Google announced it was changing the way its search algorithm works in an attempt to delist “content farms.”

What is important about this recent news about SEO? It’s a clear message to the spammers and scammers of the online world black hat SEO tactics won’t be tolerated. The fact the SEO industry even has a recognized “black hat” category is quite telling. There are rogue operators in any industry, but they keep a low profile and operate in the shadows to avoid detection. Black hat SEOs like to brag.

If you hire a black hat SEO, you may benefit for a while, but eventually you will pay…maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your domain’s life. It worked for JC Penney during a crucial time –

Kate Coultas, a company spokeswoman, wrote to a reporter in January, “Internet sales through jcp.com posted strong growth in December, with significant increases in traffic and orders for the key holiday shopping periods of the week after Thanksgiving and the week before Christmas.”

Today Penney’s has lost significant position on its ill-gotten rankings.

The situation with Overstock.com wasn’t as blatant as JC Penney’s. Rather than buying links from the dregs of the online world, they offered a discount to people who would link to them. These were namely tech savvy college students who blogged from high authority .edu domains. The end result was the same…a significant drop in search rankings for top keywords.

Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon…

These high-profile cases beg the question, “Are paid links legal in the search algorithms?” The answer is no. Google’s search algorithm won’t consider paid links. The only legal paid links are those that have a “nofollow” tag or those that go to an interstitial page that has the robots.txt file blocked.

Penneys and Overstock haven’t been banned, they’ve simply had the “link juice” or Page Rank removed from their links. The results have been devastating.

Content farms are another concept altogether. They involve low quality articles written purely to attract the attention of search engines and gain rankings. Human visitors to these sites are typically bombarded with an array of ads and the site owners hope to gain advertising income. The largest organized creator of such content recently had an IPO worth millions of dollars. Google has decided to change how these sites are ranked.

The aftermath for these companies is up in the air. JC Penney fired its SEO consulting company and blamed the entire fiasco on them. The Overstock situation is still playing out and Demand Media claims their rankings haven’t been affected.

Perhaps the better question relies on strategy. Was JC Penney duped by an SEO company? They’re in a tough position; either admit they went black hat on purpose (it was effective after all) or claim ignorance (something a multi-billion dollar company should never do.

Overstock obviously adopted a grayer hat approach, but still knew their tactic was wrong and could have consequences. Paid links that pass Page Rank are never legal. NEVER.  Demand Media and its ilk also chose the path they went down. The search engines allowed it. Now they don’t. Adapt or become extinct.

My policy has always been white hat. Over the years I’ve been passed by temporarily by black hat tactics or black hat SEOs only to find out later their results didn’t work long-term. I don’t worry about algorithm changes, because I produce good content. I’m not in business to test the gray/black line. I’m here to create good content and get good, lasting rankings for myself and my clients.

How do you choose a good SEO?

Ask them. Ask their clients. Ask their former clients. Find out what their link building strategy is. While certain tactics may be proprietary, it’s easy enough to find out where inbound links are coming from by searching for an inbound link checker.

Online marketing is now about transparency. Anything underhanded, shady or gray will be found out. There is no shortcut to creating good content. Outsourcing your content generation to countries where English isn’t their first language is not an effective strategy. The same applies if you’re creating content for a non-English website.

Bottom line: Black hat SEO isn’t good strategy. Your site’s search results will pay and pay dearly.

Is Ongoing Search Engine Optimization Necessary?

Last week I had a meeting with John over at inQuo, a computer support company.  He suggested I write an article about why SEO must be ongoing and not a one shot deal.

That is a very good idea because many people think we SEO guys just sprinkle a little magic dust and presto websites are appearing on the front page of Google.

While I could go into detail about specific steps that need to be taken each month, the bigger reason ongoing SEO needs to occur is more conceptual.

Three major reasons you need ongoing SEO services:

1.  Google loves fresh content and rewards it with high results.  If you don’t have someone to update your content or site on a regular basis, any upfront, on page SEO will eventually lose its value.  It may not happen right away, but it will happen.

2.  Tracking.  Businesses and people for that matter tend to perform better when there’s a number to beat.  If you don’t measure performance, you’ll never know how to improve it.  Any SEO service should involve monthly reporting.  For certain types of PPC, these reports should be weekly.

3.  Expertise.  While having tracking in place is part of the battle, knowing how to read those numbers is the other part.  For this site, I’ve found Friday’s are my slowest day of the week.  I’ve tried additional marketing on Twitter and making sure to post new content to help drive traffic on that day, but it still tends to be my slowest day.  Other sites I’ve managed have other “slow” days.  It’s my experience that tells me whether to be concerned or to recognize that it’s a normal traffic trend.

The same applies to spikes in traffic.  If you get one you want to know why, whether that traffic is effective and whether to try and duplicate it.  Again, it’s experience that matters.

Some people think SEO is a waste of time and money.  Some SEO companies will waste your time and money.  I don’t think a properly executed campaign is.  I’ve seen amazing results in the past and now from being on top of the search engines both in traffic and income.  I know proper SEO works and I know it needs to be ongoing.  There is no magic dust.  There are no instant results.

I Can SEO a Paper Bag to the Front Page of Google

I promise I’m not writing this article to brag, but rather to demonstrate my versatility on projects that are sometimes out of my control.

My boast is I can SEO a paper bag to the front page of Google.  More specifically, the front page of Google images.

I’ve had quite a bit of success with spiders and webs and even though Halloween is over, arachnid traffic is still generating a significant portion of my daily visitors.  Thanks to some other key images, I’m now getting traffic from weak links and fish bowls.

Paper bag will be just another of my SEO optimized images where I dominate the search engine results.

What it means for potential clients is much more significant.  After reviewing dozens of sites over the last few weeks, I’ve only found one that doesn’t need some serious on page SEO work.  However, because of my SEO strategies, that doesn’t really matter.  I can literally SEO a paper bag to the top of the SERPs.  In three weeks, I’ll prove it!

Here are five difficult SEO situations I’ve run across, where I can still do SEO and get results:

1.  There is no site to SEO! – I can have a website built or utilize a Facebook business page to provide a solution.

2.  There is no access to the existing site for on page SEO – I can utilize off-page tactics like local directories, press releases and article marketing to attain results.  I currently have a client like this.

3.  Big corporate doesn’t utilize local web marketing –  If you’re an agent or representative of a big company that won’t target market, I can still help you brand yourself or your local market with my SEO tactics.

4.  The existing site is poorly optimized, but there’s no budget for web design changes – Some of the best ranked sites I’ve seen have this problem.  Off site optimization or popularity trumps this weakness.  If you have a clear call to action on your site, you’ve got the heart of a web marketing campaign.  Why not take advantage?

5.  It’s a template, CMS, blog or other site that doesn’t allow significant on page optimization – It doesn’t matter!  There’s a reason I’ve chosen a WordPress hosted blog for my business site…to prove I can optimize it.

Some people argue I need a self-hosted site, or a better e-mail address or business cards.  I say, “NO!”  If I can get ranked on the front page of Google for the term “Utah SEM,” I can achieve similar success with your website.  I have no shortage of meetings with potential clients even though I’m using Yahoo! email.  I refuse to use an analog business card when my digital card is yielding the results it is.  I actually had a business coach apologize to me today for suggesting otherwise.

When I show the results I’m getting to technically inclined people, they’re absolutely amazed.  I purposefully picked difficult site options so I could show my abilities.  My old goal of “Salt Lake City SEO” has been crushed.  The last time I checked, four of the top ten spots had my press releases or directory listing.  That means I sent four of my competitors to SERP oblivion.  Good riddance!

My strategy towards my competitors is scorched earth.  I am going to leave them in my dust.  I’ve never been on my own in this business and I am taking no prisoners.  I already have a toehold on “Utah SEM” and “Utah SEO” is my next target.  The fact the number one SERP holder recently started following me on Twitter gives me confidence.  I am not going to stop working on these keywords until I occupy every position on Google’s front page.  It is not enough just to get there,  I intend to dominate.

I’ll admit some of it’s a little bit personal.  The only company I believe offers any significant competition to me, told me I was “overqualified” to work for them.  I’ll show them “overqualified” by locking them out of any local keyword SERP they ever wanted.  Trouble is, they’re not my competition.  They’re far too expensive for anybody in my target market to afford.  I’m going to show them exactly how “overqualified” I am anyway…without really expending much effort.

I do have a “beef” with two other companies.  Only one of them directly competes with me here in Utah, so that’s the only one I’m even thinking about.  It doesn’t matter.  There’s plenty of SEO business to go around for everybody.

I just need these SERPs to show what I can do against my competition, which means I can do the same against your competition…

Internet Marketing – The Best Article Submission Sites

Another tool in the SEO toolbox is article marketing.  An effective SEO article contains a keyword rich headline that is eye-catching and body content containing anchor text links to specific pages of the site you are trying to optimize.

The biggest benefit of an article marketing campaign is you can distribute it globally utilizing RSS.  Once article can be reposted over and over again with links to the site you’re trying to optimize.

I prefer to write interesting, quality articles that publishers will want to include on their site like this one on temporary workers and this one on LG cell phones.  Other Internet marketers prefer quantity to quality because many article sites limit anchor text in the body to only three outbound links.

Once you write the articles, where do you go to distribute them?  My friends at iXod Conversion Marketing have been kind enough to share their authoritative list of article submission sites.

These sites are listed in order of Google page rank and I’ve added some notes about each one.  This is not the complete list, but it contains the highest ranking article submission sites available.

Notes:

1.  Not every article submission site allows anchor text in the body of the article.  Some of them only allow it in the author’s resource box.  Some of them don’t allow anchor text at all.  You can still get results by having a keyword rich title which will show up in the SERPs and utilize direct links to the optimized site.

2.  I prefer to only submit to sites that allow anchor text in the body.

The Best Article Submission Sites Part 1

ezinearticles.com

This is the best site on the Internet for submitting articles.  It’s also the hardest to get accepted.  Articles need to be unique and you can’t just repost blog articles you’ve written.  Human editors approve or deny all submissions.

goarticles.com

This site is my second choice and also a very good source.  It is easier to be accepted here than ezinearticles.com

articlesbase.com

Very good site and easy to get started.

articlealley.com

Also pretty easy.

articledashboard.com

This is a good site I’ve used before.  I’m currently having some technical difficulties with it.

articlecity.com

Doesn’t allow anchor text anywhere.  You can still use a direct URL like https://seobyswaby.wordpress.com

articlepool.com

Anchor text in resource box only.

submityourarticle.com

You have to pay to submit your article here.  I don’t know if it’s worth it or not.

abcarticledirectory.com

Resource box anchor text only.

free-articles-zone.com

Resource box only.

articlesfactory.com

Resource box only.

dime-co.com

Resource box only.

articleslash.net

Resource box only.

simplysearch4it.com

Resource box only.

impactarticles.com

Allows anchor text, but is for business related articles only.

ideamarketers.com

This is a great site.  I’ve submitted dozens of articles to it in the past.  I don’t know why it’s so low on the Page Rank!

There are many more article sites on iXod marketing’s enormous list.  I just haven’t tested them yet.  Look for part two coming soon.

Trick or Tweet!

Happy Halloween everybody!  As you can guess from the title today we’ll be talking about Twitter.

Twitter has gone through some major changes this week and I’m going to talk about how that effects SEO.

First, let’s talk about the Twitter “trick.”  There are people out there that don’t believe Twitter is a useful tool, let alone a useful business tool.  Consider this comment:

I tried twitter 8 months and found it to be nothing more than rss, but worse: mostly spam

so go ahead and hype it up some more, you are a sukker like other media who believe twitter is somehow great

Obviously this commenter wasn’t following the right people.  If I get spam, I unfollow.  If I get too much stuff, I unfollow.  Consider it an instant and trustworthy opt-out list.  If you try it, it’s easy to either stay subscribed or get out.

I’ll admit many people haven’t figured Twitter out yet and that includes businesses.  The question we have to ask is Twitter a gimmick and does it present a tangible return on investment (time).  Are we being tricked by using Twitter?

I don’t think so and I believe the events of this past week prove it.  First of all the announcement Bing would index Tweets was made.  The next day Google announced similar news along with a social search function.

While the experiment isn’t quite live yet, it would seem that from the video below made by Google’s Matt Cutts, Social Search, at least at first, will be able to include results from Twitter, FriendFeed, Picasa, Blogger, and Google Reader.

When I opened up Twitter this morning, I saw a new feature:  lists.  Lists aggregate like-minded content together and they’re searchable.

Twitter Lists are exciting because curation of dynamic sources is exciting. This is a particularly accessible way to do what syndication geeks have been thrilled by for years.

If none of this made sense to you, let me explain.  Twitter lists are like a digital news or feed reader.  You can create your own list to follow topics you’re interested in and categorize them.  Until now, this wasn’t possible with Twitter.  This feature will cause more people to adopt Twitter as an information tool and they’re searchable through Twitter and Google.

The impact to search engine optimization is simple.  If you’re not Twittering useful content, you won’t be found.  Use hashtags and your keywords in tweets and you will open up a new channel of potential clients and referrers.

I think this a great treat, Halloween or not.  If you’re a business, ignore Twitter at your own peril.

The SEO Snowball Effect

For new websites, or sites that have never undertaken an SEO campaign, a common question is, “How do I know this SEO campaign is working?”

The answer is when you see an exponential increase in traffic or inbound links without expending very much current effort.

Of course your initial SEO campaign should involve a flurry of activity in research, creating content, link campaigns and so forth.  To truly measure the effect of that activity, one must wait.

That’s actually the part I like the most about SEO…when you get to the point you can create terrific content without worrying about how to promote it.  I’m still not “there” yet with this site, but I know I’m on the right track.  Why?  The SEO snowball effect.

A month ago I made the comment the site had reached the milestone of attracting 1000 unique visitors.  30 days later, meaning today, the visitor total is slightly over 4,000.  That’s not just doubling, that’s exponential!  For the most part all I’ve done is create content.  It’s also organic.  There were no paid links, except for the fee to distribute the Utah’s Top Blogger press release.

That monthly graph looks great right?  All uphill.  The daily and even weekly graphs aren’t as fluid.  Sometimes there are drops in traffic.  That’s OK because traffic is just one aspect of a successful SEO campaign.

What else is an SEO campaign supposed to do besides increase traffic?  If you think SEO is only about traffic, you’re approaching the concept the wrong way.  SEO is about business, increasing business.  That takes a lot of forms.  Increasing traffic is useless if your site doesn’t have a way to let those visitors engage you in a discussion about their needs for your business.  Those ways may include an email contact form, a Twitter follow, a Facebook fan, a phone call or even a face to face meeting.

The way to measure your online influence is by the amount of inbound links you’re receiving.  In that regard, I’m very pleased with how this site is growing.  Two and a half months ago, I had no inbound links.  Now I’ve got 550.  That’s also exponential.

Where are these inbound links coming from?

A lot of them are generated automatically through Twitter and splogs, so they don’t carry much weight.  They’re also very easy to get.  Some of them are coming from the blog carnivals and others come from comments I make on other sites.  Most of them come through pingbacks and trackbacks.  I registered with Blog Buzzer to automate that process.  Otherwise, WordPress only automatically pings other WordPress blogs.

The best inbound links are the ones you create just from having good, searchable content.  They’re the links you earn from doing a great job writing your blog or website.  I found this link to my blog on Google.  I have no idea how they found me.  That’s good.  That’s SEO.

From an SEO perspective it’s a good link because it comes from a site with similar content to mine – social media and Internet marketing – plus they’ve got a higher page rank than mine.  It’s a bad link because it’s buried along with a bunch of others in a blog roll style.  Even though it won’t get me any traffic, it will help with my page rank.

A better inbound link is this one.  It’s a blog post about my Facebook friends policy.  The link to this site is in the body of the post, which Google loves.  Plus it’s sending traffic as well as sweet Google link juice!  How did I get this link?  By linking over to them first.  I didn’t ask for a return link, I simply linked to their story as an example from mine.  A pingback shows up in their comments and they saw my site and,

I love it, and would highly encourage anyone wanting to use Facebook for professional purposes to follow this practice.

That is good SEO.  It’s the kind that snowballs into traffic, inbound links and authority.  Once you obtain authority (trust) you will only get more.  The final step of a good SEO campaign is one I haven’t reached here yet, but I have in the past.  That step is media recognition.

Some people are willing to do anything to get media attention.  I know the best way to get media attention is the same way you get your customer’s attention: good content/products and the ability to be found.

When I was writing real estate blog, I got a call from a reporter at USA Today.  He had found my number from my blog and was actually writing a story I didn’t know very much about regarding stocks.  I even told him I wasn’t a good source, but he asked a few questions anyway.  I referred him to other people to speak to about his story.  At the end of the day, I was the one that got written about.

The USA Today story wasn’t a good piece for me.  There was no link to my site and the reporter actually misrepresented me a little in the story.  However, a story in a local trade magazine was a lot better.  It put my opinion in the cover story and the magazine was distributed to people who could send me referrals.  Neither story would have happened if I didn’t have excellent SEO for my site.

Determining whether your SEO campaign is working is actually pretty simple.

1.  Are you getting more traffic?

2.  Are you getting more inbound links?

3.  Are people (not necessarily mainstream media) talking/writing about you?

If your SEO campaign has been going for 90 days and you haven’t seen any results, you need a new SEO company.

Hire an SEO Company Before Redoing Your Website

Last night I glanced over a site for a potential SEO client.  My understanding is it had recently been redone or “refreshed.”  From a design standpoint it looks pretty good.  From an SEO standpoint it needs a lot of work.  I mean a LOT!

That’s good for me if I get hired on, but it’s not good for my potential client.  They just paid probably some pretty decent money to get a site redesigned and they’re going to hate to hear some of that money will have to be respent either to me or the web design company to make the “on page” changes I’ll recommend.  If only they had hired me first.

There’s a few good points to think about in this example.

1.  Despite the awareness and knowledge about SEO, web design companies are still not offering it.

2.  There are web design companies out there that don’t know anything about SEO.

3.  Businesses are following the same process for the web they did ten years ago.  If I build it, they will come.

Good questions to ask your web design company are how much SEO experience do they have and what kind of SEO considerations will they make in designing the site.

Website redesigns are fraught with peril especially if the current site already has some good rankings.  Changing hosts, changing the software running the site (ASP, PHP, HTML) and changing the site structure or page names will KILL your current traffic.

Here are some SEO considerations to think about when redesigning a website:

1.  Do you want a custom description on the search engine results page depending on which page your visitor finds you on?

2.  Do you want your site navigation to be easy for your visitors and search spiders?

3.  Do you want your page names to be descriptive of the content that resides on them?

4.  Do you want images on your site to be descriptive of their content?

5.  Do you want every opportunity to use descriptive text for your navigation?

6.  Do you want a clear call to action on every page your visitor sees?

The answer to all these questions is YES!  The question to your web design company…before they start designing…is HOW?  If they don’t have an answer, you need to hire an SEO company.

Halloween Web Traffic Isn’t Scary

It’s interesting what will bring traffic to a website.  A little while ago I wrote about optimizing images for SEO.  That’s an opportunity I believe I’ve missed in the past.  Not this time around!

A few weeks ago, I noticed a strange keyword turning up in my analytics software; “surprise party.”  One disadvantage of the WordPress analytics is it doesn’t link directly to a source of search engine traffic like others do, so I have to do a bit of guessing.  I typed surprise party into Google and came up blank.  Then I tried the blog search.  Still nothing.  Then I tried images.  Bingo!

I don’t know why this turns up, because the photo is called “cocktail party” and I didn’t use the word surprise anywhere in the article about Facebook.  That image search result is good for a few clicks a week.

Saturday night I noticed search engine traffic coming from terms related to spiders…not the web robots…the real life icky, scary arachnids.

2009-10-03

Search	Views
spider web	3
spider webs	2
spiders	2
http//seobyswaby.wordpress.com/2009/08/2	1
spiders image	1
spider web pictures

I did know what that came from – my cleverly titled article on web copywriting.  I didn’t think much of it until Sunday, when the numbers increased unbelievably.  Why were all these people searching about spiders?  Oh yeah…Halloween!  It’s October!  Because of the title of my post and the title of the image, this site is turning up quite well for an image search on spiders…

and spider webs!

Those image results have catapulted my web traffic:

10-04-09

Search	Views
spiders	34
spider web	33
spider webs	16
a spider web	2
spider webs pics	2
picture of spider webs	2
pictures of spider webs	2
spider web pictures	1
rss site penalties	1
spiders web	1
photos of spider webs	1
spiders pictures	1

Yesterday

Search	Views
spiders	34
spider web	33
spider webs	16
a spider web	2
spider webs pics	2
picture of spider webs	2
pictures of spider webs	2
spider web pictures	1
rss site penalties	1
spiders web	1
photos of spider webs	1
spiders pictures	1

Quantity vs. Quality Web Traffic

This is the question that perplexes web marketers and businesses the most.  Do I want more traffic even if it doesn’t convert?  Or do I want a trickle of highly targeted traffic that will buy my product or hire my service?  It certainly is a balancing act.  Starting up a website from scratch with no advertising is a challenging prospect.  Blogging is hard!  These visitors coming to see spider pictures are leaving quickly.  My page views have decreased from 2:1 to slightly above 1:1 in the past few days.  Clearly this is a result of my new source of traffic.

When I started this blog I was really surprised at how quickly it started getting traffic.  When I had my Salt Lake real estate blog, I was averaging slightly over 100 visitors a day at the peak.  In good months that would triple.  For this blog, once I started going, I figured 50 a day would be a good start and maybe by month three, I could get to 100 a day.  Ideally, I’d like to have a 1000 visitors a day.

I’m trying to get a good mix of traffic sources.  So far I’ve got Facebook and Twitter and a few directories.  Last week I published my first press release and I’m beginning to get inbound links from Utah’s top blogger nominees.  The blog carnivals are beginning to pay off with inbound links and quality traffic that is signing up for my Facebook business page.  I’m getting bits of traffic from ping backs to other blogs and news sites.  As I generate traffic from all these sources, I will be helped on popularity based sites like this.  I’ve gone from the middle of the second page to the middle of the first page in the last three days.

As long as I continue to have multiple sources of traffic I will get the quality I need and the quantity I desire.

Link Building – How to Get Inbound Links

Yesterday I wrote about how to create the perfect inbound link.  Some of you are probably thinking that how to get an inbound link might be a better topic.  So let’s take some time to discuss that today.

There are a lot of great suggestions out there for link building.  Some incorporate multiple steps, but in reality, there are only three types of inbound links.  This article will describe them and explain how you can start getting inbound links today.

1.  The links you ask for – This one of the oldest and best ways to get inbound links, but it can be very slow and other sites may turn you down.  The idea behind it is to find sites that are in your general topic area that will link back to you.  When I was writing my real estate blog, I would get these requests all the time.  Making a reciprocal link exchange is a good idea, so long as the site you’re trading with has good content and is in a “good neighborhood.”  I used to turn down many sites that didn’t fit this description.

Asking for links is certainly something worth doing, but it involves a lot of work to only get one link.  The key to being successful with it is being able to offer something of value to the target site.  No, I’m not talking about money.  When you’re first starting out, the only thing you have to offer is good content.  You’re not going to pay for a link and you’re not going to have a good Page rank…yet.  So, offering to provide an article to help the other site is a good idea.  Offering the other site to make a post on yours is also a good idea.  It’s good for SEO and it’s good for building a sense of community.

2.  The links you make – This is where I like to focus my efforts when link building.  It’s faster and you’ll see results immediately.  Be careful how you do it, because you don’t want to come across as a spammer.

Trackbacks – I think it’s very important to create links in every blog post.  When you’re writing you don’t want to just tell, you want to show.  By linking to a specific post in someone else’s blog, you’ll get a link back to your own site.  Here’s an example of what it looks like.  It appears on the top of the comments.  Not all of them do like this one:

Most trackbacks have a “nofollow” tag in them so spiders won’t follow them.  However, people will follow.  Plus every time to link to someone’s site, the webmaster knows and they take note and you may very well get a link exchange on their blog roll.

News links – Use Sphere or Blog Burst to get links to your site just by linking to a news story.  My research tells me those links also have a “nofollow” tag in them, but you’ll get people.  You will also create the impression your site is important because it shows up on a major news site like CNN or the Wall Street Journal.

Blog carnivals and article submission sites are both great places to donate a little of your content to get a link back.  Blog carnivals are particularly useful in learning about your community and establishing relationships.  When you host a carnival, you’ll get dozens of inbound links at a time.  Article submission sites syndicate your content and you’ll also receive dozens if not hundreds of inbound links.

Press releases are another way to get inbound links from multiple sites.  Beware that submitting a release to PRWeb will cost you several hundred dollars to get those links.  You also need to submit something that is newsworthy.

Message boards and forums related to your topic are one of my favorite ways to get inbound links.  For instance, I found a board yesterday about blogging.  That’s a perfect place for me to sign up and review the threads.  No matter what your topic, there is a community out there talking about it.  Find that community and get involved.  The links will come both from you and from other members that review your site.

Directories, blogs and a million other sites are places you can get quality inbound links.  My point here is there are a lot more practical and efficient ways to get inbound links than asking.  Make your own.

3.  The links you earn – These are the very best inbound links you can get.  These are the links other people give you for seemingly no reason at all.  When you start getting these kinds of links it means you’re producing high quality content and putting yourself out in the community.

I’ll never forget the times my real estate blog received these kinds of links…because it meant traffic!  Sometimes it was a members only board I couldn’t access, sometimes it was a really popular blog, but those are the surprise links you earn by publishing great content.  Here’s an example of one from my old real estate blog.

I hear the question asked frequently, “how can I get traffic to my site?”   I think the better question to ask is “why should I get traffic to my site?”  Create that “why” and you’ll get the traffic.

There you have the three ways to get inbound links; ask for them, make them or earn them.  I promise that if you create quality content first, make plenty of outbound links and reach out to your community, you’ll never have to ask for them and you will earn plenty on your own.

Use Photos for SEO!

Photos can help SEO

A few weeks ago, I suggested/informed/declared that Flickr was a great place to get a little extra traffic to your site.  A photo site?

Yesterday Bing announced a visual search where photos would show up instead of text.  I believe this is something every SEO company should be aware of…and exploit.

Google already has an image search.  It’s something I use for almost every image used here and elsewhere.  Sometimes the search term I use to find a photo reflects the topic at hand.  For this post I knew I would be talking about photos.  In my mind it was a lot of photos, not a specific one.  So I searched for collage, found the one displayed here and saved it to my hard drive as a file called “photo seo.jpg.”  Then I added the “alt” tag  “photos can help SEO.”  This is a little SEO trick to help this page and to help the photo show up on Google images.  I could have kept the original file name or left off the alt tag, but why let such opportunities go to waste?  Plus I want my photo to be more relevant so someone doing a search for seo photo might actually read this article.

Sometimes I pick a photo that’s ironic or funny.  Yesterday, I did a search for apples and oranges to represent visually how different Facebook and SEO are.  I didn’t change the file name which was applesoranges.jpg or some such thing.  I also didn’t use an alt tag.  The file name was perfect.  I assume that’s a pretty common search term and I’m hoping that article will show up.

For the Facebook article, I didn’t use the best photo I found.  I really liked the one where someone had hand stiched half an apple and half an orange together and then taken a beautiful photo of it.  When you use images, there are copyright issues to consider.  Here’s how I handle it.  If I see a copyright, like I did with that image, I steer clear of it.  If I see the same image over and over on different websites, I assume it’s fair game.

The image I used yesterday was also an original image, but had no copyright info on it.  I supplied a link back to the original and feel pretty confident I won’t have any problems.  If for some reason the site owner asked me to remove the image, I would comply in a heartbeat and find another suitable image.

Why don’t I link right to the image instead of saving it first?  This practice, known as hotlinking, has become quite dangerous for several reasons.

1.  By linking to the image, you’re using the other site’s bandwidth.  I know I don’t have enough traffic yet to impact anyone, but it’s bad form.

2.  The site hosting the image may go down, and your site will have an ugly gap.  Sites come and go.  It’s a fact of the Internet.  Never rely on someone else’s site.

3.  The image may be changed.  Any one can name any file, anything.  It’s happened in the past where a completely benign file name that was hotlinked, suddenly became a pornographic image because the disgruntled host realized someone was effectively stealing their bandwidth.

If you’re not using images in your blog posts or website, now is the time to start.  Here are some quick tips.

Use Flickr to host your original images.  Do fill in the description tags and use an SEO friendly file name.  Do provide your website in the description area as well.

Always save and reupload images you find on the web.  Do rename the image if necessary.  Do use alt tags to enhance the image’s description.  Remember that humans can read the alt tags, so don’t simply keyword stuff.

Don’t steal images!

Remember that photos provide additional SEO exposure especially on Bing and Google.  Plan accordingly.