What is Tynt?

Tynt’s website states that for every user who clicks on a “share this” button, there are 90 users sharing through copy and paste. Tynt is a free tool that aims to leverage this fact by automatically inserting a link back to the site whenever a user copies and pastes an image or text.

How does it work?

You can install Tynt by adding a snippet of javascript to your site’s source code. If you’re working with a WordPress site, there are also two plugins available.  Once the code is in place, Tynt’s attribution link will appear whenever someone pastes your content into an email or adds it to a website. It is then up to the user to decide if they would like to keep this link in place, or easily strip it out by deleting it.

Results

Three months ago, we added Tynt to a client’s blog. Now whenever someone pastes their content, an added link reads “More from [Client Name]: URL.”  In the past 30 days alone (Dec. 24 – Jan. 22), Tynt monitored 778,154 total page views, 41,196 image copies, and 391,039 word copies, which lead to a whopping 4,614 new links.

There are some important things to note about this data. First, only 1.07% of image and text copies generated a link, meaning that 99% of users either pulled this link out before republishing online or shared the content through email.

Second, the majority of these links are nofollowed. In this case, three of the top sites where this content was shared were Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter, and while it is great to have visibility on these platforms, the links pass little to no SEO value.

Lastly, very few of these links are high quality. Tynt separates the links into three categories: Gold for sites the search engines will find, Silver for sites behind logins or of low quality, and Bronze for sites that won’t impact SEO, but may refer traffic. Of the 4,614 links Tynt contributed, only 25 qualified as valuable Gold links. While this is small fraction of the links Tynt reports, I don’t know a single SEO who wouldn’t gladly take 25 easy links.

Additional Benefits

Tynt has its own analytics suite that provides some interesting metrics. For example, you can see which images and features generated the most shares, broken down by the top 28 images and top 20 posts. You can also discover which regions generated the most copy and pastes. This information can then be used to plan and create new content that caters to user preferences and these geographic areas.

In conclusion, Tynt is a low maintenance tool that quietly works to drive SEO value to your site. It requires little effort once it is set up. If you have a client with engaging content, we recommend testing Tynt for a month to see if it can benefit as an easy supplement to your current linkbuilding efforts.

If anyone has any experiences with Tynt or questions about the tool, feel free to leave a comment below or reach me on Twitter at @alliebrown89.

Huge thanks to our resident Analytics junkie @RachaelGerson for introducing me to this tool! 

Last week I was using Google to find blogs that accept guest posts in the small business space — using advanced queries like, “guest post” OR “guest author” AND inurl:blog OR inurl:business. At first glance, the results looked fantastic. However, most of them were low quality and not worth pursuing.

The gears started turning and, on an off chance, I turned to Twitter. It seems every SEO blog and every conference has someone talking about using Twitter to get links. In my experience, most Twitter linking strategies are long-term, such as:

• create a top influencer list on your blog and Tweet it out to see if they’ll mention you
• find people that want something and reach out to make a connection
• create content to answer questions on Twitter

Rand Fishkin, from SEOMoz, has a great video on 8 ways to build links using Twitter, which you can find here. All great strategies, but I want to take another spin on using Twitter to get links — using Twitter Search.

For years I’ve been using advanced search queries in Google to find linking opportunities and guess what? Twitter also supports advanced search queries. Find the complete list here. Some of you out there might already be wise to advanced search queries on Twitter but for those of you that are not, here is how you can leverage Twitter for guest posts, contests and other linking strategies:

Guest Posts

Finding Guest Posts

Twitter Search query: “guest post” OR “guest author” “[industry]” filter:links

This search query will bring back Tweets that contain “guest post” or “guest author,” the industry keyword (e.g. travel, education, auto, etc) and links.

If you’re not finding a lot of opportunities, open the search to something like, “guest” “[industry]” or if there are irrelevant results, use the “-” sign to eliminate tweets with irrelevant keywords.

Here is an example you can use for the travel industry:

“guest post” OR “guest author” “travel” filter:links

After performing the query, in about 10 seconds, I stumble onto Alexis Grant, who’s written a fantastic guest post about travel. The site she’s done a guest post on could be a great place for me to reach out to for a guest blog.

If you’re thinking, “the travel industry has a ton of guest post opportunities but my industry is so niche no one does guest blog posts…” think bigger. Let’s say you sell homemade throw pillows (pretty specific, right?), search for “crafts,” “home goods,” “furniture.” Looking at the big picture can help you find more bloggers that accept guest posts.

Finding Additional Opportunities

Some guest authors publish on multiple blogs which gives you an opportunity to find sites that accept guest posts that might not have popped up in your initial query.

Search query: @[guest writer’s Twitter handle] “guest post” OR “guest author” filter:links

Example: @alexisgrant “guest post” OR “guest author” filter:links

As you can see, @alexisgrant has been a guest author on more than one travel blog. If you want to dig even deeper, you can throw her website into Open Site Explorer, download the backlinks and put “guest” in the title and / or URL filter.

Finding Industry Topics

If you’re struggling to think of great content for your potential guest blogging prospect, use Tag Crowd to find longer tail / related terms. Copy all of the content on the Twitter results page and put it into the text box on tagcrowd.com.

These word clouds are going to change as frequently as the Tweets you use, so you can have fresh content when reaching out to bloggers.

Make Publishing Your Content Even More Appealing

If you want to make bloggers a more appealing offer (other than “here’s content, publish it!”), create a contest around the content. So you can say:

“I have 5 pieces of content and I’m reaching out to 10 sites to publish it. The first 5 bloggers to publish the content before [INSERT DATE] will receive [INSERT PRIZE].”

(Full disclosure: Big thanks to Wil for coming up with this idea!)

Stuck on what might be appealing? Use some of the themes from your Twitter search in Google Products to find prizes that might be appealing to them. So if we’re going with the travel industry, simply type travel into Google Product search and see what rises to the surface.

Google Product search can help you find cheap items that might be appealing under a certain price. I’m seeing products for different travel bloggers. Take a look:

We can give the traveling baby stroller to mommy travel bloggers and the Apple and router to other travel sites. Try doing a site:[domain name] [product] Google search to see if they’ve talked about the products in previous posts. This will help you build an even more compelling argument to publish your content.

Contests

Let’s say you’re running an iPad giveaway contest to get links. You can use Twitter advanced search queries to find other contests and see how they’re getting links:

“contest” OR “contestant” “[industry]” filter:links

Once you find a contest in your industry, use Open Site Explorer to find sites that are linking to the contest. Then you can reach out to those sites to see if they’d be willing to link to your contest.

If Open Site Explorer doesn’t have backlink data on the competitor’s contest URL, try:

• the Google query: “[competitor brand name]” AND “contest.” OR, if the contest requires you to paste a snippet of code or phrase on your site to qualify, simply copy it and throw it in a Google search with quotes.
• the Twitter query: “contest” OR “contestant” @[Twitter handle] filter:links until:[insert date (e.g. 2010-03-30)]

Answer Industry Questions

Find people that are asking questions in your industry by using the search operator “?” and your industry:

“?” “[industry]”

Then you can use RowFeeder to find those users that have websites. When you find a user that has a website, reach out to them and ask if you can do a guest post on their blog.

Find Local Linking Opportunities

If you’re trying to find local links, use the “near:” operator. So if I want to find local guest post opportunities for tourism in Philadelphia, I would use the query:

near:philadelphia “guest post” “travel” OR “tourism”

Don’t Drop This Idea After You Get a Handful of Links!

I used to be the biggest offender of this. I’d read a great blog post about a new way to get links, do it for a couple of weeks, then move onto the next shiny linkbuilding strategy. I did this until I made a habit of checking on almost all of my easy link strategies EVERY DAY. First thing in the morning, I wake up, grab some coffee and breakfast, sit down at my computer, check my client’s stats and then spend 30 mins finding quick linking opps in Google Reader, EVERY DAY.

I’ve used Google Reader’s Twitter Search functionality (browse for stuff > search > track keywords and searches > enter keyword > select Twitter > now subscribe) to track guest post, contest, directories and other basic linking strategies.

So that’s how I use Twitter to find linking opportunities. If anyone else has other ideas on using Twitter search to get links, please add them in the comments below.

Two months into the SEO sphere, and I’ve come to learn a lot about the value of links, best practices for outreach and search queries that make any previous Google search by me look like chopped liver. My latest SEO exploration is of Pinterest.com (Pin + Interest, get it?) and the potential value the site might have for SEO geeks like myself. I’ve been a fan of this “virtual social pinboard” since the summer, as it allowed me and millions of users to “pin” images off the web into different, organized “boards” that I can easily share with everyone. From there, users can re-pin images that they feel inspired by onto their own boards, causing a domino effect for millions of random graphics off of the internet.

As an average consumer, I’ve been using Pinterest for my own personal blog by finding fashion/pop culture images, interesting infographics and random phrases of inspiration to post on a weekly basis. Recently though, I’m (with the much appreciated help from Wil Reynolds) starting to see a new side and use for this popular social media platform from both a client and an SEO side. No drumroll necessary, but read on to find out more!

The Art of Tagging
Pinning an image requires users to tag their image with an applicable description, allowing the site’s search box to easily categorize every upload. As you can see from the image below of Wil, links from the image source and the comment area are all followed links. Creating your own company account and pushing out infographics or images from a client’s site, as well as making relevant comments with a link back to a client’s site on other Pinterest user’s images, may be an idea worth delving into because of the potential link juice coming from that Pinterest page. With the correct descriptions and keywords, your images will get re-pined by a number of users and thus increase the reach of your original link.

Easy to add a pin, URL and description!

Highlighted in Green are the followed links!

Content, Content, Content
Pinterest is a hub of content, just waiting to be found and used for the right client. A simple search term in the top, left hand box will produce ideas and images that could all be easily created into content for a client’s guest post or giveaway. I searched the term “DIY” and got 182,079 pins of images and 109,575 boards that users have created dealing with do-it-yourself projects and crafts. For any client looking for a great blog post to create on their own site, inspiration from current Pins may just be what the SEO doctor ordered. Make sure to take a look at the images with the most comments and re-pins to create an accurate judgment on just how “hot” the image or idea may be for your own site. The highlighted chalkboard frame below had over 1,500 re-pins by users and 7 comments from users on that one image—imagine how many more comments from interested users you’ll find on the rest of the re-pined chalkboard frames!?

"DIY" search results

E-Commerce
Clients that may already have a following on Pinterest or would like to create a following of fans interested in their industry can easily add a “Pin It” button to their website or blog. Similar to any social media button for users to share content with, the “Pin It” button can be added to any product page or (blog) posts for Pinterest addicts to quickly share their favorite image AND your website URL. Take one step ahead of your competitors and add this button next to your Facebook and Twitter icons for an increase in brand awareness.

Blogger Outreach
Contacting bloggers is something I do on a daily basis for clients. Disseminating a client’s brand, message or product is a key factor in any company’s marketing strategy. Now, add Pinterest into that mix and you’ve found a creative, new way to find and contact bloggers interested in your client’s product or brand. For example, we have a client here at SEER in the wine industry that occasionally partakes in giveaways and competitions for products on their site. Pinterest came to mind as a great way to reach out to people interested in the wine industry, and more importantly, interested in winning wine accessories and prizes. One simple search of “wine” and 36,528 pinned images with the tag of wine and 2,712 boards from users showed up in the results. Bingo!

"Wine" search results

Other than linking to a user’s individual blog, Twitter and Facebook accounts, Pinterest also allows other users to send messages to one another. The next step would be sending the right outreach method for this wine giveaway–something along the lines of “Hey Melissa, I saw you that you had a really great Wine board on here and would love to invite you to WineEnthusiast.com‘s upcoming giveaway for free wine accessories!” Now, your client’s promotional message is targeted to the correct, and socially active, party!

In Summary
Think of Pinterest as the ocean for your client’s link bait. You have the hook, man power, and incentive as an SEO. With Pinterest, you now have a new and relevant platform for outreach and a resource for building and sharing quality content. Try out some of the above methods and let me know how it works out for you and your clients!

If you aren’t familiar with it, Tout allows you to speed up your template emails (while still allowing much needed customization) and tracks email views and clicks.
I used Tout for one small outreach project back in June, but got a lower than expected response rate, 3 out of 19 emails, about 16%. We decided to tweak the message and try again; the response rate was even lower, 1 out of 18 emails sent. That’s about 6%.

So I tried a small test of outreach the old way, using the exact same outreach message from the second round with Tout. Of 7 emails sent manually (2 were through web forms), I got 3 responses. That’s about 43%.

This is one small test, but still worth investigating further.

Now consider those numbers with this screenshot of a test email I sent to my personal email address. (No this wasn’t the actual outreach message.)

If you’ve ever used email marketing software, this is probably familiar. The URL redirect used by Tout to track clicks added to your URLs can set off a phishing filter in some email clients if you use the actual URL and not anchor text. Here’s a further explanation of phishing and email marketing.

It’s worth noting; the first outreach language didn’t have URLs in the body text, but did have a URL in the signature line. The second outreach language had URLs in the body text and the signature line.

If you use Tout, are you still wondering why you didn’t see this when you dutifully checked your message before sending? Not every email client shows phishing warnings like this – and Gmail doesn’t. This same email showed up without the phishing warning in my iPhone. On the flip side, some email clients or people with very strict SPAM filters will block it all together.

Why Tracking Isn’t Good for SEO Outreach

SEOs Use URLs – In SEO outreach, you are of course trying to get links! So your email outreach is almost always going to include the URL of your website, and may reference a URL on the individual’s website where you want a link. Imagine if you received an email that links to your own site and see that phishing warning – REPORT SPAM & DELETE.

Anchor Text Links Can’t Be Copy/Pasted – You can avoid the phishing warning with anchor text, which is another common element in link outreach. With anchor text right in the message the recipient can simply copy and paste. However, if you copy and paste from a Tout email, the link will go to http://go.toutapp.com/###, not your client’s website.

If it Looks Like a Link, Tout Makes it a Link – I also tried to make this work by making sure the message was text with no links, but if it looks like a link (http:// or www.) Tout turns it into a link with tracking.

You might be able to find outreach language that avoids the phishing problem with a non-www link as seen above, but I don’t think it’s worth it. Tout still has value in other situations, but may not be the best choice for link building. If Tout came out with a feature allowing you to turn off link tracking, then it would be worth revisiting.

If you think the convenience and speed makes up for the fact that some emails will be labeled SPAM, remember that an increase in SPAM emails could get you blacklisted.

So if you don’t want to use Tout, remember there is still the Canned Responses Lab in Gmail. You have to give up fancy tracking, and it takes more effort to evaluate A|B testing on messages, but at the end of the day, it’s about getting responses, and getting links!

I thought about the 10,000 Hour Rule this week as I sat in our SEO meeting watching Wil explain how he evaluates client projects using his “gut.” No, he was not referring to his rippled 6-pack that he’s developed from countless sit-ups and trunk twists in the gym downstairs; he was referring to his ability to spot trends and patterns in data that most of us newbies are unable to detect.  I’ve seen Wil attack a 10-page competitor analytics report with the same zeal as a mad scientist on the brink of discovering plutonium. Wil can quickly recognize trends that others can’t- not just because he’s really smart- but because he’s been doing SEO since the Old Navy Tech-Vest boom of 1999.

It’s still a good look in 2011, in my opinion…

The longer I work on link-building, the more I realize the importance of recognizing patterns and trends in my research in order to find opportunities that scale. In my first couple of months at SEER, I would be pretty “pumped” if I found a high authority, PR 6 .edu page that was a perfect fit for one of our projects. Today, I would still be excited if I found the same opportunity, but I would take the extra step to see if I could locate a common thread in similar .edu pages in order to generate a query that could open the door for several other clients as well. Below, I am going to highlight a couple of very simple ways that identifying patterns in research can lead to scalable opportunities that can be implemented across multiple projects.

Finding Guest Post Opportunities on the Backs of Competitors

Image Source: chikarapro.com

Recently, I was doing some research to find guest post opportunities for our client that sells contact lenses. I used the query intitle:”contact lenses” OR “contacts” OR ”glasses” OR “eye care” + “guest post” OR “guest author” and came across 7 or 8 really solid results. One thing that I quickly noticed was that a few of these results were from the same competitor and they were doing something that was pretty creative. They were writing guest posts on all different kinds of blogs-from parenting blogs to legal blogs- and just finding a way to incorporate vision or eye care in their post in order to make them relevant. An example of this strategy was a guest post on a legal blog discussing the best type of eyeglasses to wear in order to look more professional in the court room.

The other thing that I noticed was that the author byline at the end of each guest post was exactly the same. It read, “Jane Doe is a content contributor for CompetitorsName.com.” Upon identifying the recurring byline, I simply put it in quotes and searched in Google- returning 666 unique results. Since they were posting on such a wide array of blogs, the research boiled down to about 40-50 quality blogs on several different topics that we’ve used to contribute content for several of our clients.

Finding Local Links and Citations Using a Competitor’s Broken Page

Image Source: geeksucks.com

Yesterday, I was doing some research to find linking opportunities for our client that happens to be an online University located in Philadelphia. As I was digging through a competitor’s OSE top page report, I found that their 4^th most linked to page was serving a 404 error. The broken page was for their Sacramento campus and had 150 linking root domains. I ran the broken page through OSE and found that the majority of the 150 unique linking domains had the same exact URL structure: (name of town).com/SAME-URL-STRUCTURE . I clicked around on these back-links and found that they are all part of a nationwide network of neighborhood-specific, real estate sites that are formatted the exact same way and link out to local resources.

Having identified the pattern in the URL structure, I was able to generate the following query to serve all relevant results (33,000) of town pages that were linking out to local Universities in the Philadelphia Area: inurl:SAME-URL-STRUCTURE “215” OR “610” OR “484”. While we are still evaluating the overall quality of these sites (average domain authority of 25-35), they have relevant categories for just about all of our clients and submissions appear to be free.

The Take-Away

Although neither example above uncovers a ground breaking or revolutionary search tactic, they do allude to the simple beauty of spotting patterns to improve search efficiency.  It doesn’t take 10,000 hours (just pouring through 10,000 back-links) to realize that efficiency is the name of the game in link building. In most cases, the difference between finding one good opportunity for a client or several opportunities that scale is just identifying the pattern that leads to a more robust query.

If you have any other effective queries, strategies or ideas -or you want to know what that URL structure actually is- please feel free to connect with me on twitter @MikeSpringman.

Image via Zazzle.com

Let me set a few things straight. When I say link buying, I am not talking about something in the footer that looks like this. A lot of you shaking your head in discontent participate in link buying and you don’t even know it. The problem with link buying is that when people hear it, it comes off as if I was scratching a chalk board with Gail Devers’ nails. Let’s break “link buying” into it’s two main components: “Link” and “buying”

Link – A clickable reference from one site to another

Buying – Engaging in the voluntary exchange of goods, services, or both

So, by definition, link buying is the voluntary exchange of goods/services for a clickable reference to another site. Did you give that blogger a free sample of your product in exchange for a review and a link to your site? Yup, you just bought a link. Did you pay a site $250 to become a “sponsor” that happened to come with a link back to your site? That sounds like a link buy to me. Did you pay a content writer $25 so that you can shop a “guest post?” C’mon! Don’t make me look in the Yahoo Directory ($299/year?) and start calling all of you out! Let’s be realistic, we all do link buying, but some of us just do a better job of making it seem grayer than others. So, now that we have established that we all do it, let’s be smart about it. Here are nine tips to help you stretch your marketing resources.

1. Sponsor a youth athletic team. Check out this site. The registration for a child is $45. Do you think this site would turn you away if you said that you wanted to sponsor two kids for the year, every year, for a link in return. Be a good guy or girl, though. Show up to a game or two. Maybe take some pictures with the kids. Be a human being.
2. Sponsor a meetup group. This was introduced in Adam’s post recently. Meetup groups that don’t have any sponsors yet are great targets. They are waiting for someone to notice them, and that lowball offer of $50 for the year may be enough for them to pay for some pizza for a meetup or two. Use this query to find meetup groups with no sponsors that are in your niche. Meetup.com also offers custom anchor text and dofollowed links.
   • [keyword] “We want Sponsors!” site:meetup.com
3. In case you have been under a rock for the last 15 years, you may know that it costs money to keep a site up and running. $10-12/year for a domain name and $5-10/month for hosting can be a burden for a site that has SEO value, but no visitors to balance everything out. Why not transfer some of that SEO value to your site and help a webmaster out at the same time? Check out this heartfelt letter that this webmaster has sent out to solicit people to donate money to the site. If I was in the restaurant or vegetarian food business, this would be a fantastic opportunity. This site owner is asking for anything from $20 to $1K. With the amount of effort that was put into this letter, I am sure a reasonable donation can get you a link somewhere on this site.
4. Sponsor a local Codecamp/Barcamp/Wordcamp. Since I live in Philadelphia, I searched for some Barcamps around my area and I found one here. They will link to you if you provide just about anything. This particular Barcamp will even take lanyard donations. We once got a link from a Philadelphia camp by donating some old hats that a client had lying around. Be creative. Some of that old stuff you have lying around in the back office could be worth its weight in links. Looking for further “in-kind donation” opportunities? Try this query:
   • sponsor our site “in kind”
5. Let’s make this really easy. How much do you want to sponsor? This is 2011. Type it in Google and see what comes up. Let’s say I feel comfortable sponsoring a site for $100. I tried this EASY query and I ended up here. For $100, I can get a link here. The page has minimal PageRank, but if my business is in North Jersey, I not only get a link, but I get all of this. It looks like my Benjamin just helped my site and I have something for the little ones to do all summer. Sounds like a good deal to me.
6. Start a scholarship. I can’t take all the credit for this one as this was born from Adam’s idea. Remember that query where I showed you how to name a donation price to get a link? Why not try that with a scholarship? I found a page here that is linking to scholarships for as low as $50. How did I find that? I’m glad you asked.
   • scholarships inurl:k12 100 – Be sure to include that inurl:k12 in there so that you can focus on the high schools
7. Offer a service. One of my recent successes came from a link that I got for a client that cost nothing. There is a site out there that mentions wacky holidays. I found out that the site was linking to sites that were mentioning the details of the holidays and the one that related to my client was blank. I reached out to gauge interest and I found out from the site owner that her site had been negatively impacted by the Panda update. After clicking around the site, I had some recommendations. It took maybe 15 minutes to make about 5-6 easy recommendations that should help out. I sent these over in a nice email along with a link to the client’s blog post explaining the details of the national day. One day and two email exchanges later, the link was up on a topical PR4 URL. I do SEO all day and I love it. I almost felt like I owed more.
8. Offer a student discount. I have to thank Jessica Hill for this one. Do you have an e-commerce client with a minimal linking budget? If they have a section on their site where you can input discount codes, create a special code that you can distribute to local colleges. A 5-10% discount really doesn’t affect the bottom line much and it brings in business that you wouldn’t have had otherwise. Schools have pages such as this one that will link out to sites that provide discounts for their students. Just don’t get greedy with anchor text here. This is one of the reasons that Staples got penalized.
9. My last tip is one that I LOVE. I like to target events that have recently ended. I have reached out to many sites only to hear that the annual event that I wanted to sponsor happened a week before my email was received. Some link builders would put that in their calendar and follow up next year. Not me. I’d tell the site owner that I have so much faith in their organization that I would be willing to make an early donation for the 2012 event. Think about this for a second. The event is over and it took the organizers six months to raise the money to put on a successful event. When a person like me comes along that is willing to put money in their pockets for next year today, they are all smiles. Not only do I get the discounted rate since I am late/early, but since I am paying for the 2012 event in 2011, I get the link until the next event comes up in 2013. I just paid $100 for a link for the next 2 years. That’s about $4/month for a PR6 homepage link.

So, I hope that these tips make it easier to stretch that marketing budget. Do you have any other ideas that have worked well for you? Feel free to share those in the comments section or chat with me on Twitter.

While Google may want all links to be organic, I believe that they know that is not even close to within the realm of possibility. They know that non-organic link building will always be a part of the search landscape and have begrudgingly come to terms with the issue. Understandably however, Google has to draw a line somewhere. It’s up to us as SEOs to understand where that line is and for the sake of our clients, not to cross it.

So where does Google draw the line?

Normally I would say “intent.” This is the ad hoc metric Google uses to determine whether something is evil or not. If the intent is obviously to manipulate their results, then more often than not it gets a busted. However, since almost all link building is done with the intention of improving a pages/sites position in search results, “intent” cannot be that line.

Par for the course with Google, the line is a little fuzzy. They can tell us something is not acceptable on one hand then on the other, SEOs show us that it clearly has impact. Google does not think it is fuzzy at all by the way. They tell us what they expect and lead us to believe they have the technology to enforce it. SEOs have shown over and over again that their enforcement tends to have holes.

Examples on both sides of the line.

The recent J.C. Penney paid linking issue uncovered by the New York Times was an instance where the intent was obviously to influence rankings. It’s a great example of either not understanding where the line was or not caring if it was crossed. The search firm who handled the Penney’s site either allowed the creation of or actively created thousands of links using paid link networks. With what I personally consider a gross disregard for the basic principles of link building, these links were place on totally non-relevant sites which was the cause of the overall “JC Penalty” debate started in the New York Times. Google has told us that paid link networks were stepping across the line over and over again.

When was the last time you saw traffic from the Yahoo! Directory in your sites referrals? That’s a $299 a year link and the only reason most people even bother anymore is because of the strength of the site and the potential link juice it can pass. I just checked, those links are still without the no-follow tag. How far would the sales drop if Yahoo! decided to add no-follows; pretty far I am guessing. Quality directories are a rather safe bet from a paid linking standpoint. When a directory is hand edited and is full of useful links across its categories, Google will normally see value in a link on that site and give it a pass.

How to deal with the line.

Let’s face it, many clients and unfortunately many SEOs don’t have a clear understanding of how much work goes into building quality links. It’s a time consuming and expensive process. Remember, I said “quality” links, sure you can get links cheap, and paying for links is an easy way to get the job done efficiently, hence its popularity. But in this case, cheap and easy usually equal dangerous and risky; just ask J.C. Penney. The tactic of quantity over quality is not viable anymore.

Dealing with the far side of the line is easy. Just stay away from link networks and brokerage houses. If a company has a “List of Publishers” you can choose from then it’s most likely not a list you want anything to do with. If a company has an exclusive network of sites, they are probably not sites you want anything to do with. Use common sense, any service that “automates” a link is probably not a service you want anything to do with. Quality link building is neither cheap nor easy. If a company or service disagrees with this, assume they are on the wrong side of the line.

Draw your own line.

A few weeks ago, Michael Martinez of SEO Theory wrote an article similar to this one. It was somewhat tongue and cheek, but focused on the point that since all linking is paid, it’s hypocritical to allow some and not others. And it may be, but there is a point at which Google decides that SEOs have gone too far and it’s at that point that the site or page gets slapped. As SEOs it’s up to us to decide for ourselves how close to the line we are willing to venture and since it’s a fuzzy line it’s a subjective decision. Some SEOs don’t mind pushing the limits while others stay as far from the line as possible. In the long run it’s up to us as SEOs to draw our own line remembering that in most cases it is not our sites which will be in the Google crosshairs if the line is crossed.

Personally, my line was pushed to far beyond my comfort zone where I was before, I am glad to be at a place like SEER where the line is mine to control once again and all the people around me have the same regard for the clients and their sites as I do.

This was my inaugural post here on the SEER blog. I am glad to have both the time and a place to write about the industry I love once again. If you are coming over because I mentioned this post on the SEO101 Radio show, thanks for dropping by.

While Google may want all links to be organic, I believe that they know that is not even close to within the realm of possibility. They know that non-organic link building will always be a part of the search landscape and have begrudgingly come to terms with the issue. Understandably however, Google has to draw a line somewhere. It’s up to us as SEOs to understand where that line is and for the sake of our clients, not to cross it.

So where does Google draw the line?

Normally I would say “intent.” This is the ad hoc metric Google uses to determine whether something is evil or not. If the intent is obviously to manipulate their results, then more often than not it gets a busted. However, since almost all link building is done with the intention of improving a pages/sites position in search results, “intent” cannot be that line.

Par for the course with Google, the line is a little fuzzy. They can tell us something is not acceptable on one hand then on the other, SEOs show us that it clearly has impact. Google does not think it is fuzzy at all by the way. They tell us what they expect and lead us to believe they have the technology to enforce it. SEOs have shown over and over again that their enforcement tends to have holes.

Examples on both sides of the line.

The recent J.C. Penney paid linking issue uncovered by the New York Times was an instance where the intent was obviously to influence rankings. It’s a great example of either not understanding where the line was or not caring if it was crossed. The search firm who handled the Penney’s site either allowed the creation of or actively created thousands of links using paid link networks. With what I personally consider a gross disregard for the basic principles of link building, these links were place on totally non-relevant sites which was the cause of the overall “JC Penalty” debate started in the New York Times. Google has told us that paid link networks were stepping across the line over and over again.

When was the last time you saw traffic from the Yahoo! Directory in your sites referrals? That’s a $299 a year link and the only reason most people even bother anymore is because of the strength of the site and the potential link juice it can pass. I just checked, those links are still without the no-follow tag. How far would the sales drop if Yahoo! decided to add no-follows; pretty far I am guessing. Quality directories are a rather safe bet from a paid linking standpoint. When a directory is hand edited and is full of useful links across its categories, Google will normally see value in a link on that site and give it a pass.

How to deal with the line.

Let’s face it, many clients and unfortunately many SEOs don’t have a clear understanding of how much work goes into building quality links. It’s a time consuming and expensive process. Remember, I said “quality” links, sure you can get links cheap, and paying for links is an easy way to get the job done efficiently, hence its popularity. But in this case, cheap and easy usually equal dangerous and risky; just ask J.C. Penney. The tactic of quantity over quality is not viable anymore.

Dealing with the far side of the line is easy. Just stay away from link networks and brokerage houses. If a company has a “List of Publishers” you can choose from then it’s most likely not a list you want anything to do with. If a company has an exclusive network of sites, they are probably not sites you want anything to do with. Use common sense, any service that “automates” a link is probably not a service you want anything to do with. Quality link building is neither cheap nor easy. If a company or service disagrees with this, assume they are on the wrong side of the line.

Draw your own line.

A few weeks ago, Michael Martinez of SEO Theory wrote an article similar to this one. It was somewhat tongue and cheek, but focused on the point that since all linking is paid, it’s hypocritical to allow some and not others. And it may be, but there is a point at which Google decides that SEOs have gone too far and it’s at that point that the site or page gets slapped. As SEOs it’s up to us to decide for ourselves how close to the line we are willing to venture and since it’s a fuzzy line it’s a subjective decision. Some SEOs don’t mind pushing the limits while others stay as far from the line as possible. In the long run it’s up to us as SEOs to draw our own line remembering that in most cases it is not our sites which will be in the Google crosshairs if the line is crossed.

Personally, my line was pushed to far beyond my comfort zone where I was before, I am glad to be at a place like SEER where the line is mine to control once again and all the people around me have the same regard for the clients and their sites as I do.

This was my inaugural post here on the SEER blog. I am glad to have both the time and a place to write about the industry I love once again. If you are coming over because I mentioned this post on the SEO101 Radio show, thanks for dropping by.

Here is a (simplified) overview of how linkbuilding works

• I have a site
• I promote it
• People see it as a valuable resource and then link to it
• The more quality links I get, the more the search engines like my site
• The more the engines like my site, the higher I should rank
• The higher my site ranks, the more traffic/conversions I should get

Okay, so now I have my site, my tasty products and the above information that the SEO fairy whispered in my ear. Now, all I have to do is get some quality links, but where do I start? I don’t know any bloggers that I can reach out to. I don’t know any directories where I can submit my site. All I know is that I want to compete in the coconut water industry and that I have access to some cool SEOmoz tools.

The first thing that I do is type in “coconut water” in Google to get a list of competitors. I’m pretty familiar with the industry so I know that Zico, VitaCoco and O.N.E are the big boys/girls in the space. So, let’s see what they are (or are not) doing that I may be able to learn from. Running each of these competitors through the top pages tool, I can see that I caught each of these competitors sleeping a little bit.

VitaCoCo 404 Pages

Zico 404 Pages

O.N.E 404 Pages

• VitaCoCo is not getting credit for (at least) 3 links since the linked to pages return 404 status code
• Zico isn’t receiving credit for (at least) 5 links
• O.N.E isn’t receiving credit for (at least) 16 links
• I use “at least” here because there were more examples of these types of pages for each one, but I couldn’t screenshot multiple pages

So, the easy part is done. I know that my competitors have links pointing to pages that don’t exist, but how do I take advantage of that? I know if I had a website and I was linking to a page that didn’t exist, my readers would be upset with me and may not read anything else on my site. So, are you thinking what I’m thinking? What if I contacted the sites that are linking to these pages as a “courtesy” and said something like, “Hey blogger, I noticed that you were linking to a page about coconut water that doesn’t exist. Since you will already be editing that post anyway, I wanted to let you know that I also have a company that sells coconut water and the product is delicious and nutritious. Would you mind linking to my site instead?” Now this won’t work all the time, but it sure beats the heck out of “hey blogger, can you link to me, I’m neat-o?”

So, you are probably saying to yourself, “that’s a cool idea, but how do I know which pages are linking to these 404’ed ones.” For that, I will be using OpenSiteExplorer (OSE). Let’s take the O.N.E example since the most links are pointing to that one:

• I copy the link location of the 404’ed page that has received 8 external links
• I drop that into OSE to find out which sites are linking to it
• I filter the results to only include the followed external links pointing to this page only
• I take the top result and I end up on this page

Coconut Porridge Recipe

It looks like this blogger has included a link to O.N.E’s coconut water site as part of a recipe. Think about how upset I would be as a reader if I was making a Coconut Date Porridge for my in-laws and I couldn’t access the page to see which coconut water I should buy. I would be devastated. So, I would shoot an email to this blogger and say “hey, you’re readers can’t view that page because it no longer exists. You should update it and, oh, by the way, I sell coconut water and it’s freakin’ sweet. Would you mind linking to mine instead?” I would recommend going down the top pages list and compiling a spreadsheet of all of the 404 pages for each competitor. Once you have that, you can start digging. Even if you don’t get all of them, you will still get a few and you will at least make the web a better place.

Now, this strategy won’t work every time, of course, but when thinking about where to start your linkbuilding, it’s always a good idea to take a look at what the competition is or isn’t doing. You just may learn something. Do you have any other ways that you use competitors for linkbuilding? Feel free to tell us about it in the comments section!