Category Archives: Link Building

Is Backlinking Still Important?

January 24, 2014Link Building, Organic SEO, SEOIs Backlinking Still Important?, link building, Link building is still the mainstay of how major search engines rank websites but the interpretation of link data has changedPeter Marino

Link building is still the mainstay of how major search engines rank websites but the interpretation of link data has changed ever since the Penguin update was launched. Bad link building is one of the easiest ways to get penalized, but good link building can be the hardest part of your job (even more so in certain niches). So, what can be considered definitely as a bad link or a link that should be “disavowed”?

Site wide footer links / multiple links from same domain
Blogroll link
Forum posting / profile link
Free directory links
Links from same class C IPs
Links from spun content
Links to different industry websites from the same article / content
Links from link-farm directories / pages
Links from non-English sites (for example – .ru, .jp, .cn, etc.)

If you have fallen prey to this techniques earlier by some unethical vendors who claim to be experts, it is always advisable to get rid of such links either manually or disavowing the links via Google Webmaster Tools. From our end, we have adopted the below techniques as far as building links is concerned.

Backlink Analysis – Balancing of followed links to nofollow to have a natural profile. Check backlinks and traffic of sites from which we are getting links to find and weed out sites which are themselves hit by this update.

Link Velocity – The first and most significant observation that stood out among sites which were affected by Penguin update was link velocity. We have reduced our link velocity since the update. Getting too many links quickly will be flagged easily by Google.

Anchor Text Diversity – Continue to vary anchor text and lower the % of specific key terms focus. We have been doing this since 2012 and will continue to work the %’s.

Link Diversity – Sites performing well have good link diversity including links from Guest Blog Posts, info-graphics, videos, local business directories, presentations, coupons submissions etc. Since Google prefers a diversified link profile. We recommend getting links from these sources. Most of these sources are also now part of new deliverables.

Apart from this, to get quality links you can also consider link reclaiming. Link reclaiming is the act of finding sites that mention you, your brand or a related story and simply asking for a link.

There are a number of ways to find opportunities for link reclamation:

Web Mentions – Google Alerts is the most popular tool for monitoring mentions on the web, but Moz has also just released an alert function for their Fresh Web Explorer. Set up an alert for your brand name and when a site mentions you without linking send them an email.

Images – Use Google’s Search by Image tool to find out where people are using your images and ask for a link credit, this works almost 100% of the time.
Videos – If you are hosting video on YouTube you can use their analytics platform to see where your videos are being watched on external sites. Visit those sites and ask for a link to your website to supplement the video.

If you incorporate these rules to your online strategy you’re more likely to rank higher while also providing a good user experience which is ultimately what Google wants for its users.

What Will 2014 Bring for Local Search Marketing?

January 21, 2014Link Building, Local SEO, SEO, Small Business MarketingGoogle Places for Business, Google+, Local SEO, WHAT WILL 2014 BRING FOR LOCAL SEARCH MARKETINGPeter Marino

As opportunity grows for businesses to connect with customers via search, so do the challenges of determining the best approach. Here are a few local search happenings to expect in this year.

National to Local Approach for Brands

The idea of a coordinated national to local strategy will become a reality for more brands and local businesses in 2014. Many local markets (and vertical industries) are very competitive and keyword saturated, making it difficult for national and regional brands, as well as for independent business owners, to win the online visibility game on their own.

National marketers that depend on the success of independent business owners (franchises, dealers, contractors) will find they can create a platform effect with a coordinated national-to-local approach to SEO, social media and content marketing.

Mobile Optimized Websites

Making sure a business’ website is mobile optimized might mean the difference between being found by customers on a mobile browser or not. With more consumers shopping via mobile, it is clear that site traffic is moving to mobile. So, being mobile-ready is a must.

In 2013, we witnessed Google giving prominence in mobile SERPs to local businesses that properly configured their websites for mobile devices, and this will be a growing trend in 2014.

Some websites could even be penalized by Google and the other major search engines if they’re not optimized correctly. Also on the mobile front, strategies like click-to-call will become even more interesting as they play a larger role in the digital lead generation strategy for many business verticals.

Google will Focus more on Ratings & Reviews

In 2013, Google focused on ramping up its local ratings and reviews. It will continue to try to gather this rich, hyper local content from local consumers to grow Google+.

In another sign of this effort, businesses with verified Google listings will continue to reap benefits including having the ability to see customer ratings and reviews in their Places for Business dashboard and the ability to reply to those reviews.

Why Google’s Matt Cutts Thinks Moderation Is Key To Guest Blogging

October 25, 2013Blogging, Business Tech, Content creation, content marketing, guest blogging, Link Building, Organic SEO, SEO, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketingguest blog, guest blog and paid links, guest blogging, guest blogging Hummingbird approach, Why Google's Matt Cutts Think Moderation Is Key To Guest BloggingPeter Marino

SEO experts, writers, marketers, and business owners have been writing about guest blogging for years now. Guest blogging is something that should help your company improve it’s branding and visibility, SEO, and reader satisfaction, so knowing you need to create a guest blogging strategy is pretty much a no-brainer. However, as Google continues to grow and develop, guest blogging is becoming trickier. It’s hard to know how to be successful when it comes to building links and exposure anymore, so of course it makes sense to go to the man with all the answers: Head of Google Webspam, Matt Cutts.

A Quick Recap: Why Guest Blogging Is Beneficial

For those who are unfamiliar, guest blogging is essentially the act of writing a piece of content, publishing that content on a different (but related and relevant) website on the web, and then earning a link back to your company in an author bio in return. As discussed above, guest blogging is a great way to build up your linking portfolio as well as earn you visibility with a new audience and really show the world that you know your stuff.

There are a few different strategies used by companies today. In general, how you want to setup your guest blogging has been according to your niche and size, and this isn’t going to change. A few different ways it has worked in the past include:

Hire a guest blogging agency. This is usually what very large companies do when they have a lot of guest posting needs. There are many agencies out there that do nothing but guest blog and build links for websites, and if you do your research, you can find plenty that produce great content.
Hire a team of in-house writers. This is usually the option for larger companies who don’t like going the freelance route. It gives you more control.
Hire freelance writer/writers. This is probably the most popular option. If you just want a little bit extra visibility, hire one or two writers to freelance is an easy way to make it happen. Be careful though and always monitor these writers!
Guest blog on your own. This is usually the route for very small companies. If you’re just getting started, and particularly if you work in an odd niche, this should work just fine.

As you can see, some of these strategies produce quite a few guest posts. In the past this was a great way to improve SEO because you earned a lot of authoritative backlinks and all of that visibility, not to mention it allowed you to really work with a variety of blogs (also good for SEO). While this still works, Cutts says that moving forward guest blogging approaches need not be quite as forceful.

Why Cutts Say Moderation Is a Necessity (And How to React)

The biggest thing to understand is that Google is working to put less emphasis on linking and more emphasis on the actual content. While backlinks will still be important, they aren’t as important, and therefore Cutts explained in his latest video that moderation is the key to success moving forward. You can watch the video below:

As you can see, Cutts does make it clear that Google can easily tell the difference between a guest blog and a blog that paid for links, so no worries there. Still, moderation will allow you to make sure that you are not just spinning articles; you’re actually writing meaningful content, which will be better for your reputation in the long run.

Do you have a guest blogging strategy that doesn’t worry about moderation? What do you think is the best way to use guest blogging to your advantage? Let us know your story and your thoughts in the comments below.

Amanda DiSilvestro gives small business and entrepreneurs SEO advice ranging from keyword density to recovering from Panda and Penguin updates. She writes for HigherVisibility.com, a nationally recognized SEO firm that offers online marketing services to a wide range of companies across the country.

What in the World is Google Doing with Hummingbird!

October 10, 2013Content creation, content marketing, Link Building, SEO, Small Business Marketing, Social Media MarketingPeter Marino

Google Hummingbird Update As of October 9, 2013

For those of you that have a website that was currently ranking for different keywords you may have noticed a disheartening minor or major drop in ranking. Google has recently launched 2 algorithms. One is Hummingbird and the other is Penguin 2.1. Hummingbird has to do with quality fresh content detection and Penguin 2.1 has to do with spam-filtering.

The general overall pattern seems to suggest Google likes content oriented sites and sites that regularly update their website. Many of the sites which fell in rankings either lack text-based or video content or did not update the site regularly with unique offers/content. On-page search engine optimization is not just about having the right meta information any more. It seems Google is actively targeting sites which do not update their on-page content since Hummingbird is designed to look for the content originator. This means on page schema coding is more important than ever!

Me and my team do differing amounts of link building from different networks and record them just to see the effect it has every time an update gets rolled out. After careful consideration, I decided to discontinue the links from some of our partner networks and invest more on custom built blogs or blogs with high Google authority.

My team and I just made a major change to how the links are distributed during the syndication process. Instead of adding 4 links on some of the article pages with differing anchor tags, we have limited it to 2. We are making all ‘click here’ anchor tags as no follow links. Due to this process, you may see some link loss over time. We do strongly believe this process will help everyone in the long run. We’ve also decided to include more co-citations in the articles we create to help with the new algorithm. What is co-citation? Read here for more.

What I am also seeing is irregular patterns which do not single out any one single factor. Some webpages and sites just seem to have randomly lost rankings while others gained traction from the same domain.

We are fighting an uphill battle since we just never know what Google will do next. There are some reports that Google will de-rank a site if almost no one clicks on the site while it stays on page 1 even though you are doing everything correctly SEO wise. All we can do now is constantly make an educated guess and deal with it. I highly recommend regularly updating your websites and adding a blog to your site and/or post articles on other sites as a guest blogger. Thus, our focus at reelWebDesign.com will be starting to go deeper into the realm of content marketing as this is where Google is headed.
For current clients I am disappointed just as much as you are as we are at a time of such great change in SEO prompted by Google. However, if we work together we can prevail, we’ll just need to cooperate with this giant that controls the Internet. Content marketing seems like the most fool proof way of getting your website ranked and to add consistent traffic for the long term. For more information and sample content marketing packages click here.