Getting Links

There is always work to get additional links to your website. So how do you do this? You can issue a press release. That might get you noticed by other sites. Classified ads are a cheaper alternative. This can be online using Craigslist, or older media like local papers. Online videos are the primary way to go viral really quickly.

You need to produce some worthwhile information to start. Then you can submit it to article directories such as EzineArticles. If you can get your info into Google Knol, there will be a big advantage since the links from Knol are follow.

No follow links don’t pass any page rank to you. They are therefore of little use. In the past I heard you should try to get the same anchor text in all the links that point to you. However you should also try to mix the anchor text up a bit to make it seem more natural. Be sure to get links from a variety of IP addresses.

Top Social Networking Sites

I like to see the rankings of various web sites. My data normally comes from Website magazine. Some of the top rankings surprised me.

The top spot is taken by Facebook. I have an account on Facebook. But I really don’t use it or update it. Nobody knows I am on Facebook either.

The number two position is held by Youtube. This is a site owned by Google. I used to watch Youtube videos every day. However a web site redesign made me go elsewhere.

Myspace comes in at number three. I also have an account on Myspace. But I don’t use it at all. It was just a test to see what Myspace was all about.

Twitter is number four. Just like the others, I got a Twitter account. But I don’t use it. I do hear a lot of buzz about famous people tweeting.

If you want to improve you SEO ranking, you are going to want to use these social networking winners to your advantage.

Web Site Hackage

I just read a blog post about a guy's web site being hacked. No. It is not what you think. The hackers added subtle changes to the pages on the web site. They put invisible (hidden) links in the text of each page. I guess these hackers thought they would try to boost their page rank the old fashioned way.

The joke might be on the hackers. That's because Google probably takes into account that the links were hidden, and either ignores them, or penalizes them. There are no short cuts here people. Do your due diligence. Don't try the easy way with some weak hacks. You have been warned.

According to Matt Cutts

I have Matt Cutt's blog in my Google reader. He is not an official spokesman for Google. But I think of him that way. He recently went over how to do SEO for blogs there. I ate the stuff up. Here is a summary.

You should name the directory on your server which hosts blog information "blog". Make sure you place your keywords in the URLs you use. Dashes in the URLs are the best way to separate words.

Make sure you have alt tags for images. You should also make it easy for the post creation dates to be seen. Creativity in the content is important. You might also consider stirring up some controversy. And as always, you can't lose if you make lists. I should take Matt up on some of this advice.

Massive Link Back

Here is an idea to get a lot of good links back to your site. Create blogs yourself that link to your main site. This will not cost you much. Thee are free blogs all over the place. You should mix it up. Don't just use blogger to do the dirty work.

The goal is to slowly generate many links over a long period of time. This will be a massive investment in your time. It is even more difficult than keeping up your daily blog posts. You could create a new blog per day.

This is sometimes difficult as you need to figure out how to sign up to free blogs, which each do things differently. Watch out for blogging that make you post a bunch before you can link out. Not a good use of your time.

Page Rank for People

I just read about a bold new idea. It is Page Rank for People. Instead of assigning a rank to web pages like Google does already, somebody could assign and track ranking of individuals. This is a type of reputation ranking. The best part of this idea was all the comments people wrote on the topic.

Many thought this would be very hard to implement. Others thought you could mimic a lot that is already being done for web page rank. Obviously you need some type of secure ID to prevent impersonators. A technology called Calais already parses web pages to find people on them. This might be an extension of that idea.

There are a number of issues involved. Consider the fact that many people have the exact same name. The goal of this technology would be to bridge web pages with actual people. For all we know, Google may already be working on this technology in stealth mode.

You would need to detect false networks to get this to work correctly. Nobody wants to trust a score that can be easily gamed. Another issue might be the use of ghostwriters. You may have to alter your people rank accordingly for them. However this is probably no different than somebody else writing your web pages for you.

All in all, it is a very interesting idea. I await the first implementation. Perhaps it will be done by Google. Or it might be the event that marks the decline of Google as we know it.

Rebecca Has Left The Building

Rebecca Kelly has left the SEOmoz staff. She is off to some undetermined new job. Her new blog is Fresh Edge Media.

And now I have a confession to make. Seeing Rebecca on SEOmoz made me coming back to the sight for more. Now she is gone. Bamm. SEOmoz gets dropped from my reader.

Good luck you you Rebecca. We all know success will follow you. Peace out.