Polite SEO

This post is about polite SEO; don’t ask, all will become clear in a minute or two.

I have to laugh, someone left a comment on this blog for about the fifth time now, and their email address and website were for different domains so I decided to take a look.

The web link left was for a blogging package (installation of Wordpress, blog optimisation and blog training video tutorials amongst other things) from a company that is pretty well known across the web.

However, the email address was for a different domain so I decided to pay the website a visit. I found a company website for ‘search engine optimisation and link building specialists‘.

I looked around and found their link building service and this includes blog commenting.

This is how they sell their service:

We find related blogs that match your service and then leave regular comments.

By leaving regular comments we add value to the community and earn you quality blog traffic and optimized links.

Here is my problem with this; they use different email addresses (but with the same domain), different Gravatars and leave various keywords for their names, this in my opinion makes them no different from a spammer.

It states that they add value but all they essentially leave is a quick sentence that is loosely related to the blog post, meaning that they either didn’t read it or they cannot provide anything of value.

The other issue I have is that I clearly state in my comment policy and in the comment snippet below that a ‘real name’ must be used. Leaving a comment with a name like ‘blog coaching’ will only have your message deleted or I will remove the name and put in a first name of my choosing (and the URL will certainly be removed).

They are billing their service as a relationship building service but all they have done is repeatedly annoyed me by ignoring the box below that states clearly that I love to receive comments but you must us a real name. Simple!

If you are using this sort of service to build ‘quality inbound links‘ to your website then I’d seriously consider a better use of your money because you may just be severing relationships with people without realising it.

Link building can be very fruitful when done properly, blog commenting can be a great source of getting optimized links. If you are looking to get a quality search engine optimised link from blog commenting then find blogs with Keyword Luv enabled, then you can drop a link with your keywords without annoying anyone (this is just polite SEO! )

If you are outsourcing your link building, at least give the company a detailed list of do’s and don’t’s.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. If you are reading this and are from the link building company, please stop wasting your time here!

Best of the Web A Leading Directory

BOTW, or Best of the Web, is still one of the best directories on the Internet. If you think directory submissions is dead then think again!

The assumption that Google treats ‘paid for‘ directory submissions as a paid for link is very much mistaken and this was discussed by Matt Cutts in a recent video. I’ve shared the video before but just in case you missed it, here it is again.

Your take-away from this video is that not all directories are created equal, some are just there to make money from as many people as possible! You need to assess the quality of the directory before you ever pay for a link.

So, does Best of the Web provide a quality link? Absolutely!

BOTW has a Google Page Rank of 6, so the Goog see the directory as an authority site.

Are all links approved? No!

Bad quality websites are not approved.

So, if you are still looking for a top quality link, you can now rest easy that getting listed on BOTW is NOT the same as ‘buying links’ as Matt Cutts has made clear.

Go get your top quality link right here.

Get A Quality Link Today at BOTW

The most important thing you can do is make sure you select the most appropriate category for your website (remember, relevancy is key).

If your website crosses a range of categories then I recommend you choose the one that is most important to you.

To recap, a paid link in a poor quality directory that approves all links is probably going to do more harm than good, BOTW on the other hand is a great place to start with you link building strategy.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. If you are interested in local search, BOTW have now added a special feature for just for you. Just click on the link towards the bottom of the home page that says ‘local search’. Here is the link again.

It was through using this that I discovered a cool article directory. For those of you that are using article marketing in your online marketing strategy then you’ll now have an additional place to upload your articles, increasing your exposure and search engine love. If you aren’t using articles in your online marketing campaigns the I recommend you get started ASAP.

The article directory I found is called iSnare (you may not be as slow as me on this one and already be familiar with the service) and not only is it a typical article directory, it also features a very low cost article distribution service.

The price starts from as little as $10 for 5 article distribution credits ($2 each), making this something that is very affordable.

Be sure to bookmark iSnare and add it to your article marketing campaigns.

To your success,

Karl

If you want to know more about the benefits of article marketing then you should sign-up to our 7-day Mini-Course, Website Promotion Success!

photo credit: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³

Increasing the number of quality links that point towards your website will help increase the credibility of your website from the search engines point of view. Let’s say you have a website that covers search engine optimisation and you get a one way (unreciprocated link) pointing to you from SEOMoz.org, the search engines will see this as a highly credible thumbs up for your site due to the relevancy and quality of the link.

When you install the Alexa Toolbar you will will see a link at the top of your browser bar that says ‘Related Links‘.

This is such a useful tool. Let’s say your niche is SEO and you want to develop relationships with web owners in that area then you would simply follow this process.

I visit a website I know is an authority in search engine optimisation, in this example SEOMoz.org. Now, when the website has loaded into my browser I click on the related links in my browser toolbar.

Now Alexa will show you websites that are similar to the one you are visiting as shown in the picture below.

To increase your chances of finding ‘authority‘ websites in your chosen niche I recommend you download the Google Toolbar as it has a PageRank indicator that you’ll be able to refer to directly from your browser.

This is what the Goog say about PageRank and why it is important:

PageRank Technology: PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page’s importance.

Read more

Now combining the power of Alexa’s related links and Google’s PageRank indicator you will be able to find authority sites in your targeted niche.

In the example I gave above, SEOMoz.org has a PageRank of 6, meaning this has a high authority and would be a great site to get a link from.

So how do you build relationships to get that all important one-way quality link. I’m going to cover this more in a future post so I won’t get too detailed here; if the website has a blog then become an active participant, leave comments that provide quality and substance to the blog readers. You could also write a quest post and send it to the blog author and ask if they would like to publish it.

I hope you’ve found todays post useful.

To your success,

Karl