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Danny, I just received a request from whoever consults to Change.gov to run an announcment of it on URLwire, which I'll do later this morning. They must have read your article, because they asked for Change.gov - President Elect Barack Obama Transition Website to be included, and paid the announcment fee via paypal originating from an email address that looks like an Obama related account. LoL and thank you!
Eric
Good grief everyone, if you consider the entire body of work Rand has contributed freely to the SEM community over the years, his genuine and generous contributions are easily among the most useful ever made. Whether or not you like the way LS was rolled out, or whether or not you like Rand period, rather than piling on why not give the man the opportunity to do what he's alway's done. Sure things could have been done differently, but he will make it right because my gut tells me he wont be happy inside until he does. He's a guy who wants us to like what he does, and that's a rare and good thing nowadays. When I started link building I think Rand was 14 years old. To watch what he's done and what he's freely shared is amazing. I want guys like him nurtured and funded, because I want to see what he does next. I'll take a few bumps along the way because the ride is worth it.
I agree - I didn't mention that idea as I felt it might violate the copyright/trademark if you adword-ed another company's offical name. But kudos to Obama. Just further illustrates how much more saavy and prepared he is to be President. McCain probably wishes the interweb would go away
It has been pointed out to me by an obvious an*l-retentive that it isn't possible to have 5 identical twins. They would be 5 identical quints. OK, I'm a moron. I'll try to fix it now. Happy? HAPPY?
Persona's are often what I call passionate influencers. Be careful trying to talk the talk of the passionate influencer. They see through it and it's condescending. I'm a 40-something guy that listens to Dire Straits. I don't need to send a 20-something an email that's about a "crazy sick" site that's totally "tricked out" to show I'm "keepin it real" and thus have "mad linking skillz".
Don't take me wrong. After all, my own business tagline is Etiologic Linking Stratgeies, so I get where you are going and it's all good. But for me the way to truly respect another is to not change who I am just to get what I need.
Eric
Story: The SEOmoz Linkscape Ghost
I suppose I have to comment, as my silence regarding Linkscape has been mistaken by several people as meaning I don't like it. Quite the contrary. I'll post here what I've posted elsewhere, almost verbatim. Over the years I have lost count of the 3rd party link building and link analysis tools and software I've tried out, many of which are long gone. What is most telling to me is that I abandon them when it comes time for heavy lifting deep vertical link target ID and evaluation. I wont go so far as to say “All you need is Google and your brain”, but it’s darn close to true, at least for the type of client content I work with. Linkscape is outstanding and useful for a very specific set of metrics and measures, and for a certain type of link builder will be quite helpful. I commend Rand for it and I will use it to augment my own personal approach to the link building research process. On the other hand, as much as I want and look forward to every new tool, I keep thinking about Rocky IV, where Ivan Drago was using every cutting edge tool and training method available, while Rocky ran around in the snow with a log on his back. The saaviest link builders will use tools and logs.
You can fool the engines with your link building tactics for a while, but any link building approach driven by cracks and holes in an algo rather than by meritorous content, is dead. D E A D. Do your clients a favor, stop taking their money for tactics that you know will fail, and instead steer them towards a legitimate content based strategy. If the client doesn't want to hear it, say it L O U D E R.
Anchor text is and always was a joke. Seriously folks, ask 100 content creaters with subject specific expertise in their field of study what anchor text is, and they wont have clue #1. It's a tactic used by SEOs, it's been destroyed, and it's old.
homelessSEO - Good points. Allow me to clarify. I think anchor text is a joke as a signal of quality that search engines can trust. I'm not saying it doesn't work, I just feel it was naively idealistic of the algo coders to think any content that can be controlled by the content creator would be trustworthy. As we are still seeing, and as Gbombs past showed, it can be gamed. Along with this, the sites that are the MOST trustworthy are the sites that are the LEAST likely to use descriptive anchor text at all. One example: Have a look at any of the thousands upon thousands of web guides created by librarys with real subject expertise. The very folks who identify the best stuff on the web do not use keyword anchor text. None. Zilch. Nada. Which makes perfect sense given the intuitiveness (cough) of the Dewey Decimal system :) :)
Some food for thought RE: the future of links in a semantic search world.
Below is abstracted from my LinkWeek column Semantic Link Building coming next week. Call me a tease...
You wrote...
Not being able to accurately identify authority could be deadly for the success of these semantic search engines.
This notion of authority is also the reason why links will continue to be crucial, HOWEVER, it wont be the links most folks think it will be and are still hopelessly chasing today. Just as Google devalued millions of links across hundreds of non-descript directory wannabees, the engines will apply far more scrutiny as to the links they feel send useful signals, ignoring the ever-growing mass of links that are meaningless. The key will be understanding which links matter and why, having the content that will inspire, engender, and earn those links, and and knowing how to move that process along properly. The web is made up of two things: Pieces of content and links between those pieces of content. That's really it. The billions of links are a quality control mechanism too useful to ignore. The semantic SEs that succeed will be those that seletively ignore the links that should be ignored.
This is where link building and public relations intersect. The “content publicist” model I’ve been annoyingly yelling about for 13+ years :) I love your phrase “Define the TechCrunch of Your Industry.” Bingo. What I often call the 'key influencer'. He/she may be blogging at work or from their family room after the kids are asleep. No matter. Online, a key influencer is whoever has the ability to become a key influencer, and that is that.
Great great read.
Story: Don't Call Me Linkbait
Rae - good eye. Sadly, link bait and social media somehow became intertwined by marketers who JDGI. When I linkbait I stay as far away from social media as possible. It is always about the content's intended audience, though. If the linkbait is "20 Most Goofy USB devices", then Digg is worth including as a channel. If the bait is "20 Cures for Geriatric Incontinence", then maybe not so much...
It's wonderful to see you mentioned the time it takes to do linkbait right. The research, concepting, creation and planning is where linkbait succeeds or fails. The links themselves are easy to grow if those steps are done well.
Story: Linkbait at any Cost?
Linkbait is the Paris Hilton approach to online marketing. Your site becomes famous for being famous, not for having any redeeming qualities. While I totally get it, and recognize the ancillary linking benifits, i.e., trickle down, spillover and me too, I worry about the collateral damage. More crap for engines to decipher and ultimately ignore. Me, I prefer my linkbait to be useful beyond the headline, and useful to the exact people a site was designed to reach. To each site its own linkbait, to each baiter his own internal compass.
You mean Martin Sheen wasn't the President?
As a case study in successful link attraction, this one's awesome. Can't dispute that. But the ultimate success or failure of any link attraction strategy isn't in the numbers of links or buzz created. It's in what you did with the links and the traffic, and why. Similarly, one of the unintended consequences of ad driven content is that the content gets created solely as a place to stick ad code, and thus creators are way too eager to do anything to attract traffic to pages where that code resides, so that that same of that traffic will leave that site after a brief and aimless visit, preferably via a link that when clicked makes the content creator a few pennies. Content that is just appealing enough to get someone to come by, but not so appealing as to keep them interested in anything for too long. This is SOP, and we all know it and encounter it every day. I've always felt it was ironic the herculean effort put into attracting people to a site, just to try and send it away as quickly as possible via an ad link, hoping to bank a nickle for it along the way, and then start it the circle all over again. Ads plus Linkbait is like an MC Escher painting. After you get over the artistic aspects of it, you realize the futility of it, and it becomes just about the $, and at that point I'd rather go sit on the beach.
HateThePlayer - Thanks for "keepin' me real", but if my goal was self promotion, I'da deep linked that beeyatch to specially created page on my own site that woulda been more blatant. Sort like what you just did for that blog you started all of 2 days ago. Hey, no offense, I'm just callin it like I see it. Y'know, keepin it real, jus' like you is.
That and of course anyone with even a halfclue knows by now that I have my own link analysis tools. I mean this approach I've used now for, um, 14 (freeking) years was such a secret, I needed a post here at SEL to help me, right?
If it will make you sleep better, or better yet, give you something else to blog about on day three of your illustrious blog, I'll log in and edit the story so you wont havta hatethisplaya. But I think you did long before you launched.
HateThePlayer - rather than wait I went ahead and removed the mention of "my scripts" from the article. I'm sure there was other stuff that bugged you, so if you'd prefer, send me a private email and I can do this faster. Oh, and what's a "hommie"?
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hommie
says that your word Hommie is...
Hommie:
1. A completely ridiculous misspelling of the word 'homie', used by wannabe hip hoppers who think they have a good vocabulary but haven't yet discovered that the two Ms together make an AWW sound on the O....
Is that right?
@Gab - the biotech company makes oncology testing equipment, so it's a really vertical market. I think part of the challenge has been that the overall biotech niche is filled with spammers and black hat stuff, so the signal:noise ratio is high. As for ROI, I was brought in by a consultant, so I'm not privvy to those metrics, but I would not be surprised if they have some data showing a top five ranking is worth X amount, based on their other product line web sites. The company has 20 or so sites. The one I'm working on is one of the newer sites.
Once upon a time this old school link builder anoyed the hell outta the young guns because
he kept harping on about how a web site's content was the ultimate driver of truly meritorious --and thus algoritmically useful-- links. Then eight years ago i wrote What Makes A Site Link-Worthy for ClickZ. Eight years old and as accurate today as then.
Aaron I thank you for making me feel less old today. Good stuff.
Eric
IMO the anchor text would not matter in this example. The collective inbound link families
of both sites would trump a IBL parent site's single page anchors. Looking at it from the searcher's perspective, the searcher doing that search will likely find that CDVEA site before finding an individual busness's site, becasue the CDVEA site has a strong inbound link family, and probably always will have a stronger inbound link family than any one business site would. Note that the page Google shows at pos #1 is this one http://www2.cadvbe.org/search?query=graphic
So our searcher finds the CDVEA site at Google first, and proceeds to it where he then finds the company he wants to do business with via the CDVEA directory. Anchors or not, the searcher would find the CDVEA site, and thus find a graphic designer.
All of this is gut feel, hunches, and stuff I've noticed over time. I have no empirical data to support it. I figure Google has 300 PhDs working on this stuff, and if I, with my degree in beerbong, can notice it, then Google can, has, or will.
bwelford - I didn't say I was trying to coin a new term, and I don't give a shi* if anyone ever uses it. USP, ULP, LB, MLD, who cares. The point is I see cases day after day after day where people miss some of the very things that make them different. I had a client that's a reknowned piano builder. They didn't see the link potential that they -and only they- had from a historic and educational perspective. They focused purely on the commerce aspect of link building. You may be lucky enough that to be so skilled that to you this is a basic strategy, but not everyone is as brilliant as you are. Me, I'm just honored that somebody with your obvious genius takes time from your busy day to comment here and thus help me better understand the foolishness of the approach I've been using all this time.
Eric
ibrian - in the middle of the article is an example client site and an example link target site.
The site:
The National Safe Boating Council
http://www.safeboatingcouncil.org
The target:
Ocean County Library Boating Safety Resources
http://www.oceancounty.lib.nj.us/Link2Topic/boating_safety.htm
I'm sorry this extremely vertical real-life example was too pedantic and that I didn't explicity write about how this specific example might spark some creative thinking which would then spark some creative searching which would then lead one to find even more high value targets like the exampe target. The client was extremely excited to receive a targeted list of 200+ boating safety links pages I found hosted at high trust government and public library web sites all over the US. In future columns I will try harder to provide more detailed examples :)
-Eric
Barry - what did I not describe? Is link week supposed to be pure tutorial, opinion, advice, or what? The gist of this column is that best practices for link building have to vary by project, and I include examples why as well as a real-world example. Since the only thing I seem to be good at anymore is pissing people off, or worse, boring them, please help me to understand where I can add value? I'm serious. Tell me what aspects of link building you want to know about. I'll do everything I can to deliver, and if it sucks, we can all urge Danny to replace me. I asked Danny to include Debra and Rae in LW because hearing from me 52 times a year would put anyone to sleep. It appears that even 26 is too many.
If your feeling is that it's time to dust off my own blog and keep my boring ho-hum thoughts on my own site, I understand. Will do.
OK, let's give this a go. I just created a Link Building Best Practices section on my site, using blogger becasue it's so easy/quick. I will try not to bore you. Comments as to the specific topics you'd like to see me cover are welcome. I can add to it over the coming years and hopefully provide a little value.
Eric Ward's Link Building Best Practices
http://www.ericward.com/bestpractices/
Story: Change.gov Launches, But Can You Find It In Search Engines?