Is It Wise to Rely 100% on Link Networks?

Do you remember what happened on March 19? It’s the day when majority of BMR’s (Build My Rank’s) network was de-indexed by Google. Search engine giant Google has always been on a mission to detect spam. But now, it seeks to destroy spam even more strongly. Build My Rank has done a lot of good to publishers and SEOs for many years. That’s why the news of BMR getting de-indexed shattered the entire SEO community.

What does this step by Google indicate?

[There are two things.]

First, link or blog networks are on Google’s radar now.

Second, links still matter.

If you conduct a search on Google, you can easy find hundreds of reviews that recommend BMR as one of the best SEO tools. Now that the de-indexing has happened many of the reviewers feel sorry about it.

Here’s what Steve (of SteveScottSite) has to say –

Lis (of Lis Sower Butts) says this –

There are high speculations that Google will de-index many other link networks. But what we know for sure is that BMR’s blog network has been de-indexed already. The owner of this link network has honestly shared the details of this de-indexing on their site. In addition, BMR also offers a tutorial for its customers to help the latter remove backlinks to a particular site.

If You’re Building Links via Link Networks…
Obviously, not everyone out there is utilizing link networks to build backlinks. But there are definitely those that rely on link networks massively. Though it’s not entirely bad to use such networks, the best idea is to not depend on just one link network for building backlinks for your niche sites. There are still multiple blog networks that are going strong. However, you need to use your brains and take every step with caution so that you can prevent (unexpected) penalties.

Don’t freak out. Google will always continue to do things it wants to do. The biggest piece of advice that you can use is to diversify your link building efforts as much as possible. If you’re using several sources to build links, it won’t destroy everything in case one of those networks gets hit.

Building a diverse backlinks profile is all about finding more opportunities, analyzing them and leveraging those that look credible.

A truly diverse backlinks profile may include -

Text links
Image links
Country code domain links
Do-follow links
No-follow links
Links from .net, .org, .edu sites

You May Still Use Some of Those Networks!
The de-indexing of BMR is a special case actually. What you must note in this case is that BMR is built around a network of sites that are owned by the same link building service. [These sites belong to just one owner]. On the other hand, there are other link networks that thrive around a community. They have a network of sites that belong to different individuals like you and me. That’s why you really need to rack your brains before making a SEO decision.

Getting the point? Please feel free to share your own opinions and thoughts by casting your vote in the poll below.

5 Things You Can Learn by Drilling Down on Traffic Sources in Google Analytics

Did you know there is more to the Referral Traffic Sources in your Google Analytics than just the referral domains themselves? Here are a few things you can learn by clicking on some of the domains listed under your Traffic Sources > Sources > Referrals.

What Twitter User Really Sends You Traffic & Your Most Popular Posts on Twitter

Want to find out who is really sending the most traffic to your website via Twitter? Look no further than the t.co domain in your Traffic Sources. When you click on this, you will see the specific t.co links that have led visitors to your website.

Copy the Referral Path listed, then paste it into your browser after http://t.co so you can go to the post or page that it references. In another tab (if you don’t have this already), install the Topsy Trackbacks bookmarklet on your bookmarks toolbar. Then go to the tab with your post and click on the Topsy bookmarklet. You will now see most of the tweets for your page in Topsy.

When you get to the All posts about this link section, scroll to the bottom and click on the more link until you’ve pulled most of the tweets for your post (which could take a while, depending on how many times the page has been tweeted). Then use your browser’s Find on Page (CTRL + F) and paste in the Referral Path again. It should take you to one (or more) tweets with the t.co link that you pulled from Google Analytics. The first person who tweeted it is the source of your Twitter traffic!

In my case, it was Dave Larson of TweetSmarter that I had to thank for the most traffic from Twitter for my post on how to start a blog on WordPress.

Going back to your Referral Paths from t.co, you can also use this to see which posts on your site get the most Twitter traffic. Simply click on the Secondary dimension dropdown and select Landing Page under Traffic Sources.

This will show you the posts each t.co link references.

Pages with Traffic from Image Search

Curious what posts or pages on your website get the most traffic from Google Images search? Find out by clicking on the google.com domain in your traffic sources and then click on the /imgres Referral Path. Next, use the Secondary dimension dropdown and, again, select Landing Page under Traffic Sources.

Be sure to check out the images on those pages to see if you can use similar images for future posts / pages on your site for more image related traffic!

Guest Posts, Comments, or Crowdsourcing

When you’re looking at your Traffic Sources, it’s easy to tell which source is related to your guest posting, commenting, or sites you contribute answers to for crowdsourced posts. If you do multiple activities on one site, then you need to click on that site’s domain and drill down to the Referral Paths to see which activity gets the best results from that site.

By drilling down on my own referral traffic from Social Media Examiner, I could see that it comes from a variety of things, including one guest post, making their top blog list, a crowdsourced post, and a link left to one of my posts in the forums.

LinkedIn Shares, Groups, Answers, or Company Pages

If you are active on LinkedIn and take advantage of different things such as sharing your posts on your profile, LinkedIn groups, LinkedIn Answers, or on your company page, then you will probably want to know which of those activities bring the most traffic to your website. Click on linkedin.com in your Traffic Sources to see the following.

Here, I can see that the most traffic comes from shares within groups (/news), followed by status updates (/home, /profile/view, and /share), more group shares (/groupItem), and Answers (/groupAnswers).

Most Popular Posts on StumbleUpon

It’s tough to find things on StumbleUpon sometimes, including which posts from your own sites are the most popular on their network. If you want to see which posts on your site get the most StumbleUpon traffic, click on stumbleupon.com in your Traffic Sources, then click on the refer.php Referral Path. Next, use the Secondary dimension dropdown and, again, select Landing Page under Traffic Sources.

Now you can see which posts have driven the most StumbleUpon traffic over the last year. This is great to reference when you are determining what new content you want to create and how it will fare on the SU network. Going forward, with the latest changes to the SU networks, you will just look at any links starting with /su/ in the Referral Paths.

If you enjoyed this post be sure to check out basic Google analytics tips.

Do you go deeper into your Google Analytics Traffic Sources? What other discoveries have you found about your referral traffic?

Learn What Technology Websites are Using, Statistics, and More

Have you ever visited a website and were curious about what they were running on it, such as the platform, analytics, or add-ons? Have you ever wondered how many other people are using the same website components as you do? Do you want a quick SEO profile of the site as well? If so, then you need to visit BuiltWith.com.

Learn What Technology Any Website Uses

There are three ways to find out technology a particular website is using. First off, you can visit the BuiltWith.com homepage and enter the domain name in the search box. Next, you can just enter http://builtwith.com/domain.com into your browser and change domain.com to the domain of the site you wish to view. Or you can download the Chrome Extension and click on the extension to see a popup with the website’s technology profile.

On the website’s profile page, you will find the following information (when applicable).

• Server Information – This doesn’t tell you where a site is hosted, but tells you the type of web server the site is hosted on.
• Content Management Systems – This will tell you if the website is using WordPress, Joomla, or a similar CMS.
• Ecommerce – This will tell you if the website is using an Ecommerce system like E-junkie or other shopping cart software.
• Frameworks – This will tell you the programming framework of the website. For WordPress, it will commonly be PHP.
• Advertising – This will tell you what advertising systems are being used on a website such as Google AdSense and some affiliate networks.
• Analytics and Tracking – This will tell you if a site uses Google Analytics, StatCoutner, or similar analytics system. Aweber’s mailing list code sometimes pops up into this area too.
• JavaScript Libraries – This will tell you about the different JavaScript coding libraries called in the website’s coding.
• Audio / Video – This will tell you about any technology such as Vimeo, YouTube, or other media found on the website.
• Widgets – This will tell you about different widgets and add-ons a website is using, including social sharing buttons. It will pull information about some WordPress plugins, but most will just be lumped under WordPress Plugins.
• Aggregation Functionality – This will tell you about the RSS and pingback functionality of a site, including whether it uses Feedburner.
• Document Information & Encoding – This will tell you more about the website’s coding, like if it uses HTML, CSS, etc.

View Trends About Website Technology

While you are viewing a website’s technology profile you can click on the link for any technology listed to see more data about its usage. Alternatively, you can visit theTechnology Trends page and see the top technology used across the Internet. For example, if you clicked on WordPress, you would see the following.

Trending Usage‘

This chart shows you if a particular piece of technology is increasing or decreasing in popularity. In this case, usage of WordPress is definitely increasing.

Industries

Find out what industries use a particular piece of technology the most. This pie chart shows that, aside from the Other category, WordPress seems to be used equally amongst different niches.

Similar Coverage

See what website technology is similar to the application you are viewing. In this case, the next most popular technology similar to WordPress is Joomla.

Top Sites

Want to see the biggest sites using a particular piece of technology? Click on the Top Sites list on the application page.

Get a Glimpse of a Website’s Search Engine Optimization

If you want to check out a website’s SEO information, click on the SEO Profile tab. This will give you a little analysis of basic SEO elements such as your title tag, meta description, H1 heading tag, common keywords (as shown in the pie chart above), image ALT tags, website speed, and social bookmarking stats on Facebook & Delicious. It also gives you an overall score plus a score of where your website ranks compared to others. Apparently 57% is a good score if 97% of other websites score below that!

9 Search Optimization Tips with Benefits for Your Visitors

This is a guest post from Kristi Hines . It is part of The “Bad Ass” SEO Guest Blogging Contest.

There are many SEO tips that are not only good for search engines but they are very helpful for people looking for and perusing through your website. Here are nine SEO tips you can do to help search engines and visitors love your site.

1. Keywords and Research

If you choose the right keywords for your homepage and your internal pages, blog posts, etc., you will be helping visitors find what they are searching for easier. The best way to do this is to think of a keyword that fits your page, then a 2 – 3 word phrase that fits including that keyword. It’s really as simple as that.

Keyword Resources

• Google Adwords Keywords Tool
• Google Insights (plus ideas on how to use Insights)
• Microsoft Advertising Intelligence plugin for Excel (plus how to use it)
• Popular Searches
• Anchor text

2. Titles

The title tag is important because it is the heading for search engine listings and it is usually the anchor text when people bookmark your homepage, blog post, or single page on your website. The easiest way to create a title for your page is to include the keyword phrase you thought of during keyword research and include it in the up to 70 character description of your page.

Title Resources

• Title tag best practices
• Creating Killer headlines
• All in One or Platinum SEO for WordPress

3. Meta Descriptions

The meta description is essentially your sales pitch for your page when it comes up in search engines. It is also usually the description that is picked up when people bookmark your site socially. To create a good meta description, create a short sentence or two under 155 characters that includes the main keyword phrase for your page.

Meta Descriptions Resources

• Ultimate guide to meta descriptions
• Meta description best practices

4. Header Tags

Header tags break up your page into easily digestible sections to help readability. Think of your page’s content in outline form – the header tags break up each main section of your text. Header tags should include keyword phrases you would like your page to rank for.

Also, note that the text right after your header tag can play a significant role. For example, I had an H3 header in one of my recent posts that said Most Valuable Guides (not the best keywords, but bear with me). In search results, without any other optimization, link building, etc., search engines pick up that phrase as follows:

So needless to say, header tags are valuable and need to be optimized as well as careful consideration given to the first sentence after the header tag as well.

5. Images

<img src="seo-optimized-image.jpg" alt="A SEO Optimized Image" title="A SEO Optimized Image" />

To get the most out of your keywords and help break up text for visitors with something eye catching, be sure to include an image in your post with keywords in the filename, alt text, and title.

Where does the alt tag come into play outside of SEO? If you were visually impaired and using a screen reader, the alt text would be read to you by your program.

Image Resources

• SEO optimizing images.
• Creative Commons and Flickr image search
• Image copyright laws
• SEO friendly images WordPress plugin

6. Internal Linking

Once people get on your site, you want them to stick around and find more relevant content. Using internal linking will help them learn more about what your site has to offer, especially if you are using the right anchor text as a guide.

Internal Linking Resources

• Never use nofollow on internal links
• SEO Smart Links WordPress plugin

7. Link Building

So what benefit does link building have to offer potential visitors without mentioning any SEO benefits? When I am seeking out link building opportunities, I find that pages already offering their visitors resources for a particular topic. Link building is simply offering another site’s visitors more resources to choose from for more options.

Link Building Resources

• Top 100+ link building resources.
• Link building for beginners.

8. Social Media

Social networking allows you to really connect with your website’s audience, which helps you learn more about their needs and create content, product, and services that will really appeal to them.

In link building, even though Twitter, for example, only gives you nofollow links, someone who sees your link through Twitter may like it so much that they link to it in their blog or elsewhere on their website, which essentially means that nofollow social media link turned into a dofollow one.

Also, it’s not just the social networking you do – it’s the social sharing you make possible. Installing buttons or widgets to make your site more socially sharable makes it easier for your visitors to tell the world about you!

Social Media Resources

• Top social media blogs
• Social media snapshot series: your hub, content, network, and impact, plus creating a dashboard on a spreadsheet.
• Add This, Add to Any, and WordPress plugins

9. Guest Blogging

Last but not least is the ever popular guest blogging. If you have expertise that others would benefit from, then guest blogging will help you share that knowledge with an even wider audience. If your visitors are also bloggers, you can even help them by guest blogging on their site, sending some of your visitors in their direction. The benefits to doing both of these (the right way) are really exponential in helping establish yourself as an authority in your industry.

Guest Blogging Resources

• My Blog Guest
• How guest blogging gets subscribers, links, and even a better Google ranking
• A comprehensive guest blogging guide

Your Thoughts on Search Optimization for Visitors

What ways do you optimize for SEO with your visitors in mind, and what tools and resources would you suggest to help other website and blog owners to do the same?

Google Chrome Extensions 24 New SEO Plugins

Chrome Seo for modern search engine optimizers, search engine marketers and webmasters. Now more than ever seo is tied directly to the live web and real-time actions. Blog farms and scrapers, gave way to mass social spam and vote rigging. Brokering links was safe, then unsafe for Google whitehat seo, and everything in between. Page rank was abandoned even though its still with us. No-follow links and page sculpting turned out to be a shame, even with proof of concept.

Now oddly like once before we must track the structure and wider statistics. Serp rank, page rank, site rankings and social authority all now weigh against the new real-time focus. Links are still important but reputation global impact and social reach are just as much a search ranking factor in modern search analysis.

Google’s chrome browser has been with us now for many month but only recently opened the extension arsenal to the world. Social tools, blog extensions, seo plugins and more can all be found. That was half the problem. With so many changes happening every day in the world of search more than the same old tools were needed. With so many old idea once again seeing the light of viable search marketing use, the old tools were sorely needed.

After weeks of trolling the Google extensions directory I was able to round up a multi-layer seo toolkit of chrome extensions. Combine they can take a large chunk of dismay in your conversion to chrome, the extensions we need to assess our clients sites, links and reputation are now includable. The list includes three sections of focus, seo data, site research and technical helpers for the search marketers and seo’s trade.

The SEO ranking and Analysis Section:

Chrome SEO

The Google Chrome SEO extension provides easy access to Search Engine Optimization Tools that can help you with Competitive Analysis, Keyword Research, Backlink Checks and other daily SEO tasks. [link]

Current functions list:

• Pages Indexed on: Bing, Google, Yahoo
• Backlinks as reported by : Alexa, Bing, Google, MajesticSeo, Yahoo
• Current Traffic and Rankings as reported by : Alexa, Compete, Google PageRank, Quantcast, SEMRush, Technorati
• Social Bookmark counts on : Delicious, Digg, Dmoz, StumbleUpon,
• Cached Versions of the website from : Archive.org, CoralCDN, Google, WebCite
• Domain Details such as : DNS, IP Address, Server Location, Whois details

Read more >>

5 Free SEO Tools You’re Probably Not Using Yet

If you read Internet marketing and SEO blogs on a regular basis, you undoubtedly come across posts about free SEO tools quite often.  While there are a lot of great free tools on the Internet for SEOs, I have recently noticed that almost all of these posts profile the same core set of free tools (such as SEO for Firefox).  Since you most likely already use the most popular free SEO tools, I want to look at five SEO tools today that are very useful, but simply don’t get as much attention as they deserve:

Google Insights Bookmarklet: While Google Insights can provide very valuable keyword information, you can waste a lot of time switching from one window to another window in order to use Google Insights.  To eliminate the need toswitch browser windows , add the Google Insights Bookmarklet to your browser, and anytime you are browsing one of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo or Live), you can instantly access the Insights data for the keyword you were searching with a single click of the bookmarklet.

Social Media Metrics Greasemonkey Plugin for Google Analytics: I know I’m not alone when I say that Google Analytics is one of my favorite analytics packages.  Although it’s not perfect, this package can provide you with a significant amount of very useful information.  In addition to the information that is already provided, you can increase the data you have at your fingertips by installing the Social Media Metrics Greasemonkey Plugin.  As you can see from the screenshot above, this plugin not only adds data for content from all of the major social media websites, but it also adds Yahoo’s backlink data directly for you to see.

Read more >>