jatiN mahindrA doT coM

What’s a Link? Is It an Email?

For all you out there that deal with clients every day, I figured I share with you a fun thread at WebmasterWorld. Let me just quote the post: I was doing some link building for my local sites where people need to copy a paste a link which is on our site in a textarea. I’m really shocked how many people don’t know how to do this. Most of them don’t even know the difference between...

Do You Use Search Operators To Find Link Opportunities?

A WebmasterWorld thread started by forum administrator, engine, wrote: A webmaster I spoke to today was after a simple way to find new link opportunities. I mentioned something to him, which was to try using Google’s related: feature It worked for him, does it work for you? The single response so far said that they do not use search operators anyone. They have other strategies to get links....

Buying Links Can Get Your Site Penalized

A WebmasterWorld thread discusses the topic of link buying versus link selling. One person made a bold claim that link buying will not hurt you, but link selling can hurt you. I don’t think anyone would argue that Google proactively goes after link sellers. But do they proactively go after link buyers? From what I see in the various forums, including the Google Webmaster Forums, Google does...

A Living Link Building Journal

There is an excellent thread at WebmasterWorld that is basically a webmaster’s journal of his link building efforts for a specific site. Wheel, a senior member, started the thread about a week ago, saying: I’ve just launched a new website and am going to back it up with a link building campaign. I’m going to document my link building here, and welcome any comments. Notes: - link...

Romow Directory Review – Is It Worth Submitting to?

Back in the early 2000s, link building was relatively easy. All you really needed to do was submit your sites to a large quantity of online directories using your targeted keywords – and you were almost guaranteed improvements in organic search rankings. A lot has changed since then, and needless to say, SEO is a lot more difficult and complex. As for directory links, Google and the other...

Linking To Your Home Page With Anchor Text You Want to Rank For

A WebmasterWorld thread has a new conversation on an old topic. The topic is to link to your home page, off your home page, using keyword rich anchor text that you want to rank for. The example given by one member is: So I put up a paragraph on the homepage talking about say ‘red widgets in oklahoma’. Then I link those words (red widgets in oklahoma) right back to the homepage. In other...

Tracking Back Links: How Do You Do It?

There is an excellent thread at HighRankings Forum on the topic of how you should or could track one’s link building efforts. The topic in this thread started off about how to track links accrued due to a link building contest. However, the topic moved into how to track link building efforts for a site in general. Many are of the opinion that no tool can accurately measure the links acquired...

Link Building for Bing Rankings: Dos and Don’ts

It’s easy for businesses to get caught up in Google’s expectations for their sites, when trying to market through search. That’s certainly a wise thing to do, considering Google dominates the search market by a huge margin. Still, there are other search engines that people are using, and it is also wise to make sure your site is performing to the best of its ability in those too....

Acknowledge That You Suck, and Outsource It!

How many times each month do you stare at your screen and DREAD the task in front of you? Whether its Designing a theme for the site, Building the actual site or Marketing the site once it’s out there, we ALL have a weakness or two that simply takes too much of our time and drains us of our energy and productivity. My own biggest weaknesses are link building and content generation, but...

Amazing free link building script for your site

Recently we discovered Tynt which allows web publishers to add links to content that is cut & pasted from their websites. Today I’ve removed Tynt and added a better script that allows me to add a link to the story page and a link to my homepage with the anchor text of my choice. The script is called Link Building Pro and you can download it for free here. If you want to test it just try...

Are Links a Good Proxy for Traffic?

One of the most exciting developments on the web in the last two years has been the increased ability to combine two or more technologies to create something new. We see this most in the Social space, of course, but overlaying data sets could lead to a dramatically increased understanding of the world we live in. Today – after a delay of some months – I received my Hitwise (now called...

Bing on Link Building

The Bing Search blog wrote a blog post on link building for “smart webmasters.” A WebmasterWorld thread is currently dissecting that blog post, piece by piece. Martinibuster, Roger Montti, took the time to pull out the key points of the blog post: You contact webmasters of other, related websites and let them know your site exists. If the value that you have worked so hard to instill...

Are “Web Site Designed By” Links Bad?

A Google Webmaster Help thread asks a common question in link building. The question is, are “web site designed by X,” where “X” is a link to your company, against Google’s guidelines? Both a “level 4″ and “top contributor” replied to the thread. One said: I would think this is a matter of personal preference, and it is quite common in the industry. The...

Survey: Most SEOs Won’t Link To Competitors

Last week, we ran a poll asking if you should risk linking to competitors. The specific question we asked was, “Do You Link To Direct Competitors?” Not sure if you are surprised by the results, but after receiving 140 or so responses, 56% said they never link to competitors while 27% said they rarely do and 14% said they do link to competitors. Here is the full break down of results: Question:...

Should I Risk Linking To Competitors?

A WebmasterWorld thread has an interesting conversation about linking to competitors. In this case, the webmaster is considering giving his competitor a banner ad direct link (not through a redirect or nofollow) but without an alt text, in exchange for links from the competitor. The main issue is that his site and the competitor’s site are neck and neck in the Google search results for similar...