Google, Yahoo has come a long way from the days it used ignore webmasters when Google started out to helping webmasters/site owners with optimizing websites. Google has created a special channel of communication with webmasters/site owners for helping them design search engine friendly websites to make information available to users easily.

Link Building

Google clarifies Link exchange is fine as long as it does not look excessive and spam. This means the link exchange schemes & programs deliberately increasing links in attempt to achieve ranking is bad. Buying and selling links is bad. Any marketing done excessively is bad for websites. The discussion on this on webmasterworld can be found over here. Google in its Webmaster guidelines had stated that any link exchanges schemes, buying, selling links are not good for website rankings. As per Google the links are editorial votes to webpages and have to given naturally to add value to visitor.

A) Google introduces Paid Link Reporting service, find mattcutts story over here and here. Link selling sites loose the ability to transfer PageRank.

B) Google Introduces No-Follow attribute

C) Link Building with Google Bookmarks

D) Link Baiting Advice by Google & by MattCutts

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engines are interested in providing rich, useful & relevant content to end users. This can happen only when site owners publish rich content & design a search engine friendly site.

Search engines would want to index all the content provided by site owners. It is therefore in their Business Interest to help webmasters provide more content to search engines. Search Engines therefore encourage webmasters to publish more content online both quality & quantity.

Website owners are looking to drive traffic from Search Engines by optimizing websites. Search Engines are looking to provide relevant, quality results to end users. Therefore it is a Win-Win solution for both. The only glitch is Spam.. Spam is defined as any activity where this equation is disturbed.

Search Engine spam is defined as any activity by website owner which is in the business interest of webmaster but not in business interest of Search Engine. However there is no such thing as “Webmaster Spam” when the site owner’s business interest is not protected by search engines.

SEO Tips by Google

• SEO Basics
• Google Sitemaps
• Using Robots Meta Tag
• All about Robots.txt
• Quality Guidelines for Webmasters
• Duplicate Content Caused by Url
• Understand Duplicate Content
• SEO for Flash Files
• Server Location and SEO
• Using Google Webmaster Central Tools
• New Robots Meta Tag check: X-Robots Tag and Unavailable_after Meta tag
• Canonical Urls
• Google Webmaster Help Center

Some of the active channels the information & Tools online are:

A) Google Webmaster Central

B) Google Webmaster Discussion Group

C) Google Sitemaps

SEO Tips by Yahoo

Yahoo.com also offers extensive help and awareness program for webmasters for optimizing websites for higher ranking on search engines. In some areas like Dynamic Url rewriting they offer more advanced help than Google.com

• Basic SEO on Yahoo
• Ranking Factors on Yahoo
• Yahoo Webmaster Guildelines
• Yahoo Site Explorer & Sitemaps
• How Yahoo Handles Redirection
• Reporting Duplicate content through Urls & Faqs on Dynamic Urls. WMW Discussions on dynamic urls in yahoo is very useful
• Removing Urls from Search Index
• Yahoo Store Help

Web Master Tools offered by Yahoo

1) Yahoo Site EXplorer

2) Yahoo Search Blog

This is an article which is worth bookmarking for all SEO, SEM Managers, as the resources listed has to be referred by everyone in this field.

The golden fact is everyone (Search Marketing world) is aware of it but very very few people have the patience to constantly observe & learn for maintaining their website rankings on Top of Search Engines.

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A single most important assessment of a link is “Does the Link add value to the published content?” and therefore to the end user reading the content.

1) When a user reads the content, the link on the content must contain additional information that directly relates the given document.

2) The degree of correlation between the information on the given document and the linked document can be the value given to the link. This is measured by the text around the link to the entire passage of linked document. You can measure the co-relation, co-occurrence, frequency, prominence of keyword usage in both the documents.

3) The content on your document & the linked document is interdependent in certain way. There must be good reason/objective of relationship.

Think in terms of you being Google.com, who is fighting to reduce spam and ensuring best possible websites rank on web search results.

I would give high importance to links from content which find maximum value to end users.

Links from Yahoo Answers

With Yahoo Answers you are building a relationship with users by offering help or answers to their queries. Therefore your link increases the value of the content written.

Links from Digg.com

People vote digg articles and popular articles rise on home page are the ones which significant users have voted. Links from such content has high value. Also if you mention that your content has received certain number of Digg Votes, and giving a link to the page on Digg, it would add value to your content and links on them.

Links from Del.icio.us

On del.icio.us people would tag your site with keywords; they would tag your site only if your content is useful. Link from del.icio.us is a value and links from content which is linked from del.icio.us is also equally valuable.

Links from Social Sites/Web2.0 sites

In such sites there is user voting or collective intelligence. If your website gets voted as popular, this means users want your website because they found something useful. Therefore your links to your website has a value.

• Include the number of times your content has been viewed on your site that might just increase the link value from that content.
  

Why Linking is called Relationship Marketing?

Links connects documents hence 2 different content. Consider a web page to be an Organism and link is the relationship between both web pages. Therefore link building is called as relationship building. In examples below there is clear relationship between 2 web-pages hence linking counts.

1) One company owns many websites, they can link to all of them in their about us page, partner page or footer. The relationship between websites is clearly stated (as owned by single parent company). Hence each link counts in the algorithm.

2) In e-commerce websites you give a link to payment gateway, Visa, Verisign. There is a relationship of a service provider. The links here also has a value.

3) In a single website all pages are interlinked. The deep linking of pages, interlinking counts as all of them has relationship of being under a single domain.

4) Suppose your website gives link such as “To read this document click here to download Acrobat reader”. Here there is a relationship between your website and Acrobat reader, as without acrobat reader your content is unreadable. Similar relationship with Winzip. Software Download links count

5) Using Certifications such as certified seller, Google certified professional. This relationship displays the authority of the content displayed. Hence Links count here as well.

6) Testimonials on other websites. Suppose you are a service provider and other have highly recommended your service on their website, this will boost your rankings. There is a clear relationship here as client and service provider.

7) Online Alliances, where your site powers a complete section of other website, here there is a clear relationship maintained which makes value of link go higher.

Links on Answers, Blogs, Forums is giving a reference to your website for users posting queries. Here there is relationship between the both. The link is supposed to contain information or document which is of value to other person as he/she is seeking the same.

In all cases it would advisable to clearly mention the purpose of relationship explicitly on the website. It can be in privacy policy page, Terms and condition page or Business Partners page etc.

Why Link Exchange does not Work?

The objective of relationship is visibly clear to boost search engine rankings.

How to Build Relationships/Linking?

1) Create Great Products however small it may be, such as plug-in or a gadget which is of high value to end user. People will subscribe and will link to it. This is a relationship you have built with end users.

2) Write useful content valuable and worthy to end users. People will link to it, Digg it, Tag it etc. This is a relationship you build with users of providing advice, tips etc.

3) Publicize company news, company events as a part of PR activity, the relation you would like to have with community.

4) Build Alliances with related websites, share your product in exchange of traffic and ask them to link to you.

Conclusion

Stronger the Relationship higher is the value of the link.

Just ensure your link is search engine readable, and does not look like spam. If companies invest quality time and think innovatively, they can build higher quality links than shooting 1000’s of spam mails every day/night on link exchange.

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Most online businesses which operate online perform competitive intelligence analysis tracking competitor products, websites, traffic through various tools available both free & paid.

There are very few companies which analyze the link structure of competitor websites. In an offline scenario, a company is always aware of its competitor’s reach & various business links.

Competitive Link Analysis

This is actually a process of identifying various websites which link to your competitor’s website. Analyzing these websites based

A) Theme of Content containing the link

B) Freshness of links,

C) Frequency of new link addition,

D) Number of links from each domain

E) Network Structure of Links

Advantage of Link Analysis

A) Insight into Competitors’ Online Strategies

B) Complete picture of some sources of traffic of competitor’s sites, referral traffic.

C) Competitors Business Links, Business Partners, Online Alliances.

D) Get insight into competitors’ online promotional activities.

E) Find out why your competitor is ranking in Organic Search?

F) Identify new methods of Content Promotion, Link Building.

G) Find new forums, answers programs where your target audience is active.

H) Find sites which are mostly talking about your industry, business.

I) Include these links in Custom Search Engines, so that you perform niche search or filtered sample size to perform your search.

Tools Required for Link Analysis

Build software which can find backlinks of any website,

a. Retrieve content from webpages that contains the link. Like Title Tags, Meta, Headings etc.

b. Compare different Urls.

c. Group Urls based in Location, IP addresses, theme of content.

d. Get Page Rank of the Urls,

e. Categorize Urls based on Domain names, Org sites, education sites. Etc.

f. Categorize Urls Based on number of pages present on that domain, i.e group urls based on small sites, big sites.

g. Ability to split Urls to extract just domain names.

h. Filter domain names, unwanted Urls.

i. Given a Keyword or a Phrase, your software should be able to find maximum occurrences of this phrase on these set of links, as anchor, as content.

Read my further posts on link analysis …..

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If the patent applications filed by Google are carefully scrutinized then you would understand the depth and intensity of research done by Google on analyzing & interpreting the meaning & quality of the links.

Links & Content go hand in hand with each other. Popularity cannot be gained with just one of them.

Links should always the effect of Content and not the cause of content. This means that the purpose of links are to connect different content. Content must not be created just to propagate links.

To put it in simple words links on any given web-page have 2 essential attributes.

A) Weight
B) Direction

Direction of Links

Every content copy has a theme, there is a concept or an idea that it communicates to the user. The links on the content which lead to other documents which strengthens or compliments this content then these links have positive direction.

Similarly links to your copy on documents which have different theme are in negative direction.

This way links on documents that neither compliment or harm your copy will have directions appropriately.

Weight of Links

Every link has a weight. The weight of the link is given by its ability to catch user’s attention. There is difference in weights given to a link is present in the footer as compared to Top navigation.

The content which talks about a feature of a product links to certification of authority in the relevant section in the flow of content is given a higher value compared to certification link at the bottom of the page.

Links which are repeated more than twice in a single document will dilute its weight. Links placed on the top of the page which catches maximum eyeballs will have higher weight.

Therefore links have to placed only where necessary in the right place (proximity) with right anchor.

Out-Bound Links

Outgoing links also can affect your website greatly. Linking to sites which have higher theme strength and authority can help increase the theme of your web page content.

Always ensure that your out bound links have positive direction.

Anchor Text

Anchor Text can be keywords, but carefully ensure that you do not overdo the use of keywords. Always use stemming in keywords such as key word, keyword, keywords, all keywords, many keywords, key term, key terms, key term.

Description around anchor text is as important as the anchor text itself.

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SEOs would spend the same amount of effort building backlinks through article submissions/Pr submissions and persuading webmasters to post a link on their site than spend the effort in creating wikipedia posts.

You find their reasons here, this would hopefully be easier for people to post genuine articles on en.wikipedia.org

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