Posts Tagged ‘Link Juice’

What is SEO? Is It Real?

To the SEO bashers, I present this argument: Some people hire a lawn service because they don’t have the time to mow their lawn; they don’t like to mow their lawn; they don’t like wasting their weekends mowing; they don’t have the tools for it; or they tried it and they ruined the lawn and killed all of the plants in the yard. For whatever reason, they pay to have the lawn mowed. How silly would a person look if they posted an article stating “anyone that pays to have their lawn mowed is an idiot”? They continue about how it’s easy to do, they have been mowing their own lawn for years and it looks great. They declare “Lawn men are con artists! I will even tell you how to trim your hedges, edge your sidewalk, weedeat, and prune your trees, and I will tell you for free.lawn man reading SEO book”

Believe it or not, I started writing this because I just finished reading “It’s All About The Links” over at SEOWizz. Ahh, the mind is a terrible thing. How did I turn Tim’s great post about links into a discussion about lawn mowing?

SEO work can be fun and educational during the on-page process.  Onpage search optimization is the act of optimizing copy and HTML based on a set of known and  perceived search engine guidelines. It takes a certain skill set to evaluate key words and phrases and incorporate those into HTML elements and body copy so they satisfy your target audience and the search engines. You can change your page title, description, and copy and watch your SERP position and sales pitch change. Don’t let anyone tell you it can’t be done and there aren’t known factors. Then we get to link building, which is a whole different animal.

Sadly “Links! Links! Links!” is very true. I’m not sure we should be calling link building SEO, to me it’s more marketing and should be listed as SEM. Finding the links that are providing your competitors with an edge or finding quality links that will improve your search position is a different skill set than on-page SEO. New rules from Google and “juice” protection from websites is making SEO link building even more tedious and time consuming. It is also raising the cost of hiring an SEO/SEM that gets results. Specialists who can provide quality links that will hold their value don’t come cheap. You can get your site bot-spammed to hundreds of blogs cheap, but it’s not going to help.

The SEO community has been labeled con artists by some, but these people are blowing smoke when they tell you all you need to do is write good content. It’s just not true. You might not be capable of writing good content anyway. You need good content and you might have to pay for it, and then you need people to link to it. The content on its own does not get you traffic, and nobody knows you have good or even great content until someone links to it. Sure, it can go viral but first somebody needs to light the fuse. Some of the anti-SEO crowd are giving advice like “just tell people about your website” (so they will link to it?). Well, guess what; you just committed the “act” of link building. They tell you to have your friends and co-workers tweet about your site and mention it on Facebook or in email. Guess what; that too is link building. Sure, if you have the time and will to learn then you can do it yourself, but most business owners don’t sit at home blogging all day (or mowing their grass). They have a business to run and they need help promoting their website.

There are the basics that should be done when optimizing a website, and it will usually squeeze out some competition. Generally, the basic onpage optimization with no regard for links will not get you in the top 10 if you are in a market that is the least bit competitive. Don’t get me wrong; you need to study keywords and phrases, because they have to be used somewhere, either in content, titles, or link text, but that research is generally wasted without quality inbound links.

Are you listed on Best of The Web?

—David Blizzard

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Posted in Link Building, SEO | 1 Comment »

Pagerank Sculpting and the NoFollow Tag

There is a renewed buzz on some SEO blogs about the nofollow tag and pagerank sculpting that I would like to address. First let me say that I am often amazed at the different ways people find to take advantage or to expand on the use of something new. rel=”nofollow” is about 4 years old now (Search Engines Join Google and Adopt nofollow) and the ways it gets used sometimes seems to be a long way from the initial design. It’s almost like people are always after an angle. It wasn’t always that way but you see it in almost every industry now. New laws are put under a microscope as soon as they are passed and someone always seems to find an angle to use it in ways it was never intended. This is how I feel about some of the recent articles I have read about using “no follow” for sculpting or to improve internal pages. What happens is a few start using something in ways it was never intended and then others join in because they feel left out or at a disadvantage because they aren’t pushing the limits. On one hand you get the big sites that horde juice while we all let the juices flow freely back to these big companies. On the other hand you get new blogs popping up daily that turn off nofollow and in an attempt to give the big boys the finger they encourage everyone to post comments and “feel the love”. Worse yet is the misguided use that results from ignorance. My recent readings and observations have helped me establish the following guidelines for nofollow.

  • Un-moderated user added comments, posts, and guestbooks should be rel=”nofollow” by default. (original intent)
  • Moderated comments and posts that require no follow should be considered for editing or deletion.
  • Even moderated blog comments should have A nofollow on the poster’s website link (usually linked to their name). If his or her website is relevant then the comment should have an embedded link to the relevant content. (We are currently working on this at bliznet.com)
  • If  a web editor creates an internal link and feels the need to add a nofollow he should question where he ever got this idea from and then consider using his robots.txt file or consider adding valuable content to the linked page.
  • If a web editor creates an external link and feels the need to add a nofollow tag then he should question the need for the link.
  • If a link is pointing out something like a spammy site or malpractice or anything negative then nofollow is probably the right choice.
  • If a webmaster has a links page or friends page and is using nofollow tags then he should probably just dump the whole page, obviously they are not relevant links, if they are relevant then pass the pagerank they deserve.
  • If you have paid links on your site then you should use nofollow unless you have a well designed and organized site like a directory or product finder. Just be sure the site’s main purpose is to drive traffic to the links and not juice.
  • The benefit of passing pagerank should always be a by-product of quality content. Content should never be created just to pass pagerank or “link juice”.

Let me know your thoughts.

—David Blizzard

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Posted in SEO | 1 Comment »