Ask.com has announced it is entering the PPC market with contextual ads. The first ads will go online in late May. The ads will appear at first only on IAC-owned websites - Match.com, Ticketmaster, Evite, and Citysearch, as well as the countless other less popular IAC sites.

Unlike AdSense, Ask.com promises more flexibility for publishers. The fourth largest search engine plans to allow publishers the ability to tweak ads in order to optimize ad relevance and page yield. Advertisers will be able to post separate bids for contextual ads and block sites from displaying their ads. IAC is hoping its program will be more flexible that Google AdSense.

It remains to be seen how Ask.com’s PPC advertising will affect the marketplace but judging by how Ask has performed since dropping Jeeves, it does look a little promising. The question is can it give Google a run for its money over the long haul?

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SEOmoz has an excellent poll on search engine ranking factors. The poll includes a host of well-known, and some not-so-well-known, SEO experts. And, no, I’m not one of them.

The contributors were asked to determine whether certain criteria are important for ranking purposes at the search engines. It’s worth studying. I highly recommend that you take some time to look the list over. The macro-topics include:

• Keyword Use Factors
• Page Attributes
• Site/Domain Attributes
• Inbound Link Attributes
• Negative Crawling/Ranking Attributes

Within each of these general topics, experts were asked to judge the weight of more specific questions such as whether keyword usage within the title tag is a heavily weighted factor. In all, there are 53 out of the hundreds of criteria that could be judged on the list of topics discussed by the panel. What were the top 10 positive factors that affect search engine rankings?

1. Keyword use in title tag
2. Anchor text of inbound links
3. Global link popularity of website
4. Website’s age
5. Link popularity within the site’s internal link structure
6. Topical relevance of site’s inbound links
7. Link popularity of the website within its topical community
8. Keyword use within body text
9. Global link popularity of the site linking into your website
10. Rate of inbound links to the site

I wouldn’t take this list as gospel. Some of these are questionable. The method itself is questionable. SEOmoz arrives at its conclusions by giving weight to each panelists opinion and aggregating them. In other words, there was some variance of opinion as to which factors were most important and the level of importance of those factors deemed important. But it does serve as a great introduction for new webmasters and a solid reminder to veteran webmasters as to what factors you should pay attention to when building your website. Of course, some of this is out of your control as webmaster but if you focus on those factors that are within your control then you can somehow affect your ranking either directly or indirectly depending on the tools you use.

SEOmoz also includes a measure of how variant the views are. In other words, if there is a high degree of differences of opinion on a particular factor, that is noted. That’s why I like the panel’s observations. While it is somewhat flawed, it does offer some great food for thought. I will end this post with the list of top 5 negative factors influencing your site (according to the panel):

1. Server is often inaccessible to bots
2. Content similar or duplicates existing content in the index
3. Site links to low quality and spam sites
4. Duplicate title and meta tags on several website pages
5. Keyword overuse - called stuffing or spamming

Well, I’ll have to say I agree with that list entirely. I wish you lots of luck in your web building.

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WebProNews ran a great article a couple of days ago on microsites. One paragraph struck me particularly and points to the success of such sites:

Viral marketers know that having a separate presence for campaigns can return good results. The most preferred tactic used by marketers is “Creating cool microsites” with 37 percent saying they produced excellent results. One-third said that online games brought good results.

What Is A Microsite?

A microsite is a one-page website used as a sales letter for a product or service. They’re quite popular and always have been. As early as 1995 there were people online building these small websites offering some kind of product for sale. Some have done well, some have not. But the ones that have done well - a great many of them - have done really well. I mean, some folks have put up microsites and made hundreds of thousands of dollars in just a few months. It is possible. But you have to have a good plan and work that plan well. Don’t go into pie-in-the-sky. Let me offer a few tips.

Viral Marketing At Its Best

In order for microsites to succeed, you have to have a viral marketing campaign. There are tools that you can use to do this. I will go over them in a minute. For now, just know that you have to go viral. Otherwise, all you’ve got is a microsite that just sits there.

Why Is That? What’s The Big Deal About Microsites?

Search engines like big sites. That’s because they count links - the search engines, I mean. If you have a 100 page website where all the pages are interlinked, you’ve got a much better chance of ranking organically because the links help boost your ranking for each page, they serve to drive traffic from one page to the next, and you have 100 chances to get indexed and ranked highly. Of course, you have to have each page optimized correctly.

Assuming you do your SEO work properly, a 100 page website is a ticket to winning Google’s love forever. But with a microsite, you have one chance. Just one. Uno. That’s it. You flunk, you’re sunk. No questions asked. Harsh, but true.

Then Why Would I Want A Microsite?

Good question. If you have a product to sell and you don’t want to build a huge website with information after information just for that one product then you might be interested in a microsite. You can put up a one-page sales letter and sell your product through that website. Thousands of people have done it with great success. You can too. But how?

How Do I Market A Microsite?

Let’s say you have a unique product to sell. An e-book, for example. You wrote a book on how to shoot skeet. Of course, you wrote a helluva sales letter, optimized it like crazy and put it up on the web. Let’s say you got lucky and ended up on Page 1 at all the search engines for the keyword “skeet shooting.” Congratulations! Now what?

Well, you know that you might get some traffic on skeet shooting. But how many people are actually looking for a book that teaches them how to shoot skeet. Chances are some of the organic search traffic you get might be interested, but that’s really drive by traffic. Does everyone in your town stop at McDonald’s when they drive by? Even if they’re looking for a place to eat? Likely not, unless McDonald’s is the only place in town where they can eat out, a good portion of the traffic will head somewhere else.

A lot of that organic traffic is not looking to buy something. They’re just looking for information. You don’t have that, unless they buy your book. But that’s not to say you can’t market your e-book in other ways and make a decent income. Here’s what you do:

Article Marketing
Articles work. Write an article a day and distribute it to 20 article directories by manual submission. You could also send it to iSnare who distributes to 40,000 websites and directories. Not all of those will publish your article but a lot of them will. When you write articles, write information only - no sales pitches. Information that is relevant to your topic, skeet shooting. Use keywords just like you would in a website. At the bottom of your article you will write a short bio, called a resource box, that includes your name, a little bit of information about yourself with a teaser for your e-book and a link to the website. Bingo bango, targeted traffic.

Start a blog
Blogging has many benefits. All of them are awesome. I recommend with microsites that you put your blog on another standalone website. Not on blogger.com. Buy a domain name and install WordPress. Then blog every day. Link each blog post back to your microsite. Be sure that each blog post is keyword optimized and covers a variety of topics on skeet shooting. Like article marketing, you’re not selling; you’re providing free information. But don’t give away so much that people who buy your e-book will be disappointed to find that you’ve already given away the farm on your blog. Just tease them a little. Include a teaser about your e-book and a link to your microsite at the bottom of every post. Don’t have any other outgoing links. You’re selling your e-book, not AdSense, not other people’s products, you’re product. Remember that.

Here are a few of the primary benefits:

• Every link back to your site is an inbound link and counts for page rank and search engine position
• Each blog post is an optimized web page with its own search engine page rank
• Traffic, traffic, traffic
• A blog will get your website crawled faster (and I do mean a lot faster!)

Social Bookmarking

Put an Add This button on your blog. Put one in the sidebar and put one on every blog entry. Make it easy for your visitors to bookmark you. Even if they don’t visit your microsite or buy your e-book, if they like the free information you provide on your blog they may still bookmark you. Be sure you provide more than one bookmarking option:

• Digg
• Technorati
• del.icio.us
• Furl
• StumbleUpon
• Reddit
• Bloglines

There are a ton of bookmarking sites out there. The more options you provide for your visitors the more widely distributed your blog is likely to become. Also, be sure to submit your blog to the free blog directories. There are several of those as well.

Viral Video

Here’s one that is often overlooked. Make a short video. Not too long. You can do this yourself for free using software like Camtasia. Get creative. Make it something that people will watch. Something interesting. Maybe you have some great footage of your grandfather shooting skeet and makes history with the fastest time ever recorded. That would be awesome footage, wouldn’t it?

Once you get your video made send it to YouTube and Google Video. Put it on your microsite even. Your blog. Include code that allows others to put it on their websites and blogs. At the end of the video be sure to promote your microsite. The idea, after all, is to drive traffic to your microsite so people will buy your e-book.

Pay-Per-Click

Another method of targeted traffic is pay-per-click. Pick your keywords, bid on them, and start advertising. Drive targeted traffic to your website that you pay for only after they have clicked on your ad. Since your ad will appear all over the web on sites related to yours then you have a very good chance of sending targeted traffic to your microsite.

Affiliate Program

Finally, start an affiliate program. Put a link at the bottom of your microsite that invites people to join your affiliate program. Pay your affiliates generous commissions. Generous. 50% is good. If you get one good affiliate who sends you a lot of sales then it is well worth the loss of 50% of would-be revenues to pay that affiliate for his work. Think about it this way: Would you rather have 50% of $10,000 or 100% of 2,000%?

Of course, there are no guarantees, but your affiliates know people you don’t. They may have huge websites with thousands of visitors per week. If a skeet shooting magazine has a website that receives 10,000 visitors per month, that’s 10,000 targeted visitors. All of them are your potential customers. Let’s say the magazine joins your affiliate program. 10,000 site visitors will see your ad every month and you don’t even have to pay for advertising. If you get just 1% of that traffic, that’s 1,000 unique visitors to your microsite every month. If you convert 10% of that targeted traffic into sales then you will sell 100 copies of your e-book every month. If your e-book is priced at $19.95, that’s $1,000 extra income for you each month. Do you think you can handle that?

OK, Nick, Are You Putting Me On?

Not on your life. This is a very realistic scenario. Of course, there are no guarantees, but there are thousands of success stories on the Internet - people who have built microsites and turned them into cash machines. You can too!

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Yesterday, SaveTheInternet.com celebrated its first birthday. This is the organization fighting to keep Verizon and AT&T from stripping away your right and mine to the use of a free Internet. These large communications companies want to create a high band Internet for government and people willing to pay the price and then a slower “lane” for everyone else - that is, small business owners, non-profit organizations, and people who won’t be able to afford the elite steak dinner along with the keynote address.

There’s a great article in today’s WebProNews on one senator, Byron Dorgan, who is criticizing his colleague Ted Stevens and AT&T head cheese Ed Whitacre for their evil scheme. Essentially, good guys like Dorgan want to keep the Net open to everyone while the bad guys want to build a wall between the haves and the have nots. And if this happens there will be more have nots than haves, but there won’t be power in numbers - unless numbers refers to the number of dollar bills you carry in your pocket.

I encourage you all to swing by the SaveTheInternet website and sign their petition, if you’ve not done so already. And while you’re at it vote for them for the 2007 Webby Award. They’re in second place right now. Voting ends today.

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Search engine ranking is one of those things that website owners are constantly fighting to improve. The worst of search engine ranking is being termed “supplemental.” With Google, once you are in the supplemental directory, getting your site back out is like battling upstream with a spoon though the rapids.

Recently, an article was published that gave some very worthy tips on doing just that, rescuing your site from the black hole of “supplemental” listing.

The first point the writer made is to make sure that the URLs involved are search engine friendly, and short. Making them search engine friendly is fairly easy, take out those special characters. They are not necessarily special so much as a hindrance to the search engines. Quite simply, putting that percentage sign in there confuses them and they have no idea what percent to index and what percent to leave out, so just leave the percentage sign out.

Next, check that 404 error page. If it’s not returning correctly and showing an error then the search engines are likely to term the entire site as an error and into the black hole it goes. Fixing that 404 error page can rescue the entire site.

Take a look at the page content. Making sure that each page has unique keywords, page titles, and descriptions will not only keep you out of the black hole but will also make your site more attractive to the search engines and human visitors alike.

Finally, remove from the search engines range the extra pages that provide duplicate content. Each page on your site should be unique. Some webmasters like to have printable versions of certain pages in their site. This is especially true of things like articles, checklists, or even diagrams. The problem comes in that the search engines then see the duplicate content and add both pages to the supplemental index. A simple solution is to add a “robot.txt” file to your site and tell the search engines to skip over the printable copies. They will not index these pages and that will allow the original pages to be indexed correctly.

< -- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN -->

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When it comes to HTML, you can always count on accuracy and detail delivering your website’s content in proper order to the search engines. If you are new to website building, or are struggling to understand why your website is not performing this article may be of tremendous value to you.

First, let’s look at meta tags, these are the main points of interest to the search engines, they do not look at a webpage as humans do, so meta tags are the brail, if you will, to what they see. Meta tags should always be between the *head* and */head* tags, like so:

*head*

*title*(Your Website Title)*/title*

*meta name=”description” content=”(Your website’s description) “*

*meta name=”keywords” content=”keyword,keyword,keyword,etc “*

*meta name=”Author” content=”www.your-website.com”*

*meta name=”owner” content=”www.your-website.com”*

*meta name=”classification” content=”(The main subject matter of your site) “*

*meta name=”copyright” content=”copyrighted 2006″*

*meta name=”rating” content=”General”*

*meta name=”revisit-after” content=”15 days”*

*meta name=”ROBOTS” content=”ALL”* */head*

You don’t need that many meta tags. SEO has gone crazy with fluff in the last few years and too many so-called gurus are telling people to do things that don’t make sense. And the fact that this article was printed in a respectable web journal like SiteProNews just makes it even worse. New webmasters will look at this and take it as gospel when, in reality, it just isn’t right.

The only meta tags you really need to worry about are the title, description, and keyword tags. Everything else is superfluous. Here’s what I want you to do. Right click on the web page you are looking at right now. Go ahead. Right click and select “View Source.” Look at the meta tags and you will notice that there is a title tag, a description tag, and a keyword tag. That’s all. Nothing more. Nothing less. I’m a firm believer in practicing what you preach.

Now why is that all you need? Think about it. Author and Owner, what do they say? The provide the URL of the website you are on. Why? You know where you are, don’t you? What’s the point? There isn’t one. It’s just fluff. Take it out and never use it again. Search engines don’t care to see it and what they’re really looking for is the content and the meat. The meat is in your three important tags.

Classification? Main subject matter of the site? That’s what your description tag is for. Why put it in there twice? The search engines ignore this tag. They don’t ignore your description tag.

Copyright? We know you own your site. If you have a WhoIs account, and everyone who owns a website is listed in WhoIs, then your website is copyrighted. Who cares what year you put it up? No one. Not even the search engines.

Rating. I don’t even know what that is. It isn’t necessary. I know that.

Revisits and robots - well, search engines send their robots to crawl web pages every day. All day long. If you have a web site you will get crawled. You don’t have to tell the search engines to crawl your site. You don’t even have to tell them how often to crawl your site. They will crawl your site every time you update it. That’s what they do. Now if you don’t want your website crawled then you can include code to tell the search engines not to crawl your site but unless you have secure areas for memberships and items you don’t want public then why would you do that? Tags that tell the search engines to crawl your website and how often aren’t necessary.

So what are the necessary tags? Three of them:

• Title
• Description
• Keyword

Your title tag is the name of that specific web page. HINT: Search engines crawl web pages, not web sites. Don’t put the same title tag on every page. Every page needs its own title tag. Make the title of each page correspond to the keywords you are using to optimize that page by.

The description tag are the two or three sentences that show up in search queries whenever a person makes a search and the search engine returns its results. The description tells the searcher what that web page is about. It’s not about your entire web site. It’s about an individual web page because search engines pull results for searches based on information found on individual web pages. Your description should include your keyword once, maybe twice, but not more. It must tell searchers what they can expect to find on your web page when they click the link. Make it interesting because you want them to click the link.

The keyword tag tells the search engines what keywords your website is optimized for. This is important. They will find that information anyway by scanning your content, but help them out here. Don’t include a list of every keyword on your website. This isn’t a wish list. You aren’t telling Google what you hope to get ranked for. You are telling the search engines what keywords you are using to build that specific web page around. Don’t use more than five or six and don’t use less than two. It’s OK to have multiple keywords on a page, just don’t get crazy and include every keyword related to your website’s content. That will hurt you more than help you.

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Note: When writing your own code, replace all * with < at the beginning of each tag and with > at the end of each tag.

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For example, Rand Fishkin, one of the most respected people in the industry, urged his readers a few days ago to manipulate search engine rankings for the phrase “Greatest Living American” to make Stephen Colbert the number one result. What’s worse is that he offered a shot at an $80 dollar reward (a 2-month subscription) to the participants.

It’s called a Google Bomb, and SEOmoz didn’t invent it. Last year Google changed its algorithms to kill Google Bombs - well, the negative ones any way. After thousands or millions of websites linked to the White House website with the anchor text keywords “miserable failure,” Google took decisive action and disengaged the Google Bomb, offering a statement that future Google Bombs wouldn’t be possible. In actuality, all Google did was stop negative Google Bombing. Positive Google Bombs, as evidenced by Stephen Colbert’s prank, live on.

It was, after all, a prank, started by Colbert himself, not Rand Fishkin. It happened on his late night TV show The Colbert Report. Colbert actually requested a bomb that would make him the No. 1 spot for something that I won’t repeat. His fans took it down a notch and decided upon “Greatest Living American.”

I disagree with Muhammad Saleem’s analysis here. This is not a negative reflection upon SEOs. It’s actually a positive reflection because it proves the high value of links. The fact that Google places high value on inbound links and anchor text just proves that what true SEOs have been saying all along is true. Build a website with high link value and people will assist you in achieving top rankings. But you’ve got to do it the right way.

• First, suggest a keyword phrase to use for linking back to your site
• Secondly, suggest that keyword phrase link back to a specific web page
• Put an Add This icon on your page so visitors can bookmark it
• Allow trackbacks on your blog

These are all positive ways to build high value links back to your website. You don’t have to create a Google Bomb in order to make it work. But the fact that some people do create Google Bombs is proof that link building works. As long as Google places high value on inbound links people will continue to Google Bomb with great success. I think the only sure way Google can prevent it from happening is to change its algorithms to downplay the value of inbound links altogether. That likely won’t happen for awhile.

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The SEO firms that I think are the best are smaller. If I couldn’t do SEO anymore and I had to ask someone to do it for me, I could name three or four smaller shops, each with under 10 people on staff (I think). I would at least ask these firms for a reference. I wouldn’t go to iProspect, iCrossing, 360i, or any of the other big I’s. It’s nothing against them, but I think I would get better service and more passion from the smaller shops.

This says it all. I agree. You’ll get better service from smaller firm. SEO is prety static. If a firm is worth its weight in salt it doesn’t matter how big it is. This question is not the best question to ask prospective SEO firms. When you’re looking for a firm to do business with you probably want to ask them other questions, like these:

• What’s your policy if you can’t get me the results I’m looking for? You want a fair firm, one that will relieve you of a contract that isn’t working for you.
• How detailed are your reports? You want a firm that will give you the low down on as much as you can take in. Page views, leads, sales conversions, for each page if possible.
• Who in the firm must authorize any work accomplished? Do they have levels of bureaucracy or does the guy who actually does the work also approve it? Remember, small may be better; an SEO worth anything at all can do the work he authorizes.
• When you call, does someone answer the phone? If they are so small that no one is ever in the office then that might not be good either.

The best way to tell if an SEO is worth his salt is not to ask any questions at all, but to check him out in other ways, like these:

• Google him. How many results do you get and what are others saying about him?
• Visit a few forums and ask what others think about him.
• Check the bookmarking and social networking sites.
• Set a date (say, six months) where you re-evaluate to see how things are going. If not going well, get out and find someone else.
• Test them. Provide a keyword that you know is non-competitive or low-value and see what they tell you about it in their quote. Don’t accept bad quotes on bad terms; it’s a huge integrity red flag.

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Gone are the days when you built your website and waited for the search engines to crawl them and index them. In those early days of the Internet you could expect the content on your website and the meta tags to be the most important criteria the search engines used to judge where you should fall in the rankings. Not so any more.

Google introduced the idea of off page factors. Now, those factors are the most important part of the picture. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of counterfeiting going on.

All SEO boils down to two things:

• Keywords
• Links

Ideally, these would be equally weighted. But they’re not. If you don’t have inbound links, you’re dead in the water. For that reason, everybody who wants to be somebody is scrounging, scamming, scheming, and doing everything they think is necessary to get those links. Some of it is good; a lot of it is not. And the search engines have noticed.

That’s why Google is encouraging your competition to spy on you (as if they weren’t doing that already). Only now, your competition has some incentive for sending you the equivalent of a virtual Molotov cocktail. It’s called a paidlink report - or, at least, that’s what I’ll call it.

I’d like to get a few paid link reports anyway because I’m excited about trying some ideas here at Google to augment our existing algorithms. Google may provide a special form for paid link reports at some point, but in the mean time, here’s a couple of ways that anyone can use to report paid links:

- Sign in to Google’s webmaster console and use the authenticated spam report form, then include the word “paidlink” (all one word) in the text area of the spam report. If you use the authenticated form, you’ll need to sign in with a Google Account, but your report will carry more weight.
- Use the unauthenticated spam report form and make sure to include the word “paidlink” (all one word) in the text area of the spam report.

As far as the details, it can be pretty short. Something like “Example.com is selling links; here’s a page on example.com that demonstrates that” or “www.shadyseo.com is buying links. You can see the paid links on www.example.com/path/page.html” is all you need to mention. That will be enough for Google to start testing out some new techniques we’ve got — thanks!

That’s Matt Cutts talking. He wants you to report your competition. Why? Well, some people say it’s because Google wants to control all the paid advertising online. I think it’s more likely that Google is trying to improve its algorithms to give value to real, natural links at the expense of unnatural ones. That’s understandable, but Cutts’ suggestion is a bit too impractical. I mean, how will Google know if a link is paid or not? And does Google not itself sell links through it’s AdWords program?

The problem with this approach is that everyone online is buying links. Even if you engage in legitimate link building strategies, you likely paid for the links. I mean, articles, blogs, social bookmarking, these are all viable ways to build links. Even linkbaiting, as difficult as it is, involves building links to your website.

While writing and distributing articles doesn’t cost anything, while blogging is a low-cost activity, and while social bookmarking is a free activity, they all do require a time commitment. If you don’t have the time, you’ll have to hire someone to do these things for you. Isn’t that paying for links? Only, your competition won’t know if you’ve hired someone unless you tell them, and neither will Google. What all of this means is that Google will have to be selective in which links it singles out as paid links or not. And some folks could argue that’s not fair.

The hard reality online is that you need links. You’ve either got time to build them yourself or you’ll have to hire someone to do it for you. It’s imperative that, if you hire someone, you hire someone you can trust, not only from the perspective of quality work but now also because you don’t want someone blabbing your business all over the Internet. Those wall have ears, you know. And when the ears listen, links could very well get discounted. I wouldn’t want that to happen to you so keep this in mind - as they say, loose lips sink ships. Zip it, man. Your website’s life depends on it.

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MSN has recently cut off its linkdomain feature causing a big stir among users of Marketleap and other link popularity tools. Don’t worry. Your link popularity isn’t falling. You just can’t measure it.

The problem is MSN is having data mining problems. That is, some unruly people are using the linkdomain function to mine data about web domains from MSNs database. Which makes me wonder, Just what is all of that money Microsoft is making going to? I mean, Bill Gates didn’t get to be the richest man in the world by falling behind the competition. It could, however, be a clue why MSN is the third most popular search engine and not the first. Sidebar: If the gods can’t control evil then what chance do the rest of us have?

Google and Yahoo don’t seem to have the problem with data mining. Or, at least, they have discovered how to deal with it effectively. I’d like to see MSN get a handle on this issue so that you all don’t have to wait to see which sites are linking into yours any longer than you have. It’s nerve wracking trying to run a business without the proper information. MSN needs to get a grip.

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P.S. If anyone has any information on MSNs problem and how long it might take to fix it, I’d like to know. Any insiders want to share a secret?

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Global Linking Popularity

One of the major ranking factors is the Global Linking Popularity of your site. You should try to build plenty of inbound links from quality sites. One simple and effective way to do this is through writing articles and submitting them to the online article directories. Only related sites will pick up and display your articles with your anchor text links back to your site. These are often ONE-WAY-LINKS.

But don’t just write articles to get links, write quality content that will help the reader first and the links will come naturally. Also remember an article is an extremely good way of pre-selling your products and gaining trust with your potential customers.

Yesterday we talked about bad outbound links. There’s really no such thing as a bad inbound link. But there are inbound links that are more valuable than others.

In general, you want other websites linking to you. Preferably, you want a lot of sites linking to you. But you’re better off with just a few excellent websites linking to you than a lot of mediocre sites linking in. The reason is because the popularity of the site that links back to you is considered a testament to the value of your site.

The thinking goes like this: If you’re friends with everybody at school then all that means is you have a lot of friends. But if you’re friends with the Prom Queen then you must be a cool chick because the Prom Queen doesn’t just hang out with anybody. You really are judged by the company you keep - online and off line.

Your primary concern as webmaster is to make your website “linky.” That is, provide content so good that people will want to link to you. As more and more webmasters discover your website, they push you up in the rankings. But if you are linked to by sites that are relevant to yours and outrank you in the search engines, then those links are really valuable links. You have to fight hard for them. But it’s worth it, everyone you get.

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Only Linking To High Quality Related Sites

Don’t forget to link to high quality PR related sites. Linking to high quality sites shows the search engines your site is very useful to your visitors. Build relationships within communities on the topic of your site. Be extremely careful not to link to bad neighborhoods, link farms and sp@m sites… when in doubt, don’t link out!

Unless your site has been around for years and is well established and trusted by Google, this factor will have an adverse effect on your site’s overall ranking. Linking only to high quality content sites will give your site an edge over your competition.

One of the biggest mistakes webmasters make is to link out to any website related to theirs. This is not a good strategy. Another mistake, though not as bad, that webmasters make is not to link out at all. But I’d rather have a website with no outbound links than a website with even one bad outbound link. Here’s why:

Bad links can kill you. Just one is all it takes. Link to a bad site or a site that goes down can kill your site’s reputation in a heart beat. That’s why, if you do link out, you want to link out only to the best of breed. Sure, link to sites that are relevant to yours. But don’t link to just anyone. Link only to the best because search engines judge your site based on how useful it is to your visitors. If you provide trash, you’ll be trashed.

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If you’ve ever wondered how you can keep up with your bookmarking links, I’ve found a great website that lets you do this. It’s at www.socialmeter.com.

The link measuring tool is by no means exhaustive. It doesn’t measure links at Reddit, StumbleUpon, or Digg, three of the largest and most popular social bookmarking sites on the Web. But it does serve a useful function for measuring bookmarked pages at other social sites such as Google Bloglines, del.icio.us, and Technorati.

The idea is to type in your website URL so you can see the number of websites that have bookmarked you in some way. It operates on the same concept as link popularity and search engine saturation statistics at such sites as www.marketleap.com and www.linkpopularity.com. I highly recommend you adding www.socialmeter.com to your site measurement tools if you haven’t done so already.

By far the best Social Bookmarking tool, I have EVER seen is Add This. See what happens when you add a social bookmark to your website!

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Matt Cutts sometimes has some really kookie ideas:

- Sign in to Google’s webmaster console and use the authenticated spam report form, then include the word “paidlink” (all one word) in the text area of the spam report. If you use the authenticated form, you’ll need to sign in with a Google Account, but your report will carry more weight.
- Use the unauthenticated spam report form and make sure to include the word “paidlink” (all one word) in the text area of the spam report.

Word to Matt: OK, this is a really bad idea for several reasons. First, Google got the ball rolling on making links valuable in the first place. Remember? It was the first search engine to place significant importance on back links. Because of Google, every other search engine places value on back links. People tend to pay for things that are of value. If Google wants to discourage paid links, all it needs to do is change its algorithms so that links are no longer important. Otherwise, people will pay for links.

Secondly, how are you going to enforce that? What determines a paid link? Is a one-for-one trade or quid pro quo considered a “paid link?” If so, how would you know? For instance, if I trade a handful of blog posts for a handful of one-way links from a sister site, is that considered a “paid link?” Furthermore, how would you know that I have this agreement with another webmaster unless one of us told you about it and why would we tell you about it if you’re going to penalize us for it? It isn’t practical.

Thirdly, why on Earth would Google encourage business owners to spy on each other? I mean, is it really anybody’s business what Webmaster A and Webmaster B agree to? Why should Webmaster C be concerned and why should Webmaster C report it to Google? You aren’t the Internet police, Matt. You’re a search engine. Your job is to help searchers find information, not penalize the world for engaging in commerce.

Which brings me to my fourth point: Such a policy will only encourage false accusations. Google will simply get bogged down in chasing rabbits as webmasters seek to discredit their most fierce competitors. There will undoubtedly be more false reports of paid links than real reports and Google will have to pay someone to investigate all claims to determine their validity. That would be a lousy business to be in, Matt. Seriously.

I agree that the paid link situation has gotten out of hand. Anyone and everyone is getting in on the bandwagon and using every strategy they can think of to increase their inbound links so that their rankings at the search engines will climb higher. It’s almost to the point of ridiculousness and schemes are just getting schemier. It’s a game that Google has encouraged and because of the proliferation of link selling schemes the value of all links are being devalued. This is much like the phenomenon of currency valuations as governments print more paper currency. The new currency undervalues the old currency and soon no currency is worth what it was last year. So it is with links. And Matt’s answer is to have webmasters spying on each other and reporting common practices that are being encouraged by his company’s own policies. Sorry, Matt, it won’t fly.

I’ve got a better idea. How about changing Google’s algorithms to place less emphasis on inbound links and more emphasis on on-page factors. How about an algorithm that rewards alt tags, design elements, use of photos, videos, and other multimedia elements? How about keeping it simple and end the goofy Google link dance, replace it with tried-and-true old fashioned SEO techniques, and stop acting like Big Government blaming everyone else for the problems it creates. How about that, Matt?

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P.S. I still like you, Matt. It’s just that … well, it is a ridiculous idea.

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There is no substitute for people. Human beings are capable of communicating with an enormous degree of nuance and subtlety, using voice, expression, body language, and gesture; no animation, avatar, or artificial substitute can take the place of a real person for communicating meaningful, memorable marketing messages.

Well, I’ve to agree with this guy. If you’re going to produce videos for your marketing campaign there is no reason not to use a real person in the video. Graphics for your website? Be real. Avatars, cartoons, and animated gifs just don’t cut it.

People will relate to you if you tell a story. It doesn’t have to be some long drawn out tale. But they have to be able to relate to it on an emotional level. Very few people can relate emotionally to graphic caricatures - unless they’re some kind of sociopath or possess beautiful minds like John Nash. If you want people to buy your product or service, you’ve got to get them to buy you.

I don’t think that everyone necessarily should use an expert. You can do it yourself. But it’s also prudent to know when to use an expert. Don’t have the time? Use an expert? Not very photogenic? Use an expert? Stumble over your own words just saying your name? Use an expert? Not a creative bone in your body? Use an expert. You get the idea.

But for most of us, we may not be Arnold Schwarzenegger or Glenn Close, perhaps we aren’t Ernest Hemingway or Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but that’s OK. Matt Cutts is no Jerry Springer, is he?

When it comes to creating a buzz, all you have to do is connect. If you can do that in your personal life, you can do it online. Just a learn a few things about the tools first.

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