Are paid links necessary?

If you read the blogs of people John Chow and ProBlogger you’d think you couldn’t run a website without selling links or buying them. Is it true?

Personally, I’d say that’s not true. Paid links may have some value, but there are so many ways to get free links and it’s so easy to do that I wouldn’t even think about buying links without first using the free methods of link building at my disposal. But what about selling links?

When it comes to selling links on your website to others who want to buy them, there are a few things to keep in mind. No. 1, is the link buyer a spammer? If so, you want think long and hard before you sell links.

Who you link to says a lot about the type of website you run. It’s your reputation and you want to guard it viciously. Not just against the search engines either. You human visitors want to be able to trust you and they are far more important than the search engines. Spiders can deliver you traffic, but if your traffic doesn’t trust you because you will sell links to anyone for any reason then it won’t matter how much traffic you get.

That’s why paid links are such a problem. Yes, you can good money on the short term. But how will it fair long term? If you can’t translate those short term benefits into something permanent, you’d be better off leaving the paid links to someone else when it comes to your search engine optimization.

Citysearch has been a leader in local online advertising since it was started. Now, a new deal between AOL and Citysearch looks promising in terms of local business benefit. As a part of the agreement, Citysearch will be running local video and AOL will distribute Citysearch ads across its network. This combination will serve to increase the benefits of local advertisers using Citysearch. Right now, that mostly means major metro areas but I believe that rural businesses can benefit from this as well.

Since AOL is an aggregator and not a real search engine, the scope of this agreement is limited for local search, but it’s better than what local businesses had. I expect to see Citysearch’s competition do one better. I can imagine Yelp or an online yellow pages website partner with Ask, Yahoo, or Google for similar arrangements. If that happens then local search will thrive and grow at a faster rate than anticipated. The only thing that could make these kinds of deals better is if a local advertising company partners with a social media site. Can you see a Citysearch/Facebook partnership? That would be totally awesome.

I’m with Jordan McCollum on this one. Google says its SERPs are safe (for the most part) from malware and other malicious files. The search engine isnt’ satisfied with that, and I’m glad they’re not because that means they’ll work on improving it. But does this mean you shouldn’t have AdAware and virus protection on your computers? Uh, no.

If you live in China, you should especially make sure that you are safe at the local level. But even if you live elsewhere, as in the good ol’ U.S.A., you should seek local protection through firewalls, virus protection, and AdAware programs on your computers and servers. That 1.3% could be the killer.

But, remember, we’re only talking about statistics from Google. This study does not address the search engine results pages of other search engines: Yahoo, MSN Live, Ask, and smaller search engines, some of which may have a specific niche that they serve. You are more likely to get malicious files from the small search engines that likely don’t have the human power or technology to address the issue head on. To make a long story short, you should be careful when searching out there on niche sites. Stick to Google for search engine optimization and you’ll relatively little to worry about.

We’ve been conditioned to include 404 error pages on all our websites. But is it necessary? I’ve got a friend who says no.

This friend of mine has been a friend for awhile now. He’s also an search engine optimization expert who’s been doing business online, I think, since before the Arpanet. He probably knows which end is up.

At any rate, this friend - I’ll call him Al Gore (but it’s not really Al Gore, you see) - doesn’t use 404 error pages. He redirects his visitors to his blog instead. What that means is any time a visitor types in an URL or lands on a page that would ordinarily produce a 404 error page, they automatically land on his blog. I thought that was pretty creative. The advantages to doing it this way are:

• Fewer disgruntled visitors leaving your site
• Less confusion about “Which link should I click?”
• You don’t have to build a 404 error page with links to your important pages so that your visitors know what to do
• You might get more regular readers of your blog
• Site visitors will have something interesting to read even if they don’t find what they’re looking for

404 error pages aren’t bad, but in this day of endless blogs, people would rather read your 300 word blog post than your 300 word sorry-you-didn’t-find-what-you-were-looking-for message. Just a little tip from Al Gore

I finally figured out the mystery to the Google problem. It was a local issue.

It was strange, though, because Google was the only website I couldn’t access. I could get all the search engines, the news sites, my sites, client sites, everything. But I couldn’t get Google. We reset our router and that didn’t solve the problem. But we did finally get it fixed. I’m not at liberty to say precisely what the issue was, but it was a local issue. Whew! It had me worried for a bit.

Since late last night, I have not been able to access Google on any computer. I don’t know why. I have tried to find out if there were any news items explaining why Google might be down, but since I can’t access my Google Personalization page along with my favorite news feeds, I have been unsuccessful in that endeavor. WebProNews is too busy popping out stories about Microsoft and Yahoo (sorry, I had to get my dig in) to let us know what is going on with Google. Yahoo, too, is busy, but with elections. Sorry, no late breaking news on Google.

When I type www.google.com into my URL I get a timed out page. It’s been happening since last night. On other computers in the house I am redirected to a MyWebSearch search page. I’m not sure what is going on. I’ve never seen Google not be accessible. Either they are having major server issues or they’ve been hijacked. Google, hijacked? That would be a major, seriously major, news story, don’t you think?

I’d like to know what’s going on. If you are having trouble accessing Google this morning, let me know. If you have any idea why Google may be down, please let me know. This is really odd.

DMOZ has taken a lot of flack in recent years. Critics say it is slow, unnecessary, and full of prima donnas. Of course, it could be fun to be a prima donna. Couldn’t it?

If this blog post at DMOZ is any clue, I’d think being a DMOZ editor is kind of fun. But can it benefit your web business at all? Does it do anything for your Search Engine Optimization.

First, there is the obvious ethical question: Are you playing favorites with your own websites? DMOZ exists to list websites in categories. It is free and human edited. If editors use their position, as some have in the past, to make their own websites take priority over others’ then that would clearly be an ethical problem. I don’t think most DMOZ editors are that unscrupulous. I’m sure it is a temptation that editors must be on the lookout for.

That said, being a DMOZ editor can benefit your business, albeit not in a search engine positioning and search engine optimization kind of way. At least, you won’t get any additional search juice by being an editor. Being listed in DMOZ will help your business a great deal as you’ll have a valuable incoming link for your website from a high PR site - and that’s always a value. Being an editor, of course, you’ll be able to ensure that your own website is listed. But I think most people would have a problem with it if you applied for an editor’s position at DMOZ and used your position to get your site listed ahead of everyone else’s.

I’d recommend that, if you want to be a DMOZ editor, you submit your own site for inclusion in the directory before you ever apply to be an editor. If your site hasn’t been approved when you are approved for the editor’s position, don’t approve it right away. Check to see where it is in the lineup for approval and work your way through the list until you get to it - then approve it. The link will benefit you, but your job as editor is to be impartial with regard to the sites that are listed in your category. You should not play favorites. Just play the game fairly and you’ll be a benefit to us all.

Search engine optimization experts will tell you to pick your domain name based on your keyword research, but that’s getting more and more and difficult. You can do your research and identify 15 of your top keywords and when you go looking for that domain name you like so much - it’s taken. And that one’s taken too. Then the other one … yep, it’s taken. Darn, aren’t there any good ones left?

Some Web 2.0 converts are starting to follow the Flickr formula, which is to drop a vowel or misspell the keyword slightly. It boils down to acquiring a phonetic domain name, or “near misses.” Instead of Mechanics.com, you might see Mechanix.com or MyKanics.com, because we’re cute. But do such domain names work?

They can, but you have to work extra hard at branding them. Unless you pick a domain name that plays off of a popular misspelling, chances are people will not find your domain name by misspelling the correct keyword. You’ll have to use the misspelled word in all of your anchor text instances and, quite frankly, that could lead to other difficulties, especially when it comes to article marketing and buying paid links.

Some people claim that if you don’t have a .com or .org TLD then you’re screwed. I don’t think so. I’ve seen .biz, .net., and other TLDs rank high in the SERPs. It really boils down to how you do your marketing. For now, keep doing the keyword research and pick a domain name that makes sense for your business, one that is easily brandable, and, yes, one that is at least somewhat close to your primary keyword. Search engine optimization is still Search engine optimization.

Eight hours ago, WebProNews wrote a story about Yahoo contact AOL to discuss a merger. They have written no other stories on the topic since.

I apologize to Rich Ord and his fabulous editorial crew for beating up on them so much this week, but I couldn’t help but notice that by this time on the same day that Microsoft offered to take Yahoo by force like a prison term lifer owns his new cell buddy, the prestigious news organization had written more stories on that one topic than on any other topic within the previous month. In case you’re wondering, that’s a lot of stories.

Now that Yahoo is fighting back and trying to reclaim its lost virginity, WebProNews seems to have abandoned them. They were hot news, however, when they were Google’s sparring partner’s bitch. From all I could tell, WPN only hyped up the story because they really wanted to see two smaller companies (ANY two would have done, except that these two were the biggest of the small) merge so that Google might have one bigger challenger instead of several smaller Wish-They-Coulds. Too bad, so sad.

Now it’s AOLs turn - and might I point out that AOL isn’t exactly a small potato. It is in the Top 5, after all. But, alas, Google has a small stake in AOL, don’t they Rich? Huh? Don’t they?

You bet your sassafrass they do. As The Times points out, Google owns 5%. I guess that little factoid makes the story a bit less desirable to write about for WebProNews. I think Yahoo’s struggle to find its soul is at least as important a story as it selling the damn thing to Microsoft. Or it should be.

While other blogs and news sites are talking about the latest development in the Yahoo saga, WebProNews has moved on to other stories like e-mail being used in divorce cases and HarperCollins offering free books online. There is even a story that mentions Microsoft and AOL sans Yahoo.

But the most interesting story I’ve read all day about Yahoo is the possibility of Yahoo merging with Apple. Andy Beal may not be right, but at least he appeals some to my imagination. I expect to see that story appear at WebProNews some time in the near future. But I’ve had already read it by then.

Rand Fishkin’s blog post about the biggest threats facing Google is a very interesting read. I’d just like to say that the one I find most intriguing and think is the biggest real threat is #3.

Rand theorizes that vertical search will become more popular and that startups in the search field have a better chance of out-competing Google on a single vertical niche than they do on search in general. Only, it isn’t so much of a theory as a fact.

As the web becomes increasingly large and complex, it’s very possible that web surfing and web searching habits will evolve. Brands like Expedia, Zillow and iMedix are all competing in the arenas of vertical search, hoping that when web users think travel, real estate or health care, they won’t turn to Google, but instead will go directly to their favorite vertical engine. Naturally, Google’s already planning for this with search in dozens of additional verticals - news, books, academia, images, maps, etc. but beating the search giant in any one of these niches is certainly far simpler than in the broader realm of web wide search.

Every day there are millions of new web pages added to the Web, making it more difficult to crawl and index the ones that are there. It is becoming increasingly more difficult for new websites to gain authority. Meanwhile, spam is taking over. Google’s search results are nowhere near as high a quality as they were in 2000 or 2001 even though the search engine’s technology is far superior than it was then. The spam problem will get even more out of hand as more and more webmasters learn the intricacies of search engine optimization and more web pages are developed and the search robots have more pages to sift through. Google has its job cut out for it right now.

The search landscape is ripe for vertical search, more now than ever. Local search is perhaps the biggest vertical right now as the major search engines compete for the upper hand. Mobile search is still young but a growing interest as well. I think we’ll see the day real soon where Google might have dominance in a particular vertical while Microsoft, Ask, or Yahoo (perhaps even Micro-hoo) will hold dominance in another vertical. The major search engines will have to pick where it is they want to excel and leave the rest to the field of competition. This will open many doors for new startups to pick a vertical to focus on. I think you could even see some of the existing verticals at the major search engines spin off into their own independent companies, complete with branding and marketing plans of their own.

This type of specialization would follow the same timeline that traditional industries follow. First there is a new innovation. The innovation catches on slowly and picks up momentum as economic development makes it more affordable. As more people adopt and adapt, demand for improvements force suppliers to keep innovating. As consumers get more savvy and sophisticated with the use of the innovation, more innovators enter the field with R&D of their own. New developments splinter off into unique niches that are subsets of the original innovation and micro-markets are developed, first by the major players then by fans of the players who take their innovations and improve upon them for smaller niche markets.

It seems like search is following a similar timeline. Vertical search seems like the next logical level as more and more companies enter the search field looking for their area of specialization.

Adam Senour had an excellent blog post yesterday on cybersquatting. The sad thing about this practice is that, in a lot of cases, it is preventable. Probably in just as many, it isn’t. But Adam admits that he himself has allowed his domains to expire and fall victim to cybersquatting. The registrants who take these domain names are unscrupulous at best. The Web community needs to figure out a way to put a stop to this.

But aside from the politics, one other way that cybersquatting occurs is when a popular domain name is mirrored by a domain name that is close, but not quite. In other words, if you own www.thisismydomain.com then the cybersquatter may register www.this-is-my-domain.com. Usually, however, it happens in the reverse. A domain name owner will register the hyphenated version of the domain name and the cybersquatter will register the unhyphenated version. Unwitting searchers who can’t remember to put the dashes in the domain will type in what they think is the domain name into their browser windows and go to the wrong website.

This type of cybersquatting can be prevented by the domain name owner purchasing all domain names that are similar enough to be confused with the one they own. Hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the domain name, plural and singular versions of the name (ie. www.mydomain.com and www.mydomains.com), etc. If there is any way that a visitor might confuse your domain name then you should purchase the alternative version before a cybersquatter does then point that domain name to your actual Web URL. It could save you a lot of headaches in the long run.

Well, it happened. Yahoo told Microsoft to buck up and get real. I knew they would. But the week has been interesting.

You could call this week “The Underdog High Hopes Week” as just about every Google hater in the world came out of the woodwork to encourage Yahoo to accept Microsoft’s feeble takeover bid. Conventional thinking on the matter has been this: Yahoo isn’t fulfilling the needs of the search community very well and Google is big and powerful and strong, therefore, Yahoo needs someone to come and save them, like a damsel in distress, and make the world a better place for plutocracy.

WebProNews wrote at least 15 articles on the subject in the space of two days. Some of the titles were just ridiculous. The editorial stance on most of them - and WebProNews is an editorial broadsheet more than a news website - was in favor of the acquisition. Writers for WebProNews wrote their stories as if they expected Yahoo to accept Microsoft’s offer or wrote as if they were encouraging Yahoo to accept the offer. Interestingly, after I pointed out that there are other things online to write about, WebProNews started writing about other topics. Thanks to Rich Ord for stepping in to offer a belly laugh.

But diversions aside, Yahoo didn’t do as everyone expected. They asked for more money. And once again, Spanky and Gang is chastising the company for looking out for its own interests. Yahoo execs said right off the bat that they were not just going to jump on the offer. They were exploring all their options. They said that as soon as their press release writers could finish running spell check. And now they are the bad guys because they are seriously competing with Google and don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of doing so. Nevermind that a Microsoft-Yahoo merger wouldn’t have any better a chance - Spanky just doesn’t like Yahoo.

Rich Ord, in the first “Breaking” news story since Yahoo made its official announcement to spurn Microsoft’s advances, editorialized:

This rejection is likely to spark shareholder lawsuits if Yahoo’s stock price plummets back down to pre-offer levels.

After hyping up the news as the story of the century, Rich Ord must feel let down that Yahoo executives rejected the sexy swinging offer from one of his wilder than wild fantasies. But he’s not the only one talking, of course.

A venture capitalist in New York suggests that Yahoo restructure their business and squeeze every dime out of it that they can.

A writer for Marketing Pilgrim, which is often more objective than the “news site” WebProNews, tries to be at least a little level-headed about the deal:

Sure, the thought of two important companies teaming up in order to put an end to Google’s reign, in order to make the Web a better place for advertisers, publishers as well as regular users is more than interesting, but aren’t we being just a little bit too optimistic?

Well, yeah. How about “pie in the sky?”

Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo! Shouldn’t necessarily be seen as the solution which will somehow save us from Google’s domination, but rather as something which could add a little spice to the search engine equation. Do we even need to be protected from Google? And would Microsoft, out of all companies, actually be the perfect solution we have been waiting for? Of course not, as I am convinced that any person with a little common sense will agree.

Finally, someone who agrees with me. The underdog cheerleaders who think that a Microsoft-Yahoo union will somehow to put a magical end to Google dominance are fooling themselves. Google rose to prominence in the first place because they provided better search tools than any other search engine. With all of their faults - and one would be a fool to say that Google doesn’t have faults - they still do. Would a little competition make everyone’s search tools a little better? Yes, of course they would. But is that Google’s fault? Perhaps it is Yahoo’s and Microsoft’s fault for not being more competitive in the first place. And the Peanut Gallery somehow thinks a merger will change that overnight.

This is on the same level as taking two second-rate quarterbacks from the NFL and expecting their combined skills to outplay Peyton Manning or Tom Brady. It isn’t going to happen. While Alan Jackson seems to think that knocking Google off the hill will improve search, I don’t think so. I think what will improve search is for people to get real about what we have to work with, learning to use the tools at their disposal, and discussing what they want with each of the search engines so that those marketplace desires might be met by a provider who can deliver. Could more competition make that happen? Possibly. But so could better communication between consumers and providers.

Search engine optimization practitioners have argued about whether bold text is worth any search engine optimization juice for some time now. Most search engine optimization experts believe that bold text does help with search engine rankings, but it’s one of those things where bolding your content alone is not going to help you. In fact, in some cases it could hurt you.

Like in keyword usage, too much is self destructive. Too many article writers or DIY search engine optimization practitioners try to increase their search engine optimization mojo by “stuffing” keywords into their content. By the same token, some of them have taken to “stuffing” bold content into their articles and search engine optimization copy as well. They are only hurting themselves.

The reason this happens is because there is benefit to bold content. If there wasn’t, no one would try to game the system by bolding more than they have to. You’ve likely seen someone do something like this:

Spaghetti sauce can be a powerful aphrodisiac. It can get you happy and make your partner even happier. Which brand of spaghetti sauce you use for your pleasure depends to a great deal on how happy you can become. But I wouldn’t smear the spaghetti sauce all over yourselves. Simply eating a spoonful of spaghetti sauce before you prepare yourselves for action - one spaghetti sauce spoonful each please - can lead to happiness galore.

It’s bad enough when you stuff keywords, but you don’t have to bold every instance of your keyword either. That just looks plain tacky. But strategically placed bold content can lead to greater understanding of your content and better readability. When you do bold your content, make sure you are doing it for the right reasons. Don’t do it just for the search engine optimization benefits. Do it because it enhances the reader experience.

I like Matt Cutts. Sometimes.

Recently, he addressed an issue regarding Google Images and took the opportunity to explain, once again, how search engines work. I have a few thoughts of my own.

Recently I was on an email thread and the images team wanted to address a misconception. Google Images doesn’t have a dedicated blog right now, so I offered some space on my blog if someone wanted to do a guest post.

Perhaps Google Images needs its own blog now.

Every now and then a story surfaces that Google has ‘censored’ images or web pages and removed them from our site without saying a word to anyone.

I just want to say that I don’t work for Google and Google doesn’t give me money for supporting their cause. But this just doesn’t make sense in and of itself. Google has nothing to gain from censoring images. Ever. Why would they do this? You can Google porn and see all kinds of smut that is likely illegal where you live within seconds and probably see stuff you’ve never imagined possible. You can Google gruesome war photos. You can Google videos of Osama bin Laden making demands to the U.S. and other western countries. There is hardly anything at all that you can’t Google, yet somehow this person thinks that Google censors. Actually, it does - in China where, by law, it has to or risk being blocked by the Chinese government. If Google is so open about its censorship in China, why would it ever deny doing so anywhere else? The allegations just makes no sense.

Well it turns out this image was difficult to find on images.google.com for the first few days after the match, and the story that’s gathered steam is that Google removed it. Some outlets said that this was under pressure from the Israeli government.

First of all let’s put the story straight: we definitely didn’t do this. In fact from the very beginning you could find the image quite easily on YouTube and also on Google News.

It is particularly uncanny that people accuse Google of censorship when you can find the images they claim are being censored elsewhere on the Web. If Google were to censor an image, don’t you think it would censor the image for every result and not just one or two? If the image is on Google News and YouTube then you can Google it and find it. If you can Google it and find it then Google hasn’t censored it. If the image search doesn’t show your website as a result then the problem isn’t Google, it’s your website. Matt Cutts, however, has another simple reason why an image may not appear in Google search results for a few days:

The reason for the delay in the image showing up on Google Images was that it can take a few days between when an image appears and when its crawled by the Googlebot, as explained here.

I’m so tired of hearing the “Google is broke” sob stories. There is nothing wrong with Google. In some ways, the search engine is actually better than it used to be, as Matt clearly points out in his blog post:

When I joined Google in early 2000, we measured the time to update our index in months. Personally, I think it’s great that people now start to wonder why we don’t have a particular web page or image within just a few days. Over time, Google is getting fresher and fresher in my experience, but making a search engine work really well is a difficult task.

Did you read that? Months! It took Google months to index a document in 2000. Most of the time today you can have a document indexed in a few days or even a few hours. But the time factor for indexing new documents has a lot to do with the document and the source of it that is being crawled. If you own several websites and you know how to build incoming links to a website quickly so that you get the search engines to it to crawl the site then you can see quicker results. If you don’t then you may not see results for months. It all boils down to how savvy you are at search engine optimization. I’ve had blog posts on this blog indexed and hit No. 1 at Google within 4 hours. That’s because this blog is a trusted source for Google. We do things right.

That said, Google doesn’t crawl images. All the search engines are trying to figure out better ways to index images. Until they do, we’re stuck with alt tags, page authority, surrounding text, inbound links, anchor text, and other such clues. If the images on your website aren’t getting crawled, don’t blame Google. You probably need to improve your website’s crawlability.

One of the most important aspects of your website infrastructure is your internal linking structure. You really need to give it some thought as to how to make the most use of your internal links. There is one site structure that I recommend for most websites that will help you keep a handle on this very important aspect of website maintenance.

Using a tiered page system, you can ensure that you drive traffic and spread your PageRank around so that you get the best benefits from your search engine optimization efforts. The tiered page system looks like this:

Don’t add any pages below tier three - the bottom run of this structure. The home page is your hub. It should be optimized for the one or two most generic keywords related to your niche. The second tier of your website are the pages that are optimized for your best keywords (designated above as Page A, Page B, Page C, and Page D). Each page links from your home page menu bar, which will also appear on every page of your website unless there is a compelling reason not to use the menu bar on a certain page. Because you are linking to these pages from your menu bar, you will effectively have internal links from your home page to each of these tier two pages, from each of your tier 3 pages to each of those pages, and from all other tier 2 pages to each one. Such an internal linking structure allows your visitors to visit the pages that are most important to them in terms of their interests.

Tier 2 And Tier 3 Pages
You have any number of tier 2 pages that you can feasibly include in your menu bar. But I wouldn’t overdo. There are some other things that you can do to make sure that your site doesn’t look over full of links and that your menu bar isn’t too crowded, but that’s another blog post. Suffice it to say, your tier two pages will get the most traffic when you use this internal linking structure.

Your tier 3 pages (designated above as A1 / A2, B1 / B2, etc.) are spin offs from your tier 2 pages. Each tier 2 page should have several tier 3 pages linking from it, but don’t put tier 3 pages on your menu bar. They only link from the tier 2 page that is most closely related to them. The only cross-linking at this level of your site should be between tier 3 pages that are related to each other in a lateral sense but are not so closely related that they deserve to be under the same tier 2 page.

You can have any number of tier 3 pages you want and they should all be highly optimized around a specific long-tail keyword. These are good pages to sell your items on because they are optimized for very specific keywords.

If you utilize the three-level tiered site structure, you can manage your internal linking very effectively. If you pay close attention to your links, you should never have a broken link. But if you do it will be very easy to monitor and track your internal links and their effectiveness and how it impacts your overal search engine optimization.