Ever since search professionals starting talking about real-time search a la Twitter, Facebook, et. al, there has been a huge emphasis on the competitive nature and push of the industry. Twitter has even gone so far as to change the look of its search engine (when did that happen?) to look a little bit more like Google. It all makes me wonder, what’s next?

When will the real real-time search engine get here? And, more importantly, who will be the first to make it happen?

What I’m talking about, if it isn’t obvious by now, is a mashup of real-time information coming from the top sources in real-time communications such as Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, and the many other microblogging services out there such Plurk, identi.ca, and Jaiku among others. The only company I can think of that has both the resources (human and technological) and the revenue to make it happen right now is Google. But I can’t help but wondering, if Google has the resources and the revenue then why haven’t they done it already?

What are your thoughts on real-time search?

A reader asked me a question in a recent blog comment, so I decided to write a blog post about this topic. The question was: When it comes to link building, which is better: Articles or directory submissions?

Before we answer that question, let’s answer a more fundamental question: Why do you need links in the first place?

Links are important for a couple of reasons. First, they are a method of driving traffic to your website and to build and increase your online trust factor. In fact, place enough links in all the right places and you can drive targeted traffic to your most important web pages. Secondly, links are good for offsite search engine optimization purposes. All the major search engines base their ranking algorithms in part on link analysis. The most sophisticated of the link analysis algorithms is Google’s. The largest search engine on the Web judge link quality on factors such as anchor text relevance, PageRank of the linking page, link age, page relevance, diversity of link sources, and several other factors. Get the right mix of links and you can watch your page rankings go from mediocre to good or good to great in a short time.

So what is better for building links? Directory submissions or articles?

One way to think about this is to ask yourself which of these is better equipped to deliver you links that meet one or more of the above-mentioned criteria. Directory submissions, if done correctly, can deliver great link juice based on domain age, page age, and link age, relevance factors, and several other factors important to link analysis. But it’s only one link. One article, however, has the potential to do all of the above more than once. In fact, one article has the potential to build more solid links over time than 100 directory submissions. And if you multiply the potential by 100 articles at 100 directories, well, you can see the potential multiply exponentially. Either way, I normally recommend submitting your website to the top online directories and even industry/association specific directories. For article submission, eZine is great and also writing for industry specific websites/blogs is another great way to place your articles, increase visitors and highly relevant link popularity.

Directory submissions is a one-time thing. You submit and your done. The only real numbers aspect of it to think about it how many directory submissions you want to make. The more you do the better your chances of building solid links. Articles, on the other hand, are more effective is you maintain a consistent submission pace over a period of time. But because one article has more potential long-term in building the right links in the right places than a hundred, or a thousand, directory submissions, I’m going to have to fall down on the article side on this one.

What do you look for in keyword research to develop a niche? Well, it depends on your goals, but primarily I would recommend looking at three key criteria when you are looking at developing a new niche.

1. Search Volume – How many searches are conducting for a particular topic each month? You want to look at this across all major search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN). You also want to look for your top 10 keywords. What is the monthly search volume on your most important keywords? Higher is better.
2. Competition – What is your competition like for those keywords? High search volume is often not enough. If you have a moderately high search volume and low competition for a couple of your keywords, that’s better than high search volume and high competition. Lower competition is always better as it means you can exploit the opportunities more.
3. Income Opportunities – How many ways can you make money in that niche? If you just have one way of making money, that will limit your opportunities. But if you can branch out and make money in five or ten different ways then you’ll have a lot more ways to exploit the niche.

In each of these criteria, keyword research is very helpful. Very valuable. Keyword research is the most important part of the monetization process. Spend a considerable amount of time in this area and make sure you are looking at all of the right keyword opportunities.

OK, I’m playing fast and loose with the word “approved”, but I think you’ll find these link building methods pretty sound. Not all SEOs agree with these techniques, but I do. They are not “blackhat” by any stretch. They will build you good, solid links, but they each do require a time commitment and a budget. However, all things considered, they are less expensive than the most popular link building methods – so I guess you could say that’s a positive.

I am going to talk about 3 types of relevant link building but, I highly recommend that a blended approach is taken to build trust over a period of time. This chart explains the approach better:

It’s not original. I’ve discussed all of these methods before. But this blog post by Michael Martinez is what prompted today’s post. I can’t vouch for the Fantomaster service he reviews here in this article, but I can vouch for the three link building methods as proven. Here they are in reverse order:

Article Distribution – You don’t necessarily need a subscription service to succeed at article marketing. But articles do build good, solid links. If you can write and submit 10 articles a day, more power to you. If you can only do 5 a day then that’s OK too. The important thing is that you write and submit articles as often as you can. Articles build links, period.

Read other posts about article marketing:

• Cool Ideas For Building Links
• Traffic, Links, And Article Sandwiches
• How To Get Quick Backlinks And Create A Buzz

Blogging – Yes, blogging builds links. But the way it is taught by most gurus, you wouldn’t think so. That’s why most people only use one blog, and don’t do that very consistently. Nevertheless, multiple blogs building links to one site can help that site tremendously over time. You can build good, solid links from multiple blogs. But take this to heart: Put all of your blogs on different IP blocks (ie completely different web hosts) and build links to your website from each of them. You’ll get a real good solid link base.

Read other posts about blogging:

• Is Your Blog Called “Fluffy”?
• How Blog Comments Help You SEO Your Website
• Linkbaiting: When Should You Do It?

Microsites – Microsites are, for some reason, quite controversial. Not all SEOs like them. They aren’t, however, “spammy” as some SEOs will accuse them of being, especially if you do them correctly. And they can build you some good quality links.

Read more posts about Microsites:

• Tracking For Adobe Flash Video (just a taste)
• Develop Microsites As A Part Of Your SEO Strategy
• Viral Marketing Through Microsites

I don’t endorse all forms of linkbuilding, but I do use – and encourage others to use – these three methods. They work. They’re acceptable from a search engine perspective. And they’re ethical.

I read this interview by Ruud Hein of legendary SEO and Internet marketer Fantomaster, aka Reg Tegtmeier. I was struck by the simplicity and honesty of the answer to the first question asked by Ruud.

What was the question? Listen:

You’ve said “links simply aren’t everything if you want to achieve rankings” yet the majority of SEO these days is built on links, links, links. If links aren’t everything, what are those link-focussed people missing?

Of course, we all know how important links are, right? But Fantomaster blows that myth right out of the water. Here he is in his own words:

For one, the good old classic SEO rules still apply and have actually never stopped doing so – build web sites with good, useful information or content; make your pages light and fast to load; use keywords in your title tags and text headers; use meta tags: sparingly perhaps, but intelligently as well; attend to usability as much for your human visitors as for the search engine spiders hitting your site, i.e. don’t make things difficult to discern for either of them; make sure you optimize your on site navigation and linking structure.

Should we agree?

Actually, I do agree. On-page ranking factors are far more important than links. But Fantomaster never says links are not important. He does recognize their importance, and so do we, but he says they are overhyped. That much is true. Too many SEOs place too much important on links. You are much better off focusing on your on-page ranking factors and getting those right. Then … then, you should start your link building as a support effort.

It is still possible to achieve page 1 rankings, and even No. 1 rankings in Google, simply with on-page search engine optimization. But it has to be good SEO. You can’t moderately and with mediocrity perform SEO on your web pages then build links and expect to retain long-term rankings. But if you do great on-page SEO then build solid links to those pages, you can do very well over time.

Google Webmaster Central blog has a great blog post on Web 2.0 spam and what webmasters can do to prevent of cut down on the number of instances that they are attacked by it. Nefarious Internet marketers like to use fake social media accounts to send spam to unsuspecting people. Evidently, it works. Are they using your site?

They could be. And if you get a reputation for spam then these guys will be hurting you.

Google recommends a combination of CAPTCHA forms and a blacklist. A blacklist is a list of e-mail addresses or IP addresses that are blocked from sending messages through e-mail, messaging systems, or other communications media. But, how about a whitelist?

The CAPTCHA form is a necessity in today’s marketing climate. Bots can’t solve the problems so if someone does get through the CAPTCHA you know it’s a real person. But real people can be spammers too. So you need a back up measure to cut down on the spam that makes it through your CAPTCHA.

That’s where the whitelist comes in. A whitelist is a list of names that you DO allow through. It’s more secure than a blacklist because if someone doesn’t have authorization to send a message through your system then they won’t be allowed to. A blacklist does just the opposite; it adds addresses to a list that is banned.

The downside to a whitelist is that you could stop messages coming from legitimate users. But if you have a low instance of false positives then it will be worth it. You should have a member of your staff review the addresses on your whitelist periodically to see if any of them are legitimate. That way you can police the list and find out if there are any e-mail or IP addresses you need to approve to stay on good terms with the users of your website.

Facebook announced on its blog recently that there is a new beta of its Publisher feature that allows Facebook users an opportunity to share their updates with anyone anywhere in the world. In real time.

This is a change in the way that Facebook has operated in the past. Firstly, status updates have always been in real time, but by making them available to anyone – on or off of Facebook – they are now in direct competition with Twitter. Or will be when this feature moves out of beta.

Secondly, if the status updates are visible to anyone off of Facebook then there has to be some kind of search engine optimization implications involved. How will people off of Facebook see the status updates? Facebook’s blog doesn’t say, but my guess is there are two ways this can happen:

1. Facebook will become searchable by non-Facebook users with an application developed by Facebook and those searchers will be able to see status updates based on keyword searches and the privacy settings of the updaters.
2. The second way this could be possible is if those status updates are subject to being crawled by the search engines and therefore capable of search rankings.

Either way, this is good news for Facebook users as it will open doors to marketing to non-Facebook users and expand their Facebook opportunities as well. I hope there will be clear search engine ranking implications.