Are Infographics in Trouble?
A recent interview by Eric Enge with Matt Cutts is causing a bit of a stir in the SEO community. In his recent interview Cutts is quoted as saying, “I would not be surprised if at some point in the future we did not start to discount these infographic-type links to a degree…The link is often embedded in the infographic in a way that people don’t realize, vs. a true endorsement of your site.” Basically, Cutts is saying Google might not count any links a site has earned from an infographic. His reasoning is this: since infographics have become a very popular form of link bait in the past few years, many site owners have started creating essentially useless infographics. They don’t CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Who Are Your Resource Links Actually For? – SEO Video Lesson
On many websites, a "resource center" is really just a page dedicated to link exchanges. Google bans links exchanges (you link to me and I'll link to you) in the Google Webmaster Guidelines and site owners should away them and any other black hat link building tactic. If you want to get links from other businesses, build real partnerships with long term value. Watch this week's SEO video lesson! For more white hat link building lessons from Nick Stamoulis, check out the Brick Marketing link building video lesson CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Is a Paid Blog Review Worth It?
I’m on the fence about paid blog reviews. I think one every now and again is a great way to get valuable inbound links, generate new visitors to your site, build your online brand presence and more, but you have to be careful to not rely too heavily on paid reviews. If you are thinking about paying for a blog review, it’s important that you pick a blog that will actually help your brand. Here are five things to look at when considering a paid blog review: 1. The WHOIS info for the site to see if it is hosted in the U.S. and how long it has been registered. Best practice SEO dictates that you stick with aged and US-based sites, as these tend to be more CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Natural Link Building and SEO – SEO Video Lesson
Natural link building occurs just like it says, naturally! A positive product of all your SEO and online marketing efforts, natural link building happens when other sites and blogs willingly link to your content. Natural links weren't asked or traded for--they happened because you have great content! Natural links build up overtime, so it's still important to invest in a link building campaign, but natural links are a great addition to your link portfolio. Watch this week's SEO video lesson here! For more link building lessons from Nick Stamoulis, check out the Brick Marketing link building video lesson CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
2 Blog Commenting Guidelines – SEO Video Lesson
In order to help your blog comments go live, it's important that you leave a real response. "Good job!" or "great article" tell the blogger that you are just in it for the link, and don't really have anything to add to the conversation. It's also worth incorporating links to your social profiles (in addition to your company website) to help garner more fans and followers. Watch this week's SEO video lesson here! For more link building tips and lessons from Nick Stamoulis, check out the Brick Marketing link building video lesson CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
When Is a Paid Link Not Black Hat?
Google says in their Webmaster Guidelines that “Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results.” However, right in the next paragraph they admit that “Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such.” Obviously your PPC campaigns and banner ads aren’t black hat link building tactics, but what about links that aren’t purchased for advertising? What about all the directories you paid $25 for a lifetime link; what about the industry associations you joined CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Why Should You Organize Your Blog Commenting?
Blog commenting is in incredibly useful form of link building for multiple reasons. Not only is a great way to get a valuable inbound link, it can also help build your online brand, improve your reputation as an industry expert, is the first step in developing a blogger outreach program and much more. However, just like you need to keep your link building strategy organized, it’s important to organize your blog commenting activities organized so you can get the maximum value for your time. Here are 4 reasons why it’s important to organize your blog commenting: 1. You don’t want multiple people commenting on the same post. Having multiple people from your company post comments on the same blog posts looks bad for a couple of reasons. First CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Restructuring Your SEO Link Building Budget
Let’s assume you are entering your second or third year of SEO. You have a well-optimized site, a company blog that posts two new posts a week, a decent social media presence and a solid link portfolio. You might think that you can ride the success of your previous SEO efforts for a few months, or even for most of 2012, but easing off on your SEO means the competition can catch up a lot faster than you realize. Before you know it, your hard earned success might start slipping away! If you are thinking about reeling in your SEO campaign due to budget constraints, restructure the traditional link building budget into content marketing and social media marketing and take a more CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Outbound Linking from Your Business Blog
Knowing when and how often you should develop an outbound link from your blog to another site is a tricky thing. No website is an island (that’s why it’s called the World Wide Web), but obviously you don’t want to lose your hard-earned traffic to another site, especially a competitor. The Internet is full of distractions (so many YouTube videos to watch!) and once a visitor leaves your site there is no guarantee they’ll come back. If they get more than a few back clicks away from your blog, you’ve pretty much lost them until they rediscover your blog another day.
So when should you incorporate outbound links?
The most obvious scenario for incorporating an outbound link is when you are citing/quoting
eferencing someone else’s work. For CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Why Should You Conduct a Full Link Audit?
Once I year, I have to prepare myself for the arduous process of running a full link audit on my site. Is it fun? Not by any stretch of the imagination, but it is very important nonetheless and helps shape my link building campaign for the coming year. Conducting a full link audit on all of my sites (including my company site and external blogs) is a very time consuming process, but it’s imperative that it gets done. The same is true for you and your websites. Why should you bother with a full link audit? First off, conducting a full link audit means that not only do I gather the data on how many links my sites have, but I also visit each and every CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Local Event Marketing Helps Your Link Building
Brick Marketing is a proud sponsor of the Boston SEO Meetup, a local Meetup event for SEO and SEM professionals, other marketing professionals and local business owners interested in learning more about SEO. We attend every month’s event and use the time to network, build our local brand, come up with new blog post topics and yes, even get links from the event! When I say that everything you do to promote your business, both online and off, can be leveraged for SEO, I mean it! Even local event marketing can help your SEO and link building. Most of the business owners that attend the SEO Meetup aren’t looking to hire an SEO firm to handle their SEO or link building. If they are attending the CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Don’t Let PageRank Control Your Link Building
Every time a client asks me about how they can improve their PageRank, I have to cringe a little. Time and time again I have explained that PageRank is only one of 200 ranking signals that Google uses to determine where a site falls in the SERP. While PageRank used to be the Grand Poobah measurement of SEO success (and a major differentiating factor for Google), I don’t believe it’s as important today as it was back when Google was founded. So when a client tells me they only want me to focus on getting links from sites with a PageRank 7 or higher, I have to tell them that zeroing in on PageRank is limiting the long term potential of their link building campaign. Here CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Is Guest Blogging Becoming a Black Hat Tactic?
For the record, let me say that I think guest blogging should be included in any content marketing campaign. Finding relevant industry blogs to become a regular guest author on has many benefits including: increasing your online brand presence, building your brand’s authority, developing quality inbound links, driving targeted traffic to your site and more. But I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in the last few months that is making me nervous. A few years ago, my inbox would be flooded with emails asking for link exchanges, the “I’ll link to you if you link to me” version of link building. Back then, link exchanges were a viable form of link building until Google decreed that they were black hat. As a strictly white hat SEO CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
5 Questions to Ask Before Creating an Infographic
Infographics are a great way to inject new life into both your content marketing and link building campaigns. They are a fun and unique way to present hard data in a more manageable form, allow your brand personality to shine through and (hopefully) generate a lot of links for your site! But before you jump on the infographic bandwagon, here are 5 questions you should ask yourself: 1. Is my brand established enough? Infographics are great forms of link bait, but they shouldn’t be the go-to link building technique for a new site. If you don’t have a strong online presence (something that takes a long time), how will anyone find your infographic in the first place? If your website isn’t ranking well, how do you CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Tips for Determining Link Value
While links are arguably one of the most important ranking factors around, not all links are created equal. There are millions of sites you could potentially get an inbound link from, but should you? Not every website is going to give you a link that provides real SEO value for your site. Here are three questions you should ask yourself when trying to understand the potential SEO value of a link: 1. Is this a site where my target audience hangs out? Links are valuable for two main reasons. First off, the more quality links a site has pointing towards it the more valuable it becomes in the eyes of the search engines. Secondly, every inbound links serves as a potential doorway to your site. You want CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
SEO Journal is Written by
Brick Marketing Founder,
Nick Stamoulis:
Nick Stamoulis - SEO Bio.
Tel. - 877-295-0620
nick@brickmarketing.com
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