That doesn’t mean it isn’t worth talking about. A refresher is always in order. It’s just interesting that SEO and site architecture are at the forefront of Bing’s new discussion with searchers right after its big splash. But all of the points made on Bing’s blog a few days are worth mentioning.

I’d like to point out that we’ve used the bar stool analogy before. We’ve always said that keywords, links, and site architecture are important. Thank you Bing for agreeing with us! Now what does that mean?

It means that if you want your web pages to rank then certain elementary principles must be adhered to. Bing recommends:

• Descriptive file and directory names
• Limit site depth
• Keep page size to a minimum
• Place CSS and JavaScript code on a separate page
• Use 301 redirects for any pages you’ve moved
• Do NOT use Javascript or meta refresh redirects
• Customize your 404 pages

None of this is earth shattering. Google, and thousands of SEOs, have made the same recommendations for years. It’s good to see that, finally, Bing has joined us and has created a search engine that actually looks and acts like a viable search engine. I’m looking forward to using Bing more.

• Duplicate content
• Affiliate programs
• Hacking and malicious malware
• Robots.txt
• And rel=”canonical” URL attributes

This may come as a surprise to you, but affiliate program content and duplicate content do not necessarily cause a drop in traffic. But you have to understand where Google is coming from here. They are primarily concerned with attempts to manipulate rankings and if you use duplicate content to do that, well, then you might see a drop in rankings. That could be have an associative affect on your traffic. But if you have two pages with the same content on them then you shouldn’t see any penalties or drops in rankings or traffic. You can fix that issue with a canonical URL attribute.

With affiliate promotion, simply make your content original and place your affiliate links in the midst of your original content. That’s how you should promote affiliates anyway.

Interestingly, a good deal of Google’s post was about hacking issues. That is probably because this is a growing concern as it is happening more often now. The first defense against hacking is to ensure that you have a secure server. Then you won’t have to worry about cleaning up after the mess.

But what if you do get hacked and you end up with hidden text and links on your website? In that case you could see your web pages de-indexed. Before you panic, sign into your Webmaster Tools account - if you don’t have one, get one - and check to see if you have any issues. You’ll see the big red boxes if you do. Get those fixed and you should see your pages return to their rankings.

Understand that search engine rankings fluctuate over time. So if you drop from page 1 to page 3, it’s probably a natural occurrence. You’ll likely return to page 1 in a little while.

The smart thing to do is to monitor your rankings, but don’t freak out if you see big drops. Most of the time, those are short-lived. If you are de-indexed completely, that’s when you need to figure out what happened and fix it. But don’t lose your head and stay on track!

It’s all about spam. While some sites, like Twitter, nofollow all their links in an attempt to discourage spam (because it works so well on Twitter, huhn?), Yahoo! Answers has decided to go another route in controlling spam. They’re just not going to activate your links.

That’s right, according to the Yahoo! Answers Blog, URLs posted by Level 1 users, new users, will not be activated. In order to see your URLs activated, you’ll have to become a Level 2 user. In other words, you must first be initiated and accepted by the community leaders.

I’ve seen this type of thing happening more and more in the last couple of years and I think it will happen even more going forward. Web communities are becoming extremely sensitive to search engine spam. And if a website - like Yahoo! Answers, for instance - is a popular destination for people trying to game a quick, cheap link then it will be a haven for spammers. The reason sites become spam havens is because they have so much value to contribute to legitimate marketing efforts. It’s a classic take of you take the bad with the good.

Only now, the bad isn’t so good if you’re on the bad team. I say Yay Yahoo! Answers! Make them earn the right to be a linker.

Too many webmasters, and some of them are darned good at SEO, have a bad habit of confusing SEO with sales. They are, like, totally, NOT the same thing.

So why is this mistake so easy to commit? I think there’s a very good reason. If you are good at search engine optimziation and you hit on a really good success early on then you could mislead yourself into believing that your SEO made you sales. Yes, you can say it made you money. But it didn’t make you sales. SEO never makes sales. Landing Page Conversion Content is what makes sales.

Sometimes you can create great landing page content by accident then drive a successful campaign and that creates an illusion that SEO creates sales. But you need to think of these as two separate activities, two different sets of problems, and two completely and set apart methods of marketing. Yes, they overlap and compliment each other; there’s no doubt.

SEO is so very important. And sales is important too (it is what keeps you in business!).

The reality is, however, that brand new sites may have more to offer searchers on the most relevant and up-to-date information. So there is a balancing act with regard to relevance that the search engines have to perform in order to deliver information to searchers.

How do you know when your website is too old?

While the age ranking factor can go in your favor, it can also work against you. While you might have more links than the upstart, you could also have a few more negative blips like bad links, bad neighborhoods, and corrupt files. Keep in mind that search rankings are as a result of a variety of search factors, not just a few. And some of those factors may be negative. If the negative outweigh the positive then you’ll see yourself slipping in rankings - sometimes right before your very eyes.

That’s why it is always good to perform a site review. Periodically, you want to go through your entire site and see where you might have issues. Clean up those issues as soon as possible. Diminish your negatives and increase the positives. It may be time to apply a little skin cream, Old Site. Your age is showing.

First off, Rand and I both agree that’s a ridiculous question, but it’s useful in that it opens up a philosophical jar of worms that most search marketers aren’t willing to explore. He answered the questions much the same way I would have. Which Internet marketing channel is right for you depends on a number of factors, including your own internal resources. But what about search specifically? If you could spend any amount of money and choose any number of Internet marketing channels to market your business - in other words, no limitations - would you choose search?

A better question might be, why wouldn’t you?

Search marketing doesn’t cost as much money as other Internet marketing channels. It does require a lot of time. And if you do it well then you can see a huge, huge pay off in the end. The ROI on effective search engine marketing is very high. But you have to be committed to making it work.

The way I’m using search marketing for this post is limited to search engine optimization. I understand that PPC is typically considered a part of search engine marketing, and that’s normally the way I’d use it. But in terms of marketing organically through search engines, if you had unlimited resources and time, you’d be a fool not to use every channel at your disposal. I’d start with search.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Let’s run down the list:

• Fake it like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally
• Be persistent and focus, focus, focus
• Get hyped up and know that people LIE! - a lot
• Never stop learning
• Build the brand, not the traffic, links, etc.
• Choose e-commerce
• Find and exploit niches yourself
• Learn the basics
• Crowdsource (outsource) as much as you can
• Learn to program or find a programmer who can do what you need
• Brainstorm before you do anything
• Utilize all the channels that make sense for you
• Repurposing isn’t always necessary
• Build true virility when link building
• Go underground when you can

So where’s the SEO part? Buried in the ‘learn the basics’ line.

While this list is written for Internet marketing entrepreneurs, it’s a good list for small business owners who want to build an online presence to understand as well. Maybe you don’t need to follow every bit of advice word for word. But understanding how Internet marketers operate successfully online can help you better choose the strategies and tactics that you use in your business. And, yes, search engine optimization is a part of that. Just get back to the basics.

So how do you make your passwords harder to guess? Here are a few tips:

• Make them long - Short passwords are easy to guess. Make your passwords longer.
• Don’t use dictionary words - Some robots will go through the dictionary and create a list of potential passwords from real words. They can be programmed to enter passwords while their human users sleep. If you use a simple dictionary word as a password then you could be opening yourself up to a hacking attempt.
• Use numbers and special symbols - In addition to being long, you should add numbers and special characters to your passwords. Some companies require their employees to use two numbers and two special characters in their passwords to gain access to the company intranet and other secure areas. You might institute a similar policy at your company.
• Use lower case and upper case letters - Another way to add security to your passwords is to use lower case and upper case lettering. Using only lower case letters makes you more vulnerable. Again, some companies make this a requirement for their employees.
• Don’t just use the obvious characters - The characters above the numbers on your keyboard are obvious choices. What are not obvious are other special characters like the < and > symbols and the copyright symbol.

The longer your password and the more different types of characters you use in your password, the more secure your password. Here are a few examples of bad passwords and how you can make them better.

• Bad = peter / Better = P3e*e”R9t1
• Bad = 123456789 / Better = 1a2$3B45u6:;7C89*
• Bad = meandyou1 / Better = m6e&Y1o0^u=U7s5

You want your password to be easy for you to remember but difficult to guess for a hacker or robot. If you keep that principle in mind then you’ll do well. Stay away from using important dates and names like your birthdate, anniversary, children’s baptism dates, and names of firstborns.

The following advice is really for anyone, regardless of whether you have .yu domain or not, who is planning a transfer of domains to a new domain. If you have a .yu domain then you’ll need to start making your transfer as soon as possible. I would not recommend waiting until September. You want your new site working before your old site stops working and if you are planning 301 redirects, forget about it. They won’t work either. The entire .yu block of domains will be dead and so will any links that are pointing to them.

So how do you transfer an old domain to a new domain? Here’s a short list of items that you should keep in mind in your preparations.

1. Do a little keyword research first - in other words, update your keyword list to see if your old list is still the best list for your niche - and secure a domain name that is adequate on another TLD; be sure to choose a TLD that is sound and doesn’t have a history of volatility.
2. Transfer a handful of pages from your old site to your new site and test them before you move entire site. Do they work and are they visible in all browsers? Is the internal link navigation between them intact?
3. If all is good, transfer all of the pages from your old domain to your new domain.
4. Check all of your backlinks to your old domain. Are there any that you can control yourself? If so then get those links changed to point to your new domain. Contact the site owners of all other links and request that they change the link to point to your new pages. Make sure that you give those site owners the exact address of the old page being linked to and the exact page URL of the page you want them to link to on your new site. Be prepared for some site owners not complying with your request, which means you’ll lose some of your links, but if you can get most of them changed then you’re off to a rocking start.
5. If you have not already done so, change all of your directory listings. For some directories you may need to delete your old listing and submit a new one. Whatever it takes, make sure those directories are listing your new site and not your old one.
6. Create and submit a sitemap for your new site to all of the search engines that crawl them.
7. Test your new site again for crawlability, navigation, and user friendliness.
8. If you are satisfied wit your new site, take your old site down so that your new site can get crawled and indexed with no duplicate content issues. If your site is not a .yu domain and you have reason to believe that it will stay where it is for a long time, use a page-to-page 301 redirect on every page of your website so that you don’t lose any visitors. Your links to the old site should count for PR and link juice to the new site. But in the case of .yu domains, that won’t happen so taking your site down is a better option.
9. Continue marketing your new site.

If you do have a .yu domain name, now is the time to start your transfer. The bigger your site the more likely you are to run into problems and the larger those problems are likely to be. You’ll need to plan for contingencies so sooner is better than later.

But what exactly is link diversity?

Link diversity is link building that incorporates a multi-faceted approach to building links so that inbound links to your website come from a variety of sources with a variety of PageRank authority and high amount of relevance. It’s true that high authority sites within your niche that are aged will send you better link juice than low authority new upstart websites that are not relevant. But why turn down a good link juice because it’s worth a nickel and not a quarter?

There are several ways to go about link building. You shouldn’t limit yourself to just one way. In order to build a diverse portfolio of links, you need to expand your horizons beyond directory submissions and article marketing. Yes, you should include those in your strategy, but don’t limit yourself to them. Get creative.

Some other ways you can build links back to your website include:

• Posting in forums
• Commenting on blogs
• Online press release campaign
• Being a guest blogger
• Social bookmarking
• Setting up social networking profiles
• Industry association memberships
• Getting your website reviewed
• Getting your book or other product reviewed
• Offering a testimonial to another site owner you’ve done business with

And I’m sure you can think of plenty more on your own. Don’t just settle for one method of link building. Diversify!

It’s not hard. Actually, link building is fairly time consuming and arduous. But understanding the importance of it isn’t hard. And understand that au natural means more than mere appearances. You aren’t running for Miss America. You’re building your business. So don’t cut corners and don’t try to look like the most beautiful, intelligent, talented woman on the stage. Put the effort in and be the most beautiful, intelligent, talented pageant girl on the stage. See the difference?

H1 Tags - A couple of years ago, making use of H1 and H2 tags on selected areas of your HTML code kind of came into vogue. The rationale was the search engine spiders interpreted H1 tags as a signal that ‘hey, this text is important because it’s bigger’. Of course the proliferation of .css meant that you could throw H1 tags pretty much anywhere and everywhere on your page and just take care of how things looked to people with stylesheets.

That this was ever an effective ranking tactic or strategy is somewhat debatable. However, currently, while H1 tags aren’t going to hurt you, they don’t seem to be much of a factor.

First, let’s clarify something. H1 tags in and of themselves aren’t that important. No H1 tag is going to push you up to the top of search engine rankings. But H tags in general, if used properly, can be a benefit. The problem with some webmasters is that they have misused H tags.

Spam hurts. Can we all agree on that? Even H-tag spam is self-dustructive. It’s like sticking a needle in your arm. You may not be an alcoholic, but if smoke crack then you’re still destroying body. Misuse H tags and you could be killing your SEO. Plain and simple.

So What’s The Proper Way To Use H Tags?
The best way to use H tags, in my humble opinion, is in the classic newspaper style. Newspapers have always published the largest headlines at the top of the page and made the headlines increasingly smaller down the page toward the bottom. Using this classic design style for your web pages still works. It’s a quality content issue. Such decreasing h tag styles makes reading easier on human eyes and search bots don’t seem to mind either.

Now, will that make your pages rank better? I don’t think it will make them rank any worse. But if you have 12 H1 tags down your page because you think they’ll give you special search engine favor then you are likely to find out that such H-tag spamming will just end you up in the SEO gutter. Therefore, H tags can help you if they aren’t hurting you. In other words, the absence of a negative is a positive.

So, with that in mind, how’s your H1 tag hanging?

My take? If your doing well with your optimization efforts right now, Bing doesn’t change anything. Still, you’ve got read Chris’s article. Here are a few highlights.

With Bing, it’s not about getting to the top of the SERP. It’s about getting to the top of the right part of the SERP.

That’s a brilliant statement. Personally, I like the categories on the search page because it’s an intuitive and a recognized way to narrow down a search query. Thanks to the popularity of blogging, people are already familiar with tagging and categorizing. So it will be natural to narrow a search result to a specific category if it fits what you are looking for. Therefore, Chris’s observation that you should focus on getting to the top of the right category for each search query is a great observation. But does that change how you should conduct your campaign?

Not really. But, realistically, perhaps a little bit. It will become more important to rank your blog content into the proper category. It might even become feasible, and perhaps prudent, to add categorization to your static website. Time will tell on that one. At any rate, Bing’s categories could very well make SEO strategies a bit more focused.

On links, straight from the mouth of Bing’s horse:

You can’t stop bad links coming to your site. “We take the approach that bad inbound links won’t adversely affect your site ranking unless most or all of your inbound links are from bad sites,” explains DeJarnette.

Bing’s link philosophy is not really any different from Google’s so your link building campaigns really shouldn’t change. As Chris says, the presentation Bing offers may differ from Googles, but your SEO goals should be the same.

One aspect of Chris’s article that I really appreciate is his discussion social media. I believe social media is going to be more important for optimization. It already is and I’ll tell you why. Traffic. Plain and simple. Social media delivers targeted traffic. If you can manage a successful social media campaign to deliver targeted traffic to your site that stays on your site then that increase in traffic coupled with a lower bounce rate can affect your rankings. We’ve discussed that before here and here.

So back to the original question: Should you change your SEO strategy for Bing? I say ‘not yet’. What do you think?