I had a chat a few days ago with a fellow SEO counterpart who let me know a quick trick when using Yahoo! Site Explorer. This method allows you to filter the number of referring domains from the total number of backlinks pointing to a web site.
Link Building
Social Media Monitoring with Radian6
Blueclaw is constantly finding new and innovative ways to monitor our social media efforts and nothing is worse than not being able to tell if all your hardwork (building blogs, profiles, engaging in conversation etc ) is paying off or not.
Personally, I’ve used and experimented with free online tools like Social Mention, Backtype and How Sociable?, all 3 are useful to a certain extent, Social Mention’s cleaner and less cluttered interface, accuracy and search return volume means I like it more than the other two.
These sites are great for very basic reporting though.
At the moment, I have been introduced to Radian6 (if you’ve never heard of Radian6 or need some getting used to with some terms used then I strongly suggest you give those 3 sites I mentioned earlier a try first). It’s definitely not free (and not cheap) but the abundance of useful information this neat thing can extract is endless that its almost overwhelming to the untrained eye.
All criticisms aside, Radian6 is a seriously powerful tool to measure the credibility and worth of the brand or client you’re working on. You can practically monitor brand presence and awareness in real-time, listen in on the conversations (River of News) that are taking place that you’d never have known.
The right way to get into SEO
Most people get into SEO by through necessity; by trying to push their own site up the rankings with little or no budget. Hence this is why many become obsessed with onsite factors – something they can learn and do without spending much money. For many, going out into worldwide web, spreading the word and getting those links seems far too much like hard work.
However, there’s no way around it. Learning the tricks of getting links is the most important thing you need to know when doing the SEO for a site by yourself.
I could give you examples of how to email people in order to do this etc. et.c, but it’s pointless me telling you. I’ve seen these tips given out (such as using a made-up girl’s name!) and now they don’t work as everyone is doing them. You have to find what works for you by experimenting. The only advice I can give you is to try and be original. The best way to do this is though making your request personal and relevant.
The same goes for blog comments or forum posts. Be original, sincere and relevant. Then the chances of your point of view being deleted as spam are much slimmer.
The key also is not to feel overwhelmed – link building is not an impossible task. To build, you have to do so block by block. If you set yourself a target of 2 or 3 links a day and just keep chipping away then you can still make a good contribution to optimising a site.
The Conflict Between Brand and SEO
Coming to SEO from a marketing background, I immediately noticed conflict between SEO and branding.
When building a brand, a positioning statement is usually drawn up outlining its values and core message. Words are used very carefully in order to portray what exactly it is that the brand stands for. This message is then spread to the world using different marketing channels, such as the internet.
However, if SEO is important to your brand, then good marketing does not appear to equal success on the internet channel in terms of SEO. There are barriers prevent your precisely chosen message being spread across your site and throughout the internet. According to the principles of SEO this will mean there will be a plethora of duplicate content out there to negatively affect your rankings.
I believe there is a way around this though. Google thinks about these things and, using common sense, usually introduces answers to support its overall goal – to return the expected result (most relevant and highest quality). A high quality, popular site cannot help if identical content is spattered across the web. Therefore, Google determines which content is the original by comparing the amount of one way links.
My conclusion then is this: if you go out into the web and spread your message by only using reciprocal links to increase your rankings, then you’d better consider diluting/altering your carefully chosen words in order to avoid duplicate content penalties. If you really believe in the value of your brand message then have the confidence to resist simply relying on a link swapping strategy to get you up the rankings.
Google’s view on unnatural link patterns
We have been involved with an interesting case recently with a retail site that hasn’t been ranking too well. Having conducted an investigation we concluded that the probable reason was because Google had been penalising the site for what looked to be an unnatural linking pattern.
This was because all of the links to the site’s pages contained the same word - an unnatural feature in Google’s eyes, according to our sources. However the site didn’t really have an unnatural link pattern at all – the nature of the site meant that it was hard to link to the site without mentioning that one word; especially since the domain name featured that word. So for example (i’m not going to use the actual website we worked on as I’m not sure I have permission) you have the domain www.multi-coloured-bottles.com and the site focuses on blue bottles, black bottles, green bottles, red bottles etc. How do you link to that site without mentioning the word bottles? Even just providing a standard link (without anchor text) still contains the word.
Gary Beal: Precisely Martin. Shedding a penalty requires 1st ...
Martin Woods: William we are saying the same thing, I agree that...