With the growing commercial nature of the web it is becoming harder to get quality one way inbound links without spending a fortune. By submitting free or cheap press releases you can build link equity without spending a ton of money.
Many people do recommend donating to PR Web to help your PR get quicker handling and a better rotation.
"For $80 your release is also included in the Yahoo! FeatureExpress program where the full release is published under the Yahoo.com domain.
For B2B client releases that are keyword optimized, you can expect 20,000 - 60,000 page views in the first two weeks. For B2C clients it's higher, as much as 190,000." - from Lee Odden of TopRank Online Marketing
There are also a bunch of smaller press release sites on the web. Please submit any press release sites you find useful to this posting by clicking on the your evil Happy Thoughts Link.
Don't worry, be happy! (cartoon is worth playing at least twice) A few smaller press release sites that were listed are:
Update: Backlink Analyzer is free link analysis software which has probably the best feature set of any of the link analysis software products on the market.
The Original Link Analysis Software
When OptiLink ($224) came out a few years ago it was a software product like no others. A few weeks ago the second version of PageRank Prowler ($97) was released. PageRank Prowler is a product similar to OptiLink (which only lacks the link text features).
Dirt Cheap PageRank Software
Now I haven't tried the full version of it yet, but recently software by the name of PageRank Digger that only costs $39.99 via PayPal was released. I guess it's claim to fame is speed. "You will be able to scan over 2000 domain names per minute." It is not just scanning links and getting PageRank that matters though. Being able quickly evaluate and rearrange the raw data is what makes it really useful. I think this tool is targeted more toward the expired domain community vice the seo community.
Branding & Creating Better Products
It is amazing to see how quickly advanced link tools (or any technology) can become commodities. I wonder when someone will be smart enough to market a link product which is BETTER vice cheaper. I can think of a few upgrades that would make the best link software way better and am surprised that nobody has marketed them yet. I wish I had more time to learn programming... :)
Example Link Analysis Software Upgrade
I am surprised there is no specific parameter link analysis software on the market. Software which scans Yahoo! or Google for .edu links which link to your competitors. That is just one example of a useful modification I don't think has been marketed yet. I got a couple other ideas too...email me if you are a programmer who wants to make really cool link analysis software.
Do you know of any link software which better than OptiLink? What on your site makes it better, vice cheaper? The competitive nature of the web will eat up most people who use cheap as a sales angle. Branding is where it's at.
Update: Backlink Analyzer is free link analysis software which has probably the best feature set of any of the link analysis software products on the market.
Recently Shawn Pringle launched PR and link analysis software by the name of PR Prowler. The first edition was a bit bulky and slow, but recently he launched PR Prowler V2.0 which has many needed upgrades.
PR Prowler operates in its own browser window similar to OptiLink. OptiLink still has a few more features (such as showing link text), but PR Prowler allows you to search for backlinks and keywords as well.
When you use PR Prowler with the Google link:www.evilcompetitor.com function it will return their backlinks and allow you to manipulate them in multiple ways. PR Prowler allows you to organize the links by site or PageRank or by how much the link should boost your PageRank (estimated). The best part about PR Prowler is that it primarily operates in the background so that you can do other business while it is collecting data.
Any software which runs in the background, checks backlings to the full Google database search depth (1,000), and will sort the results by PageRank is easily worth well over $100 to most webmasters, but PR Prowler only costs $97. View the official PR Prowler website.
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A good SEO has enough ideas in their head and enough things to work on to not need to call you. If they are calling you it most likely means that they do not understand the concepts of reverse broadcast networks and they are no good at their job.
I just got a phone call from Traffic Power (read the Traffic Power review).
He saw one of my crap websites from when I first started playing on the web (It is super duper bad). I then told him to try "my other URL." I had him enter my http://www.search-marketing.info into his address bar and then stated if he searched Google or Yahoo! for "search marketing" I would rank #1. If he searched for "search engine marketing" I would be in the top 10 on both.
I then told him that good SEO's have no reason to call people. I told him that I get plenty of phone calls from the web. The power of search and the internet is that my targeted traffic comes to me without me needing to waste my time on Traffic Power cold call garbage.
It's funny how their site does not even come up at #1 for Traffic Power if you search Google for Traffic Power. In fact I am willing to bet this post will rank at #1 for traffic power within a few weeks.
He wished me a nice day and I wished him one too. Would you buy a diamond from a person who cold called you? Would you bet your financial future on a random telemarketer who knew nothing about marketing or your life?
Traffic Power did earn a link from me though. I created the Cold Call SEO category of black hat SEO just for them.
My favorite part about the Traffic Power website is the link to the clients page has an almost nuclear trifoil type looking symbol and says "you have reached this page in error." Indeed being on the Traffic Power client list is an error.
Google has made a change to it's algorithm which is making it much harder (or more expensive) to outright manipulate it's search results. I believe the discussion started by SEO Guy over at SEO Chat. From there he posted it on the Search Engine Roundtable weblog. The idea has since been talked about at most of the major SEO forums.
Garret French of WebProWorld wrote a synopsis article quoting some of the more common theories.
John Scott had a talk with a fellow who used to work with Krishna Bharat (Google engineer who worked on Hilltop) at another company (not Google).
"The probation does not apply to new sites. It applies to links. When the algorithm was deployed certain older links were grandfathered in. After that, links will be (are being) given partial credit, and be essentially on "probation".
It applies to links, not sites. And the age of the link is not the only factor. The IP range of the links and other considerations are made, and the person who I discussed this with said that Krishna Bharat is at Google primary to develop and implement this new algorithm. It is supposed to radically change the way links are evaluated...
Disclaimer: This is my opinion and that's all it is."
This will allow new sites to still quickly gain PageRank as displayed, but ranking for competitive terms via quick link purchase is becoming exponentially more expensive.
Cool new Google search result scrapper. It may soon get banned, but if it does not then it will be an awesome tool for SEO.
Proogle shows search PageRank with search results. This can quickly give you an idea of how competitive a search term phrase may be. In addition you can add a couple features to your search to make it super useful for SEO.
Instead of looking at a search phrase you can see who is linking to a site (using link:www.blawhateversite.com). In addition you can also add &num=100 at the end of the address bar to view 100 results per page.
here is an example search on SEO Inc.'s backlinks
Proogle will allow you to quickly find your competitors most valuable backlinks. It is not quite as powerful as OptiLink, but pretty damn darn cool for free!!!
May 20, 2004 Update: Proogle was rebranded to Prog.
So Seth released another free eBook.
On the web, when you get above self sustaining you can further elevate your position by creating conglomorate information products which you give away. Some of the companies listed in Seth's eBook will be so stoked that offer him free links, and in every copy of his book people will know who created it.
What happens? His name spreads even more, he wins even more. I have not yet read his Free Prize Inside yet, but still have a couple extras of his last book (Purple Cow). If you would like a free copy of Purple Cow then please email me your address with purple in the subject line.
So I made a directory of bad SEO services (Black Hat SEO.com) and tools. It sat dormant for a great length of time. I told a few people about it and it did relatively nothing.
Out of nowhere I looked today and saw that I have been serving thousands and thousands of page views on that site...almost exceeding bandwidth limits in a few days.
Alexa is unreliable, but it works somewhat decently when your page is in the top 10,000 or so. Out of nowhere the page went to 2,505 when I checked today. The page may soon fade, but that directory has drummed up some good business for me. More potential leads in one day than most individual SEO's probably get in a month.
It's a Seth Godin type Purple Cow example. My very own Banana Guard. It certainly is an ugly cow, but it is still purple.
It is much easier to promote an idea worth promoting than putting tons of effort in promoting something not worthwhile. How can your site attach to an emotion? How can you make people want to link to your site free of charge? If you find ways to answer these questions then your ideas spread and you win.
If you are from the UK and are debating giving Google AdWords a try then you probably should. Currently Google is giving away free 50 pound AdWords coupon vouchers at services.google.com/marketing/links/uk_adwordsfifty/ to new UK Google AdWords customers.
Update: the above link has expired, but you can get a free $75 AdWords coupon here (or here or here or here) ... many options linked, as some of their coupon offers expire over time & we update this page periodically. The Google Partners Program also offers coupons to consultants managing AdWords accounts.
Bing also has a number of great coupons available.
Bing Ads: get a free Bing coupon today.
Why use the Meta Refresh Tag?
Many people use meta refresh tags to tell the search engines that their pages moved. It is not the most elequent way to do so though.
What does the Meta Refresh Tag Look like?
Place
<meta HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" CONTENT="0;URL=http://www.redirectsite.com/">
in the head of your page copy. The number is a measure of time to redirect the browser to the new location (I believe in milliseconds.)
What is the problem with using a Meta Refresh Tag?
One of the bigger problems with this is that it is a common spam technique. Some people suggest setting the meta refresh to at least 5 seconds to avoid any ranking penalty.
In addition Google will show the URL of the original page in the search results if it has a higher PageRank than the location of the destination page. Last month they discussed Google's problems with the meta-refresh tag at WMW.
What is a 301 Redirect?
A 301 redirect is a perminant change of location code. It tells a search engine spider that a page or website has moved.
What does a 301 Redirect look like?
Redirect permanent / http://www.newurl.com/cool/
The 301 redirect code goes inside a .htaccess file either at the root level or in a local level. You can also use a 301 redirect to move just a single page.
Redirect permanent /oldpage.htm http://www.newurl.com/cool/
Other 301 redirect info
Yahoo! Slurp has been having trouble resolving 301 redirects for a while now, but when they work correctly they garner no penalty and all the link popularity is parsed through to the new location.
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