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It doesn't make sense that the person giving this advice starts out talking about authority, relevancy, quality, and engagement, then goes straight into recommending anything but.

SEnuke is trash. Don't waste your time. It works well for what it promises to do, but you'll be getting terrible links within spun content. I also don't know why the person would recommend creating 30 web 2.0 accounts and pushing links at them. If he's trying to build authority to those sites to make the links more valuable, why the heck wouldn't you just save your time and point all those links at your own site.

The suggested strategy used to work, and still does for some niches.

Please, please, please don't do this. You've done something right so far with a decent site (according to the metrics he included, even though PR isn't much help). Don't mess it up by pointing garbage content at your site. Like Rand likes to say, take all that time you were going to spend doing this stuff, and just do something meaningful. Write a great guest post or update your site content.

I really don't want to go through the advice and pick out every little thing that's wrong (there's a lot). Hang in there bud and write some killer content.

Mike

Think of any social media signal like a Like, +1, or Tweet as just another type of link. Like Keri put it, Google frowns on bought links. They also don't like it when you try to game their search engine.

Your visitors aren't all clicking that +1 to "vote" for your site's quality or relevance. They're doing it because, for all intents and purposes, they have to if they don't want to keep seeing that pop-up.

Sure, you're not doing anything that's going to hurt your visitors. You are, as they see it, deceiving Google.

Let me give you an example of just how ruthless Google can be with this type of stuff. I worked with a company long ago that came up with an idea to give out award badges (a graphic with a link back to their site) to a ton of high-quality blogs. Best 100 Animal Rights Blogs type of stuff.

Seemed great at the time. They got a ton of links from some great sites. Google came along after they noticed them climbing the SERPS and hand-penalized the entire site. It took months to undo that mistake.

Now that example is nowhere near as dicey as your Google+ technique, and it inspired a penalty that cost the company thousands, if not millions.

Your technique, although not directly referenced in the webmaster guidelines, really does walk that fine line. It was a great idea, but it really will eventually get you in trouble. Google makes their own rules, and there's nothing to stop them from penalizing you if they want for anything they see as manipulating their search engine results.

I also want to add that I'm just as concerned for how your visitors will respond to your technique as I am with how Google responds. Many of your potential clients will have some understanding of SEO. How will they feel about the authenticity and legitimacy of your SEO services when they see something like that on your site? It may not necessarily be, but it screams black hat SEO to me.

Mike

I like to think that any worthwhile link that can be bought with money can be earned with outstanding content. If a website owner has any clue what they're doing and you pitch them properly, he'd be insane to pass up the opportunity to share some valuable content with his readers.

When you find yourself about to spend $100 on a link, hire a good writer or infographic designer instead and rest easy knowing the Google Gods are smiling.

Thanks for keeping the discussion going Keri!

Sure V. Happy to answer any questions you have about marketing and SEO. Hit me up on LinkedIn or message me here sometime.

By the way, saw your earlier post and checked out your site. Like the design, but I'm also a bit concerned about the +1 checker. Remember that you do run a business site, and any sort of pop-up is kind of a turn-off to visitors.

There may not be anything specifically in the Google webmaster rules about how you're using the +1 button, but you better believe that Google has penalized sites before for much less. Even if you don't get a ban hammer, any value you get from all those Google+ social signals will be reversed, I can pretty much guarantee it when Google finds out. Engineers at Google are a lot smarter than we'd like to think.

Is it really worth the risk?

That's a very good point Keri. I see this happen all the time too. Good example is something like this:

http://fitnesstrainingbyjon.squarespace.com/

If you use a handy SEO toolbar, it would display Site PR as 7 but Page PR as 3. That PR 7 is coming from squarespace.com, not the site you think. And no, you're not getting a PR 7 link.

Hard to say V,

Not sure PR is the best metric to be worried about. Although at the PR8 level I would assume we're talking about high-traffic, high quality sites that Google cares about.

The effect depends on how you use those links and what you're doing. Would you use them for brand building or try to fit in anchor text? If they're just boilerplate text links, they might not pass anywhere near the value you might expect. If you can get links in high-visibility areas surrounded by relevant text, go for it. If they're going to be buried under unrelated text, I'd start to think you'd be better off spending your time and money elsewhere.

Remember that there are metrics that matter and ones that don't. I can get on the first page of the SERPS for "mike is the best guy in the world because he's awesome" no problem. With that long-tail, getting 20 high-value links would be about all I'd need to do, if even that. On the other hand, if you're targeting a phrase like "online schools" or "car insurance," those links might not even budge your ranking.

Maybe my examples are a little extreme, but you get the idea. If the link will bring you traffic and, more importantly, sales, get it. Links need to ripple. Readers on such a high-powered site will ideally:

• click the link without thinking
• consider linking to your site themselves
• talk about your site and products/services

In my experience, this happens only when you have something stellar to offer at the other end of the link, aim for super-relevant anchor text on a super-relevant site, and position the link above the fold. That's an awesome link, even on a PR2.

Mike

P.S. I wouldn't recommend buying mikeisthebestguyintheworldbecausehesawesome.com though. I've got that niche dominated.

Just to clarify the tool I'm talking about in my response, I'm thinking of something like this:

Having a hard time choosing a gift for that special someone? Enter some details to find great gift ideas now!

[input 1 + interests] = card games, mountain biking, skiing, scrapbooking

[input 2 + marital status] = married, has kids

[input 3 + sex] = female

[input 4 + age] = 35

[input 5 + location] = dallas, tx

[output 1] = winter scarf, coat, word teaser origins, etc. (top 10 list maybe?)

We're talking about a lot of work, of course. Although most of it could be outsourced on the cheap to data entry people. This is just something off the top of my head, so you might refine it a bit. Just thinking of an idea to increase time on site, upsell, and create something useful above and beyond simply promoting products. To cut down on development time, I'd make visitors choose interests rather than letting them enter them in a field. Simply start a tag system matching certain combinations to gifts algorithmically. It doesn't have to be all-inclusive at first, as long as it functions. You can always add new interests and gifts as time goes on, and can see if it even works for you before going all-in.

Mike

Hey dean1986,

Just like EGOL said, well done on your success so far! You've really done some great things for your client.

I'm a bit confused about your question though. Just looking at the links you have, you're getting a ton of links with your domain (or variations) as your anchor text as it is -- far more than I see with specific anchor text you mentioned. I think it's important to remember that you can't point everything at your home page - with a site like this, I usually choose a few powerful pages to optimize for single keyword phrases, then make sure the inner-linking points to the home page using the anchor text as well.

I'm kind of shocked that you haven't implemented some form of a social media presence, although I see you have developed an app. I think the strategy that will put you over the top is viral content outreach and distribution (like infographics and buyer's guides). Social media signals are only becoming more of a significant metric in SEO, so that should be a priority this year.

The only competitor you have that concerns me is gifts.com, which may be impossible to beat, like EGOL suggests. Their authority and exact match domain is going to be a very tough beat for "gifts." I'd go as far as to say that the investment required to compete with gifts.com isn't even worth it at this point.

I'm 100% on-board with your idea to reduce keywords in the title tags to give your site a boost, by the way.

I've been in your position before, although in slightly different industries. The strategies we always used to get past the keyword plateau have been to focus on the other metrics that are going to build your authority. Think of ways to improve time visitors spend on your site, reduce bounce rate, and increase pages per visit.

Maybe some sort of tool that helps keep people on your site - like a tool that helps them choose gifts for friends and family based on specific character traits. Maybe add some surveys about the "weirdest gift you've ever bought for someone." This might be a way to fit some relevancy for gifts for him and gifts for her, within the tool. I would suspect that a well done tool like that would draw some lovely organic links.

On a final note, consider adding some more content to the site - not just on the blog. I like your Top 10 section, but it's too small. Adding some dense content can give people something more to link to. Right now you get a ton of links from other ecommerce sites and promotional content from blogs, but you don't get all that many referential links that help build your site's authority (I like to call these "citation links" -- ex. According to this site on [unique gift ideas], gifts are awesome.

You're doing well in social media already, but treat any further campaigns as a way to get people excited about your site. I have a feeling that spending some time catering to the real people rather than the robots that visit your site is what you need to meet your next goals.

Hope this is helpful.

Mike

Welcome to SEOmoz Dinesh!

There are plenty of ways to build backlinks to your blog, depending on your niche and interests. If you're comfortable with social media, sites like LinkedIn can put you in touch with other professionals in your industry. Although you're going to be doing a ton of guest posting, always be on the lookout for other opportunities. Since you're a beginner, I'll include some fairly easy techniques that can get you started!

Submit to local directories: Don't abuse this and stay away from large generic directories. DMOZ should be a no-brainer (do it) and here's a link to a ton of good quality directories and other sites that accept some form of submission -- http://www.peterattia.com/a-list-of-link-building-lists/

Create some great content: Take the time to create some fantastic content. I try to focus on one piece of content each week that targets an interesting topic and is exceptionally well-written (Take a look at the posts on the SEO Blogs here for an idea of the quality we're talking about). Not only will you need this content for guest posts, but great content tends to get noticed. If you have the skills or budget to create something sharable like an infographic, you can simply use social media outlets to get people excited about your new content, publish it on their sites, and link back to you.

Guest Post: Find people in niches related to yours (the easiest way would be to do a Google search for something like:

Internet marketing + "submit guest post"

Replace "Internet marketing" with a topic of your choice. If you create good content for guest posts, bloggers will be much happier to accept future posts and build a relationship. Don't forget to respond to readers' comments -- this really makes a difference.

Syndicate Your Blog Content to Twitter and Facebook: I use a free tool called Twitterfeed to automatically post all my blogs to Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. It helps you populate your social media feeds effortlessly. Eventually, people notice your content and hopefully start to get interested. You don't get much link value directly from social media sites, but you do have the opportunity to get organic links and readership.

Get Involved: You're doing the right thing right now Dinesh. Get active on online communities and forums. Comment on other posts (sometimes with a no-follow link, sometimes with a do-follow) but make sure your comments actually contribute to or further a discussion already taking place. Don't worry about anchor text here, your site name or personal name is just fine.

As you get better at link building, you won't be able to help finding opportunities wherever you look. No shortage of great advice on the Q & A forum here and in the blogs. Here are some articles past members have written that should give you a solid start:

• http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/15-smart-ways-to-find-guest-posting-opportunities
• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/want-guest-post-links-find-them-via-twitter-tool
• http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links
• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-building-from-a-to-z
• http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/10-ways-to-link-build-for-free

Good luck to you and happy hunting! You can even send me a message one of these days and discuss some guest posts on my blogs to get started.

Mike

P.S. One very important thing to add. Don't make the mistake of chasing poor metrics like PageRank when valuing a link opportunity on a blog. Check recent posts to see how much interaction there is with the blog community. If you see tons of legitimate comments, that's a great sign.

You're really aiming for traffic, not necessarily rankings. Choose links that will give you traffic and loyal readers, not just links that look good on paper alone.

No problem colocation,

It's pretty rare to get relevant and well-written posts as guest post pitches. When you do, it's great that you take the time to consider giving the guest some added value rather than simply stripping his/her links and publishing.

It doesn't make sense that the person giving this advice starts out talking about authority, relevancy, quality, and engagement, then goes straight into recommending anything but.

SEnuke is trash. Don't waste your time. It works well for what it promises to do, but you'll be getting terrible links within spun content. I also don't know why the person would recommend creating 30 web 2.0 accounts and pushing links at them. If he's trying to build authority to those sites to make the links more valuable, why the heck wouldn't you just save your time and point all those links at your own site.

The suggested strategy used to work, and still does for some niches.

Please, please, please don't do this. You've done something right so far with a decent site (according to the metrics he included, even though PR isn't much help). Don't mess it up by pointing garbage content at your site. Like Rand likes to say, take all that time you were going to spend doing this stuff, and just do something meaningful. Write a great guest post or update your site content.

I really don't want to go through the advice and pick out every little thing that's wrong (there's a lot). Hang in there bud and write some killer content.

Mike

Hard to say V,

Not sure PR is the best metric to be worried about. Although at the PR8 level I would assume we're talking about high-traffic, high quality sites that Google cares about.

The effect depends on how you use those links and what you're doing. Would you use them for brand building or try to fit in anchor text? If they're just boilerplate text links, they might not pass anywhere near the value you might expect. If you can get links in high-visibility areas surrounded by relevant text, go for it. If they're going to be buried under unrelated text, I'd start to think you'd be better off spending your time and money elsewhere.

Remember that there are metrics that matter and ones that don't. I can get on the first page of the SERPS for "mike is the best guy in the world because he's awesome" no problem. With that long-tail, getting 20 high-value links would be about all I'd need to do, if even that. On the other hand, if you're targeting a phrase like "online schools" or "car insurance," those links might not even budge your ranking.

Maybe my examples are a little extreme, but you get the idea. If the link will bring you traffic and, more importantly, sales, get it. Links need to ripple. Readers on such a high-powered site will ideally:

• click the link without thinking
• consider linking to your site themselves
• talk about your site and products/services

In my experience, this happens only when you have something stellar to offer at the other end of the link, aim for super-relevant anchor text on a super-relevant site, and position the link above the fold. That's an awesome link, even on a PR2.

Mike

P.S. I wouldn't recommend buying mikeisthebestguyintheworldbecausehesawesome.com though. I've got that niche dominated.

Welcome to SEOmoz Dinesh!

There are plenty of ways to build backlinks to your blog, depending on your niche and interests. If you're comfortable with social media, sites like LinkedIn can put you in touch with other professionals in your industry. Although you're going to be doing a ton of guest posting, always be on the lookout for other opportunities. Since you're a beginner, I'll include some fairly easy techniques that can get you started!

Submit to local directories: Don't abuse this and stay away from large generic directories. DMOZ should be a no-brainer (do it) and here's a link to a ton of good quality directories and other sites that accept some form of submission -- http://www.peterattia.com/a-list-of-link-building-lists/

Create some great content: Take the time to create some fantastic content. I try to focus on one piece of content each week that targets an interesting topic and is exceptionally well-written (Take a look at the posts on the SEO Blogs here for an idea of the quality we're talking about). Not only will you need this content for guest posts, but great content tends to get noticed. If you have the skills or budget to create something sharable like an infographic, you can simply use social media outlets to get people excited about your new content, publish it on their sites, and link back to you.

Guest Post: Find people in niches related to yours (the easiest way would be to do a Google search for something like:

Internet marketing + "submit guest post"

Replace "Internet marketing" with a topic of your choice. If you create good content for guest posts, bloggers will be much happier to accept future posts and build a relationship. Don't forget to respond to readers' comments -- this really makes a difference.

Syndicate Your Blog Content to Twitter and Facebook: I use a free tool called Twitterfeed to automatically post all my blogs to Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. It helps you populate your social media feeds effortlessly. Eventually, people notice your content and hopefully start to get interested. You don't get much link value directly from social media sites, but you do have the opportunity to get organic links and readership.

Get Involved: You're doing the right thing right now Dinesh. Get active on online communities and forums. Comment on other posts (sometimes with a no-follow link, sometimes with a do-follow) but make sure your comments actually contribute to or further a discussion already taking place. Don't worry about anchor text here, your site name or personal name is just fine.

As you get better at link building, you won't be able to help finding opportunities wherever you look. No shortage of great advice on the Q & A forum here and in the blogs. Here are some articles past members have written that should give you a solid start:

• http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/15-smart-ways-to-find-guest-posting-opportunities
• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/want-guest-post-links-find-them-via-twitter-tool
• http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links
• http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-building-from-a-to-z
• http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/10-ways-to-link-build-for-free

Good luck to you and happy hunting! You can even send me a message one of these days and discuss some guest posts on my blogs to get started.

Mike

P.S. One very important thing to add. Don't make the mistake of chasing poor metrics like PageRank when valuing a link opportunity on a blog. Check recent posts to see how much interaction there is with the blog community. If you see tons of legitimate comments, that's a great sign.

You're really aiming for traffic, not necessarily rankings. Choose links that will give you traffic and loyal readers, not just links that look good on paper alone.

When they report your keyword rankings every month, do they cover a variety of search engines or are they just giving you Google.com.au results?

It's entirely possible that your site could be gradually increasing in rankings with the few links you have depending on your targeted keyword phrases. This is especially true in Google.com.au. The less competitive your keyword phrases, the less you have to work on link building (most of the time) to show up in the SERPs.

I just used the keyword phrase "luxury resorts" (just as an example) in the SEOmoz Keyword Analysis tool and found that the same keyword has a keyword difficulty of 77% on Google.com and 64% on Google.com.au. So it's important to check which search engines are being reported every month.

In the end, it comes down to traffic and sales. Are you seeing a satisfactory increase in traffic for what you're paying the company? Is that traffic converting as well as you'd expect?

It's really tough to call out an SEO company for not doing any work if you're seeing some results. It's the ones that do a ton of work poorly that are easy to spot. You could be seeing ranking increases with or without the company. It's tough to say without a lot more data and monitoring.

As for how much SEO companies should charge, I'll defer to the experts on this one: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-pricing-costs-of-services

Mike

I think there's probably a lot more going on with your competitor than you can see with the SEOmoz error reports. You have to take into account several things about your competitor, like:

• the site's age
• the domain name (is it an exact match domain?)
• the ranking pages (are they subpages or the home page that's killing you in the SERPs?)

Some of the errors that get spit out of the SEOmoz tool are pretty negligible. For example, if you run a fairly well-developed blog on your site, chances are good you don't do a custom meta description for each post. You can if you want to, but most people just ignore it. This alone can spit out thousands of error messages. The same result will happen with duplicate content. My guess is if you look at those errors, the majority will include a URL with /blog in there somewhere.

It doesn't sound like you're in a very competitive niche based on your keyword numbers, so the top results will be able to rank well with all those mistakes.

Mike

Hey dean1986,

Just like EGOL said, well done on your success so far! You've really done some great things for your client.

I'm a bit confused about your question though. Just looking at the links you have, you're getting a ton of links with your domain (or variations) as your anchor text as it is -- far more than I see with specific anchor text you mentioned. I think it's important to remember that you can't point everything at your home page - with a site like this, I usually choose a few powerful pages to optimize for single keyword phrases, then make sure the inner-linking points to the home page using the anchor text as well.

I'm kind of shocked that you haven't implemented some form of a social media presence, although I see you have developed an app. I think the strategy that will put you over the top is viral content outreach and distribution (like infographics and buyer's guides). Social media signals are only becoming more of a significant metric in SEO, so that should be a priority this year.

The only competitor you have that concerns me is gifts.com, which may be impossible to beat, like EGOL suggests. Their authority and exact match domain is going to be a very tough beat for "gifts." I'd go as far as to say that the investment required to compete with gifts.com isn't even worth it at this point.

I'm 100% on-board with your idea to reduce keywords in the title tags to give your site a boost, by the way.

I've been in your position before, although in slightly different industries. The strategies we always used to get past the keyword plateau have been to focus on the other metrics that are going to build your authority. Think of ways to improve time visitors spend on your site, reduce bounce rate, and increase pages per visit.

Maybe some sort of tool that helps keep people on your site - like a tool that helps them choose gifts for friends and family based on specific character traits. Maybe add some surveys about the "weirdest gift you've ever bought for someone." This might be a way to fit some relevancy for gifts for him and gifts for her, within the tool. I would suspect that a well done tool like that would draw some lovely organic links.

On a final note, consider adding some more content to the site - not just on the blog. I like your Top 10 section, but it's too small. Adding some dense content can give people something more to link to. Right now you get a ton of links from other ecommerce sites and promotional content from blogs, but you don't get all that many referential links that help build your site's authority (I like to call these "citation links" -- ex. According to this site on [unique gift ideas], gifts are awesome.

You're doing well in social media already, but treat any further campaigns as a way to get people excited about your site. I have a feeling that spending some time catering to the real people rather than the robots that visit your site is what you need to meet your next goals.

Hope this is helpful.

Mike

I usually let guest bloggers link to their site in the bio using a brand or website name only (or their own names). If you're seeing anchor text links in the bio like "buy car insurance now," that's a little spammy.

If a guest blogger wants anchor text from me, it's usually in the form of a highly relevant link within the body of the content, that points to a decent page.

Having some weird anchors in author bios isn't going to do you much harm as long as they're not pointed at bad neighborhoods, but having spammy looking anchors in your bios might turn your visitors off a bit. There are also times when having irrelevant links pointing from your site can start to be a negative for you, but not at the scale we're talking about here.

Hello Bodie,

I suspect I know what's going on but I don't want to jump to conclusions. If you'd kindly include your URL, I can check what's going on with your backlinks.

Mike

Hey Mike Fan,

What you're looking at there is called a data reference link (that ylt= attribute gives it away). In short, it is indeed a followed link and would pass any authority you'd expect from a plain old link. The big difference is in how it's used.

The _ylt type variables are data packets. They contain specific base64 encoded data. The link could be a login, referential data, tracking data, or even spyware. The main point is someone making that link wants to keep track of who's doing what with it. On large sites, it's actually more common than you'd think for tracking purposes.

In short, this link is probably fine, even if it's a little scary looking in the page source. When a site that famously no=follows uses a followed link, you better believe they're going to track what's going on when they do.

Mike

Think of any social media signal like a Like, +1, or Tweet as just another type of link. Like Keri put it, Google frowns on bought links. They also don't like it when you try to game their search engine.

Your visitors aren't all clicking that +1 to "vote" for your site's quality or relevance. They're doing it because, for all intents and purposes, they have to if they don't want to keep seeing that pop-up.

Sure, you're not doing anything that's going to hurt your visitors. You are, as they see it, deceiving Google.

Let me give you an example of just how ruthless Google can be with this type of stuff. I worked with a company long ago that came up with an idea to give out award badges (a graphic with a link back to their site) to a ton of high-quality blogs. Best 100 Animal Rights Blogs type of stuff.

Seemed great at the time. They got a ton of links from some great sites. Google came along after they noticed them climbing the SERPS and hand-penalized the entire site. It took months to undo that mistake.

Now that example is nowhere near as dicey as your Google+ technique, and it inspired a penalty that cost the company thousands, if not millions.

Your technique, although not directly referenced in the webmaster guidelines, really does walk that fine line. It was a great idea, but it really will eventually get you in trouble. Google makes their own rules, and there's nothing to stop them from penalizing you if they want for anything they see as manipulating their search engine results.

I also want to add that I'm just as concerned for how your visitors will respond to your technique as I am with how Google responds. Many of your potential clients will have some understanding of SEO. How will they feel about the authenticity and legitimacy of your SEO services when they see something like that on your site? It may not necessarily be, but it screams black hat SEO to me.

Mike