If the top SEO experts around the World can not come to an agreement about what should or should not be done when building links, then what is the every day Joe supposed to do?

Just take a look at the document over at SEOMoz about ranking factors.

Rand surveyed the Top 37 SEO experts in the World. Basically the Survey is a series of questions asked to each expert. This group of experts could not come up with an agreement rating more than 1 on many of the questions!

So now that we know the “experts” can’t agree, I might as well tell you the mistakes I’ve made/seen done by many Webmasters.

1. Failing to procure reciprocal links. I’ve seen so called SEO Guru’s say that reciprocal linking is dead and they will hurt your site. This just isn’t so. As we say in the South “They’re talking out their asses.” I have several blogs and websites with PR2 to PR4 that have nothing more than reciprocal links pointing at them. The important thing to remember is to make sure they links your trade are from quality sites. It doesn’t matter if they’re PR0, just make sure they’re not from a spam/adult/pharmacy/hate type site. Reciprocal links can be on a resource page if you run a website or a Blogroll for you bloggers. Just remember to trade!
2. Failing to acquire low PR links. For some reason, many Webmasters do not want PR0 sites linking to them. This is link building suicide! One day, those PR0 sites could be the next PR5 or better. Frankly, I don’t care who links to my sites. I can’t control it and if they’re passing any amount of authority, which even PR0 pass some, I’ll take it. It also looks natural when you have many more low authority sites pointing to your site than all high PR sites.
3. Failing to link out. Once again, we’re talking about making your site look natural to the Search Engines, especially Google. Authority sites link out to other authority sites. Google expects to see this. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a site stuck in the SERPS only to get a little boost when I linked to a higher authority site. In several instances, I’ve had the position right below Wikepedia. Seemed no matter how many links I added, I was stuck. I would then link to the topic in Wikipedia. In a few instances, that was all it took to leap frog me over them in the SERPS. So link out to authority sites! Before using a service like 3 Way Links, read reviews like 3waylinks.net review, it’s a good article on 3 way link systems.
4. Failure to check your reciprocal link partners websites. Once you exchange links with someone, you need to follow up on a routine basis and make sure the link back to your site is still there. Some sites go down, accounts are closed, domains let expired and purchased by someone else, Webmasters changing website topics and some Webmasters simply taking your link down after you exchange links. I’ve seen people put ‘nofollow’ on the links after they’ve made a trade. I’ve seen it all happen, that’s why I monitor my link partners and you should also.
5. Failing to use Anchor text in your link. If someone gives you the opportunity to use Anchor text in the link back to your site, use it! In my opinion, anchor text in a backlink is the second biggest off page ranking factor for seo. Only the relevancy and authority of the page where the backlink originates is more important in my experience.
6. Failing to cover up your paid link footprints. Look, from here to the end of time, people will sell links. And from here to the end of time, Google will be trying to find paid links. And from here to the end of time, you’ll see blogs, websites and blog networks (think Backlink Solutions) get de indexed for selling links. If you’re going to buy or sell links, you’d better be hiding your footprint or Big Daddy G is going to find you one dark, cold and stormy night. There are several ways of hiding your footprint, I covered one way in my link laundering article a few weeks ago.
7. Failing to build links. I see people on the forums all the time asking how they should go about link building or how to get started link building. Many say they don’t know how and so they don’t even try. People! I hate link building as much as the next person, but it’s not Rocket Science. You may be able to rank high in a low competitive keyword niche with on-page SEO, but for a competitive niche where’s there’s money to be made, you’re going to need some relevant backlinks! TIP: One of the most effective link building strategies you can perform is to find out who’s linking to your competition and get links from them. You simply go to Google and type in link:yourcompetitorssite.com. You’ll then get a list of sites that are linking to your competitors site. Browse that site to see if there is a place to put a link to your own site at. If not, simply Contact the person running the site and ask kindly for a link. Many times they will not respond, but some will. Now, out of those sites, do the same thing. See who’s linking to them and get links from those sites!

Okay, so there you have 7 of the biggest link building mistakes either I have made or I see made on a routine basis. What’s important to remember is that these mistakes are avoidable. Some have temporary effects on your rankings while others can have permanent effects on how your website ranks in the SERPS.

So what’s up with the flurry of link building articles lately? Well, it’s a work up to a document I’ve been working on and off now for nearly a year. It started off small and has taken a life of it’s own. Stay in touch if you’re serious about link building, because this article will have over 100 link building strategies outlined perhaps even closer to 125 or more!

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The inspiration for this method came one day when I asked myself “Self, I wonder what would happen if I created a product page from a big Merchant with one item on it and threw a bunch of relevant anchor text links at it?” To which myself replied “Well Don, I don’t know. Let’s try it and see what happens.” (Yeah, I have these little chats with myself all the time.)

In order to make this technique work, and it doesn’t work 100% of the time, you’ll need two basic things.

1. An affiliate account with a merchant that allows you create single product pages. The merchant must be an authority site such as Amazon.
2. A method to generate a good number of relevant links to your page with anchor text. You can use TNX, LinkVana, BacklinkSolutions or any number of other link networks out there. Article marketing is also a great way to generate the needed backlinks if you can mass produce some articles.

What we’re going to do here is use the Merchants authority site against itself to make our single product page outrank the main authority site’s page. Kinda underhanded but hey, all’s fair in love and affiliate marketing!

What you need to do is choose a product from your Merchant that is fairly new. This will reduce competition and increase your chances of getting the top SERPS rankings fairly quickly.

Let’s say you had created a single product page for the MacBook Air when it first came out. You would then take your single product page on the MacBook Air and create targeted backlinks to it.

It’s important that you do not use the same anchor text over and over. Change it up. Your keywords for anchor text would be something like.

• MacBook Air
• MacBook Air Review
• MacBook Air Reviews
• Buy MacBook Air
• MacBook Air vs IBM ThinkPad
• Apple MacBook Air

This way, you can still use the Merchants authority to rank well and avoid tipping Google off to what you’re doing. If you only use one or two targeted anchor text, Google could flag this as Googlebombing. That wouldn’t be good.

Another advantage to using a Merchant that has an authority site is that you can build a large amount of links to your product page without waking Google up. If you were to build massive amounts of links to a new site about the MacBook Air, they’d probably slam you pretty hard. It’s not natural to gain tons of new links to new sites and Google has this figured out now. (don’t ask me how I know ) However, Google is used to seeing a huge amounts of links going to these authority sites so you don’t alert them when you send all your targeted anchor links to your product page.

As I said earlier. This technique doesn’t always work 100% of the time, but it works pretty damn often for me. The trick is too be on the watch for new products coming down the pipe and be capable of producing quality one-way backlinks to your page.

In the future, I’ll try and post more articles on how to make money online without a website since I know a some of you are just starting out and do not have websites.

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It has always been said that Internet users have short attention spans. That’s still true for the most part.

When I first started, the rule was the post should be between 250 and 500 words. I naturally write long articles as it is. So I was getting comments and email saying my post were too long. So I started trying to keep them around 500 words. That was hard for me to do!

Here are a few reasons why you should be writing long blog post:

• If you’re only interested in attracting Social traffic, stick to making those short, concise post. Most Social readers have shorter attention spans than a 3 year old, especially if they come from Digg.
• If on the other hand, you want your post to rank high in Google SERPS and bring in loads of targeted organic search traffic, you’re more likely to do it with longer keyword optimized post than shorter ones.
• You’ll naturally have more long tail keywords in your long blog post. Long tail keywords bring in more targeted organic traffic to your site.
• Looking at it from Google’s perspective, which post is more informative? A short one or long post? Google is in the business of delivering targeted relevant information to Internet searchers. Google’s algorithym searches for the most relevant and informative information on the Internet when you enter a search into the the search box. So which post do you think it will return higher in the SERPS? A 250 word post about ‘Mens Hair Loss’ or a 1400 word article?
• If you run a content rich site with Adsense, you can increase your CTR with longer post and articles. Why? Because you’ll stand a better chance of the reader losing interest and clicking on an Adsense ad. Yeah, I know, it’s a pretty underhanded Adsense trick hunh? But it works
• You may lose a few RSS subscribers who do not like long post, but you’ll also gain a few more who feel long post are more informative and detailed. They’ll see you as a detailed authority on the subject.

What constitutes a long post?

The way I look at it is, anything over 1000 words is a long post. I know some who say 700 to 800 words is a long post, but a 1000+ word blog post is much better, especially if it’s keyword optimized.

Long post are also more detailed. Instead of making some short-to-the-point sentences, you can take your time and go into more details with your post.

Tips For Optimizing Your Blog for Long Post

If you’re worried about losing your RSS subscribers to long post, here are a few tips that will help you keep them interested and to optimize your long post.

• Use the H3 tag to break up your long post into sections. Properly constructed H3 headings also add SEO benefits to your long post.
• Use bullets and numbers to break up list or for making points
• Use blockquotes when quoting others or for highlighting a resource
• Use Bold, Italics and Colored Text to get your point across and to break up your long post.
• Not all of your long post have to be a War and Peace novels. Just the really important post you want to expand on and the ones you want top rankings for. It’s okay to mix short post with long post. I’ve done this same thing here on AffiliateWatcher.Com

Still not convinced that long Blog post are better?

Take a look at the thumbnail picture below (click it to enlarge the picture). It’s a screenshot I did of a search for “How To Monetize A Blog With Adsense.” I posted it Monday morning and when I got home that afternoon, I was sitting at the #2 spot for that keyword term.

I jumped over some pretty big names to get to the #2 spot with nothing more than a 1400 word post about how to monetize a blog with Adsense. The only reason the B2evolution network outranks my post with their little generic post is because they have more backlinks to that page. It would be rather easy to outrank them and take that #1 spot away with fewer backlinks because my post has more weight than theirs.

Fortunately for me, this happens a lot with my long blog post. Whether or not it’s on this blog or one of my other ones. Long optimized blog post rank better! I no longer ask; how long a blog post should be, I just start writing and stop when I’m done!

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What?

Yeah, you heard me right. Your links suck!

You see, you proclaim to be a blogger or Webmaster. Yet, you make links like it was 1995! C’mon into the modern Internet age. Today, backlinks are probably the most important off page ranking factors for Google. And if you want to catch a bloggers attention, you’d better make them links properly!

If you’re going to take the time to make a link, then do it right and make it count!

How To Make A Link Like A Rockstar!

To make a proper link that will benefit the blog or website you’re linking to, you first need to structure the link correctly. I have several previous post on how to do this, but I’ll go ahead and spell it out one more time for those of you who are just joining us.

WordPress and many other programs with WYSIWYG editors make creating perfect links easy with the little link icon. Just fill in the URL and “Title” fields and it will take care of the rest.

If you don’t have that option, here is how to make a proper link using HTML code. Let’s say you want to link back to this site. This is how your HTML link structure would look:

<a href=http://www.affiliatewatcher.com” title=”affiliate programs”>Affiliate Programs</a>

This is how it should look when you post your article: Affiliate Programs

Now you’re probably asking yourself why I have the words “Affiliate Programs” as a link instead of something like affiliatewatcher.com. The reason is that the words “Affiliate Program” are my anchor text.

Anchor text tells Google what the page is about that you’re linking too. If you have two identical links and one has anchor text and one doesn’t, the one with anchor text will carry more “weight” with Google than the one without. So when you link to this site with the words “Affiliate Programs,” you’re telling Google this site is about Affiliate Programs.

Notice the red ‘title=”affiliate programs”‘ in the link structure above. Your anchor text goes between the quotes (“”). Your anchor text should be a keyword or keyword phrase that describes the site you’re linking to. Let’s take this site for example again. If you wanted to link to this site, you could use the Anchor Text (keywords);

• affiliate programs
• internet marketing
• top affiliate programs
• best affiliate programs
• ebay affiliate programs.

It’s also important to put the same keyword or keyword phrase (shown in red here) between the …”> and </a> signs.

If you really want to make a blogger or Webmaster notice you when you link to them, bold the Anchor Text (keywords).

Here is an example of how you might link to another blog or website:

Don at AffiliateWatcher.com had an interesting review on ebay affiliate programs. This review got me to thinking of how I could take advantage of the ebay affiliate program on my own blogs.

Notice that I didn’t link the bloggers name or their site’s name. Always use the most relevant keywords describing THE PAGE you’re linking too!

If you’re linking to a story on the front page of a blog, click the story headline and use the page URL for your link. If you just link to the domain, the post may be off the front page when your visitors click on the link.

Also by linking to the exact page, you’re helping that blogger or Wembaster build deep links to his/her interior pages which is excellent for their SEO efforts.

So now you know how to build proper links and the reasons why you should be building the perfect links. No more linking to names and website URL’s! Now that you’re a link building Rockstar, go find those linking Groupies!

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Fast forward a few years and that’s not necessarily the case any longer.

Oh Directories, How I Use To Love Thee

As I said above, in the past Directories were a short cut to a bundle of backlinks that would help your rankings.

So what has happened?

The same thing that happens to many good things on the Internet.

Spammers.

Many Directories, especially free Directories, are nothing more than Made For Adsense sites and Spam ads.

The Search Engines, especially Google, have gotten very good at weeding out these Spam Directories and devaluing links from them.

Will links from these sites to your site hurt you? Not in my experience, but why would you throw good money at a fruitless effort, not to mention the time and trouble of submitting your site to all these Directories?

Shoemoney had an interview with some top SEO experts a while back and they believed that only Directories that sent traffic to your website were worth the money. You have to be you own judge as each site is different, but I like them for backlinks also.

Where Have All The Good Directories Gone?

I know some of you may be asking “Are there any Directories worth submitting my sites to?”

Of course there are. Unfortunately most Directories worth submitting your site to are paid Directories.

The reason many paid Directories are still beneficial to website owners is because the better ones actually review websites that are submitted. Not all websites will be accepted. It’s these types of Directories that Google actually likes due to the “Trust” factor.

Having your sites listed in better paid Directories will lead to additional backlinks from other websites. Granted, most of these additional backlinks will be from sites with lower authority, but they’re backlinks none the less.

Tips For Making The Most Out Of Your Directory Submission

Hey people. If you’re going to pay for a submission to Directories, take your time and do it right for maximum SEO benefits. I’ve seen sites submitted to paid Directories that had the lousiest descriptions and no anchor text. What a waste of Money!

Here’s a few tips for submitting your site to Internet Directories.

• Forget about paying some so called “Directory Submission” company to submit your site to hundreds of Directories for $20, $40 or $50. Most of these are automated submissions which return very little to nothing at all on your investment. If you choose to have someone else submit your site, make sure actual humans are hand submitting your site to each directory and then ask for a report that will show you which directories your site was submitted to and whether or not it was accepted. Expect to pay a few hundred dollars for this service.
• If you really want to take advantage of Directories, go ahead and pay the admission fee to top Directories. You can easily drop a few thousand dollars on submission fees to the top 50 Internet Directories. Consider this a good investment for your website, especially if this is a website you plan on keeping for long term.
• Don’t keep submitting your site over and over. Many Directories will blacklist your for this. This is why many Webmasters get into trouble by having someone else do it. They keep blasting Directories with your website via automated software until the Directory blacklist your site. Many times the unaware website owner doesn’t even know their site has been blacklisted.
• Use Anchor Text. If you’re going to the trouble and expense to submit your website to Directories, take full advantage of the submission by using Anchor Text. Also, never use the same Anchor Text over and over. Use several related keywords for Anchor Text pointing back to your site.
• Spread out your submissions. Want to grab Google’s attention quickly? Then submit your site to many directories at the same time. When Google Bot finds all those links pointing back to you site at one time, bad things can happen. Spread out your submissions over a period of time. This is another reason NOT to use a Directory Submission service or Directory submission software.
• Use good descriptive descriptions. Just like Anchor Text, take the time to use good descriptions. A good description can set your site apart from all the other websites in your chosen category.
• Make sure the Directory page you submit too is actually indexed in the Search Engines. If the Directory or the Directory Page you’re submitting to isn’t indexed, you’ll receive little, if any, benefit.
• Go Deep. Make sure the page you submit to the Directory is relevant to the category. If you have a website about Pets including sub pages on Cats, Dogs and Birds, submit your inner pages to relevant categories for maximum benefit.
• Forget Directory wide links. Forget about submitting to Directories that promise you site wide links. This too will get Google’s attention. Google will likely not value these links due to the lack of editorial integrity, ie; trust and authority, of the Directory.

The Top 25 Directories Your Site Should Be Submitted To

If you want to take advantage of Internet Directories, here are the Top 25 that you website should be submitted to.

1. www.dmoz.org
2. dir.yahoo.com
3. www.lii.org
4. www.business.com
5. sbd.bcentral.com
6. whatuseek.com
7. cannylink.com
8. 123world.com
9. www.botw.org
10. www.goguides.org
11. www.joeant.com
12. www.gimpsy.com
13. chiff.com
14. gango.com
15. www.americasbest.com
16. mavicanet.com
17. jayde.com
18. uncoverthenet.com
19. rlrouse.com
20. elib.org
21. avivadirectory.com
22. www.directory.v7n.com
23. ezilon.com
24. site-sift.com
25. isedb.com

In Summary, Internet Directories can still be beneficial to Webmasters. However, not all Directories are created equal and a Webmaster needs to be careful as to which sites they submit their site too.

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Of course there’s a catch, you have to write a review of his site like I’m doing here.

At first, I wasn’t going to write one. I have a system for hunting out .edu backlinks that work pretty well. However, I spent almost an hour on his site and realized I liked what I was reading.

Tim has some very good articles and comes at some of them with a different point of view than most bloggers. I like that.

Tim is currently in J-school so he’ll have plenty of time to get some links sent out.

Well, the common misconception is that Google places a higher value on .edu links than links from .com sites. While that is somewhat true, it’s not entirely correct. Google places a higher value on .edu links from relevant sites and from .edu pages with some PR.

As far as Yahoo and MSN are concerned, I’m not sure and I don’t know that anyone else is sure either, but heck, a link from a .edu site can’t be all bad so grab ‘em when you can.

Don

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