How to Get Links and Win the SEO Game in 2010 Link building is a critical element for any search engine optimization program. While there are many ways to obtain links, not all will result in having a positive impact on your SEO strategies. In fact, some link building efforts can actually harm your rankings. Join Catfish for this unprecedented look into link building best practices for 2010. In this strategic online marketing session, you will learn what metrics are important, how to audit your websites and your competitors inbound links using strength metrics to uncover actionable insights, what link building tactics not to do, best practices for link building, the debate on paid links. * Ray "Catfish" Comstock, Director of SEO, BusinessOnline (@bolsearch)

1. Online Marketing Summit San Jose | June 18th, 2010 How to Get Links: And Win the SEO Game in 2010 CatfishDirector of SEOBusinessOnLine 1

3. 4 What is Off Page SEO Off page search engine optimization is the process of aligning link connectivity with keyword focus. A Link is Equivalent to a VoteThe more votes, the higher the likelihood of ranking for the terms contained in the votes. The more relevant and stronger the vote, the bigger the impact on search rankings.

4. Link Baseline 5

5. 6 Challenges of a Link Base Line There is no one single source that will provide Web masters with a comprehensive list of their links. Neither Google’s link: command or the list of links provided by Webmaster Tools is a complete list. Instead, the best link base lines are done by combining data sets to provide the most comprehensive list possible. When analyzing thousands of links, it is imperative to have a grading scale to understand which links carry the most weight.

6. 7 Link Data Sources Google Webmaster Tools: Within Google Webmaster Tools there is a table of links within the “Your Site on the Web” section called “Links to My Site”. Use the export function to grab this list of links. Note you can’t get competitor links from this source.http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ Yahoo Site Explorer: Yahoo site explorer also has an export function on the in links tab that reads: “Export first 1000 results to TSV”https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ Bing Webmaster Tools: Like Google, Bing has its own Webmaster Tools that will allow you to see some of your links. Note you can’t get competitor links from this source.http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters/ 2nd Tier Search Engines like AltaVista and Excite (and Google although it returns an incomplete data set) will allow you to do a “link:www.domain.com” query which will return a subset of links that point to the domain.http://www.altavista.com/ MajesticSEO: MajesticSEO.com is a company that has been running its own search engine spider for years and has collected more link data in one place than you can find anywhere else. Highly recommended source to augment your data set. In order to access the data there is a fee to the company depending on the size of the data set.http://www.majesticseo.com/ SEOMOZ Keyword Tool Linkscape: Rand Fishkin and company have developed a proprietary link checking tool called LinkScape. Also has an export function.http://www.seomoz.org/blog/announcing-seomozs-index-of-the-web-and-the-launch-of-our-linkscape-tool SEOSpyGlass: One of our favorites, this tool has shown some real value in not only finding links, but grading them as well. This tool costs $147http://www.seospyglass.com/ *Combine all data from sources into one large list and eliminate duplicates to form a comprehensive link base line.

7. 8 Link Processing Tools There are a number of tools that make the link base line process easier. SEOSpyGlass – Link Finding program that grades links and helps prioritize resources. URL De-duplication - Excel Bulk 404 Checker (http://www.saintevemarketing.com/headline/free-bulk-url-checker) – Ensure that the links you see pointing to your site actually point to pages that exist, and figure out which of those links might be redirects. Xenu (Free) – Spider software. Set crawl depth to 0 against URL list to determine 404 pages (which pages are still currently live). Check link pages Check link destination pages

8. Value of Links 9

10. Page Rank of the page the link is on

11. Age of the domain that the link is on

12. The relevance of the page that the link is on in relation to the page that the link points to

13. Number of outbound links on the page

14. Google Patent:http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=7,716,225.PN.&OS=pn/7,716,225&RS=PN/7,716,225

15. Search this URL in Site Explorer for related articles

18. This allows the link metrics and Page Rank that those links carry to be redirected to a relevant page within the site rather than a 404 page where it is no longer counted.

19. 404 reports can be found in through your analytics platform in many cases.

20. You should periodically run a spider on your site like Xenu that can uncover 404 pages.

21. Google Webmaster tools provides 404 errors. Check Majestic Link to URLs. Also check top landing pages against a bulk 404 checker.

23. A link to us page should exist and be linked to from the footer of the site.

24. This page should have a number of html code embed options that allow Webmasters and bloggers to create links to your site that are keyword focused, simply by copying and pasting the existing text.

26. Every time someone uses your Theme, you will get to your site.

27. Other platforms that use themes and have potential link opporunities include:

28. Forums (phpbb, vbulletin)

29. Joomla

30. Drupal

32. Customers

33. Business Partners

34. Academic Institutions

35. Professional Organizations

36. Awards

37. Link exchanges are still a valid form of link development if they represent a valid business relationship.

38. Link exchanges that provide value to users typically provide value to search engines.

40. Although paid links are a risky venture in Google, directory links are considered valid if they have been human reviewed and classified.

41. General directories like Yahoo, Business.com, and Best of the Web are all good examples of high quality Internet directories.

42. According to Google, directories that require reciprocal links should be avoided. Additionally most free directories should be avoided, as they accept all sites. When there is little or no value in the editorial discretion of the acceptance process, the directory becomes less reliable as a source of categorization. Therefore, links found in free directories run the risk of being devalued accordingly (at least in principle).

43. Avoid auto submitting to directories.

44. Directory pages that have some Google Page Rank as measured by the toolbar or at least have been indexed in Google, are preferred.

45. In general, avoid directory listings that live on pages that are many levels deep into the site.

47. Press release optimization can help your press releases rank highly but can also ensure than any press releases that are published on third party sites, augments your SEO campaign.

48. PRWeb and other online press release distribution companies can provide good exposure for your release and links back to your site.

49. Experiment with different press releases for the same event targeted towards different keywords and a different audience.

51. Guest Blogging

52. Blog Commenting

53. Internal Educational / Service / Thought Leadership Communities (Lithium, etc)

54. Authoritative Content / Thought Leadership

55. Broadcast Network (social bookmarking, Facebook, Twitter, etc)

56. All of these are activities that should be undertaken regardless of SEO implications.

57. However, aligning these activities with SEO best practices pays additional dividends.

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64. 22 Thank You Visit www.onlinemarketingsummit.com for more information Follow us @OMSummit