Webcast: Google in the Real World: How Links Boost Your Rankings

Yesterday, February 7, 2012, I attended a webcast titled “Google in the Real World: How Links Boost Your Rankings“. It was presented by Stephan Spencer for O’Reilly, who published his book “The Art of SEO” three years ago. The books 2nd edition is coming out in March. This webcast was much better than the one I listened to 2 months ago. The slides were available at the beginning of the presentation so I could follow it from there. I learned a lot from the presentation, particularly about the tools of the trade. The pace was much closer to my level: fast paced. I believe I am not allowed to share the slides, so I won’t. (The thumbnail on the side is of the cover slide though.) But we were encouraged to tweet through it, and I did. Below is a somewhat cleaned up  version of my tweets, with added hyperlinks, in reserve chronological order, latest being on top.

• Spencer Q&A: No good SEO can be done for under $500 a month.
• Strip away all commercial links during the initial media swarm. Friend popular/power uses or get them to submit your story.
• Popurls.com – aggregator of the most popular stuff from many social sites.
• Leveraging Social Media to linkbaiting: news sites, bookmarking sites. Newsvine, Mixx (aka Chime.In), Kirtsy, TechMeme, ShoutWire,
• Nofollow rules: doesn’t help with increasing link authoity but still helps bring up your visibility.
• Viral videos: be creative but unpolished: Will it blend; Heroes spoofs; Intuit’s tax rap.
• Seed linkbait: Do it from poweruser account, with streetcred.
• Seeding linkbait: giving push to your content. Leverage social media communities. Each has its own quirks, anomalies and rules.
• Link baiting utilities. WP plugins (SEO Title tag), WordPress Quiz, FireFox ext: SEO for FF.
• Fun campaigns: Gizoogle.com translates pages. counterfeitmini.com, mentosintern.com, angryleprechaun.com
• More viral content: personality tests, quizzes, widgets (swicki, SeenOn.com’s Grey’s Anatomy)
• People are more inclined to link to a wiki than to a single person’s definition. Consensus is valued.
• Wikis: contribute to Wikipedia, and other (NewPR, ShopWiki, Web 2.0 Expo…) create your own ( SEOGlossary.com )
• Any type of site can do RSS feeds, not just blogs: alerts, specials, events, arrivals, best sellers, forum posts…
• RSS: Unspamable. Propgate deep links to drive traffic and PageRank. Spammers will lift your content from RSS though.
• RSS: You are targeting linkerati and not your audience, but they pass link authority to you.
• “You should be fired if you do a marketing site without an RSS feed.” – Robert Scoble
• Genesis/Thesis: SEO friendly themes/frameworks for WordPress.
• Blogs are great for launching linkbait campaigns. Dark side: comment spam, splogs (spam blogs).
• Blogging for links: SEs/Google love blogs. Inherently link-rich (hat-tips, blogrolls, rss feeds, trackbacks, comments.
• E.g. Shoemoney.com: design business card competition for “getting bizcards for life”
• Get creative: give awards, badges; allow webmasters to republish your article; publish unique content: podcast, screencast, wikis
• Bake in “copy me” instruction into message. Meme example: TP folded in triangle at hotels-promise by cleaner of attention.
• Memes: “copy me” backed by threat and/or promise; chain letters, contest, surveys…
• More viral hooks: original research, CC licensed photo, free theme/plugin/software, start a replicable meme (buttons, tools…
• Hooks for viral content: tools, how-to, compilation, scoop, expose flaw/fraud, be contrarian, be humorous. 10 things I hate about.
• Link baiting: create something that is linkworthy, so people can’t help but link to it.
• LinkResearchTools.com does Link Intelligence: breakdown of links, anchor texts, MozRank scores, sources… filtering them…
• Focus on anchor text. Throwaway words (“click here”) bad for SEO, because of Google’s mis-association with site.
• Other tools: Raven, Advanced Link Manager, Back Link Analyzer
• Competitive Intelligence: not just for finding links.
• Finding Link Targets: look at competing sites, use tools mentioned, review links to your site -> get them optimized.
• Alternative to PageRank: SEOMOz’s MozRank and MozTrust from OpenSiteExplorer.org.
• Problems with PageRank Meter: months old, indicative old, imprecise, not =Google’s algorithm, doesn’t consider redirects.
• PageRank (entertainment only): Google Toolbar, 3rd party tools to it, historical PR from SEOMoz’s PR Checker tool
• Google’s link: operator shows sampling only; use webmaster tools for backlinks, after verification.
• Check link popularity: opensiteexplorer.org, majesticseo.com, linkresearchtools.com
• Links: great content, submit to good directories, work with partners, competitive intelligence, link bait, soc. media, blog, rss.
• Best SEO links: descriptive anchor text, passively obtained, not from same IP block, not all from same TLD (.com/org/edu)
• Best SEO links: topically relevant, one way, not in footer/sidebar, earned by merits, editorial endorsement, not crowded.
• PageRank is logarithmic in nature.higher PageRank may lead Googlebot to crawl more frequently, faster and deeper.
• Attending “Google in the Real World: How Links Boost Your Rankings.”