Link Development Part II - Directories

by admin on August 28, 2008

Continuing on with our link development we’re continuing on in our quest to use mostly technical methods to build links. In my first post on the subject of link development we discussed checking your competitors backlinks to find places to get links. Now we’re going to discuss directories and other places we can basically automate submissions to.

But first, a message from your neighbourhood Google spam team. Be careful with this type of technique. It can get you ranked. It can also get you penalized or banned. Too much of anything in link development is a bad thing, too much paid link building can be a bad thing. Certainly it’s something the search engines would rather not see so realize too much of it and they’re going to want to slap you somehow.

Step 1 - finding directories.
Like much of link building, we use Google to find the sites we’re looking for. In this case we’re looking for footprints or signs that a website is a directory. For example, most directories would have the words ’submit your site’ on the page. So searching for ’submit your site’ should yield a good list of sites to start looking at. And sure enough it does.

Now I’ll cut to the chase and give you the list of footprints. This list has been passed around the internet for years and the original author is long lost. Whoever they are, thank you. Without further ado, assuming your business is ‘web design’, here’s some searches you can do to find sites.

“Suggest link” “web design”
“Suggest a link” “web design”
“Suggest site” “web design”
“Suggest a site” “web design”
“Suggest URL” “web design”
“Suggest a URL” “web design”
“Suggest an URL” “web design”
“Add link” “web design”
“Add a link” “web design”
“Add site” “web design”
“Add a site” “web design”
“Add URL” “web design”
“Add a URL” “web design”
“Add an URL” “web design”
“Submit link” “web design”
“Submit a link” “web design”
“Submit site” “web design”
“Submit a site” “web design”
“Submit URL” “web design”
“Submit a URL” “web design”
“Submit an URL” “web design”

“favorite links” “web design”
“recommended links” “web design”
“cool sites” “web design”
“cool places” “web design”
“reciprocal” “web design”
“directory” “web design”
“directorys” “web design”
“directories” “web design”
“exchange” “web design”
“exchanges” “web design”
“resources” “web design”
“resource” “web design”
“links” “web design”

“philippines” “add url”
“philippines” “suggest a site”
“philippines” “submit site”
“philippines” “links”
“philippines” “reciprocal links”
“philippines” “directory”

“friends” “web design”
“partners” “web design”

“add your url” “web design”
“submit your url” “web design”
“submit your site” “web design”
“add your url” “web design”
“add your link” “web design”

“add url” “web designs”
“add site” “web designs”
“add link” “web designs”
“add a url” “web designs”
“add a site” “web designs”
“add a link” “web designs”
“submit url” “web designs”
“submit site” “web designs”
“submit link” “web designs”
“submit a url” “web designs”
“submit a site” “web designs”
“submit a link” “web designs”

“recomended sites” “web design”
“links” “web design”
“link exchange” “web design”
“link exchanges” “web design”
“link request” “web design”
“link partner” “web design”
“recip link” “web design”
“link” “web design”

“addurl.html” “web design”
“addsite.html” “web design”
“addlink.html” “web design”
“addaurl.html” “web design”
“addasite.html” “web design”
“addalink.html” “web design”
“submiturl.html” “web design”
“submitsite.html” “web design”
“submitlink.html” “web design”
“submitaurl.html” “web design”
“submitasite.html” “web design”
“submitalink” “web design”

“add-url.html” “web design”
“add-site.html” “web design”
“add-link.html” “web design”
“add-a-url.html” “web design”
“add-a-site.html” “web design”
“add-a-link.html” “web design”
“submit-url.html” “web design”
“submit-site.html” “web design”
“submit-link.html” “web design”
“submit-a-url.html” “web design”
“submit-a-site.html” “web design”
“submit-a-link.html” “web design”

“add_url.html” “web design”
“add_site.html” “web design”
“add_link.html” “web design”
“add_a_url.html” “web design”
“add_a_site.html” “web design”
“add_a_link.html” “web design”
“submit_url.html” “web design”
“submit_site.html” “web design”
“submit_link.html” “web design”
“submit_a_url.html” “web design”
“submit_a_site.html” “web design”
“submit_a_link.html” “web design”

“add-url.htm” “web design”
“add-site.htm” “web design”
“add-link.htm” “web design”
“add-a-url.htm” “web design”
“add-a-site.htm” “web design”
“add-a-link.htm” “web design”
“submit-url.htm” “web design”
“submit-site.htm” “web design”
“submit-link.htm” “web design”
“submit-a-url.htm” “web design”
“submit-a-site.htm” “web design”
“submit-a-link.htm” “web design”

“add_url.htm” “web design”
“add_site.htm” “web design”
“add_link.htm” “web design”
“add_a_url.htm” “web design”
“add_a_site.htm” “web design”
“add_a_link.htm” “web design”
“submit_url.htm” “web design”
“submit_site.htm” “web design”
“submit_link.htm” “web design”
“submit_a_url.htm” “web design”
“submit_a_site.htm” “web design”
“submit_a_link.htm” “web design”
“submitlink.htm” “web design”
“submitsite.htm” “web design”

“add-url.php” “web design”
“add-site.php” “web design”
“add-link.php” “web design”
“add-a-url.php” “web design”
“add-a-site.php” “web design”
“add-a-link.php” “web design”
“submit-url.php” “web design”
“submit-site.php” “web design”
“submit-link.php” “web design”
“submit-a-url.php” “web design”
“submit-a-site.php” “web design”
“submit-a-link.php” “web design”

“add_url.php” “web design”
“add_site.php” “web design”
“add_link.php” “web design”
“add_a_url.php” “web design”
“add_a_site.php” “web design”
“add_a_link.php” “web design”
“submit_url.php” “web design”
“submit_site.php” “web design”
“submit_link.php” “web design”
“submit_a_url.php” “web design”
“submit_a_site.php” “web design”
“submit_a_link.php” “web design”
“submitlink.php” “web design”
“submitsite.php” “web design”

“add-url.shtml” “web design”
“add-site.shtml” “web design”
“add-link.shtml” “web design”
“add-a-url.shtml” “web design”
“add-a-site.shtml” “web design”
“add-a-link.shtml” “web design”
“submit-url.shtml” “web design”
“submit-site.shtml” “web design”
“submit-link.shtml” “web design”
“submit-a-url.shtml” “web design”
“submit-a-site.shtml” “web design”
“submit-a-link.shtml” “web design”
“submitlink.shtml” “web design”
“submitsite.shtml” “web design”

“add_url.shtml” “web design”
“add_site.shtml” “web design”
“add_link.shtml” “web design”
“add_a_url.shtml” “web design”
“add_a_site.shtml” “web design”
“add_a_link.shtml” “web design”
“submit_url.shtml” “web design”
“submit_site.shtml” “web design”
“submit_link.shtml” “web design”
“submit_a_url.shtml” “web design”
“submit_a_site.shtml” “web design”
“submit_a_link.shtml” “web design”

“add-url.cfm” “web design”
“add-site.cfm” “web design”
“add-link.cfm” “web design”
“add-a-url.cfm” “web design”
“add-a-site.cfm” “web design”
“add-a-link.cfm” “web design”
“submit-url.cfm” “web design”
“submit-site.cfm” “web design”
“submit-link.cfm” “web design”
“submit-a-url.cfm” “web design”
“submit-a-site.cfm” “web design”
“submit-a-link.cfm” “web design”
“submitlink.cfm” “web design”
“submitsite.cfm” “web design”

“add_url.cfm” “web design”
“add_site.cfm” “web design”
“add_link.cfm” “web design”
“add_a_url.cfm” “web design”
“add_a_site.cfm” “web design”
“add_a_link.cfm” “web design”
“submit_url.cfm” “web design”
“submit_site.cfm” “web design”
“submit_link.cfm” “web design”
“submit_a_url.cfm” “web design”
“submit_a_site.cfm” “web design”
“submit_a_link.cfm” “web design”

“add your link” + “web design”
“add link” + “web design”
“add your site” + “web design”
“link exchange” + “web design”
“add your URL” + “web design”
“submit your link” + “web design”
“add links” + “web design”
“submit your site” + “web design”
“exchange links” + “web design”
“add new link” + “web design”
“add URL” + “web design”
“add site” + “web design”
“add a link” + “web design”
“add your website” + “web design”
“submit your website” + “web design”
“add a new link” + “web design”
“submit URL” + “web design”
“submit link” + “web design”
“request a link” + “web design”
“exchanging links” + “web design”
“submit a link” + “web design”
“trade links” + “web design”
“submit website” + “web design”
“link requests” + “web design”
“website listed here” + “web design”
“link swap” + “web design”
“add a site” + “web design”

Here’s some other directories you may consider submitting to as well:
www.dmoz.org
dir.yahoo.com
www.botw.org

Those are three of the top directories available. Dmoz is free, but hand edited and hard to get into (I’ll tell you how you can pretty much guarantee a listing in Dmoz in a later post). Yahoo’s directory is $300 bucks a year. BOTW (Best Of The Web) are run by some of the sharpest directory folks out there. If you’re going to do paid directores and focus on quality, those are the three to start at.

In addition to the above list of search terms there are numerous compiled lists of directories. One of the most popular is vilesilencer but there’s plenty of others. Do some searches on ‘paid directory lists’ and things like that; you’ll find the lists.

Step 2: Evaluating the Directory
Now you’ve got hundreds or thousands of directories you may submit to. Some free, many paid. Which ones to submit to? All?

Let me first state that I’ve seen people rank by excessive use of paid directory submissions. But I’m very very concerned about that as a long term plan. I’m pretty sure they’re going to get busted someday. So keep that in mind. My recommendation is be careful where you submit to - let the vast majority of directories go by. Find ones that are relevant if you can. Failing that, find ones that seem to have some trust (like www.botw.org). I recommend you use this link building technique as an initial foundation layer of links, not an overall or even a primary link building technique.

Anyway, try and keep in mind my previous post on judging the quality of backlinks. Most directories are going to have a lot of low end crap as their backlinks, and most will be general non-relevant sites. That’s because in the heyday of the directory site, everyone was setting up directories, building backlinks just to get PR, then selling listings for $10 a pop. But Google has hit directories pretty hard with a decline in PR and what seem to be other penalties.

So first step in judging directories - are they relevant?
Second step - are they trusted?
Next, check how many pages the site has indexed. Using your search status plugin, see how many pages Google has indexed for the site. Lots of pages, good. Not as many as you’d expect, not so good. That means Google doesn’t think the site is valuable enough to index all the pages. You can also try the search ‘mortgages site:directorysite.com’ to see what pages from the directory are in Google that relate to mortgages or whatever niche you’re in. Certainly if you find that the page you’re getting a link from is not indexed in Google you should skip the directory.

Also, look at how the directory pages are ordered and the pagination. If your company name is ZZZ mortgages and the directory lists alphabetically, you’re on the last page. If that’s on page 12 of the mortgage listings, that’s not good. You’re buried deep.

The front page of directories will list the categories in the directory. Directory software also allows them to list subcategories on the front page (i.e. instead of just listing the business category, they might show the main ‘business’ category as a listing, and below it have three or four subcategories, like mortgages and SEO). If the subcategory you want to get listed on is on the front page of the directory, that’s a good thing.

Two other factors to look at as it relates to your submission. Some directories allow rich anchor text. So if your company is Bob’s Mortgages, they will let you set up your anchor text - the text they link to you with - as ‘Shop Mortgage Rates Online’. This practice is good for you, not so good for the directory IMO (most quality directories don’t allow keyword stuffing in the anchor text). In addition, some directories will give you a base link plus another 4 or 5 links to inner pages. This is a GOOD thing, use it.

Price is the last consideration. You need to combine all the above factors and make a decision. Is $10 a good buy? Is $99 a good buy? There’s no right answer, much of this is judgement and experience based. Personally? I’d probably be buying more $50 and $100 directories than I would $10 directories. Again, use directory submission with caution. It’s a technique that’s been thoroughly chewed over and abused for years. Show the search engines your site is about quality, not quantity.

Now for an example. I run a couple niche directories. It uses custom software so I don’t leave footprints. Listings are free - but! All listings require that the website list full physical contact info, I only list ‘real’ businesses. I don’t allow keyword stuffing. And I hand process each and every submission, discarding any I don’t want to link to. The directories still rank a bit in Google for long tail search terms. I believe they pass along some good link juice to people who are listed. And I’ve had people tell me they get referrals and business from the site. That’s the kind of directory you’re looking for, if you can find them.

That’s it! Go forward and find quality directories. Pay some and submit some. Start building the initial layer of your link development. But don’t go overboard.

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Link Development Strategies

by admin on August 28, 2008

Link development can be broken down into two different methods. The first way is the technical way. How do I get a bunch of links to my site? This method is relatively easily taught, it can be duplicated, and can yeild decent links in reasonable volume. My first post on link development is an example of this method.

The second method turns this ideology on it’s head. Rather than looking for links, we look for sites we want a link from. Then we go after those individual and specific sites for a link. It’s now a matter of getting experience on how to get individual sites to give you a link. This method produces very low volume, but extremely high quality links.

I’ll be continuing on the topic and providing more methods for the first type of link development shortly.

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Marketing Bully - some additional thoughts

by admin on August 28, 2008

(The following post makes more sense if you’ve bought the ebook and read it). If you bought Andre Chaperon’s Marketing Bully ebook today and have had the time to review it you’ll notice in one section on advertising (I’m being vague deliberately) he talks about using about.com to get lists of websites in a specific niche.

Well, let me extend this a bit - there’s another place you can get lists of websites in a related niche - Google adwords. And here’s how:

Go to Google. Click on ‘preferences’ and set the number of search results shown to be 100. Now go do your search for your niche. Of course you’ll get all the adwords listings. Now click on ‘more sponsored listings’. Now I think Google just changed the layout of this page, but you should now have a three column listing of at least 100 advertisers on that search term. That gives you a ton of information to use in conjunction with the ebook’s suggeste strategy. And combine each of those websites with the about.com technique in the ebook, now you’re cooking with gas.

My apologies if this specific strategy is mentioned in the ebook. So far I’ve only glanced at it and picked up a few points. I saw the new Google layout on the sponsored listings page and just kind of put two and two together.

Now, for those of you not following along in the ebook there’s still something to be learned here. Watching the PPC ads are a good indicator of what’s going on in the industry. How can you use that in what you’re doing? Worth giving some thought to.

I watch the PPC ads relatively closely in my niche to see any new players. Normally what I see are incompetents spending money which is kind of nice. But sometimes there’s more going on. Players who are getting slaughered in the organic listings moving to PPC. PPC players trying to move into organic. And just two weeks ago I was investigating a new player in the PPC market (see my previous post on researching your competitors online) and found a very high quality backlink. I’ve not completed my research yet, but I may be able to duplicate the link. If so - watching the PPC ads paid off, didn’t it?

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Marketing Bully report now available.

by admin on August 28, 2008

Andre Chaperon, who I think I’ve mentioned before, has just released his Marketing Bully report.

I just bought a copy, it’s $49.95 and after my first 5 minute read through seems well worth the money. I suspected as much, since it’s clear he knows how to market online - he had me waiting for the release of this. If you can market like that to me, even when I know you’re marketing to me, you’ve really got something.

Here’s basically what he did. He created a squeeze page that I stumbled across while visiting his site. Now we all hate those squeeze pages, but this one, well this one I actually read. Then I signed up to receive emails from him.

He sent me a couple emails basically creating some excitement. Telling me it’s coming out tomorrow, and probably less than $300. See? He’s creating expectation that it’s value is $300. And I’m thinking to myself, ‘Self, should I spend $300 on an ebook? I know it’s going to be good, but $300? I’ll think on it.’

Today I get the email. The product is released - for $97. So I’m pretty much in right? Except what he notes is that his payment vendor has him capped at $50 and it takes a few days to raise the cap. So temporarily its $49.95. I’ve no idea if there’s a cap, but by this point my hands are shaking I’m so anxious to send the guy my $50.

So I bought it, and as I expected, my initial review is that it’s well worth the $50. And I’m not even an affiliate.The reason SEO folks need to buy this is because it’s good for research. Learning how hardcore affiliates get traffic and convert can only be good for your business. Even if it’s not methods you use, it may spawn other ideas.

Now, I haven’t read it in depth yet, but one thing stuck out right near the top - and it goes full circle back to the initial squeeze page that roped me in. He describes in detail how he does this. Basically he researches his market then speaks their language. And that’s what he did. Let me elaborate.

I know how to do SEO. And I know how to do Pay per click. I do both pretty well. What I don’t do well is affiliate marketing. Seems kind of funny if I can do SEO and PPC, but there you go. I’ve never quite put my mind to it. However I know SEO and PPC are less about ‘tricks’ and more about reading, trying, and basically just doing the grunt work until you figure out the steps. And I’m pretty sure affiliate marketing is the same way. And that’s how his squeeze page roped me in. He knows that I know there’s no big secrets. Just test and learn.

One part of the problem though is before you can test, you need a roadmap of what to test. A push in the right direction, a list of things to test, that kind of thing. This I didn’t have for affiliate marketing. For SEO, years ago I got my roadmap by reading for a week straight, and then getting some paid consulting from SugarRae. Both actions paid off in spades. But with out the paid consulting from Sugarrae, well, I’d probably still be drifting. Hey, I still had to do the work, but I had a push in the right direction.

So I knew I need a roadmap. I knew the process is likely methodical and testing based rather than some big secret trick. And I’m willing to pay a bit of money to get a push in the right direction. And if you read his squeeze pages at marketingbully, you’ll see that this is exactly the buttons he’s pushing. And as I noted, he talks about finding these buttons in the document.

What it is is detailed instructions on how to begin testing for affiliate marketing, from start to finish. How to set up squeeze pages that work, how to find keywords, how to bring in traffic. And so on.

I likely won’t get to trying this stuff out anytime soon because I’m so busy. But if you’re into SEO, this one’s worth the $49. And if you’ve ever thought you’d like to be one of those affiliate marketing folks, this is probably the place to get started: Marketing Bully.

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Changes to the site

by admin on August 27, 2008

No need to get freaked out :). I’ve added a few things to the site.

I’ve added adsense to the site in two places. One is in the nasty big block in the top right. This is where the conversions happen - or that’s my claim. I’ve also added it in a sidebar down the right. You’ll see I’ve used contrasting colours.

The rationale is just general testing. I’m trying out some things with adsense on a number of sites. Maybe nothing comes out of it, or maybe I start seeing something. If so, I can use that information on my main sites.

But the ads will also tell us a few things; like who’s running SEO ads in Canada, and how Google sees the site based on the ads that are displayed.

And no need to click the ads to pay me (I disagree with that principle anyway). Treat them like regular ads. The 50 cents a month the ads are likely to bring in aren’t going to make a lifestyle difference for me :). And I don’t run this site for the money anyway.

I’ve also added tag clouds. The reason (and partly the adsense addition as well)? The kids toy review blog site I mentioned earlier has both adsense and the tag cloud on it. And that site is rocking in the serps. Toy reviews are ranking on the front page for the name of the toy. Now I think it’s all about the backlinks, but I’m wondering about the kick of tag clouds as well. So we’ll try it out here too, on another non-primary website.

It’s an example of tinkering and testing. I recommend you do stuff like that too. You never know what you’re going to learn.

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Judging backlinks - trustrank, pagerank, and relevance

by admin on August 26, 2008

A bit of a review post here, but we’re going to use this when developing backlinks. We need to be able to judge if a site is a place we want to get a link from.

Bear in mind when reading this, much of this isn’t ‘factual’. I really don’t know how Google ranks sites. Some of this stuff I’ve developed from reading. Some stuff I’ve developed from my own sites. But this stuff does work and I believe it will continue to work. So even if some of this stuff isn’t perfectly correct right now, following it does work somehow - and I expect will continue to get you ranked in the future. FWIW, the very first site I ranked was about 5 years ago. I built links for 3 months and have not touched it since. It has remained ranking reasonably well for the last 5 years - untouched.

Anyay, at this point I’ll repeat my mantra. You are known by your backlinks.

Pagerank:
Pagerank is a Google algorithm that assigns a number between 0 and 10. A pagerank (PR) of 10 is high.

Pagerank is also an iterative algorithm in that it cycles around in a loop. The more you calculate it, the more accurate it becomes. The actual calculation isn’t overly important though.

The way it works is this. Lets say I somehow have a pagerank 5 web page. If I link to you, I lose a fraction of my pagerank and you gain can some. So maybe my pagerank on that page becomes 4.8 (though keep in mind, pagerank that we see is only ever an integer) and your pagerank becomes a 3.

Your pagerank isn’t linear either. It takes a lot more to go from a pagerank 2 to a 3 than it does to go from 1 to 2. It’s generally assumed that it’s logarithmic, it takes roughly 8 times the links to go from 2 to 3 than it does to go from 1 to 2.

Now lets say you get another backlink from a pagerank 5 web page. Now your page may become a pagerank 4. And so on - the more backlinks you have from higher PR web pages, the higher your PR becomes. And if you link out to someone, you will pass a wee bit of PR to them. (It’s understood that this pagerank bleed does lower your pagerank. However you should assume the bleed is so mild that you really shouldn’t worry about it. Linking out has far bigger concerns and reasons than worring about going from a PR 5.85555 ot a PR 5.85554.

So, pagerank flows through links. The more, higher PR backlinks we have, the higher our PR is. And it’s harder to move up from a PR 5 to a 6 than it is from a 4 to a 5.

Google used to use PR heavily in their ranking. A high PR meant good rankings. I do not believe this is the case anymore - I believe the PR described above is hardly used at all in rankings. In other words, a PR 3 can easily beat a PR 5 site.

What you do use PR for is an indicator of ‘volume’ of backlinks. Higher PR pages and sites generally have more backlinks. Are they good backlinks? Is this a good place for you to get a link? PR does NOT answer those questions anymore.

Relevance:
Relevance of a page is based on two things. Text on the page, and relevance of sites or pages that link to that page.

Now, lets consider something. I believe Google right now is primarily ‘page’ based and not ’site’ based. So getting links from relevant ontopic pages, on an offtopic website works great right now. Will this continue to work? Ideally I think Google would like to use site specific relevance instead of page specific relevance but they run into problems with ‘general’ sites like news sites and the like that have pages on many topics. The reason this is important is if you develop links from ‘pages’ that are important but are basically fudged on a site that really shouldn’t be linking to you - well, that’ll work great right now. It may or may not work great later.

So for relevance, look at the page and make sure it uses words similiar to what’s on your site. Then check the backlinks of the site and make sure they have backlinks from places that are relevant as well.

Trustrank:
This is another conceptual guideline. It may not be exactly what Google does, but approaching this from the right perspective does work now, worked previously, and I expect it to continue to work.

Trustrank is like pagerank. And it works very similiar to pagerank. Trustrank flows from page to page and site to site via links. Get a log of high trustrank links to your pages, your webpages will get a high trustrank.

There are three differences though between TR and PR. First, we can’t see trustrank (pagerank has plenty of little toolbars we can install in our browser to see the PR of any page).

Secondly, rather than being iterative, TR only flows downhill. It’s been speculated (and speculated correctly IMO) that Google dictated some sites as ‘trusted’ and gave them TR. All trustrank flows down from those sites. We do not know what those initial sites are.

Thirdly, unlike PR, I believe Google uses TR heavily in it’s algorithm. Get a high trustrank, and you’ll rank. How do you get a high trustrank? Get lots of links from sites with high trustrank.

Since we can’t see trustrank, how do we measure it? Well, we can’t. All we can do is assume. But that’s OK - it’s very easy to do a gutcheck of a trusted site. Let’s look at some examples. Goverment of Canada site. Trusted? Of course. Highly trusted? Sure is. A university. Trusted? Of course. Not quite as high a TR as the Government of Canada, but probaby not a slouch either. What about a directory site that links out to anyone and everyone for a $15 fee. Trusted? No, not much at all.

In short, just have a look at the site. If it seems highly trusted, assume it is. If it seems shaky, assume it’s low trustrank.

Age:
It’s been assumed that Google has some sort of aging algorithm in it’s backlink checking. Older links are better. This was done as a spam prevention measure. Most web spammers are not willing to wait 6 months or a year to see if backlinks work. So aging cuts back on that. It also places distance between developing links and their affect on your ranking making it more difficult to tell if a specific link helps your site. Six months from now and your site moves up or down - what caused it? Can’t tell if it’s a link or not - and Google wants that obscurity.

Now that you’ve read all that, here’s how you judge backlinks. You want old, trusted, relevant backlinks. When you’re looking at sites to get backlinks from, check their backlinks. If they have old, trusted, relevant backlinks, then that makes them a good link for you to get. Such a link means you know have trusted relevant backlinks that will eventually become old - and you’ll rank.

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Register mortgages.com!

by admin on August 25, 2008

Think back 10 or 12 years ago. How nice would it be to know then what you know now about domain names? Wouldn’t it be cool to go back and register mortgages.com? Or some nice keyword rich domains?

Well, you can. They’re called .ca’s. And they’re available by the boatload for the registration for less than $15. Get in now.

When I started doing internet stuff, nobody used .ca’s. They were the mickey mouse version of the .com. I recommended that Canadians buy the .com. And it’s nice if you still can get them. But Canadian consumers are changing. Years ago, a .ca was a pale imitator. Now, .ca’s are preferred by Canadians. We’re sick of shopping at American websites, or getting non-Canadian information. Now the .ca’s instantly tell visitors that the site is exactly what they’re looking for. A .ca domain is an indicator of trust now for Canadians. Things have changed.

What hasn’t changed is that these .ca domains are readily available for registration. We’re in 1997 with the .com’s right now - there’s so much good stuff available.

And I’m not talking even about right now. But 10 years isn’t that long of a time. And in 10 years, the .ca’s will be like the .com’s - all the good ones will be taken. For the couple of bucks, it’s worth it to buy a bunch then just hold onto them until they increase in value.

Going back to our theme on mortgages, ontariomortgagerates.ca is available. I doubt there’s a us state mortgagerates.com left available. So get them now while they’re cheap and there’s no competition.

I’ve got a bunch registered myself. For example, in my niche there’s a multi-billion dollar industry in the US, it’s three keywords. Current legislation in Canada says this service is not allowed in Canada right now. That’s fine, but I can’t believe that the website keyword1keyword2keyword3.ca was available (where keyword1 keyword2 keyword3 is the three word name of the industry). So now I own it. What do you suppose that’ll be worth if the legislation changes in Canada? Even if that’s 5 years away? or 20? I’ll still be kicking around in 20 years, I could be looking like a real smrt fella in 20 years with a domain like that. Right now the domain would be worth say $100. If the legislation changes, it’s worth 7 figures.

In addition, there’s plenty of keyword rich combinations that could take some type in traffic. Not even for parked landing pages - but a simple conversion page on a keyword rich domain might yeild some results.

So get on board with the .ca’s. Write out all the keywords in your industry and start looking at the better combinations. Check if the .ca is available. It probably is. Go register it.

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Next SEO Bash - Toronto

by admin on August 25, 2008

I’ll be speaking about SEO and PPC at the September Toronto LUG (or newTLUG).

Date: September 23, 2008
Time: 7:00 - 10:00 pm.
Place: Seneca College on the YorkU campus, Room S1209, Lower Kaleidoscope Room
Stephen E. Quinlan building
Cost: Free. Parking however is $8.

I spoke at the KW Lug and everyone seemed please with the value for the price; I’ve got three hours this time instead of two so I’ll go into a bit more detail on the ‘how to’.

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Buying an old domain - part two

by admin on August 25, 2008

Just wanted to post a further example of how to search for old domains.

I was doing some searches similiar to what I mentioned in the previous post. And I noticed that any dead sites that are hosted by Yahoo always show the same landing page (the ‘no page here’ type of page that Yahoo displays by default).

On that page are the words “Why am I seeing this page?” followed by a link that I presume shows you how to reactivate your account.

So I did some searches like (again, using mortgages as an example):
“Why am I seeing this page?” mortgages

And voila! A whole bunch of dead pages hosted by Yahoo on the topic of mortgages. Three pages of them actually. Now it’s just a matter of visiting them and evaluating them (check backlinks, age, ownership, check them in archive.org, and so on).

Maybe that doesn’t get it. But enough searches like that and something will come up. Does Godaddy have a hosting footprint we can look for and search on? Rackspace?

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Jump start your SEO - buy an old domain

by admin on August 24, 2008

You know you need a domain with lots of old links. You can buy a new domain and build links to it over time, or you can buy an old domain that already has links.

There’s plenty of ways to find old domains and websites to purchase, here’s a couple.

Aside: like most things SEO, we start our search on Google. Spend some time thinking of searches, it’ll pay off.

1) Look for dormant accounts
First, look for dormant accounts. Websites that aren’t being used or on the verge of expiring; you can sometimes make a decent offer and pick up a site that someone’s not using anymore. So how do you find them? Google for terms that you would see on websites that are old, out of date, not being used, or have their accounts suspended.

Keeping to our generic mortgage theme, here’s some examples of searches you can do for sites:
- account suspended mortgage
- under construction mortgage
- (C) 1999 mortgage

and so on. The better you are at finding innovative searches the better you’ll be at finding sites that other’s haven’t picked over.

Keep in mind that this isn’t a high success ratio endeavour. You’ll have to spend some time looking, and a lot of time making offers, only to get declined. It’s work and takes some effort (well, it’s not real work though - this is SEO and it’s not like the rest of the world who actually do have to work for a living while we’re screwing around on the internet). In any regard stick with it, they are out there.

I’ve got a friend who offered to buy an old site. Owner wouldn’t sell. A few months later, the owner’s transmission died and he needed the cash. Site sold!

2) Scrape old directories
Google for directories in your niche. Download a copy of Xenu link sleuth and politely! scrape the old directory. That’ll tell you two things. First, any dead links may be indicative of dropped domains - domains not registered any more but with some good old links. Secondly, it’ll show you sites that have been around for a long time.

3) Connect with the industry
Go looking for hosting companies that specialize in your niche. Chat them up, strike a deal so that they let you know if any of their customers are going to drop their website. Maybe going out of business or whatever. Work out something like a $500 payout for the domain owner, and the hosting company gets $100. Whatever - keep your ear to the ground in the niche.

I do hosting for my niche. And a few years ago (before age was a factor in the algorithm) I bought a domain from a fellow who was retiring, for like $500. That’s about what it was worth at the time since it was listed in the DMOZ directory (DMOZ is a good directory to get a link from if you can). Years later it’s now sitting in reserve, I’m shortly going to turn it into one of my flagship sites. And I wouldn’t sell it for less than $20K.

4) Watch the digitalpoint forums
The sites for sale in digitalpoint are full of crap, low end sites, and fraudulent sellers. But every once in a while - and it’s rare - a great sight comes up that’s underpriced. I’ve seen sites probably worth a grand or two sell for $100. Not often mind you, but when they do they go for the buy it now (BIN) price within minutes. So you have to watch.

In summary, keep your eye out for old domains. They can be an easy way to get a ready to rank site.

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