Moderator: Greg Boser, President/CEO, 3 Dog Media Q&A Moderator: Matt McGee, SEO For Hire
Greg welcomes the familiar spammers... Rae wont be able to make it last minute, so Todd is sitting in for the Q&A. The panelist introduce themselves.
Roger Montti, Founder & Owner, MartiniBuster.com, is up first. Such a tease, they pause due to technical issues, its been at least four minutes now. 7 minutes later, Danny comes up to the podium to help out. He brings the presentation machine over to the table in the back and will run things from there. Should we all turn our seats around?
Roger starts of talking about .edus. They are the most "whitest hat" links you can get. No one gets banned for them. They pass "hand checks." Roger said he will concentrate on natural citation and not the black hat stuff.
To get these EDUs, see what is going on with the industry heavy weights and look at charitable opportunities. To see the heavyweights, see the top spenders on AdWords for a query and check their backlinks.
EDUs are not special, they are not the magic bullet. EDUs are desirable because they are usually not in bad neighborhoods. They are typically free. In maps of link relationships, these pages are generally going to fall outside relationships that are known for link manipulation, etc.
EDUs may not be desirable because they are not authoritative content, link pages are link fest, pages may not have inbound links and non-expert pages are the links you'll get.
Tips in Yahoo Link Commands:
- linkdomain:example.com site:.edu "bookmarks"
- linkdomain:example.com site:.edu "links"
- linkdomain:example.com site:.edu "favorite sites"
- linkdomain:example.com site:.edu "your product or service"
More examples:
- linkdomain:example.com site:.edu sponsors
- linkdomain:example.com site:.edu donors
- linkdomain:example.com site:.org sponsors
- linkdomain:example.com site:.org benefactors
Other modifiers include:
- Hotlinks
- Bookmarks
- Links
- Directory
- Resources
Jay Young, Owner, Link Fish Media, Inc. is next up. Yes, more tech issues. This time Michelle is up on stage debugging. It is now working. He will skip the ethics behind link building.
The thing you need most in link building is "brass balls and big bucks." There is no place for fear in link building. You need a lot of money.
Places to Get Links: - Directories -- Best of the Web -- Yahoo -- DMOZ -- Joe Ant -- Blog Catalogue
There are still a lot of "very trusted directories" that pass a lot of authority, he said. Every link building campaign needs to start with directories. Buy yourself a DMOZ editor.
More Places to get Links: - Non Profits -- Arguably editorial -- Tax deduction -- Normally very good neighborhood -- Helps a good cause
More Ways: - Join SEOcialists -- Digg -- Reddit -- Stumble
Brokers: - Big Name Text Link Brokers (will not out them, he said). Using them, he said, still works. Find them, use them and spend a lot of money with them. He does it, it works. - Blog advertisers - Smaller Brokers 2,000 - 10,000 sites - Specialty Brokers - Amateur Brokers (DP forums, 20 or 30 sites)
Link Bait - "Call Rand" he said. - He talks about the recent debated linkbait idea. - In the end of the day, he said, "We are not in this for morality, we are in this for marketing." He is serious.
Buy Links - Vital for the success for a competitive campaign - Be as relevant as possible - Be as natural as possible - Vary your anchor text - Use co-citation (link out to Wikis, etc) - If you get busted, the link will get busted and you won't be busted (i.e. he said the site passing the link will be hurt, not yours)
Darker Methods (that still work, if done in moderation): - Comment Spam (do it manually) - Trackback Spam - Reciprocal Links (be very picky when doing this, if they got a page for recip links, then opt out) - Three Ways - Link Farms (dont spend a lot of money here)
Outside of the Box: - Widgets - Templates - Template Sponsorship - Contests: Free iPhone - Content Trades
Tips: - Hire Bartenders as link builders because they have a strong work ethic, they work autonomously, fast on their feet, technically inclined, multi-tasker, social - Avoid buying links from forums - Avoid buying links with hidden links - USe moderation and common sense - If the competition is too clean, mess it up a little (buy them a lot of nasty cheap links and point it at them)
He puts up a slide, stop being afraid of this guy:
Stephan Spencer, Founder and President, Netconcepts. Greg introduces him as a PowerPoint genius.
High Value Link Targets: - 80/20 rule - B/c of the logarithimc nature of PR, its a more reliable metric the higher the score - PR10s: usa.gov, nsf.gov, w3.org, real.com, energy.gov - Adobe has 9 PR10 pages -ERCIM is a PR10, now PR9 - Email him for a longer list
Build a link building spider: - Look for sites with one-click away from Google - Look for sites with super high PR - With preferences for site that already give link love to sponsors - Populate a database with all that site data - Want specifics, go to Give it up tomorrow (re: Google Directory)
Link Build Your Existing Links: - Use tools to mine your current back links -- Internet Marketing Ninjas -- SEOMoz tool
Networking in the Blogosphere: - Comment on blogs that dofollow - Submit to blog carnivals - Be a contributor to a group blog - Be a guest blogger on someone elses blog - Get involved in comments and built rapport before requesting a link. Find old inactive free hosted blogs - A tip jar indicated the blogger is desperate for cash - Have a blogger install a WordPress plugin that injects links naturally
Paid Links: - Manufacturing link authority vs focusing your existing link authority - Dont try to artificially create link authority through paid links
Redistributing Home Page Links - Improve quality of Google SERPs for Ling Tail non-brand search terms - Sculpt PageRank - Two Levels of Improvement: --- Redistribute a percent of your home pages inbound links to relevant sub pages --- Ask them to change the anchor text too see further gains - Paid link? Yes, potentially, but editorially earned, so OK
Conditionally 301 Inbound Affiliate Links: - Be like Amazon, more info at here - This only works if you manage your own aff program. - Also demand a naked link on their legal notice page
Networking in Meatspace - Build relationships with bloggers by networking at conferences, etc. - Register and attend conferences that link to their attendees - Contribute to conference wikis - Give free talks at libraries and campuses - Get involved with local meetups - Invite W3C to speak and get a link to your event on w3.org/WAI
Wikis: - Contribute to Wikipedia - Contribute to other wikies, NewPR Wiki, WordPress Codex - Create your own wiki (SEOGlossary.com)
Link Baiting - Viral Content - Videos (he gave samples) - Quizzes/Personality Tests - Widgets - Microsites (counter counterfeit commission)
Utilities - WordPress Plugins - Firefox Extension - Release software as open source
Stroke Egos
He then flies through a ton of slides, cause he is over.
Q&A Time
