Penguin 2.0 Forewarning: The Google Perspective on Links

First and foremost, I don't work for Google. This article represents my opinions, but my company has worked on helping large numbers of sites get Google penalties removed.
The hardest part of these projects is always to get the client to understand what constitutes a bad link. This starts at the very core of how they think about online marketing and search engine optimization (SEO).
There are many who argue that this problem is of Google's own making. They created a world in which abuse wasn't only possible, but that was even very easy to abuse in the beginning. As some would say, they were talking the talk, but not walking the walk.
Some people even got mad. They would yell at Google that they couldn't follow their guidelines because it put them in a situation that was like bringing a knife to a gunfight.
But, as Greg Boser said on stage at SMX Advanced in 2012, Google is now not just talking the talk, but they are walking the walk as well. Penguin and their various attacks on unnatural links have dramatically reshaped their ability to detect and act on link building practices they consider detrimental to their algorithms.

These will continue to see dramatic improvements. Penguin 2.0 is just around the corner, and I expect it to have a bigger impact than Penguin 1.0. So let's step back and discuss what Google wants a link to represent.

Links Must Be Citations

This is the core concept. Just like the professor's research paper, which lists other research papers referenced by the professor in creating their paper.
The professor only lists (links) to the other papers most relevant to and most important to to their paper. You can't buy that, and never occurred to researchers to try and do that with each other. This system was pure at its heart.

This notion is at the very core of the original PageRank thesis. Any deviation from it at all is a problem. In fact, here's what Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts said about it in my last interview with him, when I asked him if he felt the concept of link building was itself problematic:

It segments you into a mindset, and people get focused on the wrong things.

I always wondered why people who read the interview didn't pick up on that a lot more. There was a lot of buzz about the comments he made on infographics and boilerplate content on web sites, but nothing on this comment, which I thought was the most telling statement in the entire interview.
Later on, when I asked him about how publishers can help themselves he said:

By doing things that help build your own reputation, you are focusing on the right types of activity. Those are the signals we want to find and value the most anyway.

With this in mind, let's look at four link building practices that are still common today:
Infographics
This was also featured in my interview with Cutts. The biggest problem these face is that the sex appeal of the infographic is so high that many publishing sites don't care what they need to do to get it.
On top of that, many infographics are inaccurate or unrelated topically to the page receiving the link. Even without these problems it is likely that the great majority of people republishing infographics aren't thoughtfully endorsing the page they end up linking too.
Including rich anchor text links inside a guest post
If the New York Times accepted a guest post from you, what are the chances that they would let you load rich anchor text links inside your post back to the blatant money-making page on your site? Not a chance.
So when Google sees these rich anchor text links inside a guest post, it is a clear signal of a lack of editorial standards at the site publishing the content. This could even hurt the publisher of the content. Note that rich anchor text to other content that is a source is a very different matter.

Guest posts that are only loosely related to the topic of the page receiving a link
Let's say you run a business selling golf carts. So you write a decent article on the best golf courses in Bermuda. You don't put rich anchor text in the body of the article, but in the attribution at the bottom you include a link with the anchor text "premium golf carts" to your site.
As before, these are links where the citation value is weak, and the editorial standards of the site are questionable. A link like this smells more like "payment" than a legitimate endorsement.
Award Badges
This is an oldie but (not) goodie that is sadly still being promoted by a few companies. What really makes these programs trivial for Google or Bing to flag is when the award badges seem to appear only on the lesser authoritative sites of a market segment. Like waving the red flag at the bull in the bullfighting ring, you're going to attract some attention!
These are just four examples. Note that I did not even bother with sites that have lots of footer links, lots of links on the right rail of pages, links from foreign language sites, links from markets where you don't sell/promote your stuff, etc. Those things are already being actively attacked by Google.
There are many other examples similar to the four above that can be constructed with a little thought – add yours to the comments if you like! Or, send some examples and I will give you my opinion.

Some Closing Questions For Qualifying Your Links

These questions were included in my recent article on 10 Common Link Building Problems, but I am going to expand upon them here:
1. Would you build the link if Google and Bing did not exist?
Any good link is something that has value even without search engines. Treat this question seriously, as it mirrors the behavior that Google and Bing want to see.
For example, would you spend 2 hours of a marketing person's time and $200 in expenses writing an article for Nameless Blog 23 just because they let you put that rich anchor text link in the article?
Oh, right. Without search engines that rich anchor text notion might not even be in your vocabulary.
2. If you have 2 minutes with a customer, and the law required that you show a random sampling of your links to customer prospects, would you happily show the link to a target customer? Or would it embarrass you?
This supports the notion that every link should be brand building in nature. A nice variant of this question is - would you proudly show it to your children?
3. Did the person giving you the link intend it as a genuine endorsement?
If not, Google wants to torch it, and so should you. This relates to the infographics and badge examples above, for sure, but it also relates to the blog examples. As soon as proper attribution slips into a model that looks a bit like "payment" you are no longer looking at a citation.
4. Do you have to make an argument to justify that it's a good link?
This is my favorite one. A good link shouldn't be the subject of an argument.
No argument is required with good links. When you see a good link, you know it right away. Sometimes I simplify this statement (for fun) by saying, "If you have to argue it is, it isn't."

Summary

If you've been building links that are exposed by these questions, the best thing you can do is start getting in front of it now. Don't wait for Penguin 2.0, or the next wave of link message penalties to come out. Start getting your business on a sound long-term footing now.
Start actively building unimpeachable links, and start working on eliminating the bad ones. I am not saying that you need to stand on the rooftops and yell out "hey Google I sinned come punish me", but you can begin asking sites that are the source of dangerous links to remove them.
I know that this is a hard decision to make. You have revenue, and you're paying people salaries, etc. See if you can find a way to add the good ones fast enough to make up for removals and keep your business moving forward.
And, for the record, and disclaimer purposes, your mileage may vary. I can't project the exact best strategy for sites that I have not even looked at, but I do know that Google is making large investments in the areas of fighting bad links, and I do know that Cutts let us know that a new Penguin update is coming that he referred to it as a "major update".
The last time Cutts made a similar statement, at SXSW last year, we got Penguin 1.0. You can trust that this new update is coming. You can also trust that it is not the last thing that Google will do.
Even if you get by this next update, learn to truly appreciate the meaning of a true citation and adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.

Google Penguin 2013: How to Evolve Link Building into Real SEO

Google has just rolled out Penguin 2.0, a large algorithmic update promising to go “deeper” than the 2012 Penguin release, which put a hurting on websites with number of manipulative links in their profile.
This prospect creates fear for many small businesses who depend on search engine optimization (SEO) for their livelihoods. But there is also a sense of confusion as the line often shifts and the message from Google contradictory.

Sorting out Panda, Penguin, and Manual Actions

Google's Panda update is a different release than Penguin. Panda is geared toward duplicative, thin, or spun content on websites.
Google's Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts recently stated that Google is actually pulling back on Panda because of too many false positives. This is good for news aggregators and other sites that reuse content appropriately and have been hit hard by the Panda filter.
Penguin is much harder to understand, focusing on backlink patterns, anchor text, and manipulative linking tactics that provide little value to end users. To make matters worse, Google likes to take large manual actions just prior to major algorithm updates. In 2012 we saw the removal of BuildMyRank from the index just prior to Penguin.
Earlier this year we saw major manual action taken against advertorials. Last week Google announced the removal of thousands of link selling websites and we are hearing of a manual spam penalty against Sprint this week.
The proximity of these manual actions with major algorithmic updates is brilliant PR as it associates them together in our memories, discussions and debates - but they are very different things.

Is SEO Enough?

As small business owners move through the here we go again feelings to actually decide what to do in response to Penguin 2013, sorting out the truth is paramount. Google is clearly beating the familiar drum with the same core messages:

1. Build a great website.
2. Make awesome content with high end-user value.
3. Visitors will magically appear.

But the reality is that visitors don’t magically come, at least on any reasonable scale, without organized promotional activities. Many excellent websites have died a slow death due to lack of promotion. And this is where the contradictions emerge in SEO, which has demonstrated extremely high ROI compared to other marketing channels.

Long Live Online Marketing

While discussed many times, webmasters still struggle with shifting their link building activities to real SEO strategy. They fail to see that SEO in 2013 is now integral to online marketing and no longer a standalone activity.
Whereas SEO used to be about tuning a website for optimal consumption by spiders, today’s SEO is about earning recognition, social spread, and backlinks through excellent content marketing. This means SEO is now ongoing, integrated, and strategic – whereas it used to be one-time, isolated, and technical.

Real SEO

Real SEO is the prescription for those who fear Penguin 2013. Here are practical activities that need to be done every month to achieve real SEO:

• Continually Identify Audience Demand: Your SEO won't be successful if it isn't useful. To serve a need, webmasters must understand what the audience is seeking. Keyword research, as always, is critical. While doing keyword research don’t over-emphasize head terms or money keywords. Focusing on long-tail keywords renders more immediate results, increases the breadth of a website (remember Panda), and builds authority that will ultimately help the head term.
• Content marketing: In my opinion, content marketing is the new link building. Earn recognition, social spread, and backlinks by giving away valuable information for free. Excellent content has high audience value and points readers to other resources via cocitation. Video is an excellent form of content marketing that is still under-utilized by small businesses. And newsjacking is an emerging form of content marketing that specifically targets hot news topics for viral spread.
• Work on brand: There is increasing evidence that branded mentions are an important legitimacy signal to Google. Promoting the brand has traditional marketing benefits and also now helps SEO. But be careful not to turn SEO content marketing into an endorsement, as this crosses the line. Find traditional marketing tactics, such as press releases, to drive branding while announcing news-worthy events.
• Syndicate: The "build it and they will come" philosophy doesn't work on an Internet with more than 500 million active domain names. This is why even excellent content needs to be promoted. Email marketing, social media, community engagement in forums, and guest blog posting are efficient mechanisms for spreading the word about engaging content. Interviews, PPC ads, and local event sponsorship will also get your name and content noticed. Any activity that broadcasts your message, your brand, and builds real community discussion will ultimately support SEO, and should be considered part of the SEO process.

Conclusions

The arrival of Penguin 2013 has many small business owners scared and confused. But SEO remains one of the best online marketing channels.
Real SEO is the path forward for those who wish to make a long-term investment in online marketing. Forward-looking webmasters can prepare their sites for Penguin 2014, 2015, and beyond with well-researched, end-user focused content marketing that provides strong audience value.
Using modern syndication tactics, they can broadcast their message, gain audience mind-share and earn recognition. By spreading valuable content, small business can build their brands and earn bulletproof backlinks.

The Myth of Content Marketing, the New SEO & Penguin 2.0

"What Should Lead Your Online Marketing Strategy: SEO or Content". "Why Content Marketing is the New SEO". "Is Google's love affair with content marketing usurping SEO?" "Content Marketing is the New SEO "
These are actual titles from article in the top search results for [content marketing and SEO].

Content Marketing Isn't New

CONTENT MARKETING! DO IT! It's the NEW SEO!
In fact, it's so awesome you don't need anything else! Just produce awesome content and you will be in SEO nirvana! It's like double rainbows and Matt Cutts got together and had baby NyanCats!
Old SEO is dead. This is the new SEO and it's beautiful!
Sound too good to be true? That's because it is.
Content marketing isn't new. It's just a new buzzword picked up by other industries that suddenly found out they could to "do SEO", but they didn't want to "do SEO", so they tried to make it more special. It isn't.
Content marketing has been around since SEO on Google has been called SEO. To not understand this is to not understand what Google and its algorithms measure and how this might affect your site.
Now with the arrival of Penguin 2.0, you might be just setting yourself up for a fall – right out of the rankings. And yes despite all our talk of rankings not mattering, they do, because if you go from somewhere on Page 1 (with personalization) to nowhere on page 51, you will suddenly say, "Oh no! My rankings!"
Rankings matter. SEO matters. And content marketing is SEO. It always has been, and always will be – well, at least until the search engines don't use algorithms and content, but that's a long way off.
Need more proof of the power of content? Back in 2008, I ranked a website in the top 15 for a one-word term in competitive vertical with no links, a domain that was less than a year old, four weeks from launch, with 1,500 pages of unique, solid, quality content. Every word on the site was original, even the Contact Us.
How do I know content was the reason for getting the site ranked in the top 15? Content! To be fair, I can only be 99 percent sure that content, thanks to a Google engineer at a party at an SES Conference who confirmed it was "most likely the reason".
Like I said, the importance of unique, quality content isn't a new concept.

Just What is "Content Marketing"?

If you want the best literal explanation, this quote from Quora (found via Ann Smarty and Authority Labs) works very well:

"Content marketing is the umbrella of all techniques that are used to generate traffic, leads, online visibility, and brand awareness/fidelity."

If you want the one that really gets it, then this one from Sugar Rae says it best:

"Content marketing isn't a new strategy, it's merely a new word.
Why ... do we as an industry feel the need to invent a new buzzword for the same services every few years? We've been doing "content marketing" forever.

• Website = content
• Promotion of that website = marketing

Website + promotion of said website = content marketing."

And there you go. It is content that you put on your website and promote. That can be text, video, infographics, images, whatever you think of and put on your site. When you release it as part of your site marketed materials, then it is "content marketing".
It's really that simple. Again, it's not new, it's just a new buzzword.

Now that we have that straightened out, what does content marketing have to do with Penguin, SEO, future penalties, and you?
Content marketing is not the new SEO. It is SEO and so are a lot of other things.

It's All SEO Now

One client's site I recently reviewed was brilliant. The company had never bought a link, was completely legit, and worked feverishly on their content marketing – yet they had 16 warnings and penalties. Why? Because while content is great and certainly a very important part of any SEO strategy, it isn't all or even most of what you need to be concerned about when thinking about the algorithm.

Taking Your Eyes Off The Ball

So while you were spending all that time concentrating on your content marketing, what were you doing about making sure you met the rest of the 200+ points on the algorithm? What about the other things that Penguin was meant to control?
How is your internal linking? Your anchor text either coming in or internally?
How about where your sites are linking externally? Where are you linking to and are you linking to other sites you own? (triangulation - crosslinking)
What about the other changes Google announced are coming this summer (which I will just term, the "no one is home" penalties for lack of a better term)? You know, like spam comment in your forums or blogs? Or your page speed and usability?
How about your page crawls? Sitemaps? Are you showing Google no one is at the helm while you spend all your time focused on cultivating the latest viral video or super infographic?
Starting to see the issue?
Content marketing isn't separate from SEO and isn't the new SEO. It doesn't replace SEO. It is SEO just like all the other items mentioned are SEO.

SEO isn't just search engine optimization anymore. It is, as Cutts suggested a little while back, search experience optimization and it covers everything on the website, either directly or relationally.
Once you realize that "content marketing" is just using good content practices and that you might have been neglecting the rest of your site SEO, what should you do?

12 Other Google Update Checks (Penguin Included)

1. Titles and Descriptions

Titles and descriptions still remain one of the most misunderstood items on any site and they are still as important as ever. Know what these mean and how to write each properly. Make sure you don't have duplicates, ones that are too long or over-optimized tags.

2. Anchor Text

Is your anchor text over-optimized with keywords? Are you using keywords when domain names should be used? What is the natural way someone would link to your site? This counts with inbound links as well as internally. Beware of over-optimized and overused keyword anchor text.

3. Links – Inbound & Outbound

Run a link check. How do your inbound links look? The threshold for spammy links was about 80 percent, it is now down to about 50 percent. That means 50 percent questionable links can keep your site or a page out of the index.
Know your link profile.
Using outbound links, make sure you are not sending out link juice on ad links, but still make sure you are doing some links offsite. Google doesn't like it when you hoard that link power all for yourself. Share with worthwhile sites, but never with ad links.

4. Links Cross or Triangulate

Sometimes by accident even, sites crosslink to other sites they own or partner with that site while sitting on the same IP addresses or C classes. Do you know if yours do? If they do, delink your sites or put rel=nofollow on those links, or Google may think you are attempting to put up a link network of your own.
Remember, Google can't discern intent, so the appearance of impropriety is all that you need to give yourself a penalty.

5. Page Speed

Google likes to say page speed is a small factor for websites and maybe for some industries this is the case, but in others our experience shows it isn't. This only makes sense. For Google, faster loading sites lower the load on Google's end, so take the page speed tool, check your site, and get it above a 90 percent if you can. That seems to be the magic threshold for most.

6. User-Generated Content Spam

User-generated content spam on your site is directly linked to a penalty now at Google. (Heard about Sprint's latest fiasco?)
It doesn't take a lot to indicate to Google "No One is Home" keeping an eye on things.
Make sure you have checked your blogs and comment areas for things like multiple https or for words such as "free shipping" with a database crawler or in Google with site:domain.com "words go here" and see, is someone scamming you?
Note: If the spammers are very good you may not be able to see it without a Google search.

7. Redirects

Get a tool like Screaming Frog and check your site pages for redirects then make sure those redirected pages have a 301 permanent redirect, which tells Google the page has been permanently moved and it should keep following it.
It's rare you need a different type of page redirect and if you do, then remove the page from the index with a noindex tag in the header. (There are rare cases where this won't be the case, this is just the general rule.)
Also make sure you have your canonicals in place and that they are correct. This should go without saying, but not all sites do it.

8. Over-Optimization on Non-Content Items

A common type of over-optimization happens in the navigation, the header or footer.
This is where someone either adds a keyword to every (or almost every) word to try to rank for the term or where someone adds an overabundance of header or footer links to "help" a site position for known keywords. This won't help and is likely to give the site a penalty.

9. Alt Attributes

How are you using the alt attribute on your images? Don't stuff keywords into this text. Using good alt text, especially when images are replacing text in links, can be very good for a site. In fact, Google will treat this alt text as actual text in these cases.
Go to http://webaim.org to learn the rules for "alt text" content generation.

10. Ad Issues

Google doesn't like it when a site seems to only be there to support the ads on it, so an overabundance of above the fold ads can cause the site to receive a penalty.
What is too much? Google is a little obtuse about this, but find out what is above the fold for your screen size (not your screen, but the site screen size), then hold up a post it note, if it takes up more space than the note, it is probably too large.

11. Crawl Issues

When is the last time you got into your Webmaster Tools and checked how your crawls were going? How is your crawl rate? Are the spiders having any crawl issues?
We once had a client who had 28k crawl errors. These will affect your site strength and authority with the "No One Is Home" devaluations. So keep an eye on your crawl rate and if it is not crawling well, find out why as quickly as possible and fix it!

12. Malware or Rogue Sites

For the most part, we're fortunate that Google will email us and tell you that you have malware on your site – but be careful: this isn't always the case. Periodically you want to do a search for your site, see if you trigger malware warnings in a site search or mobile, then check your analytics to make sure no one is running anything untoward on your site like say a rogue Viagra site. If you want to see how prevalent this is, go to Google search and put in ".gov" Viagra.
Not only can these sites be doing things on your site that could be causing you "hack" issues, but also sending links to their pages on your site causing your link profile to be damaged.

What Else?

This was just a partial list to get you started. We haven't touched authorship, structured data, URL construction or a whole host of things you should be doing these are just some things you need to be checking, but hopefully you get an idea that myopic SEO is not SEO at all.

If you haven't been doing much more than content marketing and thought there was something called the "new SEO" and the "old SEO" was dead, my best advice is with the arrival of Penguin 2.0 and several other changes still on the horizon, is to conduct a site audit.
This is going to be the summer of change on Google, and this article has only touched on some of the items known to be part of the Penguin and Panda algorithms and the coming attractions. Don't get caught with your proverbial pants down, wondering, what happened?
With SEO proactive is always better than reactive, because only a small percentage of sites hit by the first Penguin have ever fully recovered. If (or when) your site gets hit, sometimes all you can do is start again.

How to Train a Link Builder From Scratch

Over the past few years I've helped train more than 60 link builders, almost all of whom didn't know the first thing about building links. Most of them had very little, if any, SEO knowledge either. That was our intention though, as we have a specific way of doing things.
Although having more experienced people could provide some great new ideas and proven tactics, sometimes training people from scratch is better because they have no preconceived notions.
From what I've learned with my link builders, there are a few signs that someone will be fantastic at the job:

• Excellent written and interpersonal communication skills.
• Curiosity about anything and everything.
• Awesome organizational skills.
• Creative mind.
• A really, really hard work ethic.
• The ability to understand why we build links.
• Willingness to try new techniques and listen to feedback.

The things that are red flags to me? A person who is easily frustrated and complains early on that link building is too hard.

Link building is hard. It's one of the most tedious things I've ever done in my SEO career and if you're going to get upset and give up easily, I don't see you having a big future in link building.

Why Build Links?

While I could argue that we could train a link builder to be successful without fully explaining much about why people build links, it's ridiculous not to give your link builders the knowledge of why links matter. The more they know, the better they'll perform.
However, in a few cases, some link builders almost got too overwhelmed with thinking about the potential SEO benefits and implications of what they were doing. While they did build some great links, they also overthought things to the extent that they weren't as efficient as they needed to be.

Still, I don't enjoy doing something when I'm not told why I should be doing it. Giving your link builders the respect of explaining why their efforts matter is critical, especially if you want them to enjoy what they do.

How to Look at a Site's Backlinks

There are a lot of free link check tools, and some paid ones have free versions or trials. Have your link builders find one that they like and that fits your budget.
Google and Bing also report inbound links in their respective Webmaster Tools consoles, but they don't show nearly as many as a proper link tool will.
Link builders need to be trained on how to run at least a basic report so they can see a site's backlinks, look at the anchor text and metrics, etc.
Link builders need to know how to distinguish between number of links total and unique linking domains, too. That has been an area of confusion both to clients and link builders starting out, so take a look at where you can find that information in the tools that I list below.
My usual roster of backlink tools include the following:
Ahrefs

Majestic SEO

Open Site Explorer

Notice how the counts are different from tool to tool? That's because each tool uses its own database.

How to Find Contact Information

There are some cases where a new link builder will find a great site but it's almost impossible to find the contact information. When that happens, here's what to do:

1. Search inside the site for @url.com. For example, you could search for "@example.com"
2. Search for site with @url.com. Example: site:example.com "@example.com" and this brings up the info@example.com email contact in the results.
3. Check the About page or Contact page. If there is not an email address listed, view the source code and search for "@url.com" there.
4. Check whois. This will usually list the email address of the person who registered the domain.
5. Search the site for "email me", "my address", "email address", etc. (e.g., "email me" site:example.com)
6. (last resort)
   • Ping the site to get the IP address. 
   • http://webhosting.info/ go here and slap the IP address into the search box and choose IP Address. Note: do not use the top box, which is for searching the web. Hit the tiny Go button.
   • You'll see a list of other websites hosted on the same IP. Click on a few and see if you can find contact info on a few to see if any look related.  It probably won't work for many cases but if you're dealing with a casino site, can't find info, and do this…if you see 6 other casino sites listed, maybe one of them will be your guy.

How to Write Code for a Link

Sounds simple but you'd be amazed at how many webmasters don't know how to write code for a link. Make sure link builders know how to write code for both text and image links.

• Text link code example:  < a href="http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2285837/Broken-Link-Building-How-to-Find-Thousands-of-Broken-Link-Opportunities-at-a-Time" title="Broken Link Building: How to Find Thousands of Broken Link Opportunities at a Time">Broken Link Building: How to Find Thousands of Broken Link Opportunities at a Time < /a>
• Image link code example:  < a title="Broken Link Building: How to Find Thousands of Broken Link Opportunities at a Time" class="ukn-article-image" href="http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2285837/Broken-Link-Building-How-to-Find-Thousands-of-Broken-Link-Opportunities-at-a-Time"> < img src="http://cms.searchenginewatch.com/IMG/525/266525/broken-links-320x198.jpg" alt=""/> < /a>

How to Check Code

Following on the heels of knowing how to write very basic code, it's critical to know how to check code for times when a webmaster tries to give you a link and blows up the page. (Yes, it happens. Quotes are left out, usually.) It's also important to know how to do the following:

• Read a robots.txt file (and make sure the page their link is on won't be blocked.) A robots syntax checker is always handy but link builders should be able to read these files and understand what they mean. There are tools that can create the correct robots.txt file for you, so if you're new to this, they're pretty useful. I'd recommend http://www.mcanerin.com/EN/search-engine/robots-txt.asp. A very useful summary of robots.txt is http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html, which gives you the kiss of death for robots:
  User-agent: *
  Disallow: /
  This code will prevent bots from accessing your site and I've seen it "leftover" from code changes enough that it's one of the first things I look for if anything seems to be going wrong. 
• Check for nofollows (in the code…not just through a nofollow plugin) which will look something like  < a href="http://www.cnn.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">CNN < /a>.
• Look up anything else in the code that might be important: nowadays you'll see all sorts of code in links, most of it harmless. It's just important to know what it all means so that you don't needlessly hassle webmasters to make changes. If you see something you don't recognize, slap it into a search engine and see what it does. One exceptionally good reference is http://www.w3schools.com/.

How to Evaluate a Site

• Whatever metrics you think are important, you need to train a link builder on where to look for them and what they mean. Ahrefs has a URL Rank and an Ahrefs Domain Rank, both of which will appear when you run a basic link report. Open Site Explorer has Domain Authority and Page Authority, both of which also appear when you run a basic link report. Majestic uses Citation Flow and Trust Flow metrics, and as with the others, they're shown for any basic report. You can see where to find these metrics in the images listed in the backlink tool section a few sections up.
• Quick ways to see if a site/page has problems: Always always always check to make sure the site you want to work with is indexed in Google by doing a simple site:url.com search in Google. If it's not, a link builder should be taught that this is a sign of a serious problem but he or she does need to know how to see what the problem is. Is the site blocked in the robots.txt file, accidentally, perhaps? If that's not the case and the site isn't in the Google index, it's an indication that the site has been penalized in some way. Also link builders should be taught that there are a few things that can indicate the need for further digging:
• Toolbar PR of site seems too high or low for the age of the site and its backlink profile. If you see a site with a homepage TBPR of 5 and you can only find 2 backlinks, something's not right. If you see a site that has 10k backlinks, is 6 years old, and has a TBPR of 0, again, something's off. Since TBPR is updated infrequently, this could be a sign that the site you're looking at has recently been penalized but the TBPR has not been updated yet.

• Site doesn't load properly or reliably. Sites that take ages to load can see less frequent bot visits which causes their content to take longer to get indexed. 
• The SERP snippet shown is full of irrelevant or spammy content that doesn't match the site. This can be a sign that the site has been hacked or injected with some form of malware. Just search for something like "cialis online" and you should see what I mean but here's an example:

How to Conduct Discovery

Finding linking partners can be the best and worst parts of link building. It's simple enough to type in a related keyword to Google and dig through the resulting SERPs, but that's a very inefficient method. While you will hopefully find relevant sites, you may run into the issue of finding the same exact sites that everyone else in your niche is contacting, lessening your chances of getting a good link.
Discovery can be conducted differently depending upon your goal, too:

Broken link building
The goal of this is to find sites that link to 404 pages on other sites that are in your niche, contact them, point them to your own site, and get a link for your trouble. It can be very time-consuming but if you find a few great sites that have outdated links and you can convert them to your own site, you can score some major link power.
Garrett French wrote a great piece on broken link building, so I'd suggest reading that and familiarizing your link builders with the method. The hardest part is finding sites that do have outdated links of course, but you can use some of the tips in the section on Resource lists below to help you get started.
Resource lists
These can be very spammy so be careful and make sure that a link builder understands the difference between a good resource list and a bad one. A bad one will generally have links to irrelevant and unrelated sites and will seemingly exist for no purpose other than to host links. A good one will generally have its own backlinks and will rank well and have a decent Toolbar PageRank.
A lot of good resources will be on .edu sites but you'll find some great ones on any TLD so don't ignore the rest of them. Searches like this should help a link builder find good resource lists:

inurl:.edu medicine resources inurl:.edu medicine "resource list" medicine resources

Link builders should be trained on how to ask to be included in a list like this…politely. Garrett French (yes again) also wrote a piece about resource pages a couple of years ago so I'd suggest bookmarking that one.
Directory submissions
These can also be spammy and potentially dangerous as some free directories will give a listing to anyone at all. Avoid those (and make sure the directory is actually indexed in Google.) Generally if there's no review process, I'd avoid it.
Guest blogging potentials
While the future of this is uncertain, link builders need to know how to look for quality guest posting opportunities, write an outreach letter, and compose a guest post that will get published. Since guest posting is so popular right now, many sites simply list information about it, negating the need for intensive discovery using terms like "guest post accepted" and "guest bloggers welcome."
Asking for a link/paying for a link
However you plan to get the link, it's important to train your link builders to use creative discovery and not just robotically type in one or two keywords, expecting to find amazing and relevant sites that are going to be thrilled to give them a link. (We actually had a link builder who would add curse words to his keyword searches because he found some amazing sites that way.)
Searching in search engines vs. other methods
The main difference in using search engines vs. social media is that you'll usually find new content faster through social, and depending upon who you're following and who they're following/retweeting, you'll see a lot of content that you might not have found in the search engines.
I'd suggest training link builders to use both methods for discovery and switch off, as that can help avoid burnout. There are some great social media tools that can help with this, and I especially like IceRocket as they have a good "Search All" functionality that gives you recent results from the blogosphere, Facebook, and Twitter.

How to Write a Great Outreach Email

There are some wonderful articles out there that give examples of effective outreach emails but the principles are the same:

• Be nice.
• Be engaging.
• State your case without being too blunt or going on for 18 paragraphs.

Many popular sites get loads of emails. Link builders should be trained on how to make theirs stand out (and not get slapped into the spam folder.) For a great recent post on this topic, see Simon Penson's piece.

How to Create Great Content

This is so much harder than almost anything else. Great content isn't just about great writing, and you can spend ages on a post and have it go nowhere.
It's tough to learn what works for different industries and target markets. Unless you spend time trying to find out what works, you'll never have much success, so it's important that link builders spend lots of times not only writing, but reading what other successful writers are producing.

How to Promote Content

I cannot find a better representation of the best way to socialize content that Rae Hoffman's which lists the steps to take. I've referenced this in a presentation and in posts, and I truly think it's the best. If link builders are producing content, they need to know how to promote it, period.

Keeping Up With Link Building

This could end up being one of the most critical parts of a link builder's job. Make sure they read articles about link building and stay informed about the industry as much as possible, as link builders should never stop learning.
It's important to be open to new ideas and to give up old ones at times, and keeping up to date on what others are doing successfully, trying your own methods, and thinking concretely and creatively about their job ups the chance that they'll continue to enjoy their work.
A link builder who hates what he does is not a link builder that will do the best job. Most big industry sites have a link column but there are loads of good blogs that talk about link building regularly.
I'd also recommend that a link builder follow some of the industry leaders on Twitter as not everyone writes about links but you will pick up some awesome tips from Twitter. Here are a few Twitter lists to get you started:

• https://twitter.com/ericward/linkbuildingexperts/members
• https://twitter.com/brentbaltzer/link-building-experts
• https://twitter.com/martinclinton/link-peeps
• https://twitter.com/sewatch/sew-contributors

Summary

Make sure that you fully bring out the creative potential in your link builders when you train them, and make a big effort to brainstorm and listen to them. I've been involved with links for years and I still learn from even my newest link builders.
Brainstorming sessions where management isn't present might lead to more creative ideas that otherwise might be dismissed. Some of those ideas will be impossible, if not fairly absurd, but with some effort just maybe they could be turned into more workable ones.

Always make sure that you're open to questions and be willing to let them have a bit of freedom, no matter what you're doing.

12 Ways to Optimize Press Releases & Avoid Google Penalties

Google's most recent update to their defintions of link schemes sent shockwaves through the SEO and online PR world; a real downer to link building strategists.
It's true: the world's largest search engine called links in press releases "unnatural" and is mandating nofollowing them. What does this mean to organizations using press releases to gain digital visibility in search and social?
For brands publishing a press release or an article on your site and distributing it through a paid wire service, such as PR Newswire, Business Wire, Marketwire or through an article site, you must first make sure to nofollow the links if those links are "optimized anchor text."

Is This a Big SEO Deal? Yes. No. Maybe.

Google has been slowly squeezing the SEO life out of press releases for a while now.
"In 2006 online press releases were amazing for SEO. In 2013? Not so much," said Joe Laratro, SEO expert and PubCon lead moderator "Online press releases have had very little value in terms of links and content over the past few years – I would say it had been steadily declining. However, I still thought it was a good part of a large organic link building strategy until the new guideline changes."
But what about the anchor text links in past press releases? Will the ghost of Google past haunt companies with surprising penalties in the future? Will brands have to back track to older press releases to protect themselves.
"The real concern for the SEO industry right now should be backdated enforcement. If this is now considered a 'penalizable' tactic, how are companies that have been using this tactic for over a decade going to deal with the old content and links?" Laratro asked. "How quickly can the online newswires update their systems to support the rel nofollow? In my opinion this will have a fairly large effect on the online paid newswire release business."
Many more SEO industry experts agree. The clean up work with old press release content that's been spinning links across the web for years is a big SEO issue.
"There are press releases archived across the web that you will have no control over – how do you clean that up?" asked Bruce Clay, president of Bruce Clay Inc. "Even if press release distribution companies do something to address their archives, like noindexing old pages (and this is a big if), you're still looking at the larger problem of pruning links on the many sites that have republished those press releases."

Don't Optimize Links, Do... What?

Organizations are now left wondering what they can do with press releases past, present, and future.
"If a client has real newsworthy content, an online press release is worth doing, but I would be very careful with the links at the moment, at least until the rel=nofollow options are live," Laratro said. "Companies should still include one or two links in order to get the reader over to the website or blog. This may cause a shift back to more traditional types of PR work – not necessarily a bad thing."

The Ghost of Press Release Past

The first press release was written in 1906 by Ivy Lee and actually published verbatim in the New York Times. It wasn't until the mid-1990s that wire services began releasing news direct to consumers vis the Internet. Since then, journalists have relied on press releases to help track company news and come up with story angles and sources.
Today the digital press release reaches beyond the journalist and carries company news direct to customers, prospects, bloggers, and more. The press release lifeline streams through the veins of search engines and flows into social media.
Google might have killed the link juice, but press releases are still alive and kicking according to media experts.

"While most of the companies using PR Newswire (and our competitors) are doing so to build awareness of their messages, garner media pick up and to deliver their messaging straight to their target audiences, there is a contingent that are issuing press releases for the sole purpose of generating inbound links, and this is the practice Google is discouraging," said Sarah Skerik, vice president, content marketing, PR Newswire//MultiVu. "This is not an indictment of PR."

The Digital Path of a Press Release: It's About Content Discovery

Press releases are more than a simple SEO tool. Press release content helps reach journalists, influencers, and consumers.
The AP, Dow Jones, Reuters, Bloomberg, and thousands of other major newsrooms worldwide have feeds of press releases piped directly into their editorial systems. And almost 8,000 websites, including some of the world's largest news sites, publish stories as a result of wire services such as PR Newswire.
Let's not forget the social media intersection of press releases. They help fuel the content fire and drive social interaction, sharing, and engagement – and are the launching pad for company news. Taking a drive off main street, press releases are part of the Wall Street creed, meeting financial disclosure.
In 140 characters or less: Press releases drive broad discovery of your news message in search and social.
"None of this has anything to do with link building and SEO," Skerik said. "We believe the value press release distribution provides is in discovery, not links. Driving messages deep into audiences and generating authentic reads, clicks and visibility among relevant audiences and social shares – that's where press releases add value."
Hybrid search industry vet Greg Jarboe, president and founder of SEO-PR, specializes in both PR and SEO and zeroed in on the fact that the PR industry still hasn't fully embraced the concept of public relations optimization, so they might not realize the missing link.
"This is a big SEO deal," Jarboe said. "And it would also be a big deal for PR, if more public relations people were optimizing their press releases. But most of them still aren't."
Less than 15 percent of press releases in corporate newsrooms and posted on the wire services are optimized for search, according to a PressFeed Online Newsroom Survey.

12 Things You Can Do With Digital Press Releases

1. Adding links still helps drive traffic to a website. "Driving traffic is one of the primary objectives of website SEO, according to the SEMPO State of Search Report, published by Econsultancy. It can be one of the important objectives of press release SEO, too," Jarboe said.
2. Improve the user experience.
3. Increase visibility in search and social.
4. Use press releases as inroads to more information and details on a blog or website.
5. Spark a story idea and attract a journalist or blogger to do a larger story that might gain a natural link.
6. Educate and inform your audience.
7. Build relationships.
8. Report company news or industry data.
9. Use images and video to increase pageviews and attention.
10. Embed video and multimedia.
11. Create an infographic version of press release tell your story.
12. Broaden your distribution and use social networks to report news – both paid and organic.

5 Things You Can't Do With Press Releases

1. Generate inbound links.
2. Add link juice to your SEO campaign.
3. Use press releases as part of your link building strategy.
4. Optimized anchor text links, Google now says this equates to unnatural links.
5. Keyword stuffing.

Summary

Google may have taken away the anchor text links in press releases (and guest posts and articles), but there is still room for press release optimization opportunities like in any other digital content using:

• Optimized keywords.
• Headlines.
• Title.
• Description. 
• Hashtags.
• Photos.
• Videos.
• Social media messaging.

Gaming the system is yesterday's news. Today's press releases still work the natural, social, and mobile way of tomorrow.

Small Business SEO Tactics: Risk vs. Security

With content marketing gaining momentum in 2013, there are many cries that the "new" SEO is really no different from old SEO, it's just better quality and en vogue. This may be true, but there's no denying that Google has made several significant changes to their algorithm in 2013 and, most recently, updated their Webmaster Guidelines.
SEO professionals react to Google's statements as the financial markets react to Ben Bernanke. Why? Because the subtleties and innuendoes in what Google communicates (or doesn't communicate) are interpreted by many as signals of future policy direction. How and why Google has Federal Reserve-like influence over online marketing is another discussion altogether.

How Should Small Business React to Recent Events?

That depends. If a small business is using low-quality SEO tactics from several years ago, there is cause for concern. Many approaches that once borderline are clearly over the line now.
Even small businesses that have been keeping up on SEO changes should pay close attention to the recent changes.

• Link Buying and Automated Content Creation is Still Bad: There is no real news here. Businesses still doing these things know the risks at this point. Google has recently added that advertorials will be viewed as paid links, and will be devalued.
• Avoid Money Term Anchor Text in Press Releases: While the official guidelines now say to avoid "Links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases distributed on other sites," this has led to confusion and debate. Google suggests nofollowing all links to be 100 percent safe. For more on this, see 12 Ways to Optimize Press Releases & Avoid Google Penalties.
• Linking Schemes Are Bad: The expansion of Google's definition of link schemes is most noteworthy. Whereas Google has previously left this discussion fairly vague, they have now given specific examples such as excessive link exchanges, large scale article marketing, and low-quality bookmark sites. This justifies previous manual actions such as those against BuildMyRank and serves as a warning to companies still selling low-quality link placements.

What is also interesting here is the couching of each of these terms. Notice the descriptors:

• Excessive
• Large-scale
• Low-quality

Google knows that not all article marketing is bad. With more than 166 million active domains on the Internet, good content often goes unnoticed if it isn't well marketed.
Google also knows that it's natural for business partners to link to each other. Many social bookmarking sites have legitimate audience views and share valuable information. Yet, all three of these categories have also seen widespread abuse, with content manufactured specifically for the purpose of ranking.

Small Businesses Seek More Security

Even with the new guidelines, many wish that Google could be even more specific. Imagine them saying 10 articles in a month is OK, but 40 is too many. Or perhaps a Matt Cutts video explaining that five guest blog posts a month is OK, but 20 is too many.
But Google needs to protect their secret sauce like Coca-Cola protects their recipe, so this won't happen. In fact, I imagine that Google feels quite satisfied with the explicit direction they are now giving.

Is Link Building a Dirty Word?

Some may feel that the term link building is now a negative term, but this can't be. Google still ranks their output largely on links.
Popular SEO columns discuss how to hire and train link builders. What is clear is that the acceptable methods of link building are definitely changing.

SEO Flight to Quality

To continue the financial market metaphor, SEO is currently in a flight to quality. This is what most columnists and bloggers mean by the "new" SEO.
Sure, the new SEO is similar to the old SEO, but there is now a greater emphasis on quality. Google is highlighting concepts such as links intended to manipulate PageRank and links that aren't editorial votes given by choice. While it is hard to imagine reliable signals for such mushy constructs, it is smart to assume Google has them, or will shortly.

Conclusions

Small businesses who want to stay in good graces with Google need to heed the warnings and start their SEO flight to quality. This doesn't mean SEO has fundamentally changed.

Businesses should still produce relevant articles and newsworthy press releases, and can use bookmarks as a method for sharing. Infographics and video content are excellent for viral spread. But businesses now have been warned to stay away from excessive, large-scale and low-quality – and this will be a change for many who are still hanging on to old SEO tactics.

Time for a New Definition of SEO

The way we market, sell and deliver SEO services has undoubtedly changed. Google's algorithm updates have made content marketing and social media the core of a strong organic search strategy. So while the practice of SEO evolves, the definition of SEO ought to evolve as well.
Other digital marketing tactics such as email marketing, paid search and search retargeting have very clear, undisputed definitions. The definition of SEO, on the other hand, seems to be just as unclear as the practice itself.

Current Definitions of SEO

Even when you Google the phrase, "definition of SEO", nothing really concrete is returned.
Wikipedia's official definition is, "the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page."
Search engine optimization is about way more than this.
Webopedia's definition is, "a methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of a search engine (SERP) -- including Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines."
SEO is more than this too.

Is Web Presence Optimization the Evolution of SEO?

So what is an accurate description of SEO given the changes to the industry?

Web presence optimization is an all-encompassing approach to optimizing an entire web presence for organic search including the website, social channels, blogs, articles and press releases. Where strategies, techniques, and tactics are still used, but content marketing and social media are strongly incorporated.

What's Your Definition of SEO?

Here are some new definitions of SEO to consider, and I invite you to comment below with your own.

1. SEO is the ongoing process of uncovering and discovering non-branded keywords that are driving organic search traffic and conversions, then publishing content optimized for those keywords.
2. SEO is the process of producing optimized content that is discoverable by the target audience as they progress through the buying cycle.
3. SEO is about a prospect discovering a brand's content and web presence through search and social, and the owner of that content being able to understand who consumed the content and the impact of the content across the organization.
4. SEO is the outcome of a content marketing strategy that makes use of highly converting keywords that your target audience is searching on.
5. SEO is the process of enhancing the visibility of a brand's web presence in organic search.

SEO in the digital marketing mix is here to stay. Standardizing a definition of SEO will help buyers better understand the importance of it, the reason for committing to it, and the short- and long-term impact an SEO strategy has on a web presence.

Home

Time for a New Definition of SEO

The way we market, sell and deliver SEO services has undoubtedly changed. Google's algorithm updates have made content marketing and social media the core of a strong organic search strategy. So while the practice of SEO evolves, the definition of SEO ought to evolve as well. View.....

Small Business SEO Tactics: Risk vs. Security

With content marketing gaining momentum in 2013, there are many cries that the "new" SEO is really no different from old SEO, it's just better quality and en vogue. This may be true, but there's no denying that Google has made several significant changes to their algorithm in 2013 and, most recently, updated their Webmaster Guidelines. View.....

12 Ways to Optimize Press Releases & Avoid Google Penalties

Google's most recent update to their defintions of link schemes sent shockwaves through the SEO and online PR world; a real downer to link building strategists.
It's true: the world's largest search engine called links in press releases "unnatural" and is mandating nofollowing them. What does this mean to organizations using press releases to gain digital visibility in search and social?View.....

How to Train a Link Builder From Scratch

Over the past few years I've helped train more than 60 link builders, almost all of whom didn't know the first thing about building links. Most of them had very little, if any, SEO knowledge either. That was our intention though, as we have a specific way of doing things.
Although having more experienced people could provide some great new ideas and proven tactics, sometimes training people from scratch is better because they have no preconceived notions.
From what I've learned with my link builders, there are a few signs that someone will be fantastic at the job:
View.....

Google Webmaster Tools Updates in 2011

 We have 31 major Google webmaster tools updates in 2011 till now. Following are the list of updates were live by Sep, 2011. Following are the details:

1.  Better music snippets with rich experience in Google Search - Aug 18th
2. Sitelinks look and feel changed in Google Search - Aug 16th
3. Google Panda algorithm rolled out to additional language sites - Aug 12th
4. New videos on Google webmaster Youtube Channel - Aug 09th
5. Better reporting for webspam  - Aug 08th
6. New feature Fetch Googlebot in webmaster tools - Aug 03rd
7. Speed up website paid Service by Google in future - Jul 28th
8. Better way to handle URLs with parameters - Jul 22nd
9. Valid metrics beyond pagerank - Jun 30th
10. Google +1 Stats on Webmaster Tools & Google Analytics - June 28th
11. rel="canonical" support now in HTTP Headers - Jun 17th
12. New Instant Pages from Google - Jun 14th
13. Webmaster Tools search keywords & impressions info in GA - June 8th
14. Authors Pictures on web search with markup - Jun 7th
15. Search engines come together for richer web with schema.org - Jun 02nd
16. Check your website instant preview in Google Webmastertools - May 18th 2011
17. Better way to Remove URLS from search Engine Results - May 17th 2011
18. Suggestions to build high quality sites in the web - May 6th 2011
19. Google is supporting flash in instant previews - May 6th 2011
20. Wordpress Plugin for Google Webmaster tools verification - Apr 19th 2011
21. New Methods to verify websites in Google Webmaster tools - Apr 21st 2011
22. Google Panda Update goes Global for English Users - Apr 11th, 2011
23. Now Pagespeed online with Mobile Support - Mar 31st, 2011
24. Detecting Mobile User Agent - Mar 30th, 2011
25. Introducing Google Social +1 button - Mar 28th, 2011
26. Video Sitemaps Help - Mar 24th, 2011 
27. Google Panda / Farmer Update - Feb 24th, 2011
28. Making Websites Mobile Friendly - Feb 22nd, 2011
29. Advanced features in Webmaster tools with analytics data - Feb 18th, 2011
30. Single Login for Analytics and Webmaster Tools -  Feb 07, 2011
31. Webmaster Tools Search Queries Update - Feb 03, 2011

29. Advanced features in Webmaster tools with analytics data:

Two weeks before Webmaster tools team has released a feature to merge analytics data with Webmaster tools data. As we expected Google team started releasing more advanced features by combining data of GA and GWT.

Now we can differentiate search queries information based on search type, location and impressions vs clicks. Have a look at above screen shot for clear understanding. This kind of data segmentation will help SEO team for better understanding about search queries, so that they can deliver quality results.

30. Analytics to Webmaster Tools -  Feb 07, 2011

Another update from webmaster team that linking Google analytics to webmaster tools. Many SEO’s have a common questions that “Is it a good idea?”. Yes, it is. Linking analytics to webmaster tools will give more accurate impressions vs clicks count in webmaster tools. It helps SEO professionals to find out the best keywords which are converting well in delivering results.

In future we can expect many changes in webmaster tools relevant to analytics data. We might see like updating current sections and including new sections in webmaster tools. Let us see the future changes in webmaster tools dashboard.

Official Source: Analytics to Webmaster Tools

31. Webmaster Tools Search Queries Update - Feb 03, 2011

Google webmaster team has updated a feature in search queries section based on several webmasters feedback. Before Feb 02, 2011 webmasters are able to see the impressions count in two or three digits. After Feb 03, 2011 onwards count will be shown in one to two digits.

For example instead of impressions count 74,000 it will show 75000, instead of 146,000 it will show 150,000. Google team said that “reason behind this update to represent numbers nicely and to decrease the confusion to webmasters”. Internal ranking and impression counting systems are same, only the outer display will change.

Official Source:  Search Queries Update