The Art Of SEO - The Science Of PPC

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12 Steps to End Link Buying Addiction

I never have personally bought links or even assisted my clients in doing so, but I have had numerous occasions to counsel clients who are trying to break the link buying habit. Some are doing it out of principle while others have unfortunately bottomed out, having allowed their link buying addiction to interfere with their relationship with the SERP god. For those of you in a similar predicament, I offer the 12 steps to end your link buying addiction.

Step 1 – Admit that you powerless over your addiction to chasing rank on Google- that your link portfolio had become unmanageable.
Step 2 – Come to believe that a Power greater than yourself could restore your rankings.
Step 3 – Make a decision to turn your will and you life over to the care of God as you understand God.
Step 4 – Make a searching and fearless inventory of your past abuses.
Step 5 – Admitted to Google, to yourself and to your clients the exact nature of your wrongs.
Step 6 – Affirm that you are entirely ready to have Google remove all these backlinks from your profile.
Step 7 – Humbly asked Google to remove your penalties.
Step 8 – Make a list of all the links you have purchased and became willing to send take down requests to all of them.
Step 9 – Make direct amends to clients wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Step 10 – Continue to take personal inventory and when you being a craphat, promptly admitted it.
Step 11 – Seek through prayer and meditation to improve your conscious contact with Google as we understood Google, praying only for knowledge of Google’s algorithm for us and the power to adjust accordingly.
Step 12 – Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, try to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all your affairs.

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John Dvorak Is The Snake Oil Salesman

John Dvorak recently joined the ranks of the so called experts who periodically attack the SEO profession after they FAIL on their first attempt. The reality is that search engine optimization offers tremendous ROI when done correctly, with long term goals and a solid strategy. The reality is also that SEO, at least competent, professional SEO, is an iterative process involving a lot of measurements and refinements along the way.

I have been involved with hundreds of SEO projects over the last 12 years. In the last three years, the difference between success and failure has gone from good keyword research, keyword mapping, site architecture, taxonomy and on page content with solid backlinks to good keyword research/mapping, information architecture, taxonomy, content, social components, a solid backlink structure PLUS execution, a nuanced approach to obtaining viral traction, and solid strategy. Even this doesn’t guarantee results.

Despite all of my experience and some very solid content, not all of my projects produce top rankings for the most competitive keywords. No SEO expert can promise you will rank #1 for “Credit Cards” . What does all this have to do with John Dvorak and his experience with SEO? Anyone can read a few pop-science medical articles and tell you what drugs to take to treat an illness. Thanks to the miracle of the internet, anyone can also get those drugs delivered to their door without real medical expertise. The results will vary: some patients will live, some will die and others will actually improve.

Likewise, anyone can read some SEO advice on on the web, modify their taxonomy and title tags and think they have optimized their site. Some sites will live, some will get banned and others will see an increase in traffic. None of these results, however, should be mistaken for a professional diagnosis along with a prescription for a successful SEO approach.

Finally, good SEO is like physical fitness. It takes a while to get in shape, it requires a regular commitment to diet and exercise to maintain and the more you do it, the easier becomes.

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Ultimate SEO Toolbar

As much as I avoid hyperbolic marketing speak like Ultimately and Amazing, nothing else can describe SEO Book’s new SEO Toolbar for Firefox. Regular readers already know that I appreciate/respect Aaron’s comments about online marketing, SEO, and occasional social commentary, but it is time that I add generosity to that list of accolades, because this is a 100% free tool.

From shortcuts to all the best keyword research tools to links into subscription services like Quantcast, Compete and SEMRush, this toolbar has an entire SEO education build into learning to use all of its features. It is incredibly useful for SEO veterans and essential for anyone who is trying to make money online.

Particularly useful is the integration with Majestic SEO link and anchor text data base, which was added to SEO For Firefox in December.

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When Do You Use A 302?

SEOs have been taught that the knee jerk reaction is to use a 301 whenever you want to redirect. Sometimes, the correct answer is not 301; the answer should be 302 (or even 304 or 307). I am speaking on this topic at SMX West in February and I am looking for suggestions/examples of times when members have used other types of redirects to achieve the desired effect. Here are the examples I have already:

• When you want to display a shorter URL but the content lives deep inside within the information architecture.
• Geo-local redirection without changing the ranking for the underlying page.
• Sales, seasonal, and events related listings that keep changing…where you want the core page to rank, but want to be able to send people to an updated section.
• When some of your related content lives in a sub-domain and you want to maintain your information hierarchy.
• When you are calling legacy applications or have an application with parameters contained in the URL and you want to create search friendly URLs.
• To avoid canonical confusion when the page or application is moved to the https layer (it is unlikely you will get users to link properly to a secure page)
• When you are calling a 3rd party shopping cart and don’t want to display the URL in the code of the page.
• When you are calling an affiliate link within the target page. **

**Google quality raters have specific instructions to look for hidden/misleading redirects, so use with caution.

Thanks, Aaron, for suggestions 2 and 3!

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Search Marketing Expo Santa Clara

Jonah Stein will be presenting at SMX on the use of 302 redirects during the session:
301 Redirect, How Do I Love You? Let Me Count The Ways
Wednesday, February 11th 2009 from 4:30pm-5:45pm

SMX West is a three day event taking place at the Santa Clara Convention Center from Tuesday, February 10 – Thursday, February 12 2009.

If you are planning on attending,  please feel free to use the SMX Santa Clara discount coupon code of SMXspeaker  for $100 off the registration price.