| Recent
Articles |
Submit Your Blog To DMOZ
Everyone talks about getting their blog or website listed in the free Open Directory
Project, better known as DMOZ, but not everyone knows what to do about it. Here's
some help in navigaing the directory submission process...
Basics
Of Link Building
Quality, not quantity, should be the focus of building links, as presenters at
a session on the topic at SES Chicago discussed one of the fundamentals to improving
awareness and ranking of a site.
Revisiting The PR Licensing Debate
There's a debate in PR circles-a decades-old debate-that centers around whether
PR practitioners should be licensed. We can never be viewed as a real profession,
the argument goes, until we all measure up to the same tested standards...
Search Marketing: More Than Just Search
Nowadays, with everyone and their grandmothers creating websites, it can be difficult
for any one online business to gain attention. While some website owners have
followed the trend toward search engine optimization and better equipped their
websites to gain much needed traffic...
Blogs
Can Help eBay Affiliates
A lot of people write blogs and place affiliate links on their sites, and we have
a few suggestions to help make them work better. It's easy enough to create a
blog and toss some affiliate links into the blog's site template.
Blog
Links: Internal Page Link Benefits
High search engine rankings are important to most bloggers and website owners.
To achieve those page one search placements, a combination of interesting and
informative content along with many links to your blog are...
|
|
|
|
12.08.05
Linking
Strategies - The Search Engine Perspective
 By
Chris Richardson
One of the major session tracks during day 3 of the 2005 Chicago SES was devoted
the art and war of linking. In my last two articles, the SEO/SEM perspective towards
linking campaigns was discussed thoroughly. However, the final installment of
the linking sessions featured representatives of the all the major search engines.
Speaking at the Detlev Johnson-moderated track were Kaushal Kurapati of Ask Jeeves,
Charles Martin of Google, Tim Mayer of Yahoo, and Ramez Naam of MSN Search.
While the session was being billed as the Search Engine Q and A On Links,
the speakers each took turns giving a short presentation before they took questions
from the audience.
Admittedly, the audience questions consisted of the standard "should I engage
in a reciprocal linking campaign," which seems much like the content you come
across in the major SEO-related forums. However, while the search speakers did
not really reveal anything new, the went a long way in confirming the information
I delivered from the previous
linking
sessions.
Each speaker informed the audience to focus on producing quality content; using
solid, keyphrase-based words in a link's anchor text (as opposed to "Click Here");
avoiding link farms and purchasing links (a topic neither side, the SEO and the
search engine reps will never agree on); and making sure that you don't obsess
about backlinks.
Instead, and much like the SEO/SEM perspective, the search reps want site owners
to focus on producing quality content, which will help ensure these pages will
be linked to.
One piece of information I'm pleased to divulge has to do with image links. Both
sides of the search industry advise against using image links because the search
engines cannot follow them.
However, if you are going to use image links, both Kaushal Kurapati of Ask.com
and Greg Boser of WebGuerilla suggest including the link anchor text inside of
the images alt tag. This will allow the spiders to follow and credit these links.
Looking at these linking sessions as a whole, the main theme, at least from my
perspective, revolves around the production of quality content. By doing so, your
site can be viewed as an authority in the field being targeted, which will help
in the acquisition of passive links, something the engines seem to be placing
more value on as it is.
There is, however, more to discussed here. Because the session was on a time limit,
not all of the audience questions were answered. In order to accommodate the crowd,
the search engine reps hung out afterward and continued to answer questions.
As with past conferences, normally, the bulk of these audience members gravitate
to the Google rep, in this case, Charles Martin. After yesterday's session, I'd
say Martin has an idea of how the conference
life of Matt Cutts goes.
Because of the recent chaos caused by Google's notorious Jagger
update, I wanted to get Martin's thoughts about whether or not Google treats
links differently with a post-Jagger index and algorithm in place.
Martin stated that Jagger was a name provided by the search engine crowd, not
Google themselves. Concerning how Google weights and evaluates links in a post-Jagger
world, Martin answered yes and no. Some links are treated differently while some
are not.
About the Author:
Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews.
Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.
|
