Search Innovation: Yahoo Backlinks Theory

I've long used Yahoo to look over the backlinks showing to our site and clients websites as many SEO's have done over the years. I've noticed over these last few months that no follow links show up our business backlink search results. I'd noticed years before that our website URL would show up as a backlink in Yahoo results even though the link was not an active link on the page. Now with no follow links showing up my guess is there is some sort of link power in no follow links and non-active links on the page. No testing done as of yet as this is just a theory of sorts. Two of the no follow links we have to our business site are from high authority websites and show up in our Yahoo backlink results. I've long wondered if identifying text on the page or text without an active link had something to do with the overall score of the link popularity of the web page. It is an interesting concept since links are a major focus, but any SEO knows text on the page matters when it comes to optimization. It certainly would change the concept of no follow and how little those links are worth in marketers eyes.

Stonetemple blog: 15 Methods for Paid Link Detection

Stonetemple blog: Nice overview in this post on paid link detection:

15 Methods for Paid Link Detection

Firefox SearchStatus 1.20 - No Follow Link Tool

I downloaded the updated version of Firefox's extension SearchStatus 1.20 today. This version has a no follow highlighter which comes in handy. You turn on the no follow highlighter by right clicking the symbol next to the SearchStatus toolbar at the bottom of your web page and check it. Once the no follow is checked when you visit a page you can see which links are no follow links. Should be helpful for link builders. It also includes a keyword highlighter, number of indexed pages, meta tags source code and more:
SearchStatus 1.20 for Firefox

*While working with the SearchStatus tool I've noticed some buggy behavior, some of the no follows highlighted are showing false positives. Be aware of this in any case, in my situation it could be my use of multiple toolbars causing the problem, hard to say.

Search Engine Land Article: SEO Do's and Don'ts for Small Businesses

There is a well written two part series posted in Search Engine Land's "Small is Beautiful" column about SEO and small businesses, its a good read:

Part I
SEO "Don'ts": 20 Fatal Mistakes You Must Avoid To Succeed

Part II
21 Essential SEO Tips & Techniques

Threadwatch.org site: Threadwatch is closing...

At least thats what one of the latest posts at threadwatch.org says. I'm hoping someone steps up to take the site over and keeps it going. Its one of my daily resources for news, interesting threads and comments, some of which are not found in the SEM forums.

SEO Service Pricing

There is a post at SEOmoz that is pretty interesting on SEO pricing. I guess what startled me most was the $1k an hour price that the SEOMoz company charges. Now that's an hourly fee.

The other prices listed in the post are a good range of pricing for projects per hour. I really prefer pricing the project at a flat fee. I usually look at it as equal to an hourly rate if I break out the cost compared to the services rendered then add a little to cover unforeseen work costs that always come up. Still I prefer a flat fee for clients which seems to work best for our company.

SEO Pricing & Costs - What Should You Charge / How Much Should You Pay?

Corporate vs Small Businesses

I've been at the computer for a few hours this morning in SEOLand, checking SEM news and my regular research spots. I'm tired. Long week so far. You know, you wish it was Friday but its Thursday. You've got a new client you are working with and another client who needs a lot of extra attention, along with piles of work waiting for you. I'm not complaining though.

Working with small businesses can be a real challenge. I do prefer it to corporate SEM work, been there, done that. Seems that the higher up in the food chain the more difficult it is to get things done. Too many people to go through to get the ok to proceed. I've run into some corporate types who know just enough about SEM to think they know enough to tell you how to do things. And no, they usually don't know enough, just enough to cause problems with the project. If they are smart they listen, if they aren't they insist on what they want. Never ceases to amaze me when people hire you as the expert but do not put their trust in you.

Small businesses I find more reasonable overall. Yes, there is a lot of hand holding at times, more contact and more concerns but these folks are putting their income on the line in most cases, their business and its success reflects on them directly.

I work with small businesses because I like them. I like the idea that anyone can open a business and run it online with little funding and sheer determination. My parents both lived through and worked during the depression. Hard work. You find that happening with small business owners. It takes guts to believe you can be successful and take the challenge on your own. Its always interesting to me to see small businesses grow and succeed over time.

Social Media Marketing and Link Baiting

If you are looking for information on Social Media Marketing and Link Baiting Andy Hagen's Tropical SEO blog has good info available:

http://tropicalseo.com/category/link-baiting/

Yahoo! CEO Steps Down

Changes in store for Yahoo as their CEO steps down:

Search Engine Land
http://searchengineland.com/070618-162931.php

Threadwatch
http://www.threadwatch.org/node/15684

Google Analytics New Features

Google Analytics has added some new features according to Search Engine Land.

Search Engine Land
Google Analytics Leaves Beta & Adds Requested Features
http://searchengineland.com/070613-085738.php

Google Analytics Help Center
http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=69588

Google's crusade against paid ads

Google's crusade against paid ads has been in search engine marketing news a lot lately. Search engine marketing folks starting talking about this back when no follow was suggested for links. I wrote an article about no follow and text link ads back in 2005. In the end numerous businesses online will be penalized because they didn't realize there was a problem with paid ads. Not every webmaster is up on what's ok to do in the search engines.

Its one thing for Google to tell users what will happen in Google's search results if spammy techniques are used for ranking. It is different when Google starts telling webmasters what to do with their websites and how to run their businesses. Paid banner ads and links were around long before Google existed. How do you close Pandora's box after Google's PageRank opened it? Google can't, but that's their problem. I don't think webmasters should be responsible for fixing Google's paid link problem.

Search Engine Watch
Google Goes to War on Paid Text Links

johnon.com
Google Buys DoubleClick, Announces Penalties for Non-Google Advertising

Threadwatch
The Real Reason Google Doesn't Like Paid Links

Matt Cutts Blog
How to Report Paid Links

Matt Cutts Blog
Hidden Links

Matt Cutts Blog
Text links and PageRank

Social media marketing

Eric Ward had a very interesting post at Search Engine Land today about Social Link Manipulation. His comments about the popularity of social linking and the possibility of spamming overtaking the medium sounded about right. If you link for links instead of quality of links, its bound to happen over time.

Search Innovation Marketing Blog Privacy Policy

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