Link-Building-Techniques-and-Strategies

Link Building Techniques and Strategies
We receive thousands of phone calls and emails every year, about SEO and link building techniques. Eighty percent or more of the people contacting us have terribly wrong ideas about what works and what is important for outstanding results in the major search engines. Below are details, samples, and history of people contacting us with their requirements. Hopefully, you will find useful SEO information that will help your company grow and increase your profits.

Many people phone our company saying, "I need low cost SEO, low quality backlinks, and tons of cheap links."

I respond, "Why?".... They say, "I want to out rank my competitors."
They think it is a pure numbers game, all links are equal and you get more and you win.  This is the wrong link building strategy, and these "cheap low quality techniques" may cause your website to be penalized by Google.

These people want fast outstanding results; they want to be #1 for competitive keyword phrases in 1-5 months.  Most people still do not understand that Google has penalized almost all of these cheap, crappy links and many people still do not even realize to vary their anchor text.  So the fastest way to be penalized by Google is to put up 1000+ low quality links on crappy websites and low quality Directories all using the exact same anchor text, these people might as well just email Google and say "please penalize my site, I am a dumb-ass and deserve to be penalized."
You need and want to be on top quality sites and Directories.

why-Google-should-update-Pagerank-meter

I was reading the most recent articles about if Google will update the Toolbar PageRank meter ever again, and how it looks like Google will not.  This is your chance to tell Google what you think.  Please click here and give Google your feedback and vote to keep PageRank.  I encourage webmasters to try to email Google and ask that Google please continue to update the PageRank meter.

I believe there are benefits to Google for doing so at least once or twice a year. Yes I agree several years ago doing the updates once a month was too much.

However if Google updates PageRank two times a year it will help webmasters stay away from websites Google does not like or has penalized.  I think the main argument is that Google wants webmasters to stay away from "bad websites" e.g. do not link to them and do not ask them for links, etc.
Then Google says the #1 way you can tell what websites to stay away from is effectively disabled by Google.  This just defies common sense to me.

how-safe-are-password-managers

This video is very funny and makes an important point.

Based on all the recent problems Sony has faced with hackers and the fact that Sony did not do a good job of protecting passwords.  Furthermore with the general public concerned about the US government spying on citizens I thought it would be important to explain why everyone should be using on Online Password Manager for business, personal, SEO and marketing.

There are several good products on the market:

1.  OnlinePasswordManager.com 
     - free license information and plugin for Google Chrome

2.  Lastpass

3.  1Password

list-of-directory-submission-sites-that-google-likes

By Tom Forrest
List of Directory Submission Sites.
List of directories that Google likes and that follow Google Guidelines.

Over the last few years Google has cracked down on web directories that violate Google guidelines.  You should not place your website on any free and low quality directories, you need fewer directory listings with better quality in order to be successful with Google and Bing.

So I decided I should give people a list of Internet directories that Google thinks are valid and that if you obtained a listing from these directories it would help you with direct traffic generation and also as a "good" backlink as far as Google is concerned.

1.     http://www.Clasione.com
2.     http://www.AllBusinessNow.com
3.     http://vlib.org
4.     http://www.picknbuy.com
5.     http://www.ipl.org
6.     http://www.seekon.info
7.     http://www.JoeAnt.com
8.     http://www.dmoz.org
9.     http://www.botw.org
10.   http://www.stpt.com
11.   http://MedicalHealthSites.com
12.   http://www.HealthFitnessNutrition.org
13.   http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus
14.   http://www.SearchPure.org

Comments from Matt Cutts of Google on what to consider when submitting to a Directory.

When considering submitting to a directory, I’d ask questions like:
- Does the directory reject urls?
If every url passes a review, the directory gets closer to just a list of links or a free-for-all link site.
- What is the quality of urls in the directory?
Suppose a site rejects 25% of submissions, but the urls that are accepted/listed are still quite low-quality or spammy. That doesn’t speak well to the quality of the directory.
- If there is a fee, what’s the purpose of the fee?
For a high-quality directory, the fee is primarily for the time/effort for someone to do a genuine evaluation of a url.
Matt Cutts, Google

SEO-Process-Overview

The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) process is an ongoing continuing process that we perform every day for our clients. It is possible to become very successful with top natural/organic SEO rankings, as most (68% to 90%) searchers skip the paid ads. This large range is highly keyword dependent, e.g. if someone is searching for "buy refrigerator" vs. "what is George Washington's birthday". People searching to buy a new refrigerator have a higher probability of clicking on a paid Google Ad, then someone searching for George Washington's birthday.
The other major benefit of natural or organic #1 rankings is you do not have to pay per click.  Google Adwords can run as high as $182+ per click for highly competitive keyword phrases.
It is very important to stay with SEO methodologies long term in order to achieve the desired results.  If you stop this process your web traffic and rankings will drop, and it may be difficult to recover previous top rankings.
You can not turn natural SEO on and off like you can for Google Adwords.
Also website owners that jump around from SEO Company to SEO Company are in danger of being penalized by Google.
Google is very complex and secret so no one can claim to be 100% accurate as to why Google makes the decisions it does.  However we do know that Google has many different types of penalties some of which are manual and some of which are automated via advanced software algorithms.
The quality of your backlinks and the longer your backlinks are aged, make up major factors in the Google software ranking algorithms.  Please remember if you lose important authoritative backlinks, then you must start the aging process over from the starting line.  Besides losing PageRank, this also brings suspicion from Google, and you do not want that to happen.  Google detects all these changes looking for unnatural suspicious activities.

ahrefs-seo-toolbar-chrome

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ahrefs-seo-toolbar/hgmoccdbjhknikckedaaebbpdeebhiei

This seems to be an excellent product.

I have used ahrefs product many times and it is outstanding, 5 stars.

larry-page-ted-video-excellent-ideas

good-tool-from-Google-pagespeed-insights

The following is a very useful tool from Google that will help you optimize your web pages for speed on all devices.  This is the best tool I have seen for this and Google offers many useful insights and ideas to help webmasters.  This is one of Google's best products.

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

matthew-mcconaughey-motivational-video-sales-marketing

This is an interesting motivational video from Matthew McConaughey to a sports team.  Most motivational videos like this can be applied to business, marketing and sales. 
E.g. Why are you in this business?
What motivates you to be successful?
Why do you play the game?
What drives your desire to excel and be the best at what you do?