SEO Link Building Copywriting Case Studies

Links are the currency of the Web, so it is important to have a plan in place to improve the number and quality of the links to your site from the outside.

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Netconcepts’ GravityStream technology can do what none of its competitors can do. In an interview with the Dominion Post, Netconcepts president Stephan Spencer highlights the software allows a client to maintain their ranking without changing web content when their website is first optimised.

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Search isn’t just about scouring the Web. It’s about looking into your hard drive and the mess of documents you’ve ever generated — emails, Word documents, spreadsheets, instant messages, previously viewed Web pages and so on. A number of players in the search space released their own desktop search play, including Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves, Blinkx, and Copernic. Desktop Search will be a game changer for natural search optimization. Desktop Search means all of a sudden you are playing the search game, whether by purpose or by accident. For example, if Google Desktop Search is installed, any Web page your visitors accessed or any email they ever received in their email inbox or Web-based clients like Yahoo Mail is now fodder for any Google search they do. More importantly, those pages are given top position on the page for keyword matches that may be completely unrelated to what the customer was looking for when they visited that Web page.

This session will:

• Explain how best to leverage your existing Website to appear on the top of Desktop Search results
• Delineate new opportunities for search optimization from Desktop Search
• Provide a blueprint for implementing natural search optimization for Desktop Search

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Blogging is one of the hottest trends on the net. A blog (short for “web log”) is a web-based diary where the author can ruminate on whatever strikes his or her fancy. The blogger may share photos, poetry, political views, gossip, industry trends, business advice, or the latest on their personal life. By definition, blogs are organized in reverse chronological order. Many are updated daily. They can have one or multiple authors, such as a community blog.

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Ann Meyer, author for Multichannel Merchant, discusses the power of natural search over paid search listings. This article goes on to mention the importance of proper keyword usage and the need for scaleable optimization techniques.

Included in this article are quotes from Netconcepts’ VP of Client Services, Jody Hartwig. Jody shares her views on natural search and the best practices needed to succeed in today’s market.

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The marriage of search engine optimisation and usability can be a happy one. Granted, just creating a successful user experience can be a challenge. But to also cater to the search engine’s algorithms concomitantly - this can seem downright daunting. Many companies, often inadvertently, choose one approach over the other. The goal, elusive as it may seem, is improved search engine rankings ALONG WITH greater accessibility and better overall usability. Get ready for a dose of insight, strategy, process, and well-considered opinion to cure what ails your site.

Join Stephan for an information-packed session covering:

• Wordsmithing approaches
• Benchmarking criteria
• Contextual linking
• Role of keyword analysis
• Optimal site structure
• Wielding the full power of CSS
• Measuring Return On Investment
• Best practices & worst practices

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In this interactive panel session, understand the ways in which your organisation can achieve success in the area of search engine marketing, and hear from two companies who have implemented search engine marketing techniques, with great results.

• Search strategies and best practices — Stephan Spencer
• Case Study — Media Design School
• Case Study — WorkingIn.com

Stephan Spencer, Managing Director, NETCONCEPTS
Caroline Booth, Marketing Communications Manager, MEDIA DESIGN SCHOOL
Hayley Roberts, Director, WORKING IN LTD

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A few weeks back I blogged some advice here for business bloggers who might want to consider text link advertising as part of their blog marketing mix.

Well, there’s been a lot of controversy as of late about buying text links. Blogger Phil Ringnalder published a scathing post accusing publishing house O’Reilly of being a search engine spammer. O’Reilly’s founder, Tim O’Reilly, responded to the accusations on his own blog. Google engineer Matt Cutts posted a comment to Tim’s post admitting that Google has decreased the voting power of sites like perl.com and xml.com and downgraded the reputation of some of their outbound links. Ouch!

Matt’s (and presumably Google’s) position was loud and clear:

If you don’t want your own site to suffer the same fate as O’Reilly, you better tag your link ads with a rel=nofollow attribute so that you don’t pass any PageRank score to your advertisers.

In my mind, that doesn’t seem quite fair. Website owners and bloggers work hard to build a content-rich site with good PageRank score. Google’s black-or-white stance on this equates to a diminished earning ability for these websites by insisting webmasters cut off the flow of PageRank to their advertisers. This of course decreases the value of the link ads to those advertisers, and consequently the revenue likely to be realized from them. Granted, no savvy advertiser is going to buy a text link ad solely based on PageRank score, but PageRank does factor into the equation.

This makes me wonder what Google’s position is on BlogAds.com is, which is part banner ad, part text link ad. A good blog ad contains useful content. Why shouldn’t the blogger be allowed to “vouch for” (by not tagging the link with nofollow) the links contained within that ad if they so choose?

Most “white hat” SEOs such as Christine Churchill believe text link advertising is a legitimate practice. I agree with her.

I wonder what Google would do if all the websites across the Internet decided to take all their banner ad inventory they have and bypass the click-tracker redirect that counts all the clickthroughs. Suddenly all these new votes would start counting all over the Internet for commercial advertisers and sponsors. Wouldn’t that throw Google for a loop!

So what is the bottom line here for bloggers who are looking to advertise? It’s basically this: be discriminating in your link buying. Text link advertisements are not inherently evil. Just don’t buy ads on sites where any of the other advertisers on the site are misleading, deceptive or misrepresentative. By that, I mean things like the following:

1. Setting the ad’s link text to some keyword-rich phrase that doesn’t accurately reflect the page that is linked to.
   e.g. An ad on SeacoastOnline.com proclaims “The North Face” but that isn’t The North Face!
2. Linking the ad text to a landing page that is built for search engines and not for people.
   e.g. the “Discount Vacations” ad on DailyItem.com points to one of Orbitz’s many “doorway pages”.
3. Hiding or obscuring the link so human visitors can’t see it, only search engines.
   e.g. Doing a “View Source” on the home page of PRNewswire.com reveals these hidden links:
   
</noframes>
<a href=”http://www.icrossing.com”>Search Engine Marketing</a>
<a href=”http://sev.prnewswire.com”>Search Engine News Release Optimization</a>
</frameset>


And it goes without saying that you should refrain from such practices yourself when you advertise.

This post is based on material taken from on my own blog across three separate posts: Link buying - ethical or unethical?, Buying links - Google’s perspective, and Buying link ads - the ethical debate rages.

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• SEM campaign optimisation - what is it, and what are the benefits?
• What services and tools are available to manage the process (ie. bid management).
• Tips from the experts - practical techniques used by the professionals to interpret and improve performance

PANEL DEBATE-
Moderated by Stephan M. Spencer - President, Netconcepts
Kate Vale - Head of Advertising & Sales, Google
Jon Ostler - Technical Director, First Rate

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