Generating Value for your Link Building Campaigns - #seopodcast 168

My name is Chris Burris, owner of WC WebStyle. I am Charles Lewis, your internet marketing specialist. I feel so free because we don't have this mic standing in front of us that's like actually attached to us like a virus. Didn't realize how big it was sitting there. It's not that kind of small, but yeah, I feel a little free. Feels good. This is podcast number 168. You are listening to the most popular internet marketing podcast on iTunes. That is because of you, you, you over there and you watching right there. You're a little distracted. A little distracted. As always, there is a tip from the previous podcast and that tip is if you're going to hire an SEO company or do SEO yourself, make sure you understand the SEO lingo. Chris, how do they do that? I'm glad you asked. They should listen to podcast number 167. Definitely, definitely want to make sure that, that you're understanding of some of the terms that are used when doing search engine optimization, like SEO or algorithm. Is it the link or anchor text? These are all certain terms that, that have a huge value and importance in regards to SEO. And if you don't know these things, then it's going to be really difficult to do a decent job. So, so yeah, familiarize yourself with the terms and, and talk to an agency if you need to. Yep. An agency such as us. Remember, we are your friendly local neighborhood top position snatchers. Yes. And our mantra is, don't be a douche. If you can, right now, yeah, we're starting in the afternoon and, yeah, we'll blame it on that. Well, I'm thinking about Smilker, kind of douchey. I feel you. Oh, yeah. Right? If you have a device in front of you, tweet now, please. You should tweet SEO podcast. Hashtag SEO podcast 168. And we're doing all separate hashtag SEO podcast, then 168. Tag us in it, at eWebStyle. And that way we can, you know, follow up with you from there. Let's, let's hop

right into a little bit of news. Microsoft Surface is, they're saying it's not a tablet. It's not a laptop. It's a Surface. And I saw this video review of it. And the guy was like, yeah, it's still got the same old lame Windows. Gooey. Yeah. So far, unimpressed. There was a major web outage. It hit Google App Engine, Dropbox, Tumblr, and more. I just thought that was interesting. The chart went, like, straight across and then went and dropped a whole lot of points. So the internet had some experience. I don't know what that was about. This is cool. There is an app out. Uh-huh. It's for, you like movies, right? Yeah. It's for movies, for moviegoers specifically. And it's called Run P. Run P? Yeah. Okay, it's for Apple and Android? Yeah. Run P. Well, it may just be Apple or Run P. And it's for movies. It's for movies. I'm lost. Okay. You're going to love it. It tells you when you can run and pee because there is a time period coming up where nothing happens. Where it's boring. Run, literally, Run P. And you can get back and not have missed. And then, apparently, it'll update you what you missed. So that's kind of cool. It is, except I just don't want anyone using that app while I'm, especially if they're coming back and go, what did I miss? And they're breezing through their app while I'm watching the movie. I got this light blaring at me from behind. It's like, I love the concept, though. It'll actually vibrate when a Run P moment is about to arrive. I know, so you got everybody standing at a urinal. That would be hilarious, yeah. You didn't want to update on the movie. Oh, yeah. Because don't do it in the movie theater. That's, like, wrong. And it'd be kind of a cool Saturday Night Live skit where everyone, like, gets up at the same moment. And heads back. Or a great commercial for them. They arrested Paul, man, I should write better, Seglia.

And he's a guy who had a contract with Mark Zuckerberg early on. He actually added a page into that contract. So that page wasn't originally in the contract. And that said that he had 50% of Facebook. Wow. Yeah. He's in jail. Yeah, dog. That was aggressive. Yeah. 50%, dog? Like, come on. Just go for one. A bonus chick that I didn't get yet. I'll go away. Just 1%. You want a half, though, dog? Yeah. And I had the opportunity this week to watch a talk by Brad Sugars. Brad Sugars is a gentleman who is the founder of Sugar CRM. He's the founder of a franchise called Action Coach, which is the largest business coaching franchise on the planet, Australian dude. And two of his slides were, you know, he had 28 points for a successful business. Two of them were internet marketing. One of them was SEO. The other one was social media. So I thought, you know, that makes perfect sense. Now, he did say something that I'm not sure I believe. Okay. Said any website less than 10 pages, actually, I'm pretty sure I don't believe, any less than 10 pages doesn't get indexed. Yeah, that's incorrect. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. That's what I thought. Because there are plenty of one pages out there. Yeah. That rank. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? So I wonder if he maybe verbalized that wrong or maybe he had a different message that wasn't conveyed well. Yeah. Because. Well, it was in the context of they have like hundreds of websites. Also, he said something that is true and becoming less true, which is that if you have a domain and the domain has the search terms in it, then it will place better than anything else. Right. He said that was true. He said that was true and it used to be true. And we know it's still carrying some weight. Well, technically, you went to the conference the day before or day after the EMD update. So. Yeah. Yeah. I'll give him a

pass on that one. Well, but. And remember that even a while back, Google said they were pulling off weights on that because, you know, people who are doing that are doing it for specific reasons. Yeah. That's the EMD was a Google algorithm update exact match domain name. Yeah. Update. And the whole purpose was to reduce the amount of value given to keyword rich domain names. So. Yeah. And we know that a lot of domains that have nothing to do with the keywords you're searching do really well. Mm-hmm. So, you know, Target, Walmart, as examples. Here's an interaction on our Facebook page. By the way, Chris, how do I contact you on your Facebook page? Great question, Chris. You can do that by Facebook.com slash eWebStyle. You can also contact us, Twitter.com slash eWebStyle. YouTube.com slash eWebStyle. And you can email us, podcast at e-WebStyle.com. Excellent. And this one is from David Clayton. He wrote on our Facebook page, massive fan of the podcast. iTunes review submitted. I don't think we've seen it yet. Thanks for all the info. We are already top of Google and Yahoo, but I am working on the Civo side of things more thanks to you. Cheers, Dave Clayton with big laces. I think I'm spitting all over my paper. Remember, Civo stands for search engine visitor optimization. That's what you do with visitors after they arrive on your website, after they've been to search engine result page. What was your name, David? David. David, man. I'm glad to hear that you are spending some time doing Civo because what's happening is a lot of people we're talking to lately, I mean potential clients that come in and they're so focused on we need you to do SEO or please take over my pay-per-click campaign or whatever it is, not realizing that your site still sucks, you know? And so regardless of how much traffic we send, if your site's not going to convert, then your site's just not going to convert. And so you need to make those changes. So

punch in the face to you for understanding that and realizing that. And if you can, I'd like to see your before and afters. Yeah, yeah. Of, you know, how it looks now and after the changes you make. So send us some screenshots. Yeah. Well, a screenshot and then the URL. And then the link. Yeah, that'd be fine. Here's an email. Here's a review. It's from John Smelser. Hopefully I'm pronouncing that right. It says, enjoyable and worth listening to. Five stars. This is on iTunes. It says, I rarely review, but I make a point to do it when something here helps me. I've only gotten as far as, have I read this one? Sounds kind of familiar. So we'll breeze through it. He got to podcast 50. He has a 90-minute commute. I have read this. Thanks for making my drive bearable. We're happy to do that. Also, he submitted a web analysis form a while back. I think maybe interacted with Chuck. And then hasn't, we'll be following up with you today to get that taken care of. And here's an email. It says, review sent. This is from Gary Miller. Hey, guys. You are a new dimension of awesome. I love your show. That's the show. Yeah. And hope you both know how much you are helping people. You deliver and over-deliver great content and actionable information. I respect that you grab your audience with a headline, but then actually deliver the goods for free. Too many SEO so-called gurus are out there making big promises and then sticking their hands out for a payment. Only to deliver disappointing material or nothing at all. When I tell a joke, I give a punchline or don't tell the joke. Yeah, I get that. Makes sense. And we'll punch you in the face just because it sounded good. Because you said punch. I knew there was a reason. Thank you, guys. A big punch in the face to you both. There you go. For you helping me to learn a skill that may one day soon

get me out of the factory life forever and able to spend some real meaningful time with your family. That's awesome. Yeah. As a newbie who used to struggle to find relevant, useful material before I found your show, before I found your show, I was frustrated and grasping at straws, spending hours after hours alone in my basement, wasting time and money on programs that did not work. I want to give back and help people who want to learn the basics of SEO with my blog, SEOBoomSauce.com. I like that. Let's go. BoomSauce. The tagline is SEO for the common Joe. I hope with your permission I can repost some of your great shows as learning tools. Blank stare. Thanks. Gary Miller, yeah. Just make sure you link back to us. Maybe even do some really cool linking like, I don't know, SEO Houston. If you're in Houston and you need SEO, look these guys up. I usually don't drop a plug, but I do this right about now. Check out TheSEOWrapper.com. I've posted several raps that talk about everything from page rank to design to page search. They're entertaining and informative. So you may find some content that can make those cold days in the basement a little bit more pleasurable. Yeah. You might have to get up and start doing the page rank. By the way, you have some more listeners and followers at Google now, right? Yeah, yeah. We talked to my guys over there. We do AdWords here. We manage clients pay-per-click. And so once we exceeded a certain level, we were able to get us some direct reps at Google and things like that. And so it's been picking up. It's doing real well. So anyway, our rip didn't know who I was. So as I began telling him, he emailed back and they've been watching it. It's been floating all around the office. So shout out to them guys at Google. We got a call with him on Tuesday, right? Mm-hmm. Cool. Well, we have reached the Geno time limit. It is

now time to get off of the potatoes and jump into the meat. Okay. Well, we'll address the question first. Oh, yeah. And then I'll get into some content. All right. So I don't know where you got this question from. Facebook. Facebook, yeah. So we got a question from Facebook from a Joseph, I'm going to say, Seaner. Yeah, we'll go ahead. Because it could be Seaner, right? Or Siener. Yeah, I said Siener in my head. It didn't sound right. Seaner. Yeah. Siener. Okay, Joe, Joseph. So his question is, why is it that my AdSense shows dollars and then when the check shows up, it's so much lower? Is there a good app that accurately tracks AdSense revenue? Is there a good app? I don't know. Frankly, I'll be honest. I use AdSense on a couple different blogs I've managed, but my checks are, yeah, I've gotten like one check and it wasn't for a lot. But what I do know, because I know some people who are heavy in AdSense, what you should do is once you, Joseph, when you log into AdSense, you'll be at your dashboard. Understand that Google is not giving you exact figures. They're giving you estimates and summaries. And so you'll see a summary of how many impressions and clicks your ads received, and then you'll see an estimate on how much revenue that generated. What you should do is isolate it to a certain time period, and then they have a tab called Performance Report. Log into the Performance Report, and it'll give you details on how much revenue was generated during which certain time period. You can tie that into whatever date your check went out, and that should give you a better understanding of how much money should be on your check. I would say you should probably contact them and tell them that your numbers are wrong. Hopefully that helps. Good luck with that. Cool. All right. So I found this article here. This is on Search Engine Journal. It's called 10 Post Panda and Penguin Link

Acquisition Strategies. I thought this was just a great article because Penguin was targeting low-quality links and low-value links, and a lot of people suffered from that. We were favored enough to not really have any clients, well, except for one, but we were working on his new site. And so, unfortunately, his old site got hit with a Penguin update, and he lost a lot of ranking prior to our new site launching. We haven't worked on his old website. Yeah, yeah. We're only working on the new one. And so, but anyway, so here we're going to go through 10 things you can do right now to your site to help you come back if you may have experienced some ranking decline due to a Panda or a Penguin update. So, number one, number one says, identify viable link opportunities. Here you go. What does that mean, Chuck? I'm glad you asked. I'm glad you asked. That means look for opportunities that are actually worth your time and effort and resources in regards to link building, time, effort, and resources, because link building takes time. It requires some effort, and time and effort are the resources, essentially. And so, when you want to participate in link building, making sure that the link building strategy you're using, that the opportunities are worth it, that it's from a high PR site, that the site's credible and has a decent trust, and you're not just building crappy links from crappy sites. Number two says, use the best tools. They recommend SEO Moz is an open site explorer. Great tool. Majestic SEO is another one. Bleco is another one. I mean, there are tools out there that you can use to track backlinks to your site. I think the key here is use them. Figure out which domain names have the proper authority, the proper rank, and that way, once you get a whole list of industry-related, sites that you could possibly build links from to yours, get that list first, and then work on how can you get links on those

sites. And that way, you have a great starting point of decent, high-authority domain names you can target. So, that was use the best tools. Open site explorer, great tool. It's an SEO Moz package. I would take this time to say, I mean, our package is kind of high. Unfortunately, we're kind of forced to use it because it is one of the best tools. But, come on. You know, like, really. Maybe you can cut us some slack. We'll talk about it more. Yeah. Something. Hit me up. Number three, focus on sites with manual approval. This is huge. Any website that you're submitting to, trying to get a link back from, and there is no manual approval, you can just submit it and wait, and then your link shows. Probably not a value link. Probably from a spam site. Or, more importantly, everybody has done it. And so, that link has no weight, no juice to it. It is not worth the time, the resources, and the effort to do it. So, focus on sites with a manual approval, meaning someone that has to see your submission, double-check it, make sure it's legit, and then approve it. Usually, with some sort of verification, that you may have to click on a link, or you may have to do something in order for them to approve it. Those tend to have a higher value. Sites like a DMOS, for example, which is a directory you have to submit to, they have to manually approve it. Number four, this is a good one. Win the content marketing game. So, we're talking about link building, and ways you can build links. One of the best ways to build links is to give people something to link to, frankly. And so, if it's an infographic, or white paper, or different videos, webinars, e-books, guest posts, things like that, surveys, polls. These are things that tend to go viral on the web, and people, if they appreciate it, and they think that their viewership, or their listenership, or visitorship, maybe, I don't

know, if they could benefit from it, then they'll gladly link to it. So, take advantage of that, and create content that's link-worthy. Number five, use balanced anchor text. So, one of the recent algorithm updates was targeting exact match, was targeting anchor text. And so, you know, if all of your anchor text says, you know, SEO Houston, or Search Engine Optimization Houston, or Internet Marketing Company, or whatever it is, then you should kind of balance out some. Google is recognizing that a real, natural link profile does not have all keyword-rich anchor text. Some say website. Some say click here. Some just have your domain name. Follow this. Yeah, exactly. So, kind of go balanced. You don't want to go heavy on your keywords, because it'll look artificial, and it won't work for you. Number six, don't use mass link-building tactics. Yeah, so, when you're on the web, don't click on that link that says, you know, for $19.95, we'll submit you to 10,000 links. Or the blinking one that says, PR4, PR4. How'd you know it was blinking? How'd you know it was blinking on my screen? Yeah, don't submit to those. Yeah, I'm going to just say that. It's not worth your time or effort. Proper link-building takes some effort. It takes some time and effort, and if that's too easy, Google knows it. They'll recognize it, and it's just not a good look for you or your site. Number seven, social media is your friend. I concur. Social media is one of the best ways to build links to your site. It's also one of the best ways to share your content. So, yeah, especially if you're blogging or you're providing pages and posts of content frequently, then you should heavily be invested in social. If not, wake up and start socializing. Let's see here. We're almost done. Number eight. I was just talking about this. Monitor your link profile. Chuck, what is a link profile? I'm glad you asked. Link profile is what Google sees in regards to how your links are structured.

Where are you getting links coming from? Where do your outbound links go? When did you get them? How long have you had them? Is that a secure server? Is it not? All of these things go into what your link profile is. So what he's saying is monitor it. Make sure that you don't all of a sudden have tons of low-quality, low-PR, low-authority sites linking to your profile, linking to your site. You may need to disavow those links. That's a new feature that's in Webmaster Tools. So take advantage of that. Or if you have a whole bunch of high-quality links going out and people are sharing them, then evaluate that. Figure out why they're sharing it. Then spin off over there and try to improve it. Repeat. Yeah, rinse and repeat. So, yeah, monitor your linking profile. That's huge. It's so huge because a lot of people, we've got to realize, the people who got hit with Penguin may not have been doing anything wrong. You see what I'm saying? They were just building links. That was the thing to do last year. You know, you build links. And really, the quality, it has some value. But quantity was, and people, this is probably debatable, but quantity has a lot to do with it, too. Whether you like it or not, I think it does. And a lot of people just, unfortunately, Penguin said, okay, enough is enough. And because they didn't monitor that profile, you know, you got cut. So, watch that. Analyze your competitors' links. I think these could kind of go together. This is just effective competitive analysis. You know, if you link building, who's linking to your competitors? Why are they ranking high? Then rinse and repeat. Let's see here. And the last one, number 10, build relationships. Some of the best links are built by personal relationships. I totally concur. Yeah, without a doubt. I mean, when you know people and they're successful and you're networking, you know, you're at these luncheons or conferences or whatever it is, build those relationships.

Work on that networking. Improve the relationships you have with your colleagues and peers in this industry or in whatever industry you're in. Because if they have sites and their sites have value, then it's worth getting that link. So, for example, if you're a plumber and you focus on kitchen fixtures, then you go to, let's say, some conference where they have all the latest new kitchen fixtures by all these faucet people, it's good to start building that relationship and meeting those people and figuring out who does the web work and, hey, can I get a link, that sort of deal, because that has more value. It's related to your industry. And it's a real value link that came from a personal relationship, not something you submitted for or anything like that. And I think readers know that. Google knows that the algorithm is programmed to figure that out. And so take advantage of those kind of links. Yeah. So that was it. Ten post-panda and penguin era link acquisition strategies. Yeah. So if you've got the penguin slapped down, you can use those strategies to recover from that. Definitely. To get back on your feet. Do we have any blank stare news? Little blank stare. I got a little blank stare. Little blank stare. Yeah. I saw through the camera. You saw through the camera? Yeah, like on the other side. Looking at Bill. Yeah. Exactly. What's up? So you've noticed this blank stare had the hand right here. This was the money-making blank stare. This blank stare goes to, frankly, us and everybody else who's doing PPC management. So Google brings in $100 million daily from AdWords. Wow. I read that this morning. Wow. $100 million every day from AdWords. $100 million every day. Yeah. Every day. So like tomorrow will be another $100 million from AdWords. Yeah. So that blank stare. How many employees support that? Not enough. Yeah. So blank stare at, wow, AdWords. And when do they do so much other stuff, R&D and everything? Mm-hmm. Hey, there are two ways you

guys out there could help us. One of them is, it takes three steps. It is go on to iTunes, create an iTunes account, and write a review about us. Mm-hmm. If you choose, follow that up with an email, podcast at e-webstyle.com. Let us know that you submitted that review, and we'll give you a punch in the face. Include your URL. Mm-hmm. The other way that you could help us is you could go to e-webstyle.com slash G plus. Which plus, Chris? I'm glad you asked. Chris? Either the plus symbol or the word plus. So G plus. That'll take you directly to our G plus account, directly to the page where you can actually write a review about our podcast, our service, if you're listening and you've used our service, or just anything in general that you want to say. Review Chuck while you're there. And we would appreciate that as well. We're probably going to review the podcast, we'll be honest. And if that's it, I think that's it. You guys have been listening to the most popular internet marketing podcast on iTunes. Again, that's because of all of you out there. Thank you a big punch in the face to you all. And until the next podcast, my name is Chris Burris. Troll rules. Bye-bye for now.