How I despise those awful, cheesy pages promoting the "secrets" of search engine optimization. How I loathe the slick salesman pictured in fuzzy, 1980's-style photography promising you "the hidden tactics SEOs don't wan't you to know." When most search folks think of the "ultimate secret" in SEO," they probably think about one of these:
- Keywords in the Title Tag
- Spiderable Links & Content
- Anchor Text in Links
- Links from Quality Websites
Those are all good pieces of advice, and important to high rankings, but even the last one (links from quality websites) doesn't convey the most important part of successful ranking campaigns. If there is one key to high search engine rankings, a single piece of advice that unlocks the door to the top of Google & Yahoo! it's this: Your website must appeal to a link-savvy audience.
Simple? Sadly, no. The truth is that the very best website in the world that sells your product, offers your content or promotes your cause may not be good enough to make it to the top of the engines. Why? Because the world of search has an inherent bias to those sites with more links. It's not enough to build links now through manual link requests or link buying, nor is it enough to bolster these link acquisitions with a flawlessly "optimized" website filled with keyword-targeted pages. These strategies, while effective in the short term, won't guarantee you success in the long run. To have a shot at keeping the top positions for years to come, you need a strategy that naturally drives links to your site again and again. The "secret" is that the audience most sites appeal to is NOT the same audience that provides links, yet this group (the Linkerati) has the power to make or break a site's rankings.
Let's walk through a brief history of search engines to see how this happened:
No, Hotbot Monster, back in the early days, you really weren't. Measuring repetition of keywords and keyword placement and density led to some pretty bad results and a lot of cloaking and spamming.
With the arrival of Google's PageRank and Apostolos Gerasoulis' Teoma (now called ExpertRank), the search engines got smarter, mapping the link patterns of the web and giving higher ranks to those sites & pages with more inbound links.
Over the last 8 years, the engines have been refining the way they measure links, taking into account context, relevance, trust and other metrics to help indicate which links are worth counting towards a particular ranking.
All of this algorithmic evolution means that sites wishing to rank at the top of the engines must have high quality, naturally given, topically relevant links. Since search rankings are so valuable, massive amounts of time and money pour into campaigns for the most competitive queries, making the struggle for placement increasingly difficult. This brings us to the fundamental issue that site creators struggle against - segmenting visitors accurately and appealing to the "Linkerati."
Above are three groups of visitors, applicable to nearly every commercial or goal-oriented website in existence. While most sites do a reasonable job identifying and targeting the 2nd group (in blue) from the first (in green), this isn't the case with the 3rd group (in red). Those red Llinkerati are essential to your site's rankings - they are the great "secret" of long-term SEO success. In order to leverage their power, you must create compelling content that appeals to their desires. This really is no "secret" at all. In every interview and on every stage, you'll hear representatives from Google, Yahoo!, MSN & Ask repeat this same mantra (albeit without the benefit of colorful diagrams). As an example:
"...the sort of people who have been doing “new” SEO, or whatever you want to call it, that’s social media optimization, link bait, things that are interesting to people and attract word of mouth and buzz, those sorts of sites naturally attract visitors, attract repeat visitors, attract back links, attract lots of discussion, those sorts of sites are going to benefit as the world goes forward." - Matt Cutts in an interview with Gord Hotchkiss
Why are these Linkerati so powerful? What makes their opinions and influence so important to average website owners? Easy - the power to control the web's link structure.
The web's content may still be overwhelmingly commercial and organizational in scope, controlled by exceutives at companies, museum curators, government taxonomists, etc. But, the link landscape of the web, particularly those links that point externally from sites, are dominated by the Linkerati. If your competitors or even organizations like Wikipedia, About.com, niche bloggers or industry news publications become more popular with the Linkerati than you, how can you ever expect to compete for search engine rankings?
This is the great "secret" of SEO - that (at least) some content on your website must be targeted to the Linkerati - fulfilling their unquenchable thirst for new material to link to and share and spread virally. Although they may be a vastly different population than your customers, you need their respect and approval in order to continue to draw in targeted leads from the engines.
I know the next question - What do the linkerati want? Well, it's after midnight and I have lots of work to do before I can go to bed, so you'll have to stay tuned until tomorrow. Sorry!
Another excellent article, and I can see that this works for *some* types of websites, but there are a lot of websites out there that I don't think these principles really apply to.
For example, my company maintains a site which sells doors online. Expecting a lot people to link to the site from their blogs is highly unrealistic. Asking related companies to link to the site is fair enough, but the construction industry is not the most internet-savvy; many of the companies that the door retailer does business with do not even have websites!
In situations like these, ensuring that the content is rich in keywords and well-structured are our best bet (and seem to be working well so far)
Good point boybacon! I totally agree, it's not all industries that can target the "linkerati". Most of the websites I do SEO for are B2B websites, and not really the kind of websites that the "linkerati" would be attracted to.
Sometimes SEO can be a bit more complex than just getting traffic to the site. One of my clients, wanted to SEO their site but only wanted to get traffic from a "very" specifc audience. It wasn't about getting quanity of traffic but very specialised quality traffic.
Great point Lisa!
While I totally agree with you on your comments about the linkerati, I wonder if each website, or to be honest, each industry has its own version of the linkerati?
That's the hidden treasure isn't it? Finding out how to get linkorati to take interest in a dry, niche, B2B site.
Its something that we're working on and I'd say its possible - if you can get the stakeholders to recognise that they may need to change the way that they create content/market themselves..
I totally agree, ciaran, while many traditional or non-tech industries don't initially seem to lend themselves to link-baiting (I'm using the term very loosely here), I feel that a little creativity can go a long way.
Think of some of the articles you see make the front page of Digg or Reddit, they're not all funny and almost none deal with MTV-like pop culture. They tend to be (apart from Ubuntu, Wii, Ipod crap) political, scientific or lifestyle oriented. I think too many fols get stuck in a rut thinking the only way to get in the Linkerati spotlight is if they can make a great YouTube video or a witty programming article so they don't even consider doing viral media for more conservative clients.
While I'm well aware that many people disagree on this, I still argue that, as per Rand's discussion above, Bait Pirates will increasingly whoop Link Ninjas for rankings.
Definitely - one of the best examples taht we have (for which I can take no credit!) was an incredibly scholarly article about common myths about pre-history - the fact that it probably wasn't a meteorite that killed off the dinosaurs, and that humans never co-habited the earth with them.
One submission to Digg with a snappy headline and summary - hey presto, 13,000 visits and God knows how many links!
Great point. I completely agree. Businesses can start thinking outside the box and add something linkworthy to their site whether it's interesting articles or blogs, or a free reference guide (or library of references) or tool applicable for that industry, or contest, or anything else that may be worth a link. There are a lot of resources at Universities that may be dry but get a lot of links because people find the info useful. So it doesn't necessarily have to be "Cool" if the industry is a little more dry. Basically it has to be something they want to bookmark, hence the link. Something people would keep coming back to. Any industry can do this with a little creativity.
I think that the "linkerati" are inappropriately defined here. The people who are the 1% active on Labor Law Talk or GardenWeb likely are not "Techy" and may not be interested in "offbeat news" -- but they are still good opportunity for links.
The link givers are likely Blog/Website owners and web savvy, but you shouldn’t assume a tech slant. That would be like assuming that because someone owns a farm that they love reading about tractors. It is possible but not necessary.
If you are trying to generate B2B links you may be best served targeting a specific web community that touches on the business – find out what they like -- or going directly to offline business partners. Don't let yourself be pigeon-holed by an online mentality. Not everyone who has control of an internet property is active on the web.
This is also a fair point - but where the target audience aren't techy, they're also often not blogging in great numbers yet - this is where it gets hard to avoid trying to appeal to the Californian digg-dudes..
Here, try these Google Blog Search for Gardening, Labor Law, and Samsung TV. You have twice as many opportunities to garner a link from a public Gardner/Blogger than a public Samsung TV Owner/Blogger.
Sure, domestic tasks are never going to be as popular as "Dell" in the blogosphere -- but "tech savvy" is no longer a precursor to internet visibility.
Boybacon, I kind of thought the same thing when I read the characteristics of the linkerati, but then realized that not all of the characteristics apply to all industries. For my site, sometimes I think I got a link in a forum simply because my site looked better than the competition.
You sell doors online, and I initially thought of a half-dozen things related that could be 'linkable', and by the time I got back from getting coffee, another half-dozen. For example, Door Design (if a coffee-table book can be done on doors, you can find linkable material for door design - significance of color to doors, what the door says about you (door first impressions)), Door Safety (metal vs wood, hollow vs solid, and so on), Door Humor (doors are central to a lot of humor - say knock-knock jokes; doors in relation to salespersons, delivery persons, and proselytizing persons (is that being p.c.?); doors of the rich and famous, and so on and so forth).
In addition, I think you can simplify 'appealing to the linkerati' a further step - it's simply called Marketing (what is probably the second oldest profession in the world). Think Targeted Link-Baiting - focus on your various customer types (builders, architects, interior designers, home renovators, ???), and you may not have a tough time at creating the necessary content.
(P.S., I'm not a professional SEO, I just play one on SEOMoz)
Nice creativity. I didn't go as far as to provide examples, but share your sentiment.
Hi wdeloach,
Thanks for the reply, you make a good point (I should point out that I am not a door retailer, but that our company developed the site)...Link-baiting is something that we try to do, the problem is that construction is not an internet-savvy industry - they do not rely on it to do business - so it is often difficult to find other quality sites to link to the door site. (although I do like the idea of the knock-knock jokes)
I think this article, in the main, is geared towards sites such as SEOmoz that are frequented by the internet-savvy. These sorts of sites depend on people linking to them to remain high in the SERPs because their competition also depends on links to their sites. But if your competing in a field where other sites do not have a huge number of links to them, then I would suggest that concentrating on content not links should be your main focus.
boybacon I agree with you that some sites and industries will find it easier to appeal to the linkerati. But that also means you might not need as many links in those industries to compete since your competition should be having the same difficulty appealing to them.
As for the site selling doors here's a suggestion off the top of my head, I'm not saying it's a great idea, but maybe it'll spark some ideas.
What if you created a game sort of like the old show 'Let's Make a Deal" You could offer some kind of coupon or other prize behind the doors. people pick a door and get to decide if they want to trade what they got for what's behind door #3. Ok maybe it's not the best idea for a game, but hopefully you get the idea that there are possibilities.
Also you can always attract a certain part of the linkerati just in the way you design or develop your site. Give the design some kind of 'wow' appeal and you can submit to any of dozens of sites that feature design. Recently if you have any kind of impressive Ajax application it seems someone will link to you.
I think ciaran is right above when saying part of the challenge is to find a way make the linkerati take interest in what at first seems like a dry site.
Rand what are you doing!?
You just revealed the secrets without getting your $47, down from the regularly priced $599. Not to mention that you didn't limit this to the first 16 who purchased.
It is very interesting how the different industries are impacted by this. Some are harder to target because the industries themselves are not as tech and web savvy, like some of the B2Bs.
Sure as others have mentioned, you might be able to create some things of interest that might attract links, and it would certainly be worth doing... but these links may not exactly be "power" links... not everyone who has a website is part of the linkerati. But hopefully if these are less competitive arenas, the links will be enough for a bump in SERPs.
On the other hand, in the popular topics, even though the linkerati may not be the real target, you may find yourself having to "cater" to their needs or interests. Ironicially, this seems to go against what the SEs would want. After all, isn't this just another example of trying to manipulate one audience to reach your target audience?
Certainly far more strategic and complex than keyword spamming.
Okay, so we already know how it ends, but how about a Flash battle between Googlebot and HotBot, ala King Kong vs. Godzilla.
Now there's some linkbait for ya ;) Chew on that linkerati!
It does seem strange, doesn't it, that Mr Cutts and his peers are essentially ensuring that sites might get built, designed & run with a totally different audience in mind to the actual customer? It strikes me that this could be seen as a slight dereliction of duty on their part, ie - let's let the social media geeks decide what is cool, sorry - I mean useful and relevant.
Personalisation strikes me as a way that they could counter this, in that the amount of time people spend on sites, which ones they click on, etc.., are all arguably better indicators of a site's worth than how many Californian teenagers get a kick out of them.
When google can accuratley measure and sort how long users spend on a particular site and how many people choose to stay at that site when doing a specific keyword search, then the importance of the linkarti will be greatly lowered. How long do you think it will be before personalized search is mainstream?
From what I can tell, Google started cranking this data into the SERPs in mid-2006.
Whilst they've certainly been planning it since 2005
Ofcourse, Google has access to that data already and in some form or another is probably using it, but that wasn't my point. It isn't one of the most or even heavily valued metrics and much of oganic SEO does resemble a popularity contest for links.
The popularity element is ESPECIALLY heavy if you're trying to build up traffic to a new or newer site. There just isn't a good way for Google to know that your 1 year old site on product X is better then the 10,000 other ones around. If you can all of a sudden attract 1,000 links then Google has a nice metric to evaluate the "relevancy" of your site and increase it's rankings.
Though, what's to say the linkerati won't click through and stay on your site awhile. Not to put myself in the linkerati, but I know I end up spending more time on a site when I'm searching for information than I do when I actually buy something. By the time I'm ready to make a purcahse I know what I want and don't need to spend much time on a site.
great point Ciaran!
I have spent the last couple of years trying to convince my clients that it's about the quality of traffic, the targetting of the audience that is most likely to convert. Tweaking the title and meta description to increase organic CTR and attract quality visitors that are ACTUALLY looking for your product/service!! It seems a little unfair that some teenage "geek" in Nebraska gets to decide whether my clients site is good or not. What will happen to quality and relevancy if everything is about being "cool" and "linkable"...
Then we'll have a lot of cool and linkable sites in the serps. Things could be a lot worse.
I'm just saying it's alot of pressure to be "cool" and in some cases a bit uncessary. I mean what ever happend to informative and straight to the point. If you are doing SEO for a B2B site in the financial industry, is the 15-25 audience of the linkerati (just guessing the age range here) really the type of people you need? Why do they get to decide that your very complicated financial business isn't "cool" enough to link to, thus your rankings for your ACTUAL audience suffer. Just doesn't seem logical?
We're in the "popular" phase of the search marketing. To rank in a competitve search you have to be popular, like a giant high school popularity contest. When personlized search and other technilogies spark another major shift in SEO strategies, then we'll probably move into more of contest of usability combined with messaging. The more usable your site is, the stickier it is, the more it meets the needs of the users who's keyword searches you're targeting the better it will rank, but that will be awhile before that happens. I'm personally doing well on the popular web, I definitley like a lot better then when the Serps were full of thin content spammy sites.
Oh I should add, it's all about metrics. As soon as google starts using metric X as a guide for relevancy then a million marketers manipulate the hell out of metric X until it no longer works as well as a relvantcy guide, so they have to continually add more metrics or things to measure with their algorythems. The problem is with the advent of social media, being popular or appealing to the linkarati meets almost all the metrics the current SE's have for relvancy, you obtain links with the correct anchor text from on topic and related sites. The web will stay a popularity contest until they have a lot more sophisticated metrics (from personalized search and other sources) to draw from.
What? Has digg spread its geographical user base then?!
;)
ha ha, yeah Nebraska was a bit random. Not sure where I was going with that one lol
I thought that diggers all lived in the OC...
i'm sure they do. Nebraska just sounded more linkerati worthy;-)
All Diggers do live in California. We (and by "we" I mean "Matt") recently had yet another post hit Digg (huge this time) and it was amazing to watch what happened to the traffic when 9AM hit the West Coast. "Pow, straight to the moon!"
Also, Lisa, I think it's enirely possible to build a few pages or articles within a site to appeal to the "cool kids" while simultaneously designing and maintaining the bulk of your site and content for more serious business pursuits. A rising tide lifts all ships, as Rand's been so fond of saying lately. Meaning you don't need to redevelop DepressingOfficeFurniture, Inc into HappyUbuntuIpodFan, LLC in order to get some love from the Linkerati. Just an article or two that can suck in a few dozen (hundred?) links to your domain can be a big help in getting DepressingOfficeFurniture, Inc. a nice boost in search traffic...depressing, office furniture-related search traffic even.
hi Scott =)
Yeah i don't doubt that we can write something that will appeal to the diggers and redditers (err is that what they're called) BUT my point is: it just seem a bit wrong that we are dependent on these people to get the link love. I just don't think they are the relevant audience for my B2B clients, and yes I'm sure they could boost our rankings by giving us heaps of links if we write an article about "How my grandmother got superpowers from her epilepsy medication"...
Holy crap! Will you write that story anyway? I totally wanna read it!
BTW, are you gonna' be at SES NYC?
Me too, and now we'll now who to blame when all the kids start popping epilepsy medicine instead of whatever it is they are popping today.
I wish I was going to SES NY, I was almost going...does that count! I was trying to get a speaker role but didn't succeed. Really want to go to SMX in Seattle though, feel free to tell Danny how great I am =) and how eager I am to speak. Problem is I probably wouldn't stop talking if I got started ;-)
The challenge of course with personalization is how much do I want to share? That's why I think allowing someone to toggle off or on this personalization would be more appealing. I could now decide what I want to provide in a profile, and when I want it to influence results.
Ideally, plugging in information, demographics and geographics, along with other likes or dislikes, combined with sites visited, how long there, how long on each page, combined with maybe the ability to rate each page, could provide an incredible power. Basically the idea that other people who appear aligned with your point of view found X to be helpful.
The challenge of course is how comfortable we are providing this information... maybe not as much as an issue with the "youth" but that may change someday too, as well as when do I get tired providing feedback for a site or page? Hence, probably relying on a passive metric.
But even this will become manipulated some way or another. Life of course would be so much easier without all the spammers. Finally, I think we can communicate to most website owners and businesses that traffic, if it is unrelated, isn't important... they just want to rank for what is relevant now.
I find myself logging in and out of Google all day for the very reason of deciding what I do and don't want to share. Even more since I'm aware of how Google might be using my search history I sometimes want to be logged out just because I don't want a current search affecting anything in the future.
One thing to consider though is while we know about personalized search the majority don't and quite possibly never know. I can guarantee that my friends and family have never heard of it, but many of them are logged into gmail or some other Google property all day.
So while we may not want to share everything most people probably won't know they are in fact sharing as much as they are.
"How I loathe the slick salesman pictured in fuzzy, 1980's-style photography promising you 'the hidden tactics SEOs don't wan't you to know.'"
And not just that! Order the "Hidden Tactics" book now and for a limited time only you'll get this set of GINSU II knives ***FREE***! Yes folks, that's right - the GINSU II it slices, it dices - its great for sacrifices (of those people who keep spamming your inbox) - the GINSU II!!!!
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(bad Judith... no more late lunches for you... your brain goes all weird!)
ha ha excellent Judith =)
thank you.
For some reason I had Ginsu on the brain and that post just touched the "infomercial" button in my brain.
Props for invoking "Happy Fun Ball"
I exist in a perpetual happyfunball universe.
In fact, many of the warnings related to happyfunball relate to me...
I could be Happy Fun Ball in disguise...
"may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds" - OK... I know I should stop driving so fast but really... I was in a hurry and my dad was jet lagged...
"if Happy Fun Ball begins to smoke seek shelter and cover head" - and possibly offer me chocolate because if I'm fumin' I'll need something to calm me down
"made from an unknown glowing substance which fell to Earth, presumably from outer space" - would explain much....
But most important of all "Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball" which are sage words of advice unless you follow up with a box of Luento Santoro chocolates (I'm not cheap (or easy [to get along with says hubby])).
See... I really am Happy Fun Ball in disguise!
And here I was just about to launch my new marketing tactic of a free set of ginsu knives with every seo contract. I think I've been watching to many infomercials late a night.
They can "cut" through the spam and the competition like they cut through this tin can and yet still slice this tomato perfectly!
But wait! That's not all!
Order today and the first 13 people get a copy of "Guide to better link farming" FREE!
Yes, that's right, you get the "Secret to Ranking", a set of GINSU II knives *AND* the "Guide to better Link Farming" for the low low one time price of only...
Oh look - they brought me chocolate. I must be cranky...
No way. They can still slice the tomato. Where do I sign up? And please send me the "Guide to better link farming" right away. I have my credit card ready.
Have you brought me chocolate? Good stuff mind... not that Hershey's stuff. I'll *settle* for Godiva...
*smiles*
Nicely explained. Also, I'm loving HotBot Monster! :)
Personally, I'd say you're absolutly spot on with this. There's several types of content: content to inform, content to teach, content to educate, viral content and linkbait. But occasionally, you get content that's more than one of those. Content that teaches, that's also viral. Content that's educational, but also linkbait.
It's learning to create content that's not just good, but remarkable (in the sense that it's worth remarking on, and thus linking to) that's the real skill in SEO, for me.
So, the gist of your article (if I'm understanding it correctly) is that search engines decided that incoming links were a great way of determining search engine rankings. This was back in the day when most sites gained links a few at a time, probably from other sites that were related in topic.
Now, with the advent of social sites like Digg, websites have the ability to gain tons of links all at once if they have appealing content, often from sites or blogs that aren't related to the original site's main content. This change in how the internet links together hasn't been reflected with a change in how search engines weight incoming links to websites.
So, to get great rankings, you must appeal to the Digg crowd with specific articles, which gets you the links you need to rank highly - even if your site is unrelated to their own sites and blogs, or even if the main content of your site is unrelated to the article that got you the links in the first place? Sorry, but this seems like a really sucky system.
From reading this site, I know that search engines do attempt to correct somewhat for link quality - a link from a site related to yours counts for more than a link from an unrelated site - but that still doesn't seem to balance out the equation.
Do you think that SEOmoz - being a tech site - probably benefits more from Digg-type links than other sites would, simply because your content is likely to be similar to the blogs and sites of people who link to you? In other words, if an education-style site like mine suddenly got hundreds of inlinks from tech blogs and sites, would Google give me lots of credit for all those links, or only a little?
Well link abuse happened long before the social sites came along, with link farms, reciprocal (unrelated) linking, A-B-C site linking, etc.
This is why the algos reach a sum greater than all the parts. SEs have learned that they can't rely on any one measure as a judge of quality, especially any measure that can be easily controlled and manipulated.
So a link from a related and high quality site may be worth more than a link from a high quality, authoritative site that happens to be unrelated in topic.
But both may be worth more than several links from less quality sites, on topic or off. So you have to look at the full picture, even within linking there are many different elements that may add value. Now add in highly targeted anchor text to any of the links above, and that may bump the value of each of those links.
Then add in on site optimization, internal linking, etc. You almost have to lay everything out like stacks of blocks, seeing which stacks are low and determining whether you can add more blocks to the stack... and if not, can you make up for it on another stack.
The real challenge is that you can't ever be really sure which stacks are the most important, so you might need to add 5 blocks to this stack to equal one block on the other stack.... and then too many blocks on the wrong stack might bring it all crashing down.
Thanks for the post, Rand. I really appreciate it.
Being new to SEO, I just got my client from a PageRank 0 to a PageRank of 1. YIPPEEEEEE!
Yeah, I know. but for me, that's validation that I can do this.
Of course, now I need some advise. Would it be advisable to put a moving blog on my client's website in an attempt to get a lot of links (i.e. Digg, Reddit, delic.iou.us). I'm going to test this out on a test server, using Contribute 3 (it just happen to come with the Macromedia Package. Sadly, I didn't get the whole Web Bundle thing. se la vie).
-Clif
I think you have to ask yourself whether or not a blog makes sense for the client?
And is it something that can be maintained appropriately?
If so, great, if not, not so great.
Perhaps one of the bad things about the web is how easy it is to do something without really determing whether it makes strategic sense. This sometimes leads to the "flavor of the month" solutions...
Consultant: You need to add X.
Client: Why? Does X work with our business?
Consultant: Probably not, but who cares, everyones doing it.
I wonder if the Linkerati truly frequent places like Ezine, GoArticles, etc., which would be another, albeit less sexy, alternative.
-Clif
Good point - and I think that Hugh made it in a way that everyone can understand!
I agree in principle to all these points but I feel that not enough weight is given to the search landscape:
Not all organisations are optimising for competitive words and phrases. In fact, some even operate in niche markets, making for easier top rankings. My industry is....don't fall asleep now..... extremely high precision polishing equipment. We deal with scientists and engineers, most of whom spend their time in laboratories. As boybacon says, these people don't really 'do' blogs etc and because we are ranking in a fairly sparse marketplace, we can afford to focus more on content, as opposed to 'Linkerati' measures.
I'm not saying that paying attention to 'Linkerati' is unimportant - just not as important as they might need to be if one is working in a more competitive search arena.
Good article. I find this has been my problem. I plateaued at around 125 uniques/day and it does not go up much beyond that. thanks for the info.
I'm in the same boat...plateaued at 100-125 uniques a day and can't seem to budge it. Thanks for the thought provoking post. I now have some neew ideas that will hopefully break my out of this rut.
A huge inspiration. I have been looking forward to this kind of stratification of different link groups.
The Google's concept of popularity is, IMHO, completely nerdy, outdated and infamous. Google’s concept of popularity always reminds me of those ridiculous north-american college movies, where a strong guy and a dumb blonde girl are the best because they are popular. Seriously: do you really want to be like them? Popularity - for intelligent people - means absolutely NOTHING. The Internet urges for a new model of search engine, and for God’s sake, developed by smart, intelligent people, and not those hundreds of nerds who populate Google's offices around the world. Ok, they know a lot about programming, but they have NO IDEA on how to create a intelligent system that gives value to QUALITY - not quantity. I'm sure that, in the near future, popularity as a proof of quality will be a joke; a bad joke.
Great and inspiring unique post. Lol...I even consider myself as a member of the Linkerati group! I have learned one very important insight from this post. Thanks!
Nice article and imagery Rand.
I too get sick of the "secret" guides to ranking that only tell you to submit and add titles and meta content. The process is so much more technical than it used to be and many are just hearing about the basics or foundation work (perhaps many site owners dont make it past these points). It's good to see someone trying to inform the public about 'real' search marketing and offering advice that's not found on every other search blog and forum.
Me too. There are people like this in every industry and they're incredibly aggravating. There's really never a quick-fix for success; anything successful usually requires some time and effors. Although it means more work for the likes of SEOs, stricter ranking factors mean more honest results and I don't mind that at all! I used to see this in the athletics world: "this training regime will make you a champion in just two months!"
It doesn't matter what field you're dealing with - this is always BS.
One thing we sometimes forget is the people pushing this BS do it because there are a lot of people who want to believe it's true. That doesn't necessarily make it right, but the people wanting to believe do create a market and the BSers move to fill that market.
It's similar to all the spam we get daily. I know it's very inexpensive to send out, but it keeps getting sent because someone is buying into what the spam is selling.
I wish it weren't the case, but I suspect there will always be those looking for the quick fix and the quick buck and there will always be someone there to sell it to them.
Nice illustartions, they make it really easy to scan the post for the important parts.
Does a link from SEOmoz count?
The Linkerati are the ones surfing. They are the traffic. They are hard to montize too - cause they know how to get digital products free. Go figure...lol
No real secrets but lots to know. Thanks for your blog!
Hello.What is the best and hopefully FREE tool available that can CRAWL my sitemap and PING every individual page?Am i right i thinking this would get more of my pages Indexed and possibly found?
Excellent post Rand, an interesting read as always
If you think about 10 years ago, it was almost impossible to get someone to link back to you, because very few people knew how to ftp into their own site, add a link to a webpage and upload it again. Everyone had a site that some friend built, hopefully left the login information with them and then split. I knew a lot of people who had no idea on how to update their site - they were completely stuck with a static site.
This was the era where the linkerati was the most powerful in my opinion. It really was in the hands of the few nerds who had the keys to the internet.
Now blogs are very prevalent, and the general public is starting to understand how to link to content more then ever. I have always believed that the Google Search engine wasn't the best way to promote the best content simply because the average internet user can't "vote" on their favorite content with backlinks. But it seems the tides could turn and that the "linkerati" might be losing their grip..slowly...
Or are they more powerful then ever ? :)
Hi Rand
Thank you for sharing to us. By the way can you make a video tutorial so that some readers can more understand like me so that we can apply on our sites.
Thanks
Regards
Lloyd
I'm sure it's been covered in a Whiteboard Friday at some point. Like he said, there's no secret to ranking so you can't really teach it. It's all about providing users with worthy content that they'll want to link to constantly.
Hi Rand,
Is it called content viral link building? Great article from you and contents from your site. Keep it up.
Great article. I love your illustrations too. I think the identification of the different types of people make things click. Love the "Linkerati" reference. Thanks.
I love the Hotbot dude. Makes me think of the geico caveman ads.
I'll be all over the next installment of this article. Excellent post, sir!
we want the linkerati's...
what do they want?
Very good article Rand, and the visualisations are very interseting.
Thank you
"Those red Linkerati are essential to your site's rankings - they are the great "secret" of long-term SEO success."
Rand some business model's don't care about long term success, they make lots of money out of "SPAMITI".
Another slamming post, Rand! The fact that you manage to bust out the goods - day after day, with consistent quality - is a true inspiration to me. And I love the Googlebot character. He's the mightiest boss in the whole information universe. May we all stay on his good side!I'm so glad that the search game is quickly evolving past the days of tedious manual link requests and keyword stuffing. If that was still kind, I'd want nothing to do with SEO.Now that creative content and inbound one-way links are wildly trumping the automated Cheese-Wizz of the not-so-distant past... search has become an infinitely more interesting game.
I'm in!!!
Great post... :)
Okay... Rand... now hook us up with the real secret...What do the linkerati want?
Like most people, they seem to like to be told that they're, like, really cool, yuh?!
They want cake. Everybody wants cake. Especially if the choice is cake or death.
Totally off topic, but Eddie Izzard's transition to the US never fails to amaze me.
I choose death!
Well, I'll have the chicken then...
A little white wine?
Chocolate... champagne... some link love back...
Whoops... what a giveaway...
*winks*
Excellent article! I can already think of at least three (extremely low ranking and effectively useless to you) places to add a link to this ;)
Excellent post Rand, an interesting read as always.
I too am rather taken by the little pic, and the linkerati, that is just classic!
I can definitely agree with this from practical experience. We are in an industry that is not totally tech savvy. Although there are alots of blogs and forums in our market, those running them, in the most part, don't understand or care about anchor text, etc. While we get links, we mostly get links to our company name, "Click Here", or simply the URL itself.
How do you "train" the linkerati in a non techie industry to get better quality links?
Thanks Rand,
Great post!
All NitPickiness aside, a great and informative post, Thanks Rand!
Great illistration of the progession of search engine strategies! It makes me sit back and think about what I am doing and how more link bait can happen on my main site. Thanks for the insight!
Rand you have interesting timing. Just yesterday someone I know was asking me if I blog in the hopes of people purchasing services after reading the blog.
My response was that was part of it and that I do hope potential clients will read my blog and maybe it will be the deciding factor in them giving me a call, but my response was also in part how I saw the blog as appealing to other bloggers who would hopefully link to me.
When I first started the blog I did think readers might consist more of clients, but it didn't take long to realize that the audience for the blog was going to be different than the readers of the sales pages on the site.
A website does need to appeal to different audiences. Even if you're only looking at the sales process you'll still be appealing to people at different stages along the process each of whom could be said to be part of a different audience. The linkerati are another audience to add to the mix.
Ha!...Linkerati ...i love it.
The hotbot monster is great too.
Love the diagrams and charts...they really help explain the point.
The new articles with the image illustrations are excellent and a fun to read.
I agree. I'm loving the Google bot, you should make a comic of him/her. Meanwhile the hotbot looks like an ogre.
I have to agree with zokiiiii here, this is they type of post the Linkerati want. Something that drives discussion. Something this is relevant, interesting and really earns a link. I like to think in blogging tems in a monetary amount. If you were to pay for a blog entry on a scale ranging from 1 cent to 1 dollar, is your blog that you're about to post worth someone paying $1 to read it. Would they get their money's worth? Granted, we don't have that sort of scale, otherwise Rand would probably go broke with his suggested reads. It is more about thinking about how useful, relevant, or link-worthy a post will be.
I am in the boat with a lot of people who have commented, my company is not one worth receiving constant steady links, and we have to focus on strong content, keyword targeting and doing the best we can with what will help us rank. It's seeming to work. Great post again Rand!
This pictures are awesome. This is what Linkerati want - great content filled with illustrations.
Absolutley excellent post, in fact the best all around blog post summing up the core of SEO I've read. I'm probably going to post a response to this article in my blog, it was that good. Ofcourse all the SEO's in here hopefully already know this advice, but I think it's the number 1 thing most website owners don't understand correctly.
I setup A LOT of blogs (5 last week and I have another 5 to build out this week) and lots of times it's difficult for customers to get the linkari part. They fill their blog with promotional articles or mix too much commercial content with their more objective articles and personal anedotes which greatly reduces it's ability to gain natural links. This is why, I often recommend companies co-brand their blog and seperate it from the regular commercial content of their site, so it'll be easier to attract links. I've had a ton of success with this, especially if they can get some good links / traffic from social media, always a great way to jump start a new site.
It's a lot harder to get people to link to "Buy This NOW" Company blog then it is to create a catchy co-brand blog with less commercial content and target that at the linkari. This can usually be done in almost any industry. Someone above mentioned doors, I'm sure if you spent some time you could create a blog posts using the keyword door in it that could attract at least 10 links, in a less competitive industry that might be really powerful and after a few posts, could add up quickly. When everything else is done correctly, adding an extra 100 quality links gained from a few good blog posts can make all the difference.
Nice POST!
I agree that it can be good, when appropriate, to separate the blog content from the primary branding and marketing concerns of a company. Make the blog the lighter, friendlier side of MegaCorp X, if you will. Be warned, however, that putting the blog on a separate domain (and I realize you didn't explicitly suggest this) from the main company site can cause harmful issues with keyword cannibalization and link-splitting just to name a couple.
Well, people slammd that comment, anyone want to say why? By co-branding I didn't mean put it on a seperate domain and if you look at my blog, it's cobranded and on the same domain (just one small example). It also allow me to specifically control exactly what anchor text people use when they link to it, which is nice.
Now sometimes I do build out blogs and recommend they go a seperate domain, but these are not the MAIN company blogs, but seperate marketing attempts to appeal to niche audiences that don't completely overlap the main Search Marketing strategy of the target site. If you go super niche and are wlling to update or pay someone to update the blog you can target niche demographics and have a very easy time attracking link bait with correctly marketed niche blogs or community sites.
This can be esepcially usefull if the marketing messages dosen't overlap entirely and the target community is extremely niche. You build a site / blog and get the target marketplace to flow through it and then direct an interested percentage (by pre-qualifyng them with an excellent CTA) to commercial sections. I've done this many times and I can usually end up with a nice amount of ACTUAL LEADS, from buildling out niche blogs that the orginal company would have missed, because they didn't have the right marketing to attract the new customers on their main site.