J.C. Penney's organic search results topped Google's rankings for months, including the critical holiday season.   The Times researches determined that J.C. Penney's rankings were due in part to incoming links from thousands of pages, many of which had nothing to do with consumer retail goods.   In other words,  somebody created a huge network of bogus sites that existed primarily to generate "link juice" that benefited J.C. Penney.

J.C. Penney denies any wrongdoing and claims that neither they nor their search engine optimization consultant had anything to do with this manipulation of Google.  Google search engineer Matt Cutts explains the delay in Google's response by noting that the search giant has to deal with over 200 million domain names.   Mr. Cutts emphatically denies that Google intentionally delayed its response to manipulation of its search results because J.C. Penney spends close to $2.5 million on Google's paid search.

I think that the J.C. Penney case is instructive for several reasons, whether you believe J.C. Penney, Google, both or neither.   First, inbound links, even from sites that are not topically related to your site, carry a lot of weight in the Google algorithm.   There is an active marketplace on the Internet to buy and sell incoming links – although Google frowns at link buying as being an artificial manipulation of its search results.

Second, Google sees search results manipulation as a significant problem and they devote a lot of effort to combating so-called "black hat" search engine optimization.   Some of these more questionable tactics may work for a while but eventually, Google will catch on and your site will be banned from its index.

Third, it is possible that someone who does not like you, or perhaps even an unscrupulous business competitor could harm your Google rankings by creating a black hat linking campaign for your site.

The marketplace of tactics is a lot more fluid – methods to achieve your strategic goals change frequently.  Ten years ago, most web sites contained pages titled "recommended links" and there was even software available to automate this process.  Today, we know that Google and other search engines ignore pages that exist solely to exchange links and a much better tactic involves guest posting articles with links embedded therein.

One set of tactics that has proven evergreen are the basic "how to's" that Google readily reveals in a 32 page booklet that may be found at the Google webmaster tools area.   Click on the link to download this free guide.  This guide offers a solid, basic explanation of how to build your web site or blog to rank well in Google for your desired search terms.  I bookmark this guide and review it every few months as a reminder – Google does update this booklet periodically and it will remind you to double check your sites for easy optimization mistakes.  I currently own or manage over 100 sites and I inevitably find that this guide serves as a valuable reminder for me.

This all makes sense except for one glaring admission – you must find blogs with the "no follow" attribute turned off.  Otherwise your comments will not create any backlinks.  Ironically the marketing consultant who described the blog comment strategy had "no follow" enabled on his blog!

What is "no follow?"  No follow is an attribute that is now the default setting in Wordpress.  It signals Google and some other search engines not to follow a hyperlink, in this case, your link text.   The blog publisher must turn off "no follow" in order to send his commenters a backlink.

In order to turn off "no follow" in Wordpress, you need a plugin, which you can find by clicking on the link.  Install the plug-in and activate it and your blog comments will become "follow links."

Note that if you disable "no follow" your blog may attract some spam comments.  This has not been an issue for me, even on high traffic blogs because:

• I moderate all comments
• I use spam blocking plugins like Akismet and Hashcash

I have not yet upgraded to Wordpress 3.0 but it appears that this version allows you to turn "no follow" on or off a little easier than prior versions.  However, if you are using a version of Wordpress that defaults to "no follow" you may need the plugin.

Finally, you may be wondering how to determine if your blog is a "follow" or "no follow" blog.  The easiest way to find out is to use a tool like NoDoFollow for Firefox.  There are other tools out there but this is what I use.

• Content is king because your clients/customers/site visitors expect that your site will educate them
• Content is king because clear, thoughtful and education content functions as currency and your customers will trade their time and their business for that currency
• Content is king because new content is constantly being added to the marketplace of ideas – if you put up a 10 page web site three years ago that has not been touched since, there is absolutely no reason that anyone will assign any value to that content
• Content is king because very bright people working late at night are constantly devising new distribution channels for that content – Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Digg, etc.   Content is so valuable to the publishers that the owners of these distribution channels will host your content at no cost to you because they know that the public demands fresh content.
• Content is king because the Internet is primarily an educational tool.
• Content is king because clear and concise writing is rare.
• Content is king because human beings yearn to learn and to connect and the Internet offers a place for both.
• Content is king because the Internet is like a television with tens of millions of channels – and good content helps you get found.

Almost weekly, I get emails from blog or web site owners that go something like this:

I am in the process of developing a more substantial online presence.  I noticed your blog and that it receives a lot of traffic, and am wondering whether you would be interested in a reciprocal link arrangement whereby we link to your blog and website and, in return, you link to our website on your blog.  Our site is at _____.   We will be adding a "Resources" page that will include links and brief descriptions of useful sites for bankruptcy information, and would include a reference to your blog on that page.

Here is how I read this message:   "Hello, you do not know me but I see you have an established blog that has been around for 5 years, appears regularly in the organic search results and has a high Google PageRank.  I have a new website that has a few pages of content and has not yet been indexed by Google, Yahoo or Bing.  I want you to give me a site wide blogroll link from your site to help put my site on the map.  In exchange, I'll put you on a "links" page on my site, when I get around to adding such a page.  I sincerely hope you don't know that "links" pages are ignored by the search engines, meaning that a link from a "links" page is totally worthless."

Not surprisingly, asking for a link from an established site when you have nothing to trade is a waste of your time and it is a waste of your potential link partners' as well.

Similarly, if your site still contains a "links" or "resources" page, you are shouting to the world that you do not know what you are doing and/or that your linking tactics are vintage 1990.   With very few exceptions, "links" pages have no search engine value.  Next time you see one, look at the PageRank indicator on your Google Toolbar (or at PageRankLookup) you can check for yourself.

So what should you do if you have a new site?  Here are a few suggestions that would work for me:

1. if you have another, more established site, offer a link from that site
2. offer to write an article for your target site – but make sure that your article has some relevant, meaty content.  If you really want to impress your target's editor, offer to write a second article that you will include on your site that contains a link back to your target's site
3. if you have friends or colleagues who have established blogs, ask if they will accept a post (written by you or by your target) that contains a link back to the target
4. offer to write an article for the benefit of your target for EzineArticles.com or another major article directory.  Even better, offer to write several articles for multiple article directories
5. offer to bookmark several of your target's blog posts on one or more social bookmarking sites.
6. offer to write reviews for Google local, Kudzu, Avvo if applicable
7. offer to pay for the link back to your new site
8. offer to distribute video content on behalf of your target on TubeMogul
9. offer to record and produce a screen capture video for your target
10. offer to translate (or have translated) one or more pages of your target's site into Spanish or another language
11. offer to write and set up an autoresponder series for your target on AWeber or Constant Contact
12. offer to buy 50 stock photo credits at iStockPhoto or another stock photo site
13. offer to locate 5 or 10 badges for your target's blog – badges are seals that look like awards that may help a blog's credibility
14. offer to record an interview with your target and to provide target publisher with the audio file

Generally, put yourself in the shoes of a busy blogger – what can you do to help your target blog publisher save time?  Any other ideas about what a new site owner can offer an established site owner to justify a valuable link?

These are some of the most effective strategies to get the best results with search engines:

1) Speak Your Audience’s Language – This means use the exact words and phrases that your visitors would type into search engines. Don’t use scientific or unfamiliar jargon when writing about your products or services on your site. Make your phrases simple and use common words to describe your product or service. When people use a search engine, they most commonly describe what they’re trying to achieve, or what problem they are attempting to solve rather than your specific product or service, which may not be popular yet.

2) Make Search Engines Happy – Once you speak your audience’s language, it’s important to appear high on the search engine results page to increase your visitors. Certain information can be used in your site to appeal to the search engine spiders, which will be determining your rank. Search engine spiders like keywords that are relevant, valuable, descriptive, and informative.

Spiders look at your title tag first to figure out what your site is about, and because it also appears in the actual search engine results, it’s important that your title tag appeal to both potential visitors and the search engines. Include your most important keywords in your headlines and use them again in your content to show search engines that your site’s content is all related and relevant.

Organization is also very important to search engines. Trying to trick search engines by including words that are not relevant but may increase your ranks will not work and will only anger the spiders. Make sure all your information and content is clear, relevant, and easy to navigate. In short, the more clearly you indicate what your site is through use of quality keywords, the better your chances are of getting higher rankings.

3) Continue to Update – It’s inevitable that search engine optimization strategies will change and search engine spiders will continue to get smarter and develop new ways to determine rankings. You must constantly keep an eye on your keywords and be flexible to making changes to make sure your site keeps its ranking.

Another good way of staying up to date is by adding a blog to your website. This is easily achieved and can have extraordinary effects on driving traffic to your site.

If you have any further questions about any of the above-mentioned techniques, please contact Rent-My-Brain or leave a comment on the blog.

1) Algorithm

An algorithm is a fancy word for “formula.” In this case, an algorithm is used by search engines to rank your site, by determining how relevant your site is for the people using the search engine. Factors including your web site’s content, keywords, and links pointing towards your site (aka inbound links or backlinks) are all used in the algorithm to calculate your location on the results page of the search. The more relevant the algorithm determines your site to be, the higher your site will be placed on the results page.

2) Page Rank

The value of your site is a calculation made by Google known as Page Rank. To calculate your Page Rank, which is measured on a scale of 0 to 10 with the average being 3 or 4, several factors are used. One of the most important factors in your Page Rank is the amount of one-way links (again, aka inbound links or backlinks) pointing to your site. A high number of links shows that other sites consider your web site to be a quality, relevant resource, and therefore Google should too. You can download the Google Toolbar to see your Page Rank by clicking on the link.

3) Link Popularity

It is not very well known that some types of links can help your search engine placement while others may actually hurt it. For example, a “reciprocal link,” which is when you link to a site and that site links back to you, is frowned upon by search engines. This is because people used to try and cheat the system by adding as many links as possible to improve their ranking. Search engines have become more intelligent, and their algorithms are able to ignore reciprocal links. The best kind of link today is the “one-way link” that I covered above under the Page Rank subheading.

4) Keyword Phrase

You could say “keyword phrases” are the new “keywords.” Because the internet has been around for awhile, most single word “keywords” have been used so much that they lose value. For example, if I wanted to learn how to poach an egg, I would search for the keyword phrase “how to poach an egg” rather than just the keyword “egg.” Searching for “egg” would produce thousands of irrelevant results. By using keyword phrases you can be much more specific about what your pages are about and cater to specific audiences. For more on choosing relevant keywords for your website, please click on the link to see my most recent post.

5) Site Structure

The way your website is organized, such as how the pages are linked together and the way your menu works, is referred to as site structure. Good site structure helps visitors move freely and easily through the pages and effortlessly find relevant and related content. The better your site structure, the higher your search engine ranking.

A few extra comments on Site Structure

Before I build a website, I typically try to outline the site structure. This involves determining what topics will be covered and how, whether there will be subtopics, how my readers will be able to access/view these topics, and what it will all look like upon first glance at my site.

For example, let’s say I want to build a site promoting a rock band. I may want to have a “home" page (or landing page), an “about" page featuring the band’s members, an “upcoming shows” page, a “downloads" page, and perhaps a “contact us” page. These pages may or may not have subheadings, and that is what I try to think about before I actually start working on the site. Then I think about whether the individual pages will link to each other and whether the individual pages will look different than one another. Adding a "blog" page may be another consideration. These are just examples of things to think about when thinking about site structure. After all, getting people to your site using the methods mentioned above is one thing, but getting them to stay is another. You want to make the visiting experience as intuitive as possible if you want great results.

While search engines no longer care as much about keyword meta tags, it is still important to make yours are well-written and relevant – or your site could get penalized. Keyword meta tags are used to quickly and easily identify the relevance of your site. These days, Google's algorithm, which is used to figure out where to rank pages on the search results, is much more complex due to years of dealing with people trying to cheat the system. Google’s algorithm will not respond to outdated tricks such as typing keywords multiple times or using “invisible” keywords (white text on a white background). If you attempt these tricks, your site will not only be frowned upon, but may get banned from Google altogether.

Another big mistake is including keywords that are irrelevant to your site to attract more traffic. By including a hot-topic article on your website that is irrelevant to your subject matter, you will loose your credibility and your audience. Once a visitor to your site realizes your trick; they’ll leave immediately. Why would anyone bother visiting your site if it is filled with incohesive, random content?

Since navigating the internet for quality information is already difficult, it’s important to stand out from the sites that are created for no other reason than to get better rankings. You can do this by providing useful content and keep from making typical mistakes such as trying to trick search engines via the methods mentioned above.

Tips on choosing relevant keywords

So you have determined what your site’s content will be about but now you are at a loss as to what keywords to choose and begin using. A good place to start is Google’s keyword tool. There, you can simply type in the keyword (or search term) that you think the people who you want to visit your site would theoretically be searching for. Then, this useful tool will tell you how many searches people make per month on that particular keyword, what the competition is for that keyword, and will even provide similar keywords which may be more effective and that you hadn’t thought of. For example, say you are trying to make a website all about old outlaw ballads. Well, according to the Google Keyword tool, people rarely search for the keyword “outlaw ballads.” However, it will tell you that the keywords “outlaw songs” and “outlaw music” are far more popular and will show roughly how many others are trying to use those same keywords to market their sites.

For more on how to use the Google keyword tool, I recommend checking out this handy video on how to use articles to build SEO found at IdeaMarketers.com. There is a section of this 20-minute video devoted to the topic of using Google’s keyword tool – I recommend you check it out for more tips on using it and finding the right keywords for your site.

In my consulting practice I regularly work with lawyers, although I see the same issues in many businesses.  Law firms usually contain the name of the partners, i.e. Engulf, Devour, Cheatham & Howe.  A firm like this is likely to choose a URL that reads something like this:  www.edch-law.com.

In my view, a URL like edch-law.com is a poor choice.  Firstly, it is not something that most people will remember and given the many images and impressions foisted upon each of us every day, it is certainly better to choose an easy to remember name.   I have a bankruptcy domain name called "moneylawyer.com" – wouldn't you agree that moneylawyer is much easier to remember and spell than some random series of letters with a dash.

Secondly, I think that it makes sense to include a high traffic keyword phrase in your domain name.   For example, I use the domain name GeorgiaSocialSecurityDisabilityAttorney for one of my Social Security disability law sites and ChildSupportandSocialSecurityDisability for a narrowly focused Social Security disability blog.  It has been my experience that a URL with a keywork in the domain name will more quickly rank higher for that search term than a domain name with random letters.

What should you do if all of the "good" dot com domains are taken?  Here, you have a couple of choices.  You can register a dot net, a dot org or even a dot us.  These top level domains are well enough known that most people will recognize what they are.  Another option is to include dashes or numbers in the domain name, like I did with Atlanta-Bankruptcy-Attorney.com and 4SocialSecurityDisability.net.  Search engine spiders do not "see" dashes or numbers and from a purely search engine perspective, 4divorcelaw.com is the same as divorcelaw.com.

Finally, realize that if someone is searching for you using your name or firm's name in the search query, your site will most likely come up first anyway, especially if you feature your name prominently on the site or if you have a robust "about us" page.

The bottom line: a well researched and selected domain name can help you get to the top of the search engines for a desired keyword phrase faster than a random series of letters.

Frequently, the email solicitation will state that your link has already been posted on the other web site, with a link that looks something like www.abcwebsite.com/links_2.html.  If you should happen to visit that page, your link will be there along with a few dozen other links that may or may not be in your business category.

My advice is to ignore these requests for link exchanges.

Years ago, the major search engines gave some credit to links on "link directory" pages on a web site.  Back in 2000 or 2001, a "reciprocal link exchange" might have some value to both parties.  Unfortunately, those days are over.  Search engines generally do not give any authority credit to a link that exists in a link directory – at least that has been my experience.

Link directories that exist solely to pass "page rank" or site authority defeat the purpose of a good search result – to indentify authority sites that provide topical and relevant information.  This bias against link bartering is why some search engines are punishing links sold by link brokers.  Take a look at an article by bodybuilder Mark McManus entitled "Google Slashes MuscleHack's PageRank."   Mark earned $18.95 by selling space on his blog to a text link ad company, only to see his ranking in Google plummet.   Mark happens to have a legitimate blog that contains fresh, original content that is frequently updated, yet he got slapped.  Take heed.

If you are going to "exchange" links with another web site, ask the other site's editor if he/she add an article that you have written to his/her web site.  The article you write should be topical and relevant and it should contain a relevant link text phrase back to one or more pages on your site.  You would never want to use "link here" as your link text.

At this point it does appear that the major search engines are still giving authority credit to "blogroll links" on blogs.  In theory blogroll links don't differ much from link directory pages on web sites, but obviously Google and Yahoo must see some reason to still consider blogroll links.  Don't be surprised if this linking tactics disappears at some point.

I'll post about some of the link building tactics that I use in a future post.  For now, however, don't waste your time or your site's credibility exchanging links with link builders who are using 10 year old tactics and putting links on link directory pages.