Monthly Archives: April 2009

Content For Links & Go Compare

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April 30  |  Link Building, News  |   Ryan Clark

There has been a lot of talk lately about companies offering content for links and there are people on all sides of the fence, including myself. I just read an excellent article by Linktank(must read blog btw) entitled The Content For Links Debate, and I completely agree with what he has to say in regards to going about this tactic. A lot of the chatter has been revolving around the Go Compare fiasco which has seen them up and down in Google.

If you haven’t heard about it, then let me fill you in quickly. They were basically sending out mass emails saying they’ll write content for your site and include one simple link back to their website. This method can work out great but I can see how a lot of people didn’t like the way they went about things. Mass emailing a template to webmaster’s is not a great way of doing things. I however think that this is a great method of link building if done properly, and by properly I mean getting personal in each and every email. I also read that they were offering around 400 word articles as content, and to me this doesn’t come close to cutting it. If you’re wanting that link from the other site you’d best be writing at least 2000 words on something new and fresh, not rehashed. Spend the time doing the social media marketing to attract links to that content, which will in return pass on quality link juice.

Now it isn’t clear that they(Go Compare) received a penalty mainly because they bounced back quickly. If you’ve done link building in a tough niche you’ll know that your rankings will fluctuate all over the place.  You also don’t want to be too aggressive going after one keyword because that’s going to get you notice and slapped.

I could go on and on about this subject but i’ll let you folks write me some comments with your thoughts. I’m also going to link to a bunch of great posts already talking about what I’ve covered here and then some. It’s a touchy subject, and link building is a mine field of an industry so it’s fun(hard?) to keep up on things.

How to Determine a Search Engine Penalty – Jonathan Stewart
Go Compare Penalized Again – Patrick Altoft
The Content For Links Debate – Linktank
Content For Links – Kieron Donoghue
Link Building In Ultra Competitive Niches – Red Cardinal

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Love.com At A Glance

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April 30  |  News  |   Ryan Clark

I wasn’t aware of Love.com until I read Aaron Wall’s post “Does Google Love.com Spam?” which lead me to peering into their backlink profile and more. Aaron is the man when it comes to pointing out the crazy things companies will do and AOL is redefining content scraping. Now most sites wouldn’t have lasted this long but when you’re AOL you have a little bit more sway that others. I don’t want to get into the ethics of it all, but instead take a peek at their backlink profile and how they’re abusing social media.

Love.com Backlinks:


So far they’re blistering along in the search engines with nearly 150,000 pages indexed in just Google. Aaron tweet’d that he’d give away some SEOBook prizes if anyone could guess the date this would start dropping, and honestly I’m not sure if this will happen quickly. Love.com is going to at least have a grace period mainly due to the age of their domain name, and when you see their backlink profile you’ll shit a brick. Before I even ran them through LinkVoodoo’s Backlink Analyzer I expected to see a lot of AOL owned sites providing most of the juice. Well as of today I’m seeing just over 1000 backlinks with 93% of them being dofollow which is quite rare in a backlink profile, but I was right in guessing most of them would be from an AOL owned site. Also as expected, since most of the sections are on their own subdomain a lot of the links are coming from those.This also means that 93% of the links are pointing to their root index.

So far this has been working out in their favor and I can see the pagerank is flowing around to a lot of the Love.com subdomains. So all in all despite the crazyness this site is going to bring out in the SEO world it is worth the behind the scenes look at how you can manipulate the search engines. I’ve attached the .csv file from out private beta version of the LinkVoodoo backlink analyzer in case you’re wondering how I’m getting reports. It will be out soon so don’t worry, we’re still testing and fixing some bugs so this report may not include all the backlinks but it will be damn close.

Download: Love.com Link Analysis

Love.com’s Twitter Usage:

Everyone is using Twitter these days and it didn’t take me long to see how Love.com was making use of it either. It’s a great way to get traffic, but they’re seemingly taking it to the next level. If you do a quick search for Love.com on Twitter you’ll see what’s going on here. Tons and tons of seperate Twitter accounts based on niche feeding in news from the site. It is too early to tell if this is working out great for them but it’s interesting none the less.

What do you folks think about this?

Love.com’s Alexa:

I know Alexa isn’t the best for measuring traffic volumes but it will do fine just to see how things are progressing so far. As you can see the Scraping + Domain Age + Link Profile is bringing in the traffic so far, but I can’t wait to see the results a few months from now. I think Aaron’s guessing game is a great idea and I think I’ll make my bid.

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Link Building With Your Pictures

13 Comments
April 28  |  Link Building  |   Ryan Clark

This post I was a little nervous about pushing to the public mainly because the potential for abuse, and we all know that most link building techniques do get abused quite badly. With that being said, I had recently worked with a photographer and the research I did for his campaign lead me to the data for this post. If you’re a photographer and are wanting to expand your business you’ll find this resource quite handy, and a great way to build up a relevant backlink profile in the process. So I hope these link building resources get used wisely and I don’t wanna see a bunch of people using other people’s pictures to go on a link building bonanza.

This client in particular had a good response from the search engines with these methods and is rapidly showing improvement within the serps. Another killer factor that makes this work and doesn’t piss off any of the sites is of course great content. If you’re going to be showing off your work you best make sure those photo’s are your best work because I saw a lot of his work get very popular on some of these sites. This photographer specialized in scenery shots within his state and had a nice stockpile of beautiful shots that managed to capture the attention of a lot of people.


I approached the campaign with a couple different angles in mind, one being a whole host of picture/photography sites that let you submit your work and get nice juicy links. Two being the use of a hosted gallery with an embed feature. I found a few different open source gallery scripts that worked great, and the only thing I had to do was some minor PHP coding to make sure a link back to his site was obtained when embedded.

Wallpapers:

Everyone loves a nice wallpaper for their desktop and we were able to make use of a whole host of juicy wallpaper sites out there. A lot of these sites will allow you to submit your work and receive a link back which is great. This is where the great content comes into play because if you have a good shot your wallpaper could become quite popular. I also connected with local bloggers in his area to let them know of his new wallpapers and we managed to snag a few great links, and the bloggers were more than happy to do so. Sometimes you have to get the word out about your content instead of relying it on going viral. I’m going to keep the list of wallpaper sites to a minimum but here are a few that allow you to get a link back for your work. A lot of the sites are not all too quality so they might not be worth the submit. There are a lot of these sites out there so use the Google commands to help weed them out easily.

Wallpaper Seek – Submit
Wallpaper Cube – Submit
Wallpaper4God – Submit
IndieWalls – Submit

Screensavers:

The same sort of work goes into screensaver sites as the wallpaper ones. If you have a bunch of great themed pictures you can create a cool screensaver and submit that around the web for exposure and links. I recommend going to any one of the free music websites with mp3 downloads and finding commercial free tunes to spruce up the screensaver, which will increase your approval odds. I know this method is spammed often and you have to watch out for low quality sites, so make sure you’re submitting your finest work. Again I’m only going to post a few here but you can use Google to find hundreds of these sites, so submit with caution.

DesktopScreensaver.com – Submit
FreeSaver.com – Submit
Saverpit.com – Submit
Screensaversplanet.com – Submit

Social Pictures Sites:

I knew before I started this client’s campaign that there were a lot of great social photo/picture sites out there and it lead me on quite the journey. For a photographer these sites are a goldmine for attracting not only links, but attention to your quality work. These sites though are where my concerns for mass spamming come into play, and I can’t stress enough the need to be ethical in your marketing efforts. Some of these sites you cannot obtain links from, but if you have great content it is worth the exposure especially if you have a watermark on your work.

Zoto is a great alternative to Flickr and features a very nice minimalistic design that makes browsing photos easy on the eyes. You can’t get any links from Zoto but it’s great for social media marketing and getting that exposure you’ll be needing.

Fotolog is another social picture site that is very active and has a whole bunch of features such as embedding, user profiles and a friend network. You can get nofollow links within your profile and in the picture description. So there’s no need to upload watermarked photos here because you can just link to your portfolio and attract some attention.

Photosig is a great little site that has been booming with activity lately and I found no shortage of amazing pictures. If you’re working and come to this site prepare to find yourself time warped 2 hours ahead because there is so much to look at. Aside from being able to host your galleries on here there is a very active forum and and a bunch of useful articles. I think my favorite part about this site is you get critical feedback from other photographer’s. Aside from all that you can get a couple dofollow links to your homepage or portfolio, so make sure you fill out your bio.

DeviantArt should be no stranger to any photographer or artist as it is one of the largest photo and art websites on the web. I love the site even though it looks like Myspace in regards to its awful design and content cluttering. Regardless it is a place you shouldn’t overlook especially when it’s free to sign up and post your work. It’s also a great place to network and get in touch with other photographer’s and your pictures can rank easier if you want to go after longtails. Last but not least, you can obtain dofollow links in your photos comments and on your profile page.

More Photography Social Sites:

  • http://smugmug.com/
  • http://www.buzznet.com/
  • http://www.webshots.com/
  • http://pixrat.ibibo.com/
  • http://www.shareapic.net/
  • http://jalbum.net/
  • http://www.zooomr.com/
  • http://www.imageloop.com/en/index.htm
  • http://www.iimmgg.com/
  • http://www.scrapblog.com/
  • http://weheartit.com
  • http://www.phanfare.com/
  • http://photosynth.net/
  • http://vi.sualize.us/
  • http://www.photoshop.com/
  • http://www.dumpr.net/
  • http://www.glogster.com/
  • http://www.dailybooth.com
  • http://www.photoshelter.com

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