Monthly Archives: December 2008

Link Building With IntenseDebate.com

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December 8  |  Link Building  |   Ryan Clark

Intense Debate is a cool and effective system for inspiring people to comment. Blog comments haven’t had much innovation in the past couple of years except maybe for the likes of Commentluv, so I welcomed this cool new app when I discovered it searching through someones backlinks. Intense Debate keeps track of your comments and can track your commenting across the web, so long as those blogs have the plugin installed.

There are many features that intensify your commenting experiencing, and with it installed I only noticed it interfere with one other plugin, Commentluv. Other than that my theme integrated well and I didn’t notice a problem with any other plugin on the blog. Intense Debate adds comment threading which allows your an easier read, especially on a heated topic. You can also reply to comments right from your email which works great with your mobile phone on the go. Since it is all run through a plugin back to the main site you get tracking for all your users as well as detailed stats like top commenters, most commented post and so on. The importing feature worked great as well, as soon as I intalled the plugin I had all my comments formatted into Intense Debate within minutes.

So now on to the link building aspect…your user profile on the Intense Debate site will get indexed on its own or, or with a little help, so with the power of dofollow this is a great way to build legit links from an authoritative website. When you setup your profile you’ll be able to add in your blog, and if you name it properly you’ll get an anchor text friendly link to your site as well to your RSS feed. This is great because it’s one simple link and there is little room for spammers to abuse this site which I like, and makes it easier to write about without worrying the folks at Intense Debate. Check out my awesome GIMP editing skills to demonstrate where you get a link;

So I hope I can get a bunch of you to sign up and perhaps get this system going on your blogs to liven things up a bit. If you like you can add me as a friend and we can keep track of our online chitter chatter, or perhaps future flame wars :)

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Linking Secrets for Professional Real Estate Websites

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December 8  |  Link Building, Niche Link Building  |   Ryan Clark

This is my first guest post I’ve had on the blog and I’d like to thank the author Patric Herber from Real Estate License Direct for writing this post while I’ve been quite sick with the flu. Patric has been link building in the real estate niche for quite some time and knows what it takes to stand out in a really tough niche.


Quick, if you can’t handle the truth cover your ears for this first bit. Are you ready? Real estate is one of the most difficult niches to build links in, period. Why? Because the industry has a bad name! Ninety percent of all real estate websites are little more than spam infested hubs for low-life wanna be webmasters that can’t compete in niches with more tech savvy competition.

So what does this bad reputation mean for a professional real estate website? Well, it means:

  • There is less “natural linking” among real estate webmasters due to a lack of trust within the niche itself.
  • There are fewer authority links available because a lot of authority websites have closed their doors to anything real estate related. I have seen a lot of segregation here for our industry, it is quite unfortunate.
  • There will be more work involved in obtaining enough links to rank for anything competitive.
  • That basically you can expect less links, less love and a whole lot more work but the end result is truly a wonderful thing, because online, the real estate industry gets a great deal of quality traffic that can easily convert to quality clients.

So now that you know what problems you’re likely to face, you can begin to create a solution that will separate you from the rest of the real estate industry. You should know that I am not going to preach about writing great content and networking within the industry, chances are you probably already know and do that(hint, hint). But rather I want to direct your thoughts towards the real muscle behind a successful real estate website, quality inbound links from related websites.

Let me give you some methods that I use to build real estate links, but first I want you to remember one thing, “Anyone can build a million low quality backlinks from un-related websites, but how well do you think those links will make you rank?” So here are some link building methods I use, in no specific order:

  • Guest Writing – In any niche, but especially real estate, we find that the best quality links come from providing quality content. Now I know that sounds a little cliche’ but it works. I have seen sites with a hundred backlinks out rank older websites with thousands of links using this method, I highly recommend you try it out. Finding guest writing opportunities is really pretty easy, try a few of these searches:
    “real estate” +”write for us”
    “real estate” +”our contributors”
    “real estate” +”submit an article”
    “real estate” +”guest bloggers”
    inurl:real estate “guest bloggers”
    inurl:real estate “write for us”
    “real estate” +”guest posts”
  • Visit news websites – What I really like about news websites are that they are often considered authority sites and they can just about go with any niche. In the past, I have found a lot of news services such as CNN and similar sites that offer community services where you can strategically place links to your site. For instance, MSN has community forums with dofollow signature links, some other services allow you to create profiles, profile pages are often great places to place links. Just do a search for news, and start running through each service one by one, you will be amazed at how many opportunities you can find.
  • Utilize the Industry Leaders – Some times to find the best opportunities(ie. the best links) you need to visit the authorities within the industry. But don’t stop there, there is much more to real estate than just real estate, it is a business which means that you can combine the two for valuable links. Here are a few of the websites on my routine, all of which allow for dofollow links in one form or another:
    Active Rain – Real estate community that allows you to publish blog posts with links in them.
    Work.com – One of the leading business resource sites, you can publish how-to guides on virtually any subject with links to your site.
    Inman News – Popular real estate news site that has dofollow comments.
    BizJournals – Another business resource that will allow you to setup an account and write business articles and news stories.
  • Build out your website – Some of the best links come from within your own website. A website that is inner-linked very well and has a lot of rich pages will naturally have more link authority. I was able to drastically increase my rankings using this very method, so I know it works well. Give it a shot and see for yourself.

So when it comes to marketing a real estate website, you really need to change your mind set from link builder to opportunist, because as you can see above, great real estate links are all about hard work and opportunity. In fact, when I am building links for our real estate projects, I never “look for links”, I look for opportunities to provide value and build back the reputation that has been lost among the community.

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Link Building With Google Code(Nofollow)

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December 4  |  Link Building  |   Ryan Clark

Before I write this post I’m warning everyone that the potential to spam this resource is here and I urge you to only make use of Google Code if you have software that’s open source and Google API related. You don’t want to end up spamming this resource which is owned by Google….I can’t imagine it would go well for you. I’ve been doing some link building for a client that has software and noticed his competitor had a very authitative back link from code.google.com which was nofollow but anchor text friendly. This is a resource for Google API developers and also offers hosting that provides revision control using Subversion.

So this was taken from the project AIMlbot4glider and you can see how a page is layed out for a project. So I know this is a nofollow link, but I’m a firm believer that it’s still beneficial from authitative sites….and this Google we’re talking about. So if you are programming something with the Google API be sure to setup a project page which should be done if the resource is there right?

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Link Fish Media

5 Comments
December 2  |  Uncategorized  |   Ryan Clark

I’ve got my plate full this month with clients and I wanted to start blogging about other companies that have got my respect, as well most of the industries as well. I am kicking off the new section to this blog entitled Link Building Companies, and it will showcase other great people who can get the job done right. First up is no stranger to the SEO and link building world and they go by the name of Link Fish Media. I always like to mention that this post was in no way paid for or suggested by Link Fish Media and is written out of respect for industry leaders who I think would be great to handle your campaign.

I first heard about the company through one of the owners, Julie Joyce, whom articles can be seen all over the web including Search Engine Land. It’s always good to familiarize yourself with a company before making the plunge, and going with people who are loud in the community gives you the opportunity to make a smart decision. The other half of Link Fish Media brings another well respected member to the table…I’m sure most of you have heard of Jay Young. You may have seen him speak at SES London, or read something on the SEO Blokes Blog.

Link Fish Media handles all aspects of link building from the initial building blocks right up to getting your viral content linked all over the web. Remember that these two have years of experience and what I like most is they take a unique approach to your link building campaign, and not just some cookie cutter directory submission and social bookmarking. So if you’re looking for professional link building then please get in touch with Link Fish Media.

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Link Building With Blogoculars.com

4 Comments
December 2  |  Link Building  |   Ryan Clark

Blogoculars.com is a free news source that takes its content from blogs from all walks of life. I’ll mention right out front that 99% of the links with this service are nofollow, but it’s a great place to attract new readers within your niche. Blogoculars has a great user interface and you can submit your blog within seconds which gets you your own Blogoculars Page. The only dofollow link you get is on the right panel under your user bio, although it isn’t anchor text friendly.If you’re done reading and ready to sign up you can add your blog.

What is Blogoculars about?

Blogoculars is a live blogging directory powered by news feeds. Designed for blog writers and readers, we aim to help people find blogs which interest them and help bloggers promote their place on the web. We index a wide variety of blogs which are submitted by users themselves. To add your blog to the site please sign up.

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The Link Building Cookbook By Collin Lahay

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December 1  |  Link Building  |   Ryan Clark

I’m not sure why I didn’t think to make a post earlier about the best online resource for link building strategies. Collin Lahay has been blogging about link building for a couple years now and is without a doubt the most enjoyable blog to read on the topic. I’m almost preaching to the choir writing about this because I’m sure most of you have been following the Link Building Cookbook feaverously for the past year.

What is the Link Building Cookbook?

The Link Building Cookbook is a guide for webmasters to quickly find websites that they can get to link to their websites. In a nutshell, this guide provides hundreds of places to get to link to you so that you can get more search engine traffic in a lot less time than building links the standard way.

The Link Building Cookbook is updated very frequently, and features thousands of places where normal webmasters would not have thought they could build links to their website. This guide helps you find “the diamonds in the rough,” or in other terms, the best places to build links without paying heavy amounts of money.

Collin has 36 entries so far plus a few misc link building tactics for you to spend countless hours working on! The guide is full of mostly dofollow link building strategies and what I love about it is the fact you won’t find this information anywhere else. There are a ton of blogs out there dedicated to link building that offer nothing but philisophy and I know you all know that I hate that. So thanks for letting me rant and I hope you folks go and subscribe to his feed and enjoy the innovative ideas Collin brings forth. I also want to clarify this post was in no way paid or offered, it’s out of respect for the great information he’s worked at putting out there.

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