Link Building Strategy: Adding NEW links to OLD pages

“Old” pages on your site might already have authority and Page Rank so adding a new link on an old page will help you to rank a new page. Yes, this might have been true in the good ole days but no more.

Tim Grice wrote a report: Links In Old, Crawled Content Don’t Pass Weight which confirms that old authority pages do not pass “oomph” you expected.

Adding NEW links to OLD pages: Freshen Content

However, this is not the end of the story. It seems that you need to freshen your old page before getting the oomph you expected. So OK add your new link but work in some new content around the link as well. Google will see the page extra fresh material and reward your link accordingly. Whilst adding the new content, it may be wise to freshen your title tag to reflect the new content.

Does the same apply to external links? Say you can persuade a webmaster to update a link to your site from the webmaster’s site – will that pass rank too? Well, it seems the same applies – try to work in some new content again. Of course, some webmasters are resistant to adding new content. So it is up to you to boost the authority of the webmaster’s page with some social media links or other inbound links.

The SeoMoz video below explains the theory more fully:  Adding NEW links to OLD pages

Google Reference:
Why would this happen? Why would Google care if it’s an old page or a new page? We don’t know exactly, but we do have some hints from some patent filings that Google has filed, specifically, Document Scoring Based on Document Content Update. It’s been filed over and over again in different variations throughout the years. It’s kind of like the manifesto of how Google runs its search engine.  So it seems that Adding new links to old pages CAN work if you take a fresh approach!

One of the questions we are constantly asked about is the use of Flash (particularly on the home page). Jonathan Hochman has an interesting article on this topic. Here is an extract.

Search-Friendly Flash

Search engines have the ability to read Flash files and extract text and links. In particular, Google and Adobe announced a new algorithm for indexing textual Flash content on June 20, 2008. As explained by Rand Fishkin in Flash and SEO – Compelling Reasons Why Search Engines & Flash Still Don’t Mix, and Vanessa Fox in Search-Friendly Flash?, hoping that search engines can decipher you Flash is not a substitute for providing indexable HTML content.

Requirements for Successful Use of Flash

Flash animation is a great way to present complex content because it allows the designer to put more content in a finite space, without wrecking page design. For technology sites, Flash is an ideal way to present a slide show or movie explaining a complex product. At the other end of the spectrum, art and entertainment sites have a real need for multimedia, and Flash is the perfect solution.

When using Flash, we’d like to satisfy each of these objectives:

•     Clean design
•     Search Engine Optimization
•     Accessibility for a wide variety of browsers, including screen readers and mobile phones
•     Code validation and standards compliance
•     Correct functionality with IE

Reference: How to SEO Flash

Strategic SEO:SeoMoz expose a very tactical approach to SEO, where the content is built specifically for users searching for those things that deliver everything they want in the content.

Step 1: Establish the full list of keywords
Step 2: Target User Content
Step 3: Multiple or a singular keyword page focus?
Step 4: Find longer tail keywords
Step 5: Build content: Mapping keywords to content

Anyhow let’s discover the Strategic SEO approach in the Video below.

Video: Strategic SEO

If you have an existing site how do you take a Strategic SEO approach to this situation: Well SEOMOz recommend: “You can take an existing site right now, run through this process, and have just a huge win both in terms of your ability to target searches and rank for those keywords as well as your ability to better convert those visitors because of how you’ve targeted the relevance and the user intent.”

Social Media and Links

How can we use Social Media to build links? The video lays out a very scalable way to build links for just about any business.

The video reals useful social media tools to use, and explains how to use them.

Also tips on how to use Twitter and Google +. So fix yourself a cup of coffee and enjoy the tips about Social Media.

Unique Backlinks

Building unique backlinks to your pages is an essential part of SEO (short for Search Engine Optimization) for two reasons. The first reason is that it helps your pages get indexed faster, which is very important because you want the search engines to find them as soon as possible and crawl them regularly. The second reason is that it helps your pages get higher search engine rankings for the keywords of your choice. The more backlinks you have, the better. Period.

However, building backlinks can be a time-consuming, boring process. You can outsource the process to an agency and pay a lot of money… Or you can do it yourself with SocialMonkee! SocialMonkee is an instant backlink builder allowing you to build 25 unique backlinks, every day, FREE! All links are on unique C-Class IP addresses and domains. Imagine being able to create 25 unique backlinks every day, with the click of a button, FREE! Well, you can stop imagining…

So, 25 unique backlinks every day… That’s a total of 175 backlinks every week, 750 every month. If you upgrade, you will be able to build 100 uniques backlinks, 3 times a day! That’s a total of 2,100 backlinks every week, 9,000 every month! The good news is… you can get a Premium Account, FREE! All you need to do is to refer 12 members, and your account will automatically be upgraded. If you’re not really into referral marketing, you may upgrade right now for a low one-time fee.

Submitting a page to SocialMonkee via the members area takes under two minutes, but there’s an even faster way! They created a Firefox plugin that allows you to submit your page to up to 100 sites in just a few clicks, using nothing else than Firefox! If you have a Premium Account you will also get access to link reports and RSS feeds, which are great to keep track of your backlinks and get them indexed fast. Submitting your RSS feeds to RSS submitters is actually a very important step in link building.

So what are you waiting for? Join SocialMonkee now while it’s still free!

We are very impressed by Niche Reaper: a keyword research tool – zooming in on whether you can rank easily or make money. We have experienced the mind-numbing task researching keywords for niche markets. This video shows you how easy it is to use the Niche Reaper tool.

Niche Reaper has a complex algorithm to analyse the niches and keywords and only reports the niches and keywords you can easily dominate, and it simply replaces ALL of the tools I was using (niche/keyword research, keyword analysis etc.) and it provides results that will allow ANYONE to take action almost instantly.

Video Introduction – watch here:

Niche Reaper Rankings

With Niche Reaper you can discover hundreds of new keyword domains every day with a virtually guaranteed page one ranking. Of course, you will need some content, and backlinks. But you know your efforts will be worth your time and effort.

We are recommending Niche Reaper.

Article: Niche Reaper

Yoast WordPress SEO plugin

We have been impressed with All in One SEO and the Ultimate SEO plugins and have been watching the development of the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin.

I think it is time to get off the wall and recommend the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin. Although the interface needs improvement for beginners, the functionality is outstanding especially with recent integration of the Linkex SEO analysis tool. We have used the paid SEOPressor tool in the past and frankly Lindex is equally impressive. Effectively, it is an idiot’s guide to onpage SEO, and shows you what needs to be done.

Linkdex Analysis

Here is a sample Post Analysis from a Cactus Blog

	The copy scores 61 in the Flesch Reading Ease test, which is considered OK to read.
	In the specified meta description, consider: How does it compare to the competition? Could it be made more appealing?
	Keyword / keyphrase appears in 2 (out of 2) headings in the copy. While not a major ranking factor, this is beneficial.
	The images on this page contain alt tags with the target keyword / phrase.
	The keyword / phrase appears in the URL for this page.
	The keyword appears in the first paragraph of the copy.
	The keyword density is 1.12%, which is great, the keyword was found 7 times.
	The meta description contains the primary keyword / phrase.
	The page title contains keyword / phrase, at the beginning which is considered to improve rankings.
	The page title is more than 40 characters and less than the recommended 70 character limit.
	There are 635 words contained in the body copy, this is greater than the 300 word recommended minimum.
	This page has 1 outbound link(s).

In addition you get a snippet preview:

Conclusion:
Impressive or what? This is a real bonus, and brings Yoasts WordPress SEO plugin to the top of the pile.

Panda Update

Have you been affected by Google’s Panda / Farmer update? Obviously, this has had far reaching affect, and Google feels obliged to offer more advice. If you cannot answer “yes” to the following questions then your site might be hit by this update and subsequent updates as this is rolled out across the World.

Google’s Panda Criteria:

• Would you trust the information presented in this article?
• Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?
• Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
• Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?
• Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
• Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
• Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
• Does the page provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results?
• How much quality control is done on content?
• Does the article describe both sides of a story?
• Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
• Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites donât get as much attention or care?
• Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?
• For a health related query, would you trust information from this site?
• Would you recognize this site as an authoritative source when mentioned by name?
• Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?
• Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?
• Is this the sort of page youâd want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
• Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
• Would you expect to see this article in a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book?
• Are the articles short, unsubstantial, or otherwise lacking in helpful specifics?
• Are the pages produced with great care and attention to detail vs. less attention to detail?
• Would users complain when they see pages from this site?

Panda Content Changes?

So do you need to change your content??? Get some original well-researched content quick!

URL Shorteners

URL shortening is a technique on the World Wide Web in which a URL may be made substantially shorter in length and still re-direct to the required page. This is typically achieved by using an HTTP Redirect on a domain name that is short, which links to the web page that has a long URL. For example, http://www.seoadviser.info becomes http://bit.ly/ifS6gF via the bit.ly service.

These are great tools but can you use these url shorteners with your anchor text keywords and not be at a SEO disadvantage?

URL Shorteners and SEO

So do URL shorteners do pass link juice? Matt Cutts says “Yes” as long as they’re 301 redirects. This makes perfect sense because Google is counting signals from the likes of Twitter and Facebook in their ranking algorithm where shorteners are used. Cutts specifically states Bit.ly and Goo.gl as two that work well. Matt explains in the video below ….

One of our most trusted partners is seoMOZ – their data and material is always excellent. So when they release findings, you should take note! Here are their preliminary findings for 2011.

Image by jcolman via Flickr

1. Facebook + Twitter are Big. Even if you don’t believe that it’s having a major impact on the rankings directly, the correlation shows that those sites/pages which perform well in social media outperform in search rankings. If you’re in either profession – SEO or social media marketing – you should probably be working to strengthen your skillset on both sides.
2. Partial Anchor Text. This was heavily discussed on several panels today, and the opinions of voters suggest that SEOs have noticed too – exact match anchor text seems to be less powerful than partial match anchor text (at least, sometimes). To be honest, I voted and thought that exact was still stronger, but it could be that Google’s getting pickier about spammy, overly precise keyword-match anchors (and that’s a good thing, IMO).
3. Exact Match Domains? The correlation this round is strikingly lower than last June’s data. Perhaps Google’s taken some action here, or maybe other factors are at play, but either way, the votes from the SEOs suggest that we haven’t yet seen the bottom of exact match domain name value.
4. Something’s Funny About Nofollows. The correlation data here is downright weird. Maybe nofollowed links are simply well-correlated to followed links, maybe Google’s actually using some nofollow signals or perhaps, nofollows often come from good places (like social media sites, profiles, blog comments, discussion forums, etc.) that correlate to good, useful, high quality sites/brands.
5. Domain-Wide Signals Matter. After the Panda/Farmer update, no one in SEO should be surprised that Google’s looking at domains as well as pages, but the correlation and the strength SEOs ascribed in the voting both surprised me.

Check out their Open Site Explorer tool. There is a free version!