Jennifer Slegg - Search Engine Marketing Consultant |

When I heard that David Naylor, AKA DaveN, was going to be a part of the SEO Rehab & Intervention session at San Jose SES, which was how to deal with your SEO addictions, I found it pretty amusing… after all, of all the SEOs I know, I would rank Dave as being the one I’d put at the top of my list for being most addicted to all things SEO. Whether it is poring over logs for hours (yes, unadulterated raw logs that cause most SEO’s eyes to glaze over after about 5 minutes), checking PageRank, looking at rankings in a bunch of different geotargeted countries, or even just plain old mucking about with his blog entries for hours on end to get the perfect description snippet to appear in Google, there is no one else I know with as much passion for SEO as DaveN.

Which of course, begs the question, what is an SEO Addict doing telling others how to get off the high of repeatedly checking all things SEO?

Having spent time in Dave’s office as well as sitting around his laptop at more conferences than I can count, he is an SEO who thrives off that high that only the top SEOs get when it comes to seeing the success of their labor – not to mention the thrill of showing off to other SEO types who tend to gather around when he’s got his laptop open on a table with any open seats. I’ve even been a guest at his house when he’s brought up serps on his big screen TV, under the guise of showing off how Windows Media Center works with the internet. You know, the kind of all-consuming passion that most people wished they had.

And as a matter of fact, it was this SEO addiction that nearly made him late (yes, with just one minute to spare) when he was on his way to present on the SEO Rehab & Intervention session at SES San Jose this year. I was helping Dave with his SES presentation, since while his optimization skills are top notch, his grammatical skills can sometimes leave something to be desired, as any reader of his blog will no doubt be aware of!

So I present a day in the life of Dave Naylor at SES, on a day he has a session after lunch and no PowerPoint completed.

The morning began with my wake up text message confirming our breakfast plans (he will argue it was at the ungodly hour of 8:30am, but in my defense, he chose the time the night before). We met down in the hotel restaurant and while we had a buffet breakfast, we talked a bit about what should be included in an SEO Rehab presentation and how people should get off the desire to check their rankings every 20 minutes. And ok, I admit, I may have rolled my eyes once or twice (Hello, Pot? This is Kettle!)

Breakfast ended with plans to sit down somewhere with his laptop, when Dave thought it might be a good idea for a quick jaunt through the expo hall to pick up any swag that 6-8 year olds would love… after all, the session isn’t until 2:45, that’s lots of time, right? And if you know Dave, he loves nothing better than to talk (and talk and talk), so the quick trip into the expo hall resulted in spending about an hour wandering around and stopping at booths here and there, based upon either what they were offering or how good their swag was.

Then another ½ hour goes by at the Microsoft booth (where an unnamed Microsoft Live Search guy showed off how awesome their stuffed frog slingshots were by firing a ribbitting frog off into the nearby Google Analytics booth). Then comes the requisite visit to the Webmasterradio.fm booth where we chatted with Brasco while making sure we registered for that night’s Search Bash. Then came the inevitable visit to the Best of the Web booth, where longtime SES attendees know as the real gathering place at the conference, at least prior to an acceptable “let’s go grab a drink” hour. All said and done, a good two or more hours passed between the times we wandered into the Expo hall for a quick visit and the time we actually walked back out again.

Now, we actually sit down at his laptop to do his presentation, which is less than two hours away by this point. But first he wants to show off some of the new in-house tools he has developed or enhanced for his clients since he last showed them off to me at SES New York, and I admit being envious over a few of them. So another hour or so passes while he shows me some new SEO analysis tools, link tools and blog tools, as well as some new client stuff, while I do the requisite oohing and aahing. And of course, there is another decent chunk of random serp checking for client sites thrown into the mix, of course, since serps can look wildly different between here and the UK.

Which, of course, brings us to less than an hour before the session, and PowerPoint is finally launched on Dave’s new laptop. So we talk a bit about what should be included, and after about three atrocious grammatical and spelling errors on Dave’s part, I take over the PowerPoint writing job (is this the intervention part of SEO Rehab &Intervetion?) while I translate what Dave is saying into something most Americans can understand, while throwing in my own two cents of course. And more tools are run, this time on generic sites or Dave’s blog instead of his client sites, while grabbing screen shots to paste into his presentation.

Times flies and a quick look at the time shows the session starts in ten minutes. Some final edits are made, a last screenshot is taken and the presentation is saved onto a USB stick that reminds me of a piece of lego. We make it to the session room (which of course we had to look up which room it was in, as we walked through the conference area) and Dave hands over his USB stick with about a minute to spare.

Want to see the presentation we whipped up after all this? You can download Dave Naylor’s SES PowerPoint here, complete with the tool screenshots. And now you know exactly what goes into a typical day in the life of DaveN at a conference, at least prior to the acceptable “let’s grab a drink” hour

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A tag line is a critical part of any business venture, whether it is a Fortune 500 company or your personal blog. It can be used to segment you, or what your company does, better than your name or company name can do. But many blogs either don’t have a tag line or they have one that is completely ineffectual in promoting themselves and their blog. For this reason, it is important that you have a tag line.

Here are ten tips for creating (or optimizing) a tag line for your blog so that not only does it effectively do what it needs to - tell people what you do - but also is created with the greatest impact in those few words, more bang for your buck, so to speak. So if you are struggling with your tag line, here are the ten things you should consider so your tag line can be the best it can be.
Keep reading…

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Anytime you look on the front page of Digg, you will often see headlines that start like “Ten ways to…” or “Top Ten Worst…”. And let’s face it, chances are pretty good that you often read these kinds of posts yourself, because they are just so appealing. The title quickly tells you what you are going to expect (such as “ten ways to do something”) and usually, they deliver. So how can you write your own top ten type of post that gets significant traffic or even a front page of Digg? Here is what you need to do to make the best top ten post ever.

Don’t overanalyze
If the ideas are flowing, just write the top points, then add your commentary for each later. You don’t want to have eight great points off the top of your head, and then lose seven of them because you were overanalyzing just how worthy the first one was and on writing the perfect description about it. So jot down snippets, keywords or quick points underneath what you are currently working on while you have them fresh in your mind, and you will be much less likely to forget one of them as you write.

How many?
Sometimes your top ten post will end up being a top twenty. My 52 easy ways to optimize your blog while on your coffee break blog post initially started as a top 25 list, then 50, then ended with 52 because I couldn’t decide what two tips to delete to make it 50. And my 10 ways to turn new blog visitors into subscribers article didn’t start out being written as a top anything list, but when I was doing my final edits, I realized working the title as a “ten ways” post would work well for readers. So if the ideas are flowing, don’t feel you have to stop because you have ten. And if you stop with nine and can’t think of anything for the tenth, give it a break then come back and reread the article from the beginning. Chances are good that you will be able to come up with one more idea to hit the magic number you are looking for.

Offer a bonus tip
Sometimes you end up with an odd sounding number of tips. If you have eleven must-have tips and you can’t bear to lose one, nor can you dream up a twelfth tip to get it up from ten tips to twelve, keep your list as a top ten and include a bonus tip instead. And as an added bonus for you, readers will like the fact they got something extra from investing in the time to read your article, in the form of that bonus tip.

Are you being social?
Many top ten types of posts end up getting Stumbled, Sphunn and Dugg regularly. So make sure you add a social submitting plugin like Sociable so that people can quickly submit your blog entries without having to jump through hoops to do it.

Link out
Make sure you are linking out to things people can find useful. I read a blog post recently where someone suggested doing specific steps on a project, yet didn’t provide links to what he was talking about. That meant I left his blog instead of spending more time on it, all because I left his blog peeved and had to search for it myself. The more links you include in your post so that your tips can be put into action, the more useful your readers will find it. And yes, that also means the more likely he or she will submit it or recommend it to others. And when you link to other sites, those people you have linked to within those blog posts then have an incentive to submit your posts to social media sites too, because they will end up getting traffic from it too.

Be creative
Don’t just do the same old, same old. Be creative or do a new spin on something that is tried and true. Instead of doing Top ten tips for ranking in Google, which has been done to death, spin it as Top Ten Ways to Get Google-Friendly Backlinks or Top Ten Tips for Getting Your Blog Into Google News.

Use Humor
Don’t be afraid to make your list amusing, rather than all straightforward and business-y. Humor helps keep the attention of your readers, and keeps it from being a dry read.

Short & Snappy
Make sure each of your tip titles is, you guessed it, short and snappy. They can even be a bit cryptic, but if a reader is quickly scanning each of your tips without reading the commentary that goes along with each, shorter is best.

Common sense
Don’t be afraid to include tips you consider common sense, because even I am surprised that people learn something from a tip I included that I considered to be extremely basic. Unless your blog targets only the experts, including a mixture of basic and advanced tips means that there is something for everyone.

Do It Again
Just because someone has already done a top list on the topic doesn’t mean you can’t do it again. As long as you aren’t just copying the tips with new commentary, definitely write your own improved version. If you want social traffic, however, wait a couple of weeks before publishing your own version. If the identical top ten subject hit the Sphinn or Digg front page yesterday, today would not be the best day to publish it because you have just greatly diminished the chances that your own version will go hot as well. So save it a couple of weeks when you have a better chance of yours going hot too.

And you guessed it, this entry didn’t start of being a “ten ways” post either, but when I finished writing and realized it was ten points, it instantly became more easily marketable as a “ten was to do something” blog post. So next time you are writing a blog post with tips, see if you can easily turn it into a “ten ways to” or “top ten ideas for” type of blog post and see how well it does socially.

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If you like reading my various blogging articles here, you will want to be sure to subscribe to the ScribeFire blog, where I am guest blogging articles on all aspects of blogging, including promoting & marketing your blog. Three now four articles have been published so far:

• Critical Things All Bloggers Should Do But Probably Aren’t
  I think most of us are guilty (or have been guilty!) of at least one of these things
• Why You Should Comment on Other People’s Blogs
  For those of you who never bother commenting on other’s blogs, here is why you really should be doing it.
• 5 Strategies for Creating Killer Blog Titles
  Making sure your blog title is the best it can be is an important blogging and marketing strategy. Here are five ways to create a killer blog title.

• Why You Should Subscribe to Your Own Blog’s RSS Feed
  Seven reasons why you shouldbe subscribing to all your own RSS feeds.

ScribeFire is a Firefox addon which enables you to blog right from Firefox, so you can leave the article you are blogging about in the top of the browser, while ScribeFire opens in the bottom half of the browser with a full feature blog editor. It also has a tab for submitting to many different social media networks as well, which is handy.

You will see more of my blogging articles on ScribeFire, so be sure to subscribe to the RSS too.

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It is becoming more and more important for corporations - as well as businesses of all sizes - to have a blog in today’s world where so many people own computers. But if your business has put off starting a blog for far too long, here is why you should really be blogging, and how it can be advantageous to your overall business marketing strategy.

Human face
You don’t really want people to think of your company as “big box” or “typical corporate America”. And blogging can actually put a human face to your company, since the company now has a voice it can relate to when it reads your blog. When you consider how much money companies put into creating a human face for their business, doing it with a company blog is a relatively inexpensive way to humanize your corporation.

Controlling the message
Public Relations tends to want to run far, far away from blogs. But now, more are embracing blogs as a way to control the company’s message and how they release it. You can now have a fireside chat with your company’s CEO in the format of a blog interview, where responses can be monitored. If there is a scandal or other negative publicity surrounding your company, you already have a platform ready to release information that doesn’t involve sending press releases to the media or subjecting your CEO or other employees to a press conference.

Excitement and anticipation
Companies can easily use a blog to give hints and tidbits about new product releases or services well before the actual launch so you can get people excited about what you are going to announce before you did it. Since press releases are rarely sent to announce something your company hasn’t done yet, a blog is an easy way to get the word out and build anticipation.

Fresh content
Having a blog adds new fresh original content to your site every time the blog is updated. And since this is something many corporate sites struggle with, it means you can add quality content as often as you like.

Soft selling
Now, you don’t want to do a hard sell in your company blog, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with soft selling products or services in a blog… in fact, many readers will expect it. Just don’t go overboard with every post being promotional in nature. But it can be a great way to market your products, particularly ones that people might not be as familiar with, whether lower sellers or simply new to the market.

Reminding
When you have people subscribed to your company blog, those are all people who will think of your company as a household name or brand everytime you post a new blog entry. And since blogging is such a low-cost marketing strategy compared to paid advertising, you are saving money to place your identity in front of people.

For all these reasons, corporate blogs are becoming more and more popular for companies. As long as you are approaching your blog in the right way, it can be an invaluable marketing tool. If you are strategizing and getting ready to launch a corporate blog, 20 Best Practices for Launching a Corporate Blog is a must read. And if you already have a company blog, you might find Why Your Company or Corporate Blog is Failing useful.

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In this day and age, it is becoming much more difficult to find a never-registered domain name, especially for top level domains. So the reality is that many of us are having to purchase domain names instead. So if you are considering purchasing a domain name, here are some tips you should follow, check and research to make sure your chosen “perfect” domain name really is as perfect as you want to believe it is.

Keyword research
If you are planning to buy a domain name – especially if it is in a market area you are new to – definitely take the time to do some keyword research to see what the most advantageous keywords are to have in your domain name. Check the keyword research section of my blog if this isn’t your strong suit and you need a primer.

Brandable
Does the name have brand appeal? You want people to not just remember the site, but to link to it to. And domain names that are brandable will do better. Think about it.. what is better, Google.com or Truly-The-Best-Search-Engine-Ever.com? Google has definite brand appeal - even if how they came up with the name was unusual… and shows that sometimes those spur of the moment domain name ideas that many of us come up with on a whim can really work out well in the end.

Check Archive.org
Did your desired domain name have a previous life as a XXX porn portal? Or feature hardcore spam with thousands of doorway pages? Do be aware that some site’s histories take so much work to rise above the past life that it makes much more sense to go with a domain with a clean history. Do be aware that some sellers might hide the previous life by banning the archive bot, so you’ll need to do further super sleuthing to discover what was there in the past. This also applies to domains that you are buying “brand new” because it could have been previously owned and the owner let it expire.

Avoid hyphens whenever possible
Hyphens are associated with old time spam, when you used to see buy-keyword-keyword-keyword-keyword-keyword-keyword-now.com (and no, that unfortunately isn’t an exaggeration!) If you absolutely have to use a hyphen, limit it to two or less, but preferably one. Every hyphen adds a level of spamminess perception, even if the intended site will be as white as the driven snow.

Domain length
A shorter domain name is better than a longer one, especially if you will be getting type in traffic. Avoid really long domain names whenever possible and try to stay under 15 characters if you can. If you have two domain names that are equal in your eyes except for the fact one is 18 characters and the other is 9, I’d go for the one with 9.

Go with a quality top level domain.
Whether it is a .com in the US or a .co.uk in England, go with a top level domain (TLD) whenever possible. No matter how you slice and dice it, Example.com or Example.co.uk sounds so much better than Example.biz

If you are not TLD, check what is on it
Many years ago a friend started a business targeting moms and their kids and went and registered her website with a .ca extension. She had the URL advertised on her vehicle, on mail outs, on her business cards, etc. Except there was a small problem… people kept forgetting it was .ca and went to the .com version instead, which happened to be a spyware ridden hardcore porn site. So if you can’t get the most common domain extension for your target market, check to see what it on it before you make your final decision to go for the alternative TLD.

What about misspellings and variations
Don’t forget there are differences with how people spell certain words in different countries. It is “search engine optimization” in the US but “search engine optimisation” in the UK. So if you are targeting worldwide, it can be worth the extra expense to buy those common spelling variations that type-ins might do.

Check backlinks
Not all blacklinks are created equal. Are there a bunch of incoming spam links? Or hate links? Or anything that could raise suspicions that something isn’t all right with this domain name?

Check for pages indexed
Any pages indexed, whether currently on the domain or still previously indexed? Generally, indexed pages is a good sign, then see if those pages rank for anything as an added bonus.

Trademarks?
A surprising number of domains are for sale because there are potential trademark or legal issues that the owner just doesn’t want to deal with. A quick search in the US trademark database will show up any trademarks that could be problematic in the future. You don’t want to achieve rankings and traffic only to lose the domain to a trademark holder, unless you are willing to take that risk because the benefits outweigh the risks in your eyes.

Double entendres
The often mentioned fictional Pen Island is a classic example. Pen Island.com sounds innocent enough. But put it all together in a lower case domain name, and suddenly you get penisland.com… Good old Penis Land. Another one, expertsexchange.com (Experts Exchange) is often mentioned when it comes to making sure you consider all double entrendres with that “perfect” domain name. It is better to discover the problems before you buy than to have someone point it out after you have invested time, effort and money into it.

When you are buying a domain name –especially when it could be a pricey one – you want to make sure you are not going to fall victim to a critical problem that could cause issues with your “perfect” domain name down the road. By following these steps, you should ensure that you have as few problems as possible.

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How many times have we hit publish on a blog and then realized we forgot to do something crucial, whether it is changing post slugs or a crucial spell check. Here is a quick checklist of what you should do before you hit publish.

Did you type what you meant?
Avoid the temptation to write and then immediately hit publish. Always go back and reread your blog entry to make sure what you had in your head actually ended out coming of your fingers on the keyboard. You can also catch grammatical errors and little accidental typos that still make an actual word or where you wrote the same word twice in a row.

Do you have a hook?
The first paragraph of your blog entry is crucial. If you have a poorly written opening paragraph, readers have to be pretty motivated to read beyond that. So think of the opening paragraph as the most important part of your entire article. Make sure it is well written and enticing enough – usually with a hook - to encourage people to continue reading through to the end. Copyblogger has a great post on opening with a bang.

Spellcheck
There shouldn’t be an excuse for not spell checking, and you should always do it… although even I often forget. Someone needs to create a plugin that has an auto-spell check function when you hit publish.

Double check your links work
Make sure you haven’t accidentily forgotten a http:// or forgotten a critical period. You should double check each and every link to make sure it works, and make sure you didn’t put something else from your clipboard in place of the URL you intended. I once saw a blog where the URL linked to was actually a snippet from an IM that the author intended to paste to someone and not the URL they planned to use.

Related articles you can link to?
Are there any previous blog entries that you can link to as relevant to the topic? If so, definitely lead your visitors in that direction, especially if the blog entry is an “oldie but goodie” and not one that you published just two days ago. There is a plugin available to automatically display related blog posts.

Other blogs you can link to
Share the link love. Are there blog entries that others have written that are related to the topic. Even if they are friends, as long as the content is relevant, include some links to others. Read Why you should actively link out from your blog.

Did you source your sources?
Reporting on a news story or commenting on someone else’s commentary? Be sure you include a link to your source, whether it is linking to Joe’s New SEO blog or the likes of CNN or Forbes.

Check your post slug
Wordpress 2.5 makes this a bit easier, by highlighting the post slug underneath your title, but I still sometimes forget to do this (although I usually remember between the time I schedule a post and the time it actually gets published. Shorten the length and make sure you are including the important keywords from the title.

Check your alt tags
Are you including alt tags on your images? Be sure to tag all your images when you blog with the relevant keywords specific to the photo. And yes, avoid the temptation to keyword stuff those as well Use the SEO Friendly Images plugin to optimize your images as well as do alt tags.

Did you include categories?
Now that categories seem fairly hidden below the blog entry field instead of next to it in the new Wordpress, I keep forgetting to tag blog posts with categories. But looking at analytics, I can see just how many people come to the blog on a social media or pay per click post and then go to the category level to see the other articles I have written on the same topic. So be sure you are including categories and that they are relevant to the topic.

Did you tag it?
Along with categories, be sure to tag relevant topics and keywords on your blog entries to… if you are new to tagging, also make the time to go back on previous blog entries and tag them.

Check the vibe and flow
Sometimes you just don’t have the flow going, no matter how hard you rewrite the blog entry. And a missing vibe or flow of the piece can make a blog post mediocre when it could have been great. In this case, hit save instead of publish, and go back to it another day. When you look at it again after a few days, you can rewrite it to capture that previously ellusive vibe.

While I try my best, I don’t always remember to do everything on the list when I hit publish, but I do my best Anything else I missed that you do before you hit publish on your blog?

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Yes, it’s true, there are people who love to blog - and blog with such a passion we wonder how we could emulate what they do. But there is a fine line that you might be crossing over… one where it seems you are no longer the boss of your blog, but that your blog is the boss of you. While not everyone is in danger of this happening, it seems to be something that is happening to people with a bit more frequency lately. So if you are a super blogger, you need to sit back and consider if you are really running your blog or if your blog is running you.

Addiction
Some of us are lucky to get out a blog entry a week, while others desperately try for one blog entry a day. But if you are sitting and your desk blogging and turning down chances to be social (and no, I don’t mean just taking the time to update your Twitter status or video conferencing, I mean actual face-to-face interactions with other people) you need to sit back and think if you really need to be on the super blogger schedule that you are on. Can you cut back your seven blog posts a day to four posts then slowly get it down to one or two?

Addiction Pt. 2
Some bloggers have the need to post as much as they can, but in some cases, being so blog happy can actually turn off your readers. Why? Because when they view your feed there is just so much there they just don’t know where to begin if at least one of those blog posts don’t immediately pop at them. You could lose subscribers that would have happily stuck around to read one great blog post a day but found seven just two overwhelming day in and day out.

Honey, it’s bedtime
If your partner is making bedroom eyes at you, but you decline the suggested offer so you can blog instead, well, many people will wonder what on earth you are doing still at your computer!! Yes, there will always be times where you need to make the decision of blogging over your partner, but these cases should be extreme and few and far between. If your blog just got hacked from a WordPress exploit, most people can understand the need to fix it ASAP before any more damage is done. If you found something Digg or Slashdot-worthy because it is breaking news, by all means write your blog entry now, because those 8 hours of, er, slumber could mean that someone else breaks the story. But is it your latest top ten list of how to stop comment spam, well, that is something that can and should wait until morning.

You blog on days you really shouldn’t be
Is it an hour before you exchange wedding vows and you are sitting at your computer blogging about what you think Google should do with YouTube, you really have to sit and ask yourself WHY. There are some days where blogging should be a no-no, so think of life’s big events (weddings, baby’s birth, significant funerals) and either schedule those blog posts or get up a little extra early to do it before anyone else in the house awakens, or perhaps a quick “He’s here, 8lbs 2 oz, Christopher Michael, pics soon!” posted to your blog from your Blackberry. Even your wedding anniversary qualifies if your husband or wife is sitting in the living room waiting for you to come down so you can leave for your romantic evening out. If you are putting these types of events second to blogging, yes, Houston, you have a problem.

Making life’s small events blogworthy
Sure, we all have things happen to us and think “Wow, that will make a great blog analogy”, such as the friend who replied to me “So, you do Facebook” when I mentioned I do social media consulting. That isn’t really a stretch, and it highlighted the fact people in the industry still think of social media as sites like Facebook and MySpace. But are you taking all those little things and constantly wondering how you can make them blog worthy? If you are an SEO blogger, you will probably find it hard to figure out how to spin the fact your daughter is potty trained into a blog post… but if your blog is running you, chances are you will figure out how to do it anyway just so you have something - anything - to write about, even if the end result sucks.

Does your output match your expected quality
When I have followed those who blog multiple times a day, I notice that the quality goes down. Why? Because they are so focused on how much they can output, with the desire to blog anything just to blog, they fail to notice the quality drops significantly compared to when that same person writes one well thought out blog post. I have unsubscribed from people’s blogs for this exact reason because I tired of not only how they turned potty training into an SEO related post, but did it so poorly that it was almost embarrassing to read. One well written and thought out blog post will trump 20 lesser blog posts any day of the week. Your blog doesn’t “need” you to post the seven times a day you want to blog, so cut back on quantity and up the quality instead. And if you think your blog really needs you, you probably have bigger issues than just a blog addiction!

Blogging something you hate
I would much rather read about a subject from a blogger who loves it, rather than from a blogger who hates the topic but does it anyway. If this is how you feel about your blog, where it is a chore to blog even just once a week, you might be better off kicking it to the curb and selling it, then using the money to start up something new that you are passionate about. Just because you end up hating the topic doesn’t mean you are a failure. But you might want to pick the next topic with much more care next time. It is no surprise that finding your blogging niche equals blog success. Just make sure you aren’t having a bad week and sell on impulse, which so often people end up regretting. If you are hating it, sit on it for a month, while continuing to blog so you maintain the blog’s sell value, and if you still despise every moment you have to spend on it, then sell it.

We all have times where we swear our blogs and/or websites are running our lives… and sometimes they do and they (unfortunately) need to. But it is still important to make sure that you aren’t always being run by your blog… if you are missing out on what non-bloggers would consider must-not-miss events, well, you should probably rethink your priorities a bit so that you can have a balanced life and not one where you blog is making your personal decisions… because last I checked, your blog really isn’t good company when you are out of reach of your computer

Now, hands everyone… is your blog running your life? And what do you do about it?

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With paid links so high up on the radar at the Googleplex these days, it has become even more crucial that your website’s link profile is as natural as possible… even if the links themselves aren’t 100% natural. So what makes a natural link profile? Here are ten things to consider when you are getting links to your sites, both paid and organic, so your site and its link profile will be as low key as possible.

Pay attention to anchor text
What looks more natural… a ringtone site with 95% of all incoming links with “buy ringtones” as the anchor text - especially when both of those words are not in the domain name - or a ringtone website that has at least 20 variations of anchor text, with none of those non-domain-name variations having more than 15% share of the backlinks? You guessed it, the site with the wide variety of anchor texts in the incoming links. Also consider that naturally, some links will have anchor text of “click here”, “buy here”, “source” or your straight URL linked up. For more, read Choosing Your Anchor Text for Incoming Links.

Don’t solicit unnatural anchor text
If someone is linking to this blog, the natural anchor text is Jennifer Slegg. And that wouldn’t trip up any spam filters. But if I asked everyone to link to me with “Search Marketing Consultant” or “Social Media Consultant“, that would certainly trip some flags once it hit a certain percentage of my overall link profile. Why? Because it is not natural. Left on their own, perhaps one or two people might have used that anchor text, but naturally, nearly all would link to me with “Jennifer Slegg” as the anchor text, or if linking to an individual blog entry, with the blog entry title as the anchor text.

Oldie but goodies
Look at a smaller site in your niche market that has been around since well before the era of paid links. Now go an investigate their link profile. Pay special attention to links that look as though they have been around since the beginning of time, such as articles or online newsletters that are dated with the publish date. Now look at the anchor text and where those links came from to see if you could easily replicate it from either those sites or similar ones. This is helpful for those who are new to the industry, and don’t quite remember what it was like before the days of whoever-has-the-highest-paid-link-budget-wins.

Are you using nofollow with care?
Are you nofollowing every outgoing link on your site, even ones that Google has already decided is an authority. If you are nofollowing the CNNs or the Amazons of the world, you have to ask why you are doing this unless you are trying to manipulate PageRank loss from your site, and keeping it all for your own internal links. And nofollowing everything is just not natural, no matter how you slice and dice it. Only use nofollow for those sites you cannot vouch for, and give the rest of the sites your link love. Still not convinced? Read Why you should actively link out from your blog.

Don’t just get links from sites with higher PageRank than you
This was a popular tactic back in the days when everyone was emailing for link exchanges, and people would only ask for links from sites with a higher PageRank. Yes, it makes sense to get links from sites with higher PageRank than you (and yes, I will save the whole “how relevant is PageRank today” argument for another day ). But would it be natural for a PR2, or even a greybar or PR0 site, to only have incoming links from sites and pages that are PR6 or higher? You guessed it, there is nothing natural about that at all. So while lower PR sites might not give you a huge overall boost, it will definitely go a long way to making your link profile look much more natural, especially if you have some high PR paid links you have thrown into the mix.

Spread the love around
In Google’s eyes, how natural does a site look when it has 12,000 pages, yet only page on the entire site with any incoming links is the homepage? While the homepage will usually get the highest number of links overall to a site, with the exceptions a social related influx of links to an internal page, a large site without a single external link to any internal page on the site is a definite flag. Ensure your site does have links coming into its internal pages… and if not, you should either rectify it or consider reasons why people aren’t linking to anything but the homepage.

Lots of link love from one site isn’t very loving
In a dream, getting a link from every single page on a high traffic site sounds wonderful. But in reality, rarely do sites ever link to another site with a link on every single page of their own site… unless the links are either paid or they are within the same network. A single link from that same site is much more natural and healthy for your link profile.

Avoid footer links like the plague
It could be the most natural unsolicited link from a site whose webmaster just doesn’t know better when he decided to add his ten favorite sites in the footer of his homepage. But anyone looking at that footer link knows it might as well have a 500×500 animated gif above it flashing “Warning! Paid Links Below!” because even if they aren’t paid for, everyone will think they are.

Slow and steady wins the race
What do you think looks more suspicious to Google? The site that suddenly develops 300 links overnight or the site that develops 300 links added in small groups over several months? The first site will look suspicious, especially if it has other warning flags, such as being a brand new site or links with all identical anchor text. Do keep in mind that larger sites can handle more incoming links at once than smaller sites without raising suspicion. So be aware of your own link requirements and restrictions before you go overboard and know what a site your size and in your market area can handle.

Taking a sword to a gun fight?
Don’t forget to take into account competitiveness in an industry too. A site in specific highly competitive markets (ie. credit cards, poker, etc) will need many more links to rank than a site about tourist attractions in your hometown. So don’t attack both of those sites with the same link plan. The first type of site will need thousands of links from a mixture of high PR, authority and market sites, while the second site can likely achieve the desired rankings with a handful of carefully chosen links from related sites. And yes, throwing thousands of high quality links at a site that has no real competition in the serps will definitely cause it to stick out like a sore thumb when it comes to the linking profile, especially when the job could have been done with just a fraction of those links. So don’t go with your link guns blazing at a small site and don’t show up with a sword when you are playing with the big fish.

Developing a natural link profile is going to become more and more important this year, especially since Google is taking action against sites it perceives as purchasing links. So ensure you have a natural link profile for your big money sites, and if you have done suspicious link acquisition or paid links in the past, start cleaning up your profile to make it look much more natural before you accidentally trip the paid links spam filter.

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Who doesn’t fondly remember some of those old school Sesame Street songs we all watched in the 70s and/or 80s? So I thought I would take a trip down memory lane showing my daughter some of the Sesame Street songs I listened to, since by the time she was Sesame Street watching age, it was all about Elmo.

So I hit YouTube, where just about every old school Sesame Street song video exists, and watched Mahna Mahna (which is technically Muppets, but was also on Sesame Street), Jellyman Kelly, What’s the Name of That Song, Echo Song etc (included the links incase any of you wish to relive your youth too!)

However, as I was watching one of the videos a week or so, I happened to glance down at the comments, which can be pretty spamalicious on popular videos to be greeted with some pretty colorful language I am sure hoping my daughter doesn’t learn for a good ten years or so! So, thankfully her attention was all on the mana mana singers, and she wasn’t testing her reading skills out on the comments, but I hastily resized that browser window smaller so the comments weren’t visible.

But it make me wonder, why is Google showing so many porn & adult language comments on kid videos. And not only that, why isn’t Google doing a better job of either filtering these comments or at least using some sort of filtering for those who aren’t logged in. Seriously, Akismet does fantastic job compared to YouTube. Google has filtering for their safe search as well as in Gmail, so why isn’t it being applied to YouTube comments too? And judging from some of the good comments on these videos, plenty of parents are using YouTube to show their kids some of these older videos too.

Now, i was not logged into my YouTube account when I saw this. So I logged in to see what the settings were. Now, I have an option to “Filter videos that may not be suitable for minors”. But what about filtering comments not suitable for minors? Other than the one filtering option, there is nothing more family friendly - such as prevent comments from showing entirely - for YouTube.

Why not at least have something in place where if it is clearly a kid’s video that comments are not shown by default? A simple click to show the comments would be a passable solution to this problem. While not all videos are tagged with things like “Sesame Street” it shouldn’t be hard to identify searches that include specific keywords like Sesame Street, Disney (and specific Disney characters), Teletubbies, The Wiggles and other common kid’s shows and entertainers and place a stricter comment filter on them or have a click to show comments rated below a +5, since it seems to be rare that some of the problem comments on kid’s videos would get at least five thumbs up if they weren’t appropriate… right now, the default is to show comments all comments until they have 6 or more thumbs down on them.

Now, there are definitely times when I see comments that are not family friendly but are still appropriate in the context of the video. I have no problem with those at all, I don’t think YouTube should be censoring everything. It is children’s videos - ones that you would expect those under age 10 to be watching on YouTube - that I think should have some kind of filtering.

Now, incase anyone at YouTube is reading this, I am not sure if these are all the exact videos I watched a week or so ago, if you are looking at the historical comment data of them. All the ones I looked at while writing this had clean comments. Was I just on the site during a bad bot run on videos that had to get cleaned up? Maybe. But even with a spam bot gone wild, something automated should be there to catch them.

I also talked about this yesterday with Jeremy on the Shoemoney show. You can listen to the show and read Jeremy’s take on it too.

Is this a “never go to YouTube ever again” problem? Not for me personally, i am continuing to relive Sesame Street 70s and early 80s videos as I write this. But it will make me carefully check any videos before showing them do my daughter, rather than my usual practice of the two of us searching together, with her pointing out the ones in the related videos sidebar.

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