After two weeks of travelling from Phoenix to Seattle, where I presented at SMX Advanced, to Alaska, where I took a lovely cruise with my wife Andi and had little to no access to Internet, and then down to LA, where I presented at OMS, now I am back in Phoenix in the Vertical Measures office and excited to share my experiences. My amazing staff held down the fort and was kind enough to create a mural for me of what they imagined my trip was like.

So now it’s back to business as I recap my day at OMS in Los Angeles. For this occasion, I presented Social Media for SEO and Link Building. In this presentation, I emphasized the importance of optimizing your social media profiles for search, the fact that real-time search includes social media results and also touched on which industry specific sites might be best utilized as a part of your social media campaign and how to leverage these sites for link building. But, probably my most important point is that if you own a website you must understand that you are now a publisher and you must focus on publishing content that informs or entertains your website visitors. If you do, the links and search rankings will come.

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April Fools!

However, we have also learned what happens when an overzealous reporter happens upon a piece of “news” that just happens to be published on the first of April and spins it as fact in this day and age of the Internet.

Now, Google is assembling a Google SEO team of approximately 100 employees. The company professes that their intentions are noble. Google wants to set the standard for an industry that outsiders so often criticize. Google SEO promises to use only the most ethical practices to increase a client’s PageRank™, and they promise to do it without adding to the spam glut that currently exists on the Internet. However, the fact remains that Google SEO will be the only SEO agency in the world that can guarantee first page rankings because they are the only company that will have access to the algorithm that dictates it.

Google is putting together an SEO team of approximately 100 employees because it feels like it needs to set the standard in an industry that often gets criticized from the outside. Google SEO will strive to only use the most ethical best practices to increase rankings without adding to the spam glut on the Internet. This implies that Google SEO will become the only search agency in the world that can guarantee first-page rankings because they have total access to the infamous algorithm.

Since I do possess a journalism degree, I’m qualified to say the No. 1 thing I learned in J School is this: “If your mother says she loves you check it out.” Basically, don’t believe anything that a source says – and don’t believe any old story on the Internet that just happens to be published on April 1 with a link to AprilFools.com at the bottom – without first verifying it yourself.

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Every Tuesday we pick a vertical market based on the number of votes a market receives at our Vertical Market Poll. This week it is the Sports market.  Based on the voting, this is not sporting goods stores, but sites about sports.  We invite all of you out there to post (in the comments) a specific link building recommendation for the sports market (a good directory, authority website, blog, link search, etc.). If it adds value, we will approve it, give you the credit and a “dofollow” link to your site. However, we will just delete stupid, irrelevant, spammy comments – only truly useful information will be allowed. 

It’s been a rather busy few days here and I have to admit, I am rushing to get this post finished.  But, in a way, those of you looking for sports links may benefit from my hurried approach.  You see rather than thoroughly investigating each resource, and taking the time to coach you on how to go about getting links, I am just going to list some sites that already offer links to sports related websites.  As always, you need good content and a reason for them to link to you.  But if you have it, there are a few gems below — including a PR7 and PR6 site.  So go forth and get your sports sites listed!

http://www.sportslinkscentral.com/

http://sportsvl.com/

http://www.hotsportslinks.com/ 

http://www.sportslink.org/ 

http://www.refdesk.com/sports.html 

http://www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/ent80.00.00/

Oh and remember one of the best things you can do is ask your friends for links.  Well we have a good friend working on a few sports sites.  So we’re going to share a little link love with him: Sports Scholarships and  Start Young Play Strong.  There you go Chuck! 

Now lets hear from the rest of you. Place your advice for link building for the sports market in the comments below. Those that are accepted will get a nice "dofollow" link from us.

Make sure you sign up for our email or RSS feed so that you are alerted every time a new niche market is covered. Even if we are not focusing on your niche, you just might see a pretty creative idea that will trigger an thought for your market. 

WE NEED VOTES!  Please be sure to vote for your market today!  VOTE HERE

[tags]sports market, sports websites, sports betting, sports links, link building, contextual links [/tags]

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Just a little humor today.  Can anyone else relate?

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I was actually fooled by this when I first saw it in an email I received.  Like many, I thought is was a clever church sign. 

But for some reason I noticed a web address on the sign and realized I had been had… by some very clever linkbait.  Just couldn’t resist making a few signs of my own (below) while demonstrating that not all linkbait needs to be a free calculator or SEO tool. 

[tags] linkbait, purchase links, link building service [/tags]

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