Vertical Measures » Link Bait

Link Building Across the West Coast and Back

Arnie Kuenn — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 21:02:06 +0000

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.

In addition, I met some great folks from a wide variety of backgrounds and professions including Johnny Chan of EBoost Consulting, a digital marketing consultancy firm, Lisa Leight of Stanton Associates, Hal Rose of Gifts from a Distance, a company that sells unique gifts for women, Arbi Alexandri of Submit Express, Inc., which provides search engine optimization services, Tyler Fraser, a photographer that captures the souls of chess players throughout California, his work titled Kings of California, Jennifer McNally of Discuss Dental, which provides professional teeth whitening, Angela Watford of Project Insight, web project management software for online project collaboration and task management, and Aliza Bornstein of Melissa Data, a data management software and database company.

All in all, the past two weeks have been exciting with two great conferences that I look forward to year after year and a beautiful and relaxing vacation in between.

Arnie Kuenn

Arnie Kuenn is the president of Vertical Measures and author of Accelerate! Content Development & Marketing to Grow Your Business Online. Vertical Measures provides search, social and content marketing services, designed to help businesses improve their online presence and obtain more traffic and conversions.
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An April Fools joke 27 days later

Michael Schwartz — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:06:53 +0000

April Fools!

We have triple checked with our inside sources in the industry and can thus confirm with 100 percent certainty that our April 1 story on Google opening its own SEO agency is just what the link at the bottom of the piece purports it to be: an April Fools joke.

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.

This story was “broken” by Serena Shapero of Newswire.net in an April 26 report that explains how Google will be opening up an SEO agency as early as May:

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.

If you compare that paragraph to our original joke story, it looks like a nice paraphrase job to me:

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.

Spreading like wildfire

From there, this bogus news has spread like wildfire across the Internet. The Newswire story has 42 comments and 164 tweets as seen via Tweetmeme as of this writing. One tweet even asks Matt Cutts if there’s any truth to this rumor (which Cutts refutes) and another savvy tweeter wonders if it’s a late April Fools joke. No, @SarahCarling, there was nothing late about our original report!

The story has now made its way to Warrior Forum, the V7 Network, Digital Point, Black Hat World, UK Business Forums, Absolute Shopping Cart and even Google Webmaster Central, which answered the rumor with humor.

Many people on these forums point out that if such a piece of news were true, it would be all over the Internet instead of just in one unsourced report on Newswire. Many others got all worked up about it, which was certainly entertaining to us, and another compared it to something you would see in The Onion, which I took as a major compliment. We also found it funny how wide-ranging the debate was on the $25,000/month figure we randomly decided upon for this fallacious service.

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.

A 27-day gestation period

We found out about this whole ruse when we got a trackback to our original April Fool’s post from a story on Simply Clicks, which figured this whole thing out in a story with this witty headline: “Google SEO April Fool – 27 days Gestation.”

Yes, it’s amazing that four weeks later our little joke became a hot topic on forums around the net, but besides re-enforcing not to believe everything you read on the Internet this situation proves how far-reaching it can be when one person doesn’t understand the context of a story they happen to come across on the web before re-packaging it for a wider audience.

So relax, Google SEO is NOT coming to an Internet near you, just be careful the next time you believe an April Fools joke 27 days later.

Michael Schwartz

Michael Schwartz is an Internet marketing strategist at Vertical Measures as well as an accomplished reporter, blogger and editor. He covers the link building beat.

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Sports Link Building – DoFollow Tuesdays

Vertical Measures — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:00:31 +0000

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]

Vertical Measures

How The Internet Changed My Life

Vertical Measures — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 10:18:39 +0000

Just a little humor today. Can anyone else relate?

Vertical Measures

Thou Shalt Still Enjoy Good Linkbait

Vertical Measures — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 11:00:46 +0000

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]