Back in August we blogged about Google’s Caffeine ‘next-generation infrastructure’ change, and if Caffeine fits the bill for better search. Recently search insiders stated the index is now live on one of Google’s data centers, with a full roll out expected just after the holidays. Many are speculating that this update will be a vast overhaul and your site just may be affected.   

Kaila Strong

Kaila is a Sr. Account Manager at Vertical Measures. She works directly with clients to evaluate and analyze their overall Internet Marketing needs, creates sales proposals and recommendations. In addition she regularly reports on client rankings, gives SEO advice to brands in a variety of industries and manages client expectations.

Kaila has a background in social media marketing, link building, SEO and content marketing. She’s an active blogger on SearchEngineWatch.com, and an avid social media user (@cliquekaila on Twitter). She brings her experience to the table with new clients and enjoys writing about her experiences as well here on the VM blog and throughout the web.

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At this point in my life, there are two things I truly enjoy and spend a lot of time doing. One is hiking and the other is link building. That’s right I said link building. I know – it’s a sickness.

Normally I hike so that I can totally remove myself from the day-to-day concerns of running an SEO & link building agency. In fact, I have been building links for as long as LinkMoses (he just does a better job at the whole self-promotion thing than me), and I have been hiking for even longer. Last week those two worlds finally collided when I ran into the sign below. I wonder how may other hikers have seen this sign and immediately associated it with backlinks! I know – it’s a sickness.

Actually my first thought was "what in the world is this supposed to mean?", but my next thought was "take a picture and post to TwitPic, tweet about it and write a blog post". I know – it’s a sickness.

I asked my Twitter followers what they thought when they saw this picture. I received three pretty funny responses.

@dougfeeney Odd shaped sausage??  (not a link builder)
@frank_in_oz confusion… (a hiker)
@Matt_Siltala is that trail no followed?   (bingo!)

So what comes to your mind when you see this pic? Please let me know below!

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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If you are not a beginner in website creation, management, or otherwise, then you know a thing or two about checking your backlinks. Taken advantage of Googles Webmaster Central?
Well if you have, then I’m sure you have wondered why you can’t view: all of your competitor’s backlinks, or all of your backlinks as a whole via the Google backlink operator.  Matt’s Cutts discusses in the video below what Google’s guidelines on the subject are, and details some more information about Link: Google’s backlink checker. Tell me if you are surprised Google has a lack of servers!?

Many users have been confused why every single backlink isn’t shown, and also why it seems those links are a mixture of nofollow and frankly some very crappy links. Matt explains that this is their randomization, and should not necessarily be seen as a ranking of which links are more important than others. While they use to follow that guideline, they no longer do. Matt suggests going to the aforementioned Google Webmaster Central, signing up, and getting a detailed list of your backlinks.

Why check your backlinks? Check out who’s linking to you, thank them personally, build your network, stay aware of your links, and make a goal to increase your overall awareness of your backlinks. Do damage control when needed, and stay in touch with who is saying what about your site. Check your competitions backlinks, while only a random subsample they can still serve as good information to glean from.

Kaila Strong

Kaila is a Sr. Account Manager at Vertical Measures. She works directly with clients to evaluate and analyze their overall Internet Marketing needs, creates sales proposals and recommendations. In addition she regularly reports on client rankings, gives SEO advice to brands in a variety of industries and manages client expectations.

Kaila has a background in social media marketing, link building, SEO and content marketing. She’s an active blogger on SearchEngineWatch.com, and an avid social media user (@cliquekaila on Twitter). She brings her experience to the table with new clients and enjoys writing about her experiences as well here on the VM blog and throughout the web.

Website – Twitter – More Posts

Because of its widespread use today, Search Engine Optimization is much less of a mystery than it used to be. If someone was especially interested in gaining rankings for their site, enough information exists on the internet to instruct them in such an endeavor with relative ease. For example, a recent article by Jeffrey Smith on SiteProNews covers all the basics of link building – the single most important aspect of making any lasting gains in search engine rankings.

Without dictating exactly how to accomplish the sometimes formidable task of getting relevant backlinks to one’s site, Jeffrey does a very good job of showing how much of a difference each piece of the linking puzzle makes. The anchor text of each link is given special attention because of its enormous power in getting sites ranked for the keywords they want. Additionally, he goes over some of the factors inside each site that can help or hurt their rankings. Ultimately this article shows very clearly that SEO is mainly about maintaining consistent quality inbound links, along with regular internal website maintenance to keep the overall niche that a site serves coherent and relevant. With all these efforts in place, higher search engine rankings will naturally follow for any valid site.

[tags] search engine optimization, search engine rankings, backlinks, link building, higher search rankings [/tags]