I don’t hear too many search marketers talk about indirect rankings. Indirect rankings are a great way to get targeted traffic to your site.

What are indirect rankings? Indirect rankings happen whenever you have a link on a page you don’t own and then that page hits the top 10 of Google.

The most common example for internet marketers is article marketing. You write an article and submit it to Ezine Articles. If the keyword you’re targeting is not competitive, your article has a good chance of ranking. Internet searchers will find your article through Google. Some of them will click on your link to visit your site.

Obviously, direct rankings are better than indirect rankings. However, indirect rankings have at least two purposes for being in my SEO toolbox.

The traffic from indirect rankings is more likely to convert.
This assumes that you have quality content on the page you don’t own. Traffic from indirect rankings is “pre-sold.” The visitors have read something helpful that relates to your site before actually visiting your site. The helpful content is a positive recommendation for your site. I’ve heard of an article marketer that gets 30% CTR on AdSense through the indirect rankings of his articles.

Indirect rankings drive traffic to new sites.
Many search marketers don’t have the money to buy an old domain that’s out of the sandbox. It takes time for new sites to rank for anything but the least competitive keywords. However, if you leverage the link strength of other sites, you can get traffic right away.

Common Sites

• Ezine Articles
  I don’t think Ezine Articles passes a lot of link juice. They have a lot of pages that much of their PR is diluted. However, Google loves to rank their articles.
• Netscape
  Netscape stories rank because Netscape has a PR9. This is a social media site with moderators, so don’t spam them. Otherwise, your stories will get deleted or worse yet, your whole account.
• HubPages and Squidoo
  I put these sites together, because they’re similar. These sites don’t rank as well as the other sites. They’re worth testing, though, because you can put as many links as you want on these sites. Also, you can add pictures and affiliate links.
• Blogs
  Find a blog that ranks well. See if the blogger would like a quality guest post. Bloggers understand the value of good content. Also, you’ll get RSS subscriber traffic as well as search traffic.
• YouTube
  You’ll have to make a video, but video converts better than text. Also, YouTube gets a lot of non-search traffic.

How To Rank

1. Find a relevant, low competition keyword.
2. Publish your content on the page you don’t own. Make sure to put the keyword in the title tag. Also, insert the keyword 2-3 times in the content.
3. You may have to link to the page to get it to rank. You can get links from social media sites like Magnolia and Furl. You can buy a link. You can do a three-way link exchange. You can link from one of your other sites. I like to link from my PR 4 personal blog. Finally, don’t forget to use the proper anchor text.

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A few days ago, I talked about the importance of the social web. I gave 3 reason why the social web is heavily influencing the internet. Today we’ll talk about a couple principles for using the social web to your advantage.

Get Noticed

This is foundation of the social web. If you don’t get noticed, you’re not really part of the social web. You’re like the student at the high school cafeteria that’s sits alone. To have a social life, that person should leave his table, sit with other students, and interact with them. In the same way, to get noticed, you need to leave your site, visit social web sites (like blogs, forums, and social media sites), and interact with social web users.

Here are some practical ways to get noticed.

• Blog commenting
• Interviews
• Emailing
• Trackbacks (linking out on your blog)
• Guest blogging
• Commenting on social media sites
• Voting on social media submissions

Be Persistent

The key to getting noticed is persistence.

If you want a blogger to notice you, you can’t comment once a month on his blog. I would comment at least ten times a month. Also, I would make insightful comments rather than short comments like “Great post. I learned a lot.” The same goes with social media users. If you want to get a social media user’s attention, you need to leave many comments a month on his stories.

Stay Motivated By Focusing On The Benefits

In the offline world, it takes time to build an good business relationship. It’s the same in the online world.

To stay motivated, think about the long-term benefits. Think about getting a content-based link from a popular blogger. Think about hitting the Netscape front page multiple times. Think about getting 10,000 uniques through StumbleUpon.

So, what are the benefits to participating in the social web? What are the benefits of building friendships online?

Friends help out friends. As long as you’re not spamming and your content is good quality, I’ve found it’s easy to get links and social media votes from friends. Here are some other benefits.

• Traffic from bloggers is high quality. It oftentimes converts better than search traffic.
• Social media sites can send a huge number of visitors. This increases your brand, exposure, and mindshare.
• Content-based links on blogs give more link juice than other types of links.
• Online friendships can lead to profitable partnerships.
• Because they’re connected to other internet users, social web users are more likely to know quality outsourced workers.
• Online business contacts can give great business advice and marketing tips.

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The social web (or web 2.0) will catch a lot of search marketers off guard. Now you’re probably thinking, “I know about the social web. I’m a search marketer.” However, you may not realize just how powerful the social web is.

The social web is not just getting 10,000 uniques with a front page story on Digg. It’s not only getting thousands of visitors from a funny video on YouTube. The whole internet culture is changing because of the social web. There are now niche social media sites that actually send traffic. Online community sites like Myspace and Facebook are among the most visited sites in the whole world. Other community sites like forums and Yahoo Answers also get a lot of traffic.

How is the social web exerting more influence over the internet landscape? Here are 3 main factors.

People are spending more time online.
As people spend more time online, they invite their friends to join them. I have a friend that didn’t spend much time online. However, because many of her peers were communicating through Myspace, she joined Myspace. Not only that, she got her mom (who’s over 50 years old) to join Myspace, too. The internet has stopped being a place where mostly computer geeks hang out. Because of sites like Myspace and Facebook, the internet is now mainstream. In fact, for many of people under 30 years old, the internet takes up more time than TV.

People are getting more comfortable and knowledgeable with online technology.
Instead of just checking email, people are building Myspace profiles. Instead of buying ads on newspaper classifieds, businesses are using Craigslist. Instead of keeping notebook journals, teenagers are starting blogs in Blogger. As internet users gain more experience surfing the web, they become more willing to use new internet technology. And for many of these users, the new technology is social applications like Netscape, Twitter, and Flickr.

Because of social media technology, the social web is accessible.
You don’t have to be a computer geek to participate in the social web. Social media sites make it easy for the average internet user. You don’t have to know HTML to create a Squidoo lens or Blogger blog. Also, the well-known social sites are free.

So, now that you know about the power of the social web, we’ll talk about how to use it to get traffic and links. But that’s for a later post.

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With Threadwatch shutting down, it’s been hard to find a place where search engine marketers can get together and shoot the breeze. However, I think Sphinn is a suitable replacement for Threadwatch. Sphinn may not be as edgy as Threadwatch, but it’s still a fun place to hang out.

What Is Sphinn?

Sphinn is a Digg-style social media voting site for search engine marketers. It was started by Danny Sullivan, one of the most knowledgeable and experienced journalists in the search industry.

9 Reasons Why I Like Sphinn

I live and breath SEO. I love learning more about the search industry especially tips and tricks. Sphinn does a pretty good job of aggregating useful, interesting articles about SEO.

Sphinn has over 1,000 users and many of the users are experts in SEO.

The signal-to-noise ratio has been pretty good. There’s a lot of great content being submitted.

SEO newbies are welcome.

Sphinn drives a healthy amount of traffic for a new site.

The outbound links don’t have the nofollow attribute.

You can stalk other users. This means you follow your favorite users as they submit and sphinn (vote for) stories. If they stalk you back, you become each other’s friends.

Sphinn has a wide variety of categories that cover the SEO landscape pretty well. For example, domaining and affiliate marketing are both sub-categories (under online marketing). Also, social media gets its own top-level category.

My Favorite Sphinn Stories So Far

Linking To Wikipedia Is lazy
This was a great reminder to stop linking to Wikipedia unless I absolutely have no choice. (Don’t link to Wikipedia. Early this year, it added the nofollow attribute to every one of its outbound links.)

Your Stories Never Go Popular Because Your Personal Marketing Plan Sucks
This is a good kick in the rear for many search marketers including myself. Personal marketing is often neglected by many of us. However, Wolf-Howl shows us how important it is to market yourself. Great read. I wrote this blog post, Underrated SEO Skill: Being Social, because I realized I wasn’t marketing myself very well.

Digg Is Subtracting Votes
More editorial manipulation by the big techy news portal.

How To Determine If A Link Passes Link Juice
This is a great article especially if you buy links. Are those links actually passing link value?

Top 25 SEO Blogs
Make sure these are on your RSS reader. One day Smart SEO Blog will be there.

By the way, I learned about Sphinn through SEOmoz.

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I think one of the most crucial moments of every search marketer is when you realize not every link is created equal. Hopefully, this happened early in your search marketing career.

Links have different values and a big part of a search marketer’s job (white hat, at least) is to acquire high quality links. Here are some of the things I consider in determining the value of a link. This post is, by no means, comprehensive. Feel free to add your criteria by leaving a comment. Also,

Is the link one way or reciprocal?
One-way links are much more valuable than reciprocal links. In fact, excessive reciprocal linking can hurt your site. I would only exchange links with a site if it was high quality and revelant.

Is the link contextual?
Contextual links, or links in the body of a page, give much more link juice than site wide links (like footer, header, or sidebar links). Ideally, the majority of your links should be in the middle of articles, blog posts, and similar content. If you’re having problems getting contextual links from quality sites, write remarkable, unique articles and offer them to the sites. By the way, site wide links still work well on Yahoo.

Is the link on a quality domain?
With domain trust being a huge part of Google’s algorithm, it makes sense to acquire links on quality domains. Don’t just look at PageRank. Check out the inbound links and rankings of the domain.

Is the link on a quality page?
This is similar to the previous question. Look at PR, inbound links, and rankings. Also, check out the page’s internal links.

Does the link have relevant anchor text?
Anchor text is still a huge part of SEO. One caveat: don’t spam. Make sure to vary your anchor text. If your target keyword is blue widget, use anchor text like great blue widgets, I love blue widgets, and blue widget guide. And throw in some non-keyword anchor text like click here and link to further avoid the spam filter.

Is the link on a topically relevant site?
I don’t think relevance is as important as the above criteria. However, I believe search engines will do a better job figuring out the topic of a site. I like getting links on topically relevant sites, because they send excellent traffic.

Is the link on a topically relevant page?
Look at the previous paragraph.

How many other links are on the page where your link is?
The lower the number, the better. I’d rather have a link on a PR3 page with 4 other links than a link on a PR4 page with 99 other links.

How much traffic will the link send?
Don’t forget that the point of links is to get traffic, whether directly or indirectly through the search engines. Some links aren’t that great in passing link authority, but they’re awesome in sending traffic.

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You’ve probably heard about the importance of writing with your target audience in mind. However, if you want to exponentially increase your search engine traffic, you also need to write for a 2nd target audience. That audience is called the “Linkerati”.

This interesting term was coined by Rand Fishkin. He wrote a post in April where he argued that the secret to SEO was appealing to a link-savvy audience. He called this audience the Linkerati.

Here is a relevant quote from Rand’s post:

The “secret” is that the audience most sites appeal to is NOT the same audience that provides links, yet this group (the Linkerati) has the power to make or break a site’s rankings.

Notice what Rand just said. Links come from the Linkerati, not from the initial target audience. These two audiences are different.

Rand goes on to say that many sites do a reasonable job identifying their customer base, or the initial target audience. However, he attests that those same sites struggle with identifying their niche’s Linkerati.

This is why many quality sites have less than stellar Google rankings. They have content that appeals to their customer base. However, they don’t have enough content that appeals to their industry’s Linkerati.

So, what appeals to the Linkerati? Rand helps us answer this question by giving us some their characteristics. He writes that the Linkerati…

• own websites/blogs
• are techy, often geeky
• participate in social media sites, forums, and groups
• enjoy humor, irony, and offbeat news
• are looking for great “stories” to share

In my opinion, the Linkerati are harder to write for because they want to read remarkable content. They want to find content that is worthy of passing on to others and linking to. Producing this type of content requires creativity.

On the other hand, prospective customers are usually just looking for useful content and products. These things don’t require creativity. You just need to know what your customers’ problems are and then do some research to find solutions for those problems.

By also focusing on producing content for the Linkerati, you will get more links and search traffic. You’ll have a much better shot at long-term SEO success. Also, your branding will improve because that content will cause your site to stand out from the crowd and differentiate itself from competing sites.

Rand’s secret is very helpful, because effective SEO is mostly about getting a lot of quality links. If you can get many quality links, you’ll get search traffic. It’s that simple. So, write for two audiences. Write for your prospective customers to increase your conversion rate and also write for the Linkerati to increase inbound links and search traffic.

Source: The Secret to Ranking at the Search Engines (that’s really no secret at all)

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Last week I gave my favorite traditional link building resources. Today we’ll look at resources from the new link building kid on the block, social media marketing, or as it’s commonly called, linkbaiting. I believe social media marketing is the best way to build links. It provides the best ROI for you link building efforts.

I think you still need to do traditional link building especially for anchor text purposes. However, much of your SEO efforts should go to linkbaiting if you want a lot of quality links in a short amount of time. Here are my favorite resources for social media marketing.

Andy Hagans’ Ultimate Guide to Linkbaiting and SMM
Andy is a master linkbaiter. He’s hit the Digg front page a few hundred times, which resulted in a few million visitors and half a million inbound links! In this post, Andy gives away all his secrets. He talks about different linkbait hooks and the importance of eye-catching titles. Also, he gives marketing tips for 5 of the most popular social media sites.

Top 29 Niche Social Media Sites (That Actually Send Traffic)
If you want targeted social media traffic, bookmark this post. Most of your linkbait should be a good fit for one of these niche sites.

15 Ways to Become a Digg Power User in Only 48 Hours
This is the most practical article I know of for getting a story on the front page of Digg. It has actionable steps you can take today to build up your Digg account.

The Secret to Utilizing All Social Media Sites
In this article, you’ll get the overarching principle for succeeding in social media marketing. Disclaimer: I write for this blog, but I didn’t write this article or the next one.

How to Get Digg Frontpaged
Here’s another great article about hitting the front page of Digg. It includes information about finding people to Digg for you and when to submit your story.

Digg is for Dweebs: Free Link Bait Ideas
This blog post reminds me that any niche can be “linkbaited”. Check out the blog comments for linkbait ideas in a variety of niches.

Cornwall SEO Blog
The blogger of this blog, Lyndoman, writes a lot of great information about social media marketing. Also, if you want to outsource your linkbaiting, you can hire him for $1000.

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