I ‘m not really an SEO expert, and never wanna be, though I can’t help if someday I ‘m becoming one. But this kind of text messages keep coming at my cell atleast once a month. It triggered me to start thinking, an SEO consultant would be one great income stream for me. Nah, I ‘ll keep that as a lending hand sake as usual. Well, SEO is a self doable thingy. It ‘s just took time, and lotsa efforts. I never believe if I met someone who always saying it out loud, SEO is a hard thing to do. Nope. It ‘s not. Keeping up the effort is the hard part.

Getting in to SEO

Okay so, getting into first page for certain keyword on search engine result position is always been the struggle of the century for most webmasters. Me, no exception. The real core of this are always 2 things.

First, On site – or some say – On page optimization. Last is Off page optimization. The first is the part when you ‘re optimizing your site ‘s composition from top to toe, to be optimized for certain keyword. There ‘re some parts of your site pages that need to be optimized. Title, meta keywords and descriptions, Headings, where to bold italized or underlined, how to play with alt attribute for image tag, and so on. I ‘ve mentioned this once, in my previous post, you ‘d find it in related resources just below this post.

Last, would be the Off site optimization. It ‘s all about the link building. How to get as much votes as possible for your site, or site ‘s pages. You should ‘ve heard link exchange, reciprocal link exchange, one way links, three way links, and such terms. Those are some link building practices all in all to get as much votes as possible from others.

Link Building and Quality Guidelines

Just for your real basic consideration, the volume war was over. Wake up buddy, It is 2009. The one who gets the most backlinks not always win. The one who got the most relevant does. You should always refer to G’s Quality Guidelines before you take it into an action.

Your site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity. However, some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results.

Here ‘re the Link Schemes you should all avoid :

1. Links intended to manipulate PageRank
2. Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
3. Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (“Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)
4. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank

So, Which is Best?

The best link building practice would always be the natural way. Create some quality contents, created for the people and not search engines, and if it add values and people who read it find ‘em useful, you ‘ll get a link vote for your site.

The second best is, link exchange that avoid scheme #3. Reciprocal part and the most important, the excessive part. It ‘s the one way link building. It always is being considered as natural links, and won ‘t be counted as an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings. The why is, it works just exactly the natural way.

Not much I could say for y ‘all why one way links is best then reciprocal as it’s pretty obvious, straight forward and self explanatory, right after you read that quality guidelines. So what you should really take into an account is start to out your links off of some bad neighborhoods if it ‘s already out there by requesting a removal, and start to build your linking the natural way by writing great quality contents meant for this internet community, taking a look at free one way links services offer, and create your own related link neighborhood cleanly.

Lastly, but it always is not the least, it ‘s a self doable thingy. So why bother to pay somebody else to do so?

This morning, somebody was really poppin up. Again — he ‘s yet another just-so-happened-tobe-a-seo-analyst-wannabe buddy of mine. Not that I wasn’t expecting a company that morning, this smart-a55 buddy was suddenly lecturing me about some tricks to get our site on first page of search engine position result. I always referring to google when I mention search engine. Not really sure what his point at the very first part of his lectures, we have some discussions a bit about the topic he forced me to discuss, and after half of a pack of my cig pack is gone, he ‘s gone.

Somethin bothers me right after he left. I may not be a Search Engine Optimization Analyst or such thing, but I did learn some lessons of my own on how to get things right in a matter of optimizing our site, for search engines sake, for readers sake, for browsers sake, and for all that really matters sake. AND, the most important part which really bothers me — well, beside this whole weather thingy — is.. almost all things he lectured me about were things that in My SEO list marked as black hat techniques or some may called ‘em Dirty tricks. Whoa, did I learn the wrong stuff, of is it his?

I may not be the-mr-always-right-all-the-time, but this time, I ‘m 100 percent sure, I ‘m NOT wrong. So, here ‘s what he was lecturing me about this morning, which in MY SEO list, I ‘ve marked ‘em all as a black hat techniques, or Things you need to AVOID in a matter of optimizing your site for search engine position result, or, 10 Google DON`Ts — or should I also say — 10 Helluva Quick Ways to Get Google Kick Your Site ‘s Out of the Indexing!

1. Cloak Your Site.

It ‘s a way to make search engine see your web site as something, and visitors seeing something else. It can be done with some sneaky redirects or some programmings. Neither google, nor other search engines, nor visitors, likes to be treated — or should I say tricked — this way. It definitely is strictly forbidden, prohibited, verboten. Absolutely a no-no.
Cloak your site, google will definitely ban your site out.

2. Dupe Your Content

You know, spammers with their wholesome spam sites are doing their best these days to collect page views using this method. Duplicating the same exact content on some multiple pages.

Never, I repeat, never, copy and paste small part, even large part of contents from your own pages, or others elsewhere. It certainly violate copyright. And the most important thing we ‘re talking about here is Google — has been known banning sites with duplicate contents. The lightest scenario on getting kicked by google of this dupe issue is, getting penalized, either in rank, or in search result position.

Yea, copying and pasting contents from Free Articles sites may get you a go, as you won’t violate anybody’s copyright, but it ‘s surely never be your getaway from being kicked by google.
It still is a duplicating issue, and google never miss one kick. I repeat, never.

How about other sites that duplicating yours? Well, easy peasy, report ‘em to google.

3. Buy a Machine to Create Your Content

This one is the same worst idea as duplicating content. You may ‘ve heard about it — or worst, You ‘re now using it — about programs that duplicate some contents, make few changes on some part of ‘em, and publish ‘em as a different content. Don ‘t even try to dare google to test your site ‘s out, not even when you ‘ve bought the most-perfect-robot-writer on your side. Google pretty good on catching these kind of contents, and when they do, things you can do is say a bye-bye to your page views.

4. Stuff Un-Related Keywords

Did you heard that meta keywords are being marked as “Nah-this-part-is-no-longer-the-coolest” by Google? Some say google crawlers pass this meta, some say it still being read but not counted as an important part of ranking algorithm. But there’re things that remain the same, which are, un-related keywords that are being listed over and over again, and repeating the same keyword multiple times. These two, would definitely get your site ‘s rank being lowered by google.

5. Being as a Known Associate of Bad Neighborhoods

It ‘s about the right time I quote Marziah Karch saying – about this Bad neighborhoods term.

Google refers to malicious websites and spammers as “bad neighborhoods.” If you hang out in bad neighborhoods, you’re likely to be mistaken for a hooligan. The same is true of Web designers. If you link content to known spammers, Google might mistake your website for spam and lower its ranking in search results.

Link your site the natural way, the way this internet works, makes you a good citizen and a good neighbor of the internet world.

Having some one link yo your site never obligate you to link back to them. Feels free to do so, if you ‘ve checked it out and it ‘s not a bad neighborhood. Otherwise, Don’t. Linking to some malicious websites and spamming sites is one sure-fire way to get your pagerank and search result rank being dropped by google. Again, google never miss one kick. I repeat, never.

6. Hide Your Text with Font-Matching Technique

This technique is all about stuffing some keywords — to make the page “strong” in a matter of keyword relevancy — within the page, by making it hidden using the same color as the background color. This one also known as the one and the famous “Keyword Stuffing”. Not just google, other search engines are becoming really really good on catching this, surprisingly.
The other variant of this technique is putting some absolutely tiny text at the bottom of pages, way way at the bottom, even visitors need to scroll it the whole day, and way way tiny even human need to wear a watchmaker glasses to see it.

Same old same old result. It doesn’t work. Search engines will catch it eventually soon or later. Same kick you ‘ll get.

7. Stack Your Title

This one is really the real younger brother of keyword stuffing. Done by adding some extra keyword to your Title. Win you any places on search engine result? Nope. Get the nice hard kick from google? Definitely.

8. Taking Part of Distributing Trojans, Viruses and Other Badware

It ‘s pretty much obvious. Google will definitely remove you from their Index if your site is distributing a trojan, virus or some other badware. If you agree to distribute a software, make sure to double check and re-double check it, to make sure it ‘s not harmful, for ya and for others.

The other flip side of it is, make sure your site is secure, and safe from hackers who could hijack yours, and distribute malicious programs under your hood.

9. Creating Doorway Pages

Some may call these pages as Gateway pages, which is the same term for pages that are created and optimized for one specified term but never really created as a real content. Instead, it really is just a gateway to the intended or the real page. These pages usually cloaked and redirected to the real pages. Google may consider affiliate pages as doorway pages. So be aware.

10. All things Automated Inquiries

This one is the last one, and my fingers are screaming to get a break. So, let ‘s make this one quick. Google HATE, i repeat, HATE : robots writing you contents, checking you ranking, querying google’s services the automated way, link submission the automated way. They ‘re all against Google TOS, and for this one, google will kick you HARD and BADLY!

Let ‘s Conclude ‘em

Those 10 above are really your quick ways to get your sites KICKED out by google. Long story short, Be a Jerk. And you ‘d buried your self successfully out of this planet ‘s index.

The ball is on your court now, so decide it wisely. Play it safely.

You guys know Wade Wilson, right? Which later becoming Deadpool – which is the Weapon XI, from X-men Origin – Wolverine 2009 big screen? This buddy of mine got the exact speedy tongue just like Wade. Sorta make me dizzy hearing ‘em mumbling around about everything and anything that just floated out of his mind. He ‘s even got this same answer as Wade every time ones got tired of it and shout to shut him up. “Not When I ‘m awake”.

But, this evening is a different story. I wont get tired of his speaky thingy he ‘d shoot. As I ‘d keep him busy with this some sorta challenge I got this morning in my mailbox. I ‘ve mentioned previously, I ‘m not really into Search engine optimization and such, not even an SEO analyst or make a living hourly by it. But these kind of emails keep coming in and yeah, I always try to do my best to respond ‘em. This email was asked my service – while I never really offer any SEO or SEM service – to optimize his Credit and debt consolidation site. I giggled a bit when this one coming in this morning. Not that this subject is my fave, no, it’s just.. it finally arrives, the real – like real real – moment to give this Weapon XI buddy of mine a real play. Well he ‘s always mumbling around about this mojo thingy he ‘s got to optimize any type of site quoted to his desk – while I never really see any live prove of ‘em. Ha, this is it.

He sit, grabbed my cig pack, I quickly grab my nescafe-original-can to avoid him grabbing it.
“So bud, what’s goin on with ya this evening with Vai’s Lotus Feet inside your head?” Hah, he shoot me first.
“You know, same old same old, code this code that, kinda sorta..” I shoot back,
“Hey, you know what, I got this exact cup-of-coffee of yours, thought you ‘d interested. SEO thingy, a Credit and debt consolidation site owner wanna make his site to the first page search engine position result for this debt consolidation keyword. Wanna take a look at it?”
He replied quickly, “Hell yea I wanna look at it.”

I shoot back perfectly, one bullet only, a head-shot.

I show him the email, he read it really-really carefully, while behind him, I can’t help my giggles. “Yup, this one definitely my daily cup.” He finally sat back to his chair.

“Wanna work on it? I ‘ll deal with the pricing and stuff with the client. Will make sure you get enough cut. I know your price.” I ‘m sitting back to my chair. “Sure thing, on it.” He replied.

“So what ‘s the plan? Wanna share your tipsy tricks? You know you ‘re way way above my ceiling in a matter of SEO thingy. Is it hard? Optimizing Credit and Debt Consolidation Site?.” I ‘m starting the spread of my spider web with his fave bait – flattery.

He bite, and here comes his secret to optimize credit and debt consolidation site.

1. SEO is Ain’t an Overnight Service.

“We ll, not really. First thing you need to definitely bold and underlined for this client is, there ‘re no such thing as instant in SEO. Everything should be done in a natural way. And that, took times and efforts. If he ain’t got both, that ‘s exactly why my service is around.

2. There ‘re Only 3 Search Engines in Planet Earth.

“Have you ever heard about some services that offer this auto submit to 1000 search engines and such?” He asked and light up another cig. “Uh huh, heard ‘em over and over again.” I replied lightly. “Alrite, mark this one”, he said, “In this planet there ‘re only 3 Search engines only. Which is Google, Yahoo and Live – some still mentioned it as its old name, MSN. While it’s common public miss-understand thing.” I ‘m a bit shocked with this one. Seriously, I do. He saying it out loud, plus, no paused. “So what about the others, such as askdotcom, answersdotcom, aol blah blah blah? Aren’t they also search engines.”

“Nope. They ‘re all using the same data center, which is either its Google’s, Yahoo’s, or Live’s. And do notice I always mentioned this big 3 on the same exact order. It ‘s the exact order or those 3 in a matter of how strong they are dominating this planet’s search queries.” He said it with a flat face. I was like, huh? And then completely numb. Well, he got the point. So he ‘s not making it up if in his ops search engine in this planet earth is Google, Yahoo and Live. Not really interested to ask him about what he call for the others.

3. On site / On Page Optimization is the Base

“Okay, the next buddy, would be your thing. The on-site codes. All things SEO should be started from the site. The site it self should be coded to optimize and maximized to help search engine’s crawlers to read and collect data from our site. I wont tell you the how on this, as in a matter of web coding, you ‘re the man – I ‘m not. Still see some websites being coded wrongly from the seo point of view, titles not maximized and static, headers being coded with no heading, and stuff. Really bad. So Not Bold. So I guess, the very first step for this credit card debt site is yours to re-code it.” He explained. “Gotcha,” I replied shortly. The whole onsite coding to optimize the seo thingy not really amazed me. I ‘m on this field for a long long time. I got it on my fingers already. What amazed me the most is, he tells me all those above with one single breath! Sorta reminds me how Ace Ventura do his thing when he concluded one case.

4. Unique Content, was and Still IS the King.

From this point I ‘ll cut the conversation style of writing to skip all of his real words and all of our activities while we ‘re on it to save the space. He then explaining what ‘s next after the site is done coded. It ‘s the content. He bold – highlite – and underline it. This credit and debt consolidation site should have unique contents, not copies from others, written for visitors and internet people around the globe, not for the search engine. Yup you might ‘ve heard this one also as in Google guidelines.

5. Link Building

This would be the closing part which is the part which conclude all the works. Included within are socializing, building social reputation, creating new link neighborhood, connecting to the same niche such debt consolidation loans, credit card debt relief solution, debt consolidation, loans, personal loans and other related niches, keeping this site linking within this safe and related neighborhood, and manage it for some certain time period to analyze how the link network created and grows.

Another Lack of Updates?

Although there ‘re some lack of update of Alexa stats almost all the time, I just found out – exactly just now – that there ‘s this weird difference of update results in one alexa widget between the others. Not sure if you guys notice this one already, as I always thought that it’s just another lack of updates, the 120 x 65 badge is several days behind the other badges.

Here ‘s today’s screenshot

This screenshot taken on January 13, 2009.

Or is it a Bug?

As you may ‘ve already notices too that those buttons above calling a different source of data. You may wanna take a look at that javascript code above, one that I highlite with blue circle?
Well, maybe it’s just another lack updating. Just exactly the way pagerank did on some of their Data Center.

Most Updated One

I ‘m still concern though, in order to give your advertiser the best stats, you may need to change the badge into the most recent stat as possible. The most updated one.
My suggestion in this point, use others instead of that 120 x 65 button.

Again, if you ‘re one of those webmasters that consider pagerank and alexarank is a waste of time, you can disregard my last statement. It’s just not for you. It’s a heads up for all publishers who care about their site’s credibility.

Alrite, I ‘m out.

What so great about it?

As it’s regularly asked question and thought it might be worth putting together a page to define RSS and hopefully shed some light on the topic.

Wanna to keep up to date with the latest posts on Djarot.com?

We have a number of ways that you can subscribe to this site and receive updates. The main one that our readers use is our RSS feed. But what is RSS?

What the heck is RSS?

RSS is a technology that is being used by millions of web users around the world to keep track of their favorite websites.

In the ‘old days’ of the web to keep track of updates on a website you had to ‘bookmark’ websites in your browser and manually return to them on a regular basis to see what had been added.

The problems with bookmarking

1. You as the web surfer had to do all the work
2. It can get complicated when you are trying to track many websites at once
3. You miss information when you forget to check your bookmarks
4. You end up seeing the same information over and over again on sites that don’t update very often

Well, RSS Changes Everything

What if you could tell a website to let you know every time that they update? In a sense, this is what RSS does for you.

RSS flips things around a little and is a technology that provides you with a method of getting relevant and up to date information sent to you for you to read in your own time. It saves you time and helps you to get the information you want quickly after it was published.

RSS stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. Many people describe it as a ‘news feed’ that you subscribe to.

I find the ’subscription’ description helpful. It’s like subscribing to a magazine that is delivered to you periodically but instead of it coming in your physical mail box each month when the magazine is published it is delivered to your ‘RSS Reader’ every time your favorite website updates.

How RSS actually technically works is probably a lesson for another day but the key today is for you to understand why it’s good and how to use it.

Let me say right up front that I’m not the most technically savvy guy going around – but even I can use RSS. At first I found it a little strange to make the change from bookmarking to RSS but I found that when I started that I just couldn’t stop.

How to Use RSS

Get an RSS Reader – The first thing you’ll want to do if you’re getting into reading sites via RSS is to hook yourself up with an RSS Feed Reader.

There are many feed readers going around with a variety of approaches and features – however a good place to start is with a couple of free and easy to use web based ones like Google Reader and Bloglines. Either one will do if you’re starting out (I use Google’s Reader) – as I say there are many others to choose from but to get started either of these are fairly easy to use and will help you work out the basics of RSS.

Both of these feed readers work a little like email. As you subscribe to feeds you’ll see that unread entries from the sites you’re tracking will be marked as bold. As you click on them you’ll see the latest update and can read it right there in the feed reader. You are given the option to click through to the actual site or move onto the next unread item – marking the last one as ‘read’.

The best way to learn how to use either Google Reader or Bloglines is to simply subscribe to some feeds and give it a go. Both have helpful help sections to get you up and running.

Note: other options to tracking websites that you might already be familiar with include using pages like MyYahoo, MyGoogle and MyMSN.

Find Some Feeds to Subscribe to – there are two places to look for a site’s feed:

1. On the Site
2. In Your Browser

On Site Subscription
Over the last few years you may have noticed a lot of little buttons and widgets appearing on your favorite sites and blogs. Little orange buttons, ‘counters’ with how many ‘readers a blog has, links called RSS, XML, ATOM and many more.

They come in all shapes and sizes. Here are a few you might have seen :

There are plenty more – but any time you see any of these buttons or anything like them it means that the site you are viewing almost certainly has a feed that you can subscribe to. In most cases it’s as simple as either copying and pasting the link associated with the button into your RSS Reader or clicking the button and following the instructions to subscribe using the feed reader of your choice.

Browser Subscription

Many internet browsers now have the ability to find and subscribe to RSS feeds built right into them.

When you surf to a site you can usually tell if it has an RSS feed by looking in the right hand side of address bar where you type in the site’s URL.

Here’s how it looks for Djarot.com when you’re using Firefox :

See the little orange icon on the right hand side? Click that and you’ll be locating Djarot.com’s RSS feed.

Using Safari Browser it is a blue RSS icon :

Other modern browsers will have similar icons.

To quickly and easily subscribe by clicking these icons you’ll want to set up your browser to do it with your feed reader of choice as by default they will probably subscribe you using the in-browser reader. You can do this by going to the ‘preferences’ to your browser and choosing ‘Google Reader’ or ‘Bloglines’ etc as your feed reader.

Once you’ve done this and have subscribed to a few feeds you’ll begin to see unread items in your Feed Reader and you can start reading.

Don’t want to Use an RSS Reader? Email is an Option

If the above explanation all just seems a little too complicated for you then please don’t worry. Many sites also enable you to subscribe to RSS feeds via a more familiar medium – Email.

Here at Djarot.com we know that not everyone is into the RSS thing so at the top of our right hand sidebar there is a field where you can enter your email address and get a daily email with a summary of our latest posts. You can unsubscribe at any time and your email will be kept private and not used for any other purposes than to send these daily updates.

There you have it. Yeah, that’s what RSS all about. Cool huh!
Uh huh, it is.

Busby SEO Challenge is a Worldcup SEO contest created by Busby Websolutions.com. It started from June 1st 2008, ended in August 31, 2008. The keyword is busby seo challenge.
You ‘ve all know about an SEO challenge right? It’s a contest to win the first place of search engine position result, in a challenged keyword.

Rules

1. Start date is 1st June 2008, 12:00 midday, Perth, Western australia at which point the phrase will be posted on the Busby website.
2. End date of 31st august 2008, 12:00 midday, Perth, Western australia.
3. Only ethical SEO techniques may be engaged and the judges reserve the right to review the techniques engaged by the winner to ensure they comply.
4. No pornography, no discrimination and no illegal behaviour is permitted.
5. The competition is only open to domain and sub domain names that do not include the key phrase in any form.
6. Only registered entrants are eligible to compete and win the prize. Busby will maintain a list of entrants which can be view on the Entrants list page.
7. Registration is free, open to anyone of any age, gender, race and domicile and can only be made through Registration Process.
8. all entrants pages must have a visible link back to www.busbywebsolutions.com with the following text (including the hyperlink) in black arial 10 font: Participant in the Busby Web Solutions Search Engine Optimisation Challenge
9. Only one prize per person.
10. Employees, franchisees and licensees of Busby (and each of their family members) are eligible to enter but are not eligible to win any prizes.

The Prize

First Prize : $5000
Second Prize : $2000
Third Prize : $500

Support Indonesian Fighters!

I just browse around the Busby website, and found out there ‘re some Indonesian contestants joined already. Well, the well-known are Pogung177, RayofShadow, BrokenCode. There are others though, can’t list them all. Me? Nah.. I ‘m still ways far behind those legendary Seo Experts above. I ‘ll sit back and fasten my seat belt in this Supporters Seat.

So support them!

How to do that? → Give them backlinks in your site or blog.
How to give them backlinks? → Write a post about them and include their link, or, add their link in your blogroll.

They’re proud to be Indonesian, I ‘m proud to be Indonesian, We ‘re all should proud to be Indonesian! They’re all fighting for “Keharuman Nama bangsa Indonesia” (and the $5000 prize, ofcourse, LOL). We should all proud to be in the same nation as them!

So give them backlinks, and let us sing along together, ” Indonesia Tanah Airku.. Tanah Tumpah Darahku.. Disanalah Aku berdiri, Jadi Pandu Ibuku.. ” Let this Indonesian Pride exploded in our heart!

Good luck Brothers! We ‘re on your backs! I ‘m on your backs!

It ‘s been one helluva busy month this June, and it seems i failed to keep my commitment to write this Backlink 101 topic, 1 subject for each day. It was kinda hard to catch up with many sites I should ‘ve work on my daily work. So, I ‘ve decided to skip the past days.. and guess what?
I ‘m gonna close this June with some ultimate Backlink resources for us blogger / webmaster would definitely need. It’s the Backlink Checker Tools.

Why We Need the Tools?

Anchor text is a major ranking factor – it is hard to manipulate – well, at least it is getting harder now after Google started its anti-paid-links war and got really good at spotting link schemes. Thus by exploring the anchor text of the site backlinks, you will:

1. Get an idea of the competitors’ link building strategy
2. Understand what people think of your site
3. Get help with your keyword research (webmasters usually focus on their most important keywords when building links).

So based on Ann ‘s awesome article about the same subject, here ‘re the 7 Ultimate tools to check our site’s backlinks in regard gaining the above purposes.

The 7 Ultimate Backlink Tools :

1. BacklinkWatch – Tool Type: Web Based

BacklinkWatch is a bit stuffed with advertisements and slow, but it’s free. It will take time visiting each page linking to your site and find the anchor text.

2. Smart backlinks tool – Tool Type: Web Based

Smart backlinks tool is the next Web based tool. Offers a handy FireFox extension and viewing options (anchor text on/off; nofollow on/off) speeding up the checking process.

3. Analyze Back Links – Tool Type: Web Based

Analyze Back Links a new but promising tool also allowing for a number of useful settings and ofcourse anchor text being one of them. Some figures however – total backlinks, for examples – seems inaccurate, or I didn’t understand what they stand for.

4. Link Diagnosis – Tool Type: Web Based, Firefox Extension Required.

Link Diagnosis tool takes a lot of time but that’s worth it. The utility offers the widest variety of sorting options, anchor text is one of them, enabling you to quickly find any page you need. The result will include how many PR your site has, anchor texts, no-follow information and more.

5. Seobook BackLink Analyzer – Tool Type: Desktop application (Windows-only)

Seobook BackLink Analyzer is a great free application that has a number of useful options:

• backlinking TLD
• backlink anchor text
• linked page URL
• backlinking site IP address
• linking page outbound links
• backlinking domain Dmoz and Yahoo directory presence
• backlink nofollow flag.

It also has a handy export feature, and offers overall backlink summary, link summary per IP address and keyword-in-anchor-text summary. One more promising option I haven’t tested effectively include reciprocal link check.

6. SEO SpyGlass – Tool Type: Desktop Application (Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X)

SEO SpyGlass is another impressive – paid application – that offers an exhaustive backlinking report:

• backlinking page Google PR
• backlinking page title
• reciprocal link presence
• link anchor text
• linked page URL
• backlink page outbound and total links
• backlink domain IP address
• backlinking site Alexa rank
• backlinking domain Dmoz and Yahoo directory mentions

You can also save the project and enjoy a range of analysis options: anchor text, PageRank distribution, etc.

7. BackLinks Master – Tool Type: Desktop Application (Windows only)

BackLinks Master looks neat but I had some problems to get it running. The good news is that it’s free and has a number of good features:

• you can view all links or links sorted by domain
• it will also check the anchor text and link type.

So what about you? Got other tools you use the most to analyze your – or your competitor’s – backlinks? Feel free to share them here!

All we ever hear is numbers numbers numbers. So and So has this many links, we need this many links, how many links can you get us, buy 100’s of links cheap, get your link on 100 pages, argghh!!

The Numbers Game Died

The numbers game died a few years ago. There’s another line of thinking out there that you might not know about.
It’s not always “He with the most links” who wins the game. Often, “He with the right links” can win the game as well. Really, pretty often. He with the right 10 links can beat the guy with 1000 of the wrong links. I see this last one, all the time.

I’m sure most of us have looked at search results, and followed it up by checking the backlinks of the top 10 sites, and then scratched our heads and said “Uhm, why is that site in the top 10? It only has X amount of links! Doesn’t make sense.” I know I used to do that a lot. Upon closer inspection I’ll usually find that the sites with fewer backlinks that rank on the first page of search results have links that are more relevant, or more trusted, or seem to come from the “right places” (trusted industry related sites).

Sure, there’s different ways to play the game of SEO. Go for volume of links or go for Trusted links. But few go on the angle of “get the right links” and you might not need as many links as you thought you did.

Problem with the Volume War

See, a problem with going for volume is that you can’t stop. You and your competitors might be running in a dogs race always trying to get one more link than the other guys….you buy ‘em in volumes…you trade ‘em in volumes, you 3 way ‘em, you site-wide ‘em. You do what ever you can to get your total backlinks up, up, and away.

Problem with that is, is that you often get links from non-trusted sites (artificial backlink sites) or you get them on “Links” pages. Which this officially tossing a sign on your site saying “Google, kick me, I’m an artificial SEOd trying to artificially inflate my backlinks”. You get them for 200 directories, which another “Google kick me, I’m an artificial SEOd” sign.

And the more you get, the more you fall. The more you fall, the more you cry : “I must need more, more, more”. That’s when the more further you slip. It’s really a bad SEO trap that’s been laid out for you.

Getting trusted backlinks, Map the Neighborhood

Now, getting trusted backlinks is way better. Finding sites that have “Real backlinks” (not SEO’d sites), and getting your links on real pages is really cool. Winning by trust can be done, until the engines start to say “here’s the neighborhood, but you’re not in it” and wa-la, yea, you’re trusted too. Just not by your peers, and your rankings slip again.

I truely believe that the engines are trying to find the neighborhood. And that the numbers game is dying big time. So, remember that site that ranked high, yet had few backlinks?
Take a look at the drawing below:

Ok….see the dot I pointed with the red arrows? Those sites might not have the most backlinks, BUT they’re in the center of the activity. They got the right links, the hubs and the authorities. They don’t have a link from everyone, but They got the right links.

Getting a few of the right links, from the right places can be more valuable than getting 100 links from the wrong places.

( Jim Boykin, Internet marketing specialist, and CEO of We Build Pages )

Our Day 7 discussion is the Love for Lists. There’re 5 things you need to take a closer look about lists.
Here goes..

1. Build a “101 list”.

People tend to love lists. 101 lists, 10 easy tips, top 10 myths.. They seem to drive the most traffic.
These get Dugg all the time, and often become “authority documents”. People can’t resist linking to these .

2. Create a “10 easy tips” articles.

10 easy tips to improve your Alexa rank, 10 easy tips to help our pagerank boosted, 10 easy tips to help you gain more adsense earning. You know, that kinda stuff.
These are exceptionally easy to link to.

3. Create extensive resource lists for a specific topic.

Provide users some useful lists they might need in a particular area. List of Competitive Research Tools, list of Weblog Promotion Tools, list of SEO and Web Development Sales Tools, and stuff.

4. Create a list of the top 10 myths for a specific category.

Ever heard a myth? Or have heard some myths? List them, sort them, create a top 10 or top 5 or top whatever. Chosen category is yours to choose. Make sure it still the same as your site ‘s niche.

5. Create a list of gurus/experts.

If you impress the people listed well enough, or find a way to make your project look somewhat official, the gurus may end up linking to your site or saying thanks. (Sometimes flattery is the easiest way to strike up a good relationship with an “authority”.)

As you guys can see, I did it all the time, and is one of the greatest strategy of link building.

Here’s the Day 6 topic. “8 Things to Avoid!” Why should we? Well, some of us still practicing these 8 things below in this link building area. Bad things happened. Got penalized, hurt our site’s reputation and stuff.
Make sure to read each, so they won’t happened to yours.

Don’t participate in link popularity farms.

Don’t participate in link popularity farms. Don’t participate in programs that send out e-mails soliciting people to swap links (link spamming). Never place a link on your own site for the sole purpose of trading link popularity. Only place links that are valuable to your readers. Never try to get low-integrity Web sites to link to you. The link will actually hurt your site, not help it.

Create your link directory to be tightly themed. DO NOT include directory listings unless they match the themes or subjects of your Web site.

Tell people to LINK OFF.

Yes, it’s really odd. Turns out my marketing site was also known for wicker furniture and adult chat among other things. What?

Yes, a couple of sites thought it would be a good idea to link to me, just because I do well in the search engines. The problem was their links didn’t make sense as they were totally off topic. We both ended up getting penalized.

Usually you cannot make people remove incoming links, unless they are infringing on some kind of patent. But if you kindly explain that what they are doing is actually giving their site a penalty and hurting their findability, the links come down pretty fast. What they are doing is building the reputation of my page with what they say in their outgoing links. If what the links say do not match the topic of my page, the search engine gives the page containing the link a penalty.

Simply put:
Reputation is what a page is known for. What incoming links say the page is about. Topic is what the page is really about. The actual content of a page. The Reputation must match the Topic.

Stay out of “Bad Neighborhoods”

Be careful about who YOU link to. Stay out of “bad neighborhoods.” Don’t submit to FFA (Free for All) sites or join link exchange programs or farms. Using bulk submission programs won’t increase your link popularity either.

Never send out a “Blanket” e-mail

Never send out a “blanket” e-mail to hundreds of sites asking for a reciprocal link. Make each e-mail personal. Mention something that you like on their site. Give the URL for their links page. Discuss one of their products. Ask them a question. Do ANYTHING to make it clear that this is a personal request and not a mass-generated e-mail.

Don’t apply to sites that have hundreds of links on one page
Just like with the search engines, “If you’re not in the Top 10, you’re Cyber-Road Kill” ( Quote from Ginette Degner of Search Engine Services )

Don’t solicit sites that have their reciprocal links pages so deep in the site it’s difficult to find. If you have trouble finding the pages, so will the spiders.

Don’t solicit sites that have nothing to do with your business.
Keep your link directories clean of 404s or dead links.