I was on a forum the other day and noticed a thread where a guy was asking opinions about a link exchange that was offered to him. There a several different types of link exchanges that people can use for SEO purposes for example 2 way exchanges, 3 way exchanges and on and on.
Typically if another webmaster approaches me and asks for a link exchange they’re talking about a 2 way exchange. A 2 way link exchange is where two websites simply link to each other. It used to be that this was a solid tactic for gaining links but in the past year or two it has not given the SEO benefits that it used to. Now exchanging links is not something that will necessarily get you banned from Google but I will say that I would be very weary of that being the only link building efforts that one is employing.
As a matter of fact 2 way link exchanges are probably at the bottom of my list of possible link building tactics. It’s gotta be used lightly with many other strategies.
Now the thing that was especially bad about the link exchange offer that this guy was asking about was that the guy linking to him was going to make the link invisible to visitors so that they wouldn’t see it and leave the site but that the Google spiders would still see thereby still giving him the link juice.
So here is the problem, he would be doing something for SEO that the Google spiders could see but visitors couldn’t. There is the flag that will set Google to very likely go spider monkey on your site and removing it from their index.
Can you be absolutely sure that Google will delete your site if you do this, of course not but if there is a list of things that Google will delete you for I can guarantee that this is on it.
Anything that you are doing for SEO but making it NOT visible to your visitors is gonna set off a red flag sooner or later.
We’ll post more of these goofy tactics in the future so you can be sure you’re not doing them.
In our next post we’ll also be talking about some very powerful backlinking tactics that many people think that Google will ban you for but it’s very likely that they will not.
That is all
John
Backlinks are the name of the game when it comes to SEO. If you have read our blog at all then you probably know by now that we’re big on backlinks and you should be to. You can read some of our other posts where we argue for backlinks if you’re not quite sure you agree with us just yet.
This post is for those marketers who work hard to get backlinks to their website, whether they do it themselves or outsource it to someone else. This issue is so important that it can literally make a difference between a top 3 ranking or a ranking that on page 500.
So what is the big mistake? It’s so simple you’re going to think that I’m crazy but it’s the truth. Here’s the problem, if you want to rank for the term “lose weight fast” and you have a website at loseweightfasttips.com what URL exactly are you going to link to? You might not know this but there are actually several different URL’s within your URL and herein is where the problem lies. You have to decide from the onsite what URL you are going to promote for your website.
Here’s the mistake that so many people are making when they go out to get backlinks. One day they might promote the URL www.loseweightfasttips.com and another day they might promote the URL http://www.loseweightfast.com/ and yet another day they might promote http://loseweightfast.com/ or maybe without the slash at the end.
So what’s the problem you’re probably asking, after all the URL goes to the same sight no matter what URL you link to. That’s exactly right but the problem is that Google sees each of those URL’s as different so there is not any single one that is getting all of the linkjuice from your backlinks. Now do you see the problem?
If you get a thousand backlinks pointing to one URL and another thousand pointing to another then your website is only going to benefit from the backlinks that point to the actual URL of your website. So what is the actual URL of your website? It’s either http://yourdomain.com/ or http://www.yourdomain.com/. You must include the trailing slash at the end for every backlink you get and it’s your choice whether you are using the www in your website.
If you use wordpress on your site then you have the easy choice to include www in the URL or not, by default it is set to not use www but you can change that if you want by clicking on the “General” tab under settings on the left site of your screen. There is no SEO benefit whether you use www or not in your URL but if you do then make sure that is the URL that you use for your backlinks all the time.
This is so important that if you are outsourcing your link building then you have to stress to your outsourcer how important that he or she use the correct URL when building backlinks for you. Personally I would not pay them if you tell them one thing and they do another.
Best of luck with all your backlinking,
Mike
I saw a WSO thread on the Warrior Forum that caught my attention and I knew right away it would make a good blog post. The in the WSO thread the author claims that he will show you how to buy a PR7 domain for under $14. Let me save you the money of the cost of the WSO and tell you that you can in fact buy PR7 domains for this price on Godaddy. As a matter of fact it’s not very uncommon.
Now before you go scrape together all the money you can to buy hundreds of these PR7′s and think that you’re financial troubles are over because these PR7′s will be the answer to all of your SEO problems, just hold on a minute there is a caveat here.
As I said it’s not uncommon to find a PR7 domain for this price. So how is this possible you’re asking? It’s very simple, it’s not a true PR7 – the PR is fake. Domainers know that a newbie who sees a high PR domain for really cheap will fall for it and buy it not realizing that the high PR of the domain is a scam.
Many of you are probably thinking I’m blowing smoke up your backside but I’m not and people get scammed every day. You know the saying, “if it looks to good to be true then it’s probably not”. That definitely comes into play here.
So how do domain sellers fake PR. There are several ways, one of them is to do a hidden redirect so that it appears to the visitor that they are on the site that they wanted but they are really on a different site, a site with a PR7 or whatever PR the seller is claiming that the site has.
If you see a domain for sale with a high PR and the price looks to good to be true then it most likely is. A real PR7 domain wouldn’t sell for less than $3,000, and many go for more like $10,000.
These sneaky tactics can be applied to any domain not just PR7 domains, I’ve seen sellers fake PR3′s and PR4′s many a time.
There is an easy way to tell if it’s a fake PR though. All you have to do is type “info:domaininquestioin.com” into Google and click on the link that says, “Show Google’s cache of domaininquestioin.com” and if the PR is not fake then it will show the cache of the domain you are checking, but if it is fake then it will show the cache of the domain that they are doing the hidden redirect through.
There are other ways that domainers can deceive buyers as well that aren’t quite as easy to detect. Probably one of the most common is for the seller to get a bunch of site wide links from a high PR page pointing to the domain and then after the domain sells he removes the sitewide links.
The best way to check this is to check the backlinks using Yahoo and see if it has a bunch of sitewide links from a high PR website. If it does then you have reason to suspect that it could be a trickster but that doesn’t mean that it absolutely is.
The bottom line is that when buying domains for PR you must do your due diligence and if it looks to good to be true then it most likely is.
That’s all I have to say about that.
Have a wonderful day,
John
When it comes to SEO webmasters should be aiming to rank in Google – not Google, Bing and Yahoo. Bing and Yahoo will catch up in time, don’t worry about them. Google counts for 80% or more of searches. You can’t please them all – Google should be your goal.
There may have been a time when meta descriptions mattered to Google in terms of SEO but not anymore, however they do matter to some of the other search engines but again, none of those other search engines really matter. Google is all you should care about.
So if meta descriptions don’t matter for Google then what’s the point? The point is that Google uses your meta description for the text that shows up under your title in the search results. If you don’t have something for your meta description they they’ll choose to pull multiple areas of content from your site.
We didn’t think the whole meta description thing was an issue for SEO until this morning when I was on an SEO forum and a guy was asking a question about changing his meta description in the Thesis Theme.
I made a suggestion but told him not to worry because it had nothing to do with SEO in regards to Google. His response to my offering of help was – I don’t know what to call it, ungrateful and cocky I guess.
It’s bad enough to be cocky when you know what you’re talking about but when you don’t know what you’re talking about then it makes you look like 2X the idiot.
He said -
but did you write that meta descriptions aren’t relevant? Wow… that’s a new one 
How does one respond to that except kindly inform him that it’s not actually a new one but one that is several years old. Point him to the Official Google Webmaster blog post from 2007 where Google states in passing that meta descriptions have no weight on SEO for their algorithm located at the following link:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/improve-snippets-with-meta-description.html
So what was his response? Nothing yet, but it will be interesting to see if he does decide to argue about it for some reason.
So if you’ve been stuffing your meta descriptions with keywords and not understanding why they are not improving your Google rankings now you know why it hasn’t been helping.
That’s all I have to say about that.
Mike
A few days ago we made a post about the huge differences in the number of estimated searches the Google keyword tool has been showing recently – see post. We apparently a Google employee has decided to set the record straight and why the big difference.
No need for me to repost what he said – you can see it here.
So all that time G was including search partner searches in those numbers.
Are you kidding me.
I know there were some that were estimating that’s why the numbers were so high but to actually let so many millions of marketers and businesses think otherwise is just plain misleading.
Who knows why they decided to come clean but we appreciate it at least.
In the niches I’m in the numbers are definitely more realistic.
It will be interesting to see if they keep it the truth in keyword results.
Have a great night.
Mike
If you know anything about search engine optimization then you know that 98% of a successful SEO campaign is building backlinks.
Not just any backlinks, they need to be a mix of high quality backlinks including links from: blog posts, article directory links, blog commenting, forum profile links, press release sites etc.
These links need to come from websites that have PR – the higher the PR the better.
The only problem with obtaining these links is that it normally takes so much time that many people just give up and some very powerful and expensive tools.
Long story short we’re about to start offering a special service that will generate thousands of these links to your website that will bring hordes of traffic to your website through the search engines.
We’ll have more information soon and how you can take advantage.
See you soon,
Mike
If you’re serious about internet marketing then you’ve probably come across the trememndous amount of keyword tools on the market today.
Many marketers have always said that the best keyword tool to tell how many searches a keyword phrase gets on Google would obviously be Google’s own keyword tool.
Sounds reasonable doesn’t it? Yes it does.
But many people have speculated that Google drastically inflated the numbers that it would show for a given search term in regards to the number of searches it was getting in a month.
Why would they inflate their numbers?
For several reasons but no one knows for sure but Google and their nerdy nerds who make all the goofy decisions that they make.
I could give several examples that they have in fact inflated their numbers – big time, but of course Google would never admit it.
But three days ago their numbers changed and I mean in a big way.
For instance I’m on the first page for a keyword term that last week according to the Google keyword tool (before the change) was getting over 3 million exact searches per month.
Of course I knew it was totally false because the number of visitors I’ve been getting doesn’t even come close to reflecting those numbers.
Since the change the Google keyword tool now says that the keyword is getting 11,000 exact searches per month.
Every single keyword you’ve ever searched for has dropped dramatically.
I’m in another niche that was supposedly getting 9,200 exact and since the change it apparently gets less than 100 searches per month.
It’s funny because just a week ago I was venting my frustrations to my wife about the lies with the keyword tool.
It stinks that they inflated the numbers so badly but I’m also glad that we can depend on the keyword tool now.
I just hope Google keeps it this way.
To your success,
John
Since backlinks are the foundation of a good SEO campaign you know we’re always looking for ways to get quality backlinks.
If you read “The Perfect SEO” then you also know that some of the best backlinks you get pointing to your website are from blog posts. Now of course we’d love to have a blog post with a link coming from an authority blog but this is the next best thing.
Unique Article Wizard is very simple and I’m going to give you the opportunity in a bit to get your hands on a secret with UAW that could save you hundreds of dollars this year.
Basically what UAW does is put your articles on hundreds of blogs with the push of a button. The way it works is simple, the owners of UAW have a large and constantly growing network of blogs on many spread across many different IP addresses.
IP diversity is so important when it comes to backlinking your website as a matter of fact I would say that IP diversity is one of the top 3 most important factors to building backlinks to your website.
It’s not uncommon to write and submit an article and within a couple of weeks to have over 4oo backlinks pointing to your website just from one submission.
The only drawback that most people would say that there is to UAW is that way you have to write or have your articles written.
Those that signup for UAW have to agree not to tell what the special factor is for submitting articles although most people know it by now.
I can tell you that it will end up costing you more money if you’re outsourcing your articles or more time if you’re writing them yourself.
But there is a special secret that you won’t find out anywhere else that can cancel out that feature so you don’t have to spend that extra time and money.
You won’t find this secret anywhere else.
Do you want to know what it is?
Sorry but we can’t reveal it to the general public but don’t worry we treat our subscribers really well and our free products are worth more than most of the popular $47 products flying off the guru shelves.
We reveal this secret that will save you thousands of dollars in our Page 1 Secrets special download.
You can get it for free right now, just go to http://traffictags.com/page-1-secrets/ and among the many secrets revealed there to get your site to the top of Google’s page 1 you will also discover how to save hundreds of dollars on your outsourced UAW articles.
To your success,
Mike
I’ve tried quite a few hosts over the years and one seems to stand head and shoulders above the rest from my experience even though they are relatively inexpensive.
Hostgator has several different plans to choose from, they have pretty good support and they use CPanel for their control panel or WHM if you get a reseller account.
I’ve never had a site hacked with them and they have always been pretty fast to respond to any problems that I’ve had through their ticketing system.
They also have chat system where you can IM online with to get help with technical difficulties, billing questions or sales questions if you’re not yet a customer.
The only drawback I’ve ever experienced from them is that sometimes they reps on the chat system have given me conflicting information but that’s only been a two times.
Unless my need is emergent I usually use their ticket system which is pretty fast.
There have been a few times where my issue was resolved or question answered within 10 minutes using their ticket system.
The other thing I love about Hostgator is that they have so many things that just take a few clicks to install – take WordPress for example. Many hosts make you setup a database and jump through all kinds of hoops but Hostgator has Fantastico which make installing WordPress super easy.
Most marketers especially beginners don’t have much money to spend on hosting but they need a company that’s reliable and easy to navigate.
So if you’re looking for a host that costs very little money but gives so much and is super reliable then Hostgator is the right choice.
Here’s how to get a special discount on your hosting. Click here and choose your hosting package. After you choose your plan you’ll be taken to a page where you put in a new domain or an existing domain that you already own.
At the bottom of that page you’ll see an area to put in a coupon code. Enter “jury” (without quotes) in the space to get your discount which will show up on the next page. See image below:
Then you just enter your information and choose whether you want to pay through PayPal or credit card.
To your success,
Mike
You’ve heard of the “nofollow” tags that many websites are employing to try and deter spam right?
Basically it’s a simple tag next your an external link on a website that tells Google not to give the link any juice in hopes that spammers will pass their blog by and not try and leave a link.
Nofollow tags have been blown out of proportion big time and there are a lot of misconceptions about nofollow tags.
The main misconception about the tag is that many if not most internet marketers and maybe even webmasters think that it causes Google not to see the link at all.
That’s completely false – Google still recognizes the link they just don’t give it any link juice.
Most beginner internet marketers and SEO people think that it is a waste of time to get a backlink if it has the nofollow tag.
I’m here to tell you that’s a big mistake…
Why?
Because that means that they’re only getting backlinks that don’t have the nofollow tag and that looks unnatural to Google.
I can guarantee that 99% of the authority sites on the internet have backlinks that contain the nofollow tag and those authority site webmasters are just fine with that.
You’re making a big mistake if 100% of your backlinks don’t have nofollow next to any of them.
We recommend that at least 10% of your backlinks carry the nofollow tag just to look more natural to Google.
To your success,
Mike
