Category: SEO rankings

When we think of SEO, the first word that comes to our mind is “backlinks”. But you need to be checking backlinks to prevent effects from negative SEO.

The rule is simple: the more relevant and quality backlinks you have, the higher your business is ranked in Google.

Backlinks are still the most important ranking factor for search engines, no matter what some say.

Why you should monitor incoming links

If you are serious about SEO and you want more organic traffic, you have to monitor all your backlinks to all the pages of your website.

These are several reasons why you should do so:

• You know when you receive a backlink from a website with high authority.
• Discover which are the most linked pages of your website. Write similar posts and you will get more links.
• Check if somebody is building bad backlinks to your website. Manage and protect your reputation.
• Find the most important backlinks to your site and try to get similar links.
• Look for the bad backlinks that can hurt your rankings and try to remove them.

In this article, I will show you what tools you can use to track your links so you can determine which ones are the most valuable for you.

SEO Tools to Check Backlinks

The first tool you can use is Monitor Backlinks.com.

Benefits

• Sends email alerts when you receive new backlinks.
• Checks for links to your homepage and all the other pages of your website.
• Everything is 100% automated so it saves you a lot of time.
• Easily keep track of all your backlinks.

How to use Monitor Backlinks

Create an account and add your domain by connecting it with Google Analytics.

You can add two competitors for which Monitor Backlinks will look for new links.

Add your main keywords that you want to rank for in Google.

You will be redirected to the panel where you can check all your backlinks, listed by different filters and metrics.

Monitor Backlinks will send you email alerts when a website links to your homepage or any other subpages.

You will get the same email alerts when your competitors are gaining new backlinks.

If you are interested in checking for links to your homepage or other pages from your website, you can use the top filters.

Click on “Filters” to choose the link to location for that backlink.

You can either choose your homepage, or a subpage. For example, if you are looking to check for the backlinks for yourwebsite.com/SEO-tutorial , type “SEO-tutorial”.

A list with all the backlinks that point to your particular page will be displayed.

Open Site Explorer

Another great tool to help you check for backlinks is Open Site Explorer.org.

Benefits:

• DA (Domain Authority ) and PA (Page Authority) metrics provided by Moz
• Just discovered links feature. It shows the latest backlinks indexed by Google.
• Compare link metrics between your website and competitors

How to use Open Site Explorer

Add your domain and click “search”. The tool will show you a list with all your backlinks sorted by their value (Domain Authority).

If you want to check the latest backlinks to your website, click on “Just Discovered” .

On this page, you can see all the latest links to your website.

If you want to check for backlinks on your internal pages, simply replace your homepage URL with the one of the page you want to check.

Open Site Explorer provides a lot of great details about your link profile, but you will have to check for new backlinks manually every day.

Ahrefs Site Explorer

You can also use Ahrefs.com to search for backlinks.

Benefits:

• Great in depth details about your backlinks
• Shows New & Lost backlinks by days
• Graphics with your link building campaigns

How to use Ahrefs Site Explorer

Add the domain you want to check for backlinks and Ahrefs will return a detailed SEO report.  To check for the latest backlinks, go to the left menu and click on “Backlinks – New”.

You can choose to see the new backlinks by the days they were indexed, from the top calendar.

Below you can see the table that contains all the backlinks from your chosen period of time. They are sorted by “Domain Rank”.

If you want to check the backlinks for all the pages of your website, add your URL on top, and select “URL with all its subpaths and query strings”.

Conclusion

To build a successful SEO campaign for your business, you have to track all the incoming links, just as often as you check your traffic and rankings.

These are the 3 best SEO tools that you can use to check and monitor your backlinks for your website.

The tools mentioned on this article are in no particular order.  Each of them has many other features that can help you manage your SEO progress.

All of them have free versions for you to try.

This is a guest post from GetUsSocial offering my readers the chance to win an iPad2 and sharing social media marketing tips from their experience offering Social Media Marketing Services.

This is a very basic post about SEO offering tips to small business owners and a video that explains what SEO is in a very simple way so that anyone can understand it.

As a small business owner, you have most likely hear the term SEO – but do you really understand what it is?

You may have an SEO strategy in place and be using at least some recommended SEO techniques.

But are you aware of the real value of SEO to businesses, particularly small business like yours?

SEO is a powerful tool, which, if used effectively on a consistent basis, can provide immense benefits to your business.

Real Value of SEO to Small Businesses

SEO is incredibly valuable to your small business in the following areas:

SEO Helps Attract Local Customers

When people search for a product or service, they usually want a local store or service provider. “Google Places” is an SEO tool that considers your business location to be a critical factor in determining the result rank of your website.

You can use your optimized Google Places page to provide essential information about your business and also mention your contact details.

Another SEO technique to help attract local customers is the inclusion of location in keyword phrases you target.

Instead of opting for “Cardiologist” as your keyword phrase, choose “cardiologist in ABCtown”.

This keyword has lesser competition than “cardiologist” and people who use such a specific keyword are seriously looking for this service in the said area.

Thus SEO helps you attract more local customers, which is your desired target.

See these links for tips on how to choose keywords your potential customers are using and how to use keyword phrases in your content.

Increases Awareness of Your Business

It is a basic rule of business that awareness increases chances of sale. People are unlikely to even consider your products or services, if they are unaware of your existence.

SEO ensures that your website attains top ranking in the Search Engine Results Page, enhancing your visibility and generating greater traffic for your site.

The most effective SEO tool to achieve this is your choice of keywords. Choose effective keywords and use them at an appropriate density throughout your content.

Reduces Expenditure on Promotions

Advertising in traditional media like newspapers, television commercials, or radio spots is expensive and may not be sustainable for a small business.

It is a good idea to use your website as an advertising tool. Web hosting companies allow you to create Flash enabled interactive content on your site at nominal rates.

Any special deals or discounts that you wish to promote can be part of your website content.

If your website is suitably optimized for search engines, it will draw relevant traffic and get the message across to your target audience.

Thus, SEO allows you to reduce advertising and promotional expenditure without compromising on the reach of your message.

Importance of Consistent SEO Efforts

In any intensely competitive online marketing scenario, search engine rankings change rapidly.

Constantly monitor your rankings and tweak the SEO inputs adequately to maintain consistent high rankings.

Sometimes a drastic change in SEO strategy may be needed, but do it.

Over a period of time as your website consistently appears on the top while people search for information relevant to your product and service, you gain a reputation as an expert in that niche.

And this definitely is beneficial to your business.

We would like to close this post with a short Search Engine Optimization video from our partner CommonCraft introducing you to the basic elements that make your website attractive to search engines.

Be sure to read this “too hot to handle” guest post by Gabriella Sannino, Owner/Operator, partner, Marketing Consultant, Head of Business Development and senior SEO Copywriting strategist at Level343.

Follow her on Twitter @SEOCopy and @Level343.

Google algorithms, paid links, shady SEO services – these things used to make the online pages of such places as Search Engine Land, Search Engine Roundtable and, more recently Search News Central.

In other words, not mainstream, national news for the most part. Why?

Because nobody really cared except us SEO professionals and maybe some site owners.

Over the last year, however, SEO (or some forms of it) have hit the main stream in waves, thanks to the New York Times. Go, go, NYT…

November 2010, the New York Times released a long article by David Segal about Vitaly Borker, bad man of the Internet.

Owner of Decormyeyes, Mr. Borker threatened a customer with sexual harassment, sent menacing emails and sent her a photograph of her apartment building.

I can see why this is worth reporting in a national newspaper as a warning to other individuals who might be buying online.

I can see the reason why NYT published the story about Google altering its algorithms.

Especially when they could correctly report that, “The change was prompted by an article in The New York Times on Sunday about Vitaly Borker, a Brooklyn-based online seller of eyeglasses.”

I can even see why they reported about his subsequent arrest. The man seems to be a maniac.

However, he was smart enough to find a loophole in Google’s algorithm and exploit it through – of all things – customer complaints.

Here, the NYT plays the hero, saves the damsel in distress and does away with the bad guy.

It was good news; it faded from the front page and disappeared.

Now, I’m not sure if they just got a huge boost of traffic from the post or what, but somehow they seem to have decided they’re Google’s new SEO bulldog.

In February of this year, Segal came back with an expose about the “dirty little secrets” of search.

It seems somebody just happened to notice that JCPenney was beating out other major players in search for a lot of terms.

Segal writes, “But Google’s (emphasis is mine) stated goal is to sift through every corner of the Internet and find the most important, relevant Web sites.”

He talks about black hat optimization, calling it a “dark art”. He warns that “trafficking” in these dark arts “risks the wrath of Google”.

He describes a black hat link builder who was interviewed for the story, making the link builder sound like someone out a spy movie.

In all this crap disguised as investigative reporting, Segal asks, just once, if maybe Google might have willingly gamed their own system to help one of its largest advertisers.

The Wall Street Journal grabs on to someone outing Overstock in a Webmaster World Forum and reports it.

The difference between the WSJ article and the NYT articles is the big “S” word: sensationalism. WSJ reporter, Amir Efrati, keeps to the facts.

David Segal of NYT makes SEO, especially black hat SEO, sound like a threat to national security.

Now, for the most part, I’ve just growled, shrugged and gone on. I mean, we don’t deal in paid links, we’re considered a “white hat” SEO company, and this stuff doesn’t affect our clients.

And then the NYT pops up again with a search for Mother’s Day flowers.

Get Off the High Horse

Really? Again, the NYT shoves a bunch of links in Google’s face. Somebody, somehow, had enough time to get a list of 6,000 back links for sites like Teleflora, FTD, 1800Flowers and ProFlowers.

Some unnamed Internet marketing experts said these companies are using strategies that violate Google’s guidelines.

Like a good little bulldog, the NYT brings a package of supposed goodies to Google.

Google looks the package over and says, “Well, no – these links don’t have a significant impact.”

In other words, this isn’t a package of goodies; it’s a package of crap.

That should have been enough to drop it, right? Google says there’s no story.

However, Segal rewords the Google quote to say, well yeah, these companies are trying to game the system, but, since Google’s gotten better, the “Internet subterfuge” failed – and then proceeds to go further into all this great, helpful-to-the-world information.

All in a national newspaper, mind you.

Failure to Report

What the NYT is failing to talk about, and failing to write about, is that people in every industry will exploit a given loop hole.

What they aren’t sharing is the fact that Google’s algorithms have loopholes.

They aren’t talking about the fact that the search engine algorithms are imperfect.

Is Google trying to up their search quality? Yes. Have they succeeded? Ummm… no. So when is the NYT going to start reporting about that? Hmmm?

Take, for instance, the fallout of the Panda update. I’m not talking about the sites that lost major traffic.

I’m talking the actual search results. Take, for instance, a post written over at Web Pro News, which points out that “quality results” are relative.

Read the article, and then tell me how eHow can be more authoritative than say, the National Cancer Institute on a search for “level 4 brain cancer”?

Or how about source attribution? What does it say about the search results when you can’t even rank number one for your own content?

So, we’re supposed to be good little girls and boys, pushing out this hand crafted, original, interesting content?

In the meantime, Google’s promoting content scrapper sites; you know, the ones that steal your fresh, interesting content and make it their own?

When did you, the New York Times, or you, the idiot who decided due diligence outings were the ‘in thing’, get officially designated as Google’s little dog?

Not even a cool dog, like German Shepherds, but annoying, mangy little ankle biters.

All this outing and so-called in depth reporting does is give the search marketing industry a bad reputation.

Of course, when you have a leash around your neck as pretty as the one Google gives you, who cares that you’re somebody’s little animal… right?

“Google is not your friend
In fact, you are not even Google’s customer.
You are the PRODUCT Google sells to its customers.”
~ Adam Toporek in Google+ and the Illusion of Privacy

Pete from Currency Exchange commented in my Google Monopoly post, writing,

“I must admit I have an implicit trust in Google to deliver authentic and trustworthy results. So long as the company adheres to clear principles and punishes those that manipulate the SERPS I won’t object its influence. Is there such a thing as a benevolent dictator?”

His comment is an excellent example of so many reasons why we are all losing our rights and freedoms every day.

This short comment set off so many warning bells in my brain that this post is the result.

“Implicit trust in Google”

This is based on pure and simple PR from continuously being mentioned and written about in the mainstream media in everything from movies, prime-time television shows, soap operas, and major newspapers and news coverage both online and off.

Google’s “don’t be evil” is akin to used car salesmen saying “trust me”.

Google Trustworthy? NO:

• NEW: Google and Facebook accused of bypassing iPhone’s privacy settings to spy on owners to build advertising profiles
• Google NSA Secret Relationship (Their relationship with both the NSA – U.S. National Security Agency – and NASA)
• Google CEO Retracts Street View Privacy Joke – Google CEO told CNN reporter Parker that “if she didn’t want to be on Street View, she could just move.” How long are we going to allow companies to claim it was just a “computer glitch” or “innocent mistake” every time they get caught red-handed?
• EU Google Antitrust Probe – European investigation into “Google stifling competition by juicing its search results to favor its services over its rivals”.
• Google Lets People Block Your Domain – fair enough if you want to block a site for yourself – but those blocks are REPORTED TO GOOGLE. Have you read all my posts about the problems with Akismet blacklisting blogs – not junk blogs – the very best blogs we regularly read? Hello Google Search Akismet! See my CrowdSourcing Failure post for more details on this.
  
• Invading children’s privacy by asking for their city of birth and last four digits of their Social Security numbers in order to submit a doodle drawing to a Google-sponsored contest. THAT is Google evil. << Read this <<
• Google Privacy – they value THEIR OWN but not ours
• Google pays income taxes of only 2.4% to the U.S. on their income; the average American company pays 28.3% – Does that sound like Google pays taxes fairly? The story mentions Facebook and Microsoft use the same tax loopholes Maybe they learned them from GE – a corporation long famous for paying next to no taxes.
• Read the post on Tax Justice that includes this quote: “The $3 in my wallet is more than ExxonMobil, GE and Bank of America paid in taxes last year, combined,” said Carl Gibson, founder of US Uncut Mississippi. “There’s a direct connection between corporate tax dodging and what’s happening to real people’s lives. Because of overseas tax havens and other tax loopholes, US corporations are making profits in America but barely paying taxes here. If we close those loopholes, we wouldn’t have to be cutting back on firefighters, library hours and student loans.”
• Google’s growing undisclosed “conflicts of interest” are baring their teeth
• Googleopoly: The Google-DoubleClick Anti-Competitive Case

Clear principles? Which principles might that be?

How authentic and trustworthy are Google’s results?

Don’t take my word for it. Read these:

• “Do No Evil?”
• Stealing data including passwords with technology installed in Street View cars
• Is Google Favoring Big Brands in local, organic and paid search?
• Manipulating organic search listings or artificially inflating AdWords bid costs during the critical ecommerce shopping season?
• Outright stealing from advertisers by substituting worthless traffic for converting traffic (what we refer to as distribution fraud) in a manner that makes detection unlikely by the average user or even major agencies?
• Google CEO announces their intention to “clean up the Internet cesspool” by Favoring Big Brands.
• Google has turned search results into a popularity contest among brands.
• Google Censorship – How it works

Are those the principles Pete meant?

Do You Believe in the Google Fairy?

Is there some magic Google Fairy how can get your site to show up in the search engine results (SERPs) without your working on it?

For years I’ve tried to ignore SEO, but if you run a business or have a website you hope will make money, you really have to hire an SEO or learn it yourself.

Make sure you hire one familiar with your business, especially for niches like dental SEO.

Manipulating the Serps?

We need to get clear on what is meant by that and WHY Google does not want businesses to know how they can be found in the search engines.

Is Google Playing Fair? To imply that if you proactively make your sites easy to find that they will Google slap you scares businesses into inaction.

Do you believe in the Google search engine fairy?

NO? Well then you HAVE to actively seek out related links somehow – whether that is by commenting in blogs or using Twitter or Facebook or other Social Media or doing article marketing or asking related sites to link to your site.

If you DON’T take action to make your site easy to find
no one will be finding you in their search engine anyway.

• Links and the words that are actually linked are one of the ways search engines “know” what is on a Web page.
• If you build a site that has zero incoming links, how really do you believe anyone will ever find it – no matter how good it is – to give you a link out of the goodness of their heart? Most people are selfish and they do NOT seek out ways to give their valuable time (time IS far more valuable than money) to strangers by linking to them. Yes, some of us DO go out of our way to do that but most people do not.
• Do you believe in the if you build it they will come school of Web design? Read my post on building traffic for why that will not work and what site owners MUST do to be found.

The best site for understanding search engines, serps and SEO is SEOBook and a good place to start is AaronWall’s excellent post Two Diametrically Opposed Google Editorial Policies.

If there has ever actually been a benevolent dictator it might be the stuff of fiction such as King Arthur and Camelot or possibly the kingdom of David, but finding an example in modern times may be impossible.

For 23 years I worked for IBM, arguably the most apparently paternalistic corporation in the world, who “took care of” their employees as though they were children – at least that is what we all thought until they converted our REAL pensions to illegal cash pensions, eliminated benefits that we had been promised IN WRITING and suddenly reduced salaries for some employees by 25% – all when they were making profits and before the economic declines.

What was our “loving” corporation really up to? Read IBM and the Holocaust and my readers may start to understand why I am such a champion for privacy rights.

IBM’s technology was used to round up those sent to the death camps and technology today WILL be used in the same way in a not-too-distant future.

As luck would have it, the No Verichip Movement has a video that not only explains IBM’s connection to the Holocaust but also the IBM Verichip connection:

There are many other videos on that site and on YouTube and around the Internet.

This is NOT a secret and you don’t need to be a prophet to know what is happening. IBM Verichip related video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJliOX9Lvgk

Did you read Aaron’s post highlighted in the box above? In it he wrote,

“Some bloggers who didn’t know any better got torched based on a single blog post” ~ Aaron Wall of SEOBook, #1 for SEO training ~

THAT is the power of Google. So you might want to start saving the URLs of your favorite sites and blogs somewhere YOU control – so you can find them should posts like this one or even innocent things they say that are not even controversial – get them booted from Google’s search engine.

If that happens, be brave and make noise about where your favorite sites have gone across Social Networks or we are all already oppressed beyond belief and any “freedom” we perceive is TRULY an illusion. July 26, 2010

I wrote in this comment that hyperinflation ends Fiat currencies and what to do to prepare. There is much good information in that post.

A final P.S. to everyone and especially Pete. Read my post What Caused the Great Depression is Now and the exceptional explanations it links to regarding currency, the sliding dollar, how the worldwide economy works and the real history of the United States.

What is coming is unavoidable so you may was well know what you’re up against and be better prepared.

“The Google Webmaster Guidelines are an arbitrary device used to oppress the small and weak, but do not apply to large Google ad partners.” ~ Vancouver SEO Rob Woods ~

GOOGLE ALGO CHANGE REACTIONS:

• GrowMap: Google Farmer Update slaps Google Competitors
• Also see Local SEO Guide’s aggregate links about what is now being called the Google Farmer Update
• Aaron Wall of SEOBook: How Demand Media Used PR Spin so Google Kills Demand Media’s Competitors (See comments: GrowMap, Donna Fontenot, more as they comment)

Manipulating SERPS:

• Google search results easily manipulated

JUNK SERPS:

• Matt Cutts Criticizes Deceptive Ads, Doesn’t Realize Google Is The One Serving Them
• Google Losing the Battle Against Spam
• Twitter Better for Finding Answer Than Google Search Results

Related articles

• Dear Google…THAT was a content farm update? (seo-theory.com)
• Changing Landscape in Google’s SERPs May Indicate a Shift in Relevancy (seo.com)
• French search engine joins anti-Google campaign (cash-bandit.com)
• Overstock Overstocks .edu Links and Google Schools Them (marketingpilgrim.com)

Google funded people and groups fighting to preserve their ability to advertise sex trafficing of minors in the U.S. against children and their parents trying to stop it.