As diligent Search Marketers know, it’s quite a good idea to get links from strong/trusted sites pointing to yours and combine this with building a single link or two from a large number of smaller websites.

For some people, this second part can seem the most daunting - whilst there is a person you can talk to if you want a link on every page of timesonline.co.uk, there’s nobody you can call or email to get a link from every small website or blog. The difficulty of building such links is compounded when you realise that this work should be done using anchor text of the term you want to rank for.

(more…)

Happy June, evvabody! Here’s what happened last month in case you were bedridden with swine flu:

Best Blog Posts in May 2009
If I Could Go Back In Time & Give Myself Some Advice, This Would Be It. If Rand could turn back tiiiiiime…if he could find a wayyyyyyyyy…Rand hops into his DeLorean and gives his 2007 self some advice, including “Use email marketing,” “Invest in your affiliate program,” and “Don’t try to rip off the Libyans.” 10 Resources That Changed How I View the Internet. Danny shares some stuff that’s substantially changed his view of the Internet. (Spoiler alert: his view of the Internet largely consists of porn.) URL Rewrites and 301 Redirects - How Does It All Work? New hire Jen gets all Mr. Wizard on us and gives us a handy step-by-step of how URL rewrites and 301 redirects work, complete with lovely visual aids. Rewriting the Beginner’s Guide Part X: Measuring and Tracking Success. Rand has finally completed the Beginner’s Guide series of blog posts. Now all we have to do is slap that beeyotch together and add an appendix and Bob’s your uncle. Whiteboard Friday - Link Farming. Rand talks about why link farming is bad, m’kay. Best YOUmoz Posts in May 2009:
(more…)

It’s been a long time since we had a differential diagnosis post here on SEOmoz, but we’ve been getting lots of comments and emails requesting some mysteries, so here goes:

#1 - Who, Exactly, is Awesome, and Why?

(more…)

In this interview from SMX Advanced 2009, Rand talks to mobile search guru, Cindy Krum, of Rank-Mobile. 

Cindy starts off by noting the excellent SEO Audits panel at SMX Advanced, saying it’s one of the best sessions she’s seen.  Fortunately if you missed it there are lots of great writeups on the session (Lisa Barone’s recap has lots of good links in it).
(more…)

In this interview live from the floor of SMX Advanced 2009, Rand talks to Lyndsay Walker from Canada’s Web Shop about Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing.

Lindsay offers some good insight into how SEOs should go about learning how best to optimize for Bing, as well as some of the nice features it has for international geo-targeting.
(more…)

In this interview live from the floor of SMX Advanced 2009, Rand talks to Lindsay Walker from Canada’s Web Shop about Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing.

Lindsay offers some good insight into how SEOs should go about learning how best to optimize for Bing, as well as some of the nice features it has for international geo-targeting.
(more…)

David Mihm, Local Search guru and author of the new Local Search Ranking Factors, stops by Whiteboard Studios to discuss how business owners can get listed in Google’s Local Search Results.

Despite how powerful local and geo-targeted search has become, only a tiny fraction of businesses actually claim and verify their listing with Google (via the Google Local Business Center). The vast majority of listings are cobbled together from crawl data and information from trusted sources like the Better Business Bureau and other business directories such as InfoUSA, Acxiom, and Localeze.
(more…)

Stories, news, and other notable items from the past 3 weeks:

(more…)

After my post last night and the many follow ups from around the SEO sphere, I (along with most observers from the world of search) strongly anticipated clarifying statements from Google’s representatives at the SMX Advanced conference. Unfortunately, there’s very little to report. The best I have comes from secondary sources, albeit relatively trustworthy ones:

(more…)

Acquiring users and getting them to take an action on your site is the absolute core of web marketing. Whether that action is making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, registering for a demo…it doesn’t matter, if you’re doing business online, your job is to acquire users and get them to take an action.
(more…)