Finding the Most Powerful Links

Given that many large brands and mainstream media sites are trying to leverage their brand strength by adding interactive content to their sites and every SEO blog in the world (and some from distant universes) have posts about leveraging social media and buidling trust with link baiting, it is probably a pretty safe bet to think that Google is going to be forced away from trusting core domain related trust...and it is going to have to get even better at filtering link quality as well. You know Digg spaming is mainstream when there are many different business models based on spamming Digg.

Other social media sites are not behind the curve in getting spammed to bits. I recently noticed spam software for mass submission of videos to video hosting sites, and I see del.icio.us and Technorati pages ranking everywhere, and when I look at Del.icio.us I run into tags like this

Wow. Garbage.

When you look in Google's search results for long tail queries in consumer finance or other profitable verticals you see many sites rank which are various flavors of forums, user accounts, xss exploits, and other social spam. In spite of Yahoo! being the most visited website compare Google's recent stock performance to Yahoo!'s. Given that content as a business model does not scale well, traditional monopoly based content providers are going to have to work hard to get users to create / add value to / organize their content. As they do, many of these types of sites will make it easier and easier to leverage them directly (easy to rank content host) and indirectly (indirect traffic and direct link authority) to spam Google.

The brief history of SEO (well as best I know it) sorta goes something like
matching file names
page titles and meta tags
keyword density
full page analysis
link count
pagerank
anchor text
manual and algorithmic link filtering
duplicate content detection and semantic analysis
delaying rankings
delaying indexing
and now we are up to site related trust...which is getting spammed to bits and will only get worse

Anything that has been greatly trusted has been abused. The difference between the current abuse and past abuse is that in the past it was typically smaller individuals screwing with Google. Now Google has become a large enough force that they are actually undermining many of the business models of the providers of the content they are relying on.

Going forward, especially as Google, small content providers, unlimited choice, and easier access to the web marginalize the business models of many of the sites Google currently trust those sites are going to rely on users to help foot the bill. Google will give some content providers a backdoor deal, but most will have to look to user interaction to add value. That user interaction will be spamville. Thus I think rather than just trusting core domain levels I think Google is going to have to reduce their weighting on domain trust and place more on how well the individual page is integrated into the site and integrated into the web as a whole.

If everything Google trusts gets abused (it eventually does) and they are currently trusting raw domain related trust too much (they are) it shouldn't be surprising if their next move is to start getting even more selective with what they are willing to index or rank, and what links they will place weight on.

Jim Boykin recently announced the launch of a his Strongest Subpages Tool. Why the need for it?

If you’re getting a link from a page that no other site links to (beyond that site), what is the true trust of that page?

However, if you get a link from a subpage, that has lots of links to it, and your link is on that page, there’s outside trust flowing to that page.

If you’re getting links from pages that only has internal links to it, I doubt there’s much value in it.

Jim's tool has been pretty popular, so if you have trouble accessing it don't forget that you can do similar with SEO for Firefox. Jut search Yahoo! for site:seobook.com -adsfasdtfgs, where adsfasdtfgs is some random gibberish text. That will show you how well a page is integrated into the web on many levels...page level .edu links, external inbound links to that page, etc. etc. etc. You can also go the the Yahoo! Search settings page and return 100 results per search.

Linkbaiting or Link Baiting Strategies?

Rand mentioned that there are multiple types of linkbait, those that are known as controversial and those which are informational or comprehensive. I view them both as being in the same category though...evoking emotions and thus links. :)

I just updated my ebook again. I added quite a bit of information about designing / creating / formatting / packaging / launching / and marketing link bait. While it will surely change in future versions, here is some tips from the current version, similar to my recent WMW Pubcon talk on viral marketing.

Link Baiting
The idea of link baiting is to create a piece of content which is centered on a set demand from a specific audience. Who do you want to relate to? Why would they care? What would make them likely to spread your idea?

For example, Salary.com sponsored research stating that work at home moms did $134,121 worth of work each year. Because it was packaged as research and a story people would want to spread it spread far and wide.

Some common link baiting techniques

  • Talk about a specific community.
  • Give people a way to feel important about themselves, someone they care about, or something they feel should be important.
  • Take recent events and scale them out to others in your community.
  • Be provocative or controversial.
  • Be a contrarian.
  • Be thorough.

Controlling Your Message

  • Launch your story on a main channel such that you can change your messaging or update your offering based on feedback. If they wrong group runs with your story you may not want to stop them. ï
  • If you do not have a main channel which you can launch your idea on try to launch your idea by giving a popular channel such as TechCrunch the exclusive on your story.
  • If possible, build trust and attention in the marketplace well ahead of when you need to leverage it.
  • Consider potential blowback ahead of time. Depending on the importance of your message and brand strategy you may want to make your message easy to misinterpret OR you may want to make your message clear.
  • Create common link points. Do not throw away your link equity. For example, here are a couple ways people throw away link equity they earned:
    • Some book authors do not create an official page about their book on their site, and thus just give away the link equity and top ranking to an online bookstore.
    • Many people use Surveymonkey or some other 3rd party voting service when they create contests and polls. If you can include the voting script on your site you keep that link authority associated with your site even after the poll closes and people no longer talk about it.

Magnetic Headlines

  • Be specific with your headlines. Salary.com stating that work at home moms are worth $134,121 a year is probably going to spread further than if they said $200,000.
  • Write your headlines with the intent of spreading them. Focus more on writing something that evokes emotional responses and spread rather than writing for keywords and SEO.
  • Given that many social news sites have a voting mechanism that does not even require people to read the article to vote, the title may be far more important than the actual content of your link bait.
  • Copy Blogger offers great free headline writing tips.

Me Me Me: the Selfish Web

  • People like to view themselves as being important.
    • Many bloggers search for links to their blogs on Technorati or Google Blog Search multiple times each day (I typically do).
    • Calling out specific people, especially with humor, is an easy way to build linkage data.
    • Digg frequently has homepage stories about Digg or Digg users.
    • People are more likely to believe and spread messages which reinforce their world view.
  • Community involvement is important to help others identify with and feel ownership in your link bait.
  • When Rand Fishken launched his Search Engine Ranking Factors he collected feedback from about a dozen prominent members in the SEO community. Many of those people are active community members who helped spread the news at launch time.
    • Asking people for feedback can help others feel ownership in your idea, and is a way to pitch them on your idea without looking sleazy pitching it.

Seeding Your Idea

  • Ask for feedback from people who may be interested in helping you improve your idea or helping you market it.
  • Leverage friends and contacts via instant message and email.
  • Pitch relevant bloggers and media sources. It is preferable to build rapport prior to pitching.
  • Build accounts on social news sites.
  • Some social news sites allow you to place voting buttons on your site. Do so on your most important ideas.
  • Consider the best times and locations to launch your idea.
  • Have a friend or yourself submit your best ideas to the most authoritative and relevant social news sites.
    • Ensures your story has a title that is easy to vote for.
    • Ensures your story is submitted at an appropriate time.
    • If you do not do it soon after mentioning a story on your own site someone else may submit for you, using a dumb title or dumb post content.

Launching a Static Site
Even if your site is fairly static in nature you can still create a buzz when you launch it.

  • Call in favors from people you helped in the past.
  • ncorporate community ideas into your idea.
  • Spread out your ideas. For example, if you are forming a new partnership you can triple dip on publicity:
    • Interview partners on another channel.
    • Announce the launch.
    • Add linkbait to the site at a later point in time.

Formatting Link Bait

  • Make it easy to identify and connect with. Think about human emotions and tap the sense of empathy.
  • You may want to make your idea look polarized such that it especially appeals to one group and/or especially offends another. If other people are fighting over guessing your intentions you will get quality links.
  • Make your link bait look comprehensive.
    • Perception is more important than reality.
    • Most writing is quite wasteful in nature, because you have to trim off much of what you create.
    • By creating ordered lists of factoids an incomplete story can look well researched, even if it is not. For example, if you make a list of 101 ways to do x people may give a few ideas and some feedback, but nobody is going to sit and list 383 ways to do x.
  • Cite research, further reading, and link out to related resources from within your content. It makes your story look well researched and associates your work with other trusted names or brands in your field. You may even want to cite a few people that you want links from.
  • Dress up your link bait using quality design and / or relevant images from sites like Istockphoto.

Monetizing Link Bait

  • Make your link bait EASY to link at.
  • Don't over-monetize it right out of the gate. Make it look like research which is easy to cite rather than a piece of commercial information.
  • In Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content Clay Shirky stressed the importance of gaining authority to gain scale and distribution if you want to make money online.
  • Link bait rarely makes much money or directly pays for itself from the direct traffic. However, it has amazing indirect value.
    • People who pay attention to the active portions of the web are far more likely to be web publishers than those who do not.
    • Even if people do not link to your link bait idea right away you still gain mindshare and brand recognition amongst a group of people who have significant authority.
    • Many search engines, such as Google, use authority centric relevancy algorithms. Editorial links are seen as votes or signs of trust.
    • In Google, getting a link to any part of your site will help make all pages on your site more authoritative.
  • Two weeks after launching a linkbait my Google traffic and site earnings more than doubled on a site that was getting thousands of visitors and making over $100 a day from AdSense before the viral marketing campaign.

Bubbling Up

  • Social news sites and social bookmarking sites have recently popular lists that many people read.
  • Meme trackers track what stories are quickly spreading through the blogosphere.
  • Exposure on either of these can cause additional exposure and more linkage data. Many bloggers and some mainstream media outlets (like the MSNBC Clicked Blog) use these social news sites to find stories or sources.

Don't Compete With Yourself
Be careful what you name your link bait ideas. If your link bait is well executed and targets keywords important to other pages on your site the link bait will likely outrank your other pages in the search results.

Our SEO for Firefox page nearly outranks our homepage in Google for SEO.

The Stuntdubl Manifesto

I always thought I would be the first SEO to suck a sweet card out of Hugh, but Todd beat me to the punch with this sweet post. Good stuff Todd.

Finding Link Sources & Building Topical Authority Links

SEO Question: Many people tell me to get authoritative links. How do I find authoritative links?

SEO Answer: It helps to get links directly from sources that would be considered trusted seed sites in algorithms like TrustRank or topical hub and authority sites in Topic Sensitive PageRank. As TrustRank, Topic Sensitive PageRank [PDF], and other similar trust / topical trust related algorithms flow around the web it also helps to get links from sites that are linked to from seed sites.

Sites like DMOZ, the Yahoo! Directory, and Wikipedia might be considered obvious authorities and trust seed sites, and there are numerous other ways you could find potential trusted seed sites.

One example of a way to find general high authority / high trust domain might be to look for sites that link to multiple trusted related resources in one field that also link to multiple trusted related resources in other fields. For example, you could do something like Yahoo! Search (linkdomain: a couple sites in field 1) AND (linkdomain: a couple sites in field 2).

Sites that you know the brand of even if they are outside your industry, or see ranking across a wide range of queries are also well trusted authoritative domains.

Some algorithms might transfer a lot of trust to anything listed in multiple seed sites. So if you wanted to find what sites were listed in DMOZ and the Yahoo! Directory that link at a competing site you could do a Live search for something like linkdomain:seobook.com linkfromdomain:dmoz.org linkfromdomain:yahoo.com.

Some algorithms may take the top x% of sites from each category of trusted seed sites and consider those as trusted sites as well. The Yahoo! Directory lists sites roughly in terms of authority, so viewing the top sites in a specific category is a good way to find the most authoritative sites in that category.

Yahoo! also paginates results in each category. If you are in need of co-citation in the Yahoo! Directory and your domain lacks adequate authority to be listed on the first page of your category you can buy a category sponsorship for about $100 a month without worrying about Google calling you a link buying spammer or removing your site from the results (even though you are buying an ad for distribution, link equity, and co-citation - typically with more indirect value than direct value).

The Google Directory is powered from DMOZ data, and sorts listings in order of PageRank, so that is another good way to find the top authorities in a specific category. Also when you search the Google Directory for a domain like seobook.com it will show pages listed in the Open Directory that mention that domain.

You could also create a Google Custom Search Engine which was seeded by a seed site such as the Open Directory Project's RDF dump, and then search that for domain mentions.

When looking for topical hubs you could also look at:

  • sites which link to many top ranked authority sites using a tool like hub finder.

  • top ranked sites for related fields broader than yours...for example, if you had an SEO site you can look for top ranked pages and sites about search
  • who links at industry standards and other important documents in your field
  • top ranked sites for your keywords + blog (helps if your topic is somewhat tech or web related in nature)
  • track mentions of competing sites using Google Blogsearch or Technorati
  • topical authority blogs in Technorati
  • once you find a few hubs or authorities use the Google related sites feature to find related sites related:searchenginewatch.com

Another way to get authoritative links is to see what social sites and people outside of your industry are talking about and linking to that is related to your industry or related industries. Think of ways to create related ideas and industry standards.

Yahoo! tends to sort backlinks roughly in terms of authority. In addition, Yahoo! allows you to search for .edu, .gov, .mil, .ac.uk or things with .k12 in the URL. Combine those types of ideas with a specific topic or a link search function to find a targeted link opportunity.

And, if you are into looking at competitive linkage data right in the search results SEO for Firefox is the extension for you.

Google Code Speak - do You Add Value?

Google representatives often make statements like make sites that are good for users, but they don't tell you what specifically they are looking for to determine the quality of a site because if they did people would exploit it. When Google is using code speak to prevent people from reverse engineering organic search results then perhaps the ends justify the means, but recently it appears that Google has been looking at usage data and signs of trust which may relate to organic search and applying some of those to Google AdWords.

As Google obfuscates the field of SEO with bland double speak, and uses organic search signals as a sign of quality in PPC they are increasing the value of those who take the time to understand what Google is ACTUALLY looking at. They want an informational bias in organic results and a commercial bias in AdWords, but invariably Google is looking to separate signal from noise in organic results and AdWords.

Given how crafty us optimizers are, Google believes a healthy dose of misinformation is key to making that happen. Given how arrogant Google is and how much they believe in the raw power of data you wouldn't think they would need to do that with AdWords.

As Google owns a growing segment of the attention stream, uses vague guidelines that are selectively applied, and make backdoor deals with large publishers they are killing off many business models in aims of improving quality (also known as profit). How much leverage has Google accumulated? The NYT said that ~ 22% of their website visitors come from search engines. Think of how old some of the old media companies are and how long they have built their brands, and they are already that dependant on search. Think of how new web video is, and that there are already reports of it eroding television viewership.

As the web grows the increasing competition and increasing scope of the link graph means that content creators have to keep getting more innovative and give more away to be remarkable, gain mindshare, and build a brand.

Creators are not publishers, and putting the power to publish directly into their hands does not make them publishers. It makes them artists with printing presses. This matters because creative people crave attention in a way publishers do not. Prior to the internet, this didn't make much difference. The expense of publishing and distributing printed material is too great for it to be given away freely and in unlimited quantities -- even vanity press books come with a price tag. Now, however, a single individual can serve an audience in the hundreds of thousands, as a hobby, with nary a publisher in sight.

That is why I feel so strongly that most standards are arbitrary. As long as you reach to your market with passion eventually your market will find you. I am living proof that armatures don't need publishers. As everything moves toward free, attention, trust, and brand will be the only things that makes you a non-commodity. And as long as Google keeps separating signal from noise, and technology keeps making it easier to participate on the web, publishers are going to need to start adding value if they are going to stay relevant.

So sure, Google is right when they say you need to add value, but many businesses operate under the false pretense that they are not going to get marginalized.

SEO & the Static vs Active Web

A while ago I made a bunch of posts about search (and the web as a whole) being about communication, but I think the posts were so verbose that nobody cared. :)

Since then I have been playing with social web stuff a good bit more and it is hard to grasp the full potential of it until after you see some of your marketing ideas spread like a weed. I have done well spreading ideas related to SEO, but I really was blown away by the potential when I had ideas not related to SEO that spread fast and far. In A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History Manuel De Landa highlighted that smaller businesses tend to act as research labs for larger ones. Nick Carr highlighted the erosion of blogs from the Technorati top 35 media sites over the past couple years, based on David Sifry's most recent state of the blogosphere post. The problem is not that blogs are less important than they were, it is just that big media is integrating blogging into what they are doing, and are leveraging their other assets to boost the blogs.

As more and more people write online the value of any singular algorithmic exploit is reduced, and the value of creating what people want or being able to influence decision makers and authorities directly goes up. If you are featured in TechCrunch the odds are good that thousands of people will see your product and hundreds of people will link at your site.

How much is a static link in a lower quality directory worth? It is hard to quantify, but as the static portions of the web represent a smaller and smaller portion of the whole, the value of being mentioned there goes down. If you create something that people are actively talking about which quickly spreads the marketing value of that exposure can be far greater than any marketing you could buy, especially if you value your time.

There are many ways to participate in the active web. If you build a finite amount of attention in the marketplace before you need to leverage it then you can use that asset over and over again.

Blogs & Forums: You can leave comments on blogs and forums, or if you are motivated you can create your own blog or community. If you have limited funds to invest you can invest by spending significant time learning your industry and freely linking out to other sites.

Feedback: Before launching an idea ask important members in your community what they think about your idea. Sometimes their feedback can make it far easier for your idea to spread. If they owe you a favor or feel emotionally attached to your idea they may even help you market it for free.

Social News & Social Bookmarking: You can learn a lot by seeing what stories are spreading on various social bookmarking and news sites. Pay attention to article titles, community bias, bias of the marketed content, format of the marketed content, how frequently certain topics appear, and how you can relate your site to topics these communities enjoy.

The Past: It used to be cheaper and easier to directly manipulate the engines by doing things like

  • focus on a highly profitable commercial niche

  • focus your anchor text
  • buy high PageRank links and build many low quality links
  • focus your link equity, pointing links at the page you want to market

But Google filters many obvious bought links, has added cost to low quality links (by making it harder to get in their index and not crawling some sites that have too many low quality links), has a -30 ranking penalty for sites with artificial profiles, and even MSN is getting more aggressive at filtering link spam.

The Present: In many markets it is getting cheaper and easier to manipulate the engines indirectly by participating in the active web, by dong things like

  • creating ideas and content people like and want (even if those ideas do not have a direct monetization model)

  • being willing to go exceptionally niche or exceptionally broad with some content to create an idea which people would be likely to vote for
  • not caring about anchor text
  • not caring about what page they link at (realizing that authoritative links to any page on your site will boost your site's authority and the rankings for all pages on your site, and thus will allow you to monetize your commercial pages from the authority of the linkworthy pages)

The Future: Imagine a day when

  • hardware, software, and bandwidth are free

  • Google and other engines have access to most web usage data
  • most people who use the web run websites
  • the web is a reflection of what most people think

If that happened would you still be able to compete in your vertical? No matter how good any of us are at manipulating engines, invariable for longterm brands and websites it is going to be cheaper to influence people.

Overlapping Navigation

In the past it made sense to cross reference categories and locations to make hundreds of thousands of pages, but with duplicate content filters improving that is a fast track to nowhere. In some cases though it still may make sense to make pages which will still rank for geolocal queries.

One way to do this is to create local pages as their own categories, but to make the page linking to the local pages a category page which shares navigation common to the rest of the section of your site. That will allow you to rank for many modifier rich keyword phrases without requiring you to generate 50 pages per topic.

Link Equity and Authority Consolidation

About 2 months ago Oilman posted about how Digg was wasting some of their authority by splitting their brand and link equity across at least 3 domains. Given the following conditions

It makes sense that Google would want to promote a site with 10 quality links much more than they would want to promote 2 sites with 5 quality links each. Consolidating and controlling your link authority is exceptionally important.

Many websites still make errors when doing authoritative things by not providing a focused linkpoint on their own site for an idea. A couple examples:

    Many book authors write a book and then never create a page on their own site which is the defining resource for their own book, and thus allow one of the larger bookstores or ecommerce platforms to take the default rankings for their brand.

  • Many people use SurveyMonkey or some other source for surveys. If their survey / contest gets popular then they throw away a bunch of their link equity by having it all point at an external source.
  • Many people blow their marketing by announcing too many things at once, instead of double or triple dipping on the plublicity.

Tactical SEO vs Strategic SEO

After talking with Andy Hagans and a few other friends I have got to thinking a lot more about tactical vs strategic SEO and marketing.

Many SEO tactics work well at achieving a certain goal, but to be wildly profitable you usually needs more than tactics, you need love from the strategic front. Many people who are great tactical SEOs do not build much equity because tactics without strategy have little value. Here are some examples:

Tactical:
Buy AdWords and AdSense ads to drive revenue.

Strategic:
If you are new to a fairly saturated market use AdWords and AdSense to roughly break even, hoping to increase your site exposure, link equity, and mindshare in the process...knowing that the real profits from an ad campaign can show up indirectly over time via organic search and product recommendation on other sites.

Tactical:
Get links.

Strategic:
Avoid actively seeking low quality links until your site has a significant history which includes many trusted backlinks.

Tactical:
Get quality links.

Strategic:
Create content, tools, or other packaged value systems which allow you to gain high quality viral links for a low aggregate cost. Create things that will make competitors want to talk about you.

Tactical:
Do anything to get links. Link bait link bait link bait.

Strategic:
Consider the potential outcome of your link bait if you are trying to cut others down to prop yourself up. As you build a trusted brand become more risk adverse.

Tactical:
Blog spam for links.

Strategic:
Talk about and become friends with the people you want links from.

Tactical:
Put everything on one exceptionally authoritative domain.

Strategic:
Own multiple brands that allow you to tap different market segments, or publish things that might not fuse too well with your main brand without hurting your brand. Design the brands so that they can extend in different directions.

Tactical:
Keep all your profits by doing almost everything yourself. Stick to what you know.

Strategic:
Admit your weaknesses and take on partners where neccessary. Find partners who add value where you are lacking.

Tactical:
Create high quality content.

Strategic:
Control content costs and make boatloads of average content. Build the authority of the site using exceptionally high quality content. Leverage that authority to profit from your boatloads of average content on that site. Segregate your high quality and high attention content from your lower value content, but after attention has passed ensure that the high quality content links trough to your lower quality content.

Tactical:
Use descriptive page titles to improve CTR and anchor text.

Strategic:
Title your pages such that the story spreads far. After the story has initially spread, consider changing the page title to something more descriptive.

Tactical:
Create a niche site in a low competition vertical.

Strategic:
If the vertical should be easy to dominate, make your core brand name broad enough that if you later want to expand you can.

Tactical:
Make as much money as you can right now.

Strategic:
Invest and reinvest. Make less upfront. Create passive income streams from properties that were designed around minimal customer service and growing into dominant self-reinforcing market positions.

Tactical:
Montize right away.

Strategic:
Limit initial monetization. Make the site look like a hobby or fan site made out of love for the topic so it is easy to link at. Program it such that it is easy to turn on monetization when the day to monetize comes.

Tactical:
Use consistant ad formats and layouts throughout your site.

Strategic:
On the home page and other high attention portions of your site use less ads to make your site more linkworthy.

Tactical:
Design for maximum ad clickthrough rate.

Strategic:
Consider linkability as a cost. Place ads in a slightly less aggressive position to make your content easier to link at.

Tactical:
Stay on topic to reinforce brand image.

Strategic:
Write some content for links, while writing other content for conversion. Occassionally drift off topic if there is a way to make a high link equity / high value / high authority idea relate to your site. If you are creative enough, everything in the universe belongs in a relational database that is tied to your content ;)

I am sure you probably have lots of other good examples about why strategy is important. What are your favorite SEO strategies?

Trusted vs Untrusted Links

About a year and a half ago I wrote an article called TrustRank and the Company You Keep which offered an image showing how many of the cheesy "buy PageRank here" type general directories were not well meshed into the web. That same image can be extended well beyond directories. Article submissions, reciprocal links, press releases, and other low effort low cost links put your site in a community of low trust sites. Even if the source originally had great trust, if they offer much greater value than cost, market forces such as:

  • other marketers using the same marketing techniques to promote low quality sites

  • improving relevancy algorithms

are going to neutralize the value. And then all you are left with is the risk.

Worse yet, a new site which is heavily co-cited alongside low quality sites may never be able to build enough quality votes to offset all of the votes of non-quality. So after you gain too many garbage votes, even when you decide to splash out to put the effort in or spend the money necessary to get quality votes it may not matter. The site status may be beyond repair.

And as long as you think of SEO as I need links I need links I need links then you are going to be more inclined to pick up a disproportionate volume of junky links, especially if you are not thinking of the web as a large social network. If you know your market well enough to read market demands then it is much easier to get editorial links that will hold value, and perhaps even increase in value as relevancy algorithms evolve.

Nothing is absolute of course, but it is all ratio driven. If the first thing you do with your site is put it in a community of low trusted sites then you are going to need to work much harder to develop a trusting relationship with Google. If you go for quality first then you have more room for error down the road.

Each engine has its own values which determine the quality of a link. Google is typically the best at scrubbing link quality, and Microsoft is generally no good at it. If the market seems so saturated that you think Google will be prettymuch out of reach no matter what you do, then it might make sense to concede Google rankings and be a bit more aggressive with getting bulk low quality links to dominate Yahoo! and MSN.

When I started with SEO I ranked for search engine marketing inside of 9 months on like $300 just by getting whatever spammy links I could that had PageRank, but Google's algorithms have long since evolved. The fact that many votes count as negative votes means that you can't just pick off the easiest links pointing at competing sites and catch up that way. You have to get some of their higher quality links right away to have a good enough of a trust-to-junk ratio for the bad stuff not to whack you.

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