Running a Contest? Always Ask a Friend First

I generally steer clear of awards because they seem a bit gratuitous and self serving, but they are great for link building.

Loren recently created a 2005 search awards contest. The awards have been mentioned on most every major search blog and have even got a bit of coverage outside the typical search sphere.

When Loren did his recent contest he ran it past me first and I said that he should re-categorize some of the stuff and add at least one category that could go viral or would be inclined to be talked about.

The category which fit that profile well for me is

Matt or Jeremy: who is more likely to flame you for spamming?

Sure enough both Matt and Jeremy blogged about it.

I have never done a contest to build links, but if I did here are things I would think about

  • which people should I run the award ideas past before it exists so I can refine it? This could help improve the contest categories, and it gives those people a reason for them to want to help market it since they gave feedback on it. Plus asking for feedback is a bit more tactful than asking for a link.

  • Are there any official sounding endorsements that would make the contest seem official like?
  • Who do I REALLY want links from? Those sites should be listed in small categories that really fit there niche?
  • Will any of the contestants get pissed if I email them to tell them they are in the contest? If not which contestants should I email?
  • Can I make something funny or interesting that people would want to link at?
  • Outside of the problem of self selection can I get a consensus on something that generally has no consensus?
  • Can I relate this study to bloggers or any niche markets that typically link virally or link with authority?

There are probably a bunch of other good ideas with contests, please let me know which ones you like.

Link Love for the Link Lover

Debra has a blog

Traditional Link Building Dying to Viral Marketing

In many ways a link in and of itself may not constitute a vote of quality. How do you discount sites like FT selling hidden links or links that are out of the way ads?

Brian thinks search engines may use clickstream data.

Throwing out the book on SEO is another post covering site visitor action, and the concept has to be at least a bit valid because Rand's recent beginner's guide to SEO already ranks in the top 30 for SEO. If you look at Rand's link trend or Del.icio.us information you can see that he has had a sharp increase in viral linking and SVA recently.

Peter D recently posted on finding relevancy in hyper saturated markets. The solution to the problem?

  • buy old

  • go viral
  • do both

Get Out of The Google Sandbox Free Card

DaveN offers up a Sanbox tip

on the sandbox... try this .

so you have a site loads of content, yet you know deep down that you should be ranking but you're not .. ( I can't confirm or deny that this is the sandbox ), you have good links and a good site structure.. but still you don't rank ( I can't confirm or deny that this is the sandbox )

You rank in Yahoo and Msn .. but no where in Google ( I can't confirm or deny that this is the sandbox ) ..

ok get an old domain, something which google crawls, then put a subdomain on it ... newsite.olddomain.com original and copy the site exactly on the sub as it is in the orginal date last modifed to a few months after the domain was first registered ... yer i know that makes all the content look really really old ... lol

Add a link from the www. oldsite.com to the newsite.oldsite.com forget about seo anchor text links, these are just to let google in.. now 301 the subdomain to the new site

New Years Resolution....Get More Links

So New Years is just around the corner. Many people will act in predictible ways, saying that this year they want to do this or that. Odds are there are some good linking opportunities pent up in that demand. This page currently ranks #7 in Google for lose weight.

Reading List on PageRank and Search Algorithms

cool post with links to a variety of search research. I hope to have time to read all the referenced papers.

Greg Linden asks

The probabilities of jumping to an unconnected page in the graph rather than following a link -- and briefly suggests that this personalization vector could be determined from actual usage data.

In fact, at least to my reading, the paper seems to imply that it would be ideal for both of these -- the probability of following a link and the personalization vector's probability of jumping to a page -- to be based on actual usage data. They seem to suggest that this would yield a PageRank that would be the best estimate of searcher interest in a page.

But, if I have enough usage data to do this, can't I calculate the equivalent PageRank directly?

Ho John Lee answers Greg's question here.

Interview of Greg from BOTW

I recently interviewed Greg from BOTW. He chats about directories, blackjack, and running some of his other web based businesses.

He also offers a discount for BOTW submissions at the end of the interview.

The Googleverse

the Googleverse is a forum with posts on Google and biz related issues. Have not read it all yet, but some of it is a bit boring and some of it looks uber cool. Will post about some of it's threads in a bit more depth soon.

The Guardian Launches a Free Branded Feed Reader

Steve Rubel posted about The Guardian launching a feed reader.

Many sites that are hard to link at or are in fields where many people are competing on near similar content theme and quality may be able to boost their overall site authority scores by creating something that people with lots of link popularity would like to link at.

SEO Copywriting = Rubbish

Bob Bly, the well known copywriter, recently wrote an article about why he did not hold much stock in SEO copywriting.

To create powerful copy, you need to have a single core audience in mind and concentrate all your effort on writing to that one audience. When I write copy, that audience is the prospect, the potential buyer of the product I am selling.

However, with SEO copywriting, you pander to another "audience" — the "search engines" and not the reader. And by creating copy that's optimal for attracting search engines, you are, to some degree, weakening that copy's power to sell. You dilute its strength because you are worrying about two audiences - the reader and the engines - instead of focusing every word on the customer. That's not how to write copy that sells.

As a copywriter, I would expect him to say something like that. But to a large extent I think many people would be better off if page titles and content had viral marketing or conversion in mind more than the search engines.

If the page is good enough at converting the following will happen

  • affiliates will push traffic at it
  • you can afford to buy in on PPC
  • you can afford to place many link ads or hire article writers or hire a public relations firm and the links will boost your natural rank

Using common permutations of your keywords in the anchor text will help you rank better. If the page converts at getting linked at or selling something that's about all you need...at least as long as you understand a bit about how search engines work.

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