If you want to prevent any of your Wordpress blogs from getting hacked make sure you keep your software up to date, and follow other basic Wordpress protection strategies, like - securing your admin folder, removing the Wordpress version number from your theme's header.php file, creating an index.html file in your plug-ins directory, and removing other common Wordpress oriented footprints like a "powered by Wordpress" signature in the page footer.
Not quite as bad as full hacking, but comment spam is still annoying. There are a couple good plug ins to help prevent comment spam as well, including Akismet and Spam Karma.
Other easy suggestions on this front are to require a captcha and force first time comments to be moderated before appearing on the site.
Google IP Address Targeted Hacking + Cloaked Spam
One of my blogs was recently targeted by a blog hacker that inserted links into the site that could *only be viewed by GoogleBot*. You typically would not notice such a hack unless you subscribed to a Google Alert for your site, saw yourself ranking for some of the spam terms, and/or when your Google Search Traffic started to fall.
The issue with such a hack is that it is hard to know if you wiped it out, even if you update everything. When you use Firefox's User Agent Switcher you still will not see the links because you are not surfing from one of GoogleBot's IP addresses.
In fact, for this particular hack you can't even see the links on Google's cached version of a page unless you view the text cache version of the page.
Once you click the text only cache link tons of pharmacy links appear in the page footer. This screenshot was taken from a Texas Instruments blog post on security and safety
Earlier this week one of my writers who loves blogging complained that search traffic was dropping slightly, and then after a few days of minor decay the search traffic was cut in half. Keep in mind this site gets much of it's traffic from organic links.
Our Google traffic started to fall off slowly, and as more of the pages with spam in them got indexed the fall off became sharper. After a week or so traffic may be a small % of what it was...or if they just spam a couple pages the change in traffic may be so minor that you never notice it. The traffic decay rate depends on...
the crawl priority of your site (how frequently it gets crawled)
the number of pages you have on your site
how bad your site gets spammed (number of spammy links and pages, etc.
You can see what portion of your site got hit by searching Google for "spammy footprint" site:example.com and comparing that count to the total number of pages Google shows indexed for site:example.com.
How to Clean Up Your Wordpress Blog
Regular updates are a plus to make it easy to revert to a prior version if needed. And if you find yourself upgrading software after a hack make sure your server is clean (save old files elsewhere) and install fresh. You probably want to change your database and Wordpress passwords after upgrading, and if you are not sure where the hack was you may also want to change your theme.
There are a lot of different ways people can hack into a Wordpress blog. Some spam hunting ideas include...
Using SSH to look for recently modified files and/or weird new files that were added to your site. Some hackers may also add files to the root of your site, or above it hidden somewhere on your web server.
Some hacks may be via a Wordpress plug-in. If you have inessential plug-ins installed see if others have complained about them getting hacked, and see if you can remove them. I think some hackers that get into Wordpress go so far as adding plug-ins that position spam throughout the blog.
If your database contains spam in it then you can run the following MySQL query (from Michael VanDeMar) to find many of the most common types of Wordpress link hacks.
If you can't find any spam in your Wordpress database, then...
look for files that have been added or modified
back up your files and database
disable plug ins
delete all files (except for maybe your config file and .htaccess file - and verify those have not been edited as well)
update your blog to the newest version of Wordpress
change your MySQL password and your Wordpress password
install a new theme
download necessary plug-ins from their original sources if you want to keep using them
make sure you performed all the steps at the top of this article to try to keep your blog safe.
if your problem was a shoddy host that got compromised then its a good idea to shift to a better Wordpress hosting solution
If The Hacker Was Using IP Cloaking...
If the hacker was using IP cloaking you can't be 100% certain that the spam is gone until Google tries to index new pages on your site and/or re-indexes old pages that were hacked.
If you updated your blog a few hours ago you can also do a regular site:www.example.com search on Google and set the results to 100 per page to find any pages that have been re-indexed in the last few hours. Once the search results come up you can search the search results page for hours ago.
One note of caution is to check the actual page's cache date at the top of the page. Sometimes when a cache is really new clicking on the link will show you the new page, but sometimes it will show you a cached page from a few days back. When you see a new cached page without the spam links hopefully your spam problems are almost over and your site is on the road to recovery, with rankings improving as Google caches more pages from your site.
Remember to set up a Google Alert for your site so you can track if any spam links magically re-appear.
Your Turn
I have only had a couple blogs hacked in my many years of blogging. Did I miss any obvious tips and/or wisdom you can add to the above post?
We've all, at some point, received the "request-for-a-link" email.
Such emails are useless, on a number of levels, the main reason being that the offer is lousy. However, such emails also tend to get the pitch wrong, so further limit the chances of getting the link. Getting the pitch right - the way the offer is described - is a bit of an art.
I've been looking back through the emails I've received and there are common characteristics displayed in those I ignored, and those I responded to.
There are two aspects common to all such emails, the offer and the pitch.
The Offer
The offer must be compelling. No matter how good the pitch, if the offer doesn't advantage the recipient in some way, then the sender is unlikely to receive a response.
Take, for example, the PR offer.
I receive a lot of these. They don't get read. Why? There's no advantage for me in doing so. There is advantage for the company that wants free coverage, of course, but not me. Unless the information is ground-breaking, and hasn't been circulated widely in the public domain, then the typical PR email "offer" is very poor. The offer is essentially this: "give us your time and effort for nothing so we can advance our cause"
Well, no. No I won't :)
But lets say the offer is to my advantage. Either I'm receiving some genuinely useful information, a good opportunity, or a good incentive. It can still be let down by the quality of the pitch.
The Pitch
Here is an email Aaron received recently:
Subject: About an Advertisement on Your Blog
Hellow.
I've recently created a software for automated social bookmarking.
Just wanted to ask, if it is possible to order a post about our tool on your blog, written by you ?
You don't even need to install and actually test the software if you don't want to, just mention that there is something out there that is worth using for seo purposes.
Here is a website: (removed)
Thanks.
There are a few obvious problems in terms of both the offer and the pitch.
"Hellow". The very first word is misspelled. This is unprofessional.
Does not include the recipients name. It's not personal.
Asks about advertising, then demands coverage, with no transition. What's in it for me? Where's the incentive?
Asks us to post about the software without trying it. Again, why would we do that? Our credibility would be at stake, for starters.
Domain misspelled. You'll have to take my word on that one, but it was :)
Does not have the senders name in the email. Again, unprofessional.
Their domain is a scrolling sales letter with no other content. Why would we recommend our readers, who tend to be very web-savvy, to such a site? We'd lose credibility.
Not only is the offer a poor one, but we can't take the pitch seriously either. It could have worked if they'd thought a little bit more about the offer, and pitched correctly.
How To Pitch An Email
1. Make It Personal
Imagine a telephone call where the caller launched straight into their message, but with time spent on social niceties. Even telemarketers make some effort to establish rapport.
The same goes with email. You need to know who you're writing to and address that person by name. Read their About Us page, read their site, Google them, get to know them. It can be a good idea to make contact with them, and build a rapport, some time before making your request for a favor. Try to pay it forward. Give them something first.
It's also a good idea to clearly outline a connection you have with the recipient, if such a fact isn't already established. For example, "I read your article "SEOmoz's Linkscape: Why the Backlash is Overblown" and wanted to ask you a question...." or "I was talking to a friend of yours, Aaron Wall, and he suggested I....."
2. Keep It Professional
Hi Arren,
I waas wanting too no if you would link to my site?
Spelling and grammar matter. No one expects William Shakespeare, but poor spelling and grammar screams "unprofessional". An obvious exception is when you know someone well. The better you know someone, the less the technical aspects of communication tend to matter.
3. Tone
If you don't know someone well, it is best to use a professional tone. Too conversational can come over as "not serious", especially in email correspondence. Remember, it's not like dealing face-to-face, where nuance, inflection, expression and gestures become important signifiers of meaning.
So keep it clean, clear, precise and professional. Be particularly careful with humor. What sounds like a joke to you may get lost in translation, especially if the person you're emailing is from a different country.
If in doubt, play it straight.
4. Message Title
So much depends on the title.
Put yourself in the recipients shoes. Like you, they're probably busy. They're focused on their own stuff. They might have an inbox that is full to bursting, and they're feeling a little guilty about not clearing it out. One more message is just one more problem they must deal with.
Then your message arrives.
In this context, how do you make sure your message desirable?
The trick with email is to make the title personal. Relate it directly to the recipient in some way. Arouse curiosity, praise people, describe a benefit, or pose a direct question. But put a personal spin on it.
A lot of email marketing strategy gets this wrong, particularly in relation to benefits. Titles loaded with benefits, such as ""Do You Hate Your Job? Discover Seven Secrets..." will be viewed as spam. Titles like that may work if you are in the spam business, but they are highly unlikely to work anywhere else. If you do use benefit statements, then try to personalize them.
5. What's In It For The Recipient
This is possibly the most important aspect in getting the recipient to act.
Outline the benefit to the recipient, and do so before they switch off.
Be concise.
Too lengthy, and it's unlikely the recipient will read to the end. A big block of text can be very off-putting. The first contact should be brief. You can go into detail latter. Think of the first email contact as a covering letter.
Try to offer them something of value. A discount code, a free trial, a free product. It should be something of real value.
Ok, so let's try and rewrite the email, using the guidelines. Note: the intent of the original email was a little ambiguous. It sounded as if the person who wrote it wanted a pay-per-post deal. However, SEOBook doesn't do those types of deals, so I've refocused on how it should be pitched, if the writer had bothered to first research SEOBook.com's editorial policy :)
New SEO Software Your Readers Might Like
Hi Aaron,
I'm a loyal reader of SEOBook.com, and I've written a piece of software that you and your readers might be interested in.
The software automates social bookmarking.
You can use the software to help build links and increase traffic to your site. If you'd like to try it out, here is a link to a free copy. I've included a recent case study showing how we took a site from 1,000 visitors to 4,000 visitors in less than a week.
I'd be very interested in hearing any feedback you may have.
Kind regards,
Joe Emailer
acme.com
Not perfect, but it only took one minute to write. I'm sure we can all agree that it is an improvement on the first one.
Political Differences Come From Non-political Sources
Here is one take by Jonathan Haidt on the differences between conservatives and liberals...it may not be entirely correct, but an interesting take nonetheless.
"Truth" & the Reptilian Brain
During the last election I saved mail spam that was sent to my house. One of the pieces claimed that John Kerry was the most liberal member of congress. What does it mean to be "the most liberal member of congress"?
When a person I know well reminded me that "Obama is bad for America, and the most liberal member of congress" I showed them the matching attack ad mail pieces from 2004 and 2008.
Once the political marketers find a story that triggers the reptilian brain they stick with it...but it is hard to get people to see past their own biases when the reptilian brain is activated. They just want to yell at you or punch you, apparently because it is easier than being logical.
A couple years ago the Neuromarketing blog referenced a study about political marketing:
“We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning,” said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. “What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts.”
The test subjects on both sides of the political aisle reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted, Westen and his colleagues say.
Then, with their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix, Westen explained.
The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making.
Market Idealisms Are False
Sometimes politics causes fights that are unneeded, as the reptilian portions of our brains fight each other based on emotions and ideological errors that push for "the truth." But the end game of unrestrained belief in a strategy creates a heavily flawed system that leads toward self-destruction until the pendulum swings in the other direction. And, as the pendulum swings from one direction to the next short term opportunistic businesses look for "legitimate" ways to fraud people. Unregulated markets end up no better than the worst parts of socialism.
BILL MOYERS:One of the British newspapers this morning had a headline, "Welcome to Socialism." It's not going that way, is it?
GEORGE SOROS:Well, you know, it's very interesting. Actually, these market fundamentalists are making the same mistake as Marx did. You see, socialism would have worked very well if the rulers had the interests of the people really at heart. But they were pursuing their self-interests. Now, in the housing market, the people who originated the houses earned the fee.
And the people who then owned the mortgages their interests were not actually looked after by the agents that were selling them the mortgages. So you have a, what is called an agent principle problem in socialism. And you have the same agent principle problem in this free market fundamentalism.
Form Your Vision of the Truth, Then Compile Anecdotal Evidence
Revisionist History
People who do not understand the mortgage market meltdown like to claim liberal were at fault, offering quotes like this one, when the truth was that the fallout was caused by unrestrained greed, excessive leverage, low interest rates, and short term opportunism.
To Win, Politicians Must Lie
The party ideals have little to do with what the individuals intend to do because politicians are first and foremost marketers. To be a successful politician at the highest level in the United States being a liar is a prerequisite.
And that’s what we have in America today, only one side. Everybody’s on his own side, only speaking to himself, like-minded people. Who’s going to change the equation? Certainly not politicians, elected officials. Obama’s got to say he’s for drilling to get elected, because the person paying four bucks a gallon doesn’t know that it’ll take eons for said oil to reach the pump. We’ve got the businessmen raping and pillaging, the politicians lying, at best being expedient, and the only people we can count on to speak the truth have abdicated their power, their duty, their role. That’s what the job of the artist is. To question authority, challenge convention, speak the unpopular, if it’s the truth.
Rather than being focused on getting the facts straight, politicians focus on idea association through naming. If you want to misinform and misdirect the consumer, rather than using the name "estate tax" you could rebrand the concept as "death tax" and then begin trashing it.
Can You Re-frame Issues?
John Kerry is sponsoring a site called Truth Fights Back, aiming to counter some anti-Obama claims. The site is raising money to be marketed on AdWords. But politicians connecting with people online should be able to spread their messages organically and virally...ads would not be as effective as encouraging linking and quoting. Also a big error that is made in "advertising the truth" is that by referencing the frame of thought and words of the liar you are giving into their framing.
If nothing else, Truth Fights Back is an indication that John Kerry still has no idea why he lost the election. If one wanted to fight McCain's lies a better brand would be something like How To Lie...with McCain's picture and personal brand stamped all over it.
Most people online multi-task. They read the headline, maybe skim a bit, and draw a conclusion. If you use headlines for misdirections (or quote others who are doing so) then people still associate the topics. For example, if you wrote an article stating Obama is not a Muslim then many people will still think Obama and Muslim are associated.
Put another way...
"A lie told often enough becomes truth" - Vladimir Lenin
If Obama wanted to re-brand the religious stuff he could do things like Huckabee did in this video...subtly hint another story without directly addressing the lies.
Rather than saying x is not true, it is best to just convey a different image.
The word is the saviour because in each category of global business, it will only be possible for one brand to own one particular word. And some of them have already been booked. Each brand can only own one word. Each word can only be owned by one brand. Take great care before you pick your word. It is going to be the god of your brand.
Within a brand you can of course have sub-brands and sub-products, but if you are going for a big launch you really want to make sure you pick the strategy and make it consistent with the larger brand strategy.
If the global brand strategy is built on ideas like openness and sharing, and then later introducing secrecy, that cuts away at past marketing efforts. There was a good example of this in the SEO industry where many people felt they were lied to and/or mislead. And if the marketing would have been consistent throughout that feeling of betrayal would not exist.
Great Books on Framing & Word Usage
A large part of why Al Gore and John Kerry lost to George W Bush was because they were too stiff and programmed. The Republican party is much better at crafting phrases the evoke emotions.Two great books that talk about political framing and using words to evoke emotions are George Lakoff's Don't Think of An Elephant (left leaning) and Frank Luntz's Words That Work (right leaning). Reading either of those (or better yet, both) will teach you more about marketing than most marketing blogs or books ever could.
Sales people talk a lot about about "closing the deal", the final stage in the sales process needed to get people to sign on the dotted line.
Typically, the stages leading up to the "close" are affordability, no perceived need, no hurry, or no trust. Sales people are trained on how to spot and deal with this issues, and ways in which to overcome a customers objections. Sales training is partly systematic, and part art. After all, everyone is different.
It's the same on the web, however unlike the salesperson, you can't engage a person, one-on-one. But there are things you can do to increase the chances of making the sale.
Checklist
I thought I'd put together a simple checklist for beginners on ways in which you can get a visitor to take a desired action. I've included links to some great resources for those who want to dig deeper and see practical examples.
But what if you don't sell things?
Really, every web site "sells" something, be it a good, a service, or an opinion. This checklist can be used, and adapted for any site. Sometimes, a simple change or two is all that is required to go from good to great.
For example, Amazon, a company that builds conversion techniques into their powerful sales platform, made one simple change that made them millions of dollars in extra revenue. Rather than phrase match search results, they displayed products most people purchased after searching on any given query. By doing this, they increased relevance. The result? A revenue increase of 3%, which amounted to millions of dollars in extra sales each year.
Once someone has said "yes" to an idea, you need to get them to sign on the dotted line as quickly as possible. Leave too much time, and people may reflect, have second thoughts, get distracted, or otherwise lose momentum. Think about bricks 'n mortar stores. It's always immediately obvious where, and how, to make payment. If the store is smart, they don't make you wait to pay.
One exception to this rule is if you have a good chance of upselling. However, overplay this strategy, and you might lose the customer altogether. A certain, large domain name registrar springs to mind.....
Learn the lesson of Amazon. What do you your visitors really want from you?
If you're not what the visitor wants, then all the SEO, testing and tweaks in the world won't help. Monitor what people do on your site after they arrive. Do you know how many visitors click the back button after arriving? If too many visitors click the back button, you've clearly got a relevancy problem.
Obvious, right? What's not so obvious is what to do about it. Which brings me on to point 3....
3. Measure & Iterate
Good analytics are important. What's even more important is acting on the data.
Look at your website as a constant work in progress. It should be always "under construction". Watch what your visitors do, and what they don't do. Make changes, measure the results, then make further changes in response to those results. Repeat.
Converting visitors to action is part science, part art. There is no one way of doing it. What works for you may not work for others.
The web is often nebulous. Unlike a physical store, or face-to-face dealings, it can be hard for the visitor to gauge credibility. Therefore, you need to go the extra mile to reassue people your site is legitimate. You need to include as many credibility markers as possible.
Examples of credibility markers include your contact details, testimonials, money-back guarantees where appropriate, a physical address and phone number, credit-card security measures, and privacy and data collecting policies. Tell people what to do when/if the process goes wrong.
A call to action is a description of the activity you want your visitor to take.
Do you know where your visitors look and click? Using tools such as CrazyEgg, amongst others, you can approximate eye patterns, and see where visitors click most often. This is where your call to action should be located, if practical.
Eye paths are are also important. What visual or textual elements grab people's attention the most? Try changing the size of the headline. Try changing the separation between the headline and other page elements. Place the headline next to a picture.
Because the web is non-linear, it can be difficult for people to determine where in the process they are, and what happens next. Try to make this explicit by using signposts.
For example, you could outline in the first step of a sales process that the process will take five steps. Then, at each step, clearly show what step people are at. Signposts can be both visual and text.
7. Encourage People
Sometimes, the visitor might be unsure if they are following the process correctly. Encourage people at each step, reinforcing that what they are doing is correct. Create thank you pages and send responder emails. Tell the visitor who to contact if they have any concerns.
8. Give Visitors A Reason To Return
Most visitors aren't ready to buy or commit to action. They're tyre-kicking, they're researching, they're browsing. Try and "capture" these people, and hopefully they'll convert to desired action next time they visit.
Encourage them to do something painless, like bookmarking the site. Offer them a something free in return for their email address. Think about what you can give people in order to make them feel indebted to you. Clearly outline the benefits they'll get if they do return. What's in it for them?
9. Create A Sense Of Urgency
As a seller, you might have a sense of urgency, but the buyer may not. One way to help close the deal is to create a sense of urgency in the buyers mind. Methods such as the time sensitive offer work well i.e. if a visitor orders today, the visitor receives a special discount.
The very existence of a blog or newsletter on your site reinforces the idea that there is a real person behind the site. If appropriate, sharing your views and experiences is a powerful way to engage visitors on a personal level. Careful, though. Over-familiarity can also be annoying. It may also be inappropriate in some environments i.e. old-school corporate.
Amazon features authors statements, reviews, and personal feedback. You really get the feeling the website is a place, in which real people reside and communicate with one another.
Due to the rough scale of PageRank, outdated toolbar PageRank scores, hand editing of toolbar PageRank, and a variety of other factors, it is somewhat hard to get confirmation from Google if a link source passes PageRank. The slow way to test is to make 1 link be the only link you point at a site and then let it age for a few months. Then, if a toolbar PageRank score appears it probably passed PageRank.
If you are competing on the competitive parts of the web, building only one link and waiting around for a few months is likely an ineffective SEO strategy. So then what else can be done? How can we speed things up and get the show on the road?
If you control the linking source it is quite easy to tell if that site passes reputation. Simply link to another site with slightly misspelled anchor text, and if the target shows up you know that the link is passing some reputation and authority. For example, someone could link to this site using seoq book, and then if this site started ranking for that then I would assume that the link is passing some amount of reputation and authority. Then you could later go back and fix that spelling error.
If you *do not* control the linking source, then it gets a bit harder to test it. What you could do is add a modifier to the anchor text. For example, if this site did not yet rank in Google for best SEO book you could use that as the anchor text, and see if it shows up in the search results after the linking source is indexed.
You can also use this sort of technique to test 301 redirects & see if they pass link authority. Please note that when using redirects it is best to keep the topic fairly well aligned to minimize the risk that the PageRank might go away.
So my timing on that last post was a bit off, but I still think the general thesis is valid. But now that there has been so much negative feedback I figure it is my job to play devil's advocate and highlight reasons why most SEOs do not need to be too worried about Linkscape.
Cool Features
Unique Linking Domains
One of the coolest features of this tool is knowing the number of unique linking domains pointing links at a specific site, but that feature is for paying members only.
A competing tool by the name of Majestic SEO allows you to see that data as part of their free overview. Click on the image below for an example.
If your competitor has high authority links then you need more than just quantity to compete, but if most of their backlinks are garbage then this is a good stat to have, along with many other stats you can get from tools like SEO for Firefox.
Spam Reporting
Not that I advocate spam reporting (as the official guidelines have departed from reality so much that almost everyone that ranks is spamming and/or spammed in the past to get to their current market position), but for professional SEOs that own dozens of sites and like doing spam reports to Google this might be a good tool for outing competitors, since it makes it easy to find some noscript links, links from off the page, inbound 301 redirects, but the average webmaster probably does not need to worry about that.
A Bit Top Heavy
One of the biggest limitations in Linkscape is that you can only go 500 results deep unless you want to buy a custom report. They allow you to see various lenses of 500 at a time through search features and filters, but a big recommendation I can make on this front is for them to allow you to see all that data, even if it requires exporting data to CSV...they already spent the money to collect the data, so if you're a customer they may as well give it to you...it helps nobody if nobody sees it.
Majestic SEO appears to have a similar sized database as Linkscape, and they allow you to do a full data export for your own domain free of charge. Other domains they charge a scaling price for depending on the number of links to the domain.
More Cool Features?
Nick Gerner promised more features in the next version of Linkscape, but unless they start buying usage data and become more like Compete.com I am not sure if it will be a game changer. On to explaining why...
Personally, I'm not too worried. You want to compete with me and get links in places where I'm listed? We get listed in places where editorial rules. So just knowing where we're at doesn't get you in the door -- you have to be good enough to walk in. And if you are good enough, well, good I guess.
The highest quality links typically tend to be editorial in nature, with many of those being driven by social relationships. No matter how much one decides to analyze link patterns, they can't re-create most of the link relationships if they don't already have the content quality, market exposure, and awareness. And if you copy someone's idea after they already did it you need to greatly improve upon it to get credit for it.
2. Tons of Alternative Data Sources
Common link analysis questions...
How do I Get a Basic Competitive Overview of the Search Results?
Search Google with SEO for Firefox turned on. Make sure you are pulling data in the automatic mode while searching.
I Want to do Anchor Text Analysis. How do I Analyze Links?
Some options include...
SEO Link Analysis - a free Firefox extension that adds anchor text to Google Webmaster Central and Yahoo! Site Explorer.
Backlink Analyzer - a free desktop based tool I had created a few years ago that pulls data from the Yahoo! API. Make sure to watch the video on the download page before using it.
I Want to Find New Links to Competing Sites
If you want to find what someone's best ideas are all you have to do is subscribe to the Google Blogsearch feed for links to their site, like so. That should list many of the people who are talking about this site.
A paid option on this front is Advanced Link Manager. It costs $199 (or $299 if you package it with Advanced Web Ranking) and scrapes data from Yahoo!, keeping track of the date when the link was found.
I Want to Find New Links to My Site
This is the same as competing sites, but you can also use your web analytics and server logs to dig up additional information. You can also look inside Google Webmaster Central to download backlink reports.
I Want to Find The Most Authoritative Links Pointing at a Site
Yahoo! Site Explorer generally orders backlinks roughly in terms of authority, with some of the most authoritative backlinks showing up at the top of their results.
I Want to Get an Estimate of Unique Linking Domains
Majestic SEO offers a free estimate...though, like LinkScape, their crawl is not as comprehensive as Yahoo!'s.
I Want to Find Hub Links?
Hub Finder is a great tool for finding topical hubs.
Google TouchGraph is another great option with a cool graphical interface.
What Sites Drive the Most Traffic to My Competitors?
The best way I have found to get this data is from Compete.com Referral Analytics, though it requires a $500 a month subscription...which is a nice chunk of change, unless you are already doing quite well!
Do I Have Any Broken Links?
Xenu Link Sleuth will crawl your site and help you find broken links, showing you which pages the broken links were on.
Each search engine has its own crawling priorities and own web graph. Google has probably spent hundreds of millions of dollars building and refining their crawling sequence. No two crawls are the same.
4. Yahoo! Search Counts Link Weight Differently Based on Page Segmentation
Google's PageRank was designed based on a random walk theory, where browsers click a random link on the page. But search engines are looking to move beyond the random walk model.
The irrelevant links at the bottom of a page, which will not be as valuable for a user, don’t add to the quality of the user experience, so we don’t account for those in our ranking. All of those links might still be useful for crawl discovery, but they won’t support the ranking.
5. Microsoft May be Looking to Heavily Incorporate Usage Data
Microsoft did research on BrowseRank, which aims to use actual usage data to augment (or perhaps replace) their link graph. Be default, Internet Explorer 8 sends usage data to Microsoft...when you know what 80% of web users are doing you do not need to rely on a random walk.
Think of having access to the majority of the web's usage data like this:
If Google's algorithms are more relevant than Microsoft, then putting weight on usage data allows Microsoft to quickly catch up by weighting whatever Google is weighting
Microsoft could theoretically be better than Google at filtering out paid links, as most paid links in a sidebar or footer do not send much traffic...and thus could easily be weighted less than links in content - though with Google owning so many products they could improve significantly on this front as well, if they decided to use their AdSense data, analytics data, Chrome browser data, Feedburner data, and toolbar data.
Beyond those editors there are many search engineers inside the webspam team offering a variety of techniques to throw off SEOs, including
stripping all PageRank from a site and killing all its rankings
stripping some portion of a site's PageRank and ranking abilities
stripping PageRank from the toolbar but still allowing sites to rank
showing full PageRank in the toolbar, but killing the ability of a link to pass PageRank
Without working inside of Google and/or buying and testing lots of links across a wide array of sites and verticals it would be hard to know if any particular site passes PageRank, and how much it might pass. For instance, a link from Text-Link-Ads.com's website is one of my highest MozRank links, but I doubt Google places much weight on that link since Google does not let Text Link Ads rank for their own brand.
7. Search Engine Editorial Policies are Selective, & Constantly Changing
According to Udi Manber, Google did 450 search algorithm updates last year. Even if you could somehow catch up with all the editorial stuff search engines were doing to manipulate their version of the link based web graph, you would have a hard time of keeping up with it - let alone accounting for the hoards of usage data the search engines have.
The status of a link (and its ability to pass PageRank) may arbitrarily change based on media exposure. In the past many websites were hijacked by 302 affiliate links (this even happened to Google's site, and this is still happening today to corporate sites as big as Snapnames).
Shockingly, when asked point blank if affiliate programs that employed juice-passing links (those not using nofollow) were against guidelines or if they would be discounted, the engineers all agreed with the position taken by Sean Suchter of Yahoo!. He said, in no uncertain terms, that if affiliate links came from valuable, relevant, trust-worthy sources - bloggers endorsing a product, affiliates of high quality, etc. - they would be counted in link algorithms. Aaron from Google and Nathan from Microsoft both agreed that good affiliate links would be counted by their engines and that it was not necessary to mark these with a nofollow or other method of blocking link value.
A few years ago I set up my affiliate program to use 301 redirects to prevent hijacking, and get any link benefits I could. But right after I changed by business model to a membership site my affiliate program was featured/outed in this interview, and it no longer passes PageRank.
Watch the above video and see how at 2 minutes and 15 seconds in my site was put up for review to any Google engineer that happened to watch it.
The same set of links, to the same site, using the same format, under similar circumstances...
counts for most major corporations (and is allegedly an approved and legitimate strategy)
counted for this site for years
stopped counting around the time they were outed by a popular SEO blogger
8. Temporal Algorithms + Domains Expire, & May Lose PageRank
Search engines may place weight not only on the number of links pointing at a page, but also on the rate at which links are accumulated. Even if you know the raw number of links and the site age it still does not tell you how many links were built last month or in the last year.
Not only are links born, but some of them rot. The web graph as a whole is over a decade old. Linkrot was a big issue in 1998, and it is still a big issue today. In 1998 6% of links were broken, and the DotBot crawl shows 7% of links being broken.
To appreciate how bad linkrot is...
if you publish a large site with many outbound links, run Xenu Link Sleuth through your site and see how many broken links you find
Some domains that expire may keep their PageRank, but many expiring domains lose their PageRank. With how hard it is to build links today and 1 in 7 links broke there are SEO tools designed around trying to capture this link equity
The domains that die off may later be re-registered and re-purposed. And keep in mind that the 1 in 7 broken links number is actually much higher than that when you consider how many people buy expired domain names and build them out.
By creating an index of the web in 2008 a person would have no idea if...
the links occurred recently
if the links are old
if the site expired and potentially lost much of its link weight
And Matt Cutts generally hates re-purposing expired domain names. Why? The very first spam site he found was a high PageRank expired domain linked from the W3C. That site was converted to a porn site, and ever since then (before Matt was the head of the webspam group - before Google even had a webspam group) Matt has not liked expired domains.
Matt offers background on that story 30 seconds into this video:
9. Advancing Algorithms That Move Away From PageRank & Anchor Text
domain history (ie: spam infractions/penalties, etc.)
site authority
signals of locality (hosting location, TLD, link sources, etc.)
searcher intent (Google's Amit Singhal stated "the same query can mean entirely different things in different countries. For example, [Côte d'Or] is a geographic region in France - but it is a large chocolate manufacturer in neighboring French-speaking Belgium")
other forms of search personalization (past searches, user subscriptions, frequently visited sites, etc.)
editorial partnerships with news companies & other universal search categories (like Google Shopping Search and the maps local onebox)
usage data (especially with sites they host, like YouTube)
All of those links might still be useful for crawl discovery, but they won’t support the ranking. That’s what we are constantly looking at in algorithms. I can tell you one thing, that over the last few years as we have been building out our search engine and incorporating lots of data, the absolute percentage contribution of links and anchor text to the natural ranking of algorithms or to the importance in our ranking algorithms has gone down somewhat.
Final Thoughts
It is not that Linkscape is a bad tool, it is just aiming to do something incredibly complex, and as long as Yahoo! Site Explorer gives us a decent free sample (and other tools let us layer data on top of Yahoo!) we can get a good idea of the approximate level of competition for free. But with Yahoo! at $12 a share, if Yahoo! gets bought out and Site Explorer goes away then Linkscape (or Majestic SEO, depending on who does a better job of innovation) might be one of the best SEO investments one can make.
We spend a lot of time thinking about how to get visitors to our sites, but how much time do we spend thinking about better ways to persuade people once they've arrived?
Such topics are often talked about in terms of conversion and split/run testing. However, I'm like to talk talking about something a little more subtle.
The gentle art of persuasion.
Is Your Web Site Persuasive?
Every site "sells" something. It might be a product, a service, an opinion, or an increased level of engagement. You might wish to sign up members. You might want someone to bookmark your site, and return at a later date. You might want someone comment on your blog post. How can we best achieve these aims?
In "Yes, 50 Secrets From The Science of Persuasion", there is a great example of how to inconvenience your customers in order to make a sale. Colleen Szot, a leading infomercial writer, changed three words in an infomercial line which resulted in a significant increase in the number of people who purchased her product. What is remarkable is she seemingly made ordering more of a hassle.
What were those three words?
Instead of saying "Operators are waiting, please call now", she said "If operators are busy, please call back".
It seems odd that informing the customers they might have to wait would work, After all, the revised line implies the customer might have to redial a few times. However, the change worked because it used the principle of social proof. i.e. if people are uncertain about looking to perform a social action, then they'll look beyond their own judgment for a guide on what action to take.
"Operators are waiting to take your call" conjures up a mental image of rows of bored operators waiting for the phone to ring. Nobody is buying. However, by suggesting the operators might be busy, we imagine that many people are buying the product. If other people are buying it, it must be good. Of course, this isn't logical, but it is how people act. They perceive there to be safety in numbers.
We can take these ideas and apply them to websites, too. Here are seven. These ideas are all documented in "Yes, 50 Secrets From The Science of Persuasion".
I'm not getting any kickbacks for mentioning it. I just really enjoyed the book :)
1. Establish Social Proof
Look at ways in which you can demonstrate other people have taken this course of action.
Typical examples on the web include personal recommendations and endorsements. More subtle indicators include a running total of the number of comments made, indicators as to the size of the community, and the number of people who have visited the site. RSS counters. Social network plug-ins, such as MyBlogLog . All indicators that other people congregate here.
Think of the web as a place.
This is another reason the brochure web site is dying a death compared to interactive sites. There are few social markers on brochure sites, and there is seldom a sense of place. People want to be where are other people are.
No one wants to eat in an empty restaurant.
2. Don't Give People Too Many Options.
In a study of over 800,000 workers, behavioral scientist Sheena Lyengar studied company sponsored retirement programs. The study found that the more choices that were offered, the less likely employees were to enroll in the program. Giving people too many options forces people to differentiate. This can lead to confusion and disengagement from the task at hand.
When you consider that an exit on the web is only one click away, it becomes vitally important that people do not become disengaged. Decide on a limited number of desired actions you want visitors to take, and focus people's attention on those few options.
If you want to people to take a desired action, frame it alongside two less desirable options.
For example, let's say you're offering TVs for sale. If you offer a cheap TV and an expensive TV, you're forcing people to make a choice based on price. People will tend to pick the lowest price option if forced into a decision based solely on price. However, if you offer a third option the decision becomes less focused on price. It becomes a compromise choice based on both price and features.
Given this option, people tend to pick the middle option. Consider that the middle option was the expensive option in the first either/or offer :)
4. Scare 'Em
A persuasive technique favored by politicians. "Terrorists!". "Your Savings Will Be Wiped Out!". "Your Jobs Will Go Offshore!".
These threat messages work because humans are conditioned to look out for threats. It's a survival mechanism. You can incorporate this persuasive technique in a more subtle way, however.
People experience fear on a number of different levels, i.e. they may simply fear that by not having your product, service or blog in their feed reader, they may be missing out. Describe the threats your product or service can alleviate, and provide a clear, concise course of action the visitor must take.
This technique must be used carefully however, as fear can also lead to inaction. Hence the phrase "paralyzed by fear", which can also occur if you offer too many options. People are afraid they'll pick the wrong one.
5. Give Forward
Reciprocity is a strong human driver. We want to give back to those people who give to us as we feel obligated. Curiously, studies show that we don't even have to like the person to feel indebted.
One of the most ridiculous pitches in web marketing is the link swap email. Someone asks you for a link, and once that link is in place, they'll link back to you. Typically they want a prominent link from your site, in return for a link on a page buried deep in their site, alongside thousands of other links.
Not much of an offer, really.
Some people try and twist the idea by giving a link first, but will retract it if you don't reciprocate. Once again, this isn't really giving anything away.
A much better approach is to simply link out to the target site. Webmasters tend to follow links back to see who is linking to them. Your link becomes a subtle form of advertising. If you then praise that website, and offer great content, you're significantly raising your chances of getting a link back.
Ask not the question "who can help me", but "whom can I help?".
6. The Post It Note
Research shows that a post-it note attached to a document tends to increase response rates. Why? Partly it has to do with the bright post-it note acts as a highlighter, and partly it has to do with the fact someone has added a personal touch
You can see the post-it note technique creeping into web design. People use a post-it note graphics, like this one on CopyBlogger. There's also a design trend to add "hand writing" as a form of personalization. Check out a few examples on Smashing Magazine.
The more personalized a request, the more likely people are to agree to it.
7. Labeling
When Luke persuaded Darth Vader to turn against the dark side, he said "I know there is still good in you! There's good in you. I can sense it". This is known as labeling. BTW: That link has little to do with this point, but it is funny :)
I digress...
The technique is to assign a trait, attitude or belief to another person and then make a request of that person consistent with that label.
For example, if you were selling accounting books, you could suggest that people who buy accounting books are also big consumers of your finance titles. Then offer them a finance title. This also works in terms of social proof.
Noise is the sound of the world refusing abstraction, insisting on differences that are never the same as every other difference. If we are indeed exiting the age of information, perhaps we are entering — have entered — the age of noise.
Blogs that just repeat information already published elsewhere are providing value that can be substituted. To put it another way, these sites are completely dispensable. They lose out when a choice has to be made due to time/attention scarcity. These sites are usually the ones that just regurgitate content released on mainstream media or other larger blogs. Their identity is virtually unrecognizable. A great logo and design won’t save them.
If you want to avoid your work becoming "the commons" in The Tragedy of the Commons what is the solution for sustained distribution and profits?
Either you need a unique lens that adds enough value that makes people want to talk about you (Jon Stewart style)
or unique information sources (both TechCrunch and The Wall Street Journal benefits from news leaks)
or specialization and in depth knowledge, as recommended by Vannevar Bush in his As We May Think from 1945:
There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends. The investigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers—conclusions which he cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember, as they appear. Yet specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial.
Professionally our methods of transmitting and reviewing the results of research are generations old and by now are totally inadequate for their purpose.
Information in one market is noise in the next. The quality level needed to get to the top is determined by the competition. Summing up a competitive online marketing strategy in a saturated field can be done with 2 bits:
Are people talking about you?
Are they talking about you more than the competition?
In the long run search engines are just counting the bits.
One thing that has always fascinated me about Rand Fishkin is how likeable he is. Being known and likeable is an effective business strategy for 4 big reasons
People prefer to spend money with people they like and trust. We purchase based on emotion and then use logic to justify our emotions. (This gives a likeable person a higher visitor value, and thus ROI.)
People give you the benefit of the doubt. (This allows one to do aggressive things that would be considered wrong or spammy if a lesser competitor did them.)
Even if you to betray someone, they usually let it slide rather than roasting you. (This allows you to make content from topics that you should not have covered, like private conversations).
If people like you they will be more likely to do favors for you. (On a competitive network using one channel to establish relationships that allow you to promote sites that are more commercial in less well connected industries can help build a sustained competitive link advantage).
To put the above thesis in context lets compare some of the market reactions to various ideas and offerings.
Case Study in Likeability
Majestic SEO: People Are Suspicious of the Unknown
Can we keep you off our websites so our competitors can't access our information through your service? Or does your bot not obey the robots protocol?
Does Ann Smarty think through the implications of the tools she is recommending? Do you really want to support dropping your pants and bending over for this service? Come on folks, think this through all the way to the bitter end. Do some critical thinking.
SEOmoz: Benefit of the Doubt
Rand's team launched Linkscape (a similar but perhaps more advanced version of Majestic SEO with a slicker front end interface). In spite of having an in house lawyer, they did not find the LBI Netrank LinkScape trademark prior to naming their tool LinkScape.
In the post announcing the launch, Rand mentioned that their tool required crawling the web, and some people wanted to know how to block it using robots.txt and meta robots tags. Pierre from eKtreme highlighted that he did not think SEOmoz was crawling the web, but relying on a series of web based APIs from companies that were. Rand later revealed potential LinkScape data sources. Michael VanDeMar mentioned that he thought Rand's opening post about LinkScape lied about crawling the web:
I have to admit, Rand, it’s pretty bold to basically admit this late in the game that you guys lied through your teeth and grossly misrepresented the facts, just so you could appear to have accomplished a much bigger task than you actually did, all in the name of getting more money from webmasters. That’s a much bigger admission than saying you cloaked your bot, if you ask me.
Michael's post made Sphinn with 40+ Sphinns, and only had 1 negative comment on it a day after making the homepage.
When I consider everything I've read I can only conclude that you did mislead the SEO community and only when it was apparent that the truth would be found out, did you begin to "come clean". While your approach may not have any bearing on the value of the tool, it does demonstrate a conscious effort to misrepresent your product.
And if Michael had not had an establisheddistaste for SEOmoz built up from the past (ie: if he liked Rand half as much as most of us do) it is likely he would not have went through the effort to write the LinkScape post he did, and there would have been no lasting negative press on the topic.
The Negative Brand Approach
Can you build a big audience without being likeable, but by being sarcastic and ripping things apart? Absolutely, but the problems with that are
Most people who are attracted by negativity are not buyers (and they work to drive away the types of people who would be buyers). In the SEO field you could call this the "Threadwatch effect"
The people who do buy based on negativity are usually of a cult-like state of being against some other organization. Once the hated brand/personality/organization (or even the news around the brand/personality/organization) dies down, then so does the support from the paying customers built on this negative energy, whereas the positive businesses keep growing logarithmically year after year without needing to reset the business and capture a new fad.
You can have a common enemy that you and your readers are fighting, but it is important that your overall approach is still positive if you want to build something that is profitable with sustained growing profits.
David Naylor saw Google's bad advice on "no need to rewrite your URLs" in action, when a competing site reverted their URLs to uglier versions and promptly saw their rankings tank.
“”"”The court recognizes that as to any of the 141 defendants domain names that identify websites as informational only, the seizure order must be rescinded.”"
However the court found that “Internet gambling operators and their domain names are present in Kentucky.” So if you have a parking page the Commonwealth has no jurisdiction but if your operating a site, then your doing business in the state and your subject to its jurisdiction.
