It may be hard to believe, but just 4 years ago there was no official integration of the Beijing Olympics with social media platforms.  At that time Facebook and Twitter had 100m and 6m users respectively.  Today’s user figures are 845 million and 140 million respectively and we have sanctioned integration with the official Olympics hub.

With those factors what more perfect environment do we have for social community engagement?

But, but, but…as most of us are aware of by now, there is a suite of fiendish (not a technical legal term but you know what I mean) legislation surrounding use of anything to do with the London Olympics.  Legislation in the host country is enacted specifically for each Olympic Games, and the laws created for London are the most stringent that have ever been created and involve some concepts new to the Olympics.

Now, I’m not a novice in this area – I have a degree, a diploma in Intellectual Property and have been a specialist in this area of law for nearly 18 years – and yet to interpret the network of legislation and guidance for the London Olympic Games as it applies to social media usage is a … challenge.  LOCOG (the organisation with responsibility and authority for the London Games) has issued some helpful guidance for brands and advertisers generally.  But the application to social media still presents particular questions.

We are aware that there a lot of moderators, community managers and agencies both in London and globally who need to know what is and is not permitted around the Olympics.   So here is Part I of our three part as-user-friendly-as-possible guide to social media usage around the Big Event.

This first blog gives an overview of the legislation, particularly as it applies to brands who have not purchased sponsorship rights to the London Olympics.

The most important question is: where is the proposed content coming from?

(i) From people directly involved with the Olympics in some way; this could be:

• an “accredited person” (athlete, coach, trainer, official, accredited journalist)?
• a volunteer (“Games Maker”)?
• a ticket holder in an Olympic venue?

If so, special rules apply, that last only for the Olympic Period (18 July to 15 August 2012).  LOCOG has published specific social media guidelines for this type of content.  This is a whole blog in itself which we’ll post next week.

(ii) From Joe Public – are you a private individual, tweeting or blogging just for fun?

So long as you are not in category (i) above and don’t get any commercial benefit from your blogs/tweets (no advertising, no affiliate schemes, no paid-for promotions, no book deals etc.), then you are pretty much free to comment and talk about the Olympics.  Although do remember that the usual rules about copyright in photos, audio and video apply and to take care with trade marks.

(iii) From brands

So that ‘just’ leaves the industry of social media – businesses, agencies, individuals who are creating and engaging in dialogue with their communities.  The beauty of social media is the direct engagement between brands and their customers, the ability to blur distinctions between ‘them’ and ‘us’, to genuinely participate in community together.  It is this blurring and dialogue created by social media that makes application of the legal rules surrounding the London Olympics so difficult.
This blog delves into the legal framework for this type of content.

The legislation for brands

In legal terms the key legislation here in the UK is the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006 (“the Act”).  Countries around the world have enacted similar legislation.  For our purposes, the Act and prior legislation created two key rights:
(1) the ‘Olympic Association Right’ (OAR)  and ‘Paralympic Association Right’ (PAR); and
(2) the ‘London Olympic Association Right’ (LOAR).

(1) OAR/PAR is about rights to use the well known symbols and representations associated with all Olympics.  These are rights we are familiar with from previous Olympic Games.  See the LOCOG brand guidance for a full list.

(2) LOAR is a new right created specifically for the London Olympics.  The LOAR is a right to be “associated with” the London Olympics.  This sounds broad, vague and far-reaching because it is.  Essentially if whatever use of whatever content you are making might create an association for customers/users/readers with the London Olympics, this will be a breach of the LOAR.  It is the most far-reaching intellectual property right known and highly subjective.  Concrete examples are needed to understand how it works – see Part II for more detail on this.

The key legal points to know about for OAR and LOAR are:

• infringement requires use, in the course of trade, in relation to goods or services and without the owners’ (i.e. the Olympics authorities’) consent;
• if you are accused of use of the OAR/PAR (i.e. classic Olympics representations), the usual burden of proof is reversed i.e. you are guilty unless you can prove you are innocent  *gulp*;
• for LOAR infringement, the usual burden of proof applies.  i.e. innocent unless proven guilty.
• defences and exemptions apply to both.  I’ve outlined these below.

Other prohibitions to be aware of include:

• no use of Olympics tickets as part of competitions;
• no holding of conferences or seminars on the topic of the Olympics.

The exemptions and defences to infringement
It is safe to use the Olympic symbols and words where there is a defence or exemption.  The most relevant specific defences/exemptions to the OAR/LOAR are where the content in question is:

• a statement which “accords with honest practices” as this will not create an association.  LOCOG clarified that key factors here are: is the statement true and accurate? Is there any suggestion or implication of a connection with the Olympics? Is there any unfairness to the interests of the Olympic authorities (and presumably their official sponsors)? Is the context of use relevant?

• part of publishing or broadcasting a report or information about the Olympics.  This must be a genuine journalistic report.  No sponsoring of news conferences is permitted (e.g. “news report brought to you by Brand X”).  LOCOG has specified that this does not apply to “marketing collateral” such as corporate newsletters.  A potential grey area is where a brand might report on events via its social media channels – we look at this in more detail in Part II of this blog.

OAR: If you use Olympic symbols or words, warning signs should be flashing

Any commercial social media posting that includes the classic Olympic symbols or the words Olympics, Paralympics or derivations of these should be a massive warning symbol to check.  Without the consent of the Olympics authorities, use of these in any commercial social feed that is not covered by any of the Defences (see above), will be an infringement.

In essence, a good rule of thumb to apply is: always avoid the symbols and words connected with Olympics/Paralympics unless it is really nothing to do with the Olympics or it is a genuine facts-only report which is not unfair or suggesting a connection i.e. like this blog.

LOAR: we can’t be ‘associated with’ the London Olympics – how broad is this?

The Act defines “associated with” as suggesting any kind of contractual or commercial relationship, any kind of corporate connection or provision of financial or other support (i.e. free services or sponsorship).

In our view, the broad scope of this right is, in a sense, an acknowledgement of the creativity of agencies and brands past and present.  Incidents from Olympic Games past such as Linford Christie wearing contact lenses showing a white puma (Puma were not a sponsor) at the Atlanta Games mean that the Olympic powers-that-be decided to turn the legislative approach for London 2012 on its head; instead of giving rules the London 2012 LOAR laws focus on the overall impact of any activity.

Trade mark law (generally and for previous Olympic Games) usually has specific and fairly clear rules re what you can and cannot do.  Historically, at the Olympics non-sponsor brands have always found very creative ways to get around and become associated with the Olympics without paying the huge sponsorship fees (otherwise known as “ambush marketing”).  The new LOAR rules aim to put a stop to this.  For London 2012, we have a subjective, results-based approach with some general guidance.  This means there is no real way to get around it and win.  If a brand succeeds in being associated with the Olympics without being a sponsor, it is in breach of the LOAR.

LOCOG’s guidance suggests that any “concerted marketing campaigns or promotional events framed around the Games” are likely create an association and thus infringe the LOAR.

So, we have a subjective, results-based test: does the brand’s content or is proposed campaign likely to or intended to create an association with the Olympics in the mind of the user?  If so, it’s likely to infringe the LOAR. 

• List A : “games”, “two thousand and twelve”, “2012″ and “twenty twelve”;
• List B: “gold”, “silver”, “bronze”, “London”, “medals”, “sponsor” and “summer”. 

All clear then?  OK maybe not.  In fact, what we are finding with our community management and moderation teams is that the subjectivity of the LOAR legal test means it is tough to create guidelines (although there have been some helpful publications on this, particularly this report from The Guardian and yesterday’s CAP quiz to LOCOG).

What we have found very useful is to look at specific examples of what the LOAR means in practice for social media professionals. These will be published in Part II next week..
——

This post was written by Rachel Boothroyd, Legal Counsel, eModeration.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/socialmediatoday_allposts/~3/0PmyPy5Y5MQ/social-media-guide-olympics-part-i-legal-overview

Without revealing too much about the new Facebook App Center, the announcement has unsurprisingly caused quite a stir in the already saturated application market: “For the over 900 million people that use Facebook, the App Center will become the new, central place to find great apps like Draw Something, Pinterest, Spotify, Battle Pirates and Viddy.”

More importantly from a financial perspective, “Developers will have the ability to charge a fee for apps sold in the store in the near future”, Facebook said. All of this goes hand in hand with Facebook admitting that growth in mobile use could hurt future advertising revenue. Prevention is better than cure, and Facebook are experts when it comes to identifying potential stumbling blocks and solving them before they rear their ugly heads. The App Center is the latest demonstration of this.

When will the App Center be rolled out?

No official release date has been announced, but with the submission deadline for app pages being set as next Friday we can safely assume it’s in the not too distant future. Aaron Brady’s only indication was that people would be able to access the App Center “in the coming weeks”. We suspect it will be fully operational by the end of June, without a shadow of a doubt.

Who should create an app page?

All developers should create an app detail page. This page is required for being listed in the App Center, and it will also become the new destination when non-users search for your app on Facebook. App detail pages are created in the App Center section of the Facebook Developer App, and if you want more information it can be found in this useful FAQ guide.

So, should I create an app page already?

If you haven’t already started planning it, you should start. Right now. Aaron Brady made it very clear that submissions will be assessed on a first-come, first-served basis; “App detail pages that are eligible for the App Center will be reviewed prior to being listed and priority will be given to those apps that submit before May 18^th.”

How do I make sure my apps are eligible?

There are various restrictions on image size, promotional banners etc. Naturally, app pages will be reviewed and tested by Facebook prior to approval. Guidelines on suitable submissions can be found here, and we’ve included four examples below to highlight acceptable and unacceptable graphics for your Facebook app page.

Facebook are in the fortunate position to be particularly ruthless when it comes to hitting the approve button, so try your best to make sure you get it right the first time around.

Which platforms will the App Center be available on?

Facebook have very publically announced that their App Center is not a direct competitor for the likes of Apple App Store, Blackberry App world and all the other various application stores. That said, it quite plainly is going to reduce the amount of traffic these services. The App Center is designed to grow mobile apps that use Facebook – whether they’re on iOS, Android or the mobile web. From the mobile App Center, users can browse apps that are compatible with their device, and if a mobile app requires installation, they will be sent to download the app from the App Store or Google Play.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/socialmediatoday_allposts/~3/BNT58tUgV9U/facebook-app-store-what-do-i-need-know

In this section I want to look at the overall approach an SEO takes in putting together an audit, as well as some presentation items like formatting and report layout.

Determining Your Approach to an SEO Audit

There are some strong arguments to be made that you might want to be somewhat “guarded” or “careful” with the information you “give away” in an SEO audit, but as I pointed out in the last post in this series, my personal approach to executing an SEO audit is to:

be completely sales-agnostic: I want to charge appropriately for the value I’m delivering, so that the audit itself is a valuable project that I’m not relying on as a lead-gen tool or loss leader. This allows you to make completely unbiased recommendations about what to outsource, what to keep in house, etc. By charging fairly for your services you mitigate the risk of “giving away” value (you’re charging for it, after all) and you also position yourself as an expert who does good work, which is a better sales pitch than under-delivering and offering to bridge the value gap for a price after the fact.

This doesn’t mean that you do an unreasonable amount of work and put your business at risk: it just means that you charge a fair price for your time and expertise, and then generate the best, most complete document possible. My suggestions here and in the next section will assume that this is the general approach to the auditing process that you’re taking.

Know Your Audience, Educate if Necessary

First, as a general rule with SEO audits I find it best to assume your reader has a limited knowledge of SEO unless you know otherwise. As I mentioned in section two of the series, if you know for a fact that the only one poring over your audit will be a savvy SEO, you can adjust your audit accordingly and not over-explain or come off as patronizing, but if you’re not entirely sure, the document is likely to be read by folks with a range of SEO expertise, etc. I think it’s valuable to educate throughout your audit – don’t just make a recommendation, explain why you made the recommendation and how it will help their business.

One positive here is that as you start to do multiple SEO audits, you’ll have some explanations you can re-use. I like to start various sections of the report with an explanation of what I’m trying to accomplish with my recommendations. This doesn’t mean I need to explain the history of keyword research or copy/paste a Wikipedia-style synopsis in the keyword research section, but it does mean I want to help he client understand why I’m making the recommendations I’m making. Here’s an example of a summary of the logic behind recommended keyword strategy:

In evaluating the potential of a keyword or set of keywords we’re considering:

• Relevance/Conversion – Is the term relevant to your business, and would a searcher be likely to convert after typing in this term and actually help to generate more revenue and profit for your business?
• Volume – Does a large volume of people search for this term?
• Competition – How competitive is this term and how difficult will it be to rank for it?

We want to identify the terms that represent the best balance of these three factors, and in some cases exploit inefficiencies in one or multiple areas (ie if competition is low in areas with low volume but high likelihood to convert that may represent an opportunity even though search volume isn’t high).

The intent here is to help the client understand the thinking behind the recommendations so they can intelligently implement them.

Don’t Just Explain: Use Examples

If you’re recommending a site-wide, systemic change it’s helpful to go beyond simple statements of what you’re suggesting and use hard and fast examples. For instance let’s say you want to recommend to the client, who sells widgets, that they not just use their company name as the title tag on every page of their site, and rather create  title tags that dynamically insert the product name into the title tag. Rather than just writing this out, give them a real-life example:

Recommended Title Tag: Red Widgets – Buy Red Widgets at Great Prices | Widget Co. Widgets

And once again explain the logic behind the new title tag if appropriate, and call out the modifiers you’re suggesting and why so they understand the importance of formatting the title tag exactly as you suggest.

Formatting Your Audit: Think Web Copy

Many of the same best practices around writing great Web copy apply to creating a readable and actionable SEO audit, such as:

• Breaking your report into logical sections with clear headings
• Using anchors and a table of contents when the content is too long
• Leveraging strategic internal linking within your document to other parts of your document (in the case of the audit document you’ll use anchors – hat tip to Linsay Wassell’s 4 ways to improve your SEO audit post on SEO Moz – that post has a few other great tips, and she also wrote a great post on getting started with an SEO site audit).
• Using lots of visuals and screenshots where appropriate

Like with good Web copy, you want to make your report “scannable” even while offering a lot of complicated information.

Report Layout: What to Include Where to Include It

Finally, you’ll want to figure out how to layout your report. I find the following format helpful:

• Summary – A brief overview of what the report entails, what deliverables may be attached, and what the objectives of the report are.
• Table of Contents – A linked run down of each section within the report.
• Action Items Low Hanging Fruit – Here I include, in front of any of the in-depth recommendations and analysis, a quick-hit list of action items. Think first about “if the client could only make five relatively quick and dirty tweaks, what should I recommend?” This is informed by your knowledge of their internal resources. After that, include a detailed list of additional recommended actions. I like to break this down by priority and call out for each task whether it’s a one-time task or an ongoing project.
• Body Content – This is “the meat” of the report – the actual audit itself, complete with recommendations about various things related to the site’s SEO.
• Conclusion – This should offer a quick, high level summary of findings – good and bad – and opportunities, should point the reader back to the action item, and offer contact information.

So now we’ve covered a number of aspects around how you format and present the audit as well as the early posts in the series about how to properly prepare for your audit. All that’s left is the last (and most important) piece of the puzzle: what to put in and how to conduct the actual SEO audit itself. That’ll be the next and last installment of this four part series.

Read part 1 and 2:

An SEO’s Guide to SEO Audits Part 1: The Pre-Audit Preparation Process What to Charge What to Do

An SEO’s Guide to SEO Audits Part 2: The Pre-Audit Preparation

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SearchEngineJournal/~3/C8-P478sriA/

All I did was to follow all the instructions given to me, build links in volume and research/learn all the basics of SEO from scratch. I got the hang of it after a couple of months, and I thought that I was doing great. Then I got fired.

I guess it was a tragic story, but not quite true, since I was immediately hired by Affilorama and Traffic Travis right after getting ditched by my former employer. Fortunately, this led me to getting acquainted with the works of Ross Hudgens, Garret French and Wil Reynolds in mid-2010 – the people in this industry who have really influenced my thinking on SEO, particularly in scaling almost all encompassed processes and methodologies when optimizing a website, which certainly include building and promoting “linkable assets”.

So let’s head over to the main topic of this post (sorry for the long introduction), and start defining what a linkable asset is. Basically, a linkable asset is any part of a website or organization that its target audience will genuinely perceive as worth citing/referencing to. It could be people, content, events or anything that can be really interesting to a specifically targeted market.

This aspect of a website is so important to any form of online marketing campaign, especially these days, seeing as these materials are able to benefit a site/brand in so many ways, such as:

• Ability to continuously attract links to the domain
• Strengthen a site’s online brand presence (substantiates the brand’s authoritativeness)
• Generate more interested/fascinated brand followers and leads to the business
• Becoming more visible through search and social channels (and yield more traffic to the site)

To give you a clearer picture of how linkable assets work, I’ll give several samples below as well as the link building methods that you can implement to promote each type of content.

Awards

Samples:

• Adage Power 150
• Mashable Awards

How to build links to online Award-giving Bodies:

• Provide embeddable widgets – Offer widgets that the award’s nominees, finalists and winners can use and embed to their sites/blogs, which will link back to your site.
• Get press mentions – find columnists and authority bloggers who will most likely be interested to cover your online event (particularly those who write about your business’ industry). Engage and pitch a newsworthy angle about your upcoming event. For a more in-depth guide on pitching news to authority news sites, you can check out Chris Winfield’s recent post on getting press coverage.
• Reach out to content curators – identify the top curators in your industry, probably bloggers who have published lists of top blogs and resources in your field. Contact these people and ask if they’ll be interested to make a write up about your event, or offer to do a guest post for them.
• Leverage social sharing to nominees, members and/or winners – encourage participants to share their entry, as the more your content gets across their network and audience, the greater chances of getting second wave coverage/links from small and medium-sized blogs.

News Voting Feature

Samples:

• Inbound.org
• Hacker News

A news voting feature is best built to already existing communities that have a strong following base, like industry-specific forums and blogs, since they already have users who can regularly submit articles and contribute to discussions. It’s also a great way to engage an already existing community, seeing that you can incentivize the approach by allowing your community to promote their own content within the site.

How to build links to a news voting section of a site:

• Get press coverage – as always, getting links from news sites that have strong readership can help drive massive traffic to your site, especially in its launching stage, and can eventually bring more natural link acquisition opportunities from bloggers in your industry who might write about your site’s news voting section. Track and make a list of the people who’ll share the news articles about your launch, and segment those who have blogs, as you can also reach out to these people and ask if they’ll be interested to link to your news voting page.
• Embeddable widgets for top members – you can also choose to offer widgets to your active members to generate more links to your site.
• Acquire links from industry resources pages – Find resources pages in your industry and offer your news voting section to be included on their list of resources (you can start with queries like “keyword news” + inurl:resources). Given that this area of the site will be mostly user-generated, your link requests will have higher chances of getting approved.
• Get blogroll links – start with blogs that have already linked to your site in the past and with individuals that you have already connected with, and pitch the idea of including your news voting site to their blogroll links. Psychologically, the request will have more impact, since the page will surely be offering fresh pages/articles about your industry around the web (which means the page is able to offer real value to possible click-through visitors).

Free Learning Tools and Extensive Lessons

Samples:

• Codeacademy
• Affilorama’s Free Affiliate Marketing Lessons
• Team Treehouse’s Web Design and Web Development Lessons

How to build links to free lessons:

• Contextual links from externally distributed content – cite your extensive free lessons whenever you contribute to other blogs through guest blogging. Place the links within your guest posts’ content and always vary your links’ anchor texts. You can also link to them through the other formats of you content you distribute, such as free whitepapers, slide presentations and newsletters.
• Push content via social media – increase awareness by launching a social media campaign for your free lessons. With more people discovering the content, the more it can translate to possible editorial link opportunities and acquisitions. You can start with a Stumbleupon marketing campaign through paid discovery or by just promoting the shared links through su.pr to increase unique pageviews to your free lessons.
• Linker Outreach – make a list of known linkers and social sharers in your industry and let them know about your free course. You can easily identify these people by tracking your competitors’ social and link data, particularly from your competitors’ strong content. To learn more about this method, you can check out this guide on linker outreach that I wrote several months ago.
• Request links from .edu sites – this type of material will almost always have higher response rates when pitched to .edu sites, knowing that the offered content is providing high-value information. Search for .edu sites (ex: “keyword resources” site:.edu) who might be interested to add your lessons on their resources pages.
• Build links through community discussions – search for questions that relates to the information supplied by your lessons on related forums and QA sites. Link to your free lessons’ page when contributing to these highly-relevant discussions and make the link serve as a reference.
• Get featured on other bloggers’ newsletters – if you’ve done your homework and have managed to build relationships/connections with bloggers in your field that have a substantial amount of email subscribers, then pitching to have your lessons featured on their newsletters is a very feasible idea. Absorb their audience to take a look of your site and try to contain them once they land on your free lessons page.

Video Series

Samples:

• Everything is a Remix
• Ted Talks List

How to build links to a page with series of videos:

• Embed and incorporate videos when submitting guest blogs – this will make your guest posts look more comprehensive and it also gives you the right to link back to the category or main page of where you host your videos.
• Promote via Stumbleupon – this social platform is a home to millions of cerebral and social media-savvy users, they basically know how social media works, so you’ll definitely want to have your page filled with high-quality videos in front of their users. You can invest $20 – $100 on paid discovery just to get a jumpstart with your social media campaign and probably expect to have your pageviews multiplied if you’ve positioned your social buttons well to act as obvious CTAs. The more the content gets exposure from these types of viewers, the more opportunities your page get for link acquisition.
• Track the links and social shares from your competitors’ videos – you can use tools like Topsy and Ahrefs to identify the sites and Twitter profiles who have shared their content. List these people/blogs and try to be in touch with them, and then ask if they’ll be interested to see your videos and perhaps share and/or link to it as well.

Job Boards

Samples:

• ProBloggers’ Jobs for Bloggers
• YouTheDesigner’s Graphic Design Jobs

How to build links to Job Boards:

• Blogroll links – most independent blogs are publishing tutorials to help their readers learn, earn and probably get a job, and with that being said, requesting for them to link to your site’s job board makes it absolutely reasonable and relevant. Start with blogs who have already linked to your site in the past, as these blogs are already aware of your brand and somehow trusts you as a resource in your field of expertise. You can eventually expand to your other link/blog prospects along the process of building relationships with them.
• Acquire links from those who are posting job offers in your site – some of these businesses could be a good link/content partner for your site, so it’s best to build relationships with them as well.
• Encourage visitors to socially share their entry or the job board page – building social signals is quite important these days, as it will not just help in making the page more visible through search and social, but it also denotes high-activity and usage of the page.
• Request links from .edu sites – there are tons of .edu sites that list job vacancies/openings from different companies, primarily to make it easier for their students to find jobs right after they graduate. Use Google Search to find job resources pages from .edu sites and make contact to ask if it’s possible for your site’s job board to be included on their resources page. Specificity is the key to get high approval rates from your link requests. Ensure that the jobs being offered in your page will bring value to the page you’re trying to get a link from.

Bonus tip: You can use this scraping method and CitationLabs’ contact finder to easily extract each of your target .edu site’s contact details, because they really do reward links to job listings.

Data Visualization

Samples:

• The Hidden Cost of War – Kinetic Typography
• The State of Internet 2011 – Interactive Infographic
• World Bank’s Data on Philippines – Linked Data

How to build links to these types of rich-media content:

• Create news through your data and pitch the story to news sites and authority blogs – journalists and top/pro bloggers love data and numbers, so if you can do an extensive research about your industry, which can provide stats that could be helpful to build a newsworthy story, then you can improve your chances of getting solid links from authority domains just by presenting your data to columnists/bloggers who specifically write about your industry.
• Offer embed codes – make it easier for others to copy and embed your rich-media content to their own blogs (that links back to the original source of the content – your site).
• Feature it on your guest blogs to increase approval rate – you can also build more content that supports the data/information provided by your infographic/video and submit those as guest blogs, along with your infographic/video embedded within your guest entry. This will then amplify the reach of your data, as more brand signals will be sent out to people (your blog prospects’ audiences) who will be able to see your contributed content.
• Promote heavily through social media – reach out to known influencers in your industry and ask for feedback or if they can share your content on social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc…). It’s important to evaluate your content, if it’s really compelling and share-worthy, before sending your pitch.

Coin a term

Samples:

• Inbound Marketing – Hubspot
• Linkerati – Rand Fishkin

Creating your own brand’s industry term or technical terminology is a form of thought-leadership, and it’s definitely a linkable asset, wherein people will give credit to your brand whenever they use the term you have created. That’s why it’s imperative to build a definition page for the term(s) that you’re planning to invent, which should clearly define the meaning, usage as well as the history of the word, to own it in the SERPs.

How to build links to your technical terminology’s definition page:

• Use it frequently when distributing content externally – use the term and make it link back to your term’s definition page (hosted within your domain) when you’re submitting guest posts to other blogs, participating on community discussions and distributing free downloadable ebooks or slide presentations.
• Create a Wikipedia page for your industry term – use your definition page as well as other high-authority pages/articles that have used the term as references.
• Set up Google Alerts for your term – track blogs/sites that might use your term through Google Alerts, and try to ask for link attribution whenever you see it getting mentioned by other sites (if it’s not linking back to your definition page).

Extremely Useful Apps and Browser-based Tools

Samples:

• Open Site Explorer
• Hipmunk

How to build links to Web-based tools:

• Every major tool version update is newsworthy – if your site is offering free web-based tools, you should take advantage of its major updates, as you can publicize it through content distribution (press release and blog posts). Google is doing it, why shouldn’t you?
• Get links from bloggers (experiential reviews) – reach out to highly relevant blogs, and see if they’ll be interested to try out your tools. Provide them with all the resources that they might need to help them understand how your tool works, as this can somehow make them more interested to write about your tool. You can also check this list of alternative blogger outreach techniques to improve the chances of acquiring links from them.
• Obtain links from list pages (top and best resources/tools in your niche) – find pages that list the best tools and resources in your field. Engage the publisher of the content and invite them to try out your tool. Send a link request if they’re satisfied. You can also use the broken link building method to speed up the process of acquiring links from these list/resources pages.
• Guest blogging – write advanced tutorials on using your tool and/or on how it can improve its target users’ productivity, and then submit it to high-traffic and highly relevant blogs. Use strong calls-to-action on these guest entries, to have better chances of absorbing and converting their readers.

Custom Categories

Samples:

• 217 Link Building Articles, Posts, Interviews and Columns from Eric Ward
• SEO Strategies Resources by Kaiserthesage

Custom categories or high-quality resources pages can easily attract links, seeing that it contains links to highly resourceful pages, in which the traffic it’s able to acquire will more often than not save/share/bookmark the page, particularly if they have found the links that the page host very useful.

This type of page also has greater chances of achieving higher search rankings for industry head terms, since the absolute relevance of the content (based from both internal and external links it hosts as well as the anchor texts used pertain to thematically related subtopics).

How to build links to custom categories:

• Guest blogs – build contextual links to your custom categories through your guest blogging campaign.
• Interviews – link to it whenever you get a chance to be interviewed by other bloggers, given that it’s a good page to refer their readers to, wherein they can see almost all of your published works in one place.
• Author, Social and Forum Profiles – building links through your external profile pages (from other web communities) is also a great way to make this page more visible to your target audience. This will also allow search engines to regularly crawl the links in your custom category/resources page (as well as the new links that will be continuously added to the page).
• Constantly drive new traffic to gain more natural links – based on my experience, once the page is constantly generating new visitors (when it’s ranking highly for its targeted head terms), the more it can naturally attract and acquire links.

Finding possible linkable assets

There are also other types of web content that could possibly fit as a linkable asset that you can work on for your link development campaign. It could be a well-researched blog post, crowdsourced content, a forum thread, or even sales/product pages.

You can simply find and identify these strong pages resting within your site through assessing and sorting your site’s pages by:

• Most linked pages or pages that are naturally attracting links (via Google Webmaster Tools)

• Most visited pages with high user-activity, particularly from search engines (via Google Analytics)

Once you have distinguished pages that can possibly help you build more links with minimal effort (by just constantly bringing targeted traffic to the page that have high probability of sharing or linking to it), start enhancing these pages to strengthen its ability to automate a fraction of your link building process. Enhancements could be on areas/elements of the page such as:

• Design
• Usability
• Length Content
• Call to action
• Sociability
• Internal links to the site’s other important pages
• More inbound links to the page

It’s also best to understand the linking behavior from your newly discovered assets (or even the linkable assets of your competitors). Know why people are naturally linking to it, so you can have more ideas of how you can replicate the approach for your content as well as to your site’s other possible linkable assets.

Discerning the natural linking activities to your pages will also enable you to create powerful outreach templates that you can use to build more solid links to these pages, as you’ll be able to weigh the value that resonated to your previous linkers, and could then be elaborated as the value proposition of your outreach copy.

Prolong the purpose of the content

Optimize for search

Optimize the page to target industry-specific keywords as it will have better chances of competing for tough keywords, given that you’ll be working on to drive powerful links to the page, as well as with the page having the capability to attract links (where natural linkers will mostly use the content’s title as anchor text when linking to it).

Always Test and Update calls-to-action

This is vital, especially if your site’s strong and link-worthy pages are constantly driving new traffic to the site, as you can always change its call to action whenever you have new offers and/or products, which will allow you to effectively convert new visitors.

Brand strengthening

Let the continuously driven traffic to the page know who created the content. Highlight brand and trust signals on some parts of the content to improve brand retention.

Social CTA to force multiply social sharing

Make the content’s social buttons very visible, to continuously gain social shares, along the process of getting new visitors to the content (probably from search engines and other referring sources).

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/7caocvAA7yU/9-tangible-linkable-asset-ideas-and-how-to-build-links-to-them

Even though thousands of low-quality blogs of low or average authority were manually removed from Google’s index, they weren’t the only victims. For instance, www.rachaelwestdesigns.com, a PR7, DA70 domain was also removed, probably due to the very high number of blog roll (site-wide) backlinks.

These actions indicate that the new update on “overoptimised” websites has already begun to roll out but it is uncertain how much of it we have seen so far.

At around the same time Google sent to thousands webmasters the following message via message via Google’s Webmaster Tools:

In the above statement, it is unclear what Google’s further actions will be. In any case, working out the number of “artificial” or “unnatural links” with precision is a laborious, almost impossible task. Some low quality links may not be reported by third party link data providers, or even worse, because Google has started deindexing several low quality domains, the task can end-up being a real nightmare as several domains cannot be found even in Google’s index.

Nevertheless, there are some actions that can help SEOs assess the backlink profile of any website. Because, in theory, any significant number of low quality links could hurt, it would make sense gathering as many data as possible and not just examine the most recent backlinks. Several thousand domains have already been removed from Google’s index, resulting in millions of links being completely devalued according to Distilled’s Tom Anthony (2012 Linklove).

Therefore, the impact on the SERPs has already been significant and as always happens in these occasions there will be new winners and losers once the dust settles. However, at this stage it is be a bit early to make any conclusions because it is unclear what Google’s next actions are going to be. Nevertheless, getting ready for those changes would make perfect sense, and spotting them as soon as they occur would allow for quicker decision making and immediate actions, as far as link building strategies are concerned.

As Pedro Dias, an Ex-Googler from the search quality/web spam team tweetted, “Link building, the way we know it, is not going to last until the end of the year” (translated from Portuguese).

Carrying out a backlinks audit in order to identify the percentage of low-quality backlinks would be a good starting point. A manual, thorough assessment would only be possible for relatively small websites as it is much easier to gather and analyse backlinks data – for bigger sites with thousands of backlinks that would be pointless. The following process expands on Richard Baxter’s solution on ‘How to check for low quality links‘, and I hope it makes it more complete.

1. Identify as many linking root domains as possible using various backlinks data sources.
2. Check the ToolBar PageRank (TBPR) for all linking root domains and pay attention on the TBPR distribution
3. Work out the percentage of linking root domains that has been deindexed
4. Check social metrics distribution (optional)
5. Repeat steps 2,3 and 4 periodically (e.g. weekly, monthly) and check for the following:

• A spike towards the low end of the TBPR distribution
• Increasing number of deindexed linking root domains on a weekly/monthly basis
• Unchanged numbers of social metrics, remaining in very low levels

A Few Caveats

The above process does come with some caveats but on the whole, it should provide some insight and help making a backlinks’ risk assessment in order to work out a short/long term action plan. Even though the results may not be 100% accurate, it should be fairly straightforward to spot negative trends over a period of time.

Data from backlinks intelligence services have flaws. No matter where you get your data from (e.g. Majestic SEO, Open Site Explorer, Ahrefs, Blekko, Sistrix) there is no way to get the same depth of data Google has. Third party tools are often not up to date, and in some cases the linking root domains are not even linking back anymore. Therefore, it would make sense filtering all identified linking root domains and keep only those still linking to your website. At iCrossing we use a proprietary tool but there are commercial link check services available in the market (e.g. Buzzstream, Raven Tools).

ToolBar PageRank gets updated infrequently (roughly 4-5 times in a year), therefore in most cases the returned TBPR values represent the TBPR the linking root domain gained in the the last TBPR update. Therefore, it would be wise checking out when TBPR was last updated before making any conclusions. Carrying out the above process straight after a TBPR update would probably give more accurate results. However, in some cases Google may instantly drop a site’s TBPR in order to make public that the site violates their quality guidelines and discourage advertisers. Therefore, low TBPR values such as n/a, (greyed out) or 0 can in many cases flag up low quality linking root domains.

Deindexation may be natural. Even though Google these days is deindexing thousands of low quality blogs, coming across a website with no indexed pages in Google’s SERPs doesn’t necessarily mean that it has been penalised. It may be an expired domain that no longer exists, an accidental deindexation (e.g. a meta robots noindex on every page of the site), or some other technical glitch. However, deindexed domains that still have a positive TBPR value could flag websites that Google has recently removed from its index due to guidelines violations (e.g. link exchanges, PageRank manipulation).

Required Tools

• Excel
• NetPeak Checker OR SEO Tools for Excel

For large data sets NetPeak Checker performs faster than SEO Tools, where large data sets can make Excel freeze for a while. NetPeak checker is a standalone free application which provides very useful information for a given list of URLs such as domain PageRank, page PageRank, Majestic SEO data, OSE data (PA, DA, mozRank, mozTrust etc), server responses (e.g. 404, 200, 301) , number of indexed pages in Google and a lot more. All results can then be exported and processed further in Excel.

1. Collect linking root domains

Identifying as many linking root domains as possible is fundamental and relying in just one data provided isn’t ideal. Combining data from Web master tools, Majestic SEO, Open Site Explorer may be enough but the more data, the better especially if the examined domain has been around for a long time and has received a large number of backlinks over time. Backlinks from the same linking root domain should be removed so we end up with a long list of unique linking root domains. Also, not found (404) linking root domains should also be removed.

2. Check PageRank distribution

Once a good number of unique linking root domains has been identified, the next step is scrapping the ToolBar PageRank for each one of them. Ideally, this step should be applied only on those root domains that are still linking to our website. The ones that don’t should be discarded if not too complicated. Then, using a pivot chart in Excel, we can conclude whether the current PageRank distribution should be a concern or not. A spike towards the lower end values (such as 0s and n/a) should be treated as a rather negative indication as in the graph below.

3. Check for deindexed root domains

Working out the percentage of linking root domains which are not indexed is essential. If deindexed linking root domains still have a positive TBPR value, most likely they have been recently deindexed by Google.

4. Check social metrics distribution (optional)

Adding in the mix the social metrics (e.g. Facebook Likes, Tweets and +1s) of all identified linking root domains may be useful in some cases. The basic idea here is that low quality websites would have a very low number of social mentions as users wouldn’t find them useful. Linking root domains with low or no social mentions at all could possibly point towards low quality domains.

5. Check periodically

Repeating the steps 2, 3 and 4 on a weekly or monthly basis, could help identifying whether there is a negative trend due to an increasing number of linking root domains being of removed. If both the PageRank distribution and deindexation rates are deteriorating, sooner or later the website will experience rankings drops that will result in traffic loss. A weekly deindexation rate graph like the following one could give an indication of the degree of link equity loss:

Note: For more details on how to set-up NetPeak and apply the above process using Excel please refer to my post on Connect.icrossing.co.uk.

Remedies Actions

So far, several websites have seen ranking drops as a result of some of their linking root domains being removed from Google’s index. Those with very low PageRank values and low social shares over a period of time should be manually/editorially reviewed in order to assess their quality. Such links are likely to be devalued sooner or later, therefore a new link building strategy should be devised. Working towards a more balanced PageRank distribution should be the main objective, links from low quality websites will keep naturally coming up to some extent.

In general, the more authoritative trusted a website is, the more low quality linking root domains could be linking to it without causing any issues. Big brands’ websites are less likely to be impacted because they are more trusted domains. That means that low authority/trust websites are more at risk, especially if most of their backlinks come from low quality domains, have a high number of site-wide links, or if their backlink profile consists of unnatural anchor text distribution.

Therefore, if any of the above issues have been identified, increasing the website’s trust, reducing the number of unnatural site-wide links and making the anchor text distribution look more natural should be the primary remedies.

About the author

Modesto Siotos (@macmodi) works as a Senior Natural Search Analyst for iCrossing UK, where he focuses on technical SEO issues, link tactics and content strategy. Modesto is happy to share his experiences with others and posts regularly on Connect, a UK digital marketing blog.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/juYNbEnOB_4/how-to-check-which-links-can-harm-your-sites-rankings

“When we released the first paper, we had a lot of questions coming back, asking more more details around incrementality and under what situations can you expect different numbers?,” said David Chan, Google’s lead researcher for this study.

So, Chan set out to research more subtleties in the interaction between organic results and paid search ads, and today released new results.

Most Of The Time, There Are No Organic Result On Page One

The 89% number makes more sense now that the new results show that paid search ads appear without an accompanying organic search result on the page 81% of the time, on average. Only 9% of the time does a search ad show with an organic result in the top rank. An organic result appears in ranks 2 to 4 5% of the time, and in lower ranks (below 5), about 4% of the time.

Though the researchers didn’t specifically look at branded versus generic terms, Chan said,the ranking is a good proxy, in certain cases, for branded versus generic terms. In other words, the brand’s organic result is likely to appear higher, if it’s a branded term.

Even A #1 Ranking Can Benefit From An Accompanying Ad

Surprisingly, even when advertisers show up in the number one organic search result position, 50% of clicks they get on ads are not replaced by clicks on organic search results when the ads don’t appear.

“It is a very surprising result, and, I think in some ways, it runs counter to what people would think but the data speaks for itself,” said Chan.

The study found that 82% of ad clicks are incremental when the associated organic result is ranked between 2 and 4, and 96% of clicks are incremental when the brand’s organic result was 5 or below.

Chan noted that there was a lot of variability from advertiser to advertiser and term to term, so he encouraged advertisers to do their own experimentation. Additionally, the study focused only on clicks and not conversions, so it’s not clear to what extent the incremental clicks led to a conversion event.

Related Topics: Google: AdWords | Stats | Top News

About The Author: Pamela Parker is a contributing editor for Search Engine Land and Executive Features Editor at Marketing Land. She’s a well-respected authority on digital marketing, having reported and written on the subject since 1998, including a stint as managing editor of ClickZ. She’s also worked to help monetize independent publishers’ sites at Federated Media Publishing. She blogs about media and marketing at The River and about cooking, gardening and parenthood at Free Range. She can be found on Twitter as @pamelaparker. See more articles by Pamela Parker

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Article source: http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/nOyuBmUm7rA/google-research-even-if-you-rank-1-organically-you-can-double-your-clicks-with-paid-search-116713

NOTE: See our own follow-up analysis, No, Google Doesn’t Make Four Times More Off The iPhone Vs. Android

The publication reports “Android generated less than $550m in revenues for Google between 2008 and the end of 2011.” It further derived an average revenue per Android handset per year figure of $10.

Interestingly this is a figure that Eric Schmidt estimated Google could make off each Android user. In 2010, then CEO Eric Schmidt speculated that Android would become a $10 billion revenue stream if a billion users generated $10 per year for Google. And in early 2011 Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster estimated that Android was generating about $5.90 per user for Google and saw that figure growing to $9.85 in 2012.

The Guardian also estimated that Google made roughly $30 per year, per PC with a couple of caveats.

Earlier this month Macquarie Capital estimated that in 2011 Google made just over $1.3 billion in paid search revenue from its default position on iOS devices. Apparently Google gave the lion’s share of that back to Apple under the terms of a default search agreement between the two companies.

In other words, Google made more (top-line) revenue in one year from the iPhone than it did in three years from Android handsets.

If Google activates 800,000 Android devices daily it would mean 292 million devices activated per year. Using the $10 per user, per year revenue formula that would translate into $2.92 billion in global Android revenue over the course of a hypothetical year.

Below is a Google mobile revenues forecast from Cowen and Company. It shows $5.8 billion in revenue this year.

Mobile is becoming an increasingly strategic part of Google’s business and one of the places where the greatest growth is occurring.

Postscript: Upon closer inspection of the settlement document that apparently forms the basis for The Guardian’s analysis, it’s very difficult to verify the accuracy of the claims and estimates above. The numbers may therefore be highly untrustworthy. See our own follow-up analysis, No, Google Doesn’t Make Four Times More Off The iPhone Vs. Android.

Related Entries

• Google Will Make $10 Per Android User In 2012: Report
• US Subpoenas Apple For Details About Default iOS Google Search Deal
• Report: 25 Percent Of Paid-Search Clicks Will Come From Mobile By December

Related Topics: Featured | Google: Android | Google: Business Issues | Google: Legal | Google: Mobile

About The Author: Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog Screenwerk, about SoLoMo issues and connecting the dots between online and offline. He also posts at Internet2Go, which is focused on the mobile Internet. Follow him @gsterling. See more articles by Greg Sterling

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Article source: http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/S4hiRcZfAxQ/analysis-google-makes-10-per-android-user-per-year-116845

Undoubtedly, one of the main tasks of SEO specialist is to create a competent list of keywords for the promoted web-site. Below you can find the stages that you should pass selecting proper keywords. Fulfilling these points you can decrease expenses for further works in website promotion and to increase the success of advertising campaign. So, what are these stages? See our infographic below.

See the embed code for this infographic at Promodo.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SearchEngineJournal/~3/cZg1UUQkdbk/

My name is Anthony and I’m from Fargo, ND. First-time YouMozzer here. After reading this post, I hope you (in?)voluntarily scroll back up to the top to follow me on twitter (@anthonydnelson) and check out my blog Northside SEO.

Today’s post is about broken link building. It’s been a popular topic in the industry, but I also noticed that SEOmoz didn’t have a lot on the subject, so I thought it would be nice to write a kick-ass piece for the large SEOmoz community. Now, on to the post.

Broken [broh-kuhn] adjective: not functioning properly; out of working order

Link [lingk] noun: anything serving to connect one part or thing with another

Building [bil-ding] verb (used with object): to construct (especially something complex) by assembling and joining parts

Definitions taken from dictionary.com.

Broken Link Building [lingk bil-ding gohld] verb: the act of acquiring a link to your website by pointing out a broken link on someone else’s website

What is Broken Link Building?

Broken link building (sometimes called dead link building) is a technique that involves pointing out a link on another website that is no longer working and also asking for a link to your website. Often the broken link leads to a 404 page. The link will be on a page that is relevant to your niche and appears to be a good fit for inclusion of your site. You perform a solid by pointing out the broken link to the webmaster and in return, suggest that your link be added or be used as a replacement.

Why has Broken Link Building been so Popular Lately?

1. SEOs feel like they are making the web a better place. They are helping webmaster’s deal with the problem of link rot. SEOs care about the quality of the web. The fewer broken links, the better.
2. It gives the link builder an easy value add to their email. You are helping them out, before asking them to help you out.
3. It can result in quick links. When broken link building emails are successful, you usually get your link within a day or two of sending the email. Much quicker then allowing a site owner to try and review a product or spending time making a connection and pitching a guest blog post.
4. It’s a relatively new technique that has already yielded good results for numerous link builders.

Broken Link Building Required Tools:

1. A website that doesn’t suck (no one is going to link to your crappy site, even if you point out a broken link)
2. Google Chrome with Check My Links Extension or Domain Hunter+ (Domain Hunter+ was recently featured on YouMoz)
3. Open Site Explorer: Limited use for everyone if you register for a free account at SEOmoz

Additional Tools for Increase Efficiency:

1. Xenu Link Sleuth (unless you’re really cool like me and use a Mac)
2. Screaming Frog
3. W3C’s Link Checker
4. Gmail plugins Rapporative and Boomerang
5. Canned Responses in Gmail or saving stationary templates in Mac mail are major time saving wins

How to Find Broken Links

1. Use the Check My Links Extension on any webpage you happen to visit and cross your fingers.
2. Check Top Pages tab in OSE for any competitor or site in your niche and look for 404 pages with external links pointing at them in the Top Pages tab.
3. Use search operators in Google to find relevant sites (my examples just below). This should result in hundreds of sites with lists of links specific to your industry. Switch your search settings to display the top 100 results and export them to a CSV using the MozBar’s SERP Control Panel. Sort by Page Authority or Domain Authority and you’re good to go. Find more useful link building search operaters or advanced search queries on Himanshu’s site. Visit the sites and run a link checker extension. 
   1. intitle:KEYWORD inurl:links -exchange
   2. intitle:KEYWORD inurl:resources
   3. inurl:links KEYWORD -
4. Add exported lists of links to Xenu/Screaming Frog to find 404 pages and easily run them through OSE. Alternatively, you can run a single page through to easily find the status codes of its outbound links.
5. Run a website through W3C’s Link Checker to find broken links
6. When you find a broken link, run that link through OSE to determine who else is linking to it. You may find 5-10 other good link prospects from a single broken link.
7. Export numerous competitor’s followed back link profiles in OSE. Combine results. Filter for URLs containing Link, Directory, Where to Buy, Resources or whatever words fit your industry. Sort sites by PA/DA, visit, run link checker, email.

Determining Link Target Quality

After you find a page with some broken links on it, you have to decide if it’s worth your time sending an email and asking for a link.

But there are too many broken links!

It’s a bit of a road block to run into a page with decent authority only to realize that it contains a ton of broken links. When you find a page with too many broken links on it (10+), you have a few options.

1. Decide the page is low-quality and choose not to contact them.
2. Send an email pointing out two or three of them and pretend that you don’t know about the rest.
3. Point out all 10+ broken links and risk overwhelming them to the point that they decide not to update the page at all or completely delete it.

It’s totally up to you to decide what is right for you and the site you are building links for. Personally, I’ve gone with all of the techniques above. Often times, it doesn’t matter what you decide on because you may not hear back from them at all.

Finding a Website Owner’s Contact Information

• Look for their email address on the contact page, about page or footer of the website
• Google site:DOMAIN.COM email
• Google site:DOMAIN.COM @DOMAIN.COM gmail.com hotmail.com yahoo.com msn.com live.com
• Look for their Twitter handle. A great casual way to introduce yourself
• Check WhoIs
• Look for a contact form on their website
• Citation Labs The Contact Finder if you are working with a large list

Stalk them to the best of your ability. It’s OK if they feel a little uncomfortable that you found them through their sister’s Twitter account. No contact, no link.

Broken Link Building Email Templates

Now that you know what broken link building is and how to find websites to target, let’s get on to email outreach. I’m going to show you five email templates I use which will hopefully help you start your own successful broken link building campaign. Each template is slightly tailored for a different type of website or client. You may find that one of them works best for you, or you may find that you hopping back and forth between styles will give you the best results depending on your client, the niche or the targeted site for link acquisition.

Broken Link Building Email Template #1 – Quick and Dirty

Subject Line: (DOMAIN.COM) question

Hey (WEBSITE OWNER FIRST NAME),

Are you still updating (DOMAIN.COM)? I found a broken link I’d like to point out.

-(YOUR FIRST NAME)

Who to Send it to: Perfect for use on websites that look like they were made in the 90′s and seem as if they are no longer being updated. Also good for sites that are questionable in quality. Don’t waste too much time with on an email for a site you don’t expect to reply.

Why it Works: This short and sweet email has one of the highest response rates of any of the templates I use. It comes off as genuine and helpful and leads with a strong question that illicits a response from all webmasters who are actually updating their website. When they reply, simply follow-up by sharing the page and the broken link as well as suggesting your website and explaining the fit and value it offers to that page.

Broken Link Building Template #2 – The Pressure is On Them

Subject Line: (DOMAIN.COM) broken link

Who to Send it to: Any website that has a list of links or resources (with a broken link) that you think is a good fit for your site.

Why it Works: You come clean immediately in the email explaining that you want a link. The webmaster might feel the need to include your link in order to find out what links on their site are broken. No webmaster will email you back and say, “No, I won’t link to you. Now please show me the broken links.” You get a link or they are on their own.

Broken Link Building Template #3 – In and Out

Who Should Use This Template: Any link builder that doesn’t have time to follow up. This is a one and done send.

Subject Line: (FIRST NAME), (DOMAIN.COM) broken links

Hey (WEBSITE OWNER FIRST NAME),

Who to Send it to: Any website that has a list of links or resources (with a broken link) that you think is a good fit for your site.

Why it Works: When you nominate two unaffiliated websites for inclusion on the webmasters list of links, they will simply think you are trying to help them. You want to point out some broken links and also give them some additional sites to consider. Make sure the alternate suggested site is not a competitor to your site.

Broken Link Building Template #4 – Brand Power

Who Should Use This Template: Link builders (consultants or in-house) who work for a semi-recognizable brand name in their particular industry.

Subject Line: (SITE OWNER FIRST NAME), (DOMAIN.COM) broken link

Hey (WEBSITE OWNER FIRST NAME),

My name is (YOUR FIRST NAME) and I wanted to let you know I really liked your post about (TOPIC OF A BLOG POST – NOT EXACT TITLE AND NOT THE MOST RECENT ONE). The part I particularly enjoyed was the part about (QUOTE FROM THEIR POST).

I work at (COMPANY NAME) and after being in the INDUSTRY/NICHE field for a few years, I’ve become really passionate about INDUSTRY/NICHE and I’m happy to have found your site.

When I was looking at your (DESCRIPTION OF PAGE WITH BROKEN LINK) page, I noticed that one of the links was broken. The link labeled (BROKEN LINK ANCHOR TEXT) isn’t currently working. (OPTIONAL: DO YOU KNOW WHERE THAT LINK IS SUPPOSED TO GO?)

Also, I hope you would consider adding our website (WWW.YOURSITE.COM) as an additional (RESOURCE/RECOMMENDATION/ALTERNATIVE) to your great (DESCRIPTION OF PAGE WITH BROKEN LINK) page. We’d be honored to be included on your site and I think the link would provide great value to your visitors due to our (BRAND UNIQUE SELLING POINT).

Have a nice (DAY/NIGHT).

I look forward to hearing back from you soon.

-(YOUR FULL NAME)

-(COMPANY NAME)

Who to Send it to: Any website that has a list of links or resources (with a broken link) that you think is a good fit for your site.

Why it Works: The website owner is flattered by having someone from a recognizable brand contact them with complements about their site. On top of that, they are grateful for you pointing out the broken links. How could they not give you a link?

Broken Link Building Template #5 – Zen Master Link Builder

The fifth template is essentially using no template at all. The Zen Master Link Builder builds a relationship before asking for a favor and the placement of a link. I’ll outline the basic process below.

1. Comment on one the website’s blog post. Make sure it’s thoughtful and genuine.
2. Send first email with complement and question about a post of theirs or the niche they are in.
3. After they reply, you email back kindly thanking them. Consider repeating steps two and three if the conversation goes that way.
4. Follow them on twitter. Casually tweet at them or about their content to remain on their radar.
5. Email again to point out the broken link as an FYI. Mention your website as a replacement or addition to the page.

Who to Send it to: Ideally everyone. Realistically, use this technique on high quality websites. Sites where links are hard to come by.

Why it Works: You’ve shown that you care and connected with the website owner on a personal level first. The website owner should be grateful for your support (comments, tweets, emails) and will most likely happily add your link to the page in question.

Note: The Zen Master approach is the best approach to take for all link building outreach. It is definitely not exclusive to broken link building. The ultimate hang-up comes to the overall time and resources required to execute.

Outreach Email Link Building Tips:

• Send emails one at a time. From you, to them. Be real and try to offer as much value as possible.
• Don’t use full URLs or hyperlinks in your actual email. This increases the chance your email lands in the spam folder.
• Find the website owner’s email address and real name. Cyber stalk them to get it. Google them, find their twitter and check WHOIS.
• The email templates above will work even better if you personalize them more. Show some personality. Being unique and odd can be more effective than professional and stale. Be a person, not a canned response, even if you start your post from one.
• Use a woman’s name.
• End emails with a question or a sentence that implies they need to respond to you.
• Always double check and proof your email. Using templates can be dangerous if you’re not careful. Make sure it is personalized to the right website.
• If you do make a mistake in sending a templated email, come clean and do this.
• Hustle. You will never get a link for an email you don’t send.

Pro Broken Link Building Outreach Tip

• If the website has a phone number, call it. A real conversation will monumentally increase your chance at landing a link. Admittedly, I still send emails 99% of the time.

301 Redirect Broken Link Building – Double Dipping

Sometimes the link you point out in your outreach email doesn’t even have to be broken to get the webmaster to take action and change the page. I’ve had success pointing out links that 301 to a different site. Simply put, if you tell a site owner that they are trying to link to domainA.com and the result is a link to domainB.com they are often willing to remove that link. The benefit of this can be great.

Study your competitors’ external backlink profile and find the urls of other websites that are 301ing back to them.

Example: DOMAIN1.com is redirecting to COMPETITOR.com.

Contact the sites who are linking to DOMAIN1.com and explain to them they are not linking to the site they were once intending to. Be sure to offer your website as an additional resource.

The end result: Your competitor loses a link and you gain one. Double win.

This technique will not work for links where the redirect clearly goes to the same company/website at a different URL. This technique works best when combined with an email pointing out a few broken links. “These links are broken and this one doesn’t go to the right spot…”

Link Exchanges and Directories

Pointing out broken links is often enough to get you listed in a paid directory or on a site that is requesting link exchanges for submission. Of course, this only means something if you find a paid directory you actually want to be listed in or a site that exchanges links in a non-spammy way.

Content Recreation

Sometimes in the hunt for broken links, you’ll find a 404 page that has 5-20 external links pointing at it. Some of them are juicy links. Links that you want. Bad. The problem is, your site doesn’t contain a direct replacement for the 404′d content. Here is how you can get them.

Even though your site is in the same niche, your site didn’t originally publish the results from that study in 2005 that was referenced so many times and no longer exists. You need to recreate the content. The first step is to put the broken link into the Wayback Machine to find out what the content originally was. Recreate the content for your site. If possible, feel free to repurpose it a bit to fit your branding and style.

Once you have created the similar content, contact the webmasters with the broken link pointing at the now non-existent content and gently nudge them towards your new piece. The exact piece they were looking for.

This technique takes a lot of time and effort but can definitely pay dividends. It is already established that the content you are creating is link worthy in the eyes of multiple webmasters.

18 Additional Broken Link Building Resources

1. 40 Broken Link Building Resources by Garrett French on Citation Labs
2. Broken Link Building In Action by Nick LeRoy on nickleroy.com
3. A Tactical Guide to Broken Link Building by Cleo Kirkland on ROI Factor Blog
4. The Reciprocity Link Building Method by Melanie Nathan on Search Engine People
5. Easy Link Building with Your Competitors’ 404 Errors by Fabio Ricotta on Ontolo
6. Need Links? Make Up For Your Competitors Shortcomings by Napoleon Suarez on SEER Interactive Blog
7. 5 Creative Broken Link Building Strategies by Jon Cooper on Point Blank SEO
8. Broken Link Building for Content Promotion by Garrett French on Search Engine Watch
9. Check My Links Chrome Extension – A Link Builder’s Dream by Jon Cooper on SEOmoz
10. Broken Link Building – A Case Study by Ben Jackson on SEO ROI
11. Broken Link Building: Feast On Your Competitors This Thanksgiving by Napoleon Suarez on SEER Interactive Blog
12. Fixing the Web’s Lost Content: An 8 Step Guide for Link Builders by Jeremy Bencken on Search Engine Watch
13. 15 Questions with Nick LeRoy on Broken Link Building by Garrett French on Citation Labs
14. Broken Link Building: How Napoleon Suarez Gets 8-12% Conversions by Garrett French on Citation Labs
15. Broken Link Building Tips: an Interview with Melanie Nathan by Garrett French on Citation Labs
16. Busted Links as Reason for Link Request by Wheel on Webmaster World Forum
17. Improving Corrective Value-Adds in Link Request E-mails by Ross Hudgens on rosshudgens.com
18. Broken link building with Raven’s Link Manager and local directories by Eric Scism on Raven Blog

If you know of a great broken link building resource that I am missing, please post it in the comments and maybe one of the mozzers or I (not sure how this YouMoz editing will work) will be able to add it to the list.

Noob to Novice

I gave this post the title from Noob to Novice because reading blog posts is not going to make you an expert or advanced link builder. You have to get out there and get your hands dirty. Send emails. Send a lot of emails. Try different techniques. Test and record. Broken link building is still a technique that is in its infancy and there is a lot of room for us all to improve and refine our techniques.

I still consider myself a novice link builder. There is so much to learn and the game is always changing.

Broken link building or any outreach based link building campaign is never going to compete with someone who creates link worthy content. Content that will continue to build links on it’s own. Content that will build links on the weekends when they’re not working.

Be sure to drop a comment and let everyone know about your broken link building successes or failures. It is still a relatively new technique and we can all learn from sharing. Don’t be shy on giving this post a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Feedback is needed to grow.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/L3k9-B4DaGI/broken-link-building-guide-from-noob-to-novice

This is part II of a three part series.  In part I of this Google analytics 5 series, I discussed keyword reports and reviewed some differences in where things are now located.  Here, I’ll go over my top 3 features for goal setting.  In part three we’ll get extremely geeky and go over a few custom reports you’ll want to save for your SEO reporting needs.   Bookmark this and come back to it to!  Ready to roll up your sleeves?  Grab a cup of Joe, and let’s go.

1) Customize Your Dashboard with SEO Widgets

One of the sexiest features about Google Analytics 5 is the ability for you to modify the dashboard you are used to seeing once you access your specific profile.  You can drag and drop certain widgets to organize your metrics in a way that is meaningful to you and have the data display as a metric, pie chart, timeline, or table format.  This allows you to see important metrics at a glance.  I’ve used this awesome feature to create separate dashboards for e-commerce, events, and SEO.

How to Add an SEO Widget for Your SEO Dashboard

Let’s start by creating a widget for top branded vs. non-branded keywords.

1. Go to the “home” tab on the orange top navigation bar.  Go to the left navigation and click on “New Dashboard.”
2. You will be presented with the option to create a blank canvas or a starter dashboard and provide a title for your dashboard.  Title your dashboard “SEO Dashboard,” and click on “Blank Canvas.”
3. You will then see the “Add a Widget” box.  You can again, add a metric, a pie chart, timeline, or table.  Now, we’ll add a “table.”
4. The next step is to add a dimension.  Dimensions are visitor characteristics and are the kinds of things you would see in the rows of a Google Analytics report. Dimensions are highlighted in green.  Choose “keywords” as your dimension.
5. Click on the arrow and begin typing “keyword.” Google Analytics will auto-populate with the dimension, and you can either finish typing or click on the dimension “keyword” to fill the box.
6. Your metrics are numbers and are represented by the color light blue.  Here we will add “Visits” and “% New Visits.”
7. We will then keep the “show a table with” 10 rows (the max number of rows for any widget).
8. To filter your keywords by “branded,” enter you main branded keywords by clicking on the “add a filter” hyperlink.  You will see “only show” and “don’t show.” Since we want branded keywords, we will select “only show” our branded keyword of choice by selecting “containing” your branded term.  You can repeat this for any other branded keywords.
9. Name Your Widget “Top Branded Keywords.”
10. When you are done adding your filters, name your widget.
11. Now you can hit save and see your pretty new widget on your snazzy SEO Dashboard.

Analytics FYI: You can also link this report to one of your standard reports.  However, linking to the report will not keep any of your filters you set in your widget; it will just send you to the unfiltered standard report for easy reference.

Once your widget has been created, you can easily go to that specific report by clicking the box at the top right of your widget to access that report.  To link this widget to a report, simply start typing your report name.  In this case, we will link to the “Traffic Sources / Sources / Search / Organic” report.

An Example Customized Google Analytics Widget for Your New SEO Dashboard

You don’t have to link all of your widgets to its report, by the way, but it is a nice option.

You can repeat this process for non-branded keywords by simply selecting “don’t show” your branded search terms.

SEO Tip: You may want to include a filter to exclude keywords under “not set” and “not provided.”

Analytics Quick Tip: An alternate way to create a widget for your SEO dashboard is to go to a your standard keywords report and filter the data accordingly (as I demonstrated in part one of this Google analytics 5 series) then clicking on “Add to Dashboard.”  If you do it this way, your report will automatically be linked to the keyword report.

Yeah, yeah.  Now I hear you saying, “Dali, if that was the easy way why didn’t you say so in the first place? “ Well you must know the manual way to get things done if Google Analytics if you want to be a true SEO/analytics geek.

SEO Dashboard FYI: You can only add keyword report widgets from the Traffic Sources – Sources – Search – Organic keyword report and not the reports with Google Webmaster tools data located at Traffic Sources – Search Engine Optimization – Queries (or Landing Pages).  Dear Google Analytics, that would be a nice additional feature for the next update!

Other Ideas to Add Spice to Your New Sexy SEO Dashboard

• Add line charts to show your organic search visit trends
• Add a metric widget telling you your average page speed
• Add a pie chart featuring your top sources / mediums
• Add any specific goals you have added into your Google Analytics profile related to SEO to tie your dashboard with outcomes and conversions

Imagine the look on your boss or clients face when you are able to show them your SEO Dashboard!

In all, you can create up to 20 dashboards, and each dashboard can contain up to 12 widgets.  What’s sweeter is that you can add any of your specific custom reports to your dashboard as a widget too.   Don’t you love me… um, I mean the new analytics now?

2) Set up Custom Alerts to Inform you When a Specific SEO Goal Has Been Met

Wouldn’t you like to know right when a goal has been hit?

Under your “Home” tab you will find a left navigation menu item named “Intelligence Events.”  This is where Google Analytics monitors any significant variations in your website’s traffic and will automatically generate alerts when they occur.

Custom alerts were a beta feature prior to Google Analytics Version 5.  However, it is now out of beta.  You can set all kinds of cool analytic geek alerts.

For instance, you, upper management, or your client may be obsessed about the performance of one keyword, and may want to know exactly when you hit a goal you’ve set out to achieve.

Below are two examples of custom alerts you can create for your SEO goals.

– How to Create Custom Alerts for SEO Goals

1. You can create custom alerts by clicking on the “home” navigation menu and then selecting “intelligence events.”  You can view any interesting statistical variations in your Google Analytics profile by day, week, or month.  Select whichever you want.
2. In the middle of the screen you will see the specific date or date range and then blue links on the far right to “create a custom alert” or manage an existing custom alert.  Click “create a custom alert”

– One Custom Alert Monitoring an Increase in Visits for a variation of keywords

Once created, you will find that your custom alert will also be found (and could be edited) by clicking on your settings gear icon on the far right and clicking on “assets.”

Google Analytics Geek Tip: If you have added any custom/advanced segments in your profile, those will be available for you to choose from when creating your alert.

Google Analytics Ice Cream with a Cherry on Top: You can request the alert be sent to you by email and even mobile phone when it is triggered.  Yes!

And of course, you can create custom alerts to for AdWords and ecommerce conversions.  Woo!

A list of your custom alerts will be found under your settings (again, click the gear icon on the far top right) and under “assets.”

3) Get Deeper Insights into your SEO Conversion Process with Multi-Channel Funnels

The Multi-Channel Funnels reports show you how your traffic sources work together harmoniously to create sales and conversions.

You will see:

• How many steps assisted in those conversions (conversion paths)
• The number of conversions from each path
• The value of the conversions

Before this feature, you only could only tell that a visitor converted from one specific source (the one right before the conversion took place).

This is pretty exciting because you can see if you have any conversion patterns that may help you focus on a type of marketing you may not have been focused on i.e. (social media).

Additionally, you can create a channel grouping to see if a specific pattern is contributing to your conversions.  If so, you know your marketing strategy is right on the money! Oh my word!

Here is an example of a customized Channel Grouping that involves non-branded keywords via organic search and twitter traffic!

Like all reports, you can filter.  Below I’ve filtered out all of the channel groupings that include social. (click image to expand)

Ooh la la la! This may finally help prove the value of your social media marketing efforts (especially if you report to upper management or clients who are afraid of engaging in social marketing)!

SEO Dashboards, Custom Alerts, and Channel Groupings will keep you on task; make your job easier, and help you look like an SEO web analytics genius.  Stay tuned for more on custom reports in The SEO’s Guide to Google Analytics 5 part III.

What do you think about these features, and how do you plan to use these tips to expand your SEO/analytics skills?

Any other super geeky nuances you’d like to share about Google Analytics version 5?  I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SearchEngineJournal/~3/BqOKigZmlcc/