The Weekly Q was born on August 1, 2006 and it is with great pride that I mark the first anniversary of what has become one of the most widely read publication in the industry. I decided PrimeQ’s newsletter was going be different from those of other networks and wanted it to publish content of the highest calibre to inform and educate the community; I hope we have fulfilled that remit. I am pleased to announce the Weekly Q will be charging into Web 2.0 era and, from next week’s issue onwards, the content will be published in a blog. We will have new contributors and our many loyal readers will be able to post comments, participate in polls and engage with us more easily. The Weekly Q will still be alive and kicking, popping into your inboxes to keep you informed about new posts and discussions in our blog. Thank you for your support and compliments over the last year. Jason McClain, President and CEO, PrimeQ

 

Producing a newsletter that is not revenue generating week-in week-out in a frenetic schedule that involves designing and updating websites, putting together email marketing creative, constructing banners and dealing with a 1001 other pressing concerns, is not something that may seem a priority. But I relish the task because I believe that with the Q as I call it, me, Nadeem and the PrimeQ team are providing a resource which is unique and hopefully of value to the online marketing community which means so much to me. I am almost finished with creating the new PrimeQ blog and look forward to it becoming as popular as the Q.The URL will be revealed soon! You are welcome to email me at christopher AT primeq.com if you have any suggestions for the blog. Christopher Nalbandian, Creative Director, PrimeQ

 

At 6pm each Friday evening when the online marketing community shuts up shop for the weekend, I start researching and writing the following Thursday’s Weekly Q. I expend considerable energy on scripting the newsletter each weekend, but I credit its success to the PrimeQ CEO, Jason, and the Creative Director, Christopher: I wish to offer a public gratitude to them as they are the inspiration and talent behind this operation. The former funded the publication and without the latter’s phenomenal design skills the Weekly Q would not have grown from zero readers on August 1, 2006 to many thousands on August 2, 2007. August 2, 2007 is not only the first anniversary of the Weekly Q but the tenth anniversary of the passing away of a person who I have not mentioned to anybody in my last decade in this industry, the most precious person in my life. I would like to dedicate this special issue of the Q to Helen Fahrni who took her life on August 2, 1997. People often ask me why I spend an average 90 hours a week, 52 weeks a year on the computer and I always come up with some jocular response; the real reason is that were it not for my work I would probably be thinking about what happened on this day ten years ago. If you are able to, I ask you to pray for Helen. Nadeem Azam, Public Relations Manager, PrimeQ

 

Because On-Page factors are relatively easy to manipulate, several years ago Google’s techies started adding more weight to external or Off-Page variables. Google made this form of ranking-evaluation famous with its patented PageRank algorithm but researchers were discussing using ideas such as link anchor text as far back as 1994.  On-Page factors now only account for around 20% weighting in determining a webpage or document’s Google listings, whereas 80% weighting is given to Off-Page factors.

In this week’s lesson, we will study which factors Search Engine Optimizers need to focus on to get the highest possible rankings in search engines.

Inbound Links

The primary determinant of a good Off-Page SEO valuation is inbound links.

Search engine bots consider a variety of factors to determine what rating to give you. It’s not just the number of links you may have from other sites. The most valuable links are from high quality, highly ranked webpages which are relevant to your content.

Google Toolbar

Before hunting for inbound links you should consider downloading the Google toolbar. It is a plug-in for Internet Explorer and Firefox that displays the Page Rank (PR) of every page you visit. PR is Google's way of letting you know if a page is important and ranks well. If a page is related to the subject of your website and has a high PR, you should try to get it to link to you. You may down the Google toolbar here.

HOW TO ACQUIRE INBOUND LINKS

Directories and Link Buying

Directories are a brilliant way of acquiring inbound links. However, beware: there are literally thousands of directories out there and most of them have little value either in terms of being able to set you link juice or human traffic.

Strongest Links has an invaluable list of 290 of the most important directories ranked by PR. It also provides the submission fees. Unless you have a substantial budget, you may wish to focus on the directories that are free to submit to and those that have a one-off fee rather than a recurring annual one. When fees are listed next to a directory in red and with a star, it means the directory will charge you on a recurring basis and obviously this adds up over the years and involves administration.

Other resources to find directories are:

• Search Engine Colossus is a directory of search engines and directories broken down by country
• SEO Company provides a chart of directories in alphabetical order, with useful information about each directory to evaluate whether it is worth submitting to
• Best Catalog lists the best free directories by PR. Useful link popularity checker as well
• Directory Archives is brought to you by those maestros at SEOBook and is a user-friendly resource to find directories by category

Submitting to a significant number of directories can be a laborious and time consuming exercise and you may wish to consider using software or outsourcing the work. The best option is the latter. It is possible to find professional directory submitters on various websites such as this section of DigitalPoint forums who will manually submit your sites to hundreds of directories for $50-$100. The submitters are usually based in India and other developing countries. However, be sure to read third party reviews because many low cost directory submitters are not focussed on doing a professional job.

Many non-directories also sell and rent links. You can utilise a link brokerage service or contact sites directly – the latter option being cheaper because you cut out an intermediary.

Although search engines like Google claim to discourage link buying, most SEOs state there is nothing wrong with it and it is unlikely you will penalised unless you do it in a way to blatantly manipulate the SERPs (search engine results).

Whether acquiring inbound links via directory submissions, article syndication or link exchanges, make sure that you do it a way that does prick Googlebot’s ears. If, for instance, Googlebot sees the number of inbound links to your site shooting up from 25 to 525 in a month, it may get suspicious. Therefore acquire a steady trickle of links over a period of time, rather than all in one go. Also make sure you don’t use the identical title, description and link text for inbound links. Vary them so that they look ‘natural’.

 

Link Exchanges

Link exchanges used to be a highly effective way of garnering inbound links to your site, but over the last few years search engines have begun to frown upon them. The reason is because most link exchanges are solely set up to influence the search engines. You can study Google’s warning about link exchange schemes on this page of their site. As one of the respected moderators of Webmasterworld, pageoneresults, explains at the end of this thread: “If you are participating in link exchanges on a scale that is sure to send signals, expect those pages to become null at some point if they haven't already.”

To circumvent the clampdown, a number of sophisticated link exchange schemes have been set up. This includes, for instance, three way link exchanges. Site A links to Site B which links to Site C which links to Site A.

As with everything to do with SEO, if you operate as per the search engine’s guidelines, you will not have a problem. The general consensus is that neither two nor three way reciprocal links are bad per se as long as they are done between quality websites on the same theme and you link to other websites to benefit your site’s visitors rather than in order to manipulate the SERPs.

It can be tempting to employ gray and black hat techniques to jump up the rankings, but the likelihood is you will get caught out and be penalised by the search engines. And, by employing unethical strategies, not only will Googlebot take a disliking to you but so will advertisers and other webmasters.

How do you find potential link partners? Alexa is a good tool and High Page Rank Sites lists sites with a PR of 4 and above by category to enable webmasters to find link partners

TIP: Whenever you contact a website asking for a link, make sure you customise your email. Find out the webmasters name and start by saying something complimentary about his/her website. Also, it has been proven that link requests from females are more likely to be successful!

Article Syndication

You’d think somebody would be dim-witted for spending hours researching and writing an article and then allowing anybody to copy it for free right? Well, they would in most cases. But, if you are an Search Engine Optimizer, you are giving in order to receive and, a stipulation of people reproducing your article is that they include a link or links to your website.

There are hundreds of article archives and other sites for you to submit your content to, and they will allow you to include links back to your site either in the main body of the content or in the signature at the end.

An example is this article on Article Alley which was published on July 27, 2007. It ends with “David Marc Fishman is the owner of internet directory. The website that helps people who use directory listing for one way links. Get fast links with directory submission.” Those three links back to Mr Fishman’s site will help boost his PR and he’ll also receive human traffic.

As with directory submissions, there is both software and human submitters you can use to do article submissions for you. In PrimeQ’s SEO course in London last week we recommended Article Sender which has a brilliant free article distribution service.

Quality Content and Resources

Attracting inbound links by providing unique, quality content and resources on your site is arguably the smartest and most effective Off-Page SEO strategy. An example is phpBB which provides a fantastic free bulletin board. It has attracted so many inbound links that it has jaw-dropping Google PR of 9.

Giving away anything valuable will help you receive links. You could provide a free ebook or script for example.

SEOs often use the term ‘link baiting’, which is creating content on the web with a particular focus on inspiring people to link to it. The five most common strategies are news, contrary, attack, resource and humor, with FamousAgents suggesting a sixth, fear.

Whatever you provide to encourage people to link to you, the overriding emphasis should be on quality. The BBC does not employ teams of SEOs, but has over 3.3 million inbound links to BBC.co.uk because it publishes content of the highest calibre.

Recommended SEO Resources

SEO Chat Forums – chat about SEO to your heart’s content; 37,000 members and 464,000 posts

High Rankings SEO Forums – another hangout to share knowledge; less advertising than other SEO forums

WordZe – shows which terms are being searched and provides other awesome tools (paid)

SEO Community @ Affiliates4U – search marketing tips and tricks from PrimeQ’s James G. Evans

PrimeQ TV – free videos teaching SEO and other subjects (tutorials being added next week)

136 SEO Tools – Free backlink, search ranking, keyword density and other tools

Two secret tips on getting indexed in Google in 24 hours and acquiring links from a PR 7 site from James G. Evans, PrimeQ’s Affiliate Services Executive and SEO Expert “Advertise at Craig’s List. Now here’s a novel strategy. The website Craig’s List is a well known classifieds website with a PR 7 score. A PR 7 score is rare! To have a link in a website like this would give a tremendous boost to your own website. Simply go to that site and choose the category that your pages belong to, then post your advertisement, with your link of course. It doesn’t matter that few people may read it. What matters is that the search engine spiders would find your website as they would come from a PR 7 site.” "A lot of people wonder how to get indexed on Google in a short time, the most logical answer for me was, "using Google Products" so... use Google Products! Place your URL, in different Google Products, create a one word, one cent ad in Adwords, open a Gmail account and email all your contacts your new website, create a blogger account and place a link to your new site there, open an Adsense account and place some ads on your site... I've got sites indexed in an average of 24 hours doing all that."

PrimeQ’s Master Class Series Evolves from Written Tutorials to Live Presentation to Video

PrimeQ’s first ‘real world’ Master Class last Tuesday ended with the two dozen students going home having enjoyed half a day of learning and socialising, and on Friday the network broke new ground yet again by launching video tutorials on PrimeQ TV.

The network’s acclaimed Master Class tutorial series, published in this newsletter since October 2006, was brought offline with a crash course on Search Engine Optimization at PrimeQ’s London headquarters, the first in a series of free workshops, and a film of the sessions will be made available for free.

Students included staff from marketing agencies such as Search Logic, PhD and Saatchi and Saatchi Interactive, merchants such as BMIBaby and several affiliate marketers.

Assistant Producer Liam Craig, who is doing work placement at Saatchi and Saatchi Interactive, told the Weekly Q: “I found the course to be very interesting and informative. I learnt a lot from the session and will take that knowledge into my work. The course providers were very friendly and answered all my questions. I was certainly left with a good impression of PrimeQ and I hope they run more courses.”

Joe HQ Luong, owner of MyEggNest based in the City of London, believes, “The SEO course organised by James and PrimeQ was very informative and detailed... The breadth of experience and knowledge from all the speakers gave the course an authority that very few other courses offered.  On top of that, it was FREE.  Thank you James, Nadeem, Jonathan and all at PrimeQ for hosting such a brilliant event.”

A preview of the course has been added to the brand new PrimeQ TV and longer videos teaching SEO techniques will go live next week.

 
Wikipedia Founder Challenges Google and Yahoo Search Dominance

Wikipedia's founder has revealed he is planning a community-based search engine that he hopes will challenge the dominance of both Google and Yahoo. Last year, Jimmy Wales claimed that Internet search was “broken”.

In an attempt to improve things, he announced last week at the O'Reilly Open Source conference in Portland, Oregon, that his commercial start-up, Wikia, had acquired a web-crawling technology called Grub from Looksmart.

Grub was an open source project that was freely available to software makers to enhance as long as they shared any improvements they made. Looksmart had halted work on the project.

Grub is powered by volunteers who download the platform on to their computers, letting it run as a background process, therefore negating the need for Wikia to develop its own network of computers.

Wales said that the Wikia search platform, due to go live at the end of this year, will utilise this with computer algorithms and considerable human editing - the latter is not the case with existing major search engines - to create one of the most effective search engines on the market.

"If we can get good quality search results, I think it will really change the balance of power from the search companies back to the publishers," argues Wales. "I could be wrong about this, but it seems like a likely outcome."

However, critics have argued black hat SEOs will exploit Wikia’s openness to manipulate the search results and it will fail in its aim to provide superior results to Google and Yahoo.

 

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“The pleasure of love lasts but a moment, the pain of love lasts a lifetime.” Anon.

 

 

 

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