Does Google Like Your Site? There’s a Way to Find Out

Josh McCoy’s recent article on SearchEngineWatch.com, "What Google Thinks of Your Site," answers a question that many website owners wonder about their link building program. Fortunately, says McCoy, Google itself provides you with everything you need to find out how your link building strategies are stacking up, literally, in the search engine rankings.

He first recommends analyzing your sitelinks. You can do this by searching any term that you know currently ranks you first. Optimally, you will see three to eight links that sync with your main navigation. Or, you might see links to deeper pages on your site.

Next, McCoy discusses internal links for your site – the horizontally placed links between the SERP listing description and URL for a search. To get Google to see those, make sure they’re used in the first few paragraphs of content on your page.

A third possibility is that you may see no sitelinks at all. This, McCoy says, is a sure sign that your site is "SEO unfriendly," and you need to do something about it. You wouldn’t be alone; as examples, McCoy sites both Pepsi and Coca-Cola as having sites that use Flash or Java-based home pages, which totally confuse search spiders.

Columnist Cohen Says Twitter Translation Tools Keep Tweets From Being Lost in Translation

Most B2B firms have Twitter accounts these days. However, once they begin to work Tweets into their social media and link building strategy, many firms find themselves the recipient of Tweets from foreign countries that they can neither read nor decipher their purpose. Are they requests for business? Spam? How can you tell? What if you want to Tweet someone who doesn’t speak English? What do you do?

That’s what Jeffrey L. Cohen writes about in his article “4 Ways B2B Companies Can Translate Tweets” on SocialMediaB2B.com. Cohen reviews four of the most popular translation tools available on the internet specifically designed to bridge the translation gap between Tweeters. The first tool he discusses is Tweetdeck, the desktop tool that you may be using already to monitor your Twitter traffic. What most people don’t know, he says, is that Tweetdeck has a built-in language support option that you can find in the “Services” area. It also allows you to “un-translate.” Next, Cohen discusses the hootsuiteiphone app for iPhone. He calls it a “quick way to translate incoming tweets to your native language while on the go.”

Another web-based tool that Cohen likes is Twaitter, an update scheduler that also has Google Translate services embedded into its programming. Type an update, click the language you want it to translate to, and send. Cohen saves the most recent service for last. Tweetmeme, the popular retweet tool, recently announced that it has added Google Translate tools as well.

Reputation Management a Staple of Any Link Building Service, Expert Says

Tom Leung of Marchex, a guest commentator on SearchEngineLand.com, says that reputation management is one of the most important strategies offered by link building services to companies today. In his article “My Business Got a Bad Review. Now What?” Leung writes that in today’s social media climate, everyone’s a critic, so It’s more important than ever to monitor how your business is being discussed on places like Twitter, Yelp, Citysearch, Facebook, etc. He says that while larger companies have entire departments dedicated to monitor consumer comments and react to both positive and negative feedback, middle-sized and small businesses have their work cut out for them.

However, rather than take up a lot of time you don’t have monitoring the internet, Leung suggests four steps that can lessen your need for reputation management in the long run.

• First, make sure that all of your online listings are up to date.


• Second, take note of what your customers are saying about you online – both negatives and positives.


• Third, get involved in the online communities where your customers make comments about you.


• Finally, use customer feedback to improve your business.

Leung sites a restaurant example. If you see many comments that lunchtime service is too slow, hire another server. This analogy can be used to determine trends in virtually any type of business.

New to Link Building? Les Alford at Gather.com Presents Three Keys to Success

Les Alford, writing at Gather.com, offers up three Link Building Techniques to Help You Succeed. For starters, he highly recommends social media sites as a great way to get backlinks. You’re allowed to put links to your site to your profile page. Every profile you open should have a user name that reflects your business in some way – the actual name, your brands, a corporate description, etc. Next, Alford recommends using voting and social bookmarking websites to raise awareness of your site. He refers to these sites as currently being “all the rage,” since they are constantly being updated.

So submitting your links to these social bookmarks means you have the chance of acquiring backlinks from authority sites. Plus, the more you’re voted for on sites like Digg and Reddit, the more the search engines see you. Finally, Alford suggests submitting your site to web directories. While it takes a lot of time to do, it’s time well spent because directories usually give you plenty of good backlinks for all of your work and time. Overall, he says that any link building strategy will work best when you take your time. Don’t arouse suspicion in the link spiders by building links too quickly. It could come back to bite you and spoil all the time you spent doing it right.

Garrett French Helps You Maximize Your Link Building Potential

All opportunities to add to your link building strategy can be helpful. Garrett French of Ontolo.com recently revealed 5 steps to maximize the value of every opportunity on searchengineland.com. The first step is to identify link prospects that require some outreach. This includes requesting resource additions to available lists and roundups. These sites may add your link to their site if they find that your content is worth reading and recommending.

It is also important to gather as much information about your potential link partners before you reach out to them. This information is usually easy to obtain but it can take some time to collect and absorb. The next step is to create link building outreach emails that are customized to each company you are trying to contact, with information on why they should connect to your site. Ultimately, you can receive four possible responses: an approval, a refusal, a counter offer or no answer at all. Be prepared to react to all four.

For an approval, immediately send a thank you note and do other things to start building a relationship. Send a note as well to the refusals, and find out what’s keeping them from linking to you. If you get a counter offer, be prepared to send out one of your own. An “ignore” could mean your subject line was lousy, your prospect is away or one of a million other reasons. Follow up with another note calling attention to the fact that you never heard from them. Finally, keep intrinsic notes for further follow-ups with all four groups. These steps will all help you to grow and benefit from your more quickly and efficiently.

Article Describes Five Types of Link Building You Should Always Use

Walk into any link building company anywhere in the world and ask them what's the most important thing you can do to increase your ranking quickly. Chances are, you'll get different answers from everyone you ask. But a recent article on SearchEngineJournal.com highlights the 5 types of Link Building that you should have at your disposal from day one. Author Kristi Hines says that for starters, traffic-generating links are the most important. These may not even be links that raise your rankings, per se. Their purpose is to expose your website to pages with higher traffic. These links can include such things as embedded links, banner ads, forum posts, blogs, etc.


Links that elevate your SERPs do effect your rankings. So it's vital to get dofollow links on pages relevant to yours. Links that boost your page rank can also be beneficial. The more dofollow links you have on high PageRank sites, the higher your PageRank will eventually go. Links that help you build or reestablish your reputation – usually embedded links using the name of your business –are also an excellent link-building tool. Finally, backlink to your backlinks! The more links leading to your support links translates into more total links back to your site. Take it from any link building service you talk to – these five link-building guidelines are essential.

A recent post on the British blog econsultancy.com discusses “Three Killer Tactics for Creative Link Building.” Author Gary Preston reveals three different and unique ways that companies have been building links, using a “dash of customer insight, a pinch of target media knowledge” and some slick idea pitching. He says that using creative link building methods can be your “holy grail” for editorial links.

The first of the three tactics, “Interactive Video Content,” uses the creation of a “digital catwalk” at a fashion show as an example. Viewers received a front-row view, and a “hotspot” feature enables you to click on any piece of clothing in the show to receive immediate information about it. Method number two, a digital “badge,” is a promotional graphic to your site that third party sites are asked to embed and incentivize. Companies are likely to give you the link because the badge has an air of importance about it. Method three, the feature pitch, is a method of getting online magazines with relevant content so interested in your product or service that they do a feature article about you.

Preston says successful feature pitches offer stories that are extremely relevant and exclusive. The more attention grabbing your subject, the better chance you have of being covered on that site, which will include a link. It’s one of the more ambitious link building services offered, but one that can work well if you put enough time into it.