Two of our articles this week focus on linkbait. Monday's feature asked what might seem like a ridiculous question: is linkbait good or bad? Believe it or not, it isn't automatically good; there are some disadvantages associated with linkbait, and if you don't take those into consideration from the very beginning, you may not get the results you expect. On Wednesday we followed that theme with an article that discusses the kind of hard work that goes into building good linkbait. On Tuesday we served up some Google-related news. The company has been hammered by its competitors in recent months, but just keeps shrugging it off. How long can the search engine keep taking blows?

We go for the details in the SEO-related tutorials that we're highlighting for you this week from Tutorialized. We look at effective ways to build back links, optimize your titles, work with meta tags, and even offer up an SEO dictionary so you can follow all the jargon. We have plenty of other great tutorials for you on Tutorialized as well. Why not check them out today?

Our Thread of the Week covers a concern common to anyone who is building a new web site. Sometimes Google indexes the site before we're quite ready for it. It feels a little like getting caught with our pants down. What should we do when that happens? Blocking Google is an option, but do we really want to do that? And if we do, how long will it take after we get our site fully ready before Google comes along and indexes the site properly? Stop by the thread and weigh in with your suggestions for the best approach.

Finally, our Spotlight, just for readers of our newsletter, looks at the problem of putting all your eggs in one basket -- a basket named Google. It's not a wise approach, but many small businesses still do it, thus risking their livelihood every time the search engine twitches and their ranking drops. This is no way to run a business, whether it's Internet-based or brick-and-mortar. Business owners in this kind of precarious position seriously need to consider diversifying. How? Scroll down to the Spotlight for some excellent ideas.

Until next time,
SEO Chat Staff

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All White Papers.

SEO Index

Building Linkbait? Do Your Homework

Google Taking Blows

Is Linkbait Good or Bad?

    SEO on Tutorialized

 SEO Thread of The Week

 SEO Chat News Spotlight

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Building Linkbait? Do Your Homework
by Terri Wells -- 2008-01-16

So you haven’t been happy with the results of your conventional link building or link trading campaign. Or maybe your web site is very new and you want to be discovered quickly. You think linkbait will get you there the easy way. Think again.

There is nothing “easy” about linkbait. For readers new to search engine optimization who haven’t heard the word before, linkbait is content that is interesting enough to inspire many people to link to it and even send links to their friends. Indeed, it is designed with the idea of increasing traffic to a particular web site.

There are several parts to a good campaign that uses linkbait. Every one of them requires a certain amount of work, whether it’s research or writing or programming or what have you. If you’re really clever and creative, you can speed up the process a little. If you’re not afraid to be controversial, and can rant creatively without alienating too many people, you might even be able to speed it up a lot.

Read Building Linkbait? Do Your Homework

Google Taking Blows
by Michael Lowry -- 2008-01-15

Google is no stranger to competition. It has come up through the ranks like a young boxing phenom plowing his way through all adversaries to become champion. So needless to say, Google can not be intimidated by confrontation. Like any smart business, they capitalize on any advantage their opponents give them. This article will examine some of the most recent blows (sucker punches?) they have given and received, and how they handle the referees judging the fight

Now entering the ring, weighing in at over 9.1 million articles and standing 253 languages tall, it's the "hard-cover killer," the "reference rapist," "DJ Wiki Wiki Wawa," Wikiiipediaaa! And the crowd goes wild. I know, for me, Wikipedia is one of my favorite sites, and not just for reference. People say the Internet killed the need for people to actually know anything; they can just look it up on the web and forget about it later. Well if that's the case, Wikipedia gave it the death blow. Anyone who's been in school recently knows that professors (the traditionalists) have been desperately trying to hold it back, but clearly there's no stopping a juggernaut, be it the idea of user-created reference content or Wikipedia itself.

After Google's latest announcement, we might have to go with the former. I mean if anything can stop a juggernaut, it's another juggernaut. Although it is yet to be released, Google's new "knol" tool will work by acquiring articles from random users, who will have their names added as credit. The authors can then permit ads to appear alongside the article for a share in the revenue. And like Wikipedia, other users can edit, rate, and comment on the articles.

Read Google Taking Blows

Is Linkbait Good or Bad?
by Terri Wells -- 2008-01-14

The term “linkbait” has been around at least since 2005. Nick Wilson is sometimes credited with coining the term. It’s a great way to lure visitors to your site, but some SEO authorities now claim that it’s not such a good idea. Who’s right?

This is no small question, because the answer determines where a site owner must invest his time, money and effort. For those who are somewhat lost right now, “linkbait” is content that has been created with the intention of attracting lots of interest. Linkbait creators hope their content is discussed (and linked to) in lots of blogs, submitted to social sites such as Digg, and so forth. Dedicated linkbait creators even participate actively in social sites and post comments on blogs to help spread the word. If their linkbait goes viral, they’re ecstatic.

Aside from a sort of popularity contest aspect, linkbait doesn’t truly have a down side. Or does it? Aaron Wall posted in his blog last month that he believes linkbait is the new version of a reciprocal links page. I’ll get to the details of why he believes that in a moment. Right now, I’m not going to say he’s wrong; he’s been writing about SEO a lot longer than I have, after all, and delved into the subject far more deeply. In short, he’s an expert.

Read Is Linkbait Good or Bad?

Tutorialized has a dedicated SEO section for Search Optimization, Website Marketing, and many other SEO/SEM related tutorials.

Effective Ways To Build Backlinks
Learn how to create effective backlinks to your site.
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Macronimous- Practical web design SEO Techniques :: Download Free Complete SEO E-Book
Free E-Book teaches you the practical techniques used by SEO Experts.
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SEO Dictionary
There are many SEO terms which a self starter of SEO will not understand this article will help SEO...
Read the tutorial.

Title Optimization
Search Engine Optimization is easy, if you understand what you are doing.
Read the tutorial.

Understanding Meta Tags
Preparing your web pages with meta tags for effective search engine submission and ranking.
Read the tutorial.

Blocking site to Google during development - good idea?

I'm in the middle of developing my site. Google has already started to index it. If I prevent googlebot from indexing my site then:

a. How long should it take before I am removed from the index? (next crawl I guess)

b. When I finally finish developing my website and decide to re-allow google to crawl my website how long will it take to have my site indexed?

Is there a difference between the time taken for Google to index a site when it's new and when it was previously indexed but subsequently blocked? (Maybe googlebot doesn't check the site as frequently when it knows a site has been blocked).

Please note: you'll only get it deindexed if you use the meta name="robots" content="noindex, noarchive" command. Next crawl maybe Don't be tempted to use robots.txt .... if googlebot doesn't crawl your pages, that doesn't mean the pages will be deindexed. Especially not if there are links (any links) pointing to it.

As far as b, that depends on how many links you'll point to it at that stage.

I would not worry too much about being indexed before your site is totally completed. It, your site page(s), will likely not be in the top of any SERPs without backlinks AND being indexed starts the clock on site age.

Posts from this thread may have been abridged or removed. Forum members are responsible for the content of these posts.
Read the full thread.

Don't Put All Your Eggs in Google

Nearly every week in the SEO Chat forums, we see a thread or two from members whose rankings in Google just disappeared. They often lose serious income as a result. While we're very sympathetic to the pain and suffering that causes, it's worth noting that the site often reappears in the next 24 to 48 hours - and one can only hope they learned a lesson in that time.

The lesson, of course, is not to rely on Google for all the traffic and sales for your small business. To quote gazzahk, one of our more respected forum members, "I am constantly amazed at how many people are willing to pace their whole business model and [livelihood] on a single search engine ranking. This is...just plain foolishness." If you are fortunate enough to have a good search engine ranking, you can assume you will lose it at some point - and you'd better be prepared for it.

You can prepare by thinking now how a percentage of your income can be used to diversify your customer sources. You can also use a percentage of your income to consolidate and diversify your positions in the search engines (maybe try for more keywords). Gazzahk suggests thinking about pay-per-click campaigns, advertising on other high-traffic sites, paying for SEO services, advertising in media other than the Internet, and diversifying your product range.

The alternative is having a heart attack every time you see your SERPs take a dive in Google - and rest assured, at some point they will. Google doesn't care about your business, and Google can't be controlled. It is best, as SEO_AM, another respected SEO Chat forum member notes, to think of Google as one customer or distributor, and a potentially fickle one at that, ready to feature your competitor over you at any time. Remember, there are only 10 spots on the first page of the SERPs. That alone should have you looking for other places where you can also be seen by potential customers.

Read the thread on this topic

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