Welcome to the latest edition of the SEO Chat newsletter. As I write these words, the Microsoft-Yahoo dance looks as if it will be drawing to its climax very soon. The latest moves included Microsoft threatening to walk away from buying Yahoo entirely, and a leak saying that Yahoo might accept Microsoft's offer as is. With this kind of love/hate relationship going on before the wedding, can anyone doubt the marriage itself would be stormy? The whole situation smells of desperation on both sides, and that's no way to start a relationship -- or run a merger.

While we're holding off on writing more about this situation until it reaches some kind of definitive resolution one way or another, we have plenty of other articles for you this week. I'll start with the one we're highlighting for you from eWeek. The shootings at Virginia Tech frightened many colleges and universities into spending money on voicemail and/or texting alert programs. How are the students reacting to these programs? The answer might surprise you. Curious? Click on the link and check it out.

Our most recent article covered linkbait -- specifically, it discussed some of the characteristics you'll find in good linkbait. If you're trying to build content that will lure visitors to your site and get them to link, you'll find some good advice here. On Tuesday we started a two-part series on basic SEO. The first part covered what search engines love to see. You can guess what we'll cover in the second part, and you won't want to miss either one. Finally, you'll definitely want to read Monday's article if you run a site that relies on user-generated content to any degree. One of the best legal protections for the owners of such sites faces challenges from two lawsuits. We're not lawyers here, but we cover the implications as well as we can.

We're highlighting some excellent tips and tricks for you with this week's assortment of SEO-related tutorials from Tutorialized. Learn how to optimize Flash content, correctly do a 301 permanent redirect, get listed in Google and Yahoo in 24 hours, and more. Just point your browser to Tutorialized and check out these and other tutorials on the site today.

Our Thread of the Week deals with a potentially scary version of Google bowling. What do you do if it looks like some black hat SEOs are trying to undo all of the white hat SEO work you did climbing to the top of the SERPs? If you're an SEO Chat forum member, you go to the forums and ask for help. And you get it, too. Stop by the thread today and share your advice.

Finally, our Spotlight, just for readers of our newsletter, looks into the steps involved in making changes to a site that has been performing well for years but has started under-performing recently. The challenge is to overhaul the site without jeopardizing its still-decent performance. How do you accomplish this? Scroll down to the Spotlight to find out.

Thanks again for reading.

Until next time,
SEO Chat Staff

• What does Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds think about China allowing two WoW players bear the Olympic torch? Here's a hint: NERRRRDDDDDDDSS!
• Can Gohan and Vegita from Dragonballz really stop hackers from taking out CNN? You bet your tenchi boudakai they can.
• Video killed the radio star. Is the internet next? Duhn Dun Dun!
• How does Russian Tech Reviewer Yakov feel about HDTV and digital photo frames? All your borscht r belong to him!

Watch the video!

I wanted to call this article "Seven Habits of Highly Successful Linkbait," but I did not put in the survey work involved. I have seen and read a lot of linkbait, though, to say nothing of the number of articles I have read about creating linkbait. As near as I can tell, linkbait that does well for the site owner that originates it often has seven specific qualities.

Before I get into those qualities, let me review what linkbait is for those of you who are new to search engine optimization. Linkbait is nothing more than a specialized form of content, though it could also be a widget or other small application. It is designed to attract visitors and get them to link to your site, thus raising your standing in the search engine results page. Links to linkbait are usually posted through social media websites, blog comments, etc. in the hope of creating some kind of buzz.

Most linkbait creators also hope it will increase general interest in their site. The idea is that visitors will come to check out the linkbait, but stay when they see other content that intrigues them, and maybe convert (subscribe to a newsletter, buy a product, etc). In other words, while linkbait will generate a spike of visitors, most site owners hope for a lasting increase in the number of visitors, and that the drop-off at the other end of the spike does not go all the way back down to pre-linkbait levels. That is a tall order. How do you accomplish this?

Read Seven Important Qualities for Good Linkbait

Basic SEO: What Search Engines Love
by Michael Lowry
2008-04-22

This article will give you a beginner's guide to optimizing your site for search engines. It will focus specifically on what the search engines will be looking for when reading and indexing your site. These are things you will definitely want to utilize, or at least consider. So if you are a novice web designer, or just want to refresh some of the basic concepts, come join us.

Before you even begin to design your website, I highly recommend reading this entire article, along with the second part, which deals with what search engines hate. Aside from this, the only other prerequisite is that you or your web designer know and understand basic HTML and Cascading Style Sheets. Feel free to rummage through the Dev Articles archives for a wide variety of articles covering these two languages.

The first thing to consider is what hosting company to use. A good hosting company will put your site on their web server and register your domain name. Make sure you pick a company that allows you to upload web pages that you've created on your own; it is vital to have control over the HTML on your pages. The company should also let you use your own domain name. And finally, they should offer some log-analysis tool, which tells you the number of visitors you had and how they got there. Web Hosters should have several articles in its archives that discuss how to choose a hosting company.

Read Basic SEO: What Search Engines Love

Legal Tides Changing for User-Generated Content
by Terri Wells
2008-04-21

Many civil libertarians will tell you that there were certain problems with the 1996 Telecommunications Act, but there is one part of it that every ISP and owner of a UGC-based web site loves. Now two rulings threaten to weaken that part of the Act. Should you be concerned?

I am referring to Section 230 of what has been commonly called the Communications Decency Act. Wikipedia discusses it in laymans terms, more or less. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has an excellent page on Section 230 with an explanation of how it applies to bloggers.

The actual text of Section 230 that is relevant to providers of user-driven sites such as MySpace and YouTube says that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." In short, if I upload a nasty video to YouTube that makes fun of Disney, the entertainment company can not sue YouTube; they are supposed to sue me. (If I am violating copyright, there is also the little matter of DMCA takedown notices, but that is another law and an entirely different can of worms).

Read Legal Tides Changing for User-Generated Content

Tutorialized is dedicated to programming, designing, and many other
tech related tutorials.

SEO for Flash Optimization
While Flash content is attractive, it is not the case for spiders. Learn how to do it right!
Read the tutorial.

Get Listed In Google & Yahoo in 24 Hours
There seem to be a lot of doubters about getting listed in 24 hours.
Read the tutorial.

301 Permanent Redirect
301 Permanent Redirect is very useful when you migrate your website. Learn how to use them.
Read the tutorial.

SEO Tips - Top Ten
A top ten list of tips to keep your head above water in SEO. Easy to read and understand.
Read the tutorial.

Choosing Right SEO Service for Your Company
SEO service can be crucial to your business. Choose the right one!
Read the tutorial.

SEO Myth and Mistakes. Do Not Repeat them. Avoid Them
How to get the number position in search ranking.
Read the tutorial.

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When you've earned a high spot in the SERPs through white hat SEO, you have every reason to feel pride. It's understandable that you'll want to defend all that hard work. So what do you do if someone appears to be using black hat SEO techniques to threaten your position directly -- not by making their site appear to be more relevant, but by making yours appear to be LESS relevant? It's a variation on Google bowling that concerns the original poster. Be sure to stop by the thread and offer your advice.

Someone using my URL in forums as their homepage!!!?!

Hey I just checked my back links today and they went up a couple hundred over the weekend. I found out there is some one posting my domain as their homepage on a couple of forums...WTF?

Is this their way of trying to sabotage my website?

I currently rank number three for a very tough KW that is filled with black hat competition. I happen to be the only site that is using white hat tactics in the top 20 other than Wikipedia and few other very credible domains.

Could these extra links hurt me?

Should I try to contact the forum moderator and get them removed or just leave them there and play the game that no link is a bad link?

The more I'm looking at these links the more it's worrying me, they are all unrelated, so could that start to dilute my present situation in which 80% of my links are related and cause me to lose ranking? Or should I start being worried that all of the forum moderators may be getting pissed and find the time to report to google themselves since they likely think its me doing the posting? Man, I've got myself all worked up now. They are making me look Black hat, I couldn't even report it to Google because how would I prove what links I created and which i didn't?

WHAT DO I DO?

Hmmm. I do not think the link could hurt you directly but it may hurt you indirectly. Like if this guy is a scumbag and doing bad things in your name it could hurt your name. You could get manually added to lists as a spammer, crook etc... I know from experience that it appears quite easy to get a SEO company a bad name on this board by deceptively trying to solicit members by recommending a company that is then found out to be yours. Thus one could hurt your name as an SEO on this board by 'faking that effect'. This could be the person's goal...

They may be trying an experiment of Google bowling on your site. Personally I don't believe this can be done but I would not want someone experimenting on my site to see if it could be. The one experiment I did see carried out on this forum a couple of years ago in this area did successfully Google bowl a member's site.

I'd PM or email the guy first and ask what is the story myself first. It may just be a friend/family member trying to help you out with a free link...

Better to act from a more informed position than an ill-informed one IMO.

No it's definitely someone I don't know; in fact I see similarities in certain things with some of the spammers that also go after my KW. The guy(s) are from the Dominican Republic and Lebanon. I thought at first it was only a bunch of links from one or two forums, but I have new memberships at over 100 forums...maybe more. How the hell would I contact the moderator on all of them? I'd PM the guy, but I think it may just encourage him to go further, I know these guys have some automated scripts that are making these memberships/posts...

I'm lost as to what to do, BTW I also edited my original post with some other new findings/questions.

Could I even begin to report this to Google or something? How would I prove which links are mine and which are not? Would G even care?

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

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Upgrading Your Site: A Few Cautionary Notes

What do you do when a site that has been performing well starts slacking? That's the problem faced by Olimess, one of our SEO Chat forum members recently. His site was ranked number one in Google for some time, but in the last year he's noticed some changes with regards to Google SERP, Google algorithm, the increase and level of competition, our traffic and our conversion rate. Obviously he wants to improve his traffic and conversion rate, but he doesn't want to risk sliding further. What should he do?

Well, the first step is to find out why his conversion rate has been dropping. He'll need to set up a full tracking system so he can follow visitors from their entry points through their exit points. He needs to know how they found their way to the site, how they interacted with it, and so on. He needs to get enough information to tell which key words lead to the most sales, which terms lead to the least sales, and any kind of flow to the traffic (times of day or month when traffic is very heavy or very light). Questionnaires can also help with getting important feedback.

Olimess plans to roll out the upgrade in stages. Especially since his competition seems to be gaining on him, he's going to change the look of his site while keeping the majority of the content and link structure intact. The web site looks like it came out of the 70s while the layout and navigation are not intuitive, he explained. While that probably won't affect his SERP ranking, it may affect his conversion rate. The next step will involve improving the site's content and structure, followed by adding more sections and information to make the site more comprehensive. After that he plans to solicit links.

It's a good approach. Olimess will have to be careful when it comes to page names and such. As another of our forum members notes, Google ranks pages by their exact name so changing the name will reset the page to 0 and you will lose any back links that were pointing to that page, because now they would be pointing to the wrong page. If any page names to need to be changed, Olimess should set up an appropriate 301 redirect from the old pages to the new ones. And it's also wise that Olimess is first trying to tackle the on-page optimization, which he can control, rather than linking, which is somewhat beyond his control. His careful organization during this rebuild will pay off in the long run with a more competitive web site.

Read the thread for this article.