5 Quick SEO Link Tweaks

Going to keep this quite short and sweet and show you some really quick ways on how to get some SEO love.

This is by NO MEANS an SEO guide!

These are not for you if you are just setting up a new site or page.

But if you need a quick push in the search engines. Or you are at position 11 and want to be in the top 10, then these work great for me:

1. Go and put a link to your website on the relevant page on Wikipaedia. They are nofollow but also v powerful.

2. Create a blogger blog and put a unique article on with a link to your main site.

3. Email the top 10 people in Google for your chosen keyword phrase. Be friendly and say something unique about their site.

4. Do 3 quality comments on related blogs.

5. Answer 5 Yahoo answer questions about your subject.

Told you it would be short 🙂

Please post any other quick tips below.

Keeping it real in an unreal world,

Ben Shaffer

Importing Posts Into Build My Rank

I realize that the following script is not going to be that useful to that many people, but if you are using iWriter to write your posts, are using BuildMyRank and also using ASP and want to import a lot of posts at the time then you may find it useful.

Not the neatest of code, but does the job and shouldn’t be hard to convert to PHP if needed.

Love to hear any comments as usual…

 

<%
” function to capitalise the first letter of each word.
Public Function Capitalize(ByVal str)
DIM arrTemp, strTemp, i
arrTemp = Split(str, ” “)
For i = 0 to Ubound(arrTemp)
strTemp = strTemp & ” ” & UCase(Left(arrTemp(i),1)) & LCase(Mid(arrTemp(i),2))
Next
Capitalize = strTemp
End Function

”Easiest way to create the csv file is to create a table, view source, save that as an xls and then save the xls as a csv

response.write “<table>”

”where on your server the articles are
Whichfolder=server.mappath(“\articles\”)

Set objFSO = CreateObject(“Scripting.FileSystemObject”)
Set objFolder = objFSO.GetFolder(Whichfolder)
Set colFiles = objFolder.Files

” I am using pp as a counter to create the date when the articles are posted. Should adjust depending on your own schedule…
pp=4
For Each objFile in colFiles
xfilename=objFile.Name

” check that it is a text file rather than zip or asp page or anything else that you dont want to process

if instr(xfilename,”.txt”) then

”find out the keyword by looking at the filename

keywords=split(xfilename,” “)

for n=0 to (ubound(keywords)-1)
keyword=keyword & ” ” & keywords(n)
next

 

”textfiles seem to be in a bit of a weird text format. Didnt work without using explicitly stating -2

” Getting the content of the textfile/article and then finding out what the title is and get rid of the author name.

set k=objFSO.opentextfile(whichfolder & “\” & xfilename,1,false,-2)
article=k.readall

lines=split(article,vbcrlf)
article=replace(article,lines(1),””)
article=replace(article,lines(0),””)
xtitle=lines(0)

”check that there is actually a title in the textfile
if lines(0)=”” then
response.write “<br>NOTITLE: ” & xfilename & “<br>”
end if

”get rid of any weird spaces that may have come up in the split and rejoin

keyword=trim(keyword)

”your link will be constructed depending on how you name your files and stuff. In my case, the file is the index file within the directory that is named after the keyword without the spaces

link=”http://www.yourdomain.com/” & replace(keyword,” “,””)

if instr(lcase(article),lcase(keyword)) then
” Put the link in the first time which the keyword phrase is found

article=replace(article,keyword,”&lt;a href=””” & link & “””&gt;” & keyword & “&lt;/a&gt;”,1,1,1)

else
”if the keyword phrase isn’t there then let us know
response.write “nonono” & xfilename
end if

‘replace the character which seems to give the xls file trouble

article=replace(article,”’”,”‘”)

” create the rows in the table
response.write “<tr><td>” & Capitalize(xtitle) & “</td><td>” & article & “</td><td>” & “01/” & pp & “/12” & “</td></tr>”

article=””
keywords=””
keyword=””
lines=””
xtitle=””
filename=””
p=p+1
pp=pp+1
if pp=15 then
pp=4
end if
end if
Next

response.write “</table>”
end if
%>

 

EDIT: Also need to check that title is between 3 and 25 words…

SEO – a new technique?

I wanted to write a post today about an SEO technique which is actually as old as the web itself, but I rarely seen written about or even alluded to.

Although it is undoubtedly something that you do know about, I see so few people actually doing it, that I thought that it could act as a reminder to actually ‘do it’.

In forums and salespages, I always here about the ‘new thing’ which is meant to help you with SEO, but at the end of the day, it does come back to the essentials, which is what this post is really about.

I think that a lot of people don’t really think logically. Do you not think that Google realizes how easy it is to blast out thousands of spammy links on blogs or forums? Or that when you are bookmarking, that is only done for SEO purposes and will (almost) never actually help anyone?

I am not saying, that these links don’t count. What I am saying though is that a proper link is worth many multiples of a manufactured link.

So, here goes…I know it’s basic stuff, but trust me it works. This really is how I have the most success with traditional SEO – but it does take a bit of work.

Step 1 – Choose a keyword (we will use ‘ironing boards’)

Step 2 – Go to google and do a search for that keyword phrase

Ironing Board Search Engine Results

Step 3 –
a. Go through the top 5 sites which are NOT obvious authority sites or sites about a general topic, but are sites about a topic which is highly relevant to your search term.

b. Go over to yahoo.com and type in for each url link:domainname.com
eg. link:betterlifestyleproducts.com

Yahoo Search

c. Click on inlinks

d. Go through each of those links and see if you can get a link from them.
The first one weirdly crashed my browser.
But the second one: http://www.thecherryblossombeauty.com/ has an email address there right at the bottom.
The eight one: http://www.killerstartups.com/Site-Reviews/5581/ has a way where you can submit your site to them to be reviewed
If you through those 27, I can almost guarantee that you will get some really high quality links

Step 4.
In the search from Step 2, go through the top 100 and see which of those sites you can get a link on.

Step 5.
Send an email to all of those potential link partners. I generally keep it ‘non-spammy’ and personal.

For example:
—————————–
Hi,

My name is Ben Shaffer and I am the owner of Killer Ironing Boards.

I came across your page at:

http://www.domainname.com/directory/page.html

and enjoyed your information about ironing covers.

I wondered if there was a possibility of putting a link to my site at:

http://ikillerironingboards.com

as I am sure that your visitors would find it interesting to find out about
the actual ironing boards if they are look for information about ironing
boards [ed. or whatever]

I look forward to hearing from you and thank you in advance.

Best Wishes,

Ben Shaffer
—————————–

Is it sexy? No
Is it salesy? No

Is it personal and personal? aha
Does it work? Yup

So, what’s my point?

I am not Google, but through my own SEO efforts, I have found again and again that building up highly relevant links one by one is far more effective than using spammy or automated or artificial techniques.

And one of the great things about it, is that it DOES take time so most other people will NOT be doing it.

Back to basics, or a waste of time?

Would love to hear your SEO tips below.

Keeping it real in an unreal world,

Ben Shaffer