SEO is synonymous with ranking on the first SERP page in Google. Optimizing a site for Google means getting links, many links, no matter what. Defining and redefining SEO will not change the way these people perceive it. This is not an article for them. Those webmasters who optimize solely for Google are basically targeting only 70% of the search engine market, and disregarding the rest.

This is for those who have heard of social networking but don’t exactly know how it applies to SEO and want to use all possible SEO channels to drive more traffic and to gain more customers. This article will prove what “real” SEO value is to be expected from services like Twitter.

Does twitter Pass Any Link Juice?

Since Twitter started gaining popularity the question about its “SEO value” has been on the minds of many webmasters who obviously want to boost their placement into Google’s SERPs. But using Twitter for “link juice” is a lost battle in Google’s ranking methodology.

Twitter adds a “nofollow” attribute to links submitted by its users. The “nofollow” attribute advises Google, and a few other search engines, to ignore the link. Some of these follow the links but exclude them from their ranking calculations (Yahoo!, Google); some ignore the links completely (MSN). The only known search engine that doesn’t comply with Google’s “nofollow” at all is Ask.com. This example alone shows that Google’s algorithms are not the gospel for all search engines.

According to compete.com, Ask.com owns about 2.5% of the search engine market share. The same source shows that in November 2008 there were 255 million search queries on Ask.com. This is nothing compared to 7235 millions on Google, but can you seriously disregard a source of such traffic? Ask.com is a potential gate for visitors that could convert into customers.

So let’s ask the question again, shall we? Does Twitter pass any link juice? For Ask.com it does.

Do tinyURL Shortened URLs Have SEO Value?

The short answer is yes. TinyURLs are dynamically created URLs that redirect users to the real URL via 301 (permanent redirect). Search engines do not index TinyURLs, but index and pass PageRank to the actual URLs instead. The problem with Twitter, as we already discussed, is the “nofollow” attribute added to all submitted links.

Are There Any Other Possible SEO Advantages with Twitter?

As I already said, SEO is not only about building links. Optimizing a site is about creating and promoting content that can be regarded as a resource. “Creating” is “onsite SEO.” “Promoting” is “offsite SEO.”

Every time you submit your site to a directory you “promote it” – meaning that you do “offsite SEO.” Every time a link to your site is published somewhere on the web a gate to your site is being opened. People don’t care about “nofollow” attributes. If they see a link and they think the content it leads to is interesting, they follow.

When visitors land on a page from an exterior link some other metrics are affected: number of unique visitors, number of page views, and time on site. These metrics matter for the search engines more and more; since all other variables are so easily gamed (links and keywords are all subject to spam and black hat SEO strategies).

To make a long story short: although Twitter is a social media tool meant to create community and relationships, it does have an SEO value. For example, Twitter can affect positively your Alexa rankings by sending visitors to your pages. Usage data is a sign of quality for Google and all the other search engines. If you can make people come to your site via Twitter, then this is an SEO advantage you cannot afford to miss.

I’ve often spoken about different link-building strategies. Generally, we can break them down into two categories: chasing links vs. link baiting (letting them chase you). Both methods have their pros and cons, and I’ve found that a mixed approach of link acquisition and link baiting is the best method.  I’m going to talk  about how each works and the best startegy to use. Whether you are a link chaser or the one who chases, both strategies are important to any link building campaign.

The Thrill of the Chase

Chasing links is the traditional way of building links. This includes things like submitting your site to directories, creating press releases, submitting articles and comments with your site link and anchor text, and other strategies. While it’s the most common way to acquire links, it’s also the most time-consuming, labor-intensive approach. But who is going to disparage a tried and true technique with results?

Step 1: Identifying link targets. First off it’s important to consider and research the links that are most valuable to your site. One way to do this is to look through search engine results to see the top spots for your keywords, and attempting to acquire links from those sites. Another way is to look at your competitors and see what links they are getting (Yahoo Site Explorer is great for this). Personally, I like the latter method because you know that if your competitor obtained a link, surely you can too.

Step 2: Categorize your target sites. There are different kinds of sites and each will require a unique approach, so you should look at where the most valuable links are coming from. Are they from blogs or news items? From link directories or review sites? By understanding the kinds of links you’re after, you can nail down your approach and employ specific strategies.

Step 3: Approaching the link target. As with any chase, approaching the target deftly and surely is of great importance. Press releases, for instance, have a particular format and style. Your success rate will be higher if you follow the guidelines and focus on a specific, newsworthy idea. Link directories also have their own rules and guidelines. Read them carefully and make certain you meet the qualifications before submitting. (Notice that I am assuming that the directory will review your site. That’s because a directory without an editorial board, one that lets every site in, probably isn’t worth your time as it will be demoted by search engines, either now or sometime soon.) Some blogs accept paid reviews, but probably the best ones won’t. Study what authority sites are already linking to so that you have the right idea of what to present them with. Always get the right contact information, an email address or phone number, and do things in an individual, personal, and personable manner. The chase of link building is a refined art!

Pros

Chasing after links allows you to be more selective and gives you greater control over your link structure and link text. It’s going to be naturally high quality and diverse.

Cons

The obvious con is the time and labor required to get the link. Chasing after links isn’t something you want to be outsourcing because it requires personal rapport. It necessitates having your own voice and building a connection with representatives of other sites. Clearly it also takes a whole lot of time and patience.

Link Exchange Caution

Sometimes when you ask for a link, the site owner or blogger wants something in return, including a link back to their site. While this is standard practice, you don’t want to get involved in too many link exchanges because it could create an artificial-looking link profile. This is especially true if you use the same keyword-rich anchor text every time. Search engines are getting better at noticing this. Get your brand name out there first, and then start with keyword anchor texts.

The Pleasure of Being Chased

A less traditional but highly effective way of getting links is doing just the opposite—getting people to link directly to you without asking. Often called link baiting, the idea is to create viral content so powerful that it attracts links. This might come in the form of a useful step-by-step guide, a widget, an online tool, or a really funny viral video. All of these call for a slightly different strategy, but it’s always a similar process. Clearly, it also requires creativity and it involves more risk, but there are experts who can help you take a good idea where it needs to go.

Step 1: Identify the influencers. Instead of link targets, we identify the influencers. These are the what Rand Fishkin calls the linkerati. They are the people who will talk about your content, include a link, and by the sheer volume of people who view their sites, you’ll get even more links. Social media sites are probably some of the best sources for influencers (Digg, StumbleUpon, Sphinn, etc.). A lot of journalists and other people interested in news go to these sites.

Step 2: Choosing your content. You must understand which kinds of content do well on those sites, but the basic idea is quite obvious. I’ve spoken before about creating content that drives emotion—stuff that is often even controversial. That’s what gets people excited and talking. Of course controversial content may not be right for your particular brand, but that doesn’t mean you can’t come up with interesting resources. Often you can look at things that have done well before and decide how you can make something better or go at it from a different angle.

Step 3: Promoting the content. Submit your content to social sites or other places where you can get exposure. Titles are very important in social media because it encourages people to read and some people vote based just on that. It’s also a good idea to begin building relationships with power users, or become one yourself—power users have more of a following on social media sites so they get more votes, increasing your chances for exposure and links. I’d like to be one myself, but I barely have enough time to blog!

Pros

When successful, a good link bait will yield a massive amount of links. Ultimately, it requires less effort and is more cost effective. People will link to you with lots of different kinds of anchor text and from many different kinds of sites, giving you a very natural link profile.

Cons

While the pros are really outstanding and hard to ignore, link baiting is more risky. You’re not guaranteed to be successful and, more than likely, it will take you a few tries to learn the ropes. The results are also unpredictable; you could get just one or two links, or hundreds. Finally, it bears mentioning that you’ll have little control over your link structure and link text. While I’ve stressed that you don’t want an artificial link structure, the point really is about ranking for specific keywords. A bunch of random traffic will get you hits, but not necessarily for the keywords you truly want.

Adjusting to both strategies

The secret to link building truly rests in finding the proper mix of both chasing links and being chased. I don’t think that link acquisition should be an either/or scenario. I recommend starting with 50/50 investment both in time and money for each type of link acquisition. Diversifying is also a sound strategy for your budget because, after all, link baiting may be cost-effective, but it’s risky. Eventually you may want to shift to something more like 80/20 for what works for you and your site. In my experience, this is inevitably viral content and link baiting, but I’d be curious to hear your thoughts.

Google has made a slew of improvements within his past week such as including banner ads in search results and reading dynamic URL’s as reported last week.

One of the most important technical tools any SEO should use is the free Google Webmaster tools. This gives you a great deal of performance data to ensure Google is properly crawling and indexing your site. For those of you already familiar with the tool, you may have noticed a few improvements within the last day or so. The UI has been tweaked a bit but I noticed they removed the “date last crawled” feature in the overview section. This feature is critical to make sure Googlebot is visiting the site as often as possible. If a site hasn’t been crawled in a few weeks, changes can be made for the spiders to revisit but without knowing, myself and everyone else out there is in the dark.

That’s the downside to this update. As for the improvements, you can now use the tool to set a geographic location. Basically what this means is you can use the target tool to provide Google with information that will help determine how your site appears in Google’s country-specific search results, and also improves the search results for geographic queries. This is beneficial because once Google starts to understand your target audience, it can potentially optimize results to ensure you are reaching your intended audience. For instance I’m from a small town outside of Buffalo, NY called Angola. Well, there is a country called Angola as well which is a big geographical difference. If I create a site and all the info on the site just says, “Angola” including titles tags, meta info etc, Google is confused as to where I intent to target. Not to mention, there are most likely other Angola’s in the US. If someone goes to Google as types in “Angola” there could be numerous results in there. If I go into Webmaster tools and specify my geo-targeted location as Angola, NY, it will now that’s where my audience is. My take on this, is that it is very similar to the Adwords PPC side of things. Very similar but it’s bringing you geo-qualified traffic for free!

A few other additions are and updated to their GData API. This is for high-level programmers who can use the API key to create custom reporting functions across multiple clients. Great for an agency but again, a experience programmer is required!
Google Webmasters Blog highlights everything with a few explanations.

I must admit that link building is not my forte and continue to learn new ways of getting good quality links for clients. When starting and linking strategy, there is one important thing to stay focused on and that’s getting quality and relevant links.

Many paid submission companies out there say “Let us list you in 1000 directories for $xx.95″ (or .99) and even say get listed on quality sites as well. If you are not familiar with SEO, this may sound like a good and efficient idea but it isn’t. Most of these places create automatic submission tools that target a database of junk sites and only give one keyword or description. When search engines follow these links from these sites to yours, they read the anchor text and will find out that it is all the same. In this event, a site would be penalized, worse yet banned because they appear as spam sites. So my advise is to build links yourself the long way to ensure quality trumps quantity. Enough of that, as I’m tired so I leave you with more link building best practices from the “God of Link building,” Eric Ward. More Link Building Here

Link building is key during an SEO campaign and can either hurt or help. I have to admit I am  a novice and continue to learn new techniques everyday. One place I get good info from Search Engine Land . The link building guru, Eric Ward is a supposed God when it comes to link building campaigns. Now I know that I am no authority on link building but it doesn’t seem that involved, just a great deal of time and thought.

The basic objective of a link building campaign is to get quality links from sites that have credibility and of course, a good Page Rank but how do you go about getting these?

Well, I was dealing with a campaign recently where we needed some type of inbound linking strategy. Myself and two others came together to formulate a plan but none of us had any background in linking. Our first course of action was to evaluate the clients competition and see what sites they had links present. I created a spreadsheet with of course, URL, PageRank and if it was relevant to the client’s products. After that, we crafted a few email templates for the link request. Oh, I forgot to mention, we couldn’t do a reciporcal AND the link had to be free! My initial thought was what incentive do these people have to place a free link from a site they have no affiliation with and no link love back?

So we tried it out anyway and reached out by email or their site contact form. I believe the email had a salesish title with something like “Provided added-value to your viewers by linking to blah, blah, blah” Now to me, that sound like one of the many emails I get everyday for a little blue pill. We also had a tab on the spreadsheet to keep track of attempts to reach them and if they responded. A week went by with about 3 attempts each and nothing. We then regrouped and thought of other ways to get links. I looked into publishers and found Text Link Ads. They sent me a proposal and most of the site had a Page Rank no more than 4 and not 1 had anything to do with the client’s products. Oh, and the cost? almost $700 per month!!! Yeah, we shot that down pretty quick. I suggested to skip the sales approach and come right out and ask for advertising. What’s the worst that can happen? They say either no flat out or request money.

I spent a day coming up with a few drafts with the subject flat out saying, “Interested in advertising opportunities on blah blah blah.com.” Guess what I got 5 responses within 4 hours, (all wanting money of course, but it was at least a start). We needed to get some type of result quick becuase the monthly client meeting was in a few days.

A few days ago, I mentioned the only link building I have done in the past is basic directory submissions. Now I know many SEO’s say directory submission don’t hold that much value anymore but we were at a loss. I did a great deal of digging and found a service that does the submissions for you, called Lazy URL. I contacted them to see what the deal is and they seem like a legit place. They have different tiers of packages but give you a listing of the directories they submit to and you create the login to check them. Now from working on directory submissions in the past, it can be a tedious process so this fee may outweigh the time involved for you to do it manually. They also have a list of the directories they submit to for free if you want to do it on your own it’s right here.

We’re still working on it so I’ll keep you posted.