Archive for May, 2007

Many have written about how to get .EDU links to your web site in the SEO blogosphere recently. The real question isn’t “does it work?”, but rather “how long will it work?” I can see where the .edu link would be assumed to be of greater value given that an educational institution can generally be trusted. But once the masses Matt Cutts senses that .EDU domains are being gamed, won’t the value be reduced just like keyword stuffing, and the other techniques that worked in the past?

This leads to a better question. Why do so many (blogging) SEO professionals feel that they need to share everything they know? Is it to impress other SEO professionals? (I know the prospective clients don’t get most of it) There are times when I think of posting something on a blog or writing an article about a certain SEO strategy, then I say to myself “wait a minute… do I really want to share that, so everyone knows that it can be done?”

Perhaps this is why people are skeptical of SEO? I mean think about all of the late night real estate gurus on TV. Don’t you ever think to yourself “hmm, if there is this much money to be made by using this technique, why is this guy such a saint to send me his “secret formula” for only $39.95?”

I know, I am given to ramble, and get off course, but I made more than one point, so I guess its worth it. So how do you get those coveted .EDU links anyhow?

For starters, you can pay for them. Here is a site that will let you flat out pay to have a .EDU blog with a URL of less than 168 characters: http://blogs.adison.edu/ If you visit this page, you will already see that the SEO folks are already at it as you can see the titles of the most recent blogs. Keep in mind, this is an “online university” so I am nit even sure how legit it is as an educational institution (hmm, more gaming?). I did a whois lookup and it goes to a P.O. Box in Colorado… (scratching my head) maybe, I should start my own blog hosting service online university.

Blog posts on .EDU domains. You can also do a search for [ "blog" site:.edu ] to find blogs on .EDU domains that you might be able to post to provided they don’t use a “no-follow” (copy the code from within the brackets to the search box)

Here are a few ideas for gaining .EDU (or any other kind of links) that shouldn’t be questioned by anyone:

1. If you are inclined to be a journalist, you can find something unique about a school and write about it. Assuming that you can create a buzz about it, you can then share the buzz with the school. It helps if you are an alumni or know someone at the school who can help you get the news to the right person to post from the schools intranet and public web site.

2. You can have your company do a fund raiser for the school. If they accept your offer, let them know that your PR department will prepare a press release and ask that they release it as well (of course you have a PR department – it’s most likely YOU). You might want to make sure they have a place that they post news first or they may just issue a press release from PRWeb or something like that and defeat the goal of getting a link from them.

3. Large Donations help and although most schools don’t take the time to link to their donors, you can get some good press from the school.

That’s all for now.

Did you know that there is actually a software program out there that can look at your Google Adwords Campaigns, evaluate your Ad performance, THEN copy and paste those same Ads into their own AdWords account? If you don’t, you need to be aware of this new software program that is going to sweep across the Internet, taking advantage of the hard work of many web marketers using PPC.

Of course, you may want to get a hold of the software to see how they are doing it… for educational purposes of course.

Visit http://www.oldschoolseo.com/GoogleAdWords to download a free white paper that discusses this new phenomenon.

For the most part, I am VERY thankful for Google. I was one of the original users back in the late 90′s when they first launched. In fact, I was a Google evangelist, telling everyone who would listen to me about this great new search engine. Of course, people did listen to me, because I was a “web guy”. No one outside of the industry really knew what I did (and not much has changed) as SEO and SEM were rarely heard acronyms. People just knew I was glued to my computer most of the time, carrying at least one with me when I traveled (I think my record was 3 when I had to travel with a company laptop and 2 personal laptops during a hard drive changeover).

Anyhow, I am overall appreciative of Google. Not for the near $4.00 my AdSense account sees on a really good day, but for things like:

1. Great search results. If I can’t find something on Google, I know I am pretty much in trouble as I will likely not find it anywhere else on the web.

2. Google AdWords – Web Traffic anyone?

3. Webmaster Tool – Free Analytics anyone?

4. Blogger – Google’s Free Blogging platform. Even better since they added tagging.

5. Matt Cutts. I am sure they would pay almost anything to keep him if he was tempted by a serious offer. BTW, I met Matt back before he was THE Matt Cutts – unofficial, but maybe official Google spokesman to the Internet Marketing World – (Matt – I still have your card from SES 2001).

6. Google Earth. The first to make satellite mapping mainstream on the web, although some might say it’s one the few things that MSN has over them (i.e. MSN Live)

7. Free Local Business Listings

8. Google Toolbar.

9. PageRank – Contrary to what some may say, I think it can serve as a great benchmark (I’ll leave it at that).

10. Gmail. Although it seemed more cool when you had to be invited.

I didn’t include YouTube because they didn’t create it, and I am sure we would still have them without Big G.

So what’s my beef with Google? Two of their partners. I will only name one right now, because, well, they are in control, right?

So, who is the culprit? None other than The Open Directory (a.k.a. DMOZ). I am amazed that Google continues to rely on them as the source of their directory as I am confident that the users that use the directory are not getting good results. I won’t rant about this because it has been done for years by many, even those that seem to have a strong voice in the industry. I know that most people have written them off as a reliable source and therefore no longer even submit sites there, which makes my point even more valid in that Google is relying on outdated information.

I have written to Google, and even the Wall Street Journal about it because I think what goes on in the little “sub world” called The Open Directory is not something that responsible companies should tolerate, namely AOL and Google. I am not a stockholder, but I could quickly become one and perhaps bring it up at a meeting.

There are plenty of alternatives, but I think the one that makes the most sense is for Google to buy the Open Directory and do a clean sweep of the current editors, replacing them with trusted editors, or internal staff. Of course, they could just create their own directory and if they needed more revenue, they could monetize it with AdSense

As our industry continues to grow, there is a growing a pool of professionals that may find themselves from time to time looking for new opportunities. I am sure there are others who would just like to break into the SEM business in general and may not know where to look.

Here is where I recommend starting your Internet Marketing related job search:

SEMPO
Onward Search
SEOmoz

Jason Calacanis the entrepreneur, blogging guru, co-founder of Weblogs, and a href=”http://searchengineland.com/070208-110711.php” target=”_blank”>
not so much a fan of SEO” is engaging in a new form of link bait; ego bait or “its all about me” bait.

Yes friends, I plan on coining more and more link bait terms until, of course, someone stops me from SEO industry phrase bating.

In one of his recent blog posts, Jason encourages people to not only link to his site, but to write a blog post where the first paragraph is dedicated to a short bio of and specifically DON’T start the post off flaming me. Start the post off by praising me. Talk about an ego; I am not sure I am self aggrandizing enough to try and pull one of those off.

Anyhow, I will await my link from him as promised, unless the latest Jason Calacanis link scheme doesn’t work the way many think it will.

- Old School