In the past few years, we have seen a flurry of articles celebrating the forthcoming death of SEO (AKA linkbait) and an even larger flurry of angry rebuttal articles from the SEO community (AKA retweetbait).

So not wanting to be left out of that link party, I decided to weigh in with our clients’ opinion on that matter (click for larger version):

Have a nice day.

In between having an awesome time at Pubcon and having not so awesome time catching pneumonia, there are quite a few articles that have gathered in my Reading List bookmark folder. So here are the articles that have caught my eye in the last few weeks.

If you think I missed something groundbreakingly important or that your article has covered one of the discussed topics in a better way, please let me know in the comments and I will make sure to review it and post it in the next Reading List.

Enjoy

In between the whole nofollow-gate affair, SMX Advanced, Google indexing links in Java and a velvet revolution in Iran, there was a Google I/O conference. The conference sounded like a pretty cool place to be, especially with the Google Wave announcement and the Android phones being given out to all attendees, there was also a Site Review Session done by Matt and two guys from his team, Brian White and Greg Grothaus (who mostly  sat and looked at their laptops while Matt was stealing all the limelight ).

So while Matt was talking mostly about pretty basic stuff (which was understandable since this was not the usual SEO crowd he caters to), I managed to fish out a few interesting tidbits from his talk. While these are not necessarily new for everybody, it seemed to me that some of the stuff he said was not always clear enough or was just guessed, so it is nice to have them out in the open and confirmed. I would recommend for anyone interested to go and watch the video and for those that do not have time/mental strength to do so, here are a few gems that I  picked out of the talk. Again, it is possible that none of these are new for you, but I am sure that there will be people that will learn some things from this:

1. Google doesn’t read the text in the images.

   While this is clearly stated in Google Webmaster Help section, every now and then there are speculations popping up about how Google definitely reads text inside images. So Matt clearly said that Google will not OCR the whole web and will not read the text inside images any time soon, even if they do have OCR capabilities, as can be seen from the Google Books example.

2. Don’t worry about keyword density, make sure Google knows there is a word on your page, after 2-3 repeats, it doesn’t matter any more.

   While it was clear for a long time that keyword density does not play a role in the ranking algorithm, I have never seen a clear statement of “2-3 repeats” and then no impact. Matt did review a site that was stuffing keywords and made it clear that Google knows how to discover these cases and punish them.

3. If you want some links to get more PR, put them higher up in the page.

   We all knew that the links showing higher up on the page seem to be more important, but this is the first mention of the fact (that I know of) that there is different PR flow related to the position of the link inside the page. This may explain several phenomena that people were seeing affecting the importance of the link (such as supposed decreased importance of links in footer)

4. Google doesn’t care if you link to www.site.com/dir/dir/dir/page.html as opposed to www.site.com/page.html. All that matters is the linking distance from the homepage. Other search engines, however, may deem that important

   So while it is not exactly news that Google does not care how deep your URL structure is, as long as the pages are linked from homepage, it is interesting that he bothered to mention the situation with other search engines. So when building your website hierarchy, try to make it as shallow as possible

5. Pagerank can go to images, not only pages

   Again while this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, it is interesting to hear it directly from Matt himself. So when thinking about those linking images, make sure that you are using an optimal image that you would want to appear in the Image SERPs

6. Typically, Google revisits the whole index on a weekly basis. In the worst case, it will be monthly.

   This seems like a good benchmark to start checking whether your pages are in the main index or the supplemental  or whether you are being punished or neglected for some other reason.

None of these are news to people that have done optimization for a while, however i have a feeling that a few newcomers may find this information valuable, especially when one sees the questions that are being asked on forums, blogs and Google’s Webmaster Help groups. So there it is.

OK, so not so long ago Rand put out a post saying that Google will count only one link to a URL from any given page. This is a phenomenon that was originally noticed by Michael VanDeMar but many an eyebrow was risen at both posts. That particular facial hair elevation trend has seemingly culminated by David Eaves’ post which supposedly debunks the theory. However, some problems were found in the way David has conducted his research (starting with the fact that it was done in google.co.uk which seems to behave like Yahoo did 10 years ago). Since we love to solve dilemmas around here and since argument from personal incredulity is not terribly popular in my neighborhood, I decided to conduct a separate test which will cover most of the questions raised in and around the above mentioned posts. (BTW the initial discussion is covered at SERoundtable, as usual)

So, in order to test the theory, i picked two sites that sometimes double as my furry lab animals and set them up so that site A links to site B with two links using different anchor texts. The phrases appeared only on a site A, they were not to be found anywhere on site B and if that site was to rank for any of those two phrases, it would be only due to the anchor text of the links pointing from the site A.

The testing process went like this:

1. Setup the sites like described above and wait for Google indexing. After the links are indexed, check the rankings of the site B for the two phrases.Result: Site B ranked for the first phrase and not for the second phrase. The below image describes the situation:
   
2. Switch between the position of links to site B. Now the previously second phrase appears above the previously first phrase on site A. Wait for Google to index the change and check the locations of B for the new phrases.Result: Site B dissapeared from the SERPs for the new second phrase (previously first) and appears for the new first phrase (previously second), like in the image below:
3. Revert the situation to the initial state: Switch back between the phrases, wait for indexing and check the rankingsResult: Site B reappeared for the initially first phrase and dissapeared again for the initially second phrase, like in the image below:
   

OK, so to me this is a pretty solid data supporting Michael’s and Rand’s claims. The fact that the SERPs reacted to my changes in the order of links back and forth is kind of hard to debunk.

However, one question that kept popping up is whether nofollowing the first link will cause Google to index the second link even though it is placed lower in the code. So i performed an identical test to the one described above, just with the first link nofollowed throughout the test. The results are pretty interesting – Google did not change its behavior due to the nofollow attribute applied on the top link.

Even when i switched between the first and the second link (preserving the state where the top link is nofollowed), Google still counted only the top link and not the bottom one.

Besides the fact that nofollowing the top link will not get you around the Google ignoring the second link, it is interesting to see that Google will still count the top link even though it is nofollowed. Maybe it was due to the fact that the nofollowed link was the only link on the web using that phrase as an anchor text ? Who knows… sounds like a theory worth testing.

As for the general settings of the experiment, the keywords I have used belong to the “semi-promiscuous” kind, meaning that they are made up of words that mean something but as a combination are not commonly used. The phrase #1 had about 40 results and the phrase #2 had about 270 results in Google SERPS. It took about two to three weeks for Google to index each of the changes, meaning that each set of results persisted for that time. It also means that the testing for this post took about a month and a half. Hence the posting frequency

As i write in every post describing an experiment, the conclusions should be taken with a grain of salt, Google is a black box that cannot be 100% scientifically tested (I am not talking about you Matt), i was not wearing my lucky underwear when performing the tests, etc.

PS. In the course of the described experiments, i did come up with a method that can help circumvent the described situation and force Google count all the links from a single page to a target domain. It was even independently confirmed by an SEO who knows what he is talking about (unlike me) and is being successfully used on some of our sites. However, I was asked not to blog about it, so if you want to know more and I know who you are, either personally or from Sphinn/Twitter/Plurk/etc., contact me through the form and I’ll drop you a hint

It’s been a while since the last post, mainly due to the echoes of the conference, we are getting involved in several exciting SEO projects and there is less and less time to do experiments and build pretty graphs everyone liked so much. I am hoping that in the future I will be able to put out good post a bit more frequently. I actually have a few interesting experiments cooking in the pot, one evaluating ways to identify reliable SEO testing niches and the other one testing different models of link juice sculpting by nofollow.

OK, let’s get back on track.

I don’t need to tell you that link acquirement is bread and butter of today’s SEOs. Basically, it boils down to this: on-page optimization, being controlled by the SEOs (directly or indirectly) leaves little space for your talent to shine in competitive niches. It has been tested dry and there is a more or less a set list of actions one must do to get the maximal optimization score in that area. If you do too little, you continue optimizing. If you do too much, you dial it back a bit and you find your golden middle (which is niche specific, by the way).

Link acquirement, on the other hand, is where the men are separated from the boys. It is the hidden nature of the SE algos that makes link building such a polarizing technique: basically you have no idea whether the moment a search engine finds a link to your site is the moment when that link is being calculated towards (or against) your ranking score, you don’t know when you are acquiring links too fast, you have no idea what is the threshold of toleration of uniform anchor texts for your incoming links, etc. Because of this and many other reasons, link building has become the limiting factor in every competitive SEO campaign. No wonder that it is one of the topics most frequently written about in the SEOsphere. In spite of that, I wanted to share some of the tips/techniques/tools that I know to be helpful in improving one’s linking technique, hoping that I would bring some new information/experience to the table:

Your own backyard

The value of internal linking is often underestimated by an eager SEO who jumps into the deep end of the pool first and starts looking for PR 7 websites in his client’s field prepared to give out links. A lot of link love can be gained/properly utilized by optimizing the internal linking structure:

1. How are your links to homepage doing ? Are you using your targeted anchor text when linking back Home ? Are you diversifying your anchor text in Home links ?
2. Are you sprinkling targeted anchor text links through out the body copy of your pages ?
3. Are you using nofollow to channel your link juice to optimized pages ? More importantly, how are you using nofollow ? There are several different models of link sculpting for SEO but you will have to be a bit more patient for that will be discussed in one of the future posts.
4. Are you using your site navigation to make your site architecture more shallow? Spiders are shallow creatures and closer your page is to Home, easier it will be for spiders to find it.

Additionaly, Wiep has some great ideas how to gather up all those unused link resources you already have laying around and leverage them towards better ranking.

Some guidelines before you start the hunt

The title of the post says “Natural Link Building”. While to the untrained eye (or ear) this may sound as an oxymoron (natural links are gained by willing webmasters linking to quality information, not by zealous SEOs that create/ask for/buy links), the word “Natural” is actually intended for Google’s algo: it is of utmost importance to convince the algo that your linking efforts are in fact a part of natural link acquirement. It must walk like natural and it must quack like natural. So it is important to put our inner SEO beast back in the cage and consider the following:

1. Do all the links deemed natural have the same “spare car parts” anchor text ? Or do some of them have anchor texts like “Check it out”, “Buy here”, http://www.sparecarparts.com, etc. ? It is very important to diversify your anchor text, but that does not mean having 50% of anchor texts “spare car parts” and the other 50% “spare truck parts”. It means truly mimicking the way people linked before SEO. I know of cautious SEOs that in some cases make 50% of their incoming link anchor text totally irrelevant to search phrases they are targeting. On the other hand, they make sure that the link is placed on a page that is very relevant to their phrases and we’ll expand on what is considered relevant a bit later.
2. Do all the links come from pages that have a PR higher than yours ? While the argument about the importance of the little green bar still rages, the undeniable fact is that Google has that information and that it can use it for its purposes. And what purpose is more noble than discovering earnest SEOs artificially inflating their link scores ? If I was at Google, trying to look at suspicious link acquirement patterns, constantly getting links solely from pages with higher PR value would be a red flag with bold white printing on it saying “unnatural”. And if I can think of it, no reason that some of their PhDs can’t.
3. Are all your incoming links placed sitewide on link contributing sites ? That is another tell sign. Instantly getting 300 links, even coming from a highly relevant site, is a temptation that cautious link builder will resist.
4. Are all the incoming links pointing to your homepage ? Admit it, it looks very unnatural if your site is getting links from 50 other websites and all of them are pointing to the same page. This is especially true with large sites that have a lot of product/category pages. Acquiring deep links, together with the above mentioned link juice flow sculpting techniques will both promote your targeted pages and do it in a seemingly natural way that will present your site as an authority in it’s field, securing top locations for almost all of the phrases that the site targets presently or will target in the future. Additionaly, it will help with the spidering frequency of your site.
5. Are you being careful not to add too many links at once ? Link velocity is something often overlooked, even by the most experienced SEOs. If I had a penny for each site that got burnt by instantly getting 200K incoming links, today I would have two pennies Seriously, unless you are reporting a war breakout in your neighborhood or are a distant relative to Britney and have just received custody over her children, keep a leash on your massive link campaigns and reduce the flow to a trickle.
   It can actually be a good idea to monitor the link addition rate of your competitors so you can set a maximal rate for yourself. How to do this ? There is a nifty tool called SERP Archive. It lets you set up a query that it monitors on daily basis and builds an accessible database of SERPs. [link:] is a legitimate query so make a list of all your competitors and feed the backlink query for each one of them into SERP Archive and start following.

Be vewy, vewy quiet; I’m hunting winks

So after we made sure that our internal linking structure is all dandy and optimized and that we know how to make our campaign appear natural enough, the big question is how to find places to get links from ? What is more important, relevancy or PR ?

Whether you are manually approaching webmasters or purchasing links through a text link vendor, the bottleneck of the process is finding relevant sites to get a link from. While I am consciously trying to steer away from the argument on whether the PR is important or not, there are two principles I try to live by: 1) a link from a higher PR page contributes more than a link from a lower PR page; 2) relevancy and authority beat PR almost every time. It is the fine balance between these two principles that defines my link hunting grounds.

So the next question is how to find relevant sites to get a link from ? How do I define relevant topics that will have enough sites to give me links that will help me with my targeted phrases ? While it may seem that the research process here is similar to keyword research, there is one substantial difference: when looking for keywords for your site, you are looking for phrases that your targeted audience uses. Therefore, you have some kind of litmus test which will tell you whether the keyword you chose is good or bad – you check the conversion rates, compare it with other keywords and you can get a pretty decent picture for each of the keywords (after taking prominence, level of optimization, location etc. into the equation). When looking for topics that are deemed relevant to your targeted phrases, you have to start thinking like a search engine and take into consideration all kinds of semantic algorithms that stretch the niche definition to a lot of neighboring phrases related to your targeted keywords.

In order to diversify your anchor texts and find additional linking resources, you have to expand the list of your niches (defined by keywords). Here are some of the tools that will help you achieve that:

1. Google Sets – get it straight from the horse’s mouth. Google’s Labs project may tell you what are the keyphrases related to your niche.
2. Google tilda (~) search operator – this one is great for single word queries. It performs the search on all the related terms to your query (and marks them bold in your SERPs). For example, performing a [~SAP] query will give the following list of related keywords: CRM, ERP, ABAP, supply chain, mysap, supply chain management, CIO, peoplesoft, enterprise resource planning, business application programming, etc. Then you can perform a tilda search for each of the related phrases you got and filter out with the (-) operator all the phrases that you already have. You can end up with quite a large list of phrases which may not all sound relevant to your niche, but hey, Google deems them semantically related, so who are you to argue ?
3. Yahoo suggestion tool – just below the Yahoo search box, there is an expandable section called Search Assist. It has two areas: Suggestions, which will give you all the phrases that include the phrase that you searched and Explore Concepts which is the list you are looking for and will give you related phrases to your search query. It can go really wide so apply some common sense. On the other hand, going really wide may be just what you need.
4. Ask suggestion tool – perform a query on Ask and on the left hand side you will see again two main areas: “Narrow Your Search” which will give you all the queries that include your keyword and “Expand Your Search” that will give you all the queries that do not include your keyword but are related to your keyword.
5. Google Adwords Keyword Tool – you can use the experience that the hordes of PPC marketers have accumulated to your linking benefits. While not being so great at predicting the amount of traffic/impressions/clicks/search volume your ad will get, it can tell you what are the keywords that the publishers in your niche are using, which should be what they think their customers are using. While they may be wrong on guessing their potential customers’ intentions, they are usually good with defining the semantic field of every niche.

Just remember that this is a recursive procedure, meaning that each of the new keywords you find can be used as a query for each of the above tools so the list gets expanded. In the end, you will end up with an extensive list of keywords. What to do with it ? There are 4 major ways i can think of, that you can use such list:

1. Searching for links – sometimes it is quite hard to find relevant sites that are willing to link to you, so having an extensive list of queries can inflate a potential link source list significantly
2. Writing inspiration – there is nothing that will attract links like good topic and if you are a professional in the field of SAP, I am sure you will be able to muster some writing magic and expand a bit about CRP or ERP. Then you can promote the articles through social media or article submission services and that can produce a bunch of links, that will come from semantically relevant articles.
3. Your PPC campaigns – why not plug those new keywords in a separate ad group (so you don’t ruin your existing groups performance by some potentially poorly converting keywords) and see how they perform. You may be surprised.
4. SEO – since you are already doing the work, sprinkle some of the phrases over your website, see what kind of long-tail they bring and if they start pulling in some good traffic, maybe you will need a separate optimized page on that topic.

Wow. This post got longer than I thought it will be. I hope this is new for at least some of you and would love to hear any additional ideas on how to make your link building look natural.

When we analyze incoming links, we tend to focus on more or less the same set of link parameters: PageRank, anchor text, relative position in linking document, surrounding text, etc. However, sometimes looking beyond the regular, can provide the opportunity to not only succeed in link building, but even dominate the niche you are competing in. One of these uncommon parameters is the link freshness factor.

The whole issue of temporal aspect to links is a few years old. It has first appeared in official Google writing in this patent, signed, among others, by Matt Cutts, which makes it even more interesting to the SEO community. The whole patent itself is an interesting read and revisiting it can produce a worthy blog post, but I would like to focus on a very specific aspect of it I have recently noticed with several of our websites.

Some of our sites were enjoying top locations for their main targeted phrases in the past few months. While that is primarily good for the company’s bank account, it also gives us some freedom as to how we spend our time and how we divide the work priorities with that specific site. So, in the framework of secondary-phrase optimization stage, I have decided to drastically slow down the link acquirement process so I can try and gauge the relative value of each of the linking resources I was using at the time. Basically what I’ve done is instead of just throwing all the weight on several link acquirement techniques at once, I decided to use one, wait for the increase in rankings and then use the next one and compare. It is hardly a sterile experimenting environment but I thought it is a decent start…

While the comparison of impact of different link sources produced some interesting data by itself, plotting the change in locations over the time and marking the addition of links to different sources on the graph, provided me with a bit more interesting information (click on the below image to enlarge):

As can be seen on the above graph, every addition of a link (or number of links), resulted in a location increase, followed by the gradual slippage to a lower position (albeit higher than the starting one). This phenomena took place after several link additions from different sources and on different sites in different niches, so I believe it is not an isolated occurrence.

So what do we have here ? From the above graph, it can be theorized that there are at least two different scores that a link can pass to a page it is pointing to:

1. A “fresh link” score. Since this is a new link, Google does not yet know the amount of link-juice this link should pass on. Even if this was the only link added to a linking page at the time of the observation, the number of outgoing links has changed and the proportion of PR this link (and other links on that page) should send on, must change. Since even Google cannot calculate all that on the fly, an “artificial” value is added to the link. From the above graph it can be concluded that this “artificial” value can be higher than…
2. … a “real” link score. This score kicks in after Google reiterates all the PR calculations and assigns an objective value to that link.

In the above graph, I have marked the “fresh link” score with an A and the “real” score with the B. It is obvious that in the above case A > B which means that when the real value comes into account, the links are worth a bit less, the webpage’s ranking score is adjusted accordingly and the site slips in SERP’s.

Based on this analysis, we can have three possible relations between A and B:

1. A > B – as in the example above, when the “real” link score is lower than the “fresh” link score – usually happens in case of crappy comment / forum signature / reciprocal / unrelated links.
2. A ≈ B – when the two link values are approximately equal. We will usually not see a significant change in locations due to the switch between these two values.
3. A < B – when the “real” link value is actually higher than the “fresh” link score. This usually happens with the high-quality links from on-topic / authoritative website. The result of this would be for a site to get an initial boost in rankings, stagnate for a while and then further improve.

So, what can we do with this information? Well, if you have a large pool of authoritative websites that can give you on-topic incoming links, then you should remember that (more often than not) your initial improvement in locations, due to that link addition, is only temporal and is bound to improve even more. When the link addition is considered through this scenario, it is easy to see how a phenomena dubbed “inbound link sandbox” came into existence. The situation where it takes quality links a while to affect the rankings can be explained by the fact that the A value of those links is not high enough to overcome the ranking score of competing websites so there is no improvement in locations. When (higher) B value kicks in, the score gap between the two sites is overcome and the locations improve.

However if you belong to the majority of people that have only less sophisticated link pool to dip into, you may want to add links at such rate that the “unknown” link score just keeps adding to the previous link’s “unknown” score and thus continuously improve the locations.

Obviously that rate will change from niche to niche and from link to link. Furthermore, you should be careful not to overdo it and raise some red flags due to extensive link addition rate, but some trial and error in each niche should outline the playfield rules for that particular niche.

As for the methods of reproducing the “unknown link” score over and over again, well, that is a completely different hat color…

So I hear there is this thing going with Google not wanting people to buy links from other people and lowering their toolbar PR, taking away their ability to pass link juice through links. Terrible stuff! There are even frightening reports of adult SEOs getting lumps in their throats at conferences while Google reps are crushing candies with their bare hands in the back row.

So where is it all going to end ? Who is going to win ? Is the paid links model going to survive ? Is Google going to prevail and eradicate paid links as a method of promoting sites in their precious SERPs ? No one knows for sure. So being both an SEO and an (aspiring) scientist, I turn to science to try and predict how this struggle will end.

First, let’s try and see who the main players are: there are the SEOs – they are trying to get their sites to the top locations. Let’s be simplistic and for the purpose of this comparison assume that the only way to achieve top locations is by purchasing links. Google on the other hand is trying to prevent SEOs from artificially influencing the SERPs and, again taking a simplistic approach, they will fight back by PR reduction and by abolishing link-juice-transfer-powers. So we have two forces, trying to prevail and have it their way. If Google prevails, there will be no more paid links in SERPS (which will open the doors to the next technique). If the SEOs prevail, Google’s SERPS may become less authoritative and relevant.

So it happens that this kind of situation is happening in nature all the time. The predators are trying to outsmart the prey and the prey is trying to hide/outrun/scare away the predator with all their might. The smarter the prey gets, more pressure is on predators which are thus forced to evolve into more efficient hunting machines. Two powers, competing against each other, where the prevailing of one signals the demise of the other in what is known as evolutionary arms race.

Now we turn to science. In Population Ecology, there is a theory called ESS – Evolutionarily Stable Strategy. It states that when such a struggle (as described above) occurs in nature, the winning strategy on both sides will be the one that will preclude a new strategy from replacing the existing one. Since the last sentence does not mean much to nonscientists, I will illustrate by example:

Imagine a bird’s nest with several chicks. They have just hatched and are hungry. They all chirp for food which their mother promptly brings to the nest. However, when she arrives with a worm in her beak, she must decide which one of the chicks gets fed first. She cannot remember who got fed the last time. So she gives it to the one that seems the hungriest – the one that is screaming the loudest. For chicks, it turns out that it is worth their while to scream as loud as possible, since that will increase their chance of getting fed and subsequently surviving to become mature birds. Conversely, a nest that produces so much noise will certainly attract the tree-top skimming hawk or a wandering snake. So the louder they scream, the more they increase their chances of having a rather short life span. This is called “the begging conflict” and is seen throughout nature as a problem in communication between parents and their offspring. The Nature paper on this topic, with mathematical models and game theory application to the solution of the problem can be found here (subscription needed, if you want to get a copy of this PDF, leave a comment and I will get it to you)

Let’s analyze how this situation is copied into the paid links vs. Google situation. SEO’s are obviously the chicks. They will try to get as many relevant links as possible in order to promote their clients. The more relevant links they offer their customers, the better. On the other side is Google – the snake or the hawk, whichever suits your current feeling about them. They will be attracted to the sudden surge in links, changes in rankings, unprofessional websites ranking for brain tumor-related searches. So whichever SEO sticks out/ which ever link/post selling service advertises itself the most – gets eaten alive / its PR gets taken away.

How was this problem solved in nature ? Chicks need to eat. Mother birds need to decide who to feed. Hawks and snakes are looking for prey. One possible solution would be for all the chicks to be silent. That way they would reduce to a minimum the chance of being eaten by the local predator and at the same time make the chance of being fed, equal among all of them. However, this strategy would be very short termed. When the mother lands on the nest with that delicious worm and all the chicks are silent, one smart-ass chick will undoubtedly chirp and with one clever move, swipe the worm away from his otherwise-cooperative siblings. Soon enough, others would understand that silence is self-defeating and the screaming will begin again. That is why this solution is not considered to be an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (or Solution) – it will quickly be replaced with another strategy – one where there is a loudly chirping chick. So the ESS solution would be for all the chicks to chirp moderately. Not too loud, so as not be discovered by the predators and not too quietly so they would not encourage their clever sibling to start screaming. Nests that adopt this kind of strategy are the ones that have a better chance of survival than the ones that don’t and this strategy gets passed down the generations in higher percentages than other strategies, due to higher rate of survival of the ESS adopting nests.

Back to paid links. One possible ESS solution would be to abolish paid links concept altogether. Websites would stop selling links (or prevent paid links from passing link love by no following them), link sale mediating agencies would stop functioning due to the massive abandonment of potential clients. Everybody turns to organic linking and Matt’s department gets back to trying to discover invisible text. However, and this one is even more obvious than in the chicks example, in no time there will be the smart-ass chick that starts selling links and another smart-ass SEO that starts buying them. Since all of his competitors are sitting quietly in their nests, waiting for their organic content to roll in by way of natural links, he has the immediate advantage over them. Other SEOs observing the sudden rise in locations of link purchasing websites quickly understand that in order to compete with them they have to purchase links themselves and, wham, in no time, the link purchasing frenzy is back.

The ESS solution would be not to stop buying links/reviews. It would be to do it in moderation. This way, everyone would benefit from the advantages of the paid links moderately and the relative success would be distinguished by the ability of the SEO to correctly identify the relevant website from which a link should be purchased.

Now the question is, how to enforce the “moderation in links purchasing strategy”?

There could be many ways that this can be achieved – one of them is for the link selling agencies, such as TLA or PPP, to limit the number of links/posts a single advertiser can purchase. Over the time equilibrium would be reached between the ability of SEOs to buy the links in great numbers and the wish/ability of Google to actively seek and destroy such marketing efforts.

There could be other possibilities of reaching this state of equilibrium, although none come to mind at present. However, I do think that it is inevitable that some kind of equilibrium must be reached. Any other solution would perpetrate the evolutionary pendulum between the search engines and the SEOs and reinstate the whirlwind of link purchasing-website punishing we are seeing right now.

Hattip to my friend Tzvika whose paper on SEO-Search Engines relationship as an example of evolutionary arms race, serves as a continuous inspiration for understanding both search engines and evolutionary mechanisms of population dynamics.

Any webmaster/SEO has reached the same inspirational rock bottom when it comes to getting links to a website close to his heart – link source exhaustion. With all the directories submitted to, hundreds of emails sent to webmasters, thousands of comment/signature spam links left, you have the will, you have the resources but there is absolutely nowhere left to look. So here is a thought. Google indexes all the sites on the Internet anyway. So why not ask them to give you a list of relevant sites you can contact for links ?

Here is a little step-by-step tutorial that has helped me do this more than once:

1. Create a substantial relevant keyword list . Don’t be afraid to dig sideways. Even a fleeting association with your main theme is good enough.
2. Create AdWords campaign for your site, bidding for the keywords from the above list. Limit the campaign to Content Network.
3. Plan the bidding daily budget in a way so that you don’t spend too much money on it. The purpose of the exercise is not necessarily to get traffic to your site (although it is a nice bonus. Usually badly converting one, but still a bonus), but to develop a list of sites that can serve as potential link sources.
4. Let the campaign run for a week.
   
5. After a week (or couple of thousands of impressions, whichever comes first), run a Placement Report for the period throughout which the campaign is running (click on thumbnail on the right to see the snapshot of the type-of-report-choosing step in Google AdWords)
6. Harvest the list of websites that showed your ad through Google AdSense program.
7. Start contacting webmasters and offering them, ahem, your eternal friendship and appreciation in exchange for a link with the preferable anchor text. For better results, preferably contact those websites that have actually brought you conversions. There is going to be a lot of pruning of useless MySpace accounts (although there may be a few useful ones there) but some gems will emerge.
8. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The idea is that Google is placing ads in the content network on sites they consider relevant to your niche (their effectiveness at doing so is debatable, but that is a different issue altogether). So take the list of URLs that have shown your ad and voilà.

So you may have spent a few bucks on the AdWords, however, instead of purchasing relevant links for big bucks, you have invested some of that money in potentially relevant traffic AND gained dozens of URLs with linking potential. Naturally, this process has a learning curve which will get you to the point where you are bidding only for those keywords that trigger your ad on very relevant sites.

Good luck.