Daily SEO Dose

[Eve]

Focus on targeted rather than general backlinks, and build links manually rather than with automatic submissions. Focus on organic rather than rapid backlinking.

[DAMINK™]

Oh could i comment on this thread

Focus on targeted rather than general backlinks, and build links manually rather than with automatic submissions. Focus on organic rather than rapid backlinking.

And why would you do that?
What people should actually focus on is tons of backlinks. Literally tons.
Focusing on High PR sites.
For example.
You can get 1000 backlinks from new sites that mean nothing and slowly get link love back. All be it crap.
Or you could target the big sites. The PR8 - PR4 sites.
One link on a site like that is worth a thousand crap links.
I could go further to proove this if i have to and i will a bit.
Lets use SF. Great site and like 50k backlinks here. Thus a PR or 3.
FTW (my site) has like 5k backlinks and has been PR3 for over a year.
So this proves simple backlinks even neiche related are only as important as the PR of the site.
This applies to Google ofcourse. I only really talk Google because... well its #1. Enough said.
Keeping it short. I will advance my answers as it permits.

My rule of thumb for seo is simple.
You need metas. Even though there basically worthless now days.
You need to have your keywords sorted out.
Your main keyword has to be in your url.
Your main keyword has to have presence in your page Not spammy but creative use of the keyword.
Atleast 4 images with alt text same as url keyword.
No errors. This is important IMHO.
CONTENT, CONTENT and more CONTENT.

[jeremiah]

DAMINK, thank you for your contribution, it's greatly appreciated. This is great, and I hope you're alright with me discussing some of the points you made, if only to share my opinion on what you had to say.

What people should actually focus on is tons of backlinks. Literally tons.

You can get 1000 backlinks from new sites that mean nothing and slowly get link love back. All be it crap.
Or you could target the big sites. The PR8 - PR4 sites.
One link on a site like that is worth a thousand crap links.

While I get what you meant there, that's slightly contradictory. Thousands of links is 'not' building them naturally. Eve nailed it with a single word, organic. One of my authority PR9 sites did not get to where it was due to thousands of none related poor quality backlinks or me focusing on just those high pr links, it came naturally over time. Sure I strategically built links here and there, but it was all manual. Automated link building will never pay off, sadly. But please, anyone reading this should note that I for one, always do what works for me. So if automated link building works for you, great! I'm just saying that over the years, organic, manual link building has proved more, way way more, effective, for me.

I could go further to proove this if i have to and i will a bit.
Lets use SF. Great site and like 50k backlinks here. Thus a PR or 3.
FTW (my site) has like 5k backlinks and has been PR3 for over a year.

elfadel.com a PR3... practically no backlinks, and...no content...not fake pr, either...just saying ;) Comparing SF to FTW does nothing when it comes to proving a point of PR value as too many factors weigh in on that. When each gained PR, what the next PR update holds for each, when each webmaster worked on building backlinks, where the main focus was etc. I'd look at traffic and SERP authority to judge when it comes to comparing sites with same pr value, in that case, SF wins hands down. Again, just my own personal observation.

So this proves simple backlinks even neiche related are only as important as the PR of the site.

Really? I guess some of the leading SEOs in the industry have got it wrong. Will give Danny a call and let him know DAMINK has the answer ;) A PR5 backlink from an unrelated, untargeted site is NOT more valuable than a PR3 authoritative relevant link. This isn't an opinion...

Now, I'm not downplaying the value of High PR backlinks, not at all. If someone was to write a valuable article about YOUR site, or a topic and include a backlink to your site in there, and that said block happened to be an 'authoritative' blog, say techcrunch, mashable, or something along those lines, then great! But buying one way backlinks on pr7 anon sites in footer or sidebars is a waste of money for example, but if they're free, they can't hurt, not worth the effort imo though.

Your main keyword has to be in your url.

Says who? This 'could' give you a boost when it comes to ranking for 'some' keywords in 'some' niches... but the effort you put into ranking that keyword domain could be applied to any site in the same niche for the same set of keywords, and it'll rank just as well. Unless there's absolutely no competition for your keyword at all. This is a given, surprised you even stated that, unless of course I somehow misunderstood what you meant, in which case please do elaborate!

Your main keyword has to have presence in your page Not spammy but creative use of the keyword.

sure that helps, but again, I can rank pages, so can many webmasters, for keywords that are not even 'related' to the domain or page ranking, where there isnt a single instance of the keyword on the site, let alone the page that ranks. so stating that it 'has to have' or 'has to be included' into the page you're ranking, is slightly misleading and inaccurate.

Atleast 4 images with alt text same as url keyword.

....................

Do they have to be a particular color too?
Sorry, this is not at all accurate and in no way true. However, thanks for bringing up image alt tags, those are useful and shouldn't be ignored for sure.

No errors. This is important IMHO.

It is very important, nice one DAMINK. Now, I should point out that you'll all find tons of discussions on site validation and clean code etc etc etc. Thing to remember is, Google has advanced over the years and while their bots can crawl and index much of the web (think of how many indexed pages online don't validate....) they can encounter hiccups when your site has a critical error. So making sure there are no MAJOR errors is a must, for sure. But worrying about whether or not a site validates due an unclosed div tag or an extra br or something is not at all an issue. Matt Cutts himself has mentioned this time a couple times at dif conventions and there is record of him mentioning it on a google answer vid over at youtube I believe.

CONTENT, CONTENT and more CONTENT.

Best tip out of your post in my own personal opinion. Content is the way to go, and lots of it, rich, unique content for the win!


After all the above, I don't think a tip today is needed ha!

[Lin]

I liked OP tip. Really helped me to be honest.

[SPY™]

Yes this is a great thread, and the information is very accurate to my findings in my experience. I have been fairly successful at seo over the years and i have a few well ranking websites on various SE's. Yahoo and Bing are easy to rank well on tbh. Google is the tricky one as everybody knows!!

My tip for the day: Check out every tip already made and compile them into your website.. because i can't think of much else to add at the moment. LOL except ONPAGE SEO can really improve your rankings, and the age of your domain, and length of time you purchase it for, can be advantages. The longer you plan on being around and committed the more serious the SE's think you are hence will give you more relevance.