Below is live coverage of the Advanced Link Building, Panda Solutions, SEO Tools, and More! panel from the SES San Francisco 2011 conference. This coverage is provided by Ben Pfeiffer at RankSmart.
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Ben Pfeiffer:
1:12:45 pm
Jim Boykin Gives Advice on Advanced Link Building, Panda Solutions, SEO Tools, and More!
Jim has been a leader in the field of Internet Marketing and SEO for over 10 years. Jim will show you some of his most "killer tactics" for obtaining some of the most trusted backlinks in the world. Jim will also talk about the Panda Update and will give many tips on how can you recover. If you haven't been hit by Panda, Jim will tell you what you still need to know to prevent your site from being hit by Panda in the future. Jim will also talk about some of the best Internet marketing tools on the market, and how can you utilize them to be an Internet Marketing Hero.
Speaker:
Jim Boykin, CEO and Link Building Ninja, We Build Pages Internet Marketing Services
Jim has been a leader in the field of Internet Marketing and SEO for over 10 years. Jim will show you some of his most "killer tactics" for obtaining some of the most trusted backlinks in the world. Jim will also talk about the Panda Update and will give many tips on how can you recover. If you haven't been hit by Panda, Jim will tell you what you still need to know to prevent your site from being hit by Panda in the future. Jim will also talk about some of the best Internet marketing tools on the market, and how can you utilize them to be an Internet Marketing Hero.
Speaker:
Jim Boykin, CEO and Link Building Ninja, We Build Pages Internet Marketing Services
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:18:31 pm
Jim starts by asking some questions from the audience.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:19:18 pm
He asks how many people where affected by Panda?
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:19:38 pm
He says the first Panda update was Feb 24th.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:20:09 pm
There have been several updates since then, mini update. He says Panda will continue to roll out. There are a lot of important lessons to learn from these updates.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:20:15 pm
What is Panda?
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:20:43 pm
Google said they don't like content farms. But many of the sites that got hit where not content farms, ecommerce got hit, his own personal sites got hit.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:20:54 pm
Brands seemed to benefit from Panda
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:21:22 pm
Panda is all about content and usability. It's on the page level, its like cancer. Dragging you down. It affects your whole website.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:21:44 pm
A page that links to lots of low quality pages can have its page score lowered.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:22:41 pm
It kinda works like a backwards PageRank. If Page A links to Page B, and Page B has a low quality score then the score for page A can be lowered because it links to back B.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:23:06 pm
Things have changed. Pages that are in the supplemental index, can not drag down your website.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:23:15 pm
One of the biggest issue is duplicate content.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:23:23 pm
It's a huge issue.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:24:00 pm
Use: site:mywebsite.com "snippet of content from your website" If you are not #1, then Google doesn't think you are the original content.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:24:27 pm
If you are do that same search and it shows multiple pages on your website that have the same snippet. That is not also good.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:25:25 pm
Google's advice: "we often measure whether users click the "back" button quickly after visiting a search result, which might indicate a lack of satisfaction with your site."
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:26:06 pm
The quote was from Amit on Feb 24, the day after Panda was released
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:26:16 pm
Some factors to look at on your website.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:26:38 pm
Time on Page? Less than 15 seconds, you may have a problem. If they return to Google
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:27:18 pm
Pages Visited? You may have a problem if no one explores your deep content, except those from a search result.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:27:49 pm
Brand Loyalty? Are 90% of your visitors first time visitors (and from Search) who never return.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:28:22 pm
Exit Rates and Bounce Rates? What are people doing on your high exit rate pages? Finding answers, or returning to Google?
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:28:53 pm
Pogo sticking? Not in your Analytics. Pogo sticking is short clicks and long clicks.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:30:02 pm
To paraphrase Tolstoy (a google engineer) happy users were all the same. The best sign of their happiness was the long click. This occurred when someone when to a search result, ideally the top one and did not return.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:30:35 pm
Jim is going to go through Amit's 23 questions about your website.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:31:37 pm
For example: Would you trust this information? Is the article written by an expert or enthusiast? Duplicate content or just slightly different content? Would you give your credit card to this site?
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:32:20 pm
Spelling and style errors? Content written for interest or for search engines? Original content? Value your page offers compared to other pages in the top 10? How much quality control do you have?
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:33:28 pm
Spelling errors? Content written by an expert? Original content? Value your pages offers companies to other pages int he top 10? How much quality control do you have?
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:34:19 pm
Testing.. having some connection issues..
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:34:59 pm
Testing again...
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:35:23 pm
Okay it seems to be fixed.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:35:47 pm
Jim recommends going through your website and making a list of pages you want to remove.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:36:33 pm
Jim says there is a lot of things you can do to fix pages, one of them is removing pages. He says he strongly recommends it.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:36:50 pm
He has clients that have recovered from Panda. Most of all their traffic has come back.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:37:04 pm
Some of the solutions to Panda.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:37:15 pm
1. Study Your Google Analytics.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:37:32 pm
2. Perform a usability analysis.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:37:54 pm
3. Performa a Clicktale analysis
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:38:11 pm
4. Perform a content analysis.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:38:24 pm
5. Kill Pages - merge, no index.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:38:33 pm
6. Create new designs.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:39:28 pm
He says you need to write longer content. Informative content. 300 words just won't cut it anymore.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:39:52 pm
What happens when you can get rid of those 10,000 pages. The solution is to keep them but prevent Google from spidering them.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:40:13 pm
Jim next talks about Author Rank. Not so much about Panda, maybe a little bit.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:42:00 pm
Google is making a big effort to identify original authors on the site.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:43:27 pm
Author Rank is similar to Page Rank
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:43:43 pm
How can your utilize Author Rank
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:43:50 pm
1. Create an author for your site.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:44:09 pm
2. Facebook, twitter... be active
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:44:34 pm
3. Write content, get links to that content... the better the links, the more trusted the author will be.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:44:55 pm
Use the author for even product description pages.. Cite that and it might help these pages.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:45:10 pm
Now some advanced link building tips.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:45:36 pm
Your must promote that great content!
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:45:48 pm
Presell pages... so 2007ish
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:46:14 pm
A published Author.. now that's 2012!
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:48:29 pm
Link Wheels so 2010 or even 2011ish.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:49:05 pm
Backlinks to Backlinks... Now that's 2012.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:50:16 pm
If you get a link from Nasa.gov. Build links to that page. It increases the value.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:50:43 pm
blah blah stuff I can't repeat as requested from Jim. :)
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:54:22 pm
Linkbait is so 2007.. Getting followers, likes, and mentions is so 2012.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:55:20 pm
Begging for links.. thats so 2007ish. Fixing existing pages is better. Hey Stanford professor, you have some broken links, he is a great fix.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:55:48 pm
Short tail or long tail? Measure your risk.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:55:57 pm
Jim asks if there is anyone here from Google?
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:56:26 pm
Link building helps you to rank in the short tail results.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:56:57 pm
If you want to rank for the short tail, such as car insurance. You need to have people linking to your site with the term "car insurance"
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:57:11 pm
How do you get links like that... you can give people money. Google doesn't like that.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:57:23 pm
Jim said do not buy links... disclaimer.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:57:40 pm
But if you don't buy links you are probably not going to rank for short tail phrases.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:58:01 pm
He says if you not going to buy links, you might as well give up on the short tail.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:58:19 pm
You can make up the traffic with the long tail.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:58:48 pm
If you get caught buying links... You remove the links, say you never knew you were supposed to do that.
Ben Pfeiffer:
1:59:19 pm
Jim says don't do: blog reviews (bad). They are so easy to spot.
Ben Pfeiffer:
2:00:41 pm
Jim says... Directories. Only a good handful. Yahoo, DMOZ, BOTW.
Ben Pfeiffer:
2:01:09 pm
Jim says: Bulk Links... if its obvious you have a ton of paid links its harder to tell Google you didn't know any better.
Ben Pfeiffer:
2:02:00 pm
Links in sidebars and footers are more obviously and don't have as much impact as those links in middle content.
Ben Pfeiffer:
2:02:17 pm
Jim recommends subpages links, homepages are too easy to spot.
Ben Pfeiffer:
2:03:48 pm
Jim says content syndication.. Not a lot of value. Is it the same article published on the many websites.
Ben Pfeiffer:
2:04:06 pm
Same with press releases. Those don't hold much value.
Ben Pfeiffer:
2:04:22 pm
Link bait is still good, but its evolved.
Ben Pfeiffer:
2:04:48 pm
Trustbait is writing content for educators, long articles, few pictures.
Ben Pfeiffer:
2:05:27 pm
Paid links still work.. but its a risk vs. reward
Ben Pfeiffer:
2:05:37 pm
Another method is going for the long tail.
Ben Pfeiffer:
2:06:08 pm
Jim is going to breeze through tools. Not much time left.
Ben Pfeiffer:
2:06:41 pm
Good tip: linkdomain:yoursite.com -site:yoursite.com in Yahoo Singapore
Ben Pfeiffer:
2:07:24 pm
He highly recommends SEMRush.com
Ben Pfeiffer:
2:10:09 pm
He also recommends TweetReach.com. Shows how many that tweet reached.
Ben Pfeiffer:
2:12:13 pm
One solution (maybe) to Panda is putting that content on a subdomain.
Ben Pfeiffer:
2:12:47 pm
Session is over.
