THE SEO SURVIVAL GUIDE

THE

SEO SURVIVAL GUIDE

Written by Lisa Parmley

www.BusinessBolts.com

Copyright © 2012 BusinessBolts.com, All Rights Reserved.

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Copyright © 2012 Business Bolts

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Welcome to the SEO Survival Guide I call this special report the "SEO Survival Guide" because after the Panda update in 2011 and Penguin in 2012, SEO has become something many people starting or running an online business are afraid of.

But there's so much traffic wrapped up in search I feel it's a shame to ignore it altogether.

In my opinion, if you're going to have content on your site, you should try to optimize it.

Otherwise it's a wasted opportunity.

Although this report is called the SEO Survival Guide, I don't just want you to survive it, I want you to dominate the search engines.

You have a very big opportunity right now.

The simple fact is there are far fewer people (especially now) who know how to approach SEO the right way.

It is very possible for you to dominate your market when it comes to search engine rankings, and you don't need a big budget for buying links and mass producing content.

And in this guide I'll show you how.

I'll also give you an overview of SEO, how the search engines determine where to rank your pages post-Panda and post-Penguin, and specific tips you can implement for high rankings.


Before we cover the material, I just want to say I know there are a ton of SEO guides out there. So why should you place faith in mine?

I've been running an online business since 2001 and my primary method of generating traffic to my sites has been SEO. In fact, I have sites that have been ranking high for that entire time-span. So sites that have held top rankings for over a decade now.

I don't know many people who can say that.

I've built a fairly large number of sites, many using different methods so I can see what works and what does not work over time and report that back to you.

In addition, I started officially offering SEO training in 2009, and it's been well received.

I've helped people just starting an online business and I've helped 7-figure companies increase their rankings. I've helped train SEO experts too.

Here are just a couple of testimonials and thank-you's I've gotten...

"How to Build a Business on the Internet"

"Lisa, I have been involved in Internet Marketing since 1997 and over that period I have purchased a large number of products and I would have to say yours is one of the best I've ever seen.

Most people that put out a product know what they are doing and how they do it, but they can't teach. They have no idea of how to put something in order so it becomes a step by step plan.

YOU DO!

Your course is not just about put up a website, your course is about how to build a business on the Internet.

I do a lot of offline consulting and some SEO work for small businesses. You showed me some things that I can do that will even help those clients in the search engines. All I can say is great stuff. "


Thanks, Blase DesMarais www.GSSAM.com

"Anyone could use these techniques to grab top rankings in the SERPs very quickly ..."

"You provided a complete step-by-step system (even I could follow) and gave me the mindset, philosophy, and reasons behind the actions you take in the course. Invaluable. This course just clicks with me. I can finally build an asset on the web, something I'm proud of.

I'm used to getting around 1,400 - 3,000 visitors per month to my site. But, after watching you easily pull down 30,000 to 44,000 visitors a month Lisa, I just had to find out what you were doing. Well, I've watched the videos twice and let me just say ... I'm an idiot. I've been making SEO way too complicated. I'll be throwing my flawed little marketing plan in the garbage tonight and following the InlineSEO system to the letter from now on. Frankly, almost anyone could use these techniques to grab top rankings in the SERPs very quickly (although I hope I'm the only one :)

Truly excellent work ... "

Jeff W.

I offer a complete SEO training course, but I've packed a lot into this short report for you.

And I've made it free so that many more people just like you can get on track and get high rankings.


Table of Contents

Why SEO? 7

Just how much traffic? 8

The end goal 12

Potential 14

Ranking process 17

Quality factors 21

Link building 34

Summing Up 42


Why SEO? SEO was my first source of traffic and after more than a decade of owning an online business, it's still my favorite.

Part of the reason is because it's highly targeted traffic. Some will say it's the most targeted traffic you can get.

When a web surfer visits a search engine and types a phrase into that search box, they're looking for something specific.

If your site shows up in the results pages for that search, you probably have exactly what they want. So you're going to see higher conversions from that traffic than with traffic from nearly anywhere else.

That means visitors from the search engines will be more likely to take action on your site. And that means you'll get more people:

Signing up to your newsletters

Buying your product or service

Clicking on your affiliate or CPA ads

Clicking on your Adsense ads

Traffic that comes from the search engines is highly targeted because in theory, your site is ONLY shown when the content on one of your pages matches what the searcher typed into the search box.


Just how much traffic? Anymore, there's really only one search engine you need to worry about. And that's Google.

There's no doubt the top search engine is Google.

The only place statistics disagree is by how much Google dominates all the other search engines. I've seen some statistics claiming Google gets as much as 90% of all search traffic.

The leftovers (in this case 10% of search traffic) are typically split between Yahoo and Bing.

Other statistics show it's more like 80% to Google with a 20% split to Yahoo and Bing.

Either way, Google has a lot of the market share on search.

If you want traffic from the search engines, then your central goal needs to be to rank high in Google. That's the search engine to focus your efforts on.

According to their own statistics, Google claims they get over 1 Billion search queries a day.


Take a look at this screenshot from a page put together by Google:

One interesting thing is that of those 1 Billion search queries, about 15% are brand new.

By brand new they mean they are completely unique.

So they can never be anticipated.

That means if you write content on a topic (whatever topic is related to your market), just by taking a little effort to make your site easily accessible to Google, you can rank high for terms you never thought to optimize.

So these are search terms that cannot possibly have a whole lot of competition because no one knew to compete for them. And that's 15% of a billion search queries.

So that's a lot of unanticipated searches.

Knowing that fact, there's no reason to think there's too much competition out there.


Too much competition is not a valid reason for not going into SEO because for many search queries, there's no way to anticipate them or claim stake on them. They are completely unique and new.

Although you can and will get traffic for search queries you never knew people would type into the Google search box, you should definitely try to anticipate what people are actively searching for and optimize pages on your site for those phrases.

Knowing what words and keyphrases people type into the search engines related to your topic is very helpful. And you can find all this out with a good keyword tool (like Wordtracker, even Google's own keyword tool for Adwords advertisers, and many other keyword tools).

Instead of just guessing what to optimize your pages for, a keyword tool will allow you to know exactly what to optimize them for.

And you also know exactly what people interested in your topic want to know about.

So these tools are highly useful. And there are many out there, some paid and some free.

Not only do you want your pages to be optimized for keyphrases people are actively searching for, you want them to rank as high as possible for those phrases.

The thing is, the top three spots in the search results pages get most all the traffic.

In a study by optify.com, they saw that 60% of the clicks go to the top three search engine results. Here's the breakdown:

#1--> 37% click through rate

#2 --> 13% click through rate

#3 -- > 10% click through rate

Again, that's 60% of the clicks going to the top 3 results for any given search phrase.


So getting your site listed as high in the results pages as possible for a wide variety of targeted keyphrases is your ultimate goal.


The end goal If you've been around the SEO industry at all, one thing you'll hear is that search engine algorithms change all the time.

And it's true, I'm not going to argue with you on that.

Just take a look at this screenshot from a popular SEO site called SEOmoz.org

If you notice, there were 4 updates for the month of August alone.

Although the search engines are constantly rolling out new updates, the reason why they're doing it is to help them with their end goal. And the end goal of the search engines never change.


The end goal is to show users the best results for the term they type into the search box.

If you're just focusing on getting through the next update and missing the big picture, you'll have a lot of problems keeping your rankings.

It's better to be proactive about updates instead of constantly reacting to them.

Otherwise you're just putting a band aid on your site and you'll see stuff like this:

One month you may see a lot of traffic and the next month (after an algorithm update) you'll see your traffic suddenly drop.

Sometimes you see the up and down pattern like in the image above.

And other times you can't ever recover from the updates.

Thinking about the big picture really helps prevent this. That while the search engines update often, their end goal is really the same as it always was, and that's to rank the best sites high.


They want their visitors to be happy they chose them for their search. Otherwise they'll start using a different search engine.

So instead of looking at what new algorithm came out and smacked us around today, you really need to look at what the end goal is. Because if you keep that in mind you're going to come out way ahead.

If you've got sites that have been hit by an algorithm, you need to look at your site as a whole and address the issues with big picture thinking. Otherwise you may see a quick fix, but after the next update you'll likely see a decrease in your traffic once again.

This can cost you a lot in time and money.

So looking at the big picture and striving to align your site with it is the best way to survive long-term.

And that's how I try to approach SEO, both for my own long-term sites and when I'm training others to get high rankings.

It's not really worth it to focus on short-lived strategies. The kind that are only out there to game the system.

Google and other search engines will try to figure out a way to filter them out at some point and you'll see a decline in your traffic.


Potential Instead of bouncing around and seeing your traffic drop, the real power of SEO comes from keeping your rankings high while you're getting rankings for even more keyphrases.

There's no limit on the number of keyphrases you can rank high for. If you need proof, just look at how many different phrases Amazon.com and Wikipedia.org rank high for. They're practically everywhere in the search engine results pages.

Even if you're in a niche market, you can keep adding content based on keyphrases you know people search for and topics related to your market. And if you do this you can continually see an increase in the volume of traffic you gain through search.

Content is like currency as long as you have a solid strategy for organizing and optimizing it.

Let's say every month you're able to produce two new pieces of content.

And you optimize that content. You have a strategy in place where you're not just writing something randomly, but using a keyword tool to figure out what people interested in your topic want to know.

You understand SEO principles and you optimize your pages with both SEO principles and your visitors user experience in mind (which anymore are very much near to the same).

You do all the right things as far as SEO goes.

After one month let's assume you can bring in a steady 100 visitors a day from those two pieces of content. These visitors come from high rankings for many different keyphrases. Phrases you tried to optimize your pages for and phrases you didn't think to optimize them for.


The 100 visitors a day from your two pieces of content is great, but if you accomplish this then you have the potential to duplicate it over and over again. You can keep adding more and more content that brings you an additional 100 visitors a day.

After six months with the addition of two pieces of content a month you'd be at 600 visitors a day. That's 600 x 30 days in a month, which turns out to be 18,000 visitors each and every month.

After a year of this you could be at 36,000 unique visitors a month.

If you do this right, your traffic levels would keep moving forward.

It's powerful, and that's exactly what getting and keeping high rankings can do for you.

Again, this scenario is an ideal situation and may have limits for you. You may eventually run out of things to talk about.

But seeing growth like this is a possibility. Someone is going to get all this traffic from search and there's no reason to think it can't be you.

You can also add in other traffic sources to the mix.

The great thing is, there are many other sources for traffic once you have content on your site (like visitor referrals and direct traffic from sites that link to you, etc...).

You don't lose anything by optimizing the content you have for SEO in addition to looking for other traffic sources.

Anymore, many of the factors the Google algorithm looks for are the same things that will keep your visitors happy. Again, that's because they want the best sites showing at the top of the search engines.


Ranking process Google's algorithms have evolved by leaps and bounds over the decade I've been involved in the SEO industry.

Although it's taken a long time for that evolution to happen, it's evolved enough to where it's a night and day difference in how the algorithms filter out 'low quality' sites and give top rankings to what they consider the 'higher quality sites'.

The Panda update (which was released initially on Feb 23, 2011) really gave Google a boost in being able to "see" whether or not a site was quality or not.

But computers cannot read so how can they figure out if you have a quality site with quality pages?

I know a lot of people ask that very question.

And no matter what you think of Google as a company, the technology behind how they're accomplishing this is pretty darn ingenious.

I'll give you a quick run-down of how this probably works (I say probably because I don't work for Google and no one except those with insider knowledge like employees would know exactly what they've got going on).

They 'grade' or 'rate' sites through advanced algorithms (Panda is the name for the big one) that search for patterns. These patterns may indicate you have a high or low quality site related to any given search query.

In order to do this, they need to data from user surveys. At least some data from real people has to drive this algorithm (and possibly many of the others they have running).

We know Google has human quality raters who rate the sites that come up for certain searches.


They rate them as vital, useful, relevant and useless. All these real people, these quality raters, look through specific search engine results pages rating the web pages that show up.

Google has a small army of people surveying the top ranking sites showing them how their search results are working out.

The ratings for the sites is entered into the algorithm. So one site gets a useful rating while another gets a low rating. The algorithm them pulls out several measurable factors that it can compare (to see how the factors stack up between a high and low quality site). These measurable factors may include:

Keyphrase density - that's the number of words on the page divided by the number of times the keyphrase the searcher typed into the search engine.

Site speed - how long does it take for it to load?

Bounce rate - do people just land on a page on your site and then immediately click off your site?

Time spent on site - how long do they stay on your pages?

In the end the quality raters scores + measurable factors = patterns of high quality sites.

Computers see patterns (but it can be called a score or a profile if it helps make more sense of this).

The computer algorithm compares your pattern (or score) with that of known high quality sites (that a real person designated as high quality).

So through all this data gathered by human quality raters and measurable factors, they have a 'perfect profile' of a high quality site.


Maybe it has a low keyword density (like under 1%), fast site speed, low bounce rate, and a high time on site. This is just a small sampling of what they might look at, but it gives you an idea.

At any rate, the algorithm checks to see how many of these factors YOUR site has. And if it matches the profile of their idea of a high quality site then YOUR site gets labeled as a high quality site too.

And as a result, you get higher rankings for the keyphrases your site relates to.

So even though a human quality rater may not have ever seen your site, by comparing the pattern (or profile) between it and a high quality site they have seen, this algorithm classifies your site as high or low quality.

If you think about it, even though you've never seen every chair on the planet, you can come across a chair that's new to you and still tell me that's what it is. You don't need to see them all. You know the characteristics of a chair so you can get it right.

And that's basically what the Panda algorithm is doing except it's with websites.

The thing is this is very important. And there are two reason why.

The first is, if you think about it, it's still possible to game the system if that's what you want to do.

The algorithms cannot read and determine that the content on this site over here is better than the content on that one. They'll never be able to do that. It's all run by a computer algorithm so you just need to know what factors the algorithm incorporates into their patterns and mimic that.

And secondly, on the flip side you could actually have great content on your site, but because you didn't know the factors they consider, you may not match the pattern of a high quality site.

So now you don't rank as high.


It's completely unfair, and has happened (and will continue to happen). Any automated system for ranking sites is always going to have its flaws.

So it's very important to identify the factors and make sure you include them on your site and within your pages.


Quality factors In this section I'd like to go through a few of the factors Google's algorithm probably looks at to help determine if your site fits the pattern of a high quality site. Again if it fits that pattern, it's more likely to get high rankings for keyphrases you want it to rank high for.

Some of these factors are obvious, but I still see a lot of webmasters not addressing them on their sites. So I've listed many of them out for you here. Again, this is only a small sampling of what they're looking for, but it will help you when planning out the pages on your website.

Content is very poor, rambling, not informative or useful You want to make sure your content uses good grammar. Google can almost certainly run grammar and spell check on web pages and factor this into their algorithm. There are many very inexpensive software applications that can do this, so I can't imagine Google doesn't have their own.

In addition to possibly setting off a flag with Google's algorithms, no one really wants to read content like what's shown in this example.


It makes no sense.

Here's the first line taken right from the home page of the site, "Everyone is presumably familiar what a "white TV stand" is all about". It's missing the word 'with' in there at the very least.

That's what a visitor sees right when they land on the site. It makes no sense and even if they used better grammar, it's just filler information. It's not really what anyone wants to know about.

The entire article reads this way.

Because of the content issues, the owner of this site would likely have a high bounce rate. The bounce rate is the measure of visitors who click off the site after they land on a page.

In part, this rate tallies up the number of visitors who hit the back button immediately after landing on the site because they want to keep looking in the results for something better.

In addition, with content like this, you're going to have trouble getting any good links because let's face it, no one wants to read this let alone pass it onto others.

So taking care to have content that's readable and serves a purpose other than just taking up space is well worth the effort (not just for SEO, but for generating traffic, and for getting people to take action on your site).

The big problem is, the type of article above is the type of content you'll get if you go to most any random article writing service on the internet.

Article writing services like these often give you an incredibly cheap deal on your articles. They usually service 500 word articles and all they ask is for you to supply a keyphrase.

That keyphrase is what they'll write the article on.


They don't ask you to supply any resources or any topic ideas, which makes it really easy for you. But when the end result comes out like what's above it's not all that great for you. No matter how little you paid it's not worth your money.

You'll see much better results (whether you're shooting for high search engine rankings or just getting people excited about your site) if you take more time and use good grammar as well as write about things people are interested in.

No About Us page Many sites are missing 'about us' pages. You can't find one in their main navigation menu, the sidebar, or even in the footer. If a site's going to have one it's going to be in one of those places if not in more than one of those places.

Here's an example of where you can commonly find an 'about us' page. In this site it's in the footer and I've circled it ...

If you click through that 'About' link you're taken to a really nice page. They've got a lot of details on what the site's about and how to navigate it.


Here it is:

You should try to have at least 300 words or so of content on your 'about us' page (there's really no maximum or perfect length).

Use this page to shine and get people interested in what you do.

Even if you're putting together an affiliate or Adsense site then explain why your site exists. And if you've got a product or service I'm sure you can come up with lots of things to talk about on that page.

Don't just make it a standard 2 sentence generic 'about us' page, really get into some details about your site, your company, and who you are.

I'm sure Google can see whether this page is on your site and they've likely got some ideas (or patterns as the algorithm sees it) in mind for what a high quality site's 'about


us' page looks like (for starters that there is one and it's more than a couple of sentences in length).

Over-optimization for each article Low quality sites are often very heavily over-optimized. The webmaster will usually just find a keyphrase they'd like to rank high for and every article on the site will have that keyphrase within it.

You do want to optimize your articles for keyphrases, but you can definitely get carried away. In this example, these four articles were the only articles on the entire site. And as you can see, each one targets the phrase, 'white TV stand'.

Here's another example.


This one shows an article in full:

As you can see, every subheading has the words, 'white TV stand' within it.

It's a little over-done.

Sometimes sites will also have a lot of the same keyphrase repeated over and over again throughout the content. Or they'll bold those words everywhere they can on the page.


This is likely worked into Google's algorithms as a sign of lower quality just because it's a common SEO trick. You want to avoid over-optimizing your pages. Someone who doesn't know anything about SEO and just wants to put out good content is going to write different (more naturally) than someone who's obsessed with high rankings.

You can be obsessed, but just don't over-do it. I'm happy if my target keyphrases are on my page ONE-TIME. That's all it really takes. So there's no perfect density and if there is, it's actually very low (way less than 1%).

It's especially over-done when you have a site with the keyphrase in the domain name, in all the articles, in all the headings and subheadings, and throughout the content.

In these situations, it's obvious the webmaster went out and found a single keyphrase (or even a few) and optimized the entire site for that keyphrase.

Google has special algorithms that target just that specifically, which is commonly called an Exact-Match Domain.

The official Exact-Match Domain (EMD) update was released by Google on September 27, 2012. And sites like this are disappearing very rapidly from the results pages as they're getting pushed way down in the rankings.

Few articles Here's one of the previous screenshots showing an entire site that only had 4 articles on it.

And again, each article is all about white TV stands.


The webmaster would have done better to cover more topics related to TV's like other color TV stands (not just white), wood ones, metal ones, maybe an article on how to mount your flat-screen TV, and one on the best place to put your TV.

All that deals with the type of information someone who wants to know where to put their TV (which is what they're really looking for) would like to know.

You don't have to or need to have 100's of articles on your site, but it's a good idea to have comprehensive, substantial information on your topic. Enough content (and a wide enough variety of content) to look like a valuable resource for that topic and at the very least, closely related topics.

You can always start small and add to your site, but you want to avoid looking like a webmaster who went out and used keyword tools to find a 'perfect low competition, high search volume' keyphrase who then did everything they could to rank high for only that keyphrase.

Ads right up front Many sites are only created so the owner can get people to click on the ads. And those are commonly referred to as 'made for advertising' sites. Google would rather show a site that was made for the visitor than one created just to make the owner some money.

We all know Google's making a small fortune with their advertising programs, but they're running the show and while this factor comes with a lot of uproar, they do try to filter out sites with excessive ads up top.


Here's a screenshot of ad placements that are probably going to give off the 'made for advertising' vibe...

The ads are right up top, under the red text below the headline, 'What White TV Stand is All About' (which is probably not such a great headline).

Then they've also got ads at the top of the right sidebar too.

Again, this ad placement is pretty aggressive, and although it could probably work out well for you, in combination with the poor readability of the content and all the other factors I've gone through, it sends out a 'low quality' signal.

Taking all these factors into consideration, it really makes the site stand out as a 'made for advertising' site and not one a real visitor is going to be happy about landing on.

We all want to make money, but you don't want to place your ads right up top if you want high search engine rankings.


Content is formatted and not just slapped on the site Here's an example of what I consider a 'call-out box'. In the screenshot you see an image and right next to it is a nice, shaded area. The shaded area has some content within it.

Doing stuff like this doesn't take a whole lot of extra time, and it really helps break up your content and visitors appreciate it.

I'm sure Google's algorithms can see this within the source code of your webpage. So if you just copy and paste an article on your site and add in no formatting you probably 'look' less like a high quality site than if you took a little more time and care like in this example. Here's another example.


This one has nicely formatted areas within the content where you click on the 'open' tab and a text box opens up:

This is a great way to organize your content if you've got a lot of text on a single page. That way your visitors aren't hit with a huge, scrolling block of text, but can pick and choose what they want to read by clicking on the 'open' icons.


And here's yet another screenshot that shows formatted boxes with call-out sections:

Notice how there are numbers and each one has its own box.

The headlines are different colors and there are buttons or icons next to the pros and cons text.

It looks really nice and again, this will show up in the source code (that's the HTML code) of the page. So it would be seen by the search engine algorithms and could be factored into their quality score.

It's a great idea to spend more time formatting your content rather than just copy and paste it onto your site. These are definitely things a computer algorithm can see and would likely take into consideration when searching for 'higher quality sites'.


Real comments Having the type of content on your site that stimulates discussion is always a good thing and could definitely be factored into the algorithms. If you've ever run a Wordpress blog you know Wordpress can pick up on what it thinks are the spam comments with plugins (if you look around there are a few that are pretty advanced). I'm sure Google can do the same just by looking for typical words in spam comments.

Here's an example of an article that allows comments.

These appear to be real comments.

The commenter's use the words that the page is about; like TV, renovations, media room, and screen sizes.

Spam comments are very generic. So if you're going to allow comments, make sure to not bother allowing those that you think are spam.


Links to other pages Another thing high quality sites do is include links the visitor may be interested in at the bottom of all the articles. So once a visitor is done reading any particular article, they've got choices for what to read next.

It's a great way to increase the time people are spending on your site, lower your bounce rate, and is probably used as a signal that your site is 'higher quality'.

It's not that hard to add in these links, many CMS (content management systems) have a way for you to generate these links automatically.

I've just given you a few factors that relate to what the search engine algorithms can see on your site. And in the SEO world as you may know, that's called on-site optimization.

The other part to SEO is off-site optimization or link building.

Google definitely has other algorithms looking at the links coming back to your pages and we'll cover that in this next section.


Link building Link building is traditionally an activity webmasters and SEO's spend a lot of time on.

Since Google has always used the links coming back to your sites as a ranking factor, many people go out and actively build links back to their pages to make it look like they're more popular.

So link building crosses the line of manufacturing links fairly easily. It's very commonplace in SEO to manufacture your own links.

Some link building is just good business sense (for example, if you network with others, showing them your content and they link back to it because they want to help you share it) and some link building is just manufacturing links to give a site a boost in the search engines.

A lot of manufactured link building worked great until the Google Penguin update (that was officially rolled out on April 24, 2012). At the very least, this update targets over-optimization with anchor text in the links leading back to a site.

Once this algorithm hit, a lot of manufactured link building went out the window.

The first thing I want to say is much of this type of link building (where you're manufacturing your own links) still works. Especially if you use a variety of anchor text going back to your pages, vary the pages the links were going to, and use a diverse range of places to get links from.

But, I'd bet Google will get more aggressive at figuring out manufactured links in future Penguin updates and new algorithms they create.


The reality is Google would prefer you work on your pages and don't actively build links. That they happen naturally because you've got awesome content on your site. And it's definitely a possibility, but that can take a good, long while.

Some of us don't have time or patience to wait around for that.

When your site's new, it's definitely harder for anyone to find it. If they can't find it they sure can't link to it. You can sit around for a very long time before anything exciting happens (like you actually get a visitor).

Again, it's pretty common practice for webmasters to go out and actively get links. Which isn't necessarily bad in and of itself.

If you go out and make connections in your industry showing people your content and asking them to link to it if they find it useful, that's a link building practice I can't imagine anyone would have a problem with.

Doing this will greatly increase your rankings (and can bring you traffic) because these are the links Google would like to count. So as they update their algorithms these links will continue to count and give you a positive boost.

It basically shows them people think your pages are useful. In fact, so useful that they've decided to link back to them and point them out to others.

In order to get this type of link you generally do need something useful on your site in the first place.

But instead if you got out and say, "hey I need links so I'm going to use all these methods to manufacture them". And you build links to make it look like someone thought your content was useful, then realize those links are the type Google doesn't want to count when figuring out where to rank your site.


Again, Google wants to put the best sites at the top of their search results. And they think (and in reality are probably right) that the best sites and pages are those with links given by people because they WANT to share your content.

They don't think the best sites and pages are those that have a lot of links the owner of the site built for themselves just to get a high ranking.

So it's pretty clear if you manufacture links (and especially if it's obvious YOU manufactured those links) that they will stop helping you as Google gets more sophisticated at figuring out they were manufactured.

So even if it works right now, it may not in the future.

Again, their end goal is to rank the best, most useful sites highest.

They know how many people try to game the system through link building.

And they actively work on discounting links that aren't really given by a webmaster who thinks your site's useful. So just know that links like that may not count as much as you'd like, especially down the road (unless you really hide the fact that you gave yourself that link).

In addition to not really doing anything positive for your rankings, some links are against Google's guidelines. Google wants a link to count as a vote that your site or page has something useful or of interest on it. They don't like it when we build these links for ourselves. And they've actually been penalizing people for some types of links.

Here's a page off Google where they address what they call link schemes.


If you look at this page they've got a lot of stuff on here. Again, violating this (if you're caught) can actually result in a penalty, where the links harm your rankings. Instead of going up in the rankings or just not moving, you go down.

Let's just go through the important stuff on here quickly. Near the top of the list, they say buying or selling links that pass PageRank is bad. Passing PageRank means that the link is crawled by the search engines (most every link passes PageRank unless you insert a little piece of code in the link called a nofollow tag). They absolutely don't want you buying links. You can decide for yourself what you'd like to do, but if you're going to buy links, just be careful about it and don't make it obvious.

They also say excessive link exchanges are a bad thing. So instead of saying, "hey look at my content and if you like it please link to it", you say, "hey, let's help each other out, you link to my site and I'll link to yours".


Google doesn't like that. There's not really anyway to do this and not make it look obvious, so I'd avoid this altogether.

If you link out to people who just want to rank higher or link out to unrelated sites (which they're assuming means you're helping them rank higher) that's also a problem.

A lot of people use wordpress to build their site. In the footer of a wordpress theme there might be a link to some random site. If that link passes PageRank then that could be a problem for you. So you just want to be aware of that and make sure you're not inadvertently linking out to people spamming for backlinks or unrelated sites.

Using automated programs usually entails spamming for links. For example, there are software programs that go out and harvest sites allowing comments that run Wordpress. And with a click of a button you can send out a bulk comment to all of them. I get thousands of fake comments like this sent into my sites monthly (if not more).

It's a real hassle.

These people are only doing it to get links back to their sites. The thing is, even if the comments get approved it's not the same kind of link as if the owner of the site liked one of their articles and decided to link back to it.

It's just a blog comment link. The type of link you can get for yourself.

So even if the comment's not totally lame it's still the type of link building Google would like to stop factoring into their algorithm.

If they aren't already able to tell the difference and see that the link is coming from within the comments section of the blog and not right in the content, I'm betting they will figure this out in the not so distant future.

And the thing is, when they do, there will be a mad dash of webmasters who freak out because an update happened that really messed up their rankings. But those were rankings they had due to link building Google may not have had the technology to filter


out at the time, but wasn't the type of link building they wanted to ever factor into their algorithm to increase your rankings.

So depending on how you approach link building, you can set yourself up for long-term failure or long-term success.

Just know if you're going to manufacture links, it may not really do anything for you as far as increasing your search engine rankings (now and in the future). Or if it does help you out now, it may not in the future. I can't imagine that creating good content that people link to will ever go out of style, but much of the manufactured link building may.

Blog commenting specifically may bring you some traffic and help you network with other site owners and that's a good thing, but again, as far as SEO goes I wouldn't count on manufactured link building tactics like this one to really help you out for the long-term.

In my opinion, link building is not a fun way to spend a day. So if I'm going to spend 5 hours doing it, I'd much rather have the work I do last me a while. It's just way too boring a job to spend a whole lot of time on short-term tactics.

Another way to look at it is the only links Google would like to count are those given with editorial discretion. So only useful, valuable, relevant sites can get that link.

Just something to keep in mind. If you want to leverage your link building then links given with editorial discretion are the types of links Google would like to count. So you should get those (or make it look like those are the types of links you're getting) and spend less time getting the one's that they would like to stop counting (or worse that can cause you a problem). And this includes many of the links you manufacture.

SEO firms are still selling back links packages that can harm your site or at best not do anything for you. I see very few who are selling any type of link building service that's going to do you any good and those that are around are very expensive.


So please check them out before you buy anything. It can be a waste of your money and sometimes even lower your rankings.


Summing Up Google is squeezing webmasters from both angles through on-site and off-site (link building) factors.

The combination of the Panda and Penguin algorithm updates has been like a 1-2 punch for many webmasters and SEO's. And I'd expect the future will only bring more of the same.

Google has algorithms looking to see if you fit the profile (or pattern) of a high quality site.

And they've got algorithms designed to check out your backlink profile to see if it fits the pattern of a link profile from a high quality site.

It's a combination of the two; on-site and off-site (or link building) factors that determine where you will rank for any given keyphrase. It's always been that way, but their algorithms are far more sophisticated now than they were even just a few years ago.

If you've got a site that matches the patterns of a high quality site and you use the right labels (your on-site optimization) then you're going to come out ahead.

On top of that if you've got sites linking back to you because they want to call attention to your content instead of just a bunch of manufactured links anyone can get, you're going to rank higher still.

If you want to incorporate manufactured links into your link building strategy, just know that it may not give you long-term rankings as Google figures out how to discount them from their ranking algorithms. So you'll need to eventually get links given with editorial discretion to keep your rankings. Or you'll need to just get really lucky (which can happen, but you may not want to base your business and income on luck alone).

Good content and links given based on editorial discretion typically go hand-in-hand. If you've got useful content then you'll eventually gain these types of links (I say


eventually because if you don't do any promoting it may take you a while for anyone to find you).

If you've got good content and are willing to do some promoting for it then you'll get these types of links much faster.

These are signals Google has worked hard toward incorporating into their algorithms. And although they have separate algorithms for on-site and for off-site (or link building) factors they really do go hand-in-hand.

Useful, interesting, entertaining content can get you the types of links that will make a difference. The types of links that not just anyone can get.

So it's the best way to go for long-term rankings.

The first site I built had many elements of this strategy incorporated into it.

This was back in 2001 and there weren't nearly as many options for link building. At the time, I wasn't even really trying to get links, but I wanted traffic so I thought about where the type of people I wanted to attract went online.

I asked the people running those sites and pages to link to my site so their visitors could find it.

And many did.

It was more to get traffic than anything else. But it paid off in SEO because all those links counted and gave my site a boost in the search engines.

And all those links still count today despite all these algorithm updates because those are the types of links Google would like to count (while they've been working toward filtering out manufactured links).

Again, they were given because my site had something they thought was worth sharing with their visitors, so they linked to it.


Quality on-site and off-site optimization works best for long-term rankings.

I hope you enjoyed reading this special report and are able to take away some actionable steps to implement in your websites.

You have 2 main strategies here, on-site and off-site optimization.

It's easier to start with your on-site factors as you're in direct control of those. That's how you'll see the most impact for your time. I'd suggest going through the on-site factors and incorporate as many as you can into your pages. Some of these will not take you long at all to implement.

You can keep adding more of these factors into your pages. There are many more than what I've listed here, but these should give you a good idea of the types of elements Google is looking for when it comes to their quality algorithms.

At that point you can move onto tackling link building (off-site optimization).

It's easier to get better links (those given with editorial discretion) when you have a better site.

Many people do judge a book (or website) by how it looks. It's a fact of life. And many of the on-site factors I cover in this special report make your site look better. So once you've implemented the on-site factors, you will have a much easier time getting higher quality links.

Step-By-Step SEO Training

If you liked this report and want to learn more about SEO, I have a complete A-to-Z SEO training course put together for you. Both people starting or growing an online business have enrolled and have found it incredibly helpful.

SEO has been one of my top performing methods of traffic generation and I'm sure it can be profitable for you too. Whether you've got products or services, or are earning from affiliate/CPA offers or Adsense, SEO can bring you targeted traffic.


Take a look at the SEO training course here:

http://www.businessbolts.com/inlineseo/

It's online so it's very convenient. You can watch videos or read transcripts. Plus with

the in-depth Action Plans I've put together for you, you'll know exactly what to do each

step of the way.

If you enjoyed this report, I have much more waiting for you at businessbolts.com, including articles, training programs like my online SEO training course, and advice.

I look forward to hearing your success story!

All the best ...

Lisa Parmley

THE SEO SURVIVAL GUIDE

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