How Not to link to Sites That Are in a Bad Neighborhood

Basically, sites that are in a bad neighborhood are those that post on link farms, splogs, or other sites using black hat SEO techniques. Stay away from these types of sites. Do you know that if a person you're linking to posts on these types of sites, you could get in trouble with Google as well? It's unfair, but true. And don't think that because a site has a good page rank today that tomorrow it won't use black hat techniques that would mess up your site. This is why you need to keep your eye on the sites to which you link.

One way you can do this is to read the page rank bar on the Google toolbar. This is better than using linkvendor.com, because it tells you if a site has been banned, whereas linkvendor.com may not. If the page rank bar is gray, that indicates a ban. However, don't confuse being banned with having a page rank of 0. Just because a site has a 0 page rank, that doesn't mean it's linking to sites in a bad neighborhood. It could just mean that not enough time has passed for the webmaster to get the site to rank high enough in search engines to receive a higher page rank. Recently, for example, there was a proxy problem (now fixed) that erroneously returned sites with a page rank of 0 which in fact were ranked higher.

You can use SEO Elite to determine a site's page rank. To do this, you first open the program and select radio button 4. Enter the URL of one of your links, then select "Google PR" from the checkboxes. Click "OK." You're shown a report that displays the page rank for each of the web pages within the site you're linking to. Be on alert for those with a rank of 0.As you already know, this doesn't mean they're linking to bad neighborhoods, so you'll need a method to find out for sure. Now select radio button 6. Through this you can see if the site still appears in Google's search engine listings. Next, select the Google checkbox. If it returns 0, you know the site no longer appears in the search engine listings, and you should stay far away from it.

SEO Googler How-Tos

Get Google to read your keywords first. Things Google ignores. Don't link to sites in "bad neighborhoods." And, how to get your site listed in the search engine within 24 hours. These are some of the topics Jon Rognerud discusses in this post.

Rognerud, for example, tells us not to waste time on keywords and description attributes meta tags; style, script and comment tags; and duplicate links. He also steps us through the process of getting Google to index your site quickly. Don't use Google's submission form. That could take between 2 and 6 weeks, he writes. And, don't worry about niche keyword targeting at first. This is the rare time that the broader the keyword, the better.

Gut Genug SEO

For those unfamiliar with the German language, "Gut Genug" translates to "Good Enough".

Ever run into this situation? Maybe you've been fortunate enough that you are swamped with client work, and you have to do the bare minimum to get by. Instead of getting 50 links for the keyphrase that is most important, you only get 10.

Many times, when trying to get some work done, it is the client that impedes the progress. At that point, it's not your fault. But if you know that you could be doing more, are you really servicing the client?

The arguement could be made to say that if a client is only paying a certain amount, they should only get a certain amount of service. I can't argue that. But at some point the question needs to be asked: Are you providing value to your client? Or just taking their money?

So, enough about the rant. These situations do occur, and as I thought about it, I came up with a list of what would be gut genug:

(All of these are on a per month basis)

• 10 keyword-rich text links for each keyphrase
• 5 directory links for each keyphrase
• A review of the copy on the targeted pages
• A review of the page titles and meta tags
• Inform client on any changes in the search space
• Provide insight for client's search marketing strategy
• Be a protector of the client brand