Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Thanks for the info, Julie. I'll look into MozRank - but the question remains in terms of sites that have strong traffic from countries like India. Is it bad to get links from these sites even if they also rank in the U.S.? My experience has shown that these sites have so far helped, since they have strong presence globally, even if the majority is from India, they also seem to have strong share in other countries as well. Any thoughts on that?

Jeffrey,

Thanks for the suggestion. Where do I get the Mozrank extension and does it work w/ Firefox?

What is wrong with article sites if they have PR4-7 and the content submitted is unique? We are seeing tangible results so far. We also do daily blogs and content on our own site.

Jeffrey,

Thanks for the suggestion. Where do I get the Mozrank extension and does it work w/ Firefox?

What is wrong with article sites if they have PR4-7 and the content submitted is unique? We are seeing tangible results so far. We also do daily blogs and content on our own site.

We are creating unique content and submitting our articles to article sites. I have some questions about the best way to go about this.

1. We are being very careful to create unique content for each submission - so we are not submitting the same article to multiple sites. Each submission is unique, so 1 article per 1 article directory.

2. When I did my research about these article sites at Alexa.com, I noticed that a lot of the article sites are ranking very well globally, but that a lot of them are #1 in Alexa for India. They are still ranked for other countries with very top ranking, for example, they may 9,000 Alexa rank in India and then 18,000 in the U.S. which is still very high.

3. We are trying to reach U.S. customers mostly, so I am wondering if we are still getting value by linking to these sites who have global reach (even though they are ranked best for India).

I would think that this is very beneficial still, but I didn't want to get the wrong kind of traffic by getting links from sites that are primarily getting their traffic from India, even though they are also getting tons of traffic from the U.S. - I am assuming this is OK because a 18,000 or 19,000 Alexa Rank in the U.S. is still excellent and I will benefit by this. But I wanted to be sure.

Feedback?

We always hear about how Google made this change or that change this month to their algorithm. Sometimes it's true and other times it's just a rumor.

So this week I was speaking with someone in the SEO field who said that this week a change occurred at Google and is going to become more prevalent where content placed at the "top of the fold" on merchant sites with products are going to get better placement, rather than if you have your products at top with some content beneath them at the bottom of the page.

Any comments on this?

I agree with most responses so far that links to relevant sites could stay, but any other should be removed. I also like the idea of making changes more slowly, one at a time, and measuring results. That way you know what is working and what is not. That's sometimes harder said than done, because when you see lots of changes needed to be made, there is the tendency to want to fix the site immediately, rather than tracking and measuring results.

In the beginning of SEO days, it was going around that .com is the best for SEO and that .net is not as good. Is there any truth to this, and what about .org or .edu?

I always hear that .edu sites have high PR.

Is there any rhyme or reason to this, or all they all equal?

Thank you,

Afshin

Christian-Way.com

Thanks, Dan. I appreciate the input!

very interesting. I may do that. This will certainly open a lot of possibilities if I can stop being afraid to link out to other sites. I was just told early on from several sources that outbound links hurt and I always carried that with me.

This was about 6-7 years ago when SEO was still more hazy for many people.

Afshin

Is there any merit to the statement that Google will give some SEO value to sites that display Adsense? Or is there absolutely no SEO value for or against a site that displays Adsense Ads?

Clearly, it would benefit Google's finance to give at least a small boost to sites that display Adsense, but do they do it? My guess is no, but I'm wondering ...

I appreciate the response. I do like what you are saying and hope it is true. It is logical, that's for sure. Do we have any documentation that Google feels as you do also? That would really settle it for me.

But all in all, I think it is good advice to link to relevant quality sites that make sense to link to.

This may be obvious, but have you already created an "advertise here" page on your site and displayed it in prominent positions and your site? It helps to make the terms of the advertising clear on the page also.

Is your pricing also reasonable in comparison to similar sites?

Afshin

Apples of Gold

Interesting in terms of having "nofollow" links to promote organic-ness.

Thanks, Mat. I sent out 4 requests yesterday to quality related blogs by simply emailing them and showing them a sample of my writing and letting them know what I had in mind.

I did mention that I would put our link in the "author bio". Is this is a turn-off for potential blogs to mention right away? Or should I try to "hook" their interest before mentioning this. I've noticed that guest bloggers that have approached me have not mentioned this until after I ask them what their terms are.

Thanks,

Afshin

Apples of Gold

What have you found to be the best way to convince quality blog sites with authority to let you become a guest blogger for their site?

I know that providing samples of quality writing is key. But other than that, what is the best way "in"?

I have a handful of quality writers at my disposal and also write myself, but I'm trying to find effective ways of convincing established blogs to let me write for them.

Please send me your best, most creative suggestions! What has worked for you?

Thank you,

Afshin

Apples of Gold

Maybe I didn't understand: but if it's a PDF, it's not html and the source is not visible–so how does that help your link? Or are people taking the info from the PDF and typing it into their site?

It sounds like a great idea, just want to understand.

Afshin

Apples of Gold

Do "nofollow" links provide any SEO value, particularly for Google? I have heard that they still can, since Google doesn't necessarily follow all of the tags.

Is this true? Is there any value in obtaining nofollow links? Can they also hurt in any way?

Thank you! 
Afshin

Apples of Gold

I have a quality site with good PR and we have very few outbound links.

We are always looking for good content since it is a blog, and I get frequent requests from "guest bloggers"–some of which actually provide really high quality & unique content. But, of course, to get their content I have to give them at least 1 link.

I have always been taught that external links really hurt your site and that basically 1 outbound link cancels out 1 inbound link because they balance each other out.

Is this true? I always wondered why we must get penalized for linking out to good sites? It makes me get very "stingy" with my outbound links, whereas if my site would not be effected, I would want to be more generous.

Any suggestions & info would greatly help!

Thank you,

Afshin