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We are just using a .png - how do you avoid keyword blocking though? It's not like you can instantaneously avoid the word 'link' or providing a URL somewhere in the e-mail. How do you get round it?

The main problem with outsourcing your link building is lack of control and oversight. Unless you go to a  reputable SEO Company who you trust (and preferably have met) be very careful about who you get to do your link building.

As it's a new site you want to get it off on the right footing so with any company you take on you want to be asking about their link building processes and even, maybe, for a while ask them for a sample of places they have requested links from.

From previous experience, I don't think it's going to make much of a difference to the ranking of that page whether it's a page or a post. Although unless it's core to what your blog stands for, rather than just a topical subject that relates to the blog, then I'd be inclined to say 'make a post'.

Focus on it being relevant and interesting for your readers and do the keyword research before writing and on-page optimisation straight after publishing. That will leave you free to get on with promoting your great new content via social and links.

Enjoy whatever your 'chocolate' blog is actually about!

Hi there,

The last couple of months we have had quite a few link request e-mails apparently not being received.

Our e-mails are sent out through Mozilla Thunderbird, so not an e-mail platform. However we use a HTML template to ensure our business logo and footers are consistent and to help raise awareness of the brand.

Is there any chance that some e-mails may well be blocked (e.g. by filters) because we're using HTML e-mails rather than a standard e-mail format and does anyone have any advice for ensuring e-mails get through (other than getting the right contact name if possible).

Thanks in advance,

Martin

Hi guys,

Thanks for the feedback so far and I will be definitely checking GWT and maybe even tweeting out the links. I did think that seemed a little bit... you know, false - but I guess it's just ensuring Google takes note of the actual page? What do people think? I'm unwilling to Facebook them out, because that's even more 'in your face' and I'm unwilling to SPAM out 50 domains just to get them indexed. Advice welcomed on these points.

@Brian - yes, I suppose they could be coming from lower domains, but equally many have been pulled from competitor link data from OSE, so catch 22?

@Theo - I will double-check

@Ross - firmly NO to Black Hat. I don't do this ANYWAY, but equally something's screwing up the SEO anyway, so going down that route could permanently jeopardise the site and that's not what the client's paying for.

Hi All,

I asked about a client last month and have had to do some other digging to try to find out what's going on with its Google rankings.

According to our link-building spreadsheet, we have got up to 50 links (from 50 domains) in process of being actioned and a large proportion of these are actually in existence.

There are two questions:-

1. Open Site Explorer only recognises 3 domains - as I know that other domains exist and are pointing (mostly 'followed'), what can be the reason OSE doesn't recognise this?

2. What can be done to encourage these external links to be more easily accessible by OSE and, presumably other bots?

Other Points:-

1. I initially thought it might be  crawl blocking issue causing the rankings, but Bing/Yahoo rankings are slowly dragging themselves upwards.

2. Robots.txt is not blocking any of the site

3. Pro on-site analysis for the target keyword is 'A'

4. The website's stats per OSE are better than some competitors in the top 20 except on the root domain issue, which is why the above point is important.

Link building for other clients has worked really well without hiccups and with general gradual recognition, so any tips from more experienced folks out there would be gratefully appreciated.

Many thanks,

Martin

Thanks - I will double-check those. The mark-up should be fine, but will go through everything again just to be sure and make sure a sitemap is added through Bing Webmaster tools. Thanks.

Most of those things are normal parts of SEO work though? Maybe just strengthening the internal link anchor text may be a start for this particular client. So thanks

Hi there,

Please can someone point me to some current and reasonably accurate articles or guidance on optimising for Bing, as my optimisation work on one client is reaping rewards in Google, but being partially ignored by Bing and I really want to be able to better understand their ranking factors.

Many thanks,

Martin