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One of the reasons why keywords in a domain name work so well are because when links and references are made to the website, the keywords are typically the anchor text that are in the links.  So, you get an extra advantage beyond even the semantic benefit of having the keywords in the domain name.  You'll have less worries in the anchor text link building violations because you can build more links similar to the keywords in your domain.

However, it appears in certain verticals, there are more benefits for the exact keywords in a domain.  Check out attorney phrases for example.  Do some research by checking out specific verticals and you might get your answer in terms of how important or how valuable they can be.

Matt Cutts did a video to answer this question that coincidentally we wrote a quick blog post about yesterday.  Interesting timing...

http://seattleorganicseo.com/sosblog/move-multiple-websites-domain-steps/

Hey Gabe,

This first tool might take care of most of your needs:

http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/seo-tools/google-sitemap-generator/

Aaron Wall wrote a bit about it here: http://www.seobook.com/review-jim-boykins-free-broken-link-tool-0

Here's another tool taking care of your first need (partially), but doesn't spit out the data into excel from what I can tell: http://www.seo41.com/link-analyzer.php

Good luck in expediting all this!

B

I don't know the link to it, but there's a quick video clip of Distilled's Tom Critchlow pointing out that "it's not about building links, but building relationships."  I'd have to agree to a significant degree.

I'm not talking about buying relationships, but I'm talking about doing everything you can to get to know everyone and everybody in the SEO community who's good.  Go to all the conferences where they "hang" and spend time going to all the "Link Love", "Search Love" and all the other SEO Love type of fests.

Also, find ways to build up "relationships" with everyone in your niche by either spending time where they spend time and get to know their needs.  Cozy up to bloggers that blog in your vertical.  Send them nice presents.  Remember their birthdays.  Build relationships!

With an unlimited budget, I would seriously spend a lot of it building relationships for your client.

I would literally search everything under the sun re: topics I noticed on your homepage.  I.e.:

• training
• certification
• wealth
• hypnosis

There's gotta be tons of bloggers on most of these topics on top of associations or organizations as well.  There's probably even directories and forums specific to all these topics and so I would scour those as well.  Start with the basic searches on the broad topics and then start going down tangents.

You can find some gold in those hills, if you travel far enough...

Backlinks are the foundation of the original algorithm.  Check out the first paragraph in "Design Goals" section 1.3.1 in Brin's and Page's original paper on google: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html  The last couple of lines point to how backlinks are what guide's google to figure out relevance to a significant degree.

However, as people have both witnessed and experienced, google's punishing specific types of links like blog networks right now and also probably taking into consideration notions like what Geoff Kenyon wrote back at the end of January before a lot of the sh*t hit the fan: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/anchor-text-distribution-avoiding-over-optimization

I think the key is to keep the ratio more heavily weighted towards the brand and the urls of the original website and definitely not having too much of one specific anchor text.  However, some companies still seem to be "under google's radar" like this one I noticed recently: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.autson.com.  I guess if you "make it appear natural", you can still make it under their radar.  At the same time, I would HIGHLY encourage a larger proportion being more naturally built links despite the pain and time it takes.

Google's going to constantly disrupt the business though...how else can they keep their stock price going up by pumping it with all the adwords spends?  

I wouldn't worry about what you call the "google dance."  SEO can be done at any time.  The key is to do it properly.  You can do as much of it as you want as long as it's not creating problems like the recent "over optimization" penalties being leveraged.

Keep building up your on page optimization, keep doing what it takes to get great natural links and if possible, continue to build relationships both offline and on and you should be fine.

We're obviously biased...so we won't say "us."

Keri's message is great, but I would recommend doing the following when you're in the process of evaluating them:

-check out their title tag of their own website; it always confuses me that an SEO company doesn't SEO their own website.  If you need help with evaluating other factors that might point out what they're trying to optimize for their own efforts, let us know (i.e., the h1, h2 tags, meta description, image file names, alt text, etc.)

-if you need reference on pricing, here's a good recent post from Rand about costs: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-pricing-costs-of-services and another post debating/discussing the topic: http://www.seomoz.org/q/2011-sseo-pricing-costs-what-should-you-charge-how-much-should-you-pay

-definitely ask for more than 3 or so case studies, if possible.

-usually a quick answer is a wrong answer in our minds.  Almost every client has different needs.  We always hesitate when someone asks us "how much will it cost?" or "how long will it take?"  While we have standard pricing created because many people do ask for the pricing details right away, I would argue that each case is like taking on a new patient for a doctor.  There's a bit of history with that patient before they see the new doctor.

-thus, they should be asking you guys a lot of questions.  Wouldn't you want a doctor to do that?

DigiJoltMan is right for the most part, but there are also a number of firms that charge a bit more than they potentially should.  So, the reverse is true as well.

Gotta run, but let us know if you need any other questions.  I think it's great you're asking here.  Good luck!

I'd agree with EGOL.  Our goal is always to get more domains.

I would argue that having a domain is like having 1 fan.  Having multiple links from the same domain is like that same fan saying different things about you.  The first complement is usually the best, but after that, you know s/he's a fan and so you listen to the 2nd, 3rd and additional complements less so.

From the looks of it, the links that do have the anchor text "car warranty" aren't the best.  I didn't go through all of them, but you'll want definitely more links that are coming from better sites.

At the same time, do be careful...you joke that you would rather see the warning, but if you do get it, you'll be regretting you asked for it.  Frankly, it's not something you want...if you think ranking 10 or 11 is bad, the warning/penalization will get you much worse.

My other advice would be focusing on more than just one term.  We have a client who does get excited (and rightfully so b/c it has 110,000 mo exact searches) when they go up for one phrase, but we were also able to balance it out with 9 other great terms that frankly kept the same amount of traffic coming in that were related.

Also, I was reading recently someone thought it was bad they overoptimized by having the same exact anchor in the title, h1 and all the main on page tags (like you guys do).  So, maybe you can experiment with that, but frankly, I suspect that whatever links got you to #3 were potentially helping because they were coming from a great site.

You might consider finding other routes/methods in hopefully garnering more natural links from better websites though - for the long term.

Sorry, but not remembering 100% what I was thinking at the time of writing the response since it was a week ago, but trying to reread through what was written, I believe I was talking about how the SERP may have been manually rated.  While some of the SERPS are ranked via the algorithms google has developed, I've heard and read that there are a number of them that are affected and rated manually by humans.  If there was any human interaction by one of their manual raters, they may have deemed your site less "relevant" for the search.

Have you ever seen the "Give us feedback" link at the bottom of the SERPs?  Let's say somebody decides your website and the other 2 competitors are not what they were looking for when it came to the search "nlp" or "nlp training.  Well, they could complain and potentially be reviewed by the manual raters or whomever responds to the complaints and drop you.  Since it was before the most recent panda change, I was speculating that this could of been a cause.

Frankly, we've tried to keep rates as low as possible, but over time, we also have found there's a ton of work that needs to be done for some clients who come on board.  It really depends on what they do.

I do 2 things for clients: 1) provide them rankings, but 2) and most importantly, what the rankings translates into traffic.  I dive into the google analytics.  Do those rankings equate to improvements in traffic?  Do they help you evaluate your google analytics to show you that they do?

Rankings are not the whole picture.

Also, for some clients who do want to know more details, I provide details of the sources I pointed out above (OSE, Majestic & Google Webmasters).  I will tell them how their links have increased or rather prove it via those sources.  So, I'll give whatever a client basically wants within reason.  These have given us very positive ratings everywhere clients have rated us and happy clients as far as I can tell.  And for now, I think these are the main reports that show that we "did something" frankly.

Sorry, but when I reread this, this sort of sounds like we're selling our services, but frankly, all the above is what we do because we feel like it's fair communication.  An SEO or an SEO firm has an obligation to report their work as much as the client wants to know...and I'm sorry, but it sounds like you haven't had other standards to compare it to in the past.  Thus, the feeling of not getting what you pay for.

By the way, have you asked the provider these questions? If not, definitely do.

Hey Jon,

I forgot about a new backlink checker you might already know about.  It's now a part of SEOBook's SEO toolbar, but I discovered a few weeks before: http://ahrefs.com

I'm not sure if you should worry about interlinking the sites together.  While you might not get extra benefit from them if Google sees that they're all coming from a known network of sites that are interlinked, I would hesitate to believe Google would punish you per se.

For example, Expedia.com has a ton of sites within their company.  So does Amazon.  Do they get punished for interlinking them all?  No.

However, if you're trying to secure extra credit for the links, you might have to get somewhat smart about how you link to each other, but there's plenty of documentation online to explain some of the strategies you can apply to do that.

Hi Bodie,

I use Majestic SEO and Google Webmasters to verify my links a bit quicker.  The links typically show up on those much faster than they do on OSE.

I see links from:

|

http://www.kimberleyaccommodation.com.au

| http://www.hotelkununurra.com.au |

| http://www.morgenpost.de/reise/article1873557/Palaeste-Strandhuetten-und-andere-neue-Hotels.html |

| http://www.australien-news.com |

| http://www.bha.broomeaccommodation.com.au |

| http://www.gourmet-report.de/artikel/340712/Westaustralien-Luxusurlaub-ohne-Strassenanbindung.html |

| http://www.lookcook.net/index2.php?artikel=7416&typ=news& |

| http://australien-info.de/serendipity/authors/1-Newsletter-AUSTRALIEN-INFO/P1.html |

| http://pindanpost.com/2011/12/19/the-berkeley-river-experience-coming-soon |

| http://www.mikullagoldmann.de/Newsdetails/items/westaustralien---luxusurlaub-ohne-strassenanbindung.1321.html |

| http://www.kimberleyhotel.com.au/?id=37x71378420738950769 |

| http://www.tourismtopend.com.au/accom_result1/berkeley-river |

| http://australiabig.com.au/?p=291 |

|

http://www.reisegezwitscher.de/reisetipps?format=feed&type=rss

| http://www.eastkimberleydirectory.com.au/search/?link=Accommodation&category=ekdbusiness |

| http://content.yudu.com/A1usv7/SLHDEC11/resources/47.htm |

As your unique domains linking back.

However, 4 months and not seeing movement or a growth in the backlinks is a pretty big red flag.

Let me know if you ever need a quick check on Majestic.  You can get a free glance of the total domains and backlinks for free

though via SEObook's SEO tool bar.

Can't validate Michael's concerns 100%, but it does seem a little fishy given that you've been with them for 4 months.  No reports?

How do they communicate that their work's been complete?

|

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Great share.

I should read more of Tom's stuff.  He's consistently sharing some solid gems.  Cheers.

A gal I used to work with white labeled her reports with this: http://www.webceo.com/  It costs a few hundred bucks.  I've been trying this tool by http://www.link-assistant.com/ recently that's priced around the same, but it's not working so well securing the ranking information I need.  So, this month I have to do all my reports manually again!  

I guess we are.  I had no idea you were my neighbor to the north.  Get down to Seattle often?  I love Vancouver when I can get up that way.  

I might be a little late to the party  and didn't go through all the posts shared by Keri (which I hope to do later), but how about social bookmark campaigns.  I have a friend who was able to use stumble upon and the like to get her site to drive huge amounts of traffic to her site: http://www.swayable.com/

So, to answer the question you repeat multiple times, "How do we get them to link after we build great content?" Maybe you should find some way to get in front of crowds with the content and hopefully get them to "like it" or promote it somehow?  Facebook...twitter...and these social bookmarking sites.

SEOmoz used to have this website and might still somewhere in their recommended social media websites or maybe it was their directory list: http://www.ranker.com  Well, I know I've posted to it's sister site with a blog post of mine and got 10X's the traffic we were used to because it was in front of a crowd.  We didn't get a ton of links, but we may have gotten a few.

I thought the original question was about the most effective link building techniques and then has digressed down to a debate about creating great content ='ing link bait vs. other more artificial techniques that Vojt listed.  I'd like to read more about other strategies like Vojt's listed because it is sort of obvious that building great content is going to get you potential links, no?  Well, here's a few more ideas from other places when I searched for "link building 2012":

http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/link-building-2012.html

http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/library/link-building-secrets-2012/

http://weblogbetter.com/2012/01/02/link-building-strategy-for-2012/

Not saying these are well written or have good ideas, but maybe one idea about link building is writing posts about the next year with the same topics we ask about year after year (i.e., your question) and then get some idiot like me to copy & past it into SEOmoz and then getting links? There's an idea...

Interesting data about the hyphenated domains.  Intuitively for me, people just don't type hyphens between words.  So, outside of the SEO aspect of the domains, the "usability" of the domains has something to do with what I'd argue would get more traffic to the domain withOUT the hyphens.  There's some research that says people type in domains "as is" into the url bar the a .com at the end and I'd argue they never put the hyphens in there.

Like the previous 3 comments, in terms of SEO value, they're the same, but Rob's data is fascinating.  If there are manual raters out there checking out the hyphenated versions of domains, there may be a reluctance to value these domains and frankly, almost every hyphenated domain I've ever seen has "less quality" than the non-hyphenated ones.  Definitely can't be proven via data, but just my gut...