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Thanks Dave. I'm not sure that they purposefully thought about a way to manipulate SERPS with the hash in the canonical tag (let's just say I know what they are trying to do with everything else). I think it was an 'oops' not a "hmmm", but I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks.

The boilerplate anchor text is also very misinterpreted (IMO).  Reference this link:

http://screencast.com/t/bMatICEj

Note that this applies to titles and most-likely titles that are empty, don't exist at all, or are duplicate of other pages on the website. I know how easy it is to push the panic button when the Goog puts out information, and am really starting to realize why they haven't before now (and feel a bit guilty for whining so much in the past about it).

See you Saturday?

Any idea why companies like Skechers would be doing this: http://screencast.com/t/ooEkATGN7EX ? I suppose it makes sense, but I've never seen it done before. If this works, why on earth would we be using absolute URLs still?

We have a few exciting clients we about to start working with and I'm looking for a full campaign management solution that allows for branded reporting. Because we are an agency, is there an option I'm missing that allows you to swap your logo with the seomoz.org logo?

Fascinating. How do we explain eBay and Amazon URLs? Their breadcrumb system and categorization produce Google breadcrumbs and backward navigation, yet the URLs have absolutely no categories/directories.

Thanks @bozzie311 - it's amazing how things have changed over the last decade. Looks like a majority of respondents so far are still old school like me: http://screencast.com/t/ag4voDg561

Your feedback here is definitely appreciated, but I'm also doing a public study and would be honored and humbled if you answered the 5 questions in my survey as well.

For those who do not wish to participate, I'd appreciate your general feedback on permalink structure best practices based on what Amazon.com and eBay.com have done to their URLs in recent times.

Thanks!

There's actually two opportunities here:

1. Paid Site Links
2. Organic Site Links

Paid Site Links

This one's not too complicated at all. Simply login to AdWords and create an Ad Extension under the campaign you'd like to add site links to. You can add several site links, so if you're SEO-smart, you'll create some awesome link bait on those pages for visitors who might be inclined to link. I created a plugin that does the job well for me (see http://www.seolinkrotator.com/).

Organic Site Links

Unfortunately, the vague answer of 'authority' doesn't cut it for me and probably won't for the novice user reading this thread. Here's how I have controlled organic site links in the past:

• Keep the main navigation on the website short, sweet and explicit
• Match your anchor text to the page title and heading (h1) as close as possible
• Leverage internal linking (or intra-linking) throughout your content, linking to those important pages frequently
• Nofollow the navigational elements you do not want indexed (Login, My Account, etc)
• Include awesome link bait on those pages
• Include buzz bait on those pages (Tweetmeme, Facebook Like, etc)
• Analyze your Internal Links and keywords using Google Webmaster Tools
• Hold your breath, check back in 2-3 weeks

Both paid and organic can play well together if you're using the same pages for both site link campaigns. The drawback is A/B testing flexibility you might normally be used to having in paid search.

I'm also a huge fan of the new Yoast SEO for Wordpress plugin. If you're worried about losing data, simply login to phpMyAdmin and export the table before transitioning to a replacement.

We did a detailed write up on the plugins most used by developers via LinkedIn. Google XML Sitemap and All in One blew the rest away: http://www.seosteve.com/seo-tools/top-ten-wordpress-plugins-for-2011.html

Here are the ones I'm using with new WP installs:

• Yoast Wordpress SEO
• Google XML Sitemaps with qTranslate Support
• Dagon Sitemap Generator (HTML)
• .html for Pages
• W3 Total Cache (to Amazon S3 or other CDN)
• Tweetmeme Retweet Button
• Disqus Comments Platform

Thanks - I love Scott's article and it does list a few tools and a few types of links, and even lists a few destinations to acquire them. However, I don't see an actual strategy, phases, quantities, or an exclusive list of link building tactics one might find after a few dozen Advanced Link Building Strategies sessions at SES/SMX/etc. Do you have a boilderplate one you build off of?

Hi Richard,

All things considered, including juice, traffic and anchor text. Do you have a strategy with channels and phases?

Sitemaps create a Table of Contents for web crawlers and users alike. Understanding how PageRank is passed, HTML sitemaps play a critical role in how Googlebot and other crawlers spider and catalog content.

I get asked this question a lot and, in most cases, it's easy to categorize sitemaps and create 2-3 category-based maps that can be linked to from the global footer. However, what do you do when a client has 40 categories with 200+ pages of content under each category? How do you segment your HTML sitemap in a case like this?

All things considered, directories, blogs, articles, press releases, forums, social profiles, student discount pages, etc, what do you consider to be a strong, phased, link building strategy? I'm talking beyond natural/organic link bait, since many larger accounts will not allow you to add content to their website or take 6 months to approve a content strategy.

I've got my own list, but would love to hear what the community considers to be a strong, structured, timeline-based strategy for link building.

Hi Daniel,

This is actually a two part question, so here's the two part answer.

Linking to a Target Domain

Google's core algorthim is based on linking. The quantity and authority of links are presented in the form of PageRank, which isn't displayed by Google in any useful format nowadays. Having quality links from quality 3rd party domains add credibility and ultimately ranking for the target domain. Earning links to a target domain to achieve maximum ranking is ONE strategy and can produce great results by itself.

Creating Additional Micro-sites for SERPS Saturation

By creating additional domains simply to achieve higher ranking for a target domain divides your marketing efforts and can add confusion to your link building and PR teams. However, creating themed experiences via micro-sites and micro-blogging platforms as a way to increase search engine saturation while also boosting link juice, can be a powerful strategy (especially for an online reputation campaign). Take websitegrader.com for example. It's a micro-site built on its own domain that drives massive links from people who enjoy the tool. Yet, at the end of the day it's lead generation tool and could be a great link opportunity had the Hubspot gurus considered adding a keyword-rich link from their grader properties.

So I suppose the best answer might be to do both:

1. Build a powerful target website with the most influential links to earn top placement in the SERPS
2. Build one or more additional domains with a specific, non-salesy, theme in mind to earn saturation and organic links.

Just don't forget to add the link from the micro-site at the end of the day, if that's one of the strategies you decide to employ.