Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Agreed, if you hire a third party, you can never fully be aware of the who/what you're getting for your dollar. I would point to the most recent mess involving J.C. Penny for an example of what can happen if there is poor oversight. Even if you do pay or hire a "reputable" company, there is still the potential for mistakes if the work is not closely monitored.

Unfortuantely, link-building is a tedious, tiresome, often thankless task!

Before you decide to hire someone, be sure to look at all of your personal resources for linking opportunities: customers, vendors, professional contacts, friends who blog, etc. These might be easier and more reliable sources for potential links than hiring a temp, etc.

Alex,

I have a friend in the UK who has used FACT-finder with lots of success. My friend is part of an e-commerce group, but I believe FACT-finder can help with any platform. This is their URL http://www.fact-finder.com/

I've never used them personally, so please do your homework before committing!

All the best,

W

Liam,

Are you referring to the site link results that appear when you search the two different versions (masterpieceinteriors & masterpiece interiors)? If so, it's my best bet that this simply has to do with Google picking up your url address 'masterpieceinteriors' with no spaces in one search, and 'masterpiece interiors' with a space in the other search.

It appears that Google simply recognizes both versions for the same brand, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing at all.

If this doesn't fully answer your question, please let me know, but I don't know that there really is a problem with what you have described.

All the best,

W

Hi Ben,

Some people will tell you that directories are not worth your time. I don't find that to be true in every instance. I think that listing yourself in a few of these industry-related directories (the most valuable and non-spammy ones) can not only yield minor influence in the engines, but more importantly it can serve as a great source for referrals, especially when it's in your niche market.

That said, if you're going to concern yourself with paid directories, I would make sure that you are listed in those like Yahoo and Best of the Web. I've seen positive influence from both of these directories, and they are trsuted by Google.

In whole, directories are not going to elevate your SEO campaign too terribly much.

Hi Peter,

Great question considering the latest Panda update. A lot of people have been scrambling to remove content that Google might deem "shallow" or of no value to users. We implemented a couple of practices to see which worked best with regard to moving content:

A: We simply added a 'robots.txt' command. This is designed to not allow Google crawl the content.

B: If you have the luxury of moving it to an entirely different domain, that could also be a choice. We found this to be the better of the two in terms of aesthetics. We simply didn't want to gunk up our site with a lot of "shallow" content. It also seemed that the engines responded better to this approach.

Your 404 is another option if you simply want to remove it from the indexes. However, I'd be sure to check that no link juice is flowing through the pages. If so, then a 301 re-direct might be appropriate. Depending on your intentions, each of the three could serve your purpose!

Let me know if I've confused you, or if you need additional opinion!

Best of luck

W

Hey Joe,

We syndicate content at our company and have faced this same question.

A very succesful method for us has been to arrange unpaid internships with local colleges. They often will have job boards online at the various universtities where you can post your listing by department, e.g., English/Journalism, etc.

Depending on your pay scale, you may also want to scan already-employed journalists in local papers. Indianapolis for instance (where we are located) has a free entertainment paper named NUVO tha tis distributed once monthle all across the metro area. Very popular paper and the writers for these types of places generally make very low income and are willing to make a transition. We have also had a lot of success with this approach. (The plus is that these folks are known quantities in terms of their talent and their commitment to writing!)

Lastly, do a search for blog communities in your city. There are often large communities of bloggers that are writing purely for the sake of writing. They are often very good, too!

Best of luck,

W

Hi Sunil,

If I understand you correctly, you're asking "how" to get the same backlinks as those of your competitors? If that's the question, then I'm afraid the answer is there is no sure-fire way to ensure you will ever gain the same links. Link attribution is never a guarantee.

My suggestion would be to approach the webmasters where you see your competitors are receiveing backlinks and offer them a "value-add proposal" that is unique form that of your competitor.

You can also always offer a widget, a partnership proposal, etc. The key is to provide value and personal thought to your link request. Just asking for a link because your competitor has one is not going to likely yield positive results.

A word of caution: make sure your competitors backlinks are coming from good neighborhoods. There are many posts on SEOmoz that speak to this. You don't want to waste your time or effort, or jeopardize your sites performance, by acquiring suspect links.

Link building is tough, but a little creativity and human touch can usually open the lines of communication!

Best of luck,

W

Hey Ryan... just a quick niblet of advice I wanted to share after reading your post: Don't get too hung up on your or anyone else's PR. It's a much better practice to study the backlinks on any given site. You want to be sure that sites you are approaching for links aren't harboring spammy links, or attracting bad neighborhoods.  Sometimes a site might have a robust PR, but it's link profile is a horror show!

PR can be a bit of a mirage in many instances. So be careful!

Hi Beeneeb,

You are correct in your assumption--the reports are not real-time. In fact, I have had as much as a week go by before my changes were recognized by the report pages. I'm assuming others enjoy the same experience

All the best,

76

One of the best SEO secrets I've learned (which took a while) is how to implement what works best and leave the rest alone. Trying to read and stay abreast of everything regarding SEO is a futile venture--it's as much art as it is science, and few 'secrets' exist.

There are large components of SEO that are open to grand interpretation and it's often hard to separate good information from mis-information from out-dated information from just plain flase information. (If you ever get the opportunity to attend PubCon or an SES conference and listen to the bevy of conversation and opinion happening all about you, the quickl realization is that there are few fast and hard rules.)

There are several camps that will advise you a bit differently in all aspects of SEO: some will claim that their methods are proven, others will be more humble and offer a "best-practices" approach sans the 'guarantee'. I often believe I'm only as good at SEO as the success I had yesterday.

Try to find what works for you inside your vertical and then cherry-pick tips from the rest of the SEO community as you see fit. Translation: there is no magic bullet!

Here's to future success!