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Directories like this can help, but they are very expensive (the Yahoo link cost $299 the last time I checked). I stand by my advice. Do something awesome on your site before you ask anyone lese to link to it.
And make sure that the websites you target for link acquisition are relevant to your site. In the example you gave, construction sites would be relevant. But not blogs about travel. Does that make sense?
Well, you should always try to get a mix of branded and unbranded links. If you can get links to inner pages, that will also be helpful in helping build authority.
Dude,
The best way to get links is to earn them.
Paid links are against Google's policies, and could get you banned. Don't buy links.
And before you even start thinking about buying links, make sure that your site is worthy of being linked to. Then check out this blog post:http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies And buy this book: www.linkbuildingbook.com.
Unfortunately getting links is not easy, but don't go down the dark road of link buying...no good can come of it.
Good Luck!
Hi Emarketed Team,
Just because it doesn't show up in OSE doesn't mean it isn't indexed/valuable, depending on how relevant it is to your client site. OSE does not crawl the entire internet yet, although they are getting closer.
I have not seen any scholarly studies on this subject, but I did find this blog post: http://www.seowizz.net/2010/07/links-do-not-have-to-be-indexed-to-count.html
Since it is from 2010, I would take it with a grain of salt. Even the article says that you shouldn't base your entire SEO campaign on this tactic.
So here is what I would do (not that you asked).
Drop the link into my monthly report
Move on to the next target
Would not spend a lot of time bragging about this link to the client 
Good Luck!
The question is, do you see SEO as a service that complements your current product?
Think about it from a branding perspective:
I have an SEO site. If I decide to sell SEO tools, I might promote those tools on my SEO blog, but I probably would create a new branded domain for the tools themselves, right? That is why I'd say that you should start over with a new site.
I'm also going to let you in on a little secret. Very few of the top SEO companies rank for SEO related terms. This is because ranking for SEO terms simply isn't worth the time and energy that you need to put into it in order to succeed.
Focus on building a beautiful site, writing stuff that people find useful, and providing excellent value for your first clients and you will do OK.
BTW, congrats on taking that leap, here are a couple of articles I wish I'd read before getting started:
http://www.sugarrae.com/seo-sphere/the-number-1-mistake-new-seo-consultants-make/
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/setting-up-your-seo-project-agency-for-success
http://www.seobook.com/starting-new-seo-business-2011
http://www.seobook.com/starting-an-seo-company
Good luck, and if I can ever be of assistance, I'd love to help.
Thanks for the reply.
We ended up doing it manually, as we only had a few hundred pages to update. But I am going to keep this in my back pocket in case we run into the same issue with another client. Thanks again!
We have to update the metadata for a drupal 7 website. We've already written them all out, and know exactly what URL they should go to. But I don't want to waste the client's money by spending any more time than is necessary on uploading the information to the site.
Is there a way to upload the information that isn't manual?
Hi,
This might be a little simplistic, but why do you need to know their country before they look at your product? Either ask them via an overlay the instant they get to your site, or put it off until they've selected their items and are already in your cart. Either of these options will be better both for User Experience and SEO.
Hi Joel,
If you are looking for local citations, Dana DiTomaso just did a webinar on this form of link building yesterday. I don't think the video is up yet, but keep your eye out for it. We found it to be very helpful.
The other option is to create pages for individual markets and use the hreflang markup to differentiate for the spiders.
I love that last line...
"By the time I'm done, I want my client to feel like a genius...if for no other reason than they were smart enough to ask me for help :-)"
Do you mind if I use it?
It's not so much that you don't want to wake the beast, but more that the beast will ignore you. If you have not been warned, most likely you will be told that it was an "algo change" rather than a manual penalty. For Algo changes they do not reconsider rankings, because that would be manually tweaking something that they had solved with the Algo. Might be better to just focus on continuing to improve your site and they will find and reward you.
I just read those articles to expand my knowledge base. Adam go check them out...it looks like the address what you are talking about.
Rand, thanks for stopping by the Q & A, it's always nice to get some input from the Grand Pooba
Well, best of luck to you! Hopefully you find what you are looking for. Also, be sure to mark my answer as a good answer if it was helpful...I can almost taste my Journeyman status because I am so close!
Hi Jason,
Tip No.1 never buy a tool if you don't have time to review the instructions.
Honestly, I got the free version of this software when I was first starting out in SEO, and I found it very cumbersome. Additionally, it needs frequent updates, and on many occassions you are asked to pay for those updates. It was because this tool did not give me what I needed that I sought out SEOmoz, Ontolo, Majestic SEO and others.
It may have improved since then, but most of the reviews on Cnet have been mixed:
http://download.cnet.com/SEO-PowerSuite-Professional/3000-18485_4-10920496.html
Oops, that's what I get for speedreading! Rel=author won't do anything for you in that case. Hopefully someone else will have more info, but at that point I'd consider adding that info to her page descriptions so that people know that she's been in those publications.
My suggestion would be to come up with an alternative list of keywords related to what she does and convince her that working on these will be much more feasible than ranking her page for a term like Forbes. Now that I think about it, just show her this:
Good luck ranking for that!
Hi Adam,
What an interesting question! While this is not really my speciality, I feel obligated to add my .02 cents. Parts of what the client wants is unrealistic. Mainly that her article would rank when someone searches the magazine name.
HOWEVER, there are ways to get her articles to show up when people search her, or the specific topics that she covers in her writing. What you need is to get the magazines to give her the rel=author tag in the online version of these articles. The expert on this particular subject is AJ Kohn from Blind Five Year Old. Here are links to a couple his blog posts addressing this topic:
http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/how-to-implement-rel-author
http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/author-rank
If your client is a well respected author, these sites shouldn't have an issue implementing the Author tag, but you never know. It is certainly something she should request before writing in the future.
This also sounds like a great question for AJ, and since I'm going to MozCon, I'll be glad to ask him!
OK, so basically you need your site to only appear in the Internet Universe once, otherwise Search Engines will be confused and think you have a clone. Since cloning (duplicate content) is frowned in the SEO world, this will force the Search Engine to consider them seperately and decide which one is correct.
Fixing this is relatively simple. It means creating a 301 for one of your two options. Here is an article that explains how to accomplish this: http://www.dailyblogtips.com/how-to-setup-a-301-redirect/
If you have other questions please let me know, I'll be glad to help!
Well, it doesn't have to be PR Web, but writing a press release is just another way to repurpose content...
Why not? You just need an interesting way of repurposing the content. It may be that you don't use all of it, but just certain parts.