Yawn.

There’s no need to panic about Google Caffeine, or any revision to any search engine’s database. Ever. But only if you recognize Google’s true mandate, and play by the rules.

So what is Google’s true mandate?

This one is simple; deliver the best, and most relevant search results for any query entered into the search box at Google.com. Failure to do so threatens the core of Google’s business – visitors will go elsewhere to perform their searches, and Google’s advertisers will follow them. And that, my friends, is where the money is. So you can bet your you-know-what that Google is going to be pretty darn interested in getting it right.

If you play by the rules, and have not focused on manipulating rankings (by engaging in underhanded link-building strategies, for instance) but instead, on creating the sort of web site that adds value both to Google’s database and your visitors, what exactly have you got to fear from Caffeine? It is, after all, in Google’s best interest to drive visitors to your web site; in fact, it even adds to their credibility to do so.

On the other hand, if your web site maintains its top ranking positions as a result of various nefarious “black hat” strategies, and does not offer anything especially valuable or unique to your visitors, be afraid. Be VERY afraid. Engaging in such practices is rarely in accordance with Google’s mandate of delivering the positively-absolutely-unequivocally best results to its visitors. So yes, you can expect to see your ranking positions drop if this is the case.

Myself, I’d be surprised to see any dramatic changes. After all, as complicated as some of the mathematics behind ranking algorithyms may be, the way Google sorts its database will still be determined by many of the same criteria…

• Domain age/reputation
• Page text and critical HTML tags (<TITLE> <H1> etc)
• In-pointing links

… there’s really no other way to do it. It would be nice, however, to see Google toss out a lot of the crap that is threatening to strangle their database.

In the end, there are no short cuts to top rankings and search engine traffic. If you play fair, you can expect Google to reward you handsomely. If you do not, every major revision to the database is going to have you tossing and turning at night. It’s not worth it. Focus on building the sort of site Google wants in its database, and you can never go wrong…

Then, thanks to a new SE upstart called “Google”, things began to change. Instead of copying everyone else, Google implemented a new and what turned out to be a brilliant strategy; it placed major importance on in-pointing links and used them as a critical element of its ranking algorithms (see this article for a full discussion on the fundamentals of links).

Now, you rarely see on-page factors mentioned anymore. It’s all about building links.

But frankly, on-page factors HAVE to play a factor in determining rankings. If not, every SE runs the risk of delivering its visitors with non-relevant results. In the case of Google, the most famous “Google Bomb” occurred when a search for “miserable failure” brought up George Bush’s biography from the White House.

Now, I can appreciate the humor in this, and some others might argue that Google DID accurately deliver the most relevant results for this term. Nonetheless, this demonstrates the risks you run if you place too much emphasis on in-pointing links. Obviously, some emphasis must be placed upon “on page” factors or two problems occur…

1. You deliver non-relevant results to your visitors; an SE lives and breathes on the strength of its results, so this is never a good thing.
2. You make it possible for people to easily manipulate your database (in the case of the example above, enough people linked to George W’s biography with the keywords “miserable failure” in the link text, that Google actually “saw” this as the most relevant result for this term).

So… back to on-page ranking factors. How important are they?

That’s an interesting question, and one I’ve been interested in determining. You see, for the last several years I haven’t done any major optimizing of the pages created on UltimateFatBurner.com.

All pages are based upon a popular, targeted keyword (usually a product name), and all the important elements of the page contain this keyword. Articles are written naturally, with the relevant keyword “peppered” throughout. Other than that, I don’t do much, mostly because the majority of pages rank well without any major optimization efforts (a large number of in-pointing links and significant “domain age” help this considerably).

That doesn’t mean, of course, that all the pages on UltimateFatBurner.com rank in the top 10 at Google for their respective search terms. Many don’t. It was in reviewing some of these pages the other day that I figured perhaps I had made a mistake. Why leave any “traffic on the table?”

Yes, an “optimization” experiment was in order.

So I downloaded the free trial of WebPosition 4 – SEO ranking software that has been around for ages (I used to own a copy of WebPosition Gold back in the early 2000’s) and put it to work, playing with a series of pages over the 30-day software trial. How did the Webposition optimization software fare?

Let’s take a look. First, however, a little background information…

1) On the fat burner review section of UltimateFatBurner.com, my main keywords are almost always “the name of the product”, or “the name of the product” plus the word “review” (my searches are not performed in quotations). I don’t get too bent out of shape about not having a top 10 ranking position for “the name of the product”, because most people now know that they need to make their search queries a little more targeted to yield relevant results.

However,  “the name of the product” plus the word “review” IS an important keyword for me, and I need to be able to deliver a top 10 ranking if I expect to see ANY traffic from the page. So for all examples illustrated here, I’ll be using these two keyword variations.

2) For this experiment, I will focus on results yielded at Google only. Two reasons for this; one-Google delivers the vast majority of my SE-driven traffic, and two-there’s no efficient way to properly optimize your pages for more than one SE at a time, short of creating numerous “gateway pages”, and that’s not a road I intend to go down.

3) Remember, the results noted are relevant to the time of this writing only (August 25th, 2009). Search Engines are always messing with algorithms, so things may have changed by the time you read this.

Moving right along to the results (testing began July 28th, and ran for the course of the 30-day Webposition free trial)…

1) Page: http://www.ultimatefatburner.com/accomplix-review.html

Search Term #1: Accomplix (no searches were performed in quotes)

Ranking: Not in top 40

Ranking After Webposition Modifications: #20

Search Term #2: Accomplix review

Ranking: Not in top 40

Ranking After Webposition Modifications: #4

2) Page: http://www.ultimatefatburner.com/anoretix-review.html

Search Term #1: Anoretix

Ranking: Not in top 40

Ranking After Webposition Modifications: #6

Search Term #2: Anoretix review

Ranking: #7

Ranking After Webposition Modifications: #5

3) Page: http://www.ultimatefatburner.com/gaspari-mitotropin-review.html

Search Term #1: Mitotropin

Ranking: #33

Ranking After Webposition Modifications: #65

Search Term #2: Mitotropin review

Ranking: #5

Ranking After Webposition Modifications: #7

Since Webposition indicated one of the problems with this page was that it contained too much material, I split the article up into two parts, and tried again. The keyword “mitotropin review” immediately dropped to #7, and “mitotropin” no longer ranked in the top 60. Hastily, I recombined the articles and re-uploaded. Now, “mitotropin review” is back to #6. Mitotropin, unfortunately, no longer ranks in the top 60.

4) Page: http://www.ultimatefatburner.com/lipofuze-extreme-weight-loss.html

Search Term #1: Lipofuze

Ranking: Not in top 40

Ranking After Webposition Modifications: Not in top 40

Search Term #2: Lipofuze review

Ranking: Not in top 40

Ranking After Webposition Modifications: Not in top 40

Again, the Webposition software indicated this page was extremely lengthy, so I split it up into 3 sections. This did not help matters however; this page still does not rank. It’s infuriating, since none of my competitors are actually providing a real “review” of the product; they either grossly exaggerate its effects to earn commissions, or they are putting it down to promote a product of their own. Ugh.

5) Page: http://www.ultimatefatburner.com/fenphedra-fat-burner-review.html

Search Term #1: Fenphedra

Ranking: Not in top 40

Ranking After Webposition Modifications: Not in top 40

Search Term #2: Fenphedra review

Ranking: Not in top 40

Ranking After Webposition Modifications: Not in top 40

6) Page: http://www.ultimatefatburner.com/leptovox-review.html

Search Term #1: Leptovox

Ranking: Not in top 40

Ranking After Webposition Modifications: Not in top 40

Search Term #2: Leptovox review

Ranking: #2

Ranking After Webposition Modifications: #1

Comments: Obviously, this is a pretty small test. There’s no way I can come to dramatic and long reaching conclusions from an experiment conducted on 6 pages over the course of a month. Nonetheless, there is some valuable data here, so let’s have a closer look at the results and see what we can come up with…

1) In half the cases here, using Webposition’s Page Critic SEO module had a positive effect on the rankings of the selected keywords, and in two cases (the Anoretix and Accomplix pages), a fairly dramatic one.

2) In two cases (the Lipofuze and Fenphedra pages), Webposition’s suggested modifications had no perceptible impact on the rankings for my two most important keywords. However, Google’s Analytics software indicates something different; a 50% increase in traffic to the Lipofuze page from the previous weeks.

The Fenphedra page, which hadn’t been drawing any traffic to speak of, showed an even more dramatic increase in traffic (from 0 to high of almost 30 referred visitors a day), starting right at the beginning of this experiment. Check out the verifying screen shot from the Google Analytics software (click here for a larger version of the graphic)…

And while 30 visitors per day may not seem like a lot, this is a pretty major improvement; especially if you can expect similar results from other optimized pages. Implement WebPosition’s recommendations on 100 pages, for instance, and all of a sudden, the numbers become a lot more impressive.

3) In one case (the Mitotropin page), Webposition’s recommendations actually made things worse (most of the damage was reversed when the original page was re-uploaded). Again, however, Google’s Analytics software revealed something different; despite the disastrous changes in rankings, traffic to this page was not negatively affected. In fact, short of a few blips, traffic to this page also increased, post July 27 (click here for a larger image)…

Bottom line?

From my small test, it certainly appears that on-page factors still do play an important role in Search Engine rankings, and it’s well worthwhile to optimize your pages.

And WebPosition’s SEO software?

Well, it certainly seems to be help. And even if the rankings for your specific keyword do not improve, the modifications to the page itself seem to make it more likely to rank well for related keyword searches. There’s very little downside here. For myself, I will be upgrading to the full version of the software.

What should you do?

It’s a no-brainer. Download the 30-day free trial of WebPosition, and try it for yourself. Make sure you have Google Analytics (or some other fairly comprehensive software) implemented on your site, so you can track the performance of your pages, regardless of rankings.

Give it a shot, and let me know what you think.

Here I am, talking about link building again. It seems like every second article is about link building in one  form or another. Nevertheless, link building is a vital element of SEO, especially for relatively new sites. So it has to be talked about (if you’re familiar with my articles, perhaps you’ve already read my “linking fundamentals” article. If not, you’ll probably want to review it now).

To recap my “take” on link building; the most important element of any successful campaign is to begin with a web site of exceptional quality and sufficient depth of material. If you don’t have this, you need to take a link building chill pill.

If you’ve got this in place, you’re ready to investigate strategies to build up your in-pointing links.

One of the most common methods to do this is to submit your site to various well known directories. Some good examples include…

• The Yahoo Directory
• DMOZ
• Best Of The Web
• JoeAnt
• Gimpsy
• Business.com
• GoGuides
• WowDirectory
• Librarian’s Internet Index

… and many, many, MANY more. Of course, many of these services charge a fee to have your site listed in them (Yahoo!, of course, wants $299… per year – which puts it out of reach of most small business owners. And, other than the link it provides, I’m not sure it provides much “bang for the buck” in the means of referred traffic). Nevertheless, submitting to a handful of the better, smaller services will see you chewing through several hundred dollars very quickly. And, in many cases, you’ll need to resubmit your site in a year.

That’s why a listing service I stumbled upon whilst spending some time over at SearchEngineWatch.com looked so appealing. DirectoryMaximizer is a directory submission service that hand-submits your site to over 1200 “SEO friendly” directories (a complete list of directories is available on the DM web site) for an extremely reasonable price. Granted, many of these directories are new and don’t have much in the way of PageRank.

At the same time, your link is a permanent one, so it’s not a bid deal if your link sits for a while as the directory “matures.”

Initially, I thought it all looked a bit too good to be true, but I couldn’t find any real reason to believe the service wasn’t as credible as it claimed. So I figured… what the heck! My Real-Customer-Comments.com web site needs some in-pointing links, as does my girlfriend Marilyn’s SBI! site, Flowers-By-Marilyn.com.

So I signed up for Directory Maximizer’s service, and opted to have each site submitted to 100 directories per month for a year (you can have your site submitted to all the directories at once; not something I’d suggest, as it may raise a “red flag” with the SEs. You want your link building to appear natural).

Flowers-By-Marilyn.com was submitted at the end of February ‘09, and Real-Customer-Comments.com was submitted at the beginning of March ‘09.

Now, approaching the middle of July ‘09, how do I feel about the Directory Maximizer service? What sort of results have I seen?

That’s a difficult question, especially when it pertains to the Real-Customer-Comments.com domain. Since I’ve started using DM with this site, I’ve also sent out a press release and built numerous new pages (each one gets a link from the accompanying review on UltimateFatBurner.com, so there’s plenty of link value there, too). So it’s impossible to attribute any benefits directly to the links obtained by the Directory Maximizer service.

Nevertheless, traffic has increased (approx 20%), and using Google’s Webmaster’s tools, I can confirm that many of the DM-submitted directories are contributing to this site’s in-pointing links. So using Directory Maximizer’s service has certainly not been detrimental.

Assessing DM’s value on the Flowers-By-Marilyn web site is perhaps a little easier, since Marilyn’s been busy and has added very little content to her site in the last few months. While traffic has remained consistent, we’re finally seeing a little shade of green on Google’s PageRank (PR) tool (we’ve attained the coveted PR rank of “1″). While I’m not convinced PR is all its cracked up to be, an increasing PR score is certainly not a bad thing.

All in all, the Directory Maximizer experience has been a good one. The interface is simple yet intuitive, and it’s a breeze to use. I can’t comment on the quality of the support because I haven’t needed to use it. It’s affordable too, which makes it worth the experiment; I think I pay something like $16 per month per site for the next batch of 100 submissions.

For webmasters of new sites, especially those desperate for some in-pointing links and mindful of a small budget, the Directory Maximizer service may be just the thing for you.

Someone sent me a reciprocal link exchange request for a site in an obvious “under construction” state. It was a web site definitely NOT ready for links.

I’m at a bit of a loss as to why this happens so much.

Are those who are new to building an online business so bombarded by the “it’s critical to build links” message that they are losing sight of valuable perspective? I’m not being facetious here. It’s an honest question.

I’m not arguing that link building is not important, far from it (I wrote a fairly lengthy post on that topic just recently). But link building is a useless, time wasting venture if you undertake it before you are ready to do so. You simply won’t get the quality links you need to make an impact with the Search Engines. Quality, authoritative sites are not going to link to an unfinished resource. Quality directories won’t list you in their databases. Yes, I’m sure you can some links – from mediocre blogs, directories, web sites and what not. But here’s the thing…

The ROI (Return On Investment) for the amount of time it takes you to acquire these links is minuscule. Until you build your site into the sort of resource it needs to be in order to be considered an authority in your niche or subject, your time is better served accomplishing this task. And really, what good is it to drive visitor traffic to an incomplete web site? If nothing else, it damages your credibility when visitors can’t find what they need.

So create the complete resource first. Look for links only when you’re ready.

And when is that?

The answer to that question is completely dependent on your business, theme, or niche. To use the same example from my Link Building Fundamentals post, I’ve only recently started to build links to Real-Customer-Comments.com, a site I started back in 2007.

Since this site is basically a Web 2.0 visitor feedback site, it made sense to wait until there were enough visitor comments to make it worthwhile to promote as a destination. What kind of value does a visitor get by visiting a feedback site that doesn’t have any feedback? Now, with almost 200 featured products and 2,000 visitor comments, it makes sense to build links.

What about this web site, No-BS-Marketing?

Well, it will probably be a year or so before this site contains enough material to be considered an authoritative resource. Of course, this site is an indulgence of my Internet Marketing passion, and not a full time job. If I devoted more time to it, I could probably cut that time in half. In the meantime, I’ve made sure to have the basics covered.

For example, since this site is based on the WordPress platform, I’ve had my developers install a couple of crucial plugins….

1) The Google Analytics plugin: This tool allows me to use the amazing  Google Analytics software (if you’re using regular HTML, you can simply cut and paste a chunk of code into your pages). Incidentally, this also ensures Google knows all about No-BS-Marketing.com.

2) The Google XML Sitemaps plugin: I can submit the xml-formatted sitemap generated by this software directly to Google by making use of some of the options they offer in their Webmaster Tools. This plugin also submits updates to MSN, ASK, and Yahoo!, which pretty much covers all the bases.

Now, all I plan to do is sit back and work on the content until here’s enough meat here to make it worthwhile to actively work on building some in-pointing links. Remember too, the more your site becomes a credible, authoritative resource, the more likely you are to have webmasters link to it unbidden, simply to enhance the experience of their own visitors.

So please… take a link building chill pill. If your site is “under construction,” you should not be wasting time looking for links. You should be focused on building content. Period.

It’s pretty much the online marketing mantra.

Links, links, links. It’s enough to drive you crazy. And of course, every online marketing expert on the planet has an opinion; here’s what YOU need to do to get the links you require. Others have software tools to help you accomplish your link building goals. You’ll need to pay for those, of course.

With all the commotion, I figured it was a good time to get back to the fundamentals and examine exactly why it is that you need links, and what you should be doing to get them.

The easiest way to begin this discussion is to consider what it is that happens whenever you go to a SE (search engine), type in a query, and hit “Search.”

When you do this, the SE has to delve into its database of billions of documents, determine which one is most relevant to your search query, and deliver that back to you… in a flash (that is every SE’s mandate -deliver the best, most relevant results. If  it doesn’t, you’ll do your searching somewhere else… and the SE’s customers – their advertisers – will follow you).

To accomplish this task, every SE has a series of criteria it uses; these are called algorithyms. The simplest criteria is to analyze the text of the document being evaluated – it should contain the exact words (and perhaps synonyms) of the query you have entered. However, because on-page text is very easily manipulated by webmasters, and because the SEs recognize that such pages do not necessarily address the best interests of their visitors, other criteria are used in the determination.

Google was the first major SE to factor link analysis into its search algorithym.

It was a brilliant strategy.

On the Net, a link is essentially a vote of confidence that is extended from one web site to another. In other words, if a highly respected authority site links to another site, they are lending some of their credibility to that site. Sites that have in-pointing links from many authoritative sites are considered to be more “credible” than sites that do not, and therefore, more likely to rank higher for a niche related search query.

So obviously, in-pointing links have a huge impact on the ability of any site’s ability to rank well on the SEs.

Of course, there’s a problem with a lot of emphasis on in-pointing links. There are plenty of rich sources of information that have very little in the way of in-pointing links. Educational institutions, for example, often have fantastic resource-rich web sites… with little to no in-pointing links. Brand new sites are in trouble too (regardless of the quality of the content they offer). By their very definition, they have no links.

So if you want to speed up the process of getting your site listed and ranking in the SEs (especially Google), you need to be proactive; get out there and get some links.

But there’s a fine line here.

A line between a genuine effort to establish your site as an authority within its niche, and that of the manipulation of the SEs’ search results.

When webmasters discovered the importance of in-pointing links, many raced out and obtained hundreds – if not thousands – in an effort to increase their site’s prominence on the results pages.

Many still do.

Submitting to link farms, implementing automated link exchange programs, blog network submissions, etc, etc – these are all methods used to increase the perception that the linked site in question is an authority site. This is manipulation, pure and simple.

Remember what I said earlier? That’s right… it is the mandate of every SE to deliver the best, most relevant results to its audience.

This is a critical point.

When the building of in-pointing links threatens the SEs ability to do this,  OR when your link building efforts are not genuine, but an attempt to manipulate rankings, you can expect the SEs to strike back.

How do they do this?

Generally by downgrading the value of the links from all but the most credible of resources.

Take, for example, the typical “reciprocal link exchange.”

In this, webmasters agree to host a link to each other’s web sites on a “links” page somewhere. Generally, this page is not easily accessed, but buried somewhere in the nether-regions of the respective sites. Neither webmaster actually wants you to visit that site, but they do want it to appear to the SEs as if they are actually sending a vote of credibility for that site.

This, from the SE’s perspective, is not a “genuine” link, but one who’s only purpose is to manipulate its argorithym. Ergo, reciprocal “link exchanges” are pretty much a thing of the past when it comes to building credible, in-pointing links.

On the other hand, a link – from a quality content page – to another quality site that enhances the experience of your visitors, is perfectly acceptable. Why? Because it adheres to the true fundamentals of the Net; it’s a REAL vote of confidence, a real indicator of credibility.

And basically, that is what smart link building really boils down to. Are the links you are seeking out ones that enhance the experience of your visitors? Are you proud of the sites you are affiliated with, hosting their links in prominent locations on your site? If the answer is no, I’d suggest re-evaluating your link-building tactics.

With that said, here are my recommendations for successful link building. First and foremost…

1) Create linkable content: This a fantastic strategy because it will garner links on its own; webmasters will link to your site to enhance the experience of their own visitors. Additionally, if you are actively searching out webmasters to exchange links with, and you want that link to matter, you need to have something worthwhile to link to. I receive tons of link requests at UltimateFatBurner.com, but I rarely accept any of them. The most common reasons for this are…

• Content is not unique, or of sufficient quality to link to.
• Content recommends products or services I refuse to be affiliated with.
• I address the same material on my own web site, and an out-pointing link would not further enhance the experience of my visitors.

Having quality content also works with the SEs; remember their mantra? Deliver the best results to their visitors? If your site REALLY is high quality, it’s in their best interest to divert traffic to it. I hate to harp on it, but this element is critical. Great, “linkable” content is the foundation of your business, so make it solid!

2) Take a link building chill pill: Here’s another pet peeve of mine; receiving link exchange requests from the webmasters of 5 page web sites. Dude, there’s nothing here to link to! How credible would I look if  I linked to this? Hello?

Seriously… take the time to build your site into a real resource, before you ask other webmasters to present it to their respective audiences as one.

How long does that take? How much material do you need?

That really depends on your niche. If your topic is very specific and you can address it with a minimal amount of content, that’s one thing. If you can’t, that’s another. As an example, I’ve only recently started to build links to Real-Customer-Comments.com, a site I started back in 2007.

Since this site is basically a Web 2.0 visitor feedback site, it made sense to wait until there were enough visitor comments to make it worthwhile to promote as a destination. What kind of value does a visitor get by visiting a feedback site that doesn’t have any feedback? Now, with almost 200 products and 2,000 visitor comments, it makes sense to build links.

3) Use link building strategies that have “stand alone” merit: What do I mean by this? Use strategies that have a genuine value outside of link building, and therefore are less likely to be perceived as manipulation and be penalized.

A perfect example is distributing press releases via an online service like PRWeb. Press releases may be a good tool to boost your in-pointing links, and even if they are not, you are unlikely to be penalized by a SE for using them. Why? Because there are plenty of genuine, “non-link building” reasons for doing so.

Same goes for submitting articles to the top article directories. While I’m not convinced the value of such links provides much of a boost anymore, such submission is a genuine business building strategy.

On the other hand, paying to have your URL blasted to 10,000 blogs across an advertising network has no “genuine” purpose – it’s a blatant attempt to artifically manipulate the SEs listings. And that’s a dicey game.

My bottom line recommendations are simple…

Play by the rules. And work with the SEs, recognizing their mandate. There are short cuts to link building, but they do not adhere to these two rules. And, any results obtained by them will be short lived… especially as the SEs become better and better at distinguishing real links from spammy ones.

Stay tuned!