SEO Hosting Blog

So you’re a Mac user and just like everyone else, you’re probably looking for a quick, easy, and painless way to increase and build links to your website. Before now, finding link building and SEO software for the Mac has been difficult. However, there’s a new program that just got featured on ZDNet today that I think just may help you with your link building needs. The program is called LinkAssistant SEO Tool Version 3.3.3 and you can download it totally free of charge.

Of course, like all programs, there’s a paid version too. And we all know that the paid version comes with more features. However, even the free version comes packed with full with functionality. And in all honesty, I think it’ll do the trick for you, when it comes to building up links on your site.

The software is pretty simple. They first explain that link building is the core of any website promotion strategy. They say that Google and other search engines place trust in sites that have a high number of incoming links. Of course, many of us know this, but what many of us don’t know is how to get these high quality incoming links.

That’s where LinkAssist kicks in. The creators of LinkAssist explain that depending on your niche topic, you may have to attain thousands of links in order to make a difference in the search results. Not only that, but the links attained need to be high in quality. That’s hard to do manually, even for experts.

So how does LinkAssist work? Take a look at their video presentation. You’re going to be amazed to see how powerful this program is and then question why it’s being given away for free. The great thing is that LinkAssist is even available for Mac. What other SEO software have you found available for Mac?

(image from desperate-bid)

In the middle of August, I wrote a post about the AP’s new SEO strategy. Although they were very optimistic and excited about their plan, because it involved creating automatically generated pages, the plan attracted plenty of critics from around the web.

Now, several weeks later, the topic of SEO and newspapers has made its way back into the media. There were two articles related to this topic that caught my eye, and while one of the articles shows that there are newspapers that get it, the other shows that some are still clueless.

The first article that caught my eye was titled “How Tribune Co. plans to rid itself of SEO-killing duplicate content.” This post was published on the same blog that published the post about the AP’s new SEO strategy. After recapping their first post, this post went on to discuss how Tribune Co. plans on getting rid of their duplicate content issues. (more…)

(image from amanda cee)

If you have been following any Internet news lately, then you know the AP has been making a lot of headlines in regards to their stance on copyright issues. However, today I would like to talk about something different, which is the new SEO strategy that the AP is adopting.

As explained by the Nieman Journalism Lab, “The same philosophy is driving their plan to build “news guide landing pages” that will aggregate the AP’s content around subjects, places, organizations, and people.”

Why did the AP decide to take this approach? According to the Nieman Journalism Lab, it has to do with Wikipedia:

“Two of the biggest beneficiaries of that traffic bonanza were Twitter and Wikipedia, a couple of digital natives that would have been viewed as very unlikely news competitors even a few months ago. Indeed, a new pattern of consumption was validated in the confusing minutes that followed the first reports of Jacko’s death: Users shared; they searched and they clicked on Wikipedia….

The Wikipedia page on Michael Jackson is not very pretty to look at, but it has more blue hyperlinks than black type. Forget the “wiki” method of community updating, the key to Wikipedia’s success is that its pages are designed to catch traffic, provide key information and then send users on their way to deeper engagement on the subjects they’re interested in.”

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This week I had a fairly fascinating internet experience, in that a post of mine went viral.  I cannot be certain of how the post spread through the web, but I believe it started with Twitter.  I run a book-related website (www.selfpublishingreview.com) and was recently contacted by the last wife of science fiction author, Philip K. Dick, to do an interview.  Obviously this is an interesting story for outlets to pick up – which is tip one for going viral. The basis for the post going viral was not my supremely awesome site, as much as I’d like to believe that, but her connection to one of the most famous American writers – science fiction or otherwise.

But first the post needed to take root.  The site’s only two months old and not yet well-entrenched.  I posted the interview to Twitter.  I’m followed by the L.A. Times book blog page, which soon blogged about the interview – no guarantee Twitter was the source, but it’s possible.  It was then picked up by the Guardian in the U.K., the New York Times, blogs everywhere, and so on.  Irritating, I might add, that the Guardian didn’t link to the source interview, so while it was great to be mentioned in print, this didn’t do much for SEO, at least from the Guardian site.  Seems like bad internet form for a major site.  That article did lead to a whole bunch of other mentions of people who were kind enough to link to the site, so I can’t complain too much.
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Maybe that blog title is a no brainer and the answer should be yes.  But there are a fair number of SEO services out that promise only rankings, not necessarily if the ranking will actually convert into sales.  And there’s something to this: if the SEO is able to make you rank in the top ten for a vital marketable keyword, then he’s done most of his job.  That is mostly what optimization is about: improving keyword relevance and page rank so a site ranks well in SERPs.

It is often unscrupulous optimizers who only promise high ranking for a specific keyphrase.  These optimization experts often prey on website owners who know very little about how search engines operate.  So an optimizer can set up a URL and rank very quickly for a certain term – especially a regional term, like “San Diego optometrist blog.”  The San Diego optometrist might be duly impressed that the SEO was immediately able to rank for that keyphrase, when all the SEO really has to do is buy up the URL sandiegooptometristblog.com and then it looks like he’s done his optimization duty.  A PR 0 site could rank for obscure terms, especially in the beginning before the listing tapers off.  A vast amount of the SEO work occurring out there is just this type of work: not ranking for “credit card” or “iPod” but for niches within a niche.  The narrower you get, the easier it is and novice website owners don’t understand this.
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