I wrote this a year ago and never got around to posting it, and now that is is almost a year later and a lot of my friends and perspective clients are caring less about Digg and social media links and getting back to the O.G. way of ranking sites I figured might as well post it.

Via: flickr
Old School: Internal Links
It seems that Nov-Jan are always insane with people wanting to prepare their site to dominate for the next year. This year is crazier then ever, and as we are meeting with a lot of sites and perspective clients I have noticed that very few sites link internally like they should. I will guarantee you that if you have a site that is ranking in the top 50 or so, meaning it is somewhat established has some trust and authority, if you interlink correctly you will see a significant jump in your rankings. Here is a list of somethings you want to make sure you follow, plus some tips on how to get the most juice out of your web sites trust.

Basics:
- Make sure your important pages, ie service pages, category pages, converting pages, have links to them from within the copy of other pages on your site.

- Use text that is relevant before or after the link, as well as relevant anchor text to the page you are linking to.

- Work the most important pages into the copy of your homepage text.

- Block the less important pages from the engines spiders as to save the juice for your important pages, ie contact us, privacy policy, etc. Do this through Robot.txt or No Index No Follow Tags.

Squeeze the Juice, Pulp and Scrape the Rhine:
- Identify your key pages along with those pages top keywords, then do a site:domain.com search in Google followed by the “Keyword phrase.” I like to start specific and then work my way general so if I wanted to increase my rankings for the words, “Lung Cancer,” “Lung Cancer Treatments” and “Lung Cancer Studies” I would start with the longer terms and I would do the searches in quotes at first, then work my way out like this.

site:DOMAIN.com “Lung Cancer Studies”
site:DOMAIN.com Lung Cancer Studies
site:DOMAIN.com “Lung Cancer Treatment(s)”
site:DOMAIN.com Lung Cancer Treatment(s)
site:DOMAIN.com “Lung Cancer”
site:DOMAIN.com Lung Cancer
site:DOMAIN.com Lung

I would then note each of the pages and wherever the text I am searching is found I would anchor to my Lung Cancer page. On the last one where I searched for just Lung I would look at the authority of the page, and it it was a good one and it was relevant I would add in “cancer” or “Lung Cancer” to the text and then anchor it up.

- Sort your sites pages by authority you can use Yahoo’s site explorer they usually return results in order of authority or you can use Jim Boykins strongest subpage tool to identify your best pages. Then see if you can work your desired keywords into the text and then link them up.

- Obviously Wikipedia ranks for everything first and foremost because it has insane amounts of links and authority. But have you ever notice the Internal Linking that goes on, every time a topic is mentioned that has a page dedicated to that topic there is a link. That is why pages that have nothing but internal links still rank number 2 for a huge word, because the anchor text, surrounding text that is pointing to those pages is all spot on.

- You will notice this on top blogs that understand this as well, look at Tech Crunch and Mashable they rank for everything even though they are kicking out 15 Posts a day. Again they have a lot of outbound trust, but they also set up a company index and every time that company is mentioned in their posts they link to the company index tab. Their posts are speckled with internal links. If you have a blog you can do the same thing. Every time you mention a keyword related to one of your pages[seo blog], link back to it.

We always start with internal linking when taking on a new client, and it has never let us down. People think you are magic cause you moved up their rankings 15 spots in 5 days, but all you did is internal links. (But hey they didn’t do them before, so you are magic right?) I recommend relying very heavily on Internal Links.

I did a webinar on the above topic with Omniture earlier this year.

via flickr
New School: Inbound Contextual Links*Not really new school anymore
To get the most authority to your site and to make those internal links really count you need inbound links from related sites. To get those top 3 and number one rankings you need one way inbound links from inside copy. You want text all around that bad boy on a page that is on topic with your page.

Link building is nothing new, I am not going to layout some of the basics, there are plenty of blogs discussing the ins and outs of links. I want to talk about a little tactic that has been working really well for us on finding some top notch under the radar links.

I am sure you already use the allintext: allin etc. advanced commands when searching for related links, we used to use it all the time. What we have been doing this last year is the same idea just at http://blogsearch.google.com.

Go there and search allintext:”Keyword Phrase” this will bring back all the blog posts in Google’s database that have your keyword phrase in their text or blog post. You can use other advanced operatives or the keyword phrase by itself or in quotes.

We like this because bloggers are more likely to respond to you then old school site owners, they are wanting to be approached and they are usually on their blog/email all day. Also a lot of bloggers aren’t familiar with seo, they don’t know that someone may want to email them and hit them up for a link and offer them $50. A lot of times we offer some dough and they come back ans say thanks for liking and commenting on my blog, I added the link for free.

That is the other thing we like, blog posts are better with a lot of resources and info linked to and cited. So if you have a good relevant site for one of their blog posts, they are more than likely cool on adding the link.

This really only goes wrong if you send over a demanding or not so well written email begging for the link. Test this don’t send out 50 your first day with the same copy pasted in over and over. Send out 5 in the morning, 5 more in the afternoon and 5 more at night all with different messages. Start out by making everyone totally organic and unique commenting on the blogs. After you have done it a while you can see what is working and what is not. Maybe it’s not your message but your Subject and email look spammy so they never open it? Tweak all the aspects of it. Also pay attention to the emails you get where people hit you up for links and others. If you are not tricked into opening it, then it isn’t good, the very few that you do open, note them.

Any email that gets accepted or even opened take note of it and apply it to later messages. You will also want to try the good old phone as that is still very effective in this because of how quickly it can be done and how forth coming it is.

*Also added in 2008 use Yahoo Site Explorer and or SEOmoz’s Linkscape tool to quickly check the value of the link.

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Last week, I got this viral marketing question in the form of a comment -

I am building a new web application that sends reminders in the form of text messages, emails and voice messages to subscribers. The idea originated from my wife’s situation, being a soccer mom and everything, and having four kids, its hard sometimes to keep track with all the practices and games… so she either carry a notebook with her all the time, or she checks her emails. To make a story short, i am thinking now of having this public service web site, and people can subscribe for a small amount of money. Do you think such an idea can be marketed some how?

Initially, I like the idea, (my wife struggles with the same problems) but I do see some problems with this service actually taking off (and making any money) and the main reasons is because of Cell Phones. Everyone has them, and everyone for the most part, carries them with all of the time. Most cell phones these days, like the Blackberry my wife carries has notifications that do just what your service is offering to do, and it would be for free. I know my iPhone does the same thing, and I use it all day long to remind me of what I need to be doing.

With that said, if you were going to go through with it, and market this kind of a service, I see you having no problems finding some pretty amazing viral marketing ideas that you could use to promote your site with. The first headline that sparks my interest right off the bat (because of all the Hockey Mom talk with Gov. Palin) would be “10 Things Soccer Moms Got That Hockey Moms Don’t” (or vice versa) - start some controversy right off the bad and get these “Moms” going back and forth with each other etc. It could be funny, and interesting all at the same time. I mean, what guys doesn’t like a good cat fight right? The service you are offering fits right in because these are the kind of people who you are targeting with your business model, so even though the service itself is pretty boring, you have lots of topics surrounding it that are not, that would make it very exciting.

After doing a quick search on Google Videos and You Tube, I also found some pretty interesting videos show casing some pretty angry and aggressive Soccer Moms during their kids games. (Side note - some of the stuff I saw was actually sad, and I can’t believe some Moms act this way during games.) Always thinking like a marketer though - This got me thinking of a pretty cool post where you could find 10 of the craziest outbursts from Soccer Moms during games, and title it “The 10 Angriest Soccer Moms Of All Time Caught On Video” or “Be Glad This Is Not Your Mom” or something similar that would make people want to click. Remember your link bait is the key here, we want to get people interested in clicking.

Speaking of making things interesting, and getting people to click - what about this post as an idea “The 10 Hottest Soccer Moms” or “The Top 10 Hottest Hockey Moms Of All Time” and then just research a little on Google, or any photo sharing site, and you will find what you are looking for - trust me …

In Conclusion:

I think there is no limits to the amount of viral marketing ideas and posts that this industry could bring, but as far as a business model itself, I really don’t think it will fly with all the technology out there already. If it were a free subscription based service, and you just collected a huge database of users, and drive massive amounts of traffic to the site, and sold sponsorships and advertising - it might work. I just don’t see people paying for a service like that right now, in this economy. At least you know that you won’t run out of viral marketing ideas though, and I hope this at least got you starting to think about what direction you want to go! Good Luck, and thanks for the question. As always, if anyone ever has an industry they want featured on these viral marketing idea Friday posts, just comment, or send us an email.

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Luckily I have never lost any info inside any of my blogs, but I also credit my technology background and understanding that websites need to be backed up (and backing all mine up) to never losing any info. But what about the people who are less technical and using blogging software from websites like Blogger, or Wordpress for family blogs? If this is you, and you did lose your blog, or these companies go out of business, how much of your life would you be saying goodbye to? Could you get it back? Do you know the policies of these companies, or how often they back up your information?

I was made aware this week of Bloggled, a company (in beta, but you can still sign up) that offers a service to back up your blog with the push of one button, along with a few other pretty cool features. It got me wondering how could a company like this go viral, and that is what I want to get into with today’s post.

You might be surprised how many people don’t know about different blogging softwares that are out there (free or paid) or even what blogs are (no really its true I talk to these kind of people everyday). Many people think that setting up a company or personal family blog will be to expensive, when that is not even close to being true. So my first thoughts for a post would appeal to the new users, and be something like “The Top 5 Free Blogging Software Sites, And How Users Rate Them” or “The Easiest To Use Blogging Software Winner Is”. Now, your posts don’t have to always be for beginners either, you can do an amazing list of Wordpress plugins like - “101 Wordpress Plugins That Are A Must Have” or “10 Must Have Wordpress Plugins For A Family Blog”. Of course you have a never ending supply of “The Top 10 Blogs For Fishing” or “The Top 10 Internet Marketing Blogs” and so on (hopefully you get the point). Once you get big enough with a site like this you could even have your own badges and widgets for your users to place on their blogs that state “This Is A Bloggled Top 10 Featured Site” - Again, the ideas just keep flowing and flowing!!

With your business model you are trying to appeal to the “old dog” users of blogs, and convert new users as well and make them both aware of the services you offer. Coming up with, and executing these kind of viral ideas on your own blog would be an amazing place to start getting the word out. Normally (and I think you would agree) software that backs up a blog is a pretty boring industry, but I hope you can see with the viral ideas I have given you today how you can get past that.

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This week it seems like I have had so many conversations with people about the simple things they can do to their website to make it social media optimized, and because of that I wanted to take that approach with today’s viral media post.

Has anyone (other Internet marketers) else noticed how good CNN is doing lately with embracing social media and trying to connect with the users of it? You can follow them on Twitter, Facebook and more. You can even create your own “widgets, profiles and badges” on the CNN site talking about your issues and who YOU are. When I give this as an example to people (that I am working with) they tell me that they hear them talking about this stuff on CNN but have no clue what a profile “badge” is? If you are an Internet business owner, you need to have a clue and embrace the world of social media.

Social media sites continue to gain a huge following, and if you are not allowing your site to grow the the changing Internet environment then you are going to be left behind. Let me explain it to you this way; Google does get the majority of the search traffic, yes that is a given. The people who understand SEO (I mean really get it and understand) will always be able to achieve high natural rankings by understanding what the algorithm is looking for. The users of social media, and sites like Delicious try to counteract that by giving results based on what users are recommending - In other words, your content ain’t going anywhere on sites like Delicious unless its good and other people are saving it. Let me go even further, it does not even have to be “good” for it to be embraced by these communities, you just have to make it more available (easier) to the users of these communities.

If I come across a site that I like, and I see they have a Delicious button on their homepage, then I am going to save them because its there (and easy), whereas if they didn’t I would probably just pass them by trying to remember the site next time I was in my Delicious account. The same is true with Stumble Upon, I will usually give a site that I like the benefit of the doubt and “stumble” them if they have the SU button on their site. This is the same respect I am giving CNN and the anchors I watch by following them on their social media accounts and interacting with them that way. I have no time to be watching news all day, but if Rick Sanchez puts out an update on Twitter - I know about it (instantly) and I can take the time to watch or read, but before (or if he wasn’t doing this) I would not have had a clue as to what was going on (on his program). I would have just kept in my own little Internet world, working away and only interacting with other users of social media that I am connected with.

The simple point here for Internet business owners (that have not embraced social media) is to make sure that they have these social media icons on their site, and they let people know what communities they are a part of. A huge part of that is also understanding what communities to put where on your site. Understand that having a Digg icon on the homepage of your website is pretty much useless, and it needs to be where articles, blog posts, or news is at on your site (more potential for being “Digg-worthy”). Also understand that having “social bookmarking” icons like Delicious and Stumble Upon on your homepage would be ok. Once you understand the community and what they are looking for, the better.

There are reasons these social communities give you the ability to make your own widgets and badges promoting your profiles and what communities you are a part of, and its not just for promoting them. I would suggest getting in to the social communities that you are a part of and learning all the tools and services they have to offer. I mean, really get in and learn what having a Twitter account can do for your blog. You might think its silly to have a “micro-blog” when you are already blogging, but this is a great way to let people know of new content, things on your mind, and especially a great way to connect with people who may have never found your blog.

I know there was not a whole lot of “how to” on this post (that will come later), but I hope this at least gets you thinking of how you need to be including social media into your “over all” Internet marketing plan, and especially be embracing it on the simplest of levels - your website!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed, or follow Chris Bennett on Twitter and make sure you check out our free analytics product BLVD Status and Social Media for FireFox Which is used by more than 500,000 marketers