Using the Hub Detector to Find Relevant Links

So my question boils down to is it better to be submitted to 300 free directories or one directory that is considered an authority.

To the client, the wow factor is of course that 300 is always better than 1 but to the SEO professional is not about quantity but about quality.

For example, we use http://www.linkhounds.com/hub-finder/hubfinder.php created by www.seobook.com

With the hub detector which is what I like to call it, I searched for a specific keyword phrase. The hub detector then goes out to the search engine of your choice and finds out who is linked to them which pulls the data together to give you a report of the top sites that have web sites that are linked to them as well as the other top sites.

I did a basic search for "personal injury lawyer" using Yahoo & Google API for www.texastriallaywers.com and this is what it returned.

1: www.yourlawyer.com
2: www.lawyers.com
3: www.lipsig.com
4: www.totalinjury.com
5: en.wikipedia.org
6: www.marylandinjurylawyerblog.com
7: www.californiainjurylawyerblog.com
8: onward.justia.com

From the list above you tell that numbers 1 through 8 correspond to the websites listed above. Now you can determine that sites 4,6,8 have the top 3 links in common because of X.  Of course the hub detector can find you more accurate results by changing the search parameters,  but this gives you a great starting point to find out who you need to have linked to your web site that your competitors also have.

Like all things you will still need use common sense.  All because it is linked to them does not mean this is final factor in determining if you would like them to link to you.  You still need to go to the directory and make sure it is legitimate by making sure it is relevant to the search term you were investigating.  And another good check is to make sure their directory pages have pagerank and I also check their alexa rating too.

Most directories you will find will probably be paid but you can still pick up a free gem of a website also.

Happy hunting for relevant links.

SEO Tool - xenu

One of the tools that I use to quickly find broken links on a web site as well as tell me the titles of the pages. http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

The first thing you do is enter the url of the web site you would like to check. When I first check a site I do not check for external links, I run the report for inner linking. Let me give you an example: I was working on dugoutsports.com. XENU got stuck on url by producing more and more urls like this:

http://dugoutsports.magnetiksimedia.com/products_new.php?amp;action=buy_now&
products_id=21&page=1&products_id=96&action=buy_now&products_id=83

It kept adding the & over and over. So fixed it first. Then I noticed that my .htaccess was working for the linking page. So I fixed it next so the urls went from looking like this:

http://dugoutsports.magnetiksimedia.com/links.php?lPath=1&page=1&page=1&sort=2a

to this: http://www.dugoutsports.com/softball-leagues-l-1.html

Last but not least I noticed that pages the products new page with pagination was causing the spider a lot of issues so I came up with 2 solutions.

• Use the robot.txt file to tell the spiders not to index those pages.
• Change the setting to show only one page with no pagination.

I chose the later. After I ran the next report there were no broken links. Then I decided to check the external links by clicking the checkbox option. It found one broken external link to a pdf. So I uploaded the pdf to the server and referenced it locally.

I hope this too will help someone with their internal and external broken links.

Presentation–Your virtual salesman should reflect your image

Many people do not think how much their website affects if people will do business with them. These are the same people that want their sales people to wear a suite and tie when meeting with prospects.

Your website needs to reflect the image of your company. The design of the site needs to be able to attract the kind of clients you desire for your business.

If you want a flip flops and tank top clients then build a site that looks like the beach. Most companies have a desired target market so identify what they are looking for and put a suite on your website design so your virtual salesman reflects your business.

If you care about what you look like when you present to your prospects then put some time and thought into your website design.

Whether you believe it or not, People are deciding on doing business with you determined by your website presentation. Spend the money to make sure it reflects your image. Your online sales will reflect it.

This is part of a series of articles on creating an online sales person for your business. 

Networking Your Web Site with Other Sites

In order to grow one must meet people.  These people become their network of business associates that they recommend to others and others recommend to you.  

The same concept applies with web sites.  As your web site grows so should network of other sites that you would recommend that would recommend you also.   There is one big difference: you want web sites that are similar in topic to your site and that are considered authorities on your topic.  This way you do not confuse the search engines by having plumbing sites link to your site and your site has nothing to do with plumbing. 

Also make sure the text link that links to your site is not the exact same everytime or it does not look natural.  ( ie Each person that you meet would not say the exact same thing about you, therefore it would not look right if every web site that links to you did. )

As search engines advance, you must starting thinking that they are not just dumb spiders that crawl the web.  But information gatherers that formulate ideals about you from others.  As soon as you think that spiders are more like people gathering information about you the sooner you give the search engines the right ideal of who and what your web site is all about.

Domain Notification Scam

Be aware of the domain notification scam.

Domain Notification Scam 21/06/2007,08:51 24.30 Kb

This scam tries to get you to think your domain name is expiring. Of course if you look closely it will have your domain name but the wrong extension. (ie the notice up above says that you need to get our website magnetiks.com up to date or it is gone.  But if you look closely under the phone number it reads www.MAGNETIKS.us –> which is not the same as .com ).

If you get things in your email that you are unsure of, always call or email your registrar where you legitimately purchased your domain name.  They are happy to answer those questions to ensure your loyalty to them.

Creating online sales people that DO NOT steal your clients

Have you ever heard of nightmare stories of people hiring just the greatest salesperson only to see that person takes their clients and business with them a couple of years later. I have. 

This got me to thinking about creating sales people (online) that would play the role of a salesperson. I will begin the tale of what that looks like and what are the variable to an online salesperson/website. 

Nothing happens in business without sales and the thought of being able to create a salesperson that never sleeps is just so intriguing. 

Come along with me and each week we will detail out the relationship between the web and sales.  

Welcome to Magnetiks SEO Blog

Our first blog is just a tease to let you know that we will be taking indepth look into SEO as well as sharing tips and techniques we use to achieve high rankings in the top search engines.