We have a client that has been using OS commerce forever, and we have a good number of links established to the various sections of their e-commerce store. For various reasons, they are looking for a new e-commerce system, and appear to have settled on what I’ll call (for now) Product X.

Several weeks ago, I had a short phone call with product X, and they answered all my questions, and seemed to be able to accomodate our needs. With only a couple of small reservations, I gave it my stamp of approval for the client.

Last week however, my client and I had a phone call together, where she explained a few shortcomings -things that may have been slightly misrepresented in my phone call with the sales department.

Although Product X told me that they COULD host a WordPress blog, apparently they cannot, so they recommended they put their 250+ pages into a subdomain.

My response? But they told me they could! OK, fine, not a deal breaker, and we can just move the blog to a subdomain, and then 301 everything. There may be an initial hit to some of the rankings, but they should bounce back.

Now here’s where it gets really sticky -

This new cart provider claims to only be able to make a maximum of “about a hundred”  URLs into 301 redirects. Huh?!?

Furthermore, if those URLs are not visited EACH and EVERY 30 days, then the redirect ceases to function, and turns into… what? I’m not sure – maybe a 404 error?.  (This would have been a nice feature to include in my old article “How to Make a Crappy Content Management System, wouldn’t it?)

Although that seems incredibly stupid a bit odd, there are several reasons why the client still believes this to be their best choice platforms, and it looks like the decision has already been made.

Since my goal is to retain rankings through this process, my proposed “solution” to the dilemma was to start a new subdomain, then host THAT with the new cart vendor, retaining the main domain on our own host, where we can 301 anything as we see fit.

Makes sense, doesn’t it? Plus, as an added benefit, it would also solved the problem of having to move and redirect the blog , and it seems on the surface to be the best of both worlds.

This morning though, I got an email from their marketign manager (who originally hired us) and after sending her my response, I asked permission to use it in a post, and she consented.

Here’s the entire text, including my response, and I hope you’ll weigh in with your thoughts.

Scott,

I found some chatter about subdomains. CV3 said they can set up the web shopping area as a subdomain, but I worry how that will effect those
pages based on what I have read. Based on this, I am leaning towards just moving the whole site and not creating a subdomain.

[name removed]

Next was pasted all of the following text, assumedly taken from a forum somewhere – with my responses added in…

Be careful of all this bad info people are giving you! It does matter….here’s how it works….Google and other Search Engines consider Subdomains entirely new websites….

[Scott says:] Yes, they do consider them “separate” domains, but there’s no harm done ther…

so any subdomain will have a PR of 0.

[Scott says:] Well yes, to begin, but so will ANY new url. Google assigns PR (Page Rank) to a page, and not to a domain, and that’s the purpose of the 301 redirect – it passes the PR.

Subdomains are useful for blogs and such.

[Scott says:] I agree entirely, but I do consider “…and such” to include shopping carts.

1. My website all ready have page rank
2. Now I want create some more section in details. Should I go for sub domain or sub folder? Which one is better?
Creating sections should be done in Folders

[Scott says:] No argument here, and typically, if given a choice, its best to grow your site in themed or silo’d folders

3. My another question is did my present page rank will follow in all my sub domain or I have to promote individually all sub domains and what is
case in case of sub folder ?
Nope….the only way to pass page rank to the subdomain is through a link.

[Scott says:] – a link AND using 301’s for all the old URL’s for all the old links to pass PR

What you thing which is easy to remember sub domain or sub folder from the point of view of visitor?
It all depends on what the site is….but most people only remember main domains…and are confused about subdomains….most people remember
sites with www. at the beginning.

[Scott says:] Tru ‘nuff – but not a big deal to me…

I’d recommend using sub folders. if you have been working on the SEO of your root domain creating back links and all that kinda thing then create a sub domain the effects on your root domain won’t carry over to your sub domain. i unfortunately found this out the hard way

Subdomains over Folders
Subdomains are inexpensive and allow you to target the exact keyword you’re looking for. If I wanted to target the keyword ‘web hosting’, I
could add a sub domain to my site making it web-hosting.monetizers.com. The search engines will see the keyword ‘web hosting’ and factor that
into the SEO Ranking equation – almost as if you owned a domain such as web-hosting.com (this is because the bots see the first part of the url
as the most important section). The negative (and a big one at that) is many SEO experts are using this to spam search engine results.

[Scott says:] Yeah, that was true back in 2007 – Spammers used subdomains a lot will but this is pretty old news and it doesn’t work anymore anyway. The engines are far smarter, and aren’t going to brand you a spammer just for using a subdomain.

It’s speculated that search engines are and will be giving this less weight to reduce the amount of spam in their results.

[Scott says:] – If by “…giving this less weight” they mean subdomains, I disagree and would say that’s not true at all.

Domain names are still important, so it would be better to purchase a domain name such as web-hosting.com (everyone seems to forget about the
-!) rather than create a subdomain.

[Scott says:] A separate domain name is another option, but the subdomain would be on THEIR server at the cart host.

Subdomains do NOT receive any benefit (such as pr) from their parent domain.

[Scott says:] I disagree with that – It’s my belief that a subdomain does get some authority from the main domain with Google, Alexa, or anyone that matters, right out of the gate. If I were building a new business, and had the option of using http://myname.cnn.com or http://myname.com I would happily opt for being a subdomain of CNN, assuming I didn’t have the potential to ever lose the subdomain ownership down the road. In your case, since you own the parent domain, you’re safe.

Also a negative is that subdomains sit on the same IP address, so if one site’s IP gets blacklisted, so do all the rest!

[Scott says:] The subdomain will sit on their server, and with a static IP and SSL certificate there will be no other domains on the IP address.

And last, a subdomain makes it easy to forget that engines see it as a separate site; this means that you may end up placing more then 4 links
between sites and end up penalized for cross linking! A very costly SEO mistake!

[Scott says:] No search engine would be stupid enough to penalize someone for linking to their own shopping car – but – if they did, the negative publicity / buzz it could generate would be awesome Imagine the links we could get!

Folders over Sub-Domains
Folders are the way to go if you want to leverage the power of your site (PR, Inbound links,etc). Cross linking is not an issue with folders as
they are with subdomains.

[Scott says:] In a typical situation, I agree

New Domain vs Subdomain
Both a new domain and a sub domain start off the same. New domains usually have a different IP address and are given high priority on some
engines (at lease for a couple of weeks). Better to stick with a new domain name.

[Scott says:] But in our case, the subdomain would be hosted at the cart host, so it would be a different IP.

In summary: Stay away from sub domains, folders if you want to leverage your ranking and a new site if you want to really target keywords.

[Scott says:] My summary would be that permanent severe ranking damage could be done to the whole site if it gets entirely moved to their hosting without 100% completion of 301 redirects for every page, and every blog post on the site. If they can make that happen, with actual 301 redirects, then I’d vote to try it. If they can’t though, then I think it’s a disaster waiting to happen.

There was then a bit more text added -

Smart Traffic SEO Tip #37 – Creating a subdomain or a folder?
Subdomain vs. Subfolder, Subdomain.site.com OR site.com/subfolder
A few key facts regarding subdomains and subfolders.
Subdomains:
* Represented in the URL by the characters after “http://” and the ones before “.site.com”
* Are viewed by Search Engines as totally unique sites independent of the parent domain.
* Site Authority (in other words, the ability for the site and its subsequent pages to rank in the search engines) is not passed down from the parent domain.

Subfolders:
* Represented in the URL by the characters after “.site.com/” and before “filename.html”.
* Are viewed by Search Engines as a subdirectory within a site.
* Site Authority is passed down from the main domain.

Based on the above facts, Subdomains are viewed by search engines as totally unique sites independent of the parent domain and the site
authority is not passed down from the parent domain. This means creating subdomains requires greater quality of content to support its own and in
order for them to rank, it requires a lot of promotion and link building efforts.

Between the two, it is advisable to use Subfolders rather than Subdomains. Use subdomains only when the given topic has extensive
content which requires separate navigation and design. Make sure that the subdomain is of great enough quality that it will acquire links and
stand on its own.

So now, my question to the SEO community is this… What do you think?

Besides finding a different e-commerce platform, (one that can handle hosting WP and performing true 301 redirects) what would you advise?

Relevant factors:

• 1100 pages indexed
• 6500 backlinks in Yahoo
• 200 of the 1100 pages are in the blog

I believe that far less harm will come from moving just the actual products into a new subdomain than the harm that might come from moving everything  - especially given the lack of 301 redirects!

I received a marketing e-mail that was cleverly worded, and since I’m interested in local marketing, I clicked the link. When I got there though, the message I received wasn’t exactly a perfect sales pitch.

The e-mail I got told me that my business name was listed incorrectly on the major search engines, and I could get a complete online visibility report by following the link.

It sounded interesting, so I followed the link, and this is what I saw -

If I’m better off than all 111 of my competitors, how can they help me?

And what’s “Multnomah” Oregon?  (Actually, Multnomah is my local marketing county, but even if their email software doesn’t know that, their website for mining local leads should, don’t you think?)

Here’s what the email said…

My name is [snip Name] and I’m researching the online visibility of Multnomah small businesses.

I came across Search Commander, Inc. (11124 Halsey St) on Google, Yahoo and yellow pages sites and noticed that the business is listed differently on these sites. I invite you to check if the business details are up-to-date and take a look at your complete online visibility report.

I hope this information will be useful to you and would appreciate any feedback you may have. If this is not your business or if you would not like to receive these reports, please click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of this email.

Sincerely,

[snip name]
Business Analyst
[snip Email]

I’m not writing this to slam ‘em, I think it’s an interesting campaign, a good looking site, and they DO have a point – Listings should match identically from site to site, (something I learned from David Mihm) and my own local marketing is something I confess to being less than diligent about, at Search Commander, Inc.

I love WordPress, I really do, but i just screwed up a site by changing a bunch of permalinks to 302′s.

Worse, WP won’t allow me to change it back without digging into the database, so I effectively rendered my child page permalinks (URLs) useless.

In this short video I’ll show you exactly what not to do -( besides assume that WordPress will work the way it’s supposed to).

I’ve written about WP hurting search rankings before,  and while changing the LAST part of a permalink does now seem to 301 correctly,  in this case, changing the permalink of a parent page causes a 302  temporary redirect of all the child pages.

This, of course, kills your PageRank and effectively removes any inbound link equity that those pages may have obtained.  Nice, huh?

*Update 12/15 – We are now using this redirection plugin on all new or upgraded WP installations until they fix it…

Simply put, a Link Wheel is a group of pages on different hosts, that are about a specific product, subject or service, which all link to each other, and also link to a particular URL, or “money site”.

Some call them “link wheels”, some call them “authority hubs”, and some, I’m sure, use names I haven’t even heard of.

One of the first advanced search marketing books I read was called Revenge of the MiniNet, by Michael Campbell. In a nutshell, this is the strategy it talked about:

Using multiple domains, build multiple niche websites that are very tightly focused about a specific aspect of your business.

In turn each of those websites would link to each other, and each of those websites would link back to your core URL

You might build multiple websites, one for each model of Sunbeam Toasters, and each of those websites would link to each other, and each of those websites would link back to your primary Sunbeam product page, or toaster page, or main domain, etc.

In doing this, you create relevant content rich mini-sites, that link to other mini sites, and to a central hub, which gets authority from the links within those domains.

The Problem?
The problem with that, was that besides being an awful lot of work, it was relatively transparent, and your new domains had no authority at all, so it took a long time before you might see the benefit.

Also, people were regularly going to great pains to register the domains under different name, host the domains at different IP addresses with multiple hosting accounts, and basically spent a ton of money trying to hide the fact that they were building their own web of links.

A Better Strategy
Jumping ahead to today, many people are doing the same process using some of the Web 2.0 content sites that are out there, which automatically removes most of those transparency factors by having all of the sites hosted on quality domains with lots of trust.

With all the talk about the importance of domain authority and trust, you must know that some domains carry an awful lot of extra weight. I’ve seen this linking strategy be quite effective over the past year, and I know people that have been doing it a lot longer than we have.

For Example:
For example, let’s say the goal is to increase rankings for “blue widgets”, to this URL – http://yourdomain.com/bluewidgets.html

• Create an account at Blogger, Tumbler, Knol, Slideshare, squidoo, Weebly, and Hubpages, to name just a few.
• Go through the process of building a lens, a hub, a blog, a mini-site, or whatever each of those entities decides to call it.
• Ensure that the subject of each one is entirely devoted to specific things to know about blue widgets.
• From each of those, be sure to link to one of the others, and be sure to link to your primary URL
• Be sure to use the anchor text, “blue widgets” as well as other similar variations.
• Be certain that the URL you are linking to is optimized for that particular phrase, with “blue widgets” in the title, header tag, alt tags etc.

There’s probably tons of content you could create, all the way from the history of blue widgets, to specific features, benefits, and even potential future evolution of the product.

The point is to create whatever they offer, and to put up a good piece of original content that actually has some stand-alone value. Do *NOT* be overly commercial, or put up duplicate garbage, or you will likely get your creation declined.

Some people call this “parasite hosting” but that sounds somehow unethical. I don’t believe this is “black hat” or even an “inappropriate” strategy at all, as long as you are providing value to the end reader.  After all, you’re going to get far more exposure at these web 2.0 properties, and educate far more people than you otherwise may, simply by posting on your own domain.

This strategy can be used to build multiple authority hubs to multiple areas of your site, and in 2009, it’s becoming more and more necessary to have these be tightly focused.

A true “widget baron” who is dominating the Internet will likely have multiple authority hubs for every color and style of widget, with their primary for that particular widget at the center of the wheel.

Outsource the process

*** December 20, 2009 – I’ve received reports of problems outsourcing to the company i was recommending, so i’ve removed them from here, and removed them from my SEO Toolbar too, until they improve their quality.

I’ve actually run across a business that specializes creating these Link Wheels far more economically than we could ourselves, and I just ordered yet another one, when I decided to write this post.

• All the user accounts are created using United States IP addresses
• All of the web properties are created by hand, with no automated software.
• All content is written by authors with a good command of English.
• All of the usernames and passwords provided for your profile completion and future content additions.

It’s really a no-brainer, and I can’t speak highly enough about how happy we’ve been with the quality o f  the stuff we’ve gotten from these guys…

Updated 11/10/2009 -

I’m revising my page, because after ordering a few of these, I realized that its’  NOT a “no brainer”,  and if you don’t pay attention, and provide them with good details, the quality will suffer.

I (incorrectly) assumed it went without saying here that you DO need to intelligently choose your anchor text and backlinks.

You also want to ensure that you have decent profiles, because you want maintain these properties later, if you’re not doing so monthly. You need it to actually “look” real, because it IS real!

It’s not some magic bullet that you only do once.   You have to add stuff,  and build them into true mini authority sites, developing trust.  Yes, you basically “fool” Google into thinking you’re a website that’s providing value by actually becoming one! 

Be sure whoever is building your link wheels is using a good name, good profile info, a good company description, a photo, a logo etc. and you’ll fare much better over the long haul.

This week marks our release of the SEO Review Iphone version of SEO Automatic, and it provided unlimited access to run as many urls as you wish.

If you’ve never used my instant SEO review before, then you should probably check that out first. It gives you a detailed analysis and my personal opinion of exactly what I think is right and wrong about the on-page SEO factors of any URL, and it works 24 x 7, whether I’m there or not.

Now, the newly released Iphone app gives all of the same information, but in a slightly less verbose manner, so it will work more easily on the handheld. The Iphone App doesn’t have all the navigational links to my educational content either, but it’s still packed with page after page of good data.

Admittedly, the app does have a few small glitches, as pointed out in some early reviews at Apple and elsewhere, but overall, I’m really proud of it, and I do believe it has a lot of value packed into it.

For the next version, there are a few changed I would personally like to see, and I figured I may as well add them here before someone else does…

• Better segmentation of the different sections of information, perhaps with color blocks different size font.
• Landscape view does not work, where you tilt the handheld and see the screen flips sideways.
• The ability to zoom in and out with a pinch on the text is also something that I’d like to see in the next version.
• There are links to jump to different sections of the report, but no links to get back to the top, which means an awful lot of scrolling.
• Older handheld devices get no on-screen icon, and just show a white box.

Overall, I think the application is pretty remarkable, and if you’ve got an Iphone or an Ipod Touch, AND you have iTunes installed already, you can follow this link to get the app which will open your Itunes immediately.

Last night my kids had football practice, and I had an 8pm commitment too, but I wanted to attend last nights monthly SEMpdx event, which was David Mihm’s presentation on local search.

Recently, I’ve found myself working with some very small local businesses, and several sites for friends and casual acquaintances. I wanted to see what was new and important, so I blew off my family, and went to the presentation anyway. Nice, huh?

When I first tried to learn about the ranking factors for local search, I was verbally chastized by Erik Stein of Google in front of about 1200 people after I dared to ask out loud what the differences were between organic ranking and the local algorithm.

He claimed that “he wasn’t there to divulge the secrets of the Google algorithms” and basically made me look like an idiot for asking. Even at some of the other conferences I attended back then, it was very rare to find anyone that knew much about local, because most of the speakers were working with large companies on a national or worldwide campaigns.

Now today, just two short years later, I can get the specifics from a world class expert without even leaving Portland, and we got treated to a couple mentions of “that’s just changed in the last three weeks” which is always nice .

His presentation was basically an updated summary of his now famous local search ranking factors offering a whirlwind explanation of how to be successful with your local search marketing efforts – the “10 pack” of search results that comes up above the organic rankings in so many of todays searches.

He pointed out for those that didn’t already know, that the ranking factors for those listings were far different, and that basic SEO or even advanced SEO tactics were not enough, and pretty much, they are unrelated entirely when it comes to local search.

He then went through slide after slide of valuable information, and I’ve tried to pick out the nuggets that were most important to me, and I’ve listed them below.

Duplicate Content is Good
Match all of your listings across the web closely, even word for word. This goes not only for your business name and business description, but your phone number (don’t list tracking phone numbers!), and even your store hours, and credit cards accepted. etc. This gives your listings consistency, and the search engines see this duplication of information as a GOOD thing giving verification that you really are who you claim to be.

Beyond The Big Three
Besides claiming your business listing with the search engines, get the most bang for your buck and see quick results, ensure that you are also listed at Localeze, Info USA, and Acxiom.

Universal Business Listings
There’s a good way to submit to multiple places, one that only costs $30. I can tell you from experience myself that it’s quite efficient and effective, and that’s why I’ve been an affiliate of UBL – Universal Business Listings for a while now, and have already added all of my local clients and friends there.

Get Relevant Geographic Links
He very quickly mentioned that your inbound link profile should have a “geographic scent”, and while this doesn’t directly relate to your local business listings, it does relate to your website. A local business should develop links from other local businesses too, like your Chamber of Commerce, and any other local organizations you belong to or support.

Google Bulk Upload = FAIL
Do not use the Google bulk upload feature to submit your localizations at the LBC, even if you have dozens or hundreds of locations to submit. Currently it is being abused by spammers, and although the feature exists, you might just be wasting your time. Instead, painstakingly submit your business, or before outsource the job to someone competent. David also suggested that perhaps it was worth trying the new Google Whitelist in lieu of Bulk Upload.

Openlist
Openlist.com by Marchex is another good one, because they have so many properties around the web that will list your info. Hcard Microformat

Hcard Microformat
The truly geeky among us should submit their contact information in the Hcard microformat which is “is a simple, open, distributed format for representing people, companies, organizations, and places”. Yeah right… simple.

Link to You Tube
Link to any YouTube videos you’ve created directly from your own contact pages. The more eyeballs and views those videos get, the more valuable it is to you. David didn’t say this, and of course you should add those videos to your local business Center profile at Google LBC.

Dedicated Page for Each Location
If you have multiple locations, ensure that you have a page on your site devoted to and optimized for each geographic location. Then be sure that in your local business listings, you linked to THAT particular page on your website. If you have 20 locations, you should have 20 pages on your site, and each one gets a link back from all of your local business listings.

KML Sitemap
Google Webmaster tools offers the ability to upload a KML sitemap, which is a specific XML format that includes your latitude and longitude for each brick and mortar geographic location. My own impression is that while this may not be that important now, but certainly it’s another piece of the puzzle, and not doing so seems foolish.

That’s all I wrote down, but it was a very comprehensive presentation that covered an awful lot.

Due to David’s speed and the time constraints, some of it probably went over the heads of a few people.

There were a couple of times that even I wished I were wearing some rewind glasses.

That’s why I would encourage anyone to read David’s local search ranking factors in its entirety, and you should also check go out his other site, to get a sort of “report card” of how your local listings look.

Again, I do strongly recommend use of UBL, (Universal Business Listings), and we use it for all of our clients…

While browsing through the stats of some (very poorly maintained) sites of our own, I found one that had zero traffic for quite a few weeks. Visiting the site, I saw no site, and just a “Cannot connect to database” error.

A glance at the toolbar showed me a PR zero, and indexed pages in Google (site:domain.com) brought up nothing but a few wp-content pages that should have been blocked by a robots file anyway. Sigh.

Further investigation revealed that we had a corrupted database, and by restoring a WP database backup from a Gmail account dedicated to backups, we had the site back pretty quickly.

A few months ago, the site was a PR3 with decent traffic, and now, it was a PR0 with practically no pages in the index. Bummer.

What Did I Do?
Inside Google Webmaster Tools, I went to Site Reconsideration on the top left, then “Request Reconsideration” in the center of the next page.

Here’s what I wrote:
We lost our database on this rarely attended WordPress site, and although we had traffic and PageRank, now the only indexed pages are ones that don’t even belong there, like /wp-admin pages. We’ve done nothing wrong, just left ourselves hanging in the wind too long with no pages there. Might we get reincluded please? PageRank back too?
Thank you for your consideration…

How Did it Work?
I’ll have to let you know. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and it will be back?

I’ll bet you $1000 that if we took an existing and well established default site installation today, and first upgraded it to WP 2.82, then we set WP up correctly with our chosen SEO plug-ins, correct permalinks, etc. that we would LOSE rankings in the search engines within 90 days.

Why?
Because all of the default URLs will 302 to the new pages, instead of 301 redirect, and all of the inbound link equity and indexed pages would disappear. This means rankings would drop.

Why?
Because someone at WordPress actually made the conscious decision to change the CORRECT server response, a 301, into the WRONG one, a 302 with the latest release, 2.82. This doesn’t “accidentally” happen, someone forced a change!

Why?
That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?

There are probably hundreds of websites that I’m sure are already being affected by this, . All it takes is for them to have changed permalinks or once they were into a 2.82 environment, and it’s “game over” after Google gets done with them, isn’t it?

There are also probably dozens or even hundreds of well-meaning development firms that are “fixing” client blogs TODAY, and in reality they may actually be doing them harm.

If you didn’t see my first post, with a short video, you might want to check it out, but the bottom line is that there’s a right way to do a redirect, that retains rankings, inbound link value, page rank etc. and there’s a wrong way, and this is wrong.

When WordPress 2.82 came out, we did more than our share of quick upgrades because it came out so quickly after 2.81.

It was after we’d done a few of them that @johnandrews first mentioned that he’d seen a problem, and after investigating a little further I posted about it, and resigned myself to wait for the fix.

Now however, it’s been two weeks, and we’re doing new installations with 2.81, and that’s just dumb.

Then I got a phone call yesterday, where someone had a WordPress site that had been around for 18 months and was older, 2.5, but was just a default installation.

Then a couple of weeks ago, they upgraded to 2.82 and he’s already seeing a loss in traffic.

I saw that his pages in the index were still the default WP url structure, even though his permalinks.

I also saw that the old urls were now 302 redirecting to the new. Not good, huh?

His WP site had been around for 18 months, he has links, traffic, PageRank and rankings. if someone doesn’t fix this, (Maybe redo the thing in 2.81?) who knows what might happen!

What I really can’t understand is why WordPress hasn’t fixed it, and why nobody in the larger community of WordPress & SEO seems to be talking about it yet.

I find it hard to believe nobody’s noticed, but maybe not?

Anyone want to take the bet?

Almost two years ago at SMX Advanced 2007 I had a short talk with Matt Cutts about the nofollow tag being “okay to use”, and my last statement was something like this:

“So there’s really no “over optimization” penalty or anything considered “evil” about manipulating page rank exactly as you wish? Even if it’s just for funneling the link juice exactly where you want?

Matt told me that, yes it was “okay”, and he even agreed with me that it was one of the last available “Advanced SEO tactics”, and at the time, I commented here about his answer.

In 2008, there were discussions all over the web about it’s use, and in June of that year, I recommended using nofollow in my article “Further Beyond the top 10 SEO factors”

If you still don’t know how Google PageRank and their passing of “link juice” works, then this post may not make much sense to you. However, assuming that you DO understand the process, here are a couple of facts I’ve been considering.

• Every webpage can “pass along” approximately 86% of its available page rank through links on that page.
• The less links there are on a page, the more link juice there is available to pass on to each of the other links.
• Adding rel=nofollow to a link means Google stops passing PageRank to that link
• Other links that ARE followed, therefore get more “juice”
• Controlling the flow of your link juice helps your site and can help others you might link to

Assuming you buy into this whole “no follow” thing, (which I do wholeheartedly), then the logical recommendation made by most advanced search engine marketers is to ensure that ALL unimportant links on a page are no followed.

Generally, these are thinks like your privacy policy, security information, contact pages, customer / client logins, shopping cart “buy” buttons, and other irrelevant text phrases.

What If?
Taking this a step further, let’s say you have a page that’s a Google PR2, and it’s been around for years. If you include your header, your footer and your menu, lets assume you have 20 links on that page.

If 86 percent of that PageRank 2 is passed along to those 20 links, that doesn’t leave very much to go towards the two or three “important” links that you might have in your body text, does it?

However, suppose you were to nofollow almost everything? i’m talking about all the links in the header, all the links in the footer, and all of your navigation too. What if you limit your “followed” links to just a couple in the body text? Wouldn’t you then effectively be getting the maximum benefit out of that page? In essence, aren’t you then “juicing” every last drop of PR?

Jumping ahead almost 2 full years , the nofollow tag has become the subject of many longwinded discussions covering everything from “What is the purpose of the nofollow tag in the first place?” to whether its use is advantageous or not. My short answers?

It was originally conceived to combat pointless blog comment spam, yes it is very useful to sculpt your PageRank.

NoFollowize WordPress
In the WordPress community there have been various no follow and dofollow plug-ins, and all were developed with the the sole intention of giving the blog owner more control over where they pour their juice. Unfortunately, none of them really offered the sort of “total control” I was after.

Rather than just “dofollowing” various comments, it would be really cool if I could have this control over every link on any page selectively.

It’s this line of thought that led to the development of the ultimate no follow plug-in for WordPress, which will be available for testing anytime now.

Here’s a screenshot of the new panel appearing on every edit page.

At this point, we’re in final testing, and I’m trying to decide on the name – either NoFollowizer or Link Juicer. Can you cast a vote here?

I’m leaving this moring for Elite Retreat, and I’m writing this in the airport because my flight is delayed. It occurs to me that I may not be able to productively fill all of my “one on one” time.

Have you looked at who’s speaking at Elite Retreat 2009? Can you imagine not having an agenda of questions ready to ask these guys?

in all fairness, Tigh at Shoemoney sent out a “get ready” email about a week ago, and I saved it, planning to get back to it later, and that’s what I’m going to finish up on the plane.

However, last year at ER, each and every speakers let us “wear out our welcome”, on the last night by hanging around on their own time until EVERY single person had nothing left to ask but “Where’s the bar?”

To be honest, my biggest regret from ER 2008 is that I hadn’t shown up with a mile long list of questions – I had no idea that we would have all that personally devoted time.

This year it’s different, because I know it’s coming, and so do the other 34 attendees. also, my main focus is on furthur expanding services at SEO Automatic as I bring it forward with an affiliate program and brandable agency options.

I KNOW I have a specific agenda. But, like last year, if I were to get the opportunity, what would I do if there was nothing left to ask?

So, PLEASE tell me what questions might you ask of any of these people, and I’ll do my best to get to ‘em.

At the 2008 SMX advanced show in Seattle, one catchy phrase that I heard which stuck in my head was “cache dates are the new PageRank”.

Whomever said it in their presentation was spot on, and subsequent research tells me that Aaron Wall (the guy who literally “wrote the book” on SEO) first wrote about it nearly two full years ago.

Do a search for your chosen key phrase and look at the cache dates of those that outrank you. Are their dates newer than yours? I’ll bet they are in many cases.

In fact, look at the cache date for anything on the front page of Google, and I’ll bet it’s cache date might surprise you, despite the age of the page itself.

A recent launch of a new website spurred the research for this article, and before we had made it through this process, we began to see improved results immediately.

Another website, with over 18,000 pages hasn’t yet been so lucky yet, but we’re pulling out all the stops listed here to make it happen in a timely manner.

Obviously, the key to fresher cache dates is getting more frequent visits by the spiders, and these are all ways I can think of to increase that frequency. If you have other suggestions, BELIEVE me I want to hear about them, so don’t you dare leave without adding a comment!

Sitemap.xml
Of course getting account at Google Webmaster tools, and submitting an XML site map is one of the most common methods for getting your pages indexed, and for being able to measure the frequency crawl rate by Google.

While some people disagree entirely, I DO still like to use them for the information I can get from Google Webmaster Tools. I also recommend having multiple site maps if necessary, rather than on giant massive list.

In my experience it’s been far easier to have the majority of URLs indexed for several small site maps (without duplicate URL’s) as opposed to zipping one really large one with thousands of pages.

Also, something I learned just recently, is that Google prefers that you keep your direct image URLs completely OUT of your XML site map. Some free site map creators don’t allow you to filter out certain file types and truly, they are really not adequate.

Add New Content Regularly – NOT Just One Big Batch
If this is a brand-new website, then of course you’re going to add most of your content all in the beginning, but do hold something back so that you can continue to grow steadily.

The rate of your growth is going to have to be comparable with your industry competition, so there’s no “magic answer” to the question of frequency, but I’ve found that no matter how small the website, adding at least a page a month can make a drastic improvement.

In more competitive industries, where the competition is fierce, you’ll often see multiple authors adding content on a near daily basis, so how often you should post for your industry is admittedly all over the map.

Each time you add content, (assuming you have a good process and site structure) you’re telling the search engines that you’re YET AGAIN adding to your own authority in your chosen field.

The more often you post, the more often they’ll visit, and the faster your content will get ranked. I expect this post to be crawled and indexed within 4 or 5 minutes, and back when I was posting more often, I would usually have get a new post indexed in under 60 seconds.

Update Content on Old Pages Dynamically
Simply by placing some code on old pages you can continuously use your own RSS feeds to update and fresh and content throughout your site.

There are likely pages on your site where the content hasn’t changed for years, and frankly they don’t get cached or visited all that often, if ever. (Just look at some of your oldest pages buried in the index and view their cache dates!)

Assuming you’re adding content regularly, then the chances are also good that you’re doing it the right way . For example, millions are using a content management system like WordPress, which will provide them with RSS feeds.

Don’t be lazy and just add the main blog feed site wide – do more. Take advantage of your own subject specific RSS feeds to provide laser targeted fresh content to any page on your site using the RSS feeds from not only your main blog, but from your categories, and even your individual tags.

Regularly freshening the content of your pages will get you spidered and cached more often. If you don’t know how to add RSS to your pages, you might like my RSS tool that allows you to manipulate the feed and display it exactly as you with.

Deep Link to Yourself Intelligently
The easiest place to get a well anchored deep text link to the content of your choice is from someone you have total control over – yourself.

As you add articles and information to your website, don’t miss opportunities to link to other relevant areas of your site.

To be entirely smart about it, do a “site:domain.com key phrase” search at Google, and find pages that ALREADY rank for that phrase in your own little kingdom, and then use those as the targets of your own internal link campaign.

While you’re at it, review the title tags and descriptions of the pages you’re linking to and if necessary, make adjustments, because you probably wrote them a long time ago before you knew nearly as much as you know now.

In WordPress this can be accomplished automatically too, with a “Related Posts” plugin, adding related links to (I really love this one – Yet Another Related Posts Plugin) and this will increase the spider activity throughout your site, and keeping that old content fresh and in the “mind” of the search engines.

Make Static Sitemaps – Several if Necessary

Sometimes Googlebot is stubborn and simply will NOT index the links you want in your XML site map as fast or as often as you like. This is a good time to go back to basics with a static HTML site map, or even more than one.

By ensuring that you have a site map available, like I’ve recommended in my SEO 101 Top 10 for years now, and ensuring that it’s linked from the footer of your home page, you’re going to be giving the spiders easy access to every single link on your site.

If your site is hundreds or thousands of pages, then you’ll have to add multiple sitemaps, and strategically interlink these static maps so they all have less than 100 links on each. Even though it’s commonly believed that Google can handle 150, I usually prefer to keep them under 100.

For example, let’s say you have 2000 movie theaters across the country and want each page to be indexed. Multiple site maps would be necessary to ensure that all of your theater links get crawled from that map, so you could have one site map showing all the states, and then on each of those site maps you would have the individual theaters.

Linkvertising – Buy Inbound Links
Getting inbound deep links for free from other frequently crawled sites is obviously better, but it’s probably not going to happen as fast as you need it to when you’re just trying to get indexed.

Sometimes Google needs a push, (shove, kick, beating) when it comes to visiting all the pages, and when you find this is the case, you have to do what’s necessary. Often that means buying some links!

Google says it’s not okay to buy links for the purpose of improving your ranking but there’s certainly nothing wrong with buying links to improve your traffic flow both from visitors and spiders. Think of it as advertising.

There are many of credible link brokers out there, and often times a jumpstart is all it takes. Running some paid deep links for just a couple or few months is not that expensive, and it can do wonders for increasing your exposure to the spiders.

It is certainly possible to buy no followed links, and the search engines will still follow those links for indexing and caching purposes, bringing you visitors that are genuinely interested in what you’ve got.

Here are some recommended link brokers that will provide nofollowed links upon request – Text Link Ads, Linkworth and Link XL. On the other hand, something like Linkvana will not offer you nofollowed links, so be careful about “overdoing it” in those cases.

Submit a Press Release
There’s a a blast from the past, right? The fact that you’ve launched a new website or redesigned your old one is certainly newsworthy, so get off your duff and take advantage of this genuine news by submitting a press release at a decent level with PR Leap or PRWeb.

Press releases are still a highly effective way of telling the world and the search engines, “hey, look at me”, and by including DEEP links to new sections or to infrequently cached sections of your website, you’re going to be drawing attention of not only new viewers and customers, but also of the spiders to those “forgotten” (or new) areas of your website.

Update Member Profile Pages
If you belong to any member organizations like your local Chamber of Commerce, then you probably have a profile page where you can write a biography, and often you may have included a link to your homepage.

Over the past few years, many of the organizations that you belong to have likely enhanced your ability as a member to add deep links to your website from your profile. These can be hugely valuable, but are often overlooked by business owners.

If you’re a landscaper, and you’re a member of the National Landscapers Society (is there one?), then it makes perfect sense that you would want multiple deep links on your profile page, going to your yard maintenance category for example, and your tree trimming section, your lawn tips area, and so on.

Talk to your employees and business peers, and look through your memberships. What can you improve upon? At the same time you’re taking advantage of these new deep linking opportunities be sure to examine your original anchor text.

Even if they’ve not allowed you to place more than one link before, you still might be able to improve upon the text you’re using for your inbound link, or even send it to a new section.

Create Something Free
There are hundreds of credible software directories out there with plenty of inbound links themselves, and lots of delicious link juice to pass around to worthy businesses who are offering something of true value for free.

One tactic we’ve used in the past has been recently revived with good success by creating a free product, like a toolbar or a screensaver, and then submitting it to the hundreds of free software directories out there for distribution.

This used to be an incredibly tedious process that we had all but abandoned – that was until Michelle McPherson came out with her 30 minute backlinks process about a year ago.

Another thing that makes this so great, is that since the rules are different for every directory, when the links appear in the directories, some will use your chosen anchor text, and some wont. Some will link only to your software PAD file, and others will link to your home page, and some will link to your chosen giveaway page.

If you create a good giveaway page for your free software, like sort of a mini site map with plenty of good text links to your most important areas, then this one tactic can bring you a surprising amount of activity not only from spiders but from humans as well.

All of the links and subsequent spider activity created by the process will appear completely natural in nature because they ARE natural, and that’s a good thing! 30 Minute Backlinks just makes the process a lot easier, and it’s 100% white hat.

Add New Articles and Update Your Bio’s
Remember all those crusty old article directory accounts that you set up tediously when you started doing this a long time ago? Well it’s time to get back in there and examine your bio links, and perhaps adjust them either for anchor text or landing pages to new areas that you wish to have crawled.

Adding a couple of new articles to each of the directories with well anchored deep links to important deep pages is well worth your effort to get a fresh crawl from the spiders, and increase activity, and for anyone that says otherwise, I’d have to agree to disagree.

Get Links to Some New URL’s
This should go without saying, but it often gets overlooked in the strategies of day-to-day link building. As you add new areas to your site, be sure to add or adjust your link building tactics, whether those be by exchange, content trades or whatever, to include these new sections.

Remember, your inbound link profile should be well dispersed throughout your site, and not all pointing at all of your home page. Pointing links at these new or older sections can make a world of difference quickly.

I’ve been using the SEOmoz Pro Tools quite a bit this past month, including their new Linkscape, and I’m finding that in many cases we’re actually doing a poor job with diversification. It takes a lot of work to make it look natural!

Twitter & Get SEOcial
Make it easy for your visitors to share what they see on every page of your site by socializing those areas with popular social networking icons.

Take the 45 minutes necessary to go out and register your company name at all of these social networking groups even if you don’t intend to use them all is far better than someone else grabbing your name.

Social network applications like Twit This make it incredibly easy to share your content throughout the Web, and ensure that every post you make appears not only on your own website but on other websites too. This creates inbound links, and the ‘bots will come more often.

Yes, I know, that due to the no follow tag, these links may not always help your ranking, but they DO cite references to deeply categorized pages, and therefore, will increase that spider activity in a hurry.

Trade Some Content
Write industry relevant articles and offer them to other websites if they’ll include a deep link to your site in the bosy of the text. Having your content appear on other websites is another way to not only build inbound links, but will increase spidering activity as well, and of course, the more often you’re spidered, the fresher your cache dates will be.

UGC – User Generated Content
When posts are written that inspire comments, or you come right out and ask people questions, then the content on that page will change each and every time someone posts a new comment on that post.

A couple of good examples of pages that are cached frequently and crawled often on my site are one about fixing your Comcast email problems, and another about a terrible health insurance company that I worked with briefly back in 2002.

Both of these posts have inspired more comments from readers than I can even believe, and even though the posts are years old, the cache date is seldom more than a week old at any given time.

What can you do with a crusty old buried webpage gets indexed week after week? I’ll leave that to your imagination

Other Ideas?
So it cache dates are the (not so) new PageRank now, what other creative ways can you think of that will provide us all with more ‘bot activity? I’m sure there are more, but this is all I can think of here, so please, feel free to share your own ideas in the comments below.

Peak Studios is a “search marketing firm” in Colorado that deserves special recognition for being incredibly stupid. Apparently, they’ve decided to leave fake negative reviews on my local business profile in Google, and they’ve done the same thing to several other members of the SEMpdx board of directors.

The owner, Quince Wyss, has now moved from a simple ignorance about marketing tactics into complete and total idiocy, and I’m sharing the story here because he’s crossed the line with these personal attacks.

The Story:
Back in October, someone posted twice in a row at the SEMpdx forums with two poorly written self promotional articles that were not only poorly written, but also had embarrassingly bad formatting, grammar, and punctuation.

As a forum moderator, I was just going to delete them when I noticed something comical – The “service” being hawked in these two pieces of junk were for an SEO / SEM company in Colorado named Peak Studios.

The person that posted even left their name, company name, and their email address, website and phone number, on both of these ridiculous “contruibutions”.

First I laughed, and then I Twittered this – “If you were an SEO company, would you forumspam us at SEMpdx? Duh. So, I’m calling [unlinked here] Peakstudios.com and I’ll report back”.

I realized it might just be someone trying to make Peak Studios look bad, so I decided to phone the company and alert them to what had been done.

How Did Peak Studios React?
You can imagine my surprise when the owner, Quince Wyss, told me that they DID have an employee with that name, and Quince said he wanted to see what the employee had written.

I forwarded the “articles” to him by email, expecting to get a message back that he was embarrassed and sorry, and that the employee would undergo some training about what is and isn’t appropriate. Certainly he’d train him more about how they want to portray themselves in the public eye, right?

I hung up thinking I had done a good deed, but an hour later I got an email back from him actually defending this crap, and he also “demanded” that I retract what I had said on Twitter!

Well, never one to miss an opportunity, I wrote an article called “Forum Spam is in the Eye of the Beholder” and posted on the SEMpdx blog, calling out Peak Studios by name as defending the practice of spamming forums.

Todd Mintz submitted it to Sphinn, where agreement was nearly 100% that this guy was in the wrong. Well known and respected internet marketers like Jill Whalen, John Andrews, Daria Goetsch, Nick Wilsdon, Kim (Krause) Berg and many others all seemed to agree that yeah, it was totally inappropriate.

But after seeing the internet community lined up against him, did Quince Wyss see the error of his ways and do the right thing and apologize?

No – of course not. Peak Studios continued to argue the point as the only defender on the thread, Opiumden. The debate got so ridiculous that commenting was turned off by adnimistrators.

Was that the end of it?
Oh no, not by a long shot. This genius then actually phoned both Kent Lewis, the past president at SEMpdx, and Ben Lloyd, the current president, and “demanded” that my article be removed, threatening lawsuits, retaliation, and blah blah blah.

Quince claimed both that I had edited his “articles to make him look bad” (LOL – why would anyone do that?), and he said that there was “nothing wrong with what he’d done”.

At that point it became even more ridiculous, as several emails went around among the SEMpdx board before we all decided unanimously that the article should stay up.

I mean, here’s a “search marketing firm” engaging in the same exact kind of forum spam that you see for Viagra, but it was for their own industry, their own business, and they were actually DEFENDING it! We all found it incredible.

So, Ben basically told the guy to take a hike and to go ahead and call his lawyer, because we all agreed he was clearly off his tree.

Was that the end? Oh no, just wait, it gets better…
Earlier this week, someone supposedly named “Jesse Vandalino” posted a silly but negative comment about SEMpdx on a very old outdated blog post at Matt McGee’s Small Business Marketing blog.

Matt emailed Todd Mintz and asked him if the name “Jesse Vandalino” rang any bells, which it didn’t, and we all suspected that it might be this guy from Peak Studios trying to engage in some reputation damagement.

Then Friday, someone at the office of Anvil Media noticed a negative review on their Google Maps profile, and Tom Hale, another SEMpdx forum admin and advisory board member ALSO had a negative review added to his Google profile.

I heard about this all on Saturday, and a quick look at my own Google profile turned up the one and only negative review ever written about my company. Sure enough, it too could be tracked back to this bozo at Peak Studios. Here’s a copy, in case I can get it removed…

Why am I writing this now?
Because after seeing this fake review, I was so mad that I picked up the phone and called Peak, leaving a profane voicemail that he should have some balls and call me. What did he do? Did he “man up” and phone me? No.

After editing out his own name, his company name, and the dirty deeds I was accusing him of, he then posted the voicemail on youtube in another public smear attempt. (I guess it serves me right, but I was genuinely pissed!)

That wasn’t enough tough, and he began contacting others, like the East Portland Chamber of Commerce, and linking to the Youtube edited voicemail with more comment spam.

THEN he went back into my Google profile and added another fake review, this one with reference to the voicemail!

If this guy will spam our forum, then go to all the trouble to attack us personally when he’s so clearly wrong in the first place, what might he do for his clients?

I took a look at just the first client listed in their “web portfolio” and here’s a short video of how they “market”, including:

• Making up fake user profiles
• Leaving fake favorable reviews for clients
• Slandering client competitors by leaving fake negative reviews

Here is my proof that they are leaving fake reviews!

What’s the most disturbing is NOT that he’s too stupid to realize that they spammed in the first place.

It’s not even that he’s so dumb that he used the same user accounts making this so easy to uncover.

No, what’s most disturbing is that there are businesses in Colorado that are falling prey to the supposed “internet marketing services” of Quince Wyss at Peak Studios, and they are risking their business reputation .

Don’t take my word for it; check them out for yourself! Here are a few fake user reviews I found for ChemDry carpet cleaning, a Peak Studios client – One, two, three, four

Here’s one where they also did a fake negative review of a competitor, and here’s another fake negative competitor review. Here’s one competitor hit with 5 negative reviews

It’s one thing to engage in some negative smear campaign against me or SEMpdx – we’re big boys & girls and can take care of ourselves.

What they’re doing is posting fake reviews of their own clients, and they’re posting fake negative reviews about their clients competitors! That is SO far over the top that I I think they should be sued.

Only the most despicable company would engage in a negative campaign of actual lies about the competitors of their clients, right?

Do you think their clients have agreed to let them play that way?

Update – 14 months later, Peak Studios is at it again so i’m closing comments here – please go to the new thread…