Securing Your CMS
If you are using WordPress as a CMS or any other stock CMS such as Drupal or Joomla be sure to keep it current. Don’t show the version of the CMS on your site either. As new WordPress versions are released, security bugs from previous versions become public and vulnerabilities allow attackers to cause harm to your site by passing HTTP arguments, bad URI strings, etc.
It is also important to protect your wp-admin directory. Use a .htaccess file in the wp-admin directory to white list the IP address that can access your wp-admin directory.
AuthUserFile /dev/null
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName “Access Control”
AuthType Basic
order deny,allow
deny from all
# whitelist home IP address
allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
# whitelist work IP address
allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
There are also vulnerabilities in plugins. If a user goes to www.yourdomain.com/wp-content/plugins/ from a browser, it shows all the plugins that you are using. It is a good idea to block access to the wp plugins directory through the use of a .htaccess file or simply upload a blank index.html file to the directory to block access to the directory.
Local Web Marketing
It is essential for Local and Small businesses to claim online listings for their brand. Google Places, Bing, LinkedIn, Yellow Pages, Localeze, Yelp, FourSquare and hundreds if not thousands more online listing, branding opportunities are available on the web. Since the Panda Update internet marketers are likely rethinking linkbuilding initiatives and staying away from low quality directories and spammy, unethical linking practices. Reputable directories and business portals can be a great area to focus on for building links. December is a good month to keep an eye on Business.com for a 50 per cent discount on the yearly $299 directory submission package. Hopefully a number of you caught the article on Search Engine Journal promoting the 50 per cent discount from the BOTW directory on Cyber Monday and submitted your site to the directory. If not, next year remember, remember the month of November.
Promo codes are pretty easy to find online in just a couple searches, but if you are looking to get more than the average 10 to 20 per cent off there are a number of savvy ways to get some high quality links for free. An internet marketer that is willing to put some time into writing Guides for Work.com can gain quality links directed at their web properties, as Work.com guides are republished by Business.com. Google Knol is an online hub that has been under the radar for years, the link equity that flows within that property is likely overwhelming.
Perhaps one of the best documents I have come across in regard to local search engine ranking is David Mihm’s yearly Local Search Ranking Factors where search professionals weigh in on possible positive and negative factors that drive Google’s Local Search algorithms. The document is a must read for those interested in local and small business marketing.
Since I got involved in search marketing, aggregation and auto generated content has always intrigued me and I have finally taken the advice of Eli Aloisi from a post in Bluehatseo and purchased a PHP and MySQL book, although I probably wont crack it open in a coffee shop sporting a strawberry pink bandana. Looking for links to include in this post I was surprised to find a resourceful, promotional article about Google+ within Yahoo News. The article was published on PRweb and republished by Yahoo news. While on the topic, it should be noted that while getting accepted into search engine news feeds is a tough nut to crack, having your content distributed by Google and Yahoo news can send a flood of visitors to your site… Holy analogies batman, am I writing for SEO by the Sea.
97% of consumers search for local businesses online. Google Places for business is a free local platform from Google. In a release from the Google Blog Steve Grove, Head of Community Partnerships, Google+ noted:
“We want to help more organizations, politicians, artists, celebrities, athletes, media companies and nonprofits use Google+ to share and interact with each other – and with Google+ users.”
-Connect with your community on Google+
In early November, Google+ rolled out business pages. Placing your business with Google Places as well as initiating Google+ for business is a great place to start in your local web marketing endeavours.
Monitoring the Social Media Sphere
As the web transitions into a more semantic web and Tim Berners Lee’s dream of a web that acts more like the human brain comes closer to fruition, where a web of data can be processed directly and indirectly by machines, consider content, links and clickstreams. Search engines are mining data, the search trails of surfers, user and activity data. As well as signals to search engines from curated content and links, search results are significantly influenced by user behavior. Today search engines are capable of analyzing the majority of data on the web and user activity data provides search engines with insights that help identify the most relevant websites to a specific search query.
“Content created and curated by users carries greater influence and travels faster than doing it on your own. Voice of the customer (VoC) feedback, questions, testimonials, and insights surface through social interaction, discussion, and sharing.” – Blog SMO Guide: How to Apply Social Media Optimization to Your Blog in 33 Steps
According to the 2011 Search Ranking Factors Survey from SEOmoz released in early June, industry experts believe the top three influential social metrics to date are: authority of users tweeting links to a page, quantity of tweeted links to a page and quantity of Facebook shares for a page. Google currently uses Twitter’s XMPP feed and some signals from public pages on Facebook to influence rankings.
In todays competitive and crowded economic landscape it is important to stay connected with your audience and potential clients, not only initiating social networking but also monitoring the social conversation. It is also important to remember that a bookmark or a tweet is considered a backlink and these types of links are usually quality backlinks with relevant anchor text. Search engines are putting more emphasis on the wisdom of crowds and the voice of the end-user, the links, that are essentially sending signals to search engines of the relevance of content influence what appears in search engine results pages.
Real-time search engines such as Kurrently.com and Twitter allow you to put a finger on the pulse of search. Organizations are gaining links to their web properties in a number of different ways including press release distribution, article syndication and social bookmarking. A couple helpful resources for linkbuilding and SEO research inlude Majestic SEO and Blekko.com. The aforementioned resources not only help to analyze the diversity of a link portfolio but allow the ability to get a sense of how engaged the competition is in social.
Linkbuilding in 2011
1. “Most obvious link opportunities available are often times overlooked, gain quality links from the following where applicable and when and if they become available:
Memberships, Associations, Events, Charity, Donations, Office Space Complex, Business Partners, Clients and Customers, Media and news mentions, Testimonials.”
Link Building Campaign, How to Prepare and Where to Start
by Zarko on June 3, 2011
of PracticalSEO.com
2. Linkbuilding through directory placement.
A. General Free Directories
“There are a handful of older free directories like DMOZ or Jayde that are worth paying attention to.”
Link Building Techniques That Still Work
By Nick Stamoulis on March 8, 2011
searchengineoptimizationjournal.com
B. Niche Directory Building
“While most web directories were discounted long before the latest quality update, one kind of directory has been gaining trust over the years and has been recommended by Google employees: high quality, selective niche directories. They must be highly relevant, topical and/or local in nature.”
30 link building/link baiting techniques that work in 2011.
By Tad Chef on May 19, 2011
SEOptimize.com
“Most industries have some sort of niche directories where a business can list their information for that specific industry. Some are free and some cost money, but a niche directory can oftentimes give off a great deal of link juice to your website.”
Link Building Techniques That Still Work
By Nick Stamoulis on March 8, 2011
searchengineoptimizationjournal.com
C. Business Listings and Local Directories
“Claim, complete and optimize online listings. Nailing this very basic step – Google Places, Bing, Yellow Pages, Localeze, Yelp, City Search are all showing information about your brand and you know the search engines are using this information to look for cues that you are relevant to a particular neighbourhood.”
Small Business SEO: 46 Experts on the Biggest Mistakes SMBs Make with SEO and Internet Marketing
April 19, 2011 Lisa Barone, Outspoken Media
“There are numerous locations online dedicated to listing your business. Most of these locations offer nice descriptions, logos, and areas to submit a link. Some of these business listings sometimes offer multiple links along with the use of anchor text, which is great for SEO.”
Link Building Techniques That Still Work
By Nick Stamoulis on March 8, 2011
searchengineoptimizationjournal.com
“Is your business located near a metropolitan area? Chances are there are plenty of local town and city websites where you can list your business. These locations are also great because they tend to rank very well for your company name, which brings a variety of other benefits to the table.”
Link Building Techniques That Still Work
By Nick Stamoulis on March 8, 2011
searchengineoptimizationjournal.com
3. Link Buying.
“Buy listings with the BBB, TRUSTe, & PR.com. BBB and TRUSTe offer strong links, with immense value in their own right – but they also offer badges that will help conversion on your website by increasing user trust. If you believe the brand signals hype, it’s very possible that those two links would offer an extra “boost” to your domain in the present or future based on the standard for inclusion there. The third site, PR.com allows hosted profile links with targeted anchor text, and also allows you to disseminate press releases at an additional cost.
Utilize StumbleUpon’s advertising program to acquire viral traffic. If your content is social friendly, utilizing StumbleUpon’s advertising feature to get eyeballs on your content and then push it forward can be a great way to start the churning the viral contagion.”
A Model For Link Building: Beyond “Great Content”
by Ross Hudgens on March 15, 2011
RossHudgens.com
4. R.S.S.
http://www.wolf-howl.com/ideas/preparing-for-the-death-of-rss
http://www.wolf-howl.com/blogging/big-fat-rss-lie
5. Social Bookmarking.
6. Register and participate with Social sites.
Use networks that will initiate social sharing such as Twitter and Stumble upon.
“While some social networks are more for interacting with other users, others are geared more toward sharing content — such as Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit, to name just a few. These are the kind of social sites you want to target for you social link building.
A few power accounts on the social content sites you’re targeting: Next, if you’re going to get your content voted up, you’re going to need access to power user accounts. These are accounts that are trusted by the social content sites algorithms because they are old/have tenure and have a lot of contacts/followers.
Votes from these accounts tend to carry more weight. But more importantly, you’ll need those contacts/followers to get others to vote up your submissions.
Of course, you can’t create a power accounts overnight. So you’ll either have to take the time (about a year) to build them up, or you’ll have to partner with someone who already has access to some.”
Using Social Media to Boost Search Rankings
by Guillaume Bouchard, January 6, 2011
nvisolutions.com
“Social signals: Facebook shares and likes – the former of which appears to influence rankings – Twitter activity, Google +1 use and quality links from social are of paramount importance.”
The Panda Enigma: An Overview of Major SEO Factors
by Adam Audette, June 6, 2011
AudetteMedia.com
“use stumbleupon which is a great way of spurring Facebook and Twitter sharing.”
SMX 2011
-Justin Briggs
SEO Consultant at Distilled, SEOmoz Associate
7. Register and participate with niche associated industry social networks.
8. Register with Review websites.
SMX 2011,
-Lisa Barone
Outspoken Media
9. Register and contribute to Q and A websites (Also see Forums below).
“Actively contribute to online communities in your field. These include discussion forums, blogs, and other social media. Focus on one or two that can bring you the most exposure to your customers and industry. Answer questions. Give advice. Provide solutions. It’s all about exposure. You might attract the attention of a blogger or reporter who will cite your Web site. They may call for an interview. Once you’ve developed a solid reputation on those sites, others in the community will start to reference your site for you.”
Build Links in 30 Minutes a Day Best of SEW 2010 #8
Justilien Gaspard, December 22, 2010
Independent Consultant, Justilien.com
10. Register and utilize how to and business guides.
Other networks to utilize include: Slideshare, etc. and uploading presentations to Linked In.
“Sites must make the effort to contribute value to the web, in the form of frequently published resources, information, guides, images, videos, or whatever. Sites serious about SEO need to commit to an editorial schedule and continually produce here.”
The Panda Enigma: An Overview of Major SEO Factors
by Adam Audette, June 6, 2011
AudetteMedia.com
11. Article Distribution.
12. Press release distribution.
Follow suggestions from:
PR-SEO Mythbusting for Better Link Building
by Jeremy Bencken, March 31, 2011
Wordloop, WebsimpleSEO and Buzzstream
13. Set up Google Alerts…
“The last step regarding obvious link opportunities in your link building campaign is news and media mentions of your brand. Unlike setting an alert for your main keyword, having alerts for your brand name is one of the best ways to score some easy links. This doesn’t only apply to news and media, but also blog sphere. Monitoring your brand is an essential step in online marketing, this why whenever someone mentions your brand you can drop by and leave a comment or ask for a link directly.”
Link Building Campaign, How to Prepare and Where to Start
By Zarko on June 3, 2011
PracticalSEO.com
14. Stay Connected.
Set up an account with http://www.ning.com/ create your own social network, allowing for increased communication with connections as well as staying connected with the community. Other networks include but are not limited to FastPitchOnline, Google and Yahoo Groups.
“Building partnerships and relationships is the best way to build links naturally. That is why big companies have a lot of good quality links. They focus more on expanding partnerships and relationships and less on building artificial links. Once you have that built effectively, then the links come.”
30 link building/link baiting techniques that work in 2011.
By Tad Chef on May 19, 2011
SEOptimize.com
“The best thing to do is find the right community, engage and build relationships.”
Small Business SEO: 46 Experts on the Biggest Mistakes SMBs Make with SEO and Internet Marketing
April 19, 2011
Paul May, Buzzstream
15. Reach out to webmasters.
Utilize suggestions from:
Contrarian Perspectives On Link Building
By Eric Ward, May 3, 2011
Ericward.com
16. Reach out to bloggers.
“Blogger outreach can work great once you have somewhat established your brand online and you are capable of building a relationship with some of the bloggers in your industry.”
Link Building Techniques That Still Work
By Nick Stamoulis on March 8, 2011
searchengineoptimizationjournal.com
17. Blog Commenting.
“Blog commenting for SEO is about suggesting a resource that might get included in the article, or better forging a relationship with a blogger who then links to you of her/his own accord.”
30 link building/link baiting techniques that work in 2011.
By Tad Chef on May 19, 2011
SEOptimize.com
“Best practice is to commit to 20 or so different link building activities a month. So join two or three industry associations, submit different articles to a few article directories and document sharing sites and find 15-25 blogs to comment on.”
Keep Your Link Building Diversified!
By Nick Stamoulis on April 13, 2011
searchengineoptimizationjournal.com
18. Forum Posting.
“On most forums you get a link on the profile, in the signature, and of course in posts. Also, once people know you they’ll keep on linking to you of their own accord. Google considers forums and communities to be quite important. They are even in the menu on search results pages under discussions. I’m not sure about the actual link value for Google, but I’ve seen forums drive traffic quite a few times and bring you dedicated visitors who will return. Thus participation is key. Only getting profile links by the dozens doesn’t work these days IMHO.”
30 link building/link baiting techniques that work in 2011.
By Tad Chef on May 19, 2011
SEOptimize.com
“Yahoo Answers is a bad resource for answers but a great resource for questions. Also, forums are full of questions people ask. In many cases you just need to provide a resource on your site and people will gladly link to it. You can even link to it yourself and people will be thankful.”
30 link building/link baiting techniques that work in 2011.
By Tad Chef on May 19, 2011
SEOptimize.com
19. Search engine submission to second tier/niche search engines, search engine news portal submission and news network submission.
20. Job board posting.
“when it comes to influential links factored for by Google, Yahoo and Bing, links from .gov sites, .edu sites and .org sites tend to give you more link juice”
Content Link Building, Are You a Boring Publisher?
By Pel Abbott on June 6, 2011
VerticalMeasures.com
