....The cloaking prevents both unauthorized agents (though anyone "unauthorized" is also likely to ignore robot commands) and discourages potential spammers from tossing their links on the site.

Since we're in the optimization business I figured it would be valuable to illustrate the ideal use of time for a website owner or a website team. These are of course my personal recommendations on the subject but I believe that to a large extent a close approximation of these percentages will yield the highest return on your invested time.

Each of the six activities in my chart are designed to help grow the popularity quality and profitability of an online venture. This chart applies equally to a professional blog (though content creation might skew slightly higher while features/designs skews lower) an e-commerce website (where testing/refining based on visitor data might need a bump) to social Web 2.0-style ventures. Below I've characterized the specific tasks involved in each process:

• Building Viral-Worthy Authoritative Content (40%)
  The goal here is to create articles blogs posts forms applications and multimedia content that will provide value to your visitors. I use the term viral-worthy to refer to pieces that have the ability to spread naturally. Even if the content is highly focused try to picture an interested passionate visitor finding your work on the site - would they be likely to email it to a friend save it in their bookmarks or at the least return to the site in the future in the hopes of finding more pages like it?
  
  Likewise authoritative resources are those that are unquestionably head-and-shoulders above other available documents on the web. Your coverage detail research writing quality and entertainment factor should make it impossible for your competitors to catch up. When in doubt read the Wikipedia article on your subject then create something 100X better.
  
  Content creation deserves the largest devotion of time because it is the anchor of a great site. All of your other efforts from design to analytics to promotion will be wasted if your site's material isn't intensely compelling. I think of content in a similar way to conversion rate - if you run a site with a 2% conversion rate you need twice as many visitors as your competitor with a 4% rate. With content quality the better it is the fewer people you need to see your work before it spreads like wildfire across the web.
  _
• Developing New Features/Designs (25%)
  This component is the cousin to content creation. The goal is to never rest on your laurels when it comes to your site's offerings. If you currently have comments in your blog consider upgrading to a threaded structure. If your e-commerce site has live chat think about adding video demos. If your lackluster GUI looks and feels like 2002 upgrade it.
  
  Development most often is tasked to programmers designers and site architects - the people responding for building the backbone of the site. Development is also an item that fluctuates drastically in the time commitment required. During a re-design and launch it may consume 75-90% of your time for 4 months then have very little upkeep over the next 6. Don't worry - this is normal but guard against letting new development wait too long. Even if you're the leader in your field now the only way to stay there is to consistently stay on the cutting edge.
  _
• Keyword Industry & Competitive Research (10%)
  Every week should allow time for at the least an evaluation of the changes your competition has made to their sites. Along with classic keyword research to find terms to target you should also consider:
  • Identifying & researching new players in your market
  • Investigating new opportunities on the web that could be leveraged to the benefit of your site
  • Changes in keyword popularity or the introduction of a new phrase that could spell opportunity
  • Analysis of your industry overall to find undiscovered niches or underserved markets
    _
• Participating in Online Communities (10%)
  This often has one of the highest rates of returns for informational/resource sites (including blogs). The idea is to find forums blogs social media sites and other communities on the web where other industry mavens gather. Simply by building a positive profile through your comments posts and participation you can reap tremendous rewards in links attention and positive reputation.
  _
• Testing/Refining Based on Visitor Data (10%)
  Though this may seem like a task suited primarily to e-commerce sites it applies to service industry brands blogs and informational sites alike. Your visitor data particularly if it provides action tracking can show you which links are most valuable which keywords return the highest value where to focus your advertising efforts and how to get more visitors to "convert" however that term may apply in your situation.
  
  The act of analysis itself should be less than half the time you invest here. The other portion should be used to make changes to your site based on your theories of performance test analyze refine and repeat. Ad placement button use contextual clues headlines calls to action and hundreds of other factors all play a role. Start experimenting and you'll quickly learn what works for your particular audience.
  _
• Manual Link Building (5%)
  I'm not just making this element the lowest priority because of its distastefulness; I really believe that of the items you can spend your time on one-off linkbuilding has a particularly low ROI. 95% of the value will come from just a few dozen links that you'll be able to acquire out of a few hundred. Pursue high-traffic high-relevance links with fervor - devote a great deal and time and effort to obtaining the individual links that you believe will provide the greatest value and don't spend too much time on the rest. Link building by hand can be demoralizing and unrewarding but it's too important to ignore completely. Give it your all a couple hours each week and then go back to content. Your capillaries will thank you.

Obviously not everyone is going to agree that this is the best use of time and there may even be small elements that don't squarely fit into one of the above categories. However I think that recognizing the relative value of each of your own website development and marketing tasks and scheduling out time for them individually will give you a clear set of goals and schedule you can stick to.

p.s. This model scales fairly well to web teams - a copywriter an SEO/marketer and a developer can easily split up these tasks for maximum efficiency (and yes I recommend that all of them contribute to content creation).

The Dow's at a record high youthful entrepreneurs are minting dotcom fortunes and big media types are talking about "monetizing eyeballs"—close those eyeballs for a moment and it almost seems like 1999. Back then big media companies threw huge amounts of cash at the hot new things on the Internet: portals and online news sites that had impressive traffic figures but not-so-impressive profit-and-loss statements.

1. Lots of traffic but little profit
2. Company value based on number of users
3. Large media companies greedily grabbing up sites

1. A more mature online advertising market meaning a willingness to advertise on increasingly popular social networking sites
2. Better business models
3. Hesitance/skepticism about the success of the next big thing (in this case social networking)

There have been a ton of excellent posts articles and launches over the past week and a half that have gone largely unmentioned on the blog. Just in case SEOmoz is the only source you're reading (in which case you're really missing out) I thought it would be worthwhile to point out some of these great reads.

• SEW has an article on SE Labs in which MSN's keyword permutation tool keyword group detection tool and context-based acronym tool are mentioned. If you haven't already checked these out they're worth a look (particularly for advanced KW researchers). I also think their detecting commercial intention tool is very valuable for KW research in the retail/commercial sector. A full list of MSN tools shows more than a dozen.
• Evil Matt Cutts - funny stuff particularly the depth of attention to his posts. Barry sniffed out the owner pretty quickly.
• Is it possible that life is returning to Ask.com?
• Two birthdays - Danny's and Google's.
• John Battelle had a good interview with MC - I thought Matt did a nice job of (almost) actually answering the question of human interaction with search algorithms.
• The DMA & SEMPO are both going to offer SEO "certification" - I'm waiting to hear who the teachers and course creators are before I weigh in but I will say that I'm very very skeptical at this point.
• Aaron updated his history of search engines article. It's an amazingly good resource.
• Similarly Andy Hagans wrote a guide to beating the sandbox that I agree with almost universally (though I have some additions that I should probably write about at some point)
• Google updated their Google Trends tool - very cool stuff.
• Jumpcut which lets you make movies through your browser has been acquired by Yahoo!
• Surprisingly Wallop looks pretty good. Someone send me an invite please :)
• Oilman made it to #89 on the Technorati Top 100 Favorites list. Let us know how that traffic is Todd.
• Donna's right - Internet Summer is over.. Traffic has been rising nicely for us too.
• Lee Odden has the lowdown on the Pew Future Internet Predictions Report.
• A brilliant post from Creating Passionate Users on why users don't upgrade (something for us to keep in mind as we update SEOmoz)
• Brian Clark had two phenomenal posts for the bloggers out there - 9 Important Words for Business Bloggers and 5 Simple Way to Open Your Blog Post with a Bang.
• Dr. Garcia has free SEO advice... listen up folks as an IR scientist he knows his stuff.
• As a nice endnote Steve Rubel is telling us why we shouldn't write blog posts like the one I've just authored.

I'd love to know from readers - do you find these kind of wrap-up posts valuable? Would you like to see more of these? Are you already reading 99% of this stuff?

I could have sworn that someone has already a great post or forum thread on this topic but I can't seem to find it (no matter how advanced my operators). I'm sure Mr. Malicoat has it in his bookmarks but since blog posts are one of my personal systems for public bookmarking here goes.

Eleven Guidelines to Successful URLs

1. Describe Your Content
   An obvious URL is a great URL. If a user can look at the Address bar (or a pasted link) and make an accurate guess about the content of the page before ever reaching it you've done your job. These URLs get pasted shared emailed written down and yes even recognized by the engines.
2. Keep it Short
   Remeber always; brevity is a virtue. The shorter the URL the easier to copy & paste read over the phone write on a business card or use in a hundred other unorthodox fashions all of which spell better usability & increased branding.
3. Static is the Way & the Light
   Not to bring religion into this but I can tell you with certainty that some of the engines absolutely DO treat static URLs differently than dynamic ones. And no human likes a URL where the big players are "?" "&" and "=."
4. Descriptives are Better than Numbers
   If you're thinking of using 114/cat223/ go with /brand/adidas/ instead. Even if the descriptive isn't a keyword or particularly informative to an uninitiated user it's far better to use words when possible. If nothing else your team members will thank you for making it that much easier to ID problems in development and testing.
5. Keywords Never Hurt
   If you know that you're going to be targeting a lot of competitive keyword phrases on your website for search traffic you'll want every advantage you can get. Keywords are certainly one elements of that strategy so take the list from marketing map it to the proper pages and get to work. For dynamicly created pages through a CMS create the option of including keywords in the URL.
6. Subdomains Aren't the Answer
   First off never use multiple subdomains (i.e. siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com) - it's unneccesarily complex and lengthy. Secondly consider that subdomains have the potential to be treated separately from the primary domain when it comes to passing link and trust value. In most cases where just a few subdomains are used and there's good interlinking it won't hurt but I wouldn't take the chance. To me the benefits derived from reputation management (by flooding the SERPs with your subdomains) are minimal compared to the potential loss of link/trust juice. I also think that subdomain takeovers of SERPs is not something the search engines see as beneficial to their users and may shut down at any point. Luckily if you're doing it now you can always 301 to the main domain.
7. Fewer Folders
   A URL should contain no unnecessary folders (or words or characters for that matter) for the same reason that a man's pants should contain no unnecessary pleats. The extra fabric is useless and will reduce his liklihood of impressing potential mates.
8. Hyphens Separate Best
   When creating URLs with multiple words in the format of a phrase hyphens are best to separate the terms (i.e. /brands/dolce-and-gabbana/) followed (in order) by underscores (_) pluses ( ) and nothing.
9. Stick with Conventions
   If your site uses a single format throughout don't consider making one section unique. Stick to your URL guidelines once established so users (and future developers) will have a clear idea of how content is organized into folders and pages. This can apply globally as well for sites that share platforms brands etc. Re-inventing the wheel in situations where reliance on convention makes everyone's tasks easier is folly.
10. Don't be Case Sensitive
    Since URLs can accept both uppercase and lowercase characters don't ever ever allow any uppercase letters in your structure. If you have them now 301 them to all-lowercase versions to help avoid confusion. If you have a lot of type-in traffic you might even consider a 301 rule that sends any incorrect capitalization permutation to its rightful home.
11. Don't Append Extraneous Data
    There's no point to having a URL exist in which removing characters generates the same content. You can be virtually assured that people on the web will figure it out link to you in different fashions confuse themselves their readers and the search engines (with duplicate content issues) and then complain about it.

Example Time
The following are some grievously heinous violators of the guidelines above:

• http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/602-9912342-3046240?
  _encoding=UTF8&frombrowse=1&asin=B000FN0KWA
  Target (who's powered by Amazon) doesn't describe their content use keywords or keep it short. That and the horrifyingly useless data that can be removed from the URL without changing the content make this URL downright ugly.
• http://etsy.com/view_item.php?listing_id=477443&pic_id=2
  Despite being one of my favorite sites Etsy's URLs provide no descriptive information use multiple dynamic parameters and separate breaks with underscores.
• http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=98115&ie=UTF8&z=12
  &om=1&iwloc=A
  Google should be ashamed - their guidelines for URLs practically set the town for the recommendations but their maps feature is almost unusable due to inefficient bloated URLs (when they must know that millions want to copy those URLs into emails)

These few below are doing a considerably better job but could still go the extra mile:

• http://men.style.com/news/gadgets/092006
  It's almost there and one could almost argue that the subdomain use here is justified for branding purposes. It is too bad they gave us so much data but then cut out keywords and descriptives right at the end
• http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html?skipIntro=1
  Nasa has uselessly appended dynamic parameters onto the page and added /home/index.html for no logical reason
• http://www.newyorkmetro.com/fashion/fashionshows/2007/spring/ main/newyork/womenrunway/marcjacobs/
  They're trying to be descriptive which is great but not separating words and going 7 folders deep is really pushing it.

These last examples have done nearly everything right:

• http://www.discoverohio.com/visitors/map.asp
  Brilliant - it's short descriptive static and obvious.
• http://web.mit.edu/is/usability/usability-guidelines.html
  Despite the subdomain everything else is near perfect.
• http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/jk35.html
  I'm letting the White House off the hook for not using "john-kennedy" as the page title because they've wisely also provided his number (the US' 35th President).

URLs seem like one of the most simplistic parts of SEO but I find myself returning to this issue with nearly every client. Hopefully these guidelines can help a few folks make use of best practices before it becomes an issue down the road.

One last thing - do as I say not as I do. SEOmoz herself is a ship sorely in need of righting. $10 says our search traffic jumps more than 20% once we switch to the new friendlier URLs.

Nearly all of us are swayed by the power of words. A powerfully written essay blog post or article can open our minds convince us of uncertainties and even engage us to action. Today Matt at the 37 Signals blog has an excellent piece that helps dissect buzzwords and effective language:

People who really get it aren’t impressed by this sort of jargon. They smell BS. They can read between the lines and see what’s really there: fear. Fear of clarity. Fear there isn’t actually anything worthwhile to convey...

...Tech folks often use terms that imply we’re part of some secret club. It’s as if we’re saying “We can speak in a code that those other people can’t understand.” It’s a way to build a wall that separates us from them. It’s a form of exclusion.

You don’t need to build walls or exclude people when you’re confident in your message though. When you’re confident in your message you want everyone to understand.

Matt makes some excellent points and leverages more than a few good quotes in the process.

In the SEO industry we hover on both sides of the tech-jargon fence. As insiders to insiders we're constantly referring to SERPs sandboxing splogs and singular value decompositions (OK rarely do we actually discuss SVDs). But in the world of marketing our profession requires that we bridge the gap between technical jargon (that can impress and speak to a tech and search-savvy audience) and communicative plain language that speaks to our customers.

I believe that the search marketers who accomplish this best - speaking knowledgeably to insiders and plainly to potential customers - are the ones who achieve the best reputations and highest levels of demand. At the top of this list I'd earmark Mike Grehan who consistently impresses every audience he speaks to and then transitions to our coveted insider-search-babble over cocktails in a matter of minutes :)

Let's take a walk together down a click-path that's become increasingly popular for less-savvy users. We'll start at MSN's search page where the results for credit card offers are looking especially black-hat:

First off we can see that blogspot subdomain spam is still remarkably effective despite the fact that MSN has been alerted to the issue for many months. I'm also curious about how the word "assified" is relevant (nevermind "spatchcock") to credit card offers but I'm picky... Now let's follow that link (it's cloaked so you actually get re-directed):

This lovely site is serving contextual ads and since we don't want to be here any longer than we need to we'll just follow the first one that suite our fancy:

That's odd... It's another spammy-looking site serving AdSense and a variety of other contextual ads. We'll click another just to see if we can get to a real site:

OK this is getting ridiculous. Let's just click a few more times:

And one more for good measure:

That's all... I'm done and I think we've illustrated the point. If one wanted to one could follow a near-infinite loop of contextual ads pointing to pages serving contextual ads and attempting to re-monetize that traffic. The real question here is - who the heck is paying for all these clicks?!!

This is the process of PPC arbitrage. Any click that earns a certain amount of money can potentially be re-monetized for another higher amount by serving increasingly targeted and more expensive ads (and keeping the CTR at an acceptable ratio). If I'm site #1 paying $0.10 a click for traffic and I make $0.35 per click (and convert 30% of my visitors into clicks) I'm making money albeit a very small amount. The practice of click arbitrage exists in thousands of online markets and makes for an exceptionally low-quality surfing experience (as seen above).

The real culprits here aren't the arbitrageurs - given the chance to buy traffic at $0.10 a click and make $0.12 per visitor you have to expect that players will enter the market. Behind the veil is AdSense (and to a lesser extent other contextual ad systems like Azoogle & Yahoo! Publisher Network). They could very easily shut down the practice of arbitrage (and thus improve the quality of users' experiences across the web) but they choose not to. Why? Because contextual ads like this are a huge source of revenue. Those millions of clicks purchased by ad middlemen drives up the cost of ads and the return earned by the ad providers.

It's not an issue that we deal with in-house but it is something that a lot of people in the SEO and web property space confront daily. I do wonder how the more "legitimate" advertisers feel about this practice though as they're the ones paying the premiums that make the arbitrageurs and the contextual networks rich.

Last week I spend three days on the road visiting a client in Geulph ON. My job was to train a staff of 20 web publishers designers content creators and managers on the things that we at SEOmoz do best - viral marketing site/content development usability/design analysis and social media marketing. The training itself was excellent - better than many of the training sessions I've conducted in the past and I want to share the reasons why:

1. A Passionate Audience
   The group I talked to in Guelph was literally excited about learning. For more than 12 hours of intensive search marketing training the 22 folks in the room hung on every word asked probing questions and cared intensely about the success of their projects. That kind of commitment comes from inside but it's also built by corporate structure and management - in recongizing great employees and smart decisions.
2. Specific Goals & Relevant Projects
   Unlike some of the folks I've worked with in the past the Guelph group could directly apply their training to active sites. This was evident as I'd reveal a specific tactic and see half the group scribble on their notepads then move on to the next point and see another bunch jot down a URL or idea.
3. Supportive Management
   At one point near the end of our training the founder and President of the company came in to the room listened (and participated) during some content brainstorming and announced to his staff that they had complete creative control and freedom to make content decisions on their sites. As we'd run across a site and criticize or make recommendations the management never told the staff "no" and continually let their people (and my input) steer decision-making on both general recommendations and specific ideas.

With these components in place the group was able to take far more advantage of our time together than would have been possible otherwise. In the future as I travel for training I'll be attempting to put these pieces into place before my arrival. If you're considering getting training or on-site consulting for SEO (no matter who the consultant might be) let me urge you to do likewise.

That's actually not all I learned. I picked up something small something that might seem trivial or insignificant - just a quick fact but unbelievably it's had a massive impact on me. While I was in Guelph I got to spend a few minutes with its most famous (or infamous) SEO resident - Jake Baillie aka bakedjake (of Guelph-based TrueLocal). Just a quick background on Jake - he attended the first ever SES shows in San Francisco he's been a contributing member of WebMasterWorld and a speaker at PubCon and the SES series for years. He ran a very successful consulting business (and sites of his own) before stepping into the lead role at TrueLocal where he manages a large team of programmers marketers and support staff. Jake's firm has offices in Australia Canada & the UK and they're rolling out new products as I type.

What did I find out that changed me so significantly? I found out Jake's age. He's 25 (I turned 27 this summer). And that tiny fact made me realize that I've been holding myself back based on utterly false impressions I've had about what a person could accomplish in a company leadership role at that age. Jake's concrete example is now in my head lighting the way and showing me that you don't have to be 35 or 40 to manage a big team composed of largely older and more experienced members. Jake works his people hard he's earned their respect and he doesn't get flak for his youth.

It's not that Jake's an idol or a hero to me or even that I agree with all of his decisions but it's a real life example and in this case that fit the bill. I've had fears in the past about hiring people older than I am managing strong personalities or letting the feelings of others dictate my decisions. It's been a weakness for many years (and probably one that a lot of young executives have) but I've been feeling more confident and more capable ever since I put that example into my frame of reference. Almost seems a bit (how would the British say it?) "dodgy" to think of what a big difference a little number can make.

Kudos to Matt McGee whose Top 21 Signs You Need a Break from SEO gave me a few hearty guffaws. A couple of my personal favorites:

• When your son tells you he wants to go play in the sandbox you fear you won’t see him again for eight months.
• You feel uncomfortable and out of place at a minor league baseball game because you don’t see a Text Link Ads advertisement on the outfield wall.
• When your daughter brings home a new boyfriend to meet you your first thought is to check his backlinks.

Nice work Matt - we're definitely in need of something like this.

Next week Matt & I will be sitting down to architect the new version of SEOmoz's website. We'll be adding a lot of functionality streamlining the user experience (particularly for those who land on the home page) and adding some new sections to the site. One of our major focuses is on improving the experience of our most loyal readers - the passionate community of between 500-1000 folks who contribute the most to SEOmoz.

Thus I'm asking you (all) to contribute your ideas about what you'd like to see in the next iteration of the site. Some ideas we're already discussing include:

• Voting/Rating blog posts and blog comments and featuring the most highly rated commenters in a special section (and possibly having those users with the highest ratings have their websites featured below their usernames in the comments)
• Allowing for user-generated blog posts (from users) to have their own section of the site (almost like a weird hybrid of Reddit a forum and a blog)
• Streamlining the blog tracking system to allow you to follow comments through email individually on blog posts
• Creating more multimedia content - specifically video but maybe some comics too...
• Allowing for RSS feeds for particular bloggers so you can subscribe only to particular combinations (or only individual) SEOmoz writers
• Changing out some of our long-time guest bloggers for some new blood - this is something that I'm constantly asked about via email so I'd love your input

Anything else you'd like to see? How do you feel about the above?

BTW - Yes I'm finally back in Seattle and almost caught up with my email (after 9.5 hours of pure Thunderbird madness). Decompress post from my travels coming tomorrow.

As posted on way too many blogs to count Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has decided to fork Wikipedia in to a new project called Citizendium. I know I had no idea what it was either. Luckily their "website" provides the gist of the project:

The Citizendium (sit-ih-ZEN-dee-um) a "citizens' compendium of everything" will be an experimental new wiki project that combines public participation with gentle expert guidance. It will begin life as a "progressive fork" of Wikipedia. But we expect it to take on a life of its own and perhaps to become the flagship of a new set of responsibly-managed free knowledge projects. We will avoid calling it an "encyclopedia" because there will probably always be articles in the resource that have not been vouched for in any sense.

We believe a fork is necessary and justified both to allow regular people a place to work under the direction of experts and in which personal accountability--including the use of real names--is expected. In short we want to create a responsible community and a good global citizen.

So essentially it's an expert regulated version of Wikipedia. Real people with names not IP addresses supply the content and actual experts work as editors in their respective fields to validate and mediate the content. Good idea? No great idea.

In recent years Wikipedia's dominance in SERPs and popular culture has created a so-called "Wikiality effect" -- if enough people believe it to be true then it must be. Who can blame novice internet users for believing that a site with the phrase "free encyclopedia" in its title is accurate? After all nobody in their world is telling them anything otherwise.

I love being internet savvy and working in the same industry but the general public has very little understanding of the internet's function and is oblivious to nearly all of its inner workings. They don't read the Google blog or know what Web 2.0 is. To them AJAX is that stuff you use to clean your sink. They operate in their world and we operate in ours. But communication between the worlds does happen: through production and consumption. We produce products and they consume them. So when an internet product is bad rarely does the general product notice or care -- there isn't anything new to consume. I takes a new and improved product to come along and make everyone realize there is a better way. It happened with Firefox vs. IE and it can happen again with Wikipedia.

Thus Citizendium's biggest strength isn't the expert editors or the catchy name -- it's the fact they're not Wikipedia. They should make it a point to show people why they're different. Curious users and a few lost ones I'm sure will stumble upon Citizendium. And if they take a few moments to see the differences I'll guarantee you it will change the users their minds on Wikipedia. Not because to them Wikipedia is bad but because Citizrendium is better.

Last week Michael wrote about his take on link request emails. I thought it would be valuable to share my own perspective on the subject coming primarily from a background of making email requests to site operators. The lessons I've learned aren't universally applicable but they've helped go a long way in getting attention and having a high probability of getting the link.

STEP 1: Determine Value
Some links are worth an incredible amount of time money and effort. Others are worth a quick email one follow-up and a shrug if you can't get them. Determining which is which is the tough part. The best way to determine a link's value is to see where the page/site ranks at Google in general. If the site's pages are consistently ranking in the top 3-5 results for the target terms you've struck gold. If it ranks consistently in results 6-20 it's still carrying a lot of value. If the rankings are highly sporadic and you only find a few relevant pages that rank in the top 20 the value is lower.

One big mistake early link builders make is determining a link's value based on PageRank. I think it's a grievous error as you'll be highly over-valuing older sites and in many cases overlooking pages that rank well which to me is the single best indicator of value. The Page Strength tool can be more valuable (as it provides a lot of relevant data) but again I wouldn't rely on the score itself. Look at the links pointing to it the inclusion in DMOZ/Wikipedia and the human tagging on the page but don't assume that a link from a Page Strength 5 will be more valuable than a Page Strength 3.

Once you have a good idea of relative value in your mind (value = time/money you should spend acquiring the link) you're ready to proceed to the next step.

STEP 2: Content Targeting
This step is so often overlooked that I get the feeling there's an official link building guide out there with a chapter missing. In Step 2 you have to look at the site/page you're requesting a link from and ask yourself this question:

If I owned that site what content on my site (the site you're link building for) would entice me to link to it.

Here are some of the possible answers:

1. If the page is a directory or takes paid submissions or is linking directly to several of your competitors' homepages they're likely to link to you without any special content considerations
2. If the site's a research or informational site you'll need to have a resource that provides value to their readers. Oftentimes a tool multimedia piece or collection of data/research unavailable elsewhere will be the key.
3. If you're dealing with a direct (or indirect) competitor or a commercial entity in the space a compelling piece of content may need to be accompanied by a reciprocal link (if you're willing to go that route). Although reciprocal link building as a strategy is well past its prime in a one-to-one link building campaign it can be extremely valuable and won't hurt you if you're doing it infrequently.
4. If the site is a government non-profit or educational site content that looks and feels non-commercial can really help as can linkbait-style content that delivers value to visitors without requiring payment/registration.
5. In some cases there's almost no content you can provide that will satisfy the requirements of a picky site owner at which point money enters the equation (if it hasn't already).

A great example is to think about SEOmoz itself - if the blog the articles and the tools didn't have such an open-source community feeling to them is there any chance that hundreds of competitors in the SEO world would be linking to us? Thus the value of building a site that has a non-commercial (or subdued) feel to it becomes clear. The quality of a site's GUI also comes into play when link building - professional layout color schemes spacing and graphics play a shockingly big role in how well received the link requests become.

Once you know what content you need to get the link you have two choices - build it or decide that this link isn't worth the time & effort. Sometimes you'll find that so many links require that content piece that it's worth building after all. Make sure you remember all those links you've passed over because you didn't have worthy linkable content - you can always go back to them once you've built it.

STEP 3: Establishing Contact
In some cases it's enough to send your link request in the first email but for important sites where there's a high risk of being turned down I always think of the relationship first. Establish a relationship and oftentimes the link will come to you without even asking - if it doesn't that relationship is at least enough to separate you in the future from the morons who send email spam and those who send the one-off link request.

There's an infinite number of angles from which to approach a site and your style has to change depending on the size industry focus and feel of the site. Don't worry after a while link builders develop a sixth sense about how sites will respond simply from clicking through a few pages (SEO company owners - cultivate and reward this skill in your employees; it's invaluable).

Even though I can't share all of the methods for approach I can give an example that's worked in many situations in the past:

Dear folks behind website.com

I have to say it - I'm a fan. I came to your site through Google (who doesn't right?) and was immediately impressed with what you've built. I've recently joined the ranks of site owners in the ultra-soft cotton bedding world myself so I've been looking around and researching who else is on the web.

I'm sure you're busy but I was wondering if you had a minute for two short questions - #1 - For your article on Indian fabrics (URL) did you actually travel to India to buy those or do you have connections? and #2 - Have you found a good resource online on sewing silk? (NOTE: Obviously you need to make the questions relevant to your industry and the second should plant the seeds for a piece of content you plan to write and have them link to)

Much appreciate your time - I hope all's well in Kansas City (I'm out here in Seattle and it's pouring as usual).

Best wishes
John Such-and-Such

"But Rand" I hear you say "that's dishonest!" In some ways it is but not entirely. You really do like their site or are at the least envious (since it's ranking well). You also have at least a passing curiousity in their business so question #1 should reflect that and question #2 is fairly direct as well since you want to determine if anyone else has put together great content to fill that niche.

The rapport you've built through this contact should continue for at least one more back and forth before you go the link acquisition route. And while it may seem distasteful in some ways to be building a relationship solely for the purpose of a link you should be thinking of this as a potential industry contact and possibly even a future friend - just because you're meeting because you want a link doesn't mean the relationship has to be purely selfish. I have people I've chatted with done work for and even met in person and shared a beer with that I met through a link request. Approach link building with a relationship in mind and you're sure to have a better chance of success.

STEP 4: The Link Request
You've worked hard to get here but this is the most precarious part of the equation. The wrong link request could ruin your shot so you want to be as careful as possible. Universally I've found that there are two ways to make the link request - directly and indirectly.

With a direct request you literally ask if the party will link to your content. This approach works best if the site already links out to others in your space for their content or merely because they provide relevant services. You can also take the financial angle and ask if a paid link is available - many times the answer is yes. While purchasing links gets a bad rap from Google when it's done in a one-to-one direct fashion it's virtually untraceable unless you're buying it through Google Checkout or MC's put a bug on your laptop.

The indirect method asks the site owner to merely look at your content and possibly provide their feedback or input. This method is perfect for educational/resource focused sites that you think are a long shot. Remember that even if your request meets with no link you can always refer back to the direct method afterwards particularly the financial incentive.

Whatever method you use it's of critical importance that you find some shared point of reference or logical explanation for your link. If you can't find a place on their site where it would be relevant and intelligent for them to provide a link either you're not looking hard enough or you'll have to pay. The key is to have a connection between your link their site and the users who'll visit both that makes sense to you and the site owner. Link building is an excercise not only in patience but psychology too. If you can get inside the mind of a site owner and understand his motivations you can make that link happen.

One last note - link building via email requests IS absolutely a numbers and time game. The highest success rate I've ever seen hovered around 75% and it's usually below 50% even for highly relevant quality sites with great link builders. Target 100 links plan on getting 25 and you'll be thrilled if you can get 40.

Last week Michael wrote about his take on link request emails. I thought it would be valuable to share my own perspective on the subject coming primarily from a background of making email requests to site operators. The lessons I've learned aren't universally applicable but they've helped go a long way in getting attention and having a high probability of getting the link.

STEP 1: Determine Value
Some links are worth an incredible amount of time money and effort. Others are worth a quick email one follow-up and a shrug if you can't get them. Determining which is which is the tough part. The best way to determine a link's value is to see where the page/site ranks at Google in general. If the site's pages are consistently ranking in the top 3-5 results for the target terms you've struck gold. If it ranks consistently in results 6-20 it's still carrying a lot of value. If the rankings are highly sporadic and you only find a few relevant pages that rank in the top 20 the value is lower.

One big mistake early link builders make is determining a link's value based on PageRank. I think it's a grievous error as you'll be highly over-valuing older sites and in many cases overlooking pages that rank well which to me is the single best indicator of value. The Page Strength tool can be more valuable (as it provides a lot of relevant data) but again I wouldn't rely on the score itself. Look at the links pointing to it the inclusion in DMOZ/Wikipedia and the human tagging on the page but don't assume that a link from a Page Strength 5 will be more valuable than a Page Strength 3.

Once you have a good idea of relative value in your mind (value = time/money you should spend acquiring the link) you're ready to proceed to the next step.

STEP 2: Content Targeting
This step is so often overlooked that I get the feeling there's an official link building guide out there with a chapter missing. In Step 2 you have to look at the site/page you're requesting a link from and ask yourself this question:

If I owned that site what content on my site (the site you're link building for) would entice me to link to it.

Here are some of the possible answers:

1. If the page is a directory or takes paid submissions or is linking directly to several of your competitors' homepages they're likely to link to you without any special content considerations
2. If the site's a research or informational site you'll need to have a resource that provides value to their readers. Oftentimes a tool multimedia piece or collection of data/research unavailable elsewhere will be the key.
3. If you're dealing with a direct (or indirect) competitor or a commercial entity in the space a compelling piece of content may need to be accompanied by a reciprocal link (if you're willing to go that route). Although reciprocal link building as a strategy is well past its prime in a one-to-one link building campaign it can be extremely valuable and won't hurt you if you're doing it infrequently.
4. If the site is a government non-profit or educational site content that looks and feels non-commercial can really help as can linkbait-style content that delivers value to visitors without requiring payment/registration.
5. In some cases there's almost no content you can provide that will satisfy the requirements of a picky site owner at which point money enters the equation (if it hasn't already).

A great example is to think about SEOmoz itself - if the blog the articles and the tools didn't have such an open-source community feeling to them is there any chance that hundreds of competitors in the SEO world would be linking to us? Thus the value of building a site that has a non-commercial (or subdued) feel to it becomes clear. The quality of a site's GUI also comes into play when link building - professional layout color schemes spacing and graphics play a shockingly big role in how well received the link requests become.

Once you know what content you need to get the link you have two choices - build it or decide that this link isn't worth the time & effort. Sometimes you'll find that so many links require that content piece that it's worth building after all. Make sure you remember all those links you've passed over because you didn't have worthy linkable content - you can always go back to them once you've built it.

STEP 3: Establishing Contact
In some cases it's enough to send your link request in the first email but for important sites where there's a high risk of being turned down I always think of the relationship first. Establish a relationship and oftentimes the link will come to you without even asking - if it doesn't that relationship is at least enough to separate you in the future from the morons who send email spam and those who send the one-off link request.

There's an infinite number of angles from which to approach a site and your style has to change depending on the size industry focus and feel of the site. Don't worry after a while link builders develop a sixth sense about how sites will respond simply from clicking through a few pages (SEO company owners - cultivate and reward this skill in your employees; it's invaluable).

Even though I can't share all of the methods for approach I can give an example that's worked in many situations in the past:

Dear folks behind website.com

I have to say it - I'm a fan. I came to your site through Google (who doesn't right?) and was immediately impressed with what you've built. I've recently joined the ranks of site owners in the ultra-soft cotton bedding world myself so I've been looking around and researching who else is on the web.

I'm sure you're busy but I was wondering if you had a minute for two short questions - #1 - For your article on Indian fabrics (URL) did you actually travel to India to buy those or do you have connections? and #2 - Have you found a good resource online on sewing silk? (NOTE: Obviously you need to make the questions relevant to your industry and the second should plant the seeds for a piece of content you plan to write and have them link to)

Much appreciate your time - I hope all's well in Kansas City (I'm out here in Seattle and it's pouring as usual).

Best wishes
John Such-and-Such

"But Rand" I hear you say "that's dishonest!" In some ways it is but not entirely. You really do like their site or are at the least envious (since it's ranking well). You also have at least a passing curiousity in their business so question #1 should reflect that and question #2 is fairly direct as well since you want to determine if anyone else has put together great content to fill that niche.

The rapport you've built through this contact should continue for at least one more back and forth before you go the link acquisition route. And while it may seem distasteful in some ways to be building a relationship solely for the purpose of a link you should be thinking of this as a potential industry contact and possibly even a future friend - just because you're meeting because you want a link doesn't mean the relationship has to be purely selfish. I have people I've chatted with done work for and even met in person and shared a beer with that I met through a link request. Approach link building with a relationship in mind and you're sure to have a better chance of success.

STEP 4: The Link Request
You've worked hard to get here but this is the most precarious part of the equation. The wrong link request could ruin your shot so you want to be as careful as possible. Universally I've found that there are two ways to make the link request - directly and indirectly.

With a direct request you literally ask if the party will link to your content. This approach works best if the site already links out to others in your space for their content or merely because they provide relevant services. You can also take the financial angle and ask if a paid link is available - many times the answer is yes. While purchasing links gets a bad rap from Google when it's done in a one-to-one direct fashion it's virtually untraceable unless you're buying it through Google Checkout or MC's put a bug on your laptop.

The indirect method asks the site owner to merely look at your content and possibly provide their feedback or input. This method is perfect for educational/resource focused sites that you think are a long shot. Remember that even if your request meets with no link you can always refer back to the direct method afterwards particularly the financial incentive.

Whatever method you use it's of critical importance that you find some shared point of reference or logical explanation for your link. If you can't find a place on their site where it would be relevant and intelligent for them to provide a link either you're not looking hard enough or you'll have to pay. The key is to have a connection between your link their site and the users who'll visit both that makes sense to you and the site owner. Link building is an excercise not only in patience but psychology too. If you can get inside the mind of a site owner and understand his motivations you can make that link happen.

One last note - link building via email requests IS absolutely a numbers and time game. The highest success rate I've ever seen hovered around 75% and it's usually below 50% even for highly relevant quality sites with great link builders. Target 100 links plan on getting 25 and you'll be thrilled if you can get 40.

Poor Jim had a rough week on the blog with his forray into politics. Luckily he's re-emerged undamaged with an incredibly insightful entry on link numbers:

It’s not always "He with the most links" who wins the game……often "He with the right links" can win the game as well. Really very often he with the right 10 links can beat the guy with 1000 of the wrong links - I see it all the time.

Jim's also showing us exactly how this phenomenon functions with a nice bit of imagery - check his post for the drawings.

Personally when I see a site ranking at the top of competitive SERPs with a relatively small number of links (>10000) I'm always going to research what those links are and try to ascertain how they provide so much value. Tools like Jim's own Common Backlinks Hubfinder Link Harvester and Tattler can be of great help.

I was recently interviewed on video (in a t-shirt) at our offices here in Seattle by Payscale.com for their Salary Stories blog. I'm not sure if I'll ever be fully comfortable with how I look on video but it might be something to experiment with.

Don't worry - the video's short but it is more personally focused on me and the business than on SEO in general though I do try to guess at what G-man's earnings are like which should be fun.

And yes that's an Optimus Prime action figure in the background :)

When I was first starting out I’d do it with index cards writing down all of the onsite factors for site1.com on one index card. Then I would do the same for site2.com and site3.com. Do the same for links. Then take all the links cards and spread them out on the table looking for commonalities in linking patterns.