Most of link building / linkbaiting techniques are used so often that they lost their effectiveness long ago. Unfortunately, hosting a contest is one such technique: that has become a common fashion to create a contest for the sake of creating a contest without much thinking behind it. However the tactic may be still effective when done right.

Like reputation management , people search is rather a hot topic. Nowadays you can find almost anything about anyone online. Surprisingly, dedicated person search is not yet well-developed )probably that has something to do with burning online privacy problems( but still is something to look into: Search Engine What you will learn about the person Yoname.com Social media mentions. Intelius.com Age, previous cities and relatives. Pipl.com Mentions in web documents. Zoominfo.

Creating a network of micro-sites for the sake of link power manipulation is an illegitimate technique; hence it has become risky to interlink your own websites even for very "white hat" purposes )e.g. to let your readers know about your other relevant sites(. Nonetheless, link building with micro-sites can be a highly effective technique if done correctly.

If you are like me, you spend most part of your day browsing the Internet; that results in plenty of great pages and ideas flashing before my eyes and often times I have neither time no energy to try to save those ideas for further reference. Thus I am trying to find more and more alternative ways to organize and categorize things I come across daily to make my working process as effective as I can.

Dealing with huge keyword lists is time consuming and often you can't do without )semi-(automation. While most of the work is usually handled through notepad )"find and replace" option( and Excel )"sort", "insert", etc options(, some online tools may also be much help: Tool Most useful feature Local keywords Adds any word )city( before / after the keyword / key phrase. Mytrashmail keyword generator Replaces any word for another one)s(.

Some time ago I reviewed tools that help understand the page HTML semantic structure based on H1-H6 headings. While some webmasters question the overall necessity of headings, I insist that they should be used to structure the page content for: SEO benefit : H-heading is one of the best ways to give your keywords prominence ; Accessibility and usability : headings enable screen reader and some browser )e.g.

Last time I posted a tutorial on creating quick search )"smart keyword"( bookmarks in FireFox enabling you to quickly search any site or search engine right from the address bar. This time I am sharing my list of 17 quick searches that )if you are like me( you will find useful. 17 SEO related quick searches you might find helpful - with this list you don't need to create a quick search bookmarks yourself.

I already had a few words to say on indirect link building where you promote pages that link back to your site. The technique appeals to me due to several reasons: it is more or less risk-free ; you are able to control the link juice you own ; it is free )but really time consuming(; it is very flexible : you can change the link patterns to your liking any time.

I have previously covered ways to organize your keyword list depending on your purposes. Still there is no limit to improving your organizing skills. Besides, key terms are so numerous and diverse that I for one can spend hours trying to manage them to full potential. So, as usual, to find new ways to organize your keywords and more options to get help with the overall keyword research, I turn to 2 desktop tools - both offering handy keyword list managing options.

Last week Jane posted a must-read overview of various URL shorteners and WebproWorld.com forum thread discussed the SEO benefit of TinyURL and similar services )there is no SEO benefit by the way(. I think this is hot enough topic to discuss it at SEJ also. Why URL Shortening Services Exist?

First of all, I do not mean you should use all these extensions, of course. This will slow down your FireFox immensely. Choose the one you like most and stick to it. 1. Flagfox - displays the country flag )based on an IP address( in the status bar for you to see the domain server location. Additional information )IP address and country( is displayed when you hover over the flag. The extension menu also provides quick access to more detailed Whois data.

As a sitewide element ) head logo is another one already discussed(, footer used to be a widely used way to both interlink your own pages and add external sitewide links. It was then so much used and abused that it turned into a some kind of "red flag" for search engines )external link in the footer = very high probability these are paid links(. So now instead of optimizing the footer with links,

I have said numerous times that FireFox is an awesome SEO tool in itself. Therefore I pay so much attention to customizing it to make the SEO process most efficient. Today I decided to share 3 ways to create quick searches )or " smart keywords "( to help you access your favorite sites and search engines quickly.

You might have noticed that I love tables in general and Excel in particular. Once you view any data in Excel, you notice things you wouldn't have seen otherwise. The greatest benefits allowing to effectively process huge volumes of information are: Sorting function; Pivot tables; Find / Replace option, etc. Thus today I am listing 6 ways to export your backlink information to Excel to further work with it: 1. With Yahoo!

Using link TITLE attributes has become more popular since the rise of such widely used scripts as WordPress which by default duplicates the post title link in its TITLE attribute. Still, despite being the common behavior, this method of using TITLE attribute is both not right and annoying. The title is not meant to be a duplication of the anchor text )related post: Image Alt Text Vs. Image Title (.

Google News can bring tons of traffic and boost your site performance. If you own news site and consider it "newsworthy", getting included in Google news is one of the first thing you should do: Make sure your site meets all requirements to be included: Shimon Sandler did a great job listing the factors that will help you get accepted in Google news.

A large thread at WebproWorld forums discusses facts and myths about Dmoz )Open Directory Project( and I thought it should be summarized )and expanded( here. Facts about Dmoz: Dmoz is 10 years old )created in 1998(; Dmoz was inspired by and derived from the Debian Social Contract ; Dmoz is administrated by Netscape Communications Corporation )part of AOL(; Dmoz is maintained by human editors .

Like I previously pointed out SEO and web accessibility should come hand in hand . So here is the collection of web accessibility tools that can be also effectively used for SEO purposes: General page viewers and accessibility checkers: 1. Wave offers a graphical representation of found accessibility issues right on the web page: 2.

If the predictions that soon Google Chrome will be bigger than FireFox turn true, SEOs should seriously think about making websites as Chrome-friendly as they can. Google Chrome tab system: Chrome tabs are of default set width : even if only a few tabs are open, they will be fairly narrow )in FireFox,

You must have noticed by now that I am a huge fan of various SEO tools . I did attempt to explain why I love using tools so much: I use them as additional source of information; tools are great for SEO inspiration; tools can speed up the process considerably )by quickly processing huge amounts of information(; by using multiple tools I can compare the information and see what I might have missed otherwise; etc.