21st November saw the end of the road for the Yahoo Site Explorer, as it was rolled in to Bing Webmaster Tools. This means that you will lose the invaluable information you got about the competition, and will only get to know the information of the sites you own . While search professionals are hoping that Bing would integrate competitor data in its tool, just like Yahoo Site Explorer, there is no hints of the same from Bing.

The tool was launched on 29th September 2005, and for 6 years became the only source of competitor data that was available for free. But in July this year, Yahoo announced that they will pull the plug on this tool as soon as the organic results get transitioned to Bing in all the markets. During the transition, Yahoo kept advising webmasters to use Bing Webmaster Tools.

Well, now the transition to Bing is complete and with it comes the final day of the Yahoo Site Explorer. This means that the SEOs will now not be able to find who links to competitor sites. With the Site Explorer, one could find who linked to the competitor site and link domain found links to anywhwere on a specified web site. But since the Site Explorer has been put to rest, the source of information is also lost.

The major concern that the search professionals and online marketers face is what free alternatives are available now that the YSE is out of the picture. Till now, we could not find a free tool that is parallel to the information that the Site Explorer provided, but other tools are there, that can be considered. These are suitable for search professional who are on a tight budget:

Open Site Explorer- SEOMoz's tool will provide you with more of less the same information. The tool tells you the linking domains for up to 5 competitor websites, and the domain authority too, along with several other pieces of information like inbound links and anchor text for free. And for more details, you need to have a Pro membership that starts at $99 a month.

Majestic SEO- This is a paid tool, that gives you a summary of the referring domains and external backlinks. For the detailed information, you have to sign up for a package.

Ahrefs Site Explorer- This is again a paid tool, that provides some free information too. For instance you can know your competition's External Backlinks, their number and type (text, image, nofollow, redirect, deleted and frame). For further details like Anchor texts, referring domains you have to sign up.

Blekko- This is a highly useful alternative, as it lets you track down linked pages in two ways. However, both ways will lead you to the same results. The first way is to use slashtags- “/links” and “/domainlinks” along with the competitor's URL. Like to find the links to the home page, we have keyed-  http://blekko.com/ws/pagetrafficbuzz.com%2Fdomainlinks finds all inbound links to the site.

The search results come with a little inverted triangle, that expands to show many options, and you can select ‘links’ from the pop-up box.

By clicking the SEO option below the search results, you can view inbound links to the whole of the competitor web site. A click on the inbound links number leads you to the list of domains containing the links to the competition and their number.

To Conclude:

While not at par with the Yahoo Site Explorer, these tools may provide you with valuable insights. We can only hope that Bing adds this functionality to its webmaster tools. Any how, do you know of any more free tools? Do share your knowledge via comments below.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

The Sun Sets On Yahoo Site Explorer- What's Next For Backlinks Research?

This piece on link building is in continuation of the series on ‘alternative link building methods’, that need to be explored and implemented for greater benefits.  Previously, I discussed essential tips for Link Building Via Twitter, now I am throwing light on using Google Alerts for link building.

Yes, you know all about Google Alerts as an effective tool for brand and  reputation management. But it can be equally effective on building new relationships- and then building links. As as SEO, you must explore newer and faster ways of link building, and your trusted Google Alerts is just one of them, that you may have ignored till now.

Have a look at easy tips for link building using Google Alerts:

1. Nurture New Relationships- Whenever you get an email alert about your keyword/brand name being talked about, have a close look at the people doing so. These people are really important for you as they are in your niche. So, you have located these like minded people with interest in your brand/product/services or even keywords. Hang on to them- make a connection-get to know what they are all about and then keep up with them. Forging connections with the webmasters/bloggers you come across, will let you build valuable, relevant links back to your site

2. Link To Relevant References- If you have come across bloggers/ writers/ websites mentioning or writing about your niche, then remember to link to them the next time you write your article. Use Google Alerts to get you the relevant references to link to within your write up. The party that you have linked to, may also do so in return, and voila! You have a link.

3. Keep track Of Your Write ups- After distributing your write ups/blogs/press releases, remember to use Google Alerts to keep a track of them- by the exact title. Now you will be notified if another site picks up your piece. Respond immediately. Contact the site in picture, and offer them the supply of original content for their site. For the content, you will be allowed to post a link on it to your site.

4. Comment on relevant blog posts/write ups- This is pretty obvious. Comment on a related blog post, while leaving your link behind. People will stream to you. But remember the keyword here- relevant posts, and you can rely on Google Alerts to get you those. The traffic you get from such links will be your target audience.

5. Find Relevant Videos To Link To Your Site- Use Google Alerts to find the videos relevant to your keyword/brand name. Once you have that, link the video in your write up. Doing this will not only make your write up seem more authoritative, but will also alert the person hosting the video. Then you stand the chance of getting a link back from the producer of the video.

6. Follow Your Competition And Spy On Them- Keeping an eye on the competition always helps. Use Google Alerts to create an alert about your competition, and then get to know where are they getting their links from. Maybe you can latch on to those sources too? Get the links from where your competition is getting them.

To Conclude- Use Google Alerts to find and locate the people and websites who are talking about you and your business. You can start networking with these people in your niche, even if they are on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. If the talk about you in these circles is favorable, zoom in on them, and make a connect. You stand a strong chance of getting a link back, as they already see you in a favorable light.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

SEO Tips- Using Google Alerts For Link Building!

Taking an active part in Q&A sites is very smart SEO. You not only get targeted traffic, but also build quality links. Search engines include Q and A sites as an attempt to offer diverse search results. You must have noticed that often the Q and A sites are on the first page of search results. This is because search engines know that these sites have the relevant answer to the search term keyed. Read on to know how Q&A sites like Yahoo! Answers, Quora, Answerbag, Mahalo, Wikihow, etc. can get you relevant traffic.

Search Engines Trust Q&A Sites-

Search engines are all about real people-real connect and real/authentic answers to questions. They love the idea of fresh content generated by genuine people. That is what these Q and A sites do quite effortlessly. They are out there to help people by providing the exact answers they are looking for. They are updated frequently by askers and answerers. So much activity, is appreciated by search engines, as they prefer active sites over static sites. Moreover, Q and A sites are majorly keyword rich and have internal links from the generation of relevant questions/answers or articles on each page. In addition, Q&A sites get linked to often because they are informative and easy to find.

Get Traffic And Links From Q and A Sites-

Q and A sites are diverse. Even the “How To” sites like eHow and WikiHow have infinite categories of questions. So, you have to go there, sign up and get to the page or categories relevant to your product/services. And then start answering the questions people have put up. Give genuine and suitable answers and leave a link behind. Most of the sites, like Yahoo Answers, let you leave your link to your site, however be moderate in leaving links. Do not spam. The challenge here is to leave a link in a helpful way, instead of coming across as someone who is link building.

These sites have expert levels set up with the points that your answers get from users. So, if your answers if chosen the 'best answer' or is 'liked' by people or rated, then you gain points and as you cross each level you can post more links back to your site. When you are the 'Top Contributor' in your categories, people trust you, take you as an authority and you get traffic to your site. Consequently you get traffic that is highly relevant and will most likely lead to conversion.

Build A Social Profile On Q and A sites-

Some of these Q&A sites like Quora and AllExperts give you the option of setting up a detailed profile with your website details, work details and experience and expertise information added. So, you have a link to your website on your profile only. Now put in a good yet short professional description of yourself to let people know, you know what you are talking about. Since sites like Quora are social sites too, your site will be upped in the search engines parameters while they judge the relevance of your website; as it has a link from active and genuine social profile.

Establish Link Diversity With Q and A sites-

Search engines prefer links from a variety of, but relevant and trusted sites. So, if you are getting links from a Q and A site, then you are impressing the engines with your diversification. Your link portfolio looks much better with links from not just directories or blogs but with alive and pulsating Q and A sites.

Get The Traffic You Desired-

You get the traffic that is highly relevant. For instance, you are an iPhone Apps supplier, and you go to the iPhone category of Q and A sites. Answer a question about using an App, and then leave your link there. The clicks you will get will be from people who are genuinely impressed by your answer and are interested in getting Apps. Relevant traffic equals more conversion.

To Conclude- Q and A sites get high traffic, and if you are smart enough, you can divert this traffic to your site too. And that too targeted traffic. Moreover, using Q and A sites will also give you an insight on what other keywords and queries to people use in regard to your product. Further research may lead to better keywords for you to optimize.

So, if you have any further questions, do post them and we will answer them!

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

SEO Tips- Using Q&A Sites For SEO Results!

You know it very well that Twitter links are 'nofollow'- but that doesn't mean that Twitter can be ignored when it comes to link building. Infact, Twitter links will help you build your credibility to a great extent, and also move up in Search Engine rankings. A major benefit of Twitter link building is that you receive traffic and clicks by those who are highly relevant to your network or niche. As they are people who share your interests. The result- you get better, higher quality links-which will lead to  better conversions.

Here is a list of Link Building Tips via Twitter:

The Google Connection- Google bots filter Twitter more often than you think Search results include Tweets on the term too. Google is catering to the users' need of knowing what's happening, hence the 'real time' search results. So, for SEO purposes, you need to keep getting quality links from Twitter. And you need to keep getting them regularly. If Google is focusing on real time results, you should too. What is said about your brand/site on Twitter vis-a-vis others is monitored closely by Google. The bottom line- if Tweeple like you, so will Google.

Research For Your Niche -Your niche-people with similar interests-your target audience. This is what you need to find when you first land on Twitter. Make sure that you search for the twitter accounts for the top ranking websites in your niche. Then have close look the people following the account, and if they are suitable for your circle-share the same interests and if they will serve your purpose. With 200 million users, it is a time taking task, but you have to move around. Find and locate the people who fall in your niche. There are various Twitter directories, who can help you in searching. Twellow lets you find the category corresponding to your circle and then provides you with a list of the top people. Tweetfind.com is a Twitter directory and that helps you find like minded people. It is packed with extra features like Twitter news, statistics and interesting user profiles listed daily. The site provides you with a profile page that comes with 'dofollow' links to your Twitter Profile and also to your website. You have to sign up, and only if you get approved, then only will you get this profile page.

Use Twitter Search-  Another way of finding your circle and coming closer to your niche is to use the Twitter search engine. It has been recently modified to aid in better and cleaner and faster search. You can search for like minded people-Tweets and pages. You can search for your keyword and find out what is being Tweeted about it and by whom. More on Twitter Search here.

You can also and must use hashtags. These are nothing but keywords, and you can search for the ones related to your niche. The results will show you the people Tweeting about your keyword, and you can get into their profiles. Check out their profiles and see if you may be able to network with them. Keep the focus on your niche.

Follow The Right People-Now that you know where your top influencers are, you have to filter them even further, to those who fit your niche perfectly. Follow a top influencer, then follow the most popular ones in their list-then keep exploring the lists of all who are influential. Make sure to follow only those who generate avid interest among their followers. Then you have to interact with them. Tweet-Retweet-comment-interact in every way you see possible. The purpose is to draw attention to yourself. Let them notice you first. Make a connection, so they’ll interact with you in return. Before you make your pitch, before you ask them to share your link, you must have made a strong connection.

Create Lists And Favourites- This feature is by far the most helpful, that Twitter has to offer. Lists are carefully sorted users, that are related and relevant to an issue. So, you must create a List of people who you think can help you get links. Everyone has lists on their profile. Even the top profiles. So, all you have to do is go to Profile–>Lists–>Followed. This will display the number of followers for a list. And in the case of followers, the more the merrier. So search for the best lists corresponding to your niche.

You can use a tool like Listorious  for searching  Twitter lists as well. The tool allows you to see how many people are on the list and see how many followers they have.

'Favourites' is a tool that helps you mark a Tweet as your favourite. Now you must look for people in your niche, who have a Tweet with your keyword as their favourite, then, follow them. Retweeting someone's favourite Tweet will also get you their attention.

So the basis is this. You have to follow all these steps. Follow these people and make a connect. Only then will they share what you have to say. Once they are convinced that the content you are providing is genuine and of relevant interest to them, they will Tweet the link. With their influence, you will get highly relevant clicks as they will be of people with similar interests.

These time tested Twitter tips will not let you down.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Link Building Via Twitter!

J. C. Penney was penalized for a period of 90 days by Google, in February, 2011, for not conforming to their guidelines while optimizing their site for search. The report of J. C. Penney's excessive link building which eventually led to their penalty was brought about by the New York Times in an article called The Dirty Little Secrets of Search. However, recently, according to reports from a couple of sites seem to confirm that the company is regaining their first and second page positions on Google.

seoclarity.com and searchmetrics.com have been keeping a watch on J. C. Penney's performance since the company was penalized. seoclarity said in their post that, “We set up several alerts to observe JCPenney’s performance on keywords where it held a strong position before the NYT story hit newsstands. On May 12th, almost precisely 3 months to the day when Google assessed its penalty, our alerts went off by the hundreds. We had observed some changes here and there over the past few months, but over 900 alerts on a single day meant something significant had happened.”

seoclarity tracked more than 2,000 keywords on whose search J. C. Penney ranked in the top 100 on the dates before they were penalized (10, February) and a day after the 90 day penalty was apparently lifted (May 10 and May 11). Below is seoclarity's breakdown of the keywords by word count:

Word Count                       Count of Keywords

1                                         136

2                                         1043

3                                         756

4                                         203

5                                         39

6                                         8

7                                         1

There is also a graph that “shows the count of keywords that JCPenney had in the Top Position, Top 3 and Top 10 across the three dates”:

The huge leap of 24 to 899 keywords (shown by the green line) in the Top 10 are same in cases of both head term and long-tail keywords. seoclarity found that J. C. Penney had completely reformatted its website's URL scheme.

SearchMetrics also reports their findings via their blog post. Below is an image of their Organic Performance Index graph.

SearchMetrics says that they couldn't notice any significant decrease or change in J. C. Penney's link structure and guesses that they might have actually convinced Google that they were really clueless about the link building scheme going on at their site or that Google's search algorithm is being gracious enough to grant J. C. Penney a second chance. They (searchmetrics) also found that for some keywords such as “jewelry”, the site's (JC Penney) ranking got re-instated exactly to its former position. It is indeed interesting, as searchmetrics points out, that the reinstatement happened for a manual adjustment.

Efforts made by J. C. Penney

J. C. Penney had fired the search marketing agency, SearchDex, who were responsible for the links that breached the Google guidelines. Then they removed all the links that were listed by the New York Times, and as reported by seoclarity, they are re-writing all their URLs (which is a big task).

Searchengineland's Matt McGee points out that rankings regained by J. C. Penney showed show the older, shorter URLs. To this he says that it “seems to suggest that J.C. Penney hasn’t regained its search visibility based on Google recrawling its content and any automated changes, but instead based on the lifting of JCP’s manual penalty.”

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

90 Day Penalty On J. C. Penney Lifted?

The New York Times has come up with yet another paid links story. The daily published a story that reveals some popular online flower sellers, that rank on top of search results, allegedly purchased links. The article called Trying to Game Google on “Mother’s Day Flowers” named FTD, Teleflora, 1800Flowers.com and ProFlowers which are well known names when it comes to online flower sales.

The reporter sent 6,000 links which were supposed to be paid links, a rather huge number, to Google. According to the report, all these 6,000 links were acquired by the companies within a month. However, unlike the reactions shown in previous paid link cases reported by the NY Times including Forbes.com, Overstock (penalty lifted recently) and J.C. Penney, Google said that the links in question didn't affect the rankings of those sites. Google said,

“None of the links shared by The New York Times had a significant impact on our rankings, due to automated systems we have in place to assess the relevance of links. As always, we investigate spam reports and take corrective action where appropriate.”

It is notable that the previously outed companies in cases of link schemes had a different fate. Google penalized them and made sure they paid for their transgressions. However, the story is interestingly different this time. Equally interesting is the comment from Teleflora that says their company's “corporate policy is to not pay for any links that would violate Google’s guidelines:”, and that “after closely reviewing the Teleflora links you provided, we believe we are in compliance with Google.”

Has there been such a policy all the while? That you could pay for links that actually does not violate Google's guidelines? Don't paid links, as in all paid links, always violate Google guidelines?

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Yet Another Link Scheme Case By The New York Times!

Backlinks or the Inbound links are directed towards your website and play a crucial role in the search engine optimization. If a website has large number of backlinks, it will be considered more popular or important amongst search engines.

There is absolutely no doubt that backlinks or the inbound links can boost up the ranking of your website more than what its content can do. Apart from ensuring a regular flow of visitors, backlinks are used by search engines for crawling and ranking the site. Higher the number of backlinks on the site, more popular it would be considered by the search engine and higher would be its ranking on the search engine result pages.

You know that your site has backlinks but are not sure about the number of links it has. So, how to go about it? Over the period of time, numerous resources have been made available on the Internet to know about backlinks. But, there are chances that these resources might show you non-updated results or they will simply not disclose the number of backlinks present in your site.

So, how will you come to know the number of backlinks that are maintaining your site? Here are 5 easy tricks to that:

1. Rely on Google Search

If you will search for the expression link followed by the URL of your site at Google, you will get the number of backlinks to the website. Supposedly, you want to search backlinks to The Week magazine, search the following expression:

link:theweek.com

In case Google shows no links to your website, you will have to accept that the Google search results for backlinks are incomplete and it will not show correct results in public.

If you will check Google Webmaster Tools, you will get better results because the results will be displayed in private. However, you can't completely trust Webmaster Tools for getting updated search results.

Yahoo! Site Explorer is said to show best results for backlinks.

There is another method to search for backlinks on Google search by not using the link: command but preferring the normal search over it.

In order to get accurate search result, you should put the url of the site in quotes. There are chances that internal links will also be included in the search results. In case you want to see the backlinks only from other sites, you will have to remove all the internal links from your site.

Suppose, I am searching for the backlinks on my site, the command entered would be:

“pagetraffic.com” –site:pagetraffic.com

There are a few things you should keep in mind:

• Remember putting the quote signs and minus signs.
• Put a space before minus sign.
• No space between the site: and the site-name.

2. Google Webmaster Tools

For using this technique, you need to have a Google account. If you have one, open the Google Webmaster Tools site and choose the site for which you want to view the backlinks. Choose the “Your site on the web link” on the dashboard and click the links to your site link under this option. The right pane will have the pages of the site with backlinks. You will now have to click on the web page links or on the home page link to see the inbound links.

3. Backlink Watch

Along with the number of backlinks, it will also show the PageRank of the web pages linked to the site. You will get the number of outbound links that are linked from web pages to your site.

Another useful information provided by Backlink Watch is if the backlink is “nofollow” or normal.

4. Yahoo! Site Explorer

According to webmasters, Yahoo! Site Explorer is the best tool for finding backlinks. You will have to search for the backlinks by entering the full URL of the domain. It will include the “http://” string or else the results might be incomplete.

For example

link:http://pagetraffic.com/

or with the string:

link:http://www.pagetraffic.com/

You will get different results from different strings, so try both. There are many features for link search on Yahoo! Search Explorer like you can only get a list of backlinks to home page or the entire site.

You can also search for all the backlinks or backinks excluding the whole domain or the ones excluding the current sub-domain.

5. Alexa.com

Use the following expression for checking backlinks to the site from Alexa

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/nytimes.com

By entering the expression, you will get a detailed information about the website and the number of sites linking to it

In case you are interested in knowing the details of sites linked in, you just have to click on the number showing the linked sites.

There are many more resources on the Internet for finding out the backlinks to your site apart from the tricky 5 we have discussed.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Top 5 Ways to Find Number of Backlinks to your Site