Welcome to this week's MIND your business podcast, brought to you by the MINDs at MIND Development and Design and our friends at Fresh Roasted Hosting right here in good ol' Pennsylvania. Thanks to all of you for listening to us on iTunes, and Stitcher...and thank you for the Pinterest love! And thank you Whiff Roasters Coffee in Lititz, PA for your 3 Amigos blend...sippin' on that right now and looking forward to that coffee and chicory blend you're working on:) We are here to help you get the most out of your website by arming you with knowledge to empower you to make the best website decisions and ask the best questions of those who are working with you. Bring your questions to US, too... web development, web design, SEO, content marketing, PPC, social media and what it all means to your business, contact us on Facebook with your questions, email us at info@minddnd.com or just hit that big beautiful and quite personable "Ask A Question" button to your right on our website. There was a really cool article on Search Engine Journal DOT COM this week on 6 important metrics to assess the growth, value and quality of any website. Number of referring domains, Link Velocity i.e. how fast you obtain links, Alexa Traffic Growth, Social Visibility, SEO Visibility and...last but definitely not least...history of your site. These are some really good discussion points, although I've never been a big fan of Alexa...mainly because they're just as fallable as other similar resources and there are enough that are just as reliable and in some cases better. We'll be talking throughout the year with our Social Media swami Kris Bradley on social visibility and we talk regularly about SEO visibility...... so let's look at the remaining 3 factors here, as we really need to have a discussion about links and the only truly viable way to give and receive them: the old fashioned way. Good content and true effort. We're going to look at these three things: 1 - Your number of referring domains 2 - How quickly you obtain links, also referred to as your link velocity 3 - The History of your site To preface these three things, PLEASE oh please for the sake of mankind and the future of the human race..... REMEMBER that the QUALITY of the content you write for your site and for inclusion on other sites comes first and foremost because if your content is poorly written and/or otherwise weak, none of these three things will matter except history because you'll be writing a bad one for yourself. Now, FIRST...your number of referring domains. Yes, QUANTITY DOES COUNT! That is, when the quantity is handled properly and with purity of purpose. You see, when you're trying to build trust with the search engines you raise major red flags if the majority of your links are coming from the same site or a small group of sites. Over time, as those links increase in number, the search engine bots begin to notice that the vast majority of links to your site are coming from the same place or places regularly. Obviously, this does NOT include linking to your site from your social media posts when you're posting daily or regularly on your social media profiles. That's a WHOLE other ballgame. This has to do with inbound links from other websites. You start off with high quality content and then you find good, high quality websites that are RELEVANT to your business and that accept guest posts. If your articles and posts that you offer are high quality, it makes the job of finding homes for those posts a lot easier although it is STILL a very daunting task because you HAVE to earn that trust since there are so many content spammers out there. The search for relevant sites is ongoing because the search engines want to see that your website is not being linked to by the same websites all the time. They want to see a continued natural growth in the number domains linking to yours. Honestly, it all goes back to purity of purpose...and that's where most businesses fall flat with their SEO. Too many of you deep down really want that magic pill to fix everything and then you move on. Doesn't work that way...it's an ongoing search for more relevant sites and ongoing research to deliver fresh topics and information. If you're writing with the reader in mind and you're writing pieces with viable, useful information that you yourself can look at and say "Yep......if I needed this information, I'd find this article helpful," then your purpose is served and that natural growth in your number of linking domains can truly happen NATURALLY. Write excellent content and offer it to good, relevant websites......and remember those websites come in all shapes and forms...even Mommy Blogs. Depending on your topics - especially if it's home improvement, family oriented topics, pets, etc. - Mommy Blogs can actually be good links. When we come back....we'll talk about your LINK VELOCITY and the aforementioned HISTORY of your site... ==================================================== Welcome BACK to the MIND Your Business podcast, where we were just talking about the importance of your inbound links coming from as diverse a number of resources as legitimately possible. One thing I forgot to mention there is that diverse number of resources can be taken to a ridiculous extreme and HAS BEEN by spammers. That's half the reason the Google Penguin update even exists... To one extreme, you can have too many links from too FEW resources, which is spammy...and lazy. To the other extreme, you can have too many links from too MANY resources which, especially if built up over a short period of time, can attract Google's attention. Seriously, these link schemes people try to sell you and WOW you with incredible numbers - REMEMBER, they're telling you what you really WANT to hear, even though you know it's not right - these schemes inevitably saddle you with links coming from irrelevant sources.....including casino and even porn sites. And that brings us to link velocity. Simply put, if you aquire too many links too quickly, you will raise a red flag with the search engines. As you write good, relevant content and submit it to websites who accept guest posts, remember the old cliche': It's a marathon...NOT a sprint. You have to build these connections slowly over time. Don't EVER just buy links. For one thing, it's just wrong. Secondly, when you buy links they inevitably cause noticable spikes in your link velocity. When search engines see slow and steady growth in the number of links coming in to your website, they see a natural progression...which is what they WANT to see. This tells The Google that you're building your connections naturally. What happens when you get these spikes in your link growth is that search engine bots immediately notice something out of the ordinary. It could be A) you wrote an article that was so good that you're getting a lot of immediate shares and links, which the bots will be able to see, or B) you all of a sudden have a large number of links coming in from a large number of seemingly unconnected resources, which tells the bots that you might be up to something. Truth be told, spikes that are NOT the result of a stellar article and immediate sharing are ALMOST ALWAYS the result of spammy behavior. It goes back to what we discussed in the first part of the show: purity of purpose. If you're creating quality content and seeking out relevant, quality websites for guest posts, your purpose is served and you will build your connections naturally and without those pesky spikes. That way you're happy, Google's happy, I'm happy and we can all just chill and talk about the Glory Days with Springsteen. And finally...we wrap all of this up with the THIRD point of focus this week: The history of your site. Now, Joey Ramone never cared about history - rock rock rock and roll high school - but Google and ALL of the search engines have great interest in your history. See, what you do today and tomorrow is history by next week and YOU"RE WRITING your own history via your methods for the search engines every day. It's a mystery, wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma. Not really... So what you do today builds trust over time with the search engines tomorrow. As you write for your own website and blog at least twice a week - you SHOULD - think about 6 months from now. Two blog posts per week for 26 weeks is 52 posts. Then think about a year from now - two blog posts per week for 52 weeks is 104 posts. By this time next year, you could have an archive of 104 blog posts if you stick with it. What if you use the same numbers for submitting guest blog posts to relevant websites? By this time next year, you could have 104 solid and relevant links to your website and open yourself to an ever-widening audience. But you can't get in a hurry. You must follow the advice of the SOS Band - take your time and do it right. Yeah, I just went serious 1980's old school funk on you there. Once again, purity of purpose. If you follow these simple guidelines I've laid out for you today, the history you will write for yourself with the search engines will earn you their trust. It's truly that simple... It takes time and patience, something in short supply with a lot of "I want it all and I want it now" business management types. As far as links and SEO go, if you want it all and you want it now...you make yourself extremely vulnerable to losing it all tomorrow. Take your time, do it right...purity of purpose. Thank YOU for tuning into this week's MIND Your Business podcast, presented by the minds at MIND Development and Design...and our friends at Fresh Roasted Hosting...a good homegrown PA company! Thank you for listening on iTunes, Spreaker, Stitcher and for following us on Pinterest! Send us your questions on Facebook, on our Ask A Question page on the website or email us...info@minddnd.com. We'll see you next week!