A quote that’s being used a lot at the moment is from Google CEO Eric Schmidt, where he said that

“the answer won’t come by keeping brands from the space; instead, the web needs them to help clean up the net.”

This quote makes it seem like Google wants brands to rank well in the search results, because brands are what their users want to see. Sorry mom and pop shops, according to Google you just don’t cut it.

But for Google to be able to rank brands high, they need to adjust their algorithm to match. This gives SEOs a massive opportunity to exploit this. Right now, it’s an interesting SEO puzzle in it’s own right to find out which factors Google looks at to seperate large brands from smaller sites.

Domain Age

How long has the domain been around for? Large brands have usually taken time to build up, they will have registered domains from years ago. Sky.com is 12 years old, for example.

How can you use this to your advantage?

If you’re just starting a new site, consider spending extra on buying an old domain. Make sure it’s already been crawled by Google and has been previously indexed. Huge bonus points if it’s still indexed and has content.

Domain Registration Length

When is the domain set to expire? Has it been set as having a massive registration length, or just for a year or two? Large brands tend to register their site for years and years in the future, why wouldn’t they? They don’t envision their site or brand ever failing. Smaller sites tend to be happier with constantly renewing each year. For example, Sky.com expires in 2018. TVChoiceMagazine.co.uk is set to renew next year.

You can use this to your advantage by registering your domain for longer. You can get deals on registering for 10 years, and if you plan on the site lasting that long then it may be worth considering.

What Other Sites Are On That IP?

Large brands don’t use shared hosting. Large brands usually sit alone, or near enough alone, on their IP address. A large brand might be on the same hosting as sites that have the same name, but with a different tld (so possibly Sky.co.uk, Sky.com, Sky.fr etc) or have different named sites but all with very, very related content (like coca-cola.com and cokezone.co.uk). They very rarely sit on hosting with loads of other sites that are all completely different.

Sky.com sits on it’s own server, as you’d probably expect, whereas a much smaller site shares with unrelated sites.

You can use this to your advantage by investing in a dedicated server. I never said exploiting the brand update would be cheap.

Do People Search For The Exact Domain?

Large brands tend to get a high rate of people searching for their exact match domain. Look at Google suggest – try typing in anything, pretty much anything, and you’ll find brand names appearing. People search for exact brandnames. Google can tell it’s an exact search for a site because it’ll have the tld on the end. For searches that don’t have the tld (such as “moneysupermarket” or “sky”) they might look at the click-through rate compared to the high volume of searches. If a term has a ludicrously high number of searches, and one result gets the majority of the clicks, it’s quite likely it’s a brand.

You can’t realistically change the number of searches for your brand, but you can help to improve your click-through rate by using really well written Meta descriptions, getting a less spammy and more inviting title (without sacrificing keyword use) and making sure you use keywords in your URL. The keywords themselves don’t automatically bump you up in the SERPs, but the keywords that have been searched for do appear bolded, which tends to draw the eye to those results more (which leads to a higher CTR).

Do Most Links Have The Domain Name As The Anchor Text?

I don’t mean the whole URL, I mean inbetween the www. and before the .com. If you check the anchor text of Sky.com’s backlinks you’ll find that the majority of sites link to Sky with “Sky” in the anchor text. This is fairly normal for brands – you do get some places linking to sites like the AA, Norwich Union and the like with “car insurance” but they tend to have a larger percentage of their inbound links include their brand name somewhere in the anchor text.

You can use this to your advantage by spending some time building links to your site with your brand name as the anchor text. Hit all the usual places – directories, blog comments, forums, article syndication, profile pages – anything where you can leave a link that you’ve written yourself.

Do They Spend Money In AdWords?

Google has always made a point of vocalising how they keep their paid listings and their natural listings seperate. One does not, apparantly, affect the other. I don’t know if Google is using data from AdWords to determine whether or not a site is a large brand or not, but if I was Google and I wanted to seperate brands from small sites, *I’d* probably look at how much money they spend on marketing.

You can’t use this to your advantage without spending a ton of cash on AdWords, and unless you want to do that on something that’s not even nearly proven, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Do They Bid On Their Brand Name In AdWords?

Again, Google’s often stated that they don’t use AdWords data to boost sites in the natural listings – but where’s the line? If they were just using the data to see if a site was a brand or not, that may not necessarily on it’s own boost the site in the natural listings. Google loves collecting and using data. Never forget that.

You can use this to your advantage by bidding on your brand name. It depends on circumstance, and it may not be right for everyone, but if your site has the potential to make cash then it may be what you need.

Links From Authority Sites

I’ve kept this one last because it’s one of the most likely changes to Google’s algorithm, and it’s definitely one that you can use to your advantage if you’re a really good SEO. Large brands tend to get linked to more from authoritiative and trusted sites. They spend more money on advertising, they spend more money on publicity and PR and they’re in the news more. As a result, they get linked to from places like the BBC, the Guardian and the New York Times. They’ll usually have their own page on Wikipedia. They’ll be listed in DMOZ and the Yahoo! directory. Big sites will talk about them, because they’re newsworthy. This is almost certainly the area that Google has focused on most to determine which sites are brands and which aren’t. They’ve cranked the “must have authority” switch right up to 11.

You can use this to your advantage by creating awesome linkbait. Pick an authoritative site, like TechCrunch, the BBC or any authoritative site that’s related to your industry and sit down and think. Your aim here should be to get a link from that one website. Ignore other sites, you want content that will interest that exact site. Use MSN’s linkfromdomain command to see what type of sites and content your targetted site is linking to, it’ll help you in creating that content. If there’s no chance in hell of the target site linking to your site (because you’re a competitor, or any number of reasons), why not make a new site on a different domain primarily designed to get that link and then, after you’ve gained the link, cloak the 301 over to your site? It’s worth considering. Once you’ve designed content that will almost certainly get a link, don’t email the target site. Phone them. Let them know you’ve got some content, and it might benefit their readers if they see it too. By the way, if your target site is the BBC and you’ve got a UK site, then things are about to get a lot easier for you. Do what you have to do, but get that link. You can also use this focus on authority to your advantage by going after links from DMOZ, the Yahoo! directory and getting listed in Wikipedia (I don’t even nearly care that it’s NoFollow). Consider donating to a charity site, quite often they’ll link to you from their lovely, authoritative, well trusted site.

The beauty of every Google update is that it’s algorithmic. Google is, cleverly, built on a method of almost always trying to be scalable. If they want brands to rank higher then they need to do it algorithmically, not manually.

This, to us, is nothing but an opportunity.

How To Exploit Google’s Brand Update is a post from: Shark SEO. Have you played The Search Game?

Pokernews.com is probably the best site I’ve seen for geo-targetting. As in, it’s absolutely immense.

Quick disclaimer – I have nothing to do with the site. I’ve never worked on it, spoken to the Poker News guys, I don’t even know who does their SEO. But it’s incredible.

Check out the PokerNews worldwide link at the top right of the page. What you’re looking at is 27 additional different versions of the site. They’re on seperate subdomains – you can bet they’ll be geo-targetted in Google Webmaster Tools. But the most amazing part of it is the fact that each subdomain is hosted in the country it targets.

And check out their local search rankings. It’s fair to say that these guys are absolutely killing it.

The amount of local traffic search these guys must bring in is absolutely extraordinary. It’s not appropriate for all sites, obviously, but imagine if your site (and your client’s sites) all had the content translated into different languages, put on subdomains and had them hosted in the country they target. How much extra traffic do you think you’d pull in?

Amazing.

How The Professionals Geo-Target is a post from: Shark SEO. Have you played The Search Game?

In a world with no linkbait, SEO can become a bit monotonous. It’s all fun and games when you’re working on a cool site, but when you’re working for a client that wants to rank for car insurance or property investment it becomes a lot less interesting.

Now back to the world where linkbait exists. All of a sudden, that car insurance website that you were working for suddenly becomes a lot more interesting.

Know Your Audience

Different people and different sites link to different types of content. As a result, when you’re designing a piece of linkbait, you need to understand your audience. You need to understand what they would link to. As we all know and love SEO, lets use that as an example. The kinds of content that I, as an SEO, would link to would be:

• Useful – Like Aaron Wall’s SEO for Firefox plugin
• Interesting – Like SEO Scientist’s experiment with link placement
• Controversial – Like Johnon’s “Just Make Good Content Is Bullshit” post (which rocked)
• Authoritative – Like SEOMoz’s Web Developer SEO Cheat Sheet
• Newsworthy – Like the hyves discussion about finding link penalties
• Anything that confirms my point of view – Like Matt Cutt’s view of linkbait

Incidentally, speaking of linkbait Matt Cutt’s said:

I think of “linkbait” as something interesting enough to catch people’s attention, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

If you’re planning on creating linkbait for a client, think first about your audience – find what they already link to, see if they’re linking elsewhere because it’s authoritative, because it’s interesting or because the source makes them look good. Maybe it shares their point of view?

What Makes Linkbait Successful?

Going back to Aaron Wall’s SEO for Firefox plugin – 14,506 backlinks according to Yahoo site explorer. This was hugely successful. Hugely. Probably because it’s so incredibly useful, most SEOs use it and love it.

Mediadonis’s Hyves post managed to get 333 backlinks already so far, which isn’t bad going for a story that only broke last week.

When you’re creating linkbait, you need to know your audience. You need to understand what is going to interest people – Aaron did well because his tool is really useful for SEOs, Mediadonis did well because his find was really interesting….to SEOs. If you know your audience, you can make something that they’ll want.

Spend some time exploring the sites in your niche, find the ones that get linked to most and ask why. Why do people love them so much? What are they doing so well?

The Art Of Linkbait is a post from: Shark SEO. Have you played The Search Game?

Step 2 – Enter a couple of keywords that your site is targetting

Step 3 – Receive an email any time new content from a blog or site that targets your niche is indexed

Step 4 – Go to the site, make a relevant comment, get a backlink.

Sometimes the most effective linkbuilding techniques are also the most simple.

Getting Easy Targetted Links is a post from: Shark SEO. Have you played The Search Game?

Dmoz and the Yahoo directory can pass some decent link juice for a few reasons. They’re old, they’ve built up a lot of authority and they’ve got a lot of trust flowing to them. Because they’re so well known, they’ve got a lot of inbound links propping them up – according to Yahoo’s Site Explorer, the Yahoo directory has over 1.9 million links to it while Dmoz has in excess of 2.5 million inbound links. That is a shitload of links. Dmoz and Yahoo also get away with having a lot of weight to throw around because Google loves them, they’re great examples of what directories should be – each site submitted is manually reviewed extensively, and there’s a human element that determines whether or not a site is included. In short, if it’s a good site, it’ll get in. If it’s not, it won’t. Google loves that.

It’s the other directories that Google hates – the ones that say they’ll manually review your site but tend to have a shitload of spam in their indexes anyway. The directories that will charge you for featured listings and, in general, are clearly out to make cash instead of provide users with a usable base to navigate the web. The problem with these directories is that no-one wants to link to them. They’re so easy to see from a spider’s perspective – they’ve got more outbound links than most other sites out there, yet their inbound links are so much smaller that it’s ridiculous. They’re so easy for an algorithm to spot, and Google obviously doesn’t want them to influence it’s massive money-making index. This is why the other directories don’t really pass any weight or authority.

It’s a slightly different story with blackhat though. If you’re into linkspamming, getting 1000 directory listed backlinks to your site first will help to cover up your other links. Most other SEOs in your niche trying to find your backlinks will be using Yahoo’s Site Explorer to find who’s giving you link love, and Yahoo will only show the first 1000 links you’ve got. Make them directories, and most people won’t be any the wiser as to how you’re ranking so high.

Why Exactly Are Directories Worthless? is a post from: Shark SEO. Have you played The Search Game?

Blog farms – if you’ve got layers of blog farms, don’t interlink them if they’re on the same IP. If they’re spread out across a number of different IPs then you can get away with interlinking them if you do it stealthily, don’t use blogroll links and make sure you linkout to legit sites as well to disguise which site you’re trying to boost.

Bulk directory submissions – They’re useful for clouding up the Yahoo linkdomain: results (and Yahoo only shows the first 1000)

MSN is no longer using the LIVSOP tail and are using a lot more fake searches to see if your site is cloaking or not. Just so you’re all aware.

Getting links to white hat sites is obviously very tricky (especially if they’re targetted, relevant links) and one of the best way to get them is through awesome linkbait. The now infamous fake linkbait article about the 13 year old buying hookers with his dad’s credit card is testament to how much visibility and backlinks you can get if you’re creative. And don’t mind lying a bit (a lot).

If you manage to buy an aged domain with backlinks in a niche that’s related to your current site, instead of bulking out the content and linking to your related site it might be best to 301 the aged domain over to your site. Don’t just 301 it all to the homepage though, 301 the homepage -> homepage and then for individual pages, try and find related pages on your site that can be 301′d to. The aim here is to make it look a bit like you’re just updating the aged domain, and changing the content a bit.

Want to reclaim your Google images traffic? – Try breaking their frame. XMCP’s thread mentioned there was some JavaScript floating around somewhere that could do it (I just found it over at Nicky Cake’s blog). This may be enough to get you penalized, it’s a bit grey here but it’s best to hide it from Google. Be sure to put the JS into an external file, bring it in as an include and deny Googlebot from getting to the file using robots.txt.

If you use the same link building techniques for all your sites, like submitting to the same directories, commenting on the same blogs, using the same social bookmarking sites etc, it is very unlikely that you will be penalized for it. That’s something that I’ve been unsure of too. Apparantly it is possible and it’s happened before with Eli’s SQUIRT tool but for the most part you’ve got nothing to worry about.

Your best WordPress permalink is /%category%/%postname%/ if you’re trying to get your keywords in your URL.

Most WordPress category pages are either duplicate content or just full of links. You may be better off simply noindexing the category pages of your site.

There’s a whole lot more in the original thread, I’ve only selected bits and pieces. If you want to read the entire thread in full (and I suggest you do), you can find it over at Wickedfire. All props of course go to Slightly Shady SEO. If you’ve not read his blog before, you really should because it’s gold.

Digging Around XMCP’s Wickedfire Thread is a post from: Shark SEO. Have you played The Search Game?