I am inspired to write this post today because of all of the misguided suggestions and over-the-top spam warnings I come across when webmasters, bloggers, experts and bashers discuss link building.

Links are merely the Web’s version of a relationship, a publicly announced relationship actually. Pretty much like a marriage. The wrong people get married all the time, but that usually doesn’t work out. When the RIGHT people get married, great things happen, a family grows and the community benefits. Quite the opposite when the wrong people get married.

When the right links are built, with the proper motivation, intention and execution. Great things happen.

Eric Ward knows its not about how much or how fast, its about how natural. He is referring to motivation and intention here, as he and other great link builders usually do. If your motivation is to identify popular, targeted websites with users who would appreciate yours or your clients website - you have the right foundation.

Ensuring there is content on yours or your clients website that those users will appreciate, however, is paramount.

Most of this is common sense, but there are many marketers out there trying to do whatever it takes to rank in search engines. They are willing to do things that might not be based on providing users with great content, or developing marketing strategies that form smart relationships with popular relevant websites. True, sometimes it is just about getting the damn link, but in a world full of noise and robots competing against spam, the Linker (or Linktress?) with the most relevant (topical), trusted (authority), natural (varied) and keyword focused (anchor text) links - wins.

Links are an outcome of successful relationship building with influential players in your industry. Your customers, vendors, peers, associations, industry journalists, bloggers, conferences, college professors, webmasters, forums… who is influential in your industry? Who is already linking to your competition? This is your list. Now you have to prioritize it. Who do you contact first? What do you do first? This is what separates the Amateurs from the Players.

1. Make sure the website you are promoting has content your users would consider valuable. You can think like your users right?

2. Make your list. (This is about 37 sub topics and requires an article for each. There are some great places to start, I’ll be providing more insight in future articles.)

3. Always ask yourself, who is going to help me build my audience? Who is going to have the most impact to my Audience Bottomline? Don’t ask yourself who has the highest Google Page Rank or Alexa Score. Sure these are signs of a popular website, but is that site going to contribute to your Audience Base or not? To determine this I assign a “relevancy” score to each Link Prospect. Then I use a formula that factors in aspects such as PageRank and Alexa Score, as well as # of posts in Techorati that mention the Link Prospects URL, how many websites link to your Link Prospect, and finally…. the “Hub Count.” This is a theory that Competitive Link Builders must know, and it is a simple one. Out of all of your Link Prospects, how many of them link to your competitors, and how many competitors does each link to? If the Link Prospect recevies the highest overall score (relevancy + popularity factors) and is linking to more of your competitors than any other prospect - this is the first to approach, and the list is sorted from there.

There are many sites where you have an oppurtunity to add content yourself, such as Article Directories, Forums and Wikis. These provide an engaged audience who hate spam. So long as you actually offer a useful contribution you are cool. Remember, even if the Wikipedia Spam Cops tell you you’re spamming - “as long as you can find an opportunity to add your site where it will make a useful contribution, do it.”

Link build carefully. Some do it for Traffic and others for Rankings. Don’t be tempted to buy links unless they are relevant advertisements you would otherwise purchase for the traffic (and you agree with Jim).

Balance your activities wisely between being a “Link Ninja & a Link Baiter.” Why the hell can’t we just call it Business Development and Public Relations? And is this actually the first time I have linked to Brian Provost in one of my posts?!? Sorry Brian, you are FAR too cool for this to have happened.

I know it’s a repost, but I’m doing it for myself damnit. This is my blog too ya know? Via Spencer at CNET.

1. Undescores
Matt says underscores don’t hurt ranking anymore and are treated just like -’s.

2. ?’s
Matt claims that Google treats URLs with a query string the same as static URLs. Caveat: as long as there are no more than two or three parameters in the URL, that is! Put another way, you won’t take a hit in your Google rankings if you have a question mark in your URL; just don’t have more than two or three equals signs in the URL.

3. /’s
Matt stated that the number of slashes in your URL (i.e. the number of directories deep your page is) isn’t a factor in your Google rankings. He went on to say that although it doesn’t matter for Google, it is rumored to matter for Yahoo and MSN (Live Search). Matt addressed this because I specifically asked the question from the audience.

4. File extension
According to Matt, the file extension in your URL won’t affect your rankings. So it’s inconsequential whether you use .php, .html, .htm, .asp, .aspx, .jsp etc. The one extension you should avoid for your Web documents? .exe.

5. Domain registry
Matt stated it was myth that Google uses its status as a domain registrar to access domain registration data to use it as a ranking signal. According to Matt, being a registrar doesn’t grant one special access to other registrars’ customer data. Note that Matt didn’t state whether Google is or isn’t using WHOIS data as a signal. I believe they are.

6. Google News
When asked about how to get one’s blog into Google News, Matt shared one of Google’s requirements for inclusion: the blog must have multiple authors. So those of you wanting your blog showing up in Google News results, I hope it’s a group blog!

This is too funny and unsettling not to share with every marketer out there who has had experience buying PPC advertising from the Big G.

While managing one of our many ppc accounts with Google we noticed that they were displaying the wrong ad to a searcher who was looking for what our client offers. Instead of an, “it was just a one time bug” or, “CRAP! We’ll fix this right away!” they sent an apology email with an explanation and a work-around.

A work around?

This wouldn’t be a big deal if it were bug in a new product that’s in beta or if it were an issue that simply hasn’t been addressed by technology yet. But that is not the case here. Google informs us that due to “query parsing” they simply “chose” an ad from a GEO targeted campaign because the searcher put the keyword “MI” (Michigan) into the keyword phrase, when it *should* have displayed the non-GEO ad because *the search originated in Illinois!*

Here at PositionTech we manage quite a few search marketing campaigns. The things we see happen in our industry can get quite interesting, humorous, upsetting - or all of the above. First of all, Google does a pretty good job helping advertisers display ads to people searching for keywords they are targeting, and a pretty good job showing searchers relevant ads. For the most part, they let advertisers choose what ads are displayed when someone searches for something, and they try to help teach advertisers how to write ads and create landing pages that work. With that said, I feel like they let us down here.

The real issue is that after we pointed this out to Google, and basically asked, “Why are you displaying the wrong ad?” They came up with an excuse and a work around instead of saying “OMG, we’ll fix this right away we can’t believe this hasn’t been corrected yet!”

Here’s what they had to say:

The reason that you saw the ad from this regionally-targeted campaign even though you are located in Chicago is because of a feature called ‘query parsing’. When possible, Google analyzes users’ search queries for location-specific information in order to show regionally targeted ads.

Therefore, users may see your ad when they use location-specific search terms on Google, even if they’re located outside your targeted area. In this case, you’re located in Chicago, but you used the location-specific term ‘keyword michigan’, which is why you were still able to see your regionally-targeted ad.

Are you serious? Query parsing? “Users may see your ad when they use location-specific search terms on Google, even if they’re located outside your targeted area.” What?! I want them to see the ad I chose.

And the work-around:

In order to prevent this from occurring in the future, you can simply add the term ‘keyword michigan’ as a negative keyword in your ad group. As you may know, you will enter the keyword with a minus sign before it (i.e. -keyword michigan). This will prevent our system from matching that query to related keywords in the ad group. You can also put the keywords in this ad group into phrase match so that they are unable to be expanded upon.

Thank you for your patience while I followed up with our technical team. If you would like me to clarify any of the information I provided above, please reply to this email and I will be happy to assist you.

I don’t want clarification, I want you to show the ads I told you to show. Google, we all know you rock, and this is precisely why this issue should have been resolved soon after you launched GEO targeting in October of 2003 (over 3 years ago).

Please resolve this issue, I’m sure we aren’t the only advertising who have suffered from the wrong ad being displayed (surely many advertisers are unaware). I hope you will consider this request.

Affiliate marketing and banner ads aren’t *totally* evil… but mostly, right? I mean, we all love seeing tons of search results with different sites all trying to sell the *exact* same product - and banner ads - well those are just the best and most wonderful thing to see plastered all over the web! Right… The blogosphere is great because only people with something good to say make it to anything similar to what could be known as popularity.

Ecommerce is a bit different, but still, no one likes banner ads and not too many people would put affiliate networks in the “Do No Evil” category. 3.1 Billion dollars is a lot of money for Google to spend to purchase display advertising giant DoubleClick (to go along with their pay per action affiliate-ish network). It’s close to the most ever invested in an internet company. So just imagine the kind of bread that Google is planning to make with it - and all the rivals they have pissed off.

1. Google spent too much, agian, but made the right move in terms of accomplishing their “Rule The Universe.”

2. Yahoo! and Mr Softy will have a very hard time ever sitting at the top of the search / web empire… (hence being so pissed)

3. Unless of course MSN buys Yahoo! and AOL (hell maybe even the WSJ and NYT) - then big G will have their work cutt out for them (what a twisted world that would be).

4. Good News! Look for websites (in Google’s search results at least), whose sole purpose is to host ads to affiliate sites and make a buck, to disappear slowly but surely, stop cluttering up our search results, and be replaced by better sites (well prettier sites that actually have an audience) with quality content written by good writers (or at least writers who have something interesting enough to say that they develop *natural* links) - all because only the strong (and friend of big G) will survive.

5. The web just may get better. Of course, it can always get worse.

It’s no surprise that MSN is pissed. They should be. One Slashdot commenter suggests, “Google is the new Microsoft.”

The truth is they have every right to suggest that the deal be reviewed, everyone does. It’s pretty scary in many regards.

Google believes, “you can make money without doing evil,” so then why go after the affiliate and banner spaces you ask? To make *more* money. To increase shareholder value. To, “focus on the user,” “do one thing really, really well” and … wait a minute, that’s not right. To be “democratic on the web” or maybe it’s simply because “great just isn’t good enough.” It can’t be “doing one thing right” anymore, not after they keep trying to play with traditional advertising models like print and radio. It’s gotta be simply part of their goal to be Masters of The Universe.

It sounds more like “capitalism on the web,” plain and simple. But hey, I can understand - you can’t give everything away for free. Just look at Wikipedia and all the problems they have had because they just gave *it* all away for free. Jimbo is doing something about it with Wikia. It truly is always about the balance of providing valuable information *and* supporting the distribution of the information.

Supporting the distribution of anything, or capitalizing on it, does not mean you have to plaster crap all over it. One look at Times Square, or pretty much any other major city, and you can see how the “sell ads on anything and everything” mentality has gotten out of hand. However, with all this said, Google has historically been aware of this fact, with its stark interface and disdain for affiliate marketing in general. Google has a chance here to strip the crap out of affiliate marketing and display advertising. I hope they do.

Just after DoubleClick announces they are setting up an auction-like system for the buying and selling of digital ads (hint: pay per click advertising model), Google buys them. It’s no surprise that MSN is pissed. One Slashdot commenter suggests, “Google is the new Microsoft.” A thought on many people’s minds for years.

DoubleClick will charge a commission for each ad impression traded on its exchange. David Rosenblatt, the company’s CEO, believes they, “may derive the majority of revenue from the new service within five years.” HipMojo reminds us that the New York Times itself was only valued at 3.3B - barely higher than DoubleClick! John Battelle is surprised, “My sources told me that Google was building its own, now it’s clear it wanted the relationships which came via a market leader.” ValleyWag reminds us we are simply repeating history. I wonder how many people will compare this (like everything else the past 5 or so years) to another bubble about to pop.

This bubble isn’t popping anytime soon. As online advertising grows - businesses want as much as they can get of it. Google is simply trying to take over advertising.

They could be just after some buzz to increase their already obese stock price. But I hope not seeing as their stock fell over a buck after the deal.

Maybe investors think Google should stick with the “doing one thing great” approach.

Still, it generated quite a lot of buzz.

The simple and equally scary truth is that Google is so close to a monopoly it’s freaky. The “the giant will get even bigger.”

Yahoo! can always come up with the next wave of the social portals of all social ports, but industry analysts, “predict that Yahoo does not have the cash or the stomach to make major acquisitions.” People wondered if Yahoo! purchased DoubleClick that they *may* be able to really compete with Google - look’s like that’s not an option anymore

I’m not sure that its DoubleClick trying to be “the eBay for online ads,” but more like Google trying to take over affiliate marketing and banner advertising.

On a closing note, this is all just further evidence that, no matter what Jason Calacanis says, Search Marketing and SEO and eveything that’s in the umbrella in general, will never die.

*Thank you http://persuasion.typepad.com/ for the cool Google/Monkey graphic

To do business or advertise in today’s digital world you must live it. Just as Babs Rangaiah, director of media and entertainment at Unilever USA is trying to convey when he says, “Planners have got to have a better sense of the entire media landscape.” Via Advertising Age.

Not only must you loose the silos but you must live the way the digital world lives to advertise in it.

You must understand how the digital world thinks, where they spend their time. Or at least be able to really try and think like someone else. Where would you spend your time if you were their age, and in their shoes? Would you frequent myspace and spend all day downloading torrents or be reading blogs like lifehacker, techcrunch, adfreak, adage, searchengineland, clickz, stuntdubl, searchreturn, alistapart, marketingpilgrim, seomoz, seoblackhat, graywolf, copyblogger, nickwilson, shoemoney, seobook, mashable, micropersuasion, coolhunting, fecalface and (well just check out the blogroll on the side of this page, you get the idea), tagging and bookmarking links to your del.icio.us account as you read them through your normal day’s rss and link-surfing trip? Or would you spend all your time cruising sites like fark and digg? Or maybe you’d be reading work-at-home mom blogs and forums?

Where would you be?

Still, today marketing alone is not enough, knowing where your audience is isn’t going to cut it. Innovation and creativity are what make all the difference. Are you solving a problem in a better way than everyone else? Are you using your imagination in the best possible way to add value to your business, further satisfy your customers and even create new demands? Asking the right questions is usually the best way to start.

“Search marketing cannot live in a silo anymore,” Says Nasreen Madhany, Global CEO of Neo@Ogilvy. “It needs to be part of a 360 strategy for delivering marketing solutions. When managed holistically, search marketing can deliver branding as well as business results.” Via an Ogilvy Press Release pointed out by Marketing Pilgrim regarding Neo@Ogilvy’s purchase of search marketing firm Global Strategies.

Nasreen’s word ring true. I have always spoken in terms of holistic approaches to business and marketing. Today its imperative to understand and apply this philosophy. I call it Modern Business.

Today a businesses cannot live silo’s.

Business today requires a holistic approach to all aspects of functioning in order to succeed. No one can live in a silo. Management, Marketing, Technology, Sales, Business Development and Customer Service must understand each others needs and concerns. This approach includes coherence between functioning bodies. It includes integration of tools and automation of redundant tasks. It’s about knowing your strengths and weaknesses, using everything in your power, and in technology, to stay at the front of the pack. This means constant refinement, combined with a unique and cutting edge value proposition. After all, you have to be amazing.

To succeed today a businessman cannot live in a silo. Today a marketer or technologist cannot live in a silo. Today, in Modern Business, no one can.

A holistic approach must be used.

A holistic approach means all contributing parties must work together, taking everything they interact with into account while functioning. It means that internal technologies, such as CRM and ERP tools, must interact with one another and external technologies such as analytical tools. It must take into account historical and market data. It must be driven by team members that are connected to every part of the group. It means that what you do, the way you look, how you interact within your organization and with your customers, must all be in line.

I believe we will see a further reduction of silos and more emphasis placed on holistic approaches and integration of all functioning bodies. The businesses that do not do practice this approach will have a tough time keeping up.

To succeed, ask these questions before every action:

1. What will my planned action ultimately affect?
What will this impact? What technologies can I use to ensure its efficiency? Who internally in my group will this affect? Who externally? How can I ensure each entity affected is approached in the best possible way?

2. Now, really ask yourself again, what *really* will my action affect? How can I integrate my resources and approaches in the best possible way?
How will this idea work with Marketing, with Technology, with Sales and Customer Service?

3. Who is the best possible person or people to solve goal?
Am I? Is my current staff or team? Should I hire an outside expert?

4. Am I really thinking about the value I am bringing my customers in each choice?
After all if the customer isn’t happy they won’t come back, and in business today you win by increasing the lifetime value of each customer. You have to “Give The Lady What She Wants.”

5. Am I really thinking of all the places I should “announce” my action?
Internally - am I telling the right people in my team? Externally - do I really know where my audience is? How can I find them? How should I communicate with them?

6. Is this really the best possible action?
Now you’ve asked yourself all these questions, is this the best choice? Is there better? Who can help me figure this out?

7. How can I measure this so I can refine it as much as possible?
Do I know the answer to this question? If not who can I ask?

By asking yourself the right questions in every situation you quickly bridge the gap between any silos. Most issues that lack a holistic approach are quickly resolved with the right communication, with your team, with yourself and your customers.

Never forget you have to be great. You have to make the best possibly choices.

It takes analysis and passion. It takes a drive to know as much as possible. It takes creativity, and you always have to ask yourself if your action will engage the participants, your team, and most importantly, your customers.