Weekly SEO news: 10 November 2009
Welcome to the latest issue of the Search Engine Facts newsletter.

This week, we're taking a look at websites that could link to your website. Links from related websites are very important for the position of your own site in Google's search results. Unfortunately, it's rather difficult to convince other people to link to your site.

In the news: Microsoft sites capture largest share of time spent online worldwide, search engine robots tips, MSN AdCenter probably also uses a Quality Score and more.

Table of contents:

We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it helps you to get more out of your website. Please pass this newsletter on to your friends.

Best regards,
Andre Voget, Johannes Selbach, Axandra CEO
1. Don't screw it up: why should other websites link to your site?

The links that point to your website are one of the most important factors that influence the position of your website in Google's search results. The better the links to your website, the higher the position of your website in Google's results.

High rankings without good inbound links?

It is possible to get high rankings with only a few links if you want to be listed for keywords that don't have much competition. As soon as more than one website competes with you for the same keywords, the website with the best inbound links will outrank the other websites.

If you want to get high rankings for competitive keywords, you have to go out and encourage people to link to your website. It's not necessary to get as many links as possible. It's necessary to get better links than your competitors.

Relatively easy: finding the right websites for link building

The Internet has plenty of websites for every category. The following websites can be good link partners:

  1. Websites that are listed for the keywords that you are targeting can be good link partners. If a website has high positions for the keywords that you are targeting and if the website is not a competitor, you should contact the owner of that website.

  2. Some websites have content that is related to your keyword. If these websites have no examples or references, they could link to your website.

  3. There can be many websites that contain a review or a comment about your company without linking to your site. These websites will often link to your website if you ask.

  4. If another website links to your website and only uses your domain name to link to your website, ask the owner of the other website to link to your website with your keyword.

  5. Blogs that deal with the topic of your websites are often willing to link to your website.

  6. If a website links to one of your competitors, it is likely that they will also link to your website if you offer a similar product or service.

Easy to screw up: asking for a link

Finding websites that could link to you is the easy part. The difficult part is to convince the owners of the other websites that they should link to your site.

Contact the right person and use a personal salutation. Be polite and professional in your email message. Use a non-freemail email address and include your full contact information in the email message.

Focus on the benefits of the recipient (for example, that the webmaster will offer his website visitors a good resource if he links to your site and explain why).

There are many things that can improve the response rate of your link request messages. Details can be found in our free SEO eBook. The eBook covers everything from finding potential link partners to optimizing response rates and it also contains a checklist that helps you to get started as quickly as possible.

If you want to speed things up, use IBP's link builder to get links from other websites to your site. IBP's link builder finds related websites, websites that link to your competitors, related blogs, websites that link to your website, etc.

In addition, IBP delivers additional information such as the text that is used for the links to your website, the IP address, the Google PageRank rank of the web pages and much more.

IBP also help you to build links through directory submission, social bookmarking services and many more tools that help you to get the best possible position in the search results of Google and other major search engines. You can download it here.

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2. Search engine news and articles of the week

GoogleMicrosoft sites capture largest share of time spent online worldwide

"Microsoft Sites held the largest share of time spent among the top worldwide properties in Europe (16.8 percent), Latin America (35.9 percent) and the Middle East – Africa (33.1 percent).

Yahoo! Sites captured the largest share of time in North America with 11.2 percent share, while also attracting a notable 7.9-percent share of time spent in the Asia Pacific region.

Google Sites commanded a strong share of time spent in Latin America (19.4 percent), Middle East – Africa (9.7 percent), Europe (9.6 percent) and North America (9.1 percent)."



Search engine robots are speaking many languages

"We've already covered [...] some of the basics about how webmasters can use a file called robots.txt to control how search engine crawlers (aka bots) crawl their websites. But there is so much more to talk about with bots. So let's take a bit of a deeper dive into the subject."



BingMicrosoft AdCenter also uses some kind of QualityScore

"Sometimes when a campaign or ad group is not getting very much activity for a long period of time the ad will start showing less and less because it is not performing. That may be what has happened with your campaign. My suggestion is to start two brand new campaigns and copy all of the data over from your existing campaigns."



 Google, Microsoft, Yahoo others sued over mapping software

"A case started in Texas against a number of defendants alleging that they had infringed a patent owned by a company called Webmap Technologies LLC. [..] All the defendants are accused of creating applications using interactive mapping that Webmap Technologies."



Search engine newslets

  • Warning: use Google Commerce Search at your own risk.
  • Google adds two alerts to Google AdWords campaigns.
  • Google improves AdWords conversion tracking.
  • Google's new map data is really old.
  • Microsoft Bing gives WiFi users free search.
  • Google: Rupert Murdoch can block us if he wants to.
  • Google acquires mobile display advertising company AdMob.
  • In Google Book case, a request for more time.
  • Google says won't give Clearwire more financing.
  • Turkish government claims Google owes €32 million in taxes.
  • Google CEO: Hopefully we won't repeat Microsoft's past mistakes.

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3. IBP works with Windows 7

IBP 11 works fine with Windows 7

Do you plan to switch to Microsoft's latest operating system Windows 7? If you use IBP to promote your website, there's no reason not to update to the latest version. IBP 11 works fine with both the 32bit and the 64bit version of Windows 7.

IBP Windows 7

IBP also works with Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista. You can download IBP here.

Using current tools is very important for search engine optimization. Things that worked last year might not work today. IBP is always up-to-date with the latest algorithms of Google and all other major search engines.

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4. Success stories

"I'd recommend this product to anyone who is serious about promoting their SEO business."

'With IBP, I have successfully run my SEO business for the past 5 years. I have tried the other software on the market and none are as easy to use, or offer solutions as complete.

I used it to capture No 1 positions for 'Australian Search Engine Optimization', 'Australian Search Engine Marketing' etc. The Business Edition was my choice as it has unlimited projects and customized SEO reports. I'd recommend this product to anyone who is serious about promoting their SEO business."
Bruce Gow, Search Engine Guy Pty Ltd



220,000 readers will see YOUR website

Let us know how IBP has helped you to improve your website and we might publish your success story with a link to your website in this newsletter. The more detailed your story is, the better.

IBP

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5. Previous articles

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