Back at the beginning of the millennium – an eternity in SEO terms – on-page SEO was all you needed for successful optimisation. But things have changed, and its effect has diminished – some SEO commentators even claim that its value is almost non-existent.

But I believe that on-page SEO still has a huge role to play.

At The H2 Company we work through many keyword audits for our clients, which means I am regularly checking page-one listings for numerous keywords. And as I do so, I am constantly reminded of the importance of on-page SEO.

I’m going to show you three real examples where you can see the effects of on-page SEO for yourself. Hopefully you’ll be able to see how it can help websites to overcome the well known barriers to ranking of domain age, PageRank and backlinks.

Keyword 1: ‘rise and recline chair’

This audit was carried out for a company that sells furniture and mobility aids, and there are a few interesting things that you can see from the audit (click to enlarge image).

The number-one position has a PageRank of 0, no backlinks to the page and only three links to the domain. But it gets the number-one spot because it has an exact domain match and the title, URL, description and headline are all optimised, all of which allows it to rank above the more authoritative domains.

Look at the difference to position number two, which takes the plural domain name. Despite having a slightly higher page rank and many more links, as well as being fully optimised, it misses out because of the power of the exact domain match.

Keyword 2: ‘performance management’

Let’s take a look here at the websites which have perfect on-page SEO (click to enlarge image). Number six in the list has fewer links to the domain name than most of the other results, and although the age of the domain clearly helps, it is the perfect on-page SEO (note the pink area to the right labelled with ‘Y’s under the headings of title, URL, desc and head) that has pushed the site to appear first page.

You can see that number eight has no links at all to the page, and yet it is still on page one. The links to the domain are high, but again it is the on-page SEO that is giving it such a boost.

Number seven has a good PageRank, but it is a new domain and only has 16 links going to the page. Again, on-page SEO is at play here to get this page into such a good position.

Keyword 3: ‘executive coaching’

As with the last keyword, take a look at position number two (click to enlarge the image). It only has 20 links to the page and the domain, and yet it has a great position. This is all to do with on-page SEO: the exact domain match and the perfect optimisation have propelled it up above the other results on the page.

Number seven also has perfect on-page SEO, and although the fact that it is an old domain helps, it has no links pointing to the page. Instead it is taking full advantage of on-page SEO to get into the top 10.

On-Page SEO Matters

I hope through these examples I’ve managed to demonstrate to you the power of on-page SEO. The thing to remember is that on-page SEO still makes a big difference, and even more so when it is combined with ongoing, keyword-focused SEO.

If you make sure your site has perfect on-page SEO you’ll get a distinct advantage and get to page one quicker than the usual measures of competitiveness (domain age, PageRank, backlinks) suggest you need.

So when you are looking for new keywords to target, try to find page-one rankings where none of the top 10 have perfect on-page SEO and you’ll be in a very strong starting position.

If you want to make sure you’re taking full advantage of perfect on-page SEO then why not download our free ebook? It provides you with 10 steps to seriously boost your SEO through on-page factors alone. Subscribe to my mailing list and you can download it for free.

Negative reviews are never pleasant – but what about when those reviews appear on the first page of Google, outranking even your own website? It’s a scary prospect, but it happens all the time.

Protecting your online reputation is becoming a serious issue nowadays, and specialist firms offer various services to give you back some control over protecting your good name.

But SEO tactics can also be put to use to bury bad reviews and unfair comments, and this article provides you with three easy steps to doing just that.

How Can Negative Reviews Gain Such Prominence?

The reason negative reviews can appear so high up in the SERPs so quickly is because they are often posted to sites which have a high PageRank/authority, (eg www.ripoffreport.com). Google is an active promoter of free speech, but this sometimes makes it easier for undesirable information to gain a high degree of visibility. There’s no point complaining about that, however. The only thing you can do is take action and fight back using what you know of SEO and the internet.

Step 1 – Find the Offending Keywords

First you need to do some research into which keywords are bringing up the negative reviews. First and foremost, check your website/company/personal name (these are the most common) plus any keywords that are specifically important to your business. Also, check for common informational searches by querying your ‘website/company/personal name + review’ or ‘+rating’. Once you’ve found the offending keywords, use a keyword tool to find out which of them are generating traffic and focus on these ones as any without much traffic don’t really matter.

Step 2 – Create & Post Web 2 Articles

Next, write 10 to 15 articles optimised for the keywords which are, or can potentially, cause you the most problems.  Post these articles to web 2 sites such as: WordPress, Ezine Articles, Posterous, Multiply, LiveJournal, Tumblr, TypePad, Webs, Weebly, Squidoo and any others you know of.

These sites have high homepage PageRank, meaning the domains will react quicker and more effectively to backlinks than most other sites out there. Many of them also allow you to use your keywords in your URL for extra SEO weight, such as ‘yourname.wordpress.com’ or ‘yourkeyword.weebly.com’.

Step 3 – Build Links to the Web 2 Articles

The next stage is to try and get these articles ranking high for your chosen keywords, and to do this you need to create links pointing back to the articles. There are many tactics for this, but what you are looking for is quick links that can be created without too much effort.

One tactic is to build super-quick links from domain information sites, while another would be to reuse the articles and post them to article directories using the keywords to link back to the original web 2 articles. Duplicate content is not an issue here – if Google deems the web 2 pages and your articles to be duplicate content, all it will do is work out where the content was posted first and give priority to that page first – which is the overall aim anyway.

Bury the Negative Reviews

That’s all there is to it! Over time, some of these web 2 pages will make it to the first page of Google for your target keywords, gradually consigning the offending website off the front page where it won’t mean much to anyone.

This is an effective way to help you respond to any online bad publicity. If you ever find yourself facing a similar situation then take advantage of SEO tactics to make sure the right results are appearing when people search for you or your company online. Finally, will a heart full of endeavour, the same techniques can be used to ensure that you control all of content of the page 1 listings for your most desired keywords – now there’s a mouth watering thought!

It’s that time of year again, and as 2010 draws to a close I thought I’d take the opportunity to share with you my thoughts on the world of SEO in 2011. Following are the SEO practices which I think will remain important in 2011, as well as the factors that I think will become more significant over the course of the year.

Practices that will Remain Important

1. Building Links from Different IP Addresses

Building links from a wide range of different IP addresses will almost certainly remain an important SEO practice. Remember: it’s not just the number of links that you build but the amount of IP addresses that you get links from that will determine your PageRank.

2. Building Links from High PR Domains

Building links from domains with a PageRank higher than 3 will remain a key SEO practice because these will continue to provide the best links.

3. Ensuring Google Indexes as Many Links as Possible

Although no SEO can claim that every one of the links that they generate will get indexed, it is still important to rely on a good method to ensure that Google indexes as many of them as possible.

Whether you add an XML sitemap using Google’s webmaster tools, link from a blog post with an RSS feed, link via an authoritative social media profile or use a social bookmarking service, make sure you have a way to increase the amount of links that get indexed.

4. Carrying Out Thorough Keyword Research

No matter what changes we see in the world of SEO, keyword research will still be THE most important part of your SEO. This is one practice that is not going to diminish in importance any time soon.

Factors that will Become More Important

1. Changes to Google Local Results

Local searches are becoming increasingly important to Google’s algorithm, and as such we are likely to see a greater emphasis on optimising for local results. According to Google itself, 20% of searches are now “related to location”, and the annual Local Search Usage Study by TMP Directional Marketing and comScore puts the amount of local search queries this year at 8.3%.

Google is now reflecting this in its results pages, and I think it’s inevitable that Google local listings are going to become even more important over the course of the next year.

I’m expecting a lot of my SEO clients in 2011 to ask for optimisation of their Google local listings above that of their actual websites because their main keyword targets will trigger local results and therefore push organic listings further down and off page one. To see this for yourself, just make a quick search for ‘leeds architects’ on google.co.uk.

2. Greater Integration of Social Media with SE Rankings

There is a lot of debate going on at the moment about how social media is affecting Google rankings. One of the biggest debates centres on the ‘Like This’ button that Facebook introduced during the year.

The Facebook Like Button argument concerns the challenge that Facebook is posing to the search engines by blocking their ability to index sites through limiting how much of the web they can track at any given moment. It is unknown how this will play out, but watch out for more debate over the coming months.

This year I have also noticed that my Twitter pages are growing considerably both in terms of their PageRank and the quality of the links through to my main website. I think it’s now certain that Google will factor tweets, recommendations and other social media mentions into its algorithm more throughout 2011.

3. Continued Growth of Mobile Search

We are almost certain to see continued growth in mobile search throughout 2011, and as such new platforms like the iPad and its Android competitors could well represent the best monetisation opportunities.

Google recently revealed that its mobile search was up 130% in Q3, and Jonathan Rosenberg, SVP at Google, is quoted on mobiThinking describing mobile as “the future of search on the internet”. In addition, an analyst for RBC said back in June that by 2012 mobile search could grow to 20% of all searches as opposed to 9% this year (see TechCrunch for further details).

With mobile search being talked about in such terms, we can certainly expect to see large growth in this area.

Keep Ahead of the Changes

As well as continuing to focus on the SEO practices that will remain relevant in 2011, try to keep up to date with any new trends in the SEO world. By keeping your finger on the pulse, you will ensure that you stay ahead of the game whatever changes we witness in 2011 and get the most from all your campaigns rather than getting left behind.

You may remember back in April earlier this year I posted a methodology of getting your new website indexed by Google within 7 days or less. This method still works very well, BUT I wanted to share with you a new technique I’ve been using recently to good effect.

First off, a quick reminder on why we need to index

One of the most important skills you can master as a web marketeer is the ability to index new sites quickly. As we discussed in April this year, Google needs a reason to include your new website within it’s database and an even bigger reason to do so quickly.  The best reason for Google to index your site quickly is for the god of search engines to find that other websites are already talking about (linking to) you.

To check if Google has index your website, simply type your url within inverted commas into the Google Search box, (ie “yourdomain.co.uk”). If Google has already index your site, your url should appear towards the top of the search results, if not top. Once your indexed by Google, you can then check where you rank for your target keyword(s). Your initial ranking will tell you how much work you now need to do in order to hit page 1.

Getting indexed is something, as web marketeers, we need to be able to do quickly and efficiently. We want to save our energy for the task of link building ONCE we are both indexed and have an initial ranking – usually, we need all our energy for link building!

So, here’s a new technique I’ve been using recently to push new urls into the Google database, if followed correctly it should help you do the same and usually within 48 hours.

Domain Information Sites

There are many sites that exist purely to provide information on a specific domain. Usually, these sites allow you to query a domain and then receive instant information on that domain, often relating to age, traffic and SE rankings. Once a domain is queried on these websites, many of them actually create an ongoing record of that url in order to offer better information should anyone query the same domain at some point in the future. This means that these sites also create an webpage for these domains queried, all with a link back to the actual url. Now, these may not be great ‘keyword rich’ links in terms of SEO value, BUT they are great links to get a domain indexed and, best of all, they take only a few seconds per site to create.

Here’s a few to try, simply type your domain at the end of each of these urls (to replace YOURDOMAIN) the cut and paste into your browser:

http://www.tagurls.com/url/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.urladex.com/url/YOURDOMAIN

http://whois.domaintools.com/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.aboutus.org/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.reddit.com/domain/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.quantcast.com/YOURDOMAIN

http://stimator.com/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.cubestat.com/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.YOURDOMAIN

http://www.statbrain.com/YOURDOMAIN

http://whoisx.co.uk/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.folkd.com/url/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.talkreviews.com/YOURDOMAIN

http://wholinkstome.com/url/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.aboutthedomain.com/YOURDOMAIN/

http://websiteshadow.com/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.valuatemysite.com/www.YOURDOMAIN

http://www.markosweb.com/www/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.xmarks.com/site/YOURDOMAIN

http://www.dnscoop.com/YOURDOMAIN

You can find many more useful websites like the above by searching Google for results on ‘domain info’, ‘evaluate domain’, ‘whats my website worth?’ or any similar queries. Building your own database of such ‘fast indexing’ resources is something I whole heartedly recommend.

Google have recently launched their new Instant Search technology. Today, I’ve found a little time to really play with the new search interface, here’s some first impressions I wanted to share with you.

What Is Google Instant?
Instant is Google’s new search technology that literally shows search results as you are typing in your search keywords. This means that the top ten results actually alter as you type! Visually, it’s quite impressive and I’d also say it offers the browser much more possibility as they can view the kind of results they are going to get from a keyword before committing to actually querying it.

This all sounds, and is, wonderful, but of course there are a couple of  things to bear in mind, as least for these initial days of the new look search. For Google Instant to work you have to be logged into your Google account and your connection speed has to be adequately high (which isn’t always the case here in Buenos Aires….). I would also imagine that most people browsing the web right now on their phones don’t quite have the connection speed to run Instant properly? This will of course change, as might the need to be logged into a Google Account to run Instant search.

With those two points in mind, here’s my first thoughts on Google Instant, all of course made from a purely web marketing point of view

Three Things I’ve Noticed So Far About Google Instant

1. More Reason To Target Suggested Keywords: Similar to personalised search, when you type a keyword into Google Instant, the search box ‘instantly’ offers a number of anticipated guesses as to what your search is going to be. Where Google Instant differs from personalised search is that as should you type or hover over any of these suggested keywords, Google ‘instantly’ alters the results to reflect that keyword. This means that should you optimise your site for any/all of these suggested keywords, you have the opportunity to capture the eye of the browser as they ‘hover over’ keywords, this is in addition to the browser actually selecting to search keywords as before. Instant has the potential to make good keyword research EVEN more important and better rewarded than it has been to date. (Click to enlarge image below).
   
2. Top Two Listings Are Now Even More Desirable: The top two results of any organic search results page has always been desired positions. Now, with the extra space that Google Instant takes up on the page, the top two organic results are the only ones onscreen when viewing a results page via a 15″ laptop screen. Before Instant, the top three results were clearly visible on a 15″ screen and personally, I have noticed little difference in click through from being position 2 and 3 on Google. I now wonder if that’s about to change given that position 3 is now not always on screen?
3. Position 4 on Adwords Is Now More Visible: When Google Instant makes keyword suggestions, this pushes down the top 3 sponsored links and the top organic results onscreen. To me, this also has the effect of making the 4th sponsored ad far more visible than it was before, and more visible than the top 3 ads.  If I were looking to truly optimise my money on Adwords for a given keyword, I’d now experiment with finding the right cost per click to appear position 4 and see what kind of click through this ad position now brings.

Overall I like Google Instant, I find it adds to the browser experience of using the search engine.  Across the web there are a whole load of differing opinions about what Google Instant means for the browser, the web and of course for SEO. I believe that part of being in the online world is adapting to the changes and advancements this exciting world always has. Where there is ‘change’ there is always ‘chance’ and that’s exactly why I think Google Instant offers a number of potential opportunities for everyone in the long run.

For now,  I’m going to spend a little time watching Google Instant, monitor how it is received and try to anticipate what developments seem most likely given browser reception, there’s definitely a ‘chance’ or two in there somewhere!

If you have read a handful of my previous posts, you will no doubt be aware of my belief that the most important part of SEO is the initial keyword research. Keyword research is a two fold process – not only do you need to know exactly what keywords attract regular traffic each month, you also need to know whether targeting a specific keyword is realistic in terms of cost, time and work involved.

There are many keywords which have such ferocious competition online that ranking page 1 with a new website would take such huge resource that any investor would be unlikely to see breakeven, let alone profit for some considerable time. In such instances, it is often cheaper and easier for a wealthy investor to look at buying one of the high ranking businesses/domain names.

However, no matter how competitive a niche maybe, there are always gaps. Uncovering these gaps is truly what separates successful online marketeers from the rest.  Following on from our last post which looked at ways of uncovering the most ‘profitable’ keywords from your research, today we’re going to look at how to gauge what competition exists online for your chosen ‘profitable’ keywords.

To make this task much easier, I highly recommend the excellent SEO plugin for Firefox. This is a free application that simply involves signing up to the SEOBook website. Once installed, open up google.co.uk (or .com) and search for one of your chosen keywords. You’ll notice that as page 1 of your results appear, the SEO plugin gives you a number of useful values on the website’s listed, including PageRank, no of incoming links, any listings in DMOZ or the Yahoo directory and more.

In an ideal world, the page 1 results for your chosen keyword would have:

1. URL’s with Low Numbers of Links. At the very least, one website with a low number (less than 250) links – as reported by Yahoo/SEO for Firefox – appearing within the top 5 listings is a good sign.
2. No Meta Title Keyword Targeting. No, or only 1 or 2, websites with the actual keyword written directly into the title. For example, if you were targeting ‘buy cheap shoes’ you would hope to see a  Google Results page as below (click to enlarge).
3. Web 2.0 Pages Ranking. Additionally, you would also hope to see a web 2.0 page (most likely an article) ranking within the top 10 results. Look out for listings from EzineArticles, ArticleBase and GoArticles which tend to rank highly for lower competition keywords.
4. New / Young Domains. Ideally, at least two of the listed page 1 domains will be 3 or less years old.

If you can uncover a keyword that reflects all of the above, you have a real hot SEO opportunity! Usually, your keyword target will have page 1 Google competition that reflects one or two points form the above, but not all four.  At this point it is more useful to look at your keyword competition in terms of what you should avoid competing against.

Here are the competition factors that are very hard to outrank with a new website:

1. Keyword Rich Domains. If all of the possible keyword rich domains for your target keyword (eg buycheapshoes.co.uk/.com/.net etc) have been snapped up and you see them ranking page 1 for your keyword, your in for a very tough SEO fight.
2. Aged Domains. If all of your page 1 competition have domains that are over 5 years in age, your shiny new website is going to have big problems persuading the mighty G that your just as trustworthy.
3. High Page Rank. Whilst PageRank may not be as key a factor as it used to be, it’s still very tough to push your new website past websites with PR of 4 and above . Ideally, for your target keyword you would hope to see a website with PR 2 or below ranking well.
4. Lots of Links. If every website on page 1 has over 2K links then you have some serious link building to do. If this high link number comes in combination with no 3 (ie high PR), then your battle is harder still.

Overall, most keyword choices comes down to thinking over the gaps that a keyword may have and balancing this against the beefier sites you see listed on page 1. Sometimes you may find that the top 3 listings are taken up by aged domains with high PR and lots of incoming links. There may however be opportunity to push into the page1 listings beneath these online giants. For high traffic keywords, such a  strategy can be worth pursuing. The important factor is to know what kind of fight your getting into before you step into the SEO ring.

One of the most important factors behind commercially successful websites is their ability to discover profitable traffic channels for their online products. Whilst Google’s Keyword Tool can help us oncover keywords that have regular traffic, it’s another skill to then go on and define which of these keywords will have the best conversion from ‘traffic’ to ‘sales’.

Hopefully, some of you will have already read my post from March this year on using Google tools to find better keywords. Certainly any website that becomes commercially successful has an element of luck involved. However, here are a few tips to help delve further into your keywords in an effort to uncover the ones that truly have SALES value.

1. Adwords Spend
If a keyword has a large number of PPC advertisers, there’s a very good chance that this keyword converts traffic to sales well. If you use Google Keyword Tool to uncover your keywords, you’ll be no doubt aware that you can view average PPC costs on any keyword found. However, I find a more reliable method is to simply use your own eyes and note down how many people actually pay for that keyword.  To do this, open google.co.uk and type in your keyword. Ideally, you would now see a full page of PPC advertisers appearing under sponsored links above and to the right hand side of your organic results (click below to enlarge).

IF you see any less than a full first page of PPC advertisers be wary of this keywords ability to convert to sales. Ideally, you would want to see 3 – 5 pages of different advertisers all paying for their PPC ads on pages 1 – 5 of Google’s results, this is an excellent indication that this keyword is easily monetised.

2. Google Shopping
Google Product Search is the area of the world’s most powerful search engine where you are able to search all of the products uploaded to Google’s Checkout database. This area of Google can be a real goldmine when searching for ‘conversion’ keywords. Type your main keyword into the search box at the top of the Google Shopping page, Google will instantly offer you a number of alternative keywords in a drop down menu that appears almost as you type.

Let this menu hover, write the most relevant of these suggestions down and now go back to Google’s Keyword Tool. Research all of the suggestions for traffic numbers and any further keyword ideas Google suggests. By using Google Product Search intially, you are now feeding the Keyword Tool with keywords that Google has told you have ‘sales’ traffic, hence your keyword results should be more commercially focused.

3. Google Discussion
Finally, after completing steps 1 and 2 above, take your best keywords, type them into Google and click on ‘Discussions’. Are people already talking about your keywords? If so, this final step serves as further verification that your keywords have high potential for sales conversion.

I hope the above tips help some of you to uncover more lucrative keywords for your projects. If any of you have your own fine ideas for keyword research do let me know, I’d love to hear them!

Today were going to look at how to take advantage of regional differences in Google results to find great links for your website. If you’ve ever browsed for your target keywords on google.com and then google.co.uk, you will no doubt have noticed the different results that Google delivers. These differences are of course for very good reasons. Google’s ethos is to give browsers the most relevant and useful results they can, hence it makes sense to give browsers using google.co.uk UK focused results and browsers on google.com US focused results. This theory runs true for every region of the world from Australia, India, Russia, Spain, France and right here in Argentina. Throughout many of our posts to date, we’ve looked at different ways of sourcing great links for your website. To date, all of these methods have been conducted in English. Yet it can’t be, and certainly isn’t, true that all great links come from sites written in English. In fact, there are many great link opportunities waiting out there for you in all of the major world languages. It’s a big, wide world out there and just think how many more links you might be able to source if you could do perform all of your link tricks across a variety of languages? Today, were going to look at how to do just that.

Google Global
All of the regional Google search engines end in the domain extension relevant to that country. Just as in the UK we have google.co.uk, in Spain they have www.google.es, in France www.google.fr, in Germany www.google.de and so on. To find the Google extension for the country your interested in, simply type ‘google COUNTRY’ into your search box. If your using Firefox, this handy extension lets you view results across different countries.

Google Translate Can Be A Very Good Friend
One of the most useful and fastest growing services online is Google Translate. This service allows you to instantly translate a phrase written in English into any of the major world languages. Additionally, this service also allows you to instantly translate any webpage out there from any major language into English. We’ll be using both of these features below.

Translating Your Keywords
In April we discussed a variety of ways to discover links for your website using common keyword terms, such as ‘KEYWORD add url’ or ‘KEYWORD add site’ and so on. It makes sense that these same search strings translated into different languages will deliver a host of new results – some of which will be fine links for your site. To translate a keyword search:

1. Browse to Google Translate at www.translate.google.com.
2. Type your search string in English into the box and select your language to convert it to (click image below to enlarge).

3. Now open up a new browser tab and browse to a relevant regional version of Google, for example if you translated your search string into Spanish go to google.es or google.com.ar.
4. Enter your translated search string.
5. Grab the url for your search result and go back to Google Translate.
6. Now paste into the box your url string and select your language conversion to translate back to English.

7. Google Translate will offer a new url that when clicked on will deliver your search results, from your foreign Google engine, in English.
8. As in the our April post, browse through these results for places to post your url.

On the example below, there are three places worth investigating for links that would not have been triggered by the English version of my search string (hotels add url). Working through a variety of English search strings translated for regional Google engines will of course reveal many more!

I hope the above method helps you think of many ways you can use all of your search based link building methods across a variety of new languages and regional engines. In essence, anything that’s working well for you in English should work equally as well in Spanish, French, German, Italian and any other language you wish to turn your methods too. Let me know of any great foreign language results you find!

Were here! It was a long journey, I’m only three hours into my ‘beginners’ Spanish course and I still haven’t mastered the art of crossing the road BUT it feels so good to here be in Buenos Aires. This city has the grandeur of Paris or Rome in places and everyday we find out something new about it. There are lots of expats living here, mainly from the USA, and it seems that a large amount of BA expats work remotely, or online. Likewise, it’s not just the expats who love the online here. As ever, my SEO eyes and ears are wide open – it doesn’t take long to discover that, just like back in the UK, the internet plays a huge part in people’s lives here. Here’s three things I’ve noticed already about online Argentinian life.

Facebook Mad
Yep, here in Argentina Facebook rules! Almost everywhere I go, every cafe, every bar, every museum, everyone has a Facebook page. Even the ‘Plaza De Mayo’, the most famous place in Buenos Aires (where Evita Peron addressed the people) has a Facebook page. From a web marketing point of view, I’d say Facebook Ads are definitely worth considering if you wish to promote your website in Argentina.

Fotolog
Cumbio is somewhat of a national celebrity here and all because she posts photos of her life onto the website fotolog.com. Cumbio is a flogger, one of many floggers who post images of their lives onto fotolog.com daily. Flogging is so big here, it’s even a fashion style – fringes grown over one eye, brightly coloured laces and V necked TShirts. If you have read the post titled ‘Create Ongoing Links Indefintely‘ then consider adding fotolog.com to your web 2.0 link list.

BA Expats
BA Expats is a great resource for those not of Porteno origin who find themselves enjoying life in this great city. As briefly mentioned above, the expat community within BA is growing rapidly and google seems to be acknowledging that. This website is only 21 months old and already has a PageRank of 6. Their forum is active, they encourage registration and their links directory is human edited.  Finding a way to link your website from sites like this one is a good thing – such sites attract lots of traffic and, perhaps more importantly, such links tell Google that your website is relevant to current world and online trends.

The old saying ‘a change is a good as a rest’ seems to be proving true for me so far in Buenos Aires. Next week we’ll get right back into SEO focused posts, but for now, I wanted to share the above with you and encourage you to look outside of your usual places for opportunities to promote your websites.

It’s been a very busy week and hence, I’m keeping today’s post short but very sweet Today were going to look at how we can use the new Google features to deliver customised lists of great link opportunities.

What Are The New Google Features?
We discussed one of the new Google features, the wonder wheel, earlier on this year. Most of these new features are geared around offering the browser the ability to filter their search results as they require. Click on ‘more’ and ‘more search tools’ (as below) to view.

How To Use Search Tools To Deliver Link Opportunity Lists
You’ll notice that I searched for ‘cheap shoes’ on Google.co.uk – as shown in the image above. Likewise, perform a search for one of your main keyword targets. Google will return its results initially in it’s default manner. Now, click on ‘more’ first and filter results to show only ‘Blogs’, underneath now select ‘past month’ as below.

You now have a list of blogs already indexed by Google, topic relevant and active within the last month – great places to visit, place a comment and of course, a link back to your own website. Next, change ‘Blogs’ to ‘Discussions’ and you now have a list of forums and Q&A sites discussing your topic area within the last month. Again great places to contribute and place a link back to your website.

Finally, alter ‘Discussions’ to ‘Everything’ and now scroll down and select ‘fewer shopping sites’. This filter will give you a mix of blogs, forums, Q&A’s and many more kinds of websites where you may be able to place a link. Because we have selected to remove shopping sites, most of your direct competition, and hence places you are highly unlikely to gain a link, are removed. Your left with an interesting list of topic relevant places to visit and ‘link hunt’.

There you have three simple ways to use Google’s Search Tools to generate lists of new link opportunities. Playing with the search tools and clicking on different combinations of the filter settings will undoubtedly uncover many more, so play away and do let me know what you find!