There are a number of ways of finding the backlinks to a website but each has pros and cons. The two simplest ways are to use Google Webmasters or the link: command.
You can only use Google Webmasters if you control a website and can verify ownership. In terms of Google PageRank, Google’s Webmaster interface is the most accurate way of determining which backlinks to your website Google actually takes any notice of. The problem is that Google Webmasters often lags behind the real world situation. If you’ve added lots of links to a site they will often not show up in webmasters for some weeks or months. Usually there’s a jump in the number of backlinks reported at the same time Google exports PageRank values to the Google toolbar.
An alternative method is to use the link: command. To use this, type the following into any search engine:
link:www.domainname.com
for example: link:www.resourcefill.com to find backlinks to the domain www.resourcefill.com.
The problem with the link: command is that some search engines don’t return all the backlinks. Google in particular only returns a sample - usually far less than it returns via Google webmasters. The best search engines to use for the link: command are Yahoo and all the web (www.alltheweb.com).
by ML
At least a year ago, I read about free article sites and added some article pages to my kids mask factory site. Aaron just emailed me, he’d done a personal search and found one of my articles.
I guess there is some value is having these pages, but I’m not sure whether such pages lead to sales. But are these pages valuable for an SEO / Google point of view?
Maybe I should add some free articles to my other sites?
I guess I know the answer to this question, these articles haven’t led to a massive raise in sales, although I can’t really tell.
by
JM
We’ve been using the adwords keyword tool to try and find good keywords. My initial thoughts where that I should avoid ANYTHING with any competition but have at least a thousand search volume.
However, Aaron found a video on how to use the tool and this changed our / my understanding of it.
Heres the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDB6T_L-mqs.
In the video it says you should have around 100,000 search volume and the guy ignored the competition indicator.
Mike, whats your understanding / thoughts?
I’m not thinking I should have waited with my directory submission until I’d found good keywords to use in the links, however I can now change them I guess, so it doesn’t look like I’ve got lots of the same.
by
JM
EDIT: I’ve also learned from the video, that you REALLY need to know your keywords and near keywords, I mean, I did realise this to a certain extent, but this guy knows numbers too. I think I’m going to have to keep records, I just don’t know what. Although, I guess keyword / phrase and search volume, would be start.
Well done to BlueSkiMoney aka Aaron, We’ve been chatting about SEO and using the adwords tool and watching some howto videos from youtube and last night hes, produced what I think is a well SEO page.
http://www.burnyourvinyls.com/audio-adaptors/2-5-to-3-5-adaptor-headphones-adaptor-mobile-phone-adapter/prod_11.php
Having said this there is always room improvement, he could do with more content and some internal links and of course some incoming links to that page or more probable his home page.
Anyways I think this first good attempt.
by
JM
I’m just thinking I really need sitemaps for softtester but theres 60,000 urls / dynamic pages.
Even if I have a-z pages, the sitemap files are going to be huge.
What should I do ?
by JM
Mike, I’m guessing you haven’t seen this, or haven’t noticed it or well at least you don’t use it.
As you do searches on google and look at your position.
Google webmaster tools, has a top searches feature which shows the keyword used and the postion you are for that page on google.
So if we use word tracker to check that term gets lots a of hits…
Then surely this is all we need to do to find googd keywords, well that and some common sense to make sure people will use the keyword in the right way. And obviously we have to be getting some of those hots in the first place to see the term in google tools.
Seems like the holy grail to me ?
by JM
Google has done something unexpected and exported new PageRank values only 4 weeks after a major export of values to the Google toolbar. Over on DigitalPoint there’s threads talking about how people have noticed new PR values for inner pages on their sites and the odd homepage rank change too.
I don’t get the impression this has happened before, or at least not very often. Usually there 3 months between exports.
This export has cleared up one thing that had been confusing me. My Software Product Development blog was saying PR N/A but now it’s PR 3. I was expecting it to have a non 0 PR as it turns up in Google searches quite a bit. PR 3 is more than I thought though. I’d kind of given up on this blog after the last PR toolbar export and started removing links from SliQTools. I removed the links 4 weeks ago. I’m not sure whether this means the PR will fall back over the next few weeks.
Unfortunately there are losers too. J’s new site has dropped back to PR0 - why this has happened is anyone’s guess. I was very surprised that it achieved PR1 at the end of July as it was a new domain. I expected it to take up to 5 months to get a non-0 PR.
by ML
For the first time, one of my sites is number 1 on google.co.uk for a generic search term - billing software. This is a moderately competitive term - 1 in 5.3M. It’s been number 1 for a couple of days. I know I won’t stay in this position for long as another site will cycle into the position over the next few days but I though I’d make a record here.
The only thing I can put this down to is that I’ve been using my directory submission software to submit the site to a few more directories. I’ve used billing software in the site title/ anchor text and I’m guessing this has helped.
A few days ago Jules made a post asking if there was any software available to track/ graph the position of domains and URLs in Google SERPs for specific keywords.
I wasn’t aware of any at the time so I did a bit of Googling and found a tool called WebPosition Gold (WPG). Problem is that Google’s terms of service specifically say that that using WPG or any similar program is deeply frowned upon. In the past I think 10s of 1000s of webmasters have used tools like WPG to track URLs and have placed a significant overload on Google. There are stories that running such tools causing the searcher’s IP address to be banned by Google.
At one time Google used to provide a SOAP search API that could be used to run Google searches programmatically via a web service. You had to register for an API key with Google. About 2 or so years ago Google stopped issuing new API keys although they preserved the service for existing keys. WPG requires an API key to work. Apparently people who had purchased WPG (for about $150) are now finding that Google is blocking searches made by WPG using the old API keys so it sounds like the tool is dead in the water.
It’s a strange situation in some ways - the WPG site is PR 6 and Google shows sitelinks in the SERPS as though the site is an authority site but still specifically says in their terms of service that people shouldn’t use the tool.
by ML
