Why I Don't Trust Link Popularity

First of all it does not matter that I do not trust link popularity. I'm just whining in the wind on the off chance that someone from google will happen by and bother to read my blog.

Link popularity is measured by the number of links that point to a website.

I like amazon.com, I use amazon.com, I would recommend amazon.com to a friend. I have zero self-generated links on my websites to amazon.com. (Please note, at bottom of article we will talk further about links to amazon.com)

Since I have no links to amazon.com that means that even through I have high-esteem for amazon.com they receive zero page ranking as a result.

Now Scum Brothers Spam Marketing Corporation have zillions of contrived links that point to their website. That is because they use white-hat, black-hat, no-hat, and toupee SEO methods to make sure they have zillions of links to their website. Does this mean SBSM Corp should be held in high-esteem. No this just means they are very adept as using the system to get links back to themselves.

I have clients and friends that read this blog. But, they do not count when it comes to link popularity because they have my blog bookmarked. They don't put links to this blog on their websites. They put more intimate bookmarks on their computers.

There is something not quite right about a system that rewards tricky dicks that know how to work the system in preference to average joes that just get along.

A little more talk about Amazon.com's links.

Something that Amazon did that was very helpful with SEO (even before SEO existed) was to use an affiliate program. Because I am an affiliate of amazon.com that means that on every page of my blog there are three or four links back to amazon.com. Not of these links are self-generated. All of these links are created by widget bots that work for my affiliate program.

All the same, amazon.com has four links on my page that count toward their link popularity. I venture to guess that 99.99% of all amazon.com links are from affiliate sales links. Good going Amazon.

SEO Check List

Things that help:

• Keywords in your website address (URL)
• Keywords in all your page <title> tags
• Keywords in link text of internal links.
• Keywords in link text of inbound links (external links leading to your site.)
• Keywords in link text of outbound links (your links to other people's webpages.
• Keywords in <h1> & <h2> headings
• Keywords at the top of the page (in the beginning of your text)
• Keywords in image <alt> tags
• Where inbound links come from.
• Links from sites similar to yours
• Description Metatag
• Unique content for each page of your website
• Frequent change or addition of content
• Site Accessibility
• Sitemap (html or xml)

Things that do NOT help:

• Keyword spamming & stuffing
• Keyword dilution (optimizing too many keywords)
• Hidden links (such as 1px image links)
• Deliberate Cross-linking
• Duplicate content (10 pages of the same stuff does not make your site look bigger)
• Doorway pages (
• Serving search engine different page than public
• Invisible text (too small to read or color same as background)
• Stolen Content
• Flash
• Frames
• Redirects (301 and 302)
• Telling robots to go jump in the lake (robots.txt bans)
• Dynamic pages with session IDs

Keywords in Anchor Text

Before we can talk about Keywords in Anchor Text we need to define what in the heck this Anchor Text is.

Anchor text is also known as: link text, link title, or that stuff in between the <a href=""> thing and the </a> thing.

Here is an example: <a href="http://www.galaxywebsitedesign.com/">Galaxy Website Design</a>

The http://www.galaxywebsitedesign.com is the link url. The Galaxy Website Design is the link text (or anchor text).

When another website creates a link that points to your website that is a good thing.

Google, and other search engines, consider the fact that someone bothers to create a link to your website as a vote of confidence. So if want to bad-mouth a website do not include a link. Google will interpret the link as a vote of confidence in the linked to website.

So what about the "Keywords in Anchor Text" thing?

Quite simply, if someone links to you with the following:
<a href="http://www.yoyodyneindustries.com">Crystal Quantum Meditation Devices</a>
then Google will assume from this link that you consider yoyodyneindustries.com to be related to meditation devices. So not only will you increase the page rank of the yoyodyneindustries.com website in general. You will also add credibility to the keywords meditation and devices (as well as crystal and quantum).

Thus not only are links to your site important. It is also important what text is used in the link text (anchor text). If possible, find ways to encourage the use of keywords in anchor text used to link to your website.

Social Marketing Truths

Here they are in the nutshell:

• Social media enables you to open up a dialogue with perspective customers.
• When you have a dialogue with a prospective customer, they grow to trust you.
• Once they trust you, they're more likely to buy your product or service.

The above three truths come from my notes taken during a seminar by Jamie Turner. These little tidbits were dropped on the path as he was making his way to the main topic of the seminar. However, I felt these were gems worth mulling over a bit.

Social media enables you to open up a dialogue with perspective customers.

Social media enables you.... It is a tool. Like a hammer (or screwdriver) you have to know what you are doing with the tool and know what it is you are trying to accomplish. A hammer is great for driving nails into a board. But this is useless without some idea of where the nails need to go. Do you have a plan you are working from. Or, are you just driving nails in order to drive nails?

open up a dialogue... There are at least two little tidbits in this. First of all it is designed to be a dialogue. So work to have it be a dialogue. Encourage perspective customers to engage in the conversation. Get them involved. An active participant will get hooked into the process much easier and deeper than a passive participant. Second, fundamentally almost all dialogues in social media are perpetually in the "opening up" phase of the conversation. Dialogues have various phases -- including resolution and conclusion. The nature of social media keeps them bound into the beginning phases -- the opening up part. That's okay. Just be aware of it. You are not going to conclude your business in the social media itself. That will happen else where.

perspective customers... Treat the folks you dialogue with as bosom buddies, pals and friends. But, don't forget why you are there -- perspective customers.  If you forget you are hunting for perspective customers you may lose your posture, you may forget to actually redirect them to a place for conversion. And yes, conversion will happen else where.

When you have a dialogue with a prospective customer, they grow to trust you.

have a dialogue with a prospective customer... Again, have a dialogue -- make it a two way street, get them involved in the conversation. And of course the "them" we are talking about are prospective customers. If your product or service is empty having no value to the customer then this perspective of treating others as prospective customers will be hollow and basically yucky. On the other hand, if you are an ethical marketer and actually represent goods that are of value, then this perspective takes on a flavor of service.

they grow to trust you.... This is the goal, this is the hoped for result of the social marketing. Your ultimate goal may be to make sales. But, the goal ascribed to the social media part of the strategy is simply to generate a relationship with the prospective customer -- one in which they can view you as a trusted source of information and transaction.

Once they trust you, they're more likely to buy your product or service.

more likely to buy... The result of social media marketing is a prospective customer that has been brought to the state of "more likely to buy." That is a good goal and a workable goal. Let it be what it is. The goal of your "landing page" is to convert customers. The goal of social media is to predispose customers to the state of "more likely to buy."

By the way, keep your focus, stay on beam. You are looking to sell your product or service. You are not looking for ego boost or fulfillment of any other personal agenda item. When doing business, don't worry about your dance card, or your anything. It is not about you, it is about the customer. This is a subtle point. The best way to see it is in hindsight after a relationship has soured because somehow the energy was channeled into something personal.

Title Attribute

Warning:

This article is about the title attribute NOT the title element found in the header of your webpage.

First a bit of advise

This might resolve the whole issue of title attribute for you. If you're looking at it because you would like to improve keyword density and work on your SEO then there's no need to dig any further: Google and most other search engines do not take the title attribute into account when spidering a website.

Yep, that means that all of your title attributes only serve to bulk up the size of your page and give you more typing to do. Since google gives points for smaller/faster downloads, the title attribute will cost you a little in speed. Also, keep in mind that you never have enough time to do all the web design and update you want to do, thus monkeying around with title attributes will take that little bit of time from something else. AND, google will not use the title attribute for keyword density.

Finally Some Info About Title Attribute

W3.org says this about the title attribute: "This attribute offers advisory information about the element for which it is set."

The title attribute can be used with all elements except for base, basefont, head, html, meta, param, script, and title. BUT, it is not required for any -- there is no element that requires the title attribute.

Some browsers display title text as a tool tip when the element is hovered over. Thus if you do use title attribute text please keep is small. No one wants to see a huge tool tip. And, besides, some browsers will truncate the tool tip.

Some Possible Good Uses

Title attribute can be used to add descriptive text to links. This could be a situation where the link text does not  give the destination. Then the title attribute might provide that tidbit of info.  This can be useful for users not in the habit of checking the destination url in the status line of their browser.

This could also be used to provide additional information for an image. Remembering that the alt attribute is used with screen readers in mind, it is possible that something like a date which would not be essential for the alt attribute could go in the title attribute.

Another, and perhaps most productive, use of the title attribute is on input elements in a form. You can use the title attribute to explain to your visitors what the intended purpose of an input field in a form is.

Summary

"Could be used," "might be useful," or "allowed" are not stellar recommendations to bother with the title attribute. My opinion is that proper generation of page content and proper use of the alt attribute handle the situation nicely.

Since the title attribute does nothing for SEO (at the moment), I suggest to just ignore it. Later when we find out it was the secret, most important attribute on the page we can lament our choice to ignore it. But until then, I think I'll just concentrate on other matters.

Image Alt Attribute

There is much confusion about the proper use of the alt attribute. The first confusion is reference to the alt attribute as the alt tag. This is more or less okay, but..... if you do a google search on alt attribute you will get results that are generated by more knowledgeable writers. So, while it is okay to use alt tag it would be better to at least know the proper term. If for no other reason when you see alt attribute used in an article you will know that they are talking about your good old friend alt tag. :)

Before we talk about the more philosophical aspects of the alt attribute let's get right to the meat of the matter.

Proper-ish Use of Alt Attribute

1. You must use an alt attribute on images.
2. It may not be used for any element other than img, area, and input. For our purposes just concern yourself with the img element. And know you may not use alt on tables, href links, or anything else.
3. Use the alt attribute to provide text for visitors who can’t see the images in your document.
4. For decorative/style images, use alt="" instead of irrelevant text such as "red line", "spacer", etc.
5. If the image contains text then use alt="that text". If the image is company logo such as Galaxy Website Design  then use alt="Galaxy Website Design".
6. Alt attribute is not for tool tips. It does not (or at least should not) work that way.
7. Remember the alt attribute is a substitute for those who cannot see the image for one reason or another. 

When & Why is Alt Attribute Displayed

The alt attribute is displayed when the image is not. The alt attribute is literally the alternative to the image.

Reasons for seeing alt text:

• Viewer is visually handicapped and is using a screen reader.
• Viewer has image download turned off by choice.
• Viewer is using slow connection.

First and foremost consider that the alt text is being used by screen readers. So be compassionate. The alt attribute is NOT the place to do keyword stuffing. Please have mercy on those using screen reader software.

Some people look at webpages with image download turned off by choice. Therefore they will see the alt text. They may have turned of image download for any one of many valid (and/or invalid) reasons. The choice was theirs. The alt text should make sense for these folks. You can turn off image download in your browser to see what this looks like. If you are a stuffer, hopefully you will be suitably shamed into better alt attribute behavior after looking at your pages in this fashion.

For those will slow internet connections, they will see the alt text temporarily while the image is being downloaded. When my broadband is acting more like narrowband dial-up, I will often see the alt text on the page while waiting for the image to download.

Alt Attribute Use Summary

1. Alt-text is required for all images.
2. If the image is active (link, button, area) the text alternative is the function of the image;
3. If the image is not active but conveys information, the text alternative conveys the same information;
4. If the image is redundant or conveys no information use alt="" for the text alternative.
5. If the image is text then the alt-text should (usually) be the same as the text in the image.
6. Make it as short as possible, but as long as necessary

Some Reference Links

• 456 Berea Street -- The Alt And Title Attributes
• Jim Thatcher -- Text Alternatives for Images.