The idea was to, first, know what I’m getting myself into and, secondly, devise a plan of how to improve their SEO.

After some research online I came across quite a few SEO templates, including this Pre SEO Report template from Thats SEO.

It’s very simple, but perfect for presenting to clients as an initial benchmark. Using Mac’s Pages I built a PDF document that also included the site’s top ten terms and their current rankings for Google and Yahoo!

I actually lost the black hat stuff, as I didn’t think that was neccesary, and instead included Alexa, Compete and Page Ranks.

No feedback as yet from the client, but I think this is going to be great in a few months when I can look back on the progress we’ve made.

I’m very confident with this client as it’s quite obvious what needs to be done, and there are plenty of sites in Alaska offering links. They’ve also got an awesome URL, which is a great start! I’ll keep you updated!

Perhaps you’ve also found that your crawl rate is lower than it has been, and only a small portion of your site is indexed?

This was the case with Super Free Bingo – a site that I manage SEO strategies for. While our team spends a lot of time off-site generating new links, and creating new content on-site, all those great bingo stories that were written two years ago are were sitting unused and not indexed!

Time to up the crawl rate!

How to get the bots back to your old content? Change it. Make it new old content.

(Note: I am not suggesting you change the date – just update the content)

The idea is simple: if the bots are revisiting your old content, they’re going to discover all those keywords and interlinks. They’re also going to visit you more often to keep up with your changes. The more you update, the more they index. The more they index, the more chance you have of ranking for major keywords and longtail keyphrases.

Add new content

Add new content to your old blog posts: an “Update: …” line fits in well, or perhaps something like “Read about the developments here …” and link to a new post.

Change the location

Wordpress is gold: it will automatically redirect a post from the old URL to the new URL. This means that if you change the URL, any links to your old posts should redirect. You probably also know more about how to optimise your URLs with keywords now than you did two years ago!

I wouldn’t go over the top with this practice, but it does help. As well as refreshing the page to the bots, it also refreshes the archive pages (category and link pages) that link to it – bringing these to attention, and all the pages linked from them.

In the same way, you can also change the blog category. Great for spring-cleaning also!

Link to old content

Point the bots to all your new changes and wait for a spike in your crawl rate and, hopefully, your rankings!

In practice

How do I know this works? About a month ago I tested two different bingo operators on Super Free Bingo.

For one operator, Littlewoods Bingo, I did nothing but edit old stories related to the Littlewoods page. I probably edited / updated 50 posts or so over a period of one to two weeks. At the same time I pinged Technorati and other services, and, briefly, manually-increased the site’s crawl rate in Google Webmasters so that the bots would find these changes.

For another operator, Posh Bingo, I focused on generating new links to the page itself, and to the old stories. The idea was that the bots would revisit the old pages after finding the new links to them. All of these links were from other bingo blogs.

Results

At the beginning of the test, both operators were at the top of the third page for their respective terms on Google.co.uk.

The Littlewoods Bingo page then slowly climbed its way to the first page and is now quite steady at 6th or 7th result.

Posh Bingo actually fell away, and the site’s Posh Bingo page is now ranked on the fourth page – losing a whole page!

SEO isn’t just about LINKS

As you can see! Re-use your old content and reap the benefits! By keeping your site fresh and active, you’ll keep the bots there discovering your keywords, content and interlinks. Hopefully you’ll then see results like I did!

Update: this is now working quite well again for a highly-competitive new bingo site – Red Bus Bingo. Of course, this is such a competitive term that this practice is really only going to be useful when combined with many other tactics.

What is it?

Automatic Backlinks is what it says: a platform to generate backlinks automatically. By placing a code on your site (it’s available for html, php, asp, and some CMS) you automatically post links on your site from other bloggers. This earns you link credit, which you can spend by placing links on other websites.

How much?

Free. However, if you don’t want to place links to Cottages in Italy on your website about Bottled Water, you can purchase a link credit subscription. See the site for info on how much you get per link credit / US dollar. It starts at $1USD = 1PR link, but gets cheaper as it goes higher.

How’s the quality?

If you really don’t care for quality (ie, you’re working on getting mass links – like 20k+), or you just don’t know any better, Automatic Backlinks really is automatic. However – if you don’t want your link to an English site on a page in Swedish with 50 outgoing links and no content – then it’s going to require some attention.

Personally I use Automatic Backlinks for one client requiring a tonne of quality links. As long as I check each new link generated, it’s perfect. It does mean removing about 10-20% of the links generated, but the platform responds well: you can opt to not receive links from that site again, etc.

Note: this type of link-building is always being penalised by Google so only, only, partake in the practice alongside other more organic SEO initiatives.

The platform allows you to filter by page rank, language, site category, and number of outgoing links (only those managed through Automatic Backlinks), though as always: there are plenty of scammers that fake page rank or categorise incorrectly.

All the same, this is a great option for small- to mid-sized bloggers that want to begin exchanging links through an easy-to-use platform.

As with any online trend it didn’t take long for the spammers to curb the opportunities available to more genuine sites looking to build relevant links and, for that matter, for dofollow etiquette to evolve.

First things first… You have to find dofollow blogs!

Here’s a great article on finding blogs, and some dofollow blog search enginges -

DoFollow Diver – one of the best that I use regularly. Searches for specific posts containing your keyword.

Follow List – a categorised list of follow blogs.

600 DoFollow Blogs – many of these are no longer dofollow, though there are still some great finds.

Search for something relevant to the site you are promoting – the context of your link will be much higher quality, and you have a far better chance of having your comment approved. Also – you might just stumble across a good blog or post.

Some tips to get your comments approved on dofollow blogs:

1. Set up a profile page

Instead of using free poker as your comment name, make a profile page on your own site under your own or another name. Use this as your comment name and your comments will seem far more justified.

This is hugely important if you’re building links for an affiliate, sales or gambling site. Many sites won’t be approving comments from free poker, but they might from Tony B that links to freepoker.com/tony-b/

Make this an actual profile page with contact details, interests and maybe even a photo – depending on what suits your site.

As the saying goes, the rising tide will float the whole ship – so getting links to this one page will help your whole site.

To get the most worth out of the profile page, you can funnel your page rank by placing nofollow on any link on this page that is not highly important.

2. Monitor your comments

It can pay to know which sites have approved your comments – you can then return and submit more comments linking to other sites in your network or client-list.

Using Yahoo Site Explorer is probably the easiest way, because you can be assured that these pages are also indexed (having an approved comment on a page that isn’t indexed isn’t too helpful).

Simply search for the domain or page you are using as your comment URL and then look at the incoming links.

Returning to blogs to re-comment is also promoting the use of dofollow plugins and it keeps webmasters happy – which means more dofollow blogs in the future and more link juice. That is, if you are posting relevant, non-spammy comments to begin with.

3. Ping dofollow posts

If you’re having trouble getting your comments approved, try pinging posts on dofollow blogs by linking to them. If trackbacks are enabled on the dofollow blog, the link to your post will appear as a comment on their post.

As this gives their post credibility, as well as a fresh link, the webmaster is far more likely to approve your comment.

Remember, this is all about quality. It should go without saying that the above tips are all on the premise that you are posting relevant comments, have read the articles you are commenting on and are not promoting something ridiculous.

I’ve been wanting to use this domain for some time, mostly to document my learnings and experiments in SEO, as well as a base for other resources, trends and ideas that I come across.

I don’t at all claim to be an SEO expert – I am SEO is just a term I often read in link requests, and one I thought fitting. I am still learning, experimenting and continually looking for new ideas and practices to test.

All the same, this isn’t about speaking into the mirror, so I hope there is something that here that you find interesting or can learn from.