Diarizing

Should we report this as paid link or just sphinn it?

Running from Camera

A few weeks ago i’ve been in Rome for a meeting. Maybe one day i’ll talk about this meeting, since we discussed a very interesting project, but today i just want to give my link love to the apartment in Trastevere where i stayed.

Trastevere is great because it’s full of life and this apartment is located in a nice small street with a lot of pubs and restaurant.

And there’s even pizzeria Nerone, where you can eat my favourite kind of pizza: pizza with ‘nduja. Yum!

The apartment is very nice (pictures on that page tell you exactly what you will find) and if you need a place to stay in Rome, i really suggest to give it a try. However, i think other accomodations must be as good as the one i tried.

What’s that? A bug or a feature?

Do you know all issues you can have when doing SEO on multi language websites? Or, simply, when you have to do SEO for non english websites?

Don’t think it’s an easy work just because english is more competitive. You could damage your ranking if you don’t take care of language related issues.

I just found out (via Achille) Multilingual SEO Forums, a forum focused on multilanguage websites topic. If you need (or just want, uh) to do SEO on non english websites, keep it in mind.

Judah stumbled upon the open web analytics project and i installed Open Web Analytics as soon as i read his post.

I love open source software (i almost use only open source software). So, it’s been natural to download and install OWA. I just started with it, so there’s not too much i can tell about it at this time, but first impression is very good. Better than i expected.

Open Web Analytics (OWA) is an open source web analytics framework written in PHP. OWA was born out of the need for an open source framework that could be used to easily add web analytics features to web sites and applications. The OWA framework also comes with built-in support for popular web applications such as Wordpress and MediaWiki. As a generic web analytics framework, OWA can be extended to track and analyze any web application.

I’m using OWA on a couple of wordpress blogs, but i’m going to try it as a standalone application (and i want to try it with OsCommerce, of course) as soon as i can. And you should do the same.

Link love is posting a link to sites or blogs, usually unsolicited, that you enjoy, admire, or find useful. (Blogossary)

Sometimes i want to write about something completely unrelated with main topics (search marketing, web analytics, open source, search engine optimization, …). “Link love” is where i can talk about a travel, a restaurant, and so on. And, of course, where i can link websites i think deserve my link. Link love.

If you are looking for a versatile mass mailing software, written in PHP and freely provided under the GPL, you should definitely try poMMo.

Spread it.

Nobody doubts backlinks are very important for SEO. Links are like votes, for search engines, but every vote has a different value. This value depends on many elements and the Pagerank is only one element.

Knowing what makes a link good or not is priceless. These ten tips may worth more than two cents.

1. Quality, not quantity. Remember your run is on quality, not quantity. Stop watching how many links you and your competitors have with link: operator on Google (even asking why Google shows low numbers) and others search engines. You have to see which links your main competitors have, and try to get even better. But looking for quality, not quantity.
2. Anchor. Nobody doubts anchor text is (still, yes) very important. And it works (Googlebombing still works, yes). But don’t focus on a single keyword; try to get different ones.
3. Text around link. A link with text around it looks more natural. Just think about it and you will agree. And don’t forget words give a context to links.
4. In topic. Which one would you prefer for your SEO company website? A link from a popular SEO Guide or a link from a popular food blog? Ok, you got it.
5. Pagerank matters. A bit. When looking for links, many webmasters and SEOs look at the green bar of Pagerank. But that’s just a number. And neither so much accurate and updated. However, if you want to look at Pagerank, look also at number of links on that page. The more the links, the less the Pagerank distributed with every link.
6. No poison words around it (sponsor, adv, etc.). Words like “sponsors”, “advertisers”, “link exchange” and so on are just a way to tell search engines links are not so natural. And they will devaluate those links.
7. Different anchor texts. It’s pretty hard all natural backlinks can use the same anchor text, even if it’s the name of the website. Think how people links Google, for example. This is a perfect example, since surely all of these links are natural (does Google need SEO?). Most of them will have “Google” as anchor text. But maybe someone will use “Google.com”. Or “Mr. G.”. Or “Big G.”. Or “Big Brother”. So, when you can decide anchor text on backlinks, try to use different anchor texts, so that links look natural.
8. Backlink to internal pages. It’s not natural all of backlinks goes to homepage. And it’s not usefull as well. Using another example: you have a website about fruit; if you can have a backlink on a website talking about apple, you should choose a link to your internal page that talks about apple.
9. ODP. Dmoz is the most important directory in the world. So, you should get your link in it. But you can rank well if you are not in it. So, don’t waste your time asking why your site has not been reviewed or when it will be. When your site is done, submit it to ODP and stop thinking about it. Accidently, this is the best way to get your site on Dmoz.
10. Language of pages that link to you. Links pass informations about many things like topic, trust, and language. For example, if you have an italian website, don’t get backlinks from english websites, because your site won’t rank on Google.it (and people won’t look for italian keywords on Google.com).