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Considering how difficult it can be to garner those highly desirable links, it only makes sense to do everything possible to squeeze every ounce of value from them. You want your links on relevant pages and they need to appear as natural as possible. Overlooking or ignoring this may not hurt your campaign but you will not get the maximum value out of your links.

For now I’d like to focus on the natural appearance aspect. Jim has a recent post that addresses this well. He notes that for years SEOs have known that the text surrounding links is important, but rarely is it utilized. Personally, I think that this technique is being utilized, just not properly or to its full potential.

The thing to remember is that creativity is the key. Link building can be monotonous and it’s easy to get lazy and bored, but every time you submit to a directory or trade links, try to use different link text and descriptions. It may take a little more effort but that extra ten percent can be the difference between first and second place.

In one of my earlier posts, 4 Great Techniques For Optimizing Dynamic Websites, I mentioned a couple of techniques for configuring Apache and Cold Fusion Servers to create search engine friendly URL’s. I did not, however, give any advice for configuring Microsoft IIS and ASP to create friendly URL’s on dynamic websites.

So, after a number of questions and comments from IIS and ASP users, I’ve decided to redeem myself with the following list of URL rewriting tools.

1. ISAPI Rewrite
2. IIS Rewrite
3. XQASP
4. Portal Page Filter

Most of these come with a reasonable fee, but they are well worth it. I suggest learning about each one before making your decision, because they all have slightly different features.
Failing to mention solutions for IIS and ASP was a big mistake on my part, since I tend to reiterate the importance of good URL’s, and one of my recent projects, Affordable Tradeshows, has served as a reminder. It was ranking well before it was launched, and its rankings were due only to on page factors.

Good Luck
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When discussing link building, the conversation always seems to focus on writing articles, press releases, blogs, useful content (good text, free tools, etc..), and other tricks, but what about advertorials? I haven’t heard mention of this term in a while so I feel obligated to remind everyone of the power advertorials posses.

According to Wikipedia, these text versions of infomercials have been around since the 60’s, but they were made popular by Mobil Oil during the 1970’s oil shortage, as a way to advertise the company’s opinion (to the unhappy public) through editorials. Mobil’s advertorials were very successful and they have remained powerful advertising tools to this day.

I have used them for some time and I can attest to their value. A good writer can create advertorials that will not only promote your products but also generate backlinks. They give you the most bang for your buck, and your readers will be more receptive when the advertisement looks like a credible editorial. It’s a win win situation.

If you are curious as to how to write these, a simple web search will usually generate some good examples, and if you are looking for someone else to write your advertorials, there are companies, like Comit Technologies, that provide this service.

I‘ve never questioned the relevance of textbook SEO practices, but evidently there are others in the search engine optimization world who are curious about whether are not they should concern themselves with basic textbook SEO.

A recent thread on the Cre8site forum poses the question, “Is Textbook SEO dead?”, and most of the participants in the discussion seem to agree that the dynamic state of SEO has made on page factors less critical.

My response to this question would have to be a definite, no. Textbook SEO is not, and never will be dead. The power of textbook SEO (spider friendly code, etc…) is relative to your level of competition. Naturally, high levels of competition will lower the effectiveness of your on page factors but that doesn’t suggest bypassing this step in the optimization formula. The goal of most search engines is to rank websites based on content validity and user engagement (Google can measure user engagement!). This would, of course, dictate a focus primarily on content rather than code, but the content still has to be easily crawled.

Frequently, I get SEO clients who are in markets with relatively low levels of competition (micro niche markets or local search) and usually textbook SEO, alone, will improve their rankings.

Then there are the clients, who have mature websites with a respectable amount of backlinks that cannot figure out why they rank poorly on the SERP’s. For these clients, I always look at their code first before analyzing any other part of their website. It only takes a glance to determine if they have failed to address basic SEO coding practices. Only after the code is analyzed, do I look for other areas where they may be getting penalized (duplicate content, hidden text, sharing an IP address with spammers, etc…).

Think of textbook SEO as the first piece of the puzzle. It may not be as important, but it is a piece nonetheless.

Anyone interested in textbook SEO should check out Aaron Wall’s SEO Book. It is a great SEO resource.