I’ll be completely honest, a year ago when I heard that a friend’s wife had breast cancer, I wasn’t worried. She is a young girl and they found the cancer early, she is so full of life there is no way cancer would claim her life. My grandmother is in her seventies and battled cancer in the 1980’s and lives today, my friends wife should have nothing to worry about. Sadly I was so wrong.

I feel guilt that I wasn’t concerned a year ago. I feel anger that a person so young can still be claimed by a disease that so many in this nation overcome. I feel so much pain for my friend and his children, how can a mother with two small babies die? I feel so deeply about this horrible tragedy that my life feels like it’s flipped upside down.

When I stop and think about the events over the past few weeks, I just start crying, I get extremely emotional and upset. I picture myself in the shoes of my friend’s wife and think what would I do if I only had a few weeks to live? That answer is so obvious; I would spend every second with my children. When I’m home from work I spend as much time with my children as I can, I can’t waste one second working on freelance work or keeping up with Sweet Rock Media. I find myself writing little love notes to my children in their coloring books, working on scrapbooks and taking more photos. My husband and I have invested in life insurance policies in case something should happen to either of us. I’ve even started running on a regular basis, eating more healthy foods and taking a multi vitamin daily.

I know that in a few weeks when the initial shock and numbness of this tragedy start to fade I’ll be back to writing more frequently about SEO and internet marketing news. I’ll be back to working on freelance jobs and starting more personal projects.

In the mean time, I urge everyone to stay healthy and follow this link and Click to Give!
http://www.thebreastcancersite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=2

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Aside from coming out and bluntly saying, “This website is horrid!” I will usually stumble onto the topic with something simple and respectful like, “SEO will increase the number of visitors on your site, you may want to take into consideration the user experience and possibly upgrade the design of the site.” or “Updating your website and making it more modern may help to increase conversions by giving it a more official and authoritative look.”

Unfortunately for cyberspace most clients don’t take my advise or put off a quality redesign adding to what I refer to as “Cyber Smog” or “Pollution of the Internet”. Oddly enough, the paycheck at the end of the day does make me feel a little better

Recently a Google Designer actually stepped forward saying that the Google Logo is ugly and looks childish. See the whole story here: http://valleywag.com/365568/google-designer-company-logo-ugly-childish.

I guess if Google doesn’t care about the “Cyber Smog” they create, why should anybody else?? (Unless you actually care about the image of your business, capturing the most conversions possible and your not the largest search engine on the planet!)

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I worked on this particular project while working at Fathom SEO; the examples were going into a power point presentation to show at a SEO conference of what not to do when optimizing your website or something along those lines. I never realized how hard it was to find sites using spam techniques like white text on white background, spam in alt text or spam in div tags because it’s been a pretty well known fact these techniques will clearly get you banned from major search engines. Typically we run and hide from sites that do this type of stuff let alone grab the URL and dig around in the source code.

Seeking sites using spam techniques like doorway pages and hidden text was like searching for the ghetto of the internet and taking a stroll downtown. I couldn’t help but feel completely venerable while pills, porn and poker popped up constantly, somehow unable to be blocked by Explorer and the Google toolbar.

Since that project I have a hard time just ignoring good example of spam. Here are a few sites that I’ve run across lately that I took note of, enjoy!

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Here are a few really great ways to build quality backlinks to your website that are natural and not forced or unethical in any way.

1. Writing Articles
   Writing articles that describe your products or services. Articles can cover many different topics that relate to your business including launching a new product, how the current market conditions are affecting the state of your industry, seasonal changes within your business, announcing new promotions and sales. You know your services the best, crafting a 1 page article should be no sweat be sure to include the URL back to your website with your target keywords as your anchor text. Take advantage of the “Author” section when submitting articles, include your URL in that area as well.The next step is distribution of your article. I typically submit articles to Ezine Articles, Search Warp, Electric Articles and other free article submission sites. You can expect to pay a fee for submitting articles that contain backlinks, but it’s totally worth it.
2. Writing Press Releases
   I recommend to all of my clients crafting press releases and distributing them through PR Web and other press release distribution services. Paying the fees to include backlinks is very important, just like for article submissions, be sure that you use your targeted keywords as your backlink if possible.
3. Crafting & Sending Testimonials
   There are products and services your business uses everyday and you never realize what a powerful impact they have on the success of your company. An example may be the accounting software you use, the payroll company you use, the author of the last eBook you purchased, your web developer, your landscaping company and the list goes on. Take some time to think about what products and services you use regularly and sit down to craft a few email testimonials. Remember to include your URL when signing the letter. You never know how many of these will actually end up on another website.
4. Local Directory Submissions
   Submitting your website to Google Maps, Yahoo Local, Yellow Pages and other local directories are great sources for backlinks all companies can take advantage of. To find local directories servicing your area you can search Google for, “Your State + Directory” and “Your City + Directory”.
5. SEO Friendly Directory Submissions
   It’s always best to find directories to submit your website to that are SEO friendly and that relate to your industry. I recommend finding industry related websites by searching Google by “Industry + Directory”, “Industry
   + Add URL”, “Industry + Submit Site” and other variations similar to this. I typically only submit to directories that have a Google Page Rank on the main page of the directory and they don’t look spammy with hidden text or the same site listed over and over again or other questionable tactics.Though they are not very authoritative backlinks, general business directories are a easy ethical way to generate backlinks to any site quickly. General business directories can be found at www.DirectoryCritic.com thousands of them! Be careful they are not all search engine friendly, so make sure you check them out before submitting and make sure you submit to the category that your business best fits into.Whenever possible, use your targeted keywords as anchor text when submitting to directories, not all directories will allow this, but most of them will.

These are just 5 ways to building your sites link popularity through ethical practices. Check back for more later.

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The video suggest spamming social media sites and submitting the homepage of your site to Digg, Stumble Upon and a ton of other social media sites. This is the worst way to build backlinks I can think of! It’s no wonder there are so many junk sites ruining social media with advise like that.

When making submissions to social media sites you should be submitting interesting articles and posts, not your homepage. This is direct abuse social media!

Michelle’s next recommendation is to search for industry related blogs and forums and add comments while using keywords instead of your name when you post so it links back to you site. Michelle also recommends actually placing your keywords as anchor text within the comments and adding links that way. I about pulled my hair out when I heard this. It’s ok to do this when its relevant and you are naturally reading other blogs and making comments. I would never advise somebody to use their anchor text to replace their name when commenting. This is pure spam! Blog and Forum Spam in it’s finest! Not to mention most blogs and forums are now no-following most of the links. This is a huge wast of time!

All of Michelle MacPhearson’s recommendation for building backlins are horrible and I do not recommend anyone watch her videos, this advise gives SEO’s a real bad name.

I have tons of ideas and methods for building links naturally to your website, none of them include spamming the blogosphere or social media sites. Check back tomorrow for some good tips, but beware - it’s going to take longer than 30 minutes!

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How about a Digg like social media site for health and fitness news?

Today FatManUnleashed.com announced HealthRanker.com, a social media outlet specifically for health and fitness news.

The website works very similarly to Digg and other social media websites where users cast votes for the articles and stories that interest them the most. Articles that are most popular get higher rankings.

HealthRanker.com is filling a gap in health news on the internet. Until now the most common sites used for researching health related topics were static websites such as WebMD which hosts articles sometimes years old. HealthRanker.com delivers the most up to date information and health news as stories and articles are hours old.

HealthRanker.com is sure to be a hot spot on the internet for health and nutrition buffs as well as a destination for the occasional visitor who searches for up to date information on health and fitness related news.

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It’s been just three months and I am realizing how I have failed miserably at writing at least once a day.  It’s not that there hasn’t been any good news in the search engine marketing industry, because there has been a ton of interesting things happening.  Microsoft offers to purchase Yahoo, Google’s offer to help Yahoo, Yahoo turns down Microsoft’s offer of $46 billion and that’s just one current event happening in in search over the past week or so.  There are literally at least a dozen other happenings in this industry I have not added to the site.

I honestly have gotten to the point where I am seriously working too much. And I seriously need to make Sweet Rock Media my career.

By making Sweet Rock Media my career, I need to ditch my full time in house SEO gig and bulk up on my own client base to the point where I can support myself soley from this website.

This Freelance SEO needs your help!

I need clients!  Any referrals are greatly appreciated!

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