Is one “good” link from an important site worth ten links from lesser sites? Ah, if it were only that quantifiable. In Garbage SEO. Just What the Doctor Ordered!, a short tale from the E-Marketing Performance blog, the author reports some unexpected benefits from seemingly lower quality links. Which just goes to show the danger of trusting in perceived wisdom.

Link building is the single most important activity you should be undertaking to promote your web site. Sure, you can sort out the “on page” search engine optimisation, and you should be ensuring your site has a good structure, and you should be looking at external advertising. But link building should be your first priority.

The trouble is, link building is difficult. What’s more, there’s no obvious technique to learn. The most thought-provoking posts on the subject are like this one from the SEO Theory and Analysis blog: Why your link-building techniques suck seems to suggest that every method of link-building can be rubbish, but it still may be your best approach. Which all goes to show how complicated link building can be. The best approach is to do what you think will work best for you.

Anyway, have a read.

It’s easy to snipe at what Google is doing to the advertising industry, but the more time goes on, the more that sniping sounds like you’ve been beaten. Soundly. In All Your Ads Belong To The Goog from the Bruceclay.com blog, Lisa Barone summarises it beuatifully: “It’s scary to see Google take complete control over the advertising world like this. Now, not only are they selling you ads, giving you tools to see how those ads convert and make them better, now they’re telling you where to put them. I know; why don’t you just hand Google your advertising budget and let them use it however they’d like? Oh wait. You’re doing that now. Carry on then.”

Well, Google’s decision to release Alexa-like traffic data for (almost) every web site in the universe has caused a lot of people to choke on their bacon sarnies over the past few days. It’s all explained in A New Layer To Google Trends on the Google Webmaster Central blog and I’m sure you’ll have a lot of fun playing with it.

But as Graywolf’s SEO Blog headlines a post, Google’s Two Tiered Internet World Sinks to a New Low. Not everyone is completely happy. Expect to hear more about this one.

As I mentioned yesterday, offering free stuff on your web site drags people in (and, if it’s the right free stuff, drags the right people in). But it shouldn’t end there. Once they’ve signed up for your teaser, reel them in! As the post Don’t Give Up Without A Fight in the B2B Marketing ROI blog comments, “there is no reason to have your ‘thank you message’ consist of nothing but a thank you. Encourage your prospects to continue the interaction by offering up additional opportunities for them to explore your company…”

Creat a useful tool or resource on your website and watch the world sign up to get it - and join your promotional list at the same time. It’s an increasingly common technique, because it’s a very good one. So thanks to the B2Bad Marketing blog amongst others for pointing out HubSpot Internet Marketing’s Press Release Grader in its Cool PR Tool post. Have fun playing with that one. And join their mailing list!

In marketing, not being able to see the wood for the trees is our worst enemy. Today’s article is no quick fix to this - in fact, it’s quite a challenging read. But do find the time to think about See Like An Outsider In 3 Not-So-Easy (But Worth It) Steps from Future Now’s Marketing Optimization Blog because it really could get you thinking in the right direction.

Here’s a reference to something every site should have: a custom error page. If someone mistypes a URL on your domain, what do they see? That little bit of standard “page not found” text? They wanted to be on your site, so you should be giving them more than that. In An Absolute Pointless Custom 404-Error Page, the E-Marketing Performance blog shows how someone has gone to the effort of creating their own error page, then wasted that effort. Don’t do the same.

If your site doesn’t have a custom error page (type in some garbage after your domain name to see) then it’s time to get one set up.

The SEO Theory and Analysis blog today looks at Trends in SEO link building since 2004 and points you in the direction of Google Trends, an increasingly important tool in keyword research. Apart from directing you towards a better choice of keyword priorities for your site, it can also be used to back up your choice of terminology internally. For example, in my editorial capacity I was long ago required to standardise on “sensor” or “transducer” (yes, I appreciate there’s a difference, but this was in general terms). It’s the sort of discussion which comes up repeatedly in many organisations, particularly when Sales reckons it knows better than Marketing. Now you can put the two terms into Google Trends and if you do, you’ll discover that almost no search engine user in the UK opts for the word “transducer” - which is killer data. We’ll ignore the discussion for now as to why the number of searches for “sensor” is falling!

Many companies are wondering if they should have corporate blogs at the moment - the pressure to present a more human face to customers is spreading from the business-to-consumer sector to our own. In The Opportunities and Challenges of Corporate, Team, and Personal Blogs on Web Strategy by Jeremiah, Jeremiah Owyang discusses the implications. Many companies, such as Autodesk, have let many staff members blog to great effect, building enthusiastic communities amongst customers and hugely increasing the company’s perceived authority. But even relatively small industrial suppliers can take advantage of this new route to market - all it needs is a little commitment.