Link building is hugely important in promoting your website because relevant links increase authority of your site. As authority goes up, so do your search engine rankings. Not all links are created equal. Some have “nofollow” attribute, some “dofollow”.
“dofollow” links are generally better because they pass Google Juice to the site they are linking too. The more Google Juice flows your way, the higher authority your site gets when it comes to search ranking. More about what Google Juice is.
“nofollow” links are still great to have but less desirable because they don’t let the Google Juice flow through. Nonetheless, “nofollow” links add balance and should definitely be part of your link building strategy.
Most of the links today are “nofollow” because site owners don’t want to let go of the Juice from their site. At the same time there’s the whole “dofollow” movement happening… But this is a totally different post about Social Media, Sharing and Value transfer…
To conclude this post, here’s a list of useful resources to find sites with “dofollow” links:
This week was definitely full of events, meetings and talks. I even missed a couple of interesting engagements. The “Google product innovation in Canada” event at Mount Royal University was one of the events I attended and it did stick with me.
The event took place at the Bissett School of Business on MRU’s campus. It was a great good networking opportunity. The room was full at about 70 people capacity. As they say, “when Google talks, you listen”. Yes, it was a promo event to get students excited about Google products and potentially interest them to seek careers at Google Waterloo. However, there were a few things that I found valuable in terms of organizational development and digital workplace.
- Google doesn’t hire experts. It hires personalities. Be ambitious, creative and wanting to change the world… and you are pretty much in.
- Google Waterloo is a fun place of over 100 people. The office was originally opened up for mobile development purposes. Over time projects grew and now one of the key initiatives is Chrome OS.
- According to the two presenters (Alex Coman, Software Engineer and Steven Woods, Director at Waterloo) Google has no traditional hierarchy. The initiative is coming from bottom up, which makes it an engineer driven company.
The event was put together by Google, MRU and Alex Bruton, Professor of Entrepreneurship at MRU. Many big thanks to presenters and organizers. This was certainly a valuable event to attend.
Just read an article by WebProNews called “Google reveals factors for ranking tweets“. Below is a few key points and a bit of reflection.
Bing on the number of followers
Here’s what Bing said on the matter: “If someone has a lot of followers, his/her Tweet may get ranked higher. If a tweet is exactly the same as other Tweets, it will get ranked lower”. But it’s not just about how many followers you get. It’s about how reputable those followers are. In other words if I have a lot of spammers following me, it’s bad. If Oprah follows me, I’m good ;).
Google on real-time rankings
According to WebProNews Google’s real-time ranking system is similar to its link-popularity system. As in the case with Bing, the more authority your followers have, the more authority is transfered to you and your tweets.
Here’s a quick note for those who over-uses hashtags. According to the article, hashtags are considered spam-y by Google. So refrain from using them too much. I was actually going to write a whitepaper on the Art of using Hashtags. Now I’ll have to wait until I know more on the matter. I’m sure hashtags are here to stay, they are fulfilling a purpose. It’s just the matter of balancing and using them properly.
Real-time search going forward
Both Google and Twitter teams collaborate on real-time search and there’s still much to do. The key is to understand that they strive for relevancy of real-time search results. Link-popularity analogy is another great lesson. And although we’ve been talking about Twitter = “real-time search”, it’s not the only source of real-time data. More on real-time search on Google.
A few weeks ago a friend of mine asked me questions about linkedin.com and how I benefited by using it so far. I have been meaning to respond to her questions but didn’t have a chance to do it. Now, I realized that this information may be useful for other people too, hence I’m sharing it here.
Below is an overview of a few useful features on linkedin.com that I’ve benefited by since I first started using it.
- One place for your resume
- To connect with colleagues, past and present
- To discover new connections
- To join groups of similar interests
- To help people solve problems
- To stay up to date with your network
- To recommend and get recommended
- To look for jobs and apply for jobs
- Search visibility and personal branding
Facts from Guy Kawasaki on the subject:
- People with more than twenty connections are thirty-four times more likely to be approached with a job opportunity than people with less than five.
- The average number for Harvard Business School grads is fifty-eight, so you could skip the MBA, work at Google, and probably get most of the connections you need. Later, you can hire Harvard MBAs to prepare your income taxes.
- All 500 of the Fortune 500 are represented in LinkedIn. In fact, 499 of them are represented by director-level and above employees.
- The average number of LinkedIn connections for people who work at Google is forty-seven.
Let’s connect!