We have the honor today to be able to ask some questions to D. McGonagle who has been an active contributor in link building strategies for some time now. This is a great oppurtunity for us all to get an extra perspective on SEO, so let’s get this kicked off with the first Q and see what he has to say!

Daniel how do you think nofollow is valued these days when getting external links to a site, is it just Google propaganda ( did it become obsolete) or..?

Nofollow links get followed (sort of), they just pass less “link juice” along towards it’s target URLS.  These types of links show up in backlink checker tools which is an easy way to disprove this whole idea of Nofollow links being totally worthless. They’re not…

I know there’s a lot of focus on obtaining Dofollow backlinks but what many people don’t realize about this “quest” for Dofollow backlinks is that many Web 2.0 sites that used to be nofollow turned their sites over to Nofollow attributes, so why bother with this narrow-minded focus on certain attributes (follow, nofollow, dofollow)

Many of the blog commenting and blog-finder tools out there on the market today focus solely on finding Dofollow backlinks, but many of these dofollow comments-allowed sites are not moderated with care, and they also already have a lot of comments on those pages/URLs.  And when there’s a lot of comments on a page, there’s naturally a lot of outbound links on that page as well, which means there’s less “link juice” to be obtained from these types of places to comment on/leave backlinks at.

We all know you maintain one of the more respected blogs on SEO “linkvanareviews”, but actually how Did you get enrolled or passioned about  the SEo industry and further how did you manage to keep your head above water in such a fiercily competitive niche for such a long time?

Ah, well first of all, thanks for the voice of approval for the site, it’s appreciated!
About 13-14 months ago at the time of this writing I hired a business consultant/coach to help me streamline my marketing processes a bit better.  At that time I didn’t know what a backlinks was, or how it would get me traffic, I was a total SEO newbie at that time as you can probably imagine.
But I’d always had a business model centered around, but not totally reliant upon, doing product reviews. As you mentioned earlier my site is called linkvanareviews.com and it was originally set up to just be a review site espousing the benefits of the LinkVana product/service. But as things progressed, the site turned into more than just a product review site.  As I learned more about link building and SEO I felt like I had to write about it, so the site started to morph into an SEO/link building blog.
Then I started to review other link building services and products and revealed my test results, good or bad and the site became part review site/part SEO-link building blog as more and more content got added.
NOTE: When most people build review sites they only list the good products, or rather… their sites are only filled with products they recommend, and more often than not, the typical review site recommends EVERYTHING.  That’s not a good way to go with a review site/ review site business model in my opinion because there’s no trust established there for the site visitors.  When a review site has the atmosphere that everything is a “must-have, “gotta get this” mentality, there really isn’t any real vlaue being provided to the readers.  You build trust when you do NOT recommend certain products and services and this leads to readers becoming loyal and more trusting.
So as time went on, my readers asked for more reviews on more products and services and the site grew naturally, based on user feedback. However, along the way I learned some link building strategies of my own and wrote about those on the blog as well.
So, to answer your question I got impassioned about SEO and link building by a consultant who told me that list building wasn’t the only way to increase sales and market share.
As far as attaining backlinks and top rankings in a tough niche like link building, well, I had the benefit of trying many different services and being very analytical about how I would use them and how I would share the results.  Over time, this led to getting a wide variety of backlinks from myriad sources to my link building blog and various other sites I own.

Thanks, that is indeed enlightening and should provide a guide for those willing to venture into this. What advice can you give people on doing SEO after the recent Google Caffeine update, what changes where made in the SEO landscape and how do we deal with them more effectively?

Well, the Caffeine update was supposed ot change a lot of things in the SEO landscape.  Blog ocmments are supposedly devalued now, poor quality links are supposedly going to hurt sites more than help or just be ineffective, LSI was supposed to be more important, and it seems that more than ever, keyword-rich domain names are supposed to be more heavily favore din the SERPs, and that backlinks are now more important, more so now than ever before.
One thing that I have seen thus far is a heavy disocunting or outright removla of links form a link profile for inbound links from spun or duplicate articles.  It seems that the search engines are catching on the fact that there’s a lot of web spam content out there, and by web spam I mean poorly written articles that were spun and not totally 100% human readable.
There’s a myth that is quite prevalent in the SEO industry that 30% unique is what will get your articles noticed and indexed and remain as quality backlinks wherever those articles are placed.  Studies I have done show that the % is more like 50-80%.
I’ve seen case studies where blog commenting has produced good results for people on dofollow and Nofollow sites.  I’ve seen keyword rich domains hit page 2 for their terms within a week without backlinks, and I’ve also seen keyword-rich domain names never make it to page 1 or 2 witohut a serious amount of backlinks.
So my point here is that the landscape can change, and algorithms can change, but it’s a far better practice to just experiment and not follow trends or be scared off form certain SEO strategies when they really haven’t proven themsleves to be ineffective (yet)
A lot of people who don’t or won’t try to understand SEO will refer to Google Webmaster guidelines for their SEO knowledge.  While the maxim is true that “if you give the search engines what they want, they’ll love you” it still makes sense to focus on what’s working right now, not what might not work in the near or distant future.
So while all these changes are supposedly tkaing place, there’s one thing that hasn’t really changed; get backlinks from authority site sin your niche for best results.  That maxim will always hold true.

Finally, In what way do you think the search marketing industry, SEO in particular can get away from the Stigma’s “cowboy”, “be rich quick” and “snake oil” labels that so many low quality service providers have caused most all SEO’s to be flamed with the same fire by prejudice?

Ah, good question here.  Well first of all people need to know there’s a difference between SEO and SEM.  SEO is the practice/business of getting better rankings for your websites, whereas SEM, Search Engine Marketing… incorporates a lot more than just on-page and off-page optimization.  So if you want a company that will manage your Pay Per click campaigns and your sites for you, that’s what SEM is for.  SEO is more for getting backlinks and indexed content and getting real results for dollars spent.
In my limited experience with SEO clients, most of them don’t want to take the necessary actions to make their sites more receptive to whatever backlinks you could get for them.  Many clients also don’t have a real solid plan on what they hope to achieve with their sites and/or business model.. no marketing plan, nu real business model, no concrete approach towards achieving their goals.
Now, there ARE some “snake oil” SEO services and companies out there, well… a lot actually, and the reason for this is SEO and SEM is still a big mystery for a lot of people/would-be clients.  It’s easy to promise page one rankings within a week, then deliver those Page ONE “rankings” via PPC ads, and some companies do this.
Other companies use a tactic whereby they already have highly placed SERPs for certain keywords and terms and they rent those spots out to clients and deliver their results quickly, pet impermanently that way…
But the fac tof the matter is, the “average Joe” isn’t the ideal SEO or SEM client because they’re the ones who usually don’t have an offline business that would immediately benefit from online exposure.  But SEO is turning out to the the saving grace for a lot of companies losing market share and overall general sales volume due to competitors who have already “taken the plunge” into hiring an SEO firm, usually with great results and great ROI (return on investment)
The “snake oil” label does exist unfortunately and that’s due to the desperate actions of low-quality SEO firms.  to avoid hiring such a firm, its best to ensure that you’re dealing with a single point of contact who speaks your native language, someone who actually wants to know what your goals are, and is willing to explain how they’re going  to deliver those results for you.
Potential SEO or SEM clients should already have some sort of NEED for these services prior to hiring a firm or company.  I also believe that there should be some concern on the part of the SEO/SEM companies to reject clients based on certain criteria like; their potential client’s business model wouldn’t realize a positive ROI based on those client’s business models.

Thank you for your time and answers Daniel McGonagle of Linkvanareviews.com a link building blog

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily lease-a-seo.com

I’ve been following the SEO industry for long enough to realize the (intentional or unintentional) mistakes the majority of SEOs make most of the time, especially the ones who publish SEO advice. Oh boy, if only we were like the conversion rate guys (who test without mercy). Anyway, let’s get started.

• The industry ALWAYS forget the 80/20 rule

There are over 200 ranking factors Google uses to rank websites. We all know the most important ones…all of them have to do with links. Let’s use the 80/20 rule and suppose that if you focus on the 20% of the ranking factors (all of them have to do with links and maybe a bit of on-page SEO) contribute to 80% of the SERPs.

Then, tell me, why blogs like Search Engine Land dedicate less than 10% of their content to providing advice for link building (articles dedicated to that topic, not an article that just mentions link building)? If you go to their website you’ll see that a very small percentage of their front page is dedicated to the science and art of building links.

I think this gives beginners a wrong perspective. If you see a typical SEO blog where there is very little information on building links, you’ll think it’s not that big of a deal. The solution? Most SEO leaders should provide more valuable content on this crucial topic.

• The industry is full with untested ‘theories’

It’s a shame they even call them ‘theories’. Most SEO ‘theories’ are just untested hypotheses (assumptions) about how Google or other search engines rank websites. It’s really amazing how little those guys know how to properly test stuff. The only exception I know of is SEOMoz (referring to this and this).
The solution is for the SEO leaders to START TESTING (if you don’t know how, contact the SEOMoz guys and ask them to show you the methodology). I know it’s expensive – but if you REALLY want to stand out and contribute real value, it’s the way to go.

• The industry overrates SEO

Well, this is true for all industries really. If you read enough articles on SEO, you’ll probably think it is THE most important thing for your online business. In reality, it’s just a part of the marketing mix. You have social media (unsurprisingly, social media guys also tell social media is THE most important thing ), overall traffic building (even if the links don’t bring any SEO value) and so on.
This process of overrating SEO leads to statements like ‘SEO is dead’ (like SEO is a person so it’s either alive or dead.) SEO is just a term describing a collection of practices designed with a purpose to rank higher in the search engines. And the chances are, as long as search engines exist in the present form of ranking 10+ sites on a page, there will always be someone out there figuring how to get to the #1 position.

• The industry is full with a bunch of hypocrites

In the world of SEO, where most advice is a bunch of untested hypotheses, people love to claim their ‘how-to articles’ are must-read, ESSENTIAL and so on. And who can blame them, most of them haven’t got a clue about proper science and testing (ironically, many of them advise us to TEST but don’t show us how.)

Again, Search Engine Land, on their front page writes: “Must read news about Search Marketing & Search Engines”. Must read? Really? What do they have to support that claim?

Maybe we should introduce disclaimers for the SEO industry like they did for the affiliate industry where you put that the advice is:

• The advice is of informational nature and it is untested and doesn’t guarantee the reader will get the results promised in the headline

Ironically, this thing is mostly being said by the guys who test…for example, in their tests with linkscape, SEOMoz is trying to always tell their tests are never perfect and most of the results are correlations, and correlation does not imply causation. They don’t just name their posts like “The Ultimate Guide to Getting on #1 of SERPs”

I’m glad there are some rare exceptions who start to share some quality advice but there is a long time before the majority of the industry gets to that standard.