Paul Teitelman – Toronto SEO Expert & Link Building Freelancer

Brief History and SEO Insights

With close to 4 years of experience I’ve had the opportunity to optimize hundreds of websites and achieve great rankings for clients across many different verticals and niches. I’ve successfully executed SEO and link building campaigns for some of the largest brands & Fortune 500 companies, while also servicing small to mid size businesses just as well. Throughout my years I’ve been able to achieve first page (and hundreds of #1 positions) results for extremely competitive keywords on both Google.com and Google.ca, but can’t disclose specific results or clients publicly, however check out my rankings for any of these extremely competitive and job specific keywords and you’ll quickly see I’m the real deal:

• SEO expert
• Link building expert
• SEO expert Toronto
• Toronto SEO expert
• SEO Toronto
• SEO consultant
• SEO freelancer

My philosophy about search engine optimization and link building is pretty simple, the key to any successful SEO program is based on a multitude of factors, but at the end of the day it always comes down to a combination of two major components.

The first is on page optimization, so basic techniques like making sure you have the proper keywords in the title tags, meta descriptions, page content and other places. There’s some other additional strategies you can use but at the end of the day on page optimization, which really only accounts for about 25% – 30% of the entire search engine ranking algorithm, will initially set your site up for success in the search engine rankings, but the key component that is going to get your site to rank above others site (who are just as well optimized from an on page perspective) is an effective link building program.

Link building is the process of building backlinks (or inbound links) from other authoritative sites such as blogs, article sites, directories, forums, video sharing sites, etc. etc. Each backlink kind of gets recognized as a vote of popularity in the eyes of the search engines, and each is weighed differently according to a long list of metrics that make up Google’s ranking algorithm. So the more authoritative, niche relevant backlinks you build over time which focus on promoting both your targeted keywords as well as your corporate or business brand, the higher you will in turn rank for the keywords you are targeting with your SEO/link building campaign.

SERVICES

Let me start off by saying I absolutely love link building and am extremely passionate about my profession as an SEO freelancer. The search engines are always changing and link building is constantly evolving so it’s an exciting time to be part of such a booming industry. I specialize in offering affordable and highly efficient SEO and link building services. I’ve explained my four step SEO process; in an old post but the process still holds true. It’s all about targeting keywords with significant search volumes related to the client’s business or service, and then executing an effective SEO program which consists of a combination of on-page optimization and monthly link building services.

My SEO services are individually priced for each client based on the number and competitiveness of the project’s keywords, and I try to tailor my packages in order to deliver affordable, cost effective SEO campaigns. With my years of link building experience I’m able to implement a strong link building program for clients in ANY niche on both Google.com and Google.ca.

The best part? You are not only dealing with a true SEO and marketing professional who understands that SEO is a very powerful way to drive significant traffic and leads to a business, but you are talking directly to the guy who will be implementing the actual campaign. So you never have to deal with pushy sales reps or account managers who have never even done any link building at all.

I offer my SEO freelance consulting services directly to clients, so if you are a business owner or marketing manager and want to find out how I can help to get your company found online use my contact form and get in touch with me.

I also offer SEO and link building services to a few large digital agencies and search companies across Canada and the United States as a behind the scenes link builder & SEO consultant. Some of the services I’ve provided include in-depth keyword research and competitive analysis, backlink analysis, general SEO consulting, on-page optimization and link building of course. Reports on keyword rankings and key performance indicators can easily be re-labeled for use by agencies or companies, and my services for SEO and the monthly link building execution are marked up at the discretion of the agency or company. If you are a representative of a digital agency or web company and would like more information on my services please use my contact form and get in touch with me.

CONTACT

Please feel free to contact me or give me call at 647-448-4449 if you have any questions about your current SEO campaigns or would like to find out more information on any of my services and how I can help your business/client to achieve the highest possible rankings on the search engines!

Earlier this week, this year’s edition of “Link Building with the Experts” was spear headed by Sugar Rae on her blog. It’s a question and answer styled post featuring 10 of the top link builders out there – all these names should be familiar to any link builder out there so if you don’t know these folks time to step up:

• Aaron Wall of SEO Book and Clientside SEM – @aaronwall
• Dave Snyder, Managing Partner of the Blueglass Agency – @davesnyder
• Debra Mastaler of Alliance Link and the The Link Spiel – @debramastaler
• Eric Ward, Ericward.com Linking Strategies and Chief Link Evangelist at advertising intelligence firm AdGooroo.com – @ericward
• Justilien Gaspard, Link Columnist for SEW and owner of Justilien.com
• Michael Gray of the Graywolf SEO blog – @graywolf
• Rae Hoffman-Dolan, aka Sugarrae, CEO of MFE Interactive – @sugarrae
• Rand Fishkin from SEOMoz – @randfish
• Roger Montti, the founder and owner of martinibuster.com – @martinibuster

Although it wasn’t so much a “give-it-up” styled post it did offer some great insights into what some of the top link strategists and experts have to say about the future of link building. It’s a great read to be sure to check it out.

And now for my answers

1.) It’s always important to include the brand in your anchor texts when link building. It’s just natural – I always have to explain that link building should always appear organic – ideally with no detectable patterns. So historically speaking, most of your links should come from your brand or even www.yourdomain.com – if the majority of all your inbound links are only using your targeted keywords as anchor texts you are in trouble my friend. Always important to mix it up, so “brand”, “www.brand.com”, “brand – keyword”, “keywords from Brand”, “shop for keyword at brand” and so forth. Don’t get too aggressive and forget about building a brand focus.

For smaller sites (maybe you don’t have a brand!) or even adsense sites I’ve seen (and felt first hand) the dangers of going too aggressive with links, just the other week a MFA site of mine finally reappeared on the SERP’s after a couple months of dwelling in the dark – and I barely even did a lot of link building, I just focused only on the targeted keywords and I wasn’t using an exact match domain – it was “homeproductABC4u.com (example) and I only used “homeproductABC” and whammo.

2.) Well I sure as hell hope this doesn’t happen – I for one am not the biggest fan of Google +1 just yet as not enough of my true social network even has google accounts and truthfully I don’t really care what they like > I prefer an unbiased search results that isn’t influenced by what my friends or peers like/dislike. But you got to change with the times so if and when this indicator is “the new link” there will always be a way to become a player and make things happen, I just hope it doesn’t get nasty and people start selling retweets and +1′s through Mechanical Turk and DP, although I’m pretty sure it’s already begun.

3.) I haven’t really changed up my link building strategies that much, I still use the same mix of strategies although I am testing out different proportions of each mix across my network to see if some of the old techniques such as article syndication still carry the same weight. If I find anything earth shattering – I probably won’t share it

4.) I’ve seen link wheels work, and not work. Like anything else with link building if done properly and blended in nicely (link velocity, link variation folks I’ll always preach it!) it can definitely help. More so for non competitive keywords, but for competitive keywords it’s still a different source for links so in the grand scheme of things – go for it > but just make sure you are aware of what you are doing when it comes to link wheels.

5.) Yeah it can be possible, but really depends on what strategies they were implementing, they probably got hit if they were only focusing on a couple, so once again = link variation.

6.) Probably, although I haven’t done any testing. I’ll be honest I didn’t use Twitter for about a year because I paid some outsourced freelancer kid $20 to get me a 1,000 followers. Little did I know he got me a 1,000 followers by following 1,500 – awesome… after a few nights of cleaning up my list lesson learned but hey, you got to try right?

7.) Don’t waste your time, hire a link building expert instead and focus on your business! Seriously though, I’ve been approached a couple times by business owners who wanted to learn SEO (or thought they knew already and just wanted some tips). Don’t waste my time or yours, seriously focus on your business. If my car breaks down I don’t go and read online how to fix it, where to get the parts > I go to a mechanic or garage. If a drain bursts, I don’t go and try to find tips online, I call a plumber. So if you think you can handle SEO and link building on your own, once again – don’t waste your time and hire a professional.

8.) Yeah they probably count for something, but when you want to deliver results to a client it’s hard to say, hey look I got you a citation, but no links! Tough play, I rather focus on building links and figure that somewhere down the road the citations will happen organically. I’ll put this on my things to test list though.

9.) Link variation, link velocity. Watch going too aggressive with anchor text.

10.) Because I’m selling them! Haha kidding, but the real reason is because there’s so much shit out there now and the marketplace has become flooded with dropped domains and sites purely made to sell links. As a result, there’s now a premium to be paid on sites that are actually legit in terms of posting valuable content without placing links in most of the posts. These sites are good for links, but they are expensive so if you want to battle it out for tough keywords you better have the resources to do it.

All in all I think the keys to take away from the excellent answers provided by the panel and yours truly are to:

• don’t forget about building links around the brand
• social metrics are starting to have a place in the algorithm
• Panda update was for real, if you got slapped you need to adjust
• ABT!!! Always be testing
• Google Places is vital for any small business owner with a geo-targeted focus
• focus more on media outreach as opposed to straight up link building (brand, citations) (*depends on the competitiveness of the keywords and if you actually have a brand though)
• links are expensive
• LINK VELOCITY, LINK VARIATION

When it comes to on-page optimization in the world of link building you need to be quick and efficient. When trying to evaluate dozens of websites weekly for link opportunities a quick way to weed out inferior sites without even having to check out off page factors is to make sure the webmaster has put some effort into their on-page search engine optimization (SEO). If the blogger hasn’t even bothered to change their title tag to at least target their priority keywords then they obviously aren’t putting the right amount of effort into their website.

Here’s a quick checklist to always perform when trying to evaluate the on page SEO of any website:

Check the Title Tags for Keywords

There’s nothing worse than “Welcome to My Blog/Company” or even worse “Welcome to WordPress” lol – terrible! Ideally you’d want to have the domain name as well as the major keywords related to the site. I hate seeing something like xjhcv.net – CLEARLY a dropped domain so don’t waste your time. Here’s some good examples of what I’m talking about:

Home Renovation Blog – Your Source for Home Renovation Tips

Canada Travel Blog – A Travel Blog for Canadians

Check the Meta Description for Keywords

Don’t be lazy, view source and make sure that the meta description is at least optimized and includes the targeted keywords. Any blogger or webmaster who is serious about their site will have an optimized meta description, if not again probably are wasting your time dealing with them.

Other On Page Factors to Check for:

- if any keywords are included in the header tags

- check keyword density on the page for targeted keywords

- check overall content on the page to make sure it’s niche relevant

- check site architecture to see if they’ve linked well to their most important pages off the homepage

The BIG Picture

At the end of the day you need to take these on-page factors and also look at off page factors to get an overall feel of the quality of an entire website – it’s all about painting an overall picture of the site in order to truly gauge it’s online authority and the potential link juice you would get from having your link placed on the site. Onsite analysis is pretty similar to onpage analysis but you need to focus on a few more factors at the site level. Besides the obvious signs of pagerank, cache dates, number of inbound and outbound links, etc.; you need to really look at the number of indexed pages to gauge how SEO friendly their site architecture is. Also, you need to spend more time checking the quality of inbound links as well as anchor text and link variation (sites vs blogs, articles vs directories, .com’s vs .edu’s vs .org’s).

Before attempting to gauge how powerful the site is itself, it’s imperative to first check whether or not the site/domain is penalized or not (must rank for own domain name) as well as the age of the site. After that I always check to see whether or not the site is ranking for any of its main keywords, which should always be found in the title tags of the homepage.

Being able to quickly perform onpage analysis is extremely important but don’t forget to always take into consideration off page factors as well. Always look at Pagerank, domain authority and page authority using the SEO MOZ toolbar (helpful metric), related links, quality of outbound links, number of outbound links, dofollow vs nofollow links, cache dates, and more. You really need to look at all these factors (offpage and onpage) in unison when conducting a thorough analysis of the factors affecting the potential link juice from that link.

Obviously relevancy and a good pagerank is imperative, but a great telling signs of a pages’ authority is its cache date; within one week is great, 1-2 weeks is average, 2-3 weeks is just OK, and anything 3+ weeks isn’t very powerful.

Conclusion

When I’m evaluating a site, I love to use both SEO Open, Search Status and the SEO MOZ toolbar as well as some good old fashioned searching in Google. Within 5 minutes I check:

• PR (using Search Status)
• Page authority (SEO MOZ toolbar)
• Domain authority (SEO MOZ toolbar)
• Total pages indexed (SEO Open)
• Cache date(s) of the page(s) I’m evaluating (SEO Open)
• Total backlinks in Yahoo! site explorer (SEO open)
• Number of links and linking root domains (SEO MOZ toolbar)
• Check for the age of the site (SEO Open)
• Check the archives database (SEO Open)
• Title tags, meta description, header tags, content quality and relevancy

I always said being a link building rockstar isn’t rocket science – it’s just a matter of being organized, efficient, creative and having a competitive edge to your personality. Remember these points when trying to perform SEO analysis of any website.

So I know the great link buying debate has been a VERY hot topic in 2011, mainly because of the penalties dished out to both JC Penney and Overstock. Personally I don’t have the time to blog that much anymore but thought I’d like to chime in on the paid links debate that hasn’t stopped since I first started in the industry 3 years ago.

To me it’s all about being smart regarding buying links. The plain ugly truth is that in almost every competitive niche online link buying occurs and has been for years and years. It’s just now gotten to the point where it’s been publicly debated like never before – because you have the content pushers who cry that Google should change this and change that and “links shouldn’t have such an impact on the SERP’s” – but at the end of the day SEO comes down to an algorithm and there is no specific review feature for every site that is out there in the web. Also, keep in mind that every link is somewhat “paid” for in some way, shape, or form. If you send product samples for a blogpost – you’ve sent a monetary value worth of product and hence – a PAID link! At the end of the day it comes down to the fact that not many people are not going to link out to your site out of the goodness of their heart so at some point it takes some negotiation – money, product, services like reciprocal linking or 3 way linking, a “gift”! Even if you publish award winning content – there is still a cost associated with publishing that content and getting it distributed – need to pay the writer, internet usage, building overhead, etc.

The only major change that I’ve seen since I started a few years back is the type and quality of sites that you can now acquire links from. For example, you can get PR 5,6,7 links any day of the week from some of the top newspaper publications in the United States through several online link brokers – I’m dead serious. Even crazier to me was the online conversation I had that is definitive proof that the link selling game has reached unprecedented levels. Basically a few months ago (before JC Penney & Overstock got smacked around for buying links and Forbes got the slap for selling links) I had a conversation with a link reseller on a webmaster forum asking me if I wanted to buy links on two of the TOP Toronto media sites. I kid you not I almost fell of my chair when I saw what the offer was.

Now I’ve personally debated for a while whether or not I wanted to discuss that these two leading Toronto media websites are offering BLATANT paid links (which are dofollow too by the way). I’ve decided that I will discuss the offer proposed to me (and it’s impact on SEO) but I will not divulge either of their names as I’m not a whisteblower nor do I want to be known as one. What the truly pathetic part about the offer is that these massive media sites reached out to link brokers on some webmaster forums who can’t even speak english to resell on their behalf, pretty sad times but hey, nothing has changed regarding paid links from my experience. The only thing that has is the rampant availability of authoritative, high PR sites that are now offering links as a form of “Advertisement” off the homepages of their sites. Anyways I’ll expand later on this point but here’s the conversations:

a) My request for links:

Hey there

looking for high quality links related to accommodations and apartment rentals in Toronto

want year links, sites should be relevant to the niche
be over one year of age
have good amount of backlinks and not sell adult, pharmacy, etc.

please pm me with “accommodations Toronto” in the title

thanks!

b) Link broker’s proposal:

Hi
i have a great website related to Toronto that will give you great benefit to your site

http://www.siteinquestion1.com/

pr 8
placement in content area under section “ads” – sitewide
$1000/per month
$2650/ 3 months

dmoz listed
high traffic website
5k alexa
453000 pages indexed
in august 2010 traffic was around 3,337,000 UV

paypal:

thanks

c) My response:

hey there

where would the link be placed

I am from Toronto – how do you have the rights to post content on this site? are you working on behalf of them? did someone contact you directly?

d) Link brokers’ response:

i have direct contact with company

link will be sent first for approval

and you need to send 35% advance payment to process

remaining with in 24hrs after link placed

if any reason link not approved then you will get 100% refund with in 1 working days

approval process can take 2 business days

i am fair seller here you can check my itrades

you can check with another reputed member of DP “username”

he placed the order for three link with deposit

unfortunately his links are not approved and he get 100% refund with in 24 hrs

let me know if you are interested

thanks

(end of conversation)

And here was the second conversation:

a) Same proposal as before

b) Link broker’s response:

Hello,

I have a quality site in the required niche in which you might be interested.

http://www.siteinquestion2.com/ PR 7/$400/month

Let me know if you are interested in the site.

Thanks

c) My response:

how and where are you able to place links on this site?

d) Link broker’s response:

Hello,

Thanks for showing your interest in the site.

Your link will be LIVE under ” Links and Offers ” section ( right of the middle on home page ).

Let me know your interest.

Thanks

e) My response:

do you work on behalf of questioninsite2?

To be honest I find it crazy they are even selling links in the first place and for that price tag not sure how many clients can afford it?

f) Only limited spots are available for selling and yes they are selling the links. Let me know your interest

Thanks

(end of conversation)

WOW! So there you have it, direct proof that both that a couple of Toronto’s most established online properties are now selling links through backdoor link brokers off of webmaster forums. Never thought it would come to this and I don’t like calling out businesses or competitors’ strategies in the SEO industry but felt that people need to know that this is going on as it’s a massive game changer with unknown implications.

Will Google step up and penalize these publications as it did Forbes? If so, will they send them a warning first? I can see from their perspective that this is just like selling any other form of advertising so they don’t want to miss out on the extra revenue dollars but at what cost? Do they even realize they are going completely against Google’s terms of service? I guess only time will tell.

A couple months ago Forbes was penalized by Google for selling links on this page:

Here is the source code as they have since deleted the text ads:

So as you can see from the source code major companies are taking advantage of the opportunity at hand to buy high PR, authoritative links. Now in Google’s eyes they would just like to see these kind of links nofollowed – they have no problem with text link advertising for traffic and branding purposes – but it crosses their link guidelines if these kinds of links are bought/sold in an attempt to manipulate both PR and the SERP’s.

Now all in all I’m not complaining by any means – I think link buying and selling is just something that occurs in competitive niches and if you want to compete with the big boys then it’s part of the cost of doing business. But to that point here’s a few points I’d like to add to help protect yourself from Google’s wrath if  they should suspect you of buying links:

1. Never focus on just one link strategy – especially not just paid links as it doesn’t look natural at all
2. As my great friend Wisam (the best SEO professional I know) says “don’t kill a bird with a cannon” – meaning if you don’t need paid links to rank, then don’t use them!
3. In some industries you need to play the game  – sure you can cry wolf about paid links and hire a content dev team to pump out articles each day but in some niches you’re up against big budgets and massive link buyers. For example, in Canada one of the BIGGEST insurance companies continues to dominate the rankings based off of an extremely aggressive paid link strategy – I know because a) I’ve physically sold them links and b) I track their backlink profile each month just for fun.
4. Link velocity and link variation – are my two favourite terms that I’ve written about and one of the most important pieces of SEO advice I can share. Link building progression should be as NATURAL as possible. Meaning don’t have any massive spikes in the number of backlinks in any given month and always be sure to have link variation (sitelinks, directories, social media links, article links, etc) and always, ALWAYS make sure you focus on anchor text variation as much as possible.
5. TEST, TEST, TEST = Can’t stress this enough! I have a pretty extensive blog network (blogs for link selling, adsense & affiliate marketing) that I test different strategies on all the time. For me the best lessons I’ve learned have come from pushing the dial too hard – if you’ve never gotten a site penalized or banned then you really don’t know how far you can push the envelope.
6. Google is smart, but it’s a machine – at this point it can’t eliminate paid links or any other link strategy as the algorithm is based off of links. Also, always keep in mind that it’s hard to penalize a site based off links as a competitor could be buying the links to your site trying to get you penalized. At the end of the day Google is still link driven and it is very hard for an search engine optimization expert or company to compete without relying on links.
7. In conclusion, be smart about buying links if you choose to do it and don’t get greedy like JC Penney did and try to rank for every single term out there – eventually you’ll piss someone off and you may be contributing to the possibility of your site getting a manual review from Google.