How does it work?
With the new canonical tag you indicate that there might be more than one URL within your website presenting this specific information and if search engines want to choose between those when presenting it to visitors, you would prefer the given URL. I for instance use wordpress to rewrite to nice URLs but this post is available under http://www.vdgraaf.info/?p=120 as well.

If I would place <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.vdgraaf.info/canonical-tag-creates-new-legal-cloaking-possibilities.html" /> in the head of this page, Google would only show that one to visitors. But just like a 301-redirect Google would attribute all linkjuice to the remaining page.

The canonical tag is intended for sites that cannot do a proper 301 redirect because of several reasons. For instance if there still are slight differences between the pages under different URLs, but too little for Google to see them as unique. The same article might be available under different categories, an affilliate ID in the URL just changes some form values or you use almost the same text for the French speaking population of Canada as you do for people in France. I can think of many more, but all these legitimate reasons allow for slight changes to the page served. And it is logical that search engines now allow you to indicate which version to choose.

One page, different audiences
Your website is created for several audiences and in the ideal situation you could change nuances depending on the visitor type. The most important audiences we want to differentiate right now are “linkers”, “navigators” and “searchers”.

• People linking to your website
  A clean webpage without much commercial intent is far more likely to recieve inbound links than a page with a lot of branding and call-to-actions. A page that shows your good side (for instance with a reference to your altruism to good causes, or a reference to the specific link partner) will give you a far higher success rate on your link building effort. Use a URL like http://www.vdgraaf.info/i-am-a-good-boy.html for them.
• People navigating from within your website
  People that navigate through your website follow a certain path and you can offer more specific content depending on where they came from. http://www.vdgraaf.info/so-you-clicked-the-banner.html would be good for this audience.
• People from search engines
  A good landing page for search engines gives the answer to what you searched for and shows a clear call-to-action to the most logical next step. Besides changing the appearance of the page that you would like search engines to serve, you could also use slightly different code to be more search engine friendly. You should make this version the canonical one by adding <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.vdgraaf.info/this-one-is-for-searchers.html" /> to the head section of all your versions.

Does the tag give real cloaking abilities
It is logical that Google will or already has implemented a check on simularity between different versions. Because the tag is onpage and not in an external file like the robots.txt, the page has to be spidered first. It is a small extra step to do some text calculation as well. The canonical instruction will probably be followed when the page would normally trigger duplicate content filter. It will however assign all accumulated links to that one remaining occurrence.

So use this tag with care, but with the same content you can still create many different versions. Have fun!

But what are the lines to cross? Is it taking the risk of being banned from Google? Or is it taking the risk of losing positive brand perception? Unlike the discussion at SES I’m not going to try and find the best definition of blackhat SEO, but I’ll try to open your eyes to new possibilities and their risks.

SES Chicago 2008
The discussion at SES had some great panelists like David Naylor, Todd Friezen, Doug Heil and Eric Enge. The first two not afraid of taking risks, the last feeling they are as white as snow. Most questions asked were about “What defines blackhat?”.

I asked “Is outing your competitor’s mischief, a blackhat tactic?” and even Doug Heil replied that he does it himself. But I’d like to comment that because you do the outing from for instance your Google webmaster central, your sites could also recieve extra investigation. Just be careful.

After a good discussion, where Dave got a lot of laughs, there was slight agreement on good SEO practice. Whenever you get full consent from your customer on a technique after full disclosure on the risks, you’re not a bad SEO just by taking these risks. If an industry standard would be set, this should be the only thing in it.

Is blackhat SEO technical or social?
I believe every method that artificially boosts search term focus or topical authority is a shade of grey. When I do viral link building by getting links to one message and transferring (there are many ways) to another, I would call that less ethical. But does the lack of a negative stance by Google make it right?

“Taking risks is part of being in business”
When you’re active in a competitive industry, you have to be open to taking risks. In SEO there is the risk of being penalised by search engines and you could suffer brand damage. Both pose dangers that can be averted by hiring an experienced search engine marketeer (or reading carefully through my blog . Here are some examples of social and technical blackhat activities.

Problem: A spammy competitor ranks above me
Don’t you hate it when someone ranks above you, but he has clearly used a spam tactic that should be too easy to detect if Google just took the time? I get this all the time as well as many of my clients. But do you then use Google webmaster central to “snitch” on that activity?

I do have a special snitching Google account that I use from specific IPs and other identifiers. I always help Google by also explaining what fingerprint they could use to ban this tactic for once and for all. Otherwise they ban this instance, but other websites using it still get through.

Another way of exposing a tactic and making sure the entire strategy gets tackled is by overusing it. Once a tactic becomes common practice by for instance porn affilliates, Google will definitely try to add some rules to its algorithm. Explaining in much detail how a tactic works on for instance a blackhat forum will make sure it gets overused. Especially when people that are already under extra investigation start using it, this will kill the tactic entirely. Because I didn’t use the stupid tactic myself or out it through webmaster central, my sites aren’t effected in any way. Is this Blackhat? It sure is grey!

Problem: I can not make my site linkworthy
People who intend to link to some interesting piece of information on your website, do look at the rest of the site. If the interesting piece of information is just a small part of your very commercial website, they will either ask for money or not link to it entirely. The solution is a satellite site!

A satellite site is a site under a separate domain and if needed even separate ownership. By using a separate site you can appear less commercial and less branded. When the piece of interesting information resides on this satellite site it is far more likely to be linked to, even by your competitors. For a fun example of a satellite site take a look at JohnBukakke.com. This extreme example shows that you can get links to anything.

“How do I get the linkjuice to my commercial site?”
There are many ways to get the acquired links to have a positive effect on the ranking of your commercial site. Here are some examples.

• Link out to your commercial website as being the sponsor. Make sure there is little link juice leaked to other websites.
• After the links are acquired and few people visit the site, 301-redirect it to your commercial website. A 301 diverts al link juice.
• Use client-side redirects so not the link juice but just visitors are redirected to the commercial site.

So is swapping messages this way any less Blackhat than the tactic listed before? Because there are more legal practices that divert link juice than less decent ones, Google doesn’t have a stance against it. But I think they should! This is a social blackhat trick. Or at least it is a shade of grey.

Problem: I want to influence social systems like Delicious, Sphinn and Digg
There are many ways to influence these networks, but you need real visitors instead of bots. All these techniques are definitely blackhat!

The best way is to open a Digg (or other network) URL unseen while someone visits a page that you controll. This can be accomplished by using various Javascript and Flash exploits. They would have to be logged into Digg while they visit the page, but the odds are in your favour. It works simular to the trick used here.

Because I still use the full technique for a couple of projects, it would be unwise to out it to everybody. The select few who meet me at conferences could probably share in the fun. This way it doesn’t get overused and penalized in time. This is an example of an extreme blackhat tactic that is both technical and social. Links from these networks aren’t worth much for your ranking, but your popularity will result in valuable links.

So?! Is blackhat social or technical?
It is both. Fooling people or fooling Google doesn’t make you any less evil. Most of my customers don’t need any risky techniques, so I just do whitehat. Shades of grey are only used when factors like competition and budget make it a logical choice and only with full consent from the customer.

I happen to like evil and I’ve got a huge network of people that keep experimenting to find the limits in shades of grey. We’re all experts and never put valuable websites at risk. Whenever you touch shades of grey, make sure you have full understanding of the risks and the search engine’s ability to detect things (standard and thorough, algorithmic and manual, now and in the near future). For most of you, blackhat just isn’t the thing. Keep it for the experts and even they lose sometimes.

Why an SEO song?
While hearing the 70s discohit D-I-S-C-O I misheard it as “We Like SEO” and immediately launched an initiative to record it as such. Yes it sounds and looks amateuristic, but it is all about the fun of making it. We wanted to share the fun environment we have amongst colleagues, because these people are all real search nerds. Hopefully it is the start of many SEM disco hits from all around the world.

What do we hope to achieve?
Nothing!…  …and much.
This song could have many effects. Here are just a few of them:

• Being played at webmasterradio.fm, Pubcon, SES, SMX and many more topic related events.
• Reaching new colleagues that are as crazy about SEO as we are.
• Igniting a whole range of SEO disco hits. Just think of Try-S-E-A on the Y-M-C-A tune or Google Wonderland on Boogie Wonderland. Comment to share all your great ideas!
• Ranking #1 for “seo” because all SEO’s linked to the song .
• Showing the power of topic specific viral messages. Many of my customers don’t want to expose the very effective messages we created as being an intentional viral, so ClearSense needed an example of its own.
• Getting a formerly SEA-only company to sing We Like SEO was my personal gratification .

What did it cost?
Not much! Although the not much part shows a bit, it doesn’t make the song less effective. It cost us some free time to get the recording to an acceptable level (because these amateur singers needed alot of morphing and tweaking); Some time with a part of the company to record the video and just $ 1000 to hire a student filmmaker to record it (Youtube reduced the image quality, but the recording is fine). I think she performed perfectly, so I’m defenately going to use her more often.

Who is this ClearSense?
I work externally for many SEM companies and ClearSense is the one that I used to work for 36 hours a week, so there is an extra bond with those colleagues. The fun of making the videoclip was enormous, and they really are a crazy bunch.

What do I want from the readers?
Have fun watching the clip and hopefully you are as exited about SEO as we are. I’m going to wear a We Like SEO T-shirt to the next conference I attend.

We Like SEO T-Shirt

You can now view keyword volume estimates in the Adwords keyword tool!

So far Google has never been “close to” open about search volumes. Google trends only shows charts without numbers and it has a threshold of about 1000 searches per day. Previously the Adwords keyword tool showed only monthly graphs without any reference field to numbers. But at last they changed their ways and show “rough estimates” with real numbers.

In European countries where Google has a marketshare of more than 90% this is close to a revolution. Yahoo data, Trellian, HitWise, Wordtracker and Alexa are all useless because of the limited coverage in those countries. Hopefully Google will improve even more by showing “real numbers” in stead of the current “rough estimates”. But even the current improvement is a welcome change.

Investment per conversion
From ranking on a search term to a closed deal, a conversion undergoes several stages. These stages are all as important as the investment for achieving a ranking. They are the real money making factors in search engine marketing.

$ ≈ # ≈ ☺ ≈ $

Investment per conversion can be seen as the formula above. It states that:

1. $ ≈ # The investment for ranking:
   What is needed to rank for a particular search term? This factor is mainly determined by the competition (both SEO and SEA).
2. # ≈ ☺ The chance of being clicked:
   Is my result relevant enough for that visitor? Getting many clicks on lower rankings can easily beat 1st positions.
3. ☺ ≈ $ The chance of a converting visitor:
   Do I offer the right service for the visitors desires and is there an easy navigation? Even small improvements in usability can double your conversions.
4. $ …≈… $ The investment and profit per conversion:
   What is a conversion worth and do the costs match? Having a bigger margin creates bigger budgets to outrank the competition.

The ≈ is used to state that there is uncertainty. It equals the chance of something resulting in a desired action. Your SEM knowledge can make that chance far easier to determine in advance.

Calculation example
To clarify how important conversion is I will give two Google Adwords examples taken from real websites. These are Dutch examples in the credit business. I’ve converted the costs-per-click using the current dollar to euro ratio, and simplified some figures for easier calculation. The biggest difference between Website A and B is that B uses its homepage as landing page and A creates specific landing pages for every single search term.

What can we conclude?

• Website A is willing to pay more per visitor, but they measure better if they convert. They know their real maximum.
• The percentage of people starting the order form is enormous, but the obvious button on a very relevant landing page (doorlopend krediet landing page) gives Website A an even better CTR from the landing page than Website B has from the homepage (their landing page) (70% vs 50%).
• The order form in Website B has 5 steps across 5 pages and they require you to fill in everything. Website B uses 3 steps on 1 page (loan request form) and requests any missing information using a call-center. This is more expensive, but converts at least just as good. Therefore a lower profit per lead.

This is a real example and I know these percentages seem extreme, but I assure you these differences are common in many industries.

Website A can do much better!

Website A seems to have everything well in order, but they can use search engine marketing even smarter. The credit industry is extremely competitive, but other less competitive industries might offer chances for loans. Do you see the relevance between a divorce and loan? Well, visitors sure do.

Website A created a section specifically about financial problems that arise with a divorce. You suddenly need a lawyer, an extra home, extra furniture and you might need to pay alimony. All costs that come very inconvenient during a period that is tough enough by itself. A loan might offer some comfort to get things in order.

After introducing this new section, Website A did multi-variate-testing on Ads and landing pages. Below we compare the original situation to the situation that was achieved after testing.

Compared to “doorlopend krediet” from the first example, “scheiding aanvragen” creates a far larger profit. The amount of searches for “scheiding aanvragen” is lower than “doorlopend krediet” and therefore both are needed to fill the demand for loan leads. But every less competitive industry we can associate with loans can be added to our audience. Combined these have a great potential and the profit is enormous “until other banks discover them”. So I’m not going into the details, but you should get my point. When you keep your Profit per conversion high and cost per conversion low, you can outbid any other company (especially from other industries).

The first of April poses a great opportunity to create a safe viral. Fairly safe because you can always revert to stating it was a joke. But what makes a great April fools joke? What ingredients are required for success? Here are some tips to give you a bigger chance of success…

Viral marketing is one of the most uncertain types of marketing. As stated in “How dangerous is viral marketing?”; Viral marketing can also backfire. Normally you should be careful in linking a viral to your company name, but with April fools jokes you can openly show the creativity of you marketing team.

• Use current events
  Acting on current events that already get much media attention, gives even small news items the possibility to end up in newspaper specials. If your news is funny or shocking the chances of talkshows and popular news picking it up are also quite large. The end result should always be that online media all link to your fabricated proof or joke.
• Use popular people
  Creating a hoax about famous people gets media attention much quicker and this kind of publicity is often conconed as an April fools joke. This is the only time you can do it safely).
  For instance:“Did you know Danny Sullivan is gay?” His singing should have given him away, but now there is proof! He said so in the Daily search cast. What will his wife think?
• Create a believable story
  A story can create a feeling like “this can’t be true”. These stories could work as an April fools scam, but they need to work until the first of April. You need quite a lot of (fake) proof to keep up a story for a couple of days, so spread the proof over a couple of days. Try to have the big bang on the first op April.
• Use respected media
  When respected media pick up on your story, chances for success are much higher. Prepare content for all media types, so television, radio, youtube, flickr and blogs all have access to an easy article. Use respected newswires like PR-Newswire, because those are seen as trustworthy. For examples see: Examples of viral marketing
• Learn from what worked
  On websites like the hoax museum you can find many examples. Learn from these and create your own scam. April fools gives you the opportunity to lie without any negative consequences. Make use of it while you can!

I hope this helps you create some great jokes. Please comment to let me know what you’ve come up with.

Many webmasters have contacted me recently with the same problem. It’s an old problem that is still very important in all search engines. Their websites weren’t indexed entirely or perticular pages couldn’t even rank for the most unique text phrases although these pages were indexed. In this post I will give some pointers on effortlessly making pages more unique.

Large database driven websites all have the same problem. Sometimes search engines do not index them fully. But when they do, many pages still don’t rank in the search results. This is caused by the uniqueness of the content and seeming importance of those pages. Let’s take an average large database driven website with for instance jobs. These sites contain large amounts of job descriptions that are all formatted in the same way. While the content is somewhat unique, the shear amount causes part of that website to be seen as duplicate.

So how does this duplicate content filtering in for instance Google work?
Duplicate content filtering isn’t a black or white issue. It has multiple shades of grey, that in the worst case penalize an entire site and in the best case just effects the ranking of a page slightly. Because all forms of duplication across pages can effect your ranking, it is very important to know how to avoid duplicate content. To ensure perceived search result quality, removing duplicates is high on the agenda of every search engine.

Real focus on a search term is best given by dedicating an entire page to those search terms. This means creating and filling pages can become a huge task. Computer generated or scraped text is a very easy way to create pages, but that is where duplicate content filters often kick in. When you want to rank for combinations between “jobs in” and every city you can think of (for instance “jobs in amsterdam”), you probably generate many copies of the same page and replace the city spot wherever you can. And that is exactly what search engines want to combat.

Duplicate area’s
Many search engines see a page as part of a website and they can distinguish between the header, footer, menu, content block, etc. In fixed blocks duplication is very common, because the header and main menu are usually the same across an entire site. In the content block duplication is less common, so any duplication there is something search engines look at more closely. While duplicate area’s on the entire page should be limited, the percentage of duplicate text in the content block is extremely important.

The more inportant the page, the more duplication is condoned
If your homepage and a page just below it are near duplicates from each other, they can still rank on the part that makes them unique (even on more competitive terms). When the near duplicates are located further down the navigation and they recieve little linkjuice, the chances of them not ranking or even beïng omitted from the index are ever increasing. Linkjuice transfer is very important and optimizing it can fix many duplication issues.

The illustration above shows 2 navigational structures from the homepage. When the homepage gets an extra link on it, pages further down recieve less linkjuice. Less linkjuice means a higher chance of getting caught by duplicate content filters. Put pages higher in your navigation or acquire external links directly to them when you want to make sure they rank in spite of duplication.

Unique mashups
The “jobs in …” example will be easily detected if the city is the only inserted text. So how can you make such a thing work without having to write loads of text? You create unique mashups!

A mashup is a collection of different types of collected content. When you write small pieces of unique text per page and collect all other content in small pieces from many different sources, search engines will love your pages!

In the “jobs in …” example: Write a fifty word intro about “jobs” per city you want to focus on. Add a list of about 10 job descriptions per city from your database. Scrape a piece of city information from a cityguide. Scrape extra pieces of additional information from other sources and finally randomize the order of those content blocks. Try to collect a total of about 300 words. Search engines are smart enough to detect this technique, but the people who use it, have been ranking for ages. The linkjuice to those pages, the amount of used sources and amount of unique text you write determine if you rank on all cities.

Keep the good content above the fold
Unique text is very labour intensive and quality text cannot be automated. But where do you need quality text? Just get your visitor to click a button before they start reading the entire page content and they won’t notice the low quality Focus good usability and text quality on the top part of your page. People rarely scroll and read in detail if the function of the page is already clear and the navigation options are very obvious.

Lazy people can still score with automation, but I prefer using cheap copywriters!

How important is personalized search?
Google (and other search engines) want to give the most relevant search results. Knowing who is requesting the information with what intent is extremely important for this search relevance. If I search for “apache”, I might be looking for the Linux webserver; If my neighbor looks for it, he probably wants the helicopter gunship. So how does a search engine discover: a. the meaning of a word and b. the intention of the searcher?

The meaning of a word
Google doesn’t use a dictionary to find related words (only in a very small way), it uses other occurrances of the search term on other websites to find them. For normal ranking or when a single word can have several meanings (hononyms), these related words become extremely important for the search relevance.

If a large group of apache websites also mention something about webservers, PHP and Linux. Apache must be related to those terms and those websites must be about the same meaning of that word. If another group of sites mention nothing about webservers, but keep writing about geronimo, tipis, crazy horse and tribes, they are probably refering to indians.

Being related
The “occurrances of the search term on other websites” part is becoming extremely important in personalized search. Optimizing your relevance has to do with mentioning the same related words as other websites within your niche. Links to and from your website should contain those same related words. This relates you to your niche and that meaning of a hononym you might want to rank for.

Personalized search testing
After using different identities with a separate search history and behavior, the search results for several hononyms gave a very clear picture of how small changes in your behaviour can have a profound effect on the search results. And the same tests over time, gave us the impression that Google is increasing the importance of personalyzed search. Adding &pws=0 to the search result URL shows you the difference between your personalized results and normal ones.

Besides hononyms we’ve also seen very distinct search results for subniches of a topic. While only using a more generic term for a niche, websites that used related words that coincided with the subniche preference of the searcher where given more weight. So every search is influenced by personalized search in some way.

Intention of the searcher
So how does a search engine find out the user preference for a specific subniche or hononym of a search term? Mainly by looking at your recent searches and things you’ve clicked!

Let’s say you’ve searched for “apache” and after seeing pages full of server results, you re-specified your search to “AH 64 apache” and clicked a helicopter link. The next time you search for “comanche”, search results about the RAH 66 comanche helicopter are given extra weight. In this case some results about the comanche tribe still outrank the helicopter, but suddenly more helicopter links enter the top 100.

SEO for relevance
To become more relevant, you need to find out what you want to be relevant for. Define what audience you want to target and what they define as relevant. If they use terms like AH 64 and technical terms for weaponry, they might be a different audience than the ones using “apache squadron iraq” although they both mean the same helicopter.

Broader ranking is still possible, you will just need more superiority over the closer niche matches. Define the niche and then define the search terms. The exacter the niche, the better your focus and the easier it is to rank (link relevance).

Find out what the most visited (high Google ranking) websites in that niche are and look at the related words they use. Use the same related keywords in both your content, anchor texts to your websites and link to pages in that same niche.

SEO for personalization
SEO shouldn’t be about large amounts of traffic, but about converting visitors to a predefined goal (like “more sales”). Personalization should help you achieve that goal more easily, but you might want to rule more than just your niche. Any traffic is valuable as long as only one visitor converts. Getting people earlier in their decision process, before they know exactly what they are looking for, is becoming even more important with personalized search.

The websites found early in a search process define what more specific search queries someone will be using and they define what Google sees as personal related keywords that need to be given more weight. Therefore top rankers for more generic search terms define the keywords you need to incoorporate. The ones that are the most likely to be “clicked” are more important. The “Searches related to:” tab that is shown at the bottom of some search results helps you to find the terms that are mainly used for further specification.

Conclusion
So far personalized results mean: You have to already rank for a search term the old way, but extra weight is given to specific niche keyword relevance. This niche is mainly defined by search behavior, but the future it may include more personal information to be used.

For SEO’s this means they will have to use better subtopic specifications based on possible preferences and search history. Making a separate page for every subtopic, but mainly focussing on the same search term, might be a good solution if you aim for large amounts of traffic. For spammers it means they should use smarter scraping and text generation software. Personalization is here to stay!

Link acquisition methods
In linkbuilding we distinguish between three basic ways how new links are acquired.

• Script driven links
  These links are generated by scripts. Sites like Google scour the web and generate links. But also RSS feeds that are syndicated and other scripts generate links.
• Requested links
  These links are requested or submitted by the website owner or someone directly associated to him. It requires a manual or automated action to get the links.
• Human driven links
  These links are placed by people without the request of the webmaster. Just because they like the site or because it is very relevant for the content on their website.

Manually requested links
There are many link opportunities that require some kind of action on your part to get the link. For instance to get listed in directories, you can make use of automated directory submission services, but quality directories are still human edited. Your success rates will dramatically drop when you request all links with the same message.

A link request should be a personal message to the human editor and that is hard to automate. Not only directory submissions, but every link that requires a request needs to be as personal as possible. Even paid links need to be requested and a personal bond can make it cheaper.

Request administration
First create a list of every place where you would like to get a link. Once a list of possible link partners has been made, check which links are requestable. Human driven links can be gotten with just marketing and promotion, but once you have relevant content, you can also request the link. Script driven links are maintained automatically, but sometimes submitting for instance your RSS feed is required to get listed. It can at least speed up the process. You can use link administration software to help you categorize the links.

When do you automate, outsource or do your own link requests?
For every requestable link, find out what content is the most suitable for that site. Plan the creation of new content/linkbait for some of those links. See if that linkable content can be created through automation, requires normal written text or requires your expertise.

Then categorize the request process itself between automated, manual outsource and manual do-it-yourself. Don’t look just at the technical possibilities, but also look at the value of that link for your ranking, should it be placed. Use the RAT checklist to help determine its value. Also look at the quality of outsourced link builders. I use both cheap labour for easy links, experts for more difficult links and myself for the hardest links.

Making it easy for cheap labour
Marketing expertise is a trade you won’t find in cheap labour and a link request consists mainly of marketing. You have to model the link request process so that the email contact is just a tiny part of it all and the email contact can be outsourced to cheap labour. This can be done by:

• creating specific linkable content for every group of linkers,
• creating exchange methods (return links, promotion, money, etc.) as reward when your content isn’t enough,
• creating a couple of standard first messages that can be easily personalized to become unique,
• instructing ways to research the linker and his interests and standard ways to personalize the request message to that linker,
• instructing how to combine the right content for the right linker with the right anchor text and description and still making it unique,
• instructing link worth and when to use exchange methods and
• instructing how to react to certain replies.

As you can see you still have to do quite some work, but your effort doesn’t need to grow with an increasing amount of requests. If the request process involves thousands of personalized emails, you can better use cheap labour than doing it yourself. And you can always outsource this link building supervision to an expert and let him prepare everything for the cheap labour.

Hiring cheap labour
Sending emails and following your instructions requires: language skills, internet access and supervision. The language skills required determine how cheap the work can be.

People from India can be used for English. They’re relatively cheap, have internet access and also have highly educated people available to do the toughest work and give local supervision. For Dutch you can use people from Surinam; The French have northern Africa; For Spanish you can use South America; And the Chinese have their own cheap labour.

But most of the time I need quality work and I use local people. Local people can connect better to the linker and success rates are much higher. I hire students and housewives because the work can be done from home and whenever they want. When you pay them for every successfull request, they’ll be extra motivated. The Dutch language skills are better than people from Surinam and they are more creative in persuading the linker. Most of the time they also have more feeling with the product or service they are link building for.

Conclusion

• Hire linkbuilders as cheap as possible, but differentiate by skills required for a certain success rate.
• Hire separately for link bait creation and link acquisition.
• Hire locally for harder links and find people that could understand the field they are linkbuilding for.
• Hire experts to prepare, instruct and supervise the whole project. This is a real sub-expertise of search engine marketing and most SEO’s should stick with code and content. I do most of it myself, but that is because I’m a real cheapskate

In this part of the article I will explain how you get server-side information into client-side statistics and vice versa.

• Part 1: What is the difference between server-side and client-side
• Part 2: How to combine server- and client-side webanalytics (this article)

Part 2: How to combine server- and client-side webanalytics

Google Analytics
For an explanation how client-side web analytics works, I will use the most common one “Google Analytics” as an example. Tools like Google Analytics work with a Javascript that requests an image. The image request is interpreted by a server-side script that creates the log files (and it always returns the same image to the visitor). The log files are then interpreted by a program that creates all kinds of fun statistics, for people to interpret into the visitor behavior they want to research.

Because the Javascript and the image are requested from Google servers with Javascript (their browser), the visitor comes in direct contact with those servers and leaves the much needed extra information that javascript cannot detect. This primarily includes visitor IP address and Google cookie. The Google cookie also links to language preferences and other data not available in other web analytics tools.

Because the Javascript is located on google.com that may be listed as a trusted domain in the browser, it could fall under lower safety restrictions and recieve more information. Governmental agencies sometimes have very strict Javascript settings and Google is often one of the exceptions (I just can’t imagine why).

Communication from server-side to client-side
PHP and Javascript have several common grounds where they can exchange data.

• Javascript and PHP can both read and write the same cookies.
• Javascript and PHP can both generate and read URLs and extract GET variables.
• Javascript and PHP can both generate and read POST variables.
• Javascript can read and PHP can read/generate text files or XML files.
• Javascript can be generated by PHP.

Server-side information in Google Analytics
Just a few examples of server-side data that you might want in Google Analytics or other client-side web analytics programs.

• Your internal client ID.
• Real e-commerce sales.
• Files and visitors without Javascript support.

So how do you get it there?

Your internal client ID
If someone is logged in to your system you can identify that visitor, but how do you get that data in your Analytics report? … Lets say you have a variable $strClientID. You can enter it as the Google Analytics “user defined” variable by doing the following:

<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
_uacct = "UA-000000-0";
__utmSetVar(‘<?php echo $strClientID;?>’);
</script>

Real e-commerce sales
When you enable e-commerce tracking in Analytics you can communicate every product and every transaction to Google.
Look at this text file to see how it is done.

For more information look at
http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55528

Files and visitors without Javascript support
Look at this post about Google Analytics without Javascript. This requires some PHP skill, but you can probably add your own functionality to the script I’ve made. I’ve made 20 different versions for different functionality, so I won’t bother you with all of them.

The only drawback is that I’d recommend using a separate profile because all visits are logged on the IP address of your hosting provider. In analytics software “Webtrends” I did the same and then you can enter the IP and data of the client provided by your own PHP script.

Summing it up
There are several ways to communicate server-side data to javascript and thereby to Google analytics and other client-side web analytics.

I’d recommend on using client-side web analytics tools and server-side support for extra data. This is the most trustworthy to get the data you need to make sound assumptions about your visitors.