As you work to optimize your site, write great new content, and get links to your site, occasionally it’s good to get a “report card”—to find out how you’re doing. One of the things I usually want to know is how many people are linking to my site.

How Do I Count Links to a Site?

Most search engines provide a command similar to the following line:

Most, however, provide results that are not all that accurate. Even Google provides results that vary and are incomplete.

Count Links with Yahoo

Yahoo provides a search command that provides a very accurate list of the links to a site. If you wanted to count the links to DiamondLime, for example, you would use the following command in the Yahoo search box:

The first part (linkdomain) counts all the links from any page to any page on your site. The second part subtracts all the pages that are in your site from the results so that you have an accurate count of external links. If you want to know how many links there are including internal links on your site, just leave out the “-site…” part.

Scope Out Your Competition

One final note: this tactic also works on your competition—you can go find out how many (and which) links your competitors have and build strategies to emulate or counter these strategies.

Google is using shock and awe—their last few moves have been so aggressive and so impressive as to make my earlier vision of Google’s plan seem simple and closed-minded.

Google Base

Google base is a huge new move to capture, index, and present more information. Google is willing to host and organize your information for you—in return, Google gets exclusive content that it can place targeted ads next to.

“Google Base is a place where you can add all types of information that we’ll host and make searchable online. Based on the relevance of your items, they may also be included in the main Google search index and other Google products such as Froogle and Google Local.”
—Google Base Home Page

Google has even said that it doesn’t even know all of the uses that people will come up with for Google Base, but they’ve provided a free, easy-to-use infrastructure to facilitate these uses.

Google Analytics

Google purchased a web analytics solution called Urchin in March of this year. It dropped the price once, and then made Urchin free after renaming it Google Analytics.

What’s it mean? It means that Google has made powerful web analytics accessible to the masses. The tools aren’t quite as powerful as some paid solutions like those from Omniture, but they are worlds better than most free solutions.

The Googlenet

Finally, I read this article about Google’s plans for Internet services: The Googlenet. Google’s official mission, as stated on it’s company overview page, is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” In order to fulfill this mission, Google has begun to increase it’s capacity for storing and transferring information.

To read more about what I think about Google’s plans, read my article Google vs. Microsoft. Keep an eye on this company!

Lists are one of the most neglected HTML elements—people often don’t use them when they should. There are many situations when people simply use extra carriage returns (extra lines, the “enter” key, <br> tags) to make a new line for each item in the set of information they are creating. At other times, they use tables in order to get the numbers they type manually to line up well with their other content. For example, a collection of links is a perfect example of a situation when a list should be used instead of other methods of formatting and ordering the content.

Usability and Code Degradation

Using lists is especially important when you consider usability and code degradation—lists help users using screen readers to understand your content, and your content will make more sense to browsers that don’t support CSS.

You Can Do Cool Stuff with Lists

One of the most compelling reasons for using lists is that it provides a semantically correct way to add “hooks” for CSS manipulation—it gives you more HTML tags that you can use to format the presentation of your site. Some of the most advanced menu systems are built using lists.

What Types of Lists Can I Make?

There are two kinds of lists: ordered lists (1 2 3, a b c) and unordered lists (bullets, squares, diamonds, etc.). Changing the style of the lists to letters instead of numbers or diamonds instead of bullets will be covered in a future CSS tutorial.

Ordered Lists

The code for an ordered list is very simple. You start with a tag that tells the web browser you are making an ordered list, <ol>. Then you insert list items in the order you’d like them to appear, sandwiched between list item tags, <li>list item</li>. Finally, you close the list with a closing tag, </ol>. Here’s what a full list looks like:

And here’s what it looks like on a web page:

1. List item 1
2. List item 2
3. List item 3

Unordered Lists

The code for an unordered list is almost identical to ordered lists. You start with the unordered list tag, <ul>. Then you insert your list items sandwiched between list item tags, <li>list item</li>. Close the list with a closing tag, </ul>. As you can see, it’s very easy to switch between ordered and unordered lists—you simply change the opening and closing list tags. Here’s what the list looks like:

And here’s what it looks like on a web page:

• List item 1
• List item 2
• List item 3

Just remember, if you are creating content that you would number or put in a bulleted list if you were using a word processor or writing on paper, that content is a very good candidate for ordered or unordered lists.

Links are critical for ranking well in search engines and for getting traffic to your site, but how can you get them? Aside from posting endlessly in message boards and blog comments (many of which don’t pass on page rank) or waiting for some kind, generous soul to link to you spontaneously, it can be very difficult to get high quality links to your site.

One of the simplest methods is to simply ask for links. Here are a few suggestions that will make asking for links easier and more productive.

Be Ready Ahead of Time

Prepare some good, generic ways to link to your site ahead of time. Make up some buttons and a few text links before you begin your linking campaign. You can even include them on a page on your site called “Linking to Us” or something like that. Some examples of buttons and links that I have created are found here: BYU Links and Buttons.

Link Ahead of Time

For each web site that you would like to get a link from, find a web page that is relevant to a page on your site. Link to that page from your page. Use good link text that describes what is on the page. If you can, include the link in some of your content. When you ask this site to link to you, you can show them the high-quality link that you have created to their page and they will be more inclined to link to you.

Make it Easy

When you ask for a link, make it really easy for the other person to link to you. Tell them which page you would like him or her to link to. Tell them about a good page on their site to place the link on. Create two or three sample links to your page that you can include in the email you will send. For my post about credibility on a web site, I could use these:

(I inserted the spaces to keep the links from falling off the edge of my site. Normally the links wouldn’t have spaces before “increase”)

Send a Link-Request E-mail

Write a professional-sounding e-mail to the other site. Explain that you found the site useful and relevant, that you have linked to them, and that you would appreciate a link back. Give them the suggestion of which page to link to and your sample links, but also make it clear that they can link however they want. Also tell them that you are willing to modify the link you made to them if they want you to. Thank them for their time, spell check your e-mail, and then send it off.

Call Them

If you can, give the site operator a follow-up phone call during his or her normal business hours. The human touch of a phone call is a strong persuasive element that shows that you aren’t simply rattling off a generic e-mail to hundreds of site owners. Explain how you’ve linked to them, how a link to the page of your site that you’ve chosen is relevant, and that you have sent an e-mail with the sample links in it.

Follow Up

Check back later (about a week or two) to see if the site has linked to you. If they have linked to you, your are in good shape. If you can’t find the link, try using the site’s search function using words related to the link topic or your site or asking in a short, polite e-mail. If they haven’t linked to you, you can remind the site operators of your request (probably only once or you’ll annoy them), remove the link, or add rel=”nofollow” to your link so that you aren’t wasting precious page rank.

Some people have asked me lately about linking campaigns and strategies. They wonder how they can exchange links with other sites without getting penalized by search engines, especially Google.

Google Fixed the Problem for Us!

In early 2005, Google implemented the rel=”nofollow” attribute for links. This attribute tells Google not to follow the link when calculating Page Rank. This means that if you include the nofollow attribute in a link, it won’t sap your page rank or get you penalized by Google for reciprocal linking.

Here’s what they code would look like:

Traffic will still flow through these links, but they just won’t be considered in your page rank calculations.

What if I Want to Share Page Rank?

To link reciprocally and not get penalized, you have to work a little harder. The safest way is if both parties post links from good content on their own site to relevant content on the other site—and the links shouldn’t go to and from the same two pages (in this case a love triangle is a good thing!). Make sure to not include the nofollow attribute in this case—you want Google to follow these links.

Good Neighborhoods

Don’t use rel=”nofollow” on every link—there are certainly many cases when you should share your page rank. Remember, page rank is your votes for good stuff. And Google does give bonuses for linking to “good neighborhoods”—relevant sites with good content. So share the love with good sites and use the nofollow attribute if you are worried about getting penalized for reciprocal linking.

Conversion rates are tricky because they’re tied to people’s “feeling” about a web site—a site just feels right or it doesn’t. When people are asked why, sometimes they can’t even tell you.

Internet marketers do have one advantage—they can test different versions of everything. One of the things they have learned is to include items on their pages that add credibility to their site.

Credibility Elements That Boost Conversions

So what kind of credibility “items” can you put on a page to increase its conversion rate?

• Security Verification

  There are different services, like VeriSign and GeoTrust, that verify (and often provide) web site security. When you have passed their security inspection, they allow you to place a logo on your site that says you have been verified. People trust sites with these kind of logos more.

• Testimonials and References

  Even though sometimes they seem hokey or contrived, testimonials that compliment your site or services really do help. Testimonials that are honest about problems and how they were resolved are especially powerful. References are even better—when your visitors can personally verify that a third party thinks your service is great, they are nearly sold already.

• Awards

  If you’ve won any awards, mention and prominently display them on your site. They say to your visitor, “not only is this company trustworthy, it is exceptional.”

• Press Articles

  Positive mentions in any sort of press can be powerful credibility elements for your site. Include a link to the article or even get permission to reproduce it on your site.

• Varied Payment Options

  Offering varied payment options is not only convenient for your customers, it says that your business is real enough to be able to accept many methods. Display logos of credit cards, PayPal, etc., that you accept.

• A Phone Number and Address

  Businesses that have a phone number people can use to talk to a real person are more trustworthy, even if people never use the number. A physical address and/or mailing address has the same effect. Include a page with contact information on your site.

• In Business Since…

  If you’ve been in business for more than about 2 or 3 years, then you have earned more trust—you’re the real deal and you’re not going anywhere. Mention the date your firm was established somewhere.

• Privacy Policy

  Privacy policies are often required by law, and even when they’re not, people really appreciate knowing how you are going to use, secure, and respect their private information. After you’ve written your privacy policy, you’d better stick to it—not following it would be a violation of trust and would lose you those customers for life.

Conversion Rates Go Up With Trust

When people trust you, they are more likely to convert. Work to earn people’s trust and they will reward you with their attention and their money.

So you’ve just started your small business doing web design, Internet marketing, consulting, advertising, design, or whatever it is that you do. You’re really, really good at what you do, but no one knows it yet—you have no portfolio or list of previous clients.

How do you get a client without any previous clients?

How to Build a Portfolio

The key to building your portfolio is to start with clients that can’t afford any other service, who will take whatever they can get, or who don’t really have anything to lose.

Who “Has Nothing to Lose?”

Charities, social services, organizations that accept volunteer work, and small businesses that aren’t in the same field as you are make prime candidates as first clients.

Offer to do the work for free (or cheap) on the conditions that you can include them in your list of previous clients, that you can use them as a reference, and that they will write an honest testimonial. Next, do a knock-their-socks-off job that you would be proud to show to potential clients.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

After your first free job, take your client list (of one), their reference information, the written testimonial, and some samples of the work you just did to a potential paying client. If they reject you, do another fantastic free or cheap job to add to your good reputation. If they accept you, you’re on your way.

Important Note: it’s a really good idea to get references, testimonials, and samples from all of your jobs. You will be collecting an ever-growing list of satisfied clients and high-quality work.

Some HTML tags are ridiculously tricky to remember off the top of your head. The tag, escape characters, or code for creating a non-breaking space (a simple space!) is one of them.

HTML Space N Something or Other!

The code for creating a space in HTML looks like this:

&nbsp;

That’s where the HTML space N comes from—spaces are called non-breaking spaces in HTML.

So if you wanted to create 5 spaces in a document, it would look like this:

And appear like this on your page:

Text     More text only spaced five spaces.

What’s Non-Breaking Mean?

Non-breaking means that your space will not allow a line of text to wrap onto the next line at that point. So if you put a non-breaking space between two words, those words will always be on the same line of text, no matter how you resize your browser. They get treated as one giant word.

This isn’t normally a big deal unless you get a lot of non-breaking spaces together. They can make browsers treat a series of words and non-breaking spaces as one gigantic word that may be too wide for your column or web site or something. Just be careful!

Let’s run an informal focus group. Today I’d like to discuss internet marketing or web design pain points—the things that are hurting right now and could use a little healing balm.

Questions for My Readers

1. What is the greatest challenge currently facing people doing business using the web?
2. What Internet marketing tactics or problems are on your mind?
3. Which resource would be most helpful for you?
   • site templates
   • .pdf versions of articles/tutorials
   • help using or setting up a marketing/web design tool
   • internet marketing consultation
   • other (please specify)
4. What area of web design is the hardest for you (creating HTML/CSS, layout, color scheme, etc.)?
5. What do you recommend I improve on my site or blog?

If you are worried about confidentiality, you can send me an e-mail (mike@diamondlime.com) or fill out an anonymous comment.

If there is sufficient response to our focus group, I will publish the results later.