Pages has been overdue for an update for awhile now, so a new version of Pages (and iWork in general) is not at all unlikely. Likewise, users have been clamoring for iBooks on OS X since iBooks was announced with the first iPad in 2010.

Whatever Apple has in store is bound to be interesting, though. The announcement is scheduled for 10 AM Eastern time. Check back soon for more details.

Apparently, clicking on the new message button on a page opens up a basic message box that allows users to directly message the page, complete with the photo/video/link attachment capabilities. According to those who have used the system, you don’t even have to “like” the page to be able to communicate in this fashion.

It’s important to note that this currently only works in one direction, for the most part. Users can only send private messages to Pages. If a Page wants to communicate with a specific users, they would require the message conversation be started by the user.

Or, the system also allows for Pages to privately respond to user’s wall posts. In this private test, the private message button resides right next to the Like button on wall posts. For instance, let’s say Coke posted the question on their page, “Why do you like Coke more than Pepsi?” If Johnny Smith responded to that post “Because nothing tastes as good as a Coke!” then the Coke page could then privately message Johnny with something like “Thanks for sticking with us!”

This is definitely an interesting development for brand pages, as this could change the whole dynamic when it comes to “fan” interactions on Facebook. The ability to talk privately with users could help in addressing complaints by giving the users a forum to express grievances outside the public eye.

Until now, users could only report problems directly on the page’s wall for everyone to see. Or, they could privately message the specific page owner, but only if that page owner allowed it. “Private Messages for Pages” moves Facebook in the direction of Twitter when it comes to consumer interactions. Twitter (who in my opinion does this kind of thing better) already allows direct messages between everybody, and because every Twitter account is basically the same (no true distinction for brands), customers and fans can chat privately with companies at any time.

One drawback I can see involves publicity. As Inside Facebook points out, a private message will not create a news feed story – so other people won’t be able to see it. If the message is something positive, a company might want it to appear public in order to generate “likes” as well as more discussion.

What do you think of this possible new feature? Will this lead to better communication between Pages and users on Facebook? Let us know in the comments.

Days later, some screencaps were grabbed from the Fox News Facebook page that showed people making death threats toward atheists. Fox News later deleted the post containing the comments, but by then the story already had legs. It led us to ask the hypothetical question – Do these vile comments deserve free speech protection?

The current offensive content rattling some people comes in the form of a Facebook page called “You know shes playing hard to get when your chasing her down an alleyway.” Yes, everyone (including the admin) seems to be aware of the grammar mistake in that title, but that’s not exactly what opponents are most concerned about.

As you can imagine, many are taking issue with the connotations of the page. It doesn’t take a genius to parse out the sexual assault and/or rape joke inherent in the page. Some people are concerned that the page even exists, but others are more concerned that is currently has over 172,000 likes.

Some Facebook users have spoken out against the page on the wall (all posts below are from different Facebook users) –

You know shes playing hard to get when your chasing her down an alleywayThankyou to all the potential rapists and girls here who think rape is funny , why dont you go to a family gathering and make some of these jokes with your mums,grandmothers and aunties if your loud and proud. Its actually a good thing that your intellectual enough to post your “thoughts”here because this site has been reported to proper authorities and you will all be watched carefully. as supporters of rape you are possible rapists and girls who suppoprt rape (great mate you’d be ). 5 days ago · 5 likes · 23 comments

You know shes playing hard to get when your chasing her down an alleywayI am sure the police will be interested to know all your names especially those of you who are admitting to rape. Could you be any more underdeveloped evil scum of the earth individuals? But thank you for being absurd enough to post your comments up on such a public forum where you can so easily be named and shamed 5 days ago · 4 likes · 14 comments

You know shes playing hard to get when your chasing her down an alleywayi hope you’re happy with yourselves, this is sick. Rape should NOT be joked about like this. 4 days ago · 3 likes · 2 comments

You know shes playing hard to get when your chasing her down an alleywayyou’re all fucking pigs. this is absolutely atrocious, and i’m sure you’ll all burn in fucking hell for supporting this shit. honestly, do you small minded fucks even realize the seriousness rape causes on woman? (and i bet you didn’t even know that men get raped too).. there’s a lot of physical and emotional pain that NEVER leaves the girl after something like that happens, and sometimes they even feel so guilty to keep the bastard child, caused from your selfish fucking sperm and tiny little penis’. i reported this page and i’ll continue to tell whoever i have to, to shut this shit down. and btw, a man that has to rape is sure pathetic he can’t get laid without violent force. 4 days ago · 2 likes · 25 comments

Some of the comments from fans of the page include: “Running only makes it worse,” “You call it a restraining order, I call it a challenge,” (24 likes) and “roses are red, violets are blue, I’ve got a knife, get in the van” (12 likes).

The page’s creator issued this statement earlier today –

You know shes playing hard to get when your chasing her down an alleywayalot of people are saying this page will be gone soon? but why im just having a joke some people these days just need to relax. i did not even think of rape when i made this yous need to chill the fuck out. and the people why know this is a joke and like having a laugh i love yous <3 9 hours ago · 485 likes · 141 comments

In an article at The Huffington Post today, Barbara Hannah Grufferman asks whether this Facebook group (and others like it) condone a “culture of rape.”

She defines that as “a term used to describe a culture in which rape is common, and can be condoned through cultural attitudes and behaviors, including the way its victims are portrayed in the media, and the objectification of certain people (usually women) that seems to make their bodies open to violation.”

One Facebook users discussed the concept of “Rape Culture” as follows –

Virtually all rapists genuinely believe that all men rape, and other men just keep it hushed up better. And more, these people who really are rapists are constantly reaffirmed in their belief about the rest of mankind being rapists like them by things like rape jokes, that dismiss and normalize the idea of rape.

Does this page promote a culture of rape? Or do people need to lighten up and take a joke? Does this joke cross the line?

And even if you feel like this joke is a sick demonstration of how flippant people can be about a horrible thing like rape, what do you think should be done about it? Should Facebook disallow pages like this, or would that go to far toward censoring speech? Let us know what you think in the comments.

[Image above is the group's Facebook page image]

For instance, you might see a post that says “John Carter and 2 other friends posted about The Dark Knight.” All of the people mentioned as well as the topic will all link to their respective pages. The topic will be linked even if the original posts did not tag the actual pages.

Facebook announced this just a little while ago as part of a photo uploaded to their Facebook page (yes, Facebook’s Facebook page). Here’s what it looks like -

Note that Dmitry and Abhinai didn’t tag the actual Harry Potter page in their posts. But when Facebook groups the stories together by topic, they tag the page.

Not only will your friend’s posts about certain topics come bundled together, but so will posts by pages. For instance, Facebook grouped together three posts by Search Engine Land, Read Write Web and Mashable, all of which concerned Google.

Here’s what Facebook says about the change:

You may notice some of your News Feed stories are now grouped together by topic. We want to show you the most relevant and interesting information, and this test is designed to show you trends among what your friends are saying.

So – Facebook’s version of trending topics? Of course it’s not the same as trending topics on Twitter that concern large volumes of related content – global trends, and trends by country or city. It could serve as a more intimate way to utilize trending topics.

The other side to this brand new feed item is obviously the benefit to pages. Even if the original posters choose not to directly tag a page, this story aggregation will link to specific pages. Each time one of these “X and X posted about X” stories appears on a news feed, it’s a social advertisement.

There could be some hiccups to the new item, however. Facebook confirmed to Josh Constine that “its natural language processing doesn’t detect sentiment, how a Page’s name is being used, or whether the mentioned Page was actually the focus of the update. As such, the Posted About stories may highlight Pages that aren’t actually what a user was discussing, or that are being talked about negatively.”

That means that you might see a post that informs you about 4 friends posting about Harry Potter, but only one would be positive or relevant. You could have 3 “Harry Potter Sucks” posts and one irrelevant post like “My golf game is so magical I feel like Harry Potter out there.”

Still, this is an interesting new feature for brands and could allow Facebook to feel more immediate and connected. Trending topics seems to be something that people like across all social media platforms.

For those of us who stayed home…

Donna has an excellent how-to on creating social site profiles – Using Social Profile Pages To Your Advantage Why?

They often show up prominently in the search engine results pages. If someone searches for you by your brand name, or nick, there’s a very good chance your social network profile pages will show up in the top 10 results. The reputation management / branding aspects of this alone makes the act of creating profile pages a worthwhile endeavor.

Scott has been doing some keyword “research” in much the same way I do people watching, only he got into the math, whereas I would never get past the “cool shirt” stage. According to Blondes ARE the most popular… (Bah!), blondes are searched for the most, as are cats and Hentai, the latter of which up until today I had never heard of.

When I’m Not Doing SEO

I was tagged by Barry (aka Rustybrick) because we’re both at home lounging around eating bon bons while everyone else is blogging conferences.

I’m no longer an SEO (officially), but I refer work to my SEO Partners and follow the industry because when they need usability help, they may want somebody besides Shari and Matt. (giggle) So, being officially tagged, when I’m not doing anything for Cre8pc, UsabilityEffect and Cre8asiteforums, with the few remaining ounces of energy I have left I:

1. READ. I read an enormous number of books. Usually I have several going at once. They’re in my car, backpack, every room of the house and my office. For fun, I drive to Borders just to read there, instead of here.

2. Sports. As in spectator. Working from home allows me to attend my son’s sporting events in football, wrestling, hockey and baseball. I’m the equipment carrier, snack/water mom, taxi, and start to cry whenever he does something amazing. I’m pathetic that way. Related sport: Trying to keep an eye on daughter and her boyfriend.

3. In Winter, when I’m not working, nothing makes me happier than baking bread or preparing a meal with the kids, who have a knack for and interest in food and putting together fresh/whole/organic dinners. I love making big pots of homemade soup on cold days. Spring, Summer and Fall I have the gardens to tend to for flowers, herbs and veggies. I weed, rescue hockey pucks from the beds and thank my vegetable plants for producing for us as well as they do.

For “When I’m Not Doing SEO”, I tag:

Sophie Wegat
Barry Welford
Elizabeth Able

I Am One of 50

One of my articles on usability and seo has been chosen for The Top 50 SEO Posts of the Year. The beauty of this is discovering a new blog with business advice. Thank you for the honor!

The Perpetual Super-Novice is the perfect article for those who are looking to understand the big picture. It talks about product design, what people want from it, and what motivates them to keep using it. In addition, it touches on how people look for help or more information on it. This is where search comes into play, among other things. Much of the relationship between seo and usability has to do with understanding user behavior. As the article states:

Now let’s think about how people behave when they’re intrinsically motivated to learn more about how something works. What do they do? They do things like

* asking other people
* searching reference content
* searching the Web
* browsing forums and other archival sources of information

Finally…I just love this latest from Jeffrey Zeldman…Stealing design. At the moment he has 10 comments for a blog post that consists of one full sentence.

The man is brilliant.

Comments

Your Search Advisor blogger Andrew Miller cited some of the questions and answers Johnston addressed during the event. Among them, JotSpot will feature significantly in Google’s software as a service strategy:

Google Sites: Scheduled to be launched sometime next year (2008), Google Sites will expand upon the Google Page Creator already offered within Apps. Based on JotSpot collaboration tools, Sites will allow business to set up intranets, project management tracking, customer extranets, and any number of custom sites based on multi-user collaboration.

Johnston also noted the integration of GrandCentral, a Google acquisition that centralizes multiple phones into one number, into the forthcoming Google Sites. He declined to cite a timetable, but said it was a “huge priority” for Google.

follow me on Twitter

This article does not reference Google Toolbar PageRank in any way

First of all you are going to need to do a little homework.

Eric Enge interview with Matt Cutts

The Eric Enge interview with Matt Cutts was truly exceptional and revealed a number of gotchas that for some reason continue to be circulated.

Key takeaways

Matt Cutts: … Now, robots.txt says you are not allowed to crawl a page, and Google therefore does not crawl pages that are forbidden in robots.txt. However, they can accrue PageRank, and they can be returned in our search results.

Matt Cutts: … So, with robots.txt for good reasons we’ve shown the reference even if we can’t crawl it, whereas if we crawl a page and find a Meta tag that says NoIndex, we won’t even return that page. For better or for worse that’s the decision that we’ve made. I believe Yahoo and Microsoft might handle NoIndex slightly differently which is little unfortunate, but everybody gets to choose how they want to handle different tags.

Eric Enge: Can a NoIndex page accumulate PageRank?

Matt Cutts: A NoIndex page can accumulate PageRank, because the links are still followed outwards from a NoIndex page.

Eric Enge: So, it can accumulate and pass PageRank.

Matt Cutts: Right, and it will still accumulate PageRank, but it won’t be showing in our Index. So, I wouldn’t make a NoIndex page that itself is a dead end. You can make a NoIndex page that has links to lots of other pages.

For example you might want to have a master Sitemap page and for whatever reason NoIndex that, but then have links to all your sub Sitemaps.

I have just provided a couple of highlights, I am not attempting to replace a need for visiting the site I am citing. This is something I hate seeing, when people take other people’s content and repurpose it, thus making the original article worthless.
There are a few other gotchas in there, I suggest you read it 2 or 3 times to really understand what was said, and what wasn’t said.

Dangling Pages

One of the best descriptions of dangling links is on the Webworkshop site, though they are assuming that links are totally taken out of the equation based on what they quote from the PageRank paper.

"Dangling links are simply links that point to any page with no outgoing links. They affect the model because it is not clear where their weight should be distributed, and there are a large number of them. Often these dangling links are simply pages that we have not downloaded yet……….Because dangling links do not affect the ranking of any other page directly, we simply remove them from the system until all the PageRanks are calculated. After all the PageRanks are calculated they can be added back in without affecting things significantly." – extract from the original PageRank paper by Google’s founders, Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page.

Alternate interpretation

This is just an aside, as the amount of juice lost to dangling pages currently is hard to determine, and could be handled differently

They are assuming that if page A links to 6 other pages, 5 of them being dangling links, then the website will be treated as only having 2 pages until the end of the calculation.

Whilst I haven’t delved into the maths (and probably couldn’t through lack of information and lack of knowledge), it also seems to me that at the time the pages are taken out of the cyclic calculation, a percentage of the link value can still be taken with them.

Thus though the site for cyclic calculations will be just 2 pages, the link from A to B might only transfer 1/6 of the juice on each cycle.

At the time the original paper was written, Google only had a small proportion of the web indexed due to hardware and operating system restraints.
In modern times they have a lot more indexed, thus a more complex way of handling dangling pages could be possible.

More food for thought, a link to a page that is considered supplemental could be treated as a full link or as a link to a dangling page, or some other variant.

Even more food for thought, a site with multiple interlinked pages with no external links at all could be looked on as a "dangling site".

Ultimately what is important is that dangling pages are a juice leak, though it is difficult to determine exactly how much

Additional Research On Link Juice Flow

I have referenced these works before, and I am just going to keep on referring people to them.

• SEOFastStart by Dan Theis – a good introduction to SEO, and also introduces the ideas of controlling juice around a website – no email signup required
• Revenge of the Mininet by Michael Campbell – a timeless classic as long as PageRank continues to be important – the download page isn’t hidden if you really don’t want to sign up to Michael’s mailing list, but I have been on his list for years.
• Dynamic Linking by Leslie Rhode – A bonus that comes with Revenge of the Mininet

I mentioned these is a comment on SEOmoz recently in a discussion on PageRank, and for some reason my comment received just 2 up votes and one down vote.

I don’t gain in any material way from promoting these free ebooks, though I might gain some goodwill. The main reason I link to them is because they are a superb resource, and it saves me countless hours writing beginners material.

OK, On to some debunking

Blocking Pages With Robots.txt Creates Dangling Pages On The First Tier

In the quoted paragraph above, Matt clearly states that pages blocked with Robots.txt still accumulate juice from the links they receive.

Those pages don’t have any external 2nd tier links that are visible to a ‘bot, thus they are dangling pages.

How much juice they leak depends on how Google currently factor in dangling pages, but Matt himself suggests not to create dangling pages.

If you read any SEO Guide that suggests that the ultimate cure for duplicate content is to block it with robots.txt, I suggest you might want to question the author about dangling pages.

Meta NoIndex Follow Duplicate Content

This is a better solution than using Robots.txt, because it doesn’t create dangling pages. Links on a duplicate content page are still followed, however both internal and external links are followed and thus are leaks, often multiple leaks for the same piece of content when using CMS systems such as WordPress which create site-wide links in the sidebar when using poorly designed themes, plugins, and especially WordPress Widgets.

If you read an article suggesting using Meta Noindex Follow, ask the author how they are controlling external links on duplicate content pages.

Meta NoIndex Nofollow Duplicate Content

If you use Meta Noindex Nofollow, whilst this is handled slightly differently by Google to Robots.txt, as the page won’t appear in search results, it is still a page accumulating Google Juice if you link to it, another dangling page or node.
Second tier leaks from the page won’t leak, but the page as a whole will leak depending on how Google are currently handling dangling pages.

I don’t see people recommending this frequently, but as with Robots.txt, ask the author about dangling pages.

Dynamic Linking & rel="nofollow"

Extensive use of Nofollow and other forms of dynamic linking are the only way to effectively prevent duplicate content pages in some way having a effect on your internal linking structure and juice flow. The Wikipedia page on Nofollow really isn’t correct.

The Dangling Sales Page

To finish I want to give you an example of how a sales page that previously might have benefited from lots of links can easily be turned into a dangling page and effectively discounted from cyclic PageRank calculations.

Sales pages started off just as a single page with no links:-

Despite all the links coming to the site from external sources, this website is a dangling page, thus excluded from iterative PageRank calculations. It might still benefit from anchor text and other factors, but it effectively is not part of Google’s global mesh and passes on no influence.

Add Legal Paperwork And Reciprocal Links Directory:-

A much more structured site, and whilst it gains some benefit from reciprocating links there are 2 factors that are almost universally overlooked.

1. No Longer A Dangling Page – because the site now has external links, it is valid as part of the global ranking calculations. Other pages as mentioned above were previously stating that the amount of juice passed to dangling pages was minimal, so this could be potentially a huge boost.
2. More Pages Indexed – it is only a few pages, but with PageRank it is often not just how much juice you have flowing into a site, but what you do with it.

The reciprocal low quality links might not have had a huge amount of value compared to the benefit of being a member of the "iteration club" and having a few more pages indexed.

Add a link to the designer

Some early single page sales letters were not dangling pages, but didn’t benefit from any internal iterations, and acted as a conduit of juice to their web design firm.

The Danger of Using Nofollow or Robots.txt on Unimportant Pages

I have actually seen this on a few sites:-

• Reciprocal Link Directory Removed
• Link to web designer removed
• Nofollow added to legal papers that are looked on as being unimportant

Such a website is now out of the iteration club, it is a dangling page as it is no longer voting on other pages.

My Own Gotcha

I mentioned that this catches me out as well.

A while ago I wrote an article about linking to Technorati being a problem. It might still be true, but the amount of juice lost through such links might also be lower than I thought, due to Technorati using meta nofollow on every page. Technorati tag pages are themselves dangling pages with no external links.

Wikipedia and Digg on the other hand are not dangling pages. They still have external links to other sites, and thus any links to them are part of iterative calculations.

I would still say it is best to have tags pointing to your own domain tag pages, and to use nofollow on links to Wikipedia and Digg, though with Digg I suggest that is only on links to submission pages which contain no content.

Stumbleupon is also tricky – there are no external links from individual pages, but there is extensive internal linking.

With Digg and Stumbleupon, profiles rank extremely well, so you can use them for reputation management even if you get no juice direct from the profile.

I think I was the first to describe Wikipedia as a black hole of link equity, explained why you should nofollow Wikipedia extensively, and was one of the first to promote Ken’s Nofollow Wikipedia plugin.

You would have thought in 10 months they would have come up with an alternative to using nofollow on all those out-bound links.

They do however link out to a few trusted sites without nofollow, from just a few pages. I suppose Google does still allow them to be part of their iterative calculations.

Another Own Gotcha

This isn’t 100% something I can fix. I have suggested people use robots.txt on certain sites knowing it wasn’t the perfect solution.

You might notice on this site I don’t use an extensive robots.txt, and the design of my site structure is deliberate, but then at the same time I use nofollow with lots of custom theme modifications, and should use it a lot more.

Eventually I will come up with solutions to make things a little easier.

Tools In The Wrong Hands Can Be Dangerous

Using Robots.txt and Meta Noindex, Follow as a cure for duplicate content is a SEO bodge job or SEO bandaid. It may offer some benefits depending on how dangling pages are being handled, but is certainly not an ideal solution due to the amount of leaks that typically remain or dangling pages that are created.

Comments

*Originally published at AndyBeard.eu

(click to enlarge)

Previously, the primary component of user content on the site was limited to user ratings and reviews associated with business listings.

Some of the new features this recent upgrade added include allowing all users to enhance basic biz profile information, uploading pictures of organizations, wiki-like biz listing “blog” features which could allow simplistic blogging by businesses and/or could be used as a consumer comment or Q/A zone for each business since any user could submit info to them.

Of all the top online yellow pages and local search sites, I believe that Superpages may now have the distinction of having the greatest variety of Web 2.0 features. Out of Local.com, DexKnows, Yellowpages.com, YellowBook, Citysearch, and Google Maps — none of them have photos + ratings/reviews + “blogs” + user-provided profile data. Only Yahoo Local really approaches this number of user-content features, I believe. Out of all of the top IYP and local search sites, only Yahoo Local and Superpages openly invite any users to supply photos for locations — Google Maps only allows business owners and content partners to supply photos.

Now, I can see that they may still be working a few of the kinks out in these new services, and the display of this new content seems a little bit siloed or distanced from the business’s profile page, requiring a click to see it. But, I expect these are things which will evolve and expand as they get more content added in. There’s always something of a chicken-or-egg dilemma when adding new content like this to sites — stuff can look a little sad when there’s little content, but it’s hard to get content without making the features really visually apparent.

But, critique of the implementation aside, Superpages appears to be keeping a ahead of the game by striving to differentiate themselves from the competition in terms of these new user features, along with the robust data sources and diverse ad products they already had.

You may recall that Superpages recently brought their video ads out of beta release, and they also acquired Switchboard.com and announced plans to deploy local content through Microsoft Windows Live Messenger via a partnership with Multiplied Media. Just before that, Idearc acquired the LocalSearch.com domain name along with some portion of ownership of AmericanTowns.com (a company which has substantial local information sites and content).

There’s an arms race that’s been going on for quite some time in the local space wherein the yellow pages directory sites and local search engines have all been seeking to outpace each other by ramping up on product features and richness of data. With the recent flurry of multiple announcements and deployments of new functionality and distribution channels, you can see that Superpages is aggressively working to outpace the competition and make it challenging for others to match their suite of features. The programming for such stuff is relatively easy in some cases, but the logistics involved in managing quality issues can be expensive — you don’t want people adding malicious or obscene images to businesses, so it requires human auditing to keep the quality up.

I think these recent changes may begin to transform their info pages from being the traditional business profiles into something more like dynamic information clusters around businesses.

The strategy could be worth it in terms of driving user loyalty and in helping to differentiate from the competition. The interest and adoption of sites like Yelp.com have demonstrated that user communities can effectively be built around directory information sites, so user-generated content could be the next frontier for IYP, if it can be done in an affordable manner that doesn’t degrade quality.

Obviously, a prime motivating factor behind all this pumping of investment capital into Superpages.com is Idearc’s expectation that revenues on the legacy print side of the house may continue to decline. In the recent figures from Idearc’s third-quarter financials, Idearc’s stock took a heavy beating, in part because of a 3% fall in print revenue. Lehman Brothers analyst Anthony DiClemente stated:

“I think the concern from investors is that you are seeing the transition of the business to electronic from print faster than expected.”

Hmmm…. it sounds a bit like my theory that Google Trends could be indicating a pretty fast slump for traditional yellow pages usage might actually have some basis. But, I digress.

Idearc’s not taking the paradigm shift laying down — the cagey adoption of Web 2.0 hallmarks on top of the solidly-performing product will help them keep ahead in the local search game.

(Disclosure: I used to work for Idearc Superpages.com and you can reasonably consider that I might still hold stock and/or options from them. Despite this, I do try to write objectively about them and the local search industry in general. Heck, I’ve even been accused recently of being biased against yellow pages for stuff I write. Even so, I just want to state for the record that this article is an opinion piece by me with no intention of influencing stock prices, and you shouldn’t be basing stock purchase decisions on me anyway. After all, I’m *still* stinging a bit from my stock losses suffered during the dot-com bust!)

Comments

When you post items on your blog or your site, and your blog has an RSS feed, your post(s) can appear on many other sites. In fact, on this blog, I encourage others to use my blog’s RSS feed and re-use it as you see fit. In fact, there are lots of other sites that use my feed as their site’s content. Not only do I encourage it, it actually helps me out in the long run–here’s why:

If another site uses my site’s RSS feed as their content, it is their responsibility to make sure that the pages are not seen as duplicate pages. Since my blog gets spidered first by the search engines, I’m the original–and others are duplicates. Furthermore, as I link to other pages on my site in posts, those links will appear in my RSS feed. And whenever my RSS feed is used as content on another domain (web site), there is a good chance that the link might count as a backlink to my site.

So, as you continue to post on your blog or site, don’t forget to link liberally to other pages on your site–those links will potentially count as backlinks to your site, not only as internal links but external links to your site’s pages. Sure, someone reading your blog or web site may read the post and stay on your site (which is a good thing), but what if they’re on another site that’s syndicated your RSS feed?

Before you post, you might want to create a list of important pages on your web site or perhaps your favorite blog posts. I keep a list of my “important” pages (pages that I might want to rank well in a search engine) for future use. And when I finish a blog post I quickly scan my list of “important” pages and add a few internal links. I also record the anchor text that I used to point to the page so I don’t use it again too often.

Initial Blog Syndication

Promoting your blog or web site’s RSS feed is important–it’s part of the link building process. First, you will most likely want to use a list like this and a list like this to make sure your RSS feed is promoted properly. There are also sites in your topic area that encourage RSS site syndication. For example, there are places like this that do a great job of syndicating content.

Once you get your RSS feed listed and syndicated, you will notice that other sites will tend to pick it up. This is a good thing. Really.

When your RSS feed gets noticed (or you use sites like this and this and this to syndicate your feed, you might notice that there are other networks and other sites like Plugim.com and Bumpzee.com what automatically will publish your RSS feed. Again, as your RSS feed appears on other sites, it will include links to pages on your site.

Here’s a Cool Trick

Want even a better trick? Rather than use “plugins” and scripts to automatically figure out related posts, do it manually. At the end of your blog post, include a few links to related posts. But, put those links in your post so they get into your site’s RSS feed. That’s much more powerful than using a “related posts” plugin. As an example of this, I’ve included “favorite posts” at the end of this blog post.

The bottom line this: if you publish your full RSS feed don’t forget about linking to your internal pages on your site using the appropriate anchor text–not only could those links be counted as internal links, those links could be counted as external links, as well.

Want to read some more of my favorite posts? Here are a few links below:

14 Ways to Disclose Sponsored Links – A funny satirical post about disclosing sponsored links.

Social Media Marketing is Popular But… – Why we are not seeing money being put into Social Media Marketing.

Social Bookmarking Sites List – My list of social bookmarking sites. Needs updating, but still useful.

Linking Campaigns – An older article about linking campaigns.

PPC Keyword Mistakes – I hope you’re not one of these people. If so, then you really really need my help.

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“[W]e’ve built a way for you to connect to things other than people, without cluttering your Friend List,” explained Justin Rosenstein on The Facebook Blog.  “I love the Indian restaurant downstairs from Facebook HQ, and now that Junnoon has a Facebook Page, I can become a fan.”

Rosenstein then continued, “This is useful, not just to let Junnoon know I love their food, but also because my friends can see this affiliation on my profile or in their News Feeds and then go to Junnoon’s Page to learn more about it — or even make a reservation, thanks to an OpenTable app installed right on the page.”

Not every page is as well-developed as Junnoon’s, yet, in a short bout of testing, Facebook’s search function didn’t ever fail to find one.  In fact, the range of people and things that can have pages is quite wide – there was at least one result each for Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, the Tesla Roadster, and Google.  Also, after just a few days of life, those pages have attracted 24, 43, and 61 fans, respectively.

That won’t set any records – a surprisingly successful New York Times app drew over 1,000 users in a similar period of time.  Still, Facebook’s product pages would seem to open yet another avenue in which the social network can bring people and potential advertisers together.