fantomNews™ — the ultimate know

As search engines have come to rely more and more on inlinks rather than on-site factors, they’ve become a lot smarter in determining artificial linking patterns, too. Meaning that you can’t reasonably expect any success in competitive niches if you’re still relying on your 1990s linking techniques

Wiep Knol has released the results of his survey on link value factors as seen by a slew of well known professional SEOs such as Eric Ward, Aaron Wall, Jim Boykin, Barry Schwartz, Peter da Vanzo and Joost de Valk, not to forget the ever helpful Michael Martinez as well as relatively new but highly competent and well-regarded names such as Hamlet Batista and lots of others. What’s interesting about the results isn’t merely the overall metrics - it’s the individual comments on various questions such as the perceived linkjuice power of .edu and .gov domains, the value of anchor texts, linking sites’ topicality, authority status, and more

Isn’t it funny how prophecies have a knack of coming true sometimes? One month ago we did a cartoon taking a shot at Google’s hypocritical FUD tactics regarding paid links by fantasizing about what a pair of hardnosed mobsters would do to take advantage of this positively silly state of affairs. Now, it seems that a high profile company like Shopzilla has actually started to pay for link removal!

If you’ve fallen for the prevailing view that a social networking setup like Twitter is of no practical use unless you’re an exhibitionist attention whore, perhaps, think again. There’s actually a lot more to it, provided you’re prepared to venture on untrodden ground.

Here’s a “Link Building 101 in 2 Minutes” video that will save you tons of time and money.

Quite a few blogs haven’t yet implemented the dreaded “nofollow” tag on comment links. While comments on these blogs will pass link juice nicely, there’s a snag: How are you going to find them? This ultra cheap software cuts it down to a single-click action

Search industry watchdogs have noticed an ongoing radical slashing of many (former) darlings’ PR values. It’s happening across the board and has hit a slew of previously high PR rated sites. Is this a consequence of Google’s clamping down on link sellers? Not everyone seems to think so.

Unabashed by the ongoing, FUD dominated discussion concerning paid links as fueled by the Google self-declared Noevilers, this crowd has blithely launched a new link building service with a twist: Rather than pay through the nose on a monthly basis, as is customary, you’re only set back by one-time fees for any PR1-PR5 link.

What with the ongoing FUD tactics pursued by Google & Co. trashing paid links and junking up the industry forums and blogs with all the buzz this creates, out comes - entirely expectably - a super duper tool claiming to have mastered the technology to detect said paid links. So can they? Well, if so, here’s some very revealing stuff - and remember you read it here first!

Stop press! Here’s a kick ass list of 300+ live social bookmarking sites, including reviews and an outline of their respective features such as topical focus, available (or required) toolbars, bookmarklets, tag policy, and more.

Operating in (aka: gaming) the social network space, going for effective link building via forums, blog comments, wikis etc. will typically involve setting up slews of different personas and identities - for most of which you’ll need an operative e-mail address to verify your registration these days. So enter The Mailbot: This recently launched tool is a desktop based application that allows you to create as many valid, functional Gmail accounts as you like

Here are some great link building tips of the white hat variety, outlining the amount of time and efforts you’ll have to invest in each strategy and how effective it will generally be

Here are two cool tools that let you get free backlinks from Squidoo lenses, Hubpages and lots of blogs on various platforms

If you’ve fallen for all the recent hoopla showered upon Blogrush you may either be devastated or delighted to learn that this pathetically blatant pyramid scheme of a blog link exchange for the mathematically challenged and blog illiterati has been cracked from no less than two top notch black hat quarters, enabling you to game it to your heart’s content until the cows come home

Here’s an excellent opportunity to gain linklove from Wikipedia in a perfectly legitimate manner. Lots of niches available that can be yours to cover for the asking.