They took my idea! - How To Buy A #1 Organic Ranking

Look what I found over at SE Land:

How To Buy A #1 Organic Search Ranking On Google

So, here's one of the popular SEO blogs talking about how PPC ads and other paid material can benefit your organic ranking. I seem to remember writing about that recently - maybe they read this blog?

I have the new version of Gmail - finally!

Amid all the chatter online about Gmail 2.0, I was beginning to wonder if I would ever get to use it myself. It turns out that when I checked my email this morning, it was there - the link to the "older version" - and I knew that Gmail had quietly upgraded overnight for me. So now I can say with those great SEO bloggers that I read every day - "I have the new version of Gmail - do you?"

Link Text Optimization - Sunday SEO Series

Ok. I know - it's Monday. night. But since I didn't add to my current series of SEO posts, I felt that I should make up for it as soon as I could. So here we go...

Text Link Optimization.

The key word to focus on when thinking of Link Text Optimization is right there in the center. TEXT! That's right - text. No pictures, no JavaScript, no Flash. In order to properly optimize your website's links, the links themselves have got to be text. For this reason, we could probably refer to this as Text Link Optimization. Here's why:

How a search algorithm works.

Search algorithms go out and scour the web, taking in text and links. In general (this is changing every day, but this is still the general consensus), algorithms are not able to read pictures. Therefore, pictures of text do nothing to enhance your site's visibility in the eyes of search engines. When it comes to a picture link, the algorithm will see a link to some web address, but it will not see any text, even if the picture is of text.

Use text links in navigation, and picture links in content.

The basic practice that you should take away from this is to use all text links for site's navigation links. These are those important links that are on every page, and are always the same. Usually, you'll have a row of links across the top and a row down the side. Those are the ones that should be text.

You can use picture links, but you should use them in the content of the pages as you need them. This is the part of each page that is different.

"Alt" Text - a chance to double up.

Alt text is text that shows up when you place the mouse over a link. Specifically, in HTML markup, this is an example of a link with alt text:

Link text goes here...

This text is read by the search algorithm, and it can add to the visibility of your website. Therefore, you should always make use of alt text your navigation links. It's not always necessary to use this attribute of the link tag, but it will give your site a boost if you use it properly in your site's navigation.

OpenSocial Hacked In Minutes, and Other Exciting News

Just to keep the pings going, I decided to post a couple of headlines from the feed world this morning.

Apparently, the first application to be launched on Google's Open Social / Holy Grail framework was hacked in just a few minutes after its launch. Interesting.
OpenSocial Hacked In Minutes
First OpenSocial App Hacked in 45 Minutes

Also interesting, someone is now claiming that P2P users actually buy more music - not less - than everyone else. Could this be the Copernican Revolution of the 21st century music industry? Yeah. Probably not. But it's a good read anyway.
Gov't Commissioned Study Finds P2P Downloaders Buy More Music

Oh - and this could be the announcement of the month - Google is planning to unveil its 'Android' phone software project today.
Google to unveil 'Android' phone software

And I know - I never posted a follow-up to last week's SEO series post. It will be coming soon. Stay tuned...