I wrote about this topic recently for Anita’s site, Reviewlicious.com. However, I had a discussion a few days ago with another SEO about this and the person was unaware of the “old site” angle so I thought I’d do a little more on it for those of you who haven’t thought too much about it.

Old sites are, many times, valuable goldmines. They’re like Terrence Stamp in that black jumpsuit. Here’s why you should never discount an old site.

Best case scenario…
1. They’re listed in critical directories.

2. They will give you links for free.

3. They may sell you the domain for cheap.

4. They’ve got age on their side in the databases.

5. They have nice backlinks.

Worst case scenario…
1. The site is not listed in critical directories.

2. The site owner is too savvy or misanthropic (ever met the vegetarian-hating evilgreenmonkey?) to give you a link for free.

3. The selling price they offer for the site would buy you a lovely used Toyota and a latte a day for three months.

4. Age hasn’t been good to the site and it is the equivalent of Debbie Harry with no makeup on in the SERPs.

5. The backlinks are either tiny in number or there are none.

Here’s how to find quality sites that you can use in your quest for world domination…

Go through a directory. Simply hit Dmoz.org and drill down into a category, visiting some sites. Chances are you’re going to see some really horrible ones that are about as far away from Web 2.0 as Elvis Costello is from Sid Vicious. I know these sites exist. Just recently, I worked on some of these sites. These are the sites that are so hideous, you have to look away and count to ten before you can calm down. These sites scare small children and make the meekest among us fly into homicidal rages. If someone has a site like this, there is no telling how nicely you can abuse them. Think free links or a seriously cheap site buyout.

Go through the SERPs and click on the listings that appear to have no meta tags in place. Sometimes you’ll hit on something good that hasn’t been optimized at all because the site owner has no clue. Check the backlinks and see if the site is listed in a few good directories. Exploit site owner to your advantage.

Dumb luck is also a good way to find these old sites. You do your search and click on a result that actually looks promising, then you notice that the site has a copyright of 1998, there are banners flashing everywhere and gifs rotating around like chickens on a spit, and everything about the site screams “I’m lonely, seriously socially inept, and I live/work in my parents’ basement whilst listening to Metallica and playing Nintendo all day.” In a case like this, try bartering for a free link, especially if you have some old Metallica bootlegs on cassette.

A few things to keep in mind when considering the value of old sites:
The cache is critical with old sites. If the site hasn’t been crawled in a year, you probably don’t want to mess with it unless the site owner simply hands it to you and goes on his merry way. You’re not going to immediately reap the benefits by working with a site that doesn’t get a regular crawl.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you can rely only on domain registration for a site’s age, since that is no predictor. A domain could have been registered years ago and the site could have just gone up last month for all you know, so check for that.

Overall, I am not recommending that you cease to buy new domains and add to the joy that is the overpopulated internet, but old sites really are quite valuable in many ways. Go buy some and 301 them at the very least. Or get rid of the ones that have flashing banners and neon green text. That will help me and I’ll be a nicer person to my master and commander, the lovely nutbrown hare Mahoud Ashgar.

Perusing webmaster tools, as I am wont to do of a lunch hour, I noticed that del.icio.us seems to be giving us some links love.  Now, as loved as the B2B marketing, advertising and design site I work for is, it does not tend to attract del.icio.us bookmarks.  Imagine my joy on finding out that while they may not pass on much juice, there is love flowing from that piece of the Yahoo! pie.

While the thoughts started spinning through my mind about using all those del.icio.us accounts I had for some good (because I forgot my passwords… errrr… ya…), I had to step back and think for a moment – surely Google won’t be passing along much juice from this link…?

Whether Google passes juice on or not, as I’ve said in other* articles*, link building is about traffic, not rankings.  This method of linking also highlights title tags and how important they are.  While the title bar cannot display the heart icon I see in one users bookmarks, on her page that link stands out among all others.

Back in the day, it was just title tags and a URL in your search results.  As a search marketer you had to capture your audience in that small amount of text.  Those are good times to keep in mind when optimising now – think of del.icio.us and how you only have the title to hook and reel someone in.

How is del.icio.us working for you?

* - While these articles do require you to log on, the registration is free.

I know (or hope to god) that everyone knows what a nofollow is…if you don’t, you just slap a little rel=”nofollow” into your code and a search engine should not influence the link target’s ranking. You can do this if you’re unsure whether you want to give your stamp of approval to a site you link to, for example. I am not going to waste anyone’s time discussing this really but I do want to touch on a point that a fellow SEO brought up recently.

It’s good practice to check to make sure that someone who has given you a link has not also given you a nofollow, unless you asked for it for some religious reason. Apparently there have been some issues with sites putting in the nice link WITHOUT a nofollow, then once you’ve checked the code and decided to go surf porn or watch Britcom reruns, the developer/evil bastard who controls the link/hill person decides to put the nofollow in. This can happen days or weeks in so just take precautions and keep a check on critical inbound links every now and then. Also, if you notice anyone doing this to you please let me know and I will visit the person in the small hours of the night and put a bat up his/her nightdress.

It’s also worth pointing out that you should check to see that the page where they’ve put your link is crawlable so check the robots.txt file too. And just in general, don’t transport Dracula at night. It’s ill advised.

My fellow SEO Chick Anita, otherwise known as PPCQueen, suggested that I list out a few bits of linking etiquette since we’re all being overwhelmed with linking as an SEO strategy. After doing some searching and finding mostly the same thing being said everywhere, here are a few basic tips that might help.

1. Keep internal links opening in the same window. Set external links to open in a new window. Now, this topic was fairly hotly debated on a few forums, with most people preferring the method I have listed. Most people do expect an external link to open in a new window but since this seems to irritate some people, let’s open it up for discussion so we can see what our readers prefer.

2. Use your nofollows wisely. If you are linking to an external site and you don’t want to give your seal of approval to them, but you do want your users to go there for whatever reason, consider a nofollow. Just keep in mind that we all want a little link love.

3. If you have multiple blogs and you want to point your readers on one blog to a post on one of your other blogs, do so. Don’t fall into the habit of cross-linking your sites just to get some link points though. If it’s relevant, do it. Otherwise, think about it carefully and determine what you’re trying to gain.

These are just a few pointers when linking…we’d all love to hear more about this from our readers so please let us know if you have any good etiquette tips. If you’ve met any of the SEO Chicks, I am sure you’ll agree that etiquette is something we feel strongly about, particularly when drinking in public.

On Tuesday night, after a really fantastic SMX conference and before an equally fantastic SEOMoz party, I went to see Midnight Movies, a band that I’d never heard of. They opened for The Raveonettes, one of my current favorites. If you haven’t heard of these bands, check them out online because they put on the most amazing show I’ve seen. If you like girl drummers, especially really good-looking ones, you missed an amazing show.

Since this isn’t a “Julie loves music and is so hip it’s sad” blog, I really will make a point. The whole show made me really think about links. That is, when I was not stuffing down molten chocolate cake and swilling red wine.

Hopefully everyone understands the power of a well-placed link, but usually I think about links as a way to give credence to another site, simply because that has been my main use for them with the clients I have worked with. However, I really thought about the traffic potential last night when I was listening to this amazing opening act and wondering how I could help get people to hear them. I had no idea they existed until last night and I have the potential to send traffic to their site simply by placing a link in a blog.

Naturally that means you all should CLICK ON THE DAMN LINK and check them out.

Many people have said how tedious they find the art of link building, and I certainly am not a big fan of spending time doing it but it really is an amazingly quick way to get traffic for a site. I don’t care if the band’s site is good, or if it’s optimized at all or if I can find it by searching for something like “best indie bands from the US” because I can create a portal to it and get users there, with a lovely and lowly little link which I hope to God you’re going to click on because I don’t know if you have seen my SEO Chicks Viking counterpart around at the conference but if you have, I think you know that she isn’t really someone to mess with and even though she blew off the concert and left me with the very charming group of Ciaran, Ekky, EvilGreenMonkey, and Jay, I still love her.

I spent my last year of college heavily entrenched in ethnography, a use of which I will now demonstrate for your reading pleasure. For those of you who know nothing about anthropology or sociology, ethnography is simply a method of studying a group of people by becoming an insider. Obviously this has uses in many fields, but I think it has a particular significance in search engine marketing. You can’t really market (at least not very well) to a group that you know nothing about. Punk rockers aren’t going to buy sweatshirts with dancing cats on them (at least I hope to God they aren’t) so if you’re selling the aforementioned horrific sweatshirts with dancing cats on them, which usually just depress everyone, don’t set up ads for keywords like “punk rock apparel” or else I will have to track you down.

Link baiting also needs a little investigative work, if it’s going to work to your advantage. When you’re trying to bait, think about the type of people you want to attract, the people who will convert and help you reach whatever goal you have for the site. In doing this blog, we obviously want traffic from people who like search engine marketing and want to read about it. We’re not overly interested in getting my mom to check the site daily, since she has no freaking idea what I do and she would only use this blog for evil. OK sorry…I’m calm now. Anyway, Siphus Flibbertigibbet (his name has been changed to protect him in case we actually use his idea at some point) suggested that, in order to generate some traffic to the site, the SEO Chicks get in bikinis and wash cars. After I immediately ran out to buy a new bikini, I decided to discuss this idea with Lisa, who suggested Siphus wear the bikini and wash the car. I then suggested evilgreenmonkey wear the bikini and wash the car. See how it works? Which would you rather see, the SEO Chicks doing this or evilgreenmonkey? Don’t worry about hurting his feelings. This kind of thing IS link bait. It might seem trashy or offensive to some, but think about the trashy and offensive guys in this industry. OK I AM KIDDING! Totally kidding.

Think about things you tend to laugh at. Speaking for myself (like I’d speak for anyone else), I enjoy seeing a food cart get overturned in a chase scene. Even though I see it coming every damn time, I laugh like a moron when it happens. I also enjoy it when a criminal runs through a crowd and knocks people down. That kind of thing would almost make me buy a sweatshirt with a dancing cat on it, especially if Johnny Rotten was rubbing it. Doing this gets you into the mindset of figuring out what is going to get someone’s attention. We have all seen amazing examples of link baiting, even some that don’t involve gladiators which just plain sucks to be honest, so think about what makes them so attractive (the link baits, not the damn gladiators) and learn from that. Don’t go into the game without taking the time to figure out who it is that you want to attract. Otherwise you are wasting your time, and wasting everyone else’s. Kind of like how I’ve just wasted yours really…