Dude, Where's My Leap Link?

Hey there, hope all is well out in linkland. I have a couple things to share:

If you've been thinking about doing SES New York, here's a priority code for a 20% discount when you register: 20SPKRGUST. Be sure to stop by the linking session on Wednesday, March 19 and say hello, I'll be there talking about links again.

Good news! The Aviva Directory is back in Google's index with a new and "improved" outlook on link life. Jeff wrote an awesome post on what happened and how they changed what they were doing to get back in Google's good graces. You'll find the whole post here on the Aviva blog. Thanks for sharing what you learned and here's to living in the green from here on out!

Two more things and both are from Search Engine Roundtable.

If you didn't make it to SMX, here's the week's recaps minus the one I'm supposed to be doing on the Linking Basics session. Pretty sad when you have to cover your own session 'cuz none of your cohorts thinks it's sexy enough.

Oh well, note to self: next time we do a Linking Basic's panel...pack push-up bra and convince Eric to show some chest hair.

The other thing from SERoundtable is a post about how paid links can hurt you. Yep, you read that right, seems there's been chatter about how your competitors really can slap you into the penalty box. We'll see. People also go on and on about how funneling PageRank is the next coming and duplicate content means the end of search life as we know it. Hmmm.

Our friend Matt McGee has a great post on the new Yelp/Yahoo! relationship:

At the bottom of every business profile page on Yelp, right next to the “Write a Review” button, there are now links to view the appropriate category results page on Yahoo Local. And even better, those are followed links with terrific keyword usage in the anchor text.

Smart move Yahoo!, that Yelp is a keeper and you got there first, nice.

During the Link Building Basics session at SMX I had a slide in my tactics section that said this:

• Ask your customers to write reviews on Yahoo! Local and Yelp.

Especially now with what you know about Yahoo! and Yelp, it may be a very good time to develop some sort of incentivized review program with your customers. Or at the very least, point them to both Yelp and Yahoo! and encourage them to add a review.

This will put some pressure on customer service departments which is a good thing, with people using the review sites and the results surfacing across the Web, companies will have to be at the top of their game or suffer humiliation and loss of sales. Which can be good and bad I guess... this has the potential to affect small business when it's really the big guys that need the kick.

Hmmm (a lot of humming tonight) I wonder if my suggestion to encourage people to review could be seen as spamming. Could be I guess, since Yelp is considered one of those social media sites.

On the other hand, I'm really not sure why, is encouraging people to leave a review on Yelp any different than offering a discount on the back of a printed receipt? You've seen those - call a 800 number, take a survey and you get a discount code for a future purchase. Maybe it's the paper that makes it all public relations instead of spamming.

Who knows. Ok enough from me, have a great weekend. :)