I had to search for myself, of course. Below I’m showing you just one section of the results, because I couldn’t fit it all into one screen shot; you’d have to scroll down to see everything. Basically, 123People sets up the results page in sections, with each section devoted to a particular type of information. Let me show you what I mean:

123people

As you can see (if you look closely; I had to shrink and crop to fit), you can request email updates for this particular search. Just below that you get a summary of what was found: 31 web links, 37 images, 14 videos, 47 social network profiles, 32 emails, 16 phone numbers, 19 blogs, 20 documents, 6 Amazon references, 6 instant messages, but no news items. While none of the email addresses or phone numbers are mine, the fourth and fifth web links go to SEO Chat articles I have written.

Before I go into any detail as to what 123People knows about me, I’d like to point out a few interesting aspects of these modular results. In the lower left corner of each box, you can click on arrows to page through the results, and you always know where you are thanks to the numbering system. Near the top of each box on the right are tabs; you can click on these tabs if you want to see results only from a particular source. Icons next to each result also tell you where it came from. The icons next to the phone numbers let you call the person by using Jalal, a program with which I am not familiar.

In all, about 13 or 14 different sections covering different types of information, all publicly available on the Internet, are crammed into this one results page. I’ve seen more crowded web pages, but not very often. On the other hand, the page didn’t feel too crowded to me. Suzanne Koch, reviewing 123People for Pandia Search Engine News, however, noted that “all this information makes the search results page feel crammed and it can be overwhelming to navigate.” She wished she had the option of closing the sections she didn’t need.

Some things showed up that I expected, while others took me by surprise. For example, I expected the top web link to be about my, ah, exhibitionist namesake’s legal run-in with Playboy Enterprises (which she won). But I didn’t expect a tag cloud, which you could click to focus in on the results related to particular keywords. Other search engines and social bookmarking sites have used tag clouds to good effect, though, as Koch noted in her review, it’s still a feature that seems to be most helpful to more advanced web searchers.

Given that 123People provided a tag cloud, I expected the words “technology” and “SEO” in the tag cloud (believe it or not, I’m not the only Terri Wells out there that writes about technology-related topics online!). But here’s a section that shows a couple of things I didn’t expect:

123people

On the right you can see the tag cloud; next to it, on the left, you’ll see a box labeled “Blogs.” The fourth entry in this box is “How I SEO my WordPress Blog - A Beginners Guide Part 2.” I know I didn’t write anything like that, so I followed the link. I discovered the reason that link was included under “Blogs;” the author of the blog cited me with a link back to the article referenced in the post!

The other surprise was in the “Documents” section on the right, with my name under Wil Wheaton’s. I hadn’t written anything about Wil Wheaton, so what was going on there? As it turned out, the link went back to a monthly online magazine that Developer Shed used to publish. My byline appeared on several articles in that particular issue, which featured Wil Wheaton on the cover and an interview with the actor on the inside (by a different author). It’s worth noting that this is an old item - at least three to four years old, in fact. I’m not entirely certain how 123People got this information, since it was taken off the web a couple of years ago, maybe more.

As to social networking profiles, 123People found me on LinkedIn, and of course, plenty of other profiles that weren’t me. In case you were wondering, none of the images shown at the top of this 123People profile were me either.

Being the exploratory sort that I am (read: I’m still working on this article’s word count), I decided to check out the tag cloud. So I clicked on “SEO” and was promptly greeted by some more surprises.

123people

Notice the first and third links listed here, in the Weblinks section of 123People’s results. Yes, they lead to articles by me, but the site is not SEO Chat. When I followed the link, I found that my entire article was there - lifted and attributed, but with no link back to the original source. This, my friends, is content theft - not by 123People, of course, but by the site that displayed it, and to which 123People so helpfully led me.

Nor was this the only example of content theft I found. Paging through the web links turned up at least four other links that led to my content published on sites without SEO Chat’s (or my) permission. For the record, we NEVER allow one of our articles to be published online completely on any site other than our own. We do permit (when asked nicely) site owners to publish the first paragraph of an article with a link back to the full article on our own web site. So I knew we hadn’t granted permission for republishing these articles.

The feature that allows you to receive email updates on particular names and searches now makes sense to me. If you’re a writer who is concerned about theft of your intellectual property, you can receive alerts for new uses of your name. You can do this through Google, too, of course, but at least in theory the results from 123People should be more focused. (Whether this is true in practice remains to be seen).

I know far too many Smiths, and trying to hunt them down with 123People is futile. I thought I found an old Amazon shipping address for one of them, but it was on a wish list of books that he clearly never would have wanted. I also have the disadvantage of having friends who possess names made more famous by others (it’s not just me).

But my investigations weren’t entirely hopeless or fruitless. In searching for one friend of mine, I was pleasantly surprised to see that several images of her came up on the first page. Clicking on an image enlarges it tremendously, neatly overlaying the rest of your data. For example:

123people

And of course you can click the X in the upper right corner to return it to its former thumbnail size. Hovering over the blue “source” on the lower left reveals the image’s URL; you can click “source” to be taken to a full-sized version of the image on a different page, but you will not get the content surrounding the image. In other words, you will only get the image out of its context.

For this particular search, my friend was all over the results. I didn’t find her current phone number, home address, or even email address, but in addition to the images she showed up in the web links, documents, blogs, biography entries (not bios of her, but ones by her), and more. I discovered she’d received an award three years ago that she never told me about (and boy is she going to hear about that from me!). I could quickly identify the words in the tag cloud that were related to her, including her hobbies, her husband’s first and last names, and her penchant for stress.

About the tag cloud again: it’s worth mentioning that if you click on a word in the tag cloud, the entire cloud will either disappear or change. My friend’s cloud disappeared when I clicked on certain words, but when I clicked on “SEO” on the tag cloud under my own results, it simply changed. New tags turned up, and old ones went away, but a number of them were still relevant - most notably, the “Searchles” tag appeared. I reviewed the Searchles search engine twice and have a (much neglected of late) profile there; I’ve contributed somewhere between a hundred and two hundred links to the social bookmarking site.

So, what is my final opinion? 123People is a potentially useful first effort, but it seems as if it would be uneven if you are looking for someone you don’t know well. It still needs work, but it’s worth watching to see what develops.

And “relevance” is really the key point here. Just as you would not include any content on your site that isn’t relevant to its themes and keywords, you should not pursue links to any site that does not have a good, logical reason for linking to you. If you carry pool-cleaning supplies, it makes sense for a pool construction company to link to you, but not a pet-grooming company.

Content and links have something else in common: key words. Any links to and within your site should use appropriate key words as anchor text. If the key phrase “blue widgets” carries a hyperlink that takes you to a particular web site, the search engine spiders will treat it as a “vote” that says “this web site is relevant to the topic of blue widgets.” Not every vote is counted equally in the algorithms, and the search engines constantly tweak their indexing rules, but a link that features “blue widgets” in its anchor text will generally give you more juice as far as relevance for blue widgets than one that uses “click here” as anchor text.

You may not be able to control the anchor text to one-way links into your site, but you can certainly control it for internal links within the site. “Digital Cameras” will do better for you than “our products,” and the name of an actual product line such as “Inspiron laptops” is better than, say, “our mid-range laptops.” Consider what key words you want to target when you choose your anchor text.

If “mid-range laptops” really is the key word you want to target, though, go ahead, but be mindful of this: there is a lot more competition for general keywords than those that are more specific. Therefore, it will take a lot more effort to rank well for a general keyword than for one that is more specific.

Potentially, you’ll see more traffic for the general keyword, but you won’t necessarily see more conversions. Searchers who use more specific key words are more ready to buy than those who use general key words; they’re interested in a specific brand, not just a mid-range laptop. So a more specific keyword may bring fewer visitors, but more conversions.

Now that I’ve given you a general overview of the importance of links and how they work in combination with key words used as anchor text to bump up your site’s relevance, it’s time to focus on the details. Most of these are simply useful points to keep in mind as you’re building links to your web site. Here’s one to write at the top of your list: go for quality, not quantity. As Richard Burckhardt, writing for Search Engine Journal, notes, “One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.”

Now let’s talk about some of the ways links can help you, aside from the obvious. If you’re in a hurry to get a new web site indexed by Google, the quickest route may not be the submission form. Instead, get a link to your site through another quality web site (one in the same field would be ideal). Google will see the link to your site when it indexes the other site, and the spider will visit you in good time.

Web sites aren’t the only places that links to your site might appear, and they’re not necessarily the most valuable either. If you send out e-mail communications, such as newsletters and zines, you’re sending links to your site to qualified leads (your subscriptions all require an opt-in, right?). Every time you send out this communication you’re reminding interested visitors of your existence and encouraging them to stop by. Don’t abuse the attention, but be mindful of the links.

Other valuable links back to your site can be gained from .edu domains. A one-way link from a .edu domain to your site could give you a boost in the SERPs. But how do you get such a link? The May 2, 2008 issue of the featured some suggestions in its Spotlight. One possibility not mentioned: find a not-for-profit .edu site that is looking for sponsors.

A third valuable source of links comes from sites with high PageRank. The high PR means that Google strongly trusts the site. By extension, any links from the site to other sites carry some of that trust with them. A deep link, which is a link to a specific page on a site rather than the home page, from a high PR site is especially good to have.

What other kinds of sites should you try to obtain links from? Look for influential bloggers, especially in your field. And don’t neglect authority sites. They may be interested in your images, video, podcasts, or even ask to reprint your content. Here at the Shed, if anyone wants to reprint our content, we expect them to ask permission first; if we grant permission, we’ll usually allow a reprint of the first paragraph and a link back to the original article. You will want to have your own policy in place.

What kinds of links should you NOT pursue? Besides links from sites that are not relevant to yours, do not pay for links. As  Burckhardt explains, “You get NOTHING from paid links except a few clicks unless the links are embedded in body text and NOT obvious sponsored links.”

These are the kinds of items that won’t actually squish the spiders (see last week’s article for those), but might cause your web site to have certain issues and/or not perform as well in the SERPs as it otherwise could. Some of these concern links – such as the link for your home page. Is it yoursite.com or www.yoursite.com? Whichever it is, you need to be consistent. If you choose the www version to be the canonical one, you will need to set up a 301 redirect so that yoursite.com sends users to the proper place.

Now look at the form of your home page URL. Does it end with index.html? Or possibly default.php? If it does, you’re losing link juice. Drop whatever is tagged onto the end after the com/ and you’ll do better in the search engines.

Especially if you have to do redirects, you should check your server headers. There are free tools online that can do this for you; just Google “check server header.” Make sure your URLs all report a “200 OK” status or “301 Moved Permanently” for redirects. If you see anything else, you have some troubleshooting to do.

Some of the technical stuff that concerns your site isn’t necessarily ON your site itself. For example, do you know what “neighborhood” your site lives in? More specifically, your web site probably shares a server with lots of other sites. If it does, you really should make sure the other sites on the proxy don’t have bad reputations. You can do a blacklist check. If you’re sharing with a spammer or a banned site, it could reflect badly on you.

If you don’t want to be thought of as a spammer, don’t behave like one. Apparently, Google looks suspiciously at those who register a domain through a service that blocks domain ownership information. Weigh that against your need for privacy, and think carefully when you register your domain.

Always use absolute links on your site. It will mean you have fewer problems with on-site link navigation. As an added bonus, you’ll get link juice if someone scrapes content from your site.

When you’re trying to check on your site’s status in Google, you’ll want to make sure that you’re not searching with Google’s Personalized Search results active. If you do a lot of searches, this can be easy to forget about. There are two ways to make sure it’s not active. The first way is to log out of Google. If that’s not convenient, append &pws=0 to the end of your search URL in the search bar.

Is there anything technical you don’t have to worry about? Yes: URL file extensions. When it comes to optimizing a web site for the search engines, you don’t need to worry about whether the file extensions say .html, .htm, .asp, .php, .xml, or anything else.

You have to remember that search engine optimization as a field is constantly changing and evolving, rather like the Internet and the search engines themselves. If you want to keep up, you have to be to prepared to adopt new strategies.

One of the most important of these is social marketing. There’s been a ton of articles written about it. You need to understand it if you hope to be ready for what’s coming next. In particular, you need to understand the special attractions of sites like Yelp, Facebook, del.icio.us, and so forth. You need to know WHY people go to these sites and what they get out of them before you can even think about marketing to them (hint: if you’re thinking anything like a conventional marketer, you probably have it all wrong).

You also need to be geared up for things like image search and video search, which are increasingly part of the “blended search” approach that many search engines are taking today. Even if a spider can’t actually read a video, there are a number of ways you can tell the search engines about your video content. If you have a Google Webmaster Central account, you can create a video sitemap and list it there. You should also enable “Enhanced image search” in your account to help Google spot the images on your site.

You can submit your videos to YouTube, of course, but don’t stop there. Google indexes other quality video sites, and those items do show up in blended search results. So consider sending your videos to Metacafe, MSN, and Yahoo. And whether the video is on your site or elsewhere, add keyword-rich text so that the search engines will know what they’re about.

Many people who search for an image of an item will include the word “picture” or “image” as one of their search terms. For example, someone looking for a good picture of a horse to sketch might search for “horse image.” You already know that you should use the alt tag on your images, and put key words in it; add the word “image” or “picture” to those tags after your key words, and you may be able to snag a few of these searchers.

Above all, remember that SEO is an ongoing process. You need to remember it with every site redesign, sure, but you also need to remember it every time you add new content or repair code or build links. Keep that in mind as you climb the SERPs. Good luck!

On the bright side, if you can not control some factors, that means that you can control others, and that is very good news for you indeed. As with a ship, you can set a general course and take advantage of the winds that have been provided to you. There is no point in fighting the winds, so you may as well go with them.

Before we go into how to ride the waves, let us first remember that in this day and age most sites are multi-page, or multi-post, and that if for some reason your site is not, then you may find that you have a very challenging time with applying this theory to your site. It will work especially well on sites with many pages, a great deal of content or blogs.

Blogs work especially well because of their easy tagging. You just add the tags below the posts when you make them, and most, if not all, platforms, allow you to go back and make changes to your tags later on. If you have a mis-tagged blog, I would suggest going back to change it at the end of the piece.

That brings us to tagging. For those of you who don’t know what tagging is, and that should be relatively few of you, tagging is a way to add keywords to your site in order to aid in both search engine indexing and help your readers to find the content that they want on your site.

Suffice it to say that tags are handy little tools when you are in the world of SEO. That is, of course, provided that you use them in the right way, and not abuse or misapply them. So what are the ways that people can abuse or misuse the tagging ability?

Here are a few things you should NOT do when you tag your posts:

• Tagging way too much. If you put in too many tags on each individual selection or post, you run the risk of being seen as a spam site or as intentionally trying to give yourself an artificial boost in the SERPs.
• Tagging way to little. If you under-tag the pieces on your site, then you will miss out on rankings and you will lose out on visitors.
• Tagging too broadly. If you tag with lots of words — every one that you can think of related to the site —  then you will either have your rankings lowered or your listing discounted altogether.
• Tagging too narrowly. If all of your tags are identical, then you will miss out on any diversity in your tags that might draw in more readers.
• Mistagging. Using tag words that have nothing at all to do with your site’s content will cause you to be seen as a search engine spammer and your ranking will go down.

So, now that you know what not to do, how do you figure out what you should be doing?

Well, let’s talk about search engine algorithms. In order to do well in the algorithms, which are guarded secrets of the search engines, you will have to have more than one of the words you need to get ranked for the right kinds of searches.

I know, I know, now you are wondering how you can do that without falling into the pitfalls of tagging too much, tagging too broadly or mistagging your content. Accomplishing this trick is actually ”simple,” but not short, so bear with me while I explain it to you.

The tactic that we will be using to help you grow your search engine rankings will be a building block style of tagging that allows search engines to value your rankings and see your tags as worth giving a little bit of extra love. We all want a little bit of extra love for our sites, so we can get our rankings improved and increase our readership.

The idea behind leaving a tag trail is to build up a variety of lesser and more specific tags. I know that this sounds contrary, but in addition to boosting the number of relevant tags it also convinces search engines to return your site on more keywords.

In this example you own a small site where classic car fans can share their interests. Your first instinct will be to use the following tags: Car, classic cars, Historic cars, auto, older cars, automobile, drive, etc, as your tags. Now don’t get me wrong; for the most part, these are a good start to your tagging arsenal. The problem is that while they will make your site show up for a lot of generic car- related searches, you have a lot of competition for the top spot.

So let’s take a look at some of the trails that you could build, in relevant sections of your site. The goal is to get your site to show up more often and in smaller results pools as well as the big ones.

Car(s): You could trail down into different brands of cars that are frequently talked about on the site as well as specific models of cars, so, consider “Ford” and “Ford mustang” as possible tags.

Historic or classic car(s): You can use sub-categories like “classic car repair,” “historic car parts,” or “classic car restoration.” These and others are all options open to you for tagging.

Drive: This one opens up phrases like “classic car drive” and “driving a historic car” to your site.

Example Two: The food blog

In this case your site is a blog about foods. In a blog you have a great many more chances to tag your site because each posting can be given any number of tags and you can add new tags every day that you post — even multiple times a day if you post that often. Here your list of obvious tags might be include food cooking, healthy, food shopping, groceries, etc. So lets look at some ways that you might be able to expand on your tags.

Food: Here you can break it down into types of food like “fruits” or “vegetables” as well as specific foods like “steaks,” “asparagus” or “peas.”

Cooking: Here you can use phrases such as “healthy cooking” or “easy meals” or even “southern cooking” to expand on your tag library.

Groceries: This one is a bit more challenging but you can use phrases like “getting groceries,” “fresh produce” or “organic groceries.”

By now you are no doubt getting the idea of what you should be doing to make your tag trails work productively, but just in case you aren’t, here are some of the basic guidelines.

• Keep it on target. It will do you no good to have words that make no sense or are very peripheral on your site. This cannot be stressed enough; your tags should be on target and relevant to your site.
• Don’t be too repetitive. “Cars” and “classic cars” are one thing, but “cars,” “car” and “classic cars,” “car driving,” “car fans” and “car enthusiasts” is taking it too far.
• Don’t use convoluted tags that no one in their right mind would search for. No one looks for “how to repair vintage leather on my model-T car,” at least no one in their right mind, so don’t bother with these long phrases unless they are specific to a brand or extremely well known.

Overall, to carry out this strategy, you need to use good judgment when you are setting up your tags. This means that you probably want to do it yourself, and not hire a service or that tech savvy college kid down the street to do it.

Think about it: nobody knows more about your site than you do — and presumably, you’re setting it up because you’re an expert on your topic (or at least a dedicated amateur). You know the jargon used by others with the same interests. The same may not be true of someone you hire to do it.

It can’t be said often enough: doing this right requires an in-depth knowledge of the site and its contents. It may be an annoyance, but you should do it yourself.

Now that you have an idea of how to tag your site, we have to talk about another aspect of tagging. When you tag a site, unless it is a blog, many people think that tagging is a one-time deal. That is not the truth at all. If you expect your site to grow, its tags will grow with it.

For sites of all kinds, the job of tagging will need to be checked and re-checked as time goes on and your site evolves. You may find that this allows you to add tags as you expand, or that as you go in a new direction you must drop certain tags. This is only natural.

So, the time to end the chat has come and now you can go out into the world as a more intelligent and more strategic tagger. Go forth and bring your site to new heights of popularity and new audiences of keyword searches. I can’t wait to come across your site on a search.