Archive for the ‘SEO Links’ Category:
Link Building - A Quick History and Reasoning Lesson
This is the first in a eight part series of knowledge packed articles designed to help you understand and implement the various techniques used in backlink creation. The information provided has been tried and tested and includes proven Search engine optimization (SEO) strategies.
I will endeavor to show you how to encourage natural backlink growth as well as explaining ways to setup and manage a successful, low cost link building campaign. I will also show you those areas you should avoid and the reasons why.
Many areas will be covered, including the use of ‘link bait’ to increase your Google ranking, the dangers associated with artificial link building, how to avoid the Google backlink over optimization penalty (BLOOD) and exactly why and how links affect your ranking.
Please Note: I will mainly use Google in examples but the methods are basically the same for all search providers.
A Quick History and Reasoning Lesson
Search engines have proven their worth time and time again and the algorithms used have evolved significantly within the last few years. Although content and keyword density still plays an important role in SEO, an increasing emphasis has been put on search spiders to consider ranking pages based on the quantity and quality of their incoming links (known as backlinks).
Because of this evolution you cannot rely solely on the optimization of your content for SEO. In order to gain the best possible search results you must include various methods, the most predominant being link building. Your aim is to create relevant backlinks with unrelated websites that base their content around the same ‘theme’ and search engine marketing strategy as you. In short, you are looking for similar pages with relevant information to boost your search ranking.
One way of explaining the reasoning behind link buildings prominence in search engine rankings is to look at it almost like an online voting system. As you increase your backlinks you increase the number of ‘votes’ in your favor. Any website that has a direct link to yours is effectively saying “I trust this web page and believe it to be relevant”. This approval from other sites helps the search spiders to weed out spam sites and other, just as useless content. The idea is that these ‘bad’ sites will not gain popularity and backlinks from others as their content appears to be of no use or relevance.
The need for substantial links from reputable web pages has encouraged many online vendors and others to find ways to artificially boost the amount of backlinks to their content. This is a must if you wish to compete with others on a level playing field. It is a good idea to consider setting up a link building campaign that will increase your standing in Google and with other search providers. This has to be undertaken with great care and careful management as it can be very easy to create the wrong links in the wrong way. This will attract the attention of search providers and gain you penalties, especially from Google.
The SEO is back
So i confess its been a while since my last post, and i never really got round to completing my 10 SEO Steps To Perfection series, but the truth to it is that the most important step of all is constantly refreshing your content. take a site ive been working on recently. There a provider of Uk Web Hosting solutions, and it has taken a lot of my time. but i do think its at the stage for great things. take the Reseller Web Hosting page, perfecting the text for that page takes time and effort, and definatly a set of usefull SEO tools ive found over at SEOMOZ.org. theres h1 headers, h2 headers, bold keywords, relevant texts, strong link structure, branding images, a good amount of imformation and a clear feature list. This is essentually what your site needs to contain to do well in google, and thats exactly what a Search Engine Optimization Specialist would do for you (although i would never turn down the work!).
check out some keywords for SearchFriendly:
Search Friendly: 3rd for google.co.uk search Result 3 of about 30,200,000 sites
10 SEO steps: 1st for google.co.uk search Result 1 of about 2,260,000 sites
seo location: 3rd for google.co.uk search Result 3 of about 2,570,000
SEO Domains: 2nd for google.co.uk search Result 2 of about 583,000
not bad for a few SEO optimization articles?
if you feel you have a shining example of how to optimize a site, feel free to drop me an email, and ill be more than willing to show how your site is a shining example of SEO and give links. if anyone has any usefull seo information, drop me an email aswell and ill be more than happy to post it.
peace.
Search Engine Optimization - 10 SEO Steps To Perfection - Part 3
Today im going to be talking about the need for SEO relevant links.
SEO relevant links are a massive step of SEO. Seo relevant links help google and other search engines find your website, and rank it on the weight of the links it has. E.G if the BBC.co.uk had a link to your website, google sees that link, sees its from a top respected domain with allot of visitors, is linking to your page, which must mean the BBc thinks your site is an important site, so the link weight is high. BUT there is a twist to this.
SEO Relevant links means exactly that, links from relevant sites.
For example say you were selling computer parts. you had your site SEO’ed for all your computer keywords. now if you were to get a link from a highly ranked Sports website, this is unrelevant content, so the link weight decreases. but say you had a link from a hardware reviewer, this link is more relevant, so the link weight is higher.
Google has unoffically talked about this in a few videos available from google video about how they rank websites, and SEO Relevant links is a big part of this.
I recommended for getting decent exposure in google is to have around 100-200 SEO Relevant links.
What do you guys think?
Search Engine Optimization - 10 SEO Steps To Perfection - Part 1
This is the first part of a series of 10 covering Search Engine Optimization, the 10 steps to perfection.
What aspect of search engine optimization im going to talk about today is Content Relevance.
The first thing to note about content relevance, is that content is the only part search engines can see, eg if you had a red peice of text, all that goole etc are going to see, is the title text, and not the colour.
The second thing to note is that if you have a link from a related site, its going to do more for you than a link from a site that covers a completly different subject.
When writing your articles, make sure you cover your main subject in the text. for example, if you were going to make a site on Computer reviews, make sure that you pick your keywords, and use them in the content of your page.
This is the most important step of your search engine optimization, CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT. i cannot express this enough, having a site full of images means google isnt going to see allot on your page, but a 6 paragraph content section is going to do allot more for your ranks.
SEO - Tips to Optimize Your Webpage to Compete for a High Ranking
Search engine optimization (SEO) is very important to websites. If you rank high in search engines, your website are shown to a huge number of target users.To start with, you have to pick a list of target keywords. Try the google Adwords: Keyword tool for selecting the best keywords for your site.
Remember, be specific with your keywords! eg trying to rank well for “web Development” is going to be hard, but trying to rank well for “asp.net web development” is easier to achieve.
Go to google.com, search on the target keyword your website has planned to work on. Then check the top ranking website, learn from it, and do better.
How to do better? Here’s some basic practices…
1. place your optimizes keyword in titles, and make sure you have 1 title per page. to do this all you need to do is use the <h1> tag in very top of the page.
2. place keyword phases in a paragraph or 2 of text at the top of your site.
3. On your web page, set your first graphic with ALT set to your target keyword
4. build a text based sitemap, add ALT if it is an image
5. OPML / RSS site map
6. bold or underline keyword (1 or 2 times only)
7. The key word/phrase should be used again very near the end of the page.
8. try to register a good domain name with keyword (I guess keyword in subdirectory is ok)
9. navigation menu on the right, since google bot looks from top and left.
How To Plan For Search Friendly Websites
So you have a fantastic website but no one ever visits. You may ask? Why? Your website should be designed with search engines in mind. Too many web designers are graphic artists that excel at image manipulation, but lack a basic understanding of search engine optimization. Web design and search engine optimization (SEO) should not be mutually exclusive. Webmasters should have a clear understanding of both design techniques and how the search engines work.
Incredible graphics on a website without any traffic, will do little to fill the coffers. Follow these basic guidelines to ensure that your website will be visited and attractive.
1. Navigation
Both humans and crawlers (search engines) need to be able to navigate your website. Avoid using technology that prohibits the search engine’s ability to spider web pages. The majority of search engines have the ability to follow the links on a website if you use standard HTML. Observe normal convention and make the links obvious and available to all website visitors.
2. Easy to Read
Fonts should be legible and webmasters should utilize white space judiciously. Text on the web page should be easy to read.
3. Speed
Avoid using overly large graphics that are slow to load. Remember you only have mere seconds to capture the visitors attention, do not waste precious seconds with web pages that are slow to load. Search engines too will become impatient and give up on your website if it takes too long to view the content. As a result you should avoid using free hosting services that might be unreliable or slow to respond if you receive any web traffic surges.
4. Consistency
Your website should maintain a consistent look and feel. In other words, all the pages on the website should have a similar look, color scheme and navigation.
5. Above the Fold
The most important information on the your web page should appear above the “fold”. This means that the website visitor should be able to view the most important content without having to use the scroll bar.
6. Contact Information
Include corporate contact information on the website. This lends your company credibility, anyone can pretend to be anyone or anything. Including contact information on a website shows that you are a serious and legitimate business entity.
7. Avoid Javascript /Ajax
Javascript and Ajax are cool, but they are not search friendly. It is best to stick with good old HTML. Search engines at this point are unable to spider the website contents that are displayed using Javascript. This is also true of websites that are dynamically updated with Ajax. Chances are the body of your website will help your website rank well; do not waste the search engine opportunity by using Javascript or Ajax.
8. Meta Data Matters
Each and every web page on the website should contain a unique title and description. Many search engines extract meta data from the website header and use it to classify and categorize the web pages listing. The web page title and description should relate to the webpage contents.
9. Keywords Naturally
Use website keywords and keyword phrases in the web copy in a natural way. Search engines are starting to discern unnatural text, machine generated content and content that is cobbled together by a bot. Write your website’s content for humans not search engines.
10. Web Page Focus
Each web page on a website should focus on one or two keywords or keyword phrases, no more no less. The keywords should be incorporated into the meta tags, and web copy.
An optimized website can bring search traffic and visitors who have a natural interest in your product or service. Optimization should be part of the design process. Before hiring a web designer make sure they understand both your design needs and search engine optimization.
How Site Structure Can Effect Your Search Results
Site structure is a big part in not only Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) , But also making a very user friendly navigation system that’s easy to remember.
Some people over-do the navigation on their site using bad url’s or non optimized url’s. an example of these are:
- http://www.mysite.com/content.php?id=3
This is a non optimized url - i recommend looking at my The Power of Search Engine Friendly URLs post to combat this issue
- http://www.mysite.com/site/uk/products/computers/
Although your content is sectioned, which is good for your search engine optimization ( SEO ) , a user is never going to be able to remember this url if they want to come back. i recommend reducing this url to something like:
- http://www.mysite.com/products/Computers/
The country specific details can be dealt with in code, or for Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ), you should buy the .co.uk Domain for the UK sector.
The /Site/ folder is useless there are so many websites out there that section off their main website into a folder, it is pointless and also effects the ease of use of the navigation for the user.
This shorter structured type of URL is good for Ease of use, AND for sectioning off products for better seach enginge optimization, without overdoing it or going too far.
The other important thing to note about search engine friendly URLs , is your site should handle chopped url’s. for example if you have the path:
- http://www.mysite.com/products/Computers/
A user should be able to remove /Computers/ and see a list of all products on the url http://www.mysite.com/products/
Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) is always a balance, you wouldn’t want to over-do it and make a page impossible to use for your users, you need to make a compromise with Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) and ease of use.
The Importance Of Relevant Content on sites that link to you.
There has been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing in the search engine world of late and there are lots of conspiracy theories between SEO ‘ers as to why these things happen.
It is easy as a SEO web master to get caught up in these webs of intrigue.
You get email notes about them, you view so-called ‘ SEO experts’ thoughts on bulletin Boards - hey you probably even read things in newsletter articles!
Well I hope so anyway….
The big drive for SEO web masters currently appears to be content and link building.
While link building is important I don’t believe it makes Queen. Maybe a Prince. Content and links DO go hand in hand but, without relevance, your only building a short term linking strategy that wont affect the relevance of your site to the keywords you want to be listed under.
If your site is about finance, then finance content is best supported by finance link exchanges. Relevance!
If your site is about finance, then finance content supported by casino link exchanges from a PR8 site while in the short term may help,? but all the signs are saying this is not a long term strategy.
Okay, so what is the best strategy?
Keep EVERYTHING relevant. It is that simple.
Make sure that you only swap or link to sites that are relevant to the content on your pages. Yes I am suggesting link exchanging on pages of your site not a links page.
Links pages seem to be being abused. There are rumours that pages called links, resources or partners are not passing
page rank. You could be wasting your time building links that are not giving you any benefits!
Delivering relevant links from relevant content is the future.
Look at sites such as www.bbc.co.uk or www.independent.co.uk. News sites have the right idea. They have 2 or 3 relevant internal links to other articles on the same topic or links to internal tools that are related. These usually can be found at the right hand side of the article.
They also then have web links or external links to sites of interest that are related to the topic. These are relevant!
Another benefit of this is that with a content rich site you can add hundreds of links quite legitimately and really add some value both to your Rankings and your users.
With a content-poor site it is difficult, you have to add link pages or create a links directory. A five page site will need to add 10 or 12 good link pages to compete and even then with algorithm changes, this may not be prudent.
Having a site with 400 pages means you can easily add 3 links per page, so you have 1200 link options straight away.
Hopefully this explains that relevance runs a close second to content.
Always bear in mind when writing SEO content that relevant links will not only boost your search engine rankings, but you will also add a service to your visitors.
The Power of Search Engine Friendly URLs
I recently invested quite some time into generating search engine friendly URLs for several of my websites to increase my ranking and to have more pages indexed. I can highly recommend to look into this if your own website does not have Search Engine friendly URLs. Especially Google (the most important search engine nowadays) can be very picky in regards to URLs that are not Search Engine friendly.
Example (the 2 URLs below bring you to exactly the same page):
http://www.mywebsite.com/ShowCategory.php?CategoryID=13
This URL is not Search Engine friendly and search engines will eventually ignore any page behind it or rank it much lower in search results. Visitors will have difficulties to remember this URL. These kind of URLs often come from dynamic database driven websites. Each page is dynamically created when requested. Look at the forums URL this moment, too. It is dynamically created and not very friendly to search engines or the visitor. You get the idea.
http://www.mywebsite.com/Web-Hosting/
This URL is Search Engine friendly and search engines will spider the page behind it easily. It is keyword enriched to increase search engine ranking. Overall - this URL is easy to be spidered and easy to remember by a visitor.
For one of my own sites I was able to increase the number of pages indexed from 36 to over 150 pages - just by making the URLs search engine friendly. The additional pages were ignored by the search engines because they could not read the URLs properly. The domain used in my example went from 20 pages to 80 within 2 weeks and should go to over 120 pages indexed (by Google) with the next Google update.
How do you make your URLs search engine friendly?
Your web host/web server needs to support the Apache Web Server module “mod_rewrite”. This module allows to rewrite URLs a certain way. By using a “.htaccess” file you can give the web server the necessary commands to work with Search Engine Friendly URLs.
If you need some advice on a host that can provide this service, i would personally reccomend Power-core.co.uk , they are one of the better UK Web Hosts at providing Customers with specific needs. a smaller host is always better for more freedom in website help, a larger host wont waste time on such things, but smaller firms choose to do this to provide a better hosting environment.
How does this really work?
In general - you are faking the nice clean looking URLs and fool search engines and visitors to believe that the URLs of your website are Search Engine Friendly.
Search Engine Friendly URLs work in 2 steps.
1) Your site needs to display the se-friendly URLs.
2) mod_rewrite and htaccess ‘translate’ the Search Engine Friendlyv URL and redirect the traffic to the ugly looking Search Engine Friendly URL in the background (invisible to anyone). You will need to setup the htaccess file with the command how you would like the URL to look like and what does it translate to (a certain ugly looking dynamic URL).
The code that generates the URLs dynamically needs to be adjusted to match the rules from your .htaccess file. You upload the code changes and the htaccess and off you go.
Can every website be modified?
Most websites with dynamic URLs can be modified if the server environment meets the requirements. Each website needs to be looked at separately to get the best results.
The learning curve on creating Search Engine Friendly URLs can be quite challenging. Spend the time and resources on creating Search Engine Friendly URLs. The results can be overwhelming.