Posts Tagged ‘SEO Links’
Link Building - What To Look For
Whilst considering the variables and details of your link building campaign you must check out the number of backlinks pointing to your site. There are a few ways of doing this, one of which is by using Yahoo! Site Explorer. If you currently only have a very small number of links I would suggest building your backlinks slowly. Concentrate on the most beneficial backlinks for you. The number of links you have is not always the most important part; remember that a few high quality links could increase your page ranking far more than many inappropriate ones. You can also use a process known as ‘deep linking’ in which you point backlinks to important pages on your site. These could be promotional pages or product information. Deep linking is also a good way to ‘trick’ the search bots as links appear more natural. As with all linking strategy, deep linking must be done with thought and care. Search algorithms are trying to find the most relevant information for their users so make sure your pages are targeted accordingly. The process of targeting your links is also a good marketing strategy and may generate potential sales or keep users on your site longer.
What to Look for in a Link Partner
You need to make your links count. Every single one must be relevant and worthwhile. As said before, you should choose your potential link partners based on the theme of their website and also check out their PageRank (PR). You want to aim for pages with a PR of three or more. A good tool for this is the Google Toolbar. It displays the PR of each page that you visit so it’s as easy as browsing to the page and looking at the number displayed. Here is a quick breakdown of how to check your competitors sites for backlinks:
- Enter the keywords you wish to search for in Google,
- Look at the top twenty or so organic results and note the URL of the one you wish to look at,
- Type the address into the Google search box preceded by link: and search. (i.e. link:www.competitorsurl.com)
This procedure will bring up a list of all backlinks to the URL in question. These websites have already created links to similar pages as yours and my be persuaded to do the same for you. A one-way link from their site to yours will be far more beneficial than a reciprocal link with regard to search rankings. Always remember to check the authenticity of the sites in question and aim for the highest PageRank possible for maximum effect. You can also talk to other Webmasters and try to gain links. The best way to do this is to have information rich content on your site, content that other websites may find useful.
Another way to check out potential partners once you have found a few through the method above is to take note of the HTML Title displayed on a link partners page (the text displayed at the very top of the browser window). You can then enter this (or the first few words) into Google and search for similar sites that may be interested in your content and links. The top 10 rankings in a Google search are generally trusted sites or they would not have been able to get to the top so you can be pretty sure that they are worth the link. That said, always check the sites first as you don’t want to destroy your hard work by choosing a dodgy site! Another thing to consider is that a high PR doesn’t always mean high trust so again, just do the research before committing!
In summary, you want as many one-way backlinks from reputable, trusted and relevant websites as possible. These factors are what will get you your rankings so MAKE SURE you have chosen well.
I hope this article has been helpful and always welcome any suggestions for improvement. Please feel free to leave comments or constructive criticism and don’t hesitate to contact us for more advice.
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.
How to increase link popularity
There is a term used in the optimization industry- “content is king”. This is very true. SE’s (Search engines) love content, especially regularly updated content. With this in mind, you must remember that “links are queen”. Having inbound links to your website is a very important factor of the SE’ s algorithms, if you want to increase your visibility on SE’s then you must increase the amount and quality of the links that point to your website. For many small to medium companies the cost of paying for a full time link building campaign is far too expensive.
Companies, webmasters and web site owners should be constantly trying to improve link popularity (inbound links to their website), an increase in inbound links will cause an increase in visibility on the SERP’s (search engine results pages).
The times of “a link is a link” have however passed. Reciprocal links should only be arranged with websites that are about the same topic or share similar content. Websites that reciprocate links with websites that are not similar are deemed as artificially trying to increase link popularity by the SE’s. One way inbound links are more valuable than reciprocals, and remember that it is the quality of links that also bears more weight. One link from an authoritative site with high PR (Page Rank) is worth many links from that friend of yours that just built his personal website!
Anchor text- This is the word or words that are used to link to your website. e.g. “seo consultant ” is anchor text that actually points to my home page www.j-dunn.co.uk. This is often called the links “title”. Use the keywords that you would like a high ranking for as the anchor text.
For instance Smith LTD sell widgets of all shapes and sizes. They would like to rank well for the term “plastic widgets”. They start submitting their website for inclusion in free web directories. When asked for the anchor text or links title during submission it would be far more beneficial to use the text “plastic widgets” rather than Smith LTD.
With all this in mind you should start your link building campaign as soon as possible? Google will spider links to your website several times before accepting their importance, this process is known as “waiting for the links to mature”. This can often take several months.
So, here are my top 10 ways to get inbound links to your website.
1) Submit your website to free web directories. (Make sure you submit to the right category).
One of the most important free web directories to submit to is www.dmoz.org (the open directory) DMOZ is used by Google for all of the contents of their Web Directory. Many SE’s and directories also use DMOZ results for their directories. Google also gives a link to your site from DMOZ a lot of credit. Beware DMOZ is edited by humans and getting listed can take anywhere from 1-18 months, so the sooner you do it the better!
2) Submit your website to premium & paid web directories. (Make sure you submit to the right category).
3) Request website visitors link to your site.
Visitors to your website are there because they are interested in the content/products/services of your site. Ask them to link to your website, webpage. You can even supply the HTML code for them to link to your website. E.g. if you would like to link to this page please use the following code:
4) Write and distribute articles.
Write articles about your product & related services then submit them to article distribution websites. This is a very effective way of getting inbound links. The idea is you place a link to your website at the bottom of each article, then when webmasters use your article as free content for their website they must include the link at the bottom of the article.
5) Exchange links with other similar websites (reciprocal linking).
6) Contribute in forums.
Many forums allow you to place a signature at the bottom of every post. Place a link to your website with the use of anchor text and gain a link for every post you make. Also you may post links to your website in the main topic part of the forum. Do not spam though- Only post links when it is appropriate. It is better to be a good contributor to a forum than spam the forum with un relevant links.
7) Create a blog.
Create an informative blog about your product or services. “Bloggers” are linking fanatics. Get other “bloggers” to link/reciprocal link to your blog and then place links from the blog to your website.
8 Answer questions in Q + A websites.
It is easy to answer questions in places like Yahoo! Answers or Google Groups and provide links to relevant resources. (e g your website!)
9)Paid Links.
Some websites allow you to buy links from their website for a specific length of time.
Generally this is done from websites with high PR (Page Rank). And the purpose of it
is to increase a websites Page Rank.
10) Develop an easy to link to, informative site.
This goes back to “content is king”. If your website is of high quality, good information with no grammatical or spelling errors then web site owners will naturally link to your site.
Article wriiten by Jon Dunn. SEO Consultant, UK. Visit www.j-dunn.co.uk for more SEO Articles.
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
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.