New Way to Get SEO links
OK, we all know the main ways to get SEO links through directories, articles, blogs etc but here is a new way that might add some value. I am not claiming that this is anything more than a small, niche activity but it might help your SEO efforts a little.
What I am talking about is using Google Notebook to feature anchor text links back to your website.
I created my own Google Notebook and published it. In the notebook I put anchor text links back to key pages in my website.
To get my notebook indexed by the search engines I found half a dozen ‘do follow’ blogs and pasted my Google Notebook into the URL field
My guess is that this will not help you much with Google but I am reasonably confident it will work for Yahoo! and MSN.
When creating your Google notebook, you can add a user’s profile. In the profile you can talk about yourself and upload photos. But the great thing is that you can also add as many links to your profile as you want and the links will be ‘do follow’. This is the link to my profile.
So, here’s an opportunity for some additional ‘Do Follow’ links to move your website higher up the rankings.
If you are wondering what an anchor text link is, this is an example for you. Rather than put ‘click here’ when inviting people to my website I use the actual words that have a SEO value in the search engines. Therefore a good one for me is SEO company in Leeds where my business is based.
Saturday, 29 November 2008
Friday, 28 November 2008
Google Links - The Ten Commandments
Google Links - The Ten Commandments
Following on from the Ten Commandments of SEO, here are some more detailed dos and don’ts for link building
1. Write interesting content geared towards humans and not robots.
2. Find and replace broken links and incorrect HTML coding.
3. Keep the links on a given page to a small number. I recommend less than seventy.
4. Avoid hidden text or hidden links. They are cleverer than you and I.
5. Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines. You will get found out and penalized.
6. Don’t create multiple pages with substantially duplicate content. For instance the same page but with a different town mentioned on each
7. Never participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking
8. Avoid getting valueless links from unrelated websites. Get links from sites with a theme similar to yours (blogs are great)
9. Avoid getting links from low Page Rank pages with loads of outgoing links
10. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Don’t get involved with anything that will get your site banned.
You can win the rankings race with great content and regular honest activity. Short cuts do not exist apart from in the heads of the SEO propeller heads.
For more of the same please visit my seo services website
Following on from the Ten Commandments of SEO, here are some more detailed dos and don’ts for link building
1. Write interesting content geared towards humans and not robots.
2. Find and replace broken links and incorrect HTML coding.
3. Keep the links on a given page to a small number. I recommend less than seventy.
4. Avoid hidden text or hidden links. They are cleverer than you and I.
5. Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines. You will get found out and penalized.
6. Don’t create multiple pages with substantially duplicate content. For instance the same page but with a different town mentioned on each
7. Never participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking
8. Avoid getting valueless links from unrelated websites. Get links from sites with a theme similar to yours (blogs are great)
9. Avoid getting links from low Page Rank pages with loads of outgoing links
10. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Don’t get involved with anything that will get your site banned.
You can win the rankings race with great content and regular honest activity. Short cuts do not exist apart from in the heads of the SEO propeller heads.
For more of the same please visit my seo services website
SEO – The Ten Commandments
SEO – The Ten Commandments
You could write a very long book on this and still get lots of people disagree with you. If you do only half of what’s written below then you will be doing a hundred times more than most web owners!
1. Make sure that your website makes it very clear through content, page titles etc what it is about. Google is not sending human beings to look at your site, it is sending software driven robots. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck and enjoys a crust of bread then it is probably a duck. Make it obvious!
2. Do not make your website look and read like a brochure.
3. Add regular, original content written for people and not to impress the search engines.
4. Allow people to enjoy and share your website with others. Add a RSS feed and Social Bookmarking buttons if you can.
5. Let others add content to your site Build it as a Wordpress blog or integrate one into your site if possible. Add your original content to the blog where reasonable.
6. Submit your Blog to Technorati to get it out there in cyber space. Submit your site to as many RSS aggregators as you can (Google it)
7. Take your original content and make the most of it by submitting to article sites such as Ezine Articles and press release sites such as PR Web.
8. Have outgoing one-way links to authority sites such as Wikipedia to build your reputation.
9. Link as often as you can between your internal pages. Use anchor text to do this i.e. instead of ‘click here’ use the words that describe the page you are going to.
10. Get links from the best places. DMOZ is still the one to have closely followed by ‘do follow’ links from subject related blogs.
For much, much more on this and other SEO Services please visit my website (this is an anchor text link by the way)
You could write a very long book on this and still get lots of people disagree with you. If you do only half of what’s written below then you will be doing a hundred times more than most web owners!
1. Make sure that your website makes it very clear through content, page titles etc what it is about. Google is not sending human beings to look at your site, it is sending software driven robots. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck and enjoys a crust of bread then it is probably a duck. Make it obvious!
2. Do not make your website look and read like a brochure.
3. Add regular, original content written for people and not to impress the search engines.
4. Allow people to enjoy and share your website with others. Add a RSS feed and Social Bookmarking buttons if you can.
5. Let others add content to your site Build it as a Wordpress blog or integrate one into your site if possible. Add your original content to the blog where reasonable.
6. Submit your Blog to Technorati to get it out there in cyber space. Submit your site to as many RSS aggregators as you can (Google it)
7. Take your original content and make the most of it by submitting to article sites such as Ezine Articles and press release sites such as PR Web.
8. Have outgoing one-way links to authority sites such as Wikipedia to build your reputation.
9. Link as often as you can between your internal pages. Use anchor text to do this i.e. instead of ‘click here’ use the words that describe the page you are going to.
10. Get links from the best places. DMOZ is still the one to have closely followed by ‘do follow’ links from subject related blogs.
For much, much more on this and other SEO Services please visit my website (this is an anchor text link by the way)
Sunday, 23 November 2008
SEO Basics Thirteen Tips
SEO Basics. Thirteen Tips
SEO Basics - The higher up the search engine rankings you get your website then the more traffic you get. According to AOL the difference in traffic from position #1 and position #10 is an amazing 1,400%!
The information is of course incomplete, but it does at least have the basics listed if not all the details. Do this basic stuff first and then you have the foundations in place for a successful website.
Here goes-
1. Learn why your competitors are ahead of you in the rankings and then copy and do a bit more (free and easy to do).
2. Analyze the best keyword phrases to optimize your website for (time consuming and worth every moment spent).
3. Try and use your main keyword/keyword phrase in your URL if you are starting up. The website name www.london-conservatories.co.uk is somewhat more useful for SEO is better than www.daisymaysmith.co.uk, regardless of how cute your new daughter is!
4. Use your keywords in the page titles and Meta descriptions on your website.
5. Try to link as many internal pages to each other as you can, using anchor text. Anchor text is where; instead of saying ‘click here’ you actually use the keyword as the hyperlink.
6. Add new content as often as you can and then offer the content out via RSS directories such as RSS Mountain.
7. Set up a blog and post the same copy with links back to your website. Submit your site to the blog directories such as Technorati for inclusion.
8. Always have a sitemap
9. Submit your site to Google, Yahoo! and MSN.
10. Submit your site to dmoz and keep your fingers crossed. If you get in then its happy days because the search engines love this site.
11. If your business is local then submit to Google Maps and Yahoo Local. It’s free and will get you traffic.
12. Offer some outbound links from your website as this will mark you out as a useful resource and not just a sales site.
13. Employ a professional SEO company to build incoming links to your websites over a period of months. More and better incoming links equals a better exposure in the search engines (worth every penny)
My SEO Services website has the links, free tools and advice you need to move forward with your internet business. Lots more SEO Basics Tips
SEO Basics - The higher up the search engine rankings you get your website then the more traffic you get. According to AOL the difference in traffic from position #1 and position #10 is an amazing 1,400%!
The information is of course incomplete, but it does at least have the basics listed if not all the details. Do this basic stuff first and then you have the foundations in place for a successful website.
Here goes-
1. Learn why your competitors are ahead of you in the rankings and then copy and do a bit more (free and easy to do).
2. Analyze the best keyword phrases to optimize your website for (time consuming and worth every moment spent).
3. Try and use your main keyword/keyword phrase in your URL if you are starting up. The website name www.london-conservatories.co.uk is somewhat more useful for SEO is better than www.daisymaysmith.co.uk, regardless of how cute your new daughter is!
4. Use your keywords in the page titles and Meta descriptions on your website.
5. Try to link as many internal pages to each other as you can, using anchor text. Anchor text is where; instead of saying ‘click here’ you actually use the keyword as the hyperlink.
6. Add new content as often as you can and then offer the content out via RSS directories such as RSS Mountain.
7. Set up a blog and post the same copy with links back to your website. Submit your site to the blog directories such as Technorati for inclusion.
8. Always have a sitemap
9. Submit your site to Google, Yahoo! and MSN.
10. Submit your site to dmoz and keep your fingers crossed. If you get in then its happy days because the search engines love this site.
11. If your business is local then submit to Google Maps and Yahoo Local. It’s free and will get you traffic.
12. Offer some outbound links from your website as this will mark you out as a useful resource and not just a sales site.
13. Employ a professional SEO company to build incoming links to your websites over a period of months. More and better incoming links equals a better exposure in the search engines (worth every penny)
My SEO Services website has the links, free tools and advice you need to move forward with your internet business. Lots more SEO Basics Tips
Thursday, 20 November 2008
SEO Friendly Copywriting
Copywriting for a website is dissimilar than for any other media because the mindset of those who are going to be reading is different. SEO Friendly Copywriting makes it even more difficult because you are asked to consider writing in a style that suits the search engines but not the reader.
You, know the type of thing I am talking about "pet rabbits are fantastic for children because pet rabbits are pretty and you can meet new friends who also have pet rabbits" etc. It might make your webpage dynamite for the search engines but its total garbage to a human being.
A case in point is my own SEO Services website which I write for regularly. I do not follow the SEO rules manual and just try to write naturally. Is my website optimized perfectly for search engines; No! Is it a place people regularly visit because the content is informative; Yes!
Anyway, back to the copywriting-
Because most web pages will be found via a search engine, the person searching will be looking either for you or another business like yours. This puts them totally in control because they will be focused on finding a piece of information, product or service without much delay.
Questions that visitors might ask themselves quite quickly are - "Is this to the right place?" and "will I find what I'm looking for here?"
It is absolutely vital that you answer these questions in both your headline and any sub-headlines you may have. You need to convince the first time visitor that they are at the right place as soon as possible and that they should continue to read on. To make this happen, your text needs to provide answers so that the visitor knows exactly what they are looking for.
Here are some of the points you should consider when copywriting for the web.
Keep your website copy short and simple
Unless a visitor has been directed to a specific page on your website they will typically only read one or two lines of the text. So the longer your website text is, the less likely they will hang around to read it.
Keeping your copy simple is as important as keeping it short. It is important that website visitors are able to understand what has been written without a second reading.
In most cases, you should strive to convey one key idea effectively in the first couple of lines of writing. Any more and you will start to see visitors click away from the page.
Obviously, a two sentence introduction will not convey a full message and so providing them with a link to another page of your site with more information is a perfectly valid tactic.
What do I do with long copy?
If you do include longer copy, then organize it for the visitor to navigate easily. Providing them with useful headings, sub headings and bulleted lists helps greatly in increasing the stickiness of a page.
Not all the visitors to your website will read long pieces in their entirety. So write copy that is easily skimmed and enables them to read just the parts they are interested in.
Long copy should always be as easy to read and navigate as short copy. If you wouldn't read it yourself then why should your visitors?
Make your copy interesting and lively.
Aim to write in a light and unassuming manner. Do not preach and don't be too confrontational or this will in turn the reader off and what you are trying to convey will not penetrate through to them.
Do not fall into the trap of making your website into 'brochure-ware'. A brochure is one thing and a website is quite another. If it reads like a brochure it probably could and should be improved. Never, ever take the text from your brochure and copy it onto your website.
For details of our copywriting service please follow the link
You, know the type of thing I am talking about "pet rabbits are fantastic for children because pet rabbits are pretty and you can meet new friends who also have pet rabbits" etc. It might make your webpage dynamite for the search engines but its total garbage to a human being.
A case in point is my own SEO Services website which I write for regularly. I do not follow the SEO rules manual and just try to write naturally. Is my website optimized perfectly for search engines; No! Is it a place people regularly visit because the content is informative; Yes!
Anyway, back to the copywriting-
Because most web pages will be found via a search engine, the person searching will be looking either for you or another business like yours. This puts them totally in control because they will be focused on finding a piece of information, product or service without much delay.
Questions that visitors might ask themselves quite quickly are - "Is this to the right place?" and "will I find what I'm looking for here?"
It is absolutely vital that you answer these questions in both your headline and any sub-headlines you may have. You need to convince the first time visitor that they are at the right place as soon as possible and that they should continue to read on. To make this happen, your text needs to provide answers so that the visitor knows exactly what they are looking for.
Here are some of the points you should consider when copywriting for the web.
Keep your website copy short and simple
Unless a visitor has been directed to a specific page on your website they will typically only read one or two lines of the text. So the longer your website text is, the less likely they will hang around to read it.
Keeping your copy simple is as important as keeping it short. It is important that website visitors are able to understand what has been written without a second reading.
In most cases, you should strive to convey one key idea effectively in the first couple of lines of writing. Any more and you will start to see visitors click away from the page.
Obviously, a two sentence introduction will not convey a full message and so providing them with a link to another page of your site with more information is a perfectly valid tactic.
What do I do with long copy?
If you do include longer copy, then organize it for the visitor to navigate easily. Providing them with useful headings, sub headings and bulleted lists helps greatly in increasing the stickiness of a page.
Not all the visitors to your website will read long pieces in their entirety. So write copy that is easily skimmed and enables them to read just the parts they are interested in.
Long copy should always be as easy to read and navigate as short copy. If you wouldn't read it yourself then why should your visitors?
Make your copy interesting and lively.
Aim to write in a light and unassuming manner. Do not preach and don't be too confrontational or this will in turn the reader off and what you are trying to convey will not penetrate through to them.
Do not fall into the trap of making your website into 'brochure-ware'. A brochure is one thing and a website is quite another. If it reads like a brochure it probably could and should be improved. Never, ever take the text from your brochure and copy it onto your website.
For details of our copywriting service please follow the link
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
Email Marketing: The Money is in the List!
The money is in the list! The money is in the list! No it’s not a typo because the money really is in the list. Collect your visitor emails anyway you can and keep in touch with new information and incredible offers just for them.
So here’s an example from a friend of mine who has a Lingerie site. He averages circa 500 new visitors a day and at my suggestion added a simple form to his homepage where visitors can leave their email address in return for special offers and the opportunity to visit special pages on his website with sale offer on it.
He found that 9% of visitors left an email address and he was collecting 1350 per month. Every month he sent a special offer and it was converting at 6% giving him 81 extra sales per month. At the end of year one he was making 972 extra sales EVERY month from his email list. Just do it folks or ring me to find out how.
How else can you get emails? Try giving something away in return. Another friend of mine had a gifts website and I advised him to offer special reports in return for an email. The special reports were either – 'the top ten gifts for men' or 'the top ten gifts for women'. He had someone else write the short e-books for him at elance for the cost of a meal for two. His conversion rates were crazy and his business took off because of it!
If you do want to know more about this subject and others relating to making your website a success then please feel free to visit my SEO Company website for SEO Services, SEO advice and free SEO tools.
So here’s an example from a friend of mine who has a Lingerie site. He averages circa 500 new visitors a day and at my suggestion added a simple form to his homepage where visitors can leave their email address in return for special offers and the opportunity to visit special pages on his website with sale offer on it.
He found that 9% of visitors left an email address and he was collecting 1350 per month. Every month he sent a special offer and it was converting at 6% giving him 81 extra sales per month. At the end of year one he was making 972 extra sales EVERY month from his email list. Just do it folks or ring me to find out how.
How else can you get emails? Try giving something away in return. Another friend of mine had a gifts website and I advised him to offer special reports in return for an email. The special reports were either – 'the top ten gifts for men' or 'the top ten gifts for women'. He had someone else write the short e-books for him at elance for the cost of a meal for two. His conversion rates were crazy and his business took off because of it!
If you do want to know more about this subject and others relating to making your website a success then please feel free to visit my SEO Company website for SEO Services, SEO advice and free SEO tools.
Tuesday, 18 November 2008
5 Basic SEO Tactics
5 Basic SEO Tactics
SEO is not as complicated as you might think although it can be time consuming if you try to do it all yourself.
Search Engine Optimisation is getting your content listed in all the top positions in Google, Yahoo and MSN for your targeted keywords. When someone does a search for your particular subject or niche, you want your site or content to be at the top of the list.
Here are five of my favourite SEO tactics for you:
1. Great Content is the number one factor for getting high rankings and keeping them. Search engines are businesses who supply a product just like any other. The product for a search engine is information and any website that offers quality and new information to the search engines customers usually does well in the rankings. Quality content is vital for SEO success.
2. Keywords are the number one tool for achieving great rankings. Keywords are those words that people search for when looking for products and services. The best keywords are actually phrases that narrow down the search for potential customers.
For example, if you have a site selling toys, you might think ‘toys’ is a great keyword. Wrong! The competition is too great and you would be better looking for something like – ‘toys for girls’ which narrows down the search. So how about ‘toys for girls age six’ which narrows it down even more. True, you will have less people searching but those that do will surely be more likely to buy.
So do your research into what people are searching for. Amend the text etc on your website to reflect this and watch the sales fly in!
‘Long tail keywords’ can be enormously profitable if used correctly.
3. On-page Factors and site design will play a big role in the indexing of your site and it’s content. Make sure that all your pages can be reached from your homepage and that no pages are more than three levels away from it.
Ensure that you have all your Meta tags such as title, description, and keywords optimised. Your page title and description should be keyword targeted but remember to make them draw and entice your potential customers to your website. You never get a second chance to make a first impression!
4. Google is the king of search engines so concentrate most of your SEO efforts on them. I am not saying that you ignore Yahoo! or MSN, just that you be realistic about which company is the big fish in this market.
Use Google's Webmaster Tools to fine tune your pages for Google.
Google Alerts are also useful to keep up on niche keywords and for comment link-building on any newly created pages that Google has indexed.
5. Link Building is the most effective way to boost search rankings. Make sure you get back-links from other sites related to your market and make sure the 'anchor text' is related to your keywords. The anchor text is the underlined/clickable portion of a link.
Don't forget that linking is a two-way street. Impress the search engines by linking out to high ranked relevant sites in your niche. For instance, I link out to Google webmaster tools amongst many others, to enhance my credibility and to help my visitors.
Lyndon Ogden is a Director of Your SEO Services and an acknowledged expert on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Having spent many years in the SEO and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) industry, he now passes his expertise on to businesses both large and small interested in web marketing.
SEO is not as complicated as you might think although it can be time consuming if you try to do it all yourself.
Search Engine Optimisation is getting your content listed in all the top positions in Google, Yahoo and MSN for your targeted keywords. When someone does a search for your particular subject or niche, you want your site or content to be at the top of the list.
Here are five of my favourite SEO tactics for you:
1. Great Content is the number one factor for getting high rankings and keeping them. Search engines are businesses who supply a product just like any other. The product for a search engine is information and any website that offers quality and new information to the search engines customers usually does well in the rankings. Quality content is vital for SEO success.
2. Keywords are the number one tool for achieving great rankings. Keywords are those words that people search for when looking for products and services. The best keywords are actually phrases that narrow down the search for potential customers.
For example, if you have a site selling toys, you might think ‘toys’ is a great keyword. Wrong! The competition is too great and you would be better looking for something like – ‘toys for girls’ which narrows down the search. So how about ‘toys for girls age six’ which narrows it down even more. True, you will have less people searching but those that do will surely be more likely to buy.
So do your research into what people are searching for. Amend the text etc on your website to reflect this and watch the sales fly in!
‘Long tail keywords’ can be enormously profitable if used correctly.
3. On-page Factors and site design will play a big role in the indexing of your site and it’s content. Make sure that all your pages can be reached from your homepage and that no pages are more than three levels away from it.
Ensure that you have all your Meta tags such as title, description, and keywords optimised. Your page title and description should be keyword targeted but remember to make them draw and entice your potential customers to your website. You never get a second chance to make a first impression!
4. Google is the king of search engines so concentrate most of your SEO efforts on them. I am not saying that you ignore Yahoo! or MSN, just that you be realistic about which company is the big fish in this market.
Use Google's Webmaster Tools to fine tune your pages for Google.
Google Alerts are also useful to keep up on niche keywords and for comment link-building on any newly created pages that Google has indexed.
5. Link Building is the most effective way to boost search rankings. Make sure you get back-links from other sites related to your market and make sure the 'anchor text' is related to your keywords. The anchor text is the underlined/clickable portion of a link.
Don't forget that linking is a two-way street. Impress the search engines by linking out to high ranked relevant sites in your niche. For instance, I link out to Google webmaster tools amongst many others, to enhance my credibility and to help my visitors.
Lyndon Ogden is a Director of Your SEO Services and an acknowledged expert on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Having spent many years in the SEO and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) industry, he now passes his expertise on to businesses both large and small interested in web marketing.
Why SEO during a recession?
Times are tough and going to get tougher. That’s why companies are cutting back on their marketing spending, just as a precaution.
So, in hard times, you’ve got to tighten up the marketing budget, right? Actually the answer should be no because the smart marketer understand that this is the right time to boost the marketing effort. Why? If the pie is smaller, you’ve got to fight harder for your share. Also, if you do it right, you can grab market share while your competitors are hibernating, waiting for the climate to warm up.
I’m not suggesting that you spend like a lottery winner. You’ve just got to be smart about where you spend your money is all. My vested interest is that I have a SEO company which makes its money by helping businesses get more visitors. How many more? Well, position one in Google gets 350% more traffic than position two and 1400% more than position ten! Personally I cannot think of anything more important for a website than getting found.
Here are a few tried and tested web marketing ideas that you can use in good times or bad:
Search Engine Optimization
If your website shows up on the first page of results for your keywords, you will get a constant flow of customers who are looking for exactly what you have to offer. Bingo! Its time to make hay even during a recession.
Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing
Targeted traffic instantly at a cost you control is the upside. A huge waste of money if done wrong is the downside. Do yourself a favour and have a professional set up and manage your campaign and you’ll see a huge difference in results. It won’t cost much and the returns can be amazing.
Pay Per Click Contextual Advertising
This is where your adverts turn up on other people’s websites rather than the search results. Not as targeted as the search engine PPC but a lot cheaper. Never mix the two campaigns together as it drags down your quality score and increases your costs.
If you do want to know more about this subject and others relating to making your website a success then please feel free to visit my search engine optimization website for information, advice and free SEO tools.
So, in hard times, you’ve got to tighten up the marketing budget, right? Actually the answer should be no because the smart marketer understand that this is the right time to boost the marketing effort. Why? If the pie is smaller, you’ve got to fight harder for your share. Also, if you do it right, you can grab market share while your competitors are hibernating, waiting for the climate to warm up.
I’m not suggesting that you spend like a lottery winner. You’ve just got to be smart about where you spend your money is all. My vested interest is that I have a SEO company which makes its money by helping businesses get more visitors. How many more? Well, position one in Google gets 350% more traffic than position two and 1400% more than position ten! Personally I cannot think of anything more important for a website than getting found.
Here are a few tried and tested web marketing ideas that you can use in good times or bad:
Search Engine Optimization
If your website shows up on the first page of results for your keywords, you will get a constant flow of customers who are looking for exactly what you have to offer. Bingo! Its time to make hay even during a recession.
Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing
Targeted traffic instantly at a cost you control is the upside. A huge waste of money if done wrong is the downside. Do yourself a favour and have a professional set up and manage your campaign and you’ll see a huge difference in results. It won’t cost much and the returns can be amazing.
Pay Per Click Contextual Advertising
This is where your adverts turn up on other people’s websites rather than the search results. Not as targeted as the search engine PPC but a lot cheaper. Never mix the two campaigns together as it drags down your quality score and increases your costs.
If you do want to know more about this subject and others relating to making your website a success then please feel free to visit my search engine optimization website for information, advice and free SEO tools.
Friday, 14 November 2008
Link Baiting for SEO
Link Baiting for SEO
Firstly, what is link-baiting? Link-baiting is a variety of practices which seek to generate incoming links to a website or blog from other websites.
It is a difficult term to define accurately as it covers many different practices ranging from give away tools through to confrontational blog posts, goading people to bite back. Whatever the practice (I will list some later) it all leads to the same thing, namely that people follow links pointing back to your site. From an SEO perspective, It is important to get incoming links to your site as these are seen as a vote of confidence by the search engines. This in turn assists your website or blog to move up the search engine rankings and receive more traffic.
Is link-baiting a good or bad thing?
The problem I suppose is the connotations around the word ‘baiting’ which gives the sense of trying to trick an unsuspecting person into doing something that they don’t really want to do. While this is accurate with some forms of link-baiting it is not true with others.
My personal opinion on whether link-baiting is good or bad is that it depends what you are actually doing. Like almost anything online there are ethical and professional people trying to add value to prospective visitors. There are also the people who want to be clever for the sake of it and don’t care at all about anything but the results. For them the end justifies the means.
Here are my favourite three, commonly used link-baiting techniques.
Tools - Give other website owners a useful tool or gadget that they can use on their blog or website that points back to your own.
Lists – There is something about a top ten list that is viral. Check out dig and del.icio.us and you’ll see plenty of examples. A lot of the stuff I write is 'top ten' or 'top three' tips. They do get peoples attention and are usually the best read. Oh, by the way, I can get more traffic from an article site than anywhere else.
Research and Statistics - researching a topic that other people can learn from and quote is another is another effective way to generate incoming links. Recently I discovered some research from AOL that gave the percentage increase in traffic from being position one to position ten in the search engine rankings. If you want to see this research go to the SEO Services website for more info (this is my link-bait by the way).
Firstly, what is link-baiting? Link-baiting is a variety of practices which seek to generate incoming links to a website or blog from other websites.
It is a difficult term to define accurately as it covers many different practices ranging from give away tools through to confrontational blog posts, goading people to bite back. Whatever the practice (I will list some later) it all leads to the same thing, namely that people follow links pointing back to your site. From an SEO perspective, It is important to get incoming links to your site as these are seen as a vote of confidence by the search engines. This in turn assists your website or blog to move up the search engine rankings and receive more traffic.
Is link-baiting a good or bad thing?
The problem I suppose is the connotations around the word ‘baiting’ which gives the sense of trying to trick an unsuspecting person into doing something that they don’t really want to do. While this is accurate with some forms of link-baiting it is not true with others.
My personal opinion on whether link-baiting is good or bad is that it depends what you are actually doing. Like almost anything online there are ethical and professional people trying to add value to prospective visitors. There are also the people who want to be clever for the sake of it and don’t care at all about anything but the results. For them the end justifies the means.
Here are my favourite three, commonly used link-baiting techniques.
Tools - Give other website owners a useful tool or gadget that they can use on their blog or website that points back to your own.
Lists – There is something about a top ten list that is viral. Check out dig and del.icio.us and you’ll see plenty of examples. A lot of the stuff I write is 'top ten' or 'top three' tips. They do get peoples attention and are usually the best read. Oh, by the way, I can get more traffic from an article site than anywhere else.
Research and Statistics - researching a topic that other people can learn from and quote is another is another effective way to generate incoming links. Recently I discovered some research from AOL that gave the percentage increase in traffic from being position one to position ten in the search engine rankings. If you want to see this research go to the SEO Services website for more info (this is my link-bait by the way).
Friday, 7 November 2008
Consider search engine optimization before launching a new website
Consider Search Engine Optimization before launching a new website. It will save you time and money as well as boosting your chances of success.
Some facts for you: Nearly 73% of new visitors to a website come through a search engine. The difference in the amount of traffic between position #1 and position #10 the search results is 1,400%. In fact the difference between #1 and #2 is still 350%
More traffic.
I spend my life looking at nice websites that will never get found because either the owners or the web agency do not understand SEO. Buying some SEO services from an SEO company would have made all the difference because search engine optimisation can make or break a site as a commercial entity.
If you remember nothing else, then please remember this. The biggest search engine is Google and they do not use human editors to decide what your website is about. Unless you make it blindingly obvious with your page titles and text etc what you do for a living then forget it. So if it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and enjoys a crust of bread like a duck, guess what? It’s probably a duck! Remember the duck when building your website and you will not go far wrong.
So here you go; a few basic SEO guidelines for easy search engine indexing.
Don’t worry too much if you don’t understand the terms or don’t want to do the work yourself. There are many companies out there who can design you a SEO friendly website for not much more money than a regular site. Just make sure that they understand SEO please before giving them your money.
• Before starting out you need to decide which phrases are used when people search for your type of product or service. These words are called keywords and it is these that dictate how the pages on the site are described and also what text is used on the pages. There is a useful free keyword tool at Google to get you started.
• Design your site in html and minimise the use of java script and flash. The more complex you make the code, the more difficult it becomes for the search engines to read your content and allocate the appropriate Google PR to your web page.
• Make sure that your Meta tags are coded correctly and include the correct SEO keyword phrases that you want to be found for. If your Meta tags are search engine optimised and compelling, you massively improve your chances of a higher search engine ranking.
• Apply the proper tags to your page; ‘h’ tags are a great way to call attention to your content and promote your keywords. Try to use each tag at least once, but remember that you want your text to read well and appear normal.
• Add an html sitemap and an xml sitemap. Including a sitemap on your site makes it easy for search engines to access all of your website pages and index your site accordingly.
• Include a links page where you point visitors at other websites they might find interesting. Google in particular is keen for websites to offer a fantastic visitor experience and linking out is partly the proof of this. My own website links out to sites such as Wikipedia, Google, Yahoo! And MSN. None are in competition with me but all can add value to my visitor.
• Easy for some and difficult for others is the adding of fresh content to a website. Search engines rely on new content as much as we rely on oxygen to live. Now I absolutely realise that if your business has a single product that seldom changes then, unlike SEO there is not a mountain to write about. But why not consider case studies, customer comments, press releases or company news? All are perfectly acceptable as fresh content and the very fact you are trying does carry weight with the search engines
Starting with the strong foundation of a site that meets basic SEO standards will stand you in good stead for moving forward and for your website to be more than a glossy but often unread brochure on the web.
Some facts for you: Nearly 73% of new visitors to a website come through a search engine. The difference in the amount of traffic between position #1 and position #10 the search results is 1,400%. In fact the difference between #1 and #2 is still 350%
More traffic.
I spend my life looking at nice websites that will never get found because either the owners or the web agency do not understand SEO. Buying some SEO services from an SEO company would have made all the difference because search engine optimisation can make or break a site as a commercial entity.
If you remember nothing else, then please remember this. The biggest search engine is Google and they do not use human editors to decide what your website is about. Unless you make it blindingly obvious with your page titles and text etc what you do for a living then forget it. So if it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and enjoys a crust of bread like a duck, guess what? It’s probably a duck! Remember the duck when building your website and you will not go far wrong.
So here you go; a few basic SEO guidelines for easy search engine indexing.
Don’t worry too much if you don’t understand the terms or don’t want to do the work yourself. There are many companies out there who can design you a SEO friendly website for not much more money than a regular site. Just make sure that they understand SEO please before giving them your money.
• Before starting out you need to decide which phrases are used when people search for your type of product or service. These words are called keywords and it is these that dictate how the pages on the site are described and also what text is used on the pages. There is a useful free keyword tool at Google to get you started.
• Design your site in html and minimise the use of java script and flash. The more complex you make the code, the more difficult it becomes for the search engines to read your content and allocate the appropriate Google PR to your web page.
• Make sure that your Meta tags are coded correctly and include the correct SEO keyword phrases that you want to be found for. If your Meta tags are search engine optimised and compelling, you massively improve your chances of a higher search engine ranking.
• Apply the proper tags to your page; ‘h’ tags are a great way to call attention to your content and promote your keywords. Try to use each tag at least once, but remember that you want your text to read well and appear normal.
• Add an html sitemap and an xml sitemap. Including a sitemap on your site makes it easy for search engines to access all of your website pages and index your site accordingly.
• Include a links page where you point visitors at other websites they might find interesting. Google in particular is keen for websites to offer a fantastic visitor experience and linking out is partly the proof of this. My own website links out to sites such as Wikipedia, Google, Yahoo! And MSN. None are in competition with me but all can add value to my visitor.
• Easy for some and difficult for others is the adding of fresh content to a website. Search engines rely on new content as much as we rely on oxygen to live. Now I absolutely realise that if your business has a single product that seldom changes then, unlike SEO there is not a mountain to write about. But why not consider case studies, customer comments, press releases or company news? All are perfectly acceptable as fresh content and the very fact you are trying does carry weight with the search engines
Starting with the strong foundation of a site that meets basic SEO standards will stand you in good stead for moving forward and for your website to be more than a glossy but often unread brochure on the web.
Black Hat SEO Tactics
Black Hat SEO
These Tactics Are Considered Black Hat SEO For A Reason.
These Are Not Legitimate Tactics And While Some May Work In The Short Term.
They WILL Get Your Website Penalised And/Or Banned Eventually.
Constantly webmasters attempt to "trick" the search engines into ranking sites and pages based on illegitimate means. Whether this is through the use of doorway pages, hidden text, interlinking, keyword spamming or other means they are meant to only trick a search engine into placing a website high in the rankings. Because of this, sites using black-hat SEO tactics tend to drop from these positions as fast as they climb (if they do climb at all).
The following tactics are not listed to help you "trick" the search engines but rather to warn you against these tactics should you hear they are used by other SEO's (this is not to say that all other search engine optimisation experts use these tactics, just that some do and you should be warned against them).
Due to the sheer number of tricks and scripts used against search engines they could not possibly all be listed here. Below you will find only some of the most common black-hat tactics. Many SEO's and webmasters have simply modified the below tactics in hopes that the new technique will work. Truthfully they may, but not forever and probably not for long.
Black-Hat SEO Tactics:
Keyword Stuffing
This is probably one of the most commonly abused forms of search engine spam. Essentially this is when a webmaster or SEO places a large number of instances of the targeted keyword phrase in hopes that the search engine will read this as relevant. In order to offset the fact that this text generally reads horribly it will often be placed at the bottom of a page and in a very small font size. An additional tactic that is often associated with this practice is hidden text which is commented on below.
Hidden Text
Hidden text is text that is set at the same colour as the background or very close to it. While the major search engines can easily detect text set to the same colour as a background some webmasters will try to get around it by creating an image file the same colour as the text and setting the image file as the background. While undetectable at this time to the search engines this is blatant spam and websites using this tactic are usually quickly reported by competitors and the site blacklisted.
Cloaking
In short, cloaking is a method of presenting different information to the search engines than a human visitor would see. There are too many methods of cloaking to possibly list here and some of them are still undetectable by the search engines. That said, which methods still work and how long they will is rarely set-in-stone and like hidden text, when one of your competitors figures out what is being done (and don't think they aren't watching you if you're holding one of the top search engine positions) they can and will report your site and it will get banned.
Doorway Pages
Doorway pages are pages added to a website solely to target a specific keyword phrase or phrases and provide little in the way of value to a visitor. Generally the content on these pages provide no information and the page is only there to promote a phrase in hopes that once a visitor lands there, that they will go to the homepage and continue on from there. Often to save time these pages are generated by software and added to a site automatically. This is a very dangerous practice. Not only are many of the methods of injecting doorway pages banned by the search engines but a quick report to the search engine of this practice and your website will simply disappear along with all the legitimate ranks you have attained with your genuine content pages.
Redirects
Redirecting, when used as a black-hat tactic, is most commonly brought in as a compliment to doorway pages. Because doorway pages generally have little or no substantial content, redirects are sometime applied to automatically move a visitor to a page with actual content such as the homepage of the site. As quickly as the search engines find ways of detecting such redirects, the spammers are uncovering ways around detection. That said, the search engines figure them out eventually and your site will be penalised. That or you'll be reported by a competitor or a disgruntled searcher.
Duplicate Sites
A throwback tactic that rarely works these days. When affiliate programs became popular many webmasters would simply create a copy of the site they were promoting, tweak it a bit, and put it online in hopes that it would outrank the site it was promoting and capture their sales. As the search engines would ideally like to see unique content across all of their results this tactic was quickly banned and the search engines have methods for detecting and removing duplicate sites from their index. If the site is changed just enough to avoid automatic detection with hidden text or the such, you can once again be reported to the search engines and be banned that way.
Interlinking
As incoming links became more important for search engine positioning the practice of building multiple websites and linking them together to build the overall link popularity of them all became a common practice. This tactic is more difficult to detect than others when done "correctly" (we cannot give the method for "correct" interlinking here as it's still undetectable at the time of this writing and we don't want to provide a means to spam engines). This tactic is difficult to detect from a user standpoint unless you end up with multiple sites in the top positions on the search engines in which case it is likely that you will be reported.
Please feel free to visit my seo services website for seo services, free tools and lots of advice.
These Tactics Are Considered Black Hat SEO For A Reason.
These Are Not Legitimate Tactics And While Some May Work In The Short Term.
They WILL Get Your Website Penalised And/Or Banned Eventually.
Constantly webmasters attempt to "trick" the search engines into ranking sites and pages based on illegitimate means. Whether this is through the use of doorway pages, hidden text, interlinking, keyword spamming or other means they are meant to only trick a search engine into placing a website high in the rankings. Because of this, sites using black-hat SEO tactics tend to drop from these positions as fast as they climb (if they do climb at all).
The following tactics are not listed to help you "trick" the search engines but rather to warn you against these tactics should you hear they are used by other SEO's (this is not to say that all other search engine optimisation experts use these tactics, just that some do and you should be warned against them).
Due to the sheer number of tricks and scripts used against search engines they could not possibly all be listed here. Below you will find only some of the most common black-hat tactics. Many SEO's and webmasters have simply modified the below tactics in hopes that the new technique will work. Truthfully they may, but not forever and probably not for long.
Black-Hat SEO Tactics:
Keyword Stuffing
This is probably one of the most commonly abused forms of search engine spam. Essentially this is when a webmaster or SEO places a large number of instances of the targeted keyword phrase in hopes that the search engine will read this as relevant. In order to offset the fact that this text generally reads horribly it will often be placed at the bottom of a page and in a very small font size. An additional tactic that is often associated with this practice is hidden text which is commented on below.
Hidden Text
Hidden text is text that is set at the same colour as the background or very close to it. While the major search engines can easily detect text set to the same colour as a background some webmasters will try to get around it by creating an image file the same colour as the text and setting the image file as the background. While undetectable at this time to the search engines this is blatant spam and websites using this tactic are usually quickly reported by competitors and the site blacklisted.
Cloaking
In short, cloaking is a method of presenting different information to the search engines than a human visitor would see. There are too many methods of cloaking to possibly list here and some of them are still undetectable by the search engines. That said, which methods still work and how long they will is rarely set-in-stone and like hidden text, when one of your competitors figures out what is being done (and don't think they aren't watching you if you're holding one of the top search engine positions) they can and will report your site and it will get banned.
Doorway Pages
Doorway pages are pages added to a website solely to target a specific keyword phrase or phrases and provide little in the way of value to a visitor. Generally the content on these pages provide no information and the page is only there to promote a phrase in hopes that once a visitor lands there, that they will go to the homepage and continue on from there. Often to save time these pages are generated by software and added to a site automatically. This is a very dangerous practice. Not only are many of the methods of injecting doorway pages banned by the search engines but a quick report to the search engine of this practice and your website will simply disappear along with all the legitimate ranks you have attained with your genuine content pages.
Redirects
Redirecting, when used as a black-hat tactic, is most commonly brought in as a compliment to doorway pages. Because doorway pages generally have little or no substantial content, redirects are sometime applied to automatically move a visitor to a page with actual content such as the homepage of the site. As quickly as the search engines find ways of detecting such redirects, the spammers are uncovering ways around detection. That said, the search engines figure them out eventually and your site will be penalised. That or you'll be reported by a competitor or a disgruntled searcher.
Duplicate Sites
A throwback tactic that rarely works these days. When affiliate programs became popular many webmasters would simply create a copy of the site they were promoting, tweak it a bit, and put it online in hopes that it would outrank the site it was promoting and capture their sales. As the search engines would ideally like to see unique content across all of their results this tactic was quickly banned and the search engines have methods for detecting and removing duplicate sites from their index. If the site is changed just enough to avoid automatic detection with hidden text or the such, you can once again be reported to the search engines and be banned that way.
Interlinking
As incoming links became more important for search engine positioning the practice of building multiple websites and linking them together to build the overall link popularity of them all became a common practice. This tactic is more difficult to detect than others when done "correctly" (we cannot give the method for "correct" interlinking here as it's still undetectable at the time of this writing and we don't want to provide a means to spam engines). This tactic is difficult to detect from a user standpoint unless you end up with multiple sites in the top positions on the search engines in which case it is likely that you will be reported.
Please feel free to visit my seo services website for seo services, free tools and lots of advice.
Blog Marketing
Blog Marketing
Blog marketing can be an excellent tool in search engine optimisation because search engines consider a blog to be both an authority and a good content site..
Blog marketing is the term used to describe internet marketing via weblogs (Blogs). These blogs differ from corporate websites because they feature daily or weekly posts, often around a single topic. Typically, corporations use blogs to create a dialog with customers and explain features of their products and services. Because search engines look to blogs as both authority sites and great resources for fresh content, they can be excellent tools in search engine optimisation.
Many organisations use blogs with their user community. This allows them to share and preview product features, functions, and benefits before the products are released. Blogs are an excellent way to gather feedback and to make sure products meet the needs of users. Blogs have become the next generation marketing tool to corporate websites which merely post collateral and do not provide any interactive feedback. Blogs are also supplementary to a User Group. User Groups happen annually for example while blogs provide users constant daily and weekly feedback.
Blogs are Basic websites which are updated Regularly. They act as a Private news interface for any Company / Website. With regular updates being handled by the company executive team, product marketing, and product strategy teams. The need for fresh content on the web makes the Blogs a preferred destination for Resources. Blogs have been focused as a primary platform for Marketing since the early 2006. "Blogs are web sites that allow you instantly publish content about a certain topic or theme."
Blogging then is defined as the act of publishing content with blog. But...publishing content with a blog and publishing with a regular web site are like night and day both in how they work and in what they are used for.
So what is the difference then between a web site and a blog?
A regular web site is designed to publish content for all manner of reasons. Regular web sites are static and infrequently updated. Regular web sites are great at content delivery but they can also be impersonal in how they publish content and inform their audience.
Blogs are instant publishing tools that allow you easily update your content often. Blogs are said to be dynamic content delivery systems and even content management systems. Blogs are published as two-way conversations that are more personal than web sites and are humanized by the voice of the very human blog publisher who is generally the one actually publishing content and responding feedback from readers.Links from blogs can be a good source of quality back-links and also targeted traffic dependent on the nature of your website.
Blog marketing can be an excellent tool in search engine optimisation because search engines consider a blog to be both an authority and a good content site..
Blog marketing is the term used to describe internet marketing via weblogs (Blogs). These blogs differ from corporate websites because they feature daily or weekly posts, often around a single topic. Typically, corporations use blogs to create a dialog with customers and explain features of their products and services. Because search engines look to blogs as both authority sites and great resources for fresh content, they can be excellent tools in search engine optimisation.
Many organisations use blogs with their user community. This allows them to share and preview product features, functions, and benefits before the products are released. Blogs are an excellent way to gather feedback and to make sure products meet the needs of users. Blogs have become the next generation marketing tool to corporate websites which merely post collateral and do not provide any interactive feedback. Blogs are also supplementary to a User Group. User Groups happen annually for example while blogs provide users constant daily and weekly feedback.
Blogs are Basic websites which are updated Regularly. They act as a Private news interface for any Company / Website. With regular updates being handled by the company executive team, product marketing, and product strategy teams. The need for fresh content on the web makes the Blogs a preferred destination for Resources. Blogs have been focused as a primary platform for Marketing since the early 2006. "Blogs are web sites that allow you instantly publish content about a certain topic or theme."
Blogging then is defined as the act of publishing content with blog. But...publishing content with a blog and publishing with a regular web site are like night and day both in how they work and in what they are used for.
So what is the difference then between a web site and a blog?
A regular web site is designed to publish content for all manner of reasons. Regular web sites are static and infrequently updated. Regular web sites are great at content delivery but they can also be impersonal in how they publish content and inform their audience.
Blogs are instant publishing tools that allow you easily update your content often. Blogs are said to be dynamic content delivery systems and even content management systems. Blogs are published as two-way conversations that are more personal than web sites and are humanized by the voice of the very human blog publisher who is generally the one actually publishing content and responding feedback from readers.Links from blogs can be a good source of quality back-links and also targeted traffic dependent on the nature of your website.
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