Friday, February 2nd, 2007
As with most SEO tips, this one is simple, overlooked and easy to do. Your site’s navigation is an important part when providing a pleasant user experience and it can be beneficial in aiding your SEO efforts. Even important is how you handle your internal linking strategy, or your body text links.
Repeat after me: “I must include internal links within my content.” This is the very foundation for Internet: hyperlinking text to provide more information about the linked text. Not only is it crucial for SEO it just makes good sense.
For example, let’s take a look at this page on our client’s site, Agee Woodworks. Within the copy of this web page are a number of keyword phrases that link to other pages within their site. Some of these internal linking phrases include “custom fireplace mantel” and “fireplace shelf“. This is simple and clever way to increase the link popularity of other pages within the site. A text link from the home page is delivering PageRank to internal pages with a targeted keyword phrase. This helps both pages. The only links you can control are the links on your own site, so use them to your best advantage.
Another example, Grote Consulting Services Page, shows how internal linking can guide you through the site and provide a lift for the link destination pages. One of the terms linking on this page is “performance appraisal systems” and when I search in Google for that term it shows a first page listing for the link destination page (http://www.groteconsulting.com/services/performance-appraisal/index.asp). While other factors clearly play a role, don’t discount the helpfulness of an internal link especially when it is one of the few things you have total control over.
Fortunately, for you, very few sites are aware of the importance of internal linking. By using this SEO strategy you help the search engines index more of your site and more importantly those internal links will contribute to higher rankings because of the keyword-rich anchor text that is being used.
Don’t ignore internal linking; use it and watch your own rankings increase.
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, Link Building, SEO Strategies, Search Engine Optimization | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, January 17th, 2007
Rather than lose these wonderful idea sites for link building I figured I’d create a blog post I can access from anywhere at anytime. I may post more or accept links from other posters but this is as good a start as you could ask for.
Many pros have put their two cents in and more than a few “creative” ideas. Let you imagination run with these link building ideas. Thanks to all of the sites and authors who took the time to put these together.
- 10 Creative Ideas for Link Building
- 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity – SEOBOOK.com
- 101 Web Marketing Ideas
- Advanced Link Building Strategies – SEMOZ.org
- Out of Link Building Ideas?
- 21 Link Buidling Ideas
- Link Development vs. Traffic Development and Staying with the Times
- More Linking Ideas
- Link baiting – Thoughts by Matt Cutts
- Link Building Guide
- Bonus:Link Building Wiki - sorry,this was too good not to include.
Posted in Link Building, SEO Strategies, Search Engine Optimization | Comments Off
Friday, January 5th, 2007
Blogs can be helpful if correctly used. But, blogs will not guarantee high rankings.Blogs provide an easy way to add new and hopefully unique content. Search engines love new content and they love original content even more. Blogs are a great way of adding new information to your site because if search engines know a site is adding new articles or posts on a continual and frequent basis, they will come around more often to index the site. You can add a blog internally to your site directly (http://www.sitename.com/blog) or as an external site (http://sitename.blogspot.com).
Think of your blog as a way to reach potential clients on a more informal basis. Your blog will also allow you to tap into “lower hanging fruit” keyphrases that you use in your posts. You will be surprised at the keyphrases typed in the search engines that will bring users to your blog. It may even inspire a new Internet marketing initiative.
I recommend WordPress as the blogging tool of choice. Easy to set up, very powerful with the ability to add plungins and it has a great support network.
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, Blogging, SEO Strategies, Search Engine Optimization | 5 Comments »
Friday, December 29th, 2006
Content rich means different things for different individuals, because what one person finds useful, another may not. Content rich is all about providing information that is considered valuable to your target audience. Information that visitors might find useful could consist of product or industry facts, statistics, reviews, tutorials, or educational information related to a specific industry.
When creating a content rich website, do not be afraid to think outside of the box. Unique ideas will generally garner more attention than the mundane and more common content concepts. Over the years the unique content that has garnered the most attention, the Subservient Chicken and JibJab, may not be appropriate for a business website, there are still lots of “out of the box” things that you can do.
Here are some ideas on how you can build content for your website that will attract website visitors.
Calendar of Events
If you website appeals to a specific audience manage and maintain a calendar of events. The events should relate to a specific region or topic.
Ex. Hawaii Local Events – http://calendar.gohawaii.com/ (regional) or ex. Librarian Events – http://www.infotoday.com/calendar.shtml (topic specific events)
Sponsorships and Contests
Conducting a contest is a great way to generate interest and incoming links, everyone wants to win and in order to garner votes many competitors will tell their audience about contests and voting options. (more…)
Posted in SEO Copywriting, SEO Strategies, Search Engine Optimization | Comments Off
Thursday, December 7th, 2006
With so many strategies in the SEO world, using RSS Feeds can often be overlooked. This article on RSS Feeds can help you understand how effective RSS can be towards the SEO and Internet Marketing of your site.
Top 6 Strategies To Put Your RSS Feed Promotion On Steroids
As I wrote in one of my previous articles, the orange revolution has begun. RSS is here and it has taken the internet by storm. The number of webmasters becoming a part of this online revolution is growing on a fast pace.
The reason is, RSS feeds have proved to increase traffic in a big way. And creating your own RSS feed would surely be a step towards tapping in a new source of traffic.
However, just publishing your own RSS feed and waiting for miracles to happen won’t work. In order to get those most wanted subscribers, RSS feeds need to be promoted and marketed in the right way. With a good dose of quality traffic directed towards your feed, long term subscriptions will definitely start pouring in.
The following 6 ways will not only help you get the word out about your RSS feed but also help you retain a fresh flow of targeted visitors to your website.
Strategy #1: Create an individual webpage for your RSS feed
The most important part of your promotion should be creating a webpage dedicated to your RSS feed. Since RSS is still new to most of the online users, you can give your readers an introduction and explain how beneficial it is to subscribe to your RSS feed.
You can also have a small FAQ section about RSS here answering any questions and doubts your readers might have. Most of the time, the key here is to give your potential subscribers more than one option to add your feed. Different subscription options like “My Yahoo!” “My MSN” and “Newsgator” allow your visitors to add and subscribe to your feed with their own convenience. (more…)
Posted in SEO Strategies, SEO Tools, Search Engine Optimization | 2 Comments »
Friday, November 10th, 2006
What a great idea, and one that we have been trying out ourselves. Creating entire pages to swap links in and supplying content to other sites to link to you are wonderful ideas. As link marketing becomes more competitive we shall see how things change in the SEO world.
The problem with Search Engine Optimization is that every body does it. Whenever a new technique gets into the public domain, it soon becomes overused. As the SE industry is itself becomes more and more competitive, increasing the pressure to deliver relevant, quality results, the search engines quickly devalue it for their algorithms, in order to maintain the credibility and usability of their search results.
Linking is a case in point. A central factor to “relevancy”, inward/outward links contribute significant weight to page rank and overall search ranking. However, as linking is now both hackneyed and abused, the SE’s are damping or reducing the weighting attached to certain types of links. As they become more sophisticated, the SE’s are able to differentiate between links for their relevance both to the page they are on and the page they point to. (more…)
Posted in Link Building, SEO Strategies, Search Engine Optimization | Comments Off
Friday, November 10th, 2006
The first question you have to ask and answer about whether to embark on a reciprocal link exchange program for your website is “why”. After all, it’s work, time and money. It has to stand up to business analysis. I’ve been doing reciprocal linking for websites since 1996. In that time, I’ve seen this work evolve from one that was primarily a way for niche interest, hobbyist-oriented sites to reach out to each other, to one that is now a business function, often driven by the need for quality traffic exchange, and good search engine results.
Web Promotion Before Google
Before Google came along and put the focus on link popularity, only the savviest businesses were running link directories and pursuing links with other relevant sites. Most businesses ignored reciprocal linking.
The prevailing wisdom was that a business website should not link out to anyone else, if they could help it. The concept was that you should capture visitors, hold them hostage, and never, ever cooperate with anybody else. This has been proven wrong.
What’s interesting, though, is that the purpose and linking methods that worked well for those niche sites in the pre-Google days still work well today. It is important to keep this in focus, as there are now a lot of people out there who are trying to do this work using misguided methods, for misguided reasons.
Why Link?
First and foremost, linking should be pursued as a branding function of your business. If other websites that are relevant to your business are running link directories, and offering to list yours for free, then it makes sense to get your site listed. In as many of them as possible. That is just basic Common Sense 101.
In order to get these links, the accepted protocol is to first list the other site on your site, then make the request for a link, using the proper method of submission (via email or online form, if one is provided). This work is specifically termed “directory-to-directory reciprocal linking”.
“Linking should be pursued as a branding function of your business.”
Before people started playing games with PageRank and Alexa rankings, and other tangential matters related to linking, most linking took place between sites within relevant realms of interest. Asking for links outside of your realm was not only rude, but it was almost always a waste of time. Relevancy was the primary criteria, and as long as there was some sound reason for the exchange, and each webmaster approved of the other’s site, it was done. It’s a private exchange between two willing parties, and it should not be judged by others.
The Linking Challenge
The challenge here is that there is a lot of data management work involved in managing directory-to-directory reciprocal link exchanges. So when search engines started to reward sites that had links, the search engine optimization (SEO) crowd, which had largely ignored linking, suddenly needed them in order to succeed.
The SEO crowd began to devise all manner of strategies that were designed to allow them to get the results they wanted, but with as little linking work as possible. We’ve seen theories that only links from pages with PageRank (PR) 4 and higher were “worthwhile”. People claimed that un-reciprocated links were “hurting” your rankings through “PR-leakage”, a concept that has been proven to have no merit. There’s even more bizarre stuff out there, but you get the idea.
Over time, it is becoming clear that the websites that have ignored all of these complex theories and still treat linking as a branding function of the business, whereby they simply continue to pursue relevant links with quality sites, are still doing the best with the search engines. I see this all the time. Traditional linking with quality relevant sites works. Sites that link with quality sites relevant to the same industry get the double benefit of having their sites listed in as many relevant locations as possible, thus getting quality traffic directly from the links, while enjoying considerable search engine benefits.
The Long Term Commitment and Payoff
Treat this work as a branding function of your business. One that never ends. Commit to it, with tools, a budget, and dedicated human resources that will do it properly. Look at it as a long term necessity that really does pay dividends.
It may not be the easiest thing to manage, but many website owners consider reciprocal linking to be the single most cost-effective marketing investment that they have made in their sites. There are other ways to get links to your site, such as the outright purchase of links, or the pursuit of content citations back to your site. But on a cost per link basis, directory-to-directory reciprocal linking is a very favorable investment, when done properly.
Google has risen to the top of the search engine world, in a large part because their algorithm that takes linking into account. It is highly unlikely that they will turn their back on it, and recent indexing changes at Google have only further supported traditional, honest linking practices.
On a more fundamental level, linking is the very foundation of HTML. Which stands for Hypertext Markup Language. The term Hypertext specifically refers to text that is linked and “active”. That is, you can click on it in an HTML browser, and the browser will take you to that location on the World Wide Web. The attraction of text-based linking was the founding reason behind HTML and the World Wide Web. Prior to that, people using the Internet had to enter their destinations manually using arcane codes. HTML and browsers made it easy to navigate the Web.
“Traditional linking with quality relevant sites works.”
It’s very basic, really. The World Wide Web is a new and unique medium. It is a computer network, based entirely on links between pages. The more links you have, the more opportunities you have for people to visit your website. Links are literally the currency of the World Wide Web.
All of this comes down to choices. As it stands right now, those who make no effort to link their sites in some way will only continue to fall further behind their competitors. Since directory-to-directory reciprocal linking is the most cost effective way to get this done, then it should be very high on your list of necessary tasks, if you are serious about promoting a commercial website. It goes with the territory.
Dirk Johnson has been managing link campaigns since the mid-1990s, and writes for various sources on web promotion and linking. His advice and commentary is regarded as “expert through experience.” Dirk’s approach to linking has been more traditional in scope, treating it as a branding function, and not a search engine optimization function. He operates LinkStrategy.com www.linkstrategy.com.
Posted in Link Building, SEO Strategies, SEO Tools | 1 Comment »
Monday, October 23rd, 2006
Choosing keywords and key phrases for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is an art: if a webmaster doesn’t choose the right keywords and phrases and use them within the pages of the website, the amount of web traffic they will receive can be directly and adversely affected. Due to the fact that the Internet is a vast, collective space of information, webmasters are constantly striving to make their website more visible and choosing keywords and key phrases for SEO purposes can immediately increase a website’s page ranking, if done correctly. Thus, with an increased page ranking in search engines, webmasters will see a paralleled increase in the amount of web traffic they receive.
How Keywords Work
Choosing the right keywords and key phrases for SEO is crucial to a website’s success. With the right keywords, individuals can create online businesses that are highly visible and an increase in visibility means an increase in the profit that a business will receive. Just because your business has a website doesn’t mean that you will be able to reach a global audience overnight–in fact, you may not be able to reach a large audience at all if web users cannot easily find your website. Therefore, in order to make your website easily accessible, you will need to get your website to appear as a response to any search engine query that a web user may submit: one way to successfully do that is to find and use popular keywords and key phrases.
When a web browser submits a query to a search engine, the search engine will pull up the pages that will best answer the web user’s query. Further, search engines will base their responses on the quality of a website: the quality is determined by the website’s content along with other factors like how many outside links point to the website. If you want your website to appear in the top of the search engine results pages, you will need to make your website one that is prepared to answer any query that may relate to your website’s theme.
Common Mistakes When Choosing Keywords
- Choosing Keywords and Key Phrases that are Not Targeted: One of the biggest mistakes that webmasters make when selecting keywords is that they choose keywords and key phrases that do not really apply to their desired audience. Although the idea that choosing as many keywords as possible may, at first, seem like a good idea, it’s not. In fact, poorly chosen keywords can adversely affect the way a page is ranked and can consequently lead to a lower ranking in search engine results. (more…)
Posted in Keyword Research, SEO Strategies, SEO Tools | Comments Off
Monday, June 19th, 2006
301 permanent Redirect
Redirects are essential for some websites. Without them pages don’t get indexed and that hurts your search engine visibility. The best way to do a redirect is to use a permanent 301 redirect. A permanent 301 redirect sends a status code to the browser alerting that the page has moved and a new page is taking its place-redirecting it permanently.
Here are a few ways you can achieve a 301 redirect:
Redirect from a subdomain to a domain
It is important for SEO that all of your backlinks go to the same URL.
Remember, www.bigoakinc.com, bigoakinc.com, www.bigoakinc.com/index.html and bigoakinc.com/index.html are all different pages to the search engines. We want all the PageRank funneling to one page.
This can be helped with a 301 redirect to send browsers and bots who go to one of your home page variations. Modifying your .htaccess file that sends a 301 redirect status is where to start.
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]
If your host doesn’t allow mod_rewrite, you can use this code in an .htaccess file
Redirect 301 http://domain.com/oldpage.html
http://www.domain.com/newpage.html\
Code for various 301 redirects:
PHP Redirect
< ?
header(‘HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently’);
header(‘Location: http://www.newdomain.com/newdir/newpage.htm’);
exit();
?>
ASP Redirect
<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status=”301 Moved Permanently”
Response.AddHeader “Location”, “http://www.newsite.com/newdir/newpage.asp”
%>
ASP.NET Redirect
ColdFusion Redirect
< .cfheader statuscode=”301″ statustext=”Moved permanently”>
< .cfheader name=”Location” value=”http://www.new-url.com”>
Please use the information responsibly and be sure this will be a 301 permanent redirect. Moving it again can upset the search engines.
Posted in SEO Strategies, SEO Tools, Search Engine Optimization | 2 Comments »
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