From the category archives:

links

5 Tips For Higher Search Engine Placement

by Chaosmap on July 16, 2010

Links drive the web. For users and search engines, it’s like the central nervous system. Learn how to build links for business using your personal hi-touch.

Online competition is the norm of today’s web-based world. With so many sites and users online, it’s hard to see through the clutter and to implement a necessary process for quality relationship building. But, in this current landscape, generating links, connecting with others in your space and utilizing a link building process is a key consideration for long term survival online.

Success of any kind of online business will be impacted by the visibility and ranking of specific search phrases across many platforms, from organic search results, local search, video search, news search and in social network platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Additionally, for every web property, presenting an engaging user experience once the visitor finds you, becomes a full-time job as well. It is thus advisable to create an easily navigable and conversion-driven website. Make them want more, and to bookmark and share you web site.

Are consistent, top natural search engine rankings possible?

You can and will get high SERP (search engine results pages) positions, if you focus on the right approach for link building. Google’s PageRank link analysis is well known (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank). Quality links are achievable by means of organic methods and in developing partnerships in the community you operate in (niche market). It’s should not be an automated approach, but a personal one.

The more you build the relationships (offline and on), and the more quality incoming links a webmaster has to their site, the faster you will show up in searches, and stay there. These links will also receive direct clicks, and generate more traffic back to the web site. They will show up as referrers (incoming links) in your web analytics.

There is no short cut to success, however. If considering an SEO company to help you, don’t get fooled by those who offer fast visibility, as there are no guarantees. Once a company is selected, you must develop good relationships, work closely together, and even expect to lose money at the beginning of a campaign. But, each campaign and marketplace is different. Make sure to include good tracking and baseline reporting (rankings, traffic, conversion numbers) before starting, and measure as you go.

What Can Webmasters do to build Quality Links Using a Social Web Approach?

  1. Work on getting links from quality websites within your niche. Instead of mass submission to directories, research and contact fellow bloggers, journalists and websites that you could offer something useful to. Their readers will love it. You can even offer to guest-write. And, as you think about your own readers, what would they like to see as links you could add to your own pages? Don’t be afraid to link out. You should also develop short “how to” videos, upload them to YouTube, and share freely. Don’t make it sound like a sales-pitch though, keep it short.
  2. Submit quality content in the form of articles to the free, highly searched article directories. There are many article directories available where a person can submit work. EzineArticles.com, Suite101.com are considered top destinations, and you should build up your profile there, and share it. Use Twitter and Facebook to distribute. For more advanced sharing and tracking, try Hootsuite.com
  3. Link with popular websites within your market, that already has traffic. You can research some of the traffic metrics from Alexa.com, and Compete.com. See if it makes sense to pursue links from your findings. Make sure they don’t try and sell you on anything you don’t need. No spamming allowed, of course.
  4. Improve your own website. Adding and updating links internally to pages you want to elevate, can work well. PageRank (Google’s trust-voting-system of links) flows from page to page, internally and externally. Consider reviewing your web analytics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_analytics) for pages that are already driving some traffic, view your rankings for page 2 listings, clean up your content, add some more, add that video, add social buttons, and get more links, and you’ll likely get a page 1 placement. Try setting up a contest for a viral distribution. Repeat.
  5. Upload and publish content regularly. Content is not just web pages (HTML), but business white papers, videos, special software downloads, audio, images and more. If you don’t have a blog (WordPress.com) already, what are you waiting for? You can write a topic 2-3 times a week to start. Use sites like Elance.com to get help writing. Outsourcing to the English-speaking Philippines can work for you. Try Craigslist Manila and onlinejobs.ph for some great resources, and don’t be surprised to get a quality worker for around $300.00/mo for a full-time person. Get your own domain, and host the blog there, that is preferred.

In Conclusion:

Paying attention to this relationship link building can prove very beneficial for an owner or webmaster who wants to generate quality transactions online. It will pay off over time. Just don’t quit.

Final Tip: Register with several forums (Google & Yahoo Forums) and research to understand the latest updates on the subject matters in your niche. Track activity via Google.com/alerts. The system automatically sends you the change information directly via email, or into your favorite RSS reader. Forums are also important in building relationships and visibility/links for yourself.

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Amazingly Simple PR SEO Link Building Tips

by GuitarMan on April 5, 2010

Think of link building as Public Relations (PR), not Page Rank (the other PR).

When you do this, you are thinking about quality for your brand and online presence. But, none of the link building effort is worth it, or frankly, matters – if you don’t have a relevant page and strong offer/content to provide to your visitor that is searching for that information. If you do this right – you will get rewarded *everywhere*, from Google, user stickiness, sharing of your information, and opportunity for link reputation, while providing value.

To prepare, ask these questions below – about your page content, about your service, about your product and overall positioning. Can you offer a unique value (or sales) proposition? Are you clearly calling this out in every content piece? (without spamming, of course)

  1. What can your product / service do for me? And, that nobody else provides?
  2. What can you guarantee me, that nobody else can?
  3. What is unique about you, as compared to your competition?
  4. Why should I do business with you, and why should I trust you — and nobody else?

These are important questions to ask, and creates a solid foundation for everything you do. Not easy to answer for most, but a necessary discussion along with a SWOT (strength, weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats). This will help keep more visitors on your website, and keep them coming back too.

So, here are reasonable tips that anybody can do.

Controversy tends to work well, but you’ll be amazed how well this can work against you as well. As Matt Cutts (thanks for tips here) at Google says, “it can be okay to uncork a good rant sometimes” but don’t  use this as a norm. You’ll be like a boy who cried wolf, hey, look at me,  pay attention to me, over here, etc – be careful.

You can use humor or bring something original to the table, that’s a lot better. (Dilbert comic strips are classics)

A great way to get links, is to participate in the community. Answering questions on LinkedIn, for example, can work really well for you. If you know the answer to something and say: “hey I know that – I can help you!”. People will be more receptive to clicking to your site and seeing what you’re up to. Answering questions to help other people is really cool. Try Yahoo Answers and even groups in the social media space.

Original research is another great way to create hooks to your site. Danny Sullivan created a comparison of all the spam out there for about 30 days of different e-mail providers and he documented that. He blogged it and a lot of people linked back to him.

You can go out to Google groups, Yahoo! Groups, and other places in the social media space where people are discussing your topic to see what they’re asking.

Social media is really cool. You can enjoy a participation on friendfeed and twitter and look  where people are spending their time. Perhaps it’s more on the Facebook and Twitter – then spend time there. If you have a video and you spoke at a conference, for example – you can you can list that and people will see it.  It helps to create trust and visibility.

The ‘ol “Top 10 lists” are are good, but they have been overused and lost some of their their allure – so you might want to look at that sparingly.

Make sure you get yourself a blog. I set this one up WordPress from an open source download. But, you can try either on WordPress.com, Blogger.com or download the source to install it on your own domain. Update it a couple times a week at first. Then, make sure you join the community and share your blog as appropriate. In the social sense, it’s more about “them” than you, remember that. Your blog can also be a great asset to establish yourself as an authority and thought leader in your business.

How to and tutorials are always great. People are looking for information on the Internet. Your site can be a great way to get awareness to you and your business. And, keep in mind –  if you build this out as useful, quality content pages, you don’t have to think too much about top keywords only – but long tail keywords – that tend to draw really quality traffic  can help you tremendously.

You can make a product or a widget and give it away for free, like a Firefox extension or a WordPress plug-in. Those types of things can be really good. People tend to link back to you as a thank you. You do the work once, and then lots of people can access it and download over time w/links.

Make sure that you have easy access to your site both from a search engine perspective and from user perspective. The site architecture, navigation and structure are very important. Make it easy to get to and links within it. 2-3 link depth is good.

Make sure to create a couple of videos. Short how-to tips or information about your space uploaded to YouTube and others – easy to do.

That’s it!

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Tips For SEO Link Building And Increased Web Traffic

March 21, 2010

LINK BUILDING IMPORTANCE Stated simply (there’s more to it) – link building pertains to the SEO model where one way back links to a website are made. These are in essence incoming links to your page, and these links act like a VOTE for your page and site. By creating links from related and authoritative [...]

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What is Link Popularity?

September 17, 2008

Since the ranking factors for Google are considered a top secret, you can only use a few sure-fire ways to get listed atop in the search engine. One of these high-impact ranking secrets are LINKS! About 75% of all rankings are made from external links, and the number and quality of those links will define [...]

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Cheat Sheets for the IT Director: SEO, Microblogging, CRM

September 16, 2008

Silicon provides videos, tips and documents to help support the IT Director and others interested in Search Engine Optimization Blogs, CRM, Denial of Service attacks, and much much more. See this page at Silicon Cheat Sheets website. Some examples you may be interested in are: Cheat Sheet: SEO Creepy crawlies and things… Cheat Sheet: Microblogging [...]

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What does Google say about Page Rank?

September 15, 2008

Pagerank (Google Larry Page & Sergey Brin responsible) has been written about – a lot. What does Google say about it themselves? We stand alone in our focus on developing the “perfect search engine,” says Google co-founder Larry Page. … Something that, “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.” [...]

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SEO Linking Demystification From 5 Top Link Gurus

September 14, 2008

Recently, we came across a brilliant interview on “How to linkbuild” – and answering questions like these: What are the three most important criteria a search engine robot might consider when it is evaluating an inbound link? How does PageRank play into natural search rankings and what does PageRank really mean? Once you’ve established SEO [...]

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