Archive for October, 2008

Techniques for selecting sites for link exchange request

You should have more links pointing to your site, but you are not sure that what is the best approach to pursue them. Many sites are competing with yours only for the search terms, not products and services.
You can take advantage of the high rankings of other sites. This technique is named as piggybacking. They have what you seek, a highly placed link for a specific search phrase so rather than try to unseat their ranking, which could take you months and never happen anyway, will do the next best thing is to pursue a link on the sites with the best rankings that wont compete with you.
Imagine that if you had links on every site that had a top 10 search result for phrases that you have to care about.
You might use this technique also, identify the good targets that you can advertise on. In other words, the websites have high rankings for terms that are important to you are natural places for you to buy banner or even text links on. You may get lucky and find they have a reciprocal links page.
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 Link Building No Comments

Buying text links is legitimate

Buying text links is of course a lawful marketing practice but such links should never be bought on the basis of PageRank score – its just not a useful metric for such a decision.

There is abundance of opportunities to buy text links – on portals, trade associations, ezines, even non-profit organizations.

If you are leaving to buy text links, then do so based on marketing decisions:

* Does the site serve your target markets and present potential for getting excellence traffic?
* Will your text link be easy to get to to search engines?
* Is the content of the site well-matched with the products or services that you present?
* Is the design of the site expert and do the companies who have already bought text links appear to be reputable?
* Do you have a budget and a target in mind? You will spend $x and wait for sales of at least $y in return.

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 Link Building No Comments

Best ways to get links is to give links through reciprocal link exchanges

Link exchanges does two main things. First, it makes getting the links easier. Most of the webmasters are willing to help each other, so if you give them a link, most times they will return the favor.
Second, is by adding links to other quality websites, it augments the quality of your own website. Finally, you are providing the links to other websites for your visitors. Before worrying about getting those links, you need to create the quality content that will make people want to link to you.
Your website needs to be designed and optimized properly before you worry about links. The time spent to getting your website’s overall design and content properly done will make your link popularity grows even faster later.If your website has been designed well and optimized do not fall for those “get link popularity quick schemes.”
These are the links to bring you the traffic and potential customers you want and need. Link popularity can’t be overlooked but as with any website promotional technique is to be effective and it has to be done properly.
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 Link Building No Comments

Proposition Development

It is literally amazing how many people start their online business presence by buying a domain name (close to their business name) and building a brochure-ware page. Only later do they turn their mind to optimizing their site for (i) their audience and (ii) the way their audience find them. Fewer still take a long, hard look at what their competitors are doing first.
Take it from me, the best way to succeed in search engine optimization is to build it into your business development strategy from the very outset. For this reason – before we turn to optimization techniques – my guide consides first those fundamental questions of what, who and where:

What are you selling?

The first and most obvious question in this sequence is whether you are selling a product or a service and the degree to which you can fulfill this online.

To illustrate the thinking involved, I will use (throughout the guide) the (mythical) example of Doug Chalmers, a purveyor of restored antique doors, brass door fittings and accessories, based in Windsor in the United Kingdom.

Doug makes his money from selling doors (20% of total profit), selling door handles and knockers (25%), selling door bells or pulls (25%) and fitting services (30%). He has sold the bells, pulls, handles and knockers across the United Kingdom (and once or twice overseas, through word of mouth recommendation) but only does fitting within a 20 mile radius and rarely sells doors to people who are not local.

When forced to consider his proposition more carefully, Doug admits that he has no desire – or capability – to sell fitting services outside of his immediate locale (due to capacity and travel considerations). However, he can see a big market worldwide for his brass fittings and accessories.

I know what you are thinking, but don’t laugh. Doug may well be right and (after all) knows his business better than you or I. He gets quite a lot of business from American and French tourists that drop into his shop after a visit to Windsor castle. Many take his business card. Initially, they almost always want to see brass door knockers, but often leave with several small items.

Doug has heard the stories about other local businesses who have been successful online. The Teddington Cheese, for example, sells British and European cheeses across the globe and was a winner of the UK eCommerce Awards in 1999. Who would have thought that cheese was a winner online? Well, Teddington Cheese did and have been reaping the rewards ever since!

There are actually a number of key things about Doug’s proposition that we will revisit in subsequent parts of the guide. However, the key point for now is that simply putting up a brochure of all Doug’s products and services is unlikely to be the best strategy. He has some specific and focused aims – and by thinking about them now (and refining them) he stands a much better chance of success online.

Who are your audience?

Segmenting your audience is a key part of any marketing or PR strategy and make no mistake, search engine optimization is essentially a marketing and PR activity (albeit somewhat different to some of the more traditional parts of this field).

Doug generally agrees that he is targeting socio-economic class A/B for his services. These people are typically affluent, professional, white-collar workers living in leafy suburbs. He is in luck there, as such people are disproportionately represented in internet usage worldwide!

Having thought about it, he can readily segment his customers into three types; (1) local-full-replacement, (2) diy-refurbishment and (3) fitted-refurbishment. The first group are local people, looking to replace a whole door which has broken or is drafty. They are generally cost-conscious on the overall package (comprised of products and fitting services). The second group are interested in specific product items (which they are happy to fit themselves). They want advice on how to fit it but don’t want the labour costs. However, they are the least price sensitive group on the product cost and often buy the very best. The third group buy product but want it professionally fitted and finished. They are prepared to pay for quality but are more price sensitive than the DIYers. Where they are not local (which happens) they want a referral from him to someone who can fit locally in their area.

Doug makes the most revenue today (in order) from groups 1, 3, 2. However, he makes the biggest profit margin per sale (in order) from groups 2, 3, 1 – the exact reverse! His own time (and that of his fitters network) is the biggest constraint in his business. If only he could grow the DIY segment, he could substantially improve his overall business profitability.

Hopefully, the point here is obvious. At the very least, Doug’s website should address (perhaps separately) the needs of these three different groups. Ideally, the site will focus it’s firepower on that second group (where the opportunity for unconstrained growth is greatest). Finally, the site needs a local and a global face (to reflect the different geographies of his customers).

Where are your competitors?

No proposition development is complete without an honest assessment of what your competitors are up to. If you are in a locally-based mortar-and-clicks business like Doug, your assessment should take into account both your local and your global competition.

A useful tool to use is the so-called SWOT analysis, where you draw four boxes in a 2×2 table for each competitor. In the first box, you note the strengths of the competitor, in the second their weaknesses, in the third their opportunities and in the fourth their threats. Strengths and weakness are things inherent to their business as it operates today (and generally internal). Opportunities and threats are things external to the business and generally forward looking.

Look at each website objectively and minded like your customers. Consider whether the website was easy to find in the search engine. How many different search words did you try? Do you like the look of the website? Does it address each customer group separately, focus on
one segment or try to be all things at once? Was it easy to get information and do business?

Leave space in the boxes to return to later in the guide (as we will frequently refer back to what your competitors are doing right or wrong).

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 Link Building No Comments

What is Link Renting?

Link renting is a means to “rent” the popularity and traffic flow of one more site – you pay a monthly fee in return for a text link pointing to your site. In doing so, you can directly and indirectly drive more targeted traffic in the direction of your website.

A lot of industries such as travel, pharmacy, pornography, and gaming have search results which are hyper competitive and need heavy advertising or aggressive SEO techniques. Some niche websites may observe an even greater ROI on smart link rentals since many of their competitors may not comprise link renting in their online marketing budgets.

Some rented links give great value in direct targeted traffic, while some other links give greater value from the effect they contain on search relevancy.

Most links are rented on a monthly basis with an option to renovate at the end of the month. Some link prices can be as low as a few dollars a month while some can cost thousands for each month.

There is no singular one-size-fits-all way to directly take for granted the value of a link. Most effectual marketing has risks linked with it, but you can minimize the risks and maximize your go back by breaking the value of the link downward into its elements:

* Direct traffic from link renting
* Viral effect of advertising
* Effects of link rentals on search relevancy.

Monday, October 20th, 2008 Link Building No Comments

Quality Contents

  • Ensure your home page has at least 150 words of relevant, descriptive text about your products and services. Include the keywords your customers are most likely to type into a search engine when looking for your services.
  • Stand firm and say no when your web designer insists on an animated “Flash” intro page to your site. Search engines disregard them and your customers have seen enough of them!
  • Provide as much useful content as possible on your site.
  • Create fact sheets and expand your existing content. Search engines view a 50 page site as more “important” than a five page site.
  • Create a news section – It’s a great way to have a continual stream of new, relevant content. Archive the articles even if they may seem out of date – search engines will love you!
Monday, October 20th, 2008 Search Engine Optimization No Comments

Link to Appropriate Cross Agency Portals

Link to appropriate cross-agency portals when applicable, to guide the public to additional resources that exist across the U.S. government. This is a best practice for managing your agency’s website.

Links to cross-agency websites can supplement or eliminate the need to create information on your website. Links to other government information can guide visitors to additional resources to help them find what they need. This is especially important for federal public websites since many visitors do not know the organizational structure of the government and may need additional assistance to locate the information or service that best meets their needs.

Links to portals also help visitors get to the most authoritative, current source for the information. It’s much more efficient for you to link to information that someone else is keeping current than to have to recreate that information and keep it up-to-date yourself.

Saturday, October 18th, 2008 Link Building No Comments

Search Engines Explained part 1

Before we explore the world of search engine optimization, it is vital that you know a little about how search engines work and their relative market shares. It will help you to prioritize your activities later!

What are Search Engines and who powers them?

There are essentially four different parts to a typical large search engine; the crawler, the directory, sponsored results and the search engine itself.

Crawlers (e.g. Google) automatically visit web pages to compile their listings, making use of a so-called robot or spider (eg. Googlebot), which follows links from one website to another, ultimately compiling an index of all the pages and sites on the internet. These crawlers provide an index, which can then searched by the search engine. You may find that several or all of the pages on your site are indexed in thisway. Some search engines have their own crawler and others buy-in crawler results from others.

Human-powered directories, such as the Open Directory, rely on submissions from the public, which are reviewed by editors for inlusion in the directory. If you get included in a directory, generally only one page from your site (usually your home – or index – page) will be listed.

Crawled results are combined with sponsored results, supplied by pay-per-click (PPC) advertisers, and the results from human-maintained directories to complete the search engine index. Check out the Search Engine Reationship Chart at Bruce Clay inc. for the latest picture on who powers whom. You will note a couple of things right away. Firstly, the dominance of the Google and Yahoo! crawlers and secondly the importance of DMOZ directory results as a back-door for many search engines.

How do Search Engines find and rank sites?

Search engines do not really search the web directly, but rather an index database of the full text of web pages, which itself is drawn from the billions of web pages on the internet’s servers. Search engine databases are selected and built by computer robot programs called spiders.

If a web page is never linked to by any other page, spiders cannot find it, unless the (usually new) site is submitted manually by a human at the search engine’s “add URL” page. All search engine companies offer ways to do this.

After spiders find pages, they pass them on to another computer program for “indexing.” This program uses an “algorithm” to assess the text, links, and other content in the page for “key words” that might be searched on at the engine. This allows the search engine to order results served by their “relevancy” to the search terms used. As each search engine has a different algorithm, it will index sites in a different way and thus serve up different relevant results.

Some types of pages and links are excluded from most search engines by policy. Others are excluded because search engine spiders cannot access them. Generally, the use of frames, flash graphics and dynamic URLs all get in the way of effective spidering and should thus be avoided.

In addition to indexing pages, most algorithms seek to establish the “authority” of a site. A site which is linked to by many other sites (using keyword-rich anchor text) is assumed to be of greater merit than one with no links at all. This activity is called “ranking” and helps search engines to sort otherwise similar results into ever-more relevant and authoratative results.

Which Search Engines are the most popular?

Based on US analysis in January 2005, the top search engines (by share of total searches at home and work) are as follows:

Google Search – 47%
Yahoo! Search – 21%
MSN Search – 13%
All Others – 19%

These shocking figures do not convey the true dominance of the top players, as you have seen from the interdependence of search provision in section (a) above. You could be searching at AOL (part of the “other” 19%) and viewing Google results, for example.

There is also strong anecdotal evidence that Yahoo! and MSN tend to send more searchers through to their sponsored (or paid) results than do Google (due to the prominence of these results on their results pages). As such, for a typical small webmaster who does not use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, they might get up to 80% of all their traffic from Google’s various sites across the world.

Now you understand the market a little better, you will perhaps understand the obsession many webmasters have with Google! A top-10 position at Google for your key search terms can make your online business fly. If you drop out of that top-10, your business can literally collapse overnight!

Saturday, October 18th, 2008 Link Building No Comments

How To Get Deep Inbound Links

1. Check your referrer logs for websites that already link to you and transport you traffic. Drop a line to the webmasters (or better still phone!), thank them for what they’ve done already and ask them if they could give a number of deep links.

2. Look for reciprocal article opportunities. Carefully select target sites and present to publish one of their articles in go back for them publishing one of yours – you will of course be able to manage any linking text and URL you decide.

3. Look for top travel ezines and present your articles. Imagine not just about one article but a sequence of articles that could become a usual feature.

4. Publish collection of your articles in PDF format – these could be cyclic or location specific. Issue them on the pages to which you want to draw inbound links.

5. Deal out press releases using services such as PRWeb.com – you’ll be able to control which pages your let go links to.

Friday, October 17th, 2008 Link Building No Comments

Design a site for a link popularity

When getting a request for a link exchange with a website, look carefully over the website first. The general layout is the main thing to look at. Sites with topics that are related to be your main link partners for getting traffic.

A well-designed and organized website might be look good but if it does not deliver anything of value, it will not be successful. Whatever subject matter you have on your website, you make sure that you have something interest and importance to add to your subject, if you do and you promote it well, you will be successful.

So content is the main thing to develop the websites. Any websites to be popular, it need the links and to get the links, it needs to show the other webmasters that is worthy of a link.

Friday, October 17th, 2008 Link Building No Comments
Request a Free SEO Quote