Tag Archives: content

Linkbuilding strategies – what to do and what to avoid

For the average search engine optimisation company, building backlinks (incoming links) is a large part of the job. Although the internal architecture of your site is important for SEO purposes, it doesn’t tell the search engines how trusted it is to others.

Building backlinks is essential to your search engine optimization strategy, as tools like PageRank look upon inbound links as proof your site is trustworthy. The wider and more diverse your network of backlinks, the higher up the rankings your site pages will appear on searches. Some site owners are lucky, and get a high number of natural inbound links. However, most supplement this by putting additional links in places like internet forums, directories and news sites like Digg.

Some site owners use underhand methods, such as link farming ( where websites simply exchange reciprocal traffic to increase their search engine optimisation) and interlinking (the same thing, but where the linked domains belong to the same owner) Some search engine reputation management firms even offer link exchange programs, where site owners are duped into paying to have their pages given “high profile” on websites.

The theory is that the more sites your own site links to, the higher up the search rankings you will go. In fact, link farms usually have little to do with your business area – they’re just lists of links to other sites. Using methods like these is a sure way for you to lose domain trust – the worst thing you can do for search engine optimization. Other ways for you to damage your online reputation is by linking up to spam sites, posting in sites that are known to have illegal content, and bulk purchasing of links.

As we’ve said, the major search engines look very carefully at people’s SEO linkbuilding strategies, and place heavy penalties on sites that indulge in link-farming and other scams. Google is even working on ways to ban sites that engage in these practices – you have been warned.

To get quality backlinks, you first need to find the best places to post them. Backlink Builder is one of several useful SEO tools that professionals use to help locate suitable linking sites. They simply enter their keywords, and in return they get a list of sites where they can post blog entries, articles, reviews, videos or bookmarks to clients’ sites. From these, they can then select those that best match the profile of the sites. The listed domains usually give their services for free – it’s a saprophytic relationship. They get content for their sites, and you get backlinks to your own.

Of course, you have to be honest, and make sure the sites you are posting to are similarly respected. Don’t post fake links to worthless content – and do check your links actually work! The last is easily dealt with, if you use an SEO company that offers linkbuilding services. Building worthy content that people want to link to takes time and effort, so the more you can offload onto other shoulders, the better.

On Site SEO

According to Dictionary.com, SEO is “the process of adjusting the content, structure, etc, of a website so that it will be displayed prominently by a search engine.” This definition refers to that part of search engine optimization which pertains more accurately to On-site SEO.

On-site SEO has been reported to provide different experiences for different people. Some people debate the benefits of onsite SEO, given its specific factors. But in order to truly optimize the content of a search engine, it is necessary to take into account, both on and off site SEO factors. Discussed below are some of the proven facts, pertaining to on-site SEO.

The First and foremost factor in on-site SEO, is to completely optimize every aspect of your website in order to establish a greater density of the key search words. It is a fact that while using key search words in any URL has a significant impact on a website’s search engine positioning, this is rarely checked by the available keyword analyzer tools. It is advised by technical experts that 301 redirect should be used to make sure that all inbound links are routed to the appropriate URL. Additionally, hyphens, rather than underscores should be used for phrases forming more than a single key word.

With regards to the HTML title tag, when conducting an on-site SEO, one should be used logically, given the fact that it ranks quite highly with regards to keywords. Rather than listing all the keywords into the HTML, it is better to have just a couple tied in appropriately. Additionally, since search engines shed much emphasis on heading tags, key words should be used in these tags whenever possible.

In order to enhance the visibility of the website’s textual content, one should be as considerate of key search words as possible, because the more frequently, or rather, more prominently they appear in your content, the more they would serve to make a website visible in a search engine. It may be rather a tedious exercise to add your key words to an already established website, but given the described benefit, it may be worthwhile to do so, while keeping the flow of the contextual text intact! It may be worth noting here as well though, that a very frequent usage of key words may make a website appear to be an example of a spam message. It is advisable therefore to use keywords moderately!

With regards to the images in a website, alt tags may be used to include some keywords accompanying them, so that the images are easier to understand. And while it is true that al tags bring down the weight in search engine algorithms, the addition of key words can continue to serve the benefits that can be derived from the use of images on websites.

Finally, one would be well advised to add fresh content to their website on a regular basis. Not only would this serve to enhance the quality of the website, but search crawlers would be drawn to index fresh pages as well! The content should be reader friendly and engaging, and therefore one should avoid using methods such as auto-blogger content scrapping!

Making Local SEO Effective for Your Business

This might come as a bit of a shock but negative reviews aren’t really bad. The fact is that no matter how hard you tried to make your company perfect there is always room for improvement. So if the users see that a certain company has only positive reviews plastered all over, they might get suspicious and think some thing’s fishy. They might even end up searching for a company they think is more reliable and that they feel they can trust. This is clearly proof that you shouldn’t be too negative about bad reviews. You simply have to treat them as part of your business because that is what they are. It is the perfect chance for you to make improvements to your services or products to keep your customers happy and it will also improve your reputation.

If you want to rank for a certain area, you must make sure to optimize your content and gear it towards the area. This helps you gain search engine’s attention and also of the users in that particular area. So, if you want to rank for a certain area, you have to create content that is connected to the area and features issues that are important to the people. You should write on subjects that are relevant to them in more than one way. If you thing outside the box, it will make things easier because you want to establish a connection at a local level and you can only do this if your content is related to their interests.

Last but not the least; go ahead and add a local phone number to your site. Ensure that your number is written out in text form as the search engines won’t be able to understand it then. You should feature a real number to show you are a real business, meaning that 800 numbers are out.

What’s the reason? Despite the fact that they appear professional and look great, they don’t really allow people to determine where you are located. Thus, the key is to ensure your phone number is real. In conclusion, local SEO is all about focusing on factors that can make you reputable with these important local sites and grow your business by targeting audience in your area. Local SEO works extremely well for the right offline businesses, and if you feel it’s for your business – then get cracking on it and make it happen.