Posts Tagged ‘SEO’
Link Wheel Building – Will it Wheel for You?
Yes, definitely, link wheels are an excellent way to generate more traffic to your site. Some may not be familiar with it since people tend to focus on what’s talked about with regards to link building. We always hear the same old approach of getting back links, and jump start right with it without proper planning.
I am not saying that this don’t work, of course it does, blog commenting works provided that you post comments on relevant site, else it will not give any PR boost to your site. Directory submission is an excellent way to establish your site. Article marketing is another way to build back links. What I am actually saying is a strategy or an approach you could implement to build links.
First let me define what is a link wheel, basically, it is a set of links interconnected with one another and pointing towards your main website. Link wheel building therefore is creating interlinked pages pointing in one direction.
This is Web 2.0 properties comes in handy, such as Squidoo and Hubpages. The idea here is to create unique article for each high PR site. This article then has an anchor text pointing back to one of the pages created.
For example your site offers website design, web development and search engine optimization (SEO) services. You then build article pertaining to website design like “How to Create SEO Website Design Friendly”, create an anchor text, your strong keyword that you want to rank and submit it to Ezine or other high PR article directories (the resource box is the great place to place your anchor text). Next create another hub or lens on Squidoo or whichever you choose pertaining to SEO, with another anchor text pointing to the article you just created and another to the main website. The same will step will follow until you have created 6 spoke, preferably unique article – every spoke has two links, one pointing to the main website and the other pointing to the other sites you have created.
If you try to visualize the basic steps on link wheel building, it’s actually like a wheel in motion. When done properly, it could generate huge traffic to your site. It may be time consuming preparing articles and creating accounts but it’s a proven and tested way to boost your chances on appearing on Search Engine Result Page (SeRP).
How to Create SEO Website Design Friendly
A website should be eye catching to attract visitors. It should also be very search engine friendly. What matters aside from being user friendly is that it’s searchable on the web, otherwise, your website is useless.
How do we create an SEO friendly web design?
If you use flash on the entire website, you will have to put double the work to make it search engine firendly. Search Engine (SE’s) ignores Flash, therefore, you will also need a non-flash version of your website. If you really need to use flash, make sure that you have an alternative textual description that can be understood by SE spiders. Otherwise, you can also use web 2.0 technology to put your content first before your flash designs.
When using images, be sure to fill-in “name” and “alt” tags. The graphical image itself cannot be seen by SE spider, it is through this tags that SE spider interpret your website. Use relevant description only and do not try to deceive SE spider.
Avoid using frames, SE spiders have no way to interpret content on a frame.
Use CSS navigation and style sheets, doing so makes your navigational menu crawl-able and indexable by SE spider. Using Javascript and Flash do not have the same result – it is unseen by SE spiders. So if you have javascript or flash on your site, you also need to have simple texts of the same message you put in Javascript or flash.
Though it’s not a requirement to use CSS stylesheets, it will help your site to load faster.
Conduct a Keyword Research to use on your meta tags and contents but also avoid keyword stuffing, suggested keyword density is 3-5%. For the title tag, characters should be at lest 70 and 150 for the description. Have at least 5-8 important keywords listed in your keyword tag.
Also, use keyword researched on your anchor text, H1, H2 and H3 as much as possible. This will help you rank in Search Engine Result Page (SeRP).
Create SEO friendly URL, incorporate your keyword related to your web page. Use dashes to separate words.
Structure your site up to 3 levels deep; Google only sees three-levels deep.
Provide useful content and make sure to have at least 250 words each web page since some SE spiders requires at least 250 to analyze your site. Make it a point as well that content on your site coincide with keywords used, else, SE spider will find it of little value.
Lastly, provide a site map.
Having an optimized site works well with your SEO campaign, the second step now depends on you.
If you like this article you may want to read 10 Tips on Search Engine Optimization
10 Link Building Strategies
Various link building strategies can be implemented. To name a few, I listed down 10 common strategies that are use by most SEO experts. And before implementing your link building strategy make sure to analyze your competition. This could help you decide how to go about it.
1. Directory submission – make sure to submit your website to various website directory. Include paid listing such as Yahoo Directory, Yellowpages and Best of the Web, it would cost a bit but it pays to be more credible on the web.
2. You probably have an idea where your competitors are linking if you’ve analyzed your competition, from here try to get hold of any links linking back to your competitor site. You can send in a letter of intent to have your link included on their page, perhaps through link exchange or paid inclusion.
To make your job easier, Firefox offers various plug-ins like Foxy SEO tool to easily identify your competitor’s backlinks.
3. Write a Press Release. A well written Press Release could dramatically increase your sales and expose your company to the public.
4. Create a blog and actively read and write comments on other blogs.
5. Join online communities and actively participate in Forums.
6. Article Submission – this is a good and proven method that will ensure that your links will last for years. Listed down are some of the few article directories available on the web:
- Ezine Articles – Submit Your Best Quality Original Articles For Massive Exposure.
- Go Articles.com – Free content search engine and article directory.
- ArticlesBase.com – Submit articles for distribution, publication and promotion.
- Artcle Dashboard – Submit articles to the Article Dashboard directory, search and find free website and ezine content, and open an author submission management account.
- Article Alley - Submit articles to Article Alley for free syndication
7. Write a product or service review.
8. Link Baiting – natural method of link building. The key here is writing a buzz worthy content or providing free online tools. Read more information on Link Baiting
9. Resort to Pay Per Click (PPC)
10. Buy ads space.
In link building a combination of method is used to improve Search Engine position. This should be done regularly. There’s no sure way or a guaranteed combination of method and span of time to get your website ranked in Search Engines, it’s how you implement your strategies that will spell out your success.
10 Tips on Search Engine Optimization
There are so many ways to optimize a site but the key is to plan ahead and know exactly where to start before pushing through with your campaign. Below are some tips to help you optimize your website.
1. Choose the right keyword, you must first decide on what keyword you want to get higher ranking. Website owners would typically bid for a keyword to get higher ranking, you should optimize your site the best way you could to beat the competition. How? Analyze your competitors’ website, keywords they use, incoming links etc, in summary analysis of how they made it to no. 1 of Google or other Major Search Engines (SE’s). It will be your benchmark regardless of how old the site is.
2. Optimize your meta-tags using keywords
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Title that you would like to appear on SeRP</TITLE>
<META CONTENT=”description of the content”>
<META CONTENT=”keywords separated by comma”>
</HEAD>
Do not repeat your keywords on each tag and do not resort to unethical practices such as keyword stuffing. Suggested keyword density is 3-5 it’s the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page, according to Wikipedia.
Develop content that is unique, again, this should include your keywords with suggested keyword density.
3. Build SEO friendly URLs
4. Create Sitemap
5. Establish your site by submitting to trusted directories like Open Directory Project, Yahoo Directory and Yellowpages.
6. Submit to Web Directories and Search Engines
7. Build Links
8. Know when and how to use Social Media
9. Use Analytics to monitor progress and know which works best
To add to the list, don’t be afraid to experiment and be patient. SEO is a continuous process what works today may not work tomorrow.
How to Promote your Blog?
I’ve read a lot of blogs lately and analyzed how this blogs really caught my attention. First things first, before you promote your blog, make sure you know your target audience is and create blogs relevant to your niche market. And second, before you go out promoting your blog, which everybody would want to do, try asking yourself if your content is worth reading. Are you really giving out something that your readers expect from you, not that you have to stick on a certain topic – just stick on the relevant ones. Create a brand for your blog and deliver that message. This is really helpful if you are just starting-up –attract visitors in your niche first before diving for the big fish. Your content is why you develop huge list of followers and try to give what they expect from you, and be consistent.
So how are you to promote your site? First Submit your blog to blog directories like:
There are tools to automate the process, it’s in your discretion to use it or not or should I say to trust a software to do the job for you like the Blog Planter. You can also submit your blog to general directories if you wish.
The next thing is to post a Press Release to online resources about your new blog. This could attract new visitors to your site. There are sites that allow free Press Release posting such as http://www.clickpress.com/releases/
Create Link Bait, it means naturally attracting backlinks for your page. How? There are in fact various ways to do it, like interviewing a prominent personality and publishing it, writing something funny or embarrassing, disagree with authority, anything that will caught a readers attention and would definitely share it with others or talked about it in forums and communities.
Also comment on blogs your niche, including actively commenting on do-follow blogs.
Another is to participate in Blog Carnivals, it’s a Blog community where you could submit your blog to a certain topic. It’s some sort of a magazine only that it’s in the form of a blog article. You can also participate in other blog communities like bloglog.
Use social media as well, like StumbleUpon, Reddit, del.icio.us and Facebook.
There are various ways to promote your site, what I mentioned are just one of the common way to promote blogs. The best thing to do is plan ahead before jumping in to promote your blog, with so many ways to do it; chances are you may not know what really works for you. Establish your blog first the rest of the ways are geared more on active participation on communities. And of course, you must always provide fresh content to your reader. It doesn’t have to be everyday or every week, what matters is the quality of the content you have. Relevant and meaningful content could help you develop loyal list of followers, and as always, give them what they expect from you.
Link Baiting – Has it Vanished?
Link baiting is a white hat technique which has been around since 2006. It has not vanished, it’s in fact one the safest method of link building. It’s a natural method of having viewers to link on your site perhaps because they find it interesting or worth the buzz. Although I personally no longer read a blog regarding link bait, successful companies usually implement this strategy, viewers are just not aware of the term with what they do when they link to other sites.
According to Wikipedia:
“Link bait is any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites. Attempts to create link bait are frequently employed in the overall task of search engine optimization. Matt Cutts defines link bait as anything “… interesting enough to catch people’s attention.”
So how are you going to create link bait? There are actually dozens of ways to do it, it’s not that easy, in fact you have to keep experimenting, same way as catching a fish – use the right hook and drop it at the right place. But when you succeed on this, you could make even millions of dollars. What do you think readers do when they link to a certain article on ezine to their site, or simply sharing it with others? Its link baiting, Search Engines prefer it because it’s “organic” – meaning natural, its quality vs. quantity when it comes to link popularity.
Some ideas on creating a link bait
- Writing something controversial (works all the time)
- Write a review (new gadgets, establishment or service)
- Oppose someone’s idea
- Write entertaining articles
- Provide useful list of resources
- Conduct a research on something
- Be up-to-date with what’s going on, technology, celebrity, economy etc. and share your opinion
There are far more than I can imagine, you just have to be creative and ask yourself what is your goal for creating link bait? Is it only for the link popularity or to attract a certain niche? You always have to start with something before preparing your bait to catch a big fish.
Why would you Outsource SEO?
Every business of today knows how important Internet is as a gateway to play the international arena. Almost all industry sectors has their own website, because having a website means your business or company will have an edge over your competitor. Though lately, having a website alone is not enough to leverage yourself with your competitor, the crucial step is to appear on Search Engine Result Page (SeRP) and that is what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about. It’s all about optimizing your website to appear on SeRP. It may sound simple but it’s very time consuming and requires timely knowledge of SEO guidelines as this change frequently.
So why would you outsource when it can be done in-house? SEO is really a delicate part of the business strategy since it could potentially damage a company’s’ reputation. But, having an effective SEO could bring your business to the next level – higher traffic, higher conversion and a strong web presence. It has been a necessity for companies to incorporate SEO into their marketing plan. Others do it in-house thinking it would be cheaper but SEO is a continuous process of learning. Think about knowledge vs. time, SEO requires someone knowledgeable and could adapt to ever changing rules of Search Engines, it requires time to learn all this processes. Think of what could be lost during this time of learning everything about SEO when you can focus on the core of your business. In fact, in-house staff could probably be just engaged or more focus on implementing SEO strategies but totally lost on what’s going on outside - are they still focusing on the right direction? Possibly it works with other companies, but are they really getting the likelihood of dominating major Search Engines or getting the highest traffic with highest conversion rate possible.
Outsourcing SEO could be risky perhaps, but is your company’s growth not worth investing?. Company should focus on its core competence and leave SEO to the experts. It could be successful if it’s taken care of and could be cost-effective in the end. You do not have to worry about implementing SEO strategies or worry about implementing new guidelines, SEO Service Company could provide all options available to utilize and optimize your website.
Why would you outsource SEO would really depend on what make sense to you. Both involve risk, but before you decide ask yourself, is it not worth to invest on company’s growth?
How to Earn Money Online
If you have a personal website or a company website that wanted to fully utilize web space or take advantage of your strong web presence, then this article is for you. In fact even if you do not have a website, you could actually earn while enjoying stuff you love doing.
Let’s start with what you could do with your free time without setting-up your own website:
- Get Paid to Blog. HubPages has easy-to-use publishing tools, a vibrant author community and underlying revenue-maximizing infrastructure. Hubbers (HubPages authors) earn money by publishing their Hubs (content-rich Internet pages) on topics they know and love, and earn recognition among fellow Hubbers through the community-wide HubScore ranking system.
- Get Paid to write. Earn extra income with your original content from contextual advertising. Meaning, the more people see your articles and more you can earn. For every visitor to your articles, you have the opportunity to earn revenue just for providing quality and interesting content for the readers.
- Get Paid to Answer. Whether you would like to profit from your experience as an Advisor, get advice from some of the best, as a Client, or profit from your marketing skills as an Affiliate, the Live Advisors’ Network is the place for you. http://www.bitwine.com/
- Sell your creativity – sell stock images.
Become a contributor to iStockphoto and earn with your stock photos, vector illustrations, Flash or video footage.
We want your photos! Submit your photos to Shutterstock and get paid every time one of your photos is downloaded. Web designers, magazine editors, and other graphic artists purchase monthly subscriptions to Shutterstock to download photos from our site.
- Write Reviews and get paid. Share your own opinions and earn Income Share for your reviews. http://www.epinions.com/
Now, for those who already have a website, the common way to earn money with your website is through advertising program such as Cost-per-Click (CPC) – get paid only when someone clicks on your ads like Google Adsense. Affiliate Marketing is another avenue to earn online with your site. It’s simply is placing a banner/text of an affiliate partner to your site and get paid when someone buys / signs-up using using the links provided unique only to you.
There are various ways to earn online, you can mix and match and see where you good at. Having a website though increases your chances of earning online. Optimizing your site will help promote blogs or earn through referral programs. You could even sell an Ad space once your site is fully optimized. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not for everybody but you could always try to learn the basic and see what you could do.
For company website there is always an option to outsource SEO to fully utilize website space – don’t leave it blank – transform it to income generating space.
Why a Website Alone is NOT Enough?
Having a website is just a step forward to having one of the best cost-effective forms of advertising. It’s one of the most affordable instruments to deliver your message across a wide array of audience. It could reach millions around the world – provided you know how to market your site.
Do you know that in the United States, Internet users as percentage of population is 72.4% in 2008 and 72.8% in 2007 in Canada based on World Bank, World Development Indicators. Just imagine the huge market if a website is visible on the web, visible meaning it could be searched. Data provided are just for the US and Canada alone, how about Europe, Asia and others. Having a website is just a beginning of something better for the business. It could unlock doors to vast opportunities, including global recognition. How is that possible? That is where Internet marketing comes in.
A website is a virtual shop an office or anything you would like to call it. And just like any ordinary store, marketing campaign is needed to attract customers – Television ads, billboards, brochures etc. With a website, the more that the businesses need it, regardless of size. Huge market equals stiff competition vying to appear on the first page of SeRP (Search Engine Result Page) particularly Google. It is the no. 1 Search Engine with 67.5% Market share followed by Yahoo according to comScore as of August 2009 report.
There are only two differences between traditional advertising medium and a website. First is COST, a TV ads alone could cost thousands of dollars, uploading videos on the site is FREE. Second, COVERAGE, TV ads only runs LOCALLY, website can be seen WORLDWIDE.
I am trying to point out that having a website alone is not enough; it needs to be promoted and maintained. If businesses have this kind of attitude it’s doomed to fail achieving numerous ways to attract, earn and grow as a business. Website is not just a medium to advertise or sell a service or product, it’s also another means to earn online without shelling out a single dollar. In what way it could be possible? Affiliate Marketing is just one of the few. Affiliate marketing is simply using one website to drive traffic to another and paid accordingly based on the terms. On my next blog I will explain in details possible ways to fully utilize earning potential of a website.
If you already have a website, start promoting it, don’t let it stand there. How bad is a store without foot traffic?, goes the same with a website without traffic. Hire an SEO if you must but be careful how to choose the right one.
To further understand SEO visit SEO Simplified.