Posted by
Bonnie Landau on 09 Jul 2010 under
Blog Carnival,
SEO,
link building |
0 Comments Technorati tags: seo buzz, blog carnival.
Posted by
Bonnie Landau on 23 Jun 2010 under
SEO,
link building |
0 CommentsWhen it comes to a small business website, a significant SEO strategy is your best bet towards driving up visits from online search results. A major component of your SEO strategy should be link building, which means getting links TO your website from other online sources. Unfortunately some companies fall into the misnomer that buying links can easily increase the inbound link numbers, and positively effect search results.
Google has caught on to bought links
Google has gotten so wise to the purchased link market that they will hold it against you. Websites who have a lot of purchased, or spam, links, will be kicked out of Google all together. Google is so serious about this that many blogs have no-follow on their ad links in order to let Google know “this is a bought link, so please don’t count it.” It’s a way to still buy advertising, but not have it held against you in Google.
Fabricated links are obvious to Google
Many companies purchase the services of an SEO company, not realizing that these so-called experts are engaging in “black-hat” or “fake” SEO that could actually hurt their search engine rankings. Some examples of fabricated SEO efforts:
- Putting random comments on blogs to try and gain a back link. We receive dozens of these daily, often the same poster putting the exact same comment on different blog posts. We use Askimet, which is a plugin that weeds out fake comments, so these comments never go live on our blog.
- Buying advertising on parked domains. These pages are often structured around a particular topic so it looks like you’ve gained a pertinent link, but Google is wise to these spam pages and will count these bought links against you.
- Adding your company to link farms. These are sites that are created to appear as if they are a business directory, when in fact they are simply a huge directory of outbound links.
- Duplicating content across the net. This would mean taking the same article and publishing it over and over into many article directories so you can get the in-bound links within the articles. Google is wise to over duplication of content.
- Keyword stuffing pages. Putting to many of the same keyword on a page on your site in an effort to increase the relevance. A keyword density of more than 7% is considered keyword stuffing.
Link building strategies should be authentic
When you set out to gain links into your site, you must find authentic ways to do so. The following provides examples of authentic ways to build your inbound links:
- List your company in online business directories that are pertinent to your industry.
- Comment on blogs that you have honest, valuable comments to contribute to the subject being discussed.
- Create a Squidoo or Hubpages page about a topic pertinent to your business and of interest to others.
- Comment on message boards pertinent to your business arena.
- Write interesting articles and publish them in online article directories.
Rule of thumb
When engaging in a link building strategy, just ask yourself, “Is this content adding value?” This should be your rule of thumb when deciding on how to gain links into your website. If you are putting the link merely to get a link back, this may be risky. If you are putting the link to generate useful content, then continue on!
Posted by
Erin Inatsugu on 12 Mar 2010 under
Blog Carnival,
Online Tools,
SEO,
link building |
0 CommentsWelcome to the March 12, 2010 edition of SEO Buzz.
If you would like to submit an article for our next SEO Buzz Blog Carnival, please review our carnival submission guidelines for information.
Understanding SEO
- June Tree presents How I Boosted My Woeful Web Traffic posted at The Digerati Life.
- Bonnie Landau presents SEO Strategy: Do-it-Yourself or Hire an Expert? | Simple Web Toolbox posted at Simple Web Toolbox, saying, “For all of you who have a website, I’m certain you have an SEO strategy in place that you implement on a weekly basis without fail. No? Well, I have news for you — SEO is not an option. It’s not a matter of if, but when. If you want to be found in the search engines, you’re going to have to work for it.”
- Enrim Design presents ?I have a website. Now what?? Marketing Techniques to Help You Build Traffic. posted at Enrim Design Blog.
- Justin Smith presents How to be successful at network marketing posted at Driving success through Network Marketing Strategy, SEO and Leadership by Justin B. Smith, saying, “Driving success through Network Marketing Strategy, SEO and Leadership.”
Keywords
Link Building
GoldPavedRoad presents How To Make Incoming Links Building – The Right Way. » Post » Gold Paved Road posted at Gold Paved Road, saying, “If you wish to have more control over the process of the link generation to your site and still are not able to work on it all yourself you can hire someone to write the articles for you that will be posted in the article directories or pay for few hours a day to student who will write the massages in the forums or bookmark your site for you.”
Technorati tags:
seo buzz, blog carnival.
Posted by
Bonnie Landau on 09 Mar 2010 under
Featured,
SEO,
link building |
3 CommentsSEO can be a confusing and time-intense process, and many of our clients ask over and over where they should focus next. While it would be great if we could implement dozens of SEO tasks, the truth is, it’s much easier to focus on one or two directions at a time. Your search engine competitors can be a wealth of information for honing your SEO strategy.
Find your search engine competitors
Search engine competitors are different than industry competitors. Search engine competitors are the URLs that come up when you search using the keywords you are optimizing for. They may or may not be in your same industry, they are simply the sites that come up based on the search terms entered.
For example, let’s say you provide water damage restoration services. You might search under “water restoration” and see who comes up at the top of Google. The sites who come up on top are your search engine competitors. When I type in this term, I get companies that provide these services, but also an insurance company ranked at #3. So they are your search engine competitor, even though their company does not provide the same services.
If you want to hone in a more localized search, you might put in “water damage Los Angeles” and see who your search engine competitors are for a localized search. It is easier to rank for a localized search, so if you are not well indexed, I would start by analyzing local search engine competitors.
What do I do when I find my competitors?
Choose 2-3 competitors whose sites have good SEO ranking. Once you have made your choice, use the following criteria to analyze the SEO optimization of their website:
1) Content: Where are they using keywords in their content. Use these free keyword density tools to analyze the content and see what the percentage of occurrence is for important keywords. Have they done anything clever with their content in order to weave in keywords. For example, perhaps they show a map with links to city names in order to help get optimized for specific locals.
2) Meta Tags: Right click on the web page and select “view source” in order to see the HTML code for the page. At the very top of the page you will see meta tag information for that specific page. Here you can see if they have input keyword and description meta information to let the search engines know more about the page. SEO rumor has it that this information is no longer important for search engine ranking, but analyze your competitor’s sites to be sure. If they aren’t using it, and they are ranking high, chances are you can skip it too.
3) Title: The title of the page is considered the most important SEO element above all else on the page. The title is at the very top of the browser window, not necessarily the headline shown within the body content of the page. It is important to include keywords in your title. How well have they integrated the keywords into the page title?
4) Heading Tags: Otherwise known as H1, H2 and H3 tags, heading tags on a page are considered more important content than the regular body text. Does your competitor use these heading tags in order to highlight content? If so, have the woven in their keywords? What keywords have they used?
5) Inline links: Inline links refer to links within body text. Joomla web design is an inline link to the Landau Design website using the words “Joomla web design”. Search engines consider inline links to be much more important than non-linked text. Inline links from body content are the most valuable types of in-bound links for your site (if they come from a page that is of relevant content). Does your competitor use inline links to interlink content on their site which would emphasize specific keywords to help with indexing?
6) Content for SEO: Do they have information on their site that boosts their keyword optimization? For example, if they provide business coaching for entrepreneurs, do they have articles on their site that talk about business growth strategies? Do they have a blog that is always adding additional content, which would further index them under optimum keywords?
7) Research their in-bound links: We’ve never found a tool that is 100% reliable for this, but it’s worth it to use some of the tools out there to discover your competitor’s in-bound links. Researching inbound links gives you an idea of how many links they have coming into their website. Read Building on Your Competitor’s Links to learn how to find and utilize this information.
Conclusion
Your competitors can teach you a lot about SEO, and give you a clear direction for where to focus your SEO efforts. We would suggest choosing one competitor each week whose site you analyze in order to glean new ideas for your own SEO strategy.
Posted by
Bonnie Landau on 20 Jan 2010 under
Blogging,
link building |
2 CommentsYou put a lot of effort to write your blog, but how do you get people to come and read it? Social media outlets are very effective in reaching viewers, but can sometimes take more time than you have. If you want an effective blog sharing strategy, consider using blog and bookmarking directories for spreading the news about your valuable posts.
What is a blog directory?
Blog directories are like a phone book for blogs. People submit their blog URL into specific categories in the directory, so all your blog content gets indexed. You only have to submit it once, which means it’s a quick and easy way to share your blog.
Once in the directory, users who are looking for specific information will come and search for content, and if they are looking for your content genre, you will have easily gained some new readers. Some of the most popular blog directories include:
Sometimes an individual creates a private directory, and while it may not get as many eyeballs as the commercial ones, the users it gets tend to be more engaged. A great example is the Directory for Bloggers by The Brave Programmer (Robert Bravery).
What is a bookmarking directory?
There are many sites that are bookmarking directories, which means they are indexing specific URLs of specific blog posts. These sites you have to submit your blog posts one at a time. The advantage of bookmarking directories is that they are part of the social media world, so you can have buttons on your blog that allows your readers to submit your content as well. All these sites have submission counters, so the more a specific blog post is submitted, the higher it is ranked in the bookmarking directory index.
Users come to the bookmarking directories and browse posts in specific categories. Again, an excellent way to gain some new readers. Some of the most popular bookmarking directories include:
Consistently submitting your posts to the bookmarking directories is also a very effective way to continually add link backs to your blog.
Keep track of your progress
If you are going to utilize a directory strategy, be sure to track where you have submitted your blog. In this way you can hand off submission responsibilities to others without worrying about duplicating effort. Also, watch your traffic analytics to track how many people are finding your blog through places you’ve submitted. This will give you a great idea of what types of directories are most likely to bring you new visitors.
