May 05
MikeGeneral Business Practices, SEO link building, SEO
Link building to improve your website rankings has become a well established technique in terms of Internet marketing. But there are right ways and wrong ways of going about it. Before embarking on an aggressive link building campaign, you should know the differences as the consequences for not following best practices can be severe and detrimental to your business. If you are not too familiar with the principles of link building then it can be easy to fall into the clutches of an unscrupulous “link building” firm who will tempt you with offers of massive numbers of links and improved search engine rankings in next to no time. Lately, I’ve been receiving dozens of emails per week of firms overseas promoting 500+ links for roughly $14 – don’t be fooled!
Link building used to be an easy process. Many websites offered to “exchange links” with you, by which you would enter their web address on your site someplace and they would do likewise. It was quite common to visit a website and see a page titled “Links” which would list any number of other websites for you to click on and visit. Typically, websites were exchanging links with anyone who asked, whether or not their site was related to their own. The effectiveness of this did really rely on you being able to exchange links with higher ranking sites.
Today, things are done differently. “Links” pages are no longer viewed in a positive light by search engines. Link building has become a weapon of mass marketing in Internet terms, leading to many SEO firms offering to take on a link building strategy for you and propel your site in search rankings.
Unfortunately, while there are many good SEO firms out there that will carry this out in an SEO legal manner, known as “white hat” techniques; there are also many more that will engage in so called “black hat” (the firms that I mentioned above) techniques when it comes to link building. It’s not just me, many business owners are finding numerous emails landing in their inboxes each day from sites offering thousands of links for just a few dollars and the guarantee that their website will be top ranking in a matter of weeks (or days in some cases). The old saying “if it sounds too good to be true…” comes to mind, purely because link building takes time, it takes good research and it requires a targeted plan. Also, remember no one other than the executives of Google knows Google’s search algorithm. Beware of any company that guarantees rankings.
Why is link building so vital to SEO? Search engines love links! It makes them think your website is uber popular and as a result they will place you higher in the rankings – think of it as a popularity competition! Unlike what most so-called SEO professionals will tell you (the “black hats” I mentioned a couple of times above), quantity IS NOT everything. It’s important; however, the quality and relevance of links needs to be your first consideration. If the search engine deems for your links to be non-relevant to your business, the links will be rejected and your site can even be removed from the search engine!
Black hat link building however, is simply another form of spamming, posting links to your website on pages that bear no relation to your site or business. Unfortunately, it is your site that will get penalized not the company that posted the links in the first place. Hence why you should be careful when selecting a link building partner – “black hat” link building may appear to be a great value but they will not only fall short on their promises but will increase your business’s potential for getting caught and banned from the search engines. After all, you get what you pay for.
Mar 18
MikeSEO link building, SEO
This is the last part of our three part series on link building. Just in case you missed it, please check back and read part 1 and/or part 2.
How do you build links? That is not an easy question to answer, as there are multitudes of ways links can be built for a website. Some popular methods include:
- Directories: Directories are websites that list and categorize other websites, in order to organize the Internet’s information. They were popularly used by people in the past to navigate the web, and can even be considered the first search engines. Now, they are used by search engines themselves as they crawl directories to help them organize information. As with any site, some directories are considered to be of higher quality than others by search engines.
- Press Releases: When press releases are distributed online, they are frequently picked up and posted on other websites thus increasing the number of backlinks.
- Articles/Content Syndication: By writing and publishing quality articles, guides, and other content to content hosting hubs, valuable back-links are developed.
- Existing Link Modifications: To increase the relevance of back-links, website owners can be asked to change which page of ones website they are pointing to, and what keywords are associated with the link to ensure targeted keywords are being used.
- Text Link Advertisements: A valuable way to build high quality, relevant links to a website, is to research relevant sites and inquire about web advertisements.
Many of these methods do carry an expensive price tag. For example, PRWeb has four pricing tiers ranging from $80 – $360 for each press release!
Before embarking on any link building, consult a SEO professional (or Reef Light Interactive). Be careful though, please read our blog on deciphering the SEO experts from the self-proclaimed “SEO experts”.
There are certain rules to follow with each of these methods and best practices that will maximize the effectiveness of the link building campaign while keeping the costs reasonable. After all, who wants to spend $360 for a press release that generates no buzz because no keywords (or the wrong keywords) were targeted?
For any questions or to discuss your website in detail, get in touch with us. We’d love to hear from you!
Mar 16
MikeSEO link building, SEO
As promised, we’re back again for Part 2 of our special on link building, the most effective tactic for SEO. In case you missed our post yesterday, feel free to check out Part 1.
When search engines originated in the mid 90’s, simply incorporating keywords into your website’s page elements was enough to have it rank well. Spammers quickly understood that they could stuff hundreds of keywords in a page’s code, including keywords that were not relevant to the content, to have it rank well and generate a rush of search engine traffic. To combat spam, search engines needed another signal that would indicate whether they could trust a page enough to rank it well. The solution was to use elements outside the control of a webmaster, so they could not be abused. That solution turned out to be links — specifically, the quantity, quality, and relevance of links pointing to a page.
- Quantity — Think of Links as “Votes”: Search engines use links as votes of confidence for what they are pointing to. If a page has two links pointing to it from two unique websites, it can be viewed as two votes for that page. If another page about the same content has one link pointing to it, the search engine will trust the page with two inbound links more, and will rank it higher in natural search results.
- Quality — All Links/Votes are NOT Equal: All inbound links are not created equal. A link from a website that itself has a high number of quality links pointing to it carries more weight than a link from a page that is not well linked to. For example, if we continue the “votes” analogy for a political candidate, an endorsement from The Washington Post carries more weight than an endorsement from a neighborhood newsletter.
- Relevance — Relevant Links are Better: Links from relevant websites are weighed more heavily than links from irrelevant sites. For example, if a NYC restaurant’s website wants to build links in order to rank better for keywords related to [New York City Restaurants], it should seek links from food blogs, restaurant review websites, and New York travel guide sites, as opposed to a website about the skiing in Denver, which is irrelevant.
Stay tuned for the last part of this three part series, to publish tomorrow, when we discuss link building tactics.
Mar 15
MikeGeneral Business Practices, SEO link building, SEO
Last Monday, Forrester Research published a research study that indicated that online retail sales are going to continue to grow over the next five years. Specifically, the projections call for an increase of roughly $100 billion in spending ($155.2B spent in 2009, projected $248B in 2014). Is your business ready for this predicted 10% compounded annual sales growth?
Truth is, a lot of businesses talk search engine optimization (SEO) by using popular buzzwords like “keywords”, “meta tags”, etc. To explain SEO to many of our clients, I use the analogy of building a house. Before you can start building, you’ve got to lay a sturdy foundation. In the case of SEO, the “foundation” refers to a table-less and compliant web coding, researched and analyzed keywords, etc. Like a house, a sturdy foundation is vital; a prerequisite for any future optimization efforts. However, an effective SEO strategy must encompass much, much more than a simple foundation.
It’s true that a website can rank well by simply having a great foundation, but “well” is relative. Ideally, a website will rank for competitive, broad, generalized phrases and keywords. A solid foundation may increase search volume, but the volume will be based on less searched and less competitive terms. For example, let’s look at two phrases [red velvet wedding cake designer New York City] vs. [cake designer]. The latter phrase yields nearly 10,000 searches a month while the former yields just a few. As a business owner, would you like to try and rank in the top 10 of a 10,000 person/month search phrase, or rank in the top 10 of the more popular search? Naturally, you’d want to rank in the top 10 of the more popular search. Why? Because 95% of SEO traffic comes from Page 1 of the search results, so it’s imperative that you rank well.
As more and more people use search engines to find what they’re looking for online, it is more important than ever for you to ensure that your product/website has visibility. Visibility — there’s another relative word. According to a recent eMarketer study, it’s not enough to have some visibility — but rather a site needs to be visible on Page 1 of Google.
With all the emphasis on being ranked on Page 1 of Google search results, you’re probably wondering, “how in the world do I do that?” There are a number of ways, but the single most effective tactic to get a website to rank for a targeted keyword is by building inbound links. Inbound links are links from other websites that point to yours. Link building is a difficult, on-going SEO strategy. Stay tuned for part two, to publish tomorrow, when we go through link building’s history and overview.
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