The Puritanical View

Only GOOD links are good!  All links to your site should be from sites specifically relevant to your site. Links from non-relevant sites will put a world of hurt on you. Quality is crucial! Or Google will disinherit you, banish you, consign your site to galactic oblivion etc. Build wonderful content, and links to it will come as of right… These people are muesli-munchers - vagrant vegetarians who view the world in a mosaic of black and white…

The Puerile View

You desperately NEED links! Leave no stone unturned. Get links from anyone, anywhere, anytime… infiltrate forums, buy links, babble out blog comments, gush into guest books - use any means to get links back to your site…  Never mind that inserting your links into someone’s website without asking is plain rude… These people are  unshaven vodka-drinkers, viewing the world dimly through fake Raybans… dismal, and bereft of class…

The Pragmatist’s View

The truth lies like a mid-river island emerging from the murky waters, protruding clearly and plainly  mid-stream…

Personally, I think the puritanical view is as relevant to SE rankings as  vegetarianism is to good health.  Many sites selling products or providing services are never going to naturally accumulate links in any significant volume. The puerile view is discourteous, frequently offensive, and in the long term, counter-productive.

So… What to do?

At the outset of a website’s life cycle, the world is unaware of its existence. Incoming links will not happen by a process of osmosis, and the theory of divine intervention is (as yet) unproven. Still, links are crucial. A website cannot achieve any prominence without incoming links or, more to the point, relevant keywords within anchor text in incoming links.

Don’t Spam

My advice is to certainly avoid the blatant spam approach. Don’t begin any journey by alienating anyone. Don’t go and buy a link-builder software program that is guaranteed to streamline the process of building links with similar sites… the conversion ratio is far, far worse than pay-per-click advertising and even more costly! Don’t buy links specifically to increase your Page Rank - Google is deeply offended by that. On the other hand, you could buy into an exorbitant site review that might get you included into a prominent directory (or two)… And, if approved, such a link might inadvertently increase your Page Rank. Apparently, that’s ok… which is why the puritanical can’t get their head around this stuff - there are 256 shades of grey at work in here…

Build 1-Way Incoming Links With Keywords in Anchor Text

Everyone says that’s what you have to do… Applied logic would suggest that what you ought to do is consider who on earth wants or needs links, gives them away for free, and is likely to have pages or sections of content relevant to your site’s focus. Impossible, I hear you say? Simplistic, far too easy, I hear you scoff… Au contraire!

Since the web began life as a few optimistic IP packets seeking to connect intelligent life-forms across vast distances, the very first source of relevancy has been web directories.  By definition, a web directory describes the “Who & What” and tells you the “Where!”  Some of the earliest examples are still in existence - notably Yahoo and Open Directory. Respectively, they are  excessively expensive and virtually impenetrable. They both still wield considerable power with blithe indifference to what’s really required, remaining resolutely devoid of customer focus…  After a decade of observing no discernible improvement in any respect, I think the www would be better off without them. Best render them irrelevant - and if we all ignore them, maybe they’ll go away and re-invent themselves!

There are many other directories - optimistic, welcoming, organised, nurturing and practical, catering for both general and niche areas. Many are desperately in need of good quality listings  as a path to growth, and onwards to fame and fortune.  Seek them out!

Your goal is to get your site listed in a compatible category, nestled comfortably with sites offering similar products and services. Relevancy personified…  A description encapsulating your reason for existence helps - nothing warm and fuzzy! Crisp, to the point, with an “exact match” high-search-volume keyword phrase foremost in the title - but only if its written to make sense.  And don’t settle for one title - by all means, create and use a handful of relevant title & description combinations that expand the keywords the search engines will find pointing to your site.

“Wrong” Links Will Hurt You? Yeah, Right…

Regardless of the opposing views, simple logic should tell you that its quite unlikely for a normal, mainstream link-building strategy to visit harm upon you.

• Lets get real here - this is how links have been garnered since the inception of the Internet. Its a basic, fundamental process of indexing www content. How could it be “bad” to be listed in web directories?
• In the main, a directory assesses site quality before inclusion in their listings. Human-edited listings are the hallmark of a good directory, intended to provide users with the most relevant sources of information, products and services. Why would such a link be a bad thing???

If such links could hurt you, then your shadiest competitors would most certainly spend weeks building directory links in an effort to cause you grievous bodily harm! It would be far easier to shaft you than fix up their own sites…. Don’t for one moment think that some toe-rag has not considered it, tried it and failed…

Frankly, the pointy-heads over at Google are a decidedly smart lot, and are well aware of what the lazy and unscrupulous are capable of… Give the Google-dudes due credit for having the sense to not only be aware of the possibility, but for actually taking some care to protect you from such rancid and distasteful acts.

Fear Not - Go Ye Forth and Multiply

Seek links in appropriate directory categories, particularly in relevant niche directories if they exist. For example, don’t you dare try and list your cattery in a Business-to-Business software category… That would be stupid, and unlikely to be accepted! And don’t cheat… automated directory link submission schemes are a pointless waste of time.

Work is required - an anathema to many! Do your homework, select good directories and seek placement where it will both do you some good, and increase the possibility of acceptance.

Exchange Links

Don’t be frightened to exchange links with other sites, especially where there is a commonality of interest. Car sales and car insurance - boats and motors - houses and mortgages… obvious relationships are reputedly better, although proving that theory is harder than you might imagine. Prophylactic avoidance of link farms, web rings and FFA link schemes is patently sensible - their glory days are long, long gone the way of hidden text and 1×1 pixel images…

But if Aunty Ethel wants a link to her travel blog - hell, by all means do the old biddy a favour! Maybe your visitors will get a vicarious chuckle over her exploits and thank you for it! Maybe Aunty Ethel will leave you a pile of folding stuff in her will, a fond recompense for your charitable act…

Sure, those reciprocal links might not be quite as valuable as 1-way incoming links from a high-profile directory. But they are natural, useful, and public-spirited. Reach out a helping hand to your fellow man…

Think of links as being more like an investment portfolio! Some items have a higher price coupled with a long-term return - such as expensive review for the Yahoo Directory. Some items are minimal cost, minimal return… reciprocal links fit this group. Some are volatile, capable of good rewards but transient - social bookmarking links being one example. Some are solid, hard work, modest and unexciting - like article marketing…

Any sensible link strategy should include a broadening spread of links - and don’t sweat the small stuff…

Read the rest of this article…

• Search - a part of the “Corporate” theme - using it just generates a blank page…
• Tags - no idea whats up with this - just get a blank page with either Simple Tags or std WordPress tags… but the internal tagging functions all work fine!
• Images: added 255px images in widget areas - they get auto-shrunk to 233px Must be a template function at work there!

Apologies if you encounter any difficulties - its a work in progress, and may take a week or two to fix everything. Content revision is also ongoing…

Managing director Andrew Benton agreed and gave us the go-ahead to rebuild the website in a WordPress CMS so they could easily add / edit content as required. The additional ability to use the blog aspects of WordPress to create news, DIY articles, product reviews and distribute newsletters etc is also a consideration…

• We also needed to address the following issues;
• Lack of incoming links / lack of keywords in Anchor Text
• No robots.txt file
• No custom 404 Error Page
• No sitemap.xml
• Duplicate Titles, Descriptions, Keywords
• Etc etc..

At the outset, a benchmark Search Engine Ranking report showed 1 solitary Top 30 Ranking for the old website. The site was duly rebuilt, the previously identified problems were addressed, and the results that have accrued within a few weeks  are encouraging… click the images to see the details.

• their HTML website was looking old and tired
• other people had stolen their content and were getting better rankings
• their site’s visibility had slowly diminished

Flexiscreens - the tired old website

• Lack of incoming links
• No relevant keywords / phrases in link anchor Text
• Dduplication of Titles, Descriptions, Keywords
• No use of H1, H2 in page headings, and poor keyword targeting
• 1st paragraphs not targeting specific keywords
• Overly long pages
• Text hidden in DIV’s containing blatant keyword spam
• No sitemaps / robots.txt / 404 Error page handling
• Etc!

The plan put forward included keyword research, link building submissions, rebuild into a WordPress CMS, full Search Engine Optimisation on all pages, and attention to all the serious issues noted in the review.

Link building was implemented immediately, as is takes months to reach fruition and is independent of site changes. I.e. all links are to the Domain Name, not internal pages. The site was reconstructed in WordPress CMS, with installaion of key plugins to provide additional functionality. This included All In One SEO, XML Google Sitemaps, Feedburner RSS subscription, WP-Supercache, Simple Tags etc.

Flexiscreens - the new WordPress CMS site

The site went live in 3rd week of February. 301 Permanent Redirection of every old page to the corresponding new page was  implemented in .htaccess.

So, one month on, here’s how its shaping up… click Image 1 to view the SE Rankings changes.

Image 1

www.motorhomes-buy-sell-rent.com

That includes a depressing number of website designers, some of whom actually tell their clients that SEO is a waste of time and money, and that it’s quite unnecessary these days because Google is smarter than ever before… Au contraire - it becomes more and more critical every day, as website numbers expand exponentially! Lack of knowledge is not confined to website designers, it also includes a number of wanna-be SEO firms who make outrageous claims about their special relationship and affinity with Google etc, but have little idea of what it takes to consistently succeed in attaining Top 30 rankings.

Be very aware that in most cases website design is taught as an Art, not as a Business discipline. Website designers are rarely taught anything about search engine optimization, and few are interested in mastering the skills required to produce optimal results. That’s all very fine and dandy – but it leaves a lot of website owners desperately disappointed in mediocre results! You’ve probably heard the analogy about building a shop in the middle of a forest too, I bet? Seriously, it really does not matter how beautiful the site is – if no one finds it, then it’s just a gorgeous waste of virtual space.

Content is Still King

Regardless of the various conflicting opinions, Google conspiracy theories and misinformation, it comes down to a very simple concept - content quality, and accurate content classification. Content is where many sites fail dismally! The sites that thrive are those with well written, well organised original, interesting and useful content. Don’t copy other peoples stuff. Aside from being illegal, at best it immediately downgrades you to second best… As a general rule, from an SEO perspective, bear in mind the most fundamental issue - Google loathes duplicate content!

Classification

There are literally millions of websites, each competing for viewers in a particular niche. Reasons for their existence vary across the A to Z spectrum - advertising, entertainment, comedy, educational, humour, informational, music, news, promotional, sports, wine, video, zoos… you get the picture, right?

In the world of books we have the Dewey decimal classification system. Every published work is assigned an ISBN number, and libraries classify all books under a rigid hierarchical subject classification system. It’s not perfect, but it works pretty well because every one uses and understands it! Erudite people write insightful book reviews, which are sometimes included in advertising and promotions. Hold this thought, its relevant to a following section. You want to find a book on a particular topic, or by a specific author, you do a search and Eureka! You’ve found it, there’s a list, even! The best books are reviewed multiple times, and take pride of place in the “best sellers” rack.

Relevancy Ranking

Using different terminology, search engines are trying hard to do the same thing – to give their searchers the most accurate list possible, containing exactly what they want, so they can pick and choose from it! Unfortunately, there is no Dewey classification system on the web. The closest thing to a hierarchical subject listing is the Open Directory, Yahoo, or one of the thousands of other web directories - all of which are inconsistently organised into completely different illogical structures!

So, here we have Google and other search engines trying valiantly to index and categorize the billions of pages on millions of websites, in hundreds of countries in a multiplicity of languages. Then, they have to calculate each page’s relevance to specific search queries…

Are You Helping or Hindering?

That’s where YOU come into the picture… It’s a big, big task – have you made any effort at all to help Google to help you? Or is your website fuzzy and unfocused, with no clear statement of content or purpose? In most cases, sites are constructed with vague intentions to do SEO as an optional extra sometime in the future… What, you want Google to do everything for you?

Done Any Homework?

Do you have any idea how your primary audience searches for the information, products or services you offer? Do the pages on your site describe your content using terms your clients use? Because that’s the only way Google can match searchers with relevant content! What? You actually forgot to do any market research before launching the site? You have no accurate, researched, hard data on the keywords your potential clients would use? You asked your friends at work for ideas? Absolutely incredible!

Let us pretend you’re looking for clients for your small bed & breakfast business in Christchurch, New Zealand. You are optimistic that potential customers in New Zealand, Australia and the UK will be able to find your website amongst the millions of competing B&B pages on the web, be convinced by your persuasive advertising copy and elegant pictures… you’d also like them to come and book directly with you, to avoid hefty commission payments on the dozens of B&B Advertising Directory sites who also want you to pay to advertise! Dream on!

So You Want Google To Work For You?

You’d really like Google et al to help connect your potential clients to your business via Search Engine Results Pages by making your site No.1… And you certainly want “qualified” traffic from Google, visitors who are specifically looking for exactly what you offer!

Anyone who thinks they can survive online without Google, Yahoo and MSN is either a thoroughly well-rounded idiot, or is a household name who does not need to advertise to generate qualified traffic. There is no middle ground.

But here’s where it gets hard! How will Google do that? What solid information have you provided Google in your on-site content, and in the off-site links to your site? Have you got a Domain Name which encapsulates your business type and location; Bed-Breakfast-Christchurch.co.nz? Or a cryptic name, like; BnBChChNZ.com? Of the two, which is most likely to give the SE its first clue as to what your site is about?

What is On-Site SEO

Think about it this way… Does your home page have an explicit and accurate Title that provides a direct and unequivocal statement of the site’s business purpose in 70 characters? Does the Title say “Bed & Breakfast Accommodation, Christchurch New Zealand” or does it say “Welcome to Dusty Lodge” or something equally asinine?

Does your home page have an explicit and accurate Description that provides a brief outline of your business purpose, unique selling proposition, and call to action, encapsulated in 150 – 200 characters? Or does it contain some vague warm and fuzzy drivel about beaches and sunsets?

Keep the book analogy in your mind, and take a look at your Home page, particularly the first heading and first paragraph… “Welcome to my website” is not a productive approach! What does it tell your visitors about you? It tells me that you are at best naïve and both you and your website designer need SEO counselling! And think about that first paragraph… is it an accurate summary of the site’s reason for existence? Eliminate that fruity, cheesy, fluffy verbiage immediately!

If your website is required to deliver a return on investment, particularly by selling products or services, or delivering customer service, informing or entertaining, your really need to accurately describe your website’s content, and allow it to become visible online. What’s that I hear? Oh, you want it to make you rich as well? But you don’t really want to make a serious commitment or effort to do the job properly? Right… good luck with that! And remember that old GIGO acronym – “Garbage In, Garbage Out!”

What is Off-Site SEO?

This may surprise you, but some people are dishonest about their site content. Frankly, some people handle the truth in a very awkward fashion indeed… Telling Google that your site is about Pamela Anderson, when its actually selling Bart Simpson comics, is deuced annoying to the people who visit it! Therefore, Google and other SE’s decided long ago that some external verification of every website’s content would assist their efforts to deliver the most relevant SERPs to their clients. Makes perfect sense to me…

How is this achieved, I hear you ask. Well, you’ve heard of links, right? Back to the book analogy – think of good links as being like a series of book reviews! What if lots of people are writing positive things about your site? What if multiple, external, widely distributed sites are all saying that your site is about “Bed & Breakfast Accommodation Christchurch NZ” huh? The balance of probability that your site is relevant to such a search is positively impacted by this external confirmation! A coincidence of keywords in on-site content and off-site links reassures Google immensely! Those keywords in the off-site links are referred to as anchor text, and should form the link title.

No, Its Not Rocket Science

Frankly, search engine optimisation, in the pure sense of the term, is not particularly difficult to understand, or to do. The aim of the search engines is to provide their customers with the content most relevant to the search they are making. Therefore, your salvation lies in making your content relevant to the known searches! Do some thorough keyword research, learn and understand your target audience’s searching behaviour. Plan pages that target specific, high-volume, low competition search phrases.

Don’t be vague, don’t waffle, and help Google to help you!

When the economic gravy pot is bubbling merrily, and there’s ample business gravy slopping over, even the mediocre get a share. But when the economic ice age casts midnight shadows at noon, and credit wolf packs softly pad the empty streets, howling balefully at the waning moon… then, when you’re sucking the last congealed streaks of business gravy off your tarnished website spoon, ask yourself… Can you afford your website to be second rate, disorganised and drifting ever further into the icy wastes of mediocrity? With a better understanding of why  SEO is so important to your website’s success, will you continue to ignore it?

Author’s Bio:

The SEO Guy, Ben Kemp, is a veteran SEO consultant who provides a guaranteed personal service on all projects. Drawing on a decade of SEO experience and website design and 20+ years of work in the IT industry,  THE SEO Guy’s Blog provides advice on SEO and WordPress CMS website design issues.

Web: www.ComAuth.co.nz plus www.Website-Designers.net.nz

Copyright Statement: This article may be copied for use on your site providing its not edited, and the Author’s bio remains intact.

As a general rule, from an SEO perspective, bear in mind the most fundamental issue. Google loathes duplicate content! Google is trying to index and categorize the billions of pages on the web and calculate each page’s relevance to specific search queries. Therefore, to have any chance of attaining appearance in Top 30 SERP’s, pages must be accurately described…

Keep in mind that Google is an entirely automated text indexing system doing its absolute best to deliver the most relevant content to its core users. Those core users are NOT website owners!!! Google’s main focus is on its search customers. If you want your website to get noticed, you’ve got to assist Google et al in every way possible, by accurately describing your own content.

Make it clear and unequivocal what each page is about. Ensure it is original content, properly described, and easily accessible…

Apparently, there are over 200 elements that Google assesses as its trying to calculate a page’s relevance to a specific search query. Individually, some of them are almost insignificant. Collectively they add up to prominence or obscurity! The thinking man understands that the more elements you get right, the higher the probability of appearance in Top 30 SERPs. Here’s a dozen of the primary indicators of unique content to an SE spider;

1.) URLs:

Precise control of every page URL, carefully using primary keywords / phrase. Use Permalinks wisely!

2.)  Title:

70 characters limit. Accurate, carefully using primary keywords / phrase. The single most important element for every page!

3.) Meta Description:

150 chars limit. Accurate, carefully using primary keywords / phrase. By default, its used verbatim in Google SERP’s. Its very important to write a catchy phrase incorporating primary keyword phrase, one that impels viewers to click on it!

I always use All In One SEO because I’m a “content control freak” and want to make sure every word is in the right place. Dynamic meta-tags are better than no meta-tags - but the ability to manually input as many elements as is possible is what makes the overall difference to SE Rankings…

4.) Meta Keywords:

Accurate, carefully using primary / relevant keywords and phrases. This should NOT be vaguely related words!!! It should be a set of long-tailed keyword phrases specifically relevant to the page content. I’d never use more than 8 - 10 phrases separated by commas.

5.) 1st On-page Title/Heading:

Headings offer limited space, but ALWAYS try and get at least one primary keyword into the title, and the tag must be H1 or H2, not an ‘imitation’ with large/bold text.

6.) First Paragraph:

Very important to get the primary keyword phrase into the beginning of the first sentence!

7.) Last Heading:

If you use one, reiterate a primary or secondary keyword phrase.

8.) Last Paragraph:

Quite important to get the primary or secondary keyword phrase into the beginning of the first sentence!

9.) Images:

Use keyword-rich image file names! Provide a descriptive and accurate image ALT text that uses a primary keyword phrase. Don’t overdo it - just lightly reinforce the page content descriptions.

10.) Anchor Text:

Provide links to other Internal Pages from primary/secondary keyword phrases within page content. Don’t waste the opportunity available to give clues to content on other pages! Using “Click Here For More” is not productive.

11.) Menu’s:

CSS drop-down menus are good. Text menus are good because they (usually) describe briefly the content of the page at the end of the link, providing an additional clue/reinforcement for the SE spiders. JavaScript menus are a disaster because they are completely invisible to Google et al.

12: Latent Semantic Indexing:

Within the overall content, don’t use excessive primary/secondary keyword repetition. Instead, employ a sprinkle of similar words having the same meaning… and variations of the primary words; e.g. mortgage, mortgaged, mortgagee, mortgagor, lend, lending, lender, financing, funding, loan, loans, loaned etc… Reinforce the primary / secondary keyword phrases with supporting content. LSI is based on a mathematical probability that if a page says its about something, AND general content also contains related words / phrases, then it IS accurately described and IS specifically relevant to related search queries.

13.) USE Google!

They’ve got two absolutely essential items designed to help you! The 1st is the Google sitemap, and there are plugins available which totally automate generation of the sitemap.xml file every time you add or edit page or post content. The 2nd is Feedburner… Create a Feedburner account, and add your RSS Feed to it. That gives you an intravenous pipeline directly into the belly of the beast! I’ve regularly got blog posts and page content appearing in “Google Alert” distributions within 2 - 3 hours of publishing the post or page! Feedburner also offers you a managed email subscription service which routes your new content directly to interested users…

Author’s Bio:

Ben has more than 20 years of experience in the IT industry, including 15 years as a free-lance IT consultant. He is one of Australasia’s longest serving website seo practitioners, with clients throughout NZ, Australia, Thailand, UK & USA. He specialises in implementing CMS websites

The SEO Guy (nz)
Email: bjk
Web: www.comauth.co.nz

I want to tell you how much my clients are loving the new web design! They think it’s great! Easy to navigate, lots of great photos, and lots of useful information in a attractive layout.

Thank you a million times, you are the best! On time, reasonably priced and talented, too!

Your friend and client,

Shelley & Mike Yanak

www.seadventures.com Sitka, Alaska

Thanks so much for sending those reports through!

You have done a SUPERB job & I thank you hugely for all your advice and input.

I am constantly recommending you (although not to other photographers) 

It has been a pleasure working with you,

All the best,
Jo

JOANNA WICKHAM photography
Freemans Bay
AUCKLAND
NEW ZEALAND
e:jo
t:09 361 5963
m:021 258 7250
www.jowickham.co.nz

NZIPP Qualified - Advanced Diploma of Photography