Link building strategies have, for most people for a long time, revolved around reciprocal link exchanges. Whilst most people understand that links are important, they generally don’t understand why this is so. In a nutshell, a link to your site has traditionally been accepted by Search Engines as a vote for your site. A link from a topic or theme-related site to yours is better than a link from a site having a completely different topic. An important site’s link to yours carries more weight - for example from The Open Directory, or Yahoo Directory. All pretty straightforward…

BUT… the rules have changed… significantly! All the thinking webmasters worked diligently to build links - willy-nilly - in order to subvert the search engine rankings and gain an advantage to themselves at the expense of everyone else. For a long time, there have been mutterings about this, and comments from Google staffers about possible penalties from linking to “bad neighbourhoods’” and - heaven forbids it -  buying links! Google et al simply don’t approve of willy-nilly link-building schemes, and have recently tightened the screws a bit more, in two notable ways…

Bad Links 

Some links are bad… for example, if you are a car sales company and you’ve got dozens of completely irrelevant links to international hotel sites… yeah, YOU know the ones! in Prague, Munich, Shanghai  etc! That’s a BAD neighbourhood over there! That IS going to put a world of hurt on you! And as for the Free For All link sites, web rings, and 3 way link schemes… that’s just suicide in cyberspace! Why? Coz its a blatant and completely indefensible attempt at cheating the system!

Reciprocal Links - Almost a Waste of Effort

Reciprocal links are still of some value, providing the link titles are explicit, and if the page they link to you from has a higher Page Rank than the page from which you link to them. The concept of a link to you being a vote for you, and being added to your site’s Total Vote Count has a flip side. A link from you to someone else essentially deducts a vote from your total vote count… meaning its value is minimal when compared to a 1-way incoming back-link!   

1-way Outward Links Are Toxic

Ok, lets assume you are a service provider, maybe a health clinic, and you deal with hospitals, other doctors, specialists, nurses, laboratories. So, as a benefit to your visitors, you place direct links to their web resources on your links page. Is that clever? Most certainly it is NOT! Transfusion time, because you’ll be haemorrhaging Page Rank with nothing in return! Do it, but be smart about it, because there is NOTHING to be gained (by you) from linking to any site that does not link back. So make sure your links include the “nofollow” attribute that tells SE’s that the link is NOT a vote by your site for that site! 

Link Content Is Mission Critical

This is mission critical because Google and other have decided that they can’t trust you to be honest about your site! Basically, it seems like there are two web tribes - those who know not so much about how things work, and those who know more than they should. There should be a flourishing third tribe, who just build great sites with lots of terrific content that automatically ranks highly - but nobody’s seen nuthin’ from those guys for ages! 

The tribe who know more than they should ruthlessly manipulate every available loophole to dominate search engine rankings, at the expense of those who have yet to read SEO For Dummies. Therefore, Google decided that its essential that there is some external correlation between what YOU say your site is about, and what OTHER people say your site is about…  This is done by analysing the words in the Link Title on all links pointing to your site.  Bottom line here is - if a keyword phrases does NOT appear on links to your site, you ain’t gonna rank for that phrase!

For many established sites, this is the main reason they might have experienced a noticeable decline in rankings in the last few months. Most older sites will have a majority of incoming links based on their business name, and NOT on their activities / products / services / location etc. To use the common “widgets” analogy - if you are selling “widgets” and all your incoming link Titles have your only business name e.g. Smiths Manufacturing Co Ltd, its now very difficult for you to rank for “widgets”! 

Backlink analysis reveals this shortcoming rather quickly and, lucky for you, it is possible to remedy this by building 1-way incoming back-links using multiple Title / Description combinations that contain a good spread of relevant keywords. It does require some keyword research, and it is tedious - but if you don’t do it, you are certainly not going forwards! But your competitors might be…

Yet Another SEO Article by;

Ben Kemp, aka The SEO Guy

Web: www.comauth.co.nz

Email: SEO@TheSeoGuy.co.nz

Contact us for a Free SEO Site Review….

Links Defined

Link - a textual or image link TO another site - usually included for the benefit of your visitors because it contains important information relevant to your product or service. Usually set to open in a new window so visitors don’t “lose” your site when they open the link. Outward links are of minimal value to your search engine rankings - unless you have a lot of them relating to a common “theme” - in which case your site might be perceived as an “Information Hub” for referrals on a specific topic.

For example, it might be appropriate for a medical-related site to provide links to support groups, goverment/health agencies, doctors and pharmacies with whom they work etc.

Affiliate Link

You place a link to a provider in order to make a commission out of selling their product/service to your visitors. There is zero value in terms of search engine rankings. And of course, there is no point linking to them if you are not going to sign up and sell their products!

BACK LINKS:

Reciprocal Links

Where two sites agree to provide LINKS TO EACH OTHER for mutual exchange of visitors, and to increase the relative importance of both sites by increasing total incoming link count. Reciprocal links have value in terms of improving search engine rankings, although this value has diminished in recent times. It is still a “natural” form of linking and should not be avoided - just apply this test - “Will the link lead to relevant information, of value and interest to my site’s visitors?”

If the answer is yes, then by all means exchange links. Done properly, constrained to sites with a similar theme, this may also lead to your site being perceived as an “Information Hub” for referrals on a specific topic.

1-Way Back Link

A link to your site, not requiring a link in return. These are the most valuable form of linking in terms of search engine rankings. Usually these are from clients - e.g. a manufacturer such as Sony/Toyota/Kodak will have a gazillion 1-way back links from retailers, users etc, as will government agencies, airlines, academic institutions etc. This can lead to your site appearing to be an “Authority” on a specific topic.

In most normal web site situations, your main source of good 1-way back links will be Web Directories. In these, a listing in the most relevant category can provide a very valuable “reference” or “testimonial” for your site. Because most directories are human-edited, the search engines place greater value on such links and the well established ones are often regarded by the search engines as “trusted sites.” The more important the directory, the greater the value. In the case of Google, they place huge importance on a site’s inclusion in The Open Directory, and also in the Yahoo Directory… It is important to select the most relevant category in which to have your site included - the content of the page in which the link is contained may also be assessed.

Changes To The Way SE’s Evaluate Links

Google bases approx 50% of its assessment of your site relevancy to a specific search on the site’s that link to you, and on the words contained in the links pointing to your site.

Yahoo has recently filed for patents for technology similar to Google’s Page Rank assessment mechanism, and is expected to gradually implement a similar emphasis on incoming link quality.

It is important to specify HOW the link to you should be implemented on other sites - and to that end I always add a “Link To Us” page on any site I work on, which specifies the exact wording to be used on links TO you.

SEO work for your blog is no different to search engine optimisation on your main site - youve got to work at it. Ok, so you’ve created your nice shiny new blog, and you’ve been adding high quality postings containing lots of useful information on a regular basis for a few weeks (or months)… whats next?

Review Your Blog

First, take stock of your blog’s set-up, and make sure its ready for debut;

1. Do your postings have some relevant key word content in the headings? If you’re intending to improve your overall ranking across search engines, remember to “optimise” the pages just as you would any other page of your site. Decide on the keyword phrase you are targeting, make sure its used in the heading. Make sure its highlighted in the body text, particularly in the first and last paragraphs.
2. Do your postings contain a “clickable” link or two back to your site? By this I mean a “proper” link in the format The SEO Guys Blog and not just your plain URL. To build traffic, you want to make it easy for people to get to your site!
3. Does each posting contain your “Author Details Panel” that credits the articles and postings to you, including your (clickable) site URL information? Make your links open in a new window - thats a kind gesture to those who’d like to return and finish reading the original page…
4. Have you made a statement of your copyright constraints, if any? Perhaps you should encourage people to copy and distribute your blog content, providing the Author Panel remains intact? That would be the best way to ensure widest distribution, and the consequent proliferation of valuable 1-way links back to your site!

Blog MarketingYou will probably want other people to read your blog in order that they may appreciate your literary genius, right? But of course, nobody know where its at yet, so you’ve got to give it some publicity. The first step should be to add a prominent link to it on your own web site, or sites - pretty obvious, you’d think? However, in all the excitement, that is sometimes overlooked!

More importantly, if you want it to start generating lots of nice new incoming links, and generating serious traffic increases, you’ve got to actively “market” your blog to the places that blog readers go… and “Where is that, pray tell me do?” I hear you say…

Well, the ping services you’ve added earlier are all well and good, but due to the volume of spam and garbage postings, some discipline had to be installed into the blog process to exert some control. Your site is no doubt “pinging” a variety of servers each time you create an entry. However, before any significant transfer activity takes place, you will have to front up and formally register yourself and your blog with as many of those services as possible.

The process is analogous to submitting to a normal search engine or directory, and pretty much for the same reasons. In some cases you may be asked for a reciprocal link - not too much to ask for the favour about to be rendered to you. In other cases, a “donation” might be requested. Before handing over the cash, have the sense to check the Google Page Rank of the site… its got to be high (6+) to be worth it!

The challenge is finding all these blog directories… so we’ve added a category on our Directory especially for links them, see; Blog Directories By the time you’ve spent a day working through the 150+ directories accessible from the various links, you’ll be in good shape to get that traffic counter ticking along. Your postings, and the consequent “ping” to the various services, should now have your content distribution flowing right along!

Good luck!

Implementing a Blog (weB log) is an excellent way to steadily increase the the depth of content on your site in an easy and efficient manner. There are numerous benefits, because a Blog, if properly used, enables you to;

• distribute new information to clients and prospective clients
• efficiently increase site content by rapidly adding new material
• provide “advertorial” material to other sites
• increase links to your site as your Blog contents are disseminated across other sites on the ‘net.
• increase “deep link” count to internal pages e.g. www.yoursite.co.nz/your-blog/archives/articles/Your_Tips
• increase traffic as people find extracts from your Blog, and come looking for the source
• increase your credibility as people find lots of useful, up to date information on your site

Utilising a Blog as a business enhancement tool is far superior to a newsletter. There is minimal trouble to get a blog up and running, but make sure you host it on YOUR site. You have the choice of establishing a “hosted’ blog on www.Wordpress.org and other Blog software services, but the greatest benefits will be accrued if you get it up and running at www.yoursite.co.nz/your-blog/

Software

In our case, we’ve used Wordpress (www.Wordpress.org ) an Open Source application that not only has all the required “bells and whistles” but is easy to install, set up, and manage. It has an excellent “web browser” interface that means you can add new material from your desk, or from home. Hell, you can even configure it to accept and post incoming emails from yourself!

There are some basic system requirements - your (Apache) server must support PHP, and MySQL databases. These days, that’s level of technology is available on most “basic” level hosting packages.

Installation

If you’ve got cpanel hosting with Fantastico, you can do the Wordpress installation in a few minutes because the installation scripts are probably pre-installed already for you! If not, it might take a little longer, but the Wordpress guys take pride in the “5 minute install” concept. It is really easy - even if you’ve got to download the application, unzip it, upload it to your site into it’s own directory, add a new MySQL database, add a user, start the configuration file and insert the database / user /password details into the configuration file, it should be up and running inside 30 minutes. Be a good idea to read through the “Read Me ” file before you start… the instructions are clear, concise, and in a logical and coherent order! Pity all documentation was not like that!

Configuration

With Wordpress, there are a handful of system settings to consider once you’ve got your blog operational. Of these, I’d say the three most important are as follows;

1.) Options / Writing / Update Services

The setting for the automatic update services, where blog search engines, directories and news feed services are “pinged” each time you add new content. By default, Wordpress includes a few services, some of which will in turn update other services. However, you will probably want the widest coverage possible, and to extend that list to include all known services! Takes a little longer to process a new posting, but means you get the best overall result… and that’s what its all about! There is a list of possibilities you can copy at www.comauth.co.nz/ping-page.htm

Copy and paste the ones you want to use into the “Update Services” panel at bottom of this page; www.yoursite.co.nz/yourblog/wp-admin/options-writing.php and choose Update Settings to add them permanently.

2.) Options / Permalinks

As they put it; “By default WordPress uses web URL’s which have question marks and lots of numbers in them, however WordPress offers you the ability to create a custom URL structure for your permalinks and archives. This can improve the aesthetics, usability, and forward-compatibility of your links.”

From an SEO point of view, we’ve chosen the numeric options so that our URL’s not only look sensible, but the Search Engines will be also be able to navigate them. However, getting this arcane bit of trickery to work requires you to implement the supplied “mod_rewrite” in your .htaccess file… if your are developing a glazed look about now, just bear with me a little longer!

The .htaccess file is a dangerous area to be playing in, as a mistake in this file can render your site inaccessible - until the Host Company’s support guy sorts it out for you - usually by renaming it! How do I know so much about this shit? Well, it happened to ME! :-)

You should have installed your blog into its own directory, which minimises the potential problems substantially! Wordpress provides the correct “mod_rewrite” code in;

www.yoursite.co.nz/yourblog/wp-admin/options-permalink.php - its nasty looking stuff, as you can see below;

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /yourblog/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /yourblog/index.php [L]

1. So, choose the Numeric Option
2. Copy it into a text file - e.g. open Notepad, paste the code in.
3. Save it as htaccess.txt in your local copy of your site
4. Choose Update Settings in Wordpress Options / Permalinks
5. Use FTP to upload htaccess.txt into your BLOG directory - Please, NOT your root directory!
6. Using your FTP application, rename the htacces.txt file to .htaccess

Open your Blog, browse around it and (hopefully) not only will everything be working, but the URL’s will now not have any of those dreadful &, ? or = thingy’s embedded in them. If its not working… the Wordpress support forums offer rapid response times to such teething problems. However, you should at least be able to access the Blog directory with your FTP client and rename .htaccess back to htaccess.txt and bring it back to life while you await a response from the Wordpress forum.
3.) Categories

From an SEO perspective, its important to develop a good Category Structure, because the category names are going to be embedded as “tags” in all your Blog posts, a little like the concept of the “keyword meta-tag” and this will help define and describe your content, especially in and

Content

Now that you’ve got the basics sorted out, start populating your blog with some quality content. I recommend writing it in an HTML editor such as FrontPage) and making sure it’s spell-checked as you go. Once you’ve got it formatted the way you want, go to the Wordpress / Write / Write Page and paste it in. Add the Title, select your Category/s from the right menu, and click the “Save and Continue Editing” button. You will then have a preview of your article in the lower section of the page. Double-check the formatting, and when you are happy with it, choose “Publish.”

Blog Search Engine’s and Directories

Once you’ve got some content built up over a couple of months, you will then want to get serious about getting it distributed to blog search engines and directories… So, in the next article we will outline how to go about this process.

Have you considered Article Writing as an SEO Tool to boost your Google Page Rank? No? Not at all?

Well, imagine for a moment a community that brings content providers (authors) together with content users (websites) to provide the content sifters (search engines) with the results desired by the content seeker (web surfers).

The web surfer savours the content appetiser and clicks the link to go directly to more content provided at the author’s web site - thus completing the circle. Along the way, everyone’s requirements are satisfied;

• The web surfers gets the information he/she required
• The search engine has relevant results to display
• The websites has good content to offer
• The author becomes known as an expert and gets more visitors, more sales, and more success…
• The author’s web site receives a decent Page Rank boost from all the new links

Perhaps THIS really IS Web 2.0!!!

Click HERE for a more detailed look at Articles as an SEO Tool…