Archive for the ‘SEO Advice’ Category

Link building isn’t always easy and can be quite time consuming.  But some people are just not sure where to start.  Here are a few tips to give you a little kick start and help you drive your link building campaign in the right direction.

Look for sites that are relevant to your market.

Search engines look for relevancy and 1 link from a good, relevant site will be much more beneficial to your campaign than a load of low quality, irrelevant links.

Avoid directory sites.

Ok, when I say this I don’t mean all directory sites are bad.  But if you come across a low quality directory, that’s irrelevant to your niche, and will link to anyone, it’s best to completely avoid it.

Avoid pages that have over 50 external links (can check this using the seoquake toolbar for Firefox)

Google’s Matt Cutts recommends webmasters keep their links per page to under 100.  But when it comes to getting a link do we really want a link on a page with 100 other links on it?  The link juice on this page will be shared making the links very weak.  That’s why I always recommend looking for quality pages that aren’t stuffed with too many links.

What is their page rank and authority.

Many SEO’s hate the use of page rank but before disagreeing with this point hear me out.  Although page rank shouldn’t be used as a definitive measure is does still hold some credibility.  PR does give you a good idea of the quality of a page and the higher the PR the higher the chances are of that page having decent authority with the search engines.  This doesn’t mean if a page has PR0 it’s not worth going for.  Especially if it’s a good relevant site.

Try to get links in content if possible

Links in sidebars, links in footers, links in links pages… we see them all the time.  But the links that are of real quality to users are links within content.  The search engines see it this way and love these links.  So go for links within content if you can get them.  Even if this involves offering to write an article for a site yourself.  Article exchange is an increasingly popular method of acheiving this.  Some people offer article exchanges on sites like Webmasterworld.

If links on the page are nofollow, don’t bother!

We want quality links that are going to pass link juice to our site and help us rank higher in the search engines.  So avoid links that ask the search engines not to follow them as these will not pass link juice.  It’s all about link power.  Use the SEOmoz toolbar to check for nofollows.

Choose the right anchor text

Time and time again we see links saying click here or view.  Ask the webmaster of the site you want a link on if they can give you specific anchor text and try using one of your key terms.  Doing this will help your chances of ranking for that particular term.  So rather than click here, go for something like Puppies for sale.  Also consider approaching sites you already have links with to see if you can have your anchor text changed to something more keyword friendly.

So, time to get started.  Start looking for relevant sites, contacting some webmasters and getting those good quality links.

Many of us are often concerned with linking power and know that the right links can make a big difference to our campaigns.  With this in mind I wanted to share with you a great piece written by Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz about the valuation of links.

Check out this article HERE

Linkbaiting can be a great method for obtaining a large number of natural backlinks.  Here are just a few ideas to get your brains kicking into gear for those great linkbaiting tactics:

1. Top 10 lists: Or any other number for that matter.  Maybe a top 7 or even top 101 list.  This could be anything related to your niche.  Top 10 WordPress Themes or 101 linkbuilding tips for example.
2. Interviews: If you can bag an interview with someone interesting in your niche, or maybe even a celebrity, this could gain you a good number of backlinks.
3. Tools: If your company has a tool that could be made available to the public you could gain great links this way… especially if the tool is free.
4. Humour: People love linking to humorous material so if you can come up with something funny related to your niche, publicise it and see how many backlinks you get.
5. How-to’s: ‘How to’ info can be great linkbait… especially if there’s not much alternative information out there.
6. Controversy: Give a potentially controversial point of view and get a debate going.
7. Reviews: People love to check out reviews before they buy.  Review some products in your niche and make these reviews available for people to see… and link to.

Good luck!

You may have heard the term Linkbait buzzing around quite a bit but if you’re unsure as to what exactly Linkbait is then this is for you.

Linkbaiting is a means of obtaining a load of natural backlinks to your site by creating some material that people will want to link to.  Something that will catch people’s attention and make them want to share this material.  This may be something funny, informative or maybe even controversial.

Check out our Linkbait Ideas for some thought provoking tips.

Keyword research can be time consuming and there can often be times when you hit a wall with the tools your are using or your own suggestions.  However, many people don’t think to make use of Google Suggest.  Ok, some of the suggestions made are getting little or no results but it can produce many results that you may not have thought of or that your other tools just didn’t pick up on from your original keyword entries.

Try putting in one of your main keywords follow buy a space then a, then b, then c etc.  See how many new ideas pop out at you.  For example, imaging you’re researching fitness related keywords… here’s an example based on that keyword:

As you’re going through them and you see some terms which may be good ones, throw them into Google’s Keyword Tool and see what the searches are like.  I then also like to check out the competition by popping that term back into Google with quotes around it.

I tried this recently (on a different subject) when keyword researching for article titles and additional content keywords and it really helped me find a decent list of good quality terms.

So make use of the tools around you… even the not so obvious ones.

What is SEO?

Whether it’s a business website or a personal blog, chances are we want to get visitors to our website and get our website seen.  We therefore need to optimise our site so that it ranks highly in the search engines when people search for certain terms.  This optimisation is known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

So, lets look at some of the key points that search engines such as Google look at when ranks a site for particlur keywords.

Choose Your Keywords

You will need to decide what keywords you want to rank highly for.  There are tools available to find the best keywords for you but just remember, you’re unlikely to get very far trying to compete for the term “IT Support” but you may be able to compete for a term such as “IT Support in Brighton”.  Get together a list of relevant keywords and make them ones you can realistically compete for.

Title Tag

This is what shows up in the blue bar at the top of your browser.

It also shows up in the search results as shown below.

The Title Tag is the first thing that the search engines will look at when determining what a page is about so it is important to get some keywords in here.  But don’t go over the top… avoid keyword stuffing.

So, for example Welcome to MySite.com is not a good Title Tag

However, Kids Toys For Sale | My Site is better (assuming Kids Toys For Sale is in your list of key terms)

Meta Tags

The Meta Description is what shows up in the search results under you Title (as shown in the example above).  Again, remember to include some keywords here but avoid keyword stuffing.  The Meta Keywords are a list of your keywords/terms and should include the search terms you listed earlier that people will be searching for.

Heading Tags

The search engines like header tags and see these as key points of determining what your pages are about.  So again, make use of those keywords.  Your main title may use the <h1> tag while other titles and sub heading may use <h2> and <h3> etc.

Content is King

Make sure your site has good quality and relevant content and be sure to get some keywords in there.  But remember, don’s go too over the top.  Obvious keyword stuffing is not liked by the search engines.

Backlinks

This is a vital part of the SEO process.  For your site to rank highly with the search engines you really need to work on getting some links back to your site from other websites.  The general idea is that the more backlinks you have, the higher your pages will be ranked, as your website must be good if so many other sites are linking back to it.

Submitting your site to directories such as dmoz.org and requesting links from other sites are just some of the ways to do this.  A few quick tips before you do this though…  Firstly, avoid linking farms and other spammy sites that offer links to your site.  Secondly, if you’re going to approach sites, make sure they’re relevant to your site.  And lastly, remember that a few high quality, relevant links are much better for your rankings than a whole load of low quality, irrelevant links.