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1. Link Building -Why it is Crucial and the Most Popular Link Building Techniques Link building is where SEO’s that take their clients reputation...

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Link building is where SEO’s that take their clients reputation seriously earn their money. If you weren’t already aware of this fact it’s probably because you care little or anything about how web sites get ranked or are very new to the online marketing scene.

Well if you fall into the former camp beware, one day soon most businesses are going to come around to the fact that marketing on the internet is going to be about as critical to success as breathing is to us. And guess what, links are the most important factor that Google uses to rank your web site.

Yes, yes you can tweak your html and meta tags and you can stack your site with content but without links your site might as well be under 6 feet of snow in Siberia.

No problem I hear you say, I can get 10,000 directory links, 500 social bookmarks and 1000 articles all linking back to me in 7 days for 5000 Rupiahs, I saw it in my junk mail box.

I hear you (I get those emails too!) but it isn’t 2004 any more (not that it was the answer back then)and the same techniques just don’t cut it any more – and you don’t have a time machine handy so now what?

Click here for an example of the sort of links you are after.

You’ve got to build links that’s for sure so it’s time to get a plan but it’s best to start out with an understanding of what links mean to Google. They are in essence a vote of confidence and trust from another site and also a way of saying to Google “hey I’m in this great neighbourhood, give me some juice”.

Links have varying value from not worth the time they take to click to online gold. Your aim is to get as many high quality links from relevant sources as you can.

However, If you add your site to every measly little directory under the sun just because there is a link to be had then you can’t expect Google to launch your site into the stratospheric heights of page one for your primary keywords.

When you submit emasse to directories etc. you have no control of who you will be sharing a page with. If your site is in proximity of other questionable sites – and I mean sites with dodgy linking practices not necessarily content (although pills, porn and gambling aren’t everyone’s first choice of neighbour) – then you can expect the cold shoulder from the big G.

The art with link building is to look for quality first then quantity.

It is a fact that domains can have considerably lower numbers of links relative to their competition and still do well if the links they have are of a higher calibre than those of their competition.

I will add though in in some markets having tens of thousands of garbage links can get you listings but that is because Google probably doesn’t have much else to go on so uses link volume as it’s primary metric. I’ve found in these types of situations that a few carefully placed high quality links can oust a site with volume.

The reality is that link building takes time and time is money so hunting down links from authority domains is expensive and requires a range of skills.

For companies with small budgets this type of link building is not going to be available as It is just not realistic for them to expect a plot in the prime real estate.

However, all is not lost, there are still keywords out there where more ‘budget’ approaches can still yield dividends.

So where do you start?

To give you some ideas I’ve compiled a list of the most popular link building techniques.

First up are the easier links to get…

1. Internal links – this is the surprise entry! A lot of people overlook these links but they are a fantastic way of highlighting to the search engines that a page is relevant to particular term. Cost: Free if you manage your own site or whatever your web master charges

2. Article marketing – Easy links to get but require time investment in writing and then editing for submission. Good articles will yield better results over time and you should view this as a way to build a reputation for writing good stuff for your target audience.

The trick is to makes sure you keep an eye on what is being published and by whom. If you spot a good site publicising your content contact them with an offer of a unique article – if you do this over time you will make many of these types of relationships and you can ditch the article distribution service altogether. Cost: The price of the subscriptions, the price for a writer and someone to submit on your behalf. Article marketing can be fairly crude and involves giving up – in some cases – good content into the public domain for reprint, however it does get those contextual links that have your keywords in the anchor. If managed properly an article marketing campaign can unearth valuable link partners.

3. RSS  – Don’t glaze over please, RSS is getting more and more prominent as people catch on to setting up news feeds on their iGoogle and Netvibes pages. You can feed your content out to potential link partners but by submitting to RSS feed directories you are also getting a link back to your web site every time you submit a new  article.

4. Directories – To be honest I don’t pay a lot of attention to this and mostly only recommend the big ones like Yahoo Directory, DMOZ, Business.com and Best of The Web. I do have a list of free and cheapies that I submit some sites to in weaker markets and for local SEO I submit to a handful of decent ones including Freeindex and Bizwiki. Cost: The big ones are around £180 per year plus the cost of the submission and your SEO can quote for the free ones (I don’t personally recommend going for bulk directory submissions as they haven’t really worked for me but others have had OK results in other sectors so go with your feelings and best of luck).

5. Online Press Releases – For businesses with a lot of good stuff to say this can be a very lucrative source of links and traffic. PR Web allows you to build a press release that is search engine friendly meaning it can include links and video. Their roster of publishers is massive and if you get a foothold with some good web sites your potential for successful link acquisition is very high. Cost: PR Web do an online SEO visibility release for £110 at last time of looking plus the cost for you to write it and your SEO to submit it.

These next two approaches take more time and creativity but are the ones you want to acquire.

6. Guest blogging or business blogging – This is where the effort taken to build relationships and provide good content can pay off. If you get a good guest blogging spot the links yo get can pay dividends. You should be able to control the page title, anchor text of links and of course the content itself. Cost: For an SEO to dig these out and manage the relationship takes time and skill so expect to pay a top hourly rate. Do it yourself and it is your own time, simple.

7.Relevant industry links – Again, this about hunting down the prospects, crafting an approach and securing the link. You will need someone with an knowledge of the tools required and how to use them. Cost: This sort of link building is at the top end so expect to pay good money but in return you will want to see a evidence of the work taking place (cc in email approaches, acceptance and that sort of thing).

These final 5 techniques are not focused on getting links from the actual sites but more about link baiting and general brand building and exposure.

8. Community/Sector engagement – by this I mean commenting on blogs and posting in forums not social media which is not dissimilar and is next up. Finding relevant blogs used to be a great way of building links to pass PageRank (Google authority juice) but most bloggers add the ‘nofollow’ tag to links which thwarts any chance of getting any juice from their blog, however in the eyes of the search engines you are still linked in a good neighbourhood and some nofollows make your link profile much more natural looking anyway.

If you look more objectively though, commenting intelligently in the right places can generate interest in you and your brand and that is the point isn’t it?

Check out this graphic for the impact it can have on search results.

9. Social Media (Twitter/Facebook/Linkedin etc.) – You have to be careful with this one because of the hype, which is valid depending on which sector you operate in. For many, Twitter and Facebook have been a revolution and for other sectors the benefits are not so obvious. In terms of link building tools again these sites don’t give you links themselves but they can generate links from those that you engage with through them. Tweeting out links to good content (not always your own) can build your reputation as a source of good material. Building a Facebook fan page following can help with testing products and general feedback. Google is just about to launch it’s real time results window so tweets and status updates are going to be featured – expect even heavier use of these tools by the internet marketing crowd.

10. Social Bookmarking (Delicious/Reddit/Mr Wong/A1 Webmarks etc.) – Social bookmarking often refers to a lot of sites but Strictly speaking I’m talking about sites that host your bookmarks or your favourites (if that is what you call them) online. Some of these e.g. Delicious apply the ‘nofollow’ attribute to links so for pure link juice look elsewhere, however if you get a good network of fans you can find that every time you post a new bookmark your traffic can spike.

11. Social hosting – that’s what I call it anyway and I’m referring to webs.com, Squidoo and Hub pages etc. The key here is to provide good unique content (no surprises). Hub pages won’t give you a ‘do follow’ link until you have built up a score with them (which is a good idea to keep spammers out) and Google can be picky about which Squidoo lenses it bothers to index. Cost: A decent SEO can work with you to  create good content and mix it with video and images found online to create some engaging pages and the cost for quality is worth it in the long run.

12. Video – You can create fantastic brand awareness and develop a strong reputation for expertise using video and it does not have to break the bank. I personally use Camtasia which is a screen recorder and great for training purposes. The quality is good and it is not expensive except for your time and there are inexpensive and free video distribution
services like Tube mogul.

All in all this is just a primer and you will have to do your research upfront to decide which approach might work best or you can call on an SEO company to narrow the odds in your favour.

All in info graphics by www.searchengineoptimization.elliance.com

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1. BBC News – Google to limit free news access via news.bbc.co.uk This is a very interesting development and raises...

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via news.bbc.co.uk

This is a very interesting development and raises a ton of questions. The first thing that comes to mind as an SEO practitioner is that newspapers do very well in the search engine results pages. This is clearly due to the massive authority they have because of the mountains of unique content they produce and the number of other sites linking to them (among other factors).

If newspapers are going to restrict free access to their news then I’d expect that Google would severely restrict their access to page one listings for keywords that are relevant to any newspaper articles that have to be paid for. Most users expect free news and there is plenty of it around, so if Google clutters up page one with subscriptions pages any search engine that bucks this approach will pinch their share.

The truth is that if I have paid for a subscription I’d have my RSS feed reader pull in the news or have a bookmark on my toolbar,  so if I was actually searching for news I’d want to be served up free options not subscription pages.

If Google does penalize news sites for offering up subscription pages (which it should as a subscription page isn’t relevant to a keyword search for ‘Lancashire hot cakes murder trial’), then this could open the field for smaller free news services to get some extra traffic.

It seems to me that the news providers are getting around this potential for a penalty by allowing visitors to view the first few articles free, but for any heavy news searcher it won’t be long before their search results are bunged up with subscription pages.

I understand that print media has taken a big hit but they have enough money and resources to come up with creative advertising related models. Trying to stem the flow of news will just open the field for smaller web sites and word of mouth reporting via social media, which if you think about it could be better than some of the garbage that comes out of the major press!

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via seomoz.org

This is a sweet little table to have handy when tidying up the onsite SEO stuff. Getting these basics right will go towards supporting that 15 or 20% that Google takes into account when ranking you for relevant keyword phrases.

Of course there’s more to a title or description than the number of characters!

My first rule is to keep the keyword as close to the front of the sentence as possible (proximity) and to keep the number of words down (density)

.

Second, you want the title to make sense and press the right buttons. Too many SEO’s focus on stuffing keywords in titles even if they don’t make sense and neglect the fact that the title is what the searcher sees in the results page. You can boost your conversions massively just by treating this tag with the same respect you would give a pay per click advert.

Something similar goes for the description and I often include a telephone number just to show that the site is totally transparent and means business. Telephone numbers create a sense of trust even if the searcher has no intention of using it.

The URL is again important as it shows up in the search engines helping towards your relevancy score in the eyes of the customer. The keyword in the URL has less of an impact on rankings than it once had due to SEO’s abusing it but from a marketing and information organisation sense it is a smart move.

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This video pretty much underlines the importance of a Social Media strategy but I don’t think that shouting about the numbers is a great help (although they can inspire some to wake up to the changes).

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This is just a short post and I’m sorry if this old news but for those of you that don’t have a decent in browser competitive research tool this is for you.

This handy little piece of kit allows you to pull all of the data you need from the web sites on a search engine result page in one scoop.

You can export the data into a spreadsheet and use it to get strong idea of which sites stand in our way and exactly what you need to do to take over their rankings.

There is also the ‘SEO Xray’ function which will give you a quick look under the hood at keywords, links and other domain related data.

An absolute must for any serious marketer.

Get your SEO Book Competitive Research Tool here.

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Struggling to keep afloat as the economy teeters? Well it’s going to get much harder when business picks up too.

Here are some reasons why search engine optimisation could not only be your life raft now but your platform for the future .

The recession is biting and you aren’t the only one that is hurting and there will be more and more casualties as the gloom descends further, so what can you do to help yourself?

It might be that a carefully considered ‘spruce’ up of your web site could be all that is needed to get your web traffic flowing again or you might be ready for a major overhaul.

Either way an investment in what is obviously going to be the de facto method of winning and doing business for many sectors in the future, is going to give you both short and long term benefits.

Ask yourself this one question; “Is our sector going to get more or less competitive online?”. The answer to that is simple: Absolutely yes and probably by much more than you might anticipate.

I would be prepared to estimate that in just five years the investment required to get a new web site to the top of a search engine for any commercially connected keyword is going to cost at least five times more. I make this estimate based on a loose calculation that takes into consideration the penetration and speed of internet access, the number of businesses coming online every year and the rise in awareness of search engine optimisation as an essential ingredient for generating traffic and profits.

In reality, the impact of this huge increase in competition will mean that valuable Google page one real estate is going to be fantastically more difficult to secure and yes, you guessed it, a lot more expensive.

As a digital marketer when researching industry sectors, I find that more and more work is required to get a top ranking and this is even before the internet has been swamped by heavily optimised web sites.

In fact, in some sectors, without a huge investment the exercise of gunning for some keywords is actually quite pointless and I have to formulate a ‘side door’ strategy to get my clients enough online exposure.

So what will happen to you if you don’t take any action with your web marketing?

Well consider this. In five years it is going to be much tougher and web sites that have age on their side will also have lots of content and lots of links and these are the factors that Google rates highly.

It stands to reason then that if you don’t start taking action now and your competitors do those slots on page one that you covet and don’t have now, will be even further from your reach. Inevitably without the best positions, if you are an internet based business, the shutters will most likely have to come down at some point – not a nice thought.

You see, the internet like any gold rush – or in fact any sector – starts of fairly balanced with small and big players all vying for a piece of the cake.

As time passes the smarter players get the upper hand and the number of companies shrinks; look at the motor industry for example…

…in 1922 there were 183 companies in the UK and by 1929 there were only 58.

So what happened? Obviously the conditions were different economically but the reality is that the businesses that invested in themselves also spied opportunities to absorb talent (think Google buying YouTube) and managed to power through the hard times – are you seeing a historical pattern here?

What then happens is competing in many sectors becomes impossible for the smaller players – and again I think of all the corner shops disappearing because they just cannot compete with Tesco and the like.

It is a sad evolutionary model but it is the natural way of things and the only way forward is to embrace the internet fully and begin to understand the importance of laying a foundation in your space now.

Get optimising today!

For more information on how to boost your profits visit this web site – Brooks Digital Marketing

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Today, we’re going to discuss what the search engines like, but specifically we’ll talk about Google since this player as you will already know totally dominates the search engine market place and getting search engine optimisation right with Google will set you on the right path for success with other search engines.

An important thing to realise before we get started is that search engine optimisation and digital marketing is essential to the success of your business online.

There’s no point having a swanky website with all the bells and whistles if Google can’t see you.

It’s just like just like having a fancy high street shop with a boarded up front and in this economic climates that is virtually commercial suicide as you will be missing out on potentially huge amounts of lost revenue.

In this post we are going to quickly discover what Google does and what it really looks for when indexing websites.

And the reason we need to do this is that just like any other game, knowing what the rules are before we start is going to help us play the game properly and get you the best results.

Ok, so lets take a look at what Google actually takes into consideration when ranking websites, but be aware, I’m not listing these factors in any particular order of importance because we can only make informed guesses!

Google closely guards the way it compiles its results because it is in a constant war with those that continually try to manipulate the results and other search engines. If we all knew the exact formula then Google wouldn’t be able to rank sites properly and the results would be pretty useless to users.

All we can do as ethical digital marketers is use the search engine optimisation techniques available to us and continually monitor our results and refine our campaigns to get better listings for you – this process isn’t easy and of course it takes time and money but after all digital marketing isn’t a paint by numbers exercise!

So what does Google do all day (and night)?

Google constantly spiders the Internet gathering information from websites so that it can rank them accordingly.

What we need to understand is what information it collects and where it collects it from.

With this understanding we can set up our website to be ready with the correct information when Google shows up.

Right so lets’ talk about the factors that we know that Google loves

1. Unique and Fresh content

If Google can see that your content is frequently updated it’s going to make sure that its spiders visit you regularly and that it indexes your new content. One of the ways you can see if Google rates a site as an authority in a particular niche is by looking at page rank (you’ll need the google toolbar to see this).

Google is the most respected search engine and provides up to the minute access to the latest information the world has to offer so to keeps its top spot it absolutely can’t afford to miss out on new content.

By feeding it unique, high quality regularly updated content you are making big friends with Google.

Secondly

2. Google likes sites that large numbers of people or other sites like

Google gauges this by counting link popularity. If you got to Yahoo site explorer and type in a web address you will see the number inbound links that site has.

These links, how they are formatted and where they come from play a major part in getting a good listing.

Thirdly

3. Relevancy for keywords.

Google also likes sites that it can easily determine what the website is about and therefore rank it more easily.

The key here is that Google loves it when you are specific about what you do so if you communicate the exact theme of your site to Google at every chance you’ll start becoming friends with Google.

By showing to Google at every opportunity that your site is about a particular subject you are telling Google that you are worthy of indexing for that particular subject.

Of course we’ll be talking much more about how to do this properly in subsequent posts.

Another factor is…

4. Authority and status.

Sites like Amazon will always be on top of the search engines, so the idea is that you become the authority in your niche. Authority is something that is gained over time by applying the techniques that we’re going to talk about in this blog over time.

Finally

5. Age is also another factor that Google takes into consideration however this factor can be circum-navigated if everything else about your website is set up correctly.

Thanks for reading and I’ll catch you in the next post

For more information on Search Engine Optimisation for the Derby area call Brooks Digital Marketing.

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This is a fact that should really whet your appetite for promoting your business online using SEO techniques.

“Last year online consumer spend grew by 38%”

- this is a significant figure considering the economic conditions we are facing.

In fact it represents an enormous amount of money and slice of that business can easily be yours with the help of a solid digital marketing strategy and a good search engine optimisation consultant.

The reason I say ‘easily’ is that surprisingly, very few websites are actually optimised for the search terms that their customers are using to look for products and services.

Because of this lack of SEO they’re missing out on stacks of business opportunities and lost revenue.

The best way to visualise not being optimised for your target audience is to think of it like this…

…a website not set up for the search engines is like having a boarded up high street front – in these difficult times this is commercial suicide but you’d be amazed at just how many business web sites are set up like this!

So it isn’t any coincidence that smart businesses are switching more of their budgets to online forms of promotion as the economic situation gets worse and worse.

So you might now ask ‘why invest in promoting online’ and there’s a simple answer to this.

Online marketing can be much more targeted and this is a real bonus for businesses in Derby that focus on the local area only. You can specify exactly what search terms you want to be found for and tailor your website to meet the requirements of your visitors when they arrive.

If you set your site and digital marketing up properly, most of your traffic will be looking for exactly what you provide, it is just then down to how well your web site makes the sale.

Secondly, digital marketing is highly trackable. This means that you can save incredible amounts of money by only investing in advertising and web development that is proven to give you a profitable return.

The opportunity to set up your web site to be laser targeted on your customers using search engine optimisation techniques is here now – all you need to know is how to do it.

For more information on Search Engine Optimisation for the Derby area call Brooks Digital Marketing.

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