Sunday, February 04, 2007

Link Building Strategies That Work

There are a number of ideas about what are the best ways to promote a website and about the best ways to attract more visitors to a website. In my opinion, it is important to start up a link building campaign to increase the number of websites which have a link to your site on their site. This is one proven method which has been successful in achieving high rankings for many different sites, however there are some important factors to keep in mind when attempting to build up this link network.

If you have a new site and are desperate to achieve top rankings on the top search engines such as google, think again. Most of these search engines will probably not give your new site a high ranking until it has become established. This is where the age of the domain is important. You can not in reality expect to be placed in a higher search position than a site which has been around for eight years and which has been building up links, during this period. This is where patience is required, you should see your site as something which is going to be online for a long time and hopefully in time, some of the other sites that you are competing with will have dropped out etc.

This is the same attitude that should be applied when building up the number of backward links pointing to your site. Going from only a few, to a few thousand in a short space of time may not be the best idea. Regular increases are in my opinion the way to go and quality is just as important as quantity. Decide the ways in which you are planning to obtain your backward links and try to ensure that you obtain roughly the same amount each month, where possible of course. Over a long period of time this strategy is sure to pay dividends and your search engine position should steadily improve. You will then have an authority site, which all new sites will be aspiring to compete with. Like many areas of life we do not really want to wait for our success and want immediate rewards, such as high rankings. On some search engines this may be possible but on most it will require hard work and this type of patience.

The links that you obtain should where possible be from sites which are in a similar industry or subject matter, to your own site. This is a lot easier said than done however. If your site is very well written, optimised and of use to a large number of people, you may well receive links on other sites without the need to request the link. This is of course exactly what you want and is why it is important to spend time thinking of how your site is written and presented.

A good way of obtaining a link to your site is to write a reference or testimonial to owners of other sites with which you have had dealings with. Offer to write them this testimonial which of course will be of great benefit to them, on the understanding that they will include a link back to your site at the bottom.

I personally concentrate on obtaining one-way links as I believe these to have the most value. One way I do this is by writing articles such as the one you are reading. There are a great number of benefits of writing articles which can be read at most of the article directories such as ezinearticles. I would certainly recommend it to other people who are thinking of starting up a link building campaign.

Saturday, February 03, 2007

The Basics of Search Engine Optimisation

I am sure that it will surprise some people to hear me say that Search Engine Optimization isn’t rocket science! Although it can feel complicated at times the aim is simply to ensure that your website is presented in the way search engines like and ultimately that your visitors will like!

At the end of the day Search Engines always try to give users whatever they can find that is relevant to their search. You need to appreciate that the majority of Search Engines don’t work by moving the good stuff towards the top. What they do instead is to try to push the bad stuff towards the bottom, and hope that what’s good will ‘float up’. It is a frequently repeated truth that Content is King and good content which is well written and which is sprinkled with the appropriate keywords can get you good search engine rankings. This not only brings visitors to your site but also feeds the search engine spiders and crawlers. It is impossible to emphasise enough how well written and relevant content is key to good SEO.

One of the fast way to develop good content is to generate a series of articles regarding your topic. These items are very powerful in the world of SEO Services because they provide your visitors with something to read and they allow you to feature in the Search Engine results for some key words that you normally wouldn’t. Let’s say you are managing a website for Genealogists. A well written article about using a particular genealogy tool is more likely to generate a high position in the search results for “genealogy tools” than your home page. Therefore, if you write articles relevant to your subject but in more depth than you can put on your home page, you will find that you will benefit enormously.

Take a look at the sites that currently rank high on the search engines for your keywords or indeed for any keywords and you will generally find that they have simple designs with graphics that use minimal bandwidth, and they are generally easy to navigate. Simple, clean designs are what both search engine crawlers and search engine users like, as it lets them get the content they want without a lot of peripheral “fluff”. This is what you should be aiming to achieve with your website.

Of course some websites will be ranked highly in search engines, even though their designs make them difficult to read and navigate. If the content of a site is relevant to what people are searching for then that’s all that matters to a search engine. However, it’s preferable to have a site that is user friendly and easy to navigate if you want to encourage return visitors.

Let’s think about meta tags, keywords, descriptions, and titles. These are all important elements, even if they are not what will make or break your site. Whilst important they are just one part of your strategy. These elements need to be compelling and sprinkled with your keywords, as this will entice users to click through from the search results page to your website. It’s best to start off slowly, gradually adding things in as you learn.

If you have any questions and you don’t know where to go, then check out some of the forums on the subject. To do this you just need to go to your favourite search engine and do a search for ‘seo forum’. The people on these forums are generally more than happy to answer your questions, or direct you to someone who can answer your question if they can’t. Remember to be patient with yourself: learning something new takes time and effort, and Search Engine Optimization is no different.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Professional SEO Services

Companies offering the professional SEO services use only the best practices in the industry – none of the unethical tactics that many underhanded firms use. The services of these professionals may cost a little more, but their expertise can ensure a longer-lasting search engine ‘health’ for your Web site and therefore multiply your revenues exponentially.

Professional SEO techniques

Selection of an optimum domain name. Few realize it, but your domain name and URL greatly affect your site’s positioning in directories and search engines. Companies that offer professional SEO services help you research and choose a name.

Copywriting. Professional SEO service providers understand that search engine ‘robots’ index your site based on machine-readable text and HTML tags. They also know that editors of industry-specific directories review the relevance and uniqueness of your site in deciding whether or not to link you. Most importantly, they understand that customers and potential buyers base their purchasing decisions on your marketing copy. That is why these professional SEO companies have copywriters to skillfully integrate profitable keyword into your content.

Tags. Meta tags, title tags and description tags all play an important role in SEO. Professional SEO companies can set up your site’s indexable titles, descriptions, headings, and alternate tags. They use specific numbers of words for specific indexable sections while maintaining the section’s persuasiveness and receptiveness to qualified traffic. Professional SEO companies also expertly label your images with optimized image tags that appear when you mouse over the image.

Site maps. Finally, professional SEO companies take care of your sites link network, and clean up your hypertext links so that search spiders have ample threads to follow and register. They also structure your site map both for search spiders and site visitors. The site map must contain a cataloged inventory of all your site’s pages and must be linked from the home page.

Affordable SEO Services

Affordable SEO services is almost synonymous with ‘ineffective SEO services’ these days, but thanks to a few good but cheap companies that actually deliver, this reputation is quickly changing. Good but affordable SEO companies can give you real value for your money. Here are some of the many things they can do for your Web site.

Affordable content. Good SEO companies will be able to provide you professional website content that contains all the right keywords in the right densities. They will be able to study your market and then improve your appeal to that market through words. The content they provide is professionally-written. It follows all the correct grammatical rules of standard English, and is very readable and interesting.

Affordable Web site restructuring. SEO companies that offer good services for a low price are also able to perform all standard coding techniques to optimize your site for search engine algorithms. They must be able to create clean HTML codes for your site fix your sitemap, set up a better navigation panel, create RSS feeds and ROR files, for example.

Affordable linking and submission. Good SEO companies must also be able to submit your site to the most relevant search engines and directories, plus evaluate and logically expand your link base – all for a reasonable cost.

Cheap services that do not work

Some sketchy SEO companies claim to have the ability improve your search engine ranking overnight. They do this by employing unethical SEO practices including keyword stuffing (which, incidentally, does not anymore work). Some even go as far as to place ‘hidden’ text on your pages – text that is written in the same color as the page’s background. Many poor quality SEO companies also use link farms and even spam search engines. Remember that while these tactics can get you top rankings initially, search engines will likely catch up and reprimand you in no time. Your site can get suspended and even banned, costing you even more money. As with anything, you get what you pay for.

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