Archive for the 'SEO' Category
The true spirit of egalitarianism and brotherhood is incorporated into the concept of the pure “link exchange.” A link exchange is a mutually consensual agreement where two web entrepreneurs agree to place corresponding links on each other’s sites. This benefits both sites equally and in two separate ways. There is direct traffic from visitors clicking on the link and the incoming link is valuable for search engine optimization. This process works especially well for newer sites since it is often quite difficult for Google to recognize a site and start its indexing process on it. Link exchanges are usually rather easy to negotiate and a snap to set up, plus they can significantly improve your PageRanking as well as the various search engine listings for the anchor text keywords that you’re utilizing.
However, that is when we’re dealing with the hypothetical pure link exchange where both partners in the enterprise receive an equivalent benefit. In reality it doesn’t always work this way. Quality is also foremost to be considered in the case of the link exchange as it is in any other aspect of professional link building. There’s absolutely no point and nothing gained in coming to an agreement with a website that is below your standard as it will just drag you down. Furthermore a highly trafficked site might not place its offsite links into such high prominence as a site that has lower numbers but places your link in a premium position. In this case the two sites might average out the same, or you may even find that the lower traffic site is more successful for you.
Keeping an eye on trends is important as well. If the word on the street is that there is a hot topic coming up in your subject field and there is some poor little web entrepreneur struggling along with eye-dropper traffic but specializes in that particular topic, now might be the time to make what would ordinarily be an unbalanced deal. Although the current traffic is dead slow now, if the topic really does heat up as you’ve heard, the numbers could skyrocket and then the effectiveness of your link would as well. Imagine getting your “surfboard” site linked to a web entrepreneur who focuses on the increased wave effects of Global Warming four years ago when nobody had ever heard of it. You can bet your bottom dollar that these days they’re absolutely swamped!
Just like the only real variable in real estate is Location, Location, Location, in link exchanging it’s Relevance, Relevance, Relevance. You’ve got to keep that foremost in mind when you’re seeking a new link exchange collaboration.
There are many ways to start compiling a list of potential partners that you intend to pitch your mutually beneficial link exchange proposal to. DigitalPoint forums feature a rather remarkable resource entitled the Link Exchange category.
Many use automated link exchanges, though the problem with these various options is that these sites place lines of code on your website and Google has gotten wise to this. If they sniff those lines, Google will know what you’re up to and shoot you downwards.
Contests are the time-honored way to get attention in the press, in broadcast and now in the online world of marketing. You don’t have to start giving away sportscars and private jets. A giveaway of a simple prize worth a few hundred dollars should be enough to be worth many times its cost in link benefits. If you are on good terms with a manufacturer or supplier, you may find that they may be amenable to even donating the prize for free in exchange for prominent mention. That not only saves you the money of buying the item, but it also helps immensely by generating links from the manufacturer’s site.
A great way to advertise your contest, is by utilizing paid review websites. While the concept is fairly new and just becoming mainstream thanks to websites like ReviewMe and Sponsored Reviews, blog reviewing is proving itself to be great link builders. In addition to a link, you can usually expect some referral traffic and long-term branding as well.
The cost of a review is usually between $40 and $750. The better the statistics of the blog are, the more it costs for a review. The three largest factors are Technorati ranking, Alexa ranking, and estimated subscribed RSS readers. I also suggest taking a look at the pagerank, pasts posts, and the average number of comments per post.
I suggest finding a blog that has a pagerank of at least 4 to do a review if your sole focus is link building and organic search engine optimization. If you are looking for quality feedback from a well-known industry professional and decent traffic, then I suggest paying a little more and getting a quality review from a respected blog.
No follow was created to encourage users to not “game” search engines. In addition it was to provide web site owners and publishers with the opportunity to add a link to their site without losing PageRank to the site they are linking to, and to also help users prevent the various forms of blogspam and forum spam, the borderline-vandalistic process where posters go onto forums and leave meaningless posts just to gain some sort of linkage back to their own sites.
There have been some recent experiments to try and punch holes in the theory that Google does not follow Nofollow links and the jury is still out on the results. The general consensus is that there are various loopholes around the various Google algorithms and that Nofollow links are not the nefarious dead end that they have long been believed to be, and indeed were designed specifically to be. Its suspected that Google will follow and index, but not give link credit to the site.
One of the best, easiest and most effective link building techniques is one of the most overlooked: Commenting on other Blogs to get links back to your site. Your “surfboarding” topic likely has hundreds of bloggers covering it each and every day. Seek out these bloggers and start posting.
There are various steps you should take to prepare for the most efficient use of your time and energy instead of just starting to post buckshot across the blogosphere. So many people are still convinced of the effectiveness of the explosive technique. They blast a completely targeted generic message to a completely targeted generic list of spam “victims” and hope that their particular pitch will be successful. This sort of viewpoint is completely myopic as it doesn’t take into consideration that your “victims” have been exposed to barrages of similar targeted, unsolicited and largely undesired pitches for many years and have either implemented technological barriers against receiving much of it, or have just learned to ignore it.
Buckshot, spam, or whatever you choose to call it, is no way to derive any form of effectiveness to accomplish your desired goals. In link building almost the exact opposite approach is desired. You want to carefully target your prospects with a very specific and relevant message which will be in their best interests for them to accept. Therefore, the bottom line is simple. You need a list and it has to be a quality one.
In tests, I was able to get listed on 10 “top commentors” sections of blogs that had pageranks of over 3. I spent about 1-1.5 hours a day making the comments.
Encompassing proper keywords is vital in search engine optimization and to get a web site ranked higher on search engines. A couple common mistakes when using keywords can be the use of only one main keyword and incorporating misleading keywords. These mistakes can have detrimental effects on the ranking and also the number of visitors to a web site. There are several aspects to be aware of when associating the appropriate keywords.
The first step is to put yourself in a potential customer’s place. Think of the different terms that one might use when searching for a particular product. Implement the same keywords that you would use when looking for the product that is offered. Do not limit the product to one keyword and bank one everyone using that same exact word, words, or phrase. Use multiple synonyms that are used frequently, but also encompass other keywords that are similar that may not be used as common too. After keywords are selected the process is not over.
A very efficient way of choosing correct keywords is by analyzing the words that potential customers are using at various search engines. This analysis will give you a good idea of what words to use and also a brief idea of how many people will visit your web site. An easy way to see the number of people and the main keywords that are being used is by purchasing a Wordtracker. A Wordtracker can easily show different keywords that are being implemented and can have a significant increase in the traffic the web site receives.
Once you have a considerable amount of keywords to choose from, it is time to select the most relevant expression for the product. This word must not only relate to the product, but also been a highly trafficked term, indicated with the Wordtracker. After selecting the words and phrases to describe the product, it is important not settle on them forever. The World Wide Web is always changing and the keywords that are being searched on Google are no different. Keep track of the terms being used and take note of new phrases being searched on a regular basis. All of these tactics can help in SEO and increasing the ranking of the web site.
Search engines have programs, called “spiders” or “bots”. These bots automatically sift through pages and documents via hyperlinks. There are roughly 20 million pages on the World Wide Web that needs to be crawled through, but only about 8-10 million have actually been acknowledged by the spiders. There are a couple common mistakes made by companies. The first mistake is that organizations do not use any hyperlinks and if so, there is only a couple. Another frequently mistake made is the use of too many hyper links. If there are a lot of hyperlinks to the same page Google and other search engines assume that this page is filled with spam and will not rank it.
After a web page has been sifted through, the documents are “indexed” or sealed in a database. This database contains all of the other documents from the web pages that have already been crawled through and it creates the search engine’s “index”. The search engine instantly looks through the index to find the correct web sites that fit the search. In order for the search engine to generate all of the results so fast, the documents must be crammed secure in the index.
While conducting a search on Google, it is important to narrow the topic down. When looking for certain a football player do not just type in the word “football”. Google has over 500 million hits for just the word football, and most of the websites will not get to the right destination. Instead, type in the football player’s name (if known) or type in the team he played for and football players (Cleveland Browns football players). This should give websites that contain the names of players current and past. While searching Google it is important to keep in mind that words such as “and” and “or” are not relevant to the specific topics and Google disregards them.
After typing in key search words, Google ranks the results in order of importance to the topic. The search engines use algorithmic calculations to create the best results first. Still, the search engines have a tendency to not give the right web sites. When this occurs it is necessary to change words to direct the search engine to more accurate web sites.
To generate more viewers to a particular website it is important to rank high on the search engines. This can be accomplished by using various hyperlinks to products or services within web site. Also, use a variety of key words that different people may use to describe the product, service, or company. Lastly, track where the website ranks, and if it is not satisfactory consider seeking professional help.
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SEO can be conducted by modifying the webpage along with the URL to help increase the traffic a website acquires from search engines, especially Google. While trying to reconstruct a web site, the SEO specialist must look at an array of characteristics and decipher which ones are important and which ones to disregard to maximize the search engine optimization. By including the proper links and unique products or services offered is one way to increase traffic. A large portion of traffic is powered by Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AskJeeves. However, the biggest and the most frequently visited search engine is Google. Therefore, Google has the highest amount of hits and is generally the most important search engine to optimize for.
SEO is a vital part for a company to increase potential customers’ awareness through the growing use of search engines. The phrases people use on search engines will be more recognizable by the search engine and therefore allowing a company to become higher up in the search results. In short, SEO can bring a company for being on the eighth page in Google to the second page. Increasing the number of visitors can directly affect profits, marketing, and even the general attention the web site receives. Significant gains are available once a company properly considers the possible exposure received through SEO. On the other hand, there is the possibility of devastating losses without utilizing the correct SEO techniques.
Each search engine spends time, money, and other resources to improve their effectiveness of including the most efficient results. On the contrary, search engines will always have minor flaws that may not pick all of the right web sites or even include web sites that are irrelevant to the search phrase. This is where proper SEO comes into play, by using more efficient links and URL names SEO can easily improve the number of visitors to a struggling web site. Each day, more and more people utilize search engines to accommodate his/her personal needs or objectives, as a direct result, the online competition has grown rapidly and will continue to grow.
Overall, SEO is an opportunity for smaller or not well-known companies to get their name and products readily available. Suitable SEO techniques will help to increase clientele, visibility, and cash flow to any organization. SEO can work around the flaws of search engines to readily increase traffic to a particular web site.
Post note:
Here are Freezing Hot were not only coming up with creative ways to advertise websites, but we’re also creating cleaver ways to train employees. Since we’ve just hired Steve, we’ve tasked him with writing a few articles on search engine optimization. We get some blog posts, he gets some training, and we all win. So, be sure to check back, there are 6 more where this came from.
Here at Freezing Hot, we’re always using creative techniques to promote and advertise businesses. So, we’ve had a custom theme created and coded for Wordpress and now it’s ready for distribution. It’s a 2 column, widget-ready, blue and gold theme, which you can download here. Feel free to download, distribute and use the theme to the fullest, as long as the link remains in the footer.
With Google cracking down more and more, companies will be forced to find creative techniques to build links. Are you using Wordpress themes to build authoritative links? If you’re interested in increasing traffic from search engines, then consider getting a free, no obligation quote.
Ok, that’s the fake title, but Seth’s book is all about getting quality traffic. To get quality traffic, you have to offer the three U’s. They are:
And he’s totally right. Writing or producing crap is only going to get you crap. That’s why my post on Facebook Statistics has received over 15,000 unique visitors just in the past 30 days. It was also linked to by SEOmoz, TechCrunch, and Adrants.
The lesson? Make something worth reading - and Seth’s 13 page e-book is definitly worth the read (after you get over the fact it’s a big advertisement for Squidoo). Download Seth’s ebook.
Here are some great plugins for optimizing your WordPress blog for search engines. Though, I will admit, some have very limited search benefit, if any.
Meta Data:
All In One SEO Pack - optimizes titles and meta data
HeadSpace2 - optimizes titles, descriptions, and keywords
HeadMeta - optimizes descriptions and keywords
Duplicate Content Cure - inserts “noindex,follow” to avoid duplicate content
Permalinks:
Permalink Validator - validates link then issues a 301 or 404
Advanced Permalinks - multiple permalink structures
Permalinks Moved Permanently - helps redirect old permalinks to new ones
Linking:
WP 2.3 Related Posts - related posts via WordPress Tag
NS Recent Posts - displays recently modified posts
RB Internal Links - link to other posts wiki style
Link Harvest - compiles list of all outbound links and creates live linkroll
Random:
TrustMeter for Google - tells if page is “trusted” or not
Analytics:
xooAnalytics - tracks outbound traffic through Google Analytics
Google Analytics for Wordpress - track all clicks through Google Analytics
Sitemap Generation:
Google XML Sitemaps - creates Google sitemap of your blog
Google Sitemaps - Append UTW Tags - appends all your blog tags generated by the Ultimate Tag Warrior (UTW) WordPress Plugin onto the end of the Google XML Sitemap (sitemap.xml) file as generated by the Google XML Sitemaps for WordPress Plugin
Bonus:
These aren’t really plugins, but they sure to help.
Permalinks
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What SEO plugins are you using?
Plugins are (c) their respective owners and Freezing Hot and it’s employees are not responsible for the content or harm they may cause.
Advertisement: Freezing Hot’s has new SEO packages designed for small businesses and blogs. Check it out at Small Business SEO!
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