Search Engine Optimization, SEO Guides, SEO Marketing

Google Pagerank is based on backlinks. Backlinks are Links pointing to your website from another website. The more back links you have the higher your PR will be.

1. Join forums, forums are a great way to achieve links to your website. In most forums you are allowed to have a signature and in your signature you can put a link to your website. But another important note to look on is making sure the forum is somewhat related to your website. You will still get credit if it’s not, but if it’s related to your website than you will be accomplishing two tasks at once.

You will be advertising for your website (bringing in targeted traffic) You will also be building your websites presence.

Your websites presence is very important to your survival. The more people see, or hear about your website the more credibility you will have and this increases your chances of having these visitors come back and possibly become leads.

2. Submit to search engine directories. Search engine directories are a good way to get a free link to your website. They also increase your chances at being listed higher on popular search engines like Google, and overture.

Most search engine directories allow you to submit to their website for free. This will allow you to increase your web presence by being listed on another search engine, and it will also be a free link.

Remember the more links you have the higher your PR will be

3. Using ezine ads (or newsletters). Creating an ezine will probably be the most beneficial step you can take to increasing your web presence. When you create an ezine you will be able to keep visitors coming back to your website for more by using signatures and giving special deals.

Ezine’s will also allow you to increase your backlinks. By creating an ezine you can submit your information about your ezine to an ezine directory. This directory will than link to your website(thus giving you a free link).

4. Creating and publishing articles. Articles are an easy source of generating new traffic. You can include your signature in your article. This will bring in more traffic from article submission directories.

Your signature usually consists of 4 to 8 lines. Usually the first line would be the title of the website that you are trying to advertise. The last line would be the link to the website and the lines in between these would be a sales pitch to draw your viewers into your website.

5. Links from related websites. Gaining links from related websites can be one of the most frustrating tasks you can attempt.

They are very easy to find, but can be somewhat difficult to obtain links from.

To find related websites, all you have to do is go to a search engine… say Google… and type in your subject. Maybe your website is based on ford mustangs.

You go to Google and type in ford mustangs, than you look around for pages that are somewhat related to your website. After you have done this (which should be very easy) you have to contact them in some way to get your link posted on their website. This can be the most difficult task because a lot of webmasters ignore e-mail’s from people requesting links because they don’t see the importance of it at the time. Some other reasons could be that they are rarely online, or they delete spam mail and sometimes delete their important emails in the process.

Important note: When looking for link partners don’t just link with websites that have a page rank of 4 or higher. Link with anyone and everyone you get a chance to. If you link to someone that has a page rank of zero, this will not hurt your page rank. It will only increase it because you are getting a link back to your website. Google doesn’t look at your back links page ranks to determine what yours is going to be. It simply looks at how many back links you have.

So if Google one day decided to link to a website that was just created and this website has a page rank of 0 and has a domain that goes something like this: mywebsite.geocities.com it’s page rank wouldn’t increase even though Google’s pagerank is 10, it’s rank would still be zero because it would only have that one back link.

Without doubt, link building is one of the best ways to get better rankings and drive organic traffic back to your site. That isn’t always feasible for everyone. There are several free strategies that you can use to help pick up some solid targeted traffic from sources other than the SERPs alone.

– Article marketing. Mass article marketing will bring in bulk links A better, more refined strategy would be to concentrate on one or two of the more highly visible directories and produce some carefully keyword optimized, informational pieces which you can then promote for ranking on the SERPs independently. By doing this, you are now attracting a stream of secondary traffic via visitors who read the article and click through to your site. For this to work, top of the line copywriting is essential – cheap ‘SEO’ articles won’t deliver the thru traffic to your website.

– Social networking. You need to establish a Facebook presence or acquire a Twitter following. Once you do that and have a solid reputation there is a very good chance of attracting extremely focused, consumer driven traffic. This often means more conversions which is what we are all after. The same holds true for any socially driven site where people seek advice and information. Be careful though and kept the sales pitch ultra soft – social users hate the hard sell.

– Videos. Video marketing just about the fastest growing method to create interest in your brand and bring in targeted consumers who are ready to spend. You can make videos yourself and put them on YouTube (several people have successfully built a brand and secured lucrative advertising deals there) or choose to pay for a targeted campaign run by a professional service.
It is obviously cheaper to go the DIY route if you can produce something that is quality.

– Forums. Try to become a driving force and voice of wisdom on a forum. This method is a terrific way to increase traffic to your site. Once you get other users saying ‘wow, that person really knows their stuff’ you can drive traffic where you want it.

– Blogs. Offer to guest blog on prominent blogs in exchange for a link back. They get free content, you get your link and traffic. It’s that simple! (Of course, make sure you deliver only the best or you’ll never be asked back…). This isn’t always easy with high profile blogs, but don’t be afraid to ask and if necessary, start with smaller blogs, establish a name and work up the ladder.

While paying for a good SEO campaign is the most sure way to create a solid sales funnel stream of predictable results, using the above mentioned tips to do a little work on your end to promote your site and get extra customers onto your landing pages.

When you hire out forum link building services, you need to be sure that the company you outsource to knows what they are doing. You need to ensure that they are creating links for you that will actually benefit your website and not cause any damage to your website’s reputation. Forums are for conversations, not spammers. It’s important to keep that in mind.

The first you need to know is whether or not the service comes with guarantee, and if so, what kind? A company that is willing to stand behind their link building service and will provide a guarantee regarding the links they secure for you for a set period of time, usually one year. This ensures that they are only posting on established forums that are actually worth paying for. They also need to be willing to stand behind their guarantee and promptly replace any links which become broken or invalid during that time period.

PageRank is also very important, and another reason that links should be places on established forums whenever possible. Forums with little or no PageRank won’t pass link juice on to your site to help you increase your own PR. High standard forums with relevance to your own site should be sought out and targeted for forum linking. Only forums that allow the nofollow attribute should be posted to. A link without the do-follow attribute is a waste of time, unless it drives extreme amounts of traffic – which is unlikely from a link in a forum. There may only be a handful of forums in this category that even have the mere potential to drive huge traffic. You should also never spam forums – this is a good way to get banned and all of your links deactivated, so ensure that respectful linking tactics are used.

Link building should be conducted in a manner that Google notices it and gives you credit, not hassles! All links should look natural and not manufactured. Google hates any attempt at manipulation, so spamming forums with links in every thread only raises red flags. Post judiciously and mind your manners. The only thing worse than having Google slam you is having Google and everyone in a forum slam you.

Look for a forum link building service that has a sterling reputation for meeting deadlines and delivering quality inks that increase PageRank to their clients’ websites. Try to find actual customer reviews, not just what appears on the landing page. Look for a guarantee for their work, make sure they are prompt to answer any query or concern, and have excellent customer service any time you run into a problem. You will have various problems at times, usually small ones, so prompt knowledgeable service is a must.

When Forum Link Building is done correctly, comments will be added that give valuable information and your participation in the community will be noticed by other posters. This is one of the things you should be seeing regularly. Eventually you can establish yourself as an authority in your field, and others may start broadcasting links to your site as well. Taking advantage of the opportunity to relate on a personal level with other forum participants can be almost as valuable as the links themselves, since your primary goal is to get people to your site.

In previous posts, we have gone over website analysis and the different factors we have to take into consideration for website analysis. What you cannot afford to forget is that you must focus on competitive analysis as the next step to full optimization programs. The main focus of website analysis is always on your website, but you also have to consider the actual website’s ranking in reference to competition with other websites in the search engines.

In SEO, the word competition has a slightly different connotation in terms of our business competitors. Business competitors can indeed be part of the competition that we are discussing here, particularly if they are affecting your position in the search engines. However, if your business competitor does not have a website then he is not to be considered part of your online competition. You need to think more in terms of who is competing for your keywords.

If your website is brand new, you will be starting from scratch and will have no search rank history. If you are revamping or re-launching an old site, you will have search engine history which will be your starting point or point of reference for the work to come. It’s also possible you have had a site for awhile and your starting point is still 0. Regardless, everyone has a baseline.

When performing competitive analysis, you must start with your main keywords and check your position in the search engines and the top 10 websites that are listed for the same keyword or key phrase. Even if these are not local business competitors, they are still your competitors for that specific keyword. They may be offering the same or similar services that your or offering or selling the same product that you are selling. In rare cases, they will be in an entirely different field. Because words can be used in so many different ways, ad SERPS have a number of disregarded and stop words in play, unintended competition even enters into the fray.

To perform a competitive analysis, you have to do a complete analysis of your competitor’s website, very similar to the analysis performed on your own site. If you notice that your website is deficient or inferior in a number of factors, you can address them before moving forward with any other development aspects of your site. .

If you used a lot of flash, neglected your meta tags, didn’t use unique page titles or failed to use image descriptions, you can catch that now and fix it. Every littler opportunity to improve is important. A common mistake is having the same page title and meta keywords for all the pages. It is such as common mistake that many analysts just assume it has been committed by default. You should have unique page titles for each page which use your keywords. Your competitive analysis should document differences between your website and a competitors’ and help you make your own site better. Otherwise, the exercise is wasted energy.

You should also compare your link building efforts with those of your competitors. You can find the number of sites linking to your competitor’s website, or your own as well, by making the following search in Google: “links: xyz.com” and replacing xyz with the competitors website name. Then, do the same for your website using the same search by just replacing xyz.com with the domain for which you would like to check the back links.

When you are in the process of building back links for your website the use of link exchange websites is something that you‘ll often consider more than once. Even though link exchange directories and link exchange websites promise to give you access to huge volume of back links you should not jump into this without careful consideration. There are several factors that can make this a very poor decision if you are not fully aware of what you are getting into.

You should know how to build links using these link exchange websites otherwise you may end up losing your website’s reputation. There have been too many horror stories where people wound up with links to sites that they would otherwise never be caught dead associated to. The first thing that you should remember with regard to building links through link exchange directories is that this is a two way link exchange option, which means that you will have to link back to your link partner’s website. This may interfere with the integrity of your website and this may not be suitable for B2B websites. You have to pay attention to every single exchange request closely, and you have to make sure that you have not opted in for any “auto-exchanges.” They are akin to the kiss of death.

We have talked about the quality of the incoming links in this blog many times over and will again now. Your links have to come from a niche relevant website to be of any value. You should get your links from a website with good PageRank. One of the factors that many do not know is that Google assigns PageRank on page by page basis. So it is equally important to get links from a page with good PageRank and it is not enough to check just the PageRank of the linking website. This can be time consuming but it well worth the time.

When you enter into link exchange, webmasters will have a separate page called, ‘Links’ or ‘Resources’ or something similar and they will place your website’s link in this page. This is the norm almost everywhere. This page will already have hundreds of outgoing links in most cases – if a site is popular. Backlinks from such pages may not be of great value to your website. These links are often diluted and carry little or no value – they can even hurt you. Worse than that, these webmasters may insist you provide them with prime placement for their link – run! If this happens just walk away from the deal.

You will have to spend a considerable amount of time reviewing the linking website and its search engine reputation. Do not rush through this! There are many websites have been blacklisted by the search engines as they have been notorious for spamming the internet. You do not want to be associated with them – not even a single link! You certainly would not want to be associated with bad neighborhood. Your search engine ranking will be affected if you are associated with blacklisted websites. It is worse still to link to blacklisted websites.

When you choose your link exchange partners tread very carefully. Link exchange directories are becoming less popular because of the numerous risks they expose your website to and because of the emergence of multiple one way link building strategies that are also highly search engine friendly. It is something out there which is available, but considering the time and effort – not to mention the risk – is it worth the bother?

Does it feel like you never have the time to write your own content? Do you have worries about doing something wrong? Are you confused about linking even after reading enough guides to make your spin? if so, you are far from being alone. While a vast number of entrepreneurs think that doing your own SEO is almost mandatory, the truth is you are often better off outsourcing it to SEO professionals. Lets look at the reasons to hire a reputable firm to help you get your site off of the ground.

Hiring an SEO firm means that you don’t lose bits and pieces in the shuffle. While you may attain an understanding about some aspects of SEO, you may miss others along the way just because you do not know about them. Another possibility is that you become proficient in some areas, passable in others and never quite catch on to a few other skills. This is the exact type of situation in which a little knowledge applied improperly can be a big problem.

Even if you are working with a tight budget, the little bit you do spend on SEO is likely to supply you with some original content geared towards increasing your visibility and improving your chances not only on the SERPs, but for targeted advertising as well. That is not a bad deal by any means.

If you are struggling to optimize, then you need keyword specific content. Keyword specific content is used to drive traffic your way, ensuring any AdSense on your site will work to it‘s peak specifications. It does you absolutely no good to promote a site for one thing only to mistakenly wind up with advertising for something else entirely.

A good SEO article from a good company won’t be cheap. If an SEO company is giving away free or very cheaply priced content, the odds are you need to spend some time going over it. You can find writers who are capable of turning out good content for less, but it may not be very SEO friendly content. There is a difference between content that reads well and content that reads well and is also SEO friendly.

An SEO firm is like a homeopathic doctor in certain regards. They will take a look at your whole site rather than just one aspect of it. At least that is what they should be doing, because SEO is about more than just the keywords. Beware of any SEO company that attempts to tell you that optimization is only about linking or is solely based on the content. There is a symbiotic relationship between all aspects of your site that when combined properly makes for good SEO.

Strong content won’t overcome poor linking. Similarly no amount of PageRank will make up for sloppy article writing that is nonsensical gibberish written by people with little ability to convey useful information. Sooner or later everyone has seen keyword stuffed blocks of words that make no sense. If they make no sense to you as a reader, it won’t take long before the Eps realize they make no sense either. An SEO can provide you with an honest evaluation of your site, and help you pinpoint areas that need the most work.

Once you have decided you are better off using an SEO firm than going at it yourself, you need to find a good one. SEO firms may advertise that they guarantee a top result in the SERPS, or a certain amount of traffic within a specified timeframe, but you have to understand that they don’t control the search engines or the consumers – they can only predict and plan based on past patterns of behavior. Choose wisely because it is your money, your site, and your business on the line.