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Advanced Link Development Strategies To Improve Your Search Engine Rankings
Mar 23rd
We’ve already discussed the importance of building external links to your internet business‘s web site, and we can’t emphasise that enough when it comes to improving your search engine optimisation (SEO) results.
Having discussed some basic steps to take to get started with the new process known as link development, it’s time to look at some more advanced strategies to move your link building efforts into high gear.
Just to recap the reason for this new approach. The search engines, and Google in particular, are now looking for more natural, organic links that are of high quality rather than just any links to any sites. It’s now about deep link building rather than just link building, so let’s look at more advanced ways of doing so.
Powerful Techniques For Developing Links
The tactics discussed here may take more effort, but are the best way to develop high value links that will reward the effort extended now and for a long time in the future.
1. Build A Widget
This technique is extremely powerful as building a widget is fairly simple, but getting that widget adopted on a large scale is the tricky part. Your widget must offer a strong value proposition such that thousands of web site owners decide to add your widget to their web sites, but this is complicated by the fact that you’re competing for advertising space and web site real estate with such powerful players as Google Adsense.
2. Information Graphics, Or Infographics
An infographic is a visual representation of data or knowledge or information that is used to explain a complex issue in more simple visual terms. In other words, it needs to be useful as well as informative and/or entertaining in such a way that it has the potential to go viral and be widely adopted by your peers.
Tracking Your Link Development Efforts
Once you embark on your link development campaign, it’s important to keep track of how your efforts are going so you can see what’s working and what’s not and double your efforts in the areas that are working and abandon, or, at least, reduce those that aren’t.
Let’s look at some ways to track your efforts:
1. Google Webmaster
The tools offered within Google Webmaster have grown and improved in proportion with Google itself. Practically all SEO efforts can be tracked, including internal and external links, click-through data, visits and keyword ranking. Some of the most important features include:
- Site performance evaluation
- Monitoring external links
- Sitemap submission
- Tracking crawl errors
- Monitoring internal links
- Tracking duplicate Title and Meta Tags
- Traffic and revenue projections based on search query analysis
2. Open Site Explorer
This tool provides information on how your link portfolio is shaping up (your link graph), your site’s trust ranking and your anchor text distribution.
a) Anchor Text Distribution
This can provide you with a benchmark of how your site compares to other sites when it comes to keyword-specific anchor text links pointing back to your site as compared to your competitors.
b) Link Graph
The tool will show you updates to your external followed links, which you can then use to plot your own link graph, showing you graphically how your external link efforts are working.
It should be obvious by now that link building has changed and will no doubt continue to change as search engines look to optimize their users’ experience. But, one thing that hasn’t changed (and shows no sign of doing so) is the importance of high-quality external links to your internet business, so take the above link development steps and watch your rankings start to improve.
Check with a UK internet marketing consultant for all the help you need to formulate and execute a successful link development campaign.
Take Advantage Of The Tremendous Opportunity That Is Video
Mar 21st
Publishing videos is currently one of the most powerful methods of promoting an internet business, and should be a part of every online business owner’s search engine optimisation (SEO) arsenal.
But, despite the praise heaped on the use of video to improve search engine rankings and as a powerful promotional tool, both in these columns and throughout internet marketing circles in general, a recent report by SundaySky, a provider of online video solutions, has some pretty startling revelations regarding the use (or lack thereof) of video as a marketing force.
Top E-Commerce Sites Fail To Take Full Advantage Of Video
SundaySky’s report, based on data from the fourth quarter of 2010, shows that almost half of the world’s top 50 online retailers failed to make the most of the opportunity presented by video.
Despite the fact that some had started to add video to their sites, most had failed to take full advantage of the tremendous opportunity that video represents. But, that needs to change during this current year if better results in overall web site performance is the goal, and it should be a primary goal for all online retailers.
The Benefits Of Using Video
The benefits of using video are manyfold, one of the main ones as far as e-tailers are concerned being improved conversion rates, resulting in more sales on a wider range of products, reduced number of returns and increased web site stickiness, amongst other benefits.
Another major benefit is that video ranks higher in search results than other online content, delivering much more traffic to e-commerce sites. In addition, YouTube has been ranked 2nd in search since 2008, and is the fourth property overall on the web, which shows how valuable video content is these days.
Suggestions To Make The Most Of Video
What is evident from the report by SundaySky is that e-commerce business owners should be taking full advantage of video to drive more traffic to their web sites.
In order to do so, there are several steps online retailers should take:
- increase the scale of their videos to include all their product offerings
- look beyond YouTube for syndicating videos; publish videos on platforms such as Facebook
- apply simple SEO strategies such as video sitemaps and proper embedding
Although we’ve been referring to e-commerce web site owners here, increased use of video on their web sites would be advisable for all internet business owners.
For expert advice on the optimum use of video on your web site, consult a UK internet business coach.
New Link Building Strategies For Better Search Engine Rankings
Mar 17th
Building links to your internet business‘s web site is as important as ever for your search engine optimisation (SEO) results. But, it’s no longer enough to just add multiple links from any old web sites to boost your site’s search engine rankings.
That’s because the search engines are now devoting a lot more time and energy to differentiating between natural (or organic) links and those built solely for the sake of adding a link.
Link building must also move on, just as the search engines are doing, so building deep links via link development is the new strategy for link building.
Link Development For Quality Links
Link development is a major advance on link building, which is all about acquiring links (pretty much any links), the more the better, whereas link development is all about acquiring organic backlinks via a strategy of organic growth.
Here are a few guidelines to use in developing high quality backlinks that are of value to the search engines.
1. Link Placement Is Important
- Placing links within the actual content is better than placing them within the footer or as part of your blogroll.
- Placing links on the left side of a web page is better than placing them on the right, since the left side supposedly gets indexed first.
2. Appropriate Use Of Anchor Text
- Be careful about using the same keywords repeatedly within anchor text, as such overuse will cause red flags to be raised within the search engines as a sign of non-organic link building.
3. Commenting On Blogs
- Posting comments that are spammy is a waste of everybody’s time and could get you banned
- If blogs have a great influence on your market, you should participate actively in blogs regardless of whether the links are follow or no-follow, because the more active you are, the more beneficial to your web site and your brand.
Improve Your SEO With Better Links
Building links is still an important facet of any search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy, but the emphasis is now more on quality than quantity. If you follow the above steps, you’ll be well on your way to developing a valuable portfolio of high quality links that will help improve your search engine rankings.
As an internet business owner, this new link development technique will help you acquire better links that will add to the value of your web site as far as the search engines are concerned.
A UK internet business coach has the expertise you need to establish your link development programme, so contact one today and watch your search engine rankings improve rapidly.
Reap The Benefits Of Twitter’s New Advertising Platform
Mar 14th
Promoting your internet business on the various social media networks is regarded as a major component of any search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy today.
Some of the social networks, such as Facebook, also offer excellent opportunities for paid advertising, and it appears that Twitter is about to leap headlong into that market also.
Watch For Promoted Tweets Coming Soon
Advertisers’ messages on Twitter are known as Promoted Tweets, and users should start seeing them in their timelines any day now, if they haven’t already.
This is part of a major push by Twitter to sell advertising space to small-sized and medium-sized businesses in the form of either Promoted Tweets or Promoted Accounts, which is Twitter’s pay-per-follower advertising system.
Choose The Right Type Of Advertising
The question then is, Which type of advertising is right for your business? That all depends on the amount of money involved and also what the goals of your business are.
If the aim is to promote a single product or a single piece of content, your best bet may be to use a Promoted Tweet, but that depends on how popular what you’re offering is with the Twitter users and how relevant it is, not to mention the quality of the copy in the tweet.
If you’re looking to gain more followers, then the Promoted Account may be right for your business, but the expense can only really be justified if you intend to maintain your business’s presence on Twitter over the long haul.
The optimum option may actually be a combination of the two, particularly if most of your user base comes courtesy of Twitter.
Is Advertising On Twitter A Good Bet?
While it’s estimated there are over 200 million accounts on Twitter, only about 20 million are “active”, i.e. access their accounts at least once per month. So, this begs the question, “How effective can advertising on Twitter be?”.
That remains to be seen, but Twitter is determined to become a major player in the advertising stakes and is putting plenty of its not insubstantial weight behind a push to match, and, eventually, overtake Google and Facebook when it comes to revenue from online advertising.
Its sales force is playing a leading role in the push, but even more important is its upcoming platform for self-service ad buying, similar to Google’s AdWords, making ad buying much more accessible and affordable on Twitter.
More and more internet business owners are advertising on social media platforms to great effect, and adding Twitter to your advertising portfolio may be a great move, provided your budget can handle the expense.
For more information and help advertising on Twitter, check with a UK internet marketing consultant, who will help you determine the best strategy for your business going forward.
Expand Your Backlinks Portfolio With These 5 Tools
Mar 11th
In order to get your internet business‘s web site ranked highly in the search engines, one of the most important things you need to do is build high-quality inbound links. This should already be an integral part of your search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy anyway, but, in view of Google’s recent algorithm changes, takes on an even more important role.
Building Links Takes Time And Effort
But, building links that are high-quality is time-consuming and hard work, despite the great rewards it can bring. And, then again, how do you define “quality” when it comes to links, and what makes them “better”?
There are several services and tools that can help in finding, selecting and managing the right links for your business. That’s not to say it won’t still be hard work, but the following list can help make the whole process less arduous.
1. Majestic SEO
With an index of more than 3 trillion URLs that’s continually being added to, this is a backlinks analysis tool that provides users with all the high level information needed to determine a link’s potential. Its index is now bigger than Yahoo’s, allowing it to provide even more extensive information than Yahoo. Most of the services are free with the rest available to premium subscribers.
2. Link Insight
This tool finds high-value links, which are then graded according to 4 categories: SpamSignal, TrustSignal, GeoSignal and SocialSignal. It has a couple of unique features, Domain Strength, which shows how well a site ranks in the search engines, and Domain Discount, which can be set to handle multiple links from the same site. Licence fees start at $399.
3. Ontolo
Free tools are available that help find and qualify prospective linking candidates, including Query Generator, URL Reviewer and Backlink Monitor. The commercial packages range in price from $297 to $1,247 depending on the number of campaigns and links, and offer far more than backlink analysis.
4. Raven
Among the marketing tools Raven offers is Link Manager, which allows users to add links along with associated data such as status, owner, type, etc., and allows them to receive updates whenever changes occur. Plans range from $19 to $249 per month depending on the number of links.
5. BuzzStream
BuzzStream’s toolset (Link Prospect Research, List Building, etc.) is designed to take the tedium out of the task of link building by making research and analysis much easier. Some tools are free, while the cost of others ranges from $29 to over $300 per month, with a free 14 day trial offered.
Link building is vital to the success of your internet business, so it might be wise to investigate these tools further.
For help evaluating all available link building tools, a UK internet business coach can supply you with all the help and advice you need to select the tool that’s right for your business needs.
