SEO tips
1.
Links are good. But not all links are created equal. A short series of tips on the ideal link follows…
Aqcuire links from pages that includes similar content to your page. This should include keyword rich text on the page that links to yours. For example: if you have a real estate website, it would be completely useless to get links from a gambling website…. there is evidence that it may even be detrimental to your ranking to get links from unrelated sites.
2.
Continuing our series on the ideal incoming link…
Not only should the content of the page include your keywords… but the title tags and the meta tags of the linking page should contain your keywords also.
3.
A quote from the great Matt Cutts: “Do not assume just because you see a backlink that it's carrying weight”.
Matt is pointing out a common SEO misconception… that all links are good links. This is in line with the short series we are doing on incoming links. Not all links are created equal. That is why we have been talking about the charachteristics of quality over quantity in regards to linking.
Whenever possible, try to acquire links from pages that have few outgoing links. Fewer outgoing links means more authority (and page rank) to your link.
4.
Continuing the series on what constitutes a quality link:
One of the most important qualities of a good link is anchor text that includes your keywords. What is anchor text you ask? It is simply the words that make up the link itself. Here is an example: These words are all considered anchor text because clicking on them will take you to a new page. A large amount of importance is given to the keywords that make up the anchor text. So, whenever possible, make sure your linking text includes your keywords.
To demonstrate the power of this… a while back, some jokers thought they would “Google Bomb” the whitehouse.gov website. In other words, they created thousands of links that included the anchor text “miserable failure”. And because of the weight given to anchor text, a search for miserable failure in google resulted in the whitehouse.gov website showing up first.
In future more advanced tips, we will talk about the OOP (over optimization penalty), which basically penalizes websites for trying to manipulate the search engine results. One of the ways sites get penalized is through an over use of the same exact keywords in anchor text… just like in the whitehouse.gov example. But don’t worry about it for now… we will discuss it later. Link away!
5.
Page rank is important, but not as much as it used to be. We will go into more detail on page rank in future posts.
Whenever possible, try to pay attention to the linking page’s Page Rank. High page rank pages means more page rank given to your page (and entire site).
6.
Ever pay attention to the links on your own site that link to you? Look at your site. you will probably notice many links that point back to other pages on your own site. Now, apply the rules from the other 5 tips that I just gave you on the ideal link. The beauty of this is that you have the ultimate control. You can adjust the title tags, the content, and the anchor text.
Many people ignore their own linking structure within their own website. But you know better… Choose a couple of pages that you want to optimize for, and link to them from other pages in your site. Pay special attention to the titles, and content of the linking page.
7.
When linking, always try to use text (anchor text), as opposed to pictures. This is very important as it gives the search engine something to reference. In effect, it is like telling the search engine that “this linking text is a preview into the page where the link is going”. Picture links aren’t bad… the search engine will still be able to follow it, but any added information you can give it is a good thing. If using a picture for a link can’t be avoided, use the alt tag to identify the picture itself. It won’t do much in the way of boosting your results… but it does count for something.
One last note: there are some circumstances where javascript and other web languages can interupt a link from being followed by the search engine. This is yet another reason why anchor text is preferrable when linking to your website.
8.
We will discuss some of the strategies for aquiring links at a later date… but one of the things you want to look out for is people telling you they will link to you, but adding the nofollow tag to the link.A This means that the search engine will not follow the link, and therefore, it won’t count towards your link popularity.A So, if someone trys to scam you in this way because they think you are a newb, call them on it.
To find out if one of your links has the nofollow attribute attached to it, click view in your browser, and then “view source”.
9.
Pay close attention to the quality of the pages linking to you. Try not to get links from spammy, repetetive pages. If the page has 400 links that all have the same anchor text, or if the content is obviously of a spam nature, stay away. If one keyword is repeated 300 times, or if the text is too small to even read, stay away. The Bottom line is that you don’t want links from crappy pages. Make sure there is good useful content. Finally, if the site is banned by Google*, STAY AWAY.
*An easy way to discover if a page is banned by Google is to look at the page rank… if the bar is gray, stay away.
10.
This will wrap up our series on how to identify a good link. I hope it was informative…
Don’t waste your time trying to get any link you can get your hands on. What constitutes a “bad” link? Just follow the last 9 tips I provided, and you should be fine.A Just always remember this when linking:A 1 good link is always better than 100 questionable links.
And if all else fails, just use the traditional method… acquire links that will attract human visitors. You don’t always have to look at links through the eyes of a search engine…
11.
Since we are on the topic of links… I thought I’d do a few tips on how to acquire good links. It’s one thing to know how to identify a good link, but quite another knowing how to get one. So here we go…
The ultimate “no-brainer” way to get links: directory submission. Here is a great article on some of the best directories to submit to. One directory submission service we’ve used is the Best Web Directories. I was skeptical at first, but they are very professional, and give you very detailed reporting on which directories have accepted/denied you. If you are just launching a site, I don’t recommend submitting to multiple directories right away. I’ve read that if 25%+ of your incoming links are from directories, Google may get suspicious as this looks very unnatural.
But, by all means, start with some of the bigger directories like dmoz, and BOTW. Then as you grow your link popularity, start adding directory links slowly.
12.
One more note on the directory submissions… I definitely don’t recommend submitting to the directories that require a reciprocal link back to their directory. First of all, reciprocal linking really isn’t the best practice anymore. Second, people rarely pay attention to how linking from their own sites effects ranking. If you have a bunch of links that point towards directories, and link farms, it says something in the eyes of the Search Engines about the quality of your site.
13.
Want to know one of the fastest ways to pick up links??Blogging. It has got to be the single fastest ways to acquire links. Write a popular story, and people will start linking to you like crazy. Don’t have a blog yet?Try Wordpress or Blogger. They are both insanely easy to set up and maintain. Blogging is in and of itself a HUGE topic, so I won’t get into too much detail, but just keep it in the back of your head.
If you are serious about starting a long term link popularity campaign, blogs cannot be overlooked.
14.
Authority links are extremely important. This means that you get links from pages that have alot of weight and importance. Examples would be DMOZ, Wikipedia, Yahoo Directory, etc. We’ve already covered getting listed in DMOZ, but you may be interested in how to get into wikipedia. There are a few tactics you may want to consider. (Keep in mind that Wikipedia has now added the nofollow tag to it’s links. But it is still getting indexed, and you never know when the tag may be lifted.)
Anyways, you could always try to add your own business or name, but chances are, unless you have some other claim to fame besides real estate, it will probably be removed. You’ll have a better chance of getting included if you write a great informative article about a topic, and link it in as a resource on a pre-existing article. Don’t include any advertisements or flashy graphics on the article page as the link will probably get rejected. (it may get rejected anyway), but that is probably your best shot of getting a link to your website from wikipedia.
15.
Try to steer away from reciprocal linking… It is soooo 2004. There is plenty of evidence to show that reciprocal links have been discounted in recent months by search engines, and may even get you penalized. In the eyes of the search engines, they want to see natural linking practices. This means a nice steady stream of links to your site from a wide variety of domains. Reciprocal links are a natural part of a site’s linking structure, but when the search engine starts to see that over 20% of your links are from sites that also linked back to you, it may look a little fishy. They might suspect that you are trying to manipulate the system… keep in mind, these aren’t actual people reviewing your websites, they are complicated algorithms that check for all of these factors.
Anyway… that was a long was of saying that you really shouldn’t waste your time with reciprocal linking scemes. They are wrong on so many levels:
Search Engines don’t like them
Most link exchange programs are useless because they link to you from poor pages, or completely irrelevant pages.
Most of the time, your link will be removed after a short period of time anyway
Many link exchange strategies include spamming websites to get a link.
There are hundreds of other ways to get quality incoming links without wasting your time exchanging them. (remember the old banner exchange programs? They are extinct. Link Exchange programs aren’t far behind)
16.
A popular term in the SEO industry is Link Baiting. It is the act of trying trying to get other websites to link to yours through various means. It could be anything from a popular story, a contest on your website, a controversial topic… anything that will encourage other people to link to you. It can often become viral in nature, creating a community buzz around a certain topic.
There are many creative ways to link bait… we will cover many of them in this series, but I wanted to familiarize you with the term.
One of my favorite link baiting tools is the “informational hook”. Write about something really interesting… what are you an expert in? Are you saavy to secrets you are willing to share in order to create some buzz and links to your site? Some of the most common are top 10 or top 50 lists. If you don’t have any ideas, borrow from some of your favorite blogs or news sites and redress it to make it interesting. Lets face it… there are alot of boring blogs out there.
We’ll talk about some other ideas in the near future.
17.
Teach yourself to use a very basic html editor like frontpage or dreamweaver. I’m embarrassed to admit it… but I use frontpage for alot of things. I just make the changes to alot of my websites and save them straight to the server. It works great for small changes.
When you know how to edit basic html… it will allow you to make about 90% of the onsite changes needed for basic SEO . Just learn how to use ctrl-F to find keywords, and get proficient in copying and pasting… You’ll be surprised how much you can do with some very basic skills. All the complicated stuff can be done with a front end editor… without having to worry about complicated languages.
Developing thoese very basic skills has helped me tremendously. When you know how to create a simple text webpage, text based links, titles, descriptions, and a few other small things… you basically have all the onsite skills you need to create pages that rank well in the search engines.
18.
An always controversial way to get links: Buy them. This is pretty straight forward… you decide what kinds of sites you want linking to you, and you go about purchasing the links.
Most of the sites that offer text links are very detailed in their offerings. Most listings will offer information like:
Description of the site (type of content on the site. Real Estate, cars, news, etc.)
Date the site was begun
Alexa Ranking
Page Rank (PR)
Whether it is a home page or sub page
Number of quality incoming links
How many links that will be accepted
What part of the page the link will be listed on and number of characters
Based on these factors, you can usually find links that would be a pretty good fit for you. The primary issue is probably price for most people. Some links can get very pricey depending on the quality.
The other issue has to do with Google’s position on link purchasing. For the sole purpose of raising search engine results it is definitely looked down upon by Google. There is actually very little evidence to show that Google has penalized sites for doing this (probably because it is hard to track down), but it is still a risk. Most of the companies I’ve found go through extraordinary lengths to protect client’s identities from the search engines, and thus avoiding penalization.
I haven’t personally purchased any links, although I’ve been sorely tempted by some PR9 links. But when it comes down to it, $1,000/month just isn’t worth it when you are only buying for the SEO benefit.
My advice: Only buy a text link ad if you feel strongly about the quality of the page it is coming from, AND you think it will attract human visitors as well as boost your backlink count.
Here are a couple of the most popular link buying websites:
Text Link Brokers – Text Link Ads – Link Adage – Live Customer
19.
Remember Banner Exchanges?? Maybe you are one of the few that still uses them… for that, I’m sorry. There are tons of other ways to drive traffic. Here are the reasons why banner exchanges are dead:
They draw traffic away from your site.
You never know what pages your banners will be placed on. (you want links from quality pages right?)
Many link exchange programs have been shown to cheat customers out of clicks.
Do you really want to have to place some one else’s ugly banners on your site?
There are a plethora of better ways to drive traffic to your site.
Banners are simply becoming very tacky. (I’ll review the click through rate of banners, and why banner advertising is also dead in a later post)
20.
Is your website visible to the search engines? This is an obvious question, but you’d be surprised at how many people I’ve seen make this mistake. It’s a shame… they hire someone, or spend alot of time themselves on a website only to get on the phone with me and discover that all their work was in vain.
Search engines can only read text. They can’t look at a picture and see the text that is on the picture, or even in a flash file.
Granted, your site might look really good with those spiffy flash graphics, but how much of your site is actually visible to the search engine. Content (text) is a huge factor in your search engine ranking… so try to use as little flash, javascript and photos as possible. There is nothing wrong with those things, but don’t let it replace the text on your site.
There is a very simply tool that will let you see how much of your site has visible text to the search engines:
Search Engine Spider Simulator
21.
Are you Meta descriptions compelling to your audience? Don’t forget that your descriptions aren’t written for the search engines, but for your potential customers.
Each page of your site should have a unique description
Include a call to action within the description
The description shouldn’t just describe the page, but compel searchers to click
A well written description will bring more qualified customers and get more clicks than other SEO results with no description, or poorly written ones.
If you do not include a description, the search engines will take text from the page to try to describe it for you. This is undesirable because it may be completely irrelevant to your page.
When possible, include your keywords in the description. This won’t help you with ranking, but it will make your listing in the SERP’s more relevant.
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