SERP Experts

I took a telephone call last week from a woman who was looking to hire a link builder for a new site in a very competitive niche. I’m under contract to a business in the same industry so I passed but we had a nice chat before I sent her along with my standard list of link building referrals.

Several days went by and I heard from her again, this time in a state of panic. Seems everyone she contacted was unavailable, and she was convinced it was because her industry was a competitive one. Could I please give her an honest assessment of her website and tell her if that was indeed the case?

Well, no. I feel for her situation but in this particular field I’m under contract to a competitor and as a result, obligated to focus only on them. But I did refer her to a usability specialist and suggested her situation is probably more a result of link builders being taken rather than uninterested.

Competitive industries tend to be established industries so it stands to reason they have linking staffs in place and link builders tied up. If that’s the case, what can new sites in a competitive niche do to attract links? Read the rest of this entry »

It’s tempting to outsource link development, and there are some amazing link developers out there. Problem is, most are in high-demand and booked for months ahead of time, and those with regular clients rarely take on new work. That is one good enough reason to take it in-house.

With that in mind, link development can easily be integrated into existing marketing plans, or new marketing strategies can be designed with link building as one of the objectives. It’s all a matter of educating the staff on links and how they influence rankings.

What are some key advantages to in-house link development?
Read the rest of this entry »

Before you write one line of code:

• Do keyword research to determine what keywords you want to target.

While constructing your website you should do the following:

• Use markup to indicate the content of your site
  • Optimize your <title> tags on each page to contain 1 - 3 keywords
  • Create unique Meta Tags for each page
  • Use header tags appropriately (H1 > H2 > H3)
  • Use <b> and <i> tags if appropriate
• Optimize your URLs
  • Use Search Engine Friendly URLs
  • Use keywords in your domain (http://www.keyword1.com/)
  • Use keywords in your URL (http://www.example.com/keyword2/keyword3.html)
  • Use dashes or underscores to separate words in your URLs (keyword2-keyword3.html)
• Optimize your content
  • Use keywords liberally yet appropriately throughout each page
  • Have unique content
  • Have quality content
• Use search engine friendly design
  • Create a human sitemap
  • Do not use inaccessible site navigation (JavaScript or Flash menus)
  • Minimize outbound links
  • Kept your pages under 100K in size
• Design the navigational structure of the site to channel PR to main pages (especially the homepage)
• Create a page that encourages webmasters to link to your site
  • Provide them the relevant HTML to create their link to you (make sure the anchor text contains keywords)
  • Provide them with any images you may want them to use (although text links are better)
• Make sure your website is complete before launching it

Immediately after launching your site you should do the following:

• Create Webmaster Accounts
  • Google Webmaster Tools
  • Yahoo! Site Explorer
• Submit your site to all major search engines
  • Google (Use a Google SiteMap)
  • Yahoo (Use the page list option)
  • MSN
  • Ask (Finds your site via incoming links)
• Create an XML sitemap
• Submit your site to all free directories
  • DMOZ (also powers Google Directory)
  • JoeAnt
• Submit your site to relevant directories
  • Find more at ISEDB
• Begin a link building campaign (attempting to get keywords in the link anchor text)
  • Put a link to your website in your forum signatures (hint hint)
  • Reply to relevant blog posts (Don’t spam please)

If you will pay to promote your website:

• Submit your site to pay directories
  • Yahoo
  • GoGuides

Finally, as part of an ongoing strategy:

• Continually update your website with quality, unique content
• Continually seek free links preferably from sites in your genre

Do NOT do the following:

• Make an all Flash website (without an HTML alternative)
• Use JavaScript or Flash for navigation
• Spam other websites for incoming links
• Launch your site before it is done
• Use duplicate content
  • Do not point several domains to one site without using a 301 redirect
  • Do not make a site of duplicated content from other websites
• Use markup inappropriately
  • Style <H>eader tags to look like regular text
  • Hide content using ‘display: hidden’ (for the sake of hiding text)
• Use other “black hat” techniques (unless you accept the risk - Banning)
  • Doorway/Landing pages
  • Cloaking
  • Hidden text

Additional Tips:

• Usable and accessible sites tend to be search engine friendly by their very nature
• Be patient! High rankings don’t happen overnight
• Don’t obsess with any one search engine. They are all worth your attention.

On page optimization refers to the SEO tactics used in your HTML code. When utilized properly, on page optimization using specific keywords can lead to high search engine rankings and website success.
Check it out…

Critical Keyword Choice: the keywords you choose are the very foundation on which your site rankings stand. You need keywords that are relevant and specific for your page. General keywords will get make your page one of many in a huge search. You need more specific, less general key words to get your page at the top of search list.
For instance, if you have a website for your pancake house in Toledo, the keyword “pancakes” will pull you up on a search with huge results. A better keyword choice would be “pancake house Toledo”

Meta tag Appearance: your keywords should show up at least once in the meta tags of your HTML code. Let’s try it for your pancake business.

Your meta tag should look like this…

<meta name = ‘description’ content = ‘Sally’s Pancake House serves breakfast in Toledo, Ohio…’/>

Title: Also include your keywords in the title of your web page, such as: <title> Sally’s Pancake House – Pancake House Toledo </title>
Headings: Apply your key words to your heading <h1> tag on the specific page.

Bold Effects: placing your keywords in bold or italicized text works to increase the optimization of your page. Do not, however, go overboard with this tactic. If you bold and/or italicize every keyword appearance on your page, the search engine spiders might tag your page for index removal. Bolding or italicizing keywords works only when done gracefully, two or three times throughout the text.

Integrate your keywords in the content of your page at least once. More specifically, include them in paragraph <p> tags.

Place Keywords in Alt tags of images of your HTML file as an additional keyword placement.

Include keywords in domain name: place your keywords in the domain name as an additional way to improve your on page optimization.

Fight Fairly: a point to hit home is that you should stay away from on page optimization methods that might get you black listed by the search engines. Use keywords appropriately, naturally, and most importantly, in moderation!

• The Dual Roles of Navigation: Navigation needs to be user friendly and search engine friendly. If you want a user to pay attention to an offer you have to link to it with a call to action in the content area of the page. If you want search engines to pay attention to a page you have to link to it on important pages and/or from many pages. In general it is also better usability and better for your rankings to use descriptive (or keyword rich) text links over image links for your primary navigation, and in most in content links on your site.
• Navigation Should Parallel Keyword Strategy: Your primary site navigation should be aligned with keyword categories, structured in related groups that capture keywords along the entire purchase cycle. If you have navigation that is not aligned with your keywords (like date based archives or an about page) you can use nofollow on it to prevent passing link equity through that portion of your site. You may also want to demote sections of your site that convert exceptionally poor relative to the better performing options.
• Examples of Channeling Link Equity: Some websites, such as Target.com, show Google more navigation than they show end users to promote seasonally hot items. Other sites, like Chocolate.com, chose to use nofollow on unimportant internal links to de-emphasize unimportant options. You can view the nofollowed links on Chocolate.com by viewing their site with SEO for Firefox turned on. In some cases it also makes sense to use nofollow on user generated content to lessen the incentive for driveby spamming.
• Clean & Clear Structure: If you author many pages about the same topic it is important to link to the most important articles in order to emphasize them, and use breadcrumb navigation to help structure the site and show what pages are most important.
• Duplicate content: Google likes webmasters to believe that Google has duplicate content figured out, but if they have multiple similar pages indexed you are splitting your PageRank and they may rank the wrong version. Make sure you do not place the same (or exceptionally similar) content on multiple pages. Stuntdubl has a good list of resources for dealing with duplicate content.
• Subdomains: If you have logical breaks in your content you may want to use subdomains to create smaller focused mini sites. If you have a strong brand you can get a bit more aggressive with subdomains, like eBay is.
• More: Here are some more internal linking tips from a prior post on the topic.