I’m currently doing some research into the use of Blog Directories as a means to marketing your blog. Perhaps the best resource I have found online so far is Joost de Valk’s blog on Wordpress SEO. Very well written and an incredibly content-rich resource. I’ll post more later when I have a chance to organize my research.
Those “in the know” about search engines are far too familiar with the phrase “Content is King”. Search Engines tend favor large, dynamic sites to smaller, static ones. This is primarily because larger, dynamic sites are more likely to contain fresh information of value to the search engine’s audience.
Over the years, we have worked with some of the world’s largest online media companies such as Forbes.com and CNET Networks who are widely considered leading sources of information within their respective subject matters. Both entities have achieved “authority” status with the search engines and thus are typically “crawled” deeper and more often than smaller sites with similar information. Not surprisingly, they also find it much easier than the average Joe to rank for more competitive search terms.
If you think about it, it makes perfect sense for Google to want to be there when Forbes breaks a story on say, a trading scandal… or when CNET breaks a story on the first review of the latest, soon to be released tech gadget.
Maintenance isn’t just a term used by SEO agencies to create a recurring revenue stream. Maintenance in the SEO world can and should include services such as the process of keeping new inbound links increasing, the addition of fresh content, and making onsite adjustments just to name a few of the key maintenance services a firm should be suggesting to their clients. As a firm’s knowledge about search matures and changes there is always a need to go back and review what has worked, what is working, and what new potential opportunities might exist in the SEO channel for any given client.
When most customers start down the SEO path, with an agency, they don’t have the search engine rankings they desire so they spend time admiring and often studying what their competitors are doing. Months later when firms, like this one, have helped them achieve their rankings they forget that other firms with other clients are just waiting in the wings to knock them off their rankings pedestal.
When writing content for Search Engines it is important to consider the selection and placement of keywords to ensure that the search engines categorize your web pages correctly and display them prominently for related search queries.
Search Engine Basics:
The relevancy algorithms that determine search engine rankings consider two types of factors in deciding who ranks where; “on page” and “off page” factors. On page factors consider the placement of Keywords within the HTML of your pages including Title Tags, Keywords in Document Text, Meta Keywords, Meta Descriptions, Header tags, etc. The two most heavily weighted “on page” factors include title tags and visible document text. Off page factors are related to quantity and quality of the web pages that link to your site from external sources. For the purpose of this document, we will focus on “on page” factors.
I’m a pretty analytical guy. In fact, if I could break a good sweat using MSExcel, it would likely replace my treadmill. I like to measure my measurements just before and after I measure things to make sure my measurements are accurately measured. Sad I know… but true nonetheless.
Let’s talk keyword rankings for a minute, shall we? There are plenty of software applications on the Internet that can scrape the engines and tell you where you rank for as many keywords you would like (my personal favorite is IBP by Axandra). For obvious reasons, the engines frown on this. In case it’s not obvious, it’s because it skews their search statistics and eats up unnecessary bandwidth. I’m sure there are other reasons, but let’s leave it at that.
Well… Rand’s done it again. Rand Fishkin over at SEOMoz recently started a new series of blog posts called “Headsmacking Tips” for Link Building. Great idea for a thread and one I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on. In his first post, Rand covers link requests in order confirmation emails.
The concept is a simple one. Whenever someone places an order on your site, ask them to link to you if they own a website. Pretty awesome idea, leveraging your customer base to build links, but one that seo’s don’t consider all that often. At the bottom of your order confirmation page and/or within your order confirmation email, politely ask your customer to link to you if possible.
So you’ve conquered your website and implemented best practices in search engine optimization for each of your existing web pages. Congratulations, but what’s next? Well, you should certainly be link building… but what else should you be doing? Well, you should start with the assumption that you (or your SEO firm) hasn’t come close to realizing your web site’s full organic search engine potential.
I often tell clients that proper on-page optimization should be an ongoing process. We’ll begin with that end in mind, but in this series of posts - yes, there will be others - we’ll start with the beginning stages of the on-page search engine optimization process and how you can leverage analytics to get your SEO project started off on solid footing.
A colleague and friend of mine, Roderick Ioerger, recently wrote a post on MarketingPilgrim.com regarding an article he read that was written by Andy Beard and a video created by Stomper Net by Andy Jenkins regarding indented search engine listings. (There… I got all the appropriate credits out of the way.)
Anyway, the basic premise is that there’s actually a pretty simple process to achieve indented listings… 2 fer 1 style! When you achieve an indented listing, it will roughly double your visitor counts from the search term. Assuming the indented listing is on the first page… you’ll also be blocking out one of your competitors. Not a bad deal in exchange for a little elbow grease.
In my last post, I discussed the different types of link building methods that can be utilized. In this post, I want to look further at what factors determine the value of a link. Every link has a different value and you need to understand this if you want to make educated decisions on how you should invest your time and money. Since nobody has complete insight into the inner workings of Google and their algorithm, except people at Google of course, many of the factors that effect the value of a link are not completely agreed upon by experts in the industry. Although there are certain factors that everyone seems to agree on.
The most commonly agreed upon factors are Alexa ranking, Robots.txt excluded page, domain authority (in quality of backlinks), page relevance and the number of links. The most controversial factors are TLD, type of links, domain authority (in PageRank), domain authority (in rankings on irrelevant keywords) and target page location. The most important factors are Robots.txt excluded page, Anchor Text, link is on penalized page, page authority (inbound links), domain authority (in quality of backlinks), amount of outbound links on a page, total amount of links on a page, age of domain, relevant authority (in rankings on relevant keywords) and Javascript link.
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Link Building is essential for achieving top rankings in a competitive space. Your website can be perfectly optimized for the search engines but if you don’t have links that have been acquired naturally or through manual efforts your website will never rank as high as you want it to. I will assume you know what a backlink to your website is and instead describe some methods you can utilize to acquire links as well as the effectiveness of each and the value of the link that can be acquired.
Having a website write about your products or services and link to your website provides the most effective link to increase your rankings. The common method of acquiring a link of this nature is through press release distribution. Unfortunately, this is also the most difficult link to acquire because your product or service needs to be news worthy in order to be written about on a website that is actually worth getting a link from. You also may need to have some that is dedicated to PR at your firm in order to make sure your press release is picked up by the major publishers of the Internet. There are press release distribution services out there but there is nothing like having someone dedicated to this task either in-house or out-sourced from an agency.