Want More Traffic And More Incoming Links…

Posted on 29. Sep, 2008 by Boyd Norwood in Blogging, Search Engine Optimization

Try blogging! Over the past few weeks I have watched a lot of SEO videos and read a lot about using blogging as an search engine optimization tool. This may be old news for some of you, but for most of you, especially beginners, this is going to be very new and enlightening.

In my opinion, blogs serve three purposes.

1- To voice your opinions and ideas about the current industry that you are blogging about. In our case it is about SEO and internet marketing principles and strategies that we have developed, tested, and proven to work.

2- To increase the amount of traffic coming to your website. You see, the search engines love blogs! I would say probably even more so than normal HTML websites. Blogs, whether they are run by Word Press, Blogger, or any other blogging software make it easy for people like you and me to add new and fresh content to our sites without having to hard code anything. I’ll tell you what, Google loves websites or blogs that have new content and they come back to your site frequently to see what’s new. Because blogs are so easy to post to, you can save time and add new content all of the time.

As the search engines see new content and new internal links they will begin to rank your posts in their results. Blogs can generally get ranked pretty high with relatively little work in niche markets and with long tail keywords that you might not be focused on targeting at the moment. If you are using Word Press as your blogging software, you can use plug-ins like the Related Posts plug-in to supercharge your internal linking structure and get ranked even faster and get even more traffic.

3- For SEO value. It is no secret to anyone marketing on the internet that incoming links fuel search engine optimization and make or break your organic search rankings. It is vital that when adding new content, like blog posts, to link to other blog posts within your blog or related pages on your website. Yeah, it’s great to have a sweet internal linking structure down in your footer or side bar, but it has been proven that links within the body of your text have more value than those in other areas of your website.

Links are not the only reason why blogging helps your SEO efforts. It has also been proven that sites with over 100 pages do better in the search engines. It all goes back to the idea that you need to add new content to your website or blog regularly. The experts in the SEO industry suggest that you are adding content to your website every single day. This is why blogging is so great for your SEO efforts.

If you don’t have a company or site blog, you need to get one. Word Press blogging software is free and relatively easy to set up on your domain. If you don’t have the ability to set up a blog attached to your website, get a free blogger account. Anything is better than nothing! Take action today and work hard to add content every day! It will pay off.

SEO-flawed WordPress Themes – Back to Reality

Posted on 25. Sep, 2008 by Boyd Norwood in Search Engine Optimization

Oops! I’ve done it again! I’ve fallen victim to the call of new glossy WordPress themes. My attention has been easily drawn. In that seduction I have eaten from the table of nutritionless, SEO-flawed themes and I feel empty.

It’s so funny to me how often SEO and Design are performed in vacuums, separate from one another.  A while back ioVentures adopted many of the principles that Coutney Tuttle talks about in his article that details 6 SEO Problems Common In WordPress Themes. I had become comfortable and forgot that this knowledge is not so common place, especially not among WordPress Theme creators, among website designers.

While getting top rankings is not completely the responsibility of he who makes the website (as link development is a critically important factor in ranking), he IS responsible for creating a strong foundation for those who will later do search engine marketing to build from.

Truly valuable is the designer that knows how to create an SEO friendly website.

Acquiring Blogroll Links

Posted on 30. Jul, 2008 by Boyd Norwood in RSS, Search Engine Optimization

Blogs have proven to be a very effective way to spread information about your site and increase traffic.  Many people argue that blogs have a tendency to rank faster than normal websites.  Because of this and other reasons, it can be very beneficial to get your site listed in people’s blogrolls.  There are a few secrets I have learned that have helped me to get my site on many of these. 

The first thing you need to do is find blogs that are relevant to the content on your site.  Google is going to give your link much more authority if the two sites are similar.  People are also going to be very hesitant to include your link if it is on a different subject. 

Finding Related Blogrolls

A few quick methods to find relevant blogs are: go to technorati.com and do a few searches for industry specific phrases; do a google search like "industry phrase inurl:blog" (without the quotes); and once you’ve found one industry specific blog, check out all the blogs currently listed in their blogroll.  Those links will most likely be other industry related blogs.

Create A Bargaining Chip

Once you have located several related blogs, you need to think of something you have that the other person would want.  Most people are much more inclined to give you a link when you can give them something of value in return.  For me, Hubpages has proven to be a great outlet for these purposes.  It is a free website that gives you the chance to write on any subject.  If you keep a high enough hubscore, it provides a place to have followed links. Being able to add someone’s blog as one of these followed links is a perfect bargaining tool for getting your site on someone’s blogroll.

Contacting the Blog Owners

After you have found your potential blogroll and established your trading tool, it is time to move on to the next step.  Writing a generic email that is going to be sent to several different blogs, can be tricky.  You need to make people think the e-mail is personal and is not being sent as a mass message.  I like to include a few personal things in my life.  I also like to make comments about specific issues in our industry.  Chances are, someone has made a post or commented about one of these issues.

Do Your Part

Lastly, when people add you to their blogroll, make sure you hold up your part of the agreement and link to them where you said you would. Hopefully these little tips will help you improve your Google rankings and improve traffic to your site.

4 Ways to Get Links Today

Posted on 28. Jul, 2008 by Rachel Perry in Search Engine Optimization

Links are key to a good SEO campaign. It can be difficult to know where to start though because there are so many different avenues to explore. Linking increases the power and influence of your site faster then any other tactic in SEO, so its importance is undescribable. Here are some quick ways to immediately start your linking campaign. These tactics aren’t an all inclusive list and they are only the beginning of your strategy but they will help.

Create A Squidoo Lens- With Squidoo you are creating an outside site that is sending your site an incoming link. Therefore the more time you take to create a lens that has quality and good volume content the more power your Squidoo lens will carry, meaning the more power your incoming link will have. Now you can take 15 mins and whip up a lens with a few paragraphs containing a link or two to your site. However that incoming link won’t carry as much power as if you created a lens that actually gets traffic. Don’t go overboard and spend more than an hour, but take the extra time to create a quality, topically relevant lens which in turn creates you a quality link.

Submit to the D-List- The D-List is a list of blogs that have Do-Follow link value in their comments, meaning when you comment your name can become a link to your site. Courtney Tuttle offers a list of do-follow blogs, there is a list of links to these blogs there so it is easy to click down the list and make comments. This is a valuable resource but must be used with caution, don’t spam through comments. Go in, genuinely read their posts. Then use the keyword you are trying to rank for as your name and put your sites URL in the website box. Make a comment that adds to the post. This will not only ensure that your link is left in their comment section (instead of removed as spam) but it will also build a positive reputation around your keyword link.

Write an Article- With an article, you are writing the content that will go on another site, meaning it will be relevant content that will point back to your site. Write an article on one of the keywords you are trying to rank for. Make it completely relevant and interesting and then link one or two of those keywords to pages on your site. Then submit the article to a variety of article directories.

Submit to Unspun- Unspun is a site where users can create their own ‘Top 10’ lists and then vote on which item in the list is #1. The lists vary from topics like the” Best Skin Care Products” to “Hardest Disability to Overcome” so you are more than likely to find a list that fits your topic. The 2 coolest parts about unSpun are one; if you don’t find a list that fits your topic then you can create one. And two, you can add your link under the item on the list that fits your topic. On the actual list page the link is no follow but if you click on the item in the list it will take you to a page where your link has followed value. It can take some time for this page to be seen by Google but every link counts so it is worth the 5-10 mins it takes to add your URL.

Link building isn’t impossible, it can just be difficult to know where to start or where to try next. These 4 ideas are just starting blocks but they can help get your site ranked, indexed and become more appealing for future link trades.