A successful search engine optimisation strategy needs to incorporate an effective link-building campaign. Within this, there are many advantages to directory submissions, the main one being that they produce one-way links to your site. They can also produce some visits to your site, but this isn’t the primary reason for submitting your site to the directories.

Specialised business directories are particularly significant, as when implemented into the correct categories, the links that they provide are high in relevancy, which is what Google likes as part of its ranking criteria. Relevant links from other high profile directories such as DMOZ can improve a site’s ranking because it is recognised as a reputable source which is well connected, although it remains very difficult to get a listing here!

The following are some tips to maximise the potential of a link-building campaign:

• Decide which directories to submit to before the process begins. There are lists available that point you in the right direction, but like the directories themselves, these need to be selected carefully to ensure relevancy and successful results from submissions.
• Keep organised. This includes making a detailed list of all the directories that have been submitted to. This prevents duplication and time wasting. The cost and login details of each directory can be recorded for future reference, as well as the time taken to submit to them and the results produced. Through this record keeping, a database of good directories can be compiled over time.
• Select the correct categories for the listings. Relevancy is key, so ensure that the link to your site is only placed in the most relevant category. This is not only beneficial for the results, but also to ensure that the directory’s webmaster doesn’t fast-track your submission to the bin, if it’s carelessly submitted. The hierarchy of the category is also important, as those nearer the top level of the site produce the greater link value back to your site.
• Choose the correct title for your submission. This is important because it will become the link back to your site and so including relevant keywords within it will produce the best results. This title should then be varied between directories, so that search engines don’t penalise the links for being too repetitive.
• Ensure the description is keyword relevant. Although the title is more important than the description, it’s also important to include relevant keywords within it, as they help to determine the relevance of the link. The description should also not be too repetitive across directories, so short and long variations should be included. Excessive use of punctuation, capitalisation or sales pitches should be avoided as this can lead to the rejection of your submission.
• Finally, perform the directory submissions over random periods of time. This shows search engines that the link building is natural and not artificially created (which can result in abnormally large increases in the amount of links to a site and set off virtual alarm bells within the search engines). The more natural, relevant and well placed the links are submitted within the well respected directories, the better the results will be.

If you’d like your website’s rankings to benefit from a professional link-building campaign, please contact us now for more information.

Link building is an essential component of any SEO campaign and can often make a real difference to the ranking positions that a website can achieve. Increasing the inbound links to a website is an on-going process that needs to be implemented to support and improve rankings, as well as increase brand awareness and visitor traffic from other online sources.

A good link building strategy helps to increase the number of links to a website and, if done correctly, can help to drive increased visitor traffic from search (and in particular, Google) due to improved ranking positions, and from other relevant websites which potential customers might be visiting.

Link building campaigns are rarely complex or technical – you just need to have a clear plan to follow and to devote some time to the research, submission and administration of the links. There is no “quick fix” to building successful links and it often requires a long term strategy to gradually develop links over time. In fact, if you attract too many links to your website too quickly, it can alert the search engines to possible unusual activity and potential ranking penalties.

There are several core stages to a successful link building campaign, as follows:

* Link audit: you need to see where you currently have links on other websites and assess how big a task your link building campaign might need to be. You should have your website listed on Google’s Webmaster Tools to see how many inbound links are recognised by Google, but you can also review these through Yahoo and Bing as well.

* Competitor link research: you should also assess the number of inbound links for your main competitors, which means those websites ranking above your for your chosen search terms. You can’t see the full picture of links through Google, but researching Yahoo and Bing can provide more information and a benchmark to aim for.

* Identifying link sites: the above research will help identify some potential sites where your link should also appear, plus there are ways to identify other sites where your link should appear – ideally alongside content that’s relevant to your market and can include sites like online directories, social networking sites, article and press release sites, plus video sites. Also don’t forget customer sites where you might be able to add or exchange a link.

* Submitting links: once you’ve identified the websites to use, you need to go through the submission process and see if you can get a free link, or whether it requires a reciprocal link or payment. In the latter two cases you need to assess the relative value to your site, but reciprocal links in particular can still be effective.

* Reviewing links: The administration of a link building programme can be extensive and requires regular reviews, possible resubmissions, further research and assessment of the link results being achieved. You should always be on the lookout for new sites where links could be added, as long as these sites are good quality and relevant to your business.

Link building work should be allocated at least 2-3 hours a month and maybe more, depending on the scale of the task. And it has to be ongoing, to help improve your website’s ranking potential as well as to protect your existing rankings against competitor activity.

If you’d like more information about how the Web Marketing Workshop can help your business through an effective link building campaign, please contact us now.

The prominent US retailer, JC Penney received a large amount of unwelcome publicity last month following press coverage about how the store’s website came to dominate many searches for product items that they sell, even though they might not be the ‘best fit’ for the searcher. This led to the accusation of the store utilising “black hat” SEO techniques and a subsequent reduction in search rankings on Google.

“Black hat” optimisation is the term given to the range of techniques that could be described as ‘spamming’ or methods that contravene Google’s standards when targeting search engine rankings. These techniques were described as “the most ambitious attempt to game Google’s search results that I have ever seen” by an independent online marketing consultant who investigated the JC Penny issue.

JC Penney’s SEO agency were accused of using a “link farm” to give the company a benefit from thousands of links placed on hundreds of sites scattered around the web, all of which lead directly to JCPenney.com. A “link farm” is a website or combination of websites containing many hyperlinks, especially designed to increase the index ranking of other websites to search engines and contravene Google’s guidelines on ethical SEO practices.

Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed that the “link farm” techniques being used violated Google’s guidelines and that “corrective action” was being taken. He stated that even as recently as last November, Google had been aware of JC Penney’s violations of its guidelines but they hadn’t followed up to ensure this was no longer happening.

A JC Penney spokeswoman is quoted as saying: “JC Penney did not authorize, and we were not involved with or aware of, the posting of the links, as it is against our natural search policies. We are working to have the links taken down.” They have also fired their search engine consulting firm, SearchDex.

This is yet another high profile case of a major company falling foul of unscrupulous SEO techniques, which although might have gained them some advantage in the short-term, have proven to be a bad investment as a long-term search engine ranking solution.

If you’d like to know more about this story, or how your website can benefit from legitimate SEO practices, please contact us for details.

Improving the search engine optimisation (SEO) of a website to achieve high ranking positions involves a wide range of factors, both on and off the site. The ‘off site’ factors largely revolve around links into a domain, and this has been a core factor of Google’s success since this search engine first launched over 10 years ago. It is therefore an essential element that websites can’t ignore but one that can often be hard to achieve.

Although website marketers can create a highly optimised website through a combination of factors such as page content, title tags and design, it can still be difficult to achieve good ranking positions on Google if there are few links directed at the site. This remains an important difference in Google’s search results and it will usually – but not always – follow that the better the ‘link popularity’ of a website, the better chance it will have of ranking well for its target search terms.

Link building should therefore be a core part of a search engine marketing strategy and one that needs to be developed as an ongoing strategy through many different routes. It often needs to be creative and it can be time-consuming, but the rewards in terms of higher ranking positions and more visitor traffic to a website can be immense.

A recent? article? on the SEOmoz.org website in the US listed what are considered to be the most important SEO factors, as voted by over 70 practitioners in the field. A section on link development listed the following top 10 factors that are considered to be vital in achieving good ranking value from links, in descending order of importance:

1. Keyword-Focused Anchor Text from External Links? – which means that links gained from other sites should use relevant keywords in the text link that relate to the content of the target page (such as? Google AdWords training)
2. External Link Popularity? – this reflects the overall quantity and ‘quality’ of external links into a website. Google places a strong emphasis on this issue and the quality factors are covered by some of the other points listed here.
3. Diversity of Link Sources? – ideally there should be a large number of links coming from many unique root domains
4. Page-Specific ‘TrustRank’? – this indicates that a page has attracted links into it from ‘trusted’ sources, such as government (.gov) or educational (.edu) websites
5. Iterative Algorithm-Based, Global Link Popularity? – this is essentially Google’s PageRank calculation, a complex mathematical formula based on the exchange of hyperlinks around the web
6. Topic-Specificity / Focus of External Link Sources? – ideally external links to a web page should come from topically relevant pages or websites that are relevant to the target page
7. Keyword-Focused Anchor Text from Internal Links? – internal links within a website are also important, particularly within body content
8. Location in Information Architecture of the Site? – a link from the Home Page of an external site can be much more important than one from a directory level page deep within the site
9. Internal Link Popularity? – similar to item 7 above, the number and ‘quality’ of internal links within a site can be important, not just to the Home Page but to other core pages of the site
10. Quantity & Quality of ‘Nofollow’ Links to the Page? – the ‘nofollow’ command within HTML code can reduce the value of inbound links (such as from blogs) but may still have a small impact on the overall link popularity of a site.

So, as can be seen from this list, there are a number of considerations when developing the link popularity of a website, such as having relevant keywords in the text of external links to a website’s page on that topic being a key factor. The quality and diversity of the links, as well as the level of trust and the PageRank of the sites upon which they are placed are also important factors.

If you would like to know more about developing a link building strategy and how the Web Marketing Workshop can help, please contact us now.

One of the features that is often overlooked within the Google Analytics service is the ‘Site Overlay’ option. This can visually display the percentage of visitors who click upon standard links that are embedded on a particular page of a website and can be a valuable source of information on the ways users are actually navigating through the site.

For example, one way that Site Overlay can be used is to visually show what percentage of visitors clicked through to the main pages linked from the website’s Home Page, or within the main navigation menu. This is a great benefit to website owners as it gives them a clear depiction of which page most of the visitors go to from the initial home page, or the primary landing pages used in a search advertising campaign. Therefore it’s instantly possible to see the most popular paths that visitors follow and the most visited pages. By hovering the mouse over the percentage box in the Site Overlay, another box appears that displays the actual number of clicks to that page and the number of conversions to a particular goal on that page.

If the link is clicked upon, the Site Overlay takes you to that next page and then displays the information according to the links from that page. It’s therefore possible to see which are the best performing links or pages in terms of click density and what the most popular route to a particular goal is, without necessarily having to set up small qualitative research groups. This information can enhance a website’s optimisation by allowing site marketers to experiment with different landing pages, layout, content and navigation routes, leading to a much more effective streamlining of visitors to converting customers.

The Site Overlay tool does have some restricted functionality, however. Currently the results are only displayed on static (as opposed to dynamic) pages that have unique links to content located elsewhere on the website. So if a page has numerous links pointing to another page, the total of clicks for all those links will be displayed in each of those site overlay boxes. Other limitations include the inability to function within frames, with URL redirects, or with Javascript or subdomain links so that in these cases the Site Overlay stats are not displayed.

Overall though, the Site Overlay is a very useful addition to a website’s analytics toolbox, and should be reviewed at least monthly. If you’d like to know more about how Google Analytics could be used to enhance your website’s performance, please contact us.

Google’s Local Business Listings are now regularly shown within the main search results if a user searches for a local business, alongside a small map. In addition, viewing results on Google Maps provides more information and additional advertising options through Google AdWords, all of which should be used by a localised business to target their potential customer base. Google is now adding new features to this service to help advertisers gain more local business.

We first covered the value of Google’s local business listings and their increasing prominence in Google’s ‘universal search results’ back in our June 2007 newsletter. The local business listings service has developed further since then and remains an important area for companies who are targeting a localised market to gain a prominent listing. Achieving a high ranking in the 10 businesses listed in Google’s main results can be difficult, particularly in a competitive market, but if searchers click through to the more detailed business listings, or search directly within Google Maps, there are additional ways to achieve visibility and to attract searchers to your website.

One of the main ways to achieve good visibility is through the use of a local business advert, which is created as part of a Google AdWords campaign. This allows advertisers to create a specific advert to appear on Google Maps searches, with a small icon, address and contact details. In addition, Google has now announced some additional new features for these adverts to help companies attract prospective customers faster and to gauge how well their adverts are performing.

The first addition is that Google’s local business ads will now feature new interactive links within the panel that is displayed for the business. These panels are designed to provide more information for users and to connect them to the business quicker with a link to their website. Now users will be able to see more information from this panel and to take additional actions, such as a “Get Directions” option, a link to “Street View”, and “Save to My Maps” which allows users to personalise their search results.

In addition, Google AdWords will also be adding a new interaction report for local business ads in the near future. This report will help advertisers to assess the activity through the local business ads and their return on investment, with such information as how many users opened the info window and clicked on each of the new interactive links. Google says that Maps users are often looking for different information than Search users so that these new interactive links and the reports should help customers connect with a business faster as well as help the advertiser understand how to better target Maps users versus Search users.

If your business could be benefitting more from a Local Business Listing on Google, contact us now for more information on this feature and we’ll be pleased to help. We can create optimised listings and Local Business Adverts to help raise your profile and improve your visibility to your target market.

The need to attract links into a website from other third-party sites is undisputed as this can be one of the most significant factors in determining ranking position – particularly on Google – but it can also be the most challenging. There are many ways that this can be achieved, but one of the most effective is through the ‘natural’ attraction of links by adding unique content to your website – so called ‘link bait’. (more…)

For some years now Google and the other main search engines have recognised the ‘nofollow’ tag as an attribute for hyperlinks between web pages and this is now commonly being used by blogs and other websites that attract user comments. It’s therefore an important consideration for link building campaigns and something that needs to be checked within the source code of any page that offers potential links.

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Links are an essential but often overlooked factor when it comes to online marketing.

Whether your website is just starting out, or even if it has some maturity, it’s well worth regularly reviewing the state of your link health. Having a strong profile of quality, relevant inbound links will do wonders for your visibility, helping you to rank well in search engine results as well as driving traffic directly to your site.

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At the end of 2006, the Open Directory (DMOZ) suffered a major server crash which, combined with insufficient backup data, resulted in new submissions being suspended for at least 6 weeks. The site is now back functioning again but questions are being raised about the future of this directory.

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