Subscribe in a ReaderArchive for December, 2008
Hey, let’s face it – you can have the best content in the world and you can still be buried so deep in the search results that you might as well not even exist. SEO companies know that the most important factor in getting a site up in rankings is having good inbound links to the content you have on the website. Amazingly getting good links (emphasis on the good) is one of the trickiest parts of SEO and one which it seems we all are constantly trying to master.
Before we start talking about the how, let’s talk a little bit about what constitutes a good inbound link. A good inbound link comes from:
- A site that in itself is highly ranked by the search engines (i.e., Google).
- A site that does not use non-followed links (after all, it won’t do you much good if the search engines are ignoring the link).
- Sites that feature quality content that is related to your articles or pages.
Sounds simple, right? Unfortunately something as simple as a link can take up a lot of your time.
First, make sure your content is getting out to the social media sites. You know the ones we are talking about: Digg, Reddit, StumbledUpon, etc. However don’t just stop with the big boys. Look for social media sites that fit in with your niche.
Some of these smaller guys may not send a flood of traffic, but the quality of the traffic they do send is much better than your stand Digg and StumbledUpon traffic. The people who visit from these smaller sites are more likely to stick around longer and link back to your content on their own sites or blogs.
Second, don’t be afraid to ask for a link. If you find a quality site with good material that you reference a lot in your content don’t be afraid of contacting them and asking for a link back to your content. The fact of the matter is that sometimes all it takes is to ask. The worse they can say is no. If they do decide to link back to you then you’ve managed to give yourself a bump (which will be reflected in rankings over time) and all it took was a few emails. Just remember if you decide to ask to make sure that the site you are asking for the link from is ranked fairly well in the search engines. Quality builds quality.
Finally, chain e-mails may be annoying at times, but it works – especially for video and other “LOL” content. Sometimes you have to toot your own horn. If you create a humorous video or have some pages that will sure to make people chuckle consider starting an email “chain” to a few friends. You’ll be surprised how fast it will travel. People have this funny habit of forwarding emails on forever. The good thing is that as it gets forwarded and clicked, some of those people will inevitably link back to you on their blogs and on other sites.
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So you’ve worked hard to get your site SEO optimized with quality content that should score you big points in the rankings; or maybe you have signed on a new client who wants you to help them get recognized better out there in the search world by contracting your SEO services. Whatever the case you will probably find in your SEO analysis that a number of “bad sites” are linking to you and the question on your mind is, “How is this going to affect my ranking?”
Let’s start about my talking about what a bad site is – spam generator, screen scraper, URL manipulation and malware are all words that can be used to describe a bad site. It’s a site that is designed to interrupt or throw off the web experience rather than to compliment it. In short, it’s the dregs of the Internet.
In SEO land we know that we can’t control who links to our sites – wouldn’t it be great if we could? So why would a search engine punish us for who is pointing to our site? The good news is that in most cases they aren’t going to punish you. They know that most (if not all) sites have some questionable sites that are pointing to them. For the most part the search engines do a good job of classifying these sites and throwing out their effect on your rank.
Having said that it is important to realize that bad sites linking to you could have effect your ranking in certain situations:
- Does it appear that you engaged in a paid linking scheme to boost your rankings? If so, be prepared to be hit hard by Google and the other search engines. This is, in their eyes, a mortal sin.
- Do you have more bad sites linking to you than good? This can be hard for small sites just getting started, but percentage does matter. If most of your inbound links are coming from sites that aren’t of high quality it can affect your ranking.
- Have you engaged in link manipulation? When taking on a client project you may not know the answer to this as they might not know themselves what the “previous guy” did.
So what do you do if you find yourself being penalized for bad inbound links and you haven’t done anything to encourage it or participate in it? First, fire off a letter to the search engines asking to be reconsidered. Be sure to include a list of sites that are linking to you that you believe are hurting your ranking. Stick to the facts – in most cases if they haven’t detected anything underhanded going on they will work to recalculate your rankings.
Second, work on building the good inbound links. The more links you have coming to you from trustworthy sites the better off you will be. Not only will it help improve your rankings, but it will also attract more readers from the other sites. It’s a win-win situation and a good piece of SEO advice to follow every day.
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I remember a teacher telling me one time that if we never knew where we had been then we’d never know where we are going. She was so right. That same advice also holds true for website optimization and measuring SEO results. How many times have you walked onto a project and been told, “Just make it better”. What does “better” mean? How do we know when we’ve reached “better”? Without metrics about a websites performance you could end up spending 75% of your time on the part of the site that only gets 5% of the visits.
As an SEO company you owe it to yourself and your customers to be able to measure their site before and after – to provide the numbers that identify where their traffic is today, what is attracting most visitors, where are the links coming from, etc. By taking the time to measure websites before you tackle them, both you and the customer will learn a lot more about the traffic to the site and what SEO methods will give the best results.
The first thing to look at is what data is being collected right now? Do they have any existing tracking programs or log files you can access? Is there any historical data about site traffic available? Often many sites are using no analytical tools at all – or they may be using simple web log analyzers that aren’t providing critical data needed to make good SEO decisions. As an SEO service provider it is your job to make sure that if they aren’t monitoring, they start, and a baseline is taken for comparison when the project is done.
Next, it’s time to categorize the site. It’s not unusual for a handful of pages to be driving the majority of the traffic. It may be that the pages that are drawing in the least amount of traffic are actually bringing in the most value – again, this is where a good analytics program comes into play. Segment out your site by section or pages and see what is driving the traffic and which sections are performing and which sections are languishing. You may be surprised to find that the most obscure areas of a site turn out to be the most popular.
Next, determine what is bringing in the traffic. Let’s say you have two sections (or categories) on the site. In order to determine how to get the maximum SEO value you need to find out how many visits per page you are getting. If section 1 is made up of 5,000 blog posts and is bringing in 25,000 visits per month while section 2 is made up of 500 article pages and is bringing in 10,000 visits per month then you can quickly see that the article pages are getting more “views per page”. However, this is not enough data to make any judgment calls on just yet. If you have 5 articles that are bringing in the majority of those 10,000 visits then the numbers start to mean something.
This is a clear cut example of where a good analytics tool will benefit any SEO provider. You have to be able to measure visits, views, the how and the why – plus a thousand other questions. The more you know about why people come to a site the better you can focus your SEO skills at making it better.
Don’t just look at today either; make sure you are looking at historical data when it is available. You want to know things such as the quantity of content over time, what page are receiving search traffic, what is the rate of link growth and how much has traffic to the site gone up (or down) over time? This may not be easy to find out if the client doesn’t have analytics already in place. Sometimes web access logs are the best method to get this data from if it doesn’t already exist.
Once you get this data it’s time to analyze it – to find out what is making the site perform (or not). The more data you about a site the better you can use your SEO toolkit to help improve the site and make your job a lot easier.
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It’s pretty amazing that even in the global economic slowdown that most SEO service firms continue to see robust business. In fact, some say that business has never been so good – obviously companies believe in the power of SEO and the benefits it brings their business and their bottom line. It’s because we are remaining so busy that we tend to never look back at completed projects and do a retrospective to see how we could have improved, or assess what we promised the customer versus what we actually delivered.
Continue Reading: Reflecting Back to Help Your SEO Business GrowRelated Posts:
Let’s be honest – every time we are talking to people about SEO or search engines we don’t say “search engine” or “Yahoo” or anything else; we refer to search as “Google” as if there was only one search engine in the world. With over 63% of the market share it’s no reason why Google has become a synonym for search engine – they practically own the entire market. Yet is it good that one company owns most of the market for search? Are we losing out on innovation and a balanced marketplace since there is no real competition to Google? And, finally, why should an SEO company care?
Continue Reading: Google – Innovator or Innovation KillerRelated Posts:
We all know about skeletons in the closet that can pop out years later and have potentially destructive consequences on one’s career. What’s true in real life is also true on the SEO front – if you aren’t careful when taking on new projects and clients you can have a lot of their “skeletons” falling out of virtual closet with you left to try and stuff them all back in.
Ask yourself this: When a new client or project comes along how well do you research what has been done marketing and SEO-wize before you came along? Many of us leave ourselves wide open to walk into sites and work with clients whose shady search engine optimization practices of the past are haunting them – and you are left to take the blame!
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Is it a recession or a depression? It’s getting hard to tell. Each day brings more stories about companies laying off thousands, budgets getting slashed and even Forrester Research saying that IT spending for 2009 will be anemic. That’s why it may be surprising to hear that amongst all of this bad news that SEO spending is keeping pace and in some cases increasing despite the downtrodden economy. What makes SEO immune from the downturn? Could it be that SEO has a proven track record of getting return on investment, or is it just a safe haven to invest in during troubled times? Let’s look at some of the top reasons SEO continues to be funded in this rough economy
Continue Reading: As the Economy Weakens SEO StrengthensRelated Posts:
What’s worse than having old content, or no content at all for search engine optimization? Duplicate content – the SEO killer! Search engines can penalize your site if it finds the same content on your site that they find at others – they may even stop indexing your pages altogether, a process that some people know all too well how hard it is to get re-indexed! Yet, if your site has user-generated content how do you stop them from posting the same information on your site that they have at ten different other sites?
Continue Reading: The SEO Killer: Duplicate Content!Related Posts:
We all know that great content is the key to search engine optimization, but what many of us don’t know is what exactly great content is. Great content is what makes others not only visit your site to read your information, but also makes them want to link back and reference your information over and over again. Here are some ideas to help you discover what great content is and how you can create it on your sites.
Continue Reading: From Great Content Comes Great LinksRelated Posts:
Yesterday I talked a little about four relatively easy ways to boost your rankings in the major search engines (especially Google) without gaming the system. Looking back at that article I’ve come up with four more ways that works well and can have not only great ranking benefits for your sites, but also help you to expand your network of social and business contacts.
Continue Reading: Four More Ways to Boost Your Rankings