WebMastersLoom

Hi, I am contacting you because I have created a website, WebMaster Reporter, that you may be interested in reviewing. I originally created a similar site for my own research purposes, but then I decided that other people might like to use the technology for WebMastering research as well.

(more…)

How you write and design your links is crucial to your visitors clicking them or not. Write them badly and they leave, write them well and they stay. Who knows, they might even do exactly that what you created your site for. Following are 7 guidelines how links should be written to improve the usability of your site.

Do it consistently

Visitors learn for example how a website marks the links or where the “related-content box” can be found. Consistently adhering to these established “codes” will make it easy to navigate and read the site.

(more…)

SWAP

In last week’s article: “The Secret Behind the Internet” (http://www.msomedia.com/results/gr00006.htm) I discussed the vital role that linking has to play in your Internet marketing campaign. This week I’m continuing the linkage theme, concentrating on outbound links and reciprocation.

THE STORY SO FAR

We already know that the text that people click on to get to a site (the “anchor text”) has a vast impact on the way Google ranks sites. We also know that more links equals a better PageRank, but there’s more to it than that.

NO FREE LUNCHES HERE

I’m sure you know that you can’t get anything for free these days, without someone wanting to sell you something or get something in return. This mindset forms the ethos behind reciprocal linking. Very simply, I link to your site, you link to mine.

Unfortunately however, it’s no longer that simple. As we discussed last week, Google’s getting cleverer. It used to be the case that any old bunch of inbound links would improve a site’s ranking. This is no longer the case. Now, links have to be relevant. This is the watchword for search engine optimisation when it comes to Google.

If you have a bunch of random sites linking to yours, Google won’t be impressed, because the target has nothing to do with the source. One of the oldest examples is the American casino link: a site - owned by, let’s say a management consultant working in Scotland - places a link on his site that goes off to this American casino site. The casino site has a generic “links” page - known as a “link farm” - which has hundreds of links with no order or categorisation, and somewhere in the midst of all this rubbish is the management consultant’s link. Viz:

“These pages with countless links to other websites were created during the fervor of link popularity when it was thought that the more links that linked to your website, the higher your website ranked in search engines such as Google. It was also thought that a reciprocal link between sites, any site, counted in your favor”

Kimberly Krause Berg, Search Engine Guide (http://www.searchengineguide.com/krause/2002/1219_kk1.html)

Kimberly’s nailed it there. Link farms have existed for a good while, and are starting to die down now because people know better.

TIDY UP

No-one’s saying that having a good number of links is a bad thing. It simply boils down to two important questions:

1. Are they meaningful?
2. Are they relevant?

The first question can be addressed by categorising your links. If you run your own website (ie: have access to the HTML code) you can do this by splitting up your links into different categories, effectively making a directory. For one thing, this reduces the number of links that are displayed on each single page, making Google happier because it looks more like a list of useful resources rather than a link farm. For another it means that human beings, ie: the people you want to actually view your site and therefore more important than search engine robots, can really make use of your directory. Another good point is it means more people will be inclined to request link exchanges if they see that their link is placed within a meaningful list.

But that’s not it. The second point is equally, if not more important. Google is built on relevance. And when I say Google by the way, I don’t just mean the site, I mean the many other sites that use the Google database (AOL Search for one). If someone is looking at the “Links” page of a management consultants firm in Scotland, why would they be interested in an American casino? Listing relevant resources for your visitors to look through is not only logical and good web practise, it’s also how Google thinks. Search engines aren’t made for webmasters, they’re made for web users, so the guys who write their software try to make them think like web users. Therefore, if your links aren’t relevant, Google will not be likely to rank you highly. Also, if you link to disreputable sites, your PageRank will be adversely affected.

FINDING A PARTNER

If you’ve got in mind the two questions from the previous section, you’re probably going to have to throw out a tonne of links. I can wholeheartedly sympathise. After gaining “The Knowledge” not long ago, I decided it was time to reorder my links. That meant getting rid of the irrelevant and the disreputable, the link swap sites and the free-for-all directories, and effectively starting from scratch. I needed to find people to link with, and they needed to be relevant.

So, how do you find good link partners? Simple: just remember the word “relevance”,. and try and ask yourself: “what other companies are relevant to mine?” Don’t think about the competition, think about the buying cycle. For instance, someone looking for management advice might want team building exercises, IT training, accountants, discussion forums and possibly office space. None of these are competing with you, but they’re part of the cycle.

HERE ENDETH THE LESSON

So just remember: are your links meaningful and are they relevant? If so, you’re sorted. If not, and you need some more advice on how to spruce up your links page(s), or even if you think you’re part of the multimedia design buying cycle and would like to swap links, e-mail me via mark@msomedia.com and we’ll chat.

Mark Steadman 26/10/05

Link Building Services

If you are a Webmaster, you must know various aspects and strategies of effective link building by heart. And once you know them, you can avail link building services by various webmasters to promote your website.

Link building is certainly one of the most important aspects of Search Engine Optimization. For success on the Internet, building links is, in fact, a must for you. After all, the search engines give you a page rank on the basis of your link popularity. And the page rank determines a number of visitors on your site. Thus the incessant need of link popularity cannot be neglected in this competitive cyber world. Read on further to know more about link building.

First things first, the basics of Internet business says, you have to step ahead your competitors by building high page rank for your site(s). In fact, each website on the net is struggling hard to make a niche place among the top ten ranks of major search engines. So, availing link building services would definitely prove a wise decision from you. For, it will effectively help you gain great links for your website.

But before beginning your link building campaign, you must understand that you need to build good links capable of surging your page rank only. Now an obvious question pops up here— what are the good links? The answer is too simple. The links that are capable of providing you the targeted traffic on your website are good links for you. Linking with all kinds of websites is not going to benefit you at all. In fact, the junk links can deteriorate your link page rank further.

Link building is a time consuming process. Yes, to build links, you have to spend a lot of your precious time in the search of the right links and then sending link requests to the websites. Many a times the replies take more than expected time as well. So, you have to keep patience till you make some really good links for your website. To lighten your burden, you can go for online link building services as well.

These services can readily help you find the right kind of links for you. Finding the right links may be a daunting task for you. But the experts providing link popularity services are well adept to locate the targeted links for your website. These services are provided by website promotion companies. They take the full charge of promoting your website, once you hire their services. The affair can get a bit costlier at times. Though, the results justify the hefty expenditure.

The link building services provide you all the types of links whether internal, out going or reciprocal. The service providers first analyze your website and then develop a plan to build links for the site. The website is studied thoroughly in terms of its content and the existing links. The useless links are removed from your website. For, the service is aimed to provide you the highest number of links with great quality.

You can purchase a package of links for a month as well. You can buy a package of 25 inbound links, 100 inbound links or even 250 inbound links, as per your requirement.

The package of inbound links is much more expensive than the package of out going links. Reciprocal linking service is also a good one as it lifts up your search engine ranking instantly.

Apart from providing quality links, the link building services can also provide you the reports and updates of your websites. No link is added to your website without reporting prior information to you. Thus, it is absolutely safe for you to avail the link building services to top the search engine rankings.

As a result of search engine changes, linking with other sites is becoming an increasingly iportant way to generate traffic to your website. Links done properly will repay the effort and not be subject to the whims of the search engines. No more need to be concerned unduly about algorithmn changes and the “Google dance”.

Why have a Links Page ?

A links page should give your visitors a choice of quality information and resources, not just a web page to improve your search engine rankings. Quality information on a links page is the best long-term strategy to improve search engine ranking.

Search engines are becoming very sophisticated and realise that many sites are putting up links merely to improve their rankings. Always exchange links with web sites that are connected with your site’s theme.

How Do you Find Link Exchange Partners?

One way is to go to the search engines and look for sites that are compatible with your own. Send the webmaster an email requesting requesting a link or phone him or her personally.

An easier way is to register with the SiteSell free link exchange program which will give you quality links and save you a lot of time. To register free for the SiteSell link exchange program go to : http://www.merchant-account-service.com/link_exchange.html

How can I tell the web site I want to exchange with has any traffic?

Check the traffic ranking with Alexa (www.alexa.com). This will give you a good idea of its popularity. Another way is to check its page rank with Google. If a web site has a page rank of 4, it is more popular than one with a page rank of 20. Try to exchange links with sites that have more traffic but you must be realistic also.

How do I show my links on my web Site?

You can put your links anywhere on your web site, provided you do not have a large page with links to all kinds of sites. Remember, keep your links relevant to the content of your site.

If you have only a few links, the best way is to have a list with the title of the web site and a short description of its content. Large numbers of links are not recommended as it looks a bit tacky.

Exchange links can be worth the time and effort if done properly. The golden rule is only exchange links with other web sites that have content related to yours.

(c) John Lynch

When I left my day job four years ago I had four website’s, today I have forty five sites and a while back I noticed that two of my sites have held their “Top Three” positions through all of the trends, fads, search engine updates, even the Florida update did not affect their top positions. To say the least I was perplexed, there was nothing really apparent that made these two sites different in fact I had did a terrible job of keeping them updated, you know too busy with the other site’s greasing the squeaky wheels. They were not broken so I did not fix them.

So anyway I needed to figure out why these sites had did so well with so little attention. Now I am thinking if I can just figure out why then I can do the same to the rest of my sites. But like I said earlier I did very little to these sites, they never needed it. It just did not make sense until after days of hair pulling I decided to analyze them just like I would do one of my competitors. First the on page factors had nothing special just very basic SEO, second I looked at the list of inbound links nothing really jumped out at me, so I made a list of my reciprocal partners from my links page then eliminated those from the inbound link list, which left about three dozen links of which six were scraper site’s so I eliminated those so now there are 30 links I did not know about, at first I thought no big deal these are just links from site’s that wanted a reciprocal link and I never got back to them, like I said I had neglected these two sites. Analyzing the 30 links, six or seven probably were from reciprocal link request that I had ignored, so I was left with 23 unexpected links to analyze and here’s what I found

• None of the links were on a links page.
• All of the links were either in an article or review.
• All of the links had text before and after the link text.
• Almost all of the links had different text in the link.
• Most of the pages linking to me only had 5 to 10 outbound links.
• Some of the links were to my home page but the others were to interior pages.
• Most of the pages linking to me were only one level deep. (1 click from the home page)

Apparently the handful of “quality non-reciprocal links” was behind the success of these two sites, which if you look at it from a search engine’s point of view it makes perfect sense because an unbiased, non-reciprocal and natural occurring link is the only true vote for the quality of the content on your site. The search engines and especially Google are smart enough to spot reciprocal links and know that a reciprocal link has nothing to do with the quality of the content on your site, they know that its just a trade between two webmasters trying to get better rankings.

Back when Google first started counting inbound links as votes for a site in its algorithms they did not have to worry about whether the link was natural, reciprocal or paid because so few people knew about it, plus unlike today the technology did not exist back then to easily scan and spot reciprocal links. But as more people learned about the power of linking more and more abuse took place, forcing Google to adjust their algorithms.

Next week we’ll exam ways to get quality one way links to your site.

More and more search engines rank your web pages based on the number of links that point to your web site (link popularity). Google uses link popularity as its most important factor in ranking sites. HotBot, AltaVista, MSN, Inktomi, and others also use link popularity in their formulas.

In the near future every major search engine will use link popularity, so developing and maintaining good link exchange campaigns are essential to the success of your business. Also, finding the right partner to exchange links with is equally as important as becoming a member of a link farm can be devastating to your long term search goals.

Your exchange link partner should be reputable in the industry, and should provide links back to you on pages that have a high page rank.

The end goal is to have the greatest number of websites pointing to you saying on the link itself, “Your Company – Offering (insert your key phrases here)”.

For a good ranking on Google, Inktomi and Altivista, you need good links that point to your site. If you develop a strong content oriented site you can persuade thousands of other webmasters to link to you or to trade links with you. If you want to do it yourself, all you need is the right content, the right email letter, and a keen eye for finding sites that well link to your site.

The key is to develop content people want to link to and then get out there and make the contacts by visiting people’s sites, sending out personalized emails to webmasters of sites you have visited, and networking in discussion groups.

You can also make posts in forums related to your industry to increase your link popularity. Just do a search on any search engine with your industry + forums or discussions and you should be able to find a few discussion boards where you can make posts.

Make sure that you find a way to participate on the discussion as opposed to just posting an ad that’s not related to what people are talking about.

Another way that you can greatly increase the link popularity of your website is by publishing articles. There are literally thousands of ezine and newsletter publishers that would love to publish your article on their ezine.

Again, if you search for ezines related to your industry you should find plenty of places where you can submit an article and see it bring lots of targeted traffic. Make sure you place your resource box at the bottom of the article and require publishers to keep it there.

That’s it for now. For more info on how you could Get a High Ranking on Google in 3 Days, Visit www.WebProfitSecrets.com/FastonGoogle

1. Vary the keywords in your link ‘anchor’ text

Unless you provide only one product or service the chances are you will want to rank for many key phrases. One way to help achieve this objective is to change the link text you want all new sites to use periodically. Vary the anchor text slightly each time and by doing so you can cover more of your targeted key phrases. This approach can help your site rank for many keywords rather than just one or two.

If you do only provide one product or service on your web site it is still important to vary anchor text. If you sell ‘blue widgets’ then you could also use link text like ‘cheap blue widgets’ or ‘blue widget store’. This means your links take on a more natural feel and are much less likely to be penalised or filtered out by search engines for being ‘fake links’.

2. Set up your link information differently - create a link in context

Typically people set up their link information in a very similar way, however you could offer your link information with the hyperlink inside the description instead of at the beginning.

Imagine this is a description about your web site on a partner’s link page. Instead of a typical hyperlink followed by a description you could write a sentence describing your web site and then place “your descriptive hyperlink” inside it.

One reason for doing this is that it reads more naturally and search engines may value the link higher as it reads more like a narrative. Many webmasters will be happy to accept this style even if some do not. To cover yourself offer the link in context as a second option along with your regular link information, that way if some sites can’t support the layout you still get your link.

3. Vary where your links point

Try to vary where link partners point to on your site. It’s fine to have the majority of links pointing into your home page, however it can be beneficial to have some links pointing to other key pages on your web site as well. Taking this approach balances out your linking and can help raise the profile of more pages on your web site.

4. How to find potential link partners from your competitors

If a web site links to your competitors it may also link to yours, and in order to find these potential link partners you can use search engines. Not so long ago Google was useful for getting a lot of back link information about a site. Recently Google’s back link data is a lot less forthcoming and it now tends to show only a tiny percentage of the sites that are linking combined with a lot of internal link data. Whether the few web sites Google shows us are the ones it finds important or whether they are in fact red herrings we cannot say for certain. I would assume the latter.

Currently Yahoo is a better portal to check for backlinks. To generate a list of linking web sites on Yahoo simply go to http://www.yahoo.com and type the following into the Yahoo search bar.

linkdomain:www.mycompetitorwebsite.com

This will deliver up to date link information as read by Yahoo. The only downside with the information is that one site may appear many times if it is giving multiple links.

5. Alternate your description text

This is often overlooked, but there is no real advantage to be had if the description text supporting your inbound links is always identical. To avoid the possibility of a description ever being seen as ‘duplicate content’ alternate it when you can. If you combine it with varied anchor text [as in tip 1] you’re heading in the right direction.

6. Link to good related content from your web site

It seems like an obvious thing to say, but with so many people caught up in link exchanging you sometimes wonder if we’re losing site of the basics. If you have something useful to say on your site and can back it up with a useful link to another web site then do so. Not every link has to be reciprocated. This resourceful linking will allow your visitors to read around the subject. Linking to informative related content is useful for visitors and search engines quite like it too.

7. Seek out directory links

Links from good web directories can be some of the best links you can get for your web site. Aaron Wall has a ‘directory of directories’ at http://www.directoryarchives.com where you will find a great selection of search engine friendly directories. Some of the directories are free to get listed in whilst others may charge a fee.