How To Build Organic Backlinks

12. November 2009

Backlinks are the foundation of any SEO effort, and one of the most important parts of your online marketing efforts. Despite many online marketers deriding SEO as a marketing form, its benefits are very real, very measurable and very important. As such, assigning a great deal of marketing muscle and time to monitoring and building backlinks is an intelligent and important decision.

First things first - what is a backlink? A backlink is simply a link to your page from another external source. This could mean a link from a relatively popular blog, highlighting the services, applications or content on your website. It could be a link from an online journal or newspaper, explaining your website as part of a current event or as an external source. In addition to that, it could even be a review of your website from a top blogger or online authority. In all circumstances, backlinks are important for raising your online profile and boosting your search engine results.

So where do you start your backlink building efforts? For many marketers, building organic backlinks starts with fertilising some of their own. You can start with article marketing - a popular form of online marketing that involves writing articles, blog posts and related content about your website - and distributing it around the internet. Many marketers choose to start by hiring writers to create and distribute content for them, either through article directories or through posts on third party blogs.

Whatever way you go about it, you'll quickly find that building this initial content is key to building the organic content further down the line. Online marketing is often about "passive income" and it's quite simple to think of SEO in this sense. To build that passive SEO, you need to actively work towards building those links initially. Once you've created enough of a presence on your own, people will begin to take notice themselves, and eventually begin distributing and linking to your website for you.

It all comes down to building that initial awareness. Whether you are a blogger, an online service company or a developer, building that initial audience and awareness is what will propel you to great online heights. By creating that initial audience, you solidify yourself as an online authority, create search engine juice that will allow other bloggers and webmasters to find you, and effectively control your online brand in the early stages of your business.

So if you want to create an organic online presence, don't be afraid to start by planting the seeds yourself. You can't build your online presence and expect people to find it straight away, and by focusing on the initial wave of SEO and interest, you can easily push other people to link to you. Have an eye for interest-building content, get out there writing, and you'll eventually see your organic backlinks building. It's not instant, it requires a dedicated initial effort, but once it pays off it's all worth it. 

Search Engine Optimisation, Search Marketing , , ,

3 Tips for Making a URL Search Engine Friendly

24. August 2009

The URL of your website is a key factor in search engine optimisation. It is important to choose a search engine friendly URL that search engine crawlers can read without problems. If the URL can be easily read and crawled, then the likelihood of getting your site to the top of the search engine ranks is increased. Here are some tips for creating an SEO friendly URL.

  1. Create a short and static URL. Static URLs do not contain special characters or long strings of code. They usually take the structure of www.michaeljbyers.com. Search engine crawlers prefer this form of URL as they prioritize short and static URLs when indexing web pages.
  2. You should include keywords in your URL. For example, if a site is selling digital cameras, then the URL should contain the keywords cameras or digital cameras. There are two advantages for constructing the URL in this way. The most significant is that search engines will identify your site when someone makes a search for digital cameras. The other advantage is that web users can easily remember the address of a site that has a short, relevant URL.
  3. You should always endeavour to organise your URL structure based on your website topics and site map. This way, search engines will be able to index all the pages in your website efficiently. Website users will also have an easier time navigating a website that has a well made URL structure.

Search Engine Optimisation , , ,

South Ayrshire wedding album ranking in Google

15. April 2009

Searching for Wedding Album on Google and I discovered that the South Ayrshire Wedding Album is ranked 6th on Google.co.uk. It is 38th on Google.com.

Now this page is only internally linked to, i.e from within South Ayrshire Council website. Yahoo! Site Explorer has 283 pages listed with 306 inlinks. The website is optimised for search engines and includes a sitemap but I would have thought that it would also need external websites linking to it to be listed so highly on Google.

Search Engine Optimisation , , , ,

Optimise Your Meta Tags

30. January 2009

The meta description and meta keywords are both important to SEO. Although not a huge factor in influencing rank the meta description can have an influence on the person who sees it in the search results. Here are are some tips to optimise both the meta description and meta keywords tags.

The meta description should be keyword rich and informative. It should describe the service or page information. Make sure it makes sense when read and don't overdo the keywords. Keep it to no more than 150 characters and less than 30 words.

Don't use the meta description to repeat your page title. Sometimes a search engine may display your meta description under your page title. So use the meta description as your chance to give the user more information.

Make the meta description unique to each page. Custom write this for each page to give the searcher more information if she sees it on her search results and to also give the search engines more information about the page content.

With meta keywords these should be keywords or phrases that appear in the page content. It's that simple. Ensure that the meta keywords contains all important keywords. Keep your list of keywords to 10 or less. And write the keywords in lowercase.

Search Engine Optimisation , , , ,

Optimise Your Page Titles

30. January 2009

Page titles are commonly forgotten about or not used correctly. Which is a shame because they hold a lot of power. Page titles show up as the first line of clickable text in most search engine results. This can influence search engine ranking as well as whether or not someone clicks through. So how do you optimise your page title? Here's how.

Keep it short. Aim for no more than 65 characters and no more than 15 words. Ensure you put your important keywords towards the beginning of the title and that the title makes sense when read.

Include your keywords but don't overdo it! Keyword stuffing is bad and can make your page title meaningless. And that will put people of clicking through.

Always include your company name or brand. Your name may have a better reputation with a potential customer than a competitors.

And the final tip to a better page title. Write unique page titles for each page. This makes it clear in the listings what is on this page and why the user should click through.

Search Engine Optimisation , , ,

Google Algorithms

28. January 2009

SEOChat has an interesting article on Google Algorithms, explaining the techniques used by the search engine.

It explains that you should write naturally so that related words and not just words with the same meaning should appear. So if you were writing about gardening services you would use words like grass, plants, ground, weeds, etc. Not just garden, gardens, landscaping, landscaping, etc.

It then goes on to explain about Link Analysis, the supplemental index and human reviewers. Worth a read if you want to ensure your site stays top on Google.

Google Analytics ,



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