Archive for the 'Linking' Category

Recently, I was contacted by an ecommerce website that told me they’ve had an SEO Consultant optimize their website, but they still aren’t seeing their site in the Keyword rankings. They want to know “Why?”. “Did the previous SEO Consultant do a good job? Did they do something wrong? Why aren’t we ranking?”.

I did a quick analysis o heir site. The site was certainly “optimized”. In the sense that it is crawlable, and search engine friendly. Additionally, the site had a good amount of unique content on category & product pages. URL structures were clean & appeared static, the website navigation was okay, H1 tags were in place, Title tags were written properly. And, all the other on-page factors looked okay. The site was indexed in all the search engines. So, why isn’t it ranking? Hmm. Perplexing, right?

The answer is contained in an earlier post I wrote on the Importance of Internal Linking.

Using your keywords as textlinks within your website is very important. Choose a specific destination page for the textlink. That’s called your Target URL. And, embedd that textlink within page content. This is one way to strengthen a content silo. So, when Google (or any of the search engines) crawl your site, they understand that’s what this section is about (the textlink).

In short, building content silos, and increasing the internal link percent of target url’s is a powerful seo technique.

In the case above, the SEO Consultant was good at making a site search engine friendly, but just didn’t have the expertise to really provide a boost in the keyword rankings.

Linking is powerful. Both using internal links, and properly structuring an inbound link campaign.

Building textual content is important, but by itself, it’s not going to give you the boost in keyword ranking you desire.

Organizing your content in content silos is a powerful SEO technique, and combined with proper internal linking can be all that your site needs to rank for your primary keywords.

Links are important both internal and external. Internal links should use keyword-rich anchor text that point to your internal pages within the website. External links are the one-way inbound links from other web properties that point to your webpages.

Although, I can’t overemphasize the importance of lots & lots of content, that has hyperlinks embedded within the content that contain the keyword which you want to rank. Keyword-rich content is important. Don’t get hung up on keyword density. Just make sure you use a few primary keywords on the webpage. SEO Copywriting along with internal linking can be the secret sauce that’s needed to boost your position in the Search Engines to a top spot.

Now, come the links. The internal links should be directed to a “target URL”. The target url is the webpage you want to appear in the search results. The idea is to increase the internal link percent. In short, the internal link percent is the percentage of pages on the domain that link to the Target URL. Pick the page you want to rank, and start internal linking to that webpage using the chosen keyword. If it makes sense for usability, take advantage of the sidebar and footer for internal linking.

Fill your target url with keyword-rich content. It’s okay to link away from your site. Make use of keywords in anchor text, and make sure the outbound links are to “authoritative” sites within your topical neighborhood.

Create content silos that are tightly knitted together by keyword-rich internal linking. Ideally, ecommerce sites should use internal linking to knit together pages within a department, category, sub-category, sub-sub category, and product pages.

Bottomline, the internal linking affects keyword ranking, and contributes to strong content silos. Combined with a properly structured inbound-link campaign are extremely powerful SEO tactics.

Photo credit: bkwdayton

For larger well established sites that have alot of inbound links and are optimized pretty well, but aren’t ranking very well in the SERP’s for specific keywords, a small targeted link campaign might be all that’s needed to do the trick to get you ranked for those specific keywords.

The link campaign structure needs to be optimized with a social slant, especially with the newest algorithm update from Google, called Google Caffeine.

Overall “link power” is important. Assuming you have that already, your site might just need some fine-tuning using link building. By having an already existing large inbound link portfolio, this new campaign for link acquisition will look natural. Assuming there is already a ton of linkjuice coming from across a wide variety of websites, different countries, ISP’s, IP’s, etc, the small targeted link campaign will look natural, and is a small percentage of the total number of inbound links.

Since the overall “linkpower” of the site is very strong, we just need a small targeted campaign for fine tuning. That should provide a good “lift” for your keywords. Many of which can attain the top positions.

Budget:
Budgets will vary based on your keywords, and how competitive the search results are. Smaller budgets can accomplish the same goals, but will just take a little longer. What can be done with $7500 in 4 weeks, can also be done with $2000 over a few months. Pacing the steady placement of links over time is also important to give a natural appearance to the search engines (Google). Ideally, an ongoing monthly budget for link building should be established.

Targeting:
Stay very focused by targeting aprroximately 5 to 10 keywords.

Forecasts:
There are traffic forecasts, ranking forecasts, and revenue forecasts.

The forecasts are based on the Keyword Demand Matrix. Basically, we look at the current monthly search volume of the keywords, and then look at what your website is currently receiving in search traffic from those same keywords. The increase in percentage of “share of Traffic” could be 100% or more. Meaning, if you have 5% share of traffic, it could increase to 20% of traffic. Obviously, this has to be evaluated on a case-by-case scenario.

Trying to nail down a real number increase can be difficult. So, every site should be analyzed on it’s own. For example, in the music business, there are a whole lot more searches for Metallica than Sean Paul. So, it might be best to forecast based on percentage increases rather than real number increases. And, of course a Keyword Demand Matrix should be generated for each website/campaign.

Photo credit: Dougs2007

Just had an interesting conversation with Avi about this topic. Here’s a quick summary of my position on multiple text links on a webpage that contain the EXACT same anchor text…

Let me start out by saying, I don’t necessarily believe everything Google says. And, for that matter, I don’t take what Rand says to be the absolute truth in SEO either. Even though he has a strong following of people, many of which seem to blindly accept whatever he says.

Over the course of time, I’ve conducted my own undocumented/unofficial experimentation regarding using text links for keyword ranking. Basically, trial & error. In my experience, I’ve found that if you have multiple links on a page it’s the 1st link that gets crawled, that gets the credit.

I’m backing up what Rand says, that for keyword ranking purposes, it’s the “first anchor text that counts“. For example, if you have 2 links on your sidebar which mention the exact same anchor text, only the first link the search engine spider crawls will get the SEO value of the textlink for keyword ranking.

For example within this post, here are 2 text links with the exact same anchor text:
SEO Consultant
SEO Consultant

The first text link gets the “juice”.

But, what if you want the 2nd text link to get the “juice”. The answer is to place a nofollow on the first textlink.

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Photo Credit: mrchriscornwell.

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Properly optimizing a website is a combination effort of both on-site and off-site optimization. The ole’ 1, 2 punch. This post is about the off-site component of SEO to achieve link popularity and link relevancy.

In the past, I’ve written about how to use a Link Optimization and the Criteria & Time Period for Link Effectiveness. Below, I reveal the “secret sauce” on how to properly structure a Link Campaign to achieve high keyword rankings for your target keyword and target url.

I’ve crafted this as powerful, and permanent Link Campaign “package”:

Custom Blog Reviews
We hand pick higher quality blogs from within our network to write reviews about your website/product/service. The blogger posts their review on their blog. As part of the review the blogger links back to your site 2-4 times (randomizing the number of links will avoid creating a pattern). All of these links are considered permanent.

Custom Article Marketing
We provide an SEO friendly, professionally written, fully optimized Article(s) with 500+ words of content. The Article is submitted for syndication to the top Article sites. Package includes a guarantee of 15 placements. The article includes 2 footer links, embedded within content. [eg: ezine, with links in footer].

Article Plus (A couple targeted blogs):
Longer articles & more textlinks.
We write a full article and embed 4 links within the 500+ words of content. This article is then hosted on the homepage of the website for a minimum of 10 days. The article then archives within the site permanently. We will also backlink boost the archived page monthly, to ensure it continues to receive full search engine visibility and continues to gain trust over time.

2nd Tier Links:
This package includes Comment Links and Social Bookmarking Links on sites that have PageRank and dofollow. 100% of these links will point to your newly created link pages to ensure quick spidering and visibility, as well as support the relevancy using the same anchor text .

- Comment Links:
Make a relevant comment on a blog or other Social Media style site and link back to your site within the comment. Get the links on pages with guaranteed Pagerank from 1-5. You’ll have full anchor text and URL control. Sites are 100% SEO friendly (without nofollow).

- Social Bookmarking Links
Hand build keyword links on Social Bookmarking Sites (web-based sites designed to let users share internet bookmarks). This is a great way to build natural looking links in high volumes at low costs.

Premium Directory Links
Relevant, SEO friendly links on Directory Sites. Get the highest PR web directories available. They provide guaranteed SEO friendly links, regardless of the number of submissions.

Pricing:
Prices varies depending on the budget, and how competitive your industry is.

What if you have a client that has difficulty implementing changes you recommend? What if he/she is restricted (for whatever reason) from making any real meaningful changes to the source code?

Is it possible not to touch the code of a site and still optimize it?

The answer is yes. A good SEO Consultant knows that the search engines read “backlinks”. That’s one of the ways search engines figure out what your site is about. As a matter of fact, the thesis paper from the founders of Google is called Backrub because it measures on “backlinks”. This type of optimization is called Off-Site Optimization. Your goal is to appear as the subject matter expert in your topical neighborhood. And by using a Strategic Link Campaign, this is possible.

The link development factors to look for are many, and a time consuming discovery process. But a well crafted Strategic Link Campaign will be well-targeted research and meet the Criteria & Time Period for Link Effectiveness.

A well crafted Strategic Link Campaign can have the SEO power to boost a site to position #1 if the right link combinations & quantities are used.

Your goal is to appear as the subject matter expert in your topical neighborhood. The best sites to get links from are in your same topical neighborhood, and under Google’s “radar”.

Some websites neglect to focus on link building when optimizing their site. Instead, they allocate budget on hiring an SEO Consultant that can optimize their code, and get them “free” rankings. However, without link building many of these types of on-site optimizations just don’t produce the results that satisfy website owners.

I’ll use the analagy that onsite optimization is like planting the seeds, and link building is the nourishing rains that will produce the harvest.

Link building is an easy and affordable way to improve your website’s keyword rankings, and brand presence in your industry.

I’m not a fan of reciprocal linking. The way to build trust & authority with Google is through 1-way inbound linking, and the judicious use of outbound linking to topically related sites.

Reciprocal linking was a technique used a few years ago as an easy way to build link popularity & search engine ranking. A common technique was to build a web directory within your site for the sole purpose of reciprical linking. But, with the sophistication of search engine algorithms today…reciprical linking is not worth the effort. Here’s why…

Reciprocal linking could be like shooting yourself in the foot. Especially, if you’re identified as being in the wrong “neighborhood” of related sites and/or low quality sites. If that’s the case, then don’t count on ranking for your keywords anytime soon. Here’s how you can see what neighborhood you’re associated with: Do a Google search for [related:www.yoursite.com] without the brackets. Do you see anything unrelated. If so, you’ll probably want to fix that.

Some people say that it depends how valuable the reciprocal link is.

Reciprocal linking isn’t really dead. But for what it’s worth, I highly discourage the time & effort for reciprocal linking unless the site is topically related to yours, and/or for the social networking relationship.

Related Posts:
Criteria for Link Effectiveness.
Link Aquisition vs. Content Creation.
Getting Nowhere in Google.
Problems with some Link Networks.