Posts Tagged ‘backlinks’

4 MUST WIN SEO strategies

Monday, December 8th, 2008

If you have recently jumped on to the internet to further expand your brand name, then chances are that you will be bombarded with offers from SEO companies that offer you instant results with SEO. “Reach number 1 position on Google in 7 days”, “Get 10000 back links to your website”, “Climb up the Google ladder” etc are some of the names used by these companies. But do yourself a favor and stay away from such companies. For all that you know, your website might end up being penalized by search engines and you will be left in the doldrums for years trying to undo your mistakes. Here are 4 completely ethical and white hat SEO strategies that will place you in a must win situation. These are ideal for any new webmaster or company CEO looking to hire SEO experts online.

Slow and steady wins the race

Rome wasn’t built in a day. I am sure the same stands true for your company. You must have spent years trying to establish a company that is based on strong work principles and ethics. So why should you opt for a shortcut when you reach the biggest global marketplace? Set yourself a realistic time frame for SEO. White hat or ethical SEO strategies might take time. It might be 3 months, 6 months or even a year. Keep in mind that this is but a small time if you look at long term goals and rewards that will follow. So the first step is to hire an SEO company that has a good reputation and loads of expertise in white hat SEO strategies. If you plan to do it yourself, then go slow.

Use High quality informative content

Content is king. You cannot deny the importance of quality informative content. Good quality compelling content can not only increase the popularity of your website amongst web users, but also make it quite popular amongst other website owners. If you cannot write the content yourself, then hire a professional who can. I have heard people say this, ‘Nobody else knows my products like me. I am the best person to write about it.’ There is no denying the fact that you might know your products better than anyone else. But can you present it in a better way than anyone else? Do you have a flair for writing? Can you project it in the right way? Doing justice to your brand and making it stand out from amongst a million other websites is a tall order and it’s not something that everyone can do. Keyword research is a very important part of SEO. Do you know how and where to use keywords on the webpage?

Value each and every link

Creating back links is one of the most important parts of any SEO campaign. It is crucial for search engine visibility. It is easy to get carried away and accept each and every incoming link that comes your way. But you have to be careful and accept only quality links from trusted websites. Your content is one way to ensure that you get good links. Other than this, you have to churn your creative juices and do a fair amount of research. Promoting your website online requires a lot of patience. Not all strategies will work.

Offsite optimization

Alright, so we have spoken about content and back links and how they affect the position of your website in search engines. There are a few other things as well like Meta tags which are of reasonable importance. But there is a separate set of strategies which is known as offsite optimization. These involve promoting your website with techniques that will give you quality inbound links as well as excellent PR. Article marketing, blogs, targeting review websites, personalized emails and employing CRM are some of these strategies.

SEO Basics: Link Building

Monday, December 8th, 2008

After the role of content in SEO, it is now time to focus on the other equally important SEO tactics. The second most important strategy is link building. As the name suggests, link building is all about building back links to your website. More the number of links to a website, the better it is considered to be by search engines. If you are new to the concept of link building, then here are a few pointers for you to get started.

What is link building?

Every website is rated by search engines using several parameters before it is listed on the results pages. The position of a website depends on a lot of factors and the number of quality links that come into the website is one of these factors. So, as part of search engine optimization, SEO experts will create a network of back links to your website using legitimate link building methods. This will help your website achieve a much stronger position in search results pages.

Illegitimate link building methods

When link building became one of the key factors affecting the position and ranking of a website in search results pages, then some ‘smart’ websites started to offer link exchange services. As the name suggests link exchange services worked by exchanging links. Website A would link to website B in exchange for a link back to A. This method worked initially and this prompted some people to go one step ahead and start link farming. A link farm is a huge database of one way links. When you join a link farm, your website will immediately get 10000 back links causing your ranking to surge.

When link farms came into the picture, the quality of search results started to suffer. Websites that had little or no relevance to the term searched for by the users started to gain top positions in search engines, courtesy these illegitimate SEO techniques. So, search engine developers went back to the drawing board and modified their search algorithms. Link farming is now considered to be spam and any website that participates or joins a link farm is banned for three years from leading search engines. So you see, you’ll end up doing more harm than good.

Legitimate Link Building Methods

Alright, so how do you build back links using legitimate techniques? There are many ways to do it. But they all lead you back to the same old tried and tested method.

  1. Build a quality website: There is no denying the fact that quality always helps. If you have a superbly designed website or have the best content in the website, then other webmasters will automatically link to your website.
  2. Article Marketing: Most people undermine the effectiveness of Article marketing. But for me, it is the most powerful form of free internet marketing. You write articles or get them written by a content writer and then distribute it over the internet. Everybody needs quality content on their website and when they get it for free, they will never hesitate to give you a link back to your website. Do ensure that the resource box at the end of the article contains a link back to your website.
  3. Forums: Once again, you can do this yourself with a fair amount of ease or hire a professional who can do it for you. Online forums are like a professional beehive seeming with contacts. All that you have to do is start interacting with people. So how do you build the links? Well, the forum board will let you create your own signature which will show up at the bottom of every post that you make. This signature can contain a coupe of lines about you or your business and a link to your website. Start making quality posts and you will have quality links building up.
  4. Blog: If you don’t know what a blog is, then you have probably woken up after a decade in suspended animation or were away hibernating in a cave. Nevertheless, a blog is one of the best ways to build back links. Keep updating the blog frequently and you will have a network of links in some time.

The key is to build quality links from quality websites. Remember, the link popularity of the website that is linking to your website also matters. So accept incoming links only from quality websites that will help you.