SearchPath has today launched the website for the newly launched Independent Ambulance Association (IAA).
The site design portrays the IAA as a professional and influential voice to represent the industry's collective views and proposals to healthcare policymakers.
By joining the IAA, private ambulance companies will gain a memorable online presence to present their services to a decision-making audience within the public and private healthcare sectors through the Member Directory and Location Search facility. In addition, the Members' Only section of the site gives members access to a portfolio of business benefits and services at discounted prices.
The site's bespoke Content Management System (CMS), fully automates the membership application process, from the initial application, to subscription renewals and listig on the member directory. The CMS also gives full editing ability for the IAA to add/edit/remove content and pages to/from the website.
Slightly off topic from me - I have recently seen the impact of behavioural targeting in advertising. Three of the sites I spend time on are SEO blog SEOmoz, and two of our clients: Steppes Travel and Centreline Air Charter. And recently, when browsing the web, I have been seeing wall to wall ads for luxury safaris, private plane hire, and for SEOmoz.
The idea behind behavioural targeting (BT) in advertising is that each time you visit a site, it places a piece of code (known as a "cookie") on your computer. Then, when you visit a site that has advertising, that site reads the cookie on your machine, then serves you relevant ads accordingly. So if you spend lots of time on travel sites, when you browse the web you will see lots of ads for travel sites, because it is assumed that that is what you are interested in.
The feeling I got when I initially realised that I was being shown targeted ads was to be a bit freaked out. It felt a bit like someone was watching me surf the web. There is of course, no person behind the process, just a computer.
These concerns about intrusion and privacy were initially voiced when BT first arrived on the scene a few years ago, but seem to have faded into the background as the practice has become more accepted. I guess BT is here to stay, so we might as well get used to it.
I guess that targeted advertising first came on the scene on Google, back in the late nineties - you type a query into the search engine, it shows you targeted ads. BT is just an extension of that. BT is designed to benefit the consumer, and improve their user experience (UX). So to that end, I guess I can support it.
No, we're not mad enough to be cycling the 1,000 from Land's End to John O'Groats, but some friends are! And what's more they're doing it in 9 days rather than the usual 2 weeks!
The good news is they're not totally mad but it's all in a very good cause. They're hoping to raise over £50,000 in support of Macmillan Nurses.
This is a cause which is also close to our hearts, so we were happy to devote some of our time in creating a website to support the guys in their epic challenge. The site can be found at 1000in9.co.uk.
Good luck guys - maybe I'll come along for one leg...maybe!!
Finally we are seeing the demise of IE6, with only 1.4% of users in the UK using this very old version of Internet Explorer.
Microsoft's IE still leads the browser market, with a 38.6% share, but there are predictions that Google's Chrome will overtake this year, withmarket share increasing from 15.6% in January 2011 to 27% by 2011 year end. Firefox, our old favourite, has fallen to 25.7%.
For the first time in a single week, over 1 billion apps have been downloaded.
In total, in the last week of December, 1.2 billion, presumably from all new Christmas gadgets! (37 million Android devices were activated on Christmas Day alone! What happened to the good old days of a family game of Monopoly or Charades!!).
The US accounted for over half of all downloads, followed by China and the UK (81 million downloads, twice that of Germany or France).
The study, by Flurry, sees this level of activity becoming commonplace as the number of devices steadily increases.
All of us at SearchPath would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
This year we're supporting Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research the UK's only charity solely dedicated to research into cures for blood cancers, with patients benefitting every day from their ground-breaking research.
SearchPath will be taking a break over Christmas, with the office closing from mid-afternoon on Friday 23rd December until 8:30am on Tuesday 3rd January 2012.
Google has, for a while now, been biased toward brands rather than smaller, less well known sites. Google executive Eric Schmidt famously said a couple of years ago that he thought the bias for brands was "hardwired" in us, and that brands help "sort out the cesspool.".
A good example of this: Google suggest/instant. If you just type one letter into the Google searchbar, then the suggest and instant gives you a website, predicting what you want to search for. Of these, virtually all are big brands, household names. To be fair to Google, much of the time they are right, and they have to put something first, so I guess the big brands are as good a candidate as any to go first.
Check out the full list of sites that Google suggests for you if you type in one letter into the search engine:
A - Argos (not Amazon, funnily enough) B - BBC C- Currys D - Debenhams E - ebay F - Facebook G - Google H - Hotmail I - ITV Player J - John Lewis K - Kurt Gieger (who he??) L - Lottery M - Marks and Spencer N - Next O - Orange P - Play Q - Quidco R - Rightmove S - Sainsburys T - Tesco U - UPS V - Virgin W - Words that start with u X - X Factor Y - You Tube Z - Zara
So apart from two, every letter in the list above is followed by a commercial brand. Now this may be accurate; the top searches for these letters may be the brands mentioned. This would be slightly at odds though with the SEO maxim that transactional (commercial) searches make up only 20% of the total number of searches. Informational searches (according to most figures) make up 50% of the total, with the rest being navigational searches. So according to these numbers, many of the top searches would be informational searches, ("Justin Bieber", "breast cancer treatment", "Chelsea fixtures") not commercial ones (brands).
Could Google perhaps be altering its suggest and instant to be biased toward commercial sites, in order to to increase their advertising revenues? Surely not...
When looking to build inbound links (IBL's) to a website in order to boost its search engine ranking, any webmaster/SEO/marketer will need to, at some point, send out link request emails. I have sent out hundreds of these emails in my time as an SEO, and have learnt a thing or two about how to do it.
Rather than get in to the specifics of link request emails, the tip I want to give here is a more general one about the approach you want to take if you are to be successful in requesting links from webmasters.
In order to be successful at the task of getting links by asking for them, you need to be offering something in return. You want, and need, the situation to be "win-win".
The thing that you actually offer to the site you are looking to get a link from can be one of a number of things:
1) A link back in return. An example of when you can do this is sending out emails to blogs which have blogrolls, and are looking to exchange links with their blogrolls and the one on your blog. Keep this white hat and only exchange blog roll links with relevant, related sites that you like.
2) Money. OK, OK, this is not strictly white hat, but then just about any linkbuilding technique would be considered unethical by Google's measure ("Don't participate in schemes to artificially alter PageRank"). A good example of where paying for a link can be sort-of-ethical is paying for an entry in a quality niche directory. The directory would hand pick the sites that go into the directory, and the fee is often just to keep out the spammers. You might pay, say, a £50 one off fee for a listing in a good niche directory, one that is going to generate traffic as well as a link.
3) Content. Giving content in exchange for a link is as white hat as SEO gets these days. A great example of this is guest blogging - the process whereby you give content to a blog owner who then posts the content on their blog, giving you coverage, plus (usually) a link back to your site. They get free content for their blog, you get publicity plus a link: win-win! Superb.
An alternative, and less used way of using content to get a link is when you have some good content on your site (could even be just your core offering), and that is just what a webmaster is looking for for their site, perhaps on a list of directory on their site, listing sites like yours. You would approach them saying, "I see you have site X listed on your site, my site is market leader in that niche and has some great extra content, would you consider linking to my site. I feel it would benefit your users."
The emphasis when asking for links should always be "what's in it for them" - humans are innately self-centred creatures, and naturally look for things that benefit them first. They may be willing to help, but only if there is something in it for them. If you write to a webmaster saying simply, "Hi please will you link to my site because its great," you'll likely to get short thrift.
4) Social mentions. This is the last of the main options. You can offer a webmaster a bribe and say you will tweet about their latest offering in exchange for a link.
The number of things that you can offer someone in exchange for a link is not limited by this list - you can offer just about anything. Just don't expect to get something for nothing out there, because you will hit a dead end.
Content is arguably the most important weapon in the SEO armoury. You can have the most amazing technical SEO skills, or the have best promotion strategy in the world, but without good (or great) content, its all for naught.
Content is the backbone and lifeblood of the web, and is the reason we're all online - to find the information we are looking for; to find the answers to the questions we are asking.
All the major search engines, including Google, are designed to rank websites in order of the quality and usefulness of their content. The assumption behind Google's PageRank algorithm is that the best content will have the most links (votes) pointing to them from other websites - this is democracy at work on the internet. The massive success of Google and its ranking algorithm show that it has been pretty successful at giving its users what they want. Thus: content = rankings.
So content is vital for success online. The question then follows - who writes the content, and what should they write. Well, at Searchpath, content for our clients comes from three places - the client (staff at the client company), us at Searchpath, or a third party (for example a freelance copywriter or content acquired from elsewhere on the web).
With regard to what sort of content could, or should, be created by these three parties, please see below for a list of suggested content types:
1) Resource Lists
These are typically lists of quality, useful websites in your niche. Compiling lists of this type can be great linkbait (content that encourages people to link to it). One nice way of building links from a resource list is to make a list of the "best" bloggers in your niche. You then publish the list on your site and then contact the bloggers on it to let them know that they have been featured on your list. Many of them will link back.
2) Infographics
These are graphical representations of data or information that are easy to read and digest. Remember to include an embed code next to the infographic on your site so visitors can embed the graphic on their own sites. The embed should include a link back to your site.
3) A Blog
The staple of many sites' content strategy, blogs are a great place to build a relationship with your users, and to let them know what is happening with your firm and its community and niche.
4) Articles
These would typically come from the staff at a firm, and can be on any subject that takes their fancy (as long as it is related to the company's goods or services, of course). Ideally detailed and informational in nature. Its great advice to build up a library of these over time.
5) Interviews
Interviews conducted with industry leaders and interesting figures related to your brand can be great content for users. The interviews can be displayed in audio (podcast?) or textual form.
6) Video
This can be recorded and embedded directly onto a website, or a YouTube embed can be used. Embedding directly can be a way to make the video content more exclusive and unique, whereas a Youtube embed potentially provides more coverage and is simpler.
7) Research
Why not take the initiative and conduct original research in your industry. Surveys could work well here. if you have a good level of traffic on your blog, why not use that and run a survey on the blog? You could release the results in graphical form.
8) Q + A
These can take the form of a conversation between a potential customer and a representative of your company. Push the boat out and don't limit the conversation to your brand's offering, but extend it to cover issues not directly about your service or product, but one that is still relevant to your users. Put the user first in your thinking. Always think about what they want and need, not what you want to give them.
9) Calculators and Tools
A good example of this is the type of mortgage calculator that you find on many finance sites. Very useful and will bring in links. This type of content can be hard to action, as it can take more development time and money to produce. Can we well worth the effort though.
10) Webinars
Basically a online seminar. More commonly used in the business world than say, the travel or health care niche.
11) Tutorials
These often take the form of "how-to"s, giving advice to the community in a certain niche as to how to do certain things, such as use Ebay, get a flight upgrade, or lose weight.
12) Images
These can be stock images that you have collected, but ideally would be original pictures.
So there are many types of content that you can add to your website. So there are no excuses!
The sticking point in creating content, or having content created, is that it takes time and effort. Unless you are publicising the content directly, the immediate benefit is not always obvious. Its important to mention here that content creation will only reap benefits if it is done over a long period of time. Yes its important to promote content, but the very fact of, say, adding a blog post every day, is going to benefit your brand in varied and numerous ways. Its the only real way forward online.
SearchPath is pleased to announce the launch of a new website for Quick Move Properties.
The site is targeted at new home builders and developers, looking to offer part exchange deals to their home buying customers. The site therefore includes information and PDFs for developers and electronic home purchase enquiry forms.
QMP is the largest house buyer in the UK. To convey its size, the breadth of experience of its staff, and to personalise the site, photos were commissioned and a Key People page developed. This includes staff photos, biographies, QR codes, VCards and links to LinkedIn.
I was doing some rank checks yesterday for some of our clients (1st of the month), and was experimenting with Google's new "verbatim" search (see my post on this here) as compared to the old way of taking off personalisation, the "&pws=0" operator. I found that the Google results for the verbatim tool, "&pws=0" and my normal search, were all different.
I previously thought that using the "&pws=0" reduced Google to its "authoritative" version; this idea has been scuppered by the differing results from the verbatim search. It now seems that there is no basic, or normal search available in Google. All versions of the results give slightly different rankings.
This has a major implication for the reporting of SEO: if there is no way of getting an authoritative version of the Google results, and every person who does a Google search for a keyword gets a different set of results, then there is no basis for making conclusive claims about SEO results as reflected by rankings.
This means that the old, standard measure of SEO results and success - Google rankings - is becoming largely redundant. In the future, because of personalisation and localisation, SEO's may use traffic and conversions as the primary metric for measuring SEO progress.
This method is harder to see than rankings though - you have to mess around with dates in analytics to see the SEO results. Because of this, rankings will still have an appeal, especially to clients. Maybe we'll just have to take the verbatim search as the authoritative version of Google's results - for now.
A plumber has their wrench, a handyman has his screwdriver, a bricklayer has his cement mixer. Most jobs out there use tools to make their jobs easier; SEO is no different. SEO's use a variety of tools to make their lives easier and to increase their productivity.
This post is just to run through the tools that I use, its not an exhaustive list. So here's my list:
1) Google
Perhaps the most obvious tool SEOs use. I use Google every day, mainly for navigational and informational searches. Useful for finding link building opportunities, as well as plenty of general searches during the normal work day. A vital tool for an SEO.
2) SEOmoz Open Site Explorer
The main tool in the SEOmoz paid toolset, OSE is an excellent link building tool. OSE uses SEOmoz's index of the web (which is around half the size of Google's) to display back link information for a given site. Very useful for competitor analysis - you put in a competitor URL, then research and compare back links for targeted and intelligent link building. Identify top pages, view social activity data, and analyse anchor text.
3) SEOmoz Competitor Link Finder
Useful tool, again in the SEOmoz toolset (which starts at $99 per month). CLF works like this - you put in your website URL, then up 5 competitors, and Google finds the backlinks common to some or all of the sites you have entered. CLF is a useful tool for finding the quick wins common to your competitors - great for link building.
On the downside, because CLF is part of the SEOmoz "Labs" toolset, it is still in beta, and as such, is liable to sometimes bringing up errors instead of data. I'm sure these problems will be ironed out as the tool develops and comes out of beta, however.
4) SEOmoz Link Acquisition Assistant
This tool is the third from the SEOmoz paid toolset. The LAA takes information about the company, brand and competition returns 121 search engine link acquisition queries, such as "'keyword' resources". Its long list of queries is useful for link building. Like CLF, the LAA is in beta, so is sometimes not the most reliable tool. This should improve with time though.
5) SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty Tool
This is a useful tool for gauging the competitiveness of a keyword before you start an SEO campaign. You simply put in the keyword you are targeting, and the Keyword Difficulty Tool spits out a percentage score as to how easy or hard it is going to be to rank for that term.
6) Google Keyword Tool
This is the standard keyword research tool for internet marketer's the world over. Despite the slightly inaccurate data that the tool provides its still the best tool by far for doing keyword research, since it provides real Google data, and not poor substitutes like older tools such as Word Tracker, which give data from other, much smaller search engines.
The best way to use the KT is to use the "exact" match function, as this gives the precise number of searches that a term receives. Also look at the "Local Monthly Searches" column, rather than "Global", as "Local" gives the number of searches for google.co.uk instead of worldwide.
7) Google Analytics
For a free tool, GA really is an amazing piece of kit. It is the standard analytics tool out there, and is by far the most popular among SEOs. GA allows webmasters to track the number and origin of the users who visit your website. So you can see what phrases in Google organic (and paid search) people typed in to find your site. With GA you can also find the most popular pages and content on your site; this can be very useful data for deciding what are the best features of your site.
There are many other functions on GA to explore, such as finding out the average time on site of your visitors, of the bounce rate. GA also allows you to chop up data using advanced segments.
The only real reason to not use GA is if you really don't want Google to have access to your site's data; only do this if you are really paranoid!
9) Google Webmaster Tools
This is another remarkable free tool offering from Google. GWT offer webmasters the opportunity to see lots of information and receive lots of advice on their site to do with crawling, indexing and ranking. This information includes:
1. The ability to see problems that Googlebot has had crawling your site. If Googlebot has issues crawling some pages on your site, then it well may not display these pages in the rankings. 2. The ability to find out what are the most used words on your website. This gives you an idea of what Google thinks your site is about. Obviously if you want to rank for "luxury holidays" and the most popular terms on your website are "travel" and "trip" then that is an issue that needs to be addressed. 3. GWT gives the option of uploading an XML sitemap to Google. This aids crawling and indexing. 4. GWT allows webmasters to see which meta tags on your site that Google thinks are too short, too long, or are missing. Good tips.
So these are the main tools that I use every week in my SEO role. There are plenty of others out there, but I choose to stick to these 8 or so, since too many tools means you have moved into the realm of automated SEO, which is a whole world of spammy rubbish. I think that SEO tools should assist an SEO's work, not take it over. Good is SEO largely manual SEO, IMHO...
Google recently announced a new feature on their main search - verbatim search. This feature, found under "more search tools" on the left hand side of the main search screen, is designed to offer an opportunity to have a stripped down search, removing all the little alterations that Google normally makes to its searches.
These alterations include:
Making automatic spelling corrections
personalising your searchby using sites you've visited before
including synonyms of your search terms (matching “car” when you search [automotive])
finding results that match similar terms to those in your query (finding results related to “floral delivery” when you search [flower shops])
searching for words with the same stem like “running” when you’ve typed [run]
making some of your terms optional, like “circa” in [the scarecrow circa 1963]
This list was taken from the recent post from the Inside Search blog, and is useful for showing a full list of the changes that Google can make to your average search; a bit of what's going on "under the hood".
The "verbatim" option presumably replaces the "&pws=0" operator, put at the end of the URL on a Google search to remove personalisation. I guess it is just makes "cleaning up" the search easier.
For those of us that have to do a lot of rank checks in the average month, its a pleasing gift from Google, as it speeds up the process, and saves typing "&pws=0" after each search...
It's received SEO wisdom that government/university sites have more value to Google than standard .co.uk/.com's. You can see evidence for this for some of the ads you see around the web screaming "5000 .edu links for 5$!!! Buy now!!"
It is usually assumed that because links on these sites are harder to get, then Google gives them a special weighting. However I heard from Matt Cutts a while ago that government/education sites don't get a special weighting from Google.
So what is it that leads SEO's to believe that they do get a special weighting by Google? Well IMHO it is actually because these sites have better link profiles than standard sites. Most .edu/.gov/.ac.uk addresses have been around since the early days of the web, so have had time to build up trust over that time.
Universities and government sites also usually have great content, so almost always have a ton of quality inbound links that give exceptional PageRank.
They also tend to be resource hubs and link out to lots of quality sites, which boosts their standing in the eyes of the search engines further.
So we can see that the boost given to government/university sites is not a direct, but an indirect one.
Although everyone is looking, there are no silver bullets for SEO. For me, successful SEO is about consistently applying some well-known approaches. It’s not rocket science, but it is hard graft using a range of techniques which different people in a company and their agencies need to work on together. I’ve written a lot in the past about “best practices” and on Smart Insights we have summarised the basics of SEO and also the latest SEO ranking factors with which many online marketers are aware of.
On their own, the ranking factors aren’t so useful, context is needed to illustrate how they can be applied in practice through being creative, so I thought it would be interesting and different to create a series of posts looking at simple SEO approaches with examples. They’re relevant for all companies from small to large, but maybe easiest to implement in SMEs where there may be more flexibility in changing page templates.
Some ideas will be a little leftfield, but all ideas will be fairly simple, non-spammy and our posts should build up into a gallery of example SEO practices to learn from. On their own they won’t make a huge difference, but applied together, over a period of time they will get you better results.
To get started here are some of the simple ideas Chris Soames and I will be covering in our new series. We’ll start with 21 and take it from there. In the future, we’ll go into more detail on ll take and example and together these ideas will build up into a checklist and gallery of ideas for you to think about and apply. Here’s our first ideas on some simple techniques grouped together in terms of optimisation technique, we’ll expand on them with more examples when we do a post on each:
On-page optimisation techniques
1. Use more editorial links across your site
We know that internal backlinks and the anchor text within them are important to help ranking, but did you know that Google weights links differently? Editorial links are given a higher weighting by Google, so this is a technique that can be used across the site and on external sites like links from other blogs. Train copywriters about editorial links and don’t let the brand police completely restrict their use.
2. Use linked keywords to key category pages on home or About Us page
The challenge with the home page is we want it to be visual to support the brand make it engaging for the user, but we require content and links containing the right anchor text to showcase our main product categories. Making use of the area below the fold is a common technique here although you’re hampered if designers don’t permit scrolling home pages…
Example: About Us on home page on Asos.com
This shows the editorial links idea in practice:
Established in June 2000, ASOS is the UK’s largest independent online fashion and beauty retailer, offering over 40,000 branded and own label product lines across womenswear including dresses, shoes, jewellery, lingerie and beauty – and menswear, including jeans, t-shirts, shoes and shirts.
This is neat since it explains the proposition too. If it doesn’t work on the home page, then try it on the About Us page – this is usually a high authority page in the main nav, yet often the body copy doesn’t contain any links.
3. Create more content, a mini-directory on home page below the fold
The home page is usually the top landing page effective at attracting natural search traffic, so if you can expose more keywords on the home page, then this will be effective. Example: http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk – a nice simple widget at the top of the page will get the majority of visitors on their journeys but more detail content and key destinations below will help attract more visitors – either to this page or the destination page for the mini sitemap pages.
4. Review your title tag on key pages to keep it focused but with the right modifiers
Every compilation of ranking factors still shows that the title tag is THE most important on-page factor. Every site I’ve ever reviewed has always benefited from re-engineering of the title tags. The main issues are that either it’s too short, possibly it’s automated by a CMS and can’t be overridden or alternatively it’s too long so focus is lost. This summary of title tag options is the best advice I’ve seen, but with 40 ideas, it’s possibly too long. Watch for more succinct advice on this coming soon. especially on the home page.
5. Optimise headings
After the title, the headings, particularly the h1 are efffective. A well structured site has a semantic markup.
I have seen so many examples where designers get this wrong and don’t have a semantic markup from h1 to h2 to h3 down the page instead headings in sidebars or sub-headings have a variety, making it harder for the search engines to see headings in the main content.
Yet many h1 are simplified and perhaps worse secondary or tertiary level headings aren’t shown on the site
6. Create multiple home pages.
This isn’t so simple, it’s more a different way of thinking to create major themes around sub-pages, hubs, themes or even category pages, call them what you will. Effectively you have multiple home pages which are authoritative.
7. Create unique content for product and service pages.
An obvious one this, but particularly for retailers, there is a danger everyone has similar if not identical product descriptors. Google just won’t rank content it assess as duplicate compared to similar pages on other sites or on a single site.
This recent Smart Insights post Beat the Panda by Mel Henson shows how to differentiate – not just for the engines, but for visitors too.
8. Tweak! Use analytics to focus on the pages which will give you the most boost
There are two ways you can look at this, both require using Google Analytics to review landing pages for the natural search non-brand advanced segment. My preference is to look at the landing pages that are already attracting good volume from natural – almost the home page and then look at tweaking what we’ve discussed, i.e. title, headings, copy, internal and external links.
The other view is to see the gaps in landing pages – which are missing natural traffic compared to what you’d expect, based on their visitor levels. Review the most popular of these by views (all, not just natural) and look at how you can tweak these. Internal linking techniques
9. Use editorial links in long copy
We’ve seen that editorial links are effective. These should be a key part of blogs, but many blogs don’t include them. Of course they can be overdone – this example shows both sides of the story.
Try to use editorial links in other key pages too like product pages.
10. Create a “hot X” page which is available in your main navigation
This can be within your main or left sidebar and will be authoritative so can help flow ranking to your key offers – so this is hot products, services or deals that you want to rank.
11. Use footer links and dynamic panels
Yes, we have seen that Google has downgraded the value of run-of-site links such as footer links, but I’ve found again and again that they do have an influence.
Example: www.salesforce.com. The example of Salesforce.com is an interesting one, since they tailor the links by site section and use dynamic panels to display more in-depth content. It seems to work for them but then they have a solid PR/backlink strategy too. Linking from other sites – aka backlinking, inbound links
12. Deep link!
Possibly one of the biggest mistakes with SEO, or if you prefer, one of the biggest opportunities is deep linking.
A link from a partner site can help boost ranking for your category or product pages much better if it’s direct to these pages.
Naturally links are to the home page and you do need to keep a balanced link profile with some links to the home page which brings us to our next tip…
13. Use relevant anchor text
Using anchor text that contains your target keywords is known to be one of the key anchor factors – more important even that the on-page title tag.
Yet, if you review the natural backlinks to a un-optimised site, the vast majority of backlinks will contain the company name, URL. Both of these previous links take us to the next one:
14. Reconfigure existing links, especially high authority links
Use a backlink analysis tool like Google Webmaster Tools, Majestic SEO or SEOMoz to review your existing existing links.
Identify those with the highest authority and then look at how they can be improved in terms of anchor text, deep linking or additional links. Contact the site owners you think are most likely to be amenable to changes.
15. Follow-up new links to your site to form partnerships
If your content marketing is working well you will get new links daily/weekly, so put in place a workflow to follow-up on these links to form relationships with other site owners to maybe improve these links or look at opportunities for future links.
16. Use social media profiles to gain backlinks
Links from the profile pages of many social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are no-followed.
So limited relevance is applied to these, but this isn’t true of all networks, for example,
Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube so review links and improve the anchor text. These do vary through time too – for example You Tube has reviewed nofollow.
See also this great post on SEO for social media profiles.
17. Guest blog
Many companies have a blog and put time into writing posts, but don’t put as much time into guest blogging since it’s harder to make happen. Changing the mindset to contribute content to other sites which will often allow you tailor deep links is time well spent. Try to identify a small number of sites where you can make regular contributions, but also set targets, e.g. one new guest post per week since the number of unique linking domains is important to improving overall rankings.
18. Syndicate content with back links
A related way of getting links from other blogs – you may not need to write new content, but republish it elsewhere. Before Panda this worked well on article sites and there is still some incremental benefit of using these sites, but it’s best to syndicate content to authoritative sites if you can.
You likely already have content that others may be interested in sharing with their audiences on their blogs or sites. If not create it, you should plan to repurpose such it can be used in different locations.
19. Get the value from your other sites.
Very few companies we audit have a single site, even small sites. If you have more than one domain, even if they are hosted on the same server, this gives opportunity to flow relevant anchor text to a main site – deep links of course – direct to your key services or niche services you need to rank for.
20. Use an integrated approach to gaining links across the business and agencies
Not simple at all, but the most important to success since it’s external links from authoritative sites that count for the most. It struck me at an SEO workshop I gave recently when I asked for simple success factors that someone on the course shared this approach since it’s far from simple, but really important to get right – work with others in your company and try to get different agencies working together.
21. Review your most linked-to content and create more of the same
Finally, another quick win from the analytics – use the backlink analysis tools or Google Analytics to find your most linked to, most shared, most popular content and then replicate the approach using a different angle. You can also tweak the on-page factors to get better visitors values from this content too.
I hope you find these ideas useful, will add more detail and examples on some of them in future posts. We’ve only really scratched the surface of ideas, particularly for backlinking. If you’re looking for more ideas on linking I recommend checking out Kelvin Newmans Clockwork Pirate ideas.
This post is republished with permission by Dave Chaffey. This post was originally on www.smartinsights.com. Dave is CEO and co-founder of Smart Insights. He is a bestselling author, consultant and speaker who enjoys sharing tips, tools and techniques on all things digital, but especially SEO, PPC, Social Media, Email Marketing, Site Design & Analytics!
SearchPath is pleased to announce the launch of a new website for Easy Quote Windows.
The site is setup to enable visitors to browse and obtain quotes for windows and doors supplied by Easy Quote Windows. Visitors are able to customise their windows and doors, with different styles, sizes, finishes and glazing options.
The site includes a full windows and doors management system enabling Easy Quote Windows to manage all product information including prices, sizes and product ranges. The site's Content Management System enables Easy Quote Windows to update all site content.
The "Long Tail" is a concept first outlined by the editor of Wired magazine, Chris Anderson, in an article in the magazine in 2004. He applied the idea to internet retailers such as iTunes and Amazon, making the observation that since the advent of internet retailing, there has been a massive expanse in the size of inventory.
So, in the past, a high street CD retailer like HMV could stock, say 5,000 CD's at a typical high street store. Now, Amazon, because it doesn't have to pay high street rents and can have massive warehouses, can stock millions of different CD's at any given time. This gives rise to the long tail demand curve (seen below), which basically says that, contrary to common sense, of all the items sold in a given period by a e-tailer, only a small percentage will be the "big hitters"; the big albums, books or whatever that they sell.
The vast majority of the cumulative sales of the seller will be the small items that only sell an handful of each. But because there are millions of these tiny sellers, they actually make up the larger percentage of the total sales, compared to the "head" of the graph.
This counter intuitive notion was a real breakthrough by Anderson. He saw that in retailing, common sense does not prevail, and the Harry Potter's, Coldplay's and Pirates of the Caribbean of this world are not the big money spinners in the e-tailing world.
Not long after the first article was published, SEO's started to apply these concepts to SEO; the "long tail of SEO" was born.
So the long tail of search goes something like this: in analytics, you can see the type and number of terms that people typed in to the search engines and found your site as a result. If you look at the organic referrers report in analytics, you will see a list of these phrases. Of these, the top 10 will have the highest numbers, with mainly navigational and transactional searches (see my blog post here on more on the different Google query types). This top 10 of organic referrers is required reading for SEOs. But these are only part of the story.
I did a quick review of a few of our clients' sites, and found that the long tail concept is fully operational in the world of search, just as in retail. The results of my review can be seen below:
Site 1)
Number of visitors in the total of top 10 organic referrers: 400
Number of visitors in the rest (600 phrases) of the organic referrers report: 1,250
Site 2)
Number of visitors in the total of top 10 organic referrers: 1,000
Number of visitors in the rest (2,300 phrases) of the organic referrers report: 3,700
Site 3)
Number of visitors in the total of top 10 organic referrers: 1,570
Number of visitors in the rest (2,600 phrases) of the organic referrers report: 4,000
So we can see that the real life data above fits the trend pretty well; the top 10 phrases in the referrer reports make up only around a 1/4 of the total number. You can see the long tail of search graph below:
The next question is what to do about this long tail of search; how do we, as marketer's, tap into this goldmine of opportunity?
The short answer is this: regularly add more content to your site. By doing this, you broaden your long tail scope, and give Google at least a chance to show your site for the more descriptive phrases that people search for.
One of the best ways to add this keyword rich content to your site is to have a blog on your site. A blog can be a great way of adding regular, keyword rich content to your website. Blogging can be hard to find the time to do regularly, but its well worth it. Tips for topics for blogging include industry news, comment on industry trends, information on new products/services, and company news.
There are limitations for targeting the long tail this way, however: even if you add, say, 100 blog posts a year (2 a week), you will still only be targeting around 500 extra phrases a year (if you say an average of 5 new long tail phrases per post), which should generate a few hundred extra visits to your website per year. This is not to be sniffed at. However, to make real inroads into the long tail of search, you might need to try UGC (User Generated Content).
A great example of UGC targeting the long tail is Wikipedia, which has millions of user written pages and regularly shows for all sorts of long tail searches. In order to use UGC well though, you must have a decent sized community who you can utilise for content.
So targeting the long tail of search is a pretty vital part of SEO, but one that requires steady hard work to achieve. So get on creating that awesome content!
Traditionally scholars of the internet have divided the queries that users type into search engines into three categories, which are used by the engines to determine intent:
1) Navigational - This is the search when the user knows what site it wants to go to, and merely uses the search engine as a navigational tool for getting there. So when a search for "Facebook" or "Amazon" is made, it is pretty clear that the user just wants to get to one of those sites by using Google, not by typing in the URL into the address bar, or by using a bookmark.
The navigational query is the easiest type of query for the search engines to answer, since there tends to be little or no ambiguity in the intent of the search. This Search Engine Land post from last year tells us that, according to Bing, approximately 33% of search engine queries are navigational.
In my experience in SEO and analytics, navigational searches make up the largest single organic search engine referrer. So your brand name is, most of the time, going to be the largest single organic phrase, in terms of visitors, that Google refers to your site. However, the cumulative number of informational and transactional searches is nearly always higher than this number. So very often you will see, in a typical analytics organic Google referrers screen, the brand name at the top, followed by dozens, (or hundreds, or even thousands) of referring phrases that, in aggregate, make up much larger a portion of the total referrals than the brand referrals alone. So in this way we can see that our experience of analytics confirms that data that informational and transactional searches make up a larger portion of referrers than navigational searches.
The brand awareness that creates the navigational/brand traffic is largely generated by offline marketing, so is not generally targeted by SEO. In any case, almost all companies rank number one for their name already, so don't need any SEO in this area. We can thus leave the navigational query alone with regard to SEO.
2) Informational - This is the search where the user is looking for information on a certain topic. An example of an informational query would be "lung cancer symptoms" or "FA Cup 2001 winner". This type of query makes up the bulk of search engine traffic, perhaps 50%+.
Unlike the first category, informational searches can be a rich source of traffic for commercial websites. So if you own a website selling wildlife holidays, you might get found for the query "gorillas Congo", and may be able to get in front of the searcher who is looking for information on this topic, and potential sell a holiday to the Congo to them.
Informational searches, because of their numerous variety and scope, are often difficult to optimise a site for with SEO. The main place that informational searches are optimised are in the long tail of search, the optimisation of which should feature in most websites' content strategy. So SEO keyword research and targeting would not normally feature informational type of queries, but only the long tail, which is usually targeted by a site's content.
3) Transactional - This type of query occurs when someone is looking to buy something. An example would be "gucci handbags" or sony laptop". This type of query makes up maybe 20% of search engine traffic.
Obviously this type of query is the most fruitful for business and thus the most sought after for SEO, as people typing in transactional queries are looking to spend money.
Transactional queries are the ones commonly sought out by SEOs during the keyword research stage of an SEO campaign, and often provide the most "bang for the buck" in terms of time and money spent against return (in terms of organic search engine traffic).
A successful SEO campaign should have a good number of these transactional queries showing up in the search engine organic referrers section of the analytics report, not least because these queries are almost always the best converting, compared to the navigational and informational searcher, who is less "commercially focused".
One thing I've noticed recently when using Google search (and when signed in to a Google account) is that if you click on a result, then go back to the SERPs, Google gives you a notice below the result you have just left - "block all results from www.example.com?".
Obviously Google sees that a user who clicks on a result then "bounces" (hits the browser back button without going to another page) is obviously not happy with the result they have just found, and offers the option to block all results from this domain in future Google results. They do this to improve the UX for Google users.
IMHO this option that is given by Google is a sign that bounce rate in the organic listings is considered as a factor by Google in their ranking algorithm. It is probably not given too much weight, or has qualifiers with it, as it could be open to abuse by spammers - webmasters could just click on their competitors and "bounce" to negatively affect their ranking. But all the same, I think it is one of the famous "200 factors" in the Google algorithm.
Google has recently announced that it will be enabling a new secure protocol when users use Google search and are signed in to a Google account. This has been done, Google announced, to increase security when users are using an unsecured connection, such as a Wi-Fi Hotspot or an internet cafe.
The impact for SEO and those people that use analytics software is that analytics tools will no longer show the search queries that the user came to your site from Google with, just that they came from Google.
This is a pretty major change to the way Google operates, and has been announced with remarkably little fanfare. The net result of this is that analytics tools are going to have a pretty big hole in their data. Adwords data is unaffected, its just the organic data that is being affected by this change at the moment.
A couple of points to note:
1) First this is for Google.com at the moment, but as we know these things, if they work out, tend to get rolled out across all Google domains at later date.
2) Secondly this change just affects users who are signed in with a Google account, so not everyone is affected. However, with the growth of Google + and Gmail, this number is only going to grow.
This is a major change that everyone with a website should be aware of. Although there's not much we can actually do about this, we still need to monitor our analytics accounts to see what affect this change is having. Be ready.
Inspired by classic link building technique lists like Aaron Wall's classic and this one from E-Consultancy earlier this year, I have decided to compile my list of 20 link building tactics that still work in today's competitive marketplace.
Some of these tactics are quite old skool, but still relevant (e.g. niche directories), while others are newer on the scene (infographics).
Some of these tips are going to be relevant for you if you work as an in-house SEO, as opposed to an agency. For example, quality blog commenting only really works if you are in house and have time to divert to learning your brand inside out. If you are an agency SEO working on many clients at once, you will not necessarily have the knowledge to answer questions on forums, blogs and Q + A sites. So be aware.
We at Searchpath don't claim to have tried all of these tactics; some of them are easier than others to do. One thing the list should do is give those link builders out there an idea boost. Enjoy!
1) Link bait/content marketing - This tactic is one I have written about before, and still forms the core around which a lot of link building takes place. Without having useful, or funny, or interesting, or generally all round scintillating content on your site, all the other ideas on this list are pretty much redundant. The core of quality, white hat, successful link building is giving people a reason to link to you, not going out and spamming forums and blogs, without adding value.
2) Guest blogging - This is a very useful tactic much favoured by us a Searchpath. The idea is you contact blogs with a post idea, and give it to them for free, in exchange for a link back to your site, and coverage on their blog. They get free content for their blog, you get eyeballs on your brand and a link. Easy. You may need to give bloggers an added incentive to post your content on their sites, such as a fee (make it a sponsored guest post), or a link back from your site. Make sure you check to see that the link is still findable by Google once it has left the front page and gone into the archive. The core concept of guest blogging is relationship-building; the idea is to establish a relationship with bloggers in your niche, exchanging content and links with them on a regular basis, not a one shot deal.
3) Resource Lists - A great linkbait tactic - create a list of the top 10, 20, or 50 bloggers/sites/people in your niche, then email them to tell them that they have been featured. Often they will link back. This is a sort of ego-bait technique, and can work wonders. See an example of a resource list here on quickmovenow.com.
4) Infographics - Infographics, in case you have never seen them, are graphical representations of data sets in a given topic. They are a great way to present rather dry data in an appealing way, and can be a good way of building links in 2011. Make sure you add a embed code below the graphic on your site to make sure people don't just take the graphic without giving credit. See a great example of an embedded infographic giving a link here on Search Engine Land.
5) Blog/forum commenting/answering questions - This old skool tactic has been much abused in the past, but done properly can be a great way to build your brand and links. The main idea is not to just say "Hey great post thanks!" then add your keyword as the name - this just looks spammy. Only post if you can genuinely add something to the conversation. Always put your name in the "from" field on the blog/forum/Q + A site; make it personal. Only add a link to your posts once in every, say, 4 posts. Most webmasters would approve of this, as you are adding value. And always make sure that your link is relevant to the post. SEO expert Rand Fishkin is a big fan of answering questions on sites like Quora. Try it, you might like it.
6) Industry bodies/professional associations - One of the first things you should do when you take an SEO client on is to find out who the industry bodies and professional associations are. Examples of these are: British Association of Removers and The Fostering Network. See if your client is not linked to from sites like these already. If not, get on it and add them! Simples!
7) Testimonials - Find products or services that you or your client likes, and offer to give a testimonial (in exchange for a link of course). See an example here from freelance journalist Maggie Wakefield.
8) Niche web directories - An oldie but a goodie. Simple to do - do a web search for "keyword directory" covering your brand's main keywords, find the good ones, then submit. You might get some for free, but you'll in all likelihood have to pay for the good ones. Example of a niche directory in the travel field: onlytourist.com. Also worth trying general directory dmoz, you rarely get accepted these days but its worth a try, it only takes a minute (as Take That once said).
9) Competitor analysis - A staple of every SEO's armoury. I use tools from SEOmoz, which are paid, but you can do some analysis on free tools like Yahoo Site Explorer (although this tool is due to be retired at the end of the year). Looking for links this way can be tedious, as it involves trawling through many links looking for the odd gem. But it can work, if you've got patience. To speed things up, use the Competitive Link Finder tool on SEOmoz, which cross-references the links from up to 5 competitors to find the common links. Great tool.
10) Be controversial - This is a risky tactic, and one that Head of Webspam at Google Matt Cutts advises not to overuse, but can work. Basically it works by blogging in a controversial or confrontational way, to stir up debate and attract links from other bloggers. One way some bloggers do this in the SEO community is to pronounce, from time to time, that "SEO is dead". SEO's cannot resist debating this controversial issue, and posts on the subject often attract a large number of links from other SEO bloggers. This is just an example of how this tactic can work: http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/6769-seo-is-dead-again.
11) Donations - Donating to charity can be good to way to do some good, and genuinely help a charity, and get a link back in the process. In my experience, the bigger charities need a big donation (thousands) to start up some sort of relationship , but if you look after smaller brands, then you should be able to find some smaller local charities to work with, who will be grateful for a donation in exchange for a link.
12) Widgets/badges/awards - This is essentially the process of giving a website a tool, badge or award, in order to get a link back. A classic example of a successful widget is The Weather Channel, who have this widget to give sites to host on their site (it gives the weather local to their website). Giving badges/awards to sites to get a link back is a fairly common tactic, and can work well. The caveat for this tactic is that to give awards out, you have to have a certain status in your niche, otherwise people won't accept the legitimacy of your awards and host your badges.
13) Press Releases - Another old skool tactic, but can still be helpful. There are still a few free PR sites worth submitting to, the releases of which often come up in the SERPs once they have been released. One of the best is still PR Log, but you won't generally be able to get anchor text links from the free PR sites. Paid PR sites are also available; we use journalism.co.uk a fair amount, its releases get spidered and it offers anchor text links, for about £40 per release, which is a lot less than some of the other paid PR sites. Plus journalism.co.uk is a UK site.
14) Freebies - Giving free product to bloggers in exchange for a review can be a great way of getting links. Here is an example of a review site reviewing a product (fake nails) whilst giving a link to the site at the bottom of the review. Giving away product is easier when you have a physical product to sell rather than a service.
15) Beginners guides - See this classic example of a beginners guide as successful link bait - The SEOmoz Beginner's Guide to SEO. This great guide is 100% free and has been viewed over 1 million times. It has also been linked to many times by blogs and forums like this. Writing such a guide takes a lot of time and effort, but if you can produce something of real value, then it can serve as great link bait. A beginners guide is the sort of content that can sit on a site once it's done, and just bring in natural links.
16) Linking out - This is a technique that should be regular and ongoing if you have a blog. Some people feel that linking out too much encourages people to leave your site, but actually the opposite is true. Google regards sites that link out to large numbers of quality sites as "hubs" - sites that are resources for users to guide them in their surfing. These sites are highly regarded by Google. A good example of a SEO blog that has made themselves into a "hub" are Oxford based SEO company SEOptimise. Their blog often features posts like this one: 44 Google Webmaster Tools Resources, that features a comprehensive up-to-date resource on GWT. Blog posts like this often stand the test of time, and can hang around in the SERPs picking up links long after they have been written.
17) Video content - Can be a good, if effortful way to get backlinks to a site. Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz is a big fan of video for SEO, and regularly posts his White Board Friday videos on the SEOmoz blog. He makes the point that video content can leapfrog the normal SERPs to give easy SEO wins. Once made, submit your videos to YouTube for extra coverage.
18) Interviews - Interviewing leading industry figures on your or your client's blog can often send traffic your way from other sites in your niche. Example of this is the interesting, though short, interview on SEOmoz with web analytics guru, Avinash Kashuik. Interviews with industry leaders can be a good way of getting (sort of) user generated content on your blog, which is a quick way of adding content to your blog, which Google loves. Always good to get love from Google!
19) Contests - Good example of this format is this contest on the Guardian website for best British blog. Make sure you have some decent prizes, and obviously link out to the winner(s).
20) Research - Sorry to refer to SEOmoz again (as you can tell, I'm a fan!), but a great example of original research generating buzz, traffic and links is the SEOmoz Ranking Factors study, where every two years a survey is conducted of leading SEOs to gauge what they think are the leading factors in the search engines algorithms. This is linked to by many blogs in the SEO space, and elsewhere.
So you can see that there are many different tactics that one can execute when carrying out a link building campaign for a client. You're unlikely to use all of these tactics on one client, but a combination of some of these can reap real rewards, when done well.
Also - you will notice that I mentioned SEOmoz more than any other site on this list. If you are looking for an example to follow when it comes to success in SEO and link building, then look no further than them. Not only do they preach SEO tactics and strategy on their often updated blogs, but they practice what they preach - research, interviews, video, linking out, tools, beginners guides and resource lists are all done by the guys at SEOmoz, and with great success. If you looking for someone to follow, they are the guys. So go do it!
An EU Directive came into force on May 26th this year, requiring all UK businesses and organisations running websites in the UK to get positive consent from visitors to their website, in order to store cookies on users' computers, including first-party cookies such as Google Analytics.
There has been lots of conflicting messages about exactly what websites need to do to comply - there was talk of the government working with browsers manufacturers to find a browser-based solution. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) states: "We’ve decided to place a header bar on our website giving users information about the cookies we use and choices about how to manage them. I am not saying that other websites should necessarily do the same. Every website is different and prescriptive and universal ‘to do’ lists would only hinder rather than help businesses to find a solution that works best for them and their customers."
When the ICO put up their banner for opting-in, their visitor stats dropped by 90%! What it doesn’t/can’t reveal is whether people didn’t allow the cookie, so couldn’t then be tracked, or people left the site.
I can't see any of the big sites, such as amazon.co.uk, currently displaying an cookie opt-in messages. O2.co.uk uses Google Analytics with no opt-in messages - are companies wanting to avoid being the first mover & what this might mean for their users?
Overall, it seems that there’s lots of confusion about implementation – with the one year extension for implementation, I suspect most sites are adopting a wait & see what the competition does.
I found this great little 3 minute video detailing the basics of how SEO works. Serves as a great introduction to what we do and why we do it, in case you didn't know!
If, like me, you follow Matt Cutts (famous Google blogger) online then you will notice that his blog has gone sort of quiet recently. He had blogged recently that he had a mountain of email to catch up on, so I thought that that was the reason he had not done any SEO related posts for some time.
Then I checked out the Google Webmaster Video Channel on You Tube - and found Matt, and what he has been doing for webmasters and SEO's for the past 6 months - posting videos. I was surprised to find there are loads of videos up there, going back years. I had watched a few videos a couple of years ago, but didn't realise Cutts had been doing many more recently.
Matt answers all kinds of questions on all types of topics, from dmoz to Google indexing to marketing. You can find the channel here.
In the past us SEO's here at SearchPath have relied mainly upon a couple of metrics for assessing how difficult it would be to rank for a given term, i.e. how long it might take to achieve page one rankings for that term in Google. These two metrics were: the number of competing pages in Google for that phrase, and intuition.
So if the chosen keyword was "kids paintballing west swindon", then from that we could assume that it would be quite easy to rank for (due to the fact that four word key phrases usually meant low competition). We would also check the number of competing pages in Google (468,000) and see that because that was pretty low (anything under a million competing pages is considered pretty low) we would assume it would be relatively easy to rank for.
However, we have found that using just these two metrics for assessing keyword competitiveness has its problems. For one, they aren't always a good predictor of how long it will take to achieve page one rankings for a phrase; in the past we have seen three of four word key phrases that have relatively low competition on Google that have taken a relatively long time to rank for, much longer than we thought.
So in order to reduce the degree of error when making SERPs predictions, we have made the process more scientific. We have drawn up a spreadsheet that includes a larger number of metrics to compare, such the competitiveness as shown in the Google Adwords Keyword Tool; the number of searches per month as shown in the Keyword Tool; the maximum PPC bid price for that term; the number of results for an "allintitle:keyword" search, which gives the number of results in Google that have the keyword in the title tag (often a good indicator of how many competing sites there are in that niche, since optimised sites tend to have the keyword in the website meta title, which is considered good SEO practice).
We have also compared the top 5 results for each key phrase in Google, comparing such metrics as the number of links a site has (taken from Yahoo Site Explorer) and the age of the domain (older domains tend to do better). These metrics make up an assessment of the competition.
The result of this analysis is that once the spreadsheet is completed we have a better feel for how easy or hard it will be to rank for a given key phrase in Google. If, for example, the average Adwords bid price for a term was £5, the number of searches for month was 50,000, and the top 5 sites in that niche all had thousands of inbound links, then we could assume that it could take over 6 months to rank on page one for such a phrase. If the metrics were lower, then we could assume a shorter rank time.
The only thing that is missing from our approach is an overall difficulty score to take from each spreadsheet; something to compare the difficulty of one niche to another. To calculate this score accurately from the metrics we list on our keyword competitiveness spreadsheets would take a level of statistical knowledge that is currently beyond us at SP! Any maths geniuses that have a spare algorithm to fit the data, please get in touch...
Despite not having a single number that results from our research, the individual metrics we research do give us an improved, more accurate and scientific basis for making predictions at the start of an SEO campaign.
This occurred to me today - If you are starting out on a SEO campaign with a new site and the top 5 sites in your niche have domains that are 10 years old, you are going to struggle. Why? Before, I would have said that it was because Google trusts old domains over new ones. This is true, but also you will struggle because your competitors have a ten year link building head start. In commercial niches, your competitors will have built ten years worth of links. You have to play catch up – big time. Really hard.
The solution - scintillating linkbuilding. Hey, thats what we're here for!
This occurred to me today, a good analogy for how Google works. The best way to think of it is like this: for each page of results for a keyword in Google, think of it as an election. Each result in the listings is a candidate, with the website being the candidate and manifesto rolled into one. To win the election, and get to number one in the listings, a website must get more votes (links) than any other website in that niche, primarily by being the most appealing candidate and having the best manifesto (website).
So, for example, if we look at the keyword "mobile phones", the number one listing is O2. This is there because more people have linked their website to O2 than any other UK mobile website. In other words, in the daily "election" run by Google for this keyword, O2 have accrued the most number of "votes" (links) so have won the election. If, when the mobile phone Google result "election" is run tomorrow, and Car Phone Warehouse are found to have beaten O2 in links, then they will be declared winners on that day. And so on.
So links are like votes in Google; it's a democracy. Generally, the more links a website has, the higher it will rank in Google.
This is obviously a simplification of the real situation, as there are many factors that go into calculating the Google results; there are over 200 factors, such as: the number of tweets about a website, whether a site has the keyword in their website title, and other on-page factors. But the idea still stands.
You could even extend the analogy to cover SEO's (search engine optimisers). In a real election, it is not always necessarily the best candidate that wins; it is often the one with the best PR team. They are the ones that take the raw material of a candidate, with all his policies and personality, and present it in the best way to engage the public.
In the same way, an SEO will take a website, and add content, reach industry bloggers and generally promote the brand online, in order to attempt to win the Google election. So an internet marketer’s job is basically to help create something of value, then tell people about it in an engaging way. This is the same process as Alistair Campbell was for Tony Blair's government. So you can see the analogy.
Link building, like many sectors in the online space, is changing pretty rapidly. Many of the techniques that used to be employed by link builders the world one or two years ago are no longer working.
For example, we are finding that submitting press releases to press release sites does not give the link value that is used to. Google evangelist and blogger Matt Cutts said a recent SEO conference:
"Directly paid links on press releases, we wouldn't want to count those...We probably won't count anchor text links in press releases".
Matt did go on to say that yes, if the release is picked up by another news outlet and they reprint or write up a new release with information from your previous submission, those links will most assuredly count. So the value of online PR has reduced from direct link building to indirect. There is still a chance a journalist of blogger will pick up your release, then re-post it on their site.
For this reason, we still occasionally pay for a release on www.journalism.co.uk, as it is a hub for UK journalists and good PR's have the chance of being seen many times by UK journalists.
Another link building technique that has recently been devalued is article marketing. This was the process whereby content is written, and then submitted to online article sites in exchange for a link and coverage of the content on the article site. However, with the advent of the Google Panda update, this technique is all but redundant.
The Panda update was made in March of this year, and was an update to Google's algorithm that devalued low quality sites in the rankings. Sites that took a hit included many article sites, due to the fact that they are seen as many as low quality.
A third link building technique that used to work well but now struggles is reciprocal linking. We used to scour the web to find a list of sites in a niche, and then emailed many of them to suggest that we exchange links. However, today we are finding more and more that webmasters are not seeing the value in (fairly) random link exchanges. We are now feeling the same, and agree with Google's view on the topic, which is that reciprocal links are fine, but in the appropriate way i.e. highly relevant, targeted exchanges between sites in the same niche, not mass requests.
So what's left? Well, of the techniques we used 2 years ago, just about the only one we use today on a large scale is analysing competitors's link profiles to search for links, using software like Yahoo Site Explorer. This involves typing in a keyword into Google, then finding a competitor and going through the links they have pointing to their site, in order to find good links. We then try to replicate the link, by asking or paying the site and getting a link.
However, this technique can be very hit and miss; you can search a competitors links for days without finding a link. Other days you might find 3 or 4 links in a day. It varies greatly.
So what's the future? What link building technique are the industry leaders using? What works? The answer: content creation/link bait. This involves enhancing the client site by writing content that attracts links naturally, as opposed to artificially generated links. The best links are those that are freely given, not bought or bargained for; those are the link that stand the test of time; those are the links that Google really values.
The content can be anything that attracts the interest of your target market. It could be a resource list, an industry news piece, a controversial blog post or an online tool. The opportunities are endless. And by co-creating the client's product, and meeting the customer's needs and wants, the internet marketer is genuinely adding value to the customer's experience. This is the best way to boost links, rankings, traffic and profit.
We've only been link baiting properly for a few months, but have had some real success and gained some really good links for some of our clients. Content creation for SEO is not easy, but the rewards are potentially limitless. One remarkable piece of content can bring in hundreds of links and thousands of visitors. After all, as they say, "Content is King"!
