Published: November 6th, 2009
Most people get into SEO by through necessity; by trying to push their own site up the rankings with little or no budget. Hence this is why many become obsessed with onsite factors – something they can learn and do without spending much money. For many, going out into worldwide web, spreading the word and getting those links seems far too much like hard work.
However, there’s no way around it. Learning the tricks of getting links is the most important thing you need to know when doing the SEO for a site by yourself.
I could give you examples of how to email people in order to do this etc. et.c, but it’s pointless me telling you. I’ve seen these tips given out (such as using a made-up girl’s name!) and now they don’t work as everyone is doing them. You have to find what works for you by experimenting. The only advice I can give you is to try and be original. The best way to do this is though making your request personal and relevant.
The same goes for blog comments or forum posts. Be original, sincere and relevant. Then the chances of your point of view being deleted as spam are much slimmer.
The key also is not to feel overwhelmed – link building is not an impossible task. To build, you have to do so block by block. If you set yourself a target of 2 or 3 links a day and just keep chipping away then you can still make a good contribution to optimising a site.
Published: October 1st, 2009
Google appears to be weighting some factors more heavily since the recent spate of updates - here are three that you need to take advantage of:
1. Make sure you have an onsite blog
Sites with blogs seem to be doing even better in the SERPs following the recent updates. It makes sense that Google would move further in this direction, as if you have a section onsite devoted to regularly updated content then your link strategy will appear more natural – obviously the addition of a blog is more likely to attract links to the site (be it to the blog itself or the homepage). The outcome is greater trust.
2. Make sure you have content on the homepage
Sites that have a reasonable amount of content on the homepage seem to have performed better since the updates. This content is also useful for putting anchor text links into other parts of your sites – by doing this we have noticed that you can have more influence on the ‘sitelinks’ listed in the SERPs (the links to other parts of your site underneath your listing).
3. Make sure you have some form of feed on the site
This (like the other two points) has been known to be beneficial for a long time, though weighting appears to have been altered further towards this factor. Make sure you have a feed, whether it’s a feed of a regularly updated blog, news or an RSS feed. Again this update makes sense – regularly changing content is likely to point towards a higher quality user experience and therefore a higher quality site.
Please list any of your own observations in the comments section.
Published: July 13th, 2009
On Friday I wrote a post about how on-site changes can have larger effects on rankings for some sites than others. I outlined why I believe this is the case – one way links from quality sites lead Google to trust the content on your site.
Therefore there seems to be a form of ‘ring of trust’ in Google’s eyes. Once you get into that ring of trust then you can rely less on outside sources.
So how do you become a member of the ‘ring of trust’?
Published: July 9th, 2009
I am going back to the very basics of SEO, as this is where some people fall down, making them unable to explore deeper into the discipline. To understand SEO, you have to understand that an SEO campaign has to have a strategy behind which page will focus on which search terms.
Published: March 8th, 2009
It is easy when undertaking an internet marketing campaign to get obsessed and even carried away with chasing a position on those high search results pages in Google. You may ask what’s wrong with that? To which I respond- absolutely nothing. The market dominance of Google is there for everyone to see and concentrating Search Engine Optimisation on ranking well in Google is sound business sense. Randy Fishkin, however, has offered readers of SEOmoz some advice.
Richard: Ah I've wanted to test this for ages! The method I...
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Diane Corriette: I also ensure that my page url, title and meta des...
Dena Tasarım: Nice tips. I try to ensure that i don't encounter ...
Bryan Hadaway: I was effected by the change, but I can also under...