Link Popularity and Google

Link popularity has become a buzzword in the SEO industry lately. Everyone is desperate to exchange links and increase their link popularity especially after Google announced it was one of the single most important factor that affected rankings.

So does it work? I decided to try it out a few months back, and I must say… it did wonders. This site was an e-commerce site and hence had hardly any spider friendly static pages with lots of spiderfood and text. I was given some space to add optimized text to but that’s about it. This is what I did – created around 10 static pages and a links page.

After optimization and an initial round of submissions to the directories and search engines, I surfed around looking for suitable link partners. My criteria : Their links page should be indexed by Google and their website should have a decent pagerank.

I got around 50 links and then I waited… I needed Google to pick up these links. And luckily it did. Next months refresh I had them incoming and I had the site in the top 10 for all but one of the 12 keywords I was aiming for, the 12th keyword was #11 on Google. So 2 months after the site was first added to Google, 1 month after optimization and link exchange, the site was right up there.

So what are the steps you need to follow to get most out of your link exchange programs? Look for the site with a good pagerank. Make sure their links page is indexed by Google Use text links and no banners. Make sure your link text consists of your keyword. Optimize your website. Link popularity without optimization does not make sense. Be patient – Link popularity sometimes takes more than 1 refresh to show results.

Bulk Link Popularity Analyzer Yahoo Dmoz Expired Domains And Seo Tools.

Search Engine Optimization Reviews – The 4 Techniques That Work

Despite the aura of mystery that surrounds search engine optimization, ranking high on the search engines is not nearly as hard as many SEO firms would like you to believe.

In fact, by the end of this article, you will know the four key techniques that work every time in the world of search engine optimization. This in turn will enable you to either (a) find affordable SEO services by knowing how to evaluate their services, or (b) do it yourself by knowing the secrets of how it’s done.

So without further ado, here are the four steps or techniques for SEO success:

1. Choose keywords that are popular, yet specific and attainable.
2. Create site structure that preserves theme and link goodness.
3. Create original content that is keyword and latent-semantic-indexing (LSI) friendly.
4. Acquire inbound links using articles, press releases, and directory submissions.

The first step of keyword selection is fundamental to search engine success. If you choose keywords that are horribly competitive, you will have a difficult time out-ranking your competition. Stands to reason. And if you choose keywords that are horribly general, any traffic you do happen to get will be untargeted and unlikely to be interested in anything you’re selling. Luckily, “general” and “competitive” tend to go hand in hand. So your best bet is to avoid them and choose specific keywords instead.

The only unfortunate thing is that very specific keywords have fewer people actively searching for them. This means that in order to ramp up the number of people who visit your website, you need to compete for more of these specific keywords.

But that’s okay. That’s the model that works. If you compare the website traffic that comes from one competitive keyword ranked on page 3 or 4 of the search engines to one low-competition keyword ranked on page 1 of the search engines, the low-competition one wins every time. Why? Because nobody ever sees the page 3 or 4-ranked keyword. The popularity of the keyword is irrelevant. If your rank is too low, you get no traffic. None.

So, specific keywords win every time. Your job then is to create more web pages, each of which target a specific keyword.

The second step of website structure is one that is frequently done incorrectly. It is not okay to have a “random link-anywhere” linking structure if you want to rank well on the search engines. Instead, you must have a hierarchical linking structure for the first one or two levels of pages on your website.

Your main index page should link to your “main” or “top-level” keyword pages – that is, the pages you would ultimately like to rank well for. Each of these pages can then in turn link to more specific keyword-focused pages. However they should not link to other pages on your website that are not “sub-pages” of the same top-level keyword page. The objective is to preserve the theme set by each top-level keyword page and only link to other pages within that theme.

This is not to suggest that visitors to your website have to be constrained to only click within a certain theme. You can indeed link anywhere you want as long as you use a “rel = nofollow” tag inserted into the link html. This tag instructs the search engine spiders to ignore the link, which preserves the theme and all the search engine “goodness” while still allowing your human visitors to browse your entire site unrestricted.

The third step is to create original content, focused on the keyword of each page. This content needs to be original, but the frequency (or density) with which the specific keyword appears on each page is less important now than it used to be. What matters more now is the existence of other words that are related to the theme of the keyword. In other words, if your page is about dog training, the search engines expect to see related words like obedience, treats, sit, stay, leash, collar, etc. in addition to the word “dog training.”

This type of indexing is called “latent semantic indexing” or LSI, and the idea behind it is that any article about dog training is bound to make reference to certain other related keywords. If no othe related keywords are present on the web page, the search engine spider is likely to conclude that the page is a “spam page” and its ranking will suffer accordingly.

The fourth step involves acquiring one-way inbound links from authority sites to the individual pages that you want to rank well on the search engines. When it comes to inbound links, there are three elements that matter: (1) the source of the link, (2) the page that is linked-to, and (3) the anchor text of the link.

The source of the link needs to be a respected third-party site, such as an article site, a news site, a directory site, or any other web site that the search engines already respect. Links from poorly-respected sites such as link farms will do nothing to help your search engine ranking and may in fact hinder it.

The page that is linked-to and the anchor text (the text that is blue and underlined) of the link matter a lot. Broadly speaking, the more “good” links that a page has to it, the better it will do on the search engines. In addition, the more times a particular keyword appears in the anchor text of “good” links to a particular page, the greater the likelihood that page will rank high for that keyword on the search engines.

And that’s all there is to it.

There is not a lot of mystery associated with good search engine ranking, regardless of what the SEO “tabloids” tell you.

So, armed with this knowledge, you can now assume a strong position to review and evaluate any search engine optimization services you consider hiring. Furthermore, with a little bit of initiative, you can take on the SEO tasks yourself and maintain complete control over your search engine marketing strategy. The choice is yours.

Article Source: http://www.articletycoon.com

How to Make Search Engines Happy in 3 Easy Steps

Does your web site make search engines happy? Despite all the negative hype lately, it’s pretty easy to design a web site that search engines will accept with open arms. All it takes is 3 easy steps:

1) Follow the Search Engine Guidelines

Nearly all search engines publish their own guidelines regarding the submission of sites, the type of sites they will accept and recommendations for optimized content. Google recently updated their Webmaster Guidelines which cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative search engine behavior that they consider to be “spam”. They also published SEO Guidelines – advice for webmasters to heed when choosing an SEO. Google was the first search engine to publicly acknowledge search engine optimizers in this fashion.

It’s not just Google publishing anti-spam guidelines. You’ll find them at the following search engine sites as well:

- MSN Search webmaster guidelines

- AltaVista terms of use (AltaVista is a Yahoo-owned company)

- Yahoo terms of service

- Yahoo guidelines on search engine spam (covering AltaVista and AllTheWeb as well)

- Yahoo definitions of search engine spam (covering AltaVista and AllTheWeb as well)

- Yahoo content guidelines

- AskJeeves / Teoma terms of service and spam policy

- AskJeeves / Teoma editorial guidelines
2) Avoid Spamming the Search Engines

Often, webmasters will use search engine spam techniques without even being aware that they are doing so. Or worse, web designers can – advertently or inadvertently – integrate techniques that could cause a site to be penalized in the site’s rankings in one or more engines, without the site owner’s knowledge of such penalties. The key to avoiding spamming the engines is research.
Keep track of the various search engine guidelines via the links above. Watch for any changes they make to these guidelines and tweak your site accordingly. Trawl the various webmaster and search engine forums regularly to ensure your site doesn’t use any of the latest methods that appear to be penalized. If you suspect your site has been penalized, remove the offending content, contact the engine concerned and ask to be reinstated.

Google actually encourage you to file a re-inclusion request via their Help Center and this post by Google staffer Matt Cutts outlines what should be included.

Alternatively, here is a sample email template you can use instead:

—————————————————-
Sample Re-inclusion Request Email:

Dear [search engine name],

I am the owner of [your site URL].

I did not realize that participation in [spammy method] and
[spammy SEO name] programs could cause problems for my website. I was
assured that these techniques were search-engine-friendly by [your source for using spammy method].

I now understand that the practices used are not acceptable. I apologize for having allowed them to be placed on my website. I’ve removed the questionable pages and links from the site. I promise not to repeat such mistakes.

I am asking you to please consider reinstating my website,
[your site URL] into the [search engine name] Index.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]
————————————————–

To assist them to provide a high quality service, search engines encourage people to report search results they are dissatisfied with. If you spot some content spam or techniques that are clearly in breach of the search engine’s public guidelines, you can report it using these links:

- Google spam report or via search-quality@google.com

- AllTheWeb relevancy problem report (AllTheWeb is a Yahoo-owned company)

- AltaVista search results manipulation report (or via Yahoo’s spam report below)

- Yahoo spam report

- AskJeeves spam report or via information@ask.com
3) Build Sites for Visitors Rather than Search Engines

The methodologies may have changed over the years, but the same principles have always applied to “good” or “white hat” SEO. Build sites for humans, not search engines. Make the site as user friendly as possible, avoid the bells and whistles and include high quality, relevant content.

Wherever possible, include text-based content and navigation menus with simple, descriptive, well-written copy designed to convert your visitors into customers. Include keywords and phrases your audience would logically type in to search engines to find sites like yours. Only link to sites that are relevant to your target audience and spend some time on usability, making sure all your forms and shopping carts work.

Remember that what pleases a visitor is almost always what pleases a search engine too.