Tag Archives: seo

What Google Says About Link Building



BWMagic’s Internet Marketing News


What Google Says About Link Building


Recently, in a GoogleWebmasterCentral blog post, Google told
webmasters exactly how you should go about building quality
links to your site. Now it’s up to your own judgment if you
want to believe Google or not… some webmasters and marketers
take everything coming from Google with a large grain of salt
– are they really giving you the true facts?

For the most part, I believe what Google is saying is true.

So here are some Key Points for building the best organic
links according to Google:


1. If you have a new or unknown site… get involved in communities
surrounding your topic and offer up quality content so that your
“expertise shines” on your chosen topic.

2. One way to make quality content is to offer solutions to common
problems in the form of tutorials, videos explaining a technique
or solution, online guides and practical tools. Let your users
spread the word about your useful content.

3. While writing amusing content can get you greater visibility
and some links, Google advises you not only to concentrate on this
“short-lived link-bait tactics” but rather have a more long-term
strategy to your marketing efforts.

4. Avoid spammy short-lived links if you want to keep your site’s
reputation. Don’t buy “PageRank-passing links” and don’t exchange
links as this will have no positive impact over time in Google’s index.

5. Most online directories are worthless and of lower quality. If you
submit your site to one – make sure that directory is related to your
site, moderated and well structured. Mass submissions are useless to
your goal.

6. Take a close look of other successful sites in your field, then
identify and copy the elements which make these sites successful.
Don’t copy exactly, but rather adapt these elements from your own unique
viewpoint and perspective.

7. Lastly, make your content easy to be bookmarked in all the social
media sites like Facebook, YouTube, Google Buzz and Twitter. Let your
users spread the word about your content.


Now, in an ideal world all of the above could possibly work, but
in the very competitive world of SEO where lucrative keywords can
mean millions of dollars to an individual or company – not everyone
plays by the rules. Link-buying and link-selling is still rampant
on the web, despite Google’s attempts to stop it. Companies with
deep pockets can still buy their way into Google’s top spot for
lucrative keywords. The full extent will probably never be known
nor stopped.

Unless they want to do the same, the ordinary small-time webmaster
will have to follow Google’s advice above and pray they land on
the first page of Google – hopefully in the top five. By placing
more emphasis on social media and bookmarking sites Google has thrown
these webmasters a very small lifeline, but a lifeline all the same.

Another effective strategy is to build not one but two or three
websites on your subject area. These have to be related in theme
but should contain totally unique content. If you have a broad topic,
then breaking that topic up into two or three related sites can be
easily done and an effective way of marketing online.

Say you have a travel site – your main site could be a general site
offering travel tips and information. Related sites could be special
discount site dealing only with coupons and discounts. You could have
another related site totally devoted to honeymoon vacations.
Connect all these sites together in a linking structure – boosting
up your rankings for each in the search engines.

Regardless, no matter how many sites you have, offering quality
content which solves a web user’s problem is the best way to proceed.
Offer a valuable service, tool or your own unique expertise and you
will satisfy your visitors as well as Google. Natural organic link
building will be a by-product of this quality content.

….

Handy Marketing Tool:

Checking to see how well your website ranks for certain keywords
is very important, but not only in Google. This site below will
also tell you how your site ranks for Bing and Yahoo for your chosen
keywords.


http://www.rankchecker.net

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King of Step-by-Step Marketing Round Table

The “King of Step-by-Step Marketing” Marlon Sanders
is holding a virtual Round Table where he walks you
thru all the steps needed to market a product or service
online in 2010.

In case you don’t know that name, Marlon Sanders is
one of a shortlist of marketers, who started all this
online stuff. He goes way back and he knows how it’s
done.



I have known and promoted Marlon on my different sites
for years. His how-to marketing products are some of the
most popular because he presents them in a no-nonsense
layout. In simple step-by-step dashboards which even the
most novice marketer/webmaster can follow and do.

I own and use several of his products myself, so I know
first-hand the quality of his products. For that reason
I have been a long-time affiliate of his and promote
his products whenever I can.

Anyway, Marlon is opening up his entire marketing process
in a virtual Round Table where he walks you through
all the steps and shows you how to market online in
2010.

You can check it out here:

Marlon Sanders Round Table


or you can watch his video here:





7 New Rules of Selling In 2010 Video




Helping You Succeed Online Since 2002!

Kind Regards,
Titus

http://www.bizwaremagic.com

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How Much Do You Know About SEO? Some SEO Basics



BWMagic’s Internet Marketing News


How Much Do You Know About SEO? Some SEO Basics


One of my biggest problems in trying to help other webmasters or marketers
– I naturally and wrongly assume they know all about SEO. I forget these
webmasters have not spent the last 10 years battling it out with other
online webmasters and marketers for some very popular and lucrative keywords,
in the process, homing their SEO skills with other like-minded individuals.

I forget that many beginning webmasters may not be familiar with all the
SEO jargon and SEO techniques which I mention in my small online marketing
emails or newsletters. Now, I don’t get much direct feedback on this but
in a lot of questions I get from webmasters, I can tell they are missing
or misunderstanding some basic SEO tactics.

There’s nothing wrong with that if I were to take up a new hobby or explore
a new subject, I am sure I would be just as clueless. For instance, I think
I have played around one or two rounds of golf in my life… someone asked
if we should play Ball Four Golf and I didn’t know what the heck they were
talking about, nor did I realize it shouldn’t be confused with Ball Fore
which nearly took my head off!

So every sport, hobby or subject comes with a lot of terms/phrases which are
unique to that subject. SEO is the same way so maybe a little background or
warm-up is needed in regards to understanding the basics of SEO.

First, you must understand that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization…
which means you optimize your website and content so that it ranks high in
the major search engines such as Google and Bing/Yahoo. This optimization
can take the form of following a strict formula or layout of your website
content with the proper meta tags, keyword density, linking structures and
so on. It can also mean off-site optimization with link building, right
anchor text, keyword positioning and so on.

SEO has become a major industry simply because getting top rankings for
lucrative keywords means big bucks for companies or individuals. We are
talking about billions, if not trillions of dollars, exchanging hands with
the sale of products, services and business transactions. Get a top ranking
for your chosen keyword phrase and it means a flood of targeted prospects/buyers
coming to your website or company, ready to do business.

Now, because there is so much money involved, a whole SEO industry has
sprung up with consultants, experts and companies offering their services
to get you or your company into those top rankings in the search engines.
These SEO services could include link building, link buying, social media
positioning, onpage optimization, pay-per-click management… all with the
goal of bringing targeted traffic/customers to your site or business.


White Hat vs Black Hat SEO


You may also have heard other webmasters talking about White Hat SEO as
opposed to Black Hat SEO. And as the names suggests, White Hat is strictly
above board proper site optimization, while Black hat is using underhand devious
cloaking methods and system to raise your rankings. For obvious reasons,
always go the White Hat route and you won’t be disappointed and you will
feel better knowing you’re doing the right thing in regards to your site.

Perhaps the next concept or term you should know is Algorithm. Search engines
create complicated algorithms or list of rules which determines not only how
web pages are listed but also which web pages are listed first in their index
or SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). These rules or ranking factors are
used by SEO experts and webmasters to help move their keyword rankings up
in the search engines. You open a web browser, go to a search engine such
as Google, type in a search query for “top corporate lawyers” and the search
engine returns a list of organic results along with a list of paid listings.
Now, getting to that top spot means a lot of potential traffic/clients would be coming your way.

This is just one example, but most people would quickly realize how lucrative
getting to those top spots would be for any individual or company. They would
also realize that understanding how the search engine algorithms work and how
to manipulate them would be a valuable skill which many clients would pay big
bucks to have on their side. This SEO industry also consists of SEO software
which help webmasters/marketers get their sites into the top positions in
the search engines.


Most SEO experts break up your search engine optimization into TWO TYPES:


On-Page and Off-Page Optimization


On-Page Optimization means getting right all the factors which influence your
rankings in the search engines. Keep in mind, the whole web is “keyword based
and keyword driven” which means you must optimize your domain and site for your
chosen keywords. Your main keyword should be in your Domain Name, in the title
of the page, in the main heading for that page, in the URL and it should appear
(with variations) throughout the page. Try to keep the keyword density to around
2%-5%, although like many things to do with SEO… there are varying opinions on the
exact percentage. But what most experts agree on: the layout or structure of your
web site or pages must be easily reached not only by your visitors but also by
the search engine spiders which crawl your site. Keep it simple, have no links
more than three clicks away from your homepage and many webmasters include a
link back to your homepage on EVERY page of your site.

Off-Page Optimization means building backlinks flowing back to your web site or
web pages. Regardless of what anyone will tell you, getting quality keyworded
links from other high-quality keyword related sites is the most important factor
in achieving top rankings in the search engines. So link building should be a
major part of your SEO efforts and something which will bring the fastest results.
These links must appear natural and organic so varying the anchor text (underlined part)
in your links is important. Also, the web is quickly changing, links from social
media sites such as FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter are becoming more helpful to getting
top rankings. So too, are links from blogs especially those from Blogger and WordPress
because these are optimized for keywords. Don’t forget other media forms such
as videos since links from sites such as YouTube can also boost your rankings.

Tip: SEO experts sometimes like to complicate matters, one easy and simple way
to get hundreds, if not thousands, of links from the different social media sites
is to add the Free Addthis.com bookmark to all your pages/content. Let your visitors
bookmark your content for you. Simple, yet effective SEO technique that doesn’t
cost you anything. Other webmasters simply place bookmark logos for Twitter, FaceBook,
Google Buzz… on their sites. If a page goes viral in one of those networks, you
can get hundreds/thousands of backlinks flowing traffic and SEO link juice back to
your site.

Along those same lines, the key to SEO has been and always will be quality content.
Never forget the web is a very smart place, remember it holds all our collective knowledge,
users will find your quality content and promote it. Produce quality articles and
webmasters will place them on their sites with backlinks to your site. Produce
quality blog posts and bloggers will link back to your posts. Produce quality
videos and viewers will recommend them to their friends.

Now that’s not to say you shouldn’t do any SEO promotion or work. One of the best
ways to succeed is to constantly promote your site or links: do press releases,
write articles, make videos, create quality blog posts… get involved in online
forums related to your topic and leave your sig links at the end of your comments,
do the same for all your email messages by including your signature tag.

Many webmasters make the mistake that just because they have created a well-optimized site – it will automatically rank high in the search engines and you
will get plenty of quality traffic. Now if you’re extremely, extremely, extremely
lucky and by word of mouth your site catches on and becomes popular you will get
that traffic. However, in my experience, you can build an excellent site and have
it indexed in all the search engines but unless you do some SEO promotions it
will go nowhere.

With one of my nine or ten sites, I have done very little in regards to SEO and it has
done exactly that; it gets very little traffic and is nowhere to be seen in the
rankings. This is a site that I have not worked mainly because of lack of time
and it’s not closely related in theme to my other sites. Now if I wanted to promote
this site and build up my rankings… I would do all of the above… write articles,
do press releases, do viral videos, join related forums and get involved, do blog posts,
and so on. Now, from past experiences, I know if I work/promote this site for two or
three months consistently, the rankings would go up and the SEO would improve. Give
it six months to a year and this site would be highly ranked in the search engines
and bringing in a lot of quality traffic.

SEO is not some mysterious process that only a few skilled individuals know how to do,
rather it is a simple process of consistently promoting your site and content by
building quality backlinks from related sites on the web. It is the simple process
of connecting your content with the steady flow of traffic on the web by becoming
involved in forums, blogs, social networks and like-minded communities. SEO is simply
placing your site/content into the whole mix of things so that the search engines
can’t ignore your site. By consistently using SEO you will make your site an authority
on your chosen subject and you won’t look back.

…..


Helping You Succeed Online Since 2002!

Kind Regards,
Titus

http://www.bizwaremagic.com

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How To Rank Higher In Google’s New Search Engines

BWMagic’s Internet Marketing News

How To Rank Higher In Google’s New Search Engines




Google Spot!








A little while back I wrote an article entitled “The Five Pillars of Google Search”
and had I known how important those pillars would become, I would have paid more
attention to them. What I didn’t factor into the equation was Google’s whole
re-structuring of its SERPs interface or landing page. It really is a whole new
Google with not just one search engine but a combination of 6 or 7 search engines
all competing for your attention.

The new left side column with its new functions and displays, opens up new
opportunities for webmasters to get their listings within Google on that all
important first page. There are also many new ways to view the results such as
view everything or you can view with more or less shopping links. Plus you can
also view Google results for books, maps, blogs, updates and discussions – all
new ways to get your site or links into Google. Throw in the Wonder Wheel and
things are indeed looking very different within the new Google SERPs.

As a full-time online search engine marketer, I should have expected something
like this but the recent changes within Google has been totally unprecedented.
We have seen major updates before, some of them very disruptive like the Florida
Update, but with Google Caffeine, the new layout and the recent shakeup of its
Algorithm, Google has fundamentally changed its organic search as we once knew it.

Before I start sounding too cryptic, these recent changes seem to be a “coming together”
of all the different types of searches in Google which have been around for some time.
Now it seems with the new interface architecture… each type of search is given more
importance or rather more of an equal billing or footing within Google. There are now
multiple ways to get your links viewed and hopefully clicked.

First, I always try to start any piece on Google or the search engines with a disclaimer.
Mainly, in the course of running 9 or 10 websites, I keep a daily monitoring of the
keywords which produce revenue, some of these keyword phrases have been monitored by me
for 6 or 7 years, but they are only a small sampling of keywords and sometimes drawing
or making conclusions with such a small sample can be misleading or downright wrong.
So take any of the following information on Google with this point in mind, just one
webmaster observing what’s happening with Google and putting in his two cents worth.

Now, the reason I say “Google’s New Search Engines” is the feeling which has gradually
crept into my daily marketing – it feels like you’re no longer dealing with one organic
search engine but 6 or 7 different search engines. Let me explain, for years Google has
been presenting results for not just static webpages but also for images, videos, news,
blogs and shopping/products – but recent changes have shaken up things significantly.

With the recent changes, Google seems to be placing more importance on these new ways
to search. Videos have taken a big step forward and can now pop up on the first page
and stay there. Producing a video is now one of the fastest ways to get on the first
page of Google, even for very competitive keywords. While many online marketers are
taking advantage of this fact, it is relatively new and you can have a much better
chance of ranking for a video instead of an ordinary web page in Google. It can happen
almost instantly.

Personally, I like using the YouTube platform because it is also owned by Google and
they no doubt can easily tap into all the background stats on a video such as comments,
viewer ratings… and so on. In other words, Google has always favored ways to make
their SERPs more democratic and user-generated/rated videos are the perfect fit.

So too are blog posts and entries, these can be easily monitored and (comment spam aside)
are more democratic since it’s harder to fake Diggs or Re-tweets. All of these social
bookmarking systems and sites provide the search engines, especially Google, with some
very helpful user-generated rankings and ratings. Blogs now also have two subcategories
– Twitter Updates and Forum Discussions, which are now being displayed separately.

Google seems to be placing more importance on popular Posts, Diggs, Tweets… in their
SERPs. Again, I find using a simple Google-owned program like Blogger to be an effective
way of ranking high in Google. For example, my posts in Blogger are indexed in Google
within minutes, this recently seems to have been speeded up and we are moving more
towards instant search results.

Another instant way to get your content onto the first page of Google is to use a
News Release. Google has always listed News Items on the first page but this now seems
to play a more important role, especially when you consider all the new features in the
left side column. Surfers will probably stay on that first page longer and you have a
better chance of getting your news item read.

Within the last couple of years, I have started doing Press Releases, mainly through
PRweb but there are lots of free programs you can use. I also like posting my articles
to American Chronicle since Google News picks up and displays a lot of these items.
Again, like videos, getting your News item listed is almost instant and within seconds
you can have traffic flowing to your site.

Images and image search has always been an important feature of Google Search. One that
online marketers and webmasters have taken advantage of by creating images to match the
main products or keywords of their sites. Now image search itself is much more varied
and has many more options to re-defined your image search, for example, you could target
a certain color or line drawings. Regardless, images can be an easy way to get traffic
from Google.

Within the shopping results is the place to be featured if you have a product to sell.
This is the old product listing (Froogle) which Google has updated or renamed to shopping.
For those into online marketing, this is probably the most important listing as you’re
sure to attract specific buyers who are in the right mind-set to purchase.

While all these search options can be somewhat confusing to grasp even for the online
marketer, all these options do present different ways to get on that first page in Google
search. And while the number one spot in organic search will always be your main goal,
ranking for the top spot in the shopping results, video results, news results, blog results,
update results, discussion results and image results are all worth aiming for in your SEO efforts.
Some of these are temporary or fast-moving, but there are certain tactics you can use which
will increase your presence in the most important search engine on the planet.

Make sure you take a holistic approach to both your content and SEO. Create videos and
images geared towards your site’s topic and keywords. Make sure you have a blog and a
forum on your site to take advantage of these types of listings. Likewise, fully integrate
your site with all the social bookmarking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter… and become
an active part of those sites. Make sure you’re creating news related items for your site
or keywords, to keep your site in the whole mix of things on the web. Make sure you have
a steady flow of fresh content being added to your site regularly and link this content
to the “Q&A” types of sites; there is a growing emphasis being placed on these help-based
sites by the search engines.

Lastly, I am a firm believer in having all your content/sites/programs interconnected
with one another. Something as simple as using a Google Profile to list ALL your online
programs and sites is one way of making them ALL reachable by your visitors and Google.
But go for the overkill, do the same thing for your Facebook page, your MySpace page,
your Linkedin page… and also interconnect all your different content by referencing
your videos in your News Releases, your Twitter profile in your articles, your Facebook
page in your posts… well, you get the picture.

Just make sure the search engines, and especially Google, has no trouble finding you or
your content. Make sure this content is varied and displayed in different mediums such
as videos, images, news, tweets, blog posts and shopping links. Reaching that first page
in Google has become a lot more challenging in many ways, but it also has become a lot
more easier to do. Just go for it.




Helping You Succeed Online Since 2002!

Kind Regards,
Titus

Twitter account for bizwaremagic.

Did you find the above information helpful? If so, why not
help spread the word – recommend this content by using
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