Why Should You Build Links
SEO Search Engine Optimization is a process by which a website becomes visible on the search engine’s radars.
Because there are over 4 billion publicly accessible websites on the Internet, being visible when a potential customer performs a search on Google, Bing, or Yahoo is crucial.
If your website does not show up within the first couple of pages of results, there is a very slim chance that the potential customer will be able to locate your website.
The actual process of SEO Search Engine Optimization can be quite a complicated one and can vary depending on the actual website in question, and the key terms being sought.
The various techniques can include but are not limited to, Meta tags, Header tags, keyword density, and alt tag optimization.
5 Top Considerations For SEO
When starting on the SEO Search Engine Optimization journey, do not expect immediate results. Website’s position on the search engine is like cheese, it gets better with time. When the internet was in its infancy, there was no need to optimize the site for the search engines to see it. Back then a robot (aka search spider) was able to traverse all of the sites on the Internet within a few hours. Nowadays, the size of websites present on the internet is measured in petabytes (PB), next level up from terabytes, and it takes search engines at least 72 hours to go through and index the pages.
SEO Search Engine Optimization is all about establishing the necessary components for the website to become search engine-friendly. It starts with every page on the website having a meaningful title and description. It also involves researching a list of keywords and selecting the ones that pertain to the site’s content. After that, it is a matter of submissions to the search engine queues and establishing link exchanges.
When considering hiring someone to perform SEO Search Engine Optimization for your website make sure to spend the time and research the company.
Here are a few questions to ask:
- Does The Company Have Previous Experience With SEO?
- What Is Their Website’s Position On Google & Yahoo? – If they can’t optimize their site what are the chances they will succeed with yours?
- What Is Their Strategy? – While most SEO companies won’t go into detail on how they would perform SEO, they should be able to explain WHAT they have planned for your site.
- Will They Automate Program and Blast-Submit Your Site? – While faster and cheaper, blast-submitting a website is not without repercussions. To name a few:
• Your site might get submitted to adult content search engines.
• Your site may not be admitted to be listed as some search engines consider blast submission a form of spam and either remove these entries from their directories or block them from being entered via CAPTCHA in the first place.
• Your site might get submitted to a “link-farm”. - The Minimum Amount Of Time – In most cases, it is more likely to take about 6-8 months due to the aging algorithm implemented by most Search Engines. If the company “guarantees” the top search engine position ask the following questions:
• Are they planning to use pay-per-click or pay-per-keyword as the strategy for getting your site to the top? While both strategies are fine, they are very costly and temporary alternatives to solid SEO practice.
• Does the person you hired happen to be Larry Page, founder of Google? Because anyone else won’t be able to make such a guarantee.
An inexperienced SEO person can cause more damage than benefits to the site’s position. You, as a site owner, would ultimately have to deal with the search engines, if your site gets in a bad neighborhood.
Want To Learn More About SEO?
The Importance Of Link Building
The easiest way of improving your ranking in the search engines is to let them know that your site is important.
How do you do that? Well, the best way is through the process of link building. Link Building is the practice of encouraging other websites to link to your website. If other websites are linking to your website, your “link popularity” will increase, search engines will deem your website important, and in turn, you should receive more traffic.
But link building is a time-consuming task, and it is for this reason that most websites rank so poorly in search engines. Many website owners are unaware that link popularity can have such an effect on their search engine rankings. This is good news for you.
Start building your links now and establish your “web cred”.
- Importance Of Page Rank – Google, the internet’s most popular search engine, measures a website’s link popularity through the use of Page Rank. To view a website’s Page Rank, just download the Google Toolbar. The toolbar displays the Page Rank of every website you visit, measured as a little green bar. A website’s Page Rank can vary from a low of zero to a high of 10. Don’t worry if your website has a low or no Page Rank. Many websites only have a Page Rank of 1 or 2, but the Internet’s most popular websites possess a Page Rank of 8 or 9.
- Quality Counts – Search engines are not just looking for the number of links that point to a website. The most important aspect of the process is obtaining quality links. Quality links are links from websites that possess a high Page Rank. Obtaining a link from a website with a high Page Rank is best, although any site with 1 or above is beneficial. Search engines also consider the theme of a website that links to you. It is best to get links from websites that are associated with the industry in which you do business. For example, my trade website design; therefore, I work to obtain the majority of my links from other web design-related websites.
- Getting Links – One of the best ways to advance your link popularity is to offer quality and informative content to your visitors and hope for natural links. If they find the information interesting enough, they will naturally link their website to your own.
Directory submissions are probably the fastest and easiest way to obtain some inbound links. But, because Internet directories link to thousands of other websites, the value that they can add to your Page Rank gets diluted by all the other links. The one must-submit-to directory is the DMOZ Internet Directory. After this, it is best to search for smaller niches or local directories. You should submit to industry-related directories to indicate to the search engines your line of business. A Google search can help you find these types of directories.
If you feel that you have a knack for writing, a good way to generate inbound links to your website is to write articles. These articles can then be submitted to article syndication websites, where other webmasters are free to use your article on their website. But, there is a catch, they must provide a link back to your website in return for using the article. If you don’t have the time or drive to write an article, but you participate in an industry-related discussion forum, you are in luck. Just remember to include a link to your website in your signature.
The last way to generate quality inbound links is through reciprocal linking. This type of strategy involves contacting other webmasters and proposing a link exchange. Find some non-competitive, but related websites and simply email them to see if they are interested. It is best to already have their link on a page on your website before the proposition. - Linking Text Is Important – When employing any of the above-linking approaches, you must try to use targeted keywords as part of your link. The search engines read this text to determine what your website is all about. If your website involves “Red Widgets” try to use this as part of your linking text.
Link popularity is very important when attempting to rank well in the search engines. Link analysis is only going to get more important to search engines, not less.
This type of strategy is resistant to manipulation and justifiable way to measure a website’s importance. Therefore, the link-building process must be given high priority in your Internet marketing efforts, and since it takes time, the sooner you begin the better.
Increase Traffic And Page Rank
Most sites have a links page. Why? Well, there are two very important reasons why a web developer should consider having a links page.
- Search Engine Optimization – SEO is only one way of getting the search engines to pick up that you are there. Something else that you must not neglect if you want your website to be noticed is obtaining links.
- Your Visitors – Links provide them with other sites of interest that they may want to visit. Although the retail industry might say they want people to stay on their site, rather than going anywhere else, carefully chosen links may be able to get people even more interested in the product you are selling. You may have to think laterally.
In the eyes of a search engine, there seem to be good links and bad links. Good links will get you higher up the page rankings and onto the top of the listings. Bad links at best will be ignored and at worst could cause you and your site to be listed much lower.
- A good link is one from a site that has high relevance to yours, and which has a good page rank.
- A bad link is obvious that it comes from a link farm and has no contextual links to your site.
When you are link building you should be trying to get links to your site from sites with a higher page rank than yours. Links from sites with good Page Rank will immediately signal to the search engines that yours is a site worth indexing. The more links the better.
Does this mean you should only link with sites with higher Page Rank? Well, if everyone practised this the chances of you getting any links for your embryonic site would be zero. A site may be 0 today, but that site may also be working hard to increase its rankings and you may benefit from their progress. Also, remember your human visitors, a site may be useful to them, even if not for your purpose of increasing your rankings.
So, golden rules to remember:
- Aim to get links from high-ranking pages
- Put up links from any site that has high relevance to yours
First, think of sites that would be useful for your visitors to be able to go to from your site. For example, if your site is about football, your visitors may be interested in other sports or sports overall. Your first step will be to email these other sites and ask if you can have reciprocal links with them.
This may be a little bit of a David and Goliath situation, and many people feel put off because they think their new immature website is far too small. You may not get any response to your emails, and you may get a response refusing you, but you may find that some pages with good rankings will agree to link with you. Be very pleased with this.
Immediately someone agrees to have a reciprocal link with you, put up their link on your website, just in case they decide to check.
Now, think again about your customers or visitors. Even if the big sites have refused to put a link to you on their site, it may still be useful to put a link to them on yours for your visitors’ information. Always remember the whole goal of getting website traffic is to get and keep loyal customers or visitors – not just to attract search engine bots.
Your hard work starts now. Search the web for sites on the same subject matter as yours, but which are only NOT competitors. Keep an eye on the Google Toolbar and look for sites that have a better page rank than yours, ideally, the websites you are looking for will be ranked about 4 or 5 (higher ranking sites may be a bit snobbish towards novice sites).
One of the best ways to share your link is to join a forum. If you are into affiliate marketing, Warrior Forum may be the place for you.
When posting or answering a topic on the forum always use a signature with your website address on it, if the forum users like what they read about you they may click on the link to visit your website. This way you will have more links coming into your site. If your hosting company has a user forum, there may well be a section where you can showcase your new site, if so, you will get several visits through this. Loverly links for search engines and fodder for the link spiders.
Also, you can comment on a relevant blog post. When you do that you will improve SEO through backlinks and referral traffic. When you comment on a relevant blog, you will not only improve your SEO, but it will also build relationships. You will be shown as an expert that has something to add to the conversation. If you write insightful, helpful comments you will demonstrate your knowledge without it looking like spam. If you offer valuable insights and your links are permitted you can get a quality backlink. If you want to learn more on how you can use this technique you can read this blog post by Neil Patel.
Article writing is also a technique for building links and traffic but not so many are aware of this.
It is not as difficult as many think. Just start with one of your blog posts and break it down to an article or take some blog posts and make an article from them. Articles can help you build your traffic and ranking.
Articles do not need to be lengthy, in fact, shorter is better. Probably no more than 600 to 1000 words. What you want to do in your article is write about something related to your site.
There are several websites on which you can publish your article. Some are free and some are not. The most important though is that you can include the author’s details, which means your website details. People using your article will form links back to your site, the more different sites using it, the better the links.
Better still you can submit your article to any number of article sites. Articles Base is one of the best but you also have Sooper Articles, Article Biz, and Quora. Okay, writing articles is not always so easy, it has to be well-written, and some article directories do not submit articles that not are well-written. But article submission is an excellent way of improving your website’s position in the search engines, as well as for organic traffic, and should not be ignored.
Articles are also important resources for Webmasters in another way, free content for your site. There are sites out there that cater to an amazing number of subjects, and in themselves can be very useful and informative. Free articles for web designing, for example, can bring you other hints and tips for making the best of your website. If you use an article you must put on the full author’s bio and a link back to their site. But the benefit to you is ready-made content hopefully keyword rich which will attract the search engine bots like bees to honey!
What Is Ethical SEO Search Engine Optimization?
Ethical SEO is the process of optimizing a website to raise its position on the Google Search Engine.
The actual process of SEO can be quite a complicated one and can vary depending on the actual website in question, and the key terms being sought.
The various techniques can include but are not limited to, Meta Tags and Header Tags, Keyword Density, and alt tag optimization. As Well as this, Off Page optimization is taken into consideration.
Off Page SEO techniques involve securing, maintaining, and growing relevant backlinks, with certain configurations in the anchor text. This can have a great effect in raising the rankings of specific key terms.
Because of the positive effect of building backlinks on search engine rankings, some website owners have taken to buying backlinks in an attempt to raise their rankings.
Google has been known to consider this technique as a manipulation of its algorithm and may have been concerned that this may result in its search engine bringing less relevant results.
This has led Google to try to penalize people for buying backlinks.
Some people feel that Google has stepped out of line in trying to penalize webmasters for doing this, but there is another way of looking at things.
The reason Google does not want people buying links to raise their website’s rankings is that the reason building backlinks raises a website’s rankings is that each backlink is considered as a ‘vote’ for it. This is something that is frowned upon in most sections of society.
It is still possible to carry out Off Page SEO campaigns, however. It is just that the methods have changed. Instead of trying to trick Google, it is best to work with methods Google does not frown upon. This means having quality content on your website. Okay, we know this is On Page SEO technically, but it does make the Off Page SEO easier. Having good site content means that people will WANT to link to your website.
The next step is to get the message out that this high-quality info is on your website. Some link-building techniques can be used for this, but not in an attempt to manipulate Google, just to get the word out about your website, and then people will want to link to the great info they find.
Articles, press releases, guest blog interviews, and RSS feeds are all great ways of doing this. This kind of specialist Off Page SEO is what many SEO companies consider Ethical SEO, as it is not intended to manipulate Google results at all. Instead, they are giving Google exactly what it wants. A website full of great relevant information that people will find useful, with info about the website in good positions on the web to start people talking about it. After that, backlinks should naturally build themselves.
A basic, but holistic way of looking at Ethical SEO is that for maximum effect, both On Page SEO and Off Page SEO techniques need to be carried out together in a methodical way.
Wrapping Up
These were just a few ways to do SEO Search Engine Optimization but I think the most important. SEO is important if you want your website to show up in the search engines, but the most important thing must be to use SEO methods the search engines like. If not, you just risk getting penalized, and with that, your site will not be shown.
If you follow the methods and tips in this article I am quite sure you will succeed with your SEO Search Engine Optimization and getting your page ranked and be shown on the first five search pages.
Remember, SEO Search Engine Optimization takes time, and getting your pages to show up on the top five search pages also takes time. Do not take any shortcuts, because this will in the end only hurt you.
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