SEO Blog

As far as SEO tools go, link building is pretty high on the list. Incoming and direct links will add credibility to your site – assuming of course, that they are from credible sources – which invariably leads the search engines to sit up and take note.

The aforementioned point on credible sources does need to be flagged up immediately though. Just as in any walk of life, if you hang around with shady characters, regardless of your intentions, inevitably some of that perceived negativity rubs off on you. There are so many spamming directories, many of which may request a payment, that it can be a bit of a minefield. But simply submitting your site left right and centre could cause more problems than it does offer solutions.

A brilliant way to create a number of decent links is to write and publish articles. Wisely, most article submission sites – eZine and Buzzle are probably the most popular – don’t allow you to pepper articles with keywords and HTML code, so you’ll need to be a little smarter than that. Essentially, the back link will often come from the ‘Author’s Bio’ (or equivalent), where you can write a little blurb about yourself, the site and get in that all important embedded link.

Submitting articles not only creates strong links, but if readers find your piece interesting you may find that it is also a good source of direct traffic too. This is reflected in a number of other free posting sites such as Squidoo. Here you have the opportunity to write an informative page about any topic – preferably related to your site and area of expertise – and provide a useful resource; both selfishly for your own site’s SEO but also for the genuinely interested readership.

There are also literally hundreds of business directories where you can also post links that point back to pages of your site; many are free, some are not, but be sure to shop around when locating them to avoid the spammers mentioned earlier in the post. LinkedIn is a particularly reputable business networking tool, allowing users to write a little information about themselves, their company and provide a link; everything you need really to continue pushing that message.

Linking is very much the unseen part of SEO. Whilst you can analyse how many links you have coming in, it’s not always as easy to ascertain what effect they’re having. Without a steady stream of good links to your site though, you may never gain the respect of search engines. The better the quality, the higher the search ranking. It’s not overly complicated, but it’s certainly worth taking the time to research and effort to do it properly.

On the 12th day of Xmas…

Links are the backbone of any good search engine marketing strategy and below are 12 ways you can get quality inward one way links to your website:

1. Directories – submit your website to quality directories such as Yahoo, BOTW and DMOZ. Being in these directories can not only get you links from very credible places but also generate traffic and also other links.
2. Forums – contribute to forums in your niche and use your website link in your signature as you will gain links and also be seen as a contributor to your industry.
3. Articles – create them specific to your niche and submit them to places like Ezine articles as people will pick them up and use them on their websites.
4. Press Releases – Submit these online to places like PRWeb as you can find you get local or national media coverage and have your press release published anywhere on the web.
5. Social Bookmarking – If you have a really good article or piece of content that you have posted to your website then be sure to ask associates to review it and tag it through places such as Digg and StumbleUpon as this can go viral very quickly.
6. Wikipedia – Add your website or product only if it is credible and suitable as if you attempt to spam this resource you will get banned straight away and have your entry removed.
7. Answer Questions – Use Yahoo Answers and Google Groups to answer questions and link to relevant resources, not always yours but if its relevant then why not.
8. Hub Pages – Set up pages for your products or service on social hub sites like Squidoo and Hub Pages and use these to link through to your website.
9. Start a Blog – Publish great content regularly on your own blog and people will naturally link to it
10. Flash games – develop a fun game that can be distributed and that is specific to your industry if its good and more importantly fun people will link to it.
11. Tools – offer free tools or services that people will want to link to to add value to their visitors, this will naturally attract links.
12. Videos – Publish informative videos on your website that will be of benefit to people in your industry.

Above is only a few ways to develop you inward links but you can get as creative as you need to.

Google have been going through another PageRank update and it seems at first glance that many of the web directories have been affected.

Many low level directories have simply seen their child pages lose all PageRank meaning the only PageRank they have is on their homepage. This means that the appeal of buying links in these directories is now a very unappealing option for those who just buy links to influence the PageRank algorithm.

Effects have been seen all the way up to the likes of the Yahoo directory which have several child pages with no PageRank but most pages are still in tact.

But lets remember that the world is not Google and the directories are still worth being in for relevance, credibility and lead generation.