Tag Archives: search

How Getting the Services of Link Builders Will Help You Cut Costs

Link building is one of the most effective and promising SEO tactics utilized by experts in this field. This strategy is one of many that can help optimize a site to make it more visible on search engines and drive traffic into it. Without a doubt, it is one of the most expensive SEO services. However, it becomes a lot less expensive when companies outsource link building to firms in their own countries or SEO outsourcing hubs abroad.

Link builders utilize different strategies in link building campaigns for each client and these strategies would depend on what they need. These people know the importance of the number of links pointing in to a site, but nothing really beats the effectiveness of quality when it comes to link building. Quality also means organic and ethical link building practices which can get you ranked high on the leading search engines.

One of the best ways to capture people’s attention (and this is done by most SEO firms) is through link baiting or content publishing. The goal is to publish well-written and relevant content on a website. Writing content includes article writing as well as blog posting. These articles can be submitted to article directories, and should be engaging and interesting enough for readers to want to click on the link to your website.

Link builders make sure that the content that they publish on a website not only meets the criteria of search engines, but also interesting for people who will read them. It should be informative, newsworthy, funny, and unique to get readers come back for more. As a general rule, content writers write for their readers and not for search engines. That’s the secret to great content writing.

One of the newest tactics for link building today is publishing links on social media. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are popular channels nowadays to get more people to click on a site’s link. Link builders know that social media sites have millions of users ready to click on anything remotely interesting for them.

Other tactics for link building includes reciprocal linking, using press release links, and submitting sites to web directories. These are all effective in varying degrees, but check with your SEO firm to know which one they use and which would bring more visitors to your site.

Site owners have the option to outsource link building to SEO firms in other countries when getting this service in their own country proves to be very expensive. This is a very good option for them if they want to cut on cost, yet maintain the same quality.

The cost of labor is a lot more affordable in almost all sectors. There will probably be no miscommunication between the client and the firm because employees in these countries are fluent in the English language. In addition, most SEO firms abroad are managed by Americans who know how to respond to the needs of this fast-evolving market.

Most SEO firms abroad, especially in the Philippines, employ only link builders who have the right expertise. Link building works just like a promotional tool for websites. If site owners choose to outsource link building, they are assured that SEO firms will promote their websites in the most ethical and organic ways. Because of this, these business owners can relax, knowing that their sites are going to rank well.

Seven Vital Considerations for your On-Page SEO Check-list

On-Page SEO carries far less weight than off-Page SEO in terms of getting your content ranked high in the search engines. In fact, there are many webmasters that don’t consider it at all, which is why you should. It can give you the edge over competing pages that neglect on-page SEO and is relatively easy to do. Additionally, once it’s done, it’s done and costs nothing but a little time and planning.

The best way for us to explain on-page SEO is with this 7 point checklist that explains each step in getting your pages optimized. This checklist will refer to implementing optimizations in a WordPress Blog – although the concepts are the same for any website.

Our Must-do On-Page SEO Checklist

Keyword Density

Keyword density is the most important factor of the on-page SEO checklist, especially since recent Google algorithm updates. Keyword density refers to how many times your keywords appear in your content and is expressed as a percentage. For example, say I was optimizing this article for “on-page SEO checklist”, my article was 1,000 words long and I mentioned on-page SEO checklist 20 times, my keyword density would be 2%.

I would not go above 2% anymore! Google can and will penalize you for “keyword stuffed” content. No-one really knows that magic number, but a conservative goal is 1.5-2%.

Meta Tags

Don’t be put off by the name; WordPress makes it very simple to administer Meta Tags. There are 3 simple fields to fill in – using the Simple Meta Tags plugin.

Meta Title – Include your Keywords in here – this will be the main title your visitors see when searching in the search engines – so make it appealing and make it stand out!

Meta Description – Very important. This is a short description of your content your visitor will read in the search engines. Include your keywords and again make it appealing.

Meta Keywords – Make sure you include your keywords. This one is not so important, just reinforces to the search engines about what your page content is based on.

Meta Tags are still one of the most important parts of the this checklist, not so much for rankings, but because potential visitors are going to base their decision to visit your site or not on the title and description they see when searching for your content.

Title, URL, Content and Headings Optimizations

Some real simple, quick guidelines:

– Make sure the page title contains your keywords preferably beginning with them
– Make sure your URL contains your keywords
– Bold, Italicize and Underline your keywords on separate occasions
– Make sure you have both H2 and H3 titles in the page somewhere with your headings

Alternate Text Image Tag

A part of the on-page SEO checklist many people forget, but is very easy to do. This refers to the alternative image tag. When you insert a picture into WordPress, you have a field option called Alternate Tag Image Text. Make sure to include your keywords in here, if you have multiple images use different iterations of keywords, for example: on-page SEO checklist, checklist for SEO, on-page optimization checklist and so forth.

Get a Sitemap

This one doesn’t really apply to optimizing the page you’re working on, but will boost SEO for all your pages, so I wanted to include this in the on-page SEO checklist. The good news is, if you’re running a WordPress Blog, it is a snap to do! Like all things WordPress, there’s a plugin for that – Google XML Sitemaps

This automatically builds and keeps up to date a logical “map” of your website. It allows the search engines more efficiency in figuring out where all your pages are and leads to more of them being indexed (included) in the search engine results. Furthermore, it creates backlinks into to each of your pages (with hyperlinks that match your page title – which should contain your keywords ) – Google loves to see a site with intertwined pages!

External Links to Authority Sites

Google loves to see natural content, and natural content usually links to other content – especially authority sites. By Authority sites, I mean sites like WordPress, Yahoo, CNN and even Google itself – popular, very highly ranked pages. Try to place at least one hyperlink to an authority site.

On-Page SEO Checklist – Last but not Least…

Unique content! No On-Page SEO checklist should be complete without it. If you are plagiarizing material you will get no credit for it. The reason being is Google gives credit to only one piece of unique content – the first page it comes across and indexes. It holds this page in its indexes and if it finds highly duplicated content on another website at a future time, it will not consider that page as part of the search engine results.

Write unique, interesting, helpful material and implement all the points of this on-page SEO checklist into your posts, and you will be ahead of the pack already!

How Not to Do SEO in the Age of Penguins and Pandas

In light of Google’s recent major updates, Penguin and Panda, it’s a shame to see how many questionable Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) “experts” and agencies are still risking their reputations and doing more harm than good to clients by attempting to use dodgy techniques to boost site visibility and traffic. They are demonstrating precisely the kind of behaviour that Google and other search engines have been aiming to eliminate.

To avoid ending up in search engine black books, steer clear of dubious schemes and methods, and use only genuine, tried and tested means to enhance your website’s SEO credentials. If looking for ideas and inspiration, visit blogs and forums with a good reputation in the marketing world, such as Econsultancy, SEO Moz, and Graywolf’s SEO Blog.

If you have the budget, don’t hesitate to hire a team of professionals for the best results. This form of marketing is worth investing in so don’t be tricked by low prices. Quality services don’t come cheap.

In brief, the Google Panda update was launched to penalise websites that look and feel “spammy”, while Penguin deals with sites showcasing an unnatural looking backlink profile.

Copy

Long gone are the days when websites stuffed with keywords outperformed others in search engine results pages. This will actually damage your website’s performance rather than improve its chances.

To help realise the severity of this faux-pas, put yourself in a site user’s shoes. It’s very easy to tell when copy has been written for search engines rather than the human eye. This really doesn’t leave a good impression on most customers, and is likely to result in a high bounce rate.

Linking

Diversity has never been as important, and natural diversity at that. Paying for links and getting involved in link farms is to be avoided at all costs unless you fancy getting penalised by the likes of Google who can now smell dodgy scams from a mile away.

Instead, time should be invested in developing relationships with bloggers whose backlinks can mean a lot to sites of all proportions. Though a somewhat aged method, it’s also still worth submitting sites to credible business directories.

Social media strategies can greatly assist in acquiring natural backlink profiles as people share content according to their interests.

SEO must also consider internal linking structures. Similarly to keyword stuffing, internal linking musn’t be exaggerated either. Again, put yourself in a user’s shoes to see whether a link seems natural, and whether the anchor text fits the context. Awkwardly positioned internal links stand out like a sore thumb to both users and search engine spiders.