Author: tudor-art

Obtaining links to your site can be a frustrating business. Your search engine optimization program can produce pages that are, technically speaking, perfect – yet they fail to attract links. The Best for 2018.

You can get out and start to acquire links through directory submissions, social media and even article directories, however you should also have a healthy percentage of links from other relevant sites. As you start to acquire links from other sites you can assess the search engine optimization value of those links by researching certain factors.

• 1 – Relevance – The relevance of the page and site that links in to your pages. The more relevant the site or page is, the more value can be placed on that link.
• 2 – Anchor Text – The anchor text ideally should be your keyword. The closer the anchor text is to that page’s keyword(s) the more value can placed on that link.
• 3 – Link Placement – Links that appear within content carry more weight than links in a menu. Links a footer may carry even less weight. The content surrounding the link may also be considered when assessing the links weight.
• 4 – Strength – Strength is the least reliabel part of the equation. A site may display a PageRank of 4, however the real rank at the time may be a 3 or a 5 or any other number. PageRank is a general guide only, however a site with a PR significantly higher than your own should be sort for linking.

These are only some of the factors that can be used. These will provide an overall picture of the strength of any links coming in. Your search engine optimization strategies can then be planned around the value of these incoming links.

Premium WordPress Themes – Creative Link Building

Sometimes you need to be a little creative with your search engine optimization strategies to gain targeted inbound links. Generally speaking we have no control over how other sites links to our pages. Some these techniques may help.

If you are going to ask another webmaster for a link – particularly a reciprocal link – be sure to explain how a link is going to benefit his pages. While you’re at it, include a pre-made html code that they can simply copy and paste – it also means you have control over the anchor text and where the link is going – the ultimate in search engine optimization outcomes.

If distribute a newsletter, offer to advertise a website in your publication in exchange for links back to your pages. You can then filter the ads so that you only publish those that are relevant. It also means you can filter which sites are linking to yours.

Publish testimonials about other sites on some of your pages. When you’re finished, send a link to the testimonial to the webmaster. If it is well written they may not pass up the opportunity to brag about the great review. With some smart search engine optimization work you should be able to work the testimonial into your pages quite naturally.

Using these creative link building ideas as part of your search engine optimization strategies will not result in thousands of links. However, if you are careful and give a little to thought to them you can target web sites with pages that could be of real benefit to your pages. One link that targets the right page and uses the right anchor text could be worth three or four vague links to your home page.

Premium WordPress Themes – DMOZ

In case you forgot, DMOZ recently celebrated their 10th birthday. Forgot? Most people would say, “who is DMOZ?” – sounds a bit like a rap artist perhaps. For many years DMOZ has been a bit of quandary for search engine optimization specialists.

DMOZ is one of the oldest web directories and the popular belief is that having your site listed on DMOZ will greatly improve your rankings. Getting listed on DMOZ does provide a little boost to the rankings, but not enough to justify some of the hype that certain search engine optimization specialists attribute to it.

So they turned 10 – happy birthday! Search engine optimization specialists, rejoice – mind you, we will still take six months to get your submission approved and your site listed – or not depending on whether or not you have worked out the categories properly.

Cheap shots aside, DMOZ listings are a slow process. However a birthday post on their blog made for interesting reading. Like most anniversary events, people look back then look ahead to the future. Perhaps DMOZ can lift its game and become the search engine optimization specialists best friend.

A new era. Does that mean that DMOZ is going to change? Perhaps approve sites in a matter of days or weeks instead of months or years? No! To quote from the blog post again:

Stay tuned to the DMOZ blog. When it comes to search engine optimization – you will still have to wait for a link from DMOZ.

Premium WordPress Themes – Internal Link Building

Acquiring inbound links is one of the primary priorities in search engine optimization strategies. Whilst of secondary benefit, being able to funnel the link juice from inbound links to other pages on your site is also a role of search engine optimization.

We have written several posts related to internal linking and anchor text (Anchor Text For Search Engine Optimization) and using the correct URL’s (URL’s And Search Engine Optimization) amongst other topics.

Search Engine Guide has written a very comprehensive post on the importance of internal linking with an emphasis on contextual internal linking. The post highlights the need to not only keep the internal links within the context of your content, but to also use anchor text within the context. It is a simple search engine optimization strategy that few people use to effect.

Internal links provide at least three benefits:

• User Satisfaction:
  If you use internal links within your content that directs the user to related content, you are adding value to their experience.
• Reputation Building:
  As users read your content, if they can easily find more good content on the same subject within your site you will gain a reputation for expertise within that field.
• Search Engine Rankings:
  Search engine optimization is all about getting the highest rankings possible for search terms. The more links that pages receive, both internal and external, the higher your pages will rank.

The final paragraph in Search Engines Guide really does sum up the search engine optimization effects of internal linking:

This is one of the better references to internal linking and well worth bookmarking for future reference. As this last paragraph suggests, when it comes to search engine optimization, every little bit helps!

One of the key components of a search engine ranking is the number of quality pages that link back to your pages. Gaining organic links can be slow and relies on the goodwill of visitors to your site. One search engine optimization strategy is to request links from sites associated with your industry. Overall the best approach to link building is taking a blended and natural approach. While I do not recommend link exchange as a major part of link building, from time to time it may make sense as a small part of your overall link growth. When client’s ask me about this I normally say link exchanging is something that used to work well 4 years ago, but is not as effective these days. .

There is no shame in requesting links with other websites that you have established a solid business relationship with. In fact it makes good business sense. If, for example, you sell printer ink cartridges, it would make sense to contact printer sellers, paper sellers and other allied businesses requesting a link to your pages – perhaps in exchange for a link from one of your pages. Because these businesses relate to your business and you have established a relationship with them means the search engine optimization value of these links is far greater than many of the organic links you may receive.

Requesting a link can be a fairly straightforward process. However Eric Ward wrote a telling post on Search Engine Land called the ‘Link Building Kiss Of Death‘ which details some of the right and wrong ways to send link requests. The post provides a good insight in how to enhance your search engine optimization link building program through link requests.

One paragraph struck a particular chord that I think should be taken further, if it is on a slightly different tangent. The basic premise of the article is that most web site owners, when looking for contact details, simply stick with admin@ or contact@ email addresses – addresses he labels the ‘kiss of death’. The paragraph stated:

To extend on this paragraphs note, if you can do some research to find more direct or personal email addresses then you are more likely to first, have your email read and secondly, have someone act on it. The key is finding out who would be the best person to send the email to. But if you have a business relationship with a company, it makes it that much easier.

You could send the email to the site or business owner, however I believe this could also be a ‘kiss of death’ email. Link building is not just a SEO strategy, it can also be a marketing strategy. Where ever possible the two individuals who are ‘in a position of influence’ are the web page caretaker and the individual responsible for marketing.

Finding out who these people are and addressing your emails directly to them will result in far more success than just emailing admin@ or contact@. How do you find this information? Two possible avenues; do a site search to see if the details are listed; or pick up the phone and ask for the people responsible – talk to them and get their email addresses. Chances are they will respect you more for taking the time to contact them directly.

If you can spend a little longer planning your link request campaign you will find the results far more rewarding and the search engine optimization benefits far outweighing a quick email to admin, or filling in an online contact form…or give a call to your contact and set up the link!

Premium WordPress Themes – Advanced Linking

Getting search engine optimization basics right is fairly straightforward these days. You can follow a plan just like a menu. Determine your keyword(s); generate content style using those keywords; submit to a couple of bookmarking sites; and your done. More advanced tactics require a little more in the way of creativity – or just planning.

If you look around the web, and the blog community is a classic example, there are those with well ranked sites that attract a lot of links, and then there is everyone else. We all undertake search engine optimization programs that match even the best of sites. So what is the secret to getting those higher ranks and attracting links?

• First, let’s clear one thing up. It’s a search engine optimization reverse catch 22. Well ranked sites receive a lot of links. Sites that receive a lot of links rank well. These sites are going to continue to rank well because of that little circle.
• That circle is the key – and the secret key to that circle is advanced networking. Again, looking at the blog community and those that rank well, they continually link to each other in their posts. Their search engine optimization strategies now include not just crafting internal links but also links to fellow bloggers within their network.
• It is not just bloggers. If you are a site that promotes a certain range of products, you can network within that niche and start to include links within your content to those within your network. If everyone within the network does it often enough it can have a two-fold effect. First, as part of your search engine optimization program you are all going to have properly crafted anchor text links – this of course will help to build your rankings.

The bigger boost comes from your visitors, and the visitors to those within your network. They start to see a regular reference to your site amongst others.The result, they come and visit. If your site has quality content then your authority, or reputation, is going to increase with the result that others will start to link to you as well. You have now started that circle.

Smart web owners have networks within networks. Depending on the topic of their content, they will delve into the network of that topic to find a related article elsewhere and link into it. Top bloggers will often rehash the same subject matter and make their mark by turning it into a commentary. They can then link into opinions on that subject matter from other bloggers.

Learn to develop a strong network of like-minded individuals and start linking into their content using search engine optimization techniques. They will soon reciprocate and your inbound links will start to climb. Search engines like Google like to see links leaving a site as well and if it is going to a page with related content, everyone’s ‘authority’ gets a boost.

Become a networker and your search engine optimization strategies will become a little busier, but far more rewarding.

Eric Ward on Search Engine Land has written what is probably one of the best posts on link building and search engine optimization that I have read in recent times. . His philosophy is to remove link building from the SEO equation, particularly when it comes to content creation. To quote from the post:

Think about that statement then re-read it! Creating content simply to encourage links can be challenging. You may often read about ‘link bait’ posts, posts written specifically to gain links and aid search engine rankings. These can work at times, other times they totally bomb. If you take the approach of writing content because it is what your readers want, it will naturally draw links. Why? Because it is good!

Your content is a representation of your business. It is a representation of you. Content written for search engine optimization purposes can often read and sound artificial and wind up not drawing the links you were hoping for. Remove SEO from the equation and consider your content as marketing instead.

Write your content to draw in more readers. The more readers you acquire, and more importantly, the more visitors who return regularly, the better the chances of gaining links. The common sense component stands out. Write for your visitors, they will return, they will link. From an SEO perspective, you are gaining links without trying; with those links come an improved search ranking and more traffic from the search engines.

Take the reverse of that scenario. Write content purely for search engine optimization benefit; few appreciates it; fewer people link; you gain little or no benefit.

Premium WordPress Themes – SEO Now

An article by Patrick Altoft on Blogstorm seems to indicate that perhaps Google is placing less emphasis on keywords in anchor text and looking more for natural links.

The article raises some interesting points and if the situation is true, it could have a major bearing on search engine optimization and the way we try build links to out pages. I can understand his point where he feels that Google:

The argument he uses however, is fairly narrow using people’s names. The problem with anchor text in general is that it is used by both trusted sites trying to link intelligently to other sources, and by those who are trying to amass links with only keywords as anchors. Anchor text in itself does not imply trust, however, search engines, particularly Google, have enough information on sites to determine whether or not the link is to be trusted or not. Anchor text provides the contextual link that can then be associated with search queries.

I wrote a post not too long ago, the real power of anchor text, where we pointed out how Adobe ranked number one for ‘click here’. This is a common term associated with Adobe and not one that would be optimized by them. Checking today, they are still ranked number one for that term.

In a natural link building program, you are going to receive links in a variety of formats. There will be links to the domain name and root page. There will be links to page URL’s. There will also be links where ‘here’ is the anchor. Good search engine optimization practices should allow for a variety of anchors in links with the more powerful links carrying the best anchor possible.

If his observations are true, SEO will need to undergo a rapid change in procedures and many links will require re-evaluation. Until there is further evidence to the contrary, aim for a balance of anchor texts in your link building activities.

Premium WordPress Themes – Set Time

At present, one of the major search engine optimization factors in determining website authority, and subsequently search result placement, is the number and quality and relevant links coming in to the pages of your website. If you set aside a small amount of time each day you can steadily build and manage your links effectively. These five tasks will go a long way to making you task easier.

Your first task is to ensure that all current links are active and going to the right places – this includes internal links. If there are any dead links, check them and repair or remove them altogether. Every day check on the number of links on any one page and keep them under control.
Spend some time researching your niche and looking for link opportunities. The best links come from sites that complement yours, not compete. If you sell cleaning detergents, look at sites that sell brooms, mops or even buckets and other related cleaning accessories. Contact webmasters and ask for a link to your pages. Be prepare to exchange links so make sure the site is one that you would be happy linking too.
Finally, while not directly link related, check all aspects of your site to ensure everything is functioning correctly. If you send out link requests you need to be sure your site presents itself well if they decide to check you out. Naturally, you want your site working properly when you receive visitors.

If you set aside a set time each day to cover these tasks the whole process will run smoothly. It is very easy to get caught up responding to emails as they arrive. This takes you away from other equally important parts of your online business. SEO is an important aspect to building traffic to your website: it should not dominate your day.

There’s a nasty rumor going around that article marketing is dead. But is it? 2018.

I don’t think so. In fact, I think article marketing is still one of the best ways to build links over time. Of course, like all things, article marketing and the way it is done has changed and will continue to change. That doesn’t mean it is dead.

The purpose for relevant and useful article marketing is to build inbound links to your website and drive traffic to you most important pages. You can do that through article marketing if you approach it with the right frame of mind. Stay away from anything that looks like spam and focus on delivering real value to your readers and potential customers. Long live article marketing.

Premium WordPress Themes – Link Exchanges

A lot of people are still hooked on exchanging links. You point to me, I point to you, does it work?

Honestly, those links are not as powerful for search engine optimization purposes as one-way links. If I point to you and we are in the same niche category then that will count far more for you than a reciprocal link will for either of us. Of course, it doesn’t help me as the out-linking website much at all. But I wouldn’t say that link exchanges have no benefit at all.

Sometimes your best bet is to forego the linking benefits in lieu of a greater benefit – targeted traffic. If your link partner is a highly respected authority site in your niche then those link exchanges could be sources of great new visitors for you. New traffic is good. Especially if it is targeted traffic in high numbers. So don’t get the idea that link exchanges are worthless. They do provide some value…but my advice is only exchange links with companies that you know, trust and conduct business with.

Premium WordPress Themes – Building Links

Rand Fishkin is teaching people how to buy links again. In actuality, some of his suggestions aren’t half bad. You can actually build links using those methods. One that I really like is Link Buying Method #8, what he calls blog incubation.

With blog incubation, the idea is to set up other bloggers with a blog of their own. Develop the blog template, give them the power to blog on their favorite topics, provide them the training, and require them to put a link to your blog on theirs. Of course, you’ll have to share the revenue with them, or let them keep it all, but you get the idea. They link to you and you are virtually paying them with your time, knowledge, and skills, training them to be effective bloggers. There is no limit to the number of bloggers that you can develop that way.

How Social Networking Builds Inbound Links

Inbound links are a great source of link building pride. When you get new inbound links those translate into link popularity and higher search rankings. Typically, social networking is not thought of as link building activity. That’s because the social networks themselves do not offer link juice apart from your profile. But you should think of your social networking as link building too.

Chances are your networking friends have websites. As you get to know more webmasters within your niche you will develop relationships and boost each other in ways unimaginable. One of those ways is through link partnerships. There is no limit to how social networking can benefit you in your web business. Relationships can lead to partnerships, new inbound links, guest blogging positions, referral networking, and all sorts of other arrangements. When you build solid relationships with people online they will benefit you, but you must be willing to give of yourself selflessly for the benefit of others. When you do, the Law of Reciprocity returns that in your direction. Social networking can lead to an increase in inbound links through indirect marketing.

Premium WordPress Themes – Get Links

Link building has long been both a feared and a glorified activity for webmasters. Almost everyone knows that links are important, but few webmasters know how to go about getting them inexpensively and without effort. I know of one way that will almost guarantee that you get inbound links to your website, but only if you do it right. And it’s not hard to do it right.

Starting a blog and writing to it every day has more potential to help you build inbound links than anything else you do online. Many webmasters concentrate on creating link bait, but link bait takes time, money, and resources to create. A blog takes commitment and persistence. As for time, you can write a decent blog post in 30 minutes. It takes a little money to start one – not a lot. And all you need is the software, which is free.

The importance of a blog lies in writing to it every day. Write just every once in awhile and you diminish your chances for getting inbound links. The more you write to it the more likely you are to be linked to by someone else. The key is to make your blog unique. Write about interesting topics and that in itself will get other bloggers to link to you. Put your blog on your website and your URL will be the recipient of inbound links. Over time, that will be a huge benefit. It’s the easiest, least expensive way I know to really build good inbound links.

You know that links are important for a well crafted long term search engine optimization program. Best 2018. Well, build a widget and they (links) will come. Here’s how:

Take your widget and make it available to everyone else on your website. Give them the code to copy/paste into their pages and make it available for both blogs and web pages. Be sure that you are building a widget for something that people will find useful within your niche. If no one finds it useful then no one will use your widget. Make it useful and desirable as a webmaster tool and lots of other webmasters will use it.

A widget can be a good source of backlinks to your website. Every sponsored link that points back to your website is an inbound link offering link juice. Those links translate into search rankings. The more the better, the higher the authority of the sites using your widget the better. And your own reputation increases as well.

Premium WordPress Themes – Nonrelevant Sites Count

Everyone seems to be preoccupied with high PageRank sites within the same niche. But can you get link credit for low-PR, nonrelevant websites?

Just like the words of that old country song from the 1970s:

In this case, it seems that everyone wants to go for the experienced and aged, but if you focus all of your efforts on high PageRank and relevance then you’ll spend a lot of time looking for link love and get laid a lot less often. Is that a viable strategy? Yes. I’m not saying it isn’t. But you don’t have to do it that way.

The reason many new webmasters get stuck on high PR and relevance is because they read an e-book or a blog about search engine optimization that told them those are the best links, which is true. But they aren’t the only links. And you can build a solid base of inbound links with low-PR, nonrelevant websites. You may not get as much link love from a single one of these links as you do from a single high PR, relevant link, but numbers add up. If it came down to 10 of the very best links possible versus 10,000 low-PR, nonrelevant links, give me the 10,000.

But honestly, I see no reason why you can’t have both types of links in your portfolio. Don’t put blinders on. Just build a solid website that attracts links.

Premium WordPress Themes – How Many Links

Anchor text is an important part of the search engine optimization fine tuning that you should do in developing your website content. The search engines not only look at the number of internal links you have on your site, but also what the text in your links say. They are primarily looking for relevance.

This is true whether we are talking about internal links or inbound links. Link relevance is important and anchor text plays a part in that relevance formula.

But what is “anchor text”? Anchor text is the key phrase that you use to link from one page to another. For instance, if you link from Page A to Page B using the key phrase “milk biscuits” then “milk biscuits” is your anchor text.

What makes anchor text important is the content on the page being linked to. Is it about milk biscuits? If not then you just have a link. But if it is then that anchor text can prove to be extremely valuable. The problem is, most decent SEOs know this and Google knows they know this. So to prevent spam from overly influencing its index, Google has decided to place a limit on the amount of anchor text that you can have from one page to another.

This doesn’t affect inbound links to one page from all sources. In other words, if you 1,000 links pointing to your milk biscuits page using the anchor text “milk biscuits” and all of those 1,000 links are form unique pages, those are good anchor text links. But if you have five links using the same anchor text pointing to the same web page from the same web page then you are only going to have one of those links counted. Google won’t count them all. It’s a spam-combatting measure that has been implemented by Google and it works.

Premium WordPress Themes – Credibility

People-powered search engine Mahalo is opening up a new revenue stream for people who have answers. But will it be as useful as Yahoo! Answers, Wiki Answers, or LinkedIn Q&A? Furthermore, what kind of credibility and authority can answerers gain from these systems?

As a matter of course, Yahoo! Answers has become incredibly popular. Google tried something similar but it didn’t work out. Yet, while Google leads in search, Yahoo! has the lead in community knowledge. And users of social network LinkedIn say that the Q&A portion of the service is actually one of the best ways to get new business. Is that all it’s really about?

Practically speaking, if you provide good and useful answers to people’s legitimate questions then you can become somewhat of a trust authority, especially if you are prone to answering questions within a particular niche. But you can also gain some valuable backlinks. So there is a dual benefit. Links from a trust site and a reputation for being a credible, authoritative source. What more could you ask for that can help with your long term search engine optimization efforts?

If you haven’t guessed it already, Facebook pages are great opportunities to increase your Internet presence mainly because you can optimize the pages just like any other web page – and they show up in the SERPs. Best .

Facebook pages have advantages over the traditional Facebook profile. No. 1, there is no limit to the number of fans a page can have. Your Facebook profile, on the other hand, is limited to 5,000 fans. While Facebook profiles often show up in SERPs, the do so mainly for the names of account holders so they make great reputation management tools, but you can optimize your Facebook pages around specific keywords. That means you can make a list of your important keywords and optimize Facebook pages around those keywords just as if you were building a web page.

Why would you to do that? Why not just build a page on your website? The primary reason is access. With a Facebook page you have access to millions of Facebook users who might not find your website any other way. Another thing, Facebook itself has millions of web pages and has been around long enough that its authority rating by the search engines is very high. If you have a newer site then you might actually get better search engine traction from a well optimized Facebook page. Then you can send visitors of your page to your website with a link for more information.

Facebook pages present an opportunity for webmasters to gain access to new site visitors and customers through a social media and search engine optimization campaign designed to interact in unique ways.

Premium WordPress Themes – Authority Score

Google didn’t create back links, but Google was the first search engine that ranked web pages based on the number and type of back links it attracted. To this day, Google’s ranking algorithms are based, at least in part (and I’d like to add it’s a large part), on back links. Even other major search engines have followed suit and now include some analyzation of back links in their ranking algorithms.

Of course, over time, Google has refined its back link algorithm in particular and its search engine optimization ranking algorithm in general. Instead of just counting links as Yahoo! appears to do, Google actually looks at a number of factors related to links and judges those links based on an unknown scale of value (It’s unknown to the larger Web community, though I’m sure someone at Google knows how this value is calculated). One thing is for sure: If you want to rise in Google search engine and maintain a prominent position, you must build some links back into your website.

Anchor text is one of the ranking factors that Google looks at in judging link value. It’s just one factor. Other factors include number of links, number of different sources of links, authority of those sources, relevance of the sites that link to you, and a variety of other factors are considered as well. When it comes to anchor text, the variation of ranking factors is no less complicated.

Some of the factors related to anchor text that Google analyzes in your back links include:

• Specific keyword of each back link
• Relevance of anchor text
• Authority of linking page
• Relevance of linking page
• Variance in anchor text phrases used in overall back link portfolio
• Relation of anchor text phrase to outbound anchor text in links on page being linked to
• Optimization of on-page elements like photos, videos, and content

In short, Google favors a variety of anchor text to any page that is linked to. 100 links that vary 20 different relevant keyword phrases will gain more traction than 100 links that all use the same keyword phrase. If those 100 links are from a variety of different link sources with varying degrees of authority and relevance then that is even better. This tells Google that your back links are natural and not forced and that goes a long way to building your long-term reputation.

Premium WordPress Themes – Outbound Links

Much is said of inbound link building. Lord knows, we’ve done our fair share here at SEO Journal. But what about outbound links. Do those count?

Yes, in a word, outbound links are important too. But you have to consider, with outbound links, that every one you have an exit for your visitors and an invitation to go somewhere else. But outbound links can be good for search engine optimization too. You have to weigh the costs against the benefits.

When you link out to other sites within your niche, keep in mind that visitors to your site consider that an endorsement. So do the search engines. It helps those other sites, but it also helps you because the search engines see it as a willingness to participate in the wider web rather than closing yourself off as a cyberhermit. The downside is you could be linking to the competition.

Nevertheless, competitive issues aside, outbound links pass on relevance. A link to a complimentary site within the same niche shows the search engines that you care about providing value to your readers. That translates into being a more authoritative source. And search engines like authorative sources. The question for you is, which sites in your niche do you want to link to and where do you want to place those links?

A reader asked a question on another blog post that I could all readers of this blog could benefit from so I’m going to address it now. Best .

That’s an excellent question and there’s no easy, quick fix to a situation like this. I would begin by asking the other search engine optimization company to give you a list of places they submitted your link to. Then you should contact those sites and ask if they’ll remove your link. If that SEO company won’t provide you a list of sites then ask them to undo what they did. If they refuse that then you can (and should do this anyway) verify your website with Google Webmaster Tools. Perform a link analysis on your site to see what inbound links you have and identify the ones from bad neighborhoods. Contact those site owners and ask them to remove your links.

If worse comes to worse and the website owners refuse to take down your links or you can’t contact them, look up the Whois information on those sites to see who the web host is. Contact the web host and let them know that they have bad neighborhoods on their servers. A reputable host will remove the sites and shut down those accounts. They will also remove your links.

Premium WordPress Themes – Multiple Sites

It may seem intuitive. You need relevant inbound links. They need to be relevant. They should come from authoritative sites within your niche. Why not just build a bunch of sites within your niche with different domain names and link them together?

There are some dangers in doing this. First, if all of your sites are hosted through the same web host then it is likely that they will exist on the same web server. That’s a big red flag where the search engines are concerned. Several sites linking to each other and that exist on the same server are too closely related to be of any good to each other. They are likely owned by the same person or group of people so it’s like a mini-network of sites and Google has pretty much killed networks.

Even if you solved the server class problem, there are issues. Suppose you host all of your domains at different hosting companies. That way they are all on different servers and different IP blocks. Good for you. If they are all linking to each other with no links out to other relevant sites and no, or few, inbound links from other relevant sites, it still looks like the link pattern of a network and it will be likely be treated that way by the search engines.

Furthermore, if your sites are all registered under the same name then your Whois data could be giving you away.

While it’s possible to fool the search engines today, you likely won’t get away with any long term strategy of link networking. It is best to build quality content and develop social proof. The search engines will treat you better.

Premium WordPress Themes – How Many

When it comes to link building there is no way to overemphasize the importance of backlinks. It is pretty much common knowledge that you need them. Different search engine optimization experts will put varying degrees of emphasis on them, but all SEOs pretty much agree that they are important. How important are they? Do you need thousands? Hundreds? How many is enough?

There’s no easy answer to the how much is enough question. It depends on a lot of factors, primarily the competitive nature of your niche. One keyword in a very competitive niche may require tens or hundreds of thousands of thousands of backlinks just to make a dent, and a small one at that, in the armor of your competition. Why bother beating your head against a stone wall?

Instead, go for the smaller, less competitive keywords first. The ones that won’t require an army of link builders to spread artillery all over kingdom come just to sound like the squeak of a mouse. If you target those less competitive key phrases and get respectable traffic from those, once you capture the top of the search engine rankings for the long tail phrases, you’ll start to see yourself climb for the more generic phrases within your niche. But it takes time. And patience.

How many backlinks does it take to succeed? One more than you had yesterday. Just keep plugging away, one link at a time, until you win.

Premium WordPress Themes – Linking Strategy

Do you have a diverse link building strategy or are you too focused? One of the biggest mistakes new webmasters make is to get too focused on one method of building links. That’s a sure way to kill your link building before you even start. If you want to make the most of building inbound links to your website then you should seriously consider building links from a variety of sources and not just one. But what sources?

The following list is a good list of places to build inbound links to your website as part of your long term search engine optimization efforts. Don’t just hone in one one.

Here is a list of some very good type of relevant links to use:

• Commenting on other blogs
• Local profiles
• Niche blogs
• Video online marketing
• Article marketing
• Forums
• Directory submissions
• Social networking profiles
• Social bookmarking
• Niche blogs
• Related websites
• Ping lists (for blogs)

The key to link building is to seek out links from a variety of types of websites and authoritative sources. You don’t have to target all A-list sites or all sites within your own niche. It’s OK to step outside of the boundaries as long as you aren’t spamming people and trying to get something for nothing. Be a part of a community. Give, then get.

Do you know the difference between anchor text and a call to action? A call to action is any phrase that you use on your website or blog to get a user to do something. You can ask for a sale, a newsletter subscription, or just simply say “click here”. That’s a call to action. 2018.

Anchor text is using keywords within a hypertext link to assist the search engines in valuing that link for search marketing purposes. But can it serve as a call to action?

The short answer is, yes. In fact, using anchor text as a call to action is a powerful linking technique because not only do you get the search engine marketing benefits that go with using the anchor text, but if the link is an effective call to action then you’ll also increase your sales and marketing power. It will lead to increased conversions.

An example of a good link with a strong call to action and well-placed anchor text is right here below:

Click here to earn more about our SEO Service

Notice the phrase “SEO Service”. That’s my anchor text. But “learn more about SEO” could just as well be the anchor text. It’s a phrase that some people, albeit fewer, might use to search for information online. And it’s a link. The call to action is “click here”. It’s clear what I want my reader to do. If they are interested in link building they should click the link to learn how to do it. Anyone interested in learning about link building is promised a benefit. And that’s how you use anchor text as a call to action.

Premium WordPress Themes – Nofollow Attribute

Here’s another interesting new angle on a product that may be a good one, but since I haven’t used it I can’t vouch for it. But the interesting thing about this article is a startling statistic:

What’s this mean? Most of the people using nofollow as an attribute are doing it for PageRank sculpting reasons. They’re not selling links at all, which is the original reason Google introduced nofollow so that link sellers could sell links and not be penalized for selling PageRank. Instead, it’s being used differently. Three quick questions:

• Does this mean link sellers are still selling PageRank?
• Is the PageRank sculpting practice all that effective for those webmasters who are using it?
• Will Google kill the nofollow attribute?

If you’ve been reading this blog the last few days then you know that Google’s Matt Cutts has publicly stated that PageRank sculpting is not all that effective. Is that just Googlespeak for “don’t do it guys”? Maybe Google really doesn’t like PageRank sculpting and their just trying to find a nice way of discouraging webmasters from doing it. Nevertheless, it appears their efforts aren’t working. People are doing it anyway.

That leads to the question, Will Google kill it? Will nofollow be trashed as a failed experiment? Would webmasters using PageRank do better in the long run by not using it? What do you think? Is Google on the verge of pissing off a lot of big site owners again with another change to its algorithms or will this just blow over as another development in Web history?

Premium WordPress Themes – Build Authority

This blog post may be about PageRank sculpting, but it’s really about something else: The value of outbound linking.

Many site owners believe they should just link to themselves internally. That’s not very smart, actually. Outbound linking really helps you in a number of ways.

• If done smartly, it can increase your PageRank
• Again, if done smartly, your human visitors will see you as someone who is an authority who is willing to link to other sites if they have value
• You’ll be seen by search engine bots and humans as a high value site
• Your site becomes more social and you’ll get more participation from others
• Outbound links can sometimes leave an automatic trackback on another website, which can deliver additional traffic to your site

Reserving all of your links to internal pages may seem like a smart thing to do, but it’s really not. The linking strategy is one that ecompasses a variety of internal and outbound links that shows your site visitors that you are willing to share useful and valuable high authority resources with them.

Premium WordPress Themes – Cool Ideas

When it comes to link building there are a lot of ideas floating around. Most of them you’ve probably heard of:

• Article marketing
• Directory submissions
• Link baiting
• Online publicity
• Social media marketing
• Give away a blog theme
• Throw a contest

You get the picture. They’re all over the place. And these ideas have been rehashed over and over again. But I’ve got 5 link building methods that I’ll mention below that don’t get mentioned very often and they are really cool and unique to implement. Try them out!

• Start a microblog – Seriously, I’m not talking about Twitter or Tumblr here. I’m talking about a standalone miniature blog. WordPress theme and all. For $10 a year you can build a little blog site, throw an article or two on it and link it back to your website then totally forget about it. When that site is 10 years old you’ll have one awesome inbound link.
• Post in .gov and .edu forums – It’s no secret that .gov and .edu domain names are really valuable. The links in particular are really valuable. I mean, really valuable.
• Be a guest blogger – This one is starting to pick up steam, but it’s not quite to the point of being real popular yet. Blog for another blog in your niche. You’ll get a link.
• Join Rateitall – Post a review, get rated, and rate others’ reviews. Get links.
• Start a petition – Encourage people in your niche to sign it.

There are plenty more ways to build links. In fact, Carl Ocab has 69 link building ideas right here. Check them out.

JavaScript is an interesting tool. It isn’t crawlable so therefore any links you find in a script will not be crawled back to the source. On the other hand, search engines can detect the inbound links produced from JavaScript. In other words, you can get credit for inbound links that are hidden inside of JavaScript even though the links themselves won’t be crawled by the search engines. The .

Before you start talking about using JavaScript for paid links, consider that Google currently doesn’t penalize sites for paid links within JavaScript. But here’s the catch: They may start doing so at any time.

Do you really want to risk paying for thousands of inbound links only to have those links discounted a year or two down the road? That’s a big risk. A better plan is to take a play from Amazon.com. Amazon builds links using JavaScript, but those links are affiliate links. With its affiliate program, Amazon has thousands upon thousands of websites building links to it using the company’s autogenerated JavaScripts. These JavaScripts promote a single product or group of products and if a visitor clicks on those links to land on Amazon’s site and make a purchase, the website owner who sent them over to Amazon’s site gets a commission because that site owner’s affiliate ID is programmed into the JavaScript as well.

You can build inbound links using JavaScript if you do it the right way. You don’t have to buy links and hope that Google never changes its policy.

Premium WordPress Themes – Links Flowing

As you start to execute the link building part of your search engine optimization strategy, I would recommend to make sure you always try to keep it natural.

Doug Caverly at smallbusinessnewz reports on Phil Orford, the CEO of the Forum of Private Business, taking a casual 84 mile walk over the four days for a children’s charity. It’s no mean feat and will be reported in dozens of places around the web and the reports will no doubt include links back to his site.

In fact Doug Caverly’s report links to both the web site and the Twitter profile. If you, or one of your employees is involved in a fund raising venture like this, particularly where sponsorship is involved, why not broadcast the fact. At the very least you may end up with more sponsors therefore raising more money for the event. If others pick up the story and link back it’s a bonus – a welcome bonus.

The links you receive are not going to be keyword targeted so they will not be the premium quality you need, however, a link is a link and they do all help. Is it ethical – as I said to at the start, I wouldn’t dash off and do anything just to get links. If you normally participate in a major fund raising event, advertise it and help the event, and yourself.

If your interested, you can sponsor Phil Orford through PayPal on his CCLG site – and there is another link! He is Twittering his way through the event as well and it makes for an interesting read.

Premium WordPress Themes – Link Juice

If you’ve been wondering whether or not to use short URLs, there are some advantages and some disadvantages. From a link building point of view, short URLs send link juice, but not to the destination URL. Rather, they send link juice back to the redirection service, the URL shortener.

Here’s what happens when someone clicks on a short URL:

They first go to the short URLs website (this is very brief as you’ll see in a moment)
Then they are redirected to the destination page, the page represented by the URL the shortened URL represents

Because traffic is first diverted to the short URL service, and link value along with it, you are adding link juice to the link vault of the URL shortening service rather than the website of the page you want your visitors to go to. That may or may not be important. If it is a page on your own website then you’d be better off using the long URL. If it is on a property that you own or that you want to build links to then you should use the long URL. If the site is an affiliate site and you are just trying to earn money from your visitors then the short URL service may be more beneficial than not.

This is one of those things where you have to weight the good with the bad. Just know that short URLs services don’t pass link juice to the final destination page and if you want that, don’t use the short URL service.

Premium WordPress Themes – Develop Authority

You hear this word “Authority” thrown around these days. People use it for all kinds of reasons. In one sense, authority is a word that describes the depth of a person’s knowledge. On another level, it simply means the power to which an individual has been elevated over others. Either way, people respect it.

Authority can be abused. It can be acquired in less than honorable ways. But when legitimate, authority is a powerful force and when used for good it’s even more powerful. And that’s why you want to focus your efforts on becoming an authority in your niche.

A strongly search engine optimized website is good, but it will only take you so far. Authority, however, will take you to the ends of the earth and back again. And when you’ve achieved a certain level of authority, about the only thing that can take you down is your own stupidity, a big mistake, an ethical blunder, or a crime. Otherwise, if you are considered an authority by a large mass of people then you can ride a long way on the tallest waves just on that alone.

The problem with authority is that it takes a long time to build. It doesn’t happen overnight. Sure, you might have never heard of a certain individual then overnight they popped up on the radar screen, making it seem like they achieved instant success. But their authority has any real value, you can bet they spent years developing it. And you will too. But it’s well worth it.

Brian Clark wrote a free e-book titled Authority Rules. It’s a darn good read. If you don’t know who Brian Clark is then you are probably new to blogging and possibly even Internet marketing. Or you may just not be paying attention. But he’s one of the most respected authorities on blogging and authority so he’s someone you should listen to. It will tell you the 10 things you should do to develop authority in your niche and you don’t even have to pay for it.

If you work in an area where good white hat search engine optimization means hitting page 3 with your on-page efforts but you just can’t seem to get your pages ranked any higher then it is possibly to push those pages further up in the listings. You need to undertake an ongoing relevant link building campaign. .

Link building is not as difficult as some people make it out to be. It isn’t enough to seek out a large quantity of links. Quality links are just as important and developing a “trust factor” for your company. But what is meant by “quality link”?

The quality question in link building is not so easy to answer. Like on-page SEO, there are a number of factors that affect a link’s quality. All of them affect link quality to varying degrees and when you measure the aggregate of their affects you could walk away with a higher quality link using different variables on any given day of the week. In general, however, link quality is determined by some or all of the following criteria:

• Relevant anchor text
• PageRank of the page being linked from
• PageRank of the site being linked from
• Relevance of the web page linking to you
• Relevance of the website linking to you
• Age of the linking web page
• Age of the linking website
• Age of the link itself
• Link diversity (After a couple hundred links, one more link from the same type of website that all your previous links are from becomes less valuable whereas a link from a different type of website increases in value)
• Overall authority of the web page linking to you
• The linking website’s overall authority
• Anchor text variance (just like link diversity, after awhile the value of a certain anchor text decreases with overuse while other anchor text value may increase)

Building inbound relevant links to a page over time that has moderately good rankings when you want to push it up in the rankings requires some careful thought as to the anchor text you use in your links and the pages that you seek links from. You want to be careful not to choose bad neighborhoods. Depending on the competitive landscape of your niche, it could take a few hundred links or several thousand relevant in bound links to develop a solid trust factor in the eyes of the search engines and to build your rankings and visitors over time.

Premium WordPress Themes – New Directories

Web directories are a great source of link building as part of your long term blended approach to search engine optimization. They always have been and always will be. And there are always new directories popping up to take place of the old ones that are dying. Most directories just don’t stick around for long. So you can build 100 back links from online directories and within two years half of those are no longer in existence. They’ve died because the directory owner has decided to maintaining a directory is too hard and time consuming. Many directory owners go in it for the money and when they find out that you can’t make a lot of money from a directory without putting in some really hard work and long hours they end up quitting. Your links die and dead links don’t do any good.

That’s why it’s important to keep building links by submitting your site to new directories as they pop up if they are relevant in nature and are white hat. It is time consuming, but necessary. So many webmasters abandon the directory submission process and by doing so kill their link building campaigns. That’s why they never rise above a PR 3.

But you don’t have to do that. You should always be looking for new directories to submit your websites to. If you submit to enough directories you can beat the link attrition rate for your site. Remember, you will lose so many links each year to old sites dying. You have to replace those with new links. You do that by staying ahead of the attrition rate.

The best way to stay on top of new directories as they come out is to subscribe to Google Alerts. You’ll get an e-mail every time your keyword is triggered by a new site. Subscribe to alerts for “directory”, “web directory, and “website directory” and every time a new directory goes online you can go up and submit your website. Do this enough times and you’ll always grow your links faster than you lose them.

Premium WordPress Themes – Link Limit

Does Google have a 100 link per page limit? No. Not according to Matt Cutts. In fact, Google’s never really had a 100 link per page limit. As Matt says, the reason Google gave for that 100 links per page thing was because of a limitation in Google’s indexing quality. That limitation no longer exists, but even if it did that’s not the point anyway.

Spam. That’s the point. User experience. That’s the second point.

Link farms used to be quite popular and after awhile they quit being effective because too many users would show up on a web page, look at massive amounts of links, and leave. No clicks. No scans. No reads. Just bounces. Google figured out that users didn’t want to see a page full of links.

But what if you have 250 links on a page that is composed of three columns of text where each column is content broken up by heads, subheads, photos, images, and other graphics, laid out with tables and CSS and meets all the standards of W3C, looks attractive, and is functional. In other words, it’s not just a page that consists of link after link after link after link until your eyes go hyperlink blue.

What if a savvy webmaster put together a really useful set of resources on a particular topic and it was broken up into subtopics, each with a separate header and an associated graphic with text wrap around, an introductory summary followed by 10-25 links, and a lead-in into the next subtopic? Getting the picture?

See this example of a page with 109 links before the section titled “Join the Conversation”. Now suppose this page had 20 chapters and twice as many links. Would it be a useful page? Absolutely. And I don’t think Google would have any issue with it. As long as you aren’t using blackhat search engine optimization techniques with hidden text and links, stuffed keywords, and such then you should have a good page of solid content. The number of links is irrelevant.