The marketplace of tactics is a lot more fluid – methods to achieve your strategic goals change frequently.  Ten years ago, most web sites contained pages titled "recommended links" and there was even software available to automate this process.  Today, we know that Google and other search engines ignore pages that exist solely to exchange links and a much better tactic involves guest posting articles with links embedded therein.

One set of tactics that has proven evergreen are the basic "how to's" that Google readily reveals in a 32 page booklet that may be found at the Google webmaster tools area.   Click on the link to download this free guide.  This guide offers a solid, basic explanation of how to build your web site or blog to rank well in Google for your desired search terms.  I bookmark this guide and review it every few months as a reminder – Google does update this booklet periodically and it will remind you to double check your sites for easy optimization mistakes.  I currently own or manage over 100 sites and I inevitably find that this guide serves as a valuable reminder for me.

• Content is king because your clients/customers/site visitors expect that your site will educate them
• Content is king because clear, thoughtful and education content functions as currency and your customers will trade their time and their business for that currency
• Content is king because new content is constantly being added to the marketplace of ideas – if you put up a 10 page web site three years ago that has not been touched since, there is absolutely no reason that anyone will assign any value to that content
• Content is king because very bright people working late at night are constantly devising new distribution channels for that content – Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Digg, etc.   Content is so valuable to the publishers that the owners of these distribution channels will host your content at no cost to you because they know that the public demands fresh content.
• Content is king because the Internet is primarily an educational tool.
• Content is king because clear and concise writing is rare.
• Content is king because human beings yearn to learn and to connect and the Internet offers a place for both.
• Content is king because the Internet is like a television with tens of millions of channels – and good content helps you get found.

1) Algorithm

An algorithm is a fancy word for “formula.” In this case, an algorithm is used by search engines to rank your site, by determining how relevant your site is for the people using the search engine. Factors including your web site’s content, keywords, and links pointing towards your site (aka inbound links or backlinks) are all used in the algorithm to calculate your location on the results page of the search. The more relevant the algorithm determines your site to be, the higher your site will be placed on the results page.

2) Page Rank

The value of your site is a calculation made by Google known as Page Rank. To calculate your Page Rank, which is measured on a scale of 0 to 10 with the average being 3 or 4, several factors are used. One of the most important factors in your Page Rank is the amount of one-way links (again, aka inbound links or backlinks) pointing to your site. A high number of links shows that other sites consider your web site to be a quality, relevant resource, and therefore Google should too. You can download the Google Toolbar to see your Page Rank by clicking on the link.

3) Link Popularity

It is not very well known that some types of links can help your search engine placement while others may actually hurt it. For example, a “reciprocal link,” which is when you link to a site and that site links back to you, is frowned upon by search engines. This is because people used to try and cheat the system by adding as many links as possible to improve their ranking. Search engines have become more intelligent, and their algorithms are able to ignore reciprocal links. The best kind of link today is the “one-way link” that I covered above under the Page Rank subheading.

4) Keyword Phrase

You could say “keyword phrases” are the new “keywords.” Because the internet has been around for awhile, most single word “keywords” have been used so much that they lose value. For example, if I wanted to learn how to poach an egg, I would search for the keyword phrase “how to poach an egg” rather than just the keyword “egg.” Searching for “egg” would produce thousands of irrelevant results. By using keyword phrases you can be much more specific about what your pages are about and cater to specific audiences. For more on choosing relevant keywords for your website, please click on the link to see my most recent post.

5) Site Structure

The way your website is organized, such as how the pages are linked together and the way your menu works, is referred to as site structure. Good site structure helps visitors move freely and easily through the pages and effortlessly find relevant and related content. The better your site structure, the higher your search engine ranking.

A few extra comments on Site Structure

Before I build a website, I typically try to outline the site structure. This involves determining what topics will be covered and how, whether there will be subtopics, how my readers will be able to access/view these topics, and what it will all look like upon first glance at my site.

For example, let’s say I want to build a site promoting a rock band. I may want to have a “home" page (or landing page), an “about" page featuring the band’s members, an “upcoming shows” page, a “downloads" page, and perhaps a “contact us” page. These pages may or may not have subheadings, and that is what I try to think about before I actually start working on the site. Then I think about whether the individual pages will link to each other and whether the individual pages will look different than one another. Adding a "blog" page may be another consideration. These are just examples of things to think about when thinking about site structure. After all, getting people to your site using the methods mentioned above is one thing, but getting them to stay is another. You want to make the visiting experience as intuitive as possible if you want great results.

Google hires some very bright people whose main job is to create algorithms that filter out fluff.   Sites that have no real value may achieve high ratings for a while, but inevitably they will fail.  Quality will win out.

Need a site optimized – call me at 770-393-4985 or email me using the Contact Form (on the right of this page) and we can discuss.

[tags] search engine optimization, Google algorithm, AdSense sites [/tags]

Louise – Dating website for the disabled

Louise, thanks for your question. Here are my thoughts:

Firstly, I think you need to recognize that linking is only part of the traffic puzzle. In a very basic sense, linking works because most of the search engines consider a site's popularity as an indicia of its importance. This same theory works in the legal arena and in academia. If a particular law case or a particular scientific paper is recognized as a primary source for ideas, then lots of other documents will reference that case or paper.

For this reason, the term "news" is associated with CNN, "click here" with Adobe, etc.

In my experience, simply exchanging reciprocal links does not really do much. If you think about it, a web site with 500 reciprocal links is not inherently important or relevant – most likely the 500 links are the result of the efforts of a diligent link exchanger.

To put it another way, the search engines look for artificial reciprocal link exchange practices and filter out those links.

That being said, it has been my experience that reciprocal link exchange does have some value – it will get you indexed by the big 3 search engines and it appears that it will get you up to a PR 4 on Google.

So, I still engage in some reciprocal or three way link exchange for that purpose.

If you do engage in link exchange, make sure to select three or four phrases that will be used as your link text. For example, when I referenced your site above, I called it Dating Website for the Disabled as opposed to www.soulfulencounters.com. Why? Because you want to associate your site with a search term. No one types in "soulful encounters" in the Google search box. But hopefully there is traffic on terms related to the subject matter of your site. "Dating website for the disabled" is an example of link text. Ultimately your goal is to associate several search phrases with your web site. That will improve the chances that your site will appear when those search phrases are entered into the search engine.
Search phrase (also known as "key word") research is really the starting point of your Internet business. You may have the best product or service in the world, but if no one is looking for it, your business will not succeed. So, before you spend any more time and money on promoting your business, you need to discover whether there is a market for your service and, if so, what terms are potential customers using to search for your service. Those search phrases ought to be your "link text."

I personally use three or four different link text phrases for linking purposes. The goal is to make my linking campaign look natural. In the real world, it is unlikely that every searcher will use the same three or four word phrase. You need to vary it a bit.

Five years ago, a simple link exchange may have done more, but now, the search engine algorighms see them for what they are – an attempt by web site owners and SEO companies to artificially inflate web site positioning. So, what do you do?

What I like right now are article exchanges. For example, if you wrote an article about dating issues related to heart patients, I could post that article as a link on the page of my Social Security disability resource site addressing how to win a cardiac impairment Social Security disability case.

Even better, I might add a paragraph or two to your article focusing on the disability component and now each of us has relevant, unique content. More importantly, this content is natural and logical and it very well may respond specifically to a search engine query on the subject. And what do the search engines want more than anything – relevant search results, not ads and search engine spam.

So, the bottom line is that if you want to use linking to build page rank and to generate paying customers to your web site, you need to find article exchange partners who will work with you in posting content.

Jonathan

[tags] linking, page rank [/tags]