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Online marketing, Google, hosting, game serveri - GEM Studio

by: Jason Lam 
Keyword research is an integral part of any SEM initiative, whether it may be PPC or SEO, so it’s important to do it right. Its also important to do it right from the start, Google spiders (the bots that indexes web pages) can takes up to months before they cycle to your site, so if you target the wrong keywords initially, it could take months to fix.

We’ve briefly listed the top 5 things to consider before you begin your fun journey of keyword researching.

1. Define your targeted pages

You should recognize what goals you want to achieve. If you are looking to sell cars, you want to optimize the pages containing information on a specific type of car or pages containing content that will lead them to buy a car. Pages such as the About Us page, History page probably won’t need optimization since no one is specifically searching for those pages. Make a list of the pages you feel would provide a lead for your business, and target the keywords on those pages.

2. Speak the way your audiences speak

While the correct term to describe your product may seem obvious to you, you need to speak your audience’s language in order to show up for their searches. For example, if you are selling “GPS navigation systems”, a person may have searched for GPS systems. It may not be the most politically correct term (Global Positioning System Systems), but if that’s what everyone is using to find the item you are selling, you may need to consider it as a keyword to target.

3. Know your competition

Sure, ranking number one for “cars” would drive up your web traffic exponentially. But what are your chances of obtaining that ranking? Typically, one word keywords are extremely difficult to optimize for because millions of pages on the web are already well optimized for it without even knowing it (unless you want to optimize for kukukabo)

If you are in a very competitive industry (in the internet world) such as gaming, gambling, insurance and such, you may find it helpful to pin down your keywords to a more niche and targeted level. For example, if you are selling cars in Toronto, you may want to combine “Toronto” with “cars”, or if you are targeting a specific demographic, you may want to include that it in keyword. You may find that the competition for that term drops significantly, thereby, increasing your chances of success.

By increasing your presence for these targeted key terms, you are in a better position to optimize for more ambitious keywords in the future.

4. Using the right tools

By no means are the following the only tools you should use, but they are some popular free keyword research tools that are simple, straightforward and ideal to help you get started in keyword researching.

Overture Keyword Selector Tool

- Type in your keyword and it will show you some popular related searches and its search volume during a one month period

- Be cautioned however that the words within each keyphrase are rearranged in alphabetical order. For example, if you search for New York Horse Racing, it would show up as Horse New Racing York

Google AdWords Keywords Tool

- Type in your keyword and it will show you the search volume, competition levels, synonyms and display some useful data for budgeting when setting up your PPC campaign in Google

NLC Keyword Competition Index

While this is currently in development, we are providing a tool that shows you the competition you face for each keyword. This index will help you determine your chances of success at optimizing for each term. The NLC folks here are using it internally and its one of the best things for Search Engine Marketers since sliced cheese. We will provide more details to this tool in our blog in the future, so stay tuned!

5. Snoop on your competitors

After having a good set of keywords, go ahead and search for them in Google. Take note of the top results, if they are selling or promoting what you are, these are competitors. Browse through their site and keep an eye out for keywords they are using. It may help to view their Meta tags and description by going into the page source code (View > Source).

6. Smooth Integration with page content

PPC

While in PPC, you have the freedom to target more broad terms and loosely related terms, you must also consider that people who have clicked on your ad are expecting to see what they searched for. If your site has no relevance to what they keyword was, you probably just wasted $0.50.

SEO

When choosing keywords for SEO, you need to be much more selective. Remember, you will need to put these keywords on your page, and if you want to do SEO well, these terms are probably going to be in very prominent areas on your page. Make sure these terms make sense and can fit well into the context of your content.

Remember, when doing keyword research for SEO initiatives; do not ONLY aim for the terms with highest search volume and lowest competition. While that is generally a good rule of thumb, you must not forget the main point of search engine optimization, you are delivering more web users to your site, but you will ultimately need your web content to speak to your potential customers, so using keywords that make sense, and are related to your content is just as important as choosing obtainable keywords.
About The Author

Jason Lam is a member of the Search Engine Marketing group at non-linear creations, Jason has a wealth of experience in everything SEO, PPC and SEM while working with many clients from varying industries.

http://www.nonlinear.ca/pages/search-engine-marketing-toronto.htm
http://www.nonlinear.ca/pages/organic-seo-services.htm

by: James Saunders 
Did you know that you can dramatically increase the number of visitors that come to your site on a daily basis from Google?

Web Content (Mass + Keywords) + Links = SEO

Image Text or Javascript?

Question: Navigation is based on images, again if these are images of text?

Answer: Search engines obtain links very considerable and only read text. they like to match the topic of the target page to the text in the link that pointed to the page. Avoid Javascript.

What to do: Use text only navigation. the text and containing elements can by styles with CSS to set up them look like images, give a background image, or at least rearrange them look a little fancier. The optional is to ensure that there is some text based navigation elsewhere on the page.

Gains: Search engines will be able to match the topic of the target page with the reputation (link text). A higher relevancy is better. Ensuring there is text on the page will also help the visually impaired who use text only browsers in conjunction with braile output devices or text to speach software.

Links, and Link Relevancy

Question: You want lots of links to your website?

Answer: Although links may be great for visitors and search engine spiders, the true appraise of the link may not be fully clear to you. Visitors are unlikely to click on irrelevant links and search engines hate them. Reciprocal links (you link to me, and I’ll link to you) can be of use when associated, but carry less weight in the search engines than one way inbound links.

what to do: Avoid link farms (pages of links, for the sake of links), treat reciprocal link requests with anticipation and stay associated.

Gains: Spending time and thought on your link profile will ensure natural growth of links. Search engines hate anything that looks artificial, or anything that could be interpreted as ‘Search engine Trick’.

Duplicate Content

Question: A webmaster copies content from another website, or sets up numerous sites which are identical, or very similar. Does this mechanism works?

Answer: search engines apply echo content filters to the search results. Although the idea of increasing the market share is a bona fide idea, thousand similar sites is not the way to go about doing it. Efforts put into the secondary sites will be forfeited.

what to do: endorse all of the pages on each of your sites are unique. Querying a search engine for an exact match of long strings of text will show you if the content is bring up elsewhere. If a webmaster does have facsimile pages and wishes to avoid any penalties or filters, the webmaster must choose one page to have the other identical pages redirect to. Redirects are covered later. You may also use random RSS Feeds that are mixed before show up on each page. The RSS have the ability that are always have fresh content but only if you mix 3 or more RSS feeds you will get a unique result and not what all the other sites have that are using the same RSS feeds.

Gains: Your efforts are not wasted, time and money can be saved. Always Fresh content from the RSS Feeds.

Numerous Sites

Question: Following on from identical content, there are numerous sites. A single webmaster has a certain number closely themed sites, all inter-linked and hosted on the same IP address.

Answer: This is seen as search engine Frame-up, the linking structure and numerous sites just isn’t natural. Penalties can apply.

what to do: Such site structures can work if set out properly. this means that each site must reside on it’s own IP address where, at least, the C class is different. IP address are covered later.

Gains: Increased market share, effectively linked and spiderable sites, no penalties applied.

Unfriendly URLs

Question: The URL (web address) of some of your sites pages look like domain dot com/product.php?id=2346&category=665&sid=f29a3483270cc10b3783706916216e3a

Answer: Search engine spiders are getting better and following and indexing these form of, but not all of them. The spiders are scared of getting caught in an endless loop of identical pages with 1000s of different URLs. they are also off putting to your site visitors who could surely remember mydomain dot com/products/cars/boostvalves.

what to do: Use Search Engine Friendly URLs. If you are running the Apache webserver on Linux enabled server use mod_rewrite to translate the URLs into something nicer.

Gains: Higher chance of being indexed by more of the search engines, keywords in your URL, higher chance of being clicked on in the SERPs.

Redirects

There are two main redirects, based on the HTTP specification

301 - moved permanenty

302 - moved temporarily

You should use 301 redirects where ever possible. this can be done in your server side scripting, eg

Code: php

header(”HTTP/1.1 301 Found”);

header(”Location: w w w newdomain dot com/”);

redirects can also be set up in your .htaccess file, if you run the Apache web server

IP addresses (C class)

IP addresses are the numerical addresses of computers connected tot he internet. For ease of reading they are broken down into four parts, each called an octet as they contain 8 bits of data when written in binary form. An example my be 62.85.68.114. in this case the C class is 68 (and everything up to it), so if you have a few sites hosted on this IP they would all have identical IP addresses. If each had a single IP address that started 62.85.68. then they all share the same C-class IP address. As the allocation of IP addresses within a server involvement is usually configured so that each server has it’s own C-class; this means that a search engine knows hat all sites on the same C-class IP address are all located on the same server.

Your competitors might not be standing still; neither should you.
About The Author

James Saunders is the owner of TrafficBoosterPro, the SEO software which makes Unique Content pages Quickly and Easily! Software that bring massive Traffic from RSS Feeds in AutoPilot, now in it’s 2nd revision at http://TrafficBoosterPro.com.

by: Jerry Oakman 
Fact number 1: Kids in high school are making thousands of dollars every month with Adsense.

Fact number 2: Housewives, retirees, mom and dads, who are just staying at home and have never made a dime on the internet have created full-time incomes by simply placing Adsense ads on their web site or blog.

These are just some of the “super Adsense earners”. You may have already heard about their story for they are among the few who are on their way to making millions worth of cash just by promoting Adsense sites.

Anyone, any age and gender can become money generating Adsense publishers as long as they do what it takes. How does one go about this Internet advertising?

Writing articles for Adsense is the way to do it. Using the right keywords in your articles and having Google ads on a certain site has become the most profitable way of marketing that anybody can get into. No experience and level of education needed. If you are not using this strategy, or may not be aware of it in the first place, chances are you may be losing thousands of dollars worth of extra income and still do not know it yet.

This is one of the many reasons why writing original quality content articles is now the latest in marketing buzz.

Content and links. When combined together becomes a really powerful tool to a successful web site and richer individuals.

Many internet marketing professionals are already aware of the value of an original quality content and how using keywords can drive targeted traffic into their sites from the search engines.

So why don’t all these web site owners write and submit their own articles if that is what is important?

The simple and understandable answer is that it takes time to write articles, submit them and get targeted traffic to their websites. That is why they get the services of those who can spares sometime to write the articles that would cater to their site purpose but still turn out as a good quality and unique piece of work.

To get into the Adsense marketing business and start earning some good cash, ask yourself. Did you enjoy writing when you were in school? If you answer yes to this question, you already have an initial advantage over most internet marketing business owners that wants to make money online and doing it at home.

With the boom in the Adsense market comes the need for sites to want fresh, quality and original keyword rich content.

This way, web site owners can have a steady supply of articles with the proper keywords that they relate to their site contents. The result of this is seen in the sites page rank when indexed by the search engines.

Which, in turn, gets more Adsense ads to show above, below or next to the article on their website with targeted traffic.

What do people have to do?

Write quality and original content, keyword or phrase rich articles with links to your website in the resource box.

Then build a website or web page with targeted keyword or phrase rich original content for the targeted traffic that originates from the articles you wrote. Finally, you will have a Google Adsense ads that are targeted to your keyword or phrase rich original content site where visitors will get to visit when they come looking for information.

A win-win situation if you think more about it. A favor for persons looking for quality content and information. For the persons writing the original content articles. And the person with the quality original content rich website. Of course, the search engines and its advertisers are getting targeted traffic and sales but so what? As long as you are getting something in your favor, it does not really matter what the others are getting for themselves.

So who else wants to start earning money with Adsense. You.

Everyone. Anybody. Internet marketing has many opportunities wide open for this people. Writing articles and using Adsense for your kind of internet marketing strategy is one sure way of getting a piece of that action and cash.

Better not be left behind the many making millions already.
About The Author
Jerry Oakman webmaster, seo specialist & internet marketer from y2k, some of his “must see” projects is:

http://adsense.awardspace.biz
http://articles.awardspace.biz
http://directories.awardspace.biz

where you can find free FFA, eZines, article posting & SEO news, eBooks, viral stuff, internet marketing tools, video tutorials, current eBusiness information and more.. 

by: Dechen Lau 

Content is the soul of a website. Content is comprised of the words or text on a web page along with the graphics and structure of a website. Today Web content is the best tool for building relations with your potential customers. The look and feel of a site is crucial but quality web content may be more important.

Two of the most popular methods of getting traffic from search engines include PPC – Pay Per Click – and SEO – Search Engine Optimization.

PPC:

Pay per click advertising on search engines allows you choose keywords you would like your site to appear for when a search is performed. You decide how much you are willing to pay each time a person clicks on the search results. The more you are willing to pay per click, the higher your site will appear in the results for the keywords you choose. Pay Per Click is advertising provided by the search engine providers (Google, Yahoo! and others) where you PAY for top placement. Their strategies for placement differ slightly. Some search engines will give you higher placement if your ad has a higher click-through rate (meaning more people click on your ad in ratio to the amount of times your ad was shown), others give top positions to the highest bidder.

You probably already know that surveys are excellent for finding out what your target market wants. But if combined with low cost, quick and dirty Google PPC, surveys can also send lots of targeted prospects to your site every month.

In either case, you PAY. It is a quick way to get listed in the search engines and a smart way to get your traffic flowing – but it is not the cheapest AND you could spend far more than is profitable for your business if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Search Engines: While crawling pages of a website, search engines look for content more than anything else. Search engines can pick up quality content and it is the only factor that they emphasize and value most while ranking a website. For the benefit of their users, search engines try to find the best and most useful content on the Internet for any given set of keywords.

SEO:

Although search engines are extremely competitive (in terms of placement), the major search engines account for over 90% of all traffic. With that though in mind, companies that are serious about earning a share of the internet market should be committed to securing top 10 rankings for the keywords or phrases that pertain to the products and services that they offer.

The best way to ensure a solid return on your website investment is to employ the services of a search engine optimization firm with a proven track record of success, knowledge of current and cutting edge techniques, and experience working with the business community.

There are a lot of companies working ‘behind the scenes’ to help website owners get plenty of traffic from the natural search engine listings. Natural listings mean the search engine has ranked you according to the value it believes your site will offer an individual searching for a specific word or phrase.

Understanding exactly WHAT the search engines want to see when ranking sites requires knowledge of the algorithms. These algorithms change all the time as search engine providers try to outwit the search engine optimizers trying to find loopholes in the ranking system.

Some SEO companies will promise you top spots for a certain cost. Some are honestly creating optimized websites – others may be using techniques that could possibly get your site BANNED from the search engines entirely (once the search engine catches on). However, optimizing your website for better placement in the search engines is a technique that you should become familiar with and use to your advantage.

Both of these traffic methods have their pros and cons for generating traffic from the search engines. You will find out more about using them properly later on. But first you need to know what REALLY works…

About The Author

Dechen Lau., is an Author, Speaker and Internet Marketing Consultant
http://www.powersuccessmarketing.com
http://www.powersuccessresponder.com

by: Alex Nghiem 

In the Internet marketing world, there are many misconceptions and outright lies. But the biggest secret is one that is so obvious that nobody wants to talk about or is even aware of. In this article, I share what I (and many world class marketers) consider to be the biggest “secret” in Internet marketing.

At this point, you’re probably wondering? “What’s the BIGGEST secret?”

Before I share this secret with you, let me share a common mistake committed by 99% of Internet marketers. Almost all Internet marketers I know can quote you their opt-in rate and spend hours, days, weeks and even months tweaking their landing pages to get the highest opt-in rate. This is accomplished by asking for as little customer information as possible and casting as wide a net as possible. This usually requires asking for only the first name and the primary email address.

In many industries, this results in optimizing for the wrong results. What do I mean by that?

I spend a lot of time in multiple industries other than Internet marketing (including real estate, art, etc.) and for a long time, I was focusing on increasing my opt-in rate but rarely closed any sales (my sales for my products and my clients’ products range from $997 to $25,000 per sale). When I thought about it, I realized that in all of these industries and especially at these price points, the sale is accomplished via the phone, not via the Web.

Thus, without realizing it, I wasn’t collecting all the necessary information for me to complete a sale (that is, I wasn’t asking for a phone number because I knew this would reduce my opt-in rate). Most of the “gurus” who are teaching list building don’t take into account industries that conduct business primarily offline and/or the fact that high-end products are not closed via email alone. Heck, I am not sure that any of them has ever tested their methods in offline businesses!

Now, I do a 2-step opt-in rate that allows me to have the highest opt-in rate on the first page and then ask for additional info (including the phone number and mailing address) on the “thank you” screen. This enables me to follow up via offline methods including postcards, direct mail and even telemarketing.

What does this have to do with the biggest secret in Internet marketing? Simple…the most valuable leads often require you to follow up using offline methods. However, this contradicts almost all list building techniques being taught, which almost always teach how to get the highest opt-in rate. In this case, I made more money by having a lower opt-in rate…but I got higher quality leads, which enable me to follow up via offline methods. Again, in many, many industries, the sales happen via the phone and in some cases via the fax and direct mail.

So, before you spend too much time focusing on optimizing your opt-in rate alone, think through the sales process and figure out what is the best way to close the sale and collect information for that to happen, even if it means a lower opt-in rate.

Now that you know the biggest secret in Internet marketing and the next time somebody brags about their 50% opt-in rate, you will know that he/she is probably optimizing on the wrong thing and leaving WAY too much money on the table.

To get regular notifications on high-end product creation secrets, visit http://www.backendcashmanuscript.com/fromarticles

About The Author
© Blue Samba Publications – All Rights Reserved

Alex Nghiem is the founder of Blue Samba Solutions, creator of the Backend Cash Machine, a proven system for enabling clients to make up to 10X by building a backend of high-end products. His system has been used in multiple industries including art, real estate and many offline industries.

by: Mikhail Tuknov 

For many casual internet users, the terms SEM and SEO rarely enter their minds when they are busy jumping from one website to another. However, it is these terms that determine much of what comes out on the results page whenever we type in a word in the search tab of any accessible search engine. These terms are also responsible for all those advertisements and pop-ups that link us to even more websites, whether they may be connected to our original search or not. So just what are SEM and SEO?

In the simplest way possible, SEM and SEO are tools which website creators, especially those who are promoting and selling a certain service or product, use in order to gain a lot of exposure and better ranking for their website. Sounds easy enough, right? Well, the simplicity ends there.

To make it a tad bit complex, SEM and SEO are not the same. As suggested by the names, SEM, or Search Engine Marketing, deals more with how a website is marketed to gain exposure in the different search engines available on the internet, while SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, deals with how the web creators develop and re-develop the content, quality and structure of their entire websites so that whenever an internet user types in a particular word in the search tab, their websites have a better chance of appearing on the first few search engine results pages (SERPS).

Now, to make it even more complex, although the functions of SEM and SEO seem different, they are more effective when used together. Since the main function of SEM is to gain more exposure for a website, the more common means for attraction are online advertisements, blogs, internet articles, partner and sponsored websites, and anything that can catch the eye of the internet user. SEM also makes use of PPC (pay-per-click) and paid inclusion to further push a website’s visibility. Lastly, it is also an important process in SEM to submit the name and URL of a website to different search engines and web directories if only to inform them of the existence. All this is carried out to ensure the popularity of a website.

So how does SEO come together with SEM? Well, despite having all the advertisements provided by SEM, it is truly the SEO that allows the internet user to easily and conveniently find what he is looking for. Since the function of SEO is to gain a better ranking in the SERPS, the web creator has to constantly optimize his website in order to cater to the needs of the internet user and to make it easier for spiders or web crawlers to judge whether the website’s content is relevant to the word/s being searched. Optimization is not a simple and easy task. It involves having to restructure the website regularly (by editing the html code and meta tags, changing content, reorganizing the site map, developing an easier navigational structure, etc.) so as to adapt to the rapidly changing demands of the internet user. Still, when done properly, not only does SEO help a website become more useful and therefore, more often visited by the internet user, it also helps gain more exposure since it increases the website’s chances of gaining a better rank in the SERPS.

Both SEM and SEO success rely heavily on the words or context which Internet users type in whenever they search for something on the internet. Take PPC under SEM, for example. PPC is an ad that is triggered by a particular word or context used by an internet user. Once a particular word or context is searched, a corresponding PPC ad for a website comes out. SEO works in the same way. The web creator inputs a particular Meta tag (or keyword) in his html that he believes many internet users will use when searching for information, information which the web creator’s website may contain.

Although all of these processes involving SEM and SEO are tedious and time-consuming, it all boils down to knowing and serving the target audience. A web creator must be discerning enough to know what the internet users need and want, and at the same time he must have the real passion to inform and provide the internet users with the right service and product.

About The Author

Mikhail Tuknov, search engine optimization specialist and a founder of Infatex (Search Engine Marketing Company). With an extensive background in Internet marketing, Mikhail Tuknov offers SEO, PPC, SEM services. http://www.infatex.com

In the early 1990s, with the introduction of the search engine, website owners and self-proclaimed search engine optimization specialists began to look for ways to manipulate their positions in the search results. In this infancy stage of SEO, copywriting really played little or no role at all. The simple addition of keyword-rich META tags to each site page would easily get you positioned for even the most competitive terms. But then things began to change… quickly!

Beyond META Tags
Like most good things involved with the Internet, the addition of META tags was soon widely abused. Site owners would place keywords into their tag sets that had little or nothing to do with their site’s purpose. Comment tags and other elements of the HTML coding were also manipulated in an attempt at tricking the engines to drive more traffic to a site. Still another abuse was the addition of keyword-stuffed descriptions in the Image Attribute (or ALT) tag. Originally designed to assist disabled Web surfers with identifying images on Web pages, these tags soon also fell victim to foul play forcing the engines to respond. Eventually, most of these tags were all but eliminated from search engine algorithms. The engines began to consider more efficient and accurate ways to determine the topics of the pages they indexed. As engines looked for ways to deliver better results, they realized that the copy was the best indicator of what a specific page was about.

Keyword Density
SEO copywriters came into their own with the revelation that engines paid a great deal of attention to on-page text. Eventually, keywords and keyphrases began popping up in every corner of a Web page. The general thinking was that the more times you could use a keyphrase within the copy, the higher your page would rank. It doesn’t take much thought to determine what happened next. Keyword density ratios soared on Web pages as copywriters gave their best efforts to use keyphrases as many times as possible. Header tags were incorporated, bold and italic formatting was used and font colors were changed in an attempt to get the engines to sit up and take notice of keyphrases. With the advent of keyword density however, came the decline of copywriting quality. It wasn’t long before people began to draw a grand distinction between SEO copywriting and customer-focused copywriting. Because of excessive levels of keyword density, copy began to sound forced and stiff.

Keyphrases were stuffed into URLs, anchor text, link names, header tags, ALT tags, bullet lists and any other places that came to mind. The site visitor was left out of the equation as writers took their best shots at impressing the engines exclusively. Once again, a technique was abused and things changed. However, this time, it was not only the search engines that responded. It was also the site visitors. As conversion ratios began to fall, site owners realized that writing solely for the engines was not the way to go. Coincidentally, the engines came to the same conclusion.

Search Engine Copywriting and Natural Language
While no one but the search engines knows what their algorithms contain, it is believed today that the spiders are taking notice of pages that use keyphrases in more natural ways. I believe they are starting to assess keyword placement, page relationships and sentence structure in an effort to find copy that naturally identifies its subject matter. There has been talk over the past five years (or longer) about a movement toward a semantic Web where spiders can read and “understand” what pages are about. While I don’t feel we are to that level of sophistication yet (at least not for public Webs), I do believe spiders and bots are getting adept at gathering clues that lead to more accurate assessments of content. This would benefit everyone. Copywriters would be able to write more freely; the engines would improve search results and - most importantly - the visitor would regain their place as the primary focus the site.

Karon Thackston is a professional SEO copywriter who delivers copy designed to impress the search engines and your site visitors. Find Karon online at www.marketingwords.com or learn to write SEO copy with Karon’s highly acclaimed Step by Step Copywriting Course at www.copywritingcourse.com.

Link building is just one method of website marketing, though important and significant it is a technique highly based on attitude. Technique vs. Intention is extremely relevant to online marketing, as without the right combination, your efforts may do more damage than good. The right technique however, combined with good intention, will improve your long term online marketing strategy, and cement your effort within the architecture of the Internet for many years to come. This will allow your site to become a prominent site with sustained growth.

If the technique you adopt conforms to each search engines editorial guidelines, then your intention is already ahead of the game. Having said that, it helps to remain cognisant of the fact that there is a fine line between use and abuse with regard to online marketing and the application of technique. Using common sense will often be your saviour as search engines rarely allow a second chance once you have chosen not to conform to their editorial guidelines. If you are considering “tricks”, then its unlikely that you will see success with your link building campaign.

Link Building Types
There are five main types of link building associated with a website. They are:

One-Way
A link from site A to site B, and has no further link relationship.
Reciprocal
A link from site A to site B, and site B to site A, as the favour is reciprocated.
Triangular
Site A links to site B, site B links to site C, and site C links to site A.
Internal
A websites internal link navigation for ease of user experience.
Outgoing
Links from your webpage to another website/s.

Whilst other more advanced methods exist, we will keep to the primary factors which will determine your websites outcome. Each method has a legitimate use. The search engines themselves often state, “A good site will naturally be linked to”, however; if a good site is not seen in the first place, then how can it ever be linked to? Interesting question, which does have a solution!

Tips for Application
Algorithms are designed to pick anomalies within a page and an overall site, and excessive use of any technique, is an anomaly. The algorithms outlined previously, now move in conjunction with your link building campaign. When online marketers outline methods to improve website rankings within the SERP’s, webmasters often confuse that information with the old thinking, “more is better”. In actual fact, less is often the better approach, when it comes to link building.

Gaining topical, authoritive links to your website is the hardest part of any online marketing solution. There are thousands of easy options, though not one of them will actually deliver the correct option. The algorithms today are much smarter than even a year or two ago, as the search engines constantly improve them from statistical data tools such as toolbars, which send back surfing habits. They also gather more data from various sources they own or have built.

Conclusion

This article is merely an introduction to link building, without actually outlining specific tactics. Learn the algorithms, to learn how to correctly build links for each topical search engine. Whilst Google delivers, generally, the most traffic to a site, it is often merely associated to target Google first, then attempt to capture the others, without offsetting your Google campaign. There is a second part to this article, which delves more into the tactics used to build links, though that article may only be current for a short time, as algorithms change, and likewise so do link building requirements. For example, at the time of writing this article, Google’s update Jagger 2005 has just been completed, therefore taking out most sites that are based purely on reciprocal link campaigns and little else.

It is for these reasons that industry experts often don’t like to talk tactics and specifics, as what works today, may just not work next week. It takes a link campaign months to take full effect, thus by the time it does, algorithms have often changed. Remember this, every decision you make, you make knowing that what you have today, you might not have tomorrow. That is merely a fact with online marketing and link building.

Anthony Parsons is a semi-retired profesional SEO consultant and lives happily in Melbourne, Australia. Where he runs a successful network of web directories. Most notably the APN Directory http://www.anthonyparsons.com that features quality and hard to find submissions worldwide.

The PageRank algorithm is a known formula that computes link equations between page A and page B (the page being linked to, and linked from). The PageRank algorithm is defined as:

PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + … + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

The PageRank algorithm is what displays the “green bar” within the Google toolbar. Whilst this algorithm is still in existence, mainly for the marketing value associated to Google nowadays, the contributable factors it delivered have been abused over the past years, making it of little value for current linking purposes.

Local Rank
This is an area requiring specific attention as this is what delivers the most power to a website through the hyperlink capability. Local Rank is an algorithm that is often confused with “local” business websites, or geo-targeting. The physical or geographical location has nothing to do with Local Rank the algorithm. The Local Rank algorithm is derived to find relevant top ranking websites linking to one another, which are semantically connected.

For example, if your website was a “Real Estate Agency” in New York City, then the Local Rank algorithm would be looking for related top ranking websites linking to your site. Sites such as “mortgage brokers”, “real estate agents”, “New York commercial realty” and such sites would be a good start. The sites don’t have to be in direct competition to you, but more semantically connected to your niche / industry. These sites that are ranking within the top 10 / 20 currently for these related terms are the sites that will provide the most “Local Rank” for your website to also rank highly.

Other Factors

The above four main algorithms are used in combination, or individually, by all three major search engines. PageRank is Google’s algorithm, though all three use semantic algorithms in part to provide rankings. These algorithms and a basic understanding of them will become more apparent further within the article.

When evaluating algorithms, it is easy to lose focus and then forget that these are only one part of the overall scheme. One algorithm may compute certain data, then that data is mixed with a completely different topical algorithm, and mixed again and again. The end result may be vastly different from the expected results based on the first algorithms tested factors. Again, these exact details are only known to the search engines themselves.

The main factors that all three search engines may individually comprise when analysing links, are:

Link text
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Quantity of links pointing towards a page
Themed relevance of a link pointing towards a page
Blockrank algorithm (link location within the page)
Quality of the site/page the link is situated
Outbound links from a page

You’re probably wondering, “Why am I reading basics about algorithms?” Well, the only method to become proficient in link building, is to know exactly what is required from the search engines for a successful campaign. For every link you build, an algorithm is deciding whether that link is relevant or not, and whether or not the link will in actual fact be to your websites benefit or detriment.

Anthony Parsons is a semi-retired profesional SEO consultant and lives happily in Melbourne, Australia. Where he runs a successful network of web directories. Most notably the APN Directory http://www.anthonyparsons.com that features quality and hard to find submissions worldwide.

When you start learning about SEO many people say “get links” as though it were a simple chore. Worse yet, after you start building links and then ask “how am I doing” people say “Those are the wrong kinds of links. You need quality links.”

It gets frustrating, so how do you know what types of links are worth getting?

Not All Links Help You

Different engines look for different things when evaluating links but not every link is a good link, and some links may actually hurt you, especially if you build lots of low quality links without getting any high quality links.

Matt Cutts mentioned that Google may be less likely to even crawl or index a site if too many of its links are of low quality in nature.

If getting the wrong links can waste your time and money how do you find good links?

The Golden Rule

Links do not have golden rules by themselves, but it doesn’t hurt to create a few rules that make it easy to tell the difference between a good link and a bad link.

Will the link drive direct targeted traffic? If you build links that are likely to drive direct targeted traffic to your websites those are the types of links that search engines want to count. Some search algorithms may take many months to fully credit any links you build. Links that drive traffic may count quicker and may lead to secondary links.

Is the link editorial in nature? If a link is editorial then it is going to typically stick around a lot longer than links that were bribed. As search algorithms advance engines want to count true editorial votes.

If you worked as a search engineer would you want to count the link? Most of us are not search engineers, and it may be an abstract way to think of the web or a, but it also clears a lot of the gray area out of the way. Thinking along these lines consists of asking a bunch of simple questions to set up the mental framework of a search engineer. Is this page or site important for any reason? Was this page made for humans? Did a human add this link because they thought the site they were linking at was genuinely helpful and useful?

Building Credibility

When you are new to the web you have to active in your link building activities. Since nobody knows your website exists it is hard to find your site to link at it, so you have find the right people and ask them if they might be willing to link at your site.

When you are new to the web it is hard to get people to link at your site because:

People are skeptical. Why should they trust you if they never heard of you before?
It’s all been done. What was once linkworthy and remarkable no longer is. New sites need to have a unique value proposition that is not already being used by a competing site. What message does your site focus on? Why should I want to tell people about it?
Why should I trust you? Is your site credible? Does it have unique, interesting, compelling, well designed, and well formatted content on it? What have you done to you’re your business and site seem credible and trustworthy?

Active vs Passive Link Building
You can start building a few well trusted links, by doing things like:

Submitting your site to the Yahoo! Directory and DMOZ
Building links to your site from local chamber of commerce sites
Joining trade organizations
Looking for resource pages or niche directories covering your topic
Submitting an article to a trusted industry publications

In this post Seth Godin highlights that The Beatles did not become The Beatles overnight, but that it was a process they had to work hard at for years.

Even after others started paying attention they still kept “building links“.

Active link building will only take you so far in a competitive marketplace. In those types of markets you not only need to actively build links, but you also need to create ideas that will lead to passive link acquisition.

Ultimately the highest quality links are typically not ones that are purchased, but ones that are editorially earned because someone liked what your sites offer. By launching creative ideas, cool products, or consistently writing high quality content and providing good customer service you earn the trust necessary to be a link magnet.

Aaron Wall is a professional search engine marketing consultant and author of a successful daily blog on Internet marketing that provides up-to-date information and resources.