At Searchengineoptimization.co.uk we work hard to ensure that our firms receive excellent help. In addition to this, we try to share information which will assist them to make prudent choices with regard to search engine optimization. For example, it seems to be the case that there are some site owners who do not recognise that links can cause a great deal of trouble for a site if link building is not carried out properly. Link building is a crucial optimization activity, so the more people who have an elementary grasp of it the better.

Link acquisition is a cornerstone of any optimization campaign. If the right kind of inbound links can be found then it is great news for a site. The trick is to get links steadily and patiently. However, it is always worth recalling that some links are simply counterproductive and getting them is detrimental to site performance. Thinking about the categories of negative links can be a useful method of looking at the problem.

One type of inbound link which is worth avoiding is to the site which is simply irrelevant to the site in question. It does not matter if a site is popular; if it is not relevant to the site under scrutiny then it is going to do the trick. Avoiding links with irrelevant sites is important if a site is going to get the targeted traffic and sales that it is after.

Another sort of inbound link which should not be aimed for is one which connects to a site on which black hat search engine optimization has been implemented. Sites which are linked to other sites which are unimpressive to the major search engines can more or less be found guilty by association. A site which has been using black hat methods may receive a search engine penalty from Google or the like. Sites may be punished for several months by being banished from the index which could have serious implications for sites which link to them. Examples of black hat techniques to be vigilant towards include keyword stuffing, cloaking and link purchasing. Many of these can be detected by a seasoned professional.

Sites which are perceived as spammy by the search engines should not be linked with. The thing to remember is that sites are assessed by the company which they keep. Connecting with spammy sites is like living in an area renowned for criminal activity. If users or search engines get the impression that a site is compromising with its good name the consequences can be somewhat negative. It is always prudent to take some time and try to get links which are suitable for the job in hand.

At Searchengineoptimization.co.uk we recognise what SEO is all about. Despite all the complications, complexities and changes, search engine optimization is about getting firms discovered on the net. While it is all about helping them make the most out of being discovered, if a firm is not spotted online the efforts in this direction will be sadly wasted.

Search engine optimization has been going through an exciting transitional period. Given the nature of technological innovation, it is unlikely that the pace of change will slacken. However, it can often be instructive to look back a little. Knowledge of history can help us appreciate aspects of the present context.

There was a time when search engine optimization was focused on the staples of content, keywords and link acquisition. These things are still of importance, even if the usage of keywords and the attraction of inbound links have to be performed in new ways because of changes in the ethical framework upheld by the major search engines like Google.

However, transformative changes in the sphere of search have altered the nature of the game. Firstly, the advent of the new social media networking sites and the explosion of interest in them has meant that there is a veritable plethora of diverse ways of getting more traffic to a site. Secondly, the increasing competition between sites means that more attention has to be paid to attracting users than was previously the case. Thirdly, the competition between the search engines means that it is of crucial importance not to regard Google as the only search engine of relevance. The combined outcome of these changes is that an exclusive focus on rankings is less appropriate than ever before.

To take the three changes in turn, it is necessary to initially observe that they all present a mixture of opportunities and challenges. For example, the evolution of the new social media means that it is profitable to consider ways of linking SEO and SMM together. However, novices engage with social media marketing at their peril because respecting the relevant etiquette is imperative. Similarly, the need to interest users can be satisfied by the employment of a video or two. The trouble is that the search engines prefer content in the form of text and also do not like sites with slow loading times. Equally, the competition between Google, Yahoo! and Bing can give new ways of getting ahead. Nevertheless, the shifts in market share and the copious articles written about the competition can be a distraction.

There are two ways to approach your SEO link building. You can use ethical link building methods or unethical techniques to establish links to your web pages. The approach you decide to take will have a massive impact on how effectively your links work for your business and how they affect your SEO campaign.

If you choose to use link building farms or link swapping schemes, then the quality of the links you create will be extremely low. These links will usually be from irrelevant sources and this is not beneficial for your business.

When the search engines are exploring your website and trying to categorise it correctly for their search results, they do take into consideration the sites that are linking to your web pages. If these websites are not relevant to your business you are therefore more likely to be categorised incorrectly and this means many opportunities will be lost. Links of this kind are also of little use because the traffic they direct to your website is unlikely to have a genuine interest or need in what you have to offer.

The online businesses that use such unethical methods to develop as many links as possible to their web pages without regard for relevancy or quality can be punished by the search engines, sometimes even dropped from the search engine results page (SERPs) altogether.

If you want to build links to your website that will help the search engines to find and rank your pages and that will help your target audience to find you too, you must use ethical link building methods.

You have to create links from relevant and high quality websites that are ranked highly in the search results. It is being associated with websites like this that will get the search engines noticing and respecting your business and that will help relevant traffic to land on your site.

You also have to establish links from popular and respectable directories by getting your website categorised appropriately in their listings, include links from your well-written and regularly updated blog and provide links from other content you have produced for your SEO campaign too. Links from forums, social networking sites and many other websites can all be advantageous when trying to encourage the flow of relevant traffic.

Ethical link building is vital when using search engine optimization and we at Searchengineoptimization.co.uk can provide you with all the link building strategies you need to achieve success. We offer high quality link building services that can establish links from a range of sources to your web pages. These links will get your website visited and respected by the search engines and also by your target audience too.

1. Most of the things you do to make a site good for users amount to excellent SEO link building strategies. This is first on our list because it should amount to a guiding principle in all your endeavours with SEO. Search engines send ‘robots’ (sometimes called ’Spiders’) to investigate the internet and all the sites on it. Robots send back information about sites, and search engines apply complex algorithms to that information to decide how high up on their results pages a site deserves to rank. Sounds daunting? Well it isn’t as complicated for the website designer as it may sound. Search engines basically rank sites well that are relevant and popular. In order to be both, you need good quality content and good quality links. When you’re adding content to your page remember that if it appeals to users it will also score you points with search engines. Never use spamming methods, because they’ll encourage the wrath of search engines and users alike. It’s much better to have less, good quality links than to have a plethora of bad ones. Ethical business practise on the web amounts to good search engine optimisation.

2. Don’t try to deceive the search engines. Although many SEO services still advocate the buying of links and other dubious methods of obtaining them, you should be aware that any such activity is very much frowned upon by search engines these days. In keeping with point number one, use good practise and don’t compromise your chances by letting your guard down. Search engines have sophisticated ways of being able to spot bought links. Words such as ‘advertise’ and ‘sponsor’ generally set alarm bells ringing, and you should remember that the search engine has easy access to information about when links were added. Having hundreds of links added over the course of a week and then very few over the next month sends a message that something’s wrong.

3. Learn what the best quality links are and develop linking strategies built around trying to harness their powers. Google and other search engines will generally rank your site higher if you have a lot of authoritative links. What are these? Links from educational or governmental sites are authoritative in that they’re recognised as legitimate links from respected sources. If you can get a good number of .edu. (education) .ac (academic) and .gov (government) sites to link to you then you’ll glow in the eyes of search engines and achieve the high ranking on their pages that you need. Another benefit of thee ‘authoritative’ links is that you don’t have to wait too long for Google to take them into account for your site. Google now have a special time-filter algorithm, which means that most other links won’t benefit your site for 3-6 months. This is one of their measures to combat spamming techniques (see tip 2!). There are ways of getting these links. As a start, try to get a link from local and other libraries. When selecting from several search engine optimisation services ask whether they have experience in link building strategies like this, if you decide it’s important to you.

The three quick tips here really represent the tips of the iceberg when it comes to SEO and strategies for building links. We haven’t touched on the importance of social media and blogs, for example. Ask the professionals you employ for their advice on other ways to get the most out of links and keep our three tips in mind for link building success!

1. Include a blog on your site. We’ve put this one first because it’s really a must nowadays. Search engines need to see fresh content on your pages, and a blog will provide the ideal platform for that. As well as this it encourages useful linking to your site. Indeed it’s one of the very few methods of improving SEO that Google itself suggests. You’ll earn links from other blogs on the web if the content’s good, and it will involve you in with the online community in any number of beneficial ways.

2. Links show search engines how popular you are. This is a useful tip because, in case you hadn’t heard, it’s popularity that gets you to the results pages. Don’t misunderstand us, though. While it may once have been the case that having a ton of links on your site made it appear popular and thus brought you the positive attention of search engines, these days it’s much better to have a few useful links than a great many irrelevant ones. Think quality and not quantity when it comes to links. As a general rule of thumb, if links enhance the user experience for your site and content, then search engines will view them favourably and your site too.

3. Pay very close attention to your anchor text. Anchor text is one of the key features used by search engines to determine the relevance of a site. If a good number of links direct users to a site with anchor text that features the right keywords, then there’s a very good chance that a site will be ranked well for that anchor text.

4. Build a sitemap and link effectively between pages on your site. Search engine spiders will use the links within your site to get around, and they’ll also take the number of links present into consideration. Once again, it’s a case of doing the right thing by giving users what they want. In this instance we’re talking about how usable a site is. If there are plenty of links within the site, then it’s obvious that users are able to navigate easily and well.

5. Encourage customers to link to you. This is an example of having people vouch for your site through linking to it. Search engines see links as evidence of your sincerity on the web. Like wearing t-shirts with a brand name on it, it shows that you’re popular. Being popular will only make you popular, so encourage these links!

6. Have content that others will want to feature and directories will want to include. If a blog you’ve featured on your site gets featured on another site it carries with it any links you’ve included in the content. Similarly, content that gets included in directories will offer users the opportunity to link back to you for as long as it’s featured. To take advantage of this you probably need to have good content on your pages. Not surprisingly then, it’s another case of gaining favour with search engines through providing a good service.

In conclusion, you’re bound to have noticed that our list of six splendid tips leads you decisively in the direction of good working practices. It’s what search engines want and need to see these days. Get a good SEO company to help improve ranking, but remember that user experience and high quality content are a recipe for success!

1. How can you manage page rank? Well, there are really just two sensible ways. You can get more external links to pages on your site and you can try to register users linking from within as well as without. The first method needs to be accomplished by means of good link building strategies, and it’s true of both methods that link building services can help. The second way involves avoiding page rank from visitors being distributed among many pages on a site, since it’s optimal to have all visitors counted as visiting one. Google is very much aware of the techniques that have been employed to this end, and none of them, really work well.

2. How not to manage page rank? As a rule, using any technology outside Google itself for monitoring page rank is unwise. Use it for researching links, by all means, but assuming that Google would allow anyone to know more than they do about their own methods is virtual madness.

3. Don’t count links. If you’re specifically concerned with counting the number of links then you’re probably approaching SEO in the wrong way. Remember that it’s not quantity but quality that counts, and that search engines like Google decided long ago to punish bad practice. Buying a lot of links in the hope of increasing pagerank, for example, could prove to be counter-productive.

4. Get good quality links. Google assign higher importance to link to a site from authoritative sources. If you want to do something to improve your pagerank, implement a good link building strategy. Try to get links to your sit from domains that are ‘edu (education) .gov (government) .ac (academic). Learn about other domains that have importance online or from SEO link building experts. Having said this, it’s useful to point out that Google still hold all the cards when it comes to pagerank. It’s exclusive to Google and they aren’t telling us how exactly it works. Google’s algorithm is its own and its filters are too. We can make educated guesses and informed choices only.

5. Don’t try to hide pages from indexes. Privacy policies don’t prevent pages from being visible to search engines.

6. Consider the design of the site in terms of usability and ad location. Search engines want to rank pages well that provide relevant, high quality content to users. It makes sense really, when you think about what function you expect a search engine to perform. Keep in mind that good practice is also good SEO and that if your site is good for users it will also perform well when it comes to pagerank.

7. Feature fresh content that’s updated regularly. One of the key factors concerned in pagerank is surely having new content on your pages. Google takes this seriously and it’s another instance of good practice being good SEO.   

8. Use keywords wisely. Remember to analyse the words that users are typing into query boxes carefully. Take them into account at all times with a view to improving page rank. Beware of overusing them, though. Google have sophisticated methods of monitoring overuse and penalties can be severe.

In conclusion, pagerank is probably still as mysterious to you as it is to us. It is to everyone outside Google, to some degree. What’s certain, as illustrated here in our eight tips, is that you can’t get around it and you can’t ignore it. The best way of getting results is to act like it didn’t exist. Create a site that’s useful. Feature keywords cleverly and don’t overfill your site with them. Don’t try to cheat Google, you’ll lose. Get good quality (authoritative) links.

You want to create something that people will want to visit. And when they get there you’ll want them to stay. A good web designer will these days make effective use of all the search engine optimization tools at their disposal and while many aspects of web design are subjective, the results of good SEO are not. SEO is all about getting results. It’s about ranking highly on results pages and getting people to your site so that they’ll be converted into clients. The web designer’s remit extends beyond SEO, but you need to bear in mind that SEO is one of the most important parts of the entire process with which they are involved.

To get the best SEO results from the design of your site, what should you be looking for in a designer? We’ve put together five useful tips to act as a guide in this important decision.

1. Select a designer who is familiar with SEO. What we really mean by telling you this is that you shouldn’t make the mistake of assuming that all designers are up to speed with the latest methodology surrounding SEO. Search engine technology is advancing very quickly. The ‘robot’ or ‘spider’ programs they send to search the web and index pages are growing ever more sophisticated, as are the algorithms used to decide where in a search engine results page a site should appear. Remember that different people got into web design for different reasons and that, despite their importance, SEP strategies such as reputation management, SEO link building and social media marketing may not be as interesting from a design perspective as a pleasing and challenging ‘look’. Remember also that some of the tools designers generally get excited about are not conducive to good SEO. Flash, Splash, Frames and Java are just some of the things that might make a site pleasing to look at and use, but which may have a negative impact for SEO.

2. Make sure you choose a designer who knows about the importance of links. There should be plenty of scope within your site’s design for internal links (on-page optimization) and other links (off-page optimization). Although this ties in with tip #1 it’s something that’s worth pointing out as a definite pre-requisite in a designer.

3. Select a designer who understands users. Again, this may sound like an obvious requirement, but it’s really more complex than you might think. A site designed for modern artists to showcase their work might be difficult for users to navigate by its nature. Such a site presents an example of one where the design might not have featured usability at the top of its priorities. With a site designed for good SEO the opposite is true. Results in terms of results pages, robots and usability should not be eclipsed by any design features. User-friendliness is important because, as any search engine optimization agency will tell you, pleasing the visitor is vital for achieving popularity and popularity is pivotal.

4. Avoid designers who depend too heavily on programs to aid web building. Such programs can establish unwanted parameters for your site. Better to choose a designer with experience in tailoring sites to SEO with the minimum reliance on ready-made software. Choose a designer who will look to the future and bear in mind that times change and so must sites.

5. Find a designer who talks to robots. Anyone with a responsibility to know about SEO strategies will be aware that the text files used to communicate information to the robots sent by websites is extremely important. Don’t employ a designer who get so carried away with the look of your pages that they forget this.

In conclusion, you need someone who understands the need to visually arrest users while at the same time featuring the text necessary to appeal to robots too. You need someone with an understanding of the need for relevance, good practice, adaptability and usability.

Good luck in choosing the very best designer!

As well as rewarding sites for being user-friendly and featuring good content, search engines take many other factors into consideration when determining the relevancy of your site to users entering queries. As any good SEO company will tell you, link building is one of the most important things you can do to promote your site. It’s one of the crucial SEO tools and it’s one of the best ways of bringing users to your site outside search engine searches. Blogs, of course, offer immense potential in terms of link building. With this in mind the list of tips we have for you is packed full of ideas.

1. Remind readers to link to you. At the end of each post you can easily include a reminder that users can easily bookmark or link to your site.

2. Challenge opinions. Nurturing useful debate is one of the best ways to get noticed by more people on the web. Don’t be afraid of debate but choose your arguments with care and be responsible.

3. What’s that, a conspiracy? Conspiracies are just one example of a theme that will attract users to your site. While we’re not suggesting you deliberately pander to popular taste at the expense of good quality content, it makes perfect sense to keep your audience in mind!

4. Use Trackbacks. Think about the different software available to you for gathering information about who reads your blog and who links to it. Trackbacks represent one such useful tool. Through finding out about your audience, you can compile an excellent list of potential links and use it effectively.

5. Link to other as you would have others link unto you. Linking to other good pages in your blog is very likely to bring reciprocal links. Give careful consideration to who you link to though. Remember that search engines take all links seriously and that a poor quality one can damage your reputation and your chances in terms of results page ranking.

6. Become active with comments and forums. Remember that whatever your sphere of endeavor, there’s a pre-existing community that’s active on the net. Get involved by welcoming comments on your blog and actively commenting and contributing to forums yourself. You could be surprised how effective this is in getting new links and quickly.

7. Create a Squidoo page. Posting content on sites that aren’t your own offers a great opportunity to link back to your pages. One example of a great site that lets you do this is Squidoo.

8. Build a profile on Twitter. Social media offers great opportunities in terms of linking, and it’s currently taking over the world. Any business hoping to move with the times needs to get involved, so build a profile on Twitter, use it to ‘tweet’ and think of the potential that sites like Facebook offer too.

9. Intelligent links. Search engines look at the quality of links to your pages when determining your ranking for results pages. You might really want to think about making your blog so good that academic sites link to it. .edu and .ac links to your site are among some of the most authoritative and therefore the best.

10. Write content that’s likely to be included in directories. There’s no hard and fast rule as to what you must do to get in a directory. Look at directories and see what others have done right. Links back to your site will remain as long as the content is in the directory, so there’s enormous scope for bringing users to you site.

How Do You Make a Site Transparent to Search Engines?

To be visible to search engines, your content needs to be readable. What you need to remember though, is that search engines don’t employ people to read all the content on the web. This stands to reason, since there’s more information available online than could be read by any number of employees. So, how do search engines know what’s on your site? They send ‘crawler’ programs to search the internet and report back on what content you have on your pages. Unlike humans, these crawler programs do not linger to appreciate design features on your site. Although they are getting better at recognizing Flash content and other stuff, they still require a lot of readable text to be readily available to them on your pages. From a design and development point of view you need to feature a lot of what’s known as indexable content. That means text being visible in HTML format. SEO services can advise you about how to include optimal levels of HTML.

How Do You Make Sure Crawlers Come to Your Site?

Crawlers travel around the internet searching for sites by means of links. Therefore, from a design and development perspective, link building is crucial. Links within your site are the roads down which crawlers travel to see your pages. With this in mind, you need to be aware of how links work and how human visitors to your site might come to view pages that aren’t available to crawlers. Pages available to visitors via drop down menus should be avoided as it’s likely that crawlers will not be able to follow the links. Valuable pages on your site that are available only through drop down menus may be useless from an SEO perspective. JavaScript is similarly ineffective for helping crawlers to read your pages, as are links that are featured within frames. Having too many links on a page can result in crawlers ‘missing’ the ones you want them to follow since they only look at up to around one hundred on any given page. Think also about pages on your site that are only visible to users who are following the steps to complete an online form. Crawlers will not be filling in forms and will therefore not be reaching the pages that users are. Avoid links in Flash, Java and plug-ins as these are not likely to be followed by crawlers either. Think of search engines as providing an indispensable review of your site. If they can’t get in, they won’t review it at all. Design a site with this in mind, and if links need to be featured in, say, Flash, provide an additional link in HTML, just for the crawlers. You need effective link building strategies if you’re going to succeed.

How Do You Design with Keyword Usage and Targeting in Mind?

Keywords form a vital part of the transparency of your site, and every page needs to be designed and developed with them in mind. As crawlers search the web, they keep a record of keywords to help search engines decide how relevant your site is to users. Make absolutely sure that keywords feature as indexable content on your pages, i.e. as HTML text. Don’t design a site that features keyword usage at the expense of useful content, however. Crawlers look for overuse and penalize websites which practice it.

Design a site that’s crawler-friendly if you want to succeed!

It pays to think of links to your website as testimonials. If a good website links to yours the message sent to users and search engines is that your pages are worth taking seriously, and worth reading. A link from a website with authority and popularity is highly desirable then.

Relevance

In technical terms, search engines measure the relevance of links to your site in terms of ‘semantic connectivity’. Put simply, this means the words used as related to the content of your site. If your website markets white bread then a lot of links from gaming sites will not show that you are being taken seriously in the white bread market. Remember that search engines are limited in that they interpret relevance as directly relating to the meaning of actual words used. While there might seem to be a perfectly good reason for your white bread website to be linked to from a gaming site, the message it sends to search engines is that your website may not be of a high quality when it comes to being specific. Their concern is to present results to users that are going to be useful to them. It’s a competitive market and search engines can’t afford to upset large numbers of users by directing them to sites unrelated to their search.

Robots

Search engines investigate (or ‘crawl’) the web with a view to indexing websites by using ‘robots’ which travel via links. In this context their meaning lies in the fact that they can be seen as vital roads by which both visitors and users are going to find your pages. Without these roads no one is going to visit you or know that you’re there. Think carefully about the way these roads are to be navigated if you want to have effective link building strategies. Having many roads leading nowhere or to dead ends in terms of relevance is not going to help the user to get a good sense of direction or place. It’s much better to have a few well placed roads leading to desirable locations than a great many B-roads charting a course to nowhere.

SEO Companies

A good SEO agency can advise on the correct ways to go about link building. They should advise on links to your site and also within it. It is very beneficial from an SEO standpoint to have a site that’s easily navigable for users through having a lot of links back to a homepage or sitemap. These days, the big search engines like Google publish advice on good SEO practices and each and every one of them point to the advantages of having a sitemap. With this in mind, experts will guide you through the process of creating links which maximize the benefits for users and the robots sent to study your site.

Conclusion

Remembering these points will enable you to avoid some common mistakes and maintain a site which is optimal for getting onto the all important places near the top of search engine results pages. Search engines are increasingly sophisticated in terms of complex algorithms with which to determine popularity and relevance, but the things that show them that you’re worthwhile are really fairly basic. As a guiding principle, cultivate links that are useful for bringing the right users to your website and for navigating easily between pages on your own site.

The meaning of links is perhaps not so elusive, after all.