April 9th, 2010 by Susie

If you run an online enterprise, but are getting few hits, you may wonder if search engine optimization services are worth the bother. If this is the case, and you have a convincing product that’s selling well elsewhere, it may be worth looking at your internal link building strategies. If there’s one thing that’s bound to get the average browser’s goat up more than any other, it’s poorly navigable sites. Poor navigation links don’t just affect sales, they affect your online reputation as well. It’s no good having SMM links and social media optimization strategies if your site is anti-social.

For a website to bring you an income, you need far more than the right SEO tools. If your site isn’t easily navigable, then employing search engine optimization services isn’t going to help (unless the site is equally antisocial to the search bots). That being said, there are scores of companies online who offer a complete package, including SEO, SMM (search media marketing) and link building services. These all come under the umbrella of online reputation management, since the more accessible your site is, the better it will appeal to the public.

Swift and easy site navigation should be uppermost to any new website build. While SEO link building will make your site more transparent to the search engine bots, it won’t bring you an income if you’ve permanently got the “Out to lunch” sticker on the door. A good search engine reputation management (SERM) company will look closely at your internal links when considering how to boost online appeal of your products.

When considering reputation management, site owners often think only of external influences, i.e. the use of deep links to drive traffic to their internal pages. They get carried away with building reinforced target key phrases into link anchor text for each interior page, forgetting that those visiting their site may well use other ways of getting there.

This isn’t restricted to amateur webmasters. Professional link building services try all sorts of approaches to get rich anchor text links from social media sites, while ignoring the internal architecture of the site they’re working on. Quite often, it’s a complete mess, with doors papered over and locks that won’t open. What’s the point of directing customers to your first floor sales, when the tills are shut down and the access route to the bargain basement is blocked?

The problem is that many people place secondary importance over their internal site links, feeling they are less important than SEO link building. However, only those who design search engines professionally fully understand how the algorithms work, and how the engines weigh internal links. A good SEO company will always look at internal navigation links, in addition to external link building strategies.

No matter how many deep-links you embed on SMM sites, it’s still the homepage that will get the majority of site hits, so SEO link building begins with internal strategies. Code your internal links with the right anchor text, and the importance of those pages will transfer to the search engines.

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