Search Engine Optimization Techniques
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Transcript of Search Engine Optimization Techniques
A
SEMINAR REPORT
ON
“Search Engine Optimization (SEO)”
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULLFILLMENT OF THE DEGREE OF
BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY
2009-2013
Submitted To: Submitted By:
Miss Anjali Mathur Yuvaraj
Mr. Rajeev Sharma 09928948603
8-CS-56
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
JAIPUR NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
JAGATPURA, JAIPUR
Table of Contents 1. What is Search Engine Optimisation?
2. What is a Keyword / Key Phrase?
3. Important On Page Factors: a. Intro
b. Header Tags
c. Image Alt tags
d. MetaTag
Writing
i. Title Tag
ii. Keyword Tag
iii. Description Tag
e. Web Page Content
f. Keyword proximity
g. GeoSpecific
SEO
h. Examples of DPFOC Optimised Websites
i. www Redirect
j. URL Structure
k. Optimizig Dynamic Urls
l. Xml, ROR, Geo And Video Sitemaps
m. Avoid Flash
n. Robots.txt
o. Page Download Speed
p. Moving website location/redesigning
q. Pagination
4. Off Page SEO: a. User behaviour after logging on to your website
b. Manual Search Engine Submission
c. Link Building Intro
i. One Way Links
ii. Reciprocal Links
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iii. Run of the site links
iv. Deep Links
v. Authority Links
vi. Three Way Links
d. Google Penguin Update
5. What Constitutes a Good Link? a. Relevancy
b. PR Value
c. Anchor Text
d. Broad Base
6. How do I actually build high quality links for a website? a. Directory Websites (10% of time)
b. Social Bookmarking (10% of link building time)
i. What is Social Bookmarking?
ii. What came before social bookmarking?
iii. Benefits of Social Bookmarking
iv. Social Bookmarking SEO
v. Step by Step Guide To Bookmarking a URL
vi. Manual Versus Automated Bookmarking
vii. Avoiding having links deleted from social bookmarking websites
c. Blog / Forum Posting (35% of link building time)
d. Tracking Competitors (10% of link building time)
e. Reciprocal / Three Way Linking
i. Outbound Reciprocal Link Requests
ii. Three Way Outbound Link Requests
f. YouTube Links
g. Press Release
h. Profile Links (5% of link building time)
i. Event Links
j. Infographic Links
k. Guest Blogging( 10 % of time)
l. Reverse Image Search
m. Practical Examples of Good Link Acquisition
n. Useful Resources
o. Google Plus
p. Suppliers Links
1. What is Search Engine Optimisation?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving the rank of a
web page in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) of target search engines
for a set of identified keyphrases.
The three major search engines for which we optimise are Google, Yahoo
and Bing. All three follow similar but different rules for ranking websites. In
order to prevent webmasters (SEO agencies) from easily manipulating
search results, all issue only general guidelines as to the factors that they rely
on when ranking webpages. Due to its popularity, Google is the search
engine which we pay closest attention to. In short, SEO is about getting
your target webpage to the top of your target search engine as quickly as
possible in order to get people to click on your website to make sure that the
maximum amount of ensuing traffic converts.
2. What is a keyword / key phrase?
A keyword is a word that the owner of a website anticipates that potential
clients will type in a search engine if interested in his/her product or service.
For example, a web design company may identify “website” as a keyword
worth targeting. However, this is probably too vague and generic to be of
any real use even if a good rank is achieved in search engines. Far more
regularly identified are keyphrases. These are a combination of words that a
website owner identifies as relevant to his product or service. For example
“outsource web design” or “outsource website design.” A key concept in
relation to keywords and key phrases is the “long tail” concept. This will be
covered in more detail below.
3. Important On Page Factors:
Onpage SEO relates to the factors on the web page itself that determine its
rank in search engines. SEO executive must be aware of important factors
mentioned below:
On Page factors are:
a. Intro
We must remember that Google‟s goal is to put the most relevant web page
at the top of their
SERP for a given search query. In order to get our web page to the top, we
must ensure that our
web page screams at Google that it is by far the most relevant page on the
Internet for the
keyphrases
that we are targeting for that page. Our keyphrase
needs to be in the URL, meta
data, on the page in bold, in h tags..........everywhere! We must leave Google
in no doubt as to
what our page relates to.
b. Header Tags:
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nsure keyphrases
are encased in h tags to lend emphasis to them. When Google crawls a h
tag, it knows that the content in the h tag is important and by putting our
target keyphrases
in a h
tag, we are sending a clear message to Google that the words in the h tag are
important for this
page and so help the rank of that page for the phrase in the h tags. Try to use
header tags where
possible (h1,h2,h3), around keywords.
Note: h tags must be used in the correct order and must not be repeated ie: a
h2 tag should
never come above a h1 tag and a h3 tag should never come above a h2 tag
and there should be
only one 1 h1 tag, multiple h2, h3...h6 tags are allowed. You should not skip
a h tag for e.g. h3
should not come directly after h1. Where there is adequate amount of copy,
we can use strong
tags to lend emphasis to keyphrases
not in h tags.
It is our policy to lend emphasis to words in sentences using strong and em
tags. We only use h
tags in headings but if the heading contains words that we are not targeting,
we don‟t surround
these in h tags but use the “display:inline” attribute to keep the heading on a
single line. See
cleanscape.ie for example.
Note: Do not use H tags in paragraphs
Back to Cover Page
c. Image Alt Tag Writing
earch engines do not crawl images themselves but the image alt tags used to
describe the
images are crawled and so image alt tags offer an opportunity to describe an
image with relevant
keywords. To identify whether an image has an alt tag to describe it, simply
right click on the
image and select “inspect element” note:
you will need to use Google Chrome or alternatively
install Firebug (see SEO tools) for “inspect element” option to appear. To
check images on a
page using source code, use the “control and f” function to search for “img.”
This will identify all
images on the page and will look as follows:
<img src="images/dryhot5.
jpg" alt="Timber Treatment" />
It is the job of the SEO executive to ensure that all images on the page are
assigned alt tags with
keywords relating to that page. For example, the above image is on a page
that we are targeting
for the keyphrase
“Timber Treatment.”
In order to avoid keyword Spamming, we think it prudent not to label any
more than 1 image with
the same alt tag. If there are many images on the page, we think the best
approach is to ensure
as many images as possible do have alt tags of target keyphrases
for that page; use synonyms
and closely related keyphrases
if there are lots of images.
d. MetaTag
Writing
To see the metatags
of a webpage,
right click on the page and select the “view source” option.
This will show you the code of the web page. A metatag
will open with <> and close with </>.
Tags that must be written are as below.
i. Title Tag
<title> Insert most important keyphrases
here separated by “|” </title>
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The title tag is a crucial tag and should contain the most important keywords
/ phrases for that
particular page – the title tag should not contain more than 70 characters
maximum as too
many phrases (characters) will dilute the effect of each phrase included – a
small number of
targeted phrases specific to that page is the goal. Individual keyphrases
should be separated by
a vertical line called the pipe bar as shown below:
<title>DPFOC Link Building | Outsource Link Building | Low Cost Link
Building </title>
The pipe bar serves as a separator between keywords and phrases. Some
people use > or ;
which are equally as effective from an SEO point of view but the pipe bar is
the tidiest looking
option and so this is the one we use. Note that there is no need to leave a
space between each
keyphrase
and the bar. For extlple, the following is totally acceptable “SEO| Search
Engine
Optimisation| Company| Agency| India </title>. The text of the title tag is
visible in the SERP
(search engine results page); we must keep this in mind when writing title
tags. While a tag may
be very good from an SEO perspective if it does not read well, then click
through rate may be
low so it is the job of an SEO executive to try to include keywords while
also ensuring that the
title reads well.
Very often, we will be optimising a website for a specific geographic region.
For extlple, a
cleaning company in Dublin. In this instance it is important to put the
location being targeted into
the title tag:
<title>Cleaning Company | Cleaning Companies | Cleaning Contractor |
Dublin </title> At very
least, the country that we are targeting should be present in the title as
many people add
their own country to a search query.
If targeting multiple locations, these again can be put in the title tag but the
more locations
inserted, the fewer keyphrases
can be included and still stay within 70 character limit.
<title> Cleaning Company | Cleaning Companies | Cork | Dublin | Limerick
</title> This also
creates the need for sentences such as “we operate throughout Ireland
including Cork, Limerick
and Dublin” on the content of the page itself as well as in the description tag.
For more on optimising for multiple geographic locations, see “Geospecific
SEO” and “Google
Places” doc at Google Docs.
.
7
Important Note on Title Tags:
Duplicate page titles (using the same title for a number of pages on a
website) will negatively
affect SEO results and must be avoided. Every page of a website must have
a unique title tag.
Google webmaster tools will highlight duplicate title tags which must be
edited.
Google on Title Tags:
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Use the space provided Most
major search engines display approximately 60
characters from a page's title tag in the title of a search result. These 60
characters are
an opportunity to tell both users and search engines what the focus of the
page is.
There's no need to go past this many characters, as most search engines will
display
ellipses ( ... ) after this limit. Also, search engines may give less weight to
words after a
certain point.
ii. Keyword Tag
<meta name=”keywords” content=”insert up to a maximum of 6 keywords
here” />
While there is no formal guidance on how many characters should be
included, as usual, the
goal is to ensure that the tag is targeted and relates closely to the content of
the page in
question. No more than 120 characters should be used to ensure the tag is
targeted.
Google claims not to use keywords tags when ranking webpages:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/googledoesnotusekey
wordsmetatag.
h
tml
Yahoo and Bing still use keyword tags so these should be used and well
written. Again, keep
these tags targeted to the particular webpages
and do not dilute the effect of keywords by
including too many key words – keep them very highly targeted. Again,
include the geographic
regions targeted here.
Important Note on Keyword Tags:
Duplicate keyword tags (using the same keyword tags for a number of pages
on a website) will
negatively affect SEO results and must be avoided. Every page of a website
must have a unique
keywords meta tag.
iii. Description Tag
<meta name=”description” content=”Keyword rich copy here to describe the
content of the
page” />
This is visible on the SERP so must be well written and keyword rich. No
more than a line or two
describing that particular page (160 characters max). While title and
keyword tags are not
sentences, the description tag should read like properly formed sentences.
Nonetheless, always
start the description tag with the first three target keyphrases
for that page. Again, include
geographic region(s) targeted as well as keywords.
9
Important Note on Description Tags:
Duplicate description tags (using the same description tags for a number of
pages on a website)
will negatively affect SEO results and must be avoided. Every page of a
website must have a
unique description metatag.
Google webmaster tools will highlight duplicate description tags
which must be edited.
Miscellaneous Note on MetaTags:
10
Sometimes Google bots crawl the meta tags from DMOZ which doesn't
affect the website‟s rank
negatively however if you want to avoid such a situation you have to add a
NOODP tag in the
Head section to the web page as follows:
<meta name="robots" content="NOODP">
Important Note on Meta –tags:
Title, description and keywords tags should be included as high on the page
as possible.
e. Webpage
Content
Not including target keywords in the content of the target webpage
is like going fishing
with no bait; you are wasting your time. Target keywords must be
mentioned as often as
possible on the page in h tags and in bold to lend further importance to them
we
must ensure
that Google and other search engines are left in no doubt at all as to what the
most important
phrases on the page are. Also, target keyphrase
should be as close to the top of the page as
possible (in headings for example) as Google‟s spiders crawl the page from
top to bottom. While
we do not provide a copywriting service, it is our responsibility to ensure
that our target
keyphrases
are well represented in the target page as
per our checklist, each target
keyphrase
must be represented a minimum of three times and emphasised using h and
strong
tags. If the client is preparing the content, we must advise them as to the
target keywords for
each page and ask them to mention these as often as possible when preparing
the content for
that page – clients must be made aware of this before they prepare content if
at all possible. If
the client already has content that does not include the target keyphrases,
we can advise them
of the fact that some pages on their website do not contain the target
keyphrases
for that page
and ask them to generate a few sentences that do contain the target
keywords. When submitting
to the client, submit in a logical way outlining the keywords being targeted
for a page and the
sentences that you would like to add to that page to improve the rank. If we
want web page
content for the home page, according to our policies, it must be around 500
words and for the
inner page, it must be arround 300 words.
Google on usage of keywords in content:
“Improvements to how search terms are scored in ranking. [launch
codename "Bi02sw41"] One
of the most fundamental signals used in search is whether and how your
search terms appear
on the pages you‟re searching. This change improves the way those terms
are scored.
See full post
here:http://insidesearch.blogspot.in/2012/05/searchqualityhighlights53chang
es.
html
Hi client,
As you know, we are trying to improve your website‟s rank in (insert
relevant search engine). To
11
that end, we have selected certain web pages from your website as being the
most suited to
target certain groups of keyphrases.
I have included below the keyphrases
being targeted as
well as the pages that we are using for each group of phrases. The reason for
my mail is to
request a small bit of content from you. Basically, we need to ensure that our
target keyphrases
for each page are mentioned several times (each keyphrase
mentioned at least 3 times) on the
web page that we want to rank well for those keyphrases.
I have attached a word doc. as an
example of what we mean by keyphrase
rich content. (note to SEO exec‟ make
sure to attach
the doc “sample keyword rich content”)
Keyphrases:
Insert keyphrases
for home page here
Target page: Insert target page here
Action required: Please provide us with some sentences that include the
above keyphrases
that
we can include these on this page.
Keyphrases:
Insert keyphrases
for inner page 1 here
Target page: Insert target page here
Action required: Please provide us with some sentences that include the
above keyphrases
that
we can include these on this page.
etc etc
Note that the minimum amount of content for a target page is 500 words on
homepage and 300
on inner pages. If you simply send me the content, I will check to confirm
that the target
keyphrases
are mentioned at least 3 times on each page.
Regards,
Signature
Keywords must be mentioned at least 3 times on target page.
Hopefully, the client will respond by providing us with the content we need.
However, there are
two other situations that may arise.
1) The client ignores our email:
If the client does not reply to our email,
we should follow up with an email
as follows:
Hi again client,
I refer to my email
to you on (insert date here) entitled (insert mail tiitle here). As you know,
getting the target keyphrases
for a webpage
well represented in the content of that page is
perhaps the most important of all of the SEO processes. Without this, results
will simply not be
good. As you are too busy to provide content, I have attached my
recommendation as to how we
can integrate the target keyphrases
on the target URLs(Webpages). With your permission, I will
implement this. If I receive no reply from your end to this, I will continue to
do my best but we
12
cannot expect impressive results as not including target keyphrases
on the target URL is to not
fulfill the most basic of all SEO processes. I do hope that you give me
permission to implement
the attached so that we can maximise the impact of the links that we are
building.
Regards,
etc etc
Note to SEO exec: Attach a word doc that fulfills the below criteria.
1. Include the above 4 times on the page as follows:
First Instance: <h1>Keyword 1</h1>, <h2>keyword 2</h2>, <h3>keyword
3</h3>,
<h4>keyword 4</h4>
Second Instance: <b>Keyword 1</b>, <b>keyword 2</b>, <b>keyword
3</b>, <b>keyword
4</b>
Third Instance: Keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3, keyword 4
Fourth Instance: Keyword 1, keyword 2, keyword 3, keyword 4
2. Spread the addition of keywords throughout the page, e.g first one after
main heading,
second after 2nd paragraph or second heading, 3rd before last paragraph and
fourth at the
bottom of the page.
If after a week, the client has still not engaged with you, then advise your
onthe
ground sales
person who will contact the client by phone.
2) The client replies but does not include the keyphrases
in sufficient instances or at all:
In such cases, we must mail the client as follows:
Hi client,
Thanks very much for the content; there are some minor issues as follows.
You have only
mentioned the target keyphrase
“x” once and have omitted to mention keyphrase
“y” can
you
please ensure that each target keyphrase
is mentioned a minimum of 3 times on the page as
we need these phrases to stand out as being more important than all other
words on the page.
Regards
Again, if the client does not reply to this mail, please send suggestion mail
as per section 1
above.
Back to Cover Page
13
f. Keyword proximity for Keyphrases:
Keyword proximity measures how close together the keywords that make up
the phrase are –
their proximity to each other. It is best if they are immediately one after the
other (e.g. “dog food”),
with no other words between them. For instance, if you have “dog” in the
first paragraph and
“food” in the third paragraph, this also counts but not as much as having the
phrase “dog food”
without any other words in between. Keyword proximity applies to title tag,
description tag and
page content. Separating the words within a keyphrase
by other words will dilute the
effectiveness of the keyphrase
targeted.
For more onpage
factors, please see: http://www.webconfs.com/15minuteseo.
php
Back to Cover Page
g. Geo Specific SEO:
Please see two crucial documents at Google Docs: GeoSpecific
SEO and Google Places. To
read about targeting a business world wide, refer to document “Top Level
Domains” on Google
Docs.
Back to Cover Page
h. Examples of DPFOC Optimised Websites
Below is a list of websites optimised by DPFOC SEO executives. While
these are performing
well, see if you can see any room for improvement:
www.homecareplus.ie
www.tier12345.co.uk
www.debtcare.ie
www.globalvisas.co.in
http://www.allkarebuildingcontractor.co.uk/
bluebirdcare.ie
www.allkarepropertydryingout.co.uk
Be sure to check with your colleagues as to what sites they are currently
working on. Check the
onpage
factors for yourself and see what link building techniques are being relied on
to improve
rank for target keyphrases.
Your colleagues will always be happy to help on any issue so be
sure to ask.
More examples of websites perfect from OnPage
point of view as per DPFOC policy:
http://www.barsportfranchise.co.uk/
http://www.srsaircon.com
http://www.wordsworthhomes.co.uk/
http://www.ukbathroompods.co.uk/
Back to Cover Page
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i. www Redirect:
A website should open with only one version out of following two:
1. http://www.example.com
2. http://example.com
Practically both will open the same page but Google consider them as two
different pages and
this will contribute to duplicate content. So any one should be redirected to
the other. To check
which version to select, search for domain name in Google and select the
one which is ranking
and redirect the other to the one you have selected. A simple rule in
.htaccess file can do the job
for UNIX server. In IIS(window) servers, one can use canonical tag which
will point to your
selected version of the page itself. If unsure, consult with technical SEO.
j. Url Structure:
Every page of the website should have well written URLs. For example, the
contact page should
be: www.dpfoc.com/contactus
Note: words must be separated by hyphens (not the underscore
symbol) to enable search engines to read these as individual words.
Optimising a page for
“search engine optimisation” and “seo” may result in the URL being written:
www.dpfoc.com/searchengineoptimisationseo.
Note, the closer the word to the “/” the more
weight the search engine will give to the word. For example, in the example
above, “search
engine optimisation” will get more weight than “seo.” If Google‟s keyword
tool showed that “SEO”
had more search volume than “search engine optimisation” it would then
make sense to change
the URL to www.dpfoc.com/seosearchengineoptimisation.
Remember, the closer to the “/” the
word is, the more weight Google will give it and so the most heavily
searched term should
immediately follow the “/” to give the page the very best chance of ranking
well for the
keyphrase.
See www.tier12345.co.uk for an example of well written URLs. Crucially,
when
changing a URL, the old URL must be redirected
to the new one via what is known as a 301
redirect. A 301 redirect simply redirects one URL to another. All PR and
link juice value
associated with the forwarded URL is, in theory, passed to the new URL but
there can be a lag in
this happening and often some of the PR passed is diluted. 301 redirects
are very commonly
used by SEO executives as changing URLs is a crucial part of the SEO
process. We must not
however write URLs that are too lengthy and cumbersome. Our guidance is
that a URL should
have no more than 3 words after the first forward slash. These should be the
most important
words secondary
words can be added in title, description and other onpage
factors.
See this http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-negative-ranking-factors-
whiteboard-friday for
some data on the effect of domain length and the number of hyphens in the
domain. While we do
want to get keywords in the URL, lengthy domains with lots of hyphens tend
to underperform
more succinct domains.
:
k. Optimising Dynamic URLs
Note: All SEO executives must read but only technical SEO staff will fully
understand
15
much of the below. Non technical SEO staff will rely on technical SEO staff
to implement
the below.
Websites that utilize databases which can insert content into a webpage by
way of a dynamic
script like PHP or JavaScript are increasingly popular. This type of site is
considered dynamic
(as opposed to static). Many websites choose dynamic content over static
content. This is
because if a website has thousands of products or pages, writing or updating
each static by
hand is a monumental task. There are two types of URLs: dynamic and
static. A dynamic URL is
a page address that results from the search of a databasedriven
website or the URL of a
website that runs a script. In contrast to static URLs, in which the contents of
the webpage
stay
the same unless the changes are hardcoded
into the HTML, dynamic URLs are generated from
specific queries to a site's database. The dynamic page is basically only a
template in which to
display the results of the database query. Instead of changing information in
the HTML code, the
data is changed in the database. Very often, clients access the database
themselves via a
userfriendly
CMS (content management system) most frequently to add to or edit
products in
the database.
But there is a risk when using dynamic URLs: search engines don't like
them. Those at most
risk of losing search engine positioning due to dynamic URLs are
ecommerce
stores, forums,
sites utilizing content management systems and blogs like Mambo or
WordPress or any other
databasedriven
website. Often, the URL that is generated for the content in a dynamic site
looks
something like this:
http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=12345&sort=da
te A static URL on
the other hand, is a URL that doesn't change and doesn't have variable
strings. It looks like this:
http://www.somesites.com/forums/thechallengesofdynamicurls.
htm Static URLs are
typically ranked better in search engine results pages and they are indexed
more quickly than
dynamic URLs, if dynamic URLs get indexed at all. Static URLs are also
easier for the enduser
to view and understand what the page is about. If a user sees a URL in a
search engine query
that matches the title and description, they are more likely to click on that
URL than one that
doesn't make sense to them. A search engine wants to only list pages in its
index that are unique
(avoiding duplicate content). Search engines decide to combat this issue by
cutting off the URLs
after a specific number of variable strings (e.g.: ? & =).
For example, let's look at three URLs:
http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=12345&sort=da
te
http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=67890&sort=da
te
http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=13579&sort=da
te
All three of these URLs point to three different pages. But if the search
engine purges the
information after the first offending character, the question mark (?), now all
three pages look the
same:
http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php
http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php
http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php
Search engines will consider these three pages as duplicate content and only
index one of them
as search engines do not want to jam their index with duplicate content.
Another issue is that
16
dynamic pages generally do not have any keywords in the URL. It is very
important to have
keyword rich URLs where possible. Highly relevant keywords should
appear in the domain name
or the page URL. This became clear in a recent study on how the top three
search engines,
Google, Yahoo, and Bing rank websites. The study involved taking hundreds
of highly competitive
keyword queries, like travel, cars, and computer software and comparing
factors involving the
top ten results. The statistics show that of those top ten, Google has 4050%
of those with the
keyword either in the URL or the domain; Yahoo shows 60%; and Bing has
an astonishing 85%!
Bing‟s algorithm seems to afford far more importance to keywords in the
URL.
So what can be done about this difficult problem?
You certainly don't want to have to go back and recode every single
dynamic URL into a static
URL. This would be too much work for any website owner.
If the site is hosted on a Linux server, make the most of the Apache Mod
Rewrite Rule which
gives the ability to inconspicuously redirect one URL to another without the
user's (or a search
engine's) knowledge. You will need to have this module installed in Apache.
For more
information, you can view the documentation for this module here. This
module eliminates the
need to rewrite static URLs manually. How does this module work? When a
request comes in to
a server for the new static URL, the Apache module redirects the URL
internally to the old,
dynamic URL, while still looking like the new static URL. The web server
compares the URL
requested by the client with the search pattern in the individual rules. For
example, when
someone requests this URL:
http://www.somesites.com/forums/thechallengesofdynamicurls.
html the server looks for
and compares this staticlooking
URL to what information is listed in the .htaccess file, such as:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule threadthreadid(.*)\.
htm$ thread.php?threadid=$1
It then converts the static URL to the old dynamic URL that looks like this,
with no one the wiser:
http://www.somesites.com/forums/thread.php?threadid=12345
This URL will not only will rank better in the search engines but endusers
can understand by
glancing at the URL what the page will be about, while allowing Apache's
Mod Rewrite Rule to
handle to conversion and still keeping the dynamic URL. This URL
Rewriting Tool can also help.
What this tool does is implement the Mod Rewrite Rule in a .htaccess file to
secretly convert a
URL to another, such as with dynamic and static ones. With the URL
Rewriting Tool, one can
opt to rewrite single pages or entire directories. Simply enter the URL into
the box, press submit
and copy and paste the generated code into your .htaccess file on the root of
a website.
Remember to place any additional rewrite commands in the .htaccess file for
each dynamic
URL that Apache is to rewrite. Now, the static URL links on the website can
be given out without
having to alter all of the dynamic URLs manually because the Mod Rewrite
Rule is performing
the conversion without JavaScript or cloaking. Another thing to be
remembered is to change all
links in a website to static URLs in order to avoid penalties by search
engines due to having
duplicate URLs. Add the dynamic URLs to the Robots Exclusion Standard
File (robots.txt) to
prevent the search engines from spidering the duplicate URLs. Regardless of
methods
employed, after using the URL Rewrite Tool, ideally there should be no
links pointing to any of the
old dynamic URLs. If your website is hosted on IIS server, you need to
manually convert all the dynamic URLs to static URls. As, we all know that
IIS version 6 or earlier doesnt provide an ease
to play with the urls, still, upto some level, we can change the dynamic urls
to static ones in IIS
version 7 or later.
There are multiple reasons to utilize static URLs in a website whenever
possible. When it's not
possible and there is a need to keep databasedriven
content as those old dynamic URLs, one
can still give endusers
and search engines a static URL to navigate and all the while they are
still dynamic URLs in disguise. When a search engine engineer was asked if
this method was
considered "cloaking", he responded that it indeed was not and that in fact
search engines
encourage this to aid them in crawling useful dynamic content. We have a
document called
“.Htaccess Code”, use the .htaccess codes mentioned in the doc in order to
place url redirects
using .htaccess file.
Important Note: When optimizing URLs of OS Commerce based
websites, the most
recent SEO URL plug in must be implemented on the website.
If .htaccess does not works for client’s website, (for example in
ecommerce
websites):Usually
in Ecommerce
websites, we fail to change dynamic URLs into static URLs using
.htaccess. In this case, you have to look for the plugin/application that
client‟s CMS should
support in order to change dynamic URLs into static URLs.
For the websites hosted on IIS 7 or later versions, it is somehow easy to
implement the
URL Rewriting, but you should consult your Head Of Seo in order to
implement that. All
rewriting
rules should be placed in the web.config file.
l. XML, ROR, Geo and HTML sitemap submission
Submitting an XML sitemap to Google ensures a website is properly
indexed by the search
engine and so should be done at Webmaster Tools. This should be done for
every website.
Updates to the website will necessitate updates to sitemaps. Take help from
your account
manager to get this done. To check weather a site has XML sitemap or not,
please use search
status plugin in firefox. It‟s always a best practice to update sitemap once if
one exists already for
a new project. You can generate an XML sitemap in seconds by using
following tool:
http://www.xmlsitemaps.
com/
Geositemaps should be submitted as well in order to provide address
information of the
business to search engines. You can generate geositemap by using this tool:
http://www.geositemapgenerator.com/
Note: You need to make sure that you have removed geo tag from the code,
as Google no longer
supports geo tags. If you upload the sitemap without removing geo tag,
webmasters will give an
error. Generator will give you following lines of code:
18
<urlset>
<url>
<geo:format>
<loc>http://www.dandooley.
ie/locations.kml</loc>
</geo>
</url>
</urlset>
We just need to delete the <geo> tag. Resulting code would be as follows:
<urlset>
<url>
<loc>http://www.dandooley.
ie/locations.kml</loc>
</url>
</urlset>
Related literature on <geo> tags:
1. http://seoserviceswholesale.com/geositemapsnolongersupportedbygoogle/
2.
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/03/28/googlestillsupportingkmlfilesbutnot
theuseofgeos
itemaps/
3. https://plus.google.com/107122646256015117642/posts/CmZejMkLN4r
m. Avoid Flash
This applies to web designers but SEO executives should be aware that
optimising a
flash website is virtually impossible. Accordingly, we should recommend
conversion of a
flash site to html. Consult with a technical SEO executive if unsure. Avoid
Flash, but if
you must use Flash, use SWF_Object() and have a textonly,
keywordcentric
and fully
functional backup site loading behind it. This is only compliance, anyhow.
n. Robots.txt
For a detailed overview robots.txt, please visit http://www.robotstxt.org/. To
check whether a
website has robots.txt file, simply open the domain and append /robots.txt to
it in the address
bar. This will show you the robots.txt text file. For example, search in
address bar for
dpfoc.com/robots.txt which reads
Useragent:
*
Disallow:
This means all robots are not disallowed to any part of the site or to put it
simply all robots are
allowed to all parts of the site. If no robots.txt, then no issue, simply move
on.
19
o. Page Download Speed:
Google uses page download speed as one of its factors when ranking web
pages. The
faster the page downloads, the better rank Google will give it. This is
because
userexperience
is enhanced if pages download quickly without the need to wait for a
long time. Accordingly, it is important that DPFOC executives make sure
that every
targeted webpage
on a website under our control is as efficient as possible in terms of
download speed. To check this, we use Google‟s Page Download Speed
Checker which
is available at: https://developers.google.com/pagespeed/ . All nontechnical
SEO
executives need to know is that a score of 90 or better is required for all
target pages. A
score of below 90 is not acceptable and should be brought to the attention of
the head of
SEO. Head of SEO may decide that a lesser score is acceptable. Ishan should
be
contacted to implement page download speed improvements.
p. Moving Website location / redesigning
a site:
Moving a website domain is similar to moving the physical address of your
business. You
wouldn‟t leave your old address and just set up in your new address without
making sure that
anyone who visits your old address knows of the new address. When moving
a website from
one location to another, there are certain procedures to be followed to ensure
a smooth
transition. Interestingly, when a domain is redirected
to another domain, the PR of the old
domain is passed to the new domain. There can be a lag of a number of
weeks before PR
passes and on occasions not all of the PR passes. Please refer to “Things to
keep in mind when
moving Domain” at Google docs for more details.
Importantly, it is not unusual for a client to redesign their website. If they
decide to do this, they
must keep in close contact with us so that target URLs are not changed or if
they are the old
ones are redirected to new ones and further that onpage
SEO factors are not upset. If a client
advises that they are going to redesign their website, the following template
mail is useful:
Hi client,
As you intend to redesign your website, there are a number of issues that I
would like you to bear
in mind. First of all, we are targeting and have built links to the following
URLs:
url1
url2
etc etc
Please ensure that these URLs remain intact and that the content on the page
is not changed. If
you have to change the content, please liaise with me so that I can guide you
as to what words
need to be included on each page. Further, we would ideally like the meta
data and title of each
of the above pages to remain as it currently is, but again if you do need to
change, please liaise
with me. As your site currently has Google Analytics tracking code on each
page, we would
advise not disturbing this. Once the site has been redesigned, can you please
let me know so
that I can review all onpage stuff to ensure that the new site is perfect from
an onpage
perspective.
20
Thanks for your cooperation in this regard.
Regards,
etc etc
Note: we must review all onpage
issues after a redesign to ensure that everything is perfect.
q. Pagination:
For all you need to know about what pagination is and the various solutions
available, see:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/03/videoaboutpagination
withrelnextand.
ht
ml
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/viewallinsearchresults.
html
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/paginationwithrelnext
andrelprev.
html
Having understood the above, you will be well placed to implement either
“rel prev / next” or “rel
canonical” to ensure that all links to a paginated series are aggregated and
not diluted and that
users are sent to the most relevant page in a paginated series.
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4. Offpage
SEO:
The on page factors above are crucial in signalling to the search engines the
keywords and
phrases that matter to a particular webpage.
However, many pages on the internet will be very
similar from an onpage
point of view. For example, if two companies create a webpage to
promote the keyphrase
“search engine optimisation India,” both pages will likely have pretty
much identical content assuming both companies are proficient in SEO.
Accordingly, offpage
factors are used by search engines to decide which page should rank highest.
a. User Behaviour after logging on to your website:
Remember, search engines‟ absolute priority is to deliver the best / most
relevant sites at the top
of the SERP for a particular keyword
or phrase. If results are bad /irrelevant, people will stop
using search engines in favour of some other information sorting tool (social
bookmarking
websites based on tags assigned by bookmarkers?) and as traffic falls, prices
that can be
charged for advertising will fall also. Remember, the better the results that
search engines
deliver, the more people who will use these to find information and so the
more that search
engines can charge companies to advertise on their search engine (sponsored
links).
As engines become more and more sophisticated, it is now widely accepted
that they measure
such factors as how many pages do people visit on a website and how long
do they stay on a
website before leaving it. The only way to improve ranking in these factors
is to have a world
class website delivering great, informative and regularly updated content.
Importantly, SEO
executives can help by performing a keyword search, selecting the target
website from the
SERP, browsing many pages of the website, staying on there for a number of
minutes before
21
closing the site. This indicates to search engines that the website was
valuable and useful for
the keyphrase
searched and is likely to improve rank further. Logging on only to close the
site
after only visiting the homepage for a few seconds will not help SEO
performance as this will
add to bounce rates (percentage of people who log off after only visiting one
page of the
website). So, if, for any reason, we need to open a website that we are
optimising, we
should always browse a few pages before closing never
contribute to a high bounce
rate!
Back to Cover Page
b. Manual Search Engine Submission:
All new websites should be manually submitted to the three major search
engines as below:
www.google.com/addurl/
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx
New websites should be bookmarked quickly also to ensure rapid indexing
of the site.
Faster URL indexing to Google:
On 3/08/2011, Google added new feature in Google webmaster tool to make
indexing of new
URLs faster. To submit a URL this way, you need to fetch URL as
Googlebot. If URL get fetched
successfully, you can submit the request to add URL to index faster than
normal. Google has
also launched new “Crawl URL form” which allows submission through
webmaster tool without
verifying the site. However these methods does not guarantee that submitted
URL will be added
to index.
Refer to
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/08/submiturlstogooglewit
hfetchas.
html to
read more about this.
c. Google Penguin Update:
On 24 April, 2012, Google launched Pengiun update, the update was to deal
mainly with
unnatural linkng profiles and penalizing those who are doing so. Please read
the
document titled “Document on Penguin Update” for the same.
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c. Link Building:
A link from one website to another is known as an outbound link from the
webpage on which the
link is placed and an inbound link to the page that opens on clicking on the
link. Search engines
take the view that each inbound link (also referred to as back links) that a
website has, the more
websites that have seen fit to add a link to this website and so, in theory, the
more relevant the
22
content on the page and so, the higher the rank. In short, more links = better
rank. Coast Digital
has over 170000 inbound links while Profit by Search has almost 400000.
While creating links for
campaign, we must look for link diversity, i.e creating links on same
websites again and again is
not going to help us anymore, it will rather harm us. In order to make sure
that we are not
creating links on same websites again and again, you should use Cognitive
tool before creating
any link. Before creating any link for your campaign, search the Cognitive
Tool with the domain
name of the website on which you are going to create the link, if the search
results with more
than 34
results, do not create link on the website and look for other link building
opportunity.
Below snapshot depicts the same, when we searched for Ideamarkters, there
were more than 5
results,
Account Manager should keep an eye on the links which are added in
Cognitive. If
someone submits a link to a website on which we already have 34
links, (s)he will be
asked to leave at the moment,
Note: We should not build links for the url which is not yet live or available.
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Back to Cover Page
i. One Way Links:
Links that link from one website to another with no reciprocal link. For
example, a link to a
website on a directory website is a one way, inbound link for the website
that opens when you
click on the link. Links obtained through asocial bookmarking and
blog/forum posting are also
one way links.
Back to Cover Page
ii. Reciprocal Links:
When one website links to another which in turn links back to it. Both
websites link to eachother
and so this is known as a reciprocal link. For example, when two, non
competing websites in a
24
similar, complimentary field link to eachother.
Reciprocal linking is considered as bad linking
technique by most of the webmaster however reciprocal links are NOT bad
if used sparingly and
from relevant websites. Please refer to
http://www.google.co.uk/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=599e42b6
baf8e60f&hl=en for
Back to Cover Page
iii. Run of site links – site wide links:
These are links that appear on every page of a website. When we add “SEO
India by DPFOC”
on every page of a website, this would constitute a “run of site link.” If you
get a run of site link on
a large website, then this will quickly add a large number of links to your
site as you receive a link
from every page on that site. For example, if you make a comment on a
forum and have your
comment posted on every page under “latest comments” this may
temporarily drastically
increase your back links.
Back to Cover Page
iv. Deep Linking: Linking to an inner page of a website.
∙ Building links rapidly to a single page on the website is unwise as even if
the link profile is
natural, for all links to point to a single page is not. We need to target a
minimum of 3 clusters
simultaneously as opposed to just a single cluster. This is more natural and
less likely to cause
problems. Below we contrast two websites. In the top one, we have focussed
almost exclusively
on an inner page with the result that this page has 40 referring domains / 113
links but the next
page has just 12/19. To fix this we need to build links to other pages on the
site.
Note, the gradual downward slope of top linked to pages on DPFOC‟s site.
This is far more
natural and this is the profile that we need to build for all clients.
25
So, we have updated our policies so that we will no longer work on one page
exclusively. This
may cause issues in terms of the guidance that we issued for “page 1” ranks
expectations but
these expectations were issued prior to this update. The upside here is that
over time, we will
have all of the keyphrases
in multiple clusters ranking as opposed to the phrases in just a single
cluster.
Note:
It has come up whereby a client wants to target just one cluster of
keyphrases
ie he has 34
keyphrases
that are crucial in his industry and wants to rank for nothing else. Our
current
systems clash with this in that we start to suggest new keyphrases
that they really have no
interest in just so we can broaden the number of pages that we link to. In
such instances, we
should not force the client to try to target keyphrases
in which he has no interest. Rather, just
link to the contact page and other inner pages such as blog posts using
keywords like “click
here” “visit our website” etc
A link to any page on the site will help us rank for our target keyphrases.
Back to Cover Page
v. Authority Links:
Links from highly trafficked websites that search engines regard to be an
authority in a particular
field. Links to your website from authority websites have strong influence
on rank.
However, not all links are worth the same. Some links massively improve
rankings (authority
links / DMOZ) while others very marginally or not at all improve it
(Australian business directory
linking to Irish website). In theory, a link from another website to a website
cannot negatively
affect rank as a website owner has no control over which sites link to it; this
theory is not borne
out in reality as if you submit one article to 10 directories, your website‟s
rank will almost
certainly deteriorate.
However, linking out to low quality websites can negatively affect rank so
we must be very
26
careful about which sites, if any, we link to as Google knows we do have
control over this and
can penalise if we link to low quality, irrelevant websites.
Backlink from the following domain extensions would also constitute an
authority Link but
achieving same is very difficult:
.gov
.edu
Back to Cover Page
vi. Three Way Links:
If company A wants a link from company B, very often company B will also
want a link from A (a
reciprocal link). However, search engines do not place much value on
reciprocal links as if two
websites link to eachother, it is obvious that both website owners are
cooperating with eachother
to improve their rank. Threeway
linkbuilding
avoids this problem by adding a third website (also
under the control of company A) to the equation. Instead of company A
providing a link from its
main website back to company B‟s site, it instead provides a link from
another website under its
control. In this instance, company A and B get inbound links and as the links
are not identified as
reciprocal links, they are not penalized by the search engines. See the
diagram below.
Our policy is that we do not actively go out and try to build three way links.
However, we do
recommend to our clients that they forward all link requests to us. We then
propose to the party
requesting a reciprocal link that instead, we should build a three way link.
The website that we
use to provide the link to the requesting party is
www.bestbusinessesintheworld.com which we
control. When we take on a client first, we send them a document “help us
maximise ROI on
your spend” which advises clients to forward reciprocal link requests to us.
On receipt of such a
request, we should send the requesting party, the following mail:
Hi there,
You recently contacted a client of ours regarding a reciprocal link exchange.
Our experience is
that reciprocal links will not help either of us so we instead propose a three
way link. This works
whereby we will give you a link from the relevant section of this website
which we control
www.bestbusinessesintheworld.com in return for a link to our site from your
site or from any
website that you control. We feel the above approach will generate better
results for us both as
we both get a link but not a reciprocal one.
27
To move forward with this, please confirm your interest and we can get it
organised.
With thanks,
etc etc
Also, please refer to research document on three way links, please see
Google docs.
Back to Cover Page
5. What constitutes a good link?
The quantity of links is not the sole determinant of position; link quality is
also crucial with one
high quality link literally worth more than hundreds / thousands of low
quality ones.
a. Relevancy (Geographical and Content Relevancy):
If a website sells designer shoes and a link is got to this site from a steel
manufacturer‟s website
(no content relevancy), the search engines identify that this is a useless link
in terms of
enhancing the web user‟s Internet experience. While such links will likely
not harm SEO position
(as you cannot control who links to your website), irrelevant links will likely
add very little or no
benefit to a website. However, if a designer shoe website gets a link from an
article about
designer shoes on a high fashion website (relevant content) with the words
“designer shoes” in
the anchor text, this is very relevant and so very valuable. Links from
websites hosted in the
same country (geographic relevancy) are more valuable than those from
websites based in
different countries. A link from a UK hosted directory is of far more use to a
website trying to rank
in Google.co.uk than a link from a Thai directory for example.
While relevant link is always best in quality all links should be pursued.
Back to Cover Page
b. Page Rank (PR Value):
The cofounder
of Google, Larry Page, created an algorithm which assigns a value between
0
and 10 for every webpage
on the Internet. The Page Rank or PR value is a measure of the
importance / quality of a webpage.
For example, Google.com is 10/10 whereas all newly
created websites will begin as unranked. The higher the PR value of the
webpage
that links to a
webpage,
the greater the value of that link. A link from a 0 PR webpage
is obviously not worth
as much in terms of boosting rankings as a 7 PR webpage.
Also note that the transferable page
rank of a page is diluted by the amount of links on that page. If a page has
several hundred links,
the “link juice” transferred to the sites linked to is negligible – the goal is to
receive links from high
PR webpages
with few other outbound links. See graph below:
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Make sure to check out a great video on Page Rank at:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whatisgooglespagerankgoodforwhiteboardfrida
y
To check the page rank of a webpage, use Search Status AddOn
for Mozilla. Note, there is no
such thing as the PR of a website but rather each page of a website has its
own PR value.
Sometimes people will refer to a PR7 website; what they mean typically is
that the homepage is
PR7.
Back to Cover Page
c. Anchor Text
he anchor text is the clickable part of the text that links to your website. For
example, you
will regularly see “For more Click Here” – Clicking on the “Click Here” text
will bring you to
29
the website that the link links to. It is important that the anchor text contains
target
keywords relating to the page to which it links. An interesting example as to
the value of
anchor text is to do a Google search for “Click Here.” The top result is a web
page on
which you can download Adobe‟s latest flash player. This page at no point
either in the
content or code contains the words “Click Here.” So from an onpage
point of view, this
page could not be less optimised for the keyphrase
“click here.” However, there are
many thousands of links all over the Internet from many high PR pages that
say, to
download Adobe‟s latest player, please “Click Here.” Because this page has
so many
inbound links with anchor text of “click here”, it ranks at top of Google for
this keyphrase.
Also important is the content immediately before and after the anchor text as
well as the
content of the page on which the link is. A link with anchor text that
contains the keywords
“Summer fun” from a high PR web page that reviews summer holidays
linking to the
“Special Summer Offers” page of a travel agent‟s website is a highly
relevant link and
worth much to the travel agent. Importantly, the link should bring the user to
the relevant
page of the website which is very often not the homepage – links should be
built to all
pages on the website not just the homepage (deep linking).
While it is important to put our target keyphrases
in anchor text, we must also use variations of
the keyphrases
to ensure a natural feel to the links. For example, if your target keyphrase
is
“Hotels Clare” we should build links with anchor text “hotels in Clare” “best
hotel in Clare” “hotel
in Clare” “hotel Clare” etc. Varying anchor text is an important part of
ensuring our links look
natural. As of 24 April 2012, our revised policy is also to use words like
“click here” “visit the
website” “visit website” ie non optimised keyphrases
in anchor text to further lend emphasis to a
natural feel. Optimising all links can actually result in penalties so we must
ensure that we take
great care to vary anchor text between optimised anchor text, variations of
the keyphrase
and
totally unoptimised anchor text. If done, our link profile will feel natural and
not be penalised.
d. Broad Base:
Our goal is to achieve links from as many different websites as possible.
Achieving 10 links from
the same website (goarticles for example) is not nearly as effective as
building 5 links from 5
different websites. If we get lots of links from the same website over and
over the search
engines say “okay, we get it, this site has voted for you, wedon‟t care if this
site votes for you
another million times, you‟re not getting any more value.” The rule of
diminishing marginal returns
apply here in that the more links we get from the same site, the less impact
each additional link
has to the point where eventually, any additional links add no more value we
must look for links
from diverse sources.
Back to Cover Page
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6. How do I actually build high quality links for a website?
As SEO professionals, once we are happy with the onpage
factors of our website (or while
onpage
issues are being resolved in parallel), our focus shifts to building as many
high quality
links as we can to this website to improve its rank. Building links to a
website that has poor
onpage
factors is frankly a waste of time. There are many ways of achieving high
quality links.
Decide what URL you have to build links for:
Before starting link building, it must be decided for what version of URL
you have to build links to.
For a single page there is 6 different versions of URL possible as follows:
1. www.dpfoc.com
2. www.dpfoc.com/
3. http://www.dpfoc.com
4. http://www.dpfoc.com/
5. http://dpfoc.com
6. http://dpfoc.com/
All of the above URLs will open the same page on the website but will be
treated as separate
URLs containing duplicate content by search engines. Same will be the case
while building links
for them. So one should select only one version of the URL to build links for
and should build
links to that URL only throughout the period of campaign. Version 4 and 6
are recommended to
build links to. If you have selected the www version for your domain then
version 4 is appropriate
option and if you have selected non www version of your domain then
version 6 of the URL is
recommended. Crucially, if you take over a campaign from another team
member, you must
ensure to continue building links to the same URL as your predecessor. If
you start building links
to a different version, then you are not benefiting from the work done
previously.
It is important to see which version of the domain is currently ranking
highest when deciding
which version to use as if one version is already ranking then that is the
version that should be
used. All other versions of the domain should be redirected to the target
version.
Get Links from a broad base:
No one source should be overrelied
on for link building. A link profile should contain links
from a broad base. DPFOC‟s focus is on building links from business
directories (on
commencement of campaign) (10%of time), social bookmarking
(10% of time),
blog/forum posting (35% of time), tracking competitors (10% of time),
profile links (5% of
time) , article submission(20 %) and guest blogging(10% of time). A link
profile overly
weighted in favour of just one link source will not maximise SEO
performance. Witihin each
link category, our focus should be on gaining links from as many different
websites (IP
addresses) as possible. The same website “voting” for your site 10 times is
less effective
31
than 5 different sites “voting for” your site just a single time each. It is
difficult to overstate
the importance of a broad base DO
NOT go back over and over to the same sources
again and again. You must look for relevant new sources of links.
Watch Out for No Follow Tags:
Nofollow is an HTML attribute value used to instruct some search engines
that a hyperlink should
not influence the link target's ranking in the search engine's index ie it is an
instruction to pass no
link juice to the destination URL. For example, www.digg.com, wikipedia,
Twitter, Yahoo
Answers and other websites assign no follow tags to all links placed at their
websites to prevent
these being SPamed by SEO professionals looking to build links. However,
it is widely believed
that nofollow
links do actually help improve a website‟s rank so while our preference is of
course
for the far more powerful dofollow links, we should not totally ignore
nofollow sources. If you find
a link source that you feel is relevant but it will have the nofollow attribute,
go ahead and build the
link anyway as certain amount of nofollow links will lend a natural feel to
the link profile.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nofollow for more.
To see if a website is using the nofollow attribute, simply install the firefox
plugin
mentioned in
the SEO toolkit below. This will highlight all nofollow
links in red.
Vary Anchor text:
Examples of various anchor text for a single keyword:
1. Home Care
2. Home care agency
3. Home care company
4. What is a home care agency
5. Should I use a home care company
6. Click here
7. Visit website
8. www.homecareplus.ie
9. Home Care Plus Ireland
10. Home Care Dublin
11. HomeCare
12. Home Care Plus
13. HomeCare Dublin
14. Home Care Ireland
The Penguin update of April 2012 reinforces the need for varying anchor
text. Submitting link
after link with the same anchor text will not only not help, it will likely
ensure the website is
penalised under Penguin and ranks drop dramatically. If you fail to vary
anchor text, you are
running the risk of destroying a client‟s rank.
32
Planning Month Ahead:
At the start of a month, we know how many hours that we have assigned to a
campaign. We
should multiply this amount of hours by the percentage of time that we
allocate to a particular
type of link building to get the amount of hours that should be invested on
that website on that
type of link building. For example, if we have 40 hours assigned to a
campaign, then we should
spend 40 X .05 = 2 hours on directory submission.
Content Copyright Act:
When creating content, it is crucial that the content that we generate is
original and not copied
from third party sources as to so do exposes DPFOC as well as the
individual involved to
serious legal implications as the owner of the copyrighted material may sue
for breach of
copyright. Copying someone elses‟s content is an immediate dismissal
offence.
Link Building process:
The below instructions should be adhered to.
Utilise 20% of time on article creation.
Utilise 10% of time on social bookmarking.
Utilise 10% of time on tracking competitors.
Utilise 35% of time on blog / forum posting.
Utilise 10% of time on Directory Submission.
Utilise 5% of time on Profile Linking
Utilise 10% of time on Guest Blogging
Each and every link that we build or attempt to build must be tracked in
Cognitive SEO. When
adding a new link to Cognitive, firstly ensure that you have the correct
website selected from the
dropdown
menu. Then click on Add Inbound Link , see below snapshot:
In “From” field, enter the url of the page on which you have created a link,
in “To” field, enter the
target URL of the page. Link type will be text for text links and image if you
have created a link on
an image. For all the requested links, you should select requested in “Link
is” and links which are
33
live, select “Live”. If the link is immediately approved, we can simply add
the URL of the page on
which the link is. However, very often links are not approved immediately,
please see below
snapshot:
a. Directory Websites (5% of time):
There are many thousands of free directory websites on the Internet at which
you can add your
website and so create an inbound link to your website. It is very important
that the website is
added to the correct section of the directory website. For example, if
building a link to the online
marketing section of a website, the link should be added to the closest
classification to online
marketing within the directory – this may be anything from “Web Services”,
to “professional
services” to “SEO” depending on the classifications available. The title and
description should
first and foremost adhere to the guidelines as set down by the directory.
Failure to adhere to
such guidelines will result in our submission not being accepted and our
time invested in
performing the submission being wasted. In the absence of clear guidelines
from the directory
itself, we should adhere to the rules below:
The title should simply include the name of the company and the primary
service it provides. For
example:
DPFOCSEO
Services
The description should read in correct English & not contain too many
keyphrases
(avoid
SPAM). For example, the following would not be likely to be accepted into
a directory as it does
not read naturally:
34
For search engine optimization, search engine optimisation, SEO Dublin,
SEO
services, SEO Company needs in Ireland, Dublin.
Instead, a description more likely to be accepted would be:
IDF Marketing provides search engine optimization (SEO) services to
clients
throughout Dublin & Ireland.
The destination URL should be the most appropriate page on the website. If
the directory does
not accept deep linking, then the homepage has to be used.
In the name field, use the name of owner of the website.
Note: many directory websites will insist that a reciprocal link is added at
your website or may
request payment for links – ignore such requests and browse away from such
websites. When
adding a client‟s website to a directory, we are faced with a dilemma as
follows. If we use their
main company ID, typically [email protected], then this email
address will typically attract
a lot of SPAM as the email
address is being widely circulated. However, if we set up a separate
address that we do not regularly check, then if a genuine enquiry comes to
this mail ID,
the company will not receive same. So, we have 2 options which we must
make available to the
client as follows:
Option 1:
Use the company‟s primary email,
address.
Option 2:
Ask the company to set up a separate email
address, perhaps [email protected]
Team member should liaise with Account Manager to get directory
submission email for the
project assignd to him.
DPFOC maintains a list of business directories at our Google Docs account
named as
“Directory List”. Be sure to add websites under our control to all relevant
directories here.
Further, any new directories found that are not included in our Google Docs
Account should be
added(should be forwarded to DL) to ensure that all DPFOC SEO staff can
benefit. Sites should
be added to directories in following order:
1. Local or geographically relevant directories e.g. if your site is target to
Ireland then a local
directory would be an Irish web directory. In this case you should submit
Irish website to
all Irish web directories listed on Google Docs.
2. Fast Approval Directories: These are the directories which accept
submission either
immediately or within few days(1 week at most). DPFOC maintains list of
such
directories. Be sure to add your website to these directories to get Fast
Directory Links.
35
3. General Directory: Directories which have all type of categories and
accept submission
world wide i.e. global business directories. You can submit all type of and
website in any
region in world here.
Every website should seek to attain a link from www.dmoz.org as this is one
of the most
respected directories on the web and a listing there will substantially
improve rankings. Great
care should be taken to adhere to the editorial guidelines when submitting
websites to the
directory as failing to adhere may result in the website being refused. DMOZ
is human edited and
achieving a rank can literally take months or may never happen as DMOZ
editors may decide
that their directory already has sufficient listings of a high quality in that
particular classification.
Currently, a website optimised by DPFOC has a worse rank to a website
optimised by one of
our competitors for the phrase “copywriter” in Google.co.uk. While our
website
www.billfryercopywriter.co.uk has far more links than our competitor
www.abccopywriting.com
they have attained a DMOZ ranking and accordingly perform better.
Making multiple
submissions for the same site to DMOZ will ensure your site is not
added – accordingly,
a website should be very carefully submitted once only to a category
with an editor.
Before attempting to make a DMOZ submission, you must have read
the contents of
www.dmoz.org thoroughly particularly http://www.dmoz.org/add.html as
well as the research
document at Google Docs entitled DMOZ. Be aware of DMOZ search
feature as sometime it
shows misleading results. If you search for alertful.com in DMOZ it will
show you 20 listings
however none of them is for the website www.alertful.com. Remember, each
office location that
a business has can be submitted separately to DMOZ so if your client has
multiple offices, make
sure to do multiple submissions.
DMOZ submission should be done under the guidance of Account Manager.
If your website is
not approved in DMOZ after 6 months of submission, you should schedule
new submission.
One quick way to find relevant directory sites is to do a Google search for
searches like:
Submit website keyword
Submit URL keyword
Submit your site keyword
Add your site keyword
Add your website keyword
For example, if link building for a website that offers home care services in
Ireland, a Google.ie
search for:
“Submit website home care” returns www.submityoursite.com in the SERP
which would be a
useful place to add your link.
Alternatively, search for “industry directory” or “industry business
directory” for
example, you
could search for “home care directory” or “security services directory” or
“online marketing
36
directory” etc to find industry specific directories.
The increased importance of directories now that Google Places is so
important:
As we know, Google Places is becoming increasingly important for local
search. Getting to the
top of Google Places results locally is now as sought after, if not more
sought after, than getting
to top of natural listings. The more directories that list a website, the better it
will perform in
Google Places this
is because it enhances visible consistency. See our Google Places doc at
Google Docs for more. Importantly, if a business has several locations, we
must make several
submissions to ensure that each branch has its own local listing.
Finally, if we search for a product or service that we are interested in
followed by a geographic
location, Google will very often show other directories on which the website
that they are
displaying in Google Places is listed. This is a good way of finding industry
specific directories.
Back to Cover Page
b. Social Bookmarking Websites:
i. What is Social Bookmarking?
Social bookmarking offers a web based, more interactive alternative to
traditional bookmarking at
your computer (add to favourites). Websites such as Digg, Reddit,
StumbeUpon and many more
enable users to sign in and bookmark their favourite websites online. Social
bookmarking
websites enable users to organise content on the Internet that they find
interesting (bookmarking
the content) as well as to share this content with their friends and colleagues.
For example, if
you find a website that you really like, you can bookmark this website on a
social bookmarking
website. The websites that you bookmark can be “tagged” by assigning
keywords to them in
much the same way as we add keyword metatags
to webpages.
Furthermore, such websites
enable users to bookmark websites to certain categories. For example, a
website could be
tagged as “Search Engine Optimisation” in a business category. Regardless
of where in the
world you are or on what computer you are using, the bookmarks can be
accessed via the web
by logging in to your account – this is the core benefit of social
bookmarking. When bookmarking
websites, we should tag them with our target keyphrases.
We should ensure that the anchor
text to the destination URL is optimised for target keyphrase
also.
37
ii. What Came Before Social Bookmarking?
Traditionally, if someone saw a website that they felt was of interest or
important to them, they
would add this to their favourites list or bookmark this website using their
web browser. Over
time a long list of favourites built up that could be returned to quickly and
easily without having to
remember the specific website address of the website – simply clicking on
the website in the
favourites list would open the web page in question without the need to
remember the specific
URL.
The drawbacks to this are that your favourites list is tied to a specific
computer/browser and so if
you are away from your computer or use a different browser, you do not
have access to your
favourite websites. Also, there is no mechanism for you to share your
favourite websites with
others – they are essentially in an unconnected silo on your computer.
iii. Benefits of Social Bookmarking
Location, platform and browser Independent Access to Bookmarks:
Sites that are bookmarked to your social bookmarking website of choice are
available from any
computer with an internet connection. You simply sign in to your
Bookmarking account and
access the bookmarked content from there.
38
Bookmarks can be shared and voted on by users of the bookmarking
website:
The sites that you bookmark can be made visible publicly or to selected
people to whom you feel
your bookmarks will be of interest. Likewise, your friends and colleagues
can make their
bookmarks visible to you. Users can vote on websites (dig them for
example) based on whether
or not they think they are good or not. This sharing of and voting on
bookmarks is what makes
this type of bookmarking social.
Bookmarks can be tagged and searched:
When bookmarking a website at a social bookmarking website, you can
assign tags or
adjectives to describe the nature of the website. For example, a search
engine optimization blog
may be tagged with words like “SEO” and “Blog” much in the same way
that we add keywords to
individual webpages
to describe them. Bookmarks to be arranged / sorted based on parameters
like chronology, category, tags, and metadata
or even via search engines.
Users of the site can search for bookmarked sites that relate to a particular
topic and so social
bookmarking websites are seen by some as a viable alternative to search
engines such as
Google. While Google will rank a website, amongst other things, by the
number of other sites on
the net that link to it, bookmarked sites are ranked by the number of site
users who have voted
for them. Both linking and voting are open to manipulation by SEO
professionals but both are
useful ways of determining the value of a webpage.
iv. Social Bookmarking SEO
Social bookmarking websites offer obvious benefits to SEO professionals
seeking to drive traffic
to websites.
By bookmarking your website at social bookmarking websites, you will
ensure the site is quickly
indexed by search engines. All new sites should be bookmarked immediately
to ensure quick
indexing. The reason for this is that search engines crawl popular social
bookmarking websites
very often and if a link to your website is found, the search engine spider
will follow this link and
index the page as well as any other pages linked to it and so the entire site
will be crawled.
By their very nature the social bookmarking website offers you the ability to
create a link to your
website which will help its performance in search engines. Crucially,
deeplinking
should be
pursued here, not just the homepage. A number of accounts should
registered to facilitate
bookmarking the same website multiple times as well as to vote for your
bookmarks using
different accounts. DPFOC maintains a list of accounts at Google Docs
called “bookmarking
accounts” that everyone can use to bookmark their target websites.
However, as well as using
the preregistered
accounts, we should also create new ones and store the details to these
accounts locally.
Important Notes
1. Please check to ensure that the website is not bookmarked already from
this account.
2. Please do not bookmark more than one page for any website from a single
account.
3. Please use target keyword as title tag.
39
Tips:
1. Bookmark more than one website simultaneously to speed up the process.
v. Bookmarking Example
1. Put details of a website like all URLS, Titles, KEYWORDS and
DESCRIPTIONS in a
manner (mentioned below) for which you want to do bookmarking. It is
crucial that tiAMes
and descriptions include the target keyphrases
for that page and that all target URLs are
bookmarked, not just the homepage while ensuring not to bookmark more
than one page
of a website from a single account.
40
2. Pick any Social Bookmarking website e.g. http://socialwebpad.com/ .
DPFOC has
hundreds of precreated
accounts at different Social Bookmarking Websites which are
available at Google Docs. Please consult with your Account Manager for
Login and
Password access to Google Docs. Make full use of these accounts to prevent
you having
to create new ones but definitely feel free to create new ones also and add
these to
Google Docs for the benefit of your fellow team members.
41
3. On logging in, click on Submit a New Story.
42
4. Copy and paste your target URL into space provided as per screenshot
below.
43
5. Put Title(use single target keyword), Keyword and Description in the red
circles, select
an appropriate category and click submit/Enter.
44
6. Vote the bookmark and click on submit story/Enter.
45
7. Your story is submitted in the travel category.
46
Above is just an example. Every Social Bookmarking Website has its own
way to bookmark. But
the basic things are the same like you need to register on that website, copy
your URL, TITLE,
KEYWORD and DESCRIPTION from the excel sheet and paste it on the
required places, then
click on submit and your website will be bookmarked.
Note: when creating accounts, it makes sense to submit all details requested
such as middle
name for example as leaving such fields blank may identify you as a
SPAMer. Also, bookmarking
several pages of the same website from the same account is not a good idea
as again it may
identify you as a SPAMer as opposed to a genuine person bookmarking a
website.
vi. Manual versus automated bookmarking
1. Manual versus automated bookmarking
As with pretty much all forms of linkbuilding,
there are means of automating the bookmarking
process. Our initial reaction to tools that automate linkbuilding
is one of scepticism as Google
does not like such tools that look to quickly manipulate their SERP results
and penalise those
who use them. Nonetheless, we are duty bound to investigate the merits of
any such tool.
Manual Submission.
Manual Bookmarking submission is a style in which all efforts like Account
registration, Title,
47
Tags and Description submission etc. are done manually. The main
advantage of manual
submission is that it looks „natural‟ if done with keeping few points
(mentioned below) in mind.
This „natural‟ effect protects Social Bookmarking personas from getting a
label of spammer.
It is better to have a slow drip of bookmarks over a long period of time.
Avoid a sudden
flux of 100 bookmarks a day for 4 to 5 days.
Avoid repetition on same bookmarking websites. Try to find out as many
websites as you
can and bookmark there.
Get links from dofollow
and nofollow
bookmarking sites to add a natural feel.
Let's get back and define what personas are, because they are the real heart
of social
bookmarking. A persona is one person with several bookmarking accounts,
creating multiple
bookmarks on multiple sites on a semiregular
basis. They've filled out the info on their profile
pages, and they also use the same bookmarking sites that they bookmark to.
Manual
Submission style is slow but it produces results.
Automated Submission.
There are many automated programs, softwares and websites that create
personas for you and
automatically bookmark your website to Social Bookmarking sites you
choose. Bookmarking
Demon is one kind of software which is used for automated bookmarking.
Apart from that,
www.easysubmits.com and www.socialmarker.com www.seonuke.com are
some of websites
that are used for semiautomatic
bookmark submission. But the problem is, this creates a huge
potential for spamming and generally regarded as more Black Hat approach.
It is DPFOC‟s
policy never to use such automated tools as to do so risks penalisation by
Google and other
search engines – we use a strictly manual approach.
1. Avoiding having links from bookmarking websites deleted:
Bookmarking websites are very much aware of and crack down upon those
who seek to use
their websites for purely linkbuilding
purposes. Accordingly, we must follow a few rules to
ensure that our links / accounts are not deleted.
We should not bookmark more than one page from a website in the same
account.
Bookmarking several pages of the same website in the same account will be
interpreted
as SPAM and so the account may be deleted.
We should log back in to old accounts regularly as failure to do this will
mean that, in
time, old accounts will automatically be deleted. By logging in to old
accounts to ensure
that they don‟t get deleted, you are minimising the number of lost links that
you will suffer.
Note: We do not track social bookmarking links in Cognitive SEO as to do
so seriously impedes
productivity.
Back to Cover Page
c. Blog / Forum Posting:
Pretty much every industry will have blogs (web logs) whereby the blog
owner (companies or
private individuals) posts stories / interesting industry issues. Many blogs
allow members of the
public to comment on the posts. The idea is to create a dynamic discussion
about a particular
topic. The initial post sets the ball rolling and if lots of people visit the blog
and post comments on
48
the story, an interesting exchange of ideas can take place. Posting a
comment on a blog and
gaining a link to your target website is a nice link to get. Finding a topical
blog that relates to your
chosen target website is the first step. See “tips to finding blogs” and “blog
search engines”
below for techniques on how to find suitable blogs.
Ideally the links from the comments should be dofollow.
However, very often, comments on blog
posts are nofollow.
This is the case on blogspot.com and Wordpress blogs and many others.
Links should also be pursued even if nofollow to add a natural feel to link
profile.
Once a relevant blog is found that allows comments to be placed on the blog,
the next challenge
is writing a comment that looks natural (take help from onshore content
writer). Take time to
read the original post we
recommend reading the post quickly to gain an understanding of what
is being discussed. It is absolutely vital that you understand what the original
post was about and
how those commenting have reacted. If you do not take the time to
understand this, you cannot
meaningfully contribute to the discussion. Once you have understood the
post, you should be in
a position to make a meaningful comment.
Note: We create strong content which we upload on client‟s blogs each
month. We need to find
blogs and forums that are requesting the content that is provided on our
client‟s website. For
example, as we have a post here
http://www.allkarepropertydryingout.co.uk/_blog/Allkare_Flood_Damage_
Blog/post/How_to_Dry_
Out_a_Property/ that explains how to dry out a property, we need to find
blogs and forums that
are looking for this content. To do this, search for “how to dry out a property
comment” “how to
dry out a house forum” see
search operators for other techniques which can be used to find
relevant blogs and forums. If we provide a link to useful, relevant content,
moderators are likely to
allow the link in. Similarly, if we had a post on “how to clean your wedding
ring” we would look to
comment on forums and blogs that have asked for this content ie we need
strong content that
serves as link bait that we then go out and build links to.
EXTREMELY IMPORTANT:
Lazy, generic comments that in no way address the post will serve only to
infuriate the blog
owner. Examples of such crap are:
“Wow, great blog, thanks for posting; you have really nailed it!”
“Thanks for such an interesting post you
really know this area well!”
“This is really great; I‟m going to come back regularly to check out your
blog!”
All of the above translate into “I couldn‟t be bothered making any effort, I
am a blog SPAMer and I
copy and paste the above crap into every blog I find.” Blog authors are not
idiots and will not
allow through such crap.
An example of engaging meaningfully with the author is as below:
Original Post on:
http://www2.moreheadstate.edu/blogs/blog.aspx?blogid=730&id=27710
49
Global warming, over population, air and water pollution, deforestation and
unsustainable
development, they all seem so insurmountable to the average
person…especially here in eastern
Kentucky. “What could we do to change anything?” we ask ourselves if we
even bother to ask
something at all. This blog was created to help us answer that question as
well as to engage
Morehead State‟s students, faculty, and staff in an open dialogue about the
issues that threaten
our, hopefully bright, future on this planet. With any luck, throughout this
process, you‟ll find
yourself amazed, inspired, and informed.
I encourage you to check in regularly. Here you‟ll find information about
upcoming events at the
University and in our community. You‟ll also be able to access
environmental news that will affect
you and outlets for effecting policy change in the area, national, and locally.
You‟ll get many ideas
on how to personally live a more environmentally conscious life without
giving up every modern
amenity and finally you‟ll here from me and others on our trials and
tribulations trying to live a
more “green” life.
Example of a good comment 1:
I think it's a decent idea to set up this blog and will read with interest.
However, I am inclined to
agree that anything we do as individuals is pretty much irrelevant
particularly in the fight against
global warming we
can turn our lights off when leaving a room, install insulation to reduce heat
consumption, install windmills, geothermal systems etc etc but all of this is a
drop in the ocean
in the light of the huge amounts of carbon being pumped into the atmosphere
by emerging
nations such as China and India who correctly argue that the West had no
restrictions when
building up their industrial base so why should they try to expand under the
confines of these
new rules I
fear that no matter what we do, it won't make a difference however,
I will read this
blog with interest.
Posted by: Eddie O‟ Driscoll Visit Website
Example of a good comment 2:
I want to share some facts with you guys.Coalburning
power plants are the largest U.S. source
of carbon dioxide pollution. They produce 2.5 billion tons every year.
Automobiles, the second
largest source, create nearly 1.5 billion tons of CO2 annually.
But still there are solutions and technologies exist today to make cars that
run cleaner and burn
less gas, modernize power plants and generate electricity from nonpolluting
sources. We can
increase our reliance on renewable energy sources such as wind, sun and
geothermal. we can
manufacture more efficient appliances and conserve energy.
I hope this blog would help us more.
Posted by: Rahul Kharnokia Visit Website
Example of a good comment 3:
This is something worth spending time on. It‟s not only global warming
which is threat; all issues
which are highlighted
are big threat for us. We have to accept that we are responsible for this,
so it is high time to take initiative in order to provide healthy environment
for our next generation
as a gift.
Posted by: Nidhi Singh Visit Website
The goal with blog posting is to aim for quality not quantity. If you SPAM a
hundred blogs with
50
crap like “wow, great post, you‟re really gifted!” you will succeed in
annoying 100 authors and
gaining no links. If you take your time, research the topic, write well and in
good, clear English,
you will contribute meaningfully and get a link in the process.
Tips to find blog:
Using following queries might help in finding blogs for commenting:Add
comment "keyphrase”
Post comment "keyphrase”
Write comment "keyphrase”
"keyphrase”
leave a comment / leave comment
"keyphrase”
Notify me of followup
comments? + Submit the word you see below:
"keyphrase”
Remember my personal information + Notify me of followup
comments?
"keyphrase”
Notify me of followup
comments
"keyphrase”
This site uses KeywordLuv
"keyphrase”
Enable Commentluv
"keyphrase”
You can use these tags
"keyphrase”
Powered by BlogEngine.NET
"keyphrase”
Allowed HTML tags:
"keyphrase”
top commenter
Note: the above will locate a large number of relevant blog posts that allow
comments. However,
you will notice that many of the posts have no comments. The reason for this
frequently is that
the blog owner does not approve any comments regardless of their quality.
Spending time
submitting high quality comments to blog posts that currently have no
comments is an inefficient
use of time as even if you write a really great comment, many of the
moderators will not even
read it. So, we need to focus our efforts on those blogs that we know for a
fact do accept
comments. To find such blogs, we refine the technique outlined above as
follows:
keyphrase
“1 comment”
"keyphrase
“2 comments”
etc etc up to “5 comments”
keyphrase
“1 reply”
keyphrase
“2 replies”
etc etc up to “5 replies”
Alternative Query: “”Keyword” 5comments”
Note: we do not go beyond 5 as if a post has more than 5 comments, the
likelihood is that there
is no moderator and the post has been aggressively SPAM‟d. We are
interested in relevant posts
where there are a small number of comments as we know if we post a decent
reply here, we
51
can get a link. Note also that when searching we include “5 replies” “2
replies” etc in quotation
marks to ensure the pages returned have the number followed by the word
comments in that
order; if you leave out the quotation marks, you will get pages that contain
these words not in this
order which can be irrelevant
Often, the blog post that contains the link can be quite old and the moderator
may have even
closed the post to comments. Don‟t let this deter you. The fact that our
competitor has achieved
a link means that this moderator is open to accepting links if the quality of
the comment is good.
Browse the rest of the blog and see if there is a more fresh post that you can
comment on. If
your comment is good enough, it too will be accepted.
Also note that blogs often ask the commenter to submit their name and this
name becomes the
anchor text of the link so very often link builders will put a keyword in the
name box. This
immediately marks you out as a link builder as opposed to a genuine
contributor to the blog. It is
best to add a local sounding name (“John Long” for example in Ireland)and
secure the link as
opposed to trying to put keywords in and having the link refused. Putting
your keywords in the
namebox
screams “I am a linkbuilder”
so don‟t do it. If others have successfully done it and got
away with it then it probably is worth trying but don‟t be the first commenter
on a blog post to try
this.
.
When commenting, you will often come across a commenting engine called
“Disqus.” Disqus
enables people to create accounts and then use this account to post
comments on any site that
uses Disqus. We should create an account and use this to comment on any
blog that uses
Disqus as the engine.
Blog Search Engines:
http://topsy.com/
http://www.inlineseo.com/dofollowdiver/
http://www.seopositions.net/dofollow/
http://www.postrank.com
http://www.technorati.com
http://www.dofollowblogs.com
http://followlist.com/ (to find out DoFollow blogs according to their niche)
http://www.wmtips.com/tools/dofollowsearchengine/
http://www.dropmylink.com/
http://www.getbacklinkslocally.com/
https://www.soloseo.com/tools/linkSearch.html
http://www.icerocket.com/
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Notes: The reason link bait is called this is because in fishing “bait” is used
to catch fish. So, in
linkbuilding,
we are not looking to catch fish but rather we are fishing for links. Good
quality
content attracts links so we call it link bait.
THE most important thing about linkbait
is to read thoroughly the content that you are relying on
as link bait ie if you do not understand the content, you will not be able to
effectively use it as bait.
If you understand it and know why it is valuable, you will confidently share
this with other
members of a forum / blog.
You have something great to share, be honest!
While using link bait content, do not use anchor texts while using the blog
post link. Be a real
user and add some meaningful value to the blog/forum comment. You can
write something like
this: “ For more information on this, you can visit this blog post: BLOG
LINK HERE. Apart from
this, some of client‟s websites already have link bait content and we should
leverage the content
to earn some links. A practical example is as follows: One of our clients,
http://www.ardnasidhe.com/ provides very useful information on “things to
do in Kerry” at:
http://www.ardnasidhe.com/thingstodokillarney
. We can use this in forums/blogs as this is a
real “Compelling Content”. Example: We can use this content and can
comment on related
blogs in below manner:
Hi all, I work for a hotel and we have preapred a very detailed guide on
things to do in Killarney check
this out here: http://www.ardnasidhe.com/thingstodokillarney
"
Our thinking here is that as we are genuinely adding value to the discussion
by referencing a
useful resource, even the most stringent moderators will approve our
comment.
Note: After submitting the comment, do check the url in other browser and
remove the
“#comment415” anchor from the url before testing the URL.
Google Search Operators:
You can use Google Search Operators in order to find blogs for blog
commenting. Examples are
as below:
intext:Your Keyword inurl:.blog
allintext: Your Keyword inurl:.edu
Also, refer to our Doc called “Google Search Operators” to learn more about
the usage of these
search operators.
Seomoz Link Acquisition Assistant:
53
You can you use Seomoz Link Acquisition Assistant in order to get new link
building
opportunities. The Link Acquisition Assistant (or LAA! for short) takes
information about your
company, brand and competition and returns 121 link acquisition queries.
Link to the tool is :
http://www.seomoz.org/labs/linkfinder/
index.php
Forum Signature Linking:
Much of what is mentioned above applies to link building from forums.
Forums are similar to
blogs but instead of a conversation being started by the blog owner, anyone
can start a
conversation (a thread) and people can post comments on the thread. When
registering on a
forum website, be sure to add your website link by clicking on “edit profile”
option after logging
in.This will provide a backlink to the user‟s website(profile link).
After registering at the forum, we should go the introduction post or the
introduction thread of the
forum (if one exists), and introduce ourselves in a well written, meaningful
way so as to show the
forum owner that we are genuine and intend to contribute meaningfully to
the forum and are not
going to SPAM it.
An example of an introductory post would be as follows:
http://www.knowledgesutra.com/forums/topic/77099hello/
http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=213468
http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=22925
http://forums.seochat.com/seoprofessionals57/
introduction456932.
html
Forums also facilitate the addition of a signature, the sole purpose of which
is to advertise the
poster‟s website, so you can create a backlink with optimised anchor text
within the signature.
Best practice is to create only one link, either in a post or signature. Also
some forums do not
allow you to add a signature before having a certain number of posts; in such
cases, create a
number of posts without any links to build trust with the moderator. After a
number of relevant
posts without any links, the moderator will typically allow links thereafter.
Regardless of the
forum, we should post a minimum of 5 times with no links in order to build
trust with the
moderator. Thereafter, we can build links but not in every single post, trust
is an ongoing issue
so by posting sometimes with no link, you build more trust.
Below are some examples of how you may get past the moderator:
Example 1 Ask
for Advice: A camera forum
Consider starting a new thread “best camera for a beginner”
The first post may be “Hi all, I‟m new to the world of photography but am a
keen learner and love
nice photos. As I am just starting out, I was wondering if anyone could give
me some advice as
54
to what is the best camera for a beginner. I am happy to invest in a good
camera but said I‟d take
some advice from the experts on this forum first!
Depending on forum, you might get a link at the bottom of the post or more
likely as a profile link
when registering for the forum.
Example 2 Agree
with someone:
If two people on a forum are disagreeing with each other, a comment as
below may be
acceptable to a moderator:
Interesting debate guys. On balance, I have to agree with John.............sorry
Mick!
Example 3 give
some advice / answer a question:
This is perhaps the best means of engaging in a forum as if you provide a
good answer or a
meaningful contribution that adds to the body of knowledge within the
forum, this will endear you
to the moderator thereby making link acquisition from this forum less
challenging.
If somebody posts looking for some advice, give it to them. So, if someone
asks for “where is
good to eat in Birmingham” just Google “restaurant Birmingham” find a
restaurant and post:
Hey John, I pass through Birmingham a lot and regularly eat at insert
restaurant. Friendly staff,
good food and fair pricing.........you won‟t go too far wrong here.
If someone posts asking when is the best time of year to visit Ireland, do
some quick research
and formulate a coherent response:
Hi, I was in Ireland last summer and really enjoyed it. I am told that the
winters are wet and cold
so I definitely think you should go in summer to ensure you can enjoy all the
county has to offer
and not be stuck inside!
If someone asks who is the best provider for electricity in the UK, do some
quick research and
make a post:
To be honest, I think they‟re all about the same in price. Some do offers
from time to time but in
the long run I think they‟re all very close on price. I have been using
NPower for over a year and
no complaints.
When looking for forums on which to post, be sure to make full use of the
Google search
operators. See “Google Search Operators” research doc at Docs.
We can also add links in the body of the post where the forum allows this
practice and where we
can naturally weave our keywords as anchor text into the post. We can also
provide links to our
clients‟ blog posts within the body of the post.
If we do find a relevant forum, becoming a regular contributor to this forum
is useful even though
this would appear to contradict our emphasis on achieving a broad base.
While we do want a
broad base, the relevancy of links that can be achieved from a relevant
forum are useful and so
55
being a regular contributor is worthwhile.
Forum Search Engines:
Some good vertical forum search engines are:
1. www.omgili.com
2. www.boardreader.com
3. www.boardtracker.com
4. www.bigboards.
com
5. www.dofollowforums.com
6. http://www.forumssearch.com/
Blocked IP Addresses:
On occasions, if a forum believes that we, as a company, are SPAMing their
forum, they will
block our IP address. In order to get around this, we can use a proxy IP
address which has not
been banned. To do this:
Download the proxy software Ultra Surf 10.06.
Go to the options menu and select the proxy settings and then select
manual proxy
settings.
Enter the proxy host and proxy port and then save it by clicking “ok.”
Now register at the forum using this IP address.
When creating a new account at this same forum, make sure to change the
proxy port
and IP address.
Blog Posting:
You can also write your own blog; there are lots of blogging sites available
which allow you to
create your blog by registering on the website. Blog posting provides you a
new platform to share
your views and create links. Examples of blogging sites are:
wordpress.com
blogger.com
livejournal.com
blog.com
weebly.com
bitcomet.com
thoughts.com
To see full list of blogging sites, please visit “Article & Blog List” on
Google Docs.
A blog post can be also be optimized like a webpage which gives us more
out of that blog.
Please refer to document “Blog and its optimization” on Google docs for
more on blog
56
optimization. To increase the value of your blog further, you should tweet
your best posts. Each
team member should set up a blog on each one of the sites above and use
these to promote
their clients‟ websites.
Building a link from a blog that you have set up yourself is a good idea but
we can get even
greater results if we submit the rss feed of these blogs to syndication
websites. Every time you
post on your blog, this post is automatically sent by rss feed to the
syndication websites
including the link in the post. So, if you submit your blog to 10 syndication
websites, instead of
getting 1 link per post, you will get 10.
To learn more about RSS and syndication websites, see:
http://www.whatisrss.com/ &
http://www.squidoo.com/deeplinkswithrssfeeds
All blogs should be added to RSS feed websites to get maximum out of
them. For the list of
syndication websites refer to “Syndication websites” spreadsheet on Google
docs. If client have
a blog on their website then it should also be added on such websites.
At time of writing, we feel that 30% of time allocated to a campaign should
be utilised on finding
dofollow blogs and forums relevant to an industry and writing blog post on
our own blogs. Once
found, the link builder should return to these blogs / forums periodically and
post meaningfully
there. Sometimes blogs / forums will only allow you to include dofollow
links after you have
posted 10 comments and so it is worth identifying blogs and forums and
becoming active
participants in these. An SEO executive should use his 15% time on forum
and blog
commenting and 15% time on blog posting on blogger sites.
Back to Cover Page
d. Tracking Competitors:
Tracking competitors is a vital part of the link building process. If a
competitor is ranking highly
for our target keyphrases,
then clearly they have built effective links. It is our duty to see from
where these links were secured and where possible secure such links for our
site.
For example, if one of your target keyphrases
is “graphic design London,” do a Google search
for “graphic design London.” Those websites ranking on page one of the
SERP are performing
very well for this keyphrase
and so their link profiles should be initially emulated and eventually
beaten. In order to see what links well performing competitors have
achieved, we rely on the link
analysis tool at Cognitive Tools. As explained in “Populating Cognitive”,
you will add one of your
main competitor in “Competitor Section” and for rest of your competitors,
you will need to
download backlink reports .To access this, go to Back Links Report
Management and enter the
website that you wish to analyse. A report will be delivered showing all of
the links to our
competitor‟s website. Links can be sorted by value as measured by “Rating”.
Also,sort the link
according to their Ratings before downloading. Now upload this file in
Competitor Analysis
Section of your checklist.
57
If we have links in this fashion, we will be able to populate the total number
of links from each
Rating and can compare this with our own website. In order to calculate
number of particular
“Rating” link, you need to select columns and in the bottom right of the
sheet, you will see total
count of such links. For example, I want to calculate total number of Rating
5 links, I will select
Rating 5 Rank link in Rating column and excel will give the total count of
such links, see below
snapshot.
Note: Make sure to select Group By domains while downloading the report.
While analyzing competitor links in excel sheet, please add a tab called
“Link Type” , each link
should fall under one of these categories:
Links Type Possible Links
ArticleArticle
Links
Social BookmarkingSocial
Bookmarking Links
Blog CommentBlog
Comment Link
Blog PostBlog
Post Link
58
ForumForum
Commenting
Client siteLinks
from client sites( SEO By XYZ)
Paid LinkPaid
Links
DirectoryDirectory
Listing
ProfileProfile
Link
UnidentifiedLInks
which does not fall in any of above categories
Make sure that you have used exact same nomenclature, i.e do not change
the spellings and
use exact same Caps. In case, if some of your link(s) does not fall under
above categories, feel
free to use your own categories, but make sure that the categorization is
uniform.
Once you have each link with associated Link type, you can filter out the
links according to types,
in order to filter links, follow below steps:
Make sure that the “Link Type” Column has all the values in proper
format( as defined
above).
Select the “Link Type” Column and click on “Filter” icon as per below
screenshot:
Once you have turned on “Filter” , Click on the drop down icon next to the
“Link Type” tab
and select the Link type which you want to analyse. If you select “Forum”, it
will show
links with “Link Type” as “Forum”. You can also use combinations of such
link types by
selecting multiple “Link Types”. See below screenshot for the same:
59
Thus, you can easily categories links according to their types and will help
you to understand the
strategy of our competitor. Once done, at the end of each competitor tab,
conclude the summary
of link types according their %, see below snapshot:
Above figures are hypothetical, please do not get confused.
It will not be possible to secure all of the links from all of the sources that
they have achieved for
various reasons but it will be possible to secure links from some of the same
sources. The
thinking here is that many of these websites will also be employing link
building experts to build
links; if they have already spent time finding decent link sources, we should
certainly copy these.
When we start working for a campaign, every AM should maintain a Comp
Analysis sheet
(available at tab 2 in Checklist) which will help us to do a structured
competitor analysis. We
have a check in our checklist to implement above directives.
Note: If a competitor has achieved a link in the form of a comment on a blog
post, we should try
to attain a link from here also by adding a meaningful comment. However,
sometimes the blog
post may be several years old and posting may not be appropriate. In such
instances, it is worth
60
investigating to see if there is scope to post a comment on a more recent
post.
On occasions, high value link opportunities in the form of blog comments
will be identified.
However, sometimes we may feel that we don‟t have sufficient industry
knowledge to make a
meaningful comment. In such instances, it is worth involving the client with
the below template
being of use:
Hi client,
I have identified a high value link opportunity for your website. I would add
a comment myself in
order to achieve a link to your site but I feel some input from you may
increase the chances of
securing the link. To this end, I was wondering if you read the blog post here
www.insertblogpostlocationhere.
com/blog and prepare a comment that meaningfully adds to
the discussion if
you email this to me, I will go ahead and use your comment to create the
link.
If you don‟t have time, I will try myself but would prefer your input as we
only get one shot at
making a comment and it needs to be good to be approved by the moderator.
Regards,
Back to Cover Page
e. Reciprocal / Three Way Link Request:
Inbound reciprocal link request:
Our clients will inevitably receive a large volume of requests for reciprocal
links. On commencing
a campaign, the account manager will advise the client to forward these
requests to us. While
we do not offer a reciprocal link from our client‟s website, we can offer the
enquirer a three way
link whereby they provide us with a link from their website and we provide
them with a link from a
directory that we set up for this purpose. If the client forwards a reciprocal
link request to you,
please use the template below to try to negotiate a three way link for the
client:
Hi there and thanks very much for your enquiry,
We would be delighted to exchange links with you. However, we cannot
provide a link from
(insert your website here) but can provide a link from an invitation only
business directory
www.bestbusinessesintheworld.com we
will add your site to the relevant geographic location as
well as to the relevant industry classification (please advise us of your
preferred geographical
area and industry). This would therefore constitute a relevant, contextual
link for your website. If
you are interested, please reply confirming same and we will arrange the link
to be placed at the
directory without delay. To add your business, we need the following:
The name of your business.
A brief description of your business not to exceed 300 characters. 1 link
can be placed in
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the description with anchor text and destination URL of your choice. Please
advise as to
your preference.
Your business address.
Your business industry.
For the link that you will provide to us, we require a link to the following
page insert (relevant page
here), with anchor text (insert anchor text of relevant phrase here).
We look forward to hearing from you in this regards.
Best regards,
etc etc.”
If a client chooses to forward such requests to us, the AM must reply as
above. If the link
requester agrees to such a link exchange, then the AM must liaise with the
Ishan to ensure the
business is added to our directory. Also, the AM must ensure that the link to
our client‟s site is
added to Cognitive, including the contact details of the link exchanger, with
classification as
reciprocal link to ensure that we monitor its status over time. In the event
that the link to our
client‟s site becomes inactive, we need to send the following email
to the person with whom we
have exchanged the link with:
Hi there,
We note that the link that you had previously provided to our website (insert
relevant website
here) has now become inactive. Please activate this link and confirm same
has been done. If we
do not receive such confirmation within next 3 working days, we will
remove your business from
our directory.
Best regards,
etc etc.
If we receive no reply, we must remove the link from our directory
Back to Cover Page
f. Youtube Links
By creating a Youtube channel for our clients, we can build a dofollow
link from Youtube to our
clients‟ websites by getting a profile link. In order to create a Youtube
channel, visit
http://www.youtube.com/create_account If the client already has a gmail
account or already has
a Youtube channel, then simply sign in and optimise the link. If not, create a
new account
ensuring usernames and passwords are forwarded to AM for recording in the
client password
sheet. Once created, edit your profile where you can add a link to the client‟s
website. Once this
is done you can ask the client to check if he has any video for his business
which you can
62
upload on Youtube. This will increase the value of the profile and hence the
backlink. If we are
going to go to the trouble of creating an account and uploading a video, we
can follow some of
the guidlelines below to optimise the video for SEO purposes.
Include appropriate keywords in the name of the video and always use
“video” in the
name of the video as people often append “video” to search queries when
specifically
searching for a video. The title is the most important piece of information
that the search
engines have about your video and so again should include keyphrases
and the word
“video.”
For each video, write a unique, keywordrich
description that includes a URL. Put the
URL at the beginning. This way, even when the "more info" option is
collapsed, the user
will still see the link. Also, a video's description is the nextbest
indicator to search
engines of the video's content, right behind the title. Use this space to place
relevant
keywords when appropriate.
Tag your videos with keywords. Along with the title and the description,
tags help the
search engines identify the video's content. If you have relevant keywords,
place them
here.
g. Press Releases
If a client has some newsworthy content, this can be used as the basis of a
press release which
can in turn be used as a linkbuilding
tool by submitting the release to PR websites. To read
more about press releases, refer to “Press release” document on Google
docs.
Back to Cover Page
i. Profile Links (5%)
Profile links helps a lot in getting broad link base from popular websites
across web e.g. youtube
profile links. We should seek profile links for all website under our control.
Please see the “Profile
Links” spreadsheet on Google Docs for the sources where you can create
profile links.
j. Event Links
If your client is speaking at or hosting an event, this provides you with a
great opportunity to build
links from event directory websites. A great article on how to leverage
events to build links can
be found here:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/thecompleteguidetolinkbuildingwithlocalevents
Our “help us maximize ROI on your spend” document requests that clients
keep us appraised of
upcoming events that they are hosting or speaking at. An example for such
link building
63
technique is available at: : http://internet2012eorg.
eventbrite.com/ . we have created this event
for upcoming event which is hosted by Supreme Systems.
k. Infographic Links
An infographic, as the name suggests, is a graphic used to display
information relating to a
certain topic. The best way to understand what one is is to view one at the
following website:
http://visual.ly
There are a number of infographic directory websites at which we can
submit infographics and
in the process build links for our clients. For an example, of such a link, see
http://visual.ly/onlinemarketinginfographic
as well as a profile link here:
http://visual.ly/users/dpfoc
In order to build such a link, the first thing we need is a decent infographic.
The account manager
should be intimately familiar with his clients‟ businesses and as such in a
position to devise a
concept for an infographic as well as write the necessary accompanying
description. Once the
concept/rough sketch is understood, this is forwarded to Ishan for
infographic creation. On
receipt of same from Ishan, this must be forwarded to the client for approval.
On approval, the
infographic should be submitted at as many infographic directories as
possible. An initial list of
these can be found here
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/gettingthemaximumnumberoflinksfromyourinf
ographic
As we have limited graphic design resources, this technique should be
initially reserved for
campaigns that re struggling as this should provide a strong boost to such
campaigns.
Ultimately, every client should have an infographic that was used to build
links but in the first
instance, we should focus on troublesome campaigns.
The following template will be useful when dealing with clients:
Hi client,
We would like to use a technique called infographic linkbuilding. This is
where we generte an
infographic relating to your business and then upload this at infographic
directory websites
gaining a link to your site in the process. This is similar to article directory
submission but
instead of articles, we are using infographics. We have internal design
capabilities so can
generate one for you but your input in coming up with a concept would be
very helpful as you
know your business better than anyone else. To this end, I would welcome
any ideas that you
may have for an infographic for your business. If you cannot provide one,
we can generate one
for you. To see the sorts of things that people generate infographics about,
check out this
website: http://visual.ly You will see that DPFOC has acquired a link to our
website by generating
the infographic at: http://visual.ly/dpfoconlinemarketting
Please note that in the absence of a reply from you on this, we will prioritise
clients who do
engage with us in terms of infographic generation.
Thanks,
etc etc
l. Guest Blogging
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What is a guest blog post?
As the name suggests, a guest blog post is when someone provides a blog
post to the owner of
a blog who publishes it. The owner of the blog gets an interesting post for
their readers and
typically the author of the post gets a link to his website win/
win. The reason that the publisher
will be interested is that fresh content helps their site to rank and additional
visitors to their blog
means that they can make more money through monetization such as
AdSense.
What are the pros and cons of a guest blog post?
Contextually relevant link from a trusted source:
A link from a travel blog that writes frequently about travel related topics is
obviously of high value
to a website that operates in the travel space. However, while the homepage
of these blogs can
often have high PRs in excess of 4, the actual blog posts themselves tend to
have much lower
PR. So, even if the post is accepted, the value of the link will not be of as
high value as for
example a link from the homepage. Nonetheless the authority of the domain
and the contextual
relevance of the link will ensure that it does help rankings.
Onshore team will provide you the content for the guest blog.
So if a homepage link is better, are we better off trying to get a
sponsored homepage
link?
For example, http://www.cardesignonline.com is a PR5 page and links to
nononsense.ie thereby
giving it a very high AC rank link of 7. However, this is a paid link. Had
nononsense tried for a
more natural link perhaps from an inner page such as
http://www.cardesignonline.com/design/modelling/cad/hdriimaging/
index.php, the link would not
be as valuable. So, as we only use paid links in highly competitive industries
where we do have
budgets to go and buy the homepage high AC rank links, why would we
consider guest blog
posts at all? Why not just buy the high AC rank homepage links such as on
this page
http://www.irelandshiddengems.
com/ There are two key reasons why we would consider using
a guest blog instead of a sponsored homepage link. The first is that in theory
if we write a really
good blog post, a blog owner may include it in their blog for no charge as
they feel the content is
of such high quality that their visitors would appreciate it. As many blog
owners will charge to
include a guest blog post anyway, the reason is even less valid. The second
reason which is
highly valid is that a guest blog, even if paid for, appears totally natural.
Even if a monthly fee is
paid to the owner of a blog site to include a guest blog post on their site,
Google cannot know this
and therefore cannot penalise it. The same cannot be said for homepage
sponsored links. The
link that nononsense has on this page http://www.cardesignonline.com is
blatantly a paid link and
therefore a risky one. A guest blog post, even a paid one, does not carry this
risk.
So, a homepage paid / sponsored link is the most valuable for rankings but
carries a degree of
risk. A guest blog post is not as valuable, although still quite valuable, but
carries no risk.
So how risky are homepage paid links?
65
It works and isn‟t risky at all?
This is a difficult question to answer. If we look at the website ranking in top
spot on Google.ie for
“car insurance” which is perhaps the most valuable rank on google.ie, we
see that as below 14
of their top 20 links are paid for. This would suggest that paid links are
effective and without risk.
They are extremely risky?
This article
http://searchengineland.com/learnfrombrandcalledoutforpaidlinks122156
suggests however that both the seo company arranging the purchase of paid
links and the
company benefitting them are at great risk if they engage in this process.
So, how can we square this circle? iAcquire was removed from Google‟s
index for 3 months for
buying links but Ireland‟s largest insurance company rules the roost using
the precise policies
that got iAcquire banned. The reality is that Google has no way of
algorithmically detecting paid
versus natural links and so penalising paid links systematically is not
possible. It requires manual
intervention. The iAcquire situation proves this.
So what is our policy?
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As there is risk associated with paid links, our policy is not to use them
unless strictly necessary.
This is determined by the AM and approved the our head of SEO and the
relevant country
manager. In the event that using paid links backfires, we have a disclaimer
on all of our
proposals that we ultimately cannot accept responsibility for a website‟s
rank. For some
campaigns we take the view that being the only clean guy in the fight is
futile and as such we will
use such links. So, if we‟re happy to pay for and to take on the risk
associated with homepage
paid links, then why do we need guest blog posts? Guest blog posts can
offer, in theory, a free
high quality source of links and as such are worthy of consideration.
So how do I go about getting a link from a guest blog post?
Step 1: Write the post
If there are no onshore hours, you can write yourself. Ideally, the client will
have onshore hours
assigned and if so, you should request that the onshore person writes a post
for you and you
spend your time on outreach. However, if there are no onshore hours, you
may try to write
content yourself but if writing content for outreach, you must be hyper
careful as if you reach out
to blog owners with poorly written content, you are totally wasting
everyone‟s time. There is a
strong link between the quality of the post and the likelihood of being
accepted as a guest
blogger. DO NOT WASTE TIME by approaching people with poorly
written content as we lose
100% of the time invested in this. Get strong content and then begin
outreach.
Find relevant, high value blogs
Once you are armed with a strong post, now all you need to do is to find a
blog and to get the
owner to publish it! The goal here is to find high quality, relevant blogs. The
ideal blog is several
years old with a high homepage PR (at least 4). Blogs owned by individuals
who are passionate
about the subject and who post regularly are ideal. While we do not target
blogs owned by
companies, it is possible that a company in a non competing industry or in
the same industry but
in a different target location may publish your blog post obviously
a competitor website should
not be approached as clearly they will not wish to facilitate your linkbuilding
efforts. So how to
find such blogs?
BloggerLinkup.com
This is a fantastic, free resource that connects people seeking guest posts
with people seeking
links in return for submitting guest posts. Once you have signed up, you
receive three emails
per week detailing those people interested in receiving guest posts and the
topics on which they
wish to receive them. Simply submit your email address and you will start
receiving the updates.
Do not spam the website owners; only suggest a post if the website in
question is related to your
client‟s website. As the sites mentioned on this list are actively seeking guest
bloggers, this
should be the first tool used.
Google:
Search for your keyword plus the word blog. So, if searching for a travel
insurance related blog,
simply search for “travel insurance blog.” On the left hand side you can
filter results to only
include blogs and if using this feature, you do not need to include the word
“blog” in your search
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query. This search will inevitably return the blogs of competitor websites;
obviously do not make
contact with them! If you cannot find blogs after searching for your
keyphrase
and the word
blog, broaden out your search. So, if you can‟t find a travel insurance blog,
look for a blog on
travel or one on insurance. Google search operators are of use here too.
“guest posts welcome”
“guest author welcome”
“write for us”
keyword “accepting guest posts”
keyword “guest blogging”
keyword “guest post by”
keyword “guest post guidelines”
keyword “guest post”
keyword “guest posting”
keyword “submit a guest post”
keyword “submit an article”
keyword “submit post”
keyword “write for us”
keyword + contribute
keyword + guest blogging
keyword + submit an article
keyword + submit guest post
keyword + submit post
keyword + submit your post
keyword + write for us
“add guest post”
“become a contributor”
“become a guest blogger”
“become a guest writer”
“become an author”
“bloggers wanted”
“blogs accepting guest posts”
“blogs that accept guest bloggers”
“blogs that accept guest posts”
“contribute to our site”
“contribute”
“group writing project”
“guest bloggers wanted”
“guest blogging spot”
“guest contributor”
“guest post by”
“guest post guidelines”
“guest post”
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“guest posts roundup”
“my guest posts”
“now accepting guest posts”
“places i guest posted”
“submission guidelines”
“submit a guest article”
“submit a guest post”
“submit guest post”
“suggest a guest post”
“the following guest post”
“this guest post is from”
“this guest post was written”
“this is a guest article”
“this is a guest post by”
“want to write for”
“write for us”
inurl:guestpostguidelines
inurl:guestposts
inurl:writeforus
Technorati:
Technorati is a useful blog search engine and a helpful resource when
searching for blogs.
Guestr.com
Guestr.com is a website that is designed to match blog owners seeking guest
posts with
companies / individuals looking to find blogs at which they can guest post.
The site is of limited
use but worth visiting if none of the above sources work as is free.
Useful Resources
1. http://blog.kissmetrics.com/guidetobloggeroutreach/
2. A comprehensive list of Guest Blog Websites is available on docs entitled
“guest blog
sheet”
Making the pitch:
Once you have found a contextually relevant website, get the contact email
address and mail the
website owner. The mail should be sent from an email address associated
with the client‟s
website and not a DPFOC email address. The following template is useful:
Hi there,
I have just finished reading some of your blog posts and found them very
interesting. As I write
regularly on [insert subject here. Examples: travel insurance, health, sport,
disaster restoration
etc] related issues, I was wondering if you would be interested in including a
guest blog post
from me. I think your readers may find one of my articles to be informative
and interesting. I have
attached an article for your review. If you would like to publish this, all I ask
in return is that you
provide a link to my website [insert website here] somewhere in the article.
If you would like me
to write a post on an alternate subject, just let me know and I will be happy
to oblige. If you don‟t
wish to publish my article on your site, I apologise for disturbing you and
thank you for taking the
time to read my mail nonetheless.
Regards,
INSERT CLIENT‟S NAME HERE
If you have found this website through BloggerLinkUp.com, the following
mail is more
appropriate:
Hi there,
I see from my BloggerLinkUp.com alerts that you are looking for high
quality posts on the subject
of [insert subject here. Examples: travel insurance, health, sport, disaster
restoration etc]. As I
write regularly on this topic, I thought I would submit an article to you for
your review. Please find
same attached. I do hope that you deem this article worthy of inclusion on
your site but if for any
reason you don‟t please let me know your feedback as I will be happy to edit
/ update it in line
with your guidance.
If you would like to publish this article, all I ask in return is that you provide
a link to my website
[insert website here] somewhere in the article. If you would like me to write
a post on an alternate
subject, just let me know and I will be happy to oblige.
Regards,
etc etc
Note: As website owners looking for posts via bloggerlinkup offer guidance
as to the type of
posts they are looking for, sometimes you will need to revert to Onshore Am
to advise him/her of
the type of article required and liaise with the onshore exec‟ to prepare same.
We are not against paying the owner of a blog to include our post on their
site. In the event that
payment is requested, you should refer to your head of SEO who in turn will
involve the relevant
country manager in order to decide as to whether or not to buy the link.
Payment requests may
be made by the publisher in his response to our email or there may be
pricing details listed on
the website itself.
Webinar:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3FOXCK9worzUmd4aWczdGFiaEE/e
dit
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m. Reverse Image Search
This technique will not apply to most clients but is useful to know
nonetheless. If your client
produces original images or graphics and uploads them on their website, it is
possible that these
images will be copied by other websites and used. If so, it is worth
contacting the owner of the
website that used the images and request that they acknowledge the source
of the image by
linking to your client‟s website. To find the other sites on which your
client‟s images have been
used, use the Google Chrome extention: TinEye Reverse Image Search
HOW TO USE THIS EXTENSION
To use the extension, simply rightclick
on any web image and select "Search Image on TinEye"
from the context menu. Results are displayed for you at tineye.com. Below
snapshots depicts
the same.
Step 1: Search the image: Right Click on the image and select "Search
Image on TinEye”.
Step 2: Results for the search: It will return a page with resulting searches
for the image.
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Once found, the following email is useful:
Hi there,
I see that you have used an image that I produced on your website at: insert
URL here. Can you
please acknowledge my website as the creator of this image by linking to my
website.
Thanks very much,
etc etc
n. Practical Examples of Good Link Acquisition:
Acquiring link for: Westport Woods Hotel, Westport, Mayo, Ireland
As this is a hotel, I am looking to acquire links from hotel themed websites
ideally within Ireland.
My first step is to search on Google.ie for: hotels leave a comment
On the first page of results, I see www.hotelchatter.com/ The name of the
site suggests to me
that this is a site at which people discuss hotels so I click on it. I browse the
site and see that
registered users can leave comments and in the process can achieve a profile
link which is
dofollow from a highly relevant website. I proceed to register I
would not have taken the time to
register or go to the trouble of reading an article in detail if no link was
possible. When asked for
a profile image, I google “westport woods hotel” in order to get an image of
the hotel as if I leave
this blank it may look to the moderator that I am simply pursuing a link.
Once registered, I read
an article on the site in detail to ensure I have understood it. I choose an
article about a hotel that
is soon to opened in Manhattan:
http://www.hotelchatter.com/story/2012/5/21/102522/573/hotels/While_We
_Wait_on_Hyatt_Unio
n_Square%2C_Hyatt_Place_in_Midtown_Has_an_Opening_Date#1
Having read the article, I compose a meaningful, relevant comment as
follows:
“I love hotels that give you a price and that's it ie no hidden extra charges for
WiFi etc. Hopefully
will get to try this place out when in the States next year!”
This comment is shown as being posted by Westportwoods as this is the
username I provided
on registering. At my profile page on this site I have a dofollow link to the
homepage of my target
website. Because I have made a relevant, worthwhile comment a moderator
is unlikely to
subsequently delete my profile. The link is visible at:
http://www.hotelchatter.com/user/westportwoods Google interprets this as a
vote from a hotel
related website to my target website and one from which very few of my
competitors have links. I ensure to add the log in details to the client
password sheet in case ever needed in the future.
Back to Cover Page
m. Useful Resources
http://www.dropmylink.com/: This tool searches Google automatically for
various type of
websites for link building. All you need to do is to enter your query and
select website
type. It can also searches for .gov and .edu blogs.
Example of high quality links created using this tool are
1.
http://blog.undergradresearch.northwestern.edu/worldisabook/2011/01/09/dr
eamingwithi
nreach/
: Link on .edu domain for DPFOC website anchor text = seo services
2.
http://www.ncaddnj.org/post/Alcoholanddrugaddictiondetoxificationcenters
belonginourcommunities.
aspx : Link for Smoke Relief from 3 PR blog. anchor text = electronic
cigarette
Back to Cover Page
n. Google Plus
We should create google plus profile links for every target page. To do this
you need to +1 a
target page using a Google account which is signed up on Google Plus. You
will find a growing
inventory of such accounts on the Google Doc entitled “Google Accounts
for +1.” By +1ing a
page from an account, you achieve two things. Firstly, the page gets an
additional +1 and also
gets a profile link and as such improved ranks.
Every website under our control has a checklist entitled “Google Plus
Checklist.” The AM must
ensure that every target URL under his/her control is +1‟d by every Gmail
profile that we have in
our inventory. This should be a slow, gradual process as we cannot +1 a
single page more than
3 times in a single day.
To read more about Google Plus and Google +1 button, please refer to
“Impact of Google+1 on
SEO” on Google Docs.
o. Supplier Links
Sometimes suppliers will be happy to link to their clients. For example,
http://www.cctpipefreezing.com/ supplies equipment to a company called
www.findaleak.co.uk
and links to them from their links page. The thinking of CCT PipeFreezing
here is that if they can
help their client, they will be happy to so do. On encountering such links, it
is worth emailing your client to ask him if he also uses this supplier and if so
to ask for a link from them. If not, perhaps
the client can ask their suppliers for a link. Some suppliers will be happy to
help; others will not
but there is harm in asking.
Useful resources
http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?answer=188494
http://googlemerchantblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/important-changes-to-google-product.html
ECommerce Websites:
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55528
http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/gaTrackingEcommerce.html
Google Merchant:
http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=188493