Search Engine Optimization Techniques

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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

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.

.

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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.

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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:

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

Back to Cover Page

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.

Back to Cover Page

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.

23

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

more on this.

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:

28

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

30

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

email

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/

52

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

61

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

64

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?

66

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

70

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.

71

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