AxleIt : The Business Technology Group

Standard link building practices-Key steps to build effective links

Lets first understand link building, it can be termed as the process of building backlinks to website. As per SEO research the more backlinks you have in you web site, the higher it ranks in the search engines. Thus, it is an essential practice of spinning money from internet.

Link building methods changes regularly, anything that is effective today may not be effective tomorrow. According to SEO analysis, if a link has been used too much, then such a method would not be very much effective. Thus it is imperative to know which method is effective and offers good results.

Some of the reliable link building methods are:

Article submission

Getting published in article directories is also an effective and tested methods of link building, you will get backlinks as well as prospective visitors. It also offers you reliable appropriate contextual links that Google prefers.

Directory Submission

Directory submission works effectively in link building, however it is not wise to submit article in all the directories. To be precise, all the directories are not worthy enough for article submission.

According to SEO experts Yahoo directory link is one of the main backlink considered by Google. If you think you can afford Yahoo charges then it is worth submittimg to Yahoo directory. However, remember there is no guarantee that your site would get approval.

DMOZ is another major directory, where you can submit your article and it is worth submitting to, it has the efficiency to provide great advantages to your SEO campaign. But don’t forget that getting approval from DMOZ is not that easy. One more important thing, there are several small directories, which use DMOZ directory categories, so your listing with DMOZ means receiving bonus listings from many other web categories.

BOTW is also another major directory, besides these discussed directories you can look for some other qualitative directories too. Before deciding on any directory, you can analyse it by knowing its number of listed websites, backlinks, PR, age of the directory and others.

Social Bookmarking

Besides, backlinks social bookmarking also offers considerable bonus traffic, provided you bookmarked on world class bookmarking websites, these include Digg, Mixx and Propeller.

Blog Commenting

Blog commenting is another link building methods, find quality blogs linked to your category. Her e you can post your comment. A comment adds value to the blogpost, your comments have a strong chance of staying on blogposts.

Press Releases

Sounds strange but its true, submitting article to press release sites can also assist you in receiving backlinks. Nevertheless, finding a list of good press release site is not an easy task. If you manage to find qualitative press release sites, then you are sure of receiving backlinks.

Social Media and Web 2.0 pages

There is no dearth of social and web 2.0 sites, which can be used for submitting articles for backlinks. You can write articles and content, which are relevant to your website using keywords hyperlinked to your website, for example Squidoo, Hubpages, Blogger and Wordpress.com. These social media web 2.0 sites provide relevant contextual backlinks, which are preferred by major search engines.

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Importance of HTML and XML sitemaps

Like many others you also want to increase your online presence, developing an HTML sitemap and a XML sitemap for your website are some of the right steps in this direction. Besides, it will also add value in SEO, which in turn will help bring your website onto the first page of leading search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. Submitting sitemap to various search engines confirms that you also exist in World Wide Web.

Sitemaps are basically of two types-HTML and XML. An HTML sitemap is one that offers a directory sort of thing comprising all the pages present in your website. On the other hand your XML sitemaps helps search engine in crawling diverse pages of your site. In the below given content we are discussing the various advantages of developing HTML and XML sitemap, and how to create them using sitemap generator.

HTML Sitemaps

It is a single page comprising links to all the pages related to your website. Generally, it is shown on every page and accessed through link in your site footer. A well developed sitemap helps visitors visiting your site access the right page they are looking for, while if your HTML sitemap lacks quality, visitors will face problems searching right page and content. In such a situation, they may be forced to look for other options.

Even from an SEO perspective HTML sitemap is of immense importance, using sitemap search engine’s robot crawls your website’s pages easily and brings them in the search result. Thus your website gets exposed regularly to millions of visitors. For more clear picture on the HTML sitemap you can also have a glance at the IT companies offering sitemap development through search engines , there you will notice that each page on the website comprises a link to this page in the footer.

XML Sitemaps

HTML sitemaps are tailor made for human visitors visiting your website, while XML sitemaps are created keeping in view the technical requirements of search engines. It has been found that popular search engines like Google and Yahoo use XML sitemaps in their search process for indexing the pages of websites. A well designed XML sitemap will easily converse search engine-what kinds of pages are there in your website, when and how often those pages are updated and when they were last modified? This will help search engine in doing indexing job more accurately and deciding which page to revisit regularly.

Given below is an example of the XML you would like to integrate in your XML sitemap:

<url>

<loc>yoursitedomain/index.htm</loc>

<lastmod>2009-03-05</lastmod>

<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>

<priority>1.0</priority>

</url>

If you analyse above example, you will notice, we have provided details concerning the last modified date (<lastmod), the frequency regarding updating (<changefreq>) and the priority of this page with respect to the other pages of the website (<priority>).

Tip: Don’t indulge in unethical practice in giving information in your website’s sitemap. Enter accurate information in your website’s sitemap, otherwise your website will be shown less often in the search results of diverse search engines.

Creating both HTML and XML Sitemaps

Creating HTML sitemaps is similar to creating a basic HTML page containing links to all the pages of your website. Remember whenever you are creating a new page for your website, you must add those links on the sitemap of your website without fail. Although creating XML sitemaps is not only challenging and time consuming manually but you can also collect information on this key subject browsing leading search engines like Google, you can select paid or free information on the subject as per your convenience.

Frequency of submitting sitemap

In case if you are updating information regularly on your website’s web pages then you should update your sitemap more frequently. Keep on updating and submitting your sitemap regularly on search engines, this will increase your exposure on world wide web.

Conclusion

If you are interested in increasing your online presence then give due importance to both HTML as well as XML sitemaps. It will improve your search engine ranking that in turn will offer you more exposure on World Wide Web and business. But apart from HTML and XML sitemaps, there are many more things involved in the search engine optimization.

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As traffic over the internet increases and more people start using search engines to find useful information, the use of local search engines is becoming more important and continues to rise. Any website or service provider who services local or limited geographical areas should seriously consider local search engine optimisation.

What is Local Search?

Local Search uses specific and specialised search engines, commonly known as directories, which are used to focus on a selected geographic region to find local businesses and websites focused on your area.

Local Search directories allow users to select their location, and narrow their search by categories until they find the listing they want. Google works as a local search directory, for example, when you search on Google using a geographic modifier or search phrase like “outsource bookkeeping Brisbane”, a map appears with results specific to that location. You can also take it one step further and search Google Local specifically. Many local web directories provide a basic free listing with a paid advantage listing option.

Where is the Best Place to be Listed?

There are some places where local service providers don’t want to miss such as Google Local.

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Landing Pages are lead generators or revenue makers in online marketing. On a landing page a visitor clicks on an advertisement or search engine result to bring up a seller’s website.

A landing page can be an advertisement or link, that is optimised to feature specific keywords or phrases for indexing by search engines. In pay per click (PPC) campaigns, a landing page is modified so that an advertisement’s effect can be counted.

There are two types of landing pages: orientational and transactional. Orientational landing pages show information in the form of display text, images, dynamic compilations of relevant links, or other elements. The effectiveness of reference landing pages is measured by revenue earned by the advertisements displayed on the landing page.

Transactional landing pages are designed to get information from a visitor by persuading them to complete a transaction such as filling out a form or interacting with advertisements or other objects on the landing page. This landing page achieves its ultimate goal of direct or ultimate trade of a product or service. The efficiency of transactional landing pages is measured through the conversion rate, that is, the percentage of visitors who have acted on the desired purpose for what a transactional landing page was formed.

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There are six main steps in undertaking Search Engine Optimisation (SEO):

1) Mapping out a keyword strategy 

2) Optimising the website structure 

3) Developing optimised web pages and content 

4) Link building and promotion campaign 

5) Analyse result 

6) Refine result

 The first step towards a SEO campaign is Keyword Analysis and mapping it with the website theme and content. There are many tools available over the internet for keyword analysis, which can be easily found on Google. However, the major issue is the cost of those tools. Costs can vary from around US$60 per month to several hundred dollars per year.

What if you know how to analyse keywords for your websites?

You can analyse your website’s keywords using free tools such as:

 (a) Google external keyword tool    or    (b) word tracker free tool.

When you plan a new website, you want to take your main keyword phrase (which should represent the theme of the site), and break it up into sub-phrases that have less competition. You can do this with Google’s external keyword tool. When you get the tool on your screen you can enter your keyword phrase in the box to the right, then hit the “Get Keyword Ideas” button.

Steps for keyword analysis: 

1) Brainstorming to find out related keyword and phrases for website 

2) Determine core keywords related to your website theme

3) Make clusters of keywords, then dilute them using some low profile keywords 

4) Add this cluster to you web pages and articles.

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Webmasters are always concerned about attracting more traffic towards their websites. There are many ways to do this, but the most important way is link building i.e. to attract links from the related websites. It is important not only to attract many links but good quality links.

You need to consider the following points when attempting to attract links:

1)    Domain Age and Page Authority: Try to get links from high “authority” websites i.e. from higher page rank website. “Authority” websites have more weight than links from lesser-known websites.

2)    Relativity: The best links should come from websites which are related to your website’s theme.

3)    The anchor text should include keywords that relate to the topic covered on the web page that is being linked to. Anchor text should be varied; links that all have the same anchor text will appear manipulated and contrived to the search engines.

4)    Position of links on the page also count. Some search experts claim that footer links carry less value than links which are integrated into the actual web page content.

5)    Deep linking appears more natural to search engines. The links should direct visitors to a related page within the website. Do not make the mistake of directing all of the web links to a website’s home page.

6)    Links should come from a variety of sources. Fewer links from a larger number of websites will generally “weigh” more than a large number of links from a small number of websites.

7)    It is more likely that links containing surrounding text are more likely to be relevant, and as a result those links tend to be worth more.

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ALT tags are placed inside your HTML code as a text description for a graphic or image that appears on a web page. When spider crawls are performed, these ALT tags will allow the spiders to ‘see’ the image as indexable content. Text will pop-up when the mouse hovers over the graphic or image on the page.
The idea of alternative text is to provide a textual replacement for pictures (images) - a replacement that conveys the same thing as is communicated to a sighted user seeing the image.
The SEO practitioner should use ALT text in the manner in which it was designed to be used by the W3C: to describe the image. Then, they can include the keyword phrase in one or two images on the page, if appropriate.

ALT Text / ALT tag Tips . . .

1. Remember that the purpose of ALT text is to describe the image for the benefit of those who surf the Web with images turned off and for those who have the contents of Web pages read out loud to them. The WC3 highly recommends that Web site owners use ALT text to describe images.

2. Use your keyword phrase in one or two instances of ALT text on the page - no more. Use moderation in everything you do in search engine optimisation.

3. Don’t use text that is non-relevant to the imageJerry West adds, “Give the visitor information that is worthwhile, especially for the visually impaired.”

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There are five areas on which all SEOs should concentrate, although these are a highly debatable issue.

1. Content is king. Write unique, relative and remarkable content on web pages ie Attention Grabbing Content

Everything starts with remarkable content i.e. content worth remarking on and linking to. Do you have unique, timely content? Does you content solve a problem? Does you content provide a new insight? Does you content spark controversy? Does you content start - or contribute to - a conversation?

2. Easily accessible to search engine spiders ie increase Crawlability

If your content can’t be crawled, you won’t rank. Ensure your site is easily accessible to both humans and search engine spiders.

3. Build Links

Google’s algorithm is heavily weighted towards links. Beg, buy, or earn links, and rankings follow. Get your keywords into the link text. Building links also means building relationships with people. Spend a lot of time doing this, especially in the early stages.

4. Title Tag

It is debatable how much ranking value the title tag has, but it definitely has click-thru value. Your listing fights for attention with all the other links on the page. What will make people click your link?
Learn the lessons of Adwords. Match your title tag to the keyword query. Solve a user’s problem. Arouse curiosity.

5. On-Page Content

Forget endless on-page tweaking, as this is largely a waste of time. Instead, keep a few keyword phrases in mind when writing. Use semantic variations of your terms in order to help catch long tail terms. Link your page to related pages, using keyword terms in the link.

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Every month millions of new domains are registered and millions of websites are being added to the internet and they are all competing for customer attention even if they are not in the same business line.
You can create the most stunning website, with flash animations, video or audio features, rotating logos etc but the truth is, if your website doesn’t have any depth, no amount of “pretty” will get visitors to come back, let alone purchase anything!
Using an optimisation technique can get a visitor to your website, but if you fail to provide neccesory information, your potantial customer will click away and never return.
Every website owner faces three major issues in running a successful website:

• Driving traffic to your website
• Converting visitor into paying customers
• Getting returning visitor and purchasing more

How do you convert a visitor into a paying customer?
a) When creating your website pages, especially the service pages, ensure that you provide as much information as possible about each product and service, including its price (or price range).
b) Websites should be easily navigated. Contact details should be displayed not only on the “Contact Us” page, but also at the bottom of each page.
c) You should also include as much information as possible on your website - free resources, articles, reports, ebooks relating to your industry, service and products.

How to get returning visitors for more purchases?
First Impression is the last impression.
Your first transaction with them must prove flawless.
Another way of staying in touch with your customers is by sending them a regular newsletter. This can be done, weekly, fortnightly or monthly.

Important:
Once you’ve created your website pages , the work doesn’t stop there. Keep updating the content and services and product to keep your customers and search engines happy. Your marketing also needs to continue.

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