in Google’s Search
Engine
Search engines such as Google are seen as black boxes
that hand out page one search rankings for websites and blogs based upon secret
and mysterious calculations.In essence that is true.
Hundreds of scientists
and mathematicians are constantly working in quiet rooms to increase
the artificial intelligence of its search engine.
Some search engine optimisation experts
have used devious means to try and trick Google into getting ranked high
in search results. This has been done via tactics such as “Black Hat SEO” that
are used to try and fool Google. Google doesn’t encourage these activities and
is constantly fine tuning its search algorithms to eliminate these practices.
Google’s objectives is to ensure that it is always
delivering search results that users find relevant, interesting and also
timely. If they don’t keep doing this then people will stop using Google
and then its $30 billion of revenue it earns off search advertising is under
threat. Also breathing down its neck are rapidly growing social sites such as
Facebook that indirectly are providing alternatives to Google (rumours are
constantly circulating that Facebook is building its own social search engine).
If Google doesn’t continue to deliver then its whole existence is heading for a
slippery downward slope of Web extinction.
In the last 2 years Google has increased the
importance of usability such as measuring the speed of websites and sites that
are producing unique content , hence the targeting of content farms and
de-ranking them.
Google Loves Unique Content
What Google does like is great unique content. We have
seen the rise in importance of content creation and curation as a marketing
tool over the last few years. People use the web to find information, that is
why Google is putting such a high value on unique content. Creating great
contagious content that begs to be shared such as videos, blog posts and
ebooks also has a big side benefit. That benefit is that people will link
to your website or blog and hence Google gives you big ticks in its search
engine calculations the more often back-links are created to your blog and
website from other websites.
This is is where the tactic of “offsite optimisation”
starts to make its importance and presence felt and should be included in your
SEO strategy. This is the final stage of getting Google to like you.
Off-page Optimization
SEO experts generally agree that off-page link
building techniques can contribute around 80% of the effectiveness in any SEO
campaign. Off-page optimization or building links, is by far the most important
activity for assisting us in getting our website well ranked in search engines.
And the key driving force in this, is backlinks.
The Importance of “Back Links
A link, or back-link, is the link that you use to be
brought to another page. Backlinks are incredibly important because they are
basically like “votes” for your page that tell search engines that other
webpages like and utilise your page for information. The more websites that you
have linked or “voting” for your webpage, the higher your ranking will be.
Though, not all votes are weighted the same, as links from the homepage of
major websites, like the Australian Government australia.gov.au, amazon.com or
facebook.com, are going to be worth a lot more than a lesser known website.
So here are 5 tips for easy link building:
Tip 1:
Competitor analysis
Assuming you won’t be getting many links from those
major sites, there still are easy link building tactics available to you. Begin
your link building campaign with a competitor analysis. Basically, you want to
repeat what your best competitors are doing, as one of the key link building
principles is to match and exceed your competitors. Meaning, if you can go
through and match all the links they have, or at least a majority of them, and
find a couple of other ways to get additional links that they don’t have, you
will be able to easily surpass them in searching ranking results.
Tip 2:
Content, content and content
As always, the best way to encourage people to link to
your website, is by consistently providing new, compelling and useful content.
Content, content and content, to steal a well known phrase. Creating
compelling, relevant and useful content; such as writing about your products,
industry, general current market information with keyword oriented useful
content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factor
discussed here. After the Google Penguin update, regularly posted quality
content is the recommended method to getting more traffic to your website.
Ideally you should post at least 2 new articles per week, more being better, as
Google will favour websites with frequently updated material that contains
unique and relevant content. And if your website offers good content, other
websites will naturally want to link to you as well.
When you are posting articles, don’t forget to apply the same principles of Title tag and Meta Description to your articles, and don’t forget to include your desired keywords or phrases.
Tip 3:
Guest blogging
Other ideas for a successful link building campaign include
guest blogging. The general idea behind guest blogs is to get a link to your
website posted on an already established website/blog. These links tend to
carry more weight in Google because they are harder to acquire. Some sites will
have very stringent requirements for the types of articles they will accept, so
links from these sites have more value. Another popular and highly successful
method is to contact bloggers or webmasters in your niche and simply ask them
for a link. Or, ask to be a guest blogger for the sole purpose of getting the
chance to link your guest blog posting back to your site. Establishing
relationships with reviewers, authors, professors, enthusiasts, topic experts
or anyone else who is operating a website in your niche area, whether it be
through social networking or message boards, is a great way to build a network
of people who might be willing to reference your website in their content.
Tip 4:
Join web 2.0 site
Joining a web 2.0 site is an excellent method of
developing search engine friendly links. If you are not familiar with the name,
web 2.0 is the term used to describe websites that have a social networking
component to them. Sites like Squidoo, StumbleUpon,
and Delicious generate most of their content from the site users themselves.
These types of pages facilitate interactive information sharing as well as
collaboration, where you yourself can add articles that include up to 9 free
backlinks per article to your website. Don’t duplicate any of your existing
articles on your website and use them for either Squidoo or HubPages though, as
search engines are filtering out content that way.
The best way to build links and create strong SEO
benefits through Squidoo.com is by creating unique content that focuses on your
keywords. Always try to incorporate multimedia, such as videos or images to
gain more trust and authority quickly. It only takes a few articles until
you’ll be able to add on a number of backlinks in your articles to your main
site. I also really like Squidoo’s RSS feed widget, as this gives nice
backlinks plus context to the links, which is great for search engines.
Tip 5:
Vendors, Partner testimonials
Always give online testimonials to your suppliers,
business partners or anyone else you can give a testimonial to, as it is a
great way to get free backlinks from legitimate websites. Don’t forget to
include your strategic keywords into your testimonials and hyperlink it back to
the appropriate webpage from your website. And finally, source your own
networks for possible opportunities to build more links. Business contacts,
suppliers, distributors, family members, friends, even your children’s school,
all have the potential for providing you backlink opportunities. If you have
been nice to them and they like you, ask for a free backlink on their website.
Of course, the higher page rank or relevant websites you can link to, the
better. If you can manage to obtain powerful and valuable links from websites
like edu.com, that would be highly beneficial to you SEO efforts.
There are a lot more tactics involved in SEO to help
you compete and surpass your competitors in search engine ranking results. The
aforementioned tactics are basic initial strategies that help build a strong
foundation and starting point for your SEO efforts, and will immediately help
you move your website traffic and search engine ranking results to the next
level.
