Link Popularity
Six Strategies for Holding Competitions to Get Backlinks
Mar 2nd
Running a competition or a giveaway is often touted as one of the most successful and failsafe strategies for sending visitors to your site, increasing branding visibility, and getting backlinks for SEO. However, since everybody has started saying how great it is, the ‘noise’ in the competition market is that much greater. You will actually have to compete to give things away, strange as that is! So today we are looking at six strategies to help you get the most value out of your competition for SEO.
'Running' a Competition
8
1. Collect as much contact information as possible
… without scaring entrants away. It is a rich opportunity to get demographic information that you can use later in web marketing opportunities. Add a couple of demographics questions to a competition entry form, and you have instant extra value.
2. Use your own products or services as the prize where possible
Everybody wants a new iPad or a trip around the world, and these competitions will naturally create a huge following and number of entries. However, when you have to pay retail prices for the prize, the competition becomes decreasingly cost effective. Use your own products where possible.
3. Look for competition partners
You may be able to get some prizes donated if you email around your partners and offer to include their logo, tagline and contact details on the competition form. You’ll still have to donate the major prie if you want YOUR business to get the brand recognition, though!
4. List your competitions on comp sites
There is an entire community of people that play the statistical odds, entering every free competition they can, in the hope of winning prizes. There are also (naturally) websites that collect competitions for people that do this. Make sure your comp gets listed on these sites, such as::
- Loquax.co.uk (UK)
- ThePrizeFinder.com (UK)
- Compaholics (UK)
- CompetitionWinner.com.au (AU)
5. Video marketing to promote the comp
This can be ultra-effective … videos are easy to share on social sites, so lets people share with their friends.
6. Require a link back to your site
This ca be a great way to get backlinks … accept competition entries only from people who provide a link from their site to yours, in a fairly permanent place. The requirement could be reviewing one of your products and providing a link to it, for example.
5 Indirect Ways to Build Link Popularity
Feb 20th
When it comes to SEO, the on-page stuff is fairly straightforward. Your web content in most cases will be dictated by your business offering, and if you follow best practices like setting up a regularly updated blog, etc, there is a limited amount you can do to differentiate yourself from other businesses who have their own web marketing experts.
Get your link popularity with ... a skateboard!
Link building, though, is where some websites truly excel, and build top rankings for themselves. Today we’re looking at some of the sneaky, indirect and very effective ways to build links for a site! There’s no instant reward of seeing your link come up in a blog comment or at the bottom of an article … but a little effort can go a lot further here.
1. Build trust in your site
Do this by minimizing grammar and spelling errors, having an About Us section, allowing customers to contact you via phone as well as email, putting up a Privacy Policy (and noting on email signup forms that you do not sell or rent email lists), and adding payment security accreditations.
It certainly doesn’t get you any links directly … but don’t forget that people’s own site ranking may go down if they link to a ‘bad neighborhood’. Remove all possibility that your site could be seen as such, and you could get a lot more links with no extra ongoing effort.
2. Answer a question
Most of the question forums on the internet don’t provide ‘followed’ links – that is why this is an INDIRECT method of link building. If you answer a question on Yahoo Answers, Google Groups, or Wikianswers exceptionally well, providing a link to relevant resources (that would be your site), there is a good chance that people writing their own blog posts will pick up on it and link to you also.
3. Use Wiki
Add links to Wikipedia pages which link to other pages, which link to your site. If your site got a great review on a blog, try to add that link to a relevant page. The keyword being relevant!
4. Write a review
People are often nervous about buying things online, when they have to hand over the money long before even seeing the packaging of the product, let alone trying it. Reviews are big business on the web, so write an honest and thorough one and it will become a needed (and linked to) resource.
5. Trade a link
BUT! BUT! Only with sites that will send you relevant and qualified traffic. If you have a business partner that offers something complementing your own products and services, write a blog post on them, or find another way to trade links with them. This should obviously not be overused, at the risk of getting a Google penalty.
Pagerank … Wah, Good God Y’all – What is it Good For?
Feb 4th
If you are just starting out on your SEO journey, you are probably wondering what all the fuss about PageRank is. Who cares what one website thinks about another, after all? Isn’t it your customers that truly matter?
Links=PageRank
Well, when the website is Google and you are trying to rank highly in it, it certainly does matter. Today we run through the basics of Pagerank – who the heck it is, and what it’s good for 
.
What is Pagerank?
PageRank can actually be explained quite simply – it is a measure of all of the inbound links coming to your website or blog. Google figures that the greater the number of other sites that are linking to yours, the more people must feel that your website has something worthy on it.
Every link is sort of like a ‘vote’ for your site – saying that you have something worthwhile related to your topic. This judgement of worth is something that Google’s computers simply cannot do … as powerful as they are. So they use links to create PageRank, and PageRank is part of what goes into your search engine ranking results.
How is PageRank Calculated?
Here is the formula for calculating PageRank that was published when the concept was first launched … not that too many people bother with using it! It is likely that the formula has now changed, and is as top secret as the 11 famous herbs and spices.
Nevertheless, this is a good approximation:
PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn))
Notes: t1 … tn are pages linking to your site. C is your site. D is a damping factor, usually 0.85, which is why is is so hard to get to PR10!
Increasing your PageRank
The way to increase your PageRank is to keep up with your link building activities to get plejnty of inbound links, and to ensure that you don’t link out to sites that have a PageRank of less than 1. It is possible that Google has penalized them, and may also penalize you for promoting them.
A word of warning…
If you are looking for serous advice on increasing your PageRank, go to a web marketing expert … not a site called www.pr10.com (link deliberately omitted!). All of the techniques listed are black hat, though there is no indication that it is as such. There is also no indication that the text is sarcastic. We hope it hasn’t caught out too many people!
The 4 Most Important Internet Marketing Aspects of Your Website
Jan 14th
If you’re doing your own research about SEO, or have just come out of discussions with an internet marketing firm, you may be wondering about just how much each of the activities they mention matters to Google. Will it do so much harm if I don’t use a keyword in just this title tag? Do those meta tags actually do anything? Should I try to get PR0 links, or are they just worthless? Today we are looking at the four most important factors in getting a top ranking for you, as well as some hints about how SEO professionals will build a ranking with them.
SERP Factor 1: Keyword usage and surrounding content
I may have snuck an extra one in there 
. While some people advocate writing without giving any thought to keywords (to make it as natural as possible), there is little value in determining your keywords if you don’t use them. What has happened is that you need far fewer instances of a term, and much more careful placement, to get the same web marketing results. Keywords should be used in title tags, headers, body copy, alt tags, and also in bold.
SERP Factor 2: Link popularity
Link juice - yum!
This is the focus of much web marketing activity – building links to your site, either from inside or outside it. It can be achieved through contextual linking within the site, and outside link building activities like article marketing, press release distribution, etc.
SERP Factor 3: Anchor text
The text that somebody uses as an anchor to indicate what people will get if they click through a link to your site is very important to Google. Try to ensure that links pointing to your site utilise keywords relevant to the landing page for that link.
SERP Factor 4: Domain authority
There are several factors that affect domain authority or trust:
- How long the domain has been indexed by Google
- The trust of sites that you link out to
- The number of people searching for the site and visiting it
- Stability in growth
Domain authority is the least easy factor to manipulate – you simply have to wait, build traffic, make sure your outgoing links are sound, and hope!
There are plenty of other factors, as well as ‘factors within factors’ to consider in your internet marketing journey – an expert is best to round them up for you.
SEO and the Changing Google Algorithm
Jan 13th
Much like raising children, SEO is a discipline where the playing field, and the rules, keep changing. It is one of the reasons that there is so much misinformation about it on the web, and one of the major reasons that people turn to SEO professionals to sort it all out. Today we check out how the game plan for SEO has changed over time, by exploring the changing Google algorithm. These rankings are a selected view of our personal opinions about internet marketing, including our observations about which activities get which results.
We’ll be looking at four major factors that Google uses to rank pages for a particular search query:
- Keyword usage on site, including keyword density, positioning, relative appearance next to related words, etc.
- Anchor text used in external links
- Link popularity – how many links of what level of ‘authority’ you have linking to your site
- Trust and authority of the domain hosting the page
2004 – Back in Aught-Four!
- Trust and authority: Only had a very slight impact on SEO rankings. Having a .gov or .edu domain probably would have helped relatively little in rankings.
- Keyword usage: Was of moderate importance in determining rankings
- Anchor text: Was very important in determining SERPs
- Link popularity: Was seen as the dominant force in determining the SERP
2007 – Back in Aught-Seven!
- Trust and authority: Was moving up in importance, we could now see a moderate impact
- Keyword usage: Again, of moderate importance
- Link popularity: Moderate importance – the top three factors had relatively equal weight
- Anchor text: However, was seen as immensely important by Google
2009 – Back to the Not So Distant Past
- Trust and authority: Our recent SEO projects have shown much better results for host domains with good trust and authority in Google’s eyes – it seems this is now of quite dominant importance.
- Keyword usage: Still has a moderate impact on internet marketing activities
- Anchor text: Still important, but not so much as it was a few years ago
- Link popularity: Currently this has the least effect on over all ranking of the four major factors.
This is all very interesting to note – but an important point to remember is that you shouldn’t neglect to use keywords in your achor text just because Google doesn’t care about it right now … those links will still be there in a couple of years when Google may have changed its mind. For the same reason, there’s still no excuse for neglecting on-site optimization or working on building link popularity as an internet marketing tactic.
Thrive Online With Web Marketing – webmarketingexperts.com.au
Sep 15th
Use web marketing strategies as the cornerstone for your business because it can drive your numbers up. Indeed, very few people would admit that this is the most viable method of getting an online business to thrive and increase in the web market. SEO is an internet marketing strategy that does not only work towards creating important links to and from your site but it is also a measurable kind of marketing process.
Your marketing methods must not rely on the paid advertisements that cost you more money. With search optimization, you can even get promoted with low investment! This is the reason why this becomes a preferred type of online advertising. If you want to attract new people to your site, optimization can bring your name to the top ranks of searches. Internet users trust search results because this is the most efficient way of getting valuable information on a certain topic or product.
When you know how to take advantage of search engines, your website can benefit from the exposure search engines give to valued sites. Search engines index sites that comply with specific standards. In addition to that search engine optimization is a campaign that knows how to bait the spiders to get your site noticed. When you have the idea on how to choose a web marketing campaign to boost your popularity, you can have quality site visits and conversion. This makes it easy for your website to multiply profit and thus, achieve the goals on target.
Your web design is the face that you provide to your visitors. So, the design must contain the right elements that will also comply with the factors that are important for search spiders. However, optimization must also go hand in hand with the right web design. It is one way of assuring the customers that you are intent in giving them the best service and products.
If you want to know more on how search engine optimization can give benefits to your online business, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.
Long Standing SEO Tips (Part 2)- webmarketingexperts.com.au
Jul 30th
B. During the Initial Stages
5.) When you’re creating content, it might be best to first focus on your target audience rather than your business. Address their issues and concerns. Write articles and blogs that cater to their needs. Of course, you must not forget to use keywords, with the right density, in order to be crawled by web spiders. But then again, you must present relevant and readable content, in order to be noticed and appreciated by online surfers.
6.) When you have built a following, you must then upgrade the level of your write-ups so as to create unique and interesting content for your readers. You must endeavor to keep them updated and make them insightful. Readers love to be taught, moved and challenged. It is during this phase of the SEO process that you can pitch in your product or service, relating it to the content being expounded. Again, you must not forget to use the keywords in order to maintain categorization in search engines. You can even use these keywords as anchor texts for internal linkages, which in turn, help web spiders recognize what your other web pages are all about, and rank them accordingly.
7.) Along with building content, you must also build links to other websites. This will assist in increasing your credibility and page ranking. But this does not mean that the more linkages you have, the higher your credibility and ranking goes. No.
Link building is the same as the case of good apples being mixed with bad ones. When you align with poor ranking websites, your ranking is pulled down to. So you must build links with websites that have a page ranking of 6 and above. That will certainly boost your sites online visibility and integrity. Use trusted directories, like DMOZ or Aviva, to look for quality sites to link to, or to promote your site to other credible sites online.
8.) After you’ve settled your links, the next thing you can do is advertise. Use press releases wisely. Take advantage of social media and join forums and social networking sites. Submit blog entries to blog sites. Aside from making relevant one-way linkages to your site, these internet marketing strategies also enhance your online visibility.
SEO is an ongoing web marketing cycle. It may take as short as 6 months or as long as six years, no one can ever tell. The online market weather is something that is never really predictable. But regardless, with hard work and dedication, SEO will ultimately catapult your business to fame. Make sure to apply these tips in order to fully reap the rewards of search engine optimization.
For more tips on how to get good SEO, check out www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.
On-Page Factors That Affect SEO- webmarketingexperts.com.au
Jul 28th
Apparently, your website should get a good position in search engines results. It is known that SEO can bring websites into that position because it can usher traffic to your site. This is the real way to get listed in the SERPs.
However, SEO, a good web marketing strategy can increase your chances of standing out against the competition that is growing deeper in the online market every moment.
Search engine optimization is primarily composed of 2 factors that make it a potent force as an internet marketing method. These two are described as the on-page and off-page essentials of a website.
On page optimization deals with the content and text that are inside the pages. It is the backbone of the SEO process that is being carried out for your site. This website content have to contain keywords so that when search engines sweep the web, your site can be included in their indexes. This has a favorable impact on you since search engines exercise a big influence in recommending sites to web searchers.
There are several on page factors that can be involved in your pages:
Web Page URL – Your URLs must be search engine friendly because search engines also look on this factor when evaluating your site. Your inner pages must be taken for granted because they are still part of the whole website. Therefore, your page URLs must contain a good keywords that are relevant to the contents in them.
Meta tags- These have a role to play in attracting the attention of search spiders. This should include keywords, titles and description that are relevant to the page.
Internal Links- This should be present in the page because it needs to have links to other sites as well. Major pages in your website should contain links to the homepage.
Sitemap Creation- This is needed so that when search engines crawl your site, all pages in it can be included in the inspection. The sitemap will serve as the guide of search robots so that they can easily find the path to each page that are in your site.
Quality Content- Place content that is both relevant and sensible for readers. It is not only the search engines that take pleasure in picking content that contains relevant information. You must also cater to the needs of your visitors.
If you need help in evaluating on-page condition of your website, you can visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.
The Value Of Good Content- webmarketingexperts.com.au
Jul 24th
Did you get across a site that caught your attention because it has great content? Some searchers are always skimming through the web for good sites that can capture their interest. There are also sites that are so boring you can be on the verge of tears. Well, there are plenty of them. Great SEO content is one component of a successful web marketing plan.
Websites cannot maintain a good flow of interested readers if they offer content that are flat and plain. Good graphics and images cannot make up for good content in the pages. All form and no substance will make your site go through a hard time. The minutes that surfers spend on your site can be valuable because they have such limited reading span. So, when your first paragraph does not spark their interest, you have little chance of getting a second look at your pages.
In internet marketing, impression and appearance has significance. There are sites that provide images for their products but no descriptions. This is not good for users who want to get the best information they can in researching for products they want to purchase. The website owner must make an effort in giving the best content that can inform and entertain the visitor while they are browsing the pages. Do not waste the effort of searchers because good content has value.
Writing good content can be tedious since you need to research on topics, specifics and process a whole lot of information to come up with a good article. If you have no time to do the legwork, hire someone who has the expertise of providing content for your pages. You can also merge keywords on target into the content you want done since keyword-optimized copy is an essential of the onsite optimization process. You have to position meat and not some weak fodder for your visitors.
Writing requires logical sequencing so when you attempt to write without considering this factor, you might deliver copy that will let your readers cry to boredom. Hire someone who can do the job better and concentrate more on customer care and other business essentials.
Websites need to look good, and they need to sound good as well. Reach your audience in a more effective manner with content that speaks to them. Offer readers something that will make them alive when they come across your content.
If you need more tips on how to create good content for your site, visit www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.
Qualities of A Good SEO Company- webmarketingexperts.com.au
Jul 21st
A good SEO company is hard to find since SEO revolves around a true understanding of the interests of customers. Search Engine Optimization tops many web marketing methods because it can create exposure of a site through the search results pages.
A good SEO company knows how to approach the problem by fundamentally learning what sells to a certain crowd of consumers. There are certain keywords that spark the interest of consumers and the right keywords should be used in order to catch this crowd. Properly identified keywords allows a site to hit the right market to be tapped.
SEO experts know what a website’s accessibility can be the hindrance why search engines fail to index it. Therefore, when this is diagnosed, a set of processes will be laid down to optimize the site. An audit of the accessibility features of the website can help determine the extent of work to be done. People gather information from search engines and when you understand their likes, you can easily reach them through keywords. It is your keywords that will bring you the visibility in searches.
The ones who know optimization can research on the activity of competition websites. Their inbound link structures can be analyzed in order to make the best measures to beat the competition. These links are valuable elements for search engines since the robots rely on links they find in a site. Getting plenty of links from high ranking sources can also influence your site’s popularity. SEO professionals can create more opportunities for a site to get good links through content dissemination.
Content that is worthy of index should contain words that are related to the products that you promote. Careful research on what may work with users should be done. Sitemaps can also be optimized so that search spiders can direct their searches to your content when they are crawling the web.
Good SEO companies know that monitoring is essential in order to keep track of the site’s progress in the optimization efforts. If results are not so satisfactory, additional adjustments can be made until the proper target is achieved.
Being visible means meticulous work to dominate search engines. For more information on how to find a good SEO company to be your partner in business, contact www.webmarketingexperts.com.au.