Beyond Link Building: 5 Important Off-Page SEO Factors

Doug Williams @ 4:30 am

This blog entry was posted on September 23, 2011.

Together on-page and off-page factors make up the SEO process to get top rankings. You need to be doing both to get the best rankings results. Other than link building, what are the other off-page SEO factors?

Site age: Older and long established websites show stability. New pages are indexed quickly. New websites go through a penalty phase (Google Sandbox) where it is difficult to get ranked for difficult phrases. The Sandbox penalty can last 18 months for highly competitive phrases.
Domain renewal term: Renew (or purchase) your domain for the longest period possible. Choose 10 years if your registrar will let you. Google will “trust” your domain more the longer you renew it for. 1-year domains are often “throw-away” domains.
Domain trust and authority: Domain trust is a measure of who links to you… and who you link to. A trusted highly trusted site such as Wikipedia or .edu sites will tend to link to other trusted sites. Spammers tend to link to spammers. Domain authority is a measure of a site’s link power. Are they linked to by other high PageRank sites? Is there a diverse base of domains that link to them?
Usage data signals: Google has patented a number of factors that are related to user behavior. They may begin using information on how content is capturing and holding your audience’s attention. This includes number of visitors, page selection (click-thru-rate), which pages are visited, how much time is spent on a page and if a page has been bookmarked.
Google +1: Google has confirmed that the number of +1 votes will influence the position of a website in the search results. This is a newer ranking signal that we will have to see how it stands the test of time.

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What are the Important Link Building Factors?

Doug Williams @ 9:02 pm

This blog entry was posted on September 20, 2011.

Getting other websites to link to your site is a large part of SEO. Links should be from relevant websites, blogs, directories and social media. Ideally the hyperlink text (anchor text) will include your keyword phrases.

Total volume of inbound links – The total number of incoming links increase the importance and trustworthiness of a page.
Link quality – Links coming from higher PR pages or from authority sites are considered more important.
Anchor text – Very valuable if the hyperlinked text contains keywords.
Content relevance (referring page) – More valuable if the page content, page title and especially the adjacent words are relevant to your page.
Page Location (referring page) – Where is your link located on the referring page? Footer links carry less value than links in the content area. Higher up on the referring page is better.
Link acquisition rate- A consistent rate of accruing links over a long time is better and more natural.
Deep link ratio: Deep links to specific pages inside your website are more natural than having all links pointing to your home page.
Age of link – Older links are more valued than new ones that are recently acquired.
Number of outgoing links (referring page) – It is better for the referring page to have fewer outbound links on it.
Image and JavaScript links have little to no value.
Links from .edu – Only qualified educational organizations are allowed to purchase .edu domains. These are less subject to manipulation and therefore more valued.
Link geography: Australia based links are better if you have an Australia based website and you are optimizing for the Australia market.
Diversity: Links from many types of sites are better. Develop a portfolio of links from blogs, directories, social bookmarks, etc.
Paid Links: This is a negative factor. Google has methods of detecting paid links and links in close association to known paid links. Once detected the link is devalued at once.

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Link Building Secrets: 10 Large Directories of Web Directories

Doug Williams @ 6:49 am

This blog entry was posted on June 24, 2011.

Getting your business listed in a business directory is one of the original link building methods and is considered a good and respectable linking method (white hat). Website directory listings can be local, national or international. They can be associations or market niches. They can be free or some charge for a listing.

How do you find website directories to get your website listed?

Directory Critic is a directory of website directories. This makes locating directories easier. Directory Critic has nearly 15,000 directories listed. Directories are categorized by free vs. paid, those that allow linking to specific pages, or searches by PR.

Here is a list of 9 more directory listing sites similar to Directory Critic.

Best SEO Friendly List Includes lists of free directories, most trusted directories, niche directories, etc.
Blog Directory List List of blog directories that pass link juice. Includes a list of feed directories too.
Directory Snob: They claim to be the Internet’s largest directory list with the ability to search by language or market niche.
Free Directory List: List of web directories where you can submit your website for free.
Free Web Directories Listing of directories that do not charge for listings.
Strongest Links List of directories showing PR, Alexa fees, etc.
Top 25 Most Powerful Web Directories List List compiled by Paul Teitelman
Top Web Directories Web directories rated by inbound link quality
Web Directories This directory of directories includes listings by market niche, Languages and geographic area. Shows PR and Alexa rankings for each directory.

The key to good link building is to do many forms of linking and to do all in moderation. It can be time consuming to find the best website directories and these lists of directories make it easier.

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Is Having 22,000 Site Wide Links Good or Bad?

Doug Williams @ 5:12 am

This blog entry was posted on March 5, 2011.

You can buy your way onto some large websites and get links from every page on their site. These site wide links, do they help or hurt? How much ranking power can you expect when you have 22,000 links from a single Domain? Will this create a penalty from Google and cost me every ranking that I had earned?

Site wide links are where a link from every page in website A links to website B. Usually these are footer or sidebar links. These can also be blogroll links where every blog page links back to a recommended and trusted blog.

Will Google count these as 22,000 separate links and give you great rankings? Realistically these site links will be greatly depreciated and count as a single link. Site wide links are not going to be the breakthrough strategy to get top rankings, but at the same time they won’t be a ranking killer.

There are times that site wide links are normal and relevant link. This could be between a parent and subsidiary company websites. Blogrolls are normal links to blogs that are respected. Web design companies will frequently place site wide links on websites they design. None of these are sinister or something that would trigger a Google penalty.

Opinions vary about how much “link power” you will gain from site links, but estimates vary from being counted as a single link to getting as many as 5-10 links.

The best links are individual content links that link deep into the pages of your website.

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7 Back Linking Strategies That Will Improve Website Rankings

Doug Williams @ 5:11 am

This blog entry was posted on December 19, 2010.

Creating inbound links with keywords in the anchor text is one of the most powerful SEO methods you can employ. Google puts tremendous value in these back links in determining your website rankings. Here are 7 methods of creating these keyword rich links.

Blog comments: Find relevant, high page rank blogs and post comments. Provide insightful and original comments that apply to the blog post or your comment will be treated as spam and be rejected. Include a link to your website URL in your comment.
Web directories: Submitting your site to directories is still a valid and cost effective link building method that should be part of developing your portfolio of back links. You just have to be selective on which directories you use. Find directories that are focused on your market niche.
Article marketing: Writing articles promotes yourself and your company as a respected expert by providing solutions and insights for problems in your market niche. These articles should be placed onto article syndication websites. By publishing articles that are highly keyword focused and providing a keyword based link back to your website.
Forum posting: Join and participate in forums that are part of your market niche. In looking for a forum, make sure to find ones that allow signatures that include website URLs. Join the conversations, share and answer questions. Be part of the community. Your answers should be keyword rich. Include a link back to your website.
Social networking: Create profiles on social networking sites. Most of these sites allow you to link to your website in your profile. Build-up your online public profile that includes a link to your website.
Social bookmarking: Social bookmarking leads to more folks reading your articles, posts etc, and over time this could create further credibility for you. The content on your website must be good. You will use bookmarking sites such as Digg, Delicious, Yahoo Buzz, Stumble Upon etc. To bookmark, you simply bookmark pages into your social book marking account.
Press release: Publicity is one of the most important success factors for almost any website or business. There are a number of free press release services and low cost PR services where you can post company announcements, new product releases or other company news. These sites give a low cost way to promote your company and a good way to increase the link popularity of your website.

You can also use a quality backlinking service to get this job done.

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20 Link Building Terms You Should Know

Doug Williams @ 4:54 am

This blog entry was posted on November 11, 2010.

Anchor Text: The visible text in a hyperlink. Sometimes called link text
Anchor Text Optimization: The strategic use of keywords in the anchor text in inbound links as a SEO technique.
Backlinks: Incoming links to a web page from an outside website. Sometimes called inbound links.
Deep Links: Links to a page other than the home page. This is considered more natural by the search engines.
Hidden Links: A SEO spam method where text links are designed to be seen by spiders but not by human visitors.
Image Link: A hyperlink that consists of an image linked to another web location.
Inbound Links: Hypertext links from an external web page to your page. Inbound links with optimized anchor text are highly valued by search engines.
Linkbaiting: Content on a website or blog that is designed for the specific intention of gathering links from as many different sources as possible.
Link Building Campaign: Using methods and strategies to attract links from external websites in an effort to improve search rankings.
Link Exchange: See reciprocal linking
Link Farm: A spam technique by setting up sites that can be crawled by search engines, just so they can put in thousands of links to sites they want to boost in search rankings.
Link Popularity: A measurement of the quality and quantity of inbound links to a webpage. A factor which affects a website’s search engine rankings.
Nofollow: This is an HTML attribute or tag that instructs a search engine not to pass credit or “link juice” onto another website. Google encourages the use of nofollow on all paid ads.
One Way Link: An inbound link from an outside website where there is no return link. Different than reciprocal linking.
Outbound Link: A link from your website to an external page on the web.
PageRank: Google’s measurement of how important a page is and affects search rankings. This is an index that values Web pages on a scale of 0 to 10, based largely on link popularity.
Paid Link: A backlink that is paid for or rented from another website. This is considered a spam technique today.
Reciprocal Links: These are links to another website placed on your site in exchange for links back to your site from theirs. Technique to improve search engine rankings and now considered a spamming method.
SERP: Search Engine Results Page
Spamming: Using a method that Abuses the normal search engine ranking techniques, such as using hidden text, hidden links or using a link farm.

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SEO Comes Down to Keywords and Backlinks

Doug Williams @ 12:31 am

This blog entry was posted on July 22, 2010.

There are many technical aspects to Search engine optimization (SEO). Too many people get caught up in the detail. In SEO there are only two things to focus on: keywords and backlinks. Everything else is a distraction.

It doesn’t matter if you are a beginner or an expert. It doesn’t matter if you are starting from scratch or trying to tune up an existing site. Keep your attention on keywords and backlinks and then measure your results. It is as easy as 1-2-3.

Keywords: Research and select keywords that are relevant to what you do. Many people try and select phrases with high numbers of searches first and relevance second. Make relevance your first priority. If you attract someone to your website, they won’t stay if you don’t have what they are looking for. You will want to use these keywords visibly and prominently on your website… not just in the META tags.
Backlinks: Getting incoming links from other websites is very important in your SEO effort. A large number of backlinks from relevant websites signals the search engines that your website is very important. Using your keyword phrases in the anchor text tells the search engines what your web page is about.
Measurement: Track your major metrics on at least a monthly basis. I like to track number of pages indexed by Google, number of links as reported by Yahoo, Home page authority and domain authority as reported by Open Site Explorer, Alexa rankings and actual rankings in the SERPs for my 5 primary phrases. Each month I work to get some improvement in my measurements.

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How Many Backlinks Are Enough?

Doug Williams @ 12:26 am

This blog entry was posted on July 14, 2010.

If you have read anything about search engine optimization (SEO), you have come across the term backlinks. These are incoming links from other web pages to your web pages. A good number of quality backlinks signals the search engines that your website is important enough to be rewarded with a top ranking. Backlinks are an important building block of the SEO process.

There are 5 facets to look at to determine if your website has enough backlinks.

Quantity: You can measure the sheer number of backlinks using a tool like Yahoo Site Explorer. A larger number of backlinks in general is better for your website.
Quality: How important is each of these backlinks? Look at the PageRank (PR) of each inbound link. You want at least some of these backlinks to be high PR backlinks.
Relevance: How relevant is the page linking to your site to your topic? You links from other web pages that are closely related to your subject.
Anchor Text: This is the clickable text in the hyperlink. It is sometimes called the link text. You would want keywords to be used in the anchor text rather than “click here.”
Variety: You want your backlinks to come from as many different sources as possible. This would include blogs, web directories, articles, press releases, social book marks, etc.

SEOmoz has a free tool that allows you to measure the success of your backlinking called Open Site Explorer. Pay attention to both Page Authority and Domain Authority to see if your website has enough backlinks.

Hint: Compare the number one rated site for your target phrase against your website.

Click here for a free analysis of your website’s backlinking.

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Link Popularity thru Article Marketing

Doug Williams @ 6:18 am

This blog entry was posted on February 25, 2010.

Article Marketing is an effective SEO strategy that has been around for many years. It is still one of the best ways to generate high PR one way links and to drive direct traffic to your website at the same time. Article marketing involves writing keyword focused articles and posting them onto article syndication websites. These website are frequently highly trafficked websites with high Page Rank.

Article marketing accomplishes two things. You are able to promote yourself and your company as a respected expert by providing solutions and insights for problems in your market niche. By producing articles that are highly keyword focused and providing a keyword based link back to your website, you help your website’s link popularity.

Many articles allow reposting and reuse of your articles onto other websites as long as the links in the resource box (at the end of the article) is left intact. These articles then become “link bait” as other websites hungry for content will repost your articles around the Internet.

Getting good quality articles written is the key to effective article marketing.

Goals: Before writing, have definite goals for what you want accomplish. Develop a central message around your goals. Think of the image and brand you are building.
Outline your article with a clear beginning, middle and ending. What do you want to leave your readers with? If you leave them hungry for more, they will follow your link back to your website.
Keywords: Select a single keyword phrase to focus on. Use your phrase in the title of your article, within first paragraph one time and in the link text within your resource box.

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Deep Linking vs. Home Page Links

Doug Williams @ 5:33 am

This blog entry was posted on February 17, 2010.

Deep links are considered more important than home page links in SEO. Deep links are inbound links that point to a specific page on a site other than the home page. Deep linking is considered the more natural linking method that occurs naturally over time on a website.

A higher number of links (or high quality links) to a specific page will build up the importance of that page. Deep links help your visitors by guiding them to the exact information they are searching for.

If a website has a low percent of deep links, this is a sign to the search engines that a site has used artificial link schemes to try and build up its link popularity.

Deep Link Percentage is the percent of all inbound links that point to pages other than your home page. A normal deep link percentage is considered 30% or higher.

Measuring: You can measure your sites deep link percentage by querying the search engines that have mapped out which other sites have linked back to your website. I prefer to use Yahoo because it reports a high percent of all inbound links. Use the following in a Yahoo search (substitute in your domain into the query).

# of Deep Links= linkdomain:YOURDOMAIN.COM-site:YOURDOMAIN.COM-link:http://www.YOURDOMAIN.COM-link:http://YOURDOMAIN.COM
# of Total Inbound Links= linkdomain:YOURDOMAIN.COM-site:YOURDOMAIN.COM
Calculate % Deep Links = # Deep Links / # Total Inbound Links

Most websites will have a deep link percentage of 30% to 60%. There doesn’t appear to be any downside to too high of a deep linking percentage. Too low though is clearly visible to the search engines and many of your inbound links are likely to be discounted by Google.

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