Why Search Engine Optimization Isn’t Enough! Legitimate Link Building After the Nofollow Tag. PART 1 August 31, 2010
Posted by admin in : Sem , comments closedr SEM?
With all of the SEO companies popping up everywhere how do you know your SEO efforts are going to pay off? I spend a significant amount of time reviewing SEO offerings from other companies and find that the range in quality of SEO can vary greatly. While doing proper SEO is very important, will SEO alone dramatically improve your ranking in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP)? If you don’t have an effective Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaign, the answer is probably not! SEM uses several techniques that could include but aren’t limited to, SEO, Link Building, Pay Per Click, Social Media and more. The focus of this article, and one of the more difficult and time consuming aspects of a good SEM campaign, is link building.
What is link building and why is it important?
Link building is the process of building your sites link popularity, or simply put, creating links back to your site from other sites. This is very important and arguably the most heavily weighed factor in determining your site ranking in the SERPs. Through building a large amount of outside links back to your site, the Search Engines will view you as more relevant, credible (possibly), and popular. Ideally you should try and build links from credible websites with content related to you site. The more popular and credible the linking website the more it should help you. There are all sort of potential ramifications for building links from unsavory websites and link exchange services which are beyond the scope of this article. But suffice it to say you can actually be doing more damage than good if you try and take shortcuts. Remember if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is… and it’s been my experience that this adage holds truer today, on the internet, than at any point in history! (Thanks Nigeria!)
Why link building today is harder than ever.
After many years of link building abuse from comment spammers and the like, Google came up with an answer, the nofollow tag. Because of rampant misuse of people posting spam comments on blogs, bulletin boards, and content sites, the nofollow tag was introduced. This is a method by which sites could still allow users to post links, without lending any of their sites credibility to the referring link. In other words, your site now gets NO credit for linking if the referring site uses the nofollow tag. It seems major sites, that were once a staple of link building (both credible and otherwise) are all going the way of the nofollow tag. Wikipedia, craigslist, yahoo answers, and the list goes on. While I am not sad to see spammers lives made more difficult, this has made credible link building more difficult for the rest of us. Below are 5 ideas for good and credible link building after the nofollow tag.
1. Article Syndication – Writing relevant articles with good content, that will interest readers is always a great idea for more than just link building. It helps establish your reputation as a professional and build credibility. It is also very time consuming but over the long run well worth it. As part of your link building campaign consider writing 2 to 3 articles a week and syndicating those to 10 – 20 different article syndication sites. Part 2 of this article will include syndication sites listed by popularity and that will be a great place to start! It may take you an extra 5 or 10 hours a week, but your efforts will pay off big time over time. If you don’t have the time, consider hiring someone who will work with you to develop link building plan and submit your articles for you. There are many good companies out there that can help you with this.
2. Press Releases – Have you recently launched your business or a new website, product or anything else worth telling the world about? Consider issuing a press release. While most of these services are not free they are a very effective means to get the word out about your company and create links from highly trusted websites. PR Newswire offers a large variety of services that can reach many different audiences. It’s not free but it is effective.
3. Social Bookmarking – Social bookmarking sites are a great way to promote your content. Part 2 of this article will include a current list of social bookmarking sites that do not make use of the nofollow tag and more detailed strategy using social bookmarking.
4. Blogging – Blogging is a great way to add content to your site, gain a following of readership, gain relevancy and credibility with the search engines and your prospects and clients. Blogging can also be a great way to link build. Once you have established your blog and have a decent following, you can make use of guest bloggers from other popular blogs, or even link to another popular blog when you see a post that you think is excellent and your readers would appreciate. There is a reasonable chance the owner will notice your inbound link and link back, if you have good and relevant content. Warning: if you do plan to blog, make sure you stay on top of it and post content frequently. Weekly if not daily is preferred, but even more important than frequency of posting, post GOOD CONTENT.
5. Trade Links (if it’s relevant and beneficial) – Email the webmasters of sites that compliment your site but generally do not compete with it, the more popular the better. Outline the benefits for them to link to your site. Explain how their readers could benefit from the content on your site and how your readers benefit from the content on theirs! ALWAYS HAVE A LINK TO their site on your site already BEFORE you do this. Include the location of this link on your site in the email and explain why your visitors benefit from linking to them. This can be a very effective tool when done right because you are building links from highly popular and highly relevant sites to yours. Part 2 to this article will discuss strategy to trade links in much more detail.
For more tips or information on how T2T Marketing can help you market your business online successfully, call us at 858-952-0848 or visit our website at for help with your SEM or SEO Campaign.
Content Network Ads – A Good Choice for Many Online Advertisers July 17, 2010
Posted by admin in : Sem , comments closedMost beginning online advertisers are very confused about the difference between SERP (”search engine results page”) ads and content network ads. The major search engines blend the two together so well that they seem to be the same thing, unless you really pay attention.
Search engine results pages are what most people think of when talking about pay per click marketing. Ads are displayed based on the search terms used by searchers. When users search for terms that are the same or very similar to keywords you have specified in your account, they appear on the page. Content network sites are non-search engine web sites that display ads either based on the content of the pages or by advertisers that have specifically requesting advertising on the sites.
Web sites join content networks in order to monetize their traffic. They receive a portion of the revenue generated by users clicking on the ads. The amount that can be earned for each click is dependent on advertiser bids, so content network clicks can be just as expensive as SERP clicks for some industries. Clicks in more competitive industries will cost much more to the advertiser, so those clicks will be worth much more to the web site hosting the ad. There is good money to be made in online advertising if you can drive enough traffic to your web site.
It has been my experience that ads on content sites generate far fewer clicks and conversions than ads on search engine results pages. No matter how relevant a web site is to the advertiser, viewers of the site will not be nearly as targeted as a SERP showing search results related to a specific keyword. However, there are some very good reasons for choosing to advertise on a content network:
1. Branding is an important consideration, so you need to get your name as much exposure as possible.
2. You are in a very expensive industry.
3. There is not much search activity for your industry. If noon is searching for what you have, then you need to place your message in front of people who might be interested based on their visitation of a particular web site.
There are usually two ways to get your ads placed on sites in a content network: based on the content of all of the sites in the network, or by specifying particular sites. If you have time to research particular sites, then that might be the best route. However, you can also get good results letting the advertising platform place your ads for you based on site content.
Content network ads may work well for your business, or they may not. The only way to know if content network advertising is a good option for your business is to give it a try. Go conservative at first and carefully monitor your conversions. Content network is generally cheaper than search advertising, so you should be able to stretch your budget out. As with all things, calculate your return on ad spend or cost per conversion for both search and content and go with the one that provides the best performance.
A Good Pay Per Click Management System May 22, 2010
Posted by admin in : Internet Marketing , comments closedPay per click can bring benefits to your business in no time at all. But before you begin to make use of pay per click techniques with the aim of boosting your website traffic and web presence, it is important to consider a few factors that are necessary in order to do a run a successful and profitable pay per click campaign.
The first and the most essential factor in a pay per click campaign is the selection of search engines. There are several search engines in the web but the selection of the most effective one is most important. The primary job of a pay per click campaign is to attract traffic from the search engines and bring them to the concerned website. But if the traffic in the search engine itself is not of good quality then the traffic visiting the website shall not prove beneficial either. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN are the most popular ones followed by a list of another few that are used for PPC campaigns.
The next essential step in pay per click campaigns is the selection of keywords. Keywords are the most essential requirement of the search engine marketing. And in pay per clicks it is the keywords that are the core of the campaign. The most popular keywords find the highest position in the search engine ranking pages and is quite competitive too. Keywords selection should be based on its relevancy with the website and its popularity with the users.
Next comes into play bidding. The position of your ad depends on how much you can pay for your pay per click campaign. If you become the highest bidder of the website, you shall rank on the top of the SERP and so on. Next it is also important to monitor the performance of your ads that are placed in different search engines. This is necessary to find out which, ad is providing the most benefit and hence forth invest higher in it in the near future.
It is easy to earn a profit from your pay per click campaign, all you need to do is carry out each transaction carefully and with vigilance.