Optimizing your web site for Better results with quality links

The next component in your site search engine optimization strategy is getting quality links. Search engines have found measuring the quantity and quality of links pointed at a site a legitimate way to measure the importance of that site and they give high importance to links pointing to your website from sites that relate to yours and frown on those that are un-related. Thus exchanging links with relevant websites will increase your link popularity and in part, it will improve your search engine optimization.

Google expresses the quality and quantity of these back links or inbound links as Page Rank or PR. Thus the most common tactic in obtaining a good page rank is obtaining quality back links to your site from relevant websites. When your site is ranked well for different search engines then obviously you'll get more traffic from them and that is your goal isn’t it? Therefore initiating and maintaining linking strategies is a core factor to getting your site to move up in Google’s search results.

So let’s look at some ways to get these quality inbound links:

Start by getting inbound links from related web sites that sell products related to yours or that are associated to yours in exchange for you linking to their site. Find these related sites and send them a note requesting the exchange and giving them the info they need to link to your site and a little information on what your site is about. It is best if these links are not directly reciprocal though that isn’t all bad. If you have two web sites though try having them link to one and you link to them from the other in a sort of triangle. Thus each site gets one inbound link which is better then a reciprocal link.

You may want to consider writing relevant articles and then submitting them to article directories like ezinearticles.com. Ezines are online magazines and they provide some great benefits like, you are allowed to include “a” link to your website with every article submission. They also provide you with a chance to show how knowledgeable you are in your area. This is a free way to get a quality link, though you must be able to write a well written article that offers something to their users and on a topic related to your site. Be sure to consult the guidelines of the ezine site in which you decide to submit articles though for acceptable and best practices.

Related Forums provide another opportunity to get visitors to your site without having to pay for it. Again, it does take some time as you must first find forums that talk about questions related to your products and then make comments on them. The trick here is when entering a discussion you must provide quality information first so that it opens up the opportunity to link to your site. NOTE: You must include quality content here as most forums are not keen on sales pitches.

Blogging also provides another free way to link to your site. All of these take some effort and blogging is no exception. Since with blogging you own your own space you may think I can do what I want, but here again if there is no content and it is only one big advert then people aren’t going to stay long or come back. So quality content related to your site is essential and presenting your site as a solution to the problem you’re talking about along with a link to your site works best.

Building links to your web site is seen by many as an art so to help out, look at how others in articles, forums and blogs are presenting their links. This will give you some ideas.

Finally it is important who is linking to you as some links may even harm your sites rank. Sites that promote linking as a primary activity or with inappropriate content are never a safe bet.

Quality links from well ranked sites is what we are looking for and we are looking for the quality of the links not the amount of links.
That’s a lot to think about and work on but it is well worth the effort and will pay rewards. Link building takes time, so the sooner you start the better and as you do it, do it right.

“links build ranks which brings visitors”

Is good content the key to more website traffic?

The simple answer to that question is if there's any secret to getting more visitors, its content. Good content is at least as important, if not more important, than your site's design and is one of the most important factors in a successful website. Information is what drives the World Wide Web, and being able to meet this need will assure your website gets a generous volume of traffic.

Good content on a web site is content that is worthwhile to read and tells its visitors something they don't already know and is packed with details. It’s informative, easy to scan and digest, and grabs a reader's attention, and along with compelling images and videos will help draw people to your site over a competitor's. It is at the heart of any web site and is essential for giving your audience a worthwhile experience, conveying your message correctly, and encouraging visitors to return to your web site.

If your site has unique content it will give it an edge over your competitors. Because of this you need to be willing to invest time, effort and money into planning your site's content and making it the best it can be. Creating your own content does take up a lot of time, but it can be worth the effort. If you write the contents on your own, it becomes extremely accurate and directed to the audience that you would like to attract but the ability to write well isn’t something anyone can do without some training and practice, and therefore can mean a lack of quality and this is not a good trade off.

Good content simply is well written information which communicates to your visitors exactly what you want to communicate, with no ambiguity, while it also offers info to the search engines so our site is categorized properly within their database. Search engines like Google rank pages for quality and these rankings are affected by the amount and quality of content on your site. Creating multiple pages of content that link back to your homepage is very important because each of those pages adds to your overall link popularity and therefore your page rank. Furthermore, an abundance of good content gives your site credibility both in your visitor’s eyes and also to the search engines.

Creating new and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first and then keeping the content fresh so visitors will want to return again and again is what brings increasing amounts of traffic to your site. This quality content can also be a very valuable asset, which can be syndicated to different media distribution channels, making you money.

To conclude good content is going to help you get found and will make your site "sticky" once it is found. Therefore good content is key to an effective website which has tons of traffic coming to it and if you are selling something it will be making you lots of money and that’s the bottom line isn’t it?

Next time we will talk about links and how they fit into Search Engine Optimization.

For now “Content is King”

How to Optimize your web site for Better results.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is something that anyone trying to sell anything on the internet knows is important but knowing how to do it well that is a different story.
SEO is about optimizing a site so that it gets higher rankings in a search engine - no matter what factors the search engine uses to determine your page rank. Good SEO will figure out how to make a sites ranking higher and therefore get found easier by people looking for your information.
We know that there are a few things that are important when it comes to SEO, good content, having quality links to our web sites and good key words are all very important. When done right we know it helps us get higher ‘page rank’ so visitors can find our site easier so we get more sales and that is what we all want.
What we don’t like about SEO is that it is a process rather than an action. This is where some of us loose it. We want a step by step fool proof method for our web site. Well it just isn’t that way. SEO is, in my view, a moving target and hitting that target is what we want to do, what we try to do but it keeps moving.
Search engine optimization is built around 3 basic concepts - organic (the way a search engine places us naturally), optimizing for PPC (pay per click) campaigns and a sites content and functionality. All three areas must work together to succeed. Search engine positioning is hard work and takes hours of work on an ongoing basis.
Over the next few weeks we are going to talk about the different aspects of search engine optimization. Can we do it ourselves or do we need to hire a professional? Can we do some aspects ourselves? Is good SEO possible? How do we do it? Seems like I have a lot of questions, doesn’t it? Well I am not a professional SEO Guru so I am only going to try and communicate what I know. Even if we don’t want to do it ourselves we should know what it’s all about or we could get snowed by the people we hire. I hired a company to do some for me and it was money out the window. Am I any smarter? I’m working on it.
Next time we will talk about content not just any content but good content.

“Good SEO helps make sales”