Best Practice for Guest Blogging

The regular changes that Google’s been making to its search algorithms recently to clamp down on poor quality links or content has started to change the focus of many website’s link building strategies. Outsourcing link building to agencies that use bulk link techniques on dubious sites has never worked that well, but now more than ever, an effective link building program should be focused on ‘relationship building’ rather than simple link building.

One of the popular ways to go about relationship building is by being a guest blogger on a reputable blog. This has always been an incredibly effective means of generating high quality links from popular and relevant web pages, but more recently the over-use and poor implementation of this technique has resulted in many bloggers cringing at inboxes full of poorly written, self-serving pitch requests, and ultimately ignoring the vast majority of would be ‘guest posts’. In the same way that numerous linking request emails started to flood into mailboxes several years ago, the same is now true for guest blog requests, so that a number of blogs are now closing their doors to guest post submissions.

Furthermore, according to Matt Cutts – the head of Google’s webspam team – “Google is willing to take action if they see spammy, or low quality guest blogging…which is basically putting low quality articles with embedded links on that site”. He goes on to say that “article-spinning, or low quality syndication are the areas in which Google are going to take an interest”. You can hear more about his comments in a video here.

Guest blogging still works however, and works well, but it has to be done effectively as genuine relationship building, rather than blatant link building. The links will come by building real relationships with the people running the sites so that a level of trust and respect is developed and the guest blog posts add to the quality and tone of the original blog.

Here are some useful tips on the best practice for guest blogging:

• #1 Research potential link sources well: Research sources through social media channels, especially Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Seek out high quality blogs and get to know the blog first, before making contact.
• #2 Don’t be too direct: The first time you contact a blogger, don’t pitch to them – instead, get to know them. If you are targeting a larger blog with multiple writers, then you might want to go by the way of an introduction. Most bloggers are happy to help out people they like with a link, but the only way to get that is to focus on the relationship before the link.
• #3 Approach through social media: Better yet, skip email altogether for the first contact. Instead, make contact through social channels, where you are much more likely to get a response. Twitter is one of the best social networks for finding and connecting with bloggers and should be the first point of contact. Start by following, then tweet directly to them, but don’t ask for a link on the first tweet.
• #4 Personalise the pitch: What if you don’t know enough about the blogger to make it personal? Then it’s probably too soon to be pitching for a link! Nothing will get your guest post denied quicker than sending a generic pitch.
• #5 Offer value: The best way to get what you want is to give something back. The primary value you should be offering is excellent content to the blog, so create valuable, unique content to submit to the blogger. Also, offer to promote and share their content on your social networks, bring technical issues to their attention, such as dead links or broken forms, and leave good quality comments and participate in discussions.
• #6 Maintain the relationship: Often when guest bloggers manage to get a link placement, they don’t continue the relationship with the blog’s owner. So follow up with the blog owner / editor to see if they have any feedback, positive or otherwise. If your content is good, the blogger will be eager to publish more of your submissions in the future. This is particularly useful for agencies that can leverage these relationships with multiple clients.

As outlined above, the process of guest blogging can be time consuming but should reflect the natural process of relationship building rather than a quick link request. If you would like more information about how guest blogging can improve your relationship building (and links), please contact us now for more details.

A successful search engine optimisation strategy needs to incorporate an effective link-building campaign. Within this, there are many advantages to directory submissions, the main one being that they produce one-way links to your site. They can also produce some visits to your site, but this isn’t the primary reason for submitting your site to the directories.

Specialised business directories are particularly significant, as when implemented into the correct categories, the links that they provide are high in relevancy, which is what Google likes as part of its ranking criteria. Relevant links from other high profile directories such as DMOZ can improve a site’s ranking because it is recognised as a reputable source which is well connected, although it remains very difficult to get a listing here!

The following are some tips to maximise the potential of a link-building campaign:

• Decide which directories to submit to before the process begins. There are lists available that point you in the right direction, but like the directories themselves, these need to be selected carefully to ensure relevancy and successful results from submissions.
• Keep organised. This includes making a detailed list of all the directories that have been submitted to. This prevents duplication and time wasting. The cost and login details of each directory can be recorded for future reference, as well as the time taken to submit to them and the results produced. Through this record keeping, a database of good directories can be compiled over time.
• Select the correct categories for the listings. Relevancy is key, so ensure that the link to your site is only placed in the most relevant category. This is not only beneficial for the results, but also to ensure that the directory’s webmaster doesn’t fast-track your submission to the bin, if it’s carelessly submitted. The hierarchy of the category is also important, as those nearer the top level of the site produce the greater link value back to your site.
• Choose the correct title for your submission. This is important because it will become the link back to your site and so including relevant keywords within it will produce the best results. This title should then be varied between directories, so that search engines don’t penalise the links for being too repetitive.
• Ensure the description is keyword relevant. Although the title is more important than the description, it’s also important to include relevant keywords within it, as they help to determine the relevance of the link. The description should also not be too repetitive across directories, so short and long variations should be included. Excessive use of punctuation, capitalisation or sales pitches should be avoided as this can lead to the rejection of your submission.
• Finally, perform the directory submissions over random periods of time. This shows search engines that the link building is natural and not artificially created (which can result in abnormally large increases in the amount of links to a site and set off virtual alarm bells within the search engines). The more natural, relevant and well placed the links are submitted within the well respected directories, the better the results will be.

If you’d like your website’s rankings to benefit from a professional link-building campaign, please contact us now for more information.

Link building is an essential component of any SEO campaign and can often make a real difference to the ranking positions that a website can achieve. Increasing the inbound links to a website is an on-going process that needs to be implemented to support and improve rankings, as well as increase brand awareness and visitor traffic from other online sources.

A good link building strategy helps to increase the number of links to a website and, if done correctly, can help to drive increased visitor traffic from search (and in particular, Google) due to improved ranking positions, and from other relevant websites which potential customers might be visiting.

Link building campaigns are rarely complex or technical – you just need to have a clear plan to follow and to devote some time to the research, submission and administration of the links. There is no “quick fix” to building successful links and it often requires a long term strategy to gradually develop links over time. In fact, if you attract too many links to your website too quickly, it can alert the search engines to possible unusual activity and potential ranking penalties.

There are several core stages to a successful link building campaign, as follows:

* Link audit: you need to see where you currently have links on other websites and assess how big a task your link building campaign might need to be. You should have your website listed on Google’s Webmaster Tools to see how many inbound links are recognised by Google, but you can also review these through Yahoo and Bing as well.

* Competitor link research: you should also assess the number of inbound links for your main competitors, which means those websites ranking above your for your chosen search terms. You can’t see the full picture of links through Google, but researching Yahoo and Bing can provide more information and a benchmark to aim for.

* Identifying link sites: the above research will help identify some potential sites where your link should also appear, plus there are ways to identify other sites where your link should appear – ideally alongside content that’s relevant to your market and can include sites like online directories, social networking sites, article and press release sites, plus video sites. Also don’t forget customer sites where you might be able to add or exchange a link.

* Submitting links: once you’ve identified the websites to use, you need to go through the submission process and see if you can get a free link, or whether it requires a reciprocal link or payment. In the latter two cases you need to assess the relative value to your site, but reciprocal links in particular can still be effective.

* Reviewing links: The administration of a link building programme can be extensive and requires regular reviews, possible resubmissions, further research and assessment of the link results being achieved. You should always be on the lookout for new sites where links could be added, as long as these sites are good quality and relevant to your business.

Link building work should be allocated at least 2-3 hours a month and maybe more, depending on the scale of the task. And it has to be ongoing, to help improve your website’s ranking potential as well as to protect your existing rankings against competitor activity.

If you’d like more information about how the Web Marketing Workshop can help your business through an effective link building campaign, please contact us now.

The prominent US retailer, JC Penney received a large amount of unwelcome publicity last month following press coverage about how the store’s website came to dominate many searches for product items that they sell, even though they might not be the ‘best fit’ for the searcher. This led to the accusation of the store utilising “black hat” SEO techniques and a subsequent reduction in search rankings on Google.

“Black hat” optimisation is the term given to the range of techniques that could be described as ‘spamming’ or methods that contravene Google’s standards when targeting search engine rankings. These techniques were described as “the most ambitious attempt to game Google’s search results that I have ever seen” by an independent online marketing consultant who investigated the JC Penny issue.

JC Penney’s SEO agency were accused of using a “link farm” to give the company a benefit from thousands of links placed on hundreds of sites scattered around the web, all of which lead directly to JCPenney.com. A “link farm” is a website or combination of websites containing many hyperlinks, especially designed to increase the index ranking of other websites to search engines and contravene Google’s guidelines on ethical SEO practices.

Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed that the “link farm” techniques being used violated Google’s guidelines and that “corrective action” was being taken. He stated that even as recently as last November, Google had been aware of JC Penney’s violations of its guidelines but they hadn’t followed up to ensure this was no longer happening.

A JC Penney spokeswoman is quoted as saying: “JC Penney did not authorize, and we were not involved with or aware of, the posting of the links, as it is against our natural search policies. We are working to have the links taken down.” They have also fired their search engine consulting firm, SearchDex.

This is yet another high profile case of a major company falling foul of unscrupulous SEO techniques, which although might have gained them some advantage in the short-term, have proven to be a bad investment as a long-term search engine ranking solution.

If you’d like to know more about this story, or how your website can benefit from legitimate SEO practices, please contact us for details.

Improving the search engine optimisation (SEO) of a website to achieve high ranking positions involves a wide range of factors, both on and off the site. The ‘off site’ factors largely revolve around links into a domain, and this has been a core factor of Google’s success since this search engine first launched over 10 years ago. It is therefore an essential element that websites can’t ignore but one that can often be hard to achieve.

Although website marketers can create a highly optimised website through a combination of factors such as page content, title tags and design, it can still be difficult to achieve good ranking positions on Google if there are few links directed at the site. This remains an important difference in Google’s search results and it will usually ‘ but not always ‘ follow that the better the ‘link popularity’ of a website, the better chance it will have of ranking well for its target search terms.

Link building should therefore be a core part of a search engine marketing strategy and one that needs to be developed as an ongoing strategy through many different routes. It often needs to be creative and it can be time-consuming, but the rewards in terms of higher ranking positions and more visitor traffic to a website can be immense.

A recent? article? on the SEOmoz.org website in the US listed what are considered to be the most important SEO factors, as voted by over 70 practitioners in the field. A section on link development listed the following top 10 factors that are considered to be vital in achieving good ranking value from links, in descending order of importance:

1. Keyword-Focused Anchor Text from External Links? ‘ which means that links gained from other sites should use relevant keywords in the text link that relate to the content of the target page (such as? Google Ads (AdWords) training)
2. External Link Popularity? ‘ this reflects the overall quantity and ‘quality’ of external links into a website. Google places a strong emphasis on this issue and the quality factors are covered by some of the other points listed here.
3. Diversity of Link Sources? ‘ ideally there should be a large number of links coming from many unique root domains
4. Page-Specific ‘TrustRank’? ‘ this indicates that a page has attracted links into it from ‘trusted’ sources, such as government (.gov) or educational (.edu) websites
5. Iterative Algorithm-Based, Global Link Popularity? ‘ this is essentially Google’s PageRank calculation, a complex mathematical formula based on the exchange of hyperlinks around the web
6. Topic-Specificity / Focus of External Link Sources? ‘ ideally external links to a web page should come from topically relevant pages or websites that are relevant to the target page
7. Keyword-Focused Anchor Text from Internal Links? ‘ internal links within a website are also important, particularly within body content
8. Location in Information Architecture of the Site? ‘ a link from the Home Page of an external site can be much more important than one from a directory level page deep within the site
9. Internal Link Popularity? ‘ similar to item 7 above, the number and ‘quality’ of internal links within a site can be important, not just to the Home Page but to other core pages of the site
10. Quantity & Quality of ‘Nofollow’ Links to the Page? ‘ the ‘nofollow’ command within HTML code can reduce the value of inbound links (such as from blogs) but may still have a small impact on the overall link popularity of a site.

So, as can be seen from this list, there are a number of considerations when developing the link popularity of a website, such as having relevant keywords in the text of external links to a website’s page on that topic being a key factor. The quality and diversity of the links, as well as the level of trust and the PageRank of the sites upon which they are placed are also important factors.

If you would like to know more about developing a link building strategy and how the Web Marketing Workshop can help, please contact us now.

One of the features that is often overlooked within the Google Analytics service is the ‘Site Overlay’ option. This can visually display the percentage of visitors who click upon standard links that are embedded on a particular page of a website and can be a valuable source of information on the ways users are actually navigating through the site.

For example, one way that Site Overlay can be used is to visually show what percentage of visitors clicked through to the main pages linked from the website’s Home Page, or within the main navigation menu. This is a great benefit to website owners as it gives them a clear depiction of which page most of the visitors go to from the initial home page, or the primary landing pages used in a search advertising campaign. Therefore it’s instantly possible to see the most popular paths that visitors follow and the most visited pages. By hovering the mouse over the percentage box in the Site Overlay, another box appears that displays the actual number of clicks to that page and the number of conversions to a particular goal on that page.

If the link is clicked upon, the Site Overlay takes you to that next page and then displays the information according to the links from that page. It’s therefore possible to see which are the best performing links or pages in terms of click density and what the most popular route to a particular goal is, without necessarily having to set up small qualitative research groups. This information can enhance a website’s optimisation by allowing site marketers to experiment with different landing pages, layout, content and navigation routes, leading to a much more effective streamlining of visitors to converting customers.

The Site Overlay tool does have some restricted functionality, however. Currently the results are only displayed on static (as opposed to dynamic) pages that have unique links to content located elsewhere on the website. So if a page has numerous links pointing to another page, the total of clicks for all those links will be displayed in each of those site overlay boxes. Other limitations include the inability to function within frames, with URL redirects, or with Javascript or subdomain links so that in these cases the Site Overlay stats are not displayed.

Overall though, the Site Overlay is a very useful addition to a website’s analytics toolbox, and should be reviewed at least monthly. If you’d like to know more about how Google Analytics could be used to enhance your website’s performance, please contact us.

Google’s Local Business Listings are now regularly shown within the main search results if a user searches for a local business, alongside a small map. In addition, viewing results on Google Maps provides more information and additional advertising options through Google Ads (AdWords), all of which should be used by a localised business to target their potential customer base. Google is now adding new features to this service to help advertisers gain more local business.

We first covered the value of Google’s local business listings and their increasing prominence in Google’s ‘universal search results’ back in our June 2007 newsletter. The local business listings service has developed further since then and remains an important area for companies who are targeting a localised market to gain a prominent listing. Achieving a high ranking in the 10 businesses listed in Google’s main results can be difficult, particularly in a competitive market, but if searchers click through to the more detailed business listings, or search directly within Google Maps, there are additional ways to achieve visibility and to attract searchers to your website.

One of the main ways to achieve good visibility is through the use of a local business advert, which is created as part of a Google Ads (AdWords) campaign. This allows advertisers to create a specific advert to appear on Google Maps searches, with a small icon, address and contact details. In addition, Google has now announced some additional new features for these adverts to help companies attract prospective customers faster and to gauge how well their adverts are performing.

The first addition is that Google’s local business ads will now feature new interactive links within the panel that is displayed for the business. These panels are designed to provide more information for users and to connect them to the business quicker with a link to their website. Now users will be able to see more information from this panel and to take additional actions, such as a “Get Directions” option, a link to “Street View”, and “Save to My Maps” which allows users to personalise their search results.

In addition, Google Ads (AdWords) will also be adding a new interaction report for local business ads in the near future. This report will help advertisers to assess the activity through the local business ads and their return on investment, with such information as how many users opened the info window and clicked on each of the new interactive links. Google says that Maps users are often looking for different information than Search users so that these new interactive links and the reports should help customers connect with a business faster as well as help the advertiser understand how to better target Maps users versus Search users.

If your business could be benefitting more from a Local Business Listing on Google, contact us now for more information on this feature and we’ll be pleased to help. We can create optimised listings and Local Business Adverts to help raise your profile and improve your visibility to your target market.

The need to attract links into a website from other third-party sites is undisputed as this can be one of the most significant factors in determining ranking position – particularly on Google – but it can also be the most challenging. There are many ways that this can be achieved, but one of the most effective is through the ‘natural’ attraction of links by adding unique content to your website ‘ so called ‘link bait’.

Creating content on a website can be achieved in a number of ways and the more ‘niche’ a market might be, the easier it can be to attract attention through the addition of ‘hard to find’ information that the market might be looking for. We’ve outlined some ideas below on ways that content could be used to attract web traffic and links, but in most cases the creation of the content is just the beginning and you also need to consider how others will find this content to then link through to it.

Developing web content can also be a time consuming task, so advance planning on what to produce and how to gain attention will be an important aspect to avoid wasting time creating information that doesn’t achieve its objective. Here are some ideas that you might want to consider for your business:

• Web content ‘ this can be the simplest way of attracting links into your site and involves adding useful content or resources to your site that your target market will find valuable and which is presented in a non-commercial way. This could be a glossary of industry jargon, some background information on your market sector (such as our history of search engines) or free advice on a particular topic that might be hard to find elsewhere. If this content can also be developed with search engine optimization in mind, it can help your site to attract visits and reference links.
• News ‘ adding news stories about your market sector can also attract links from other sites. This could be the use of a news feed or ideally some unique news content or perspective on current issues that might not be available elsewhere.
• Blogs ‘ these are now becoming immensely powerful tools for many companies and provide an easy way to regularly ad content and comment to your website. A blog can be used in many different ways, from commenting on trends in your market sector, to announcing new product developments or publishing opinions that can attract feedback and debate.
• Forums ‘ external forums can be used to discuss issues in your market sector, or you can develop an active forum on your own site. This can be more difficult to achieve than a blog that attracts feedback, but can be a used as a good information exchange in a specialized market, as long as there is no outwardly commercial motivation by your site that could prevent people from getting involved.
• Articles ‘ if you can create good content that is unique and valuable you can publish this through your own site or through many of the free article circulation websites. Other blogs or content sites may use this information in return for including your details and a link back to your site, but this type of market is now highly competitive and you need to find new and interesting angles to get your articles noticed.
• Tools or applications ‘ another popular way of attracting traffic and reference links to your site is to provide a free tool or application that would be used by your market ‘ such as a budgeting tool or mapping application. Again, these techniques are becoming more widespread so you need to consider your market and come up with a unique idea that could address a particular need.

All of the above elements can be developed on your website or through external web services that will create links back to your site (although note the impact of the ‘nofollow’ tag). You need to consider what content will add value to your customers and create interest as well as reference links from other sites.

Creating this type of ‘link bait’ is very much like PR and needs constant development to raise the profile of your business and website, but with the right planning and implementation the time spent can be a valuable investment, not just for attracting links but also new business enquiries as well.

If you’d like to discuss some ideas about how your business could attract links from new content strategies, please contact us.

For some years now Google and the other main search engines have recognised the ‘nofollow’ tag as an attribute for hyperlinks between web pages and this is now commonly being used by blogs and other websites that attract user comments. It’s therefore an important consideration for link building campaigns and something that needs to be checked within the source code of any page that offers potential links.

It was in early 2005 that Google first announced the introduction of the attribute (rel=”nofollow”) on hyperlinks in an attempt to stop ‘comment spam’ on blogs, guest books and other similar sites. You’ve probably seen the type of thing ‘ meaningless comment added to the bottom of a blog post, or blatant advertising for another website which attempts to take advantage of the link made available with each comment. In short, content that adds no value to the original blog post with the direct intention of gaining some link value from the site.

This tag resulted from the new opportunities that were created to build links from blogs and forums to third party websites. It is also now being applied to other ‘Web 2.0′ applications like Wikipedia, or bookmarking sites (such as del.icio.us), photo sharing sites (like Flickr) and social networks (like Facebook). By recognising this ‘nofollow” attribute on hyperlinks, Google moved to cut out unnecessary ‘link spam’ by not giving such links any ranking ‘credit’ within their search results. In short, the tag doesn’t provide a negative ‘vote’ for the site where the comment or link is posted, but it just ignores the link and makes sure that spammers get no benefit from abusing public areas like blog comments, trackbacks, and referrer lists.

By reviewing the HTML code of a blog, you are now likely to see a link that used to say something like:
Visit my <a href=”http://www.example.com/”>discount pharmaceuticals</a> site.

to a comment code that says:
Visit my <a href=”http://www.example.com/” rel=”nofollow”>discount pharmaceuticals</a> site.

This is another example of an opportunity for SEO spam being restricted to avoid abuse and, consequently, the application of this link attribute has been the cause of much debate on the extent that it is now being used to block ‘link value’ from some sites. The tag performs much the same function as the ‘nofollow’ attribute within a robots metatag, but allows the ‘blocking’ of the link to be at an individual hyperlink level.

As a result, if you are undertaking any link building work then you need to check whether this tag is being used behind the links on a potential links page, as this can have an impact on the value of any link development work or exchanges with other sites. There has also been some debate about whether it can be used within a site to try to control the value of links between pages and ‘sculpt’ Google’s PageRank score, although this is speculative and not recommended.

To find out more about the use of the ‘nofollow’ tag and its role in the development of link popularity, please contact us now.

Links are an essential but often overlooked factor when it comes to online marketing.

Whether your website is just starting out, or even if it has some maturity, it’s well worth regularly reviewing the state of your link health. Having a strong profile of quality, relevant inbound links will do wonders for your visibility, helping you to rank well in search engine results as well as driving traffic directly to your site.

Get those links

Some popular ways to get inbound links include:

Directory Submissions

There are still some prominent directories where you can submit your website link. Some of these, such as the Open Directory (DMOZ) and Yahoo Directory are also used by the main search engines, plus there are many industry-specific and business directories in the UK. Some leading directories request a reciprocal link or charge for a listing, either as a one-off fee or a recurring annual charge. However, there are many directories that still offer free listings, although as each submission is checked by a human editor, these submissions may take some weeks, or months, to be accepted.

Requests for Links from other websites

Find a relevant website, find the right contact and make your request. It’s usually polite to send the link code out with your request. Some sites will link out to other relevant sites for free. However, most will want to charge and some will want a reciprocal link. If you are paying for your link, get some assurance about traffic to the other website first. Link building this way can be a very labour intensive method, so be prepared for the long haul.

Forums and Blogs

The key to using these channels successfully is relevance. Only post blog comments which relate to the overall theme of the blog. Otherwise, attempts to promote websites in this way can have negative effects.

Similarly, forums will not appreciate obvious promotional comments which do not contribute to the discussion threads. But if you have something relevant and useful to say, a signature link may be all that’s needed to send some traffic through.

RSS Feeds and Syndication

If you can write original, informative and readable copy on topical issues, then other websites and feeds may be interested in carrying your articles and content. As the author, links to your biography and/ or your site are normally offered.

Press Releases

Press releases can be very successful in the online environment too. Well written copy can drive relevant traffic to your website for a specific promotion, or even counter negative publicity. You can read more about Press Releases on our website.

What not to do…

Indiscriminate links are not advisable – poor quality links, such as those bought from link farms, will do nothing to enhance your quality ranking with search engines or drive relevant traffic to your site. There is also some debate about the value of buying text links and whether Google can identify and penalise these.

Other points to remember:

• Text links are the best option, with the text of the link being a relevant keyword or phrase that relates to your site content.
• As well as providing link value, good links can also attract additional visitors so make sure your links in point to relevant content on your website. You might get visitors initially but they won’t hang around and may not ever return,
• Do not use spam techniques to request links by email or spam blogs: you want to promote your site not get blacklisted, or worse…

Link building is an ongoing task since other websites will come and go and so do their links to your site. At Web Search Workshop UK we can help you with link building campaigns and Press Release services, so please contact us now to find out more.