Search engines such as
Google are seen as black boxes that hand out page one search
rankings
for websites and blogs based upon secret and mysterious calculations. In
essence that is true.6 Tips to Rank High in Google Hundreds of
scientists and mathematicians are constantly working in quiet rooms to
increase the artificial intelligence of its search engine.
Some
search engine optimisation experts have used devious means to try and
trick Google into getting ranked high in search results. This has been
done via tactics such as “Black Hat SEO” that are used to try and fool
Google. Google doesn’t encourage these activities and is constantly fine
tuning its search algorithms to eliminate these practices.
Google’s
objectives is to ensure that it is always delivering search results
that users find relevant, interesting and also timely. If they don’t
keep doing this then people will stop using Google and then its $30
billion of revenue it earns off search advertising is under threat. Also
breathing down its neck are rapidly growing social sites such as
Facebook that indirectly are providing alternatives to Google (rumours
are constantly circulating that Facebook is building its own social
search engine). If Google doesn’t continue to deliver then its whole
existence is heading for a slippery downward slope of Web extinction.
In
the last 2 years Google has increased the importance of usability such
as measuring the speed of websites and sites that are producing unique
content , hence the targeting of content farms and de-ranking them.
Google Loves Unique Content
What
Google does like is great unique content. We have seen the rise in
importance of content creation and curation as a marketing tool over the
last few years. People use the web to find information, that is why
Google is putting such a high value on unique content. Creating great
contagious content that begs to be shared such as videos, blog posts and
ebooks also has a big side benefit. That benefit is that people will
link to your website or blog and hence Google gives you big ticks in its
search engine calculations the more often back-links are created to
your blog and website from other websites.
This is is where the
tactic of “offsite optimisation” starts to make its importance and
presence felt and should be included in your SEO strategy. This is the
final stage of getting Google to like you. (
Off-page Optimization
SEO
experts generally agree that off-page link building techniques can
contribute around 80% of the effectiveness in any SEO campaign. Off-page
optimization or building links, is by far the most important activity
for assisting us in getting our website well ranked in search engines.
And the key driving force in this, is backlinks.
The Importance of “Back Links
A
link, or back-link, is the link that you use to be brought to another
page. Backlinks are incredibly important because they are basically like
“votes” for your page that tell search engines that other webpages like
and utilise your page for information. The more websites that you have
linked or “voting” for your webpage, the higher your ranking will be.
Though, not all votes are weighted the same, as links from the homepage
of major websites, like the Australian Government australia.gov.au,
amazon.com or facebook.com, are going to be worth a lot more than a
lesser known website.
So here are 6 tips for easy link building:
Tip 1: Competitor analysis
Assuming
you won’t be getting many links from those major sites, there still are
easy link building tactics available to you. Begin your link building
campaign with a competitor analysis. Basically, you want to repeat what
your best competitors are doing, as one of the key link building
principles is to match and exceed your competitors. Meaning, if you can
go through and match all the links they have, or at least a majority of
them, and find a couple of other ways to get additional links that they
don’t have, you will be able to easily surpass them in searching ranking
results.
Tip 2: Content, content and content
As
always, the best way to encourage people to link to your website, is by
consistently providing new, compelling and useful content. Content,
content and content, to steal a well known phrase.
Creating
compelling, relevant and useful content; such as writing about your
products, industry, general current market information with keyword
oriented useful content will likely influence your website more than any
of the other factor discussed here. After the Google Penguin update,
regularly posted quality content is the recommended method to getting
more traffic to your website. Ideally you should post at least 2 new
articles per week, more being better, as Google will favour websites
with frequently updated material that contains unique and relevant
content. And if your website offers good content, other websites will
naturally want to link to you as well.
When you are posting articles,
don’t forget to apply the same principles of Title tag and Meta
Description to your articles, and don’t forget to include your desired
keywords or phrases.
Tip 3: Guest blogging
Other
ideas for a successful link building campaign include guest blogging.
The general idea behind guest blogs is to get a link to your website
posted on an already established website/blog. These links tend to carry
more weight in Google because they are harder to acquire. Some sites
will have very stringent requirements for the types of articles they
will accept, so links from these sites have more value. Another popular
and highly successful method is to contact bloggers or webmasters in
your niche and simply ask them for a link. Or, ask to be a guest blogger
for the sole purpose of getting the chance to link your guest blog
posting back to your site. Establishing relationships with reviewers,
authors, professors, enthusiasts, topic experts or anyone else who is
operating a website in your niche area, whether it be through social
networking or message boards, is a great way to build a network of
people who might be willing to reference your website in their content.
Tip 4: Join web 2.0 site
Joining
a web 2.0 site is an excellent method of developing search engine
friendly links. If you are not familiar with the name, web 2.0 is the
term used to describe websites that have a social networking component
to them. Sites like Squidoo, StumbleUpon, and Delicious generate most of
their content from the site users themselves. These types of pages
facilitate interactive information sharing as well as collaboration,
where you yourself can add articles that include up to 9 free backlinks
per article to your website. Don’t duplicate any of your existing
articles on your website and use them for either Squidoo or HubPages
though, as search engines are filtering out content that way.
The
best way to build links and create strong SEO benefits through
Squidoo.com is by creating unique content that focuses on your keywords.
Always try to incorporate multimedia, such as videos or images to gain
more trust and authority quickly. It only takes a few articles until
you’ll be able to add on a number of backlinks in your articles to your
main site. I also really like Squidoo’s RSS feed widget, as this gives
nice backlinks plus context to the links, which is great for search
engines.
Tip 5: Vendors, Partner testimonials
Always
give online testimonials to your suppliers, business partners or anyone
else you can give a testimonial to, as it is a great way to get free
backlinks from legitimate websites. Don’t forget to include your
strategic keywords into your testimonials and hyperlink it back to the
appropriate webpage from your website.
Tip 6: Link request to your connections
And
finally, source your own networks for possible opportunities to build
more links. Business contacts, suppliers, distributors, family members,
friends, even your children’s school, all have the potential for
providing you backlink opportunities. If you have been nice to them and
they like you, ask for a free backlink on their website. Of course, the
higher page rank or relevant websites you can link to, the better. If
you can manage to obtain powerful and valuable links from websites like
edu.com, that would be highly beneficial to you SEO efforts.
There
are a lot more tactics involved in SEO to help you compete and surpass
your competitors in search engine ranking results. The aforementioned
tactics are basic initial strategies that help build a strong foundation
and starting point for your SEO efforts, and will immediately help you
move your website traffic and search engine ranking results to the next
level.
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