Posts Tagged ‘search engine optimization’
Internet Marketing Ideas: Valuable Links for SEO
When it comes to internet marketing ideas, it’s not exactly revolutionary to come out and say that you need inbound links to rank well in the search engines. We all know that much. Google has made it very clear that they value sites that are valued by others (in the form of inbound links, which act as popularity votes). Among links, though, they’re not all created equal. There are definitely some links that are more valuable than others – but which ones? Below, we’ve covered a few of the most important factors in determining the quality of an inbound link.
- Anchor Text: Anchor text is crucial, as this is one of the best ways to tell Google what a page is about. If you want to rank for a particular phrase, it’s vital to have inbound links that use that phrase as their anchor text. This one small step will dramatically improve your ability to rank.
- Pagerank: Pagerank gives you a good idea of where a site stands in terms of inbound links. Ideally, you want as many links as possible from high Pagerank sites.
- Relevance: It’s not just about anchor text. If a site relates to your topic, the link is going to be worth more to you.
- Purity: If a link is purchased, it’s probably worth less than a non-purchased link. Obviously, it’s impossible for Google to know which links are paid in all cases, but it’s not too difficult to figure out the ones purchased through major link buying services. It’s also not at all difficult for your competitors to report you for link buying. The best case scenario is one where you build links manually and don’t buy any at all.
What other traits do you look for in your links? Although these are some of the top factors to consider, they’re not the only ones. Weigh in on the comments!
Affiliate Marketing & SEO: How to Make it Work
All too often, you hear people complaining that affiliate marketing and SEO just don’t go together. They complain that they’ve made landing pages that do really well with PPC, but that they just don’t have what it takes to rank well organically speaking. Having looked at many of those pages, I know exactly why that is.
- Too little content. This is the number one reason that affiliate marketers doom their pages to rank poorly forever. You just can’t expect to compete with real, quality sites when your page is nothing more than a landing page and 3-4 junky articles. Add a real blog, write content that a human might actually want to read, and stop complaining that you can’t compete with people who have put in 500x more effort.
- No inbound links. Google doesn’t give first page rankings to sites with no inbound links. It just doesn’t happen. Not unless you want to rank for something ridiculously unpopular and rare as “purplish blue sweatshirt with rhinestones in the shape of a cat”. Because you could rank for that with no inbound links…but that’s about it.
- Poor quality inbound links. Some affiliates realize that they need to build links, but instead of actually making an effort, they do something silly like buy a $15 directory submission package and then sit back to wait for their riches. No competitive niche is going to be dominated with a low-quality site and $15 worth of automated directory submissions. You need to put in the time and effort to see out genuine, high-quality, relevant links if you want to really see results.
- Unhidden affiliate links. It’s not that Google hates affiliates. In fact, there are many affiliates that do extremely well in Google’s search rankings. What Google hates are affiliates who cheapen and tarnish the overall user experience. Unfortunately, that’s most of them, which means that it’s much safer to hide your affiliate links with a PHP or .htaccess redirect. Why give Google a reason to doubt your intentions?
If you take these four points to heart, your affiliate marketing and SEO efforts will undoubtedly be more successful in short order.
Free Affiliate Marketing Tools for SEO Marketers
When you’re doing affiliate marketing, tools can make the job significantly easier. For SEO affiliates, the best tools are those that let you quickly and easily spy on competitors and locate potential link partners. To help out, we’ve put together a brief list of some of the most useful SEO tools for affiliate marketers.
- Yahoo! Site Explorer - To use it, simply go to Yahoo! and type in “link:www.sitename.com” where “sitename” is equal to the actual domain you want to explore. Here, you can view inbound links to specific pages on the site, or to the domain as a whole. It’s far more comprehensive than the same command on Google.
- SearchStatus Toolbar – This free toolbar consolidates Pagerank, Alexa Ranking, Compete Data, and whois functions into a single toolbar that sits in the lower right-hand corner of your browser.
- Google External Keyword Tool – This free tool lets you research potential keywords and get volume estimates from the largest English-language search engine.
- Aaron Wall’s Rank Checker – This free plugin lets you easily check your current rankings with the most popular search engines.
- Keyword Spy – Although the angle with this site is to get users to pay for the premium version, even the free data can be very telling.
As you can see, it’s actually very possible to accomplish a lot without spending money on expensive tools. What other free SEO tools have you had success with?