Keyword Optimization

One of the most popular strategies in the SEO process is keyword optimization. Relevant and keyword-rich content is the life of a website. This is what search engine crawlers look for in a website and becomes their basis in indexing and ranking a particular website. Search engines base their rankings of websites on their relation to certain keywords or phrases that users usually look for.

Keywords are words that are trending and popular among search engine rankings. These are usually words that users type when they make their queries and searches. Using these keywords and incorporating them in your web content will make it easier for your website to be noticed by search engine crawlers and indexed in their rankings.

Taking Advantage of Trending Keywords

Being aware of keyword optimization is key to finding success in the SEO arena. Keywords may form a little part of your whole SEO strategy but they play the most important role in the whole process. Being highly ranked in any search engine in the Internet today depends largely on how you effectively use keywords in your web pages.

Here are some things web developers do to fully optimization their keyword usage:

• Research and Determine the Keywords you Will use

There are two types of keyword categories that web developers should always keep in mind. There are Money Keywords and there are Market Defining Keywords. Differentiating the two is important as they both play separate but equally important roles in the whole keyword optimization process.

Money keywords may be the more popular one especially among SEO practitioners. These are words that they usually bid on and serve as the main keywords used in their optimization processes. These are trending words that are advantageous to use within the posted web content. However, money keywords are not always the keywords used when developers need to evaluate recent SEO trends on their particular industries.

Market Defining keywords are the ones used in this evaluation process. These kinds of keywords are the ones deemed to be at the highest level and can be used to accurately measure the industry you are interested in. They may not be the trending ones at the moment but market defining keywords are usually the more often used keyword in the whole link building process.

• Analyze the Competition

It is not only advisable to know the certain Money or Market defining keywords in your particular industry, it is good to research on the websites that are currently ranking on top based on these certain keywords. You should be able to know who is considered authority website for a particular keyword and be able to observe the strategies they are employing to stay on top of the search engine ranking pages.

The goal here is to learn and be able to improvise on certain strategies so that your website itself can rank high with regards to a particular keyword. The companies that are usually on the top 20-30 SERP of a particular keyword are the ones that can be considered authority ones. These websites are also known as SERP dominators.

When users search for a particular keyword or phrase, these are the websites that would almost always be returned by the search engine crawlers. The goal is to ultimately become one of these.

• Use Keywords in the Link Building Process

Knowing these sites can also help in the overall link building process, not just in keyword optimization. Web developers, especially for start-up websites, can get a significant amount of relevant backlinks from these authority websites, something critical in all link building endeavors.

Developers can search for blogs, guest posting opportunities, interviews, press releases and many more regarding a particular money keyword or phrase. Developers can log into these top websites and find for an opportunity to link there. Not only will you have authority backlinks, search engine crawlers will definitely turn a positive eye towards your site and catapult it up the search engine rankings.

• Use Your Assets

Assets would mean the link building assets that you have in your company, in your utility. These are pages from within your website, information you have in your hands, or even the people who work within you company all of which can be used to generate links pertaining to certain keywords in your industry.

Assessing these is important because you never know the link opportunities that a simple interview with your company’s CEO or a certain picture about a product can generate. You should maximize these assets and connect them to certain keywords that you are targeting. Search engines, with all the latest developments they have undergone, are now more capable than ever in considering various link building assets in their SERP criteria.

• Use Keywords and Link Building Query Operators Combined

To be successful in your SEO process, it is important to always look for opportunities and saturate every avenue you can find. One way to do this is to find for certain Market defining keywords and combining it with link building queries available for web developers to use.

Some of the more popular link building queries in the Internet today include:

1. The Ontolo Link Building Query Generator
2. Link Search Tool by SoloSEO
3. SEOBook Link Suggest Tool

• Do Guest Writing

Posting and writing web articles in web directories or for some other company is advantageous; you create a network for yourself and an extensive link building opportunity for yourself.

Some web directories and sites allow their writers to post certain links for further reference to be used by their readers on the topics they have searched for. You can use this opportunity to create a natural and relevant backlink to your website which will eventually increase visitor traffic and would surely help in getting you atop search engine rankings.

Also, the opportunity to observe and know certain strategies that some of your indirect competitors apply is advantageous in your own link building and keyword optimization process.

• Reach out and Ask for Help

Though this is more personal than technical, it will not hurt if you ask friends, acquaintances or even family to link back to your site and help you in the whole keyword optimization process. Reach out and ask. The link opportunities that can be generated would still count and help you succeed in your endeavor.

Strategically Placing Keywords in Your Website

There are several ways to put keywords in the contents of your website. But you must know what works and what does not for your website to be able to fully optimize the process. Placing keywords strategically in your site is crucial because some visitors and web crawlers use these as the basis on whether or not your site is worth spending time on.

Here are some places within your site where you can put keywords in:

1. The Title

The title of your content or article should have keywords present on it. Aside from thinking of a creative title for your posts, it is also important that the titles feature the keywords that you are targeting. It is advisable to have around 5-6 words in your title with the keywords on it.

2. In the Description Meta tag

In the search results page, search engines always use the description meta tag in providing a snippet of what your website is all about. Sometimes reading these short sentences can entice or turn away visitors from logging into your website. It is important that the keyword/s be present in these descriptions to make search engines have an easier time partnering you website to a certain money keyword.

3. In the Keyword Meta tag

This pertains to the list of keywords or key phrases that are targeted by your page which also enable the search engine crawlers to find and index your site. Some things to remember would include:

o Use keywords that are also present in your title and description meta tag
o Do not overuse your keywords. Twice or thrice is enough.
o Remember to limit the characters you use for your keywords to 200 only, including spaces.
o Use keywords relevant to your pages

4. In the Heading Tags

The heading of your pages should feature your keywords.

5. In the ALT Tags

These are the tags present in other files within the website like JPEG, PNG and other picture files. Sometimes users have the tendency to disregard the loading of images in a website to make the pages load faster. They will be relying on the ALT tags for information that is why putting your keywords here is very important.

6. In the Web Content itself and its corresponding Hyperlinks

As you know by now, search engines base their rankings on the relevance and keyword-richness of a site’s content. Remember to always post unique and fresh content that has around 2-3% keyword density. Your hyperlinks should also feature your keywords as search engine spiders also check these regularly.

The Relevance of Keywords in SEO

Keywords are the major basis of search engine optimization. Your site cannot be considered authority unless you have maximized the utilization of your keywords by posting relevant content. The whole search engine optimization process anchors itself on keywords and their importance should always be deemed highest by web developers and SEO practitioners.

This application works quite differently from Twitter since aside from updating our status and connecting with friends online, this app allows you to find your Twitter friends in real time when you are in the same place at the same time and find out new things to do in different places.

This app has already gained substantial popularity and has attracted a lot of buzz amongst social networking fanatics. It has been dubbed as the next Twitter or Facebook, as the social networking powerhouse of the future. This innovative app is none other than Foursquare.

What is Foursquare?
Foursquare is essentially a location-based social networking website, an application for mobile devices, and a social game. It allows registered users to connect with friends and update their location. Foursquare utilizes the built-in GPS of a mobile device like that of iPhone’s to display your current location and show restaurants, bars, parks and other attractions found in your location. When you visit in any of these different venues, Foursquare enables you to “check in” using text messaging or a device specific app. It updates and broadcasts your current location to your friends, while also being able to actively take part in a fun social game with other registered users as Foursquare awards you points and badges for checking in at venues. You can also unlock new features in Foursquare when you check in more later on.

Foursquare in turn allows you to see where your friends have checked in. This is helpful especially if you want to meet up with them or just find new things to do in those places where your friends already checked in. This application was initially planned to be used like Twitter, but basing post on a user’s location. Instead of posting random ideas or news like in Twitter, Foursquare users can enjoy using the app by updating their friends as to where they are by updating their location. Thus, you can post shouts about what you are currently doing in a specific venue. It also enables you to search for your friends, add more friends and find more venues within your city.

Moreover, Foursquare also allows you to wire reviews and tips about a certain venue, which will appear to other Foursquare users. These tips would include everything from the best selections to order off the menu of a well-known restaurant to the prices of the services you might want to avail in a local salon.

The Foursquare mobile app is currently available to iPhone, Android, webOS, and Blackberry and Windows Mobile Application users. A Maemo version of the app is currently on its early stages of development and is not being offered in the Foursquare website yet.

Rising from the Ashes
Foursquare was created by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai. Crowley and Selvadurai previously created a similar social networking app to Foursquare called Dodgeball in 2004. Internet giant Google bought the rights to Dodgeball from the two in 2005 and even got them in to further develop the product. However, Google decided to shut down this social networking app without much explanation last 2009. Crowley definitely disapproved of Google’s move to dump the project, but he decided to join forces with Selvadurai once again to work on another product very identical to its disappointing precursor.

Hence, Foursquare was created in 2009, and albeit very similar to Dodgeball, it received an opposite reception from the virtual community. It started with availability in the 100 worldwide metro areas where the service was only accessible. When the Foursquare founders decided to extend the service further by changing its location model to permit check-ins from any locale worldwide in January 2010, the service started to boom and become increasingly popular. The site is exponentially increasing its registered users each and every day; it has closed in with around 1 million users from across the globe in April 2010.

With its growing popularity, Foursquare has been considered by a lot of people as the next Twitter. With this potential at stake, Foursquare is now being pursued by another Internet giant, this time Yahoo! Inc., which has offered the founders as much as $125 million. Google must be regretting its previous decision now.

Foursquare Mechanics

Here is how Foursquare works: each time a user goes anywhere in the world, they can use their mobile devices to check in to these locations and earn points. Some locations have tags for check-in frequency, thus a user can earn badges by checking into such venues. Some urban locales offer users city-specific badges that can only be attained in a specific zone. Foursquare has already made updates on the way they handle badges. Thus, when a user acquires a certain type of badge, that person will have the same type of badges across all cities. Once a badge is acquired by a user, it will stay in his or her profile for an indefinite period.

This social game allows users to play with and compete not only against the network of friends on Foursquare, but also against every Foursquare user not included in your network who are also in the same city on a weekly basis.

Users are also able to create their own “to do” lists for their own use, where they could list down all the locations that they would want to visit and check in. Foursquare also features a Tips section where users can key in information about the city attractions they have checked in, such as the things to do or the food to eat at the venue.

The social gaming feature of Foursquare has become beneficial to business establishments. Founders Crowley and Selvadurai have started to secure partnerships from different local companies to work with them and to have mutually profitable relationships. Last February 2010, Foursquare partnered with Zagat, Bravo, Conde Nast, and the New York Times. These companies will share information and tips to Foursquare users through their website and offer special badges at city attractions they have featured in their publications, websites, and shows.

Superuser Status
To make the playing field more competitive, Foursquare provide three level of “superuser status.” They can be attained by users who check in regularly or enter new information about several venues into Foursquare. Obtaining superuser status will unlock additional features and give users the ability to perform new tasks, depending on the superuser level.

Superuser status level 1 will allow users to edit venue info like address, phone number, Twitter details and map pin location, mark venues as “closed”, and inform Foursquare about duplicate venues. On the other hand, Superuser level 2 can edit venues, remove tags, add venue categories for any venue, and merge duplicate venue listings; while Superuser level 3 adds the ability to create and delete venue aliases and delete fake/spam listings, which are starting to infiltrate Foursquare.

Foursquare Mayor
Foursquare has a feature that allows a user to become the “mayor” of a location. If a user checks in to one location on several days more than anyone else, that person becomes the Foursquare mayor of the location. Becoming a mayor allows you to receive actual prizes or benefits from some business establishments in a city, like dining discounts and free drinks. The title can also be stripped off if someone else checks in more than the previous mayor.

Location-based Social Network
Foursquare is not the first of its kind that helps you connect with friends on a location-based social network format through a mobile device with GPS capabilities. Actually, Brightkite was one of the first online services of its kind to penetrate the market. However, what made it unsuccessful over the years is because it had so many features but missed its essence. Indeed Brightkite took technology to the next level and offered a lot of features. But, the all proved useless, unlike Foursquare that has a clear-cut purpose. Its service did not appeal users who are not interested in knowing about where people are unless they know them personally and are their friends in the first place.

Google Latitude is another location-based social network service that failed to become successful because it lacked originality, foresight and usefulness. Google just ripped off the concept from Brightkite and assumed that their LBS will gain more popularity because it was, in fact, Google-made. And yet Google did not make the extra effort of creating unique features that would make it stand out and useful.

It would be wrong to assume that Foursquare is another just another app that jumped on the LBS bandwagon, copied the concept and improved on it, and was just lucky enough to become popular. Remember that the founders of Foursquare are the creators of Dodgeball, the certified first ever LBS app. Foursquare is just the product of the continuous perseverance of Crowley and Selvadurai to make their initial vision into reality.

The Twitter Contender
Foursquare was much in the same shoes as Twitter in its early days. Initially, their services have been mocked and misunderstood as useless apps. But both have been considered as game changers as more people have been starting to take notice, actually use them, and realize their importance. However, with Twitter’s resounding success, Foursquare is coming from behind and daring to challenge Twitter in the social networking wars.

Foursquare is already considered as the next Twitter, but the founders are not contented by this. It wants to become the perfect LBS app and a more useful service than Twitter. Unlike Twitter, where a random tweet goes off into cyberspace to no effect, Foursquare users’ check-ins and other activities would actually help other people. Foursquare’s “tips” feature allows users to share information on places that are worth checking out. Users can leave tips about a location with friends and strangers alike. The service is also beneficial to business establishments found under Foursquare’s radar that need help to flourish.

The Importance of Marketing in Today’s Business

Marketing has always been one of the most crucial parts in starting up a business. Aside from the over-all planning and financing, marketing is the next thing that business owners pay attention to. For small business owners, the fickle economy posts a lot of risks that many of them are unwilling to take. With consumers being overly cautious and keeping tight hold of their money, business-owners are finding it more and more difficult to reach them and sell them their products. This is one way of looking at it.

Another side to this predicament is a more positive one. With customers tightening their belts and business owners finding new means to reach out and entice their customers, creativity has seen a sudden surge especially in the advertisements used by businesses to help market their products.

The Emergence of Local Search Marketing for Small Businesses

One industry that has emerged stronger because of this sudden surge is the Local Search Marketing industry. The vast reach that online Local Search Marketing provides is especially advantageous for small business with limited budget for their marketing processes.

Simply put, Local Search Marketing includes services that cater to a specific niche market or local community. Many businesses, especially the small ones, use this to advance their products by taking advantage of the local markets/communities that are within their areas. Local search marketing tools would include Online Maps, Business Directories, Internet Yellow Pages, PPC Ads, and Local Search Results. Local Search Marketing can also be considered as a search engine optimization tool and many businesses are finding the advantages that this technique presents.

While they may not be featured as much as the big ones, local economies almost always rely on numerous local businesses in keeping their economy afloat. Due to this, local search marketing is a very lucrative venture and an indispensible service for these small businesses. The opportunity that it provides is enormous.

How to go about a successful Local Search Marketing Business

Local Search Marketing is also a business. It can be very profitable even considering today’s uncertain economy. Like any other venture, it takes careful planning and market research to successfully pick out clients to work with in order to be profitable in this kind of business. In providing local search services, one must remember to pick clients who:

• are in need of local advertising.

This is easy to say but really hard to carry out. Picking out potential businesses to offer your services is a tricky task. Many local businesses almost always have advertising needs especially in the local markets. For small businesses, they tend to pick local search marketers also to provide them marketing services.

This is where salesmanship usually comes in handy. Owners and their people should know the business they are into by heart and be able to present these in a manner that is believable to their customers.

• are sure to make repeat business, or at least, a large purchase of your services.

This may seem a little bias to the bigger local businesses but this has always been the way to make sure that your business make a profit from the services it provides. Browse through local directories and find businesses that you think may be interested in your local search services.

A local search business does not always need a new batch of customers every month or so. What it needs are customers that it can partner with in the long run. This way, you always have clients to attend to and income is always generated.

It is also advantageous in this particular process to find customers that are high value and are constantly spending money for their marketing efforts. Businesses that have a constant influx of customers, every month or every week, are perfect customers to provide your local search marketing service with.

• have online traffic strength.

In finding a customer, it is helpful to find out first how their website is doing in the SEO landscape. By doing this, your company can brainstorm and evaluate the ways with which you can go about your business. It is helpful to familiarize yourself with the client’s web site and see what are the keywords and advertisements you can put into them to be able to drive sufficient traffic to it.

Two tools you can use in providing this service would be WordTracker Keyword Tool and Insight for Search. WordTracker provides you with popular keywords or phrases that Internet users search for in relation to the company you are servicing. Local search marketers can type any keywords and WordTracker will provide the data that will help them evaluate the keywords they can use in their ads.

Aside from this, WordTracker also provides related keywords that Internet users also search in their queries. In this way, your company can truly evaluate and make a well-researched plan to your web ads.

Insight for Search, on the other hand, provides keywords or phrases that are being searched by the local demographic. It is more particular in its searches and is more suited in evaluating the keywords that your client’s target customers are searching for.

While this service does not provide the number of searches made on a certain keyword, it does provide a good picture of how certain keywords fare to a local demographic. This can be very useful in evaluating the strategy in which you will go about with your local marketing.

• already has done Paid Advertising in the Past

Companies that are not new to the whole web marketing process are customers that should be targeted for local search marketing firms. Companies that have also employed other means of paid advertising like Billboard spaces, yellow page ads, newspaper advertisements and others should be targeted.

Some of these companies have already tried local search marketing so making them understand the process will not necessarily be a difficult task to do. Many of these companies would almost always be aware of the importance that Internet marketing provides and would be looking for companies they can partner with to give them these services.

Developing a Niche for your Local Search Marketing Business

Finding niches and blue oceans in an already stacked field is important in attaining success in any business. Especially in Local Search Marketing where every tech-savvy guy can do the job, developing your own niche can ensure you success and continuous flow of business. Developing a niche market can be of two types; these are Local Market Area Niche and Product/Industry Specific Niche.

1. Local Market Area Niche

Between the two, developing a local niche is the easier thing to do. In this way, you are only obliged to find companies that are within your area and provide your services for them. This provides an easier way of meeting up with local businessmen and striking deals with them. It is also easier to conduct business with them since both parties are situated close to each other.

You can develop web ads and sites that will be targeted to your local consumers and present these to your business partners for approval. These sites should also be authority in the eyes of search engines or else they would be pointless.

2. Product/Industry Specific Niche

Finding or creating niches are supposed to make your Local Search Marketing job. Creating a product or industry-specific niche is one way to make local search marketing click in a very easy way. All you have to do is lay out a plan depending on the products that you’re clients are selling and make ads using these.

In addition to these, searching for keywords or phrases related to these industries would be a breeze since it is already given and that only the related ones would be needing evaluation. Establishing Product/Industry-specific niche will also enable you to gain access to relevant data that can contribute to the marketing strategy being formulated.

Many local search marketers today offer combined services to their clients. This means that aside from the local demographic advertisements, they also provide industry specific services.

All in All

Going about your Local Search Engine Marketing is a good business especially in these hard economic times. Small companies market their brands but usually do not have the proper means to do it. Finding these clients and letting these clients find you is crucial in achieving local search marketing success.

Finding the right clients and the right mix of services to provide them will all be at your discretion. Make sure that in every technique and strategies you plan to implement to your clients are well-researched and are based on solid data and facts. You do all these and local search marketing will be a viable source of income for you.

A link building campaign can only be successful if you can identify the right amount and value of a given link opportunity type in a keyword market. But first, you have to fully understand the different aspects that come into play. Correctly identifying how the following concepts differ will guide you in planning an effective link building campaign by finding the right link opportunities and evaluating among the different types of opportunities that will be discussed later on.

Your Linkable Assets and Link Opportunity Types

Let us first distinguish between “linkable assets” and “link opportunity types.”

A linkable asset is anything that can entice web site publishers to link or cite them in their web pages. These can include events, data, journals, research materials, free software, a blogger, industry expert, or any person and page that lures publishers to establish a link. By being able to identify your linkable assets before planning for your link building campaign can help you evaluate the types of web sites or opportunities these assets open up for you.

On the other hand, link opportunity types are simply the opportunities for link in the keyword space. They include different types of channels, such as guest posts, link or directory listings, industry news sites, product review blogs, forums, blog discussions or comments, upcoming event listings and others. By identifying the right link opportunity types in your keyword space, you can successfully look for the linkable assets that are highly linkable. You can also explore on more new link opportunity types in your keyword space by establishing queries as well as conducting competitor profile analysis. A single linkable asset opens up numerous link opportunity types, including site directories, blog posting, and interviews among others.

For example, if your company and your web site offer free mobile applications, then the apps themselves are the linkable assets, while mobile application directory sites, mobile app review sites, and guest postings that feature a mobile app are the related link opportunity types.

Distinguishing Market Defining Keywords from Money Keywords

Next, it is important to also distinguish between money keywords and market defining keywords (MDFK) to determine the right keywords to utilize in an effective link building campaign. As we all know, keywords are the means to know the movement of a certain market or industry. It is the bridge between search engine optimization efforts and revenues from these efforts.

Search engine marketers are usually familiar of money keywords, or the keywords that are bidded and optimized for because they are searched by potential clients when are looking for ideas, products, or services as their target solutions. However, money keywords cannot always give you the needed help to analyze your market or industry for link building opportunities. The key to this endeavor is the market defining keywords (MDFK) which are high-level keywords that describe a market. They are usually not the keywords you seek for with your organic efforts. For instance, an online shoe retailer’s money keywords would be brand names (Nike, Geox, etc.), type of shoes (rubber shoes, leather shoes, etc.), and specific shoe names. Its MDFK would be simply shoes.

Identifying Market Defining Keywords for Industry Link Opportunity Analysis

To identify the right link opportunities that exist in your market, you should first look on your market defining keywords to evaluate the different opportunities. You should determine the top three market defining keywords—and not the profitable keywords—that would best suit your site.

Measuring the Value of the Different Link Opportunities in Your Keyword Space

After getting your MDFKs, it’s now time to know how to measure each link opportunity using your MDFKs. The following are the different types of link opportunities you can evaluate and utilize to your link building campaign’s advantage.

• Blogs

You should consider checking blogs related to your market. By looking at the blogging community in your keyword space, you can determine whether it is worth it to engage in blogging communities such as interviews and blog post collaborations. You can search Google with the following queries if the search results are relevant and to test whether your MDFKs are broad enough: MDFK blogs, MDFK blog lists, top MDFK blogs
(insert your own MDFKs in the “MDFK” portion).

• Industry News Sites and Trade Publications

You should also check out industry news sites and trade publications since they are effective channels to campaign your links and create new business relationships. Contributing to these sites through submitting news releases, articles featuring certain tips or interesting comments in discussion forums, industry news sites, and trade publications can greatly contribute in your link building campaign.

Search for the following terms in Google to look sites and help you decide whether it’s wise to engage in these channels: MDFK news, MDFK trade publication, MDFK conference.

• Guest Publishing

Guest posting or guest publishing should be given great consideration especially when other web publishers are actively looking for content. Guest posting is also an effective way to establish your online presence and links in your market and to attract your needed online traffic. To look for web publishers that are currently looking for more content, you can search Google with the following keywords: MDFK guest post, MDFK inurl:category/guest, MDFK guest article.

• Interviews

You can establish your relevance and credibility in your keyword market if you conduct interviews, especially from experts in your industry. You can also build working relationships with the people you interview, and consequently, extend your network of links. When you are planning to hold interviews, you should look for two important things first. You have to look for the experts or renowned members in the organization you are interviewing, and you should also hold a wider scale group interview with all the industry experts who have already received interviews. You can check if doing interviews with certain experts are feasible or if it is worth your effort by doing a Google search on existing interviews and interview tips with the following terms: MDFK intitle:interview, MDFK intitle:”q&a with”, MDFK intitle:”tips from” OR “advice from” OR “chat with.”

• Niche Directories

In niche directories, you can find listings related to your keyword space. They are usually worth submitting to. Being found in such directories can help your site attract a wider targeted audience and enhance the trustworthiness and relevance of your web site among the different major search engines. Search Google with the following terms to check different directories or listings related to your keyword space: MDFK directory, MDFK websites, MDFK suggest * URL.

• Niche Online Communities

It is also advisable to check for forums and social networking sites related to your niche to get a picture of the online community in your keyword market. Discussion forums are a great venue for exchanging ideas, interacting with other experts and target audience, and establishing your link. Online communities such as social networking sites like Facebook and social media sites like Digg and StumbleUpon are great channels to get content ideas and establish your online presence through contribution and interaction. Remember to not just join these communities to drop your links — this can harm your reputation among the other members of the communities. You have to be actively involved. Check out online communities in your niche with these search keywords: MDFK community, intitle:MDFK forum, MDFK inurl:blogs.

• Professional Associations

Finding professional associations within your industry can help you in your link building efforts through building professional relationships. You should definitely join professional organizations to connect with other experts within your industry. This is also a way of finding online newsletters and publications of some industry organization where you can also submit content to. You can check if your industry has prominent professional organizations by googling for: MDFK association, ADFK associated, MDFK intitle:“location” (insert your own location).

If you are able to take advantage of the different link opportunities listed above and determine the right mix that suits you, you will surely direct your link building campaign to the right path.

The main point of having the FAQ page is to minimize the time that web developers will be spending in trying to answer each and every question that their customers may have. Imagine if you or your company’s web developers spend the bulk of their time reading and replying to customer letters? That would be inefficiency at its finest.

But the FAQ page is more than just a page that answers customer queries, it has been used lately by many web developers as an SEO tool that can drive traffic to a website and help in increasing a web page’s search engine rankings.

Benefits of a Frequently Asked Question Page for Your Website

Aside from the time saved in answering your customer’s questions with regards to your website, company or the products/services you are offering, there are plenty more reasons why a FAQ page will bring good to your web page.

1) It helps increase traffic to your website

As was said earlier, many SEO experts and web developers have utilized the FAQ pages to eventually drive more traffic to their web pages. How can this be? This is because many Internet users have become more specific with regards to their searches. So instead of searching for just “computer shops,” many users search for more specific topics like computer shops in a certain state or a certain city. They can push this further by searching for computer shops in a particular city that sells a particular brand and model of a product.

Hitwise, an Internet statistic site, reported that length at which online users have been searching has increased over the past few months. For the period dating January ’08 to January ’09, Hitwise revealed that an average query in a search engine would be more than five words in length. This development in searches has increased the chances that a particular keyword in your FAQ may be searched for directly by potential customers.

2) It provides fresh and relevant content to your site

A FAQ page can be updated regularly. This means that it is one place which web developers can use to put fresh content into their website. Clever web developers use this page as an additional weapon in their quest for search engine supremacy.

When posting FAQ contents, you should consider putting relevant keywords. Remember that a FAQ page is still an integral part of your website. This means that search engines will be checking up on these when they do their searches for a particular subject matter. It is advantageous to put up a well-developed FAQ page, rich in keywords and original content without any duplication, since search engines turn a favorable eye on anything fresh and keyword-rich.

Also, consider setting up a FAQ page that would be easily found by search engines. Put a link to your homepage that would direct web crawlers to your FAQ pages and vice versa. This also serves a double purpose since each customer brought to your web pages will have an easier time locating your homepage and other pages from within your site.

3) FAQ pages can be used as a way to market your site to customers

Whether you are working for a big company or owning your own start-up business, the website is a very important tool in enticing and reaching out to your customers. You can use your FAQ pages as an indirect selling tool that can convince your customers to try out whatever it may be that you are offering.

As a sales tool, the FAQ page can answer particular questions with regards to your products. It can explain how certain processes work. It can also explain existing deals that your company may be having that very moment.

For customers, the FAQ page may make or break a deal for you. If your FAQ pages are interesting and informative enough, visitors might be enticed to try out whatever you are offering translating into sales and income for you.

Some things to consider when putting up a FAQ page

If ever you decide that the advantages of having a FAQ page are too great to pass up, you may want to consider these things first in setting up this particular page.

• Interactive FAQ pages

If you can, consider an interactive FAQ page. You do not have to shoulder all the burden of having to answer questions one by one. Have your visitors have a say on the issues. Consider setting up a FAQ page where not only you can post content but also your visitors as well.

Give your frequent visitors the chance to comment on certain questions and provide some answers themselves. In this way, your visitors can feel more empowered and your workload can be significantly lessened. This can also be a way of discovering new ideas that you may have never thought of before.

• Avoid setting up ONE LONG FAQ page

Aside from the act that this is boring, setting up one page of answers to different questions will have the tendency to confuse your visitors. They may find your FAQ page annoying instead of helpful.

One thing you can do is to divide the pages by topics. You can group similar topics into one group and provide answers for them in one page. Then you can answer a different topic in another page. In this way, your page will be more organized and your visitors will have an easier time browsing through and finding the answers on your FAQ page.

• Add relevant links to your FAQ pages

Since you are also using the FAQ pages as a tool for search engine optimization, make sure that you will post links that are relevant from within your FAQ pages that will direct you visitors and search engine crawlers to your site’s homepage. A back button that will direct visitors back to any pages within your website is also highly recommended.

• Be sure to update you FAQ page regularly

Follow recent developments in your industry and address them in your FAQ page. This is one way of posting fresh and relevant content to you FAQ pages that search engine and your loyal customers will definitely love.

What to put in your FAQ pages

A FAQ page mainly serves the purpose of answering your customers frequently asked questions. One thing to put into your FAQ pages is the actual questions that your visitors actually have with regards to your website. It is helpful to compile all these questions and address them in this FAQ page. Review the email messages you have received from your customers throughout. These can be the basis and source of the questions you can put into your FAQ page.

You can also ask friends and family to review your website and formulate questions you yourself may have overlooked in the process. This is especially helpful for start-up businesses that are just new to the whole search engine optimization thing.

AS was said above, it is important to be regularly updater with regards to the recent trends that is happening in the industry you are in. whether you are offering SEO services or selling different products online, it is helpful to always be on the know whether there is something new that you can share to your frequent visitors. This is also a great way to post relevant and new stuff on your website.

Expounding further on the sales part of having an FAQ page, it can be used to eliminate any doubts about the product or service you are offering. Being very detailed with regards to your posts in the FAQ page will encourage customers to try out whatever it is you are offering. You can address issues like quality, durability, price, and over-all performance and explain all of these in detail in you FAQ pages.

Considering all of these, you should be able to post content and links that are relevant and keyword-rich. In the SEO business, these two things are always considered the most important.

Other Means of Addressing FAQ questions

Many web developers today have started going away from the traditional FAQ page. They have considered answering their customers’ queries from within the pages themselves and not on a separate FAQ page to make it look and feel more natural.

Hardcore web developers have veered away from the FAQ page by developing their pages in a way that visitors can log into and be able to get the help and explanations that they needed. This may be added work but it will make your website stand out and be more professional in the eyes of your visitors and potential customers.

Problems with Older Methods

Usually, after transferring your duplicated content from all of your web pages, you need to create a 301 redirect on your old web site so that your visitors and the search engine crawlers automatically stumble upon your new site when trying to access a web page from your older site. However, you may encounter problems when you have no access to the web host of your old domain, thus you won’t be able to implement the 301 redirect. Also, you won’t be able to set up 301 redirects when you need to transfer your web site from a web server that does not feature server-side redirects. If you are transferring your site from Blogger to a new one under WordPress, you cannot just utilize 301 redirects.

Also, copying your content incorrectly could cause your new domain to encounter problems with search engines like Google. If you export your Blogspot content and import them to your new site improperly, Google might penalize your site for what it will perceive as duplicate content. The search engine might not also transfer the corresponding PageRank values from the old site to the new one.

The Canonical Tag

Fortunately, life has become a little easier for webmasters who can now move their content from one domain to another without the use of 301 redirects and without encountering canonical issues that may arise from this. The Link Rel Canonical Tag helps you to inform search engines about the new domain of your old content without the need to change anything on the server side. This element allows site owners and bloggers to suggest the version of the page that Google should treat as canonical. Basically, a canonical page is the preferred version of a set of web pages with closely identical content. Google will take the canonical attribute into account when deciding which web page URL sets contain similar content and analyzing the most relevant of the pages to display in search engine results pages, or SERPs. This canonical link element is especially helpful for those who are moving their blog content from the Blogger web host to an entirely new domain.

In general, this works by editing the section of the HTML template source of your existing web pages on the previous domain and include a rel=canonical tag link that leads to the new one. It was basically created to allow website publishers to specify exact web page URLs of whichever domain is preferred for indexing.

Canonical Tag Application to Blogger-hosted Blogs

If you are hosting a blog on through Blogger and planning to transfer your blog to a new domain, you can conveniently move your blog by adding a Link Rel Canonical Tag element to your Blogger template source code.

Implement Blogger Scripting Codes

You will have to implement blogger scripting codes in your Blogger template source code. But first, you have to check whether your Blogspot blog is new XML-based or classic based, because Blogger scripting codes only work in XML-based Blogger template. While logged in into your Blogger account at www.blogger.com, look carefully for your blog in the dashboard and compare the Blogger URL column (old domain) and the equivalent WordPress URL column (new domain). If the blog URLs to be transferred to the new domain uses “Layout”, then your blog already has the New XML-based template. However, if you see “Template” under your blog, then your blog is still in the “classic” Blogger template. In this case, you will need to convert the classic template to a new XML-based template.

To convert your blog template, simply go to the “Template” section at the Dashboard once you log in. Then, click the “Customize Design” option at the header of the Template menu. When you select “Upgrade Your Template”, you will be requested to select a new template for you blog among the different options. It is advisable to select a template that is closest to your current one. After this, click “Save Template”. Your Blogspot blog’s template should now be XML-based. Take note that you do not need to do this when your existing template is already XML-based.

Tag Blog Archives with Meta No Index

Since you are only planning to move the content of blog post URLs, the rest of your pages must be tagged with the Meta No Index attribute. The Meta No Index tag is used to advise automated Google search engine crawlers to avoid indexing your archives in the old domain.

The tag must be correctly inserted in the tag of the HTML template source of Blogger. If done incorrectly, all URLs, including the blog post and home page URLs will also be tagged with the Meta No Index tag and will also be affected.

To place this in the Blogger template of your archives, you will need the following codes to be inserted next to the tag:

This tag is necessary because the archives are not needed to be migrated to your new web host, since the archived pages that will be moved in the new domain under the new web host have no corresponding URLs. Also, they are deemed unnecessary to be indexed by Google anymore because it would create duplication problems with the content now transferred to the new domain.

Insert Front Page Link Rel Canonical Tag

After placing the Meta No Index tag at the section of the template, it is now time to put the front page URL next to it. The front page link rel canonical tag will look something like this:

According to the code above, if the requested URL is equal to http://myoldblog.blogspot.com/ then return the link rel canonical tag in the section:

The URL above in the tag refers to your home page of the new domain, http://www.mynewdomain.com/. This corresponds to the Blogger front page URL.

Thus, when you combine the conditional meta no index tag with the front page link rel canonical tag, your section will now look like the following:

Place Link Rel Canonical Tags for all Blogger URLs

After creating a tag for your home page, the next step you will need to do is to generate Link Rel Canonical tags for every Blogger blog page remaining so that all of your pages point to their corresponding URLs in the new web host. The number of tags you have to place will depend on the amount of pages or URLs your blog has. For example, your Blogspot blog has a total of 31 URLs, excluding your front page. Thus, you will need to place 31 more link rel canonical tags at the section of the HTML template source of Blogger.

However, if your blog has more pages that would reach up to hundreds of blog posts, you might need the help of MS Excel to computerize the process and make it much easier. Through using MS Excel, you can use the Concatenate Function to automatically create the link rel canonical tag. Remember that you have previously obtained data about the Blogger URL column (old domain) and the equivalent WordPress URL column (new domain) from the Dashboard while checking if your blog template is either XML-based or classic based. You can plot your data of the Blogger URLs and the equivalent domain URLs in the MS Excel spreadsheet and use the Concatenate Function to make the process quicker (treat the new domain URL and the old Blogger URLs as “variables” and the other elements of the Blogger link rel canonical script as “constants”). The whole thing is a bit complicated but you can download an available template for the link rel canonical automation at http://www.php-developer.org/link-rel-canonical-automation-excel-template-for-blogger/.

Once all the data is processed, you can now select all of the generated link rel canonical tags and place all of them on a text editor like Notepad or MS Word. Then, you can copy and paste all of the tags to the HTML template source of Blogger below the front page link rel canonical tag:

At this point, all of the remaining link rel canonical tags for all the remaining blog pages that point to the new domain are placed. You can now select the “Save Template” option and review the template source codes. Try to open any page in your Blogspot blog, and you can now see a particular link rel canonical tag at the section that has the Blogger page URL pointing to its corresponding URL located in another domain under a new web host.

After-effects

Search engines would usually take around three to six months to move the page and link attributes to the new web host. Eventually, you will see that your new domain will replace your previous blog URLs in search rankings.

The next time you update your blog, you should now update in your new domain rather than in your old Blogger site. However, you should not still delete your Blogspot blogs.

However, there are situations when these elements won’t be giving optimal results. It may be possible that the site is still not able to attract more incoming traffic that it is supposed to do. In this case, your site may still be lacking the necessary fundamentals that are needed before it can fully benefit from search engine optimization. The following sections will guide you through several basic aspects of your site that you have to scrutinize.

The Need for More Quality Content

Before anything else, your website should be carefully well-planned when it comes to site content. Content is one of the biggest determinants of SEO success. To make sure that your site is prepared for an SEO campaign, you have to fill your site with great content. And when we say great content, it means that you have the responsibility of giving the site fresh high quality content that can attract a reader’s interest and more importantly, a search engine’s attention. This requires constant effort; you have to update your site with unique content regularly. You have to focus on quality and quantity. This will surely get a search engine’s attention.

Search Engine Friendly Content Management Systems

Your site should be able to receive all the content its needs without difficulty and in an organized manner so that it can get picked up and indexed by search engines such as Google. You can only do this if your website has organization among its various pages. Using a content management system will certainly help. A content management system, or CMS, enables a user to crank out content and deliver content to a site efficiently and effectively so that it gets noticed by a search engine. It makes the pages within your site search engine friendly by adding permalinks or search engine friendly URLs. A CMS also allows you to edit or modify a URL to reflect the keywords in your title or topic.

There are available content management systems out there, such as Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress, all of which allow you to assign tags or tag clouds to your posts. In turn, this will enable you to establish categories within your site in which to organize your content. Also, using a CMS permits you to control a title tag and meta content description of your pages.

Fixing Internal Navigation Issues

A content management system, as described above, can help you avoid several internal navigation problems you might encounter. If you don’t have this tool, your pages would scatter all over your site, leaving your site disorganized especially if your site has tons of material. It would give search engine crawlers more difficult time to index your site. As a result, your site would not be recognized and ranked by a search engine properly.

Also, aside from a CMS, you can use Xenu to help you solve internal navigation problems. Xenu, or Xenu’s Link Sleuth, is a link-checking software that can help you verify your entire website for broken hyperlinks. It provides you a detailed overview of your website’s internal linking structure and diagnoses any problems related to it. This will surely help you fix your site’s broken internal link so you can create a new XML sitemap that you can submit to Google and help your site get indexed by the search engine properly.

One Homepage Policy

It is important that a search engine like Google can only find your website in one location. It is possible that your site can be in multiple locations or URLs. However, it would give your site some SEO problems if you are not careful with establishing your home page URL appropriately.

For instance, your site home page can be usually seen in http://www.mywebsite.com. However, you can also type in mywebsite.com without the preceding WWW in the address bar and your same home page will also appear. Actually, there can be other ways to type in your URL, like adding a trailing slash or none, among many others:

http://www.mywebsite.com

http://mywebsite.com

http://www.mywebsite.com/index.html

http://mywebsite.com/index.html

http://www.mywebsite.com/index.htm

http://mywebsite.com/index.htm

http://www.mywebsite.com/default.asp

http://mywebsite.com/default.asp

Ideally, all of these URLs will all lead to the same home page. However, even if it seems that they lead you to one place, there’s a problem with how the address bar and search engines interpret them. For instance, if you key in your URL mywebsite.com without the WWW and you are lead to your site, there’s a possibility that what appears in the address bar is still the non-WWW version of your URL. Now there lies the problem.

A search engine reads URLs very literally and does not make any distinction with how you type in a URL. Search engines consider the given links above as different pages since the URLs are different, even if they seem to all work out to point to the same page. Without doing any corrections, you now have multiple duplicate pages on your site. Search engines would interpret it as different sites with link and thus, splitting up all the link juice and PageRank values which would be more effective if focused on one site.

To solve this issue, you need to be prepared for the possibility that multiple URLs can be used to direct to your site. First, you have to select your preferred primary URL for your site. The preferred URL for a homepage is www.mywebsite.com. Then ensure that every variation of the URL ends up leading to your primary URL and uses the same URL structure. For the Google search engine, you can do this using the Tools section of Google’s Webmaster Central, where you can assign your preferred URL.

Next, you need to setup 301 redirects for those URL variations. There are other ways of redirects to other URLS that are not your primary, like JavaScript or meta redirects, but they could give you more complications. Using 301 redirects is the surest and safest method for the SEO process. A 301 redirect is permanent and maintains search engine rankings. It also passes the search engine ranking score of the URL variation to your primary URL, helping your main URL appear and gradually rank in search engine results pages. Lastly, you should also check your site navigation to make sure that your internal links will also point to your primary URL.

When it comes to choosing your URL, it’s up to you how your URL looks like. You can opt for either the www or the non-www version, to have trailing slash or none, and opt for any top-level domain (albeit .com is the most commonly used). The important thing is to designate one and be consistent with it.

The Importance of a Smooth Link Structure, Site Architecture, and Hierarchy

To make the most out of your SEO efforts, you should also consider how your site is built and how you design your site’s navigation. How you lay your foundations like a website’s architecture and its overall linking structure will also determine the success of your website and your business bottom line. If your website is confusing to navigate, you will lose visitors. Not only that, search engine spiders will also have a difficult time crawling over your pages. Therefore, this will hurt your site’s search engine rankings badly, since the way your links are structured is also given significant weight aside from the anchor texts present within your pages.

Building Your Site like a Silo

It is important to make sure that your site structure makes sense, meaning that your website allows all your visitors to find what they need conveniently and search engine to index all your pages properly. Make sure that your site navigation is search engine friendly as well.

The best way to optimize your site, make it more search engine friendly, and attract more targeted visitors is to establish a solid website architecture, or a “silo website architecture.” Silo structured websites will surely give your site the needed boost in the search engine results pages.

A silo—for this discussion—simply means “category” or categorizing. Silo architecture is a vertical page linking design that organizes your content into structured themes while the content of each page, including titles, headers, and URLs, all synergize to reinforce the overall theme of your site. It is the method of linking your pages and designing your site so that all major search engines can be easily drawn to your site. Through this structure, you create distinct sections for each category that are all related to the overall site’s theme. Cross-linking between silos or categories should be designed in such a way that links lead to the landing pages of other silos if your content contains keywords or anchor texts that reinforce those silos’ themes.

The silo architecture has been proven to boost your search engine rankings because the way how your pages are linked to your home page and vice versa gives your pages more link juice, telling search engines that they are important. It signals search engines the overall theme and significance of your site while providing a convenient navigation for your visitors.

When you carefully plan your site’s navigation from the very beginning, your site will be able to rank better with less effort and address a specific topic of interest, therefore attracting more visitors.

Points to Considering in Maximizing Digg

Endorsed by Google and other search engines, Digg has become one of the top choices for websites and their developers when it comes to building link popularity. Basically, Digg is a web directory that features web articles visitors can link to if they found it interesting enough. But more than this, there are a lot of aspects to Digg that web developers should know and take advantage of.

• Although Digg eventually directs customers to a website, its main focus is always on link building.

Building link popularity only comes as a result of the links produced by being published in Digg. Getting listed on Digg mainly serves the purpose of getting as much natural links as possible. You write an article, have it published on Digg and hope that readers and visitors find it interesting enough to link to it and share it in their websites.

The traffic that Digg will direct to your web page is already a given. It is the natural inbound links that will be disputed here. Having ten thousand customers troop to your website does not mean anything if no one links to it, at least from the search engines’ point of view.

• Being on Digg should have you focused and more careful about the articles that you make.

Are they interesting enough to read especially for your target readers? Are the titles catchy enough to entice even those who are originally not searching for your topic? Are they keyword rich, enough to convince readers that yours is a good site to be linked to?

These are just some of the questions that web developers should consider in seeking publication on Digg. One can drop the thought of making Digg a selling place. Instead, developers should focus on the things that will encourage readers and fellow web developers to link to your webpage. Once this is done, you can say that you have successfully used Digg; sales would almost always follow.

• Digg is all-natural.

You can be assured that when you get published in Digg, all those links back to you are almost always natural. Search engines turn a favorable eye on pages that have natural links in them. They frown on those that have links that seem to have been bought and unrelated to the topics of their pages.

Out of the thousands of traffic that your website will be receiving, a small number of them will probably be interested enough and link back to your site. These are natural links that you actually did not exert that much effort for.

How to maximize the Usage of Digg for your Website

Digg, as was said above, provides an easy process for websites who would want to avail of its services. Here are a few steps that developers can do to maximize the use of Digg for their websites:

1) Write readable and keyword-rich articles

Of course since this is Digg, a well made, researched and original article is a must. This is the main bullet used by developers to get published in the Digg directory.

2) Have your story “dugg”

Having a story published on the Digg home page is the main goal that developers would want to achieve when they sign-up for its services. Digg basically ranks articles according to two criteria. These are:

• The volume of Diggs for the story

60 Diggs is the magic number that an article must achieve in order for it to be considered being featured in Digg’s homepage.

• The speed with which the story received its Diggs

For the first hour at least, an article is required to accomplish a third of the 60 Diggs in order to get published in the front page.

With so many developers submitting articles everyday in the hopes of getting published, the windows for opportunity are very thin.

3) Invite and take advantage of your Digg’s friends feature

Invite a few friends, family members or officemates to sign-up for Digg and remind them to Digg your articles whenever you publish something. The more friends and relatives present in Digg, the better.

You can also try adding other users that also Digg. Though you do not really know who the person are, connecting to them and linking back to their websites can form a bond between you and another Digger. This can lead to exchanges of Diggs which is a WIN-WIN situation for both parties.

4) Publish as many articles as you can and aim to be a top-submitter.

There are some developers that are confident enough to make just one article and pass it on to Digg. Before you can become like that, make several articles and submit them to Digg for publication. Authors who submit a lot of articles and then make it often to Digg’s front page can be awarded as top submitter by the directory.

5) Web developers can focus their articles on topics that are not about SEO.

In Digg, anything SEO is almost always rejected outright. Although it may be a well-written article about search engine optimization, Digg users usually have the tendency to categorize these pieces immediately as spam. Web developers however still have a lot of choices left with regards to topics they can write about and pass to Digg to be published. Top subjects include:

• Humorous Stories

It has been proven that “Diggers” have the tendency to link to articles that features funny everyday happenings. Hilarious reviews of shirts from Amazon have been one of the most “dugg” posts during the past year.

• Updates on Political Issues

These articles usually get thousands of Diggs per day. Digg users usually are people from various backgrounds so articles made from any viewpoint can be expected to be received popularly in the directory.

• Videos and Pictures

Not only can Digg be applied to text articles, authors can also submit and post other media such as videos and photo files. Hilarious and cute videos usually do the trick for Digg users.

• Celebrities and other Entertainment News

There are a lot of people out there who use Digg to find for the hottest and latest celebrity issues or gossips circulating the Internet. Writing about these can guarantee you Diggs all day!

• Linux and other Open sources

If you are a technology buff who likes to blog about technology news and developments, you’ll score big when you write about Linux and other topics related to Open Sources. For example, Digg users usually favor articles talking about Ubuntu, KDE, and Debian.

• Apple and other Trendy Technology topics

The release of the iPad by Apple has created write a buzz in the Internet and reviews about it are searched by lots of Digg users out there. Diggers are generally more biased towards Apple when it comes to technology than other companies such as Microsoft.

• Video Gaming

There is always gaming news popping out of Yahoo or other News Pages everyday. From reviews to releases to planned releases, gaming is always a popular topic in whatever website. Digg is no different. Never a day goes by when one article about gaming and other gaming related news do not make Digg’s front page.

• Digg itself.

Or if there’s no other choice left, you can talk about Digg itself! Articles about it, like its developments and new features, usually score well among Digg users. Also, articles talking about its founder Kevin Rose usually find their way to the directory’s front page.

Digg, a Valuable SEO tool

Making use of Digg as an SEO tool may not be as simple as others but equally as effective. For link building, Digg and other similar websites are crucial not only in providing customer traffic but more importantly providing the links that will make your web pages matter in the eyes of search engines. Taking advantage of Digg may be one of the best moves you will ever do in the whole process of your link building.

External Backlinks
Search engine algorithm identifies the value of links to determine the popularity, importance and relevance of a web page. Search engines like Google classify links into two categories: internal and external links. When it comes to the value between these two links, Google puts more weight and consideration to external links than internal links. Although internal links are still important, Google carries out the principle that what others say or think about you is more significant than what you say about yourself. But this doesn’t entail that you can ignore having good internal link structure or disregard improving on your internal links.

Advantages of Backlinks
Definitely, a direct advantage for having a huge number of external incoming links pointing to your site is that the more sites linking to your pages, the more online traffic your site will get and the wider the target audience your site attracts. Link building would be even more effective if backlinks are located in sites that attract high traffic themselves, have high quality content, and are within your industry or niche.

Another advantage of having a high level of backlinks, albeit less noticeable, is that it makes your site more trustworthy in the eyes of search engines. Search engine algorithms regard inbound links as votes of confidence. This means racking up more links increases the level of trust and power behind your site. Trust is an essential force behind any website’s successful search marketing efforts. Building trust with search engines is very important if you are competing for rankings and establishing dominant online presence in the search engine results pages, or SERPs. However, you can only accomplish this if you carefully select the right kind of quality links.

The Right Kind of Links
Always remember that a search engine’s algorithm can discriminate among the links leading to your site. There are good quality links that can greatly contribute to your link building efforts, and there are also bad ones. To become effective in driving more traffic to your site, you have to discern which backlinks can give your site the leverage to rank better in search engines. So how do you determine which links are worth pursing? How can you judge the value of a link?

Link Popularity, Relevance, and Trust
Having valuable backlinks helps your search engine optimization process to progress smoothly because it provides your site the sure-fire path to better ranking opportunities in search engine results pages. A valuable backlink that helps your site climb the SERPs must have high quality. Moreover, gathering high quality links will depend on the level of trust and relevance of the web sites they are found and on the popularity of your links.

Search engines have just recently placed more significance on metrics about an entire domain rather than an individual URL or page, making it now possible for new pages or even sites with very few links to rank highly because they are connected with important, trusted and well-linked-to domains. Based from this, you can see how being linked with certain domains will surely propel you own site to higher rankings. Having backlinks from other domains that have high levels of authority and trust signals search engines that your site is considered a potentially important resource of those trusted sites. Your site will be seen as valuable if your site have links from other valuable sites. Also, attracting links from websites that have content relevant to yours cues search engines to consider your site an influence within your niche or industry, pushing you further to higher rankings.

Link popularity also plays a vital role in boosting your rankings. Basically, if the links to your pages are considered popular and attract a lot of clicks, it also means that your site is considered popular and important by search engines

Anchor Text Relevance
As mentioned earlier, when looking for sites that will link to yours, it is always important to check their relevance to your content. Make sure that the page that links to your site is relevant to the page within your site that you want to link it to. See to it if the other page’s content is related to the keywords in your own target page, especially if that other page uses related keywords in locations that Google finds important. Check for keywords in the following locations of the page that can be accessed through the View Source command: domain and URL, title tag, heading tags, the body of the text and HTML, and the incoming links pointing to the page itself.

Your goal is to check if the page can be considered as relevant by search engine and if it also related to your own page. The relevance of the anchor text is one of the most important elements in determining rankings. As an attribute of links, anchor text is a critical metric that passes ranking value to a page. Furthermore, search engines give more ranking value that can be passed to “exact match” anchor texts rather than target keywords that are just inserted in an anchor text phrase. For instance, if your page contains a comprehensive article on how to maintain cars, and you are planning to get inbound links from a web site selling car care products, you need to check if the page has exact related anchor texts such as “car maintenance,” “maintaining your car,” etc., rather than “These cheap car care products will help maintain your car well.”

Link Juice, Link Equity, and PageRank
In your link building efforts, it is also important to look at link equity and link authority or “link juice.” Link equity is a component of PageRank, which is an important part of off-page search engine optimization. Link equity refers to the number of incoming links to any given page on your web site. On the other hand, link juice or link authority is the underlying value of the links. This is also referred to as domain authority, which describes the measure of importance, popularity, and trustworthiness of any page in a given domain by the search engines. Google considers the domain where you earn your links from as important as the individual metrics of the page passing the link.

These two combined influence PageRank, which is not directly related to how high you’ll rank in search engines. PageRank is a measure of a website’s popularity on a scale of 1 to 10, with PR 10 being the highest. PageRank functions under the principle that a link pointing to a web site is considered as vote or endorsement for that site. The more votes your site gets, especially from sites that have high PageRanks themselves, the higher your PageRank and popularity. To determine the PageRank value that is being passed, you have to identify the innate PageRank value of a page and the number of links on a page. If a page has a PageRank of 8 it can pass on and link out to two other pages, those pages will carry PR4 each. Thus, the more links on a page, the lower the PageRank value it can pass on.

Therefore, to make your site popular, you need to earn as much links as possible from other web sites that have substantial link authority, with sizeable inherent PageRank value, and have pages with less links to maximize the level of popularity and trust your site can gain.

Permanence
It goes without saying that the permanence and sustainability of links also play key roles to your search engine optimization process. Link building is not just a matter of immediate boosts in your page attributes or site popularity; it should also be in line with the long-term sustainability of these effects. The quality of the site where your links are earned from should not only be the focus, but also consider if those links will stay there for a long time. Once your links are gone, the effects are gone as well. It is important to pursue links from a site that’s just longer periods of time as the site and link mature.

Also, try to avoid buying links most of the time since you can only buy them out for a definite period of time. It won’t be worth it since you will just spend more money to renew and maintain your links on a site.

Link Positioning
Links can appear in different locations on a page; it can be on the header, footer, sidebars or in the body of the content itself. However, when search engines analyze a page for different sections, they assign different weights to content or links according to their location. In general, links placed at the top or beginning of the page are deemed more valuable by search engines than links on the footer of the page. Moreover, links that are occur naturally within the main content of the page carries higher value than any location. This means that links placed in articles as anchor texts that lead to your page have more weight than links placed at the end of a featured content. Thus, it is important to place your links at the top/ navigation header of the page or within a paragraph of the main content as much as possible.

Other Link Evaluation Factors to Consider
Finally, you should also take into account the cost of acquiring a link and the probability of acquiring a link. Issues like how much time and effort do you need to spend to earn a certain link must be thought through to become more effective and efficient in your SEO efforts. You should ask yourself: Is it worth it?

Also, you need to be realistic about the likelihood of acquiring a link from a web site. There are other factors that influence the possibility of actually earning a link. Do you have what it takes to earn a certain link? Can you add a link directly or submit it without strings attached? Can you easily make revisions or additions to a linking page? Also, do you have an existing relationship with the owner or webmaster of a certain domain? If you do, it would help a lot.

Dofollow blogs are a trend nowadays. Simply put, blogs are almost always set up in order to drive customer traffic into a site and hopefully have some of these readers link back to your web page. The comments section of a blog page is where most of the interactions take place.

The comments section of a blog usually serves a dual purpose:

One, it serves as an interactive part of your page that your readers can go to drop their thoughts about the topic you are talking about. Many readers browse through a blog’s comments section because this is where the conversation is continued. Many readers themselves are educated and are willing to suggest a thing or two to further expand the topics you are talking about.

Two, the comments section can provide your blog with a handful of inbound links from readers who found your entry or entries interesting and relevant with regards to their own sites. Many users actually leave links to heir favorite sites or even their own web sites in the comments section for further reference on the topics discussed. These result in many inbound links for the web site’s usage.

But today, Dofollow blogs have also been encountering infiltrations from spammers and other hacks that do nothing but bring the page’s rankings down. These bad links can also cause a web page to disappear altogether in the search engine’s indexes and rankings. Being vigilant is always the way to go with regards to these bad links especially if you are maintaining and would like to continue using a Dofollow blog.

Here are some things you can do to avoid the negative results of bad links in your Dofollow blogs:

1. Follow your comments section closely

This is especially so if you are on top of the SEO rankings and have a large customer base that is following your blog. But if you have both of these covered already then it should be safe to say that you are vigilant in maintaining the sanctity and authority of your web site.

But for some other who do not, it is time to start doing so. Google, through all these years in the search engine business, has come up with newer and more advanced ways in tracking down spam or bad links. Anything they see as malicious, no matter how high the rank of that particular website is and how established it is, is going to be dealt with.

Follow your comments section as you would the other parts of your blog. Remove all the bad links and enjoy high authority rankings throughout your blog’s lifetime.

2. Use tools that are available online

Sometimes, web developers and bloggers do not have that much time in their hands to manually patrol their web sites and see if they are inadvertently harboring spam messages and links. This is where software programs and services such as Akismet come in. These anti-spamming service providers can be used by bloggers and installed on their pages in order to track down and eliminate spam.

You can also use CAPTCHA to avoid spam messages and links in your comments sections. Basically, the CAPTCHA eliminates the possibility of automatically-generated messages (meaning spam messages) from being posted especially in your vulnerable Dofollow blogs. Make your readers type a code that usually spam-generating software won’t be able to understand and you can sit back and see your page rankings stay on top of the lists.

Dofollow Website Lists

Here are some web sites that employ the Dofollow scheme in providing service to their users.

• WordPress.com
• Tumblr
• Live Journal
• Blogspot
• Thoughts.com
• Blogetery
• Blogster
• EasyJournal

Some social networking web sites also use Dofollow in providing services. These include:

• Xanga
• Yedda
• RateItAll.com

Article submission directories oftentimes employ the Dofollow feature in their web pages. Some of the more popular brands include:

• Ezine Article Submission
• Yahoo MyWeb
• Reddit
• GoArticles
• Propeller
• Idea Marketers
• Article Dashboard Directory
• Article Alley