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.

What is Link Building? Links are essential in getting noticed on the Web. In terms of search engine ranking and indexability, they are an important factor, along with the way a search engine ranks how a user experiences and views your site. Link building is defined as an “integration of useful elements into a whole Web site to allow for the accretion of links through natural means.” From this definition, we understand that link building is a two-step process. We split this definition into two parts and analyze each to dissect the link building process better.

The Two Elements in Link Building

1. The first process in link building is integration. Integration involves the combination of two or more parts or elements together into a complete whole, set, or unit. The idea in link building is to make a site desirable to the widest possible audience and admirers. In order to do so, a site must possess components that would attract viewers and potential site owners who might want to link to it. Hence, a link building campaign is not a stand-alone process that relies on a singular point of view to achieve link popularity. Without incorporating or blending other topics or materials to address its diverse audience, aiming for higher page rankings becomes a difficult goal to achieve. Full integration occurs when a site addresses the interests of all of its potential audience. This could include customers, employees, business owners, industry executives, and competitors. Any Web site that you create must take the needs and requirements of each of these groups into consideration or else you stand to isolate a valuable segment of your audience. Because you are dealing with and competing among millions of sites for traffic, every segment is indispensable. Adopting a populist attitude toward Web site creation generates relevance and meaning to the widest number of users. The more complete the integration, the greater the likelihood of attracting more links to your site.
2. The second process is accretion. Accretion is the increase or growth in size through gradual addition, inclusion or fusion. Accretion cannot occur without integration. Web sites that lack the integration requirement undertake several methods in order to attract links and achieve higher page rankings. Generally, there are two manifestations of accretion: viral awareness and standard public relations. When audiences find your Web site meaningful and relevant, they unavoidably pass the word along to their friends and people they know. The campaign then becomes viral as it is viewed, linked to and shared among a large and diverse audience, which in turn results to higher link popularity. The most common mechanisms are “send a friend” emails and icons to recommend the site such as Digg, Twitter, Reddit, or StumbleUpon. The importance of viral awareness in link building makes these mechanisms a necessity. Doing without these elements would spell disaster for the accretion component in your campaign. The other form of accretion is an active one. Standard public relations needed for accretion require that you create awareness of your site by asking other site owners that they link to it. This is why integration becomes important: the more relevant your site is to a diverse audience, the greater the number of relevant sites you can request to link to yours.

The Importance of “Natural Means” In understanding the link building process, it is important to distinguish the natural from the artificial means of acquiring links. The ideal link building strategy is thus: create content that is genuinely relevant, and the links will come naturally. Natural links are considered the best links for search engine rankings, and are defined as links from other sites that are given by a website’s authors and not by bots or a computer program. Simply put, natural links are those given by the site’s owner to your website or blog because it is truly linkable, and not merely because of compensation.

There are three popular SEO techniques that are used by a link building service or a link building company to acquire more links:

1. link buying
2. link exchange
3. link farming

Natural links become an important issue in link building because search engines like Google now give penalties to links that manipulate search engine result rankings. Search engines’ algorithms are now capable of detecting whether a site is abusing SEO techniques in order to obtain higher page rankings. However, SEO has developed ways in order to use these three techniques without getting penalties by creating natural-profiled links. Still, SEO experts are unanimous in saying that the best link building campaign involves the creation of relevant and authority content. Link building may be a long and time-consuming process, but its rewards could mean a big boost for your business. Before engaging in a link building campaign, keep these fundamentals in mind and learn more about SEO for proper guidance in making SEO-related decisions.

What is PageRank? PageRank is a numerical value that is assigned to a site for the purpose of measuring its importance or relevancy. PageRank was developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The concept was inspired by citation analysis conducted on scholarly journals or articles to measure its credibility. The more times a paper gets cited, the more important or credible it is to its peers.

PageRank computes the probability of finding a web page if a person randomly surfs the Internet. Google uses the mathematical formula, PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn)), where: A = Linked Page tn = Linking Page C/(tn) = Number of outbound link on v d = damping factor, normally set to 0.85 Despite its intimidating appearance, the mathematical formula has several implications for obtaining the link popularity of a web site:

1. If a web page links to another page, it is essentially casting a vote in favor of that page.
2. If several pages link to a web page, it means it has more votes and deserve a higher rank.

How does Google assign PageRank? Google PageRank is highly dependent on the quantity of backlinks. An experiment conducted by SEOWatch concludes that the more backlinks a website has, the higher the PR will be. This is logical since the PageRank was designed as a type of balloting system among Web users where site owners “vote” by linking to a particular page to show support. This explains why PR is often referred to as a measure of link popularity. However, because mere reliance on quality of links have made spamming and search engine manipulations a link building tool in order to influence a site’s positioning, Google’s algorithm includes the quality of backlinks associated to a website in its calculation.

If the pages linking to your site have high PR and are considered “high authority” sites, then your page shares a piece of their reputation and improves its link popularity. Google PageRank considers other factors in assigning values to web sites. These include site age, back link duration and back link relevancy. The fact that Google considers back links’ relevancy helps warn site owners: bad sites can harm your overall total PageRank and your link popularity.

Is there only one type of PageRank? There are variations of PageRank used by Google in order to measure importance or relevancy. Google Toolbar PageRank. This feature projects a page’s PageRank as a whole number ranging between 0 and 10, 10 being the highest. In order to restrict and disallow search engine manipulations, the accurate procedure on how Google calculates PageRank is not disclosed. However, there is always stress on the quantity and quality of backlinks to produce higher PR and higher link popularity. Search Engine Results Page (SERP) Rank. Link building campaigns are built around this type of ranking. It returns the actual result produced when a search engine responds to a keyword query.

A web page’s SERP rank is indicated by a link’s placement on the SERP. If the page can be found on the top positions in a SERP, the higher its SERP rank. It must be noted that while PageRank plays a vital part in SERP, a myriad of factors are included in its computation. Any link building campaign should be geared towards achieving the highest SERP ranking for a website or websites. In order to deter search engine manipulation, Spamdexing, and spoofing, as a means of building link popularity, Google is mum on how factors influence PageRank specifically.

What are some tips to improve PageRank? The encouraging thing about being able to understand PageRank is that webmasters, site owners, or a link building company can determine how to adjust some factors in order to optimize PageRank and improve link popularity. A high PR to add to other link building methods will drive you ahead of competitors. There are three basic areas to consider when optimizing PageRank:

1. The quality of links you choose to have link to your site. The link you choose and the effort you put in to acquire them are essential in PR optimization. As explained before, quantity and quality of links are important considerations in PR and link building. Choosing link farms and banned sites to link to you would prove disastrous to PR and link popularity.
2. The site you choose to link out to from your site. In using outbound links, there is one golden rule: ‘Keep PageRank within your site.’ Linking out will decrease your total PageRank compared when you decide not to link out. However, if you choose to link out as part of your link building campaign, experts advise to choose pages that has both a low PR and a lot of links to your site.
3. The internal quality of your site. Your site’s navigational components and linkages must be able to distribute PageRank within the whole site. To accomplish this, Google’s algorithms must consider as much content in your site as worthy of being indexed. Developing quality content creates more PageRank and boosts link popularity.

While PageRank is a valuable tool, achieving link popularity through PR optimization must be combined with quality visitor experience. Gaining higher PageRank will not amount to any significance if users could not find content to enhance their experience when navigating your site.

If you pursue high quality link building using other methods and increase inflow of backlinks by submitting your URL effectively to Internet directories, the greater your change in breezing ahead of your competitors. The successful use of directory submission to boost link popularity and rankings depends on the number and quality of directories you submit your website to. The importance of “quality” in directory submissions, as in other link building methods cannot be overemphasized. Algorithms in Google and other major search engines favor sites listed in high quality directories.

Are Free Directories Worth It? There are thousands of possible directories that you could submit your website to for your link building campaign, but screening out thousands into a group of high quality directories will take time. When time is an issue for you, you can hire a link building company to handle directory submissions for you. High authority directories are the most popular go-to directories for site owners who are gunning for top spots in the SERP rankings. An important option you need to consider if you intend to submit a URL to an Internet directory for enhanced link popularity is The Open Directory Project at DMOZ.org. The Open Directory Project feeds content to search engines like Google, Lycos, Hotbot, AOL Search, Ask Jeeves and Netscape, among others.

Listing your site at DMOZ is helpful to your link building campaign since this allows your information to be found on several smaller search engines and directories on the Web. Moreover, DMOZ is considered to be among the free higher authority directories that are guaranteed to build link popularity. The downside with DMOZ however, is that its free listing feature subjects sites to very strict quality control procedures before submissions are accepted. Hence, acceptance is not easy and turnaround takes a considerable amount of time. Despite this, site owners must consider submitting to DMOZ and other free quality directories for link building. They must also submit to paid directories listings for site inclusion.

Paid Directories Why do you need to pay fees to be included in the directory listing? According to Matt Cutts of Google, the purpose of the fee in a high quality directory is to compensate the time and effort of someone (an editor) doing a genuine evaluation of a URL or site. There have been concerns that Google’s rejection policy of URLs with paid links would render listing into paid directories useless in link building efforts, but Cutts has explained it clearly that Google does not penalize directories requiring minimum fees for editorial reviews. What Google blacklists are directories that sell links for link juice, passing PR and purely for profit with no regard for the end user. If used effectively, directory submissions as a link building method guarantees a high return on investment (ROI).

By increasing the number of backlinks to your site, directory submissions help you gain link popularity and a better placement on the SERP rankings. Directory submissions are a long-term advertising technique that can directly send customers at your doorstep. Since it acts like an online phonebook of sites, having your site listed in many quality directories means a greater likelihood for prospective customers to view your site and obtain contact information. In the group of paid Internet directories, there are major differences in payment options. Some charge a lifetime or one-time fee and others charge an annual or recurring fee. Depending on your ROI goals, you need to evaluate the payment guidelines and review payment options before selecting the directory to submit to. Here are definitions to guide you:

1. Paid web directories. These are Internet directories that charge site owners a fee for their site inclusion on the directory. They are also called premium, commercial, or pay-for directory listings. Among the high authority paid directories include Yahoo! Directory, Skaffe, Joeant, Abilogic, eLib, and BOTW Directory.
2. Annual fee web directories are directories that charge site owners an annual fee to get listed on the directory. They are also referred to as recurring fee, recurring membership listings, or recurring fees.
3. Permanent fee web directories require a one-time charge for directory listings. This means that you pay a lifetime fee for site inclusion.

There is some debate on which payment option is best. Some prefer the permanent fee listings since it is more economical, but others question the quality of services in one-time listings. Recurring or annual fees are usually paid in order to maintain directories. As submissions increase, the larger the directories become, so Internet directories deem it fitting to charge site owners to maintain the directories and pay for editorial costs to ensure effective and sustained indexing for Google rankings. The choice is entirely left on the discretion of the site owner. A rule of thumb: do not pay too much for submission to paid directories. Submit to free directories and suggest your site only to high quality paid directories that guarantee ROI.

Link exchanges are an easy way of creating link popularity, defined as the quantity and quality of the inbound links pointing to your site. By swapping links with other site owners, you increase the potential targeted readership of your site, thereby giving it more exposure. Since getting noticed by the search engines require the quantity and relevancy of incoming links leading to your site, a link building campaign must incorporate link exchange as one of the methods used for gaining link popularity. However, like all off-page optimization strategies, there are pros and cons, and points to consider when leveraging the power of link exchange to boost your link popularity and search engine rankings.

What can be expected from link exchanges? A big advantage from link exchanges is highly targeted readership, a pivotal factor in building link popularity. By focusing on exchanges with relevant links or doing thematic exchanges with other sites, you can attract a large, quality and highly targeted traffic your way, increasing exposure for your web site. If you can get an authority website that enjoys huge traffic to link to your site, some of that traffic will undoubtedly come your way. Link exchange remains an important part of the link building process because it still is a leading factor in improving search engine placements. It is the easiest way to increase your site’s link popularity, which leads to higher traffic, and ultimately, a better position in the rankings.

What are the types of link exchanges? There are several forms of exchanging links: one-way, reciprocal, and three-way.

1. One-way link exchange. This is the most favorable type of link exchange that enhances link popularity because major search engines place great importance on inbound links when evaluating page rankings. When performing this type of link, the output link becomes: Mysite1 -> Mysite2
2. Reciprocal link exchange. This is a mutual link performed by two websites aimed at generating mutual traffic. Reciprocal links create permanent back links for partner sites. SEO experts typically frown at reciprocal links in general but recommend doing so-called relevant linking, which is a derivative of reciprocal linking that links only to relevant and quality sites. The Output Reciprocal link here is: Mysite1 <-> Mysite2
3. Three Way link exchange. This is a variation of reciprocal linking that is advantageous to all parties and attempts to replicate organic link building for the search engine rankings. The Output Three way link becomes: Mysite1-> Mysite2 -> Mysite3 -> Mysite1

Pointers for performing link exchanges: If done properly, link exchanges can deliver excellent results for your link building campaign. Here are a few pointers:

1. When exchanging links, always consider the Google mantra: “quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating.” Delimit your exchanges to links that are relevant and high quality.
2. Stay away from link farms and link trading hubs or networks because the possibility of exchanging links with off-topic link partners will prove disastrous to your link popularity and your rankings.
3. Search for relevant websites on search engines. Use Yahoo or Google and search your targeted keyword/s. Target the sites on the upper part of the search results. Visit these pages and ask the owner to link to your site, but do not assume that everyone will say yes. If you succeed, you get inbound links from pages that rank well in the eyes of the search engines, a very advantageous thing for your link popularity. If simply asking for a link does not work, you can offer incentives such as commissions or free advertising.

Link exchange is the most popular method to acquire link popularity, but for large web-based promotional campaigns, exchanging links can be very tedious. Fortunately, you always have the option of hiring a link building company to handle your link exchanges or your link building campaign for that matter.