Paid for or not paid for? Investing in Linking
Buying links is not the most effective technique to earn your way to the top rankings. SEOmoz CEO Rand Fishkin believes that paying for links is short-term and a waste of money because: Rankings are tactical: When you pay for links, you’re earning a small amount of traffic and the conversion is a lot lower than if you would grow your site with honest branding, trust, social media and word-of-mouth. It’s Overpriced: Buying links is more expensive than you would think. You could pay several hundred pounds for a few links in a post, but prices are a lot higher when you are dealing with big sites with a great authority and huge amounts of traffic. It’s Risky: Buying links is not accepted by the major search engine Google, thus you might be penalized for being a “link spammer”. Are paid links a waste of money? Buying and selling links to increase ranking was considered normal back in 2000 but 7 years later, Google declared that manipulating search results with paid links was not an acceptable SEO link building technique and will be penalized according to their Webmaster Guidelines. However, depending on the source, the quality of the links and the short or long-term impact, paying for links can sometimes be a good way to increase your rankings. There are three main types of paid links: Directory links Directory submissions can be a useful component of your link building strategy as long as you select just a few relevant and authority directories to submit your links to. When you have a new website and want to get the word out there and get some traffic back to your site, you can use online directories for that. Some are paid and some are free, but the important thing is for these to be relevant for your site, otherwise you’ll be losing money as well as time. Paid blog reviews Paid blog reviews are not as trusted as unpaid blog reviews. That’s because people tend to assume that a paid review cannot be honest or critical because the author has been paid to write it. On the other hand, when you pay someone to review your product, the review might just not be as favorable as you’d wish it to be. However, if the review is positive, it can work in your benefit and generate the buzz you need to make your product known to the public. Blog reviews also have a great effect on your SEO because when you choose a popular blog that is relevant for your business you can get high-quality links and targeted traffic especially. Online PR links Paid PR distribution sites are only valuable when you use them to share real news. Of course these can work against your company if you are publishing three, four, five press releases a week. It’s unlikely you have such big news to share every two days, thus you should limit your press releases to when you are promoting new products or services, or when you are hosting an event or conference that is of real interest to clients or potential clients. In other words, you can’t get away with spam or press releases that aren’t newsworthy. Press releases are meant to increase brand awareness and generate buzz around your products and services. So, should you invest in paid links as part of your SEO strategy? Yes, as long as you are aware that this is a short-term way to drive traffic to your site. Otherwise, invest the cost of paid links into promoting your business online through the use of fresh content and social media sharing.
Everything you need to know about SEO and outranking your competitors
Optimising a website for search engines is not easy and it’s a continuous process that takes time. Go through the most frequently asked questions on Search Engine Optimisation and find answers that can help you understand the basics of SEO and what techniques you can use to have your site rank higher than your competitors. What is SEO? When you enter a word or a phrase in a search engine, whether it’s Google, Yahoo, Bing or another one, and click “Search”, you get a list of search results that include that word or phrase. People usually visit the top 5-10 websites on that page because they consider them to be the most relevant to their search query. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is responsible for getting those sites in the top results on search engines. SEO is a technique that helps improve the visibility of a website or web page in a search engine’s list of results. This means that SEO helps a site rank higher than millions of other sites when people search for a certain word or phrase. Ultimately, SEO is responsible for getting more visitors to your site. What are Meta Tags? Meta Tags provide details on what type of information is included on a web page, thus helping search engines categorise it easier. These elements are inserted into an HTML document and are not visible to users visiting your site. Meta Tags are a very effective marketing tool because they are used to give users snippets of your website content. Thus, they’re a hook that you can use to get Internet users to visit your site. Read more on how to create meta descriptions. How do I create Meta Tags? InstantTraffic a search engine optimising tool from 123-reg, will help you create the perfect Meta Tags for your site by using a Meta Tags generator. This powerful tool gives you suggestions of Meta Tags you can use based on the content on your site. Where do I add Meta Tags? The Meta Tags generator tool from InstantTraffic will not only suggest the perfect Meta Tags for your site, but also show you exactly where you need to insert them inside your site’s HTML document. How can SEO help me? SEO is an invaluable technique for any site owner that wants to rank high in search engines and increase the number of users visiting the site. InstantTraffic includes everything you need to reach as many Internet users as possible. We can submit your site to over 400 search engines every month including Google, Yahoo and Bing to increase your website’s visibility which can lead to traffic increase. We will also advise you on what keywords to use to help increase your site’s rankings. What is Google Ranking or PageRank? Google Ranking or PageRank is a link analysis algorithm that determines how important a website is. The PageRank is responsible for your site showing up at the top of the first page of results or on the 15th page of results that almost no one visits. What elements influence the Google Ranking of my site? There are a number of factors that contribute to a better PageRank and the most important one is the number of quality websites that link to your site, also known as incoming links. An incoming link is interpreted by Google as a recommendation or a vote of support. Having links from websites with a high PageRank can also help increase your site’s PageRank. How long does it take for a website to have a good ranking? There is no exact answer because this depends on a lot of factors such as the quality of your content, relevancy, the keywords you are using and their location, and many others. However, if you publish quality content constantly and get authority sites to link to you, you can increase the chances of ranking higher faster. How long does it take for a website to be indexed? As for the previous question, there isn’t an exact answer for this question. For more information, read our blog post on this subject. Why doesn’t my website appear in search engines? If you have a new website and have already submitted it manually to several search engines, it may not be crawled and indexed right away. There are so many new websites that are submitted daily that it’s understandable why it may take longer for it to show up in search engine results. With our InstantTraffic SEO software, we can help get your site listed on Google within 8 weeks. We will submit it to numerous major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing to increase your site’s visibility worldwide and get traffic to your site. How do I choose the right keywords for my website? InstantTraffic will perform a detailed keyword research in order to recommend you with a list of strong and relevant keywords that you can use. These will be targeted keywords that we will choose based on your audience, your competitors, your site’s performance and incoming links. Using the right keywords can help your site rank higher and ultimately increase traffic to your site. How can I get quality websites to link to my site? InstantTraffic will do an analysis on your competitors to determine what they are doing right so you can use this information to your advantage. You will be able to see what sites link to your competitors’ websites and where most of their traffic comes from. How can I market a website created with InstantSite, Website Builder and eCommerce from 123-reg? If you are using InstantSite or Website Builder website creation tools from 123-reg to build your site, then InstantTraffic is the perfect solution to market it on the Internet. It will help you increase your site’s visibility and get more traffic. Once you implement it, you will get to use the powerful InstantTraffic tools to modify the URLs, titles, descriptions, alt tags and keywords based on our recommendations. Do you have other
Old is Gold in terms of domains
There has long been much debate about whether older domain names rank higher simply by age or more by having more chance of being indexed, linked and found, but even after Google’s most recent changes, the general consensus still appears to be that an older domain name can help with your search engine ranking. To get the best value out of an old domain name however, remember that SEO is a package of tools. An old domain without an track history may be limited in worth but an old domain with a strong existing PageRank, a set of worthy backlinks and a track record of traffic becomes very valuable, but equally will be reflected in the cost if you are looking to buy a domain. So let’s have a look at how the various factors may affect whether or not you buy an older domain name: Availability A targeted keyword in a domain name can be a massive boost to site rankings and with often limited availability of those in the first-come-first-served market of domain names, a ‘previously-owned’ domain offers a chance to tap into that potential. Equally it may be the best domain to match your branding is not longer available new, but it may well be owned by another who has yet put it to proper use and may even be keen to sell for the right price. Quicker results Many experts now suggest that it is far more difficult for new websites to achieve decent rankings on Google. This may or may not have a scientific reason, but with more domains than ever an older domain with an existing ranking is easier to push up the list from lower down than jump straight in. In addition, an older domain is more likely to have more Google trust and organically good rankings for keywords that can quickly be tapped into. PR, PR Many domainers will constantly cite PR as their measure as to how valuable a domain is. In specific terms they are referring to Page Rank, so where the domain ranks on the search engine lists, but more generally it can also apply to Public Relations. The more popular the domain the more value it has. That is important not only to help you work out the value of a domain you are considering buying, but also as to the value of any advertising you may be able to sell on the site once you own it. In terms of attractiveness to would-be advertisers, a top page ranking is a lot more appealing than one several pages on which is unlikely to attract their money. Link value Google’s new focus on the need for relevant and quality links has made this factor even more important. A domain name with a batch of authoritative links to sites relevant to the content you want to push, has great value in the Google-sphere. Equally, quality is the important measure as quantity may actually have a negative impact if the links are deemed irrelevant to the content on the site. Traffic Heavy traffic domain names obviously come at a premium, but they can offer obvious benefits. It’s a bit like buying a ready planted flower garden compared to planting the seeds yourself which is the standard approach of buying a new domain name. However, be sure you know what traffic you are buying into. Is it still relevant to what you want to put the domain to use for? Traffic can go down as well as up, so make sure you know exactly what is driving that traffic there before you invest. Once of the biggest fears of those looking to buy a second-hand domain is that they may fall foul of a scam. What if the seller doesn’t actually own that domain? what if the statistics provided are just wrong? If you’ve searched for a domain name recently on 123-reg you will have seen we now offer premium domain names as alternatives to your initial search. Our premium domain names are all domains previously purchased by someone that they are now selling for a set price via our premium domain partner. While not every domain listed will be aged, the chances they have some additional ‘age’ value over a new domain name as well as the usual ‘catchy’ nature of premium domains. So if you want to find the best way of tapping into the value of older domain names, our Premium domain offerings are a great first point of call and you can be sure the seller is legitimate leaving you with at least one less worry.
Just a Tool – Why SEO should not be used alone
People have long debated whether SEO is compatible with an informative site? In truth they need to work together and it is vital you don’t over complicate matters by making SEO too big a focus. The best traditional journalism sold newspapers. Those newspapers may have moved online but they are now amongst the world’s most popular internet sites. SEO of course plays a part in that, as does reputation established over years, but good quality content regularly upated drives people back to websites time and time again. However, good you are at SEO you have to have great content, great stories and good writing before it is even worth employing SEO. An SEO driven site may bring in clicks but as a business you want repeat visitors. You want to build loyalty and encourage others to share your content. If it is not interesting they won’t do that and all your energy and budget spent on SEO will have been in vain. Equally too, remember your site needs to look good. It doesn’t need to be a work of art but it needs not to jar the eye and it needs to be usable. A lot of SEO focus will be upon the naming convention for pages and articles within them, but of equal, if not more importance, is how those pages are navigated. SEO will help you drive traffic but it won’t have a great effect on how visitors use your page once they are there. Have a look at heatmaps and see where people are clicking. Look at research and see where people’s eyes track when looking at a website. All of these are relevant tools, as relevant a tool as SEO. Only in combination can you take your site to the top of the rankings. Remember having a site people want to ‘buy’ into is the best sales tool you can ever have. Make what’s on your site, what people want to see and read and your SEO results will also rapidly improve. Do you agree? We’d love to hear your thoughts, even if you disagree. Leave us your comments.
Improvements are always possible
There is no magical recipe for successful SEO, it is more about constantly applying well-know approaches. The rules that search engines use to rank websites is ever-changing, thus your efforts should be consistent. Google is constantly tweaking its search algorithm to return relevant results. Some tweaks have little effect on search engine results, whereas others have much wider effects, and you might discover that your page dropped from a top three ranking to a page 10 of a search results page. This means that you need to keep updated with Google’s improvements in order to improve your site. Top 5 SEO tips to stay on top of your competition Here are the top 5 things you should focus on to ensure you get the most out of your SEO efforts: Tip 1: Review your most linked-to content and create more based on it Use Google Analytics or a backlink analysis tool to find the content that is most linked to. Then use the same approach and create another article using a different angle or providing new and interesting insights. Tip 2: Follow-up new links to your site to form partnerships If you are getting valuable traffic from other sites, find out from which ones and try to form relationships with the site owners. This way you can improve these links to get more traffic or look at opportunities for future links. Tip 3: Reconfigure high authority links Use a backlink analysis tool such as Google Webmaster Tools to review the state of your existing links, especially those with high authority. Determine how you can improve them in terms of anchor text or how you can add other links. Tip 4: Focus on the pages which will give you the most boost Use Google Analytics to review your landing pages and find out which ones are attracting a high volume of natural or organic traffic. Then try to improve these pages by tweaking them – change titles, headings and sub-heading, add call-to-action and internal links. Tip 5: Review your title tag on key pages Take a closer look at your title tags and tweak them if necessary. You might discover some of them are too short or too long, maybe automated by your CMS. That’s why it’s best to review and edit them manually. The future of SEO With all the tweaks and changes that might occur, the best recommendations are to keep providing your visitors with outstanding quality content that is relevant and interesting, as well as ensure you create an unbeatable user experience.
Headings – flag up what’s good
Writing content for the web can be challenging, especially because web users don’t read a lot. According to a research study conducted by usability expert Jacob Nielsen, web users scan the text and usually read between 20-28% of the words on a web page. This means that one of your main goals, as a site owner, is to make the content on your site highly readable. One of the easiest and most effective practices to improve website readability is to use headings. Aside from making the content easier to go through, headings are also important for SEO because search engines consider them an indicator of the content published on a page. Enhancing content readability Web content management expert Gerry McGovern wrote an article based on his usability study concluding that web users do not scan pages, but blocks or sections of text. He calls it “block reading”. He explains that when a web user sees a page, he doesn’t see it as a whole, but rather as blocks of information. We tend to read in sections, going directly to what interests us or catches our attention. McGovern’s study results are also supported by one of Nielsen’s eye-tracking studies, which reveals that web users do read in chunks. Nielsen says that web users read in a horizontal movement, and then continue down the page in an F-shapped pattern, thus skipping a lot of text in between. As you can see, the coloured red areas are the ones where users looked the most, followed by the yellow areas and then the blue areas, which are the least-viewed areas. The grey areas did not attract any attention from the users. That’s why it’s recommended to break up long articles into blocks of text by using heading to catch the user’s attention and encouraging him to read more. When you don’t use headings, you’re making it difficult for your visitors to scan the page because you’re not giving them any indication of the content on that page. Also, they tend to leave the page immediately if they can’t scan it. Enhancing SEO In terms of SEO, headings are important because they let search engines know what’s important on that page. That’s why, when optimising the content on a web page, it’s advised to include your targeted keywords in headings and sub-headings, thus making it easier for search engines to index it and for users to find it. Header tags Like any article, online or print, the content on a web page should be broken into heading and sub-headings. For instance, the H1 tag is the most important on a web page and should catchy enough to get the users’ attention. The heading is written in bold or a larger font, and it should include the main keyword you are targeting for that page. The sub-headings (h2, h3, etc) are usually written in smaller font but these should also include keywords. The sub-headings are used to break the page into logical blocks of text to make it easier for the users to read the content, as well as to summarize the content that follows. There are many benefits to using headings on a web page, such as enhancing content readability and SEO. When you use headings, users can find your content faster and read it easier once they visit your page.
Descriptions – more than just what you see
The meta description is mainly used by search engines and is a great way to get traffic to your site, but it can be tricky to get it right. This short paragraph is used to describe the information that is included on a page and it should be written to “sell” it and get people to click. The meta description is the short paragraph that appears on search engines like Google so it’s very important to pitch it perfectly. It’s an elevator pitch We are all busy people, so you have just a few seconds (10, the most) to pitch your idea, article, product or whatever it is that you’re trying to get the world to see. Take an hour or two or how many you need to come up with maximum 160 characters of content that will summarize the information on your page and get people to click. So your meta description should be short, catchy and perfect for your target audience. Craft your description Start with research. See how your competitors or other businesses you look up to are writing their meta descriptions and what details they are including, then start crafting it. You might not get it perfect the first time, but with practice you will get better and better at it. Soon enough you will be able to write it in a few minutes. Another thing to consider is the uniqueness factor. Try to write your description as creatively as possible because if it’s predictable, chances are your audience will not pay attention to it. Things to do, things to avoid The meta description should be written for people, not for search engines. You can include a keyword or two that is relevant for your site or business, but try to avoid over-optimising it or stuffing it with keywords. Each page should have a different meta description, usually between 100 and 160 characters, otherwise search engines tag it as duplicate content. Don’t forget to include a call-to-action, such as “Buy now”, “Find out more”, etc. Have we missed anything? Do you have any tips to share that can help write a perfect meta-description?
Authority means top rankings
Trust builds trust and trust builds authority. Authority is an important factor that helps rise up the rankings, which means that, in terms of SEO, authority has a positive influence on search engine rankings. What does Authority mean? Authority refers to: the quality of a site. This can be a combination of the site’s relevance, importance, age, size. a niche site. Most authority sites are built around a particular subject and this helps them gain the status of experts in their field. Leading experts in a specific field are the ones that carry most authority because they are focused on a single subject, and don’t claim to know everything about everything. sites that rank high for a specific keyword or phrase. This means that authority sites are also popular. sites that are referred by other sites that consider them to be the most relevant in that domain or industry. Why authority sites rank higher Authority sites are highly appreciated because of the quality content that people find there. Site owners also ensure to constantly publish fresh and unique content because they know that new content will be spidered and indexed quicker by search engines. This will not only enhance authority, but also help them rank easier for specific keywords in their field. Aside from being rapidly spidered by search engines, authority sites also get links from other sites easier. Quality content gets noticed, shared and linked by other sites. If some of these sites that recommend your content are also authority sites, then the links are A list links, the best quality links one can get. They certify to the quality of the content and they recommend it to their readers. Search engines see that and it’s when they elevate the authority site to the top of the search rankings. How to achieve Authority Authority doesn’t necessarily mean having the highest page rank. It’s more about a mix of relevant, quality content that people find useful, as well as off page optimisation. Domain age is also an important factor because people often link authority to a website’s age. However, even with a domain that has been online for years, it’s still the fresh content, optimised around powerful keywords, that matters the most. If it’s not link-worthy, people won’t share it or link to it. The key to an authority site is to give people what they need, and that is well documented, unique content that they will want to share. It’s that type of quality and useful content that other authority sites would want to be associated with. To achieve that, you need to determine what the trends are in your industry and create relevant content around it so that other sites, authority ones especially, will want to pick up and promote. Once it becomes popular, your site will benefit from it by traffic increase and higher ranks. Social Media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, are also good places to build links, as these sites already have authority which will be transferred to you instantly if the content you publish is relevant to their users. So, choose your sites carefully and ensure your target audience is there. You can also promote your content on other channels, such as directory submissions, blogs, press releases sites and more. Be an authority, not a crowd pleasure To be an authority and get all the benefits that come with that status, you should focus on a niche and demonstrate your expertise to your readers. When people deem you worthy of their time and consider you to be the go-to resource for solutions to their problems, it’s when you will win the battle for page rank.