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SEO 101-Basic Link Building

2009-11-18T03:33:00Z

Greetings, and welcome to SEO 101-Basic Link Building

Link building is perhaps the most important aspect of your search engine optimization strategy, and sadly, is one of the most overlooked. Opinions very about the importance of on site optimization. In our research, we have determined that about 20 to 30 percent of your positioning in the search engines is affected by optimization inside your site, while the remainder is off site factors, especially link building. So, let's start from the beginning.

When we say "link" we are really referring to either inbound or outbound hypertext links to or from your site. Links from your site to another site are far less effective in determining your search engine ranking. The only two main factors looked at by the engines, at least currently, are the outbound links text and th site they link to. It is suspected that relevancy of the linked site will also soon matter as well. Make sure that you're not linking to "bad neighborhood sites". Most search engine API's will penalize you for linking to site that are known spammers, or worse. So, be careful who you link to. This is all the time we'll spend on who to link to. What is more important, is who to get links from.

Far more important than who you link to, is who links to you. There are three factors we'll discuss in reference to "inbound" links.

1. How many inbound links point to your site.

2. The quality of sites that link to you.

3. The relevance of the sites that link to you.

The importance of the number of inbound links varies from search engine to search engine. It is the second most important of the three factors that we're discussing. If you were to us link-checking software you would find that most of the sites in the top three spots for popular keywords will have thousands or tens of thousands of links. This is not entirely necessary, though it doesn't hurt. It is widely known that more important than the number of links to your site, is the quality of links. Google, for instance, assigns page ranks to sites based on their popularity, age, and number of other factors but we will talk about this more in a later article. Suffice it to say, that higher page rank sites (3 or higher) are far more valuable to have link to you than pages that are of lower page rank. A good analogy would be that it's like "hanging out with the popular kids". Just by being in the presence of the popular kids, others see you as more popular. Internet explorer and mozilla both have good plug-ins for the browsers to check page rank. If you don't want to install a plug in however, just look for link partners that have been around a long time. This will usually guarantee some level of page rank. Site relevance will also come into play here. If you're a shoe store site and you link to a bunch of video game sites, the search engines do not give these links as much weight for determining your "popularity". Relevant sites are a must. Try to make sure that nearly every site you link to is related to your site in some way and that the links you establish on their sites have descriptions that match your keywords. The descriptions surrounding a link are important because if the description does not match the page, you will once again have a link that is less effective.

Realizing that we are sticking to the basics here, we thought it also necessary to tell you some very basic link building strategies. As a personal choice, we believe in "organic" link building. Gaining too many links too quickly can cause unwanted attention and actually hurt you. If done organically, the links are built slower over an extended period of time to reflect the typical "organic growth" of a website. In order to do this,at little to no cost, you will likely have to do a lot of submitting and link exchanging. It is easy to find lists of sites that will accept your link without exchanging. Just search for them on the search engines. However, we also recommend approaching sites that are related in some fashion to your industry, but not competitors, and ask them if the would be willing to exchange links. If accepted, they'll put a link to you on their site, and you'll return the favor. You'll also find as you go along that this will increase your traffic slightly over time just because their visitors will occasionally look at your site. So, give it a try. Using an email template will save you a lot of time and you'll be surprised sometimes at how much response you'll get. Keep in mind, this is a long process, but it works. There are no magic bullets. Data Zealot will do organic link building exclusively for our clients at discounted rates. If you're a client, and you're interested, go to http://www.datazealot.com and contact us for a quote.

Stay tuned for the next article of SEO 101

SEO 101-Search Engine Submission

2009-11-03T00:12:00Z

Welcome to SEO 101- Search Engine Submission

Search Engine Submission is actually one of the simpler aspects of the SEO process. Submitting your URL/Domain/Site can be a simple, but time consuming process. Most search engines don't make it hard to submit to them. Simply do a search on any number of them using the keyphrase "submit URL" or "submit website" and you should have no trouble finding it. At this point you will need to simply submit your URL to the Search Engine. This is usually a simple process, however some of them may require you to put your name or company information, though most will not. Here are a couple do's and don'ts:

1. DO NOT submit your website to the same search engine multiple times. They usually consider this a sign of bots or spamming and will decline your submission.

2. MAKE SURE that at the very least you submit to Google, Yahoo, Bing, ASK, and the DMOZ if possible. These engine have a large portion of the market and ARE A MUST. However, in our experience other engines may have less competition on them so it's worth looking in to.

3. YOU CAN use automated search engine submission software, but MAKE SURE it's reputable. www.Datazealot.com has software available for a low cost. This software will make the process a lot easier for you.

4. If you're a customer of Data Zealot and you are a newsletter subscriber, we will submit your URL (if hosted and an active website) to 101 search engines FOR FREE. The better you do as a client, the better we do as your provider. All you need to do is contact us once your site is up and running and we'll do the rest.

5. MAKE SURE that you optimize your keywords BEFORE you submit. Some Search Engines Don't like a lot of changes to Keywords. Better to do it all up front and then submit to avoid any penalties.

Search Engines can take a significant amount of time to index your site. Some will even decline you, while others will make you an offer to be towards the top for a fee. In our opinion, don't pay for it. If you're reading this your probably learning about the process and will be applying some of it. There are other techniques that would be better ways to spend your money. In addition, we don't recommend Pay per Click Advertising if you have a small budget. We will talk about this in a later edition.

The bottom line is that you should spend the time to submit to search engines! It's well worth it.

Stay tuned for SEO 101- Basic Link Building

SEO 101-Keywords

2009-10-30T04:24:00Z

Greetings and Welcome to SEO 101 from the wonderful city of Janesville, Wisconsin.

You may have a web business or are thinking about starting one. You might even have difficulty wrapping your head around the concept of marketing on the Web. Perhaps you just are looking for a . We want to make it easy.

First, you might ask what is "SEO"? SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process by which you improve your position on a search engine for particular words or phrases searched. So, typing in "video games" will bring up millions of results. How many people will look at your website if you're number 675,000 on that search? The answer is none. So, your goal is to get as close to the top as possible. This is done by making sure all of the factors that the "spider bots" that search engines use to find sites are optimized. For this blog, we will assume that you do not have any software and would like to go about this as inexpensively as possible. The first "factor" we will discuss are keywords.

101-Keywords

Keywords are THE most important part of your optimization strategy. There are a few common mistakes that many webmasters make that you should avoid.

1. DO NOT pick single word or "tier one" keywords. "Tier one" keywords have two flaws associated with them. First of all, the competition is very stiff and it lowers your chances of getting to the top. Secondly, much of the traffic that searches these terms is just browsing around the net and are not sure what they want yet. Think about it. What might be on a person's mind when they type in "business"? Starting one? Owning one? Investing in one? What!? Now think if they type"business insurance" (a tier two keyword phrase)? At this point, they have an idea of what they are looking for, and they are potentially ready to buy.

2. DO NOT put 100 keywords on your site or repeats of the same word. Search engines often "penalize" sites for doing either of these. The maximum number of keywords should be around 15 or so on any given page with no repeats.

3. MAKE SURE that the keywords are relevant to your site. We will talk about some ways to accomplish further relevancy in the future, but you don't want your shoe store site to have the keyword "beef jerky" all over it. The lack of relevance and some other factors can cause further penalties or ineffective keywords. Try making sure that your keywords are mentioned a few times on your site.

4. IF you're still feeling shaky, ask us for advice. We're here to help. We offer both simple software solutions for less and all out professional service (http://www.datazealot.com/). However, this blog is meant to help. Post something and we'll reply when we're able.

5. STAY TUNED for lesson 102-Search Engine Submission