A 5 Step Approach to Building Links

Getting people to link to a particular website is not always an easy proposition. But it is possible to stack the odds in one's favor just a bit. So, let's discuss a five point process for getting quality back links to a website.

Point One: Link to the Best
The first process of better link building is to find people who are interested in a particular website's overall theme. Right off the bat, this increased the odds of getting people to link back. Take time and look at the Google PR rating of the site, the Alexa score, etc. Determine which websites are the best in the industry. These are the type of influential websites that can help. The goal is to link to these.

Point Two: Link to a Rising Star
The second process involves further use of the research done in point one. Also take time and link to a website that is on the rise in a particular subject. These types of websites are often easier to get, and will pay dividends down the road.

Point Three: Write Content that is Interest to These Sites
The third point is fairly self explanatory. Get content on a website that is of interest to the best in any particular industry. It makes take some time to determine what is of interest to any particular site. But once the answer is found, it will pay dividends to include content like that on the website being developed.

Point Four: Contact the Website and Offer an Exchange on Promoting Links
The fourth point involves contacting the owners of the other websites, and offering an exchange of links. One simple idea is to offer two links to your one. This may help to make the deal more attractive. Offer links to only quality material. Ask about what is important to them to be promoted about their website.

Point Five: Develop an Ongoing Relationship
The final step in quality link building just involves continuing to build a relationship with that website owner over time. Stay in touch. Periodically check out the website and make notes about new and important events, ideas, pages, etc. Keep coming back and promoting.

This five point concept is simple in nature, but highly effective. It is built on age old principles of doing business through relationship building. Over time, the technique can help to build lots of quality links that will bring new readers to any website.

Johnny Smoes is an IT Programmer and Principle at SEO Experts Australia. He frequently writes about issues surrounding search engine optimization. You can contact him at @seoaus2010 on Twitter.

The Chicken or Egg Dilema for SEO Experts

The chicken or egg dilema for SEO experts goes something like this: which Comes First, Web Design or SEO?

When you are likely to consider your next web design change, you may want to consider the SEO version of the old chicken and egg question. Which comes first, web design or SEO? Both will ultimately be important. One the one hand, web design can appeal to the human eye, and get people excited about sharing links with your site. On the other hand, good search engine optimization makes it possible to find the site in the first place.

What I am going to argue is that SEO considerations need to be built in from the beginning. Web design that is "out of the box," pre-designed, or even pre conceived can make it harder to get good search engine optimization. Yes, you have to consider the architecture of the site. You have to consider how you are communicating your message, and how you will get people to respond with contact information, sales, etc. The security of your underlying code and the overall functionality of that code are all important. But all of this must be designed with SEO in mind from the very beginning.

Poorly built sites may make it hard for search engine spiders to "crawl" the site. An SEO Expert that hasn't considered "how we are going to get links" may make it harder to get people to back link. We may have designed our site; so that the best potential links spots are buried too deeply, making it hard to get people to stay that long. We may have a wrong strategy about "do follow" or "no follow" linking.

We need to take the process from a different approach. Start with developing a strategy for getting critical information to people quickly. Think from the other person's erspective. Design the site so the best "link bait" opportunities are easy to find. Follow simple, basic principles about designing content for search engine spiders. The results could be dramatically better.

As we consider the overall web design of our coming change, let's make sure we have asked and answered these types of questions:

• What does my site offer to other website designers that would make them want to link to my website?
• What does my site offer to any visitor that would make them want to share that content on their favorite social websites?
• Out of all the information that exists, that I could put on my website, what relevant information is in demand (or soon will be). Out of that type of information, what part is not being communicated well on other sites?
• How do I need to effectively keyword target that demand?
• What functionality/organization will make my site more attractive to search engines?
• How do I build ongoing SEO refinement and growth into my overall business plan?
  
  

The chicken or egg dilema for SEO Experts gets a lot easier with a little planning. A web design that is built around these guiding principles has a better chance of succeeding. It will be more easily found by search engines, and will ultimately rise in rank quicker. Further, you will get more people to want to connect to your website. This will make the job of your SEO expert much easier.

Johnny Smoes is an IT Programmer and Principle with SEO Experts Australia. The company is located in Australia, but does business world wide. He frequently writes on topics of search engine optimization, web design, and search engine marketing. You can get more information at SEO Experts Australia.com.au or Zanity.com.au.

SEO and Web Design

seoexpertsaustralia.com.au
The way you design a site can really make a difference in how many people visit. Many people do not make this connection with search engine optimization either. So, I think SEO and web design are connected. Here's why.

Put simply, the Google PR rating for your website is partly tied to the number of people that are visiting your site. The more people, the higher the rating. In addition, it can influence the relevance rating your website receives for informational content. In a purely logical world, facts should be facts. But in the world of the Internet, relevance plays a role. There is a kind of assumption that more visitors can mean better content.

Web design also allows you to bring the element of emotion into your overall scheme for getting people to visit your website. Pictures, graphics, colors, etc., can make a huge difference in how people perceive the value of your site. You can also use these design elements to promote a sense of what your product is all about.

Try this simple experiment. Establish a base line for how many people are visiting your website each day of the week, on average. Then, make some design changes to your website. Note the changes that are made. In a pure test, you will need to continue to add content at exactly the same rate. For example, if you always post a blog on Friday, don't stop! If you have made no content changes in a while, then don't add changes during the test for design. It can invalidate your work. An SEO expert can help you work through some of the design strategies we have discussed, should this be a task you would rather outsource. Read more...

That's my take on it,
Johnny Smoes

Why Aren't You Linking Pictures?

Why aren’t you linking pictures? It amazes me how often bloggers fail to do some simple things that add a lot of search engine optimization punch to their blogs. This blog’s take is on what we do with pictures. Here’s the story.

Pictures add a lot of class to a blog article, and help us get across the point of our blog. When done right, they will also help to draw people back to read again, because the site looks so professional. Often though, people forget to add links to those pictures, which can really help to draw traffic to your website.

For many, the main website for a business is separate from the blog site. Many people use Blogger or WordPress to help draw traffic to their main website. (Probably need to blog on this too some day!) Links back to the main website will draw people there. But few remember to do the same thing with the pictures they place in the blog.

There is an almost irresistable urge to click pictures. If you system allows you to do so, put a link back to your main website, or a landing page for sales. All of these links help to add SEO valaue to your main website. More importantly though, it can draw readers there. So, why aren’t you linking pictures?

Happy blogging! Link em!

Johnny Smoes