allinanchor.com | Internet Marketing News and Tips » Search Engine Optimization

Build Those Links!

mwolfe — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 18:59:50 +0000

Who doesn’t want better rankings in Google? Isn’t that the point? One of the most important parts of SEO and the surest way to see your site climb up the rankings is to get high quality links pointing back to your website.

But what constitutes a “high-quality link”? Links from sites that have a high value to the search engines are good sites to link back to your site. Search engines place value on the site by how much free and useful information it has on it. Sites of value have many sites pointing to it, telling the search engines that it is a relevant and important source of information.

Types of sites that produce high quality links

Reliable news sources
Educational Facilities (.edu websites)
Encyclopedias
Information Portals specific to your topic or industry
Forums
Blogs
Link Directories

The fastest and easiest way to get links back to your site is to submit to Directories. (more…)

Guaranteed Ways to Dump Money on PPC Ads

dwhite — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 21:48:41 +0000

PPC (pay per click) is almost the most efficient way for a small web based company to generate leads. Thanks to it’s unique ability’s to measure results precisely, target prospects in a narrow manor, and tightly manage your spending. That alone has made PPC one of the top lead generating tools ever.

However this technique does have it’s downside. Reason being is that PPC campaigns are so convenient, easy to set up and get started that the small business owner can easily spend upwards to thousand’s of dollars in just a period of weeks until they learn some hard lessons on what will be successful and what will bury you.

So here are some of the most common PPC mistakes, hopefully this is a useful outline on strategy that will start generating leads as quickly and efficiently as possible.

1. Problem: Using the home page as your landing page

There are many search engines that you can setup your PPC campaign with: Google, Yahoo, and others. It is your responsibility to decide where to direct the traffic that clicks on your ad. Most businesses send their traffic directly to the home page. Which seems to make sense since the home page is the equivalent to he store’s front door where you would think you would want to send your traffic. Right?

Wrong. Here is the dilemma in that. Most peoples home pages are so cluttered with information, and generally cover such a broad topic. It’s like pushing someone on to a site that contains the info. they need along with topics on totally unrelated issues. Good luck is what you mind as well say when they get to the home page. Obviously this will lead to a high frustration and failure rate.

Solution: Always take a clicker to a well crafted, easy to use and specific landing page. (more…)

Anchors Aweigh

mwolfe — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 21:37:31 +0000

One of the most important elements to the SEO of a website is the anchor text. But what exactly is anchor text, and how is it optimally used? Just how important is anchor text?

Anchor Text is defined as the visible text of a hyperlink. For example, http://www.allinanchor.com is a hyperlink. Rather than displaying the link address we can use anchor text that is relative to the site or page the link is pointing to. So, rather than this: http://www.allinanchor.com we get this: killer SEO blog. Both links point to the same place, but the link containing the anchor texts helps to establish relevancy of the content on the page to the content of the page the link is pointing to.

As we know the search engines work primarily off the relevancy and importance of the content in a website. There was a time long ago when the search engines placed most of its importance in keywords. People would stuff content full of keywords that had nothing to do with the subject of the website. Now, the websites that have been around the longest, and have the most relevant content are the ones that are on top.

Anchor text optimization is the process of optimizing anchor text using relevant keywords to get higher rankings in search engines. Using keywords as anchor text to link to pages on the same topic helps the search engines establish relevancy of all the text contained in a website. All major search engines place huge level of importance to anchor text in comparison to simple hyperlinks.

(more…)

SEO is Easy

Michael — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 22:51:49 +0000

Ok, for all of those who are saying ‘If SEO is so easy, why isn’t allinanchor.com at the top of the SERPS?’. The easy answer is that SEO isn’t hard, it’s expensive. Here’s what it all comes down to:

Write quality, engaging content.
Optimize your site to be relevant to the search terms you have carefully chosen.
Buy advertisements in the form of text links. (more…)

Microsoft is Going to Handle SEO Spam… Yeah Right.

Michael — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 16:59:05 +0000

Apparently Microsoft has been working on a new technology that will scrub your search results of “spam” websites. Spam sites are typically those sites that are created with no real content or purpose other than to funnel traffic through to an advertiser or profit generating site. The most common of these are called “doorway pages” but other a new kind of spam using blogs has also become mainstream for search engine spammers.

The new approach is a basic, if novel, idea:

Microsoft’s tool doesn’t find spam the traditional way, by looking at the site’s content. Instead, it turns the spammers’ activities against them by using search engines to find links to potential spam pages. These links are often posted as comments on blogs, in online discussion forums and in guestbooks, also called “comment spam”.

Only time will tell, in the meantime you can learn more here: Strider URL Tracer

White Hats Don’t Buy Links

Michael — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 13:57:51 +0000

Ok, we all know that if you want to get anywhere in the SEO world, you pretty much have to buy links. Is this ‘Black Hat‘? Who knows. Rand posts some information on the subject with some pretty nice examples of sites that have used payed linking.

In the current search marketing environment, it’s exceptionally hard to find a website that’s ranking highly for competitive queries in niche fields that isn’t employing paid link tactics to bolster their position.

I personally think that SEOs need to develop the skills and a network of venues for the procurement of paid links if they want to be effective. The ‘White Hat’ vs. ‘Black Hat’ debate has never been an issue to me. It’s our job as SEOs to do the very best that we can for our client’s. You can label that whatever you like. I know that we have had great success, and it’s due in large part to our willingness to look past what some people call ‘Black Hat’ or the enigmatic ‘Gray Hat‘ labels and just do what works. That’s what we get paid for, and that is what our clients want.

‘Pinning’ a Site to 1st Position

Michael — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 17:53:39 +0000

Ok, so a few months have passed since I first posted about our efforts at Active Internet Marketing to get the AIMpromote website to the first page in the Google SERPS and maintain our position there. We have actually had excellent success. It appears though, that there is no really solid way in our efforts to have a consistent first position… But we know what needs to be done to get the first position solidly locked in.

Internally, we dub websites that hit and maintain the first position in Google for any period of time, without fluctuation, to be ‘pinned’. This is a simple analogy to the speedometer in cars. In your car, you will see that the speedometer only goes as high as say 150MPH. If you are going 175MPH (yeehaw!) your speedometer will be pinned to the little peg that stops it from showing how much faster than 150 you are actually going. We think that this is the same in the SERPS. To get ‘pinned’ in the first position essentially means that you are FAR ahead of the rest of the pack on that term. Since you can do no better than 1st position, there is no real way to tell exactly how much better than 2nd position you are.

If a site regularly fluctuates between 1st, 2nd, and 3rd positions, it is easy to see that they are relatively in the same shape as the competition. If they are ‘pinned’ in 1st, there is no way of telling how far ahead of the competition you actually are. This can be dangerous, because you won’t ever know if what you are doing is having a positive impact. You only know if it is having a negative impact (you fall from the top).

Getting to the first position and staying there.

Michael — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 14:02:17 +0000

I have been trying for months to get AIMpromote.com to the first position for the search terms that are most relevant to my market:

lead management

sales lead management

I managed to have a week where they were both 1st position. Actually, it was almost 3 weeks, but that damn Google Dance.

My strategy to date has been:

Write unique content

Optimize said content

Procure free links back

Procure paid links

This has seemed to work… Basically. I am just not far enough ahead of the competition to really stick that first position. The ultimate goal is to have AIMpromote an authority site with a small sitemap under the listing. I’m not exactly sure of the criteria, but I’m going to be looking into it and getting back to you all with how it is to be accomplished.