allinanchor.com » Search Engine Optimization

Build Those Links!

Michael Myles — 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. There are thousands of directories, both paid and free, to which you can submit. Paid directories usually are better than free ones, because there usually is more important information on a paid directory. Also, there is someone to approve listings, and make sure that yours gets up in 72 hours or less. With free directories who knows how long it will take you to get listed (if at all) and who knows what kind of spam, porn, gambling and undesirable content is on the free directories. Links in paid directories usually run from anywhere from $10 – $300 most of which are usually in the $30 – $40 price range. A couple things you should know when submitting to link directories:

You won’t get much traffic from the directories themselves – The average internet user these days has no idea what a directory is. The days of people actually searching directories for sites has been long gone. Traffic is not what its about. It’s all about building links. You’ll get more traffic from Google when all the links back to your site skyrocket you in the rankings.
Have good, varying descriptions – You will need to come up with descriptions of your site for the directory listings. usually these are 50-200 word descriptions. Make sure they are rich with your top keywords without being overstuffed. Also, make sure the descriptions for each directory are different. If you use the same exact description over and over Google can think your submissions are automated and therefore spam.

Below are some directories to which you can submit, to get you a good start.

Directory	URL	Price
Yahoo! Directory	dir.yahoo.com	$299
Best of the Web	www.botw.org	$69.95
GoGuides	www.goguides.org	$39.99
JoeAnt	www.joeant.com	$39.99
Wow Directory	www.wowdirectory.com	$37
Site-Sift	www.site-sift.com	$29.95
Uncover The Net	www.uncoverthenet.com	$49
Gimpsy	www.gimpsy.com	$40
Librarians Internet Index	www.lii.org	FREE
Site Snoop	www.sitesnoop.com	$10
Browse8	www.browse8.com	$35
01 Web Directory	www.01WebDirectory.com	$49
Starting Point	www.stpt.com	$99
Web Beacon	www.web-beacon.com	$39.99
Rubber Stamped	www.rubberstamped.org	$29.95
Illumirate	www.illumirate.com	FREE
Massive Links	www.massivelinks.com	$24.95
This Is Our Year	www.thisisouryear.com	$24.95
SevenSeek	www.sevenseek.com	$40
Aviva	www.avivadirectory.com	$34.95
Azoos	www.azoos.com	$89.95
Skaffe	www.skaffe.com	$39.99
DMOZ	www.dmoz.org	FREE

Guaranteed Ways to Dump Money on PPC Ads

Desmond White — 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.

2. Problem: Not bidding high enough to secure top spot

You are the advertiser. As the advertiser with PPC you have the option on how much you feel is necessary to pay for any particular search term. Being that PPC works on an auction model the more that you pay relative to the other bidding advertisers the higher up your ad will appear.

The most popular search terms will have up to a dozen or more ads listed on search result pages. This gives off the feeling that any noob can drive clicks with PPC. Consider this staggering statistic though, 85% of all PPC clicks are on the first page and on the top three positions! The scraps (15%) go to the remaining positions, which could number in the hundreds or more.

This all means that if you don’t bid high enough to get on the first page in the top three you are just wasting your own time. your not necessarily wasting money due to the fact that if no one clicks on it you pay nothing. Of-course if you make the decision to hide yourself further down the list it will be tough generating leads that will close the deals that you need to make.

Solution: Choose search terms and possibly less of them that will consistently make you appear in one of the top three spots.

3. Problem: Not making ad copy specific enough

With your two major search engines, Yahoo gives you 190 characters (including spaces) in your text ad. Google offers only 70. With no colors, pictures, or even a company logo. Only words. Many of the advertisers out there today waste this tiny space with vague, meaningless terms, or generalized statements that do not have a definitive uniqueness to what they are offering.

This leads to searchers not clicking on your ad, which once again does not cost you money but time and misses the whole objective. On the much more serious side of things the wrong searcher will click on your ad due to a poorly designed ad copy, realize when they hit the landing page that it is not what they were in sought of and you generate leads that will go no where but you paid for.

Solution: Be very specific and unique with your ad copy. If you have features that are unique to you or something that sets you apart from the others in your market this is a good place to make that known.

In short: PPC has a tremendous amount to offer your small business in terms of trafficking potential customers to you. Keep these few guidelines in mind when you start or revise your new PPC campaign and you will be transforming those clicks into a profit in no time at all.

Anchors Aweigh

Michael Myles — 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.

There are two types of anchor text optimization: Internal Anchor Text Optimization- The linking of text to pages within your website. Linking anchor text from within one of your articles or pages to another page within your site is internal optimization. This helps the search engines to see the structure of your site and helps to establish relevancy of one piece of information to another on your site. External Anchor Text Optimization- Using relevant keywords linking from other websites, such as, blogs, link directories, similar websites, or link exchanges. Links that are inbound to your site using relevant anchor text is tremendously important. Incoming links should come from high ranking, rich in good relevant content, websites. The more incoming links you have from websites with good relevant content, the more the search engines will see your site as relevant to the topic and more important. That’s why links from .edu or .gov sources are very valuable, because the engines see educational or government sources as authoritative sources of important information. Like any type of SEO there comes a point where too much can be detrimental to the organic rankings of your site. If you use the same keywords as anchor text over and over again, the search engines can see it as spam. So it best to vary your anchor text as much as possible. Use too much of the same key phrase and watch your rankings drop. There is a new school of thought on the topic of anchor text that says it is good to not only use the actual key phrases as anchor text, but to also use phrases in the same sentence or paragraph as the keywords, instead of using the keywords itself. The Google Algorhithm looks at complete sentences or ideas rather than just words, so anchor text AROUND keyphrases is just as effective as using the actual keywords as anchor text. I personally have found this to be true, using off keyword anchor text is just as effective (if not more) than using anchor text that is just keywords. Switching it up in such a fashion will keep the engines from deeming your links spam. The importance of Anchor text goes overlooked by many people who are trying to optimize their site. The simple “click here” link has absolutely no value to the optimization of your site. Be creative with your anchor text and make your links work for you.

SEO is Easy

Michael Myles — 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.

That’s it. It’s not that hard. If any part of this seems too heavy to handle, you might not have what it takes to run an online website. A quick Google search will show you any number of places from whom you can purchase links. If there is a secret, it’s this:

There is no secret to SEO, no tricks, no gimmicks that work.

If you think this isn’t so, then go ahead and purchase those text links and those autosubmitting rip-offs and we’ll have one less site in the SERPs with which to compete. Seriously though, you can’t expect to purchase PageRank from the kind of site that sells links for $100.00. It just doesn’t work. Let me tell you another little secret… Shhh… Is anyone listening… Good, here is the secret:

A quality link is an advertisement in its own right. If a link won’t drive real traffic to your site, don’t buy the link.

Microsoft is Going to Handle SEO Spam… Yeah Right.

Michael Myles — 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 Myles — 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 Myles — 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 Myles — 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.