A Few Methods Of Increasing Search Engine Rankings Quickly
There’s no way to get around it: if you want to make money online, you have to find ways of increasing search engine rankings. When people look for something online, they go straight to the search engines. Nine times out of ten, they only look on the first page. If you’re not there, you’re not going to be found.
Increasing search engine rankings is a daunting task, but it’s not impossible. If you cannot afford the help of a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) guru, then you’ll have to do a lot of the work yourself. Here are some key things you will have to do.
People use keywords when they do their searches. Use a good keyword tool to help you find the best keywords for your content. Don’t just settle for the most used keywords. A short keyword like “used cars” will get millions of hits and also have millions of other sites that will rank ahead of yours. “Used cars in Seattle” will shorten that list considerably and, if you’re selling used automobiles in the Seattle area, target your market more efficiently.
Spread the word! Everyone knows about blogging, but not everyone knows that you’re better off having one main blog and also submitting blog posts to other social media sites as well. Use your keywords and include backlinks to your main blog. Ideally, you should submit different but similar articles to each blog you have. This can be accomplished with a minimum of effort using article blending software. You can make dozens of unique, readable articles from just one original using this type of service.
Submit articles to article directories. There are thousands of them, but you can automate most of the submissions and only do a half dozen or so of the most important ones yourself.
These are the three main things you must do for increasing search engine rankings. Do them regularly and you will see your site on page 1 for your targeted keywords.
Boosting Search Engine Rankings for you website use to be an easy project; however with the expanding number of sites and marketers online it has become a little more difficult. One of the best ways to increase search engine rankings is to get more backlinks by using unique article wizard.
Part I: Linking Practices That Will Hurt your Search Engine Rankings
Quality linking practices are encouraged by the major search engines as an acceptable way of improving site popularity, website traffic and help contribute to higher search engine rankings. As a webmaster you must be wary of engaging in poor linking practices that have the potential to strip your website of its ranking status on the major search engines Google, Yahoo and MSN.
In this two part Article Series we will firstly discuss those linking practices that will find your website penalized by the major search engines, with the most current controversy over ‘paid links’. Google has recently penalized several sites with ranking drops for violating its quality webmaster guidelines by selling paid links. This penalty can also be applied to those sites displaying ‘paid links’ that are considered spam or of low quality by the search engines and provide users with a poor browsing experience.
Not all paid linking will be penalized, the current focus tends to be on those links that are primarily being used to manipulate search engine rankings. Purchasing paid links may also affect your rankings if the originating site selling the links is considered to be a ‘bad neighborhood’ site by the major search engines, your site’s rankings can be affected by association. As a general rule, avoid companies selling links who are promoting paid links that are ‘hard to detect by a search engine’ and with the recent increase in the reporting of paid links to Google, their ranking algorithms are being adjusted to detect such paid links.
The advice from Google on paid links is that it’s okay to promote paid links that are aimed at increasing website traffic but are not being used to manipulate search engine rankings. If you are using paid links:-
• Add a ‘no follow attribute’ to the linking info (see Google for more info on how to do this).
• You can also redirect the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from the search engines with robots.txt file.
• Clearly define paid advertising links on your site to the search engines ie. with a ‘sponsored link’ title heading.
Another linking practice that is discouraged by the major search engines is using Link Farms to artificially increase a site’s link popularity. Link farms are usually classified as a website or web page that displays a series of links to other unrelated sites and displays no content of real value or interest to site visitors. These types of links pages are usually created by automated software programs and services. To avoid being caught linking to a ‘link farm’ vigorously check all link exchange requests and the reciprocal URL location of your link on their site. Link farms will be obvious in nature as no actual web content will be present for site visitors except links and often the link exchange will be represented as a ‘3 way link’ exchange.‘3 Way Linking’ has been an emerging trend over the past 12 months and is designed to quickly boost the search engine rankings and online presence of the requesting link partners site by anonymously building link pages that have no direct link to them so that they can’t be penalized by the search engines for deceptive SEO practices. 3 Way Links are of little or no benefit to your site or your linking campaign as typically the third party site that your link is located on has no content relevance to your own site or worse still it is just a ‘link farm’. Once again your site’s search engine rankings can be penalized by association.
Check link exchange requests carefully as often 3 way linking practices are hidden in the link request, in some cases you may agree to a link exchange with a site whose content is similar to yours only to find that when the link exchange is completed that your link has been placed on a third party site. Often the site requesting the link exchange does not even have a links page set up on their site. 3 Way Links can also be represented as ‘triangular link exchanges’.
The final linking practice we will look at is ‘Cross Linking’. Excessively cross-linking sites of unrelated content can and will violate the quality webmaster guidelines of Google, Yahoo and MSN. This linking practice is generally used to artificially increase the number of links to a site and link popularity with the main aim of manipulating the search engine rankings. Even if you are the owner of multiple sites it is unwise to cross link them if the content of the sites is unrelated.
I came across a prime example of cross-linking recently when analyzing a potential new client’s site for SEO & website marketing recommendations. What I discovered was that their existing SEO provider had excessively cross-linked their site to all their other clients sites under the disguise of ‘site map’ pages which were not only numerous in quantity but also keyword stuffed. This practice has somehow gotten past the ranking algorithms of Google and Yahoo most likely because the pages were being represented as ‘site map’ pages however the site had been penalized by MSN with no rankings showing whatsoever.
The only way of bringing up the site on MSN was to type in the site’s direct URL address. The site owner was completely unaware of this breach which was explained away by this SEO company as the search engine results for MSN being inconclusive on the day they were searched for reporting purposes. To a novice, this explanation probably seems viable – so website owners be wary and don’t be afraid to ask questions as to why your site is not receiving rankings in at least the top 10 pages of the search engine results for Google, Yahoo & MSN especially if you are paying for professional SEO services. Avoid automated software being added to your site primarily for SEO purposes, organic search engine results are certainly achievable without the application of automated software which usually displays web pages of lower quality than your main web pages and certainly be wary of site maps being developed for your site in the format I have described above. These are generally placed in the footer of your home page with the words site map preceding them, followed by an A – Z listing of site map web pages. This doesn’t apply to software added to your site to record site statistics for performance analysis.
Positive linking practices will be discussed in Part 2 of this Article Series.
© Rosemary Donald, Rank1 Website Marketing 5th November, 2007
www.rank1websitemarketing.com
Rosemary is also a successful online trader and owner of www.sabujewellery.com a top ranking on site on Google, Yahoo and MSN with experience in online marketing, export sales, importing, growing customer bases, ecommerce customer service, online sales generation and Rank 1 search engine marketing.
Travel Tips
3 Way Links an Emerging Trend or SEO Trap for the Unwitting Webmaster?
Traditionally reciprocal linking has been a tried and true method of raising the profile of a website on the internet. The major search engines still index sites based on the number of links from one site to another amongst many other factors. The more references and listings your website has on the internet the more exposure your site receives overall which impacts positively on your search engine rankings. The upside of reciprocal linking with a site whose content is similar or complimentary to yours is that traffic originating from their site to yours and vice versa is targeted content traffic who may be interested in purchasing the products and services you have on offer. You are also offering related content to your site visitors that they may find useful and interesting.So where does ‘3 way linking’ fit into this picture?
3 Way Linking has been an emerging trend over the past 12 months where webmasters and website promotion companies who own or manage multiple sites initiate link exchange requests whereby you link to the site they are promoting however your link is placed on a third party site. Usually the site they are promoting has no visible link page set up on their site and no references to the link page/s where your reciprocal link is held. Typically the third party site where your link is listed has been built specifically for just this purpose and is usually a series of links with no site content. Alternatively your link may placed on a third party site that the webmaster owns but has no content relevance to your own site in an effort to hide the reciprocal nature of the link exchange from the search engines.So what is the benefit of 3 way linking?
The only benefit is to the site who is proposing the 3 way link exchange in terms of quickly boosting their online presence on the internet and anonymously building links pages that have no direct link to them so that they can’t be penalized for deceptive SEO practices that blatantly attempt to manipulate the search engines. Be wary though, this doesn’t mean that your site can’t be caught out by being linked with a bad neighborhood site and consequently lead to having your search engine rankings drop!
Who else benefits, well clearly the website promotion/SEO company who are being paid a fee to dupe unwitting website owners to knowingly or unknowingly engage in these 3 way link practices. They may get away with it in the short term however practices that generally have little benefit to the wider internet community and are only being used to manipulate the search engines are typically weeded out by responses by the major search engines in redefining their ranking algorithms and dropping sites from search engine listings who behave inappropriately.So how do you identify a 3 way link exchange invitation?
A simple word of advice, read your link exchange requests carefully as 3 way link exchanges can be hidden deceptively within the text offering you a link exchange with a site of similar content and value however if read carefully you will notice that the reciprocal URL site where your link exchange has been placed does not match. There is often no mention that the link exchange request is a 3 way link exchange. Alternatively the link exchange will not nominate a reciprocating URL where your link is to be placed however on completing the link exchange the location of your link is not placed on the direct URL of the site you agreed to exchange links with but on another third party site.
The last version of this type of link exchange invitation is the webmaster or website promotion company who is acting on behalf of a website will clearly state that the exchange is a 3 way link exchange or ‘triangular link exchange’ and will then espouse the benefits of such linking practices. For example here is one that I received recently for my Sabu Jewellery website, I have removed the site details of the initiating party for confidentiality purposes:-“Dear Webmaster,
I found your website http://www.sabujewellery.com/ by google search engine and it has a good link popularity. Sir, I handle online marketing for my clients site. To increase the link popularity of my client’s site, I am now looking for triangular Link swapping with some good quality sites. You are already aware that Triangular Link swapping is much more popular and beneficial than Reciprocal Link exchange .This way both the sites gets the benefit of one way Linking. I would request you to place my client’s link at your site with the following details.
Our site details are…
(linking info of the site with similar content ie. the initiating site)
We have placed your link here…
(The URL location of the third party site which is in this case just a site for links, no actual content)
We would appreciate if you link back to our site.
Thanks & kind regards
Webmaster…”A simple word of advice on 3 way link exchanges…
Whether you engage in 3 way link exchanges is entirely up to you, however I have few questions for you to consider before embarking on this type of SEO practice in an attempt to boost your search engine rankings:-
How is anyone going to find the generic links page of the third party site on the Internet that lists your reciprocal link if it contains no useful content for website visitors?
And why would you wish to exchange links with a site which has no real benefit to you or the wider internet community generally?
What is the value of linking to a third party site that has no relevance to your own site content?
Why are these sites relying on 3 way linking? Are they too lazy to build their own links pages and source quality link partners for their own site? Or is it just a ploy to manipulate the search engines?
Can you afford to be associated with a third party site that may potentially be classed as a bad neighborhood site by the major search engines and result in your search engine rankings dropping by association?The final word…
Don’t be fooled by the positive spin that website promoters are putting on 3 way links, do your homework and be one of the smart webmasters who looks to implement positive quality SEO practices on your site that not only benefit your own website, website visitors and your search engine rankings but add value to the wider internet community at large.
© Rank1 Website Marketing, 9th August 2007
www.rank1websitemarketing.com
Share Recipes
