Search Engine Optimization: Natural Linking Strategies

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be the difference between a small, barely profitable or visible website and a traffic magnet website. There are a lot of ways, both good and bad, to influence the search engines. Some search engines react to certain strategies better than others. Some even have conflicting strategies that they react to. To document all of these things would require a significant number of pages and research that goes beyond the scope of this article.

However, there are a number of things that can be documented that will work for most if not all search engines. And let's face it; there are really only 3 that make a difference between a successful and an unsuccessful SEO strategy. They are the big three: Google, Yahoo and MSN. These three search engines in any given month are responsible for over 90% of all internet searches.

So, what is this article about? It's about what you can do as a website owner that will influence the search engines using commonly accepted practices of linking to other websites (outbound) and getting website links (inbound) back to you. There are basically 4 strategies that a website owner usually will employ to increase their website value in the eyes of the search engine.

They are reciprocal linking, one-way linking, multi-site linking and directory linking. A website owner should not think that using just a single strategy is the right answer - sure it will help your SEO but it won't be the Best answer. The Best answer is to employ all 4 techniques and to do it naturally.

Each of the four linking strategies has specific descriptions that can be summed up as:

1. Reciprocal Linking: Site A links to Site B, Site B links back to Site A

2. One-Way Linking: Site B links to Site A

3. Multi-Site Linking: Site A links to Site B, Site B links to Site C, Site C links to Site D, and Site D links back to Site A. Could be 3..N number of sites involved.

4. Directory Linking: Site Directory A links to Site A

That seems simple enough but it takes time and effort to perform all 4 strategies and most website owners aren't willing to spend the time or don't have the time to spend on it. As a website owner, SEO needs to be one of the highest priority tasks that you need to address, just after Order Processing and Fulfillment and Customer Service. Without free traffic from the search engines, other traffic generation strategies that usually require payment must be engaged.

Now doing the 4 strategies above is great, but it gets even harder because you have to do it in a way that doesn't trigger the search engines to enforce a penalty upon your website. No one except the search engine engineers know all of the exact penalties but we have some good theories for some of them.

The first is the rate at which links are created. There is a certain threshold for creating links that is too fast. It's possible that the threshold is a sliding scale and is related to the age of the website according to the engine. For example, a young low-traffic website should not normally be getting 1000 links a month whereas an older website that gets a lot of traffic could be OK to get 1000 links a month. As you progress in your linking strategies make sure you keep this in mind, especially if you are thinking about buying links.

The second is that having a link to every site that links to you will likely reduce the value of the links. In other words, if all you ever get is Reciprocal Linking, you will likely move up the SERP's (Search Engine Results Page's) but you won't reach your sites full potential. Having a mixture of all 4 strategies will appear more natural to the engines.

The third is having all inbound links to your site on "linking" pages will make those links less valuable than having a natural link on a contextually relative page for a percentage of the inbound links. The higher you can drive this context percentage, the better your website will rank. These types of links are often some of the most difficult links to generate an exchange for because it requires more time and effort for both website owners.

The fourth is to have links inbound from all different ranking sites. If all you have linking to you is page rank 6 and 7 sites then you are likely to be sending the message that you purchased your links and that is not natural to the engines. Some would argue that purchasing links for driving traffic is just fine and it is. However, you should not expect the search engines to give those inbound links very much weight when calculating your SERP positions. It is significantly more natural for you to have a large number of rank 1 and 2 inbound links and a decreasing number of inbound links as you move up the page rank scale (0 - 10).

The fifth is to have the text of you inbound links varied. It isn't natural to have every website that links to you to have the same text on the link description. The natural tendency would be to have a certain percent be the sites name, but after that it should be a wide variety of description. Your link text description is a key factor for how your site/page will rank, so make sure that you keep that in mind as you specify your preferred link text description on your website.

Finally, it would be best for a good percentage of your inbound links to appear within the text of a page that appears natural for the reader of that site. And for those links to not all point back to the home page of your website. It's most natural for a good high quality link to appear in the text of a page and have it point internally within your site.

So, when you begin or continue your SEO activities keep all of these things in mind and don't be impatient. Impatience could incur penalties or worse. Your website could end up in the "sandbox". It is rumored and becoming more concrete that Google supposedly uses a sandbox that questionable sites are put in until they have aged to a point that Google no longer feels that they are being manipulated. Many of the search engines use similar protection schemes to eliminate spam sites and manipulation sites to keep their SERP's from being cluttered.

Search Engine Optimization And The Industry

Although the internet may be a wondrous piece of engineering and a work of art in progress is it is also an important and powerful industry. The internet represents an unparalleled opportunity for work. Web designers might as well be the modern equivalent of the gold miners of the Old West. They are searching for riches and traveling until they find their fortune. However web design skills are only part of it. A webmaster may have powerful skills but they are not necessarily SEO masters. Let’s compare and contrast.

A webmaster must master not only the basics such as HTML skills but also web design programs, web programming languages, graphic skills and pretty much must have advanced computer skills. They must understand all of the tricks of the trade as well as be creative enough to use them.

SEO masters on the other hand not only have to master all of the tricks of their trade must they must also learn the black arts of their trade. They have to not only be able to manipulate the search engines ranking algorithms but also do it in such a way as to not get caught. They have not only the fighting skills but also the necessary stealth skills to be invisible.

The internet’s unprecedented growth will only continue but an exponential rate. As the technology for website functionality increases so will the methods for ranking websites in the search engines. These two areas give an unprecedented level of financial opportunity that no one has ever seen before. They are so many chances for people to improve their lives with education and work. The internet has the potential to give everyone their shot and their right at a good life. The opportunity of a lifetime is here and we look at it everyday and everywhere. Seize the day and learn everything you can about this modern wonder of the world.

Targeted Local Search Engine Optimisation

One of the key elements to Internet and Online marketing is identifying your target market. Who are they, how old are they and most importantly where are they located? With the advent of more advanced geo-location software systems being used by Google we are now able to target very specific markets with our online marketing campaigns. The first step in this process is to write down and identify your market with the 3 questions I have listed above. Once you have done that then you should consider the following and address them in order to hone in on your target search engines and then consequently your target market.




I will use the example of a Web Designer and Developer in Melbourne, Australia.




1. The website should be hosted in the country and if possible the city in which you plan on targeting with your online marketing strategy.




2. The website should have on page search engine optimisation which is tailored towards the region - country - city. So, in other words these three elements, if they are identified as the target market, should be mentioned in titles, keywords, meta tags, content, on page titles, links etc within the website.




3. Any controllable external links to the website should have a sprinkling of the region - country - city within them, without over doing it.




4. The website should have a fully qualified domain name. In this case .com.au




5. The website should be listed in the regional Google search index. You can go to your local search engine and simply register and request for the googlebot to scan your website. If you host within the region and/or you have a fully qualified domain name then you should get listed within the regional index anyway but registering will triply ensure.




6. Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools and then go to Tools->Set Geographic Location. Some sites target users for a particular geographic location. For example, a site may target all users within a specific country, or it may target only those users who reside within a very small geographic area within that country. Using this feature allows you to further refine your target your market.




7. Have a regional specific phone number. For example, for website design in Australia it would be 1300 880 841.




8. Get listed in local online directories.




9. Use a Google map that shows your business location. This will ensure that your regional association is further enhanced within the search engines.




Once you have done all of these things then your website should be fully targeted towards your identified target market. Now you just need to make your site interesting, make it sell and get it developed properly in order to do this.

Future Relevancy or Page Rank

With all the talk about search engines and relevancy, I came up with some interesting thoughts that I wanted share about where I believe the search engines are heading concerning basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Trying to stay ahead of the search engines, which is nearly impossible, I’ve been trying to look to the future of SEO while creating web pages following the guidelines of the major search engines.

One of the largest problems the major search engines are dealing with is Search Engine Spam, Adsense Spam, and “Spammy Pages” such as keyword stuffing to gain higher rankings. In guidelines from Google, they mention write your pages for the users, not for the search engines. This statement alone, is a little prediction of the future of what is coming. And in order to stay ahead of the curve with some long term planning, I am suggesting we should take this to heart, and stop using the older SEO methods that eventually will hurt us.

Websites are being currently being penalized and dropped from years of top rankings for not adapting to the search engines guidelines and continuing to use SEO methods of years ago.

In thinking in terms of long-term success to maintain high rankings for each of the major search engines, through about as much research as you do online, I have came up with a few guidelines to the basic SEO ideas for the future.

One of the most important aspect for the search engines, and what I have seen and predict will have more importance is website copywriting. We’ll this is nothing new, we all know website copywriting is important, may as high at 45% of our copywriting contributes to our page rank. This will always remain important, and I believe will become even more important to high as 85% of what our website says will contribute to our page ranking in the future, as a shift from the search engine giving higher ranking from a technical aspect to more of a informational or relevancy aspect.

Eliminating some of the currently used technical aspects may maintain higher ranking in the coming future. Let me explain some of the commonly abused technical SEO habits currently, that I believe is headed toward extinction.

a. Keyword Meta tags. This tag alone is open to elimination due to the common abuse methods such as keyword stuffing. Most major search engines generally ignore this tagline currently.

b. ALT tags are another tagline that is just in the beginning stages of being eliminated. Some search engines have been experimenting with ignoring ALT tags and have found out that pages indexed without ALT tags are returning higher relevancy results. Again like the Meta tags, ALT tags have been abused to such from as keyword stuff.

c. The two Meta tags that will gain in importance will be the Title tag and Description tag. A title and description taglines accurately representing a well written website copy write will enhance your page’s relevancy.

I am not suggesting that today that we immediately stop using the successful technical SEO currently in place, but the gradual elimination of this technique as the search engines stop using each method. Personally, I no longer include the Keyword Meta taglines on my web pages, and will continue to remove useless html as that become irrelevant.

In summary, my opinion is that future SEO standards will be more focused on good copywriting and less on technical aspects such as Meta taglines, Alt taglines, Headings to gain a higher page rank, or should I say higher relevancy.