SEO Blog

I’m always talking about ways in which you can dig a bit deeper to get links. But more often than not, the best solutions are also the simplest. If you want links, then being positive, proactive and keeping an ear to the ground can really be your best friend.

Here’s a simple but great way to get links.

As you already know, commenting on blogs will often result in a link. Admittedly they will often be nofollowed automatically; however, that doesn’t mean that they have no value whatsoever.
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Domain names have slowly been growing in influence when it comes to search engine rankings. If you have a keyword rich URL, there’s a fair chance you’ll feature prominently for that term within the SERPs. This isn’t a coincidence either.

Apart from the obvious fact that it’s one more thing that ties your site into a particular term – adding to your content, Meta and H1 tags for instance – it is also representative of your brand.

We know that Google are favouring big brands in their searches, this has been happening for the last year or so. It’s their way of ensuring that people are always able to find what they’re looking for from the most creditable source.
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We all want to get an amazing link from an authoritative website. To get a track back from a leading national newspaper or other media organisation can catapult a flagging site back up the rankings. That’s the mystical power of PageRank.

However, for many people this isn’t a viable option. Unless you’re being directly quoted or have some content on your site that everybody wants to link to, the likelihood is that you’ll never be able to get one of these hugely powerful inbound links to your site. Shame.

So what can you do to assist your standard link building process? Well, it might be time to start considering the context of your links.
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If you’ve been messing around with a few black hat optimisation techniques, knowingly or otherwise, it’s likely that Google will catch up with you one day. When they do, it’s safe to assume the worst.

They aren’t the most forgiving search engine. If you’ve been found to be contravening their rules, then they are likely to come down on your like a tonne of bricks. This won’t necessarily mean being thrown out of the index entirely, but your rankings could suffer to the extent where you might as well have been.

This isn’t the end of the road, but it’s certainly a major issue. It won’t be resolved in a day either, it can take weeks, or even months to get back to any kind of visibility. Your reputation with Google will have been tarnished, but not necessarily irrevocably so.
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I’ve been writing a lot recently about the benefits of being active in engaging visitors and developing the social side of your site. Social media isn’t directly linked to SEO, in fact they are often poles apart. But if you’re struggling to reach an audience or get to the next level in your site’s optimisation, it can bridge that gap.

Social media isn’t just about chatting to your friends remember. In my last post I discussed the dangers of procrastination, and getting involved in long Twitter or Facebook discussions can certainly drain your time. What you should be doing is forming trust relationships.

Influence isn’t decided by how many people you have following you, but how you interact with those followers and what the net result of those conversations is. Often this is a great way to crowdsource any new developments and see whether your ideas will sink or swim. It’s also a good way to share your blog posts with the wider community.
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It’s easy to get distracted when you’re doing SEO. Sometimes you’ll even think that you’re doing something constructive only to realise that hours of efforts have actually been misguided and fruitless.

Procrastination comes as a result of happening upon something that appears to be more interesting than the task you set out to do. When you’re working online, this can be a constant fight.

There are social media sites, many of which you will have signed your business up for, which are a constant source of distraction. With hundreds of updates rolling by each hour, the temptation to follow links or add your two cents to a conversation are often unbearable.

But keep in mind your own goals and targets. For some procrastination is looking at analytics and seeing what effect your SEO changes have been. This is at least evidence of achievement and encouragement for future efforts.
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One of the major driving forces in SEO is the visibility of the brand behind the site. Whilst you’re looking to dominate the search engine rankings, exposure is often a great way of aiding progress.

If you’ve built an offline presence already, you should be looking to harness that strength. Not simply to bring visitors to the site, but to encourage others to link to you organically.

A high profile is a wonderful thing. Not only will people naturally gravitate towards you, but you have a platform from which to build.
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Video isn’t the most obvious SEO tool. There’s no intrinsic keyword value, the code can’t even be read by search engines. However, that isn’t to say there’s no SEO benefit found in video marketing.

First of all let’s go beyond link building and strength for a moment and take a look at the wider benefits. If you take the time to create a decent video for your brand, whether it’s a user guide, promotional piece or just a bit of fun, you will help to raise awareness. This can only be good for business.

As a consequence of having greater visibility, the chances of receiving visitors directly to your site should increase. Again, not SEO, but still more than a little helpful.
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The $64,000 question, just what do Google and Bing use to judge our websites and determine rankings in their listings? Some we know, many we don’t, others we simply assume. The fact is, there is nobody outside of the respective headquarters of Bing and Google with access to this knowledge. In fact, there might not even be that many here either.

This post was prompted by the rather flippant way in which Steve Tullis (Program Manager at Bing) reportedly confirmed that Click through Rate (CTR) was a ranking factor on Bing. This might not be big news for Bing, they’ve probably been using it for a while, but for the world of SEO it could have a pretty major impact.

Suddenly, not only are you concerned about optimising your pages and getting those rankings in order, but you have to make sure you get the click. So what does that mean? Well, apart from going after the most appropriate keywords for each page, you also have to have some pretty enticing Meta too. This is something I’ve covered in the past – Using Your Meta as a Marketing Tool – so I’ll avoid repetition.
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When you’re a big company servicing thousands of customers a month, invariably there are going to be a few issues along the way. You can’t please everyone and occasionally that will lead to unhappiness. Of course you want to do everything you can to appease such annoyance, but sometimes even that fails.

In an online-centric world, one slip up can be hugely costly. A disgruntled customer might not just leave a bad review somewhere, but could actually go on a vendetta-fuelled rampage. They can start forum threads criticising your business and encouraging others to get involved. They can start a social media campaign against the brand. They might even go as far as creating a website dedicated to how much they hate you.

A classic example of this is ihateryanair.co.uk. Now Ryanair are a big company, they can probably take the criticism. However, one (or more) disenfranchised customer has taken it upon themselves to dedicate time and effort into destroying the company’s online reputation.
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