What is ‘link building’ and why is it important to my website?
It’s possible that you have heard of the term ‘link building’ before which relates to your website’s popularity and importance in the eyes of search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.
Links, or backlinks are simply the hyperlinks that connect websites together as clickable text. You see them thousands of times whenever you surf the web and without them the Internet would be a very different place. So why are they so important to your own website?
First, backlinks are a means for people/traffic to find your website and therefore products, services or information. The more backlinks you have visible on other websites, the easier it will be for others to find your website – simple.
However there is a second benefit as to why having a high number of backlinks is beneficial to you. Search engines crawl trillions of websites continuously checking content and links to help them determine where websites should rank in their search engine results for various keywords and key phrases. The more backlinks a website has, the more important it could be considered as many people are linking to it. Let’s look at a simple example:
Dog training website 1 = 7 backlinks
Dog training website 2 = 544 backlinks
Taking every other factor out of the equation, which of the above websites is likely to rank higher in search engine results for the keywords ‘dog training’? Yes, dog training website number 2. Google, Yahoo and Bing for example will notice the number of backlinks to each website and in their eyes will determine that the second website is more popular as more third party websites have linked to it. This is an indication that the website has good content and is valuable to the search engine users. It will therefore rank higher and get more traffic than the first website. This doesn’t necessarily mean the second website does have better dog training content than the first website; it simply seems that they have done a better job of getting their message out to others on the internet and provided their links are from sites that are from sites that are relevant to their industry, they will be more popular to search engines.
Therefore, obtaining a solid number of relevant backlinks to your website is very important. In fact it is considered the single most important aspect of search engine optimization and it is essential rather than important.
There are hundreds of ways to get backlinks to your website and some methods include article marketing, video marketing, directory submissions and Web 2.0 methods. However, link building can also involve a steep learning curve and it does require a serious time investment, especially if you are new to website promotion. It is important to obtain a balance of quality and quantity of backlinks to ensure maximum returns from your link building strategy.
ACES4HIRE specializes in all aspects of web promotion, including link building and have helped countless websites rank highly in the search engines, increasing traffic and sales. See how ACES4HIRE can help you with your link building campaign now.
What’s a Squidoo? No It’s Not an Appetizer!
Filed under: Link Building, Search Engine Optimization, Social Marketing
For those that don’t know, ‘Squidoo’ has nothing to do with cuisine or eight-legged creatures that live under the sea. No, Squidoo is the name given to a content website situated at www.squidoo.com.
This website offers its users the ability to create a ‘lens’, which is just a unique name created by Squidoo for a standard webpage or blog-type page that is created at Squidoo for original content to be added.
If you use article marketing as a form of website promotion, then Squidoo should be at the top of your list as a place to publish your articles, videos and other content. The reason for this is simple – Squidoo ranks very highly in Google and the content that you create on their website can be indexed in within hours of it being published rather than days, weeks or months in some cases. Additionally backlinks from Squidoo have good ranking strength so Squidoo lenses are a powerful tool to help with your promotion activities and best of all they are free!
A lens on Squidoo can be about absolutely anything that the user wishes it to be. However each lens should only cover a single topic. As already mentioned, Squidoo can be a very useful ally in improving website traffic through either direct readers or through improved search engine ranking and as a source of backlinks, however it is possible to make money directly from a lens as well. Affiliate information such as Amazon Associates, eBay and Google Adsense can be added to lenses to help optimize monetization.
Each lens is built up of ‘modules’. There are many modules available to you and you simply select which ones you would like to add to help with your content creation. Below are some examples of useful and popular Squidoo modules:
- Text – self explanatory – adds text to the lens;
- YoutTube Videos – embeds videos relating to your topic from YouTube;
- Flickr – adds pictures from Flickr to your lens;
- Poll – add a poll to survey your readers;
- Link List – add your favourite website links (can be used to link to your websites for backlinks);
- Google Blog Search – adds content from other blogs relating to your content;
- eBay – products from eBay that relate to your lens are added here;
- Guestbook – allows your readers to comment on your lens. Great for getting feedback on your content;
- RSS – add entries from your website RSS feed or from a third party RSS;
- Amazon – adds products available from Amzon.com;
- Google Maps – useful to add a viewable location on a map;
- Wikipedia – add content definitions from Wikipedia.
The above outlines a few examples of what can make up your Squidoo lens. You can use all or just one of the modules and the flexibility to create very informative lenses means that the page is customized exactly how you would like it. However if you have never used Squidoo before, setting up a lens can be quite confusing and creating a Squidoo lens that has a positive effect on your web traffic can be difficult for new users.
At ACES, we take the learning curve out of your website promotion and create professional looking Squidoo lenses for you. That way you get an optimum performing lens that will help boost your website traffic and increase your search engine rankings. Check out our internet marketing services for more information on how we can help your website get more targetted traffic.
To see what a Squidoo lens looks like and the type of content available on it, click here for one of our clients examples.
How Article Marketing Can Help SEO
Of course there are many methods in which you can promote your website online, just as there is with a traditional offline business. A term that you may be familiar with or heard of is ‘SEO’ which is an abbreviation of ‘Search Engine Optimization’.
Search Engine Optimization is exactly that – optimization of your website in order to gain high rankings in search engines such as Google or Yahoo! The advantages of utilizing good SEO techniques are numerous; however the main benefit is from gaining free and organic traffic to your website in order to increase business and sales. The higher a website ranks in a search engine for various keywords that are related to your website, the more traffic you are likely to receive.
For example if your business sells garden equipment and furniture you would ideally like to rank high for keywords such as “garden equipment” so that when users type in a search for those keywords, your website will show up high in the search engine results (known as SERP – Search Engine Ranking Position). Of course a keyword such as this is very broad and ‘garden equipment’ could include items like lawnmowers, shovels or fencing. Broad keywords are more competitive and therefore harder to rank for so while thinking about SEO for your website, it is easier to rank for more targeted keywords such as “electric lawnmower” which will have less competition and will be easier to obtain traffic.
So how do we actually use SEO to rank and get organic traffic? One of the easiest and most popular forms of promoting a website for certain keywords is through article marketing. There are many websites online such as ezinearticles.com and goarticles.com that exist for users to post their articles on any subject.
Now you don’t need to be a professional writer to be accepted on such websites. An article that is written in good English and over 250 words will likely be accepted.
To use these article directory websites to your SEO advantage, consider writing content that relates to your website or products. Using the gardening website above you could write about the advantages and disadvantages of gas versus electric lawnmowers for example. In your article you should include keywords that relate to your website such as ‘gardening’, ‘lawnmowers’, ‘lawn’ and so on. This will help search engines understand what the article relates to.
The article should not only include a good number of related keywords but will also have a ‘biography box’ in which you tell the readers about yourself. This bio box can include a link to your website which is beneficial for two reasons:
- Direct Traffic – Readers of your article may click on the link after being impressed by what they have read and require further information on the product or service;
- Backlinks – The link in the bio box is a ‘backlink’ to your website which will help with search engine rankings. The more a website is linked to from third party websites, the more ‘important’ that site is considered to be by search engines, therefore generally the more backlinks you have to your website, the higher it is likely to appear in search results.
Additionally the bio box should have a link that is from clickable text. This is called “anchor text”. For example you could have a link such as this:
That is simply a standard link and though it is a backlink, it does not relate to anything. By adding anchor text you could have a link such as:
That link still points towards the www.homedepot.com web address but it adds ‘gas lawnmowers’ as anchor text. By doing this not only do you have a backlink to your website, search engines will also recognize that link is associated with gas lawnmowers and therefore your website will likely rank higher for that term.
Article marketing can have massive benefits to your websites popularity if used properly as outlined in the manner above and is a good form of search engine optimization. Remember to include related keywords on an article of at least 250 words (500 words works best) and a keyword anchor text link in your biography box.
ACES specialises in all forms of search engine optimization, including article marketing and though effective, article marketing is very time consuming. Our team of professional writers can create custom and totally unique content for you and then the content will then be submitted to article directories without you having to type a single word! Reap the benefits that article marketing brings by contacting us today. Find out more about our article marketing and link building services for more details.