Web Hosting News and Reviews and SEO Blog – fergieweb.org

Posts Tagged ‘link building’

Many times, a site gets very large and its ability to rank well in competitive markets decreases in part because of the size of the site. While we in the business know that content is king, more often than not it is a combination of content and effective site structure which will ultimately help your pages rank.

In this article I look at how to most effectively structure your site to take advantage of this.

I read this great article on layering on the SEOmoz Blog http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=789 and while it does a good job of explaining what content layering is, I feel it could be improved just a little bit.

I’m not saying it is wrong in any way. In fact the tactic outlined will be very effective for a small to medium sized site, however I have also found another way to organize your site which can be more effective if done properly.

In the article, it explains how you use layers to organize your site. Now we’re not talking about CSS layering or anything like that. It’s more of a site structure issue than anything.

According to the article, one can layer their site through the use of sub-folders. By creating layers of sub-folders and then placing all related content within that sub-folder you can layer your site to help specific sections of it rank higher.

This is a great way to organize a smaller site because it allows you to place topical pages together, and promote links within the pages to help improve overall positioning of these sections.

Further, it helps reduce the dilution factor often felt by sites that attempt to cover multiple topics in a flat file structure.

For example, if you sell widgets you could organize the sections by some common element, such as color. That way your site could be: http://widgetts.com/blue/page1.html and all blue widget pages would go into this sub-folder. You’d then organize all other sub-folders in a similar style.

Like I said, I think this is a very effective strategy for a smaller or medium site. There would be a much greater chance of blue widgets ranking highly in a structure like this.

However, I feel that for larger sites there’s an even more effective way to organize your content.

Through the use of sub-domains one could further organize this content. This would make it even more relevant to search queries and more likely to rank. If one sold a larger variety of widgets yet still wanted to organize them by color then the structure of the site would be: http://blue.widgetts.com and all site content relating to blue widgets would appear within this sub-domain.

The reason I say sub-domains would be more effective is because search engines tend to treat a sub-domain as its own site. In other words, a search engine sees http://blue.widgetts.com and http://widgetts.com as essentially 2 different sites.

Keep in mind that such a strategy is of the most benefit to larger sites. If you don’t have a large site, or don’t foresee your site growing to become a large site then I wouldn’t recommend the sub-domain layering tactic.

This is because, as I’ve said, the search engines will treat your sub-domain as a unique site. So if you’ve only got 10 or 15 or even 50 pages in your sub-domain, chances are it won’t rank as competitively as it would have as a sub-folder of a larger site.
Read the rest of this entry »

Link Building is vital for a good placement in any search engine and most website owners are unaware of this or don’t really understand how it actually works.

Apart from good Keyword research and the right meta tags, linking building is an absolutely must for the success of any website and is an on going process, so make sure your put some time aside for this on a weekly basis or pay some one with experience to do it for you.

Without it your website will certainly get no traffic.

There are 4 different types of Linking involved and each one is as important as the other.

If they are done correctly, they most certainly will give you a good ranking in the search engines.

They are :

Reciprocal Links
Oneway Links
MultiSite Links
Directory Listings
Reciprocal Linking

Quite simply – this is a link from your site to another and they link back to you. A bit of advise here is to only link to sites that are relevant to yours. i.e – If you are selling Cars – only link to Car websites, a link to a Health website will really do you no justice, and trust me I have seen hundreds of website owners make this mistake.
Read the rest of this entry »

This article covers a much discussed topic in the SEO community. Also, clients and often site owners come up with questions about what links to get, and how to get them. Note that I will not consider reciprocal links here, because of better alternatives, and because their effectiveness only applies to a small number of sites, who use them under 10% of their overall link ratio. I will review the main types you want to get for your site.

The natural one-way links.
This one is solely based in good content and resources. This is the safest method of link building available as far as search engines, which look at the “intent” of links. But it is also the slowest. If your site is new, then as part of its launch, submit it to niche web directories. Start with a few highly trusted directories, but do not have more than 10-15% of your overall links coming from them. Don’t overlook industry-specific directories that may be paid or unpaid. These usually send highly qualified traffic and can be a real bargain. Directories will get you site many natural one-way links, at a natural speed of growth. This combination of type and speed is very beneficial. Look for sites that would benefit from offering users your content.

Linkbaiting, or link bait.
This one is not easy, and involves creativity. But it is worth every effort. Linkbaiting refers to content, videos, images or anything on your site that is created with the intention of increasing links to it. It is highly effective in getting links, probably the cheapest too, based on the cost of the “bait” you use, has no negative effects from the search engines, at least not for the moment, since all links generated look natural. When complemented by social bookmarking, the networks associated with these links will add even more value to them.
Read the rest of this entry »

The natural one-way links.
This one is solely based in good content and resources. This is the safest method of link building available as far as search engines, which look at the “intent” of links. But it is also the slowest. If your site is new, then as part of its launch, submit it to niche web directories. Start with a few highly trusted directories, but do not have more than 10-15% of your overall links coming from them. Don’t overlook industry-specific directories that may be paid or unpaid. These usually send highly qualified traffic and can be a real bargain. Directories will get you site many natural one-way links, at a natural speed of growth. This combination of type and speed is very beneficial. Look for sites that would benefit from offering users your content.

Linkbaiting, or link bait.
This one is not easy, and involves creativity. But it is worth every effort. Linkbaiting refers to content, videos, images or anything on your site that is created with the intention of increasing links to it. It is highly effective in getting links, probably the cheapest too, based on the cost of the “bait” you use, has no negative effects from the search engines, at least not for the moment, since all links generated look natural. When complemented by social bookmarking, the networks associated with these links will add even more value to them.
Read the rest of this entry »