In order to increase your ranking in Google searches, you have to have links to your website from others. You do need to take extra care though to make sure that you build the right kind of links from the best sources. Here’s an overview of some link building strategies and which ones you should consider using.
Paid Links
There are two types of paid links. Overt paid links are those that are from websites that openly say that they sell links. You do not want links from these types of websites because Google has openly said they do not like paid links. Since Google does not like paid links, this type of link could lower your ranking.
Covert paid links are from websites that you have approached on your own and asked to link to you for a monthly fee that you would pay to them. Examples would be a blog or someone that is popular in your community.
Awkward Silence… the most uncomfortable sound in the world. Everyone has experienced a moment when a certain topic comes up, someone states their opinion and the rest of group sits there…in silence. The nature of the subject is the reason the awkward silence occurs. No one wants to put their two cents out there for fear of losing a best friend, causing conflict between mom and son or worse husband and wife.
The same type of “awkward silence” is happening within the SEO world. Many people are asking hard questions concerning the correct policy for building links with Google. Despite a patent developed years ago, there are gray areas where you can go either way. Meaning there are obvious loopholes in certain link building tips but one has to question, how far is too far?
David Jenyns breaks the “Awkward Silence” and addresses the three most asked questions about building links.
When working on SEO, you must consider both on page SEO and off page SEO. While on page SEO is definitely important, off page optimization contributes more heavily to search results than on page SEO. Making sure to get your title page and meta tags correct is important, but optimizing off page still weighs in at about 80% of importance compared to only 20% for on page SEO.
Google search results are by no means magical. Google’s servers use algorithms to analyze web pages and give us the results to our searches. The algorithms used by Google are based on how research reports work. In any industry, a report really begins to gain weight when it begins to be referenced by others. Some ways that a report may be referenced include:
It is not enough to just create a great video, post it on YouTube, and just wait for things to happen. You have to put some effort into making your video rank or stand out from the crowd. There are many things to consider that will affect your video’s rank in a search.
The following factors play into how Google’s algorithm ranks a video. More of each is better and results in a higher video ranking.
Backlinks: Links to your video from other web pages.
Embeds: People are allowed to embed your video into their webpage unless you specifically disable this for your video.
Views: The number of times the video has been viewed.
Ratings: People are allowed to rate a video from 1 to 5 stars
Comments: Comments from viewers are allowed on videos unless you specifically disable this for your video.
Age: The age of your audience.
Playlists: YouTube users can create playlists that include any public video on YouTube.
Channel Views: This is the number of visits to your YouTube channel where your videos and information are displayed
Subscribers: Your subscribers are those who have signed up to be notified of new content posted in your channel.
When you are recording a video, the focus is the content. You want the content to stand out. Here are some tips that will help make web video production flow more smoothly.
Remember to speak to the camera. Look directly at the camera just as you would another person if you were talking to him or her in person. Be sure to look positive and well groomed.
In order to seem more natural, it is important that you do not read from a script. A viewer can always tell that you are reading from a script and your presentation will seem too forced or awkward. What you can do instead is use a list of bullets points that you have on a whiteboard at camera level behind or next to the camera. This will allow you to keep on track with your points without looking away from the camera, and thus your viewer.
When it comes to business publicity, many business owners make the mistake of focusing their time on how to deliver the product. Instead, the focus should be on two factors that play a vital role in publicity- traffic and conversion. Publicity brings attention to the brand or business, which causes the traffic to increase. As traffic increases, more people will want the brand or service resulting in conversions of sales.
There is a classic 80’s movie titled “Can’t Buy Me Love”. In the movie, a teenager named Ronald Miller wanted nothing more than get rid of his nerdy reputation. Ronald knew the only way for others to see him as “Cool” was to be associated with a popular kid from school. He comes up with the plan to bribe the most popular girl in school with $1,000 to be his girlfriend for a month. Since the kids in school believed that Cindy was the epitome of cool, whatever or whomever she associated with was automatically cool.
Similarly, a good publicity campaign helps attracts traffic but also produces sale conversions because it builds authority, credibility and a good reputation.
Video testimonials are a great way to build trust with users who land on your website. Any visitor is a potential client, but you have to show them that you are trustworthy. A video of someone detailing their positive experience with your business shows that they liked your service enough to share that experience with others for the benefit of helping you out. A picture is worth a thousand words, and while one video testimonial may not be worth a thousand written ones, a web site with several or more good video testimonials may well be.
A great way to get client or customer testimonials is to tell them early on that getting testimonials is a large part of how you grow your business and gain new clients. When you first begin to do business with someone new, you can let them know that you work mostly on referrals and testimonials. Then ask them if they would mind if you recorded a short video of their experience once you have completed your job to their full satisfaction.
Technology changes fast—very fast. The Internet is accessible on an ever-broadening range of devices beyond computers. Information needs to make it to users without getting lost in the shuffle and search process. Whatever message it is that you are trying to get out to others on the Internet needs to have enough appeal to grab the attention of your intended audience amidst the vast sea of information on the internet. Web videos are an excellent way to do that.
Face it: Users are lazy. When given the choice of watching a video that explains something or reading a page or more of text that explains the same thing, most users will choose the video. That is why video works so well.
Video can cover much more ground. You can quickly demonstrate how to draw a cartoon dragon in video, but imagine trying to give a written explanation of the same process. Accompanying pictures may help, but if you really want to show someone how to draw a dragon, a video is the ideal choice. You can show them systematically what to do while explaining each step aloud. Read More>>
Does having a sitemap submitted through Google Webmaster Tools increase your ranking within Google? In short, through the testing that we’ve done, we haven’t found this to be the case. There doesn’t appear to be any correlation between better rankings and sitemap submission.
So if you ever hear someone mention that using XML sitemaps boosts rankings, pay no attention to them because they don’t know what they’re talking about
I’ve been asked this question numerous times and it may have been because people have misinterpreted something I’ve said in the past – “Flash based websites are a bad idea.” What I was getting at here was, having “exclusive” Flash websites is not a great idea – and here’s why…
When the Google spider is crawling around the web, you want to make it as easy as possible for it to navigate your website. This is done through your linking structure and/or your nav bar. Google needs to be able to follow your links to find your pages, so it can index them.
If you’re using exclusively Flash based menus and your website is Flash heavy, Google can’t read this. There’s nothing for it to grab hold of. You need content on your page. Don’t get me wrong, you don’t have to discard Flash completely.
