Link Building and SEO

Link are they really a factor for Ranking

People all over the world vary in their opinion about Link building and so do I. Many say that building link is one of the main factors for ranking well for competitive keywords. Others disagree and say that it depends a lot on the site

Confused?

Let’s take example to suggest what actually Link Building is?

It started off long back when Google implemented the Pagerank concept in the Search Algorithm. Webmasters all over the world started misusing them for their own benefit. Concepts like Link Farms and bad neighborhood came into effect. Thanks to Google that took evasive measures to tackle this kind of spam through their numerous updates.

But then the question comes are Links really useful?

Link Building for Google

With my experience I can say that it is really tough to make your way to the top ten in Google for competitive keywords. Google considers Link as a vote of trust. But then you have to actually pick quality links. Editorial links are the preferred ones but even links given out by other sites are appreciated. Link bought through any kind of network or Paid Links are the typical links that can harm you in the process and the effect may vary from poor performance to getting banned from Google.

Link Building for Yahoo and MSN

For Yahoo and MSN the case is different. If you have proper structure with great navigation, content, and few to no links, then you have good chance to rank for fairly competitive keywords.

It is not that I am saying so with no real life examples. I have personally faced this for more than one issue when I have ranked my site for fairly competitive keywords in Yahoo and MSN with in few months. As for Google it may vary from 6 to 7 months depending on the work you do for your site.

Important Point to remember while Link Building

1. Do not link out to bad neighborhood site
2. Always check the link provided to you.
3. Before giving a link out to any site think how it would help your site visitors.
4. Getting a link from related site is much more appreciated.
5. Check the Anchor Text and the position of the link.
6. Check the Anchor Text of the link pointing out to the site linking to you.
7. Prefer directories for best one way links
8. Editorial links are preferred ahead of other links.

In my next post, I will discuss about the misconceptions aboutPageRank.

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Basic SEO Tips

People round the world target three major search engine Google, Yahoo and MSN. The main idea is to drive in maximum traffic through these Search Engines. But how do you actually get to rank on all the three.

The page should be properly structured along with quality content. By quality content I mean content which should be unique and should contain targeted keywords distributes according to the need of the page. But this does not mean that you should start spamming the page with keyword spamming.

The navigation of the page should be user friendly with no flashy images or javascript buttons. And even if they are used then it should be kept in mind that the noscript tag should be used for search engine bots to crawl the links.

The images should have proper Alt Attributes to explain the image and not just put in long list of keywords to fool the Search Engines. Remember that Search Engine are smarter.

Build quality links to you pages. This will help gain trust in the eyes of the Search Engines. Links build on the basis of quality content or editorial links stands out. Otherwise you deal with link farms and link building partners and get banned by Search Engines in the near future.

Make sure that your site is submitted to quality directories. By quality directories I mean quality and they are very few. Do not submit to directories that ask for a reciprocal link back. Also, make sure you learn the pros and cons before submitting to a particular category.

Now to sum up the main points that affect the Search Engines I have listed them down in point wise to make a better understanding.

On Page Optimization

Title Tag – Should be compact and should only contain targeted keywords. It is one of the main criteria’s so should be handles effectively. Do not try to spam the page title with lots of keywords or repetitive keywords. You should always try to limit your keywords in the title to less than three.

Meta Description – Another important tag that helps search engines to denote the content of the page.

Meta Keywords – This should actually contain the targeted keywords and the keywords used in the page. Should not be huge list of keywords or occurrence of keywords. Remember GOOGLE, google, GoOgLe all them gives the same result. Try it out at Google.

Heading Tag – It is equally important as rest of the tags. Should be considered as the heading of the content and should be generated down the order.

Image Alt Attribute – Provide this tag for each of the image used in the site. This should depict the content of the image.


Off Page Optimization

Link Building – As discussed by Matt Cuts. Editorial links are always preferred. But quality links gathered through unique content on the site is also favorable.

Anchor Text – Anchor Text is another very important factor. The anchor text should be very well chalked out according to the need of the optimization plan.

Page Targeting – It is always considered to be of utmost importance that you should try to target two to maximum three keywords per page. This way you can target most keywords to your site rather than targeting 10 keywords per page.

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