How to Build Search Engine Ranking
How to get Better Search Engine Ranking
After getting great content one of a web master's key concerns is how to build better seach engine rankings. Search engine rankings are comprised of many factors. Keywords, titles, content, linking competition and exact match domain names all contribute. I was listening to a webcast today from a company named Vitizo and was very impressed with the quality of information the panel provided in this hour long talk. The focus was on recovering from the Panda and Penguin updates that Google recently hit the web and the concept of web neighbourhoods was introduced which aptly describes what Google is looking for when it gages your webpage.
If you’re on the web for any length of time you will have seen people advertising for you to buy links and usually for some ridiculously low price. What you may not know is many of those links you are buying are from overseas sources and from link farms. The only legitimate link farm I can think of is the online yellow pages. All of those purchased webpage links have nothing to do with your site and with Google Panda and Penguin updates will hurt your efforts to rise above the rest.
So what is your neighbourhood? Let’s talk about some examples of how this works. If you are a plumber and your supplier of fixtures links to you this link this link will build authority in Google’s eyes. If you as a plumber provide services to a construction company and they link to you this will also build authority. When you link back to the construction company this will add somewhat to your authority and theirs but not as much as a one way link from someone who does not need to link to you. Google wants to promote a good user experience and mutual linking in your own sphere of influence (i.e. your own industry) tells Google that you are trying to build that customer experience and not just get high rankings.
Google's Thoughts About Getting Links
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Link Building 101
- Seek out links with industry experts.The top rated links you can probably get come from colleges, universities, government and quasi-governmental agencies like regulatory agencies that are legislated but not directly considered government. How do you get such links?By being an expert in the field and offering to write articles, courses or set standards for these folks.You could sit on a board of directors of an agency, hospital, or standards association like UL.Or, it could be on a working committee to set industry standards.These are hard links to get but each one of them with Google will rate a 10/10 or close and are subsequently better than many links from poor quality sources.If you are on such a government committee suggest that they put a link somewhere on their site for the committee members and if it works out it will be like gold for you.These are the people at the top of your neighbourhood.
- Next would be industry leaders not associated with government, standards or education.Industry associations and professional associations come to mind.If your professional association or industry association has not set up links to its members I would be seeking to add this to their site.These links again are non-commercial links that will help.
- For profit industry giants would be another great link.If you have authority in person with both governmental agencies and your industry association this should be easy to get and probably there for the asking.This would be your major supplier who wants you to succeed in business.The suppliers are often engaged in promoting product to a wide audience and generally don’t sell online to the public.They sell to you and you in turn sell the product to the consumer.
- Post original content.If you are simply cutting and pasting articles about your industry from your suppliers you are getting the same script as everyone else and this will actually hurt you in your efforts to increase page rank.Do not spin other people’s articles as Google will catch this unless there are some pretty major changes.Get others in your neighborhood to link to your content rather than copy it.Duplicate copy, unless Google can determine that you are the original author will hurt you.
- Mutual links can be good in some cases but don’t overuse these links and limit how they are used. If you have a few trusted colleagues that operate outside your geographical area Google may rank these better than just a bunch of links. Remember that it all about user experience. In fact it may be advantageous to form some sort of referral network with a separate webpage.
- Comment on industry blogs that add value to the customer experience. When you leave a comment leave something insightful. These comments are usually longer than spam links. So when you comment about a common problem of the industry and how you have tried to fix it and how your customers felt afterwards you will find that this comment will have value to search engines. Never leave a comment like “good article!” These look like potential spam to search engines.
I feel I learned a lot from the webinar today and I have more points to share with you but for now my fingers are tired!I’ll see you again soon with more about some tricky little things people are doing to hurt your rankings.