All Entries Tagged With: "link building"
Response to Allen Taylor’s Response to Michael Martinez Post on SEO Theory :)
Allen Taylor posted a response to Michael Martinez’ post on SEO Theory and I decided to expand on that response here.
Image via Wikipedia
Content VS Link Building
Content is king. Links only support content, they are not more important than content, never were, never will be. Left you see Google’s home page from 1998. Content was king then and still is today.
Title Tags
Title tag for a web page should be the key phrase you are targeting for ranking that page IF the title also makes someone want to click it.
Description Tag
You should write your own description tag. If you have a header tag on the page that is or contains a key phrase you are targeting and you want google to use the description in the paragraph on the page below that header, then don’t use that key phrase in your description.
If you write your own description tag and you rank for a particular phrase that IS in the description, google will use your description. If google does NOT find that phrase in the description, it will use what’s on the page. So you can use google snippets to pull content for some phrases while keeping your own description for other phrases.
Keywords
Not doing keyword research and not using keywords in your pages is moronic. No other way to put it. That does NOT mean using the key phrase you want to rank for over and over again. It’s all about semantics.
Your key phrase in the title tag and in the header tags on the page basically tells the googlebot what you’d LIKE to rank for. The bot will then search the content for other keywords it expects to find on a page that is really about that topic. If it finds those related words, you have a chance to rank well. Pretty simple.
Link Building
As far as building links goes, building a lot of links from anywhere you can get them, using the same anchor text for most if not all of them, and pointing them all to your home page is a total waste of time.
Google isn’t stupid. They aren’t going to believe that suddenly 1000 people linked to you and all of them underlined and linked the exact same words to describe your site and all of them linked to the exact same page.
You don’t need a ton of links. You need links from high-traffic websites that are related to your topic. You promote content, you don’t just build links.
Building knol pages, hub pages, squidoo lenses, posting an article in a related forum if they allow it, these are things that are good for building high-quality links. But it has to be 100% original content and it has to be interesting and it has to be helpful to people.
Those are the reasons you get click-thrus from those articles. It isn’t about the links. it’s about getting people to read the content and want to come to your website. The fact that you are also link building and feeding the algorithm is a side benefit, not the purpose of real article marketing.
Keyword Domains
Image via CrunchBase
Yes, the keywords in the domain name do help you rank well in search engines. Sorry, but it’s a fact, not a theory.
Just search for SEO on Google. SEO.com is #1. According to Michael’s theory, this makes the people at SEO.com better at SEO than anyone else on the web . . . or another theory is . . . they own SEO.com. I’ll say the latter is correct, not to say anything bad about the people at SEO.com, but the best in the world at SEO? Seriously? They were smart enough to get SEO.com though. Gotta give em that.
With searches for most keywords, you will find that keyword in the URL, not necessarily the domain name itself, like wikipedia.com/keyword. Having the keywords in your domain name is not enough. Other factors are at play here like the actual content on the page.
You can overcome not having the keywords in your domain name, but the key word in this sentence is “overcome”. Why handicap yourself and “overcome” not having the keyword in your domain name? It is an advantage and every little thing you can do to gain an advantage is a good thing. It’s why we still use alt tags, header tags and other things. Any one of those by themselves is not that important. But if you do them all, it adds up.
If you own a company, you should own the domain that matches your company name. You use that on biz cards, letterhead, ads, etc. You brand that name. But your website can be physically located on a domain name that matches the product you sell or the service you provide or the key phrase that brings you the most traffic.
Your “company domain name” is simply pointed to or redirected to that keyword domain so the people who see your ads, biz cards, letterhead and such will still arrive at the right place. In the search engine results pages, people click links and don’t care what the domain name is. It can even help you track what is happening because of your seo efforts vs what is happening because of your marketing efforts.
Anyway, there is so much misinformation out there, I thought I’d straighten some of it out. Need 100% original Content written for you? Let us optimize your web pages the right way. Call us at 512.322.9566 for a free SEO consultation.
How Articles Build Links
Let’s break it down. Articles build links in one very simple way. But in exponentially powerful directions.
You develop your authority with article marketing by writing great content. When you write great content that is highly optimized for search engine traffic, you develop your own authority and build credibility. But you drive traffic to your website by including a link at the end of the article where your readers can go to get more information on the topic.
That link is very important. For two reasons:
- It attracts traffic to your website
- And it builds quality, relevant links back to your website
Both are important.
Links, with the right anchor text and from the right domain, can help increase your search engine rankings. Traffic, too, can do the same thing. It’s more than just a way to get people to your site so you can sell them something. When you add value to your site visitors’ experience, they stay on your site longer and you get increase search engine rankings due to the increased exposure.
So how does article marketing benefit you? With link building and traffic. Good SEO never comes in one flavor.
Articles Build Inbound Links
One of the most important aspects of search engine marketing is building inbound links. Many SEOs teach that this is the most important aspect of SEO. I still think there is no substitute for on-page SEO. But link building is important.
Articles are a great way to build links long term. It’s not a short term fix. You don’t write the article today then get thousands of links tomorrow. The key is to get your article out there so that it is published and linking back to your site. By submitting your articles to article directories you are offering your articles to other webmasters to use over and over again. Every time another webmaster uses your article you get a link back to your website. Those are valuable links.
The links are good SEO, but they can also drive traffic to your website. That’s the real beauty of article marketing. Dual benefit over the long haul, where it really counts.
Is Article Marketing Changing?
Change is inevitable. It will always happen. Even article marketing is affected by change. So, yes, article marketing is changing in some respects, but fundamentally it is still the same as it has always been and always will be.
How then is article marketing changing? One way that it is changing is that Google has stopped passing link juice from article directories. But that’s not so much a change as it is just common sense search engine management. Too many article marketers were using the article directories as spam repositories instead of going about it the right way. The links you really want are from the websites that will pick up your article and publish it on their website or in their e-zine.
Another way that article marketing is changing is that many webmasters have started writing and publishing articles that specifically target one website. That way, they can get their link in a high authority website within their niche and it’s a website of choice. Plus, they control where their article appears and they have more control over their reputation.
Those changes withstanding, however, article marketing is still basically the same as it has always been. The benefits are the same. The reasons webmasters do it are the same. You are building your credibility, driving traffic to your website, and building search engine benefits by acquiring link juice. Otherwise, article marketing, like everything else, is in a constant state of flux.
Is Google Penalizing Article Marketers?
Every now and then I get a question about Google’s policy of discounting links from article directories. Is Google penalizing article marketers?
The question stems from a fundamental misunderstanding about article marketing. Article marketing is not about getting links from search engines article directories. It never has been about that. Rather, article marketing is about building links from other websites, building your authority and credibility as an expert in your niche, and driving traffic to your website. If you do it correctly, that’s what will happen. You don’t really need that link from the article directory.
What you want to happen is for your articles in the article directories to get picked up by publishers in your niche. If you write good articles that deserve to be published, those articles will be published by other bloggers and webmasters. When publishers use your articles, you’ll get your coveted links from that, but you’ll also get the traffic from those publishers’ websites. In addition to those search marketing benefits, you’ll be building your reputation as an authoritative source within your niche. That’s what article marketing is about. Don’t get shortsighted about links from article directories.
