Blog and Nature of Natural Linking

A lot of people are talking, and few of them know, the soul of a search engine was created in the blog.

There has been a lot of talk about Natural Linking. From Oakland (Ask Jeeves), Sunnyvale (Yahoo!) and Mountain View (Google), California, all of the search engine companies are talking more publicly about Natural Linking.

Why Is Linking Important?

The whole concept of linking in the eyes of the search engine companies is that when Site A links to Site B, then Site A is making a personal recommendation of Site B. Because Site A is willing to put their reputation on the line to share the story of Site B, the search engines have determined that Site B MUST be of higher value than Site C.

Google established their PageRank system a few years back based on this conceptual idea. Over the past few years, the other search engine companies have begun to adopt the linking model in their attempt to catch up with Google’s lead in the marketplace.

Because the search engine companies want to provide the best possible results to their users for a particular search, they have all climbed on the concept of link counting to determine the value of the sites that they are recommending to their users.

What Is Natural Linking?

The idea behind “Natural Linking” is that you can have for example five people linking to the same site giving the site a recommendation via the hyperlinked text.

The hyperlinked text is any text that appears between the <a href=> and the </a> tags. When used in a HTML document, the hyperlinked text in the viewable webpage becomes a live clickable link like this: Blogger.com. When viewing this link from within the HTML coding, it will look like this:
<a href=http://Blogger.Com>http://Blogger.Com</a>.

Each webmaster who decides to link to an invidual website has a different idea and reasoning as to why his or her visitors should look at the site they are recommending. As a result, each webmaster will outline their reasoning within their links to your website.

In our example, we have five Site A’s pointing to Site B:

Example Site One will put the following on their site:
<a href=”http://Blogger.com”>Easy to Use Blogging Software</a>

Example Site Two will put the following on their site:
<a href=”http://Blogger.com”>Blogger.com - Owned by Google</a>

Example Site Three will put the following on their site:
<a href=”http://Blogger.com”>Get a Frëe Blog for Your Website</a>

Example Site Four will put the following on their site:
<a href=”http://Blogger.com”>Bloggers Love Blogger.com</a>

Example Site Five will put the following on their site:
<a href=”http://Blogger.com”>Fully Featured Blogging Software</a>

Each webmaster in this example has shown their users why they should visit Blogger.com. In doing so, each of them has shown their link using their own descriptive text. It is this “descriptive text” that the search engines view as “natural links”.

So, “Natural Links” are links that are created by individual webmasters and not by Site B’s owner. In the eyes of the search engine programmers, these links will likely have a more accurate representation of the content that appears on a website. And the search engine masters understand that a stranger is always more honest in his representations than the webmaster trying to promote his own website.

What Does Natural Linking Have To Do With Blogs?

Over the last few years, you have read many an article from people pitching the importance of the blog in the search engine optimization game. But, do you know why blogs have become so important to the search engine companies?

Natural Linking

When all is said and done, the text within a link has been given more weïght in the search engines than the real content on a webpage.

I heard the guffaws in the audience. I can see the look of utter disbelief on your faces as you sit in front of your computer staring incredulously at my comments.

But, wait. I can actually prove this to you.

Come back when you are done, but do clïck this link to view the search results for the Worst President: http://google.com/search?q=worst+president

Did you notice the results in search result Number 1? Did you go to the webpage to see if you could find the word “worst” in the text? I did too. And guess what. I could not see the word “worst” in the text either.

The same search with a slight variation, searching for the Worst President in History puts the same page in search result #4.
http://google.com/search?q=worst+president+in+history

This Is The True Power Of Blogs

The search engine companies put far more value in the natural link text than they put in the terms that show up within a webpage! The bloggers are the ones who have said that George W. Bush is the worst president in history. And, I will bet that they get a great chuckle every time someone like me points out their accomplishments.

The reason why the blogs are the best new resource of the search engines is because blogs use natural linking far more often than regular website pages.

The Challenges Facing Us Now

As we move forward to promote our website in the hëre and nöw and tomorrow, we must keep in mind the need for natural linking. The challenge for us is how to communicate our salës messages in such a way that links to our websites are perceived by the search engines as natural links.

As we face this challenge, we should consider giving other people more leeway in how they post a link to our websites. If you are using reciprocal links or paid advertising, you should by all means give the person showing your ad several choices for your advertisement. If you are using reprint articles to promote your online business, you should find a way to offer publishers and webmasters mutliple article resource boxes, or you should just give them more frëe reign in developing another natural link to your website.

Written by SEO Tipster on September 1st, 2005 with no comments.
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All About Content

Content is one of the biggest influences on the success of your search marketing program. There is a saying that ‘content is king’ and this is true whether it is for your optimized web pages, your paid advertising message, or your optimized news releases.

Remember that writing and optimizing your content is an ongoing process and requires constant refinement and re-evaluation. If at first you do not succeed try again! This is a cliché that will make sense as you develop your written content.

Writing Page Content for your Website

Writing content for your websites pages is different that writing for any other medium. There are some simple facts you should be aware of before you put pen to paper. It can take some time to get the balance right so be aware that you are going to be fine tuning your content for some time.

Write for your visitors and not for the search engines. Search engines are a consideration but you want to communicate with the people who arrive on your site. You want to inform them and motivate them to take action. Fortunately text written specifically for your visitors will also be search engine friendly.

Inject your personality into your writing and try to connect with your visitors. This connection will make your visitors feel at home on your site. Informal, friendly, conversational language works best. You want your visitors to feel like they belong.

Another important thing to remember about writing for the web is that people scan what you write; they don’t read it from start to finish. This is a very important fact. Therefore what your write should be easily read and easily scanned.

To help make your site easy to scan:

• Employ a easy to understand, attention grabbing heading
• Start with the conclusion or summary (inverted pyramid writing style)
• Do not bury your message
• Include sub-headings that if scanned tell a story
• Incorporate only one idea per paragraph – make them self contained
• Highlight important words and phrases
• Use bullet-point lists
• Keep your language simple

Your writing should help to build credibility for your business. To do this you should build trust for your visitor.

Establish credibility by:

• Customer Lists
• Testimonials
• Case Studies
• Articles and White Papers
• About Us Page

Use language that informs your visitors. Make sure the language does not exaggerate or over sell your offering. Any type of hype tends to make visitors suspicious. Avoid marketing language and focus more on an editorial style.

Even on a highly technical site it is best to keep your language simple. Remember that all visitors to your site will not be as knowledgeable as you are! Try to put yourself in your visitor’s shoes. Be empathetic towards your visitors and address their needs. What information are they looking for? How con I describe things to really make them understand?

The goal of your writing is to inform and also persuade people. The key is to know and understand the people to whom you are writing. Once you understand them then it is a process of writing in a clear and understandable manner directly to them. As this is not an overnight process it is essential that you monitor your results. You need to know what is and what is not working. This way you can continue to refine your message over time.

Content – Some Definitions
‘Alt text’ is the text written to describe an image. Although it’s invisible to visitors reading your web page it is a useful tool for improving search engine relevance and for helping visually impaired visitors.

‘Anchor text’ is the text used to describe a link to another web page. This is of use to page visitors and search engines which use this text to determine the subject of your page and the targeted page.

‘Blog’ is short for weblog and is basically an online journal.

‘Body text’ is the text that makes up the body of your web page and does not include titles and headings.

‘Call to Actions’ are written messages that cause the page visitor to perform an act. Typical ‘call to actions’ include; sign up for newsletter, add to shopping cart, buy now, etc.

‘Content’ is a general term for the text and images on your web page.

‘Content Management System’ (CMS) is a software system to create, update and publish web pages throughout a web site.

‘Creative” is text written for paid advertising ads.

‘Heading’ is text within the heading tag used to break up body text. Used by many visitors who scan pages as opposed to reading the body text. Headings are also viewed as more important than body text by search engines.

‘Hidden text’ is a spam technique that uses text that is either too small to read or of the same color of the page background to improve keyword frequency. Avoid search marketers that use this technique.

‘Term density’ or ‘keyword density’ is the ratio of a search term or keyword to the total text you your web page. An optimized web page should have a term density of around 6%. Any higher and it can be considered spam by the search engines.

‘Term frequency’ or ‘keyword frequency’ is a metric used by search engines to determine the pages relevance for organic search results.

Written by SEO Tipster on September 1st, 2005 with no comments.
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