Looking for a way to advertise your web site, product or service? Blogs and forums are a great way to get the word out and usually cost nothing. If you would like to advertise on blogs and forums, here are some tips.
Blogs and forums are great places for people with the same interests to congregate to, no matter what your product, service or web site, you can easily find a few blogs and forums that cater to the topic. Blogs and forums are usually great places to advertise, because most blogs and forums allow you to either leave a sig or link when you post info or an opinion. Some forums even have threads devoted to advertising products, services and web sites.
Thousands of people visit the most popular blogs and forums and you can easily spread the word on your site or offerings. Many people love blogs and forums, because it also gives them an opportunity to network and see the competition.
There are also a few forums that cost admission, but are super specialized. While most paid membership forums are usually affordable, they can be a great investment to network and spread the word on your products. So if you are looking for ways to advertise, check out blogs like problogger.net and forums like sitepoint.
Written by SEO Tipster on March 27th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on SEO Tips.
Looking to reach a bigger audience on the web? Blogs offer web masters a great way to expand their audience from visitors to participants. Many people are becoming more familiar and comfortable with blogs and participating by posting on them. This is great for a web master because not only do visitors come to your blog but also add fresh content.
Many people can easily monetize their blogs by having an AdSense account or posting advertisements on their blog. However, some blog owners use their blogs to draw traffic to their other high profile sites. Blogs can also help new web sites that have just been developed needed attention from search engine spiders. Search engine spiders usually follow links and index web sites that are deemed important.
If you never developed a blog before, it is extremely simple. You can use sites such as blogger.com to create a very decent looking blog site in a few minutes for free or build a blog as part of your web site using software called Wordpress. Wordpress is also free and very easy to set up. So if you are looking for a new area to expand in and a new audience to reach, check out blogs.
Written by SEO Tipster on March 26th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on SEO Tips.
Thousands of servers …billions of web pages…. the possibility of individually sifting through the WWW is null. The search engine gods cull the information you need from the Internet…from tracking down an elusive expert for communication to presenting the most unconventional views on the planet. Name it and click it. Beyond all the hype created about the web heavens they rule, let’s attempt to keep the argument balanced. From Google to Voice of the Shuttle (for humanities research) these ubiquitous gods that enrich the net, can be unfair …and do wear pitfalls. And considering the rate at which the Internet continues to grow, the problems of these gods are only exacerbated further.
Primarily, what you need to digest is the fact that search engines fall short of Mandrake’s magic mechanism! They simply don’t create URLs out of thin air but instead send their spiders crawling across those sites that have rendered prayers (and expensive offerings!) to them for consideration. Even when sites like Google claim to have a massive 3 billion web pages in its database, a large portion of the web nation is invisible to these spiders. To think they are simply ignorant of the Invisible Web. This invisible web holds that content, normal search engines can’t index because the information on many web sites is in databases that are only searchable within that site. Sites like www.imdb.com - The Internet Movie Database , www.incywincy.com - IncyWincy, the invisible web search engine and www.completeplanet.com - The Complete Planet that cover this area are perhaps the only way you can access content from that portion of the Internet, invisible to the search gods. Here, you don’t perform a direct content search but search for the resources that may access the content. (Meaning - be sure to set aside considerable time for digging.)
None of the search engines indexes everything on the Web (I mean none). Tried research literature on popular search engines? AltaVista to Yahoo, will list thousands of sources on education, human resource development, etc. etc. but mostly from magazines, newspapers, and various organizations’ own Web pages, rather than from research journals and dissertations- the main sources of research literature. That’s because most of the journals and dissertations are not yet available publicly on the Web. Thought they’ll get you all that’s hosted on the web? Think again.
The Web is huge and growing exponentially. Simple searches, using a single word or phrase, will often yield thousands of “hits”, most of which will be irrelevant. A layman going in for a piece of info to the internet has to deal with a more severe issue - too much information! And if you don’t learn how to control the information overload from these websites, returned by a search result, roll out the red carpet for some frustration. A very common problem results from sites that have a lot of pages with similar content. For e.g., if a discussion thread (in a forum) goes on for a hundred posts there will be a hundred pages all with similar titles, each containing a wee bit of information. Now instead of just one link, all hundred of those darn pages will crop up your search result, crowding out other relevant site. Regardless of all the sophistication technology has brought in, many well thought-out search phrases produce list after list of irrelevant web pages. The typical search still requires sifting through dirt to find the gold. If you are not specific enough, you may get too many irrelevant hits.
As said, these search engines do not actually search the web directly but their centralized server instead. And unless this database is updated continually to index modified, moved, deleted or renamed documents, you will land yourself amidst broken links and stale copies of web pages. So if they inadequately handle dynamic web pages whose content changes frequently, chances are for the information they reference to quickly go out-of-date. After they wage their never ending war with over-zealous promoters (spamdexers rather), where do they have time to keep their databases current and their search algorithms tuned? No surprise if a perfectly worthwhile site may go unlisted!
Similarly, many of the Web search engines are undergoing rapid development and are not well documented. You will have only an approximate idea of how they are working, and unknown shortcomings may cause them to miss desired information. Not to mention, amongst the first class information, the web also houses false, misleading, deceptive and dressed up information actually produced by charlatans. The Web itself is unstable and tomorrow they may not find you the site they found you today. Well if you could predict them, they would not be god!…would they?! The syntax (word order and punctuation) for various types of complex searches varies some from search engine to search engine, and small errors in the syntax can seriously compromise the search. For instance, try the same phrase search on different search engines and you’ll know what I mean. Novices… read this line - using search engines does involve a learning curve. Many beginning Internet users, because of these disadvantages, become discouraged and frustrated.
(more…)
Written by SEO Tipster on March 26th, 2006 with no comments.
Read more articles on SEO Tips and SEO Articles.
7 SEO skills that are necessary for SEO work are:
Web Design – producing a visually attractive page
HTML coding - developing Search Engine friendly coding that sits behind the web design
Copy writing – producing the actual readable text on the page
Marketing – what are the actual searches that are being used, what key words actually get more business for your company?
An eye for detail - even the smallest errors can stop spiderbots visiting your site.
Patience - there is a time lag on any change you make, waiting is a virtue.
IT skills - an appreciation of how search engine programs and the algorithms they use actually work
Written by SEO Tipster on September 28th, 2005 with no comments.
Read more articles on SEO Tips.
Yahoo searches while you type, saving countless nanoseconds wasted by pushing a Submit button.
Clint Eastwood asked the question first; Google let’s you act on that lucky feeling by hitting a button. Now, Yahoo dispenses with the question and the button, by searching while you type.
It’s in beta, but the Yahoo! Instant Search page offers another take on the ’search engine anticipating my request’ bit. AOL Search does something similar with its Smartbox Suggestions technology.
Typing in the Yahoo Instant Search box will start its back-end search off on a quest to anticipate your query. The page returns different results as you build your keyword. I decided to test it with the now-popular hobby ’scrapbooking’.
Instant Search gave me a box of financial information, linked to Yahoo Finance, for Royal Shell when I typed in ‘Sc’. Adding three more letter changes the suggested destination to Scrap.org, the “bi-monthly publication of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries.”
Extending that to “scrapbook” brought a link to a Japanese page hosting the ScrapBook Firefox extension. The snippet of text accompanying that mentions how the New York Times discussed ScrapBook on April 7th; that text appears high up on the web page (SEO readers: take note of that).
Finishing off the word ’scrapbooking’ pulls up Scrapbooking.com, an appropriate destination for people who not only need to stick pictures in books, but do so with the right paper, the right tape, and all the other little extras one needs to preserve those precious memories.
Written by SEO Tipster on September 19th, 2005 with no comments.
Read more articles on SEO Tips.
10 Adsense Tips for getting maximum click trhu rates:
1) You should make your Adsense ads look as a part of your web page.
They shouldn’t look like an Ad. People are negative to advertising. They search the internet for content not ads. Especially Banners have a less of 0,5% response. Their days are over. Imagine if you have an Adsense ad looking like the typical Banner with different colors. It will not be profitable.
2) Text ads are better than image ads.
Like before, people are more responsive to text than images. In a way it is considered as a part of the online document and is more clickable.
3) No Border ads.
One of the best tricks is to erase the borders of Adsense ads and make them again having the same color with your website’s background.
4) No other advertisements.
The first reason is to be legitimate according to Google’s Rules and the second more practical reason is that you do not want to distract your visitor’s attention and go somewhere else without clicking your Adsense ads.
5) Placement.
Even if you have the best Ad, people will not respond if they don’t see it instantly. The best place to see the ad is the top of your web page and the next is aside your document’s text. Visitors will click it more frequently since it will look like your text.
6) Traffic.
Try to use legitimate ways of traffic. Some people use Google Adwords and other Pay per Click search engines. The problem here is to search very carefully for the right niche and keywords in order to make your campaigns profitable. Other ways is link popularity techniques like link exchange directories, software or even mass blog submission techniques. Don’t use link farms and classifieds for that, because search engine’s algorithms are extremely clever and they will ban your listings.
7) Do not rely on one website.
Yes you can make money with one website but try to make as more as possible.
8) Relevant content is King.
Articles are one of the best tactics to create huge websites that will be crawled by search engine’s robots. Don’t forget search engines exist to provide relevant content at first. One excellent resource to automate your article directory procedure is http://www.articleequalizer.com .You can create an article database in minutes which otherwise is time consuming and it would take you a week!
9) Use site maps.
Google’s site maps visit your site and crawl it much sooner that any other submission process. More information is here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps
10) Relevant ads.
It’s one of the most important factors for Adsense success. If the internet user can’t find relevant ad in your page he or she won’t click the ad. Would you act differently? So it’s critical to create relevant resource for your web page. In order to do that, you must do the following steps.
First the file must be saved with the appropriate name for example: Golf-Secrets.html if your article is about golf. So the webpage will be:
www.yoursitesname.com/Golf-Secrets.html
Second thing you must change is your title tag. For example:
< ;Title>Golf-Secrets article </title>
Third is the heading. The first sentence must have this heading:
12 Golf secrets
Written by SEO Tipster on September 19th, 2005 with 1 comment.
Read more articles on SEO Tips.
Written By: Meghan Whitmore for site-reference
Tip 1: Please, please, please be careful that your spelling and grammar is correct. If you are writing your copy on your own, you may wish to consult the Associated Press Style Guide, Strunk and White’s Elements of Style or another solid grammar guide. They are quick and handy references in case you are unsure if you should use a colon or a semi-colon, and they can help you keep all ten thousand comma rules straight in your head. Also pay attention to your spellchecker. Almost all word processors have them. Good grammar and spelling is not only expected of you, but it gives your site an air of professionalism that customers deserve.
Tip 2: For Pete’s sake, keep the exclamation marks to a minimum! They sound overly dramatic! They make people antsy! They make you sound like a guy wearing a clown suit on a used-car commercial! It’s annoying! And, bottom line, exclamation marks don’t make your sales pitch more effective.
Tip 3: Keep it simple. While we stress the importance of words, we don’t suggest you use too many of them, either. A customer faced with a wall of words before them may be too bored or too busy to read them all. People have short attention spans in this click-click net navigating world, so keep that in mind. Use simple, concise, easy to understand words and you’ll do much better than if you try to talk your website visitors to death.
Tip 4: Keep it scannable. White space is your friend. It’s hard to read online, so you want to keep eyestrain to a minimum. Be a razor-sharp editor and cut out anything that might be dragging down the rest of your copy. Don’t use run-on sentences. Don’t make your paragraphs too long and bulky. Use big text, descriptive headlines and short paragraphs. Use bold text to help make your copy scannable, but use it judiciously. If you make everything bold, it defeats the purpose.
Tip 5: When it comes to word choice, choose words that are descriptive and helpful. Be specific. Words like “great,” “awesome,” “super,” “new” and “improved” don’t tell you much. But words that explain just why your product is great and improved are much more helpful. For example, if you sell shampoo, and you want to tell everyone that it is now “new and improved,” explain that now it has a cleaner, fresher scent, won’t leave a greasy residue, and won’t spill if you drop it in the shower. Now that’s something that tells me what I want to know!
Tip 6: On a related note, don’t use words that are too flowery or colloquial. Write appropriately for the subject. If you are selling cowboy boots, you can probably throw a few “pardners” and “l’il doggies” in there, but that probably will not be so impressive if you are writing for your office’s money marketing page. Also, while you may have a well-versed Harvard vocabulary, many of your customers may not. If you are inclined to use words such as “sycophantic” and “pedagogy” or “fungible,” you might consider leaving them out. Also, though you may really want to use the word that means, “to swarm like ants,’ you probably ought to avoid having your visitors read, “The 6th graders formicated all over the playground.” Your site’s readers may not have a dictionary handy.
Tip 7: Organize your information. Start simple, and then get to the details. There’s no need to tell your visitors everything at once. While your homepage is similar to the welcome mat to your Internet abode, the rest of your pages are like the rooms. Make sure they are friendly and inviting and organized, not a cluttered, musty mess like at your Uncle Leo’s house. Your homepage should focus on telling your visitors specifically why they want to enter your home. What’s in there for them? On your inner pages, you can go into more detail. A lot of information is good, but break it up into well thought-out, organized pieces that are easy for your visitor to handle. Who wants to tackle a page 10 scrollbars long? But 10 pages, correctly organized, can help your visitor find the information they need and will make them comfortable, happy customers.
Tip 8: Lastly, if you are not fully confident that you can create the exact kind of copy you are looking for, you can always hire an experienced professional to help you. They may help you see potential for your website you might never have thought of on your own. And they can help stop you from making a fool of yourself if you accidentally say, “all sinners will be vaccinated on Tuesday” when you meant to say “all seniors”.
You can have the greatest layout, the prettiest shade of background color, the easiest navigation bars, but if your copy is messy, hard to read, or uninformative, your website is going to tank.
Written by SEO Tipster on September 19th, 2005 with no comments.
Read more articles on SEO Tips.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is the current heavyweight of so-called “disruptive technologies” (loosely defined as those that have the effect, if not developed with the intention, of changing the way we use technology in general) and its use is skyrocketing among content providers looking for a way to get their content in front of more eyes and ears. But RSS originally stood for Rich Site Summary, a standard way of cataloging your site’s content for third-party aggregators.
Google Sitemaps have a similar function, in that they are an XML-based way to describe website content in a standard, predictable way; but they differ in that Sitemaps are intended for the Googlebot’s eyes only, rather than for any third-party. Think of them as an automated way to make sure Google knows about your site’s content (please note, however, that Google does not guarantee inclusion of your content based solely on the presence of a Sitemap file).
This sounds like a very specific undertaking, but the importance of Google to getting your site’s content noticed can simply not be overstated. And with Google’s expanding reach into more and more areas of Web content presentation, chances are that you can be assured that the information your Sitemap provides will eventually find some use you haven’t yet thought about. That’s what disruptive technology is all about, and Google has become one of the more innovative champions of such technological advances.
Where To Start
The first thing you should do as a website developer is create a Google Account for yourself or your company. This will allow you to do other things besides access the Sitemaps infrastructure; but we’ll leave that for another day. Create the account here
(https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount) and then proceed to the Sitemaps area at (https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login).
Once you’ve logged in, you’ll see the sparse Sitemaps interface. Don’t be fooled, however, because like the simple interface to its search engine, this one hides quite a bit of information regarding the creation and use of Sitemaps, presenting it in digestible bites as you walk through the process.
There’s probably more there than you need to know at this point, provided you don’t have a huge site with a need for multiple Sitemaps and so on. But if you do have such a site, the information is there for creating truly complex Sitemaps and Sitemap Indices referencing many Sitemaps and you can familiarize yourself with that as needed. For now, we’ll concentrate on what’s required to establish a Sitemap for our site at Cafe ID (http://www.cafeid.com).
Like creating RSS feeds, creating a Google Sitemap is as simple as putting together an XML file at the root level of your site that describes the site according to the instructions that Google has laid out. You can use any text editor for this purpose, but some editors do a better job of helping you create properly formatted XML files. We heartily recommend two that cost money, BBEdit on Mac OS X
(http://www.barebones.com) and Macromedia’s Homesite on Windows (http://www.macromedia.com/software/homesite/), but there are excellent free alternatives out there and when it comes to text editors, personal preferences take on an almost religious importance, so we won’t proselytize about that here.
The Googlebot recognizes several Sitemap formats, ranging from a simple list of URLs to Sitemaps already created using something called the “Open Archive Initiative protocol for metadata harvesting”, a format apparently popular with library collections. The OAI protocol is an advanced XML specification that you don’t need to worry about if you don’t already understand. An intermediate XML format is what we recommend, over the simple URL list, because of the additional information you can associate with each constituent URL of your site.
Getting Fancy:
The more advanced format isn’t much more difficult to create and lets you specify additional information about each URL. The protocol is described fully here (https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/protocol.html) and is too detailed to explain here. Your finished file will look something like this, except (hopefully) with more URLs specified:
http://www.cafeid.com/
2005-01-01
monthly
0.8
http://www.cafeid.com/art-over.shtml
weekly
Your Sitemap’s location dictates what URLs can be included in it. A Sitemap placed at the root level of your site can specify any URLs on that site, while a Sitemap placed at www.yoursite.com/images can not include URLs under www.yoursite.com/banners, for example.
You can take as full or as little advantage of the availability of the various additional XML tags available in this format. Each needs to include at least the specification, but need not include the other three, and all URLs in a Sitemap file must be encapsulated within the tag. We recommend using at least the tag and the flag to let the Googlebot know how often it should check your site for updated content. Be sure to change the date, and maybe even the time, specified in the tag any time you actually update your site.
One more caveat is that your URL specifications must be XML-encoded, similarly to the way they’re encoded under RSS. What this means is spelled out in detail here (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html), but essentially, what you’re doing is converting a URL like http://www.yoursite.com/view?widget=3&count>2 to look like this: http://www.test.org/view?widget=3&count>2 (Note the substitution for the HTML entities & and > for the “&” and “>” symbols.)
Done. Now What Do I Do With It?
You’re almost home. Upload the Sitemap file you create to your server and then add the URL to the file itself using your Google Sitemaps account. You don’t need to use the account, but doing so will allow you to keep track of what you’ve uploaded.
You’re welcome to compress your Sitemap file using gzip, found typically on Mac OS X, Linux and BSD (normal PC zipping won’t work, although you can certainly find a third-party gzip program for your Windows box). Click the “Add Your First Sitemap” link on the main Sitemaps page after you’ve logged into your Google Sitemaps account, and that’s all there is to it!
You can use your Sitemaps account to keep track of and receive diagnostic information about your Sitemap submissions. You don’t need to create a Sitemaps account, however, and if you already have a Google account for receiving Alerts, for accessing the Web Developer APIs and so on, your existing account will work as a Sitemaps account automatically.
Google has already played a significant role in shifting the paradigm of discovering the Web from doing so by following links to doing so by searching, and the company shows no signs of slowing down. Subscribing may well be the next paradigm, based on the flexibility of the protocols that put content syndication in the hands of mere mortals, and getting your content cataloged in these formats should be among your first priorities. The web browser and operating system is adjusting quickly to this new paradigm, and you should be too.
Written by SEO Tipster on September 19th, 2005 with no comments.
Read more articles on SEO Tips.
Once a website has been created and published, many new website owners think that the web development project is finished. But in reality, the real work is just beginning. In order to create a money-making site, traffïc must be generated and driven to the website. There are several effective methods that can be implemented in Tier II of the SEO strategy to create this web traffïc. While all methods may not be required to realize successful traffïc generation, some combination of most, if not all, will probably be needed to create traffïc, maintain traffïc and finally, grow traffïc to your website with long-term, lasting results. Consider implementing these strategies:
Submit Plus
Blog Search
FindMyHost
Add Me.com
DesignerWiz
Web Position
Alexa Toolbar
SubmitExpress
Website Builder
$100 Free-Traffic
Fr-e-e SEO Tools
Website Templates
Make Extra Income
FreeWebSubmission
BlueFishHosting.com
SEO Success: Attracting
Search Engine Attention
By Chesa Keane
Once a website has been created and published, many new website owners think that the web development project is finished. But in reality, the real work is just beginning. In order to create a money-making site, traffïc must be generated and driven to the website. There are several effective methods that can be implemented in Tier II of the SEO strategy to create this web traffïc. While all methods may not be required to realize successful traffïc generation, some combination of most, if not all, will probably be needed to create traffïc, maintain traffïc and finally, grow traffïc to your website with long-term, lasting results. Consider implementing these strategies:
- Dynamic content is necessary for search engine recognition, and by updating the website frequently, the search engines see your website as an active, not stagnant, website. How often should changes be made? At the very least, monthly. But the more frequent the changes, the better. There are some tried and true methods you may want to employ:
- Monthly newsletter (or weekly)
- Tip of the day that rotates to the page using a scrïpt from an existing database of information at your site.
- RSS feed to public news feeds that update hourly or daily at the least.
- Changes to contact information, staffing, clients, etc.
- Checking links frequently to make sure that they are active and valid, and changing the link text from time to time will register as a change to the page.
- Simple modification of content from time to time should be done in between these regular maintenance tasks which will update the website.
Good links management will result in a stronger weïght given by the search engines for search positioning. The algorithms used for weighting one page over another require link popularity assessment for successful traffïc to your website. Link popularity is also one of the main considerations for Google and Alexa Page Rank. How do you achieve link popularity? It can be tedious and requires careful attention to the selection of the links, but there are several means that can be employed:
- Reciprocal Links: Search for relevant and desired web pages with which to trade links.
- Purchase PageRank-based links: boost your relevance and weïght in the eyes of search engines by purchasing links for a period of time, three to six months until you have achieved a better ranking.
- List with directories: paid or unpaid directory listings that are relevant to your website will give your website additional exposure.
- Anchor text: create the links with link text in mind, utilizing relevant keywords where possible.
- PageRank consideration: link only with websites that have decent PageRank (PR); i.e., PR of 3 could be a minimum but a PR of 4 would be a better minimum requirement from those pages who want to exchange links with you.
Blogs: Web logs linked to your site or posting to popular blogs with your links included to point traffïc back to your site; a good strategy is to employ pinging with blog posting.
Forums: Forum participation that allows you to leave your link with the intent of attracting traffïc back to your site can get traffïc back to your website, however, take care that you actually offer something of value in your posting so you are not accused of spamming.
Search Engine Listings: Listing with frëe search engines and directories is an essential step, although you won’t see any results for months.
Gather Opt-ïn Email Addresses: Utilize an email list subscription function on your website with the intent of sending e-newsletters and announcements on a regular basis. This subscription list can be used for several other campaigns, including the sale of advertising space in your newsletter.
Advertise on Ezines: Purchase sponsorship on other email lists where you can promote your product and/or services as well as links to your website in the process.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns with Google and Yahoo Search Marketing where you purchase advertising space based on keywords that are popular for your website if you are not in a saturated market. If your business operates in a saturated internet market, seek niche keywords for your PPC advertising. Determine your budget first and from there, you will know how much you can afford for the positioning you desire. It’s all mathematical:
Price-Per-Click = monthly budget/number of clicks (or) Number of clicks = monthly budget/price per-click.
Some suitable combination of price and number of clicks based on your own budget will result in a campaign you can monitor and adjust as necessary. The important result to watch for is the conversion rate. How many paid clicks convert into the desired result; i.e., new contract, sale of product, sign up for e-newsletter, etc.
Remember, creating a website is only the first step. Driving traffïc to your site is the next important task. Layout a plan of action and follow-through. You are not going to realize success until you spend the time and energy - or pay someone else for their time and energy - to get the job done.
Written by SEO Tipster on September 19th, 2005 with no comments.
Read more articles on SEO Tips.
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.
Read more articles on SEO Tips.