Is There Any Use In Using Keywords In The URL?

Is there any value in using keywords in the URLs of web pages? Would a search engine look at keywords that you might include in the addresses of your pages, and associate those keywords with the content of your pages in the search engine’s index?

If so, how would a search engine go about looking at the web addresses indicated in the URLs to your pages, and break them down into meaningful parts to identify keywords?

Breaking URLs down into parts may also play a role in how the pages of a web site might be crawled by a search engine.

A newly published Yahoo patent application gives us some ideas on how it might extract keywords from the URLs of pages, and rank them, as well as using information uncovered in the process to determine which pages to crawl first from a web site.

Techniques for Tokenizing URLs
Invented by Krishna Leela Poola and Arun Ramanujapuram
Assigned to Yahoo
US Patent Application 20090083266
Published March 26, 2009
Filed November 6, 2007

A search engine will look at many different signals to determine what a page on the Web is about, and attempt to rank pages based upon keywords that might be an indication of the subject matter or content of those pages.

Many of those keywords are extracted from the content of pages themselves, but a search engine can look at other information associated with pages, such as the addresses of the pages.

Keywords may also be extracted from the URLs of pages, by using an algorithm that can break the URL into components, understanding the structure of those URLs, and removing candidate keywords from the different parts found within the URL.

Parts of URLs

The patent application provides a definition for different parts of URLs:

Scheme - This section of a URL identifies the internet protocol used to access a resource, such as HTTP or FTP

Authority - The part of a URL that identifies the host server where the documents or resources are located, or the domain name.

Path - This is the information following the slash character after the authority, or domain name, and it identifies the specific page or resource

Query arguments - A string that may appear in a path that can be broken down into name and value pairs, such as “category=shirts”

Fragments - A fragment identifies a subsection within a page that might be pointed to in a URL, ususally started with the “#” symbol

An example of these five different components from the patent filing:

http://www.yahoo.com:80/shopping/search?kw=blaupunkt#desc

In this URL, the scheme is “http”

The authority is “www.yahoo.com:80″ which shows the domain, and also includes a port number of “80″ in this instance.

The path is technically everything after that first single slash: “shopping/search?kw=blaupunkt#desc”

A query argument shown in this example is “kw=blaupunkt”

A fragment from this URL is #desc

Tokenizing URLs for Keywords and Web Crawling

The patent application describes a way that it might break down URLs into parts, or components, to extract keywords from URLs. Those keywords could be used to categorize pages for web search, and to understand what pages are about when providing advertisements for those pages.

This breaking down of URLs into components, and even smaller parts is referred to as “tokenizing URLs.” In addition to helping a search engine find keywords in URLs, it can have an impact on the indexing of the pages of a web site:

The tokens generated by URL tokenization may also be assigned with features of the web document to improve the efficiency of a web search. Tokenizing URLs is also the first step when clustering URLs of a website. Clustering URLs allows the identification of portions of a web document that hold more relevance. Thus, when a website is crawled by a search engine, some portions of web documents may be white-listed and should be crawled, while other portions may be black-listed and should not be crawled. This leads to more efficient web crawling.

Conclusion

Yahoo provides a fair amount of detail in the patent filing on how URLs can be broken down into components, and how keywords can be extracted from those components, as well as provided different rankings. If you’re interested in how the URLs of your site might be treated under this process, it’s worth spending some time with the patent filing itself to get a grasp of the technical details. Keep in mind that the processes from this patent application may not be the ones that Yahoo may presently be using at this time,

A cautionary note - changing the URLs to your pages, especially if those URLs have been around for a while and are indexed by search engines, is an undertaking that shouldn’t be started without careful consideration, and without using a cautious approach that keeps the risk behind such a change to a minimum. Such an approach can include using proper redirects (permanent 301 redirects) to any new URLs for external links pointed to pages of the site, actually changing URLs in internal links to the new addresses upon the site itself, and other technical methods that might help a site retain its rankings in search engines. How a search engine might react to changes to the URLs of the pages of a site can vary from one search engine to another, and traffic to the pages of a site may be negatively impacted by such a change for a period of time regardless of how carefully such a change is implemented.

12 Content Strategies To Make SEO Great

Its been said time and again, to search engines, “content is king”, but when it really comes down to it, many companies say they don’t have the time, patience, or budget for content creation. It begs the question; why then should they be ranked high in the search results? Maybe, just maybe, they’re not thinking about it logically and aren’t considering all the options at their disposal.

Here are 12 different types of content (not necessarily mutually exclusive) that when implemented properly, can drive tremendous volumes of visitors, links, and even business:

1. widgets/badges - for those unfamiliar with widgets, a widget is typically an interactive tool, that can be embedded in a web page. Since they’re interactive, often they can help potential clients find solutions quicker than they otherwise might have, making them a very powerful online marketing tool. Sometimes widgets are also made available for download to other websites, making them a powerful link acquisition tool too. Below is an example of one such widget.


2. videos - a good video is difficult to beat. People like to hear and see things for themselves, as opposed to reading about them, or being told about them. Video makes this possible, and accordingly is very popular. At the same time, video can be instructional, entertaining, and/or informational. When well done, videos will drive tremendous volumes of traffic, links, and/or potential clients to a site … and offers additional opportunities to appear in the search results


3. images - if a picture can say a 1000 words, then its also possible for images to generate 1000 visitors or links. We’ve seen many client sites, who’s images drive 20%+ of their overall website traffic volumes. In many cases, images are the reason people visit websites … they need to see what they’re buying! All that to say, do not underestimate the power of good quality images!


4. research - people often buy from websites they’ve heard about before, because familiarity breeds loyalty and trust. One means of breeding familiarity and trust is to perform and publish unique research that others in your industry or potential clients will find useful. When well thought out, timely, and topical, such research can generate thousands of links, visitors, and potential clients. Good research also helps to establish you as an authority in your space.


5. awards - everyone likes to receive cudos, or acknowledgement of a job well done! Now image that you as a site owner offer the ability for others to take those cudos, and post them on their site for all to see. Its a powerful tool, often generating thousands of visitors and/or links.


6. contests - while not for every business, contests can generate alot of relevant links, and accordingly help a site rank much better. The key is to ensure that the contest somehow relates to your business.


7. news - sites that are routinely first to publish industry news, are often visited more frequently, generate more links, and are viewed more as industry authorities. Alternatively, those running news stories after the fact, typically don’t experience all these benefits, unless they add some value or unique intepretation angle. Of course, one way to ensure the news is new and fresh is to make the news (aka a publicity stunt) … so get creative!


8. blog posts - perhaps one of the most popular techniques to create content, and one of the most poorly done! Most don’t understand the subtle nuances of creating blog content. I’ve posted about it previously (12 Common Blogging Mistakes to Avoid) as have many others, but the majority still continue to write blog content as if it were for another form of offline media.


Blog content generally consists of one of the four types listed below:


a. editorial/opinion based

b. entertaining

c. resource/educational

d. news (see #7 above)

The type you choose should be based on your objectives.


9. do something “remarkable” - if a company truly does something remarkable and unique, and publishes it on their site, the content will take on a life of its own. What does this mean? Well, if you’re a sausage manufacturer, manufacture the largest sausage on the planet. If you own a burger joint, offer a $2700 burger on the menu. Even if no one ever orders it, its something to mention on your website, and something interesting that others will notice and talk about (which results in links, visitors, and often clients). Consider this term alone “most expensive martini” … there are 1200 mentions on it in Google, and presumably a good number of those mentions link to it!


10. create an ebook - much easier said than done, but creating a ebook can result in perceived authority, visitors, links, and …. business!


11. make and distribute applications - if you can find a way to make potential clients lives easier (online or offline), it can have a profound impact. Creating an online application such as a WordPress plugin, a calculator, or industry software, and hosting it for download via your site, can increase awareness of your site, your perceived authority in the industry, attract large volumes of visitors, links, and yes, even business.

12. user generated content - content added by others, is content that you didn’t have to add yourself. With most business owner’s arguing they don’t have the time or budget for content, user generated content (UGC) would appear to be a logical solution. Although, most business owners then become concerned with their inability to control the content. Precautions can be taken however in most situations, making UGC a solution worth investigating.

Google Releases Major Blog Search Blogroll Algorithm Update

The much awaited update to the Google Blog Search blogroll detector algorithm has finally been pushed through.

An updated Google Groups thread has Googler, Jeremy Hylton saying:

We have launched a ranking change that reduces the number of results that are returned because of blogroll matches. There are still problems to work out, but this change appears to be a big improvement over our earlier fix. We had originally planned to launch an experiment for link: queries, but decide more recently to release this change first. We are still working on the link: change and expect to have that ready in a few more weeks.

We did expect to see an update for how Google Blog Search responds to the link query, but as Jeremy said, that won't be released yet for the next few weeks. But the blogroll matching detector, which matches for keywords in the blogroll sections of sites, should no longer return results for those keywords.

Why does this matter? Well, lets say you are like me and you track who links or mentions you via Google Blog Search. If someone has the Search Engine Roundtable in the blogroll, and the do a daily blog post, even if that blog post doesn't mention the Search Engine Roundtable, blog search would show that new blog post as a match. Why? Because it is in the blogroll and Google thinks it is part of the content of the blog post. Google said they fixed this issue but they do want feedback at the Google Groups thread.

Is Flash Being Indexed By Search Engines?

It seems that once a year for the past five years or so, a search engine representative will stand up at a conference and announce that they are now indexing Flash. Website designers jump with glee, and SEOs lament that all the work they did educating their clients on why they need to curb their use of Flash will be for naught.

Think of it this way, if Flash were a food, it would be an herb or a spice. Let’s say it’s basil. While basil is great in pesto, it’s not something that you’d typically make an entire meal out of. You use it to add flavor to your tortellini. And yet designers across the world—as well as CEOs who want to appear cool—want huge chunks of their websites in Flash. Sigh.

Of course if the search engines truly are indexing Flash this time around, then what’s the problem?

Flash sites certainly can do some neat tricks. People can interact with them in ways they can’t with a typical plain-Jane HTML website. Interaction is certainly good, as it can make a site “sticky.” And people pass around fun websites to their friends so they can make the little balls spin, or play with the cool virtual cubes. This is great for some websites which are looking to entertain people.

If, on the other hand, your company wants people to actually understand what you do when they come to your website, how does playing with the spinning balls further this goal? I don’t personally find it endearing to have to guess what’s behind each ball or cube when I mouse over it and it makes a funny sound or explodes and perhaps shows a single word or cute saying. If I’m looking to kill time, I might visit your site. But if I’m wondering if you’re a good fit for my needs at the moment, I don’t want to do a puzzle to figure this out. Instead, I am likely to seek out your competitor that provides me with information, rather than games.

As you can tell, I’m not a fan of cool Flash sites for a typical business. But what about those that have a more basic Flash site that does indeed provide information? For them, I would ask, why Flash? If you don’t need to allow your visitors to interact with your website, then why not just use HTML with Flash accents? Because even if the search engines are indexing the information contained in Flash (more on this in a bit), there are other reasons not to use it. First and foremost, not every browser has Flash installed. In fact, currently on an iPhone, Flash shows up as a little blue cube. Second, many Flash-based sites use only one URL for the entire site. Besides the search engine implications of that, it is also a nightmare for bookmarking, as well as for most web analytics programs.

So, even if search engines are indeed indexing the information in Flash, my recommendation is still to not design your entire website with it.

With that out of the way, I just rolled up my sleeves and started looking at how Google is currently treating Flash and whether websites can do just as well in the search results even if important information is contained within Flash.


Guess what? Most Flash is still highly invisible in Google.

To test this, I went directly to some Flash sites, and pasted exact words contained within their Flash into Google (using quotes) and most of the sites did not show up in the search results. Upon review of the source code of two sites that did show up I found that one was using the phrase I looked for within their Meta description (see… meta descriptions actually DO count for something with Google, despite what some will tell you). The other site had lots of text within the code beneath the Flash so that search engines and browsers without Flash would have some meaningful info. While that’s a good alternative, the info they had was very different from the info contained in their Flash. That’s a bit of a dangerous game to play with the search engines if you ask me. If that info is good enough for search engines and iPhones, why isn’t it good enough for your most important users?

The other thing I noticed was that even on pages that used Flash sparingly, if they had words in the Flash files, a search for those exact words would not typically pull up the HTML page that the Flash was embedded on. However, when performing a search for the exact phrase plus only .swf filetypes (which is what most Flash files use as an extension), the Flash files themselves do show up in the results. This tells me that the Google reps were kind of telling the truth about Flash being indexed, but that it doesn’t do website owners much good in a real world setting.

Google searches for the brand names of Flash sites do bring up the sites in the search results (note that their brand is typically in the Title tag). So if that’s all you care about, then using all Flash shouldn’t be a problem for you. However, if you’re interested in showing up in the search results for people who may not have already heard of you, i.e., those seeking out exactly what you offer rather than your brand name, then you may want to rethink the cool factor and go for the smart one instead!

Way Of Google Analyzing The Top Keywords On The Site

Google recently filed a patent application that deals with the keywords that Google finds on your web pages.

Google's new patent filing describes a way for website owners to view the top phrases that Google assigned to their website. The patent shows that Google finds the most important keywords on a website with a phrase-based indexing system and it describes a method that could allow website owners to add additional related keywords.

How does Google find the top keywords of your website?

All major search engines index web pages based on the individual words that they find on the page. If certain words and phrases appear together on the same page, search engines assign a topic that is related to these words to the page.
For example, the words "Paris" and "Hilton" are associated with a woman instead of a city and a hotel, the words "Tiger" and "Woods" are associated with golf.

Google's patent application indicates that Google might plan to tell you what they believe are the top keywords for your website and let you suggest changes to these phrases.

How can Google find the relation between words?

Google has billions of web pages in its index. If Google finds that many web pages contain both the word "Paris" and the word "Hilton" then Google might assume that these keywords are related. The other words on these pages could give Google a hint that this special word combination is about a woman.

Words that frequently appear very close to each other could get a tighter connection. Google has a lot of algorithms that allow them to calculate the relation between different words.

What does this mean for your website?

Google does not allow you to suggest your keywords through a form yet. That means that you must use other methods to tell Google for which keywords you want to be listed on Google's result pages. That's why search engine optimization is so important.

Here are some things that you can do to show search engines that your site is relevant to a special topic:

• Use a meaningful site architecture
  

Use a logical system to organize your website content. Create content sections that deal with different parts of your main topic and make sure that everything that is related to your topic is mentioned on your web pages.

Make sure that your web pages are put in the right categories on your website and that it's easy to find the different categories.

• Create web pages that use different relevant search terms
  

If you want to get high rankings for the keyword "shoes" then it's not enough to mention the keyword "shoes" on your website.

You must also use related keywords such as "sneakers", "boots", "sandals", "footwear", etc. to show Google that your website is relevant to the general topic.

• Find out why other pages rank higher than yours
  

If you ever asked yourself why another page has been ranked higher than yours although you perfectly optimized your pages for your search terms then you should analyze the inbound links of the top ranked pages.

The number and the authority of inbound links are important. However, it's also important that the links come from semantically and topically related pages.

Don't focus on a single keyword when optimizing your pages. Modern search engine algorithms require you to create a website that has been optimized for many different but related search terms.

How To Use PPC For SEO Benefits?

Pay per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) are widely used for search engine marketing, but are mostly performed in isolation to one another. The cross utilization of data is seldom seen, which if done, could potentially produce far better results.The idea behind this post is to ascertain how best PPC can be used to gain useful insights, which when implemented in search engine optimization can help us derive improved results. Mentioned below are few tasks that can be performed better by using PPC to ‘test the waters’.

1. Keyword selection: There is no shortage of free and paid keyword research tools but the data presented by them is not always accurate. Many of us would have learnt this fact the ‘hard way’ – by optimizing for keywords that don’t deliver targeted traffic, or for that matter any traffic at all. It is a costly mistake both in terms of time and money.

PPC can be used to determine the ‘traffic generation capacity’ of keywords by mining raw data such as number of impressions for that particular keyword. This data can be extrapolated to predict the traffic yielding capacity of keywords. Optimizing the website for such keywords would therefore drive more traffic to the website.

2. Building a wider keyword portfolio: Every website has a set of core terms it wants to rank for, in addition to other semantically similar key phrases. High rankings for core terms will deliver maximum targeted traffic, but at the same time the importance of ranking for secondary terms cannot discounted.

By running a PPC campaign for core terms on broad match, we can identify keywords other than the core terms that trigger the ad. This will not only help in building a database of relevant keywords that are searched for, but also assist in ascertaining keywords that Google considers relevant to the core terms. Tapping these keywords along with the primary keywords would therefore channel more visitors to the website.

3. Judging keyword efficacy: As everything else in search engine marketing, not all keywords are made equal. It is a well established fact that some keywords convert better than others, but the only certain way of knowing keywords that convert better is to test.

PPC is a quick and efficient way to check the ‘conversion potential’ of both the primary and secondary key phrases. Optimizing your website for keywords that drive conversion is a sure shot way of generating more revenue.

4. Writing compelling descriptions: Meta description may have lost its importance as a ranking factor but plays a crucial role in enhancing ‘click through rate’ for organic listing. In short, it is the ‘ad copy’ for organic listing.

PPC can be used to test different versions of ad copies and their corresponding click through rate. The best performing ad copies, based on their click through rate, can then be improvised to develop Meta descriptions that are likely to attract more clicks.

5. Testing landing pages: A website that does not have the potential to convert visitors into customers is no good.

In order to create a landing page that facilitates conversions it will need to be tested, modified, and tested in an iterative manner. Since PPC has the propensity to deliver quality traffic quickly, testing can be performed without waiting for organic rankings and the consequent traffic.

The whole exercise of leveraging PPC to build a high performing SEO campaign has an additional bonus attached to it – you get the ‘best of both worlds’ and here’s how.

It is a well established fact that an online marketing campaign produces best results when search engine optimization and PPC are implemented in tandem, and compliment each other.

After initial spillage and fine tuning, the PPC campaign that is being used to churn data will start to deliver positive return on investment. Synergizing the PPC campaign with your search engine optimization campaign will result in a holistic search engine marketing campaign. This is bound to deliver best results. And our philosophy is - why settle for less when you can get the best.

Is Link Building Necessary For A Website?

Everyone in the field of internet marketing knows that without link building, your site will not be valued by search engines. Also, we agree that links are a path through which our prospects can reach to us. Most importantly, we need to develop high quality links to outrank our competitors.

Link building is not easy, however. It requires hard work, creativity, patience, and a lot of timel. This job becomes more challenging when you hear remarks like "This technique is not good; it will not work for your website ranking," "This is unethical," and much more. In a real sense, these are inevitable comments.

We are constantly being questioned by our clients about what works and what doesn’t work, so I thought I would compile a quick list of misleading link building statements to help our clients.

#1 Outbound links can kill rankings

• “Linking out to other sites isn’t worth doing because you drive people away from your website.”
• “All outbound links leak Page Rank.”

My verdict: If you send your visitors to useful content often enough, they’ll keep coming back for more.

A site cannot "drop" or "lose" PageRank by linking out. Also, there are few ways of linking to other sites that don't result in leaks. The best option is to set “rel” attribute i.e., rel="nofollow". The fact is search engines not only look how the site links in, but also check how it links out. Sites with a lot of incoming and reciprocal links can only be viewed negatively by search engines.

Tip: Link to websites that will benefit you. Linking to authoritative sources can help establish visibility and build credibility. Outbound links hold a lot more weight than is generally perceived.

#2 Reciprocal links won't work

A common myth concerning reciprocal links is that if you exchange links with sites, you will not get any value of those links in rankings.

My verdict: It’s not true that reciprocal linking is bad. If you link to a site you liked and this site also link to you (depends on site requirement), there is nothing bad about it. And it will pay you in terms of ranking for sure. Besides, the wrong way of reciprocal linking is creating a link page on a website and then trading links with other websites' link pages with the intention of “Give link and get link.”

Always remember, Google will never penalize the site that has backlinks coming from relevant and quality sites.

Tip: Stay within your domain and it should not be your only linking strategy.

#3 Link with a Page That has a High Page Rank

Get 25% links from PR-5

15 % links from PR- 4

10% links from PR- 3 and so on….

PR…PR ….PR. One of the major concerns of clients. Even service providers differentiate their services by offering the highest percentage of links from high PR sites.

My verdict: We think it’s totally misleading your prospects. We (SEO professionals) know quality and relevancy is paramount, so why do we always try to fool our customers by using statement like this?

Who says backlinks from PR 5 is better than PR 1? Look at this PR calculation formula:

PR (A) = 1 – d + d ( PR(B) / L(B) + PR(C) / L(C) + PR(D) / L(D) + ….. )

d = 0.85 (damping factor derived statistically)

The final Page Rank of your web page equals to 1-0.85 + 0.85 x (PR/ number of outbound link).

Now, for instance, you have web page A. You are getting links from two pages: one is B and other is C.

Page B (page rank- 5, number of outbound links – 100)

Page C (page rank- 1, number of outbound links – 10)

According to the formula above, if web page A gets link from page B, the final PR will be 0.15 + 0.85 x 5/100= 0.193.

And if A gets a link from C, the final PR will be approximately 0.24.

So you see, the final PR value of Page A will be better if linking with C has PR 1 than linking with a page B that has PageRank 5.

Tip: It is advisable to check the total number of outbound links on a page and the quality of a webpage rather than PR only.

#4 Linking With High PR websites!

“Always Link with High PR page.”

Another misleading concept. There are a lot of differences between websites and web pages.

My verdict: A high PR website indicates the PR of the home page and web page can be any of the inner pages. Google assigns PR only to a particular web page and not to the whole site. Therefore, home page PR cannot pass value to the inner pages of website.

Tip: It is imperative to check the PR of a web page and, most importantly, the relevance of that particular page from where the link is sourced.

#5 Permanent link building

“Links can be permanent.”

This is the biggest myth that makes service providers' pitch sound compelling to most of their prospects.

My verdict: Links cannot be permanent. Getting links on other sites depends on the webmaster of that site. He can either keep it for long or remove it, all up to his or her requirement. We cannot take direct control on others' sites. However, we can take assurance from them to keep the links for a particular time period (6 months, 3 months, etc.) and not forever.

Tip: Develop links that can pay you longer, not even stay longer.

#6 Paid links are unethical

There is much conversation around paid links, like:

“Paid links are unethical; Google can penalize you for paid links.”

My verdict: What is the differentiating factor between natural links and paid links? Or how could you detect paid links? No way at all, but there could be guesses about paid links, like developing a large number of links within limited time period, with most of the backlinks from High PR sites, links from irrelevant sites, or many other quality issues. If you know these things can pull Google to suspect your sites, it’s better to avoid these types of links while buying.

Paid links are none other than paid advertisements. If you can post banner and text ads, then why not links?

Tip: For quality links, it would be better to go for experienced and authorized link builders (who know the real purpose of link development and could give your website maximum business) rather than linking networks. Don't even buy links in bulk and pay for only those links that can return you more.

How To Find That A Blog Link Is Useful Or Waste?

Sometimes when you’re on the prowl looking to acquire links via link trades, buying links or contributing optimized content to a blog in return for a link or two, you can run into some sites which may seem like you’ve struck link gold .. but these opportunities may prove too good to be true.

Case in point, you may find some site owners who are more or less giving away good links on sites with high PageRank or lots of incoming links, but what may look like incredible places to get links from, but I highly suggest taking a deeper look before striking a deal. Here are some red flags to look for when judging the quality of a site.

Topic Irrelevance : Is the site’s content relevant to its theme or URL? Site relevance is one of the first things I look at when judging the quality of a site or linking partner. If it’s a blog, are all of the posts about the genre or theme of the site? Or are they just blatant reviews designed to make money. If the answer is the latter, then that site has no real value and will probably lose anything it currently has going for it right now. If so, the value of your link will be nothing, or some negative value could be associated with your link.

Dropped Domains : Look through the history of the site via Archive.org and its Whois information to see if the site has been dropped. Google looks at two aspects with dropped or transferred domains : has the site changed hands and has the site changed content.

If you find an obvious site like CatholicsforLieberman.org with lots of juicy association or church links pointing to it, and the site is a Wordpress blog running off a default template and blogging about office furniture, stay away from it; it’s been dropped, picked up and all of its old good content was replaced with crap.

Buy a Sponsored Post Buttons : I’m not going to name any companies, but there are a lot of paid blogging review companies out there. Some use good blogs, are responsible and a bit under the radar, others are pure garbage and will result in negative association with a bad linking neighborhood. If you see buttons to buy a post on a blog, WITH A PRICE, and the posts say “Sponsored Post”, and you see that the links in the posts don’t use a no-follow .. hit your back button NOW!

Penises, Viagra and Poker : OK, this should be a given but if the site or blog which you are thinking about obtaining a link from links out to or writes about online gambling sites, penis enlargement or sex pills like Viagra, there’s a 99% chance that you’re about to obtain a link from a spam blog (or splog). Don’t do it. Don’t even think about it … unless you sell penis pumps or have an online poker spam site (and if you do, I hope you’re thinking of better ways of getting links … like comment spamming Search Engine Journal or Daily SEO Tip!)

Generic Wordpress Defaults : Not all blogs with generic Wordpress templates are spam, but a lot of the spam blogs I run into do not venture too far away from the freebie Wordpress templates available from Fantastico or basic Wordpress template sites. You’ve probably seen these when you first develop a Wordpress blog.

Also, check their “About Us” page, if it says the following, the blog could be spam, new, or just lacking some basic TLC :

This is an example of a WordPress page, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many pages like this one or sub-pages as you like and manage all of your content inside of WordPress.

I really do use this as a quality indicator and if I find a good blog for becoming a link partner with and I see that they have not changed their About Us page, I usually make sure they do so before embarking on a blogging or link campaign with them.

Tips To Track Email Marketing Campaigns

Email campaigns are a cost-effective way of attracting quality return visitors to your site. It's important that you tag your email campaigns with campaign tags so that you can track how well each email performs. This lets you optimize your efforts and track your return on investment.

What are campaign tags?

Campaign tags are additional information that you apply to links. Once a link is clicked, the tag information is passed to Google Analytics. Tagged links allow you to evaluate the performance of individual links within your emails.

Why tag email links?

Let's say that you send out an email newsletter in January and February that does not use campaign tags. Visitors coming from emails reported within the Referring Sites Report will only include visitors coming from web-based email clients like Gmail:


But, did they visit your website as a result of the January email or the February email? Unless you've used campaign tags, you'll have no way of knowing.

Visitors who click a link in your email using an email client on their computer will be reported as Direct Traffic -- and will therefore be grouped in with visitors who used bookmarks or who typed your website's URL into their browser.

A quick reference for tagging emails

The Google Analytics URL Builder is a great tool for generating tagged links to use within your email campaigns.
For more information vist Google Analytics Blog

Do Setting Up A Blog Gives Out Quick SEO Solution?

Sometimes, I feel that the emphasis on blogs and blogging have taken dangerous heights. Especially with someone who has to sell his products online. There’s enough and more information flowing around that says setting up a blog on your site is the “band aid” to your falling SERP ranks.

I should disagree with this statement. Not only because it sounds too easy and vague but also because it is wrong.

Most of my clients do have an old website, which has a falling SERPs record and are looking for a healing process. Some are still doing good while some have serious issues such as page not being indexed and “penalty like” issues.

Its a bit surprising when most of them suggest blogs as a solution. Probably from what they’ve heard over on the internet, but the expectations from a blog is just too much and hyped I must say !

Blogs do help in oiling back the machine but I’m seriously concerned over the “setting up a blog” part of it.

I strongly disagree that just by setting up a blog, some miracle is going to happen. No.

Blogs and social media should be embraced in the right way with lot of commitment and involvement. You should be able to “utilize” blogs and the social media channels to your benefit. You should still be able to deliver content frequently, should be able to connect with the audience and on top of all able to deliver quality without actually promoting your products directly. Its easy to piss off people with your content and in blogging its a bit too easy to. So you have to be really careful with it.

There’s a lot more to using blogging and social media as a platform to sell your products. It doesn’t end with setting up a blog, adding some meta keywords and waiting for the traffic to rush in.

Having said that blogs are good tools to bring in that much needed traffic rush and google juices to your failing site, if you use them effectively that is.

So essentially, setting up a blog is a good thing, but not definitely a quick solution. Its only a starting point and there’s quite a lot more to go. The time, effort and commitment required to bring in the traffic is almost as equal as in a normal site.

Five SEO Tips to ensure a first page rank for your blog posts

Search Engines love blogs. And we all know it well, which is the reason why we have blogs either on blogger.com or on self hosted WordPress. But when everyone had a new blog, then wouldn’t the advantages be cancelled out equally ? Probably yes. Only blogs that have managed to gather up some moss..err..the authority would have a clear advantage over others. Stories these blogs publish would most definitely be on the first page, even if they have a not-so-good onsite optimization. This is most likely due to the enviable amount of backlinks they have gathered.So for comparatively new blogs , what are the chances of ranking high for freshly published stories ? Do they stand a chance to compete against the big boys ?

I’m happy to say that the answer is yes.

With the search engine love and the technical excellence of blogs, its quite possible to get a first page rank on fresh stories no matter what your competition is.

1. Write stories with lot of text and optimize it well

I’ve found that stories that have lot of text with optimized content do well on the SERPS, even when the stories are published minutes earlier. The possible reason is that such articles give search engines a lot to chew on and make out as to what “topic” the article is about. An adequate amount of text would be around 300-500 words in my opinion. However when the competition is tougher, writing even more lengthy stories with headings, titles, images and all possible on site optimization weapons do help.

2. Leverage on the title space

You have around 50 characters. Use that space to write the best titles that are relevant as well as attractive. Most of the times, the title relevancy to the keyword search is a huge factor in getting a top rank. so use it well.

3. If possible get some link backs from the social media

Its probably unfair to say that you need backlinks on a fresh story. Its not a necessary, however if you can manage to get a few, that would be great. And I’m not talking about the regular link back from a normal site, but some high-traffic social media sites. A dofollow is awesome, but even if its a nofollow but on a highly accessed page – great. Don’t ever spam for backlinks please, your story has to be equally interesting, worthy enough for good traffic.

4. Check what’s already there on the SERPS

A good strategy would be to find out if the story you are going to publish has competition already on the SERPS. Try searching for possible related searches on Google. Find out the age of the post, and if the top ten results are saturated with relevant stories. If the stories around the 5-10 results are not directly targeted to the search term (possibly a content match) then you have a higher chance to win.

5. Be clever, use the headers wisely

When writing quick posts, bloggers don’t really make use of the header tags, or that’s what I see. We have a whole range of them starting with H1. A simple H1 is good, but if you use the others, its still a lot of added weight. So use them properly and include your possible keywords in them. Again, no keyword stemming please, but use it a natural looking way.

Having said that, there is no guarantee to a first page rank and a lot depends on your blogs history and general SEO health. But a good research and proper content design will do half the job in getting there. There are lot of young blogs that enjoy a steady and healthy traffic from search engines, due to their consistency in posting well optimized articles. They have very few backlinks, page ranks not exceeding PR 2 and domain ages of around 1 year or so. But almost all their stories are on the front page if not Rank No.1 – which is a good achievement I’d say.

How Google Hadles Redirected Links And Nofollowed Links?

Matt Cutts of Google has posted two short videos on the topic of links. One video answers how Google handles links that are 301 redirected and the other video answers how Google handles nofollowed links from authority sources.

Here is Matt’s video on 301 redirects where the question asked is does anchor text carry through all 301 redirects:

His answer, if you don’t want to watch it is. Typically yes, but Google deserves the right to pick which they pass. If all your links are through 301 redirects, then that looks suspicious.

Matt’s second video on nofollowed links answers two questions. The first, does Nofollow tag devalue the Google algorithms? The second, does Google take into account nofollowed links from authority sites, such as Wikipedia? Even thought it is nofollowed?

His answers, if you don’t want to watch the video are:

(Q) Does Nofollow tag devalue the Google algorithms? (A) Matt said the nofollow is used very rarely on the web, relative to all the links on the web. He said it is “miniscule” compared to all the links.

(Q) Does Google take into account nofollowed links from authority sites, such as Wikipedia? Even thought it is nofollowed? (A) Google doesn’t take into account the nofollowed Wikipedia links. But people may find your resource via Wikipedia and link to you without a nofollow from their site, so that might help you.

Matt did add that if a site has a lot of trust, like Wikipedia, does deserve the right to take the nofollow off. But it is up to the site to decide if they want to take off that nofollow tag. Matt goes as far to say that Google would support Wikipedia if they want to put into their policy a way of removing nofollow links from trusted editors and their content.

How To Make Ads More Effective?

At Google, they believe that ads are a valuable source of information — one that can connect people to the advertisers offering products, services and ideas that interest them. By making ads more relevant, and improving the connection between advertisers and their users, Google can create more value for everyone. Users get more useful ads, and these more relevant ads generate higher returns for advertisers and publishers. Advertising is the lifeblood of the digital economy: it helps support the content and services we all enjoy for free online today, including much of our news, search, email, video and social networks.

That's why Google has worked hard to create technology that makes the advertising on our own sites, and those of our partners, as relevant as possible. To date, we have shown ads based mainly on what your interests are at a specific moment. So if you search for [digital camera] on Google, you'll get ads related to digital cameras. If you are visiting the website of one of their AdSense partners, you would see ads based on the content of the page. For example, if you're reading a sports page on a newspaper website, we might show ads for running shoes. Or we can show ads for home maintenance services alongside a YouTube video instructing you on how to perform a simple repair. There are some situations, however, where a keyword or the content of a web page simply doesn't give us enough information to serve highly relevant ads.

We think we can make online advertising even more relevant and useful by using additional information about the websites people visit. Today we are launching "interest-based" advertising as a beta test on our partner sites and on YouTube. These ads will associate categories of interest — say sports, gardening, cars, pets — with your browser, based on the types of sites you visit and the pages you view. We may then use those interest categories to show you more relevant text and display ads.

We believe there is real value to seeing ads about the things that interest you. If, for example, you love adventure travel and therefore visit adventure travel sites, Google could show you more ads for activities like hiking trips to Patagonia or African safaris. While interest-based advertising can infer your interest in adventure travel from the websites you visit, you can also choose your favorite categories, or tell us which categories you don't want to see ads for. Interest-based advertising also helps advertisers tailor ads for you based on your previous interactions with them, such as visits to their websites. So if you visit an online sports store, you may later be shown ads on other websites offering you a discount on running shoes during that store's upcoming sale.

Our advertisers and publisher partners have been asking us for a long time to offer interest-based advertising. Advertisers need an efficient way to reach those who are most interested in their products and services. And publishers can generate more revenue when they connect advertisers to interested audiences.

This kind of tailored advertising does raise questions about user choice and privacy — questions the whole online ad industry has a responsibility to answer. Many companies already provide interest-based advertising and they address these issues in different ways. For our part, we're launching interest-based advertising with three important features that demonstrate our commitment to transparency and user choice.

• Transparency - Google clearly label most of the ads provided by Google on the AdSense partner network and on YouTube. You can click on the labels to get more information about how we serve ads, and the information we use to show you ads. This year Google will expand the range of ad formats and publishers that display labels that provide a way to learn more and make choices about Google's ad serving.
• Choice - Google have built a tool called Ads Preferences Manager, which lets you view, delete, or add interest categories associated with your browser so that you can receive ads that are more interesting to you.
• Control - You can always opt out of the advertising cookie for the AdSense partner network here. To make sure that your opt-out decision is respected (and isn't deleted if you clear the cookies from your browser), we have designed a plug-in for your browser that maintains your opt-out choice.
  

Keyword advertising has been so successful because it's useful to users, advertisers and publishers — everyone's interests are aligned. We believe that interest-based ads will create the same virtuous cycle, by giving users more relevant ads, while generating higher returns for advertisers and publishers.

Nine Factors That Affect Web Usability And SEO

I have already given out 30 tips that a webmaster has to consider while constructing a website. Here I would drop some nine factors which is really important for the web usability and SEO.

Optimizing web pages for search engines does not mean creating special pages for search engines. Optimizing web pages for search engines is often the same as optimizing web pages for web surfers.If you do it correctly, your website will be attractive to both web surfers and search engine spiders. The following list shows nine factors that can improve the usability of your website as well as your search engine rankings.

1. You should have fast loading web pages

Usability: Web surfers don't want to wait for web pages.

Search engine optimization: Search engines can index your web pages more easily.

2. Your web pages should be easy to read

Usability: It's easier for web surfers to read your web pages.

Search engine optimization: Near-white text on a white background and tiny text is considered spam by most search engines.

3. The contents of your web pages should be clearly arranged

Usability: Clear headings, paragraphs and bullet lists make your web pages easier to read.

Search engine optimization: Clear headings, paragraphs and bullet lists make it easier for search engines to find the topic of your web pages.

4. Your web page images should use the IMG ALT attribute

Usability: Web surfers with images turned off and visually impaired visitors will be able to see the content of your images.

Search engine optimization: Search engines cannot index the content of your images but they can index the content of the IMG ALT attribute.

5. You should use custom 404 not found error pages

Usability: If your 404 not found page contains links to other pages of your website or a search form then people might remain on your website.

Search engine optimization: Proper 404 error pages make sure that search engines index the right pages of your website.

6. Your website should be easy to navigate

Usability: Clear and concise navigation links that are easy to find help your website visitors to find content on your site.

Search engine optimization: Clear and concise navigation links that contain your keywords make it easy for search engines to index all of your web pages.

7. Important content is above the fold

Usability: Web surfers with small computer screens can quickly see what your web page is about.

Search engine optimization: The sooner your important content appears in the HTML code of your web pages, the more likely it is that it will be indexed by search engines.

8. Your web page titles are explanatory

Usability: If web surfers bookmark your web pages, a clear web page title will help them to find it again.

Search engine optimization: The web page title is one of the most important SEO elements. It should contain your keywords and it should look attractive so that web surfers click on it when they see your web page title in the search results.

9. The URLs of your web pages are meaningful and self-explanatory

Usability: It's much easier to remember a web page like www.example.com/support than a web page like www.example.com/123123-werwc.php?2342234.

Search engine optimization: If your URLs contain your keywords, this can have a positive effect on your search engine rankings. Dynamic URLs with many variables can lead to problems with search engine spiders.

Can A Web Page Have More Than 100 Links?

Most of them have a doubt whether a web page can have more than 100 links in it. It depends on certain conditions:

The original reason is that Google used to index only about 100 kilobytes of a page. When we thought about how many links a page might reasonably have and still be under 100K, it seemed about right to recommend 100 links or so. If a page started to have more than that many links, there was a chance that the page would be so long that Google would truncate the page and wouldn’t index the entire page.

These days, Google will index more than 100K of a page, but there’s still a good reason to recommend keeping to under a hundred links or so: the user experience. If you’re showing well over 100 links per page, you could be overwhelming your users and giving them a bad experience. A page might look good to you until you put on your “user hat” and see what it looks like to a new visitor.

But in some cases, it might make sense to have more than a hundred links. Does Google automatically consider a page spam if your page has over 100 links? No, not at all. The “100 links” recommendation is in the “Design and content” guidelines section, and it’s the Quality guidelines that contain the things that we consider webspam (stuff like hidden text, doorway pages, installing malware, etc.). Can pages with over 100 links be spammy? Sure, especially if those links are hidden or keyword-stuffed. But pages with lots of links are not automatically considered spammy by Google.

So how might Google treat pages with well over a hundred links? If you end up with hundreds of links on a page, Google might choose not to follow or to index all those links. At any rate, you’re dividing the PageRank of that page between hundreds of links, so each link is only going to pass along a minuscule amount of PageRank anyway. Users often dislike link-heavy pages too, so before you go overboard putting a ton of links on a page, ask yourself what the purpose of the page is and whether it works well for the user experience.

Google Analytics Getting Started Guide

Google Analytics is absolutely free to use and there are many benefits that come with installing it on your site. We've listed the top five things you can do as soon as you start tracking your site with Analytics:

1. AdWords advertisers can make Analytics available right in their AdWords account as a separate tab through a simple linking process. Advertisers can review extra data for their online campaigns by tracking landing page quality and conversions (goals), and pick out their highest performing ads.
   You can also use Analytics to track other Google products including AdSense, Blogger, and Google Sites.

2. See which pages drive the most pageviews on your site from the Top Content report. This report can answer questions you have about your most or least effective pages - for example, a high bounce rate indicates a landing page that should be redesigned or tailored to the specific ad which links to it.

3. Which groups of visitors became customers or did something else important to the success of your business? You can get key insights for these questions by setting up goals.

4. Grant other people in your company or organization access so that they are restricted to viewing reports in a profile or given full access to help manage your entire account as an administrator.
5. There are over 80 reports with customizable, drag-and-drop interfaces. You can also create your own reports with Custom Reporting, create the segments you want to see with Advanced Segmentation, or view multi-dimensional views of your data with Motion Charts.
   

Best SEO Tips For WebMasters!

Optimization for the sites has to be done from the time of designing. I would drop here 30 steps which would help the webmasters to design the website with the Optimization process.

The steps goes as follows:
Tip No. 1

- Study and read everything possible about advanced SEO techniques right from the start of your project.

Tip No. 2

- Always keep in mind that designs are cool, but what is equally important is the code that goes behind it.

Tip No. 3

- Always keep the code optimized, check for W3C compliance right from the start.

Tip No. 4

- Follow the basics, titles, meta tags are still important if not ignored, so keep space for them.

Tip No. 5

- Keep a horizontal directory structure, don’t go too deep with them, the search engines likes easy access to any file in the quickest time.

Tip No. 6

- When you name the files and directories, keep it descriptive and simple. Keep away numbers and weird characters.

Tip No. 7

- Images better be optimized for size, and quick loading. If you can’t keep away from loading that fancy graphic, mix it with the page elements. Don’t make them look blunt.

Tip No. 8

- Make room for a lot of text. As you already know, search engines love text, lot of them.

Tip No. 9

- Flash files are cool. And Search engines have found better ways to crawl and index them unlike old times, but that doesn’t mean you can use them extensively blocking access to relevant text info. So if you are keen on using flash, keep alternate text versions ready.

Tip No. 10

- If you have dynamic content, make sure you keep it simple and split to parts. Also, make sure you have optimized static pages for your primary keywords.

Tip No. 11

- Always do a bit of competition analysis. See what your competition is, if they have a minimalistic design you don’t want to have a flash design, and leaving no room for improvement. Stalk your competition.

Tip No. 12

- Many web designers make the mistake of using a template through out the site and many a times this includes repeating the same title or similar page titles all over the site. Get over this, use descriptive page titles everywhere possible.

Tip No. 13

- Keep the page titles to 65 characters or less in count. Nothing wrong is going over it, but you could avoid a spill over.

Tip No. 14

- The meta descriptions are supposed to be mini ad-copies that should be descriptive of what the page is about. Don’t keep them the same for all pages.

Tip No. 15

- Keep the JavaScript away from navigation menu. Navigation menu is a good resource for gathering information about what your site is about, and using javascript can make it less crawlable by the engines.

Tip No. 16

- Use CSS based navigation if you want fancy effects. Pretty much all of the javasript stuff can be done on CSS, in a more search engines friendly way.

Tip No. 17

- Use the header tags effectively. Don’t limit yourself with H1 and H2. Use H3, H4 and beyond and use it wisely on the page.

Tip No. 18

- Use strong tags wisely. Don’t let them stand out like bolded text, within the content, style it down to show up as normal text within the content.

Tip No. 19

- Use the footer effectively. Of course, you can use it for all your TOS/Legal stuff, but also use it to link to the important pages on your site. It helps.

Tip No. 20

- Identify the most important pages on your site as seen by the search engines, and leverage them to promote other resource pages.

Tip No. 21

- Link well internally, and use descriptive anchor text instead of “click here” and “check this out” like phrases.

Tip No. 22

- Use al tags, Title tags on images and use descriptive filenames. They help search engines find more information about them.

Tip No. 23

- Use a SEO friendly layout, at least one that does not block or hinder the crawling of crucial areas on your site.

Tip No. 24

- Find out the important areas on your website, like the content rich area in the center and keep them above the fold. Not only helps the engines but the user as well.

Tip No. 25

- When designing dynamic pages, try to stick to pages with descriptive URLs and not the one with session ids and other parameters. Google can still get it’s head around them, but its good if you can stick to SE friendly, descriptive ones.

Tip No. 26

- When dealing with CMS’s there might be instances where you have to keep the page URL the default way with the extra parameters. Use URL rewrite mod to re write the most important pages URL’s to SE friendly form.

Tip No. 27

- When using AJAX, load the modules in parts split across pages and not in one single page. Although this defeats the purpose of using AJAX in the first place, you might be able to provide more information to the search engines using other on site SEO parameters.

Tip No. 28

- If you want to block any particular area on your site from the reach of Google spiders, use either Robots.txt commands, or else set up a login access. This is the safest way to block crawlers from spidering vital information.

Tip No. 29

- Keep the meta descriptions descriptive and precise to about 150 characters.

Tip No.30
- Use an SEO simulator to test your design through out the process. And make sure no part of the design blocks/hinders any part of information being accessible to the search engines.

So essentially, web designers got to ensure that while their designs are unique and eye-catchy, making sure that there is enough information available in the form of text is always recommended, and leveraging this information by using all the possible SEO metrics in a healthy and balanced way to cater to the search engines is the right way of designing a search engine friendly web design.

Control Your Search Result URL

Tracking parameters allow analytics programs to differentiate between paid ads and other sources of traffic, such as direct visits, organic searches, or referrals. They are invaluable for understanding the effectiveness of online advertising.

From an SEO perspective, URL parameters can be somewhat problematic. People who click on your ads may like the content so much that they decide to share your webpage with friends or post it on their own websites. Although this type of viral marketing is a good thing, imagine what happens if the link that they copy looks something like this:

http://www.yourwebsite.com/landingpage/?utm_campaign=FreeOffer&
utm_source=Google&utm_medium=cpc

If this link is popular enough, then search engines will begin to index this URL. It may supplant the same version of this page without tracking parameters in the search results. Clicks on this new organic result will increment the visits number for Google(cpc) when it should really be attributed to Google(organic).

One popular SEO method of dealing with this challenge is instituting a 301 redirect and storing campaign variables in a cookie. Although this prevents search engines from indexing the same content multiple times, it has the undesired effect of stripping campaign parameters and generally messing up analytics tracking (boo!).

Google now supports a new format that provides webmasters with more control over the URL that is returned in the search results. You can specify your preferred version of the URL so that properties like link popularity are consolidated to this version. Unlike the 301 redirect, this will not affect your analytics tracking.

Link Your Ads To A Particular Time On You Tube

I have already made a posting that videos are being concentrated more for SEO purposes. Since links gets more concentration when added with videos. Now the video ads are becoming popular with the people of Internet Marketing. Google now gives out other options in video ads. One can link the Ad at which part of the time he needs.

If you want to link to a specific part of a video on YouTube, you can. For example,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjDw3azfZWI#t=31m08s

Notice the “#t=31m08s” on the end of the url? That link will take you 31 minutes and 8 seconds into that video. Linking to a particular minute and second can be really helpful — for example, that link takes you straight to where someone asks Eric Schmidt a question about Twitter. From there, you can listen to his answer, where he says (among other things):

“We’re in favor of all of these new communications mechanisms. …. I think the innovation is great …. Twitter’s success is wonderful, and I think it shows you that there are many, many new ways to communicate, especially if you’re willing to do so publicly.”

Deep-linking to a specific part of a YouTube video is really easy, so I wanted give a short example to tell how to link to a certain minute and second of a video.

Do You Want To Remove A Page From Google Indexing?

Many People wants to remove a page from Google Index. Is there any way to remove it from Google’s index? People don’t usually say it like that. More likely, they say “There’s this person making crazy claims about me on the web, and the stuff they say is just off-the-wall. Can Google remove this crazy person’s page?” Or “Everybody knows that this crazy person is posting lies and twisting people’s words. Is there anything you can do about it?” Will that happen? Yes and No is the answer from Matt Cutt.

This is what Matt Cutt says " Unfortunately there’s not much I can do. The page you pointed out is not spam, and pretty much the only removals (at least in the U.S., which is what I know about) that we do for legal reasons are if a court orders us. We typically say that if person A doesn’t like a webpage B, only removing page B out of Google’s search results doesn’t do any good because webpage B is still there (e.g. it can be found by going to it directly or through other search engines). In that sense, the presence of that page in Google’s index is just reflecting the fact that the page exists on the wider web.

The best actions for you from our perspective can be one of a couple options. Either contact whoever put up webpage B and convince them to modify or to take the page down. Or if the page is doing something against the law, get a court to agree with you and force webpage B to be removed or changed. We really don’t want to be taking sides in a he-said/she-said dispute, so that’s why we typically say “Get the page fixed, changed, or removed on the web and then Google will update our index with those changes the next time that we crawl that page.” Our policies outside the U.S. might be different; I’m not as familiar with how legal stuff works outside the U.S."

Through Matt Cutt we can understand that Google will not stop indexing a page until they are forced by the law to do.

Five Tips To Optimize The Existing Links To Maximize SEO Benefits

As an SEO or Internet marketer, you’re constantly testing strategies to build new links to your sites for improved traffic and search engine rankings. But what about your existing links and link partners? Are you maximizing their potential and squeezing every little bit of benefit out of them? New links are great of course, but optimizing your existing links can have a significant impact on your SEO as well with minimal effort. Improving an existing link is usually a lot easier than obtaining a new one.

In this article, I’ll describe 5 strategies you can use today to optimize existing links to your site and increase their SEO value. This will help you to obtain more direct traffic and creep up in the search engine rankings for your targeted keywords.

1. Ask for more links

If someone links to your site, it usually means that they find value in what you have to offer or have some sort of relationship with you. Because of this, your existing link partners are more likely to change your links for you and add more in the future. Just don’t get too greedy with this strategy and push your luck. For example, if someone links to your homepage, you might email him with a relevant page and ask for a deep link as well. Furthermore, if someone links to one of your articles and you write a similar one on the same topic a few months later, you might let him know and ask for another link.

Again, don’t go overboard with this tactic. You want to get as many links as possible from your partners without seeming overly pushy and ruining the relationship. It definitely helps if you can repay the favor in some way.

2. Optimize link anchor text

A lot of times webmasters will link to your site with less-than-optimal anchor text. Anchor text is extremely important for links because it not only tells users what the resulting page is about, but it is also used by the search engines to determine the relevancy of a page to a particular keyword. For example, links to Winning the Web with the anchor text “internet marketing” will help the site to rank for that keyword. Links like “click here”, “learn more”, and “www.site.com” are unfavorable because they don’t incorporate high potential keywords.

Contact webmasters that link to you and ask them to change the anchor text for your link to include your targeted SEO keywords - especially links from high authority sites. Be sure to keep the anchor text relevant and mix it up (ideally a different variation for each link). Also, leave some anchor text unoptimized in order to appear natural to the search engines. Google will penalize your site if your link profile looks like it’s obviously been manipulated for a keyword. Learn how to appear natural and make every link count for your SEO rankings.

3. Correct errors

Occasionally you’ll find that webmasters link to pages that no longer exist on your site or completely misspell one of your URLs. Monitor your 404 error (file not found) logs and ask your link partners to correct the erroneous links if possible. If they’re non-responsive, an alternative solution is to transfer the link value yourself by implementing a 301 redirect from the old page or misspelled URL to the correct version.

4. Change link locations

Find out which sites link to pages on your site that are blocked from indexing by the search engines (in robots.txt or robots meta tags). Ask those webmasters to link to another more valuable page on your site. You can also go a step further with this strategy by asking for links on specific highly relevant pages with a lot of link equity (use PageRank as a general guide).

5. Turn your site name references into valuable links

Webmasters will often mention your name, business name, or URL but fail to use an actual link back to your site. Search for websites that already mention you. If they haven’t linked to your website, kindly let them know and request that they do so. Use Google Alerts to find these opportunities as they pop up.

Are you in the habit of optimizing your existing links? If not, take a look at the link profile for your site using your Google Webmaster account or tools like SEO Spyglass and Link Diagnosis.