Search Engine Optimization

[John Alexander]

Another good tip to remember when considering the value of a link is that all links are not handled quite the same. When we ask about things like whether a link is site specific or page specific, it's a good thing to remember that a search engine does not really see a Web site or even a a Web page. From a simple minded search engine robot's perspective, the whole Web is seen as a world made up of URLs.

Reciprocal linking does not have quite the same value it did years ago. In a way, it is good to link out based on other pages that are related to a similar topic. But if you link to them and they link to you, it somewhat nullifies the value. Not always, but sometimes. The other thing to mindful of is that sometimes if you link to a Web site and are not aware that that site is participating in a link farm or doing something else against Googles Webmaster Guidelines, that you could end up being penalized for linking to that site. Google says that if a nasty site links to you, that's beyond your control, but anyone you link to is well within your control. For example, it could be something that is not readily evident to you, for example suppose you link to a Webmaster who makes a habit of buying high PR links. There have been cases where people are flagged because they are linking to shall we say "bad neighborhoods."

What other types of links hold good value?

Links within your own Web copy tend to have more value than links in your navigation. If a related site links to you and is also includes your keyword in their Title Tag, the link on that will have more benefit than if the Title of the page is unrelated.

Initially, Google use to devalue links in some Social Media sites like keyword rich links coming to you from Facebook, but these days they seem to be carrying more value than they use to. Remember that a link within a caption underneath an image, tends to have a little more value too.

In my own link building actions, I try to stay focused on links to informative pages or Blogs that I think my readers will benefit from and are at least somewhat related to the topic I'm discussing. Remember that if you Blog, that most Bloggers are very generous with links because they just seem to be so focused on their topics (or at least in cases where the Blog has a defined purpose) and many will Blog daily and many Blogger are focused on 2 way dialog and conversation trails about their topic.

Other great places to get links from are authoritative and busy Web sites, places like About.com (but you need to write very useful content of an engaging, useful nature in order to get them to link to you) and of course there are educational sites that tend to deliver a lot of value in their links.

[MelJames]

Very true GT,

The truth is, we are never in competition with any search engine. We are in competition with our competitors. The number 1 thing I often see though, is that everyone is often obsessed with watching their competition or trying to follow what the competition is doing. Far better to take the missing element of SEO (creativity) and start your own trend. Instead of watching the competitors all day, then you are wisely using your time to build a better Web site. Next thing you know, all the competition is then following you all day.

I'm wishing each and every member in this forum, some great breakthrough success as you learn to think differently.

Hello John, I enjoyed reading your thoughts, the last paragraph in particular. Makes A LOT of sense really, excellent take on SEO

[John Alexander]

Many thanks Melanie.

[tobuso]

Just curious as to what others are doing to optimize their websites. I have received a page rank 5 from google which is very good in my line of business in comparison to my competition. I am still not coming close to being on the first page for main key word searches though, even though all of the websites ahead of me have a smaller page rank. Does anyone know how this works and what I can focus on?

Thanks!

What you have done is amazing. 6 Months to a page rank of 5 is great. How did you do it?

[tobuso]

Another good tip to remember when considering the value of a link is that all links are not handled quite the same. When we ask about things like whether a link is site specific or page specific, it's a good thing to remember that a search engine does not really see a Web site or even a a Web page. From a simple minded search engine robot's perspective, the whole Web is seen as a world made up of URLs.

Reciprocal linking does not have quite the same value it did years ago. In a way, it is good to link out based on other pages that are related to a similar topic. But if you link to them and they link to you, it somewhat nullifies the value. Not always, but sometimes. The other thing to mindful of is that sometimes if you link to a Web site and are not aware that that site is participating in a link farm or doing something else against Googles Webmaster Guidelines, that you could end up being penalized for linking to that site. Google says that if a nasty site links to you, that's beyond your control, but anyone you link to is well within your control. For example, it could be something that is not readily evident to you, for example suppose you link to a Webmaster who makes a habit of buying high PR links. There have been cases where people are flagged because they are linking to shall we say "bad neighborhoods."

What other types of links hold good value?

Links within your own Web copy tend to have more value than links in your navigation. If a related site links to you and is also includes your keyword in their Title Tag, the link on that will have more benefit than if the Title of the page is unrelated.

Initially, Google use to devalue links in some Social Media sites like keyword rich links coming to you from Facebook, but these days they seem to be carrying more value than they use to. Remember that a link within a caption underneath an image, tends to have a little more value too.

In my own link building actions, I try to stay focused on links to informative pages or Blogs that I think my readers will benefit from and are at least somewhat related to the topic I'm discussing. Remember that if you Blog, that most Bloggers are very generous with links because they just seem to be so focused on their topics (or at least in cases where the Blog has a defined purpose) and many will Blog daily and many Blogger are focused on 2 way dialog and conversation trails about their topic.

Other great places to get links from are authoritative and busy Web sites, places like (but you need to write very useful content of an engaging, useful nature in order to get them to link to you) and of course there are educational sites that tend to deliver a lot of value in their links.

That was all very helpful to me. Thanks

[John Alexander]

Just curious as to what others are doing to optimize their websites. I have received a page rank 5 from google which is very good in my line of business in comparison to my competition. I am still not coming close to being on the first page for main key word searches though, even though all of the websites ahead of me have a smaller page rank. Does anyone know how this works and what I can focus on?

Thanks!

What you have done is amazing. 6 Months to a page rank of 5 is great. How did you do it?

Hi there,

John Alexander here. I agree, that if you have a Google page rank of 5, that is great (as far as PR goes.)Keep in mind that while PR does have benefits, it has little to do with where your page actually shows up in the search results. Having a PR of 3 or higher is fine, but I would not get too obsessed with it.

One of the benefits of a higher PR is that the robots will visit you more often and another benefit is they will tend to stay longer on your pages and also dig a little deeper.

But when it comes to where you show up within the search results, you must remember that Google (or none of the search engines grade on an absolute scale. What that means is that how difficult or how easy it is to get your page coming to the top depends totally on how competitive your competitive landscape is. The more competition there is for a specific phrase, then the more you have to do some work to compete.

One of the best ways to begin is to look for any errors that are easy to fix. Are you using any dynamic pages that may cause the search engines to loop into a spider trap? Always remember, for any design challenge there are multiple ways to fix a problem.

Is there any duplication in your Meta Description tags or Meta Title Tag?
I only ask, because many times I see this one in Web sites where people are not aware of how important it is for each Title and each description to be unique. By that I mean each Title should relate to what is actually relevant to the page. Same with the Meta Description.

This error is so common, that I often see that once people understand and fix the problem, (easy to fix) they quickly lose any duplicate content penalty and sometimes can increase their traffic by 20% to as much as 50% once Google sees them as unique and relevant.

I know this is fairly basic, but if you star with the easy things to fix, it can bring you much better focus to your pages and you want every page on your site to be like an information rich gateway to attract many new readers. Then as you learn more and more advanced methodology, because the basics are right, they ultimately will carry you through and keep your pages performing in a stable way. I hope that helps a bit. Remember, doing good keyword research combined with only mild optimization can make you money.

[tobuso]

I have gone from position 199 to position 8 for my local keyword "************** greenville, sc" But, nationally I am not even within the top 200 sites. I had a PR of 1 and ranked 150 or so nationally but nothing really on a local level. My extensions were not good with my prior theme either. They were like tobuso.com/ccprocess instead of tobuso.com/credit-card-processing which they are now. So maybe I lost some google juice because the extensions changed. But, how long will it take to recover and how long will it take to start ranking nationally if I keep up the blogging, link building, smm, ect?

[localnumberone]

As per the part of promotion, a website should have search engine friendly design because there are a lot things like flash, java script which search engine crawler doesn't handle. In the beginning if we are making a website to promote our business then we can just make it SEO friendly.

[tobuso]

I have a PR2 now and rank up at the top for all my local search terms now. Nationally I rank for only one keyword I know of and I am in 96th position. It is a good keyword but 96th position gets me literally nothing. I have done research that suggests that second page gets around 12% and fist page gets 80%. So all the other pages share the 8% left overs. Need to be in the top 20 or you are nowhere.

[davidfrankk]

WOW PR 5 in just 6 months is pretty awesome
A difference about other search engines and Google is that, though Google indexes pages more frequently than other search engines, it takes time for the effect to happen. A PR 5 site obviously has some high quality linking going on for itself and since PR is a Google metric, it will recognize your site as high quality and rank it better soon.

For the time being, use forums, blogs and very few directories to get some more backlinks for your site with anchor text as your targeted keyword.
Cheers !

[drdony]

For the time being, use forums, blogs and very few directories to get some more backlinks for your site with anchor text as your targeted keyword.
Cheers !

Thanks for the advice David