Most important aspect of link building - link diversity

Getting links to your website is the most important thing you can do to optimize your website. Back links to your website would always have impact on the ranking of your website though the way the back links are built might be penalized.

Components of a back linking strategy

Many SEO professionals do backlinks purely by checking the page rank of a website which did work in the past but now with the Penguin and Panda updates websites are being penalized for unnatural link building.

A strategy has to be developed for back linking to ensure that back link activities are not interpreted by the search engines as spam. Each task has to be well thought and careful analysis is needed to understand its impact.

A good link building strategy should be

• well balanced
•  thoroughly tested
• proper link velocity
• social media back links should be created carefully
• Natural editorial links
• Manual outreach back linking should be used
• Ensure that the links are in good neighbourhoods

Getting links to your site are one of the most important things you can do. As a matter of fact links are absolutely the key to your online success!

Getting quality links in a post Google Panda and Penguin algorithm update world is a time consuming and a tedious process that requires knowledge about how the Internet and search engines work. A good back linking strategy should establish your website in very good search engine ranks and position in the search engine results and is therefore critical for building a strong online presence.

Using Blog directories

What is a blog directory? 

A blog directory is a list of blogs on the Internet which are categorized for easy browsing. Some of the directories also rank different blogs based on different parameters such as traffic, followers and how often the content is updated. Usually blog details are submitted by bloggers. Some of the blog directories verify the submissions made to ensure that spam is not posted on the directory while there are other directories on submission publish the listing. Of course moderated blog directories are more popular that auto approve directories.

Submitting to Blog directories as SEO strategy

Submitting your blog to blog directories helps as far as SEO is concerned as not only do you get backlinks but you will get real visitors from good and reputable directories. The other advantages are

• With sole purpose of exposure and traffic.
• With good reputation and high traffic.
• If paid directory, well and good. Paid fee shouldn’t be refundable, irrespective of listing.
• The paid fee should be for the editorial review, not for the link.
• Max. no. of directories submission should be 5 to 7.
• The directory should have a past history of rejecting submissions.
• Checkout their editorial-policies – Are they obeying Google’s (SEs) guidelines?
• Checkout the sites they are listing – Are they high quality and authoritative?
• Check, whether the directory is penalized by Google. Search for site:domain name.com on the Google Search, and check how many pages are indexed/showing.
•  heck, whether the directory is offering Guaranteed Premium listing for higher fee? If yes, stay away from it.
• If the directory is promoting about  SEO benefit or value of back-links, instead of traffic, then avoid it.

SEO for ecommerce websites

SEO is logical and yet sometimes it is made into something very complex. The rules for SEO are the same in nearly all types of websites. For ecommerce websites SEO is very important as that is what drives prospective customers to the website.

SEO for Ecommerce websites

SEO for ecommerce website

One of the most important SEO tactic is the usability of the website. Ecommerce websites have to ensure that the website is easily usable where information can be found easily and browsing the website is easy. In this post the focus is on usability because a happy customer is the best advertisement for your website and if your website is usable high SEO ranking is guaranteed. Some of the points to keep in mind are.

• The main aim of your website is to sell products or services therefore make it easy for the website visitor to buy stuff
• The navigation should be based on category as far as possible. 
• Use high resolution product pictures and give the user the ability to view product images from different angles. 
• The product description should be self explanatory and should address the most common questions
• The URL of the product page should be friendly and easy to remember. Suppose a bubble bath soap's URL should be http://www.example.com/soap/bubble-bath-soap
• Always provide different options to pay
• All financial transactions should be done on a secure server and ideally the fact that it is a secure server that the customer is using should be visually communicated to the customer. 
• At times the shipping options are very confusing which should be avoided
• Checkout process should be simple and user information should be collected once only
• Give the opportunity to the visitor or shopper to easily compare products
• User reviews are very important and it is best that the reviews are provided by previous buyers
• The shopper should be easily able to contact you in case they face a problem. Providing live chat feature is a must for all ecommerce websites. 

Htaccess cheat sheet

.htaccess is a is the default name of a directory-level configuration file that allows for decentralized management of web server configuration according to Wikipedia.

Favorite .htaccess commands

The Jackal blog has cheatsheet which can be handy for online marketing professionals. My favorites commands for .htaccess are  are

• Disable directory browsing
• Custom error pages
• Change default page
• Block users from accessing the website
• Allow only LAN users
• Redirect Visitors to New Page/Directory
  del.icio.us Tags: htaccess,seo
• Stop .htaccess (or any other file) from being viewed
• password protecting directories
• Switching on the check spelling directive
• Disguise Script Extensions
• Speed up your website by caching using .htaccess
• Set server timezone
• Limit access to LAN

More about .htaccess

You can find the .htaccess cheat sheet here.  For those who want to learn more about .htaccess there is in depth analysis and guide on the perishable press blog post. The post is old (2006) but is relevant and every time I refer to it I learn new things about .htaccess.

Link Building techniques

Over the last 8 years I have developed a list of strategies and techniques for link building for a website. This is a very broad classifications of activities. The effectiveness of link building techniques is usually different for different industries.

• Directory Submissions
• Article submission 
• Press releases
• Social media profile creation
• Social Bookmarking
• Guest blogging
• Local listing like Google places
• Create link wheels using social websites and web 2.0 sites
• Identify where the competitors are getting inbound links from. Approach those resources to find out if you can get a outbound link from those sites. 
• Add your self to yellow pages and local business listings.
• Participate in forums and discussions and use signature with a link back to the website if possible. 
• Guest blogging on other blogs which are in the relevant industry with link backs to the website. 
• Use http://www.beaucoup.com/ to find vertical engines and directories and get listed in them
• Participate in question and answer websites by answering questions related to your business or website. 
• Paricipate in discussions on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and LinkedIn.
• RSS Submission if possible
• Blog submission if you are running a blog on your website
• Create video content and submit to various video hosting services like Youtube.com and metacafe.com
• Create documents like infographics and PDF documents and submit them to websites like Scribd.com and similar websites. 

Is there a technique that you have used that is not mentioned in the list the please share it by adding comments below. 

Ads that work on Facebook

One of the main difference between advertising on Google adwords and Facebook is that images are allowed on Facebook. When advertising on Facebook a slightly different approach is needed.

Facebook advertising rules to be followed

1. While on Google adwords the aim is to show the advertisement as often as you can a different approach works on Facebook. Research shows that users are likely to click on that advertisement that is less likely to be repeated versus advertisements which are seen often. Therefore buy impressions miserly. Of course the content of the advertisement has to enticing enough. In the end the mantra is lower your impression rate (I know it sounds weird but it is correct). You can find more about this on FBadslab.
2. Though this is true for Google advertisement network as well make your advertising enticing. The aim of the advertisement has to be to distract the user from the present task and get him to click on your advertisement. Therefore the bait has to be good which means the advertisement has to tie to a promotion or discount. 
3. On Facebook test multiple images in one campaign. Each copy in the campaign try to use a different image which is unique and provides a unique hook to the customer. 
4. The conversion ratio or percentage is low on Facebook. The average conversion rate is 0.02% which is much lower than the average adwords conversion percentage which is 0.04%. Therefore businesses that are new to Facebook sometimes panic when they get low conversion rates. 

What type of images to use in Facebook advertisements

Research done by  Jennifer Sheahan at FDAdslab.com shows that the following type of images bring about the best results when used with Facebook advertisements

1. Happy Women
2. Colorful logos
3. Headshots

If you are interested in knowing more about online marketing there is a great post at Search Engine Land about how to create effective Social Advertising. 

Free tools to evaluate competition for SEO

Whenever you start building an entity on Internet the first 'homework' that needs to be done is find out how the competition or the industry going about optimizing their websites for search engines. Here are some free SEO Tools that can be handy while trying to evaluate competition

Free SEO tools to evaluate competition

1. Blekko - One of the most underrated SEO tool. This tool by itself should be give you enough armor to fight the war! On the face of it Blekko is like a 'normal' search engine. If you look at the results little closely there are links below each search result which can give you wealth of SEO parameters of your results. I'm amazed that this tool is free and has not been lapped up by the biggies (you know who I'm talking about). I intend to a full post on the details of how to use the tool. 
2.  Compete - There is a free and a paid version. The free version does a decent job though.
3. Alexa - Though it is not rated as highly but still does give you some idea about the competition
4. HowSociable - Find out how social media is being used by the competitors and the industry.
5. Social Mention - Another social media research tool that can help you know how the competition is leveraging social media marketing
6. Website Grader - Use this tool to evaluate any website on the Internet.
7. SEOmoz Crawl Test  - The free version crawls upto 50 pages on a website. For bigger sized websites you need to buy the subscription
8. Yahoo Site Explorer - Yahoo's site explorer is still going strong.
9. AttentionMeter - A search engine which does a comparative SEO analysis 

Most of the small business owners will find these tools provide you overwhelming information. You have to wise to go after the right statistics for as they say that

        "Statistics hide as much as they reveal!" or
        "Statistics are like bikinis.  What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital."
 :-)