Okay, back to some basics today. These days, landing pages are being used very frequently, even though they have evolved from the cheesy designs and glaring oddities. These days landing pages come with sexy designs and the best compelling copies, that can convince you in seconds. We’ve seen many good examples of modern, sleek looking landing pages, which are eye candies but when it comes to search engine optimization, I’ve seen that not all of them are fool-proof. Which is what we would discuss here today.

1. Its not about one keyword anymore, focus on the contextual category !

Earlier, you could get away with search engines by optimizing for one keyword and rearranging all the stemmed keywords around it. Like “seo tips, seo optimization, seo google” and things like that. But clearly, search engines have evolved a lot and the algos need to change. The wise thing to do is to spread out your list of keywords along a plain path. This is different from “stemming”, where a core keyword is repeated with combination keywords in and around the page. Doing so, might not harm you but it wouldn’t stand a chance to get the attention it deserves with the search engines as it will fit safely into the brackets of the “old school stemming agenda”. So the key is to diversify your keywords, and focus on the category and context rather than a single keyword.

2. Repetition and keyword density is not the key, but relevance is

As mentioned in the earlier point, one could easy get away with repeating the targeted keyword to a calculated average density and get picked up by search engines. But the relevancy factor have gone ahead of this simple criteria and now revolves around metrics such as relevancy, context, references and traction. Search engine robots are clever enough to figure out if the copy was written for search engines or otherwise, from scanning it, so don’t make the evident mistakes of focusing too much on one or a few set of keywords. Instead of focusing on “Red apple, Blue Apple, Green Apple”, one might want to focus more on “Apples, Orchards, Fruits” and the like.

3. Do not completely disregard the Old school SEO, certain parts still work.

Like code optimization, clean code and semantic markup. Make sure that you use the core concepts like the Page Titls, Heading tags and all the SEO basics in place without ignoring them.

4. Cool graphics are alright but also optimize the code accordingly.

Search Engines have evolved much to figure out how to parse and scan heavy graphics and multimedia content, but the page load time is one such important factor you might not want to ignore. If you have heavy graphics make arrangements to make them load fast. Quick delivery is a key factors as we’ve seen Google put too much focus on it lately.

5. Highlight the best parts that needs focus in the content.

There are more than one way of doing it but one way I’d personally recommend doing is to highlight important phrases (that gives contextuality to the content) by including them cleverly in to the heading copy and interlinking them with the page with anchor text, particularly if its a long page. Search Engines are picking up “inter-page links” these days and if not a direct clue, definitely passes a signal about the content to search engines.

Apart from these points, the regular search engine optimization strategies can be employed and social media can be used to bring in some traction to the page. Gone are those days when you build a good foundation and leave it at that for the search engines to pick up and say “Wow, this is amazing stuff”. These days, they say a lot of amazing pages, so the key is to make them say “Ah ! This is a better one among the lot, and its popular too, let’s pick this up”.

Every blog has links al over the page, We have links in the content, we have links on the sidebar, we have navigation links, footer links…all that. So does Google see all these links the same way with equal weightage or differently ? That’s the question.

Well, technically its easy for us to get it wrong. Normally webmasters and SEOs see links based on PageRank and traffic on a site. Almost every link exchange request I get request me text links on the sidebar or above the fold, with the typical “contextual link with a few lines of text”.

I’d like to clarify that “a few lines of text” is not actually being contextual. You bought single keyword text links – Google found it – screwed your page rank. And now, you’re repeating it. Not good.

In my humble opinion, “Contextual links” are the ones that are present in the textual content, in the real copy or the article. Both you and me can easily find out what’s contextual and what not. And Google bots are equally intelligent.

So just adding a few lines of text before and after your “bought link” doesn’t make it contextual.

Coming back to the topic, does all the links placed at different places on the same page, have equal importance ? As you might have already figured out, No.

Links at the footer, or the header, are probably navigational links or copyright/TOS links, as the majority of websites uses it that way. And Google bots know this.

They’d like to give more importance to links that appear in the content/article. So footer links / sidebar links are likely to get less importance by Google whereas in-the-content links would be considered more important.

The saga of “Natural links and Google” continues. The latest episode being this one from Matt, where he says that links must indeed be “natural” and not merely appear natural.

The entire SEO industry would completely agree to what Matt said. Links should be natural, and not “artificial”, but the problem is that not many people do understand Google’s version of “natural links”.

In my humble opinion any links placed irrelevantly anywhere on your site is a non-natural/artificial link.
So that includes, sponsored reviews, paid text links etc.
Now, if any of these “non-natural links are advertisements, then that’s completely different.
Advertisements are okay, even though technically they are “Nofollowed – Sponsored Links”.

But why do Google have a problem with paid links / artificial links ?

- Because the link might take you to a non-contextual/non related source.
- Because the sponsored review post you did might totally be of of context of your domain.
And so, when google spiders your content, they might get “misleaded” to non trusty or simply non-relevant source.

Problem No.1
The problem with the web is that not all are SEO’s or webmasters. SEO’s constitute may be 20-30% of the web but the rest are people seriously dealing with great amount of information, be it on blogs or their websites. And not all of these people know that Google doesn’t quite like you to plug that link of your friends or the guy who paid you to do so.

Problem No.2
Google does not and I firmly believe that it cannot ever give us concrete rules on what artificial links are. Because clearly, not everyone on the internet can take Goog’s perspective, and Google knows it best. Here’s an example.

Go to this post on the Google official blog – http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/day-in-cloud-challenge-featuring-google.html

In the post Google posts a link to Virgin America. Its contextual technically because the blog post deals with a contest. Fair enough. But I’m wondering how would Google see this had the post been on a normal blog ?

- The link on the Google blog is not nofollowed. But can it be left the same way in another low profile blog ?
- The link is to a reputed website (of virgin america), but does that mean every webmaster can follow what Google did and link to any website that they might think is “friendly and reputed?”

Now, this is the problem with natural links. What is natural to you may not be natural to Google. And sadly, not everyone are webmasters and SEO’s to understand this.
If only Google came up with a clear and precise explanation on what “natural links” are.

Am turning the table around this time.

Now that the Google toolbar PageRank updates are happening, we’ve seen that many of DSB readers have seen fluctuations in their PR. Comments here tell us that many have got their PageRank jumps too. So, I’d like to hear it from you.

What do you think gave you a better PR this time ?

OR (If you had a PR downgrade)

What do you think got you down ?

PageRank of course is not predictable but we can clearly see patterns emerge and associate it with our actions. Please share your thoughts, it will help the crowd. Looking forward to your comments.

Back to some old school stuff today. Social Bookmarking is a nice way to get some “additional” Google juice (and traffic), particularly when you have a lot of backlinks and need that little bit of extra numbers.

Here are 60 social bookmarking sites that have dofollow links and do pass some Google juice one way or the other to the listed sites. Let me warn you that these are not effective if your link building campaigns ends with only these, but they are nevertheless worth a try.

Mind you, although these “might” work with extremely low competing keywords, they don’t stand a chance to substitute a proper healthy link building strategy/campaign.

1. Slashdot
2. Connectedy
3. Connotea
4. Current
5. Mixx
6. MyBlogLog
7. Mister Wong
8. NowPublic
9. BlinkList
10. Newsvine
11. Ma.gnolia
12. Backflip BibSonomy
13. Kirtsy
14. Searchles
15. coRank
16. LinkaGoGo
17. Clip Clip
18. Associated Content
19. Furl
20. Yahoo My Web
21. Spurl
22. Rawsugar
23. BumpZee
24. My Link Vault
25. Shoutwire
26. Faves
27. Spotback
28. BuddyMarks
29. Propeller
30. Blogging Zoom
31. Oyax
32. 9rules
33. Blogoria
34. MemeStreams
35. Edopter
36. BlogMarks
37. TeDigo
38. MyPIP
39. Socialogs.com
40. Contentpop
41. Pixelmo
42. Memfrag
43. Getigadget
44. Jumptags
45. Plugim
46. Syncone
47. Postonfire
48. Business-planet
49. Hatedorloved
50. Bookmarks
51. Yattle
52. Kapely
53. Givealink
54. Totagit
55. Socialblink
56. Wigleytagz
57. Buzztagz
58. Youtagz
59. Space-ed
60. Jumptags
61. Tagza (new)

Have fun trying them out. I don’t guarantee that all of them work, but some of them are really good while some give only temporary links. I suggest you take some time out and try out each one, trust me you’ll find some gems in there.

This is the third in the Link Building Tips series. First two articles here – Tip 1 – Rank lists , Tip 2 – Interviews.

  Okay, today let’s take a look at yet another link building strategy that is guaranteed to work, provided you do it right.

Remember, there is no BS here as you might often see elsewhere with “do this,you might get this” kind of general lame talk. This is a tested, proven strategy, that if you do the right way can work wonders for ya. Believe me, it works !

Before jumping in, let’s ask ourselves this question. What is the one reason that makes us link to another article/blog ? Whether it is a bandwagon, or a meme, or a simple admiration to the author, there’s one thing in common. While linking to another story, you pass value to your readers.

Ex:- When you are linking to a Wikipedia article, you are actually passing value to the reader.

So basically, if you were to tempt someone to link to you, you must be able to convince them that there is value in your content, that the readers would enjoy. (You’ve heard that a million times from the gurus eh?)

Okay, let’s get straight to the point. You are going to create “something” that’s going to tempt others to link to you.

And this goes out to all the strugglers out there so clearly we are not talking about writing an exclusive interview with Guy Kawasaki or a brand new product release or the new iPhone design that’s releasing in mid 2009. That’s the big guys cup of tea. Let’s make ours own.

We are going to create pages on our blogs, that will ask questions to the readers, rate their answers and give them a grade. (Sounds very simple, eh?)

Let’s put it this way. Assume that you are an authority in “AJAX coding”. You know the world but unfortunately, the world does not. Now, you need that one major break to let the world know of your expertise in it.

1 – Create a quiz page on your blog, that will ask 100 questions to readers. All of them are tough, above average questions that AJAX learners have never seen anywhere.

2 – Create a grading system from the answers they give. And give them badges according to their marks.
Ex:- If they score a 10/100, they get a “I’m a newbie” badge, probably with their graphic or something.

3 – Provide them a HTML code with the links to the graphic, that they can paste in their website.

Now, who ever manages to get a badge showing off their “ranks”, will be proud to show them off on their websites. And each badge means a link back to you.

The problems

You have to decide how tough your questions are going to be. If they are too tough, people might find it boring. And if it’s too easy, people would simply skip it off and wouldn’t even bother to show off the badges, even if they got a 100/100.

The codes to frame the quiz.

If you are on WordPress, these plugins will help you build quizzes of various types.

Quiz plugin 1, Quiz plugin 2, Quiz plugin 3,  

If you are on other platforms, you have to create separate quiz pages with Javascript. Here are some scripts that might help.

Quiz script 1, Quiz script 2, Quiz script 3,

So, what are you waiting for, go make your own quizzes and show it off to the world.

Please don’t forget to create badges, which are the the “hooks” that will compel others to link to you. If you cannot manage badges, make the quizzes as interesting as possible, also select a topic that you are best in or is related best with your blog.That itself would be the factor to compel for a link back.

Article marketing is undoubtedly one of the most best tools out there in SEO that really works. I mean, we are talking results here. What’s SEO without results?

If you ask me that one factor that really helps to make that push way up on the SERPs, then it’s backlinks with proper anchor texts. That’s a deadly combination isn’t it ?

Imagine you getting backlinks from thousands of blogs from your desired category (say blogging itself), and you getting to chose all the anchor texts ? Awesome – wouldn’t it be?

Well, what would you do achieve that ?

- Write a 101 list of web resources ?  But there are already too many out there.
- Unleash a link bait with a flame topic ?
- Code and release a wordpress plugin that no one ever built ?

Well, if all that sounded a little tough…there’s an easy way around.

It’s an automated tool that lets you collect backlinks. But before I explain how to use it, first, this is what it does.

• You write a real good..wicked..kickass article on a topic related to the category in which you want to get links from. Let’s say you want to gather links from all the “make money online” blogs…so you write a unique article in about 300 words on  “The 101 ways the gurus did not tell you to make money online.” Got the point ? (In fact, it  needn’t be as vivid and exclusive as this)
• You embed three contextual links in the article with the anchor texts of your choice.
• You select the category of blogs where you’d want to deploy the article.
• You additionally rewrite the article a few more times that you want to publish it for. (To avoid duplicate content.) Yea, this is done technically  to avoid similarities, and you can’t automate this. Even if thy had a tool to, I wouldn’t recommend it. But manually doing the rewriting is effective.
• And then you publish the article.

Your article (and it’s rewritten content) gets published on every blog from the category you selected (this is based on a manual acceptance check done, so no spam here).

You get all the contextual backlinks from the blogs that publish the content.

Now, I cannot guarantee that all the blogs that publishes the content will be awesome ones, there might be silly ones, but you can ignore them. With having hundreds of backlinks, we cannot expect all of them to be great – fair ?

Okay, so the tool I was talking about is this one – Article Marketing Automation.
A very cool tool if you ask me, that can be utilized to reap some quality backlinks if used wisely. It’s easy to use and very effective but costs you around $49 per month. I think that’s reasonable.

One word of warning though: Like all good tools, this is again an exploitable tool that spammers can use to market link farms, so make use of it before it gets abused.

Was talking to a fellow blogger last day and this topic came up.

Bloggers and SEO – Does it really help ?

.

“Being a blogger, what are the things that I can do as a quick SEO tweak ? I don’t want to go digging the code and calculating the density and all that..that’s kinda.. for you geeks”

That’s a nice question I guess. I mean…yea we all know the tips…tricks and all that..but how many bloggers do actually implement them ? How many of you try the basic tweaks at least..hmm that would be interesting to know.

What SEO tweak have you done on your blog ?

What do you think is the best SEO tweak for bloggers ?

I’m all ears.

I bet you wouldn’t disagree with me if I said that meta tags (keywords and descriptions) are one SEO factor that got popular for spamming. Haven’t you seen that page with half part of the code filled with meta keywords? Damn! That was bad.

Now, even though Google does not give much importance (as it used to earlier) to meta info, it’s a good idea to keep it as relevant to your content as possible.

But how do you know if your meta tags are “white hat” and it’s all looking good in Google’s eyes?

Hmm, well ask a friend of yours (may be your folks) to read the content and then your meta keywords. If they say “hey…are you sure you had that content on the page related to those keywords”, you know you are not doing the right thing.

Even better, there is a ncice little program that will help you do this check pretty much automated. It’s called Meta tag SEO 1.0

Give in all your URL’s it checks the content, and the meta tags and try to find some sort of correlation between it. If it finds that the meta tags ratio is alarming, it would let you know.

Of course, checking it manually is the best thing to do, but if you have a handy program that helps you with it, why not try it?

Head over here, check out the screenshots and download this guy. See if he works for you.

Just got hired by Webbizideas.com, and I’ll be contributing more articles over there on Search Engine Optimization. More of “how to” articles and tutorials which DSB readers would enjoy reading. Feel free to subscribe to the RSS feed here.

Webbizideas is based out of Minneapolis, and has a wide range of professional services to deliver ranging from web design to internet marketing including SEO.

Web biz ideas have a video channel on YouTube where they explain many interesting facts on web marketing with simple, easy to understand narration. Feel free to subscribe to the channel.

Here’s a great video from Jeff Foster of Webbizideas, explaining on how to use Google Alerts to your advantage. Web masters don’t wana miss this !

You can see similar articles from me at Webbizideas, so grab the feed.