Internet Marketing Blog » search engine optimisation success

The Importance of Links

Dan Taylor — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:06:44 +0000

The most important part of search engine optimisation is getting your linking strategy right. Your internal links are important for telling a search engine how your website is structured whereas the external links from other sites can be seen as votes, informing search engines about what you do and what the site is all about. The more quality votes your site has, the better it will be perceived by Google.

Internal links:

An internal link is an effective means of letting search engines know how your website works and where relevant information is located. Internal links help you to control the link structure by employing things such as breadcrumbs, which create associations between subpages and categories.

When linking to a page it’s best to use descriptive anchor text which is relevant to the page you are linking to. Links saying ‘read more’ will be less effective than links where the heading or title of an article is used.

External links:

External links help to increase your ratings by acting as a vote. However, unlike internal links, you don’t have as much control over the anchor text which may lead to people throwing Google bombs by linking to your site using irrelevant anchor text.

You can control external links by creating them yourself. If you know an industry well and have friends who can link to you, it's worth doing. Another option is to link to industry forums and directories.

At Click Consult we can help you to develop effective SEO for your website and ensure you get the top rankings.

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Using Internal Links with Keywords

Nick — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:41:33 +0000

When it comes to optimising the effectiveness of your keywords, there are many ways you can ensure that you achieve a higher ranking with Google. One such way is to optimise the homepage as part of your SEO strategy and include on and off page links. Internal linking is another way of ensuring your keywords achieve their full potential with little extra effort on your part.

Most websites don’t include the keywords within the navigation menu. This is a great oversight as introducing keywords here can significantly boost search engine rankings and ultimately attract more visitors in the long run. Google and other search engines will rank a keyword higher if it is positioned in the navigation menu as a link in comparison to a keyword placed within a body of text that isn’t linked.

When search engines looks at the navigation bar, they weigh more importance on links that route through to the inner pages. If you link through from the homepage to keyword-relevant pages, you increase the link value which in turn ensures that these pages have a higher ranking in the longer term.

A review of the navigation within your website is always recommended. You can then identify if keywords can be incorporated into the navigation menu to optimise their effectiveness. By clever use of keywords within both text and navigation areas you can significantly improve your search engine optimisation efforts.

Increasing the effectiveness of keywords is intrinsic to a successful SEO strategy. For more help in this area contact us at Click Consult.

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The Hazards of Doorway Pages

Mike — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:05:26 +0000

When doing an analysis of websites for our clients at Click Consult, we often come across doorway pages. Doorway pages are created specifically for SEO rather than to add value to the user.

These pages are developed in order to create a page that targets specific keyphrases. Usually these pages are one-page sites and the domain name will contain the targeted keyphrase. Within the site, all links will be directed back to the domain name with the exception of the homepage.

Within any site there are usually multiple doorway pages. Each will be designed to replicate the design of the main site but will be targeting different keyphrases. These pages will then be linked back the main website.

Although this seems like an innovative idea, by using this ‘black hat’ technique your site can be severely penalised.

Reasons Google Does Not Like Doorway Pages:

The most key reason is that the user never arrives at an appropriate page. The doorway pages simply encourage users to click through to the main site.

They spam Google’s index.

Often, doorway pages are linked from a high ranking page creating duplicate issues.

Meta Refresh is often used by doorway pages to redirect to other pages and this violates Google guidelines.

These pages are also called bridge, jump and portal pages but no matter what you choose to call them they should be avoided as they may undo your search engine optimisation and cause you to have a low ranking in Google.

For help with your SEO contact us at Click Consult today.

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SEO and the recession

Dan — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:20:11 +0000

Everyone is highly aware at the moment that the world’s economy is extremely tight. This means every company, big or small is looking into every possible way they can save money. The tighter things get, the more businesses are cutting corners to stay profitable. One of the services people look to immediately is cutting down on their search engine optimisation costs.

This could lead to serious trouble for the business. If you think logically about this; during any recession people are going to think twice before spending money. This means that if you cut down on your search engine optimisation, your ranking results will drop down.

Think smart

Dropping down means that your business is no longer highly visible to potential customers. Once you have dropped off that crucial first page in the SERPs, your website will have less visitors. Fewer visitors mean that the chance of converting visitors into paying customers becomes far more difficult. Then search engine optimisation efforts have to be redoubled to be able to start the laborious climb back up the rankings.

It is usually far quicker to drop down in the ranking than it is to climb back up. It also takes much more of your resources to fight your way up the ranking than it took to stay static and highly visible. Using resources that could be utilised for other aspects of the business can have long-term repercussions.

Therefore, in reality you should not be cutting your SEO and marketing efforts during a recession. You should be redoubling your efforts to stay competitive for fewer available customers.

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