Using internal links help your SEO rankings
For SEOs, internal links are great since they will directly affect your rankings for these reasons:
They control the flow of link equity flow (based on Google's PageRank) around a site - pages within your site structure which have a higher PageRank tend to rank better
The anchor text within the hyperlink tells the search engine what the destination page is about. If a link contains "click here" or "more" this won't work as well as if a specific product or service name is included.
Images which are linked to other pages use the "Alt text" help determine which keyphrases the page ranks for
You control these links unlike backlinks from other sites so you can feature different terms in the anchor terms based on the phrases you are targeting
What types of internal links are there?
Not all links are created equally. When Google was launched they were treated…
Our review of a new free guide to link-building
In January 2011 a guide oddly named "Becoming a Clockwork Pirate" was launched. While finding the title slightly weird I then read the subtitle which reads: "A Field Guide To Creating Links For Search & Social Success". Now this is something that caught my attention. Written by Kelvin Newman this guide is a lengthy, very detailed ebook, with over 60 pages, but if you are willing to give it the time you will get an unbelievable amount of value & inspiration from it.
The guide covers ideas & tactics on generating traffic, inbound links & developing brand awareness and while 60 pages sounds like a lot believe me the ideas will start to flow the more read. Its not that the guide is full of amazing things you will have never heard of, its much more that a lot of tactics are in…
As part of my series of blog posts on link building techniques I have decided to look at how we can use tools and build a process to analyse a competitors backlink profile to help create a list of target sites for you to approach. After all, if your competitor can be on that website then why can't you?!
If you're new to the term "backlink" it's simply a link from another site to yours which Google may count to boost your ranking if it considers it's a quality link.
The key to this process is getting the appropriate data about yours & your top 5 / 10 competitors (in search) back links so you can filter & prioritse the actions off the back of it. Both you and your competitors are going to have backlinks which do very little for your website…
Using Blog content to generate links and shares
My last two blog posts on this topic, an Introduction to link building & link building using forum marketing hopefully opened up new ideas for you and your business. This week I want to focus on using blog content to create opportunities for links. Using blog content to link build is one of the more unpredictable of link building techniques. There are two methods to using blog content to generate inbound links.
Benefits to link building using blog content
Establish thought leadership
Create content & pages as well as opportunities to link build
Every post has the opportunity to create links or social media shares and bookmarks which are also now part of the Google algorithm
Two methods to link building through blog content
The first method resides with your own onsite blog. The key…
My blog post last week on link building techniques touched briefly on each of the techniques available. I going to focus on one technique this week - Forum Marketing. Before I get into using forum marketing, we have to have the health-warning that :
Not all links are the same
Getting one link at a time is not a waste of time, its the compound effect over time that is powerful. If you can get a lot of links too quickly it's likely not worth it
The concept of "€œnofollow"€ still has an effect in forum marketing and comments on blogs "€“ Google won"€™t rate these links as highly but do not write off engaging on sites that use the nofollow technique. These links will help with your social score which from recent blog posts is becoming slightly more important in search and will continue to do so.
The concept…
The top 10 link-building techniques
Two of the most common questions I'm asked as a consultant is, "How do I get more links?" quickly followed by, "is there a quicker way of doing it?". Quite often clients expect link building to be something you outsource or there is a "tool" that does it for you. Unfortunately this is far from the case.
During this blog post I want to quickly look at what I see as the top level methods for link building. In future posts I'll look at best practice for each of these. In the meantime, I invite you to add to the methods and also add any insights or experiences you have.
Creating amazing content
Looking at the various ways to generate links, there is one thing common between them - they all rely on content. But not just any content, it has to be exceptional,…
Targeting competitive keyterms with links to specific pages - Distilled
Value: [rating=5]
Our commentary: Creating links from related sites with specific anchor text to a relevant page on your website feels like one of the most obvious parts of SEO, but there are some great tips here to refine it.
However, it's hard to resource, so due to the extra effort required it is overlooked. While this article focuses on why link building to targeted pages will help you on your competitive terms, do not forget the long tail. You will not need anywhere near the number of links to each of the tail term pages to secure top spots.
Marketing implications: Having read the article have a think about the following best practices:
Current back link analysis
Is your anchor text specific or is it all my brand & "click here"?
Are your links targeting specific pages on your website or do they mostly point to…
Our selection of the best 5 hacks from 17 presented by Wordstream
Value: [rating=5]
Our commentary: The purpose of this alert is to point you to a great collection of techniques you may not have considered for advanced analysis to diagnose opportunities to improve your marketing and in particular Search engine Marketing within Google Analytics. It's a classic linkbait example, but nothing wrong with that and it has clearly taken a lot of effort to compile through contacting 17 Google Analytics specialists. I think it's proved popular through it's clear layout with screengrabs explaining each technique.
Marketing implications: These are my picks of the techniques covered which I thought were particularly useful for advanced review of search marketing effectiveness:
1 Will Critchlow - using custom variables to determine the referring traffic source for the first visit. By default, Google Analytics only records the first visit.
2 David Harry - using custom reports to drill-down…
How to gain high-quality links
Value: [rating=4]
Our commentary: A recent post on Search Engine Land (see recommended link at the end) draws out the tactics you may want to consider if you are facing the challenge or opportunity of a client that already has 10,000's of incoming links and is a well known brand in its market.
The article focuses most of its ideas around high quality & high volume links. The first being links from authority sites such as key newspaper sites or government / education related websites for example. The second is much more about volume links from lots of websites to yours, very social media & advertising orientated.
Clearly the two options I have mentioned there will be on any link building task list, where this blog adds some good value is how you should then leverage your brand & other marketing activities to accelerate & improve the effectiveness of…
In my interview with SEO specialist Kevin Morley of Internet marketing agency Search Path we discuss an interesting perspective on link-building.
For SEO success is competitive markets (aren't they all?) your approach to linkbuilding simply has to be better than the competitors. To review how you successful you are, I recommend using one of the two most established link-building tools Majestic SEO or Linkscape which I covered in my interview with on how to compare link analysis tools.
Of course quality of links is more important than quantity when it comes to links, but as a starting point to benchmark against competitors, try this backlink history comparison tool.
Q1. What is value added link building?
The techniques used to increase the number of inbound links pointing…
