Web Earnings

A quick and simple way to generate back links for your site is to submit articles to 3rd party sites containing a link(s) to your site. This way the search engine will pick up the article page as relevant to your site and give the link more weighting than it would for a non relevant page (do you follow). On this page you can find a list of sites that allow you to submit articles to be published on their site containing a link to your site. As well as aiding your search engine positioning, this is also a free way to bring targeted visitors to your site. If you are submitting articles, it’s important that you do it correctly or rather than benefiting you; it could actually have a negative impact on your site. Follow the tips below for the best results:

Submit original content to article sites. If you submit content or articles that already exist on your site, Google will see this as duplicate content and the benefit of links from these pages will be reduced. You could also see the weighting of this content on your site reduced so avoid this whenever possible. You should also be careful about submitting the same content to multiple sites - Google may again see this as duplicate content and you could be penalised for spamming.

Choose carefully. Out of the thousands of article sites out there (a few hundred of which are below), you have to be selective about who you submit to. Check Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank and how long the site has been active. Also look at other sites that have been submitting articles from your sector and see how they perform for their target key phrases. I have listed the top sites along with their Google PR on this page. Try to start with these and then look at the full list for relevant or niche sites which could have more benefit than general directories.

Use correct anchor text. If possible, make sure the anchor text in the link from the article is the phrase you are trying to optimise the target page for, so if you are optimising your page for green widgets, the clickable link should say ‘green widgets’. Some sites ill only allow links in the Bio piece at the bottom of the page and some will allow links in the body of the text.

Be Patient. It can take weeks or months for the full benefit of an article submission to be realised.

Don’t just look at ’submission sites’ look at non competing sites in your sector, see if anyone wants to swap articles, i.e. you they publish an article on your site with links to them and you do the same, that was you get unique content and they get links and vice versa.

Don’t just look online. If your writing skills are good enough approach trade magazines and ask if they want to publish your piece. They’ll most likely jump at the chance of free good quality copy and you get to mention your website.

Be aware of copyright issues. When you publish articles on most sites, they normally have t’s & c’s that allow any content submitted to be republished, people are then free to republish your articles wherever and whenever they want (which is why you should be careful of what you publish). The upside of this is that if you publish emails or are looking for some content on a particular subject to rewrite and add to your site, you have a wealth of free content to choose from that you can send out.

After the announcement of the MSN Beta Adcenter (With new and improved functionality!), MSN have introduced their Keyword Prediction Tool - which gives the number of searches over the past 12 months and breakdowns of age and gender. I’m not sure what they base the demographic data on, but at first glance it’s clear that data is skewed to the US. In the Adlabs section, there are also a few other handy things such as the Keyword Mutation Tool and the online Commercial Intention Tool. This is the first time I’ve discovered these and althoough it isn’t exactly groundbreaking, it shows that MSN are starting to think forward and develop new tools and apps which is what they’ll need to do if they ever want to pose any sort of a challenge to the mighty G!

The Google Maps team are charging ahead with the functionality of the maps by adding traffic reports. It has a long way to go before it changes from a novelty to a useful service but new Google developments always get me a bit excited! Currently this is only rolled out across a few US cities but has made me think about the steps Google is taking to bring it’s services together.

I’ve always thought that it was odd that they would develop tolls and applications that seemed unrelated but as time goes on it all seems to add up as the relationships between these applications tie together. Google Earth was a fun tool on it’s own, but together with Google Local, Google Weather, Google Transit and Google Traffic reports, combined with mobile technology, you’ve got a pretty powerful tool. This has made me think about other things they could add - Google Home Search, Holidays, basically anything that has a geographic element, and it is this merging of the online and offline world that will see rapid growth over the next couple of years.

The same thing is happening with their computer applications, as Google Docs and Spreadsheets develops, will they be adding more? Will the heavily rumored G-Drive finally come into existence?

One of the biggest webmaster gripes about Google has always been that they don’t show enough of the backlinks that exist on the web. There has always been a thought that this is because they don’t want to give away too much info - but now they are letting webmasters see exactly who links to them through the webmaster tools console, in the same way that it shows search queries, pagerank etc. If you haven’t got a webmaster tools account then you really need to get one, this info is actually quite useful! You still can’t see who links to your competitors so this isn’t a case of Google getting all transparent on us, but in terms of being able to better analyse your site, this is a great step forward. Loads more info can be found here, here and here

Ok, not quite a mind reader, but it was only a matter of time before Google stepped into the realms of trying to figure out what you really want rather than what you type. They have been slowly rolling out new features over the past months adding functionality such as local search to organic results, cinema times when you search for a film and the multiple ‘did  you mean’ features on a page (ok, that’s been around for a while) along with a plethora of other useful (or not so) feature.

Their latest step seems to be their personalized search giving you results based on your past searching history. Google’s official blog-man gives the example “For example, I (Sep) am an avid Miami Dolphins fan (no joke). Searching for [dolphins] gives me info about my favorite football team, while a marine biologist colleague gets more information about her salt-water friends.”

At first you won’t see much change but over time Google will learn what you search for, what you click on etc and tailor the results to your needs. My thoughts? As long as you can turn it off then it’s not a big problem. The fact that they’ve introduced this now suggests that they’ve been collating and aggregating personal search information for some time, which gives them immense marketing power. There will be some that say this is an infringement in their privacy.

My major thoughts are as follows. If you know what Google is doing then you have the option to turn it off so what’s the problem? Upon mentioning this to my colleagues however, I found that they didn’t even know about this new feature. All have google accounts and all were signed in, so had Google been collecting data and amending the search results without them being aware of this? My second gripe is that Google thinks it knows what I want but it doesn’t. If I search for car hire in Berlin, I DON’T want a map showing me where local car rental companies are located, what I actually want is UK companies that offer car hire from Berlin when I travel there (unfortunately I don’t speak German so would much rather carry out the booking in English). When I search for plumbers in Bristol I don’t want a list of local plumbers on a map, I don’t care where they are located as they will be travelling to me. I would rather get some information that I CAN’T find in the yellow pages such as customer reviews etc, so in terms of Google giving me the results they think I want, I simply don’t trust that they will.

It does however pose an interesting question for SEO, if everyone is seeing different search results, how do you know where you stand in the serps? Along with everything else that has been introduced in Google Land since the start of the year - this is a big step and will have huge implications in search. I’ve said it before but I think this will be a big year for Google.

Lots of mixed reactions in the SE world which you can read about here

 

With the increasing problems of the overture keyword research tool and building rumors that it is to be pulled completely, wordtracker have released a free version of their keyword suggestion tool. This returns 100 results and seems alot faster than the overture tool. Having tried a few searches, the accuracy is questionable, as was the overture tool however it seems to be a good indicator and a definite first stop for an overview of a given keyword so well worth bookmarking. The paid version offers a lot more keywords and drills right down to the long tail, but for free the free version this aint bad. What I like about the overture tool was the option to change the language, this was great for working on foreign language seo/cpc when you don’t speak the language - this is one feature that the free wordtracker tool seems to lack. You can also try the Trellian tool which is a little slower but seems to dig further. It also returns alot of results for foreign language queries. There are hundreds of others on the web but now that Overture seems to be taking (what could be a permanent) vacation - these are my 2 favourite alternatives.

I sat down at my desk this morning and booted up my pc, and conducted the usual routine of checking a few search terms while my other programs loaded up and I was hit with something quite strange. It seems that Google has integrated ‘local’ results above the organic listing when you search for a service in any location. A search for hotels in Manchester produces:

After google’s algorithm update last week, this is a major step forward in search - meaning that actual businesses will be returned before the organic listings, This will have repurcussions particularly in the travel industry, as it will make it more difficult for brokers and consolidators to rank highly for location specific searches, as they don’t physically have a hotel/car rental depot etc in that location. Also significantly, on an average monitor, a search for ‘hotels in manchester for example will now only return 1 organic result above the fold! Another concern is that it takes the focus away from the adwords ads whicch may have a small impact on Google’s own revenue. This undoubtedly presents a relevant experience for users, (as long as they can keep the local results ‘clean’) - but this will reignite the debate about Google’s motives. If people use Google to navigate the web, do they really want ‘Yellow Pages’ type results?  I’m very interested to know what people think about this, will it stay? Will it work? And more importantly, how long before people find out how to spam these results? Is this the start of the end for SEO? Want more reading, try the offical blog here.

Just incase anyone doesn’t know, DMOZ is now back online and accepting submissions.

Wow, must be the shortest post ever!

A common mistake people make when integrating adsense into their sites is poor positioning which can seriously reduce click through rate and earnings.

Different people have different reasons for adding contextual advertising to their sites. Some do it to complement the existing content on their pages, some do it to earn revenue to pay for hosting and general costs of maintaining the site, and some people build the sites with the sole intention of making money from the adsense.

Whatever your reason – you need to position your ads correctly on the page. Having your ad right at the bottom where it will never be seen or far away from your content will mean that people won’t click. You need to have your ads positioned above the fold (so it will display initially when the page loads up, without the user needing to scroll down). If you are looking for a high click through rate, you should place your ads in the body of the text, so that they blend in, such as at the top of directory listings, or directly underneath  the header so that the users eyes are drawn towards the ad when they first see the page.

A common practice on article driven sites is to position the content unit in the middle of the article with the content continued below, or to feature a skyscraper ad directly next to the article. Not only does this increase click through rates but also delivers ads to the user while they are reading about the topic and you don’t get much more contextual than that!

You do need to consider however that when the user clicks the ad they will be sirected to another site, so if you are trying to retain visitors then contextual advertising such as adsense is probably not the way to go!

How to Generate Inbound Links

Inbound links is one of the more important factors that Google and other Search Engines take into account when deciding where your site should rank for any given key phrase. The quality of the links is very important as well as the theme of the site the link originated from, the ‘trust rank’ of the site that the link originated from and a whole host of other factors.

The best way to attract inbound links to your site is to feature interesting and informative content that people will want to link to from their sites or blogs. ‘Link Bait’ is the name given to content that attracts links. Although linkbaiting sounds like something that is pretty black hat, it’s actually just the term coined for content that naturally attracts inbound link.

For example: The Energy Fiend Website managed to get a link from AOL’s homepage with their Caffeine Test tool. And the Subservient Chicken is perhaps the best example of linkbait, generating thousands of links within days.

Perhaps the best proof that linkbait works is that I am linking to these sites whilst writing a post about linkbait! Matt Cutts wrote a nice post about link baiting which in itself of course, is link bait!

This article in itself may prove to be link bait – someone else whilst writing a blog post might want to link to a page that explains what linkbait is and hey presto, I’ve caught a link!

The fact is – if your site is just like all of the others in the sector then why should people link to you rather than your competitors? You need to give them a reason to link to you. Interesting tools and informative content are things that you should be thinking about, basically, something that you think people would want to read.

If you take this site for example. I would like to rank well for Online Marketing related keywords and phrases, so I would ideally like links from good quality sites in this sector. I therefore want to introduce content to the site that will draw links from such sites, such as SEO tools, maybe some informative content about online marketing, or a directory of affiliate programs .

Link Baiting should be your first thought when trying to generate inbound links, it’s free and relatively easy, All you need is a little imagination!

Reciprocal Links

Now these don’t carry as much weight in Google as unique inbound links but can be useful in ensuring your pages get crawled on a regular basis and if done in the right way, can also generate visitors, yes that’s right, real people!

In the past I have used Link Assistant quite effectively. This tool automates some of the process of link building but still allows enough flexibility to be useful. This tool will crawl the internet looking for potential link partners, you can then filter them based on certain criteria and search for information on the sites. You can then send out personalised emails to each partner. Link Assistant isn’t just good for searching link partners but helps you build up a good idea of your competition, and related sites that you could be looking to form other initiatives with. You can download a trial version of Link Assistant and try it out to see if it will work for you before you buy

Buying Links

Purchasing links is a common way of increasing the number of inbound links to your site. Google does now however devalue the weighting of inbound links that look as if they have been purchased, which includes site wide links and links that don’t look natural. There is also speculation that link sin the body of the text of a page carry more value than links in footers, headers and sidebars so my advice would be that if you are buying links, you shouldn’t just look at potential SEO value but also the number of visitors that you may be able to get from those links. This way if the SEO value doesn’t materialise, you should still be able to benefit in increase visitor numbers directly.

You may find that you are approached by companies offering to sell you hundreds or thousands of inbound links. My advice would be to avoid such companies like the plague! This sort of black hat SEO will not work. I receive 7- 8 of these phone calls every week. Common sense tells you that if a product is any good, they wouldn’t need to resort to cold calling to try and sell it!