With the art of search engine optimization comes many challenges and procedures, with most basic optimization methods focused on keyword saturation and inbound links. It is with this focus that many people neglect to mention the purpose and benefits of having outgoing or outbound links on your site. These types of links help create new relationships with other sites and this process has in many aspects turned former competitors into cooperating partners. For those of you who wish to understand more about the basic concept of outgoing links, these tips will guide you in the right direction.

What Outgoing Links Do For The Target

In the olden days of search engine optimization, one of the biggest ways to rise to the top of search results was to have the most outgoing links on other sites pointing to your site. In other words, the more links, the higher your ranking would be. Since then, search engine algorithms have become more complex but similar sentiments are still integrated within Panda and other SEO-related ranking systems. As a site owner, you want to have tons of links pointing to your site as it will increase both PageRank and traffic and it is a good way for search engines to determine if your site is a legitimate source of information, commerce or other content.

What Outgoing Links Do For You

There are certainly less benefits for you to host a link to an external site, but the act of doing so can reap bigger rewards. There are many websites on virtually all subjects that have notoriety and authority among search engines and yet maintain a grounded understanding of how traffic and online relationships can be a net positive. If you provide a link to a given website that is related to your site and then contact the webmaster, you very well may be able to score a link on their site to yours, which will give you added authority. This is not a sure bet but can be done on a case-by-case basis.

Easy Way to Score Outgoing Links

There are plenty of high ranking sites on the internet that you can use to score quality outgoing links on their sites that point to yours (which would be an incoming link from your site’s perspective). There are press release sites, comment sections on highly-read newspapers and online portals and many other assorted sites. Check out Alexa and its ranking system to get an idea of the most trafficked websites on the internet and proceed to explore each to determine which ones are suitable for your URL.

Learn From The Competition

If you are curious as to which outgoing links your competitors have, then try out Pingler’s Link Extractor Tool, which will isolate and display all outgoing links from any given website into an easy to read text box. From here, you can check out each site and even get ideas as to which sites may be doing reciprocal linking with your competitor. This will help you find potential sites that you can link with to boost your own PageRank and traffic with only a reasonably small amount of effort.

Whether you are putting a website together for the first time or are a seasoned professional, you may be wondering how you should proceed with optimizing your website so that as many people as possible will be able to find it. The best and most tested way of increasing traffic to your site is using keywords throughout the pages that will attract and indicate to search engines specifically what your site is about and from there, how to categorize it. These suggestions will point you in the right direction of discovering keywords that are a great fit for your site and hopefully will educate you more on the basics of keywords.

Brainstorm Your Category

Once your site is deployed, ask yourself: what exactly is my site about and what would people search for to find me? This is the biggest question as the process in question (what people search for to find you) is the most important way to drive traffic. By having the answer to this question, you have accomplished the hardest part. Jot down a series of words and phrases that may be relevant to your website; for example, if your site specializes in plumbing, you may want to include plumbing, pipe repair, sink repairs, and other words in your initial draft of potential phrases.

Use Generators

Once you have a list of potential keywords and phrases, you may want to also use a keyword generator to get even more ideas. Pingler offers a Keyword Suggestion Tool that will give you dozens of suggestions from just one keyword selection or entry. By adding these to your list of previously conjured keywords and phrases, you should now have a list of several dozen different possibilities that can be incorporated into your website and content.

Go Local

Now that you have tons of keywords to check, you should consider which ones of these you can begin to use in a local sense. For example, if one of your keywords is “sink repair”, then you may want to reduce the likelihood of irrelevant visitors finding your site by making it “sink repair Dallas” or “sink repair in Phoenix”. This will give your site precedence in local search results where your services are more likely to be used. If you are marketing to a broader audience with products, you can still use local keywords as a trick to bring others to your website; feel free to have a variety of landing pages with various locales keyworded into the content.

Pick Keywords With Few Results

It will be much harder to break into a keyword that has millions or tens of millions of results. After compiling your list of selected keywords, narrow it down further by searching each one. Any keyword that returns more than one million results is probably not worth your time. Keywords with 50,000 results or less are virtually guaranteed to give your site the top spot once optimized correctly. Keywords between 50,000-1,000,000 results will take more time to conquer, but are still very doable and should be considered for your site.

Every single day, there are countless bots, spiders and crawlers perusing the internet on behalf of major search engines that are collecting information about each site and page they come across.  Your site – especially if it has many backlinks – may be indexed several times per day by bots that are looking for any changes that have been made to the website.  If you want to take advantage of these bots and their constant patrolling, you will want to make sure that your site is optimized for their presence. These tips will provide you with ways to augment your site’s indexing potential and allow you to get properly indexed.

The First Three Sentences Are Crucial

On each page, you should have a page title, article title and page content.  One of the best ways to make sure bots, spiders and crawlers are comfortable on your pages is to make sure that you use titles and headings that are relevant to the rest of your site.  Spiders and bots have become increasingly intuitive and look for matching content sections on each page.  You will also want to make sure that all of your keywords (or rather, the first instance of each) appears in the first two or three sentences of the page.  Your article or page title should have also emphasis on it (<em>, <h5>, etc) so that search engines properly index it along with the rest of the page.

Have A Site Map

Especially useful if your site is new, site maps give search bots and crawlers the ability to find all pages on your website.  Some of your pages at first may not be locatable by spiders and crawlers due to the lack of backlinks and internal linking, so a site map incorporates links to all of your pages in one easy to find section.  Based on the formatting of the site map, you can also indicate to the bots which sites are primary pages, which are secondary and which are tertiary.  Site maps work well on websites that have 50 pages or less.

Small Edits

Your site is completely evaluated by these crawlers, so it is vital to make sure that your site doesn’t have any aspects to it that could lead to a downgraded PageRank or other rating.  Some of the most common ways to avoid being perceived as a spammer is to reduce the instances of dashes in your URL (common in blog posts) and to use your keywords at a rate of approximately 2% density.  When creating anchor links on your site for example, use keywords in the hyperlink instead of “click here” or “visit this page”.  Finally, be sure to spin the descriptions on any products or services offered; if you are selling a product that a thousand other websites sell, do not use the generic item description.

See Your Site Through Their Eyes

Pingler has released its Spider Viewer Tool that gives you first-hand access to what search engine spiders are seeing. This strips away all of the code such as HTML and allows you to see what the spider does in relation to content and keywords.  This will let you know the extent of your keyword usage and whether or not excess and unnecessary content is being indexed by major search engines.

At the fundamental core of search engine optimization is the science of keywords. There are millions of websites all competing against one another to dominate certain search results and the way the leaders of the industry achieve this result is by finding the best, most precise keyword selections for their particular site and then proceeding to dominate in that category. Keyword selection and deployment is both easy and difficult, depending on who you ask and what level of keyword penetration you are seeking to obtain. The following is a summary of some basic pieces of advice that will have you using better keyword etiquette – in both research and deployment.

Use Niche Specifics

One of the biggest mistakes people make when attempting to create a successful website is trying to incorporate a variety of mismatched keywords into their site’s content. Google and other search engines will recognize what you are trying to do and flag your site; this leads to penalty points and can bump you down in the ratings. Avoid this scenario by using keywords that only pertain to your site. If you are running a site about online piracy, it does not make any sense to have keywords on there relating to health and beauty. Not only will this attract unsatisfied visitors, but will also lead to consequences in your PageRank results.

Use Elaborate Phrases

Some of the best keywords and phrases for an up and coming site are those that are the longest and most obscure. Search habits vary widely, and many people will have many ways to search for any given thing. If you want to aim for results in the mobile phone industry around the holidays, “the top 5 best cell phones for Christmas” is a far better phrase than “best Christmas cell phones” when it comes to competition versus traffic. While the latter keyword may have more results and may be searched more often, there are also many more websites vying for dominance in that keyword. Start your site’s reputation by gaining notoriety in keywords and phrases that are less common. If you do well here, you will be able to gain ranking in more simplified keywords later down the road.

No More Than 1,000,000

Everybody has their own “cut-off” point, but it is safe to say that most newer sites should strive to compete in keywords that have less than one million search results. If I was running a site that sells scarves and I wanted to gain more immediate keyword penetration results, I would perhaps look at two different keyword possibilities: “purple scarf” and “lavender scarf”. “Purple scarf” returns over seven million results, while “lavender scarf” only returns around 700,000. They are virtually the same thing but are two different ways of saying something, and I guarantee you there are people out there who will search for a lavender scarf over a purple one each and every day.

Check Your Ranking

Finally, after you have been attempting to gain notoriety in specific keywords, you will want to keep tabs on your progress.  Pingler offers a Multiple Keyword Rank Checker that allows you to see how well you are doing on any and all keywords on your site. Simply specify the keywords and the tool will give you your results.

We’ve spoken a lot on this blog about how it is important for your website to be fully searchable by the search engine spiders so now it’s time to get some in depth knowledge about what a search engine spider actually is.  A spider isn’t a cute little arachnid like you may have been led to believe; rather it is an automated software agent that seeks out the content on each and every one of your webpages.  The findings of the spider are then relayed back to the search engines enabling them to correctly position your webpage in the search engine results.

How do Spiders Work?

Before a search engine can correctly bring up results for your search terms it needs to know that webpages for your search terms exist and where to find them.  This is the job of the search engine spiders that literally crawl through webpages looking for keywords and indexing them.  As a spider moves through websites looking for keywords the process is called web crawling (yes this is one of the disadvantages of calling the internet the World Wide Web, we end up with a lot of spider centred names).  In order for the search engine results to be beneficial to the searcher, the spiders must crawl through millions of pages and index them correctly.

Where Does a Spider’s Job Begin?

A search engine spider will generally begin its search on a popular website or on a heavily used server.  As it begins to crawl through the webpages and index them, the spider will continue on to follow any links that are found on the webpage too.  By following links the search engine spiders find themselves indexing large parts of the internet, and in particular the most popular websites.  When Google was first invented, inventors Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin announced that when operating at peak performance the spiders could crawl up to 100 pages per second.

What do the Spider’s Look For?

The answer to this question varies depending on the search engine.  For example the Google spiders take into account the titles, subtitles, meta tags and keywords on a page whilst ignoring words like “a, an, of, in” etc.  Other spiders’ crawl the webpages differently – some may even still pay attention to keyword tags it all depends on the search engine they are working for.  Additionally the search engines are continually updating the way they regulate their searches and so whilst the Google spiders may take certain things into account now, this may all change in a few months time.

A Spider’s Job is Never Finished

With the World Wide Web changing on a daily basis, a spider’s job is never finished.  After indexing webpages, the search engines will use a variety of different algorithms to determine which webpage is the most useful for the searcher when they enter a search term.  Each page is given a different amount of “weight” by the search engine and so when a search is conducted by a search engine user they should, in theory, be presented with a list of the most useful webpages for their search term.  As the amount of webpages on the internet increases on a daily basis, search engine spiders need to continue to crawl the web (both new and existing pages) in order to ensure they are still presenting the most relevant search results to users.

If you want to see how your website looks to a search engine you might want to check out the Pingler Spider Viewer Tool.  Whilst the results aren’t intended to be seen by human eyes it can help you to determine what the spiders see and whether they can crawl your page effectively.

So, what do you think of the new Facebook layout?  Pig’s ear?  Sophisticated and useful?  Don’t really care?  Whichever camp you are in, you will have noticed a lot of people boldly shouting about how they’re off to Google+ because they’re “SO fed up with Facebook always changing its layout!”

But what exactly is Google+ and what can it offer its users?  It was originally intended to rival Facebook but, given Google’s less than impressive track record with social networking, that was probably an overly-ambitious aim.  However, with their impressive collection of products, Google is brilliantly placed to create a network of socially compatible tools for its users, in a way with which other networks cannot currently compete.

Instead of a ‘news feed’, Google+ features a ‘stream’ of updates and information from your friends.  The stream consists of four parts: Circles, Hangouts, Huddles and Sparks.

Circles is a cunning way to compartmentalise your goings on.  One of the biggest problems for a lot of people on Facebook is that seemingly inevitable moment when your mum decides to join.  Cue frantic untagging of all photos in which you’re smoking, removal of all comments in which you use deplorable language and deletion of all evidence of that chap you were seeing that she never knew about.  Google+ Circles allow you to create groups of people such as friends, colleagues, relatives etc. and enjoy interaction privately with that group.  You can click and drag people to their relevant ‘circle’ and bob’s your uncle, there they shall stay.

Hangouts is all about virtual get-togethers.  You can invite people to hang out with you and others at any given time and enjoy face-to-face chatting with them in your hangout.  Pretty straightforward really.

Huddles, like the name suggests, are little collections of people you can create to make planning that little bit simpler.  If you’re trying to organise a night out for example, texting back and forth between 5 or more people can become a logistical nightmare.  Huddles allow you to create a big old cluster chat and organise things quickly and in one place.

Sparks are what make you tick.  You can tell Sparks what kind of stuff you’re into and it’ll fire back stuff it thinks you’ll like.  Have a search through the items available in Sparks and if you like what you see, click ‘add interest’ and you’ll be kept up-to-date.  It’s a great idea in theory but it’ll be interesting to see how Google+ stops it from just being a valuable marketing tool for those who might want your interest.  So it’s wise to use it carefully.

Now is a good time to check out Google+ as it’s still in its relative infancy and it’s also enjoying some healthy interest due to Facebook’s makeover.  You might be unsure as to whether the world really needs another social network, but it’s certainly worth checking out.  Waiting for your social groups to migrate over might be the sticking point for a lot of users, but only time will tell.

During its early days, Google+ was only available to people upon invitation (though frankly, anyone could get hold of one) but now it’s officially open to the public!  At the ‘launch’, it already boasted an estimated 20 million users but since then, the hit rate has soared and it’s estimated that a further 10 million users have signed up since.

And the general consensus?  It’s a hit!  A vast proportion of new users are really enjoying Google+ and all it has to offer.  Some are even stating it’s far better quality than Facebook, though generally that seems to be a matter of opinion.  So why should you move?  Well, here are a few things to consider:

Integration

Google already packs quite an impressive punch with its list of products.  Because most people use Google anyway, along with YouTube and Documents, it’s a natural progression to keep everything in the one place.  We’re an increasingly lazy bunch so if we can avoid opening that extra tab, we probably will!

Improved Photo Tagging

Have you found the tagging system in Facebook a little strange recently?  The photo recognition can provide some giggles as it attempts to tag your female best mate’s mug with your great uncle’s name.  Google haven’t bothered with this recognition software and it seems a wise move.

The photo tagging process in Google+ is very similar to that of Facebook but it takes the trouble to let you know what will happen when you tag it i.e. the person you are tagging will be notified and they’ll then be able to see the whole album.  It’s little nods like these that will win people over, given the shifty nature of Facebook’s privacy options of late.

Privacy

On that point, privacy is probably one of the biggest reasons people are moving away from Facebook.  The network guarding your personal information has a responsibility to treat it with respect and a lot of people feel like Facebook has butchered that relationship over the years.  Google+ has made a point of being a more considerate guardian of your person information and in that respect it’s way ahead of the game.

Your Data is Your Data

Once you’ve joined up to most social networking sites, it’s difficult to manage your data and ensure that none of it is being used publicly.  It can also be infuriatingly difficult to remove your details and delete your profile permanently.  Google+ has introduced ‘Data liberation’, an easy way to pick everything up and run away with it should they ever breach your trust.

With each little addition, Google+ has made itself far friendlier than Facebook in many ways.  It’s entirely possible that it will overtake Facebook in the popularity stakes, purely by being more responsible and respectful of its users and their personal privacy.  We all like to feel like we are being looked after.  However, it’s still got a brain-boggling distance to go before it’s pinched all of Facebook’s users.  Only time will tell.

Now that Google+ has come into mainstream availability, after a launch where membership was available to a restricted group of beta testers, many are questioning whether it offers anything new in terms of social networking and indeed social media marketing.

Uptake has been fairly quick, however a common complaint from a lot of users is that all of the connections they have on Google+ are people they already have on Facebook or Twitter, so unless Google+ offers functionality that these sites do not, it is more of a hindrance than a help to have to update an extra site, whether for business or for keeping on top of what your friends are doing.

One of the main benefits of Google+ is that it allows you to categorize your contacts into “Circles”, of which you can have as many as you like, meaning you can target certain things you share at a specific group of your friends.  This can be done on Facebook using groups, but by no means as easily.  It is virtually impossible to do on Twitter, unless you specifically mention the names of the desired recipients in your tweets.  This is probably the main advantage Google+ offers for an internet marketer, because you don’t need to run multiple accounts or worry that you will annoy your customers with overly personal updates or your friends with promotional ones.  Additionally, you can create circles that apply specifically to one campaign or promotion and manage the mailing list for that one set of communications through G+.

Another benefit is the higher level of integration with other Google products.  If you have your companies mail through the Gmail interface, or your blog was created using Blogger, you will find many ways to handily connect your G+ contacts and content with these other services.  Some of the more social features such as Huddles and Hangouts don’t lend themselves to marketing in an obvious way, but over time there is no doubt that canny marketers will find innovative ways to integrate these new communication features into their promotional work.

Google+ is very much in its infancy and even if it doesn’t currently offer anything that appeals to your own business needs it is worth becoming an early adopter – keep on top of new developments as they are introduced to the network and add your existing contacts as they join, and you may soon find that ideas for using this fresh social media tool for your benefit come flooding in.

Did you know that Google Places offers a little known method of making serious money on the internet? Almost 20% of all searches on Google are for a specific location or mention a specific location. Google knows this only too well and has developed Google Places as a result.

Basically Google Places is a feature which produces specific search results for local businesses. The streamline analytics feature allows you to find out how people are finding you and with what search terms.

Let’s therefore assume that you either have a local business or that, like most people, you are surrounded by them. All local businesses can create a Google Places page and advertise their services. You can include an extensive range of business based information including a description of your services, your opening hours and any discount coupons you want to offer. If you receive lots of calls asking some key questions over and over again then you can also place the answers to these questions on your Google Places page. It is also possible to post multimedia files such as staff photos and videos.

Another great feature is the customized code that Google has created for each business registered on Google Places. You can print this code onto marketing merchandise such as business cards and receipts. The code can then be scanned by most smart phones and the phone gets redirected to your Google Places page. Scannable codes are becoming an increasingly popular way of interacting with potential customers and also do not require staff to be present.

There are a few basic requirements that you have to meet to have a Google Places page including having a mailing address and one business location (PO Boxes don’t count). These are not particularly onerous and most businesses will have no difficulty in complying with the requirements.

You can sign up for free at http://google.com/places. Give it a try!

One of the best ways of increasing visitors to your website business is to clearly understand the visitors you currently attract and then use that information to attract more. One great way of gaining that information is by using Google Analytics. This simply means placing a defined sample of code on your site. Once installed, Google Analytics collects data continuously and puts the information together in a report every 24 hours. You can therefore view this information on a regular basis to see the effects of marketing efforts or adding content to your website.

Let the code do its job for a reasonable period of time and then log into your Google Analytics account. You will see your dashboard and a number of different options from which to choose. Some of these options are as follows:

Visits and Site Usage: lists the number of visits to your site differentiated by number of unique visitors, page views and pages viewed per visit. One feature which new users struggle to understand is the “bounce rate”. This is simply the ratio of visitors who chose to leave the site after viewing just one page. A high bounce rate indicates that visitors do not find your content particularly interesting and therefore you should work to improve site content.

Map Overlay: this feature allows you to see from where your visitors originate. There is a drill down facility which also allows you to obtain more detailed statistics.

Traffic Sources: this allows you to see if traffic is coming from search engines, directly by users typing in the URL of your site or is being referred from another site. The thing to watch for is that you have a significant proportion of visitors coming from search engines which denotes that your search engine optimization is working effectively. People don’t normally find a site by typing the URL unless the site is very well known.

Content Overview: a very useful feature which shows the most popular pages in rank order. These pages are popular for a reason – you just need to discover what the reason is and then use this information to improve other pages.

The use of Google Analytics is a great way to increase your traffic for free – but you need to take action on the information!