What link building tactics do you use?

Is link building  dead?

in short link building is not dead, and will not die any time soon!

That being said we do need to understand the many issues that surround link building, and the implications of your personal link building strategies.  In the past when things in search first started out links were the primary SEOVI (Search Engine Optimisation Value Indicator) and links were gamed to the extent that Google and other search engines started showing very distorted and poor SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages)

see previous post discussing the value of a link in 2014

The search engines thus introduced algorithms that started to look for patterns that these so called BLACK HAT search engine optimisation practitioners were using, and started penalizing those who they thought were cheating or gaming the system.  Google now has a number of NAMED ALGORITHMS , as well as many un-named algorithms,  that look into these matters and related matters where Search Engine Optimisation Technical staff and online marketing practitioners SPAM the search engines in a variety of different ways using many different techniques.

Some of these named algorithms include :

>>  PANDA

>>  PENGUIN

>>  HUMMING BIRD

>>  PIGEON

These algorithms help to improve the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) and some are punitive, while others add value to the work of those who apply recommended tactics that are rather technical and difficult to implement, such as Google's author and publisher programs that are connected to Google plus.

This short video below will help you understand why I say that link building will not die any time soon, but link building has changed and it is now necessary to selectively screen out bad links and focus exclusively on high quality links from reputable sources when ever possible.  The question asked was does Google have a version of search where back links are excluded.  listen to what  +Matt Cutts had to say then evaluate your own situation.

The question thus becomes  What is link building and why is it important?

In short links, some times called HYPERLINKS are the tools that you use to allow  the end user, or your audience to move from one place on the internet to another, and are the only tool that search engines have of locating your online content.  If there are no links pointing to your page, then a search engine has no means of locating your page, and it will thus never be found in search.  In the past the more inbound links a page had the better it did in search results.

Link building is the process that you follow to ensure that your web pages or blog posts acquire in bound links, be they internally from   pages within your own web site /  blog or externally from some other online resource.

Today, due to the amount of SPAM generated by so called BLACK HAT SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION this is no longer true, and Google as well as all other search engines now use the quality of links more than the quantity of links.  Then  within Google search there is the issue of PANDA and PENGUIN  which both have negative or punitive tools that tackle SPAM and bad quality web pages

It is thus important that you understand the  need to have a link building policy in place, and that this link building policy needs to be well documented and shared with every person who has anything to do with your total marketing plan.  Bad links can come from a number of sources, and those who do not know about these issues can very inadvertently make use of a link building farm or some other bad tactic, thinking that they are helping your marketing efforts.   New employees or  junior marketers who have not been exposed to the impacts of bad links may not understand what a link farm is, and believe they are being helpful in getting traffic to your pages.

DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF BAD LINKS TO SINK YOUR ONLINE MARKETING EFFORTS,  BE CAREFUL WHEN DEVELOPING YOUR LINK BUILDING POLICY

The social media is currently a very big source of links to your online content, and as such you do need to have a social media policy in place to deal with these issues. Once again Your social media policy needs to be well documented and shared with everybody who has anything to do with your marketing, be it online or not.  You need to remember that all your offline marketing has a very big impact on your online marketing in many ways, especially when it comes to issues around search. You will need to include your link building policy within your social media marketing policy,as they are very interconnected.

Off line marketing has strange impacts on your intended target audience, and this is where you should use terminology and language that is specific to your business interests.  Your target audience will be induced to use the words and language in your off line marketing to search online to discover more about your company, your products or your services, and you need to be aware of this in your online marketing, especially in your social media marketing, as this is where you will have direct one on one conversations with your target audience as well as many others who may or may not have a direct interest in your product, service or business proposition.

The people who you have conversations with online within the social media space, may or may not decide to place links within their posts to your web pages or blogs, and as such you need to influence these OUT SIDERS in a positive manner so that any links that they may place within their social media posts are positive and  relevant to pages within your web site or blog.

These issues are also confounded and confused when marketers say that you should not be doing any link building at all.  Link building as a term is also a very difficult term to come to grips with in the current scenario where past link building practices have destroyed web sites through their spam attacks and the use of link farms.  Link building has definitely changed a great deal over the last few years, and is now a very delicate art that is not properly understood.  On the one hand an online resource must have inbound links, these links need to be of high quality and carry some authority to have any success in the SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) and on the other hand excessive links as well as links of low quality can cause a web site or blog some serious damage within the SERP's.

The guys at +Moz recently published an article called The beginners guide to link building   which I have found very helpful, and shared with my audience in other places.  The G+ post embedded below is actually what inspired this post, as I commented there  and had an interesting conversation with both  +Mike Gracia and +William Rock   Take some time and read the comments as I believe they will help you to understand the great difficulties that we as online marketers have in dealing with the changes in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) issues as well as how different people interpret the terminology within the  search engine optimisation world.  Please remember that these are sensitive issues, and need great care, so ask for second and third opinions, then apply your own mind and be aware of those who are willing to game the system.
  

THERE IS LOTS OF BAD ADVICE OUT THERE 

What is the true purpose of SEO

The true purpose of SEO (search Engine Optimisation) has some how been hidden from plain view, and now seems to be obscured by the technical jargon thrown around by technical SEO experts.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a complex task which involves your entire marketing teams efforts that starts with  the Manipulation of "IN-PAGE DATA" to suit your target markets vocabulary and ends with ensuring that search engines understand the complete "Aboutness of your page" so that they are able to match this to the intent of the searcher who is looking for your information which you want your target market to find.

Put bluntly SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is done to ensure that your web pages and related online information  get visitors. So we can happily say that the purpose of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is to ensure that search engines send visitors to your pages.

Problem is how ever that website owners (you) don't  want large numbers of visitors who will be uninterested and bored with what their web site offers, but want qualified visitors who will be entertained, take some action on their pages call to action statements, and tell their friends about the great experience they had.

Good SEO (Search Engine Optinisation) involves your complete marketing team to ensure

1) that your web sites visitors are entertained and have a great experience at your site. This end user satisfaction is fast becoming a primary concern within many SEA's (Search Engine Algorithms) which was never an issue in the past.

2) your in-page navigation structure is user-friendly and easy for search engines to understand in a way that enhances the SE (Search Engine) ability to link the pages aboutness to a searchers intent. This is also becoming a very contentious issue within the SEI (Search Engine Industry)

3) your web site has a good solid back up within your SME (Social Media Efforts) as social signals are becoming increasingly important within all major search engines metrics that are used within their SEA's (Search Engine Algorithms)

4) the copy writing is linguistically correct for the specified   language in the META TAGS within the head section of your page. Good language and the correct syntax is getting a lot more attention within SEA's (search Engine Algorithms) than it did in the past, as this is assisting the search engine to link your pages aboutness to the users intent. Being linguistically correct involves using slang that is indigenous  to your target market, so be careful how you interpret this.

5) the META TAGS in the HEAD section of your pages has all the right segments for your page type and page style. Is the page
                   a) a news page
                   b) a technical info page
                   c) a shopping or e-commerce page
                   d) an educational page

AS search engines learn  about people behavior and thinking patterns within various communities, they integrate this into their algorithms with devious mathematical tricks on the data they have about your pages to link the aboutness of your pages to the intent of the searcher.

It thus follows that SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is no longer just about the technical in page SEO stuff, but must now include many more metrics. Google technical staff within the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) field say that they use more than 200 individual metrics in their SEA (Search Engine Algorithm) and some of the more important ones are listed below.

1. page title in <HEAD>
2. page description in <HEAD>
3. key words tags in <HEAD>
4. other META TAGs in <HEAD>
5. language
6. user friendlyness
7. navigation structure, internal links and out bound links
8. inbound links from out side sources not under your control.
9. Social media signals associated with page, site and communities
10. in-page HTML use, structure and style (image alt tags, link title tags etc)
11. copy content and relevance to other pages in sub-domain as well as complete domain relevance

Once again the true purpose of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is to get search engines to send visitors to your pages.  I hope that you now understand why SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) must be integrated into your company marketing holistically, and why you need a dedicated SEOM (Search Engine Optimisation Manager.)

Once the marketing manager is up to speed with the true purpose of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) in the new online information age, you should not have any difficulty in ensuring that your company appoints a single dedicated person to manage your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) to ensure that SEO  related policies and guidelines are in place and functional.

Is SEO dead?

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is not dead, and will never die, as SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is the collective work done to ensure that your online information is found by your intended target market . So as long as you have online information of any sort you need to do SEO

The very technical stuff that used to be done by technical SEO experts is taking a bit of strain, and under serious pressure, from Social Media experts, and this may be what some experts are referring to as the death of SEO.

Once again SEO or Search Engine optimisation is a collective effort that needs to be integrated into your entire online marketing strategy. The "Link building" and Social "signals" that are generated when others quote your work are one of the most essential parts of any SEO effort, as this offers the search engines an insight as to just how useful your audience has found your online offerings.

This article - What is SEO and who cares is a very interesting read

This article  Mobile SEO – Just How Different Is It   is also a bit of a surprise, but not entirely new or alien to SEO

Managers need to understand that SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is a very big issue and it needs to be integrated into the company marketing policy and managed from the top in a co-ordinated and integrated fashion. SEO is no longer the stand alone department that it used to be, but should now be an integral part of any online  marketing strategy.

Search Engine Optimisation and social media marketing

The YouTube play list below contains videos covering SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) issues, and the write up discusses SEO \(Search Engine Optimisation) and SMSEO   (Social Media Search Engine Optimisation) in general

Info4u offers Online cloud computing services, and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is an essential part of all online cloud systems that ensures the relevant target market finds the various information portals within your company or organisations online computing cloud.

The target market could be

• internal office staff
• different segments of your corporate intranet
• your customers
• your suppliers
• the general public

Each target market segment requires different approaches and different sets of information. How to ensure which set of viewers find which set of information is out of your hands, and in the realm of your Search provider, but you are in control of how you optimise  your page for the different search engines to evaluate your information.

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is a delicate subject that requires a deeper understanding of many marketing concepts and starts with understanding your target market.

Next is to use selected key words in the web page copy, and ensure that these are used by your primary target market group.

The many SEA's (Search Engine Algorithms) use different techniques and procedures to score points for your selected keywords, so you need to have a very good understanding of what key words are, and how to construct sentences around these key words in a manner that is visually pleasing to your target audience, and also logical to SEA's  (Search Engine Algorithms)

Each video in this play list will add some understanding to the bigger picture, and each video should be viewed independently and analyzed separately first, taking into account the target market of the information provided in the video.

Adding META TAGS in the head section of any html page adds tremendous value to the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) value of the page, and many of the videos in this playlist will discuss these tags.

The META TAGS should how ever never be separated from the content of the page that the end users (viewers) see and read, and words not in the content should never be placed in the <HEAD> section willy nilly, as this may cause the SEE's (Search Engine Engineers) to view these words as SES (Search Engine Spam).

SEA's (Search Engine Algorithms) are closely guarded secrets of Search Engine Owners, and have many variables which are mentioned from time to time, and when you watch a video discussing any of these take careful note, and write this down so you never forget the particular variable, and its worth within the SEA (Search Engine Algorithm) 

Google professes to use in excess of 250 (two hundred and fifty) individual variables in their SEA (Search Engine Algorithm) which gives you an idea of the size of their logical equation used to evaluate your web pages and the words within your pages when deciding which page goes to the top of a SERP (Search Engine Results Page) list.

SMSEO (Social Media Search Engine Optimisation) is hardly ever discussed in any online forum, but is an essential part of ensuring the success of your social media marketing efforts.  Take note of the videos discussing your target market selection and the word selection criteria during key word selection.

 The first step in SMSEO is to use your selected key words and key word phrases in your social media marketing efforts.

The second vital step in SMSEO (Social Media Search Engine marketing)  is to ensure that your posts have inbound links from -:-

• your web sites
• your blogs
• your forums where you discuss the different aspects of your project, product or service
• Your other social media platforms

The third vital step SMSEO (Social Media Search Engine Optimisation is to ensure that your posts contain out bound links to  -:-

• your web sites
• your blogs
• your forums where you discuss the different aspects of your project, product or service
• Your other social media platforms

Following these three steps  is the best you will be able to do, as no social media platform allows you to edit the html code where your social media posts are displayed.

So watch these videos carefully and evaluate them with great care, and make adjustments to your web pages and social media posts with respect for what you have learnt from the videos in this play list.

For further info visit www.info4u.co.za or fill in the online form found here

Social media and advertising stuff from big brother

If you dont know who "BIG BROTHER" is then you are wasting your time reading this post.

BIG BROTHER  watches your every keystroke and follows each click of your mouse, when ever you give him and his many allies the opportunity. This is scary stuff for those who wish to hide or those that have privacy concerns.

I just read this post http://www.zdnet.com/quarantining-facebook-to-control-tracking-7000000228/  which reminded me of these very disturbing issues. But the big marketing firms are the main culprits, and not the governement (well not yet anyway)

Targeted advertising is getting better and better for those that have the resources to tap into the rich data mines that have evolved along with the social media growth. They know your every move, who your online friends are,  which chat rooms you visit, what you purchase online, who you purchased it from, how many searches you made about the product you purchased before you spent your hard earned cash, how many times you visited each online store, and what other items you looked at whilst browsing. SCARY STUFF but very true.

Each website you visit leaves a cookie on you computer, or the computer that you were using. when you login to a site from a different computer the site notes this and leaves an indicator within the cookie that you use different computers, so that the owners know that they need to treat your data slightly different to that fella who uses one access point only.

for those that do serious SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) these data mines are an interesting pool of information about how the end user interacts with your pages, and what tools to use to ensure your SEO  is treated as you would like it to be by the search engines and their marketing friends who are associated with BIG BROTHER.

Remember that you "SMART PHONE" is a computer too, and also keeps cookies in its memory bank. these cookies are vitally important for your security at any site, and deleting them places you in danger of having your info attacked by hackers. so be aware of what these cookies do before you just delete them from you computer. But getting your browser to remove them is also a security risk. What to do? 

Only do online banking from your own devices, never use a shared computer for any financial transactions of any nature. It is very risky to do so!!

always log out / off from any site that requires a pass word to enter

never allow your device to remember your pass word, if others get access they have access to all your remembered passwords.

When using Faceook, Twitter, Linkedin or other social media  you are bombarded with ADVERTISING FROM all sides and many different angles. take time and notice what these adds are for and be surprised at how accurate the marketing companies are getting with their offers.