SEO Strategy

There is no unanimous opinion on how to optimize a website, but certain principles are generally accepted. Here are some of these principles:

1. Do some keyword analysis to define a set of keywords (which I refer to as your “keyword group”) that range from your most general theme to more specific sub-themes. For example, if your site is about “golden retriever puppies” this term, along with two or three other closely related terms should provide the focus for your home page.

2. Your home page is usually considered your site’s most important page, so it should be optimized for your most important keywordS - as mentioned above. Your home page should be more general in content and emphasis, with links pointing to more specific sub-sections within your site. In other words, organize your home page around the most general (small) set of keywords you want to rank well for.

3. Create internal pages focused around specific keywords related to those emphasized on your home page. For example, you may have sub-sections within your site on topics such as:

- golden retriever puppy care
- buying a golden retriever puppy
- toys for golden retriever puppies
- best features of golden retriever puppies
- etc.

Each of these pages should focus on a narrow set of keywords related to (and linked to) the home page, and all the other pages within your site.

4. You need simple navigation tools - such as a nav-bar - to interlink your pages. These links are important, both for navigation purposes and for SEO purposes. These are seen as inbound links and they help form a “neighborhood” of related resources. Neighborhoods are good in the eyes of the search engines. The SEs assume that a neighborhood of closely related resources contains more information than isolated pages.

5. Expand your neighborhood by creating resources in other places and linking back to your main site using specific anchor text. For example, you could create a Squidoo page (Hub page, Knol, Wordpress blog…) about “toys for golden retriever puppies” and link back to your main website. You could also write an article about “buying a golden retriever puppy” and link back to your main website. Then upload it Ezinearticles.com and several other article sites. Or you could create a video demonstrating the “best features of golden retriever puppies”, link back to your main site, and then upload the video to Youtube.com, Revver.com, Google Video, etc.

This way you expand your “neighborhood” of tightly related resources. These days that’s what “link building” or “getting links” is all about.

Check out the Link Builder Network, launching August 15/08.

If you know anything about getting traffic from the search engines, you know the importance of getting backlinks to your websites.

The Link Builder Network is a place where online promoters, marketers, web designers and publishers can go to build backlinks to their websites. The Link Builder Network consists of more than 50 blogs where members can publish posts. These blog posts can contain backlinks to your websites - as many websites as you want to promote.

In fact you can even resell this service to clients. For instance, if you are a web designer you can bundle a unique promotional service with your other web building services.

Among other things, the Link Builder Network is a “member restricted” website designed to allow members to promote their products and services. Inside the member restricted area you will find important tools to help build links and web presence.

What kind of tools?

1. A “Multi-Poster” program that lets you post to all blogs within the network. An individual post can be sent to one blog or several. It is all right there in front of you, with no need to log into each blog separately.

2. Instructional videos demonstrating how to use the system and make effective posts.

3. Writing tools, to help you quickly write effective blog posts.

4. A system to let you order unique blog posts, optimized for your products or services and with your links already embedded.

5. Tons of PLR articles that you can take and modify to create posts.

With the Link Builder Network, members can make as many entries as they like - The purpose of the Link Builder Network is to give members an avenue for promotion. So members are free to use the blogs within the network to do legitimate promotion of their products and services.

No spamming is tolerated. Blog posts must make sense, have a maximum of 3 embedded links, and must not be repeated or duplicated in more than 4 blogs across the network.

In a previous post called “Commenting on Blogs to Get Links” I mentioned the product called G-Lock Blog Finder that helps you find relevant blogs (in your niche) where you can leave comments.

Turns out there is another similar product that has been around for a while, called Comment Kahuna. This one is worth checking out as well. It is free, and from the video it looks like it is easy to use and potentially helpful.

I have not tried the product yet, but I have the same reservations about this one that I expressed in the previous post.

I recently did some investigation into the suggestion that leaving comments on blogs is a good way to get backlinks to your website and thereby increase its Google ranking.  Jonathan Leger, who I refer to from time to time in this blog, has done some testing on this question, and has also recently recommended some tools that might help in the quest to get backlinks by doing commenting. His most recent suggestion is a tool called G-Lock Blog Finder.

As explained in his video, this little program lets you search for blogs by keyword. It goes out and finds blogs relevant to your keywords, tells you their PR, the PR of the actual pages it finds, and also tells you whether it is a “nofollow” or “do follow” blog. In case you’re not aware, a “do follow” blog is one in which the Google-inspired “nofollow” tag is deactivated so that links in comments actually get (a little bit of) link juice. Google has come convoluted reasons for encouraging the use of “nofollow”, and most bloggers are in love with Google, so there you go.

G-Lock Blog Finder then lets you click on the address of a specific post and it then shows that post in a window where you can create a comment (and leave your link of course.)

Now if you think it sounds just a bit anal to spend an hour or so every now and then to find random “targeted” blogs, do a cursory reading of the content, and then leave a comment for the purpose of getting a link, I completely concur. Most SEO experts think links from blog comments are, at best, of minimal value anyway, so spending any time at all generating such links seems like a pretty pointless way to waste your life away.

If these links actually were worth anything that would be a different matter, I guess. But first, there is the “nofollow” issue - which most blogs adhere to (rightly or wrongly). Second there is the question “Don’t I have anything better to do with my time?” And third you will inevitably ask “Do I really want to read this crap?” since so many blogs - even the ones turned up by a program like G-Lock Blog Finder - are little more than self-congratulating navel gazing.

On the other hand, finding relevant blogs can be a very useful exercise. Some blogs actually have very interesting content, a fair bit of traffic, and offer you a place where you can both learn something about your niche and meet others who are also interested in it. In other words, they perform the same function as social networking sites do - they let you get involved with others in your area(s) of interest.

No doubt this can turn out to be one of the most important sources of traffic to your site. Not because you have created a bunch of backlinks and have thereby improved your search engine rankings (although I suppose that may happen occasionally), but rather because you have entered into “the conversation” with others who share some of your interests, and they see some value in having a look at your site from time to time.

So I suggest you forget about looking for blogs based on the value you might squeeze out of them by leaving comments. Instead, I suggest you look for blogs that offer you useful content that can teach you something and a lively community of readers who might be interested in hearing what you have to contribute to the conversation.

To come (more or less) full circle, a tool like G-Lock Blog Finder might actually help you find blogs like this. So it is at least worth a look.

You can download a free trial version of G-Lock Blog Finder here.

In his recently released report titled “Search Engine Myths Exposed” Jonathan Leger tackles some of the most basic assumptions most of us make about getting successful ranking in Google.

He presents case studies and actual research to show that most of these assumptions are nothing but “myths” propagated by “gurus” who are just repeating stuff they have heard elsewhere, usually to promote their own products.

Of course Jonathan himself is promoting a product - a link generating product called 3-Way Links - so we might wonder if that has influenced his emphasis in the report just a bit.

Personally I think not, since he has been consistently saying the same thing ever since I have been following him. He also provides some pretty convincing evidence that, Continue Reading »