A simple guide to website ranking with links

One of the key factors influencing how your site is indexed, and ranked, in the search engines is that of inbound links.

These are hyperlinks to pages on your site from other sites on the web. The basic theory is that the more links you have, the higher the value of your own site. Why? Because the search engines will assume that, if all those other people think your site is interesting enough to link to, then it must be important.

That was the premise a few years back, but sadly that assumption was abused by the darker side of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). They set up thousands of sites that were just 'Link Farms'. Pages and pages of listings with links to other sites. The more links you had on these sites, the better value you appeared to have, thus skewing the listing results.

Google got smart to this idea and, in an attempt to reduce the effect, they introduced a system of ranking each page it indexed. It's ranking process included a host of factors but was mainly designed to weed out the Link Farms. In fact sites that were/are still found to be listed on these sites are often penalised heavily and their own indexing can be severely impaired making it difficult to appear in any of the results listings.

So let's go back to the beginning. Inbound links are important, but they have to be carefully chosen and prepared links.

Here are the three key factors you should consider:

1: What is the Page Rank (PR) of the page and site that will show the link? The higher the PR the better as it seen as an important site and it's outbound links are valued higher too. Not only that but it will 'feed' some of it's high ranking across to your page as a bonus.

2: Is the site relevant to yours? As an example let's say your site was about pet products. If you had a link on a site with heaps of information all about dogs - that would make sense to Google and be valued. A link on a dating site would be seen as totally irrelevant and virtually ignored.

3. Use good 'Anchor Text'. Having a hyperlink to your pet product site showing as www.petproducts.co.uk on that dog information site is not so effective, and meaningful, as having the hyperlinked text saying 'Buy dog baskets, leads and dog food'. Google sees and understands the relationship between the wording on the information site, the anchor text and that of your site - so it will value the link higher.

So to summarise, links to your site are good, but not all links. Be careful about accepting offers of links, especially if they are asking you to pay. Take time to consider those key factors before you commit.

Finally there is the issue of reciprocal links - the 'You show me yours and I'll show you mine' of the internet world.

You may be offered a link to your site in return for a link to theirs. If you accept this and the link to them is shown on, for example, page 2 of your site and the link to you on their site also points to your page 2, it will easily seen as reciprocal and not a 'vote' of confidence in your or your website, therefore valued less.

Turn that around based on the 3 key factors earlier in this blog. If the link from them is on a page of information about dogs, the anchor text reflects that and the page on your site which it points to is about dogs that's good.

So in return, work something on the same principal but using different pages, perhaps about cats. That way the links are less likely to be seen as reciprocal.

I hope that all makes sense, but you can always talk to me about how to maximise your website profits at Alloy CRM, Sales & Marketing Strategists

What's your page rank and what is it's influence?

The search engine Google works hard to identify the websites that it believes would be the best option to show at the top of the listing when we type something into their search box.

Google takes loads of different factors into consideration to determine that all important list. Bottom line is that Google wants to keep us using their search engine above all others and rightly believes that, if it offers the best and most useful sites for us to visit, we'll keep coming back.

As a guide to how important Google thinks a site is, they have a Page Rank system. Ranging from 1 to 10, with 10 being the top, each indexed web page - note I said page, not site, is allocated a ranking number.

You can see the Page Rank for any site quite easily. First you need to install the Google toolbar for your web browser here: http://pack.google.com/intl/en-gb/pack_installer.html?hl=en-gb
By default the Page Rank (PR) tool probably won't be on there, but you can add it in easily by right clicking on your newly installed Google Toolbar.

With that done every web page you visit will show the Page Rank. You will find that lots of pages have a PR of less than 2, maybe even 0, which means that they are unlikely to show up in Googles search listing other than for very unique phrases such as your own business name if it's unusual enough.

At the other end of the scale are sites like bbc.co.uk which has a PR of 9 - even they can't make 10! The difference between each rank increases enormously as you go up the scale. So you might be able to move from 2 to 3 reasonably easily, but the move from 6 to 7 is enormous.

So how can you influence your own PR and stand a better chance of ranking better?

Three key factors really:
1: Make sure that Google understands what your site is about by the careful selection and use of keywords throughout your content.
2. Relevant content, more relevant content and even more relevant content! The more there is on your site the more Google will absorb and value your site accordingly.
3. Links into your site from other sites. The higher the PR of those linking sites the better. So if you could get a link to you from bbc.co.uk that would benefit you tremendously.

I've been fairly simplistic about how the PR system works and can be influenced. There are a whole host of factors to be taken into consideration and I may well delve into those a little deeper in another post.

If you want to improve your standing in the PR stakes give me a call or click here to improve your website profit

Alloy CRM helps businesses to increase sale, revenue and profit

The Next Generation Websites

I remember saying, a good few years ago, that the internet would end up like electricity. It would just be piped into every home and business and we wouldn't be using the 'Internet' as such.

It would be just part of every appliance we use in our every day life. Your fridge and microwave would be seamlessly web enabled. Most people who I said that to gave me that strange look that suggested that I lived on another planet.

Well perhaps I wasn't as mad as they thought. I read today an article about Web v3.0.

You may already be conversant with the term Web v2.0. If you haven't heard it then you are certain to have used it. It's the label given to the development of the internet that gave us interactivity - Facebook, Myspace, Wikipedia, YouTube and ecademy. Web v2.0 is that ability to interact with others online and influence through commenting and reviewing.

That was a major step forward in our use of the internet which had previously been simply an information and research tool to view only.

Now Web v3.0 is on it's way. It is the seamless integration of web services and information with every other means of communication and device.

One of the examples went as follows:

A business contact has just rolled into town and called you his mobile phone to tell you he's stopping overnight in a local hotel and is suggesting that you might want to meet up over dinner.

The call from the mobile is already logged through GPS so you know which hotel he's in. A couple of presses on the touch screen of your phone gives a list of nearby restaurants. A further click on your restaurant choice offers menu selections and available booking times. Once booked your car satnav receives the location and route in readiness. Meanwhile your friend gets the same but as walking directions for his mobile phone.

At the same time your fridge has just texted you to let you know that you are low on semi skimmed milk and then offers a new recipe that you might like with a list of ingredients - all of which can be added to your regular on-line supermarket order, due for delivery tomorrow, with one click.

A step too far into the future? It may not be.

Technology such as this relies upon integration of information systems. Currently that information resides on PC's and servers. We have already seen the first wave of internet based systems such as Google docs - the online Microsoft Office look-a-like and more on-line applications that are no longer reliant upon a specific PC or server are just around the corner.

I watched James May's 20th Century program the other night and he told the story of the guy who took us from a multitude of electricity power stations, each with its own voltage and wall plug configuration, to the unified national grid system.

That allowed us to have 'electricity enabled' devices such as vacuum cleaners, plug in electric fires and eventually the TV.

That was electricity's Web v3.0.

Enjoy your 20th century PC - I'm not sure it will be around for much longer!

If you need any help and advice on your bussiness use of the web Alloy CRM offers website profit programs to ensure you achieve Return on Investment

Using Themes in SEO

Using Themes in SEO

The Search Engines use a number of algorithms to determine the natural listing position for your site and pages. By helping the search engine understand the theme of your site it is better able to decide when to display a link to your pages in response to a users search query.

There are 5 key factors that influence the theme of a site:

The Domain Name
The Page Title
The Meta Tags
The Page Content
The Anchor Text of Inbound Links

If we look at a fictitious site about mobile phones and see how each of these can be used to our advantage.

The first step is to determine the best keywords and phrases to use. Let’s assume that the most appropriate for our site is ‘mobile phone’.

The Domain Name

It is always beneficial to have your main keywords included in the domain name, so mobilephone.co.uk would be a good choice.

The Page Title

The Title in the page code should be one of the first lines that the search engine robot sees when it ‘reads’ your site. This is the wording that appears in the uppermost line of the browser window. Something like ‘Mobile Phones at fantastic prices’ might be suitable and links to the domain name.

Another consideration with the Title tag is that of users adding the page to their favourites. This process takes the Title tag as the default description which makes it easier to understand when looked at in the list later.

The Meta Tags

These tags are of questionable use from a search engine ranking point of view now as it thought that these are no longer of interest to them. However the Description is used by the search engine to give a snippet in the listings to help the user decide if this page is worth viewing and, therefore, the wording is picked up by them. A 2 or 3 line paragraph that started and ended with ‘Mobile phone’ would be worth while from both a visual user point of view and to add to the ‘theme’

The Page Content

It is accepted that pages should be content rich and appropriate to the subject but including multiple references to our keyword ‘mobile phone’ would emphasise the theme once again. However it must be remembered that a human will read the text ultimately and it must therefore read fluently to ensure that a site conversion is achieved.



The Anchor Text of Inbound Links

It is widely accepted that links to your site from other sites is a key factor in determining its ranking. It has been common practise, in the past, to gain vast numbers of these from ‘link farms’ – sites set up simply to provide one way inbound links from otherwise worthless websites. The search engines have wised up to this practise and now value inbound links by the Page Ranking of the originating site. So for example a site such as bbc.co.uk, which has a Page Rank of 9/10 would provide an extremely valuable link to you. At the opposite end of the scale are sites with zero page rank which could in fact harm your own value in the eyes of the search engines.

So with that in mind there are some good ways to enhance the value of your good ranked links.

Typically links to your site would simply be the web address with a hyperlink. In our example of mobilephones.co.uk that’s not too bad at our key word is included in the domain name, but that’s not always the case.

A better alternative would be to have a short piece of text, describing your business and including your keywords, with the whole piece hyperlinked. This reinforces that the destination site is about mobile phones.



Conclusion

The processes described here are not ‘black art’, they are simply logical steps to ensure that the search engines understand exactly what you are trying to promote and give them guidance as to when they should be display your site as a suitable link.

The search engines ultimate aim is to provide its users with the best and most appropriate links to ensure that they keep coming back, using them as their search engine of choice.

All you are doing with themes is helping the search engines with that process.



If you would like help with making your website produce sales and marketing the results from SEO, SEM and PPC you are looking for call Roy Gough on 0777 556 1664 to discuss the cost effective options available.