DOS AND DONTS: Safe Link Building Tips For 2013

With the Google Panda and Penguin updates, the method in which links were built and earned took a major turn over the last couple of years. For the year 2013, one word rules – that is quality. Below are some of the DOs and DONTs when acquiring backlinks.

DOs.

• Guest blogging. A way to build your brand and for people to visit you is to do guest blogging. Choose blogs that have high Google ranks. Study their topics closely so you’d know the fastest technique to get your post accepted. Stick to your niche. Be expert on the field.

• Content Creation. Quality over quantity. The type of copy that you put out there could make your business stand out from the rest. Always build fresh and innovative content strategies. Use up-to-date infographics and pin it on Pinterest. If you’re local, create SEO training materials to target professionals in the Philippines. Upload them to Slideshare and link it back to your website for more info.

• Social media. With Google putting on more weight to your presence in the social media scene, being active is a guaranteed to boost ranking. Create profiles and business pages. Add your site on each so you can easily be reached. Join communities. Let the word-of-mouth coupled with social signals take care of everything. 

DONTs.

• Directory links. Gone were the days when you suggest your website for inclusion to hundreds of directories that offer two-way link building services. You can still continue this practice but be very particular. Opt for PR 7 or 8 and those with good authority in Google.

• Blog comments. Most of the blogs have nofollow attribute thus, the old system of commenting, leaving your keyword on the comments has become obsolete as well. More often than not, the ones with links on it are often ignored by readers if not rejected by the blog owner itself. You can still proceed on keeping this strat but learn to put a limit into it.

• Article submission. One of the hardest hit with the change of Google algorithm are the article submission sites. Duplicate content is a big NO. The search engine giant has even warned against spinning as it offers low quality content. Hence, scratch this off your list. You may still submit one or selected two but be sure to really work on imparting great info for search engines to credit it as a link.

Myths About SEO

Search engine optimization, or SEO, has long been a common and familiar term for anyone who spends a considerable amount of time online. Search engine optimization is all about increasing the visibility of your website to search engine spiders so that you can rank high in search engine results for particular keywords or phrases.

A lot of stuff has been written about SEO and there are many strategies that can give you guaranteed SEO success. Nowadays, it is only just a matter of how fast you can achieve the results that you want. The field of SEO has grown so much over the past few years that you can find many companies that offer SEO in Cebu, Davao, and especially Metro Manila.

Despite the large amount of information on SEO that anyone can easily find online, there are still SEO myths and misconceptions that have prevailed. Steer clear of these by learning about them below.

·         Get as many sites linking to you as you can. Although having other sites link to your site is a good thing, the quality or relevance of the website linking to your site is also important. A lot of low quality links can actually do more harm than good. Instead, get links from sites that are relevant to your site and also offer valuable information to readers.

·         Google PageRank is the only factor in SEO success. Google’s algorithm has evolved and changed so much over the years that a website’s online success goes beyond its PageRank. Nowadays, relevance seems to be more important than PageRank when it comes to getting links from other sites.

·        You can do your own SEO. Although it is not impossible to be optimize your website yourself, SEO success in a timely manner requires more than just reading some SEO articles. It is better if you undergo some SEO training or get an SEO expert to help you out.

[DO IT YOURSELF] Five (5) Ways To Keep Yourself Up-To-Date With SEO Trends Online

Keeping up with the latest trend in the SEO industry can be taxing to both marketing professional and freelance enthusiasts especially if they don’t know where to get started. Below are five (5) ways to resolve this challenge:

1. Subscribe to feeds and alerts. You can start by subscribing to the top SEO blogs’ RSS: Google official blog, SEOMoz, SEOBook, SearchEngineLand, and SearchEngineJournal to name a few. Visit Inbound.org – a community-managed website that collates high-quality, most-talked-about internet marketing articles around the web. Setup Google Alerts to monitor what’s happening out there.

2. Follow SEO Gurus and personalities. Add the following to your Google+ circles: Matt Cutts (head of Google’s webspam team), Rand Fishkin (CEO and founder of SEOMoz) and Danny Sullivan (Editor of SearchEngineLand). Find them on Twitter:  Aaron Wall (Founder/CEO of SEOBook), Barry Schwartz (CEO of RustyBrick and Founder of SearchEngineRoundTable) and Bill Slawski (SEO blogger at SEOByTheSea).

3. Be active on SEO discussion sites. Become a member of WarriorForum, Webmasterworld, or DigitalPoint. Join SEO groups in Facebook and LinkedIn. Not only will you be updated with what’s hot and what-knots but you get to meet different people from various SEO company in the Philippines and around the globe.

4. Attend SEO seminars online. You don’t need to enlist yourself to SEO training in the Philippines or even abroad just to be aware of the latest trend. You can do that even in the comfort of your own office or home. Some seminar-giving bodies upload the event highlights on video sharing sites like on their Youtube/Metacafe channels. Watch or download them. More often than not, the presentation and documents used can also be found on Slideshare and Scribd. Be sure to check these out as well.

5. Do not forget Pinterest. As graphic marketing continues to make its way to the top of the list, knowing which SEO-related infographic went viral is an effective way to gain SEO knowledge.