Latest Articles
Link Diversity: The Spice of Link Building
November 19, 2010 By Sue Spiker
We all know about the importance of building inbound links, but link diversity is just as important as generating the links themselves. And for good reason.
Better Search Rankings
Imagine that a job candidate’s references were all family members. Wouldn’t the candidate’s references carry more weight if they were a mix of colleagues and supervisors? The same goes for your natural link portfolio. Inbound links are essentially ‘votes’ for your site, and a diverse link portfolio indicates authority and trustworthiness, which search engines are often happy to reward accordingly.
Conversely, search engine algorithms can tell if a significant portion of your inbound links come from one single site…and penalize your search rankings for it.
Protection For Your Efforts
As with monetary investments, putting all of your eggs in one basket is not usually the best idea. But diversifying your link portfolio can help protect your site against search algorithm updates, the closing of sites that have linked to yours and other changes that can derail your link building efforts.
Increased Web Traffic
If your inbound links stem from a limited source, you can pump only so much water out of that proverbial well. By varying your inbound links, your site will be exposed to a broader audience, which creates more opportunity to generate high-quality inbound links and reach potential customers.
Building quality inbound and outbound links can be challenging enough, but putting in the extra time and effort to create a natural link portfolio that consists of diverse inbound links can pay off in your search engine ranking. In an upcoming post, we’ll go into more detail about what constitutes link diversity and how to achieve it, so stay tuned.
SEO 101: Back to the Basics
November 11, 2010 By Webposition SEO Team
Keeping up with the latest in SEO requires the same dedication demanded of those who train for triathlons. Seriously, just thinking about it almost makes you reach for a sports drink.
But professional pride drives most of us to not only stay knowledgeable about the newest methods, but to also implement them. And because search engines continually update their algorithms, we often must also adjust our efforts accordingly to maintain the page rank we’ve already worked so hard to earn…all while answering the numerous demands from multiple business stakeholders that often have little to no understanding about SEO in general. (Take another sip of your sports drink.)
Let’s be honest, modifying our strategies for whatever reason has become a reflex, but it doesn’t always benefit our overall SEO efforts. Our strategies quickly grow so complex that if they were posted to the Internet, they could rank in the Top Ten Results for “How in the world did we end up here?”
If keeping up with it all has made your strategies too convoluted, it may be time to revisit those tried-and-true SEO 101 basics that have proven effective time and time again. Offer users solid content, and optimize your keywords on and off the page. Build a site that users want to keep visiting and that other sites want to link to. The most successful SEO efforts are built upon a foundation that’s stood the test of time and changing search algorithms.
Top 5 Mistakes When Choosing Keywords
November 5, 2010 By Sue Spiker
Researching keywords is one thing, but choosing the right keywords is another. Choose the wrong ones and search engines don’t know to offer your website to users who want to find it. And that means missed opportunities.
To help you stay on the straight and narrow, here are the Top 5 Mistakes to avoid when choosing keywords.
5. Insider Jargon
You know what the buzzword means, but average users probably won’t. Think about it. Most users will search “garbage removal” instead of “sanitation” to find someone to haul away their unwanted junk.
4. Too General
You’ll have tough competition for a decent ranking and a wide range of users. Google “stuff” and you’ll get almost 400,000,000 results ranging in topic such as social politics, comedy and so on. It makes earning a top ranking and attracting the right traffic difficult.
3. Single Word
One word can generate so many results that getting a decent ranking is a monumental and expensive feat. Googling “money” returns about 900,000,000 results. That’s a lot of competition for just one term.
2. Too Obscure
Choose keywords that are too obscure, and you’ll end up with little competition for rankings but also terms that few users will search. “Happymoneymaker” may generate less than 34,000 results, but not many users will query it.
1. Popular but Less Relevant
“Cute slippers” may be a popular search phrase, but your target audience may just be looking for your “bunny slipper patterns”. Don’t forgo potential customers in favor of more popular but less relevant keywords.
Keyword Research is Never Done
Your keyword list should always be a work in progress. Track your keyword performance to monitor which ones perform and which ones don’t so you can refine your list and maximize its effectiveness. WebPosition offers an easy way to track how your keywords perform across search engines, and you can try Webposition for free for 30 days.
