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SEO – A Non-Spammy, Natural Linking Strategy

By Tracy Mu Sung in Featured

Despite there being over 200 parameters taken into account by search engines when ranking sites, one of the most popular facets of search engine optimisation (or SEO) continues to be linking.

However, this article isn’t about non-spammy content, it is about non-spammy linking strategies. Yes, although linking has fast become an industry whereby directories have popped up everywhere and links are put in footers, headers, background color, or a myriad of other disguised ways, there is still a non-spammy way to do links. Whats more, my history shows that this way works better for your ranking over the long term as well.

Before we get started, a very brief introduction for those newly initiated into the world of SEO. The bottom line is this – Google will recommend your site, if others recommend it first. This means, to get high rankings in Google, Google needs to know that others find your site useful. How does a search spider know what people think about your site? Links. If people are linking through to your site, the Google spider will think your site is well liked. If relevant sites are linking through to you, this is even better, because Google will consider you to be an authority on this topic.

So, how do you go about getting the nice mix of links that Google might consider appropriate? Well, you can just dive in and submit your site everywhere you can think of. Or you can take the longer, more well thought-out way around…

1. Before you even start – look at who your client is. What is and isn’t going to be effective for them? Where and where wouldn’t they want to be seen? You need to know exactly what the limitations of your link building strategy are going to be. For example, if you have a government body as a client, you are going to have to think VERY conservatively. Similarly for national brands or straightlace industries like insurance. On the other hand, start ups, media and online retail might be more willing to take risks. You need to note all this down, and make a memo of what kind of strategy you will be following. This is particularly important if you are sharing this client work with others.
2. Similar to point 1, point 2 is about relevancy. you don’t want to damage your brand image for some basically worthless links, so make sure all your links are on topic in some way. Its best for your SEO and it is best for your brand. The effect of directory links seems to be negligible these days, so you might want to consider if this is worth your time. In content links however are much more valuable.
3. Assigning the work. Link building is often assigned to junior staff, or as a starting task. Now, sure, it might seem like brainless work – but if your junior gets an irrelevant or inappropriate link for your client, and your client or a competitor sees it, you will have a lot of explaining to do. Make sure that the person doing your links has some experience or good training, and most importantly, that they have read your client memo.
4. Now, in the interests of corporate knowledge and continuity, it is also recommended that you keep good records of every link you do for your client. No, not so you can copy this strategy for the next client (see point 1.- client suitability!), but so that you can go back and see what has worked and what hasn’t. Going hand in hand with this is the obvious monitoring of rankings to see how your efforts are affecting them.
5. Step 4 will help you with step 5. Evolution. You can’t just get links and then stop. You need to constantly increase, improve and diversify your sources of links. This takes creativity and experience, and is yet ANOTHER reason why the most junior people in your organisation shouldn’t always be given linking to do. As part of evolution you need to monitor your progress, learn more about your client and keep up with their latest developments (look for linking opportunities), and also keep on top of general SEO industry developments.

This is the general overview of how a linking strategy should be undertaken. Sure it is a lot more complicated than just submitting your site to link farms, or sending out a mass email, but SEO is about having the edge over your competitor, and these steps will help you get there. Website Marketing is an increasingly popular and competitive form of marketing, you need to make sure you are keeping up with the Jones’s not just looking for the fast or easy route.

If this advice is too vague for you, here are some more specific do’s and don’ts:

Do use relevent anchor text, which helps Google to know what exactly it is you are an expert about.Don’t use ‘click here’ as your link – ever! * Don’t forget to check if a site you are trying to link from is nofollow’ed * Do try to diversify your links – 100 links from one site isn’t the same as 100 different links * Don’t use irrelevant links – Google can spot this a mile off, and may penalise you. Also, it just doesn’t look good if you want to retain some dignity for your brand * Do try and generate buzz with good content so that links will come to you naturally * Don’t undertake any paid links without thinking very very carefully about the implications * Do contribute valuable content/comments/reviews to other sites, with relevant links embedded * Don’t try and contribute spammy content with embedded links that aren’t relevant. Your content will either get blocked, or Google will devalue the links. * Do think laterally – always be on the look out for good, relevant, linking opportunities. There are opportunities out there if you remember to keep thinking, developing and diversifying.

This article was written by Tracy Mu Sung for MooMu Media, the search engine marketing experts. MooMu Media provides search engine optimisation, PPC marketing and web analytics advice. MooMu’s clients include multinational companies including professional services, online retail and digital media.

Hot Tips to Keep Your Blog Safe and Secure

By Paula Brett in Featured

More and more of my I.M. colleagues and indeed new people that I meet on line are `getting into blogging’.

And why not? Blogs are relatively easy to produce and use, no matter which platform you choose, and they can be a brilliant tool for internet marketers.

However, no matter how easy they are to install and use, and no matter how helpful they can be to your business, the one thing that I’ve noticed more frequently is that many people are neglecting the security of their blogs.

Now I’m actually talking in particular about WordPress blogs here. Yes, I have used Blogger blogs in the past, and I know that many people swear by them, but I found Blogger a bit too restricitive for my liking (though I understand that things have changed a lot at Blogger since I first used them).

Because WordPress is an open source blogging tool, meaning that it’s free and available to everyone, it’s a prime target for hackers and ne’er-do-wells.

Of course, the WordPress development team are tireless in constantly working on the script for our benefit, but none of this is any use if we don’t actually get up off our backsides and do a bit of work on our blogs behind the scenes.

It’s par for the course to worry about your blog theme, your next blog post, your readership, attracting subscribers to your RSS feed etc. etc., but do you actually think very much about your blog’s security?

I suppose that I might perhaps see more WordPress blog security problems than most, being in the hosting business.

Did you know that probably the biggest cause of server compromisation is actually people who install WordPress blogs and other open source scripts and don’t keep them up-to-date with the latest versions and patches?

Hackers find it easy to search around, find a way in through an old script, hack your blog, access your email accounts, start sending viagra and cure for baldness spam emails `from you’ and generally get up to all kinds of nasty things.

I can’t tell you how many panicky emails I’ve had to answer from people who’ve logged into their blog one day and have been smacked in the face by a skull and cross bones proudly proclaiming that their carefully crafted, lovingly nurtured blog has been hacked by Hound Dog Horris the Hardcore Hacker!! Great!

So I’ve put together a few suggestions that you might like to implement to help keep your WordPress blog `safe’.

Keep Up-to-Date

First of all, the most obvious fix is to ensure that you keep your blog up-to-date with the latest version released by WordPress.

Most WordPress blogs display a little warning in the Dashboard that tells you when a new version is released and a link for you to click to download it. If yours doesn’t, then it’s worth checking the WordPress website fairly regularly for updates. They also invite you to sign up for email notification of updates.

If you feel a bit daunted installing updates via FTP, or you installed your blog initially using Fantastico in your cPanel, so are not sure how to install the updates, WordPress offer quite a good set of instructions for this.

Plugins

It’s a good idea to hide the list of plugins you are using. Any known vulnerabilities and bugs that may occur in some plugins can be used as tools to harm your website.

Check out your blog, now… yourdomain.com/wp-content/plugins

The chances are, you will see the full directory of all of your blog plugins, and in some cases, the date they were installed.

To hide your plugins, simply create an index.html file and upload it to the wp-admin/plugins folder. This index file can be blank or you can be really creative and add some promotions to it.

Another way that Hound Dog Hacker uses to determine whether your blog is furtile ground for hacking is to check which WordPress version you’re using.

So, if you’re one of those that has put upgrading on the back burner, then you could be announcing that you’re ripe for a hack harvest with a huge magaphone!

How so? Well, go to your blog… go on, open a new tab in your browser and type in your blog’s url. Then right click on your blog with your mouse and select View Source, View Page Source, or similar, from the drop down menu.

Check out the coding… about 10-12 lines down, you will see something like this

The plugin is merely one small .php file that you upload to your plugins folder, and then activate it in the usual way in the plugins section of your Dashboard.

Block Access

A folder that Hound Dog Hacker likes to have a good old nosey around on your blog is your wp-admin folder – this is the storage place for all your blog’s most sensitive data. So here’s a quick tip to secure this directory…

Open notepad or wordpad on your computer, and add the following code:-

AuthUserFile /dev/null AuthGroupFile /dev/null AuthName “Access Control” AuthType Basic order deny,allow deny from all allow from TYPE YOUR IP ADDRESS HERE

If you don’t know your IP address, you can find it here whatismyipaddress.com

Next, save your txt file as .htaccess and then upload it to your wp-admin folder.

NOTE: This method might be a pain in the neck for you if you don’t have a static IP address, however, if you are with an internet service provider that has a range, you can add the range.

I have to say that my IP address isn’t static BUT, I’ve only had to add extra IP addresses twice in the past 6 months or so, to allow me to login.

I did wonder why, when I went to my blog login page whilst on my laptop that I was denied access… doh, then I realised that my .htaccess file was denying me access from this computer.

I now keep the .htaccess file on my desk top and just add an IP address, if and when it changes, to the file and upload it in seconds. So your file might look something like this

AuthUserFile /dev/null AuthGroupFile /dev/null AuthName “Access Control” AuthType Basic order deny,allow deny from all allow from TYPE YOUR IP ADDRESS HERE allow from TYPE YOUR IP ADDRESS HERE allow from TYPE YOUR IP ADDRESS HERE

I hope this has helped give you some ideas, or at least galvanized you into taking a closer look at your blog security.

Paula Brett is a writer and internet marketer in several niches. She works mainly with newcomers to internet marketing. You can check out the plugin mentioned in this article and other free downloads her blog

Nine Ways To Get the Most out of Your Twitter Account

By Darren Dunner in Featured

Since March 2006, Twitter has evolved into one of the more popular ways to keep people connected from all over the world. As well, it has created marketing opportunities that no one expected.

Every month people are finding new ways to connect their marketing efforts to Twitter and while many of these Social Media sites eventually disappear, it seems Twitter will flourish.

The problem that most people have is finding how to make the most of Twitter and even understanding all its features. Although there are many tools available, we will only cover a few here and spend most of our time on how to use Twitter to improve your social networking status.