Link Development takes a major role in having your web site rank well in the search engines. Many web masters as well as SEO companies overlook how important it is to have a good link development campaign going for their web site. This article consists of 3 major topics; What is Link Development, Finding Link Partners and getting the max. potential from each one of your links, and Proving the power of Link Development which are meant to give you the basics of running a good campaign that will boost your rankings in search engines.
What is Link Development?
Link Development, also known as Link Popularity, is a term used to describe getting other web sites to link to your web site. Remember the popular kids in high school? Well lets just say that in most cases popular kids got noticed way more, they usually were social chair or prom queens and kings, top athletes and the list goes on. The point is, the popular kids got noticed while the not so popular kids didn't. This is the same concept that search engines go on. If you are popular, then you get noticed and how search engines decide whether you are popular or not is by how many web sites link to you and how popular those sites are.
Hopefully that isn't a painful analogy that brings up memories of your high school days. So now that we know what Link Development is, lets talk about how we start a link development campaign.
Finding Link Partners!
There are two types of link partners to go after, one is a one way link. This is a directory, forum, or web site that links to your web site without you having to link back to their web site. You can buy links now from web sites like: Expert Link Building Services from TextLinkbrokers.com, Buy Links, Text Link Ads, Text Links, but I am not to sure how the search engines feel about buying your popularity. The second type of link is a reciprocal link, which means that if you put a link on your web page pointing to them, then they will put a link on your web page pointing to you, the perfect "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours".
So now how do we find one way links? Well first off, the easiest way is through the search engines. If you are doing link development for a real estate site, google: real estate directory. There are plenty of directories out there that allow you to add your site for free. Next you will want to look up real estate and find forums, so that you can find posts that relate to you and add a reply giving some useful information while providing a link to your web site. Please do not spam your link on forums, only place a link when it makes sense to. For example if you are a Real Estate agent in Vancouver BC, Canada and you come across a post saying, Where can I find real estate listings in Vancouver. Then add a nice reply and your link at the bottom. Finally, never forget about your friends and family, explain to them that by having a one way link form their web site to yours it will help you boost your search engine rankings.
It seems that reciprocal links do not have as much weight on the search engines as one way links, but are much easier to get. The reason they are easier to get is because you are helping the other web site get better rankings while they do the same for you. So there are a few general rules you should follow while doing reciprocal link development, first, try not to exchange with your competition as you will just make it harder for you to come up before your competition. Second, only exchange links with relevant sites. By relevant we mean that the site you are linking from and to should relate to your web site, an example of this would be if you are a real estate agent, you would want to link to mortgage brokers sites or home renovation sites not children's video game sites, however if the site is in your locality you can link to them and mention in the link that they are a local business/web site. Finally, always be honest and truthful when sharing links, do not put up a link and then take it down a week later, if you agree to sharing links, stick to your guns.
Finding reciprocal link partners is actually easier than you think. One of the best things to do is find out who is linking to your competition and ask them if they would also like to trade links. To do this, in google type: link:www.competitionswebsite.com. This will bring up a list of all the web sites that have linked to that site, then just find the web masters e-mail and send him/her a polite e-mail asking if they would like to exchange links. Do this for every major competitors web site and you will have links coming at you left and right. Another great resource is a free web site called sitesell. What this site does is lets you enter your information into their database, including your e-mail, web site and what keywords best describe your site, then it finds you people with the same keywords and sends them an e-mail asking if they would like to exchange links. I have received hundreds of links this way. I suggest you sign your self up right away at: The SiteSell Value Exchange.
Now that you know how to find link partners lets look at what your links should look like. Now this is only what I do and it seems to work very well, some may disagree and I can understand not everyone wants to exchange links this way. Personally I think Google has become to smart to just accept links that follow this general concept: Anchor Text - Description of link. How I exchange links is within a paragraph. For example:
Real Estate in Vancouver is a booming industry. With the 2010 winter olympics happening in Vancouver people are very interested in Vancouver Real Estate. Joel Carcone is an experienced realtor ready to help you make the right investment in Vancouver.
By having it in a small paragraph that gives the web site that is linking to you more text that is relevant to your site, it is going to make the link weigh more when the search engines count it as a vote. Lots of software out there will not let you do this and require a strict: link - Description, formation. Do not skip over these, they just won't count for as much.
Finally, Google ranks sites based on their algorithm and gives them a rank between 0 and 10. The higher the PR the more important Google believes the web site is, thus giving more weight to sites that link to you with a high PR.
The Power Of Link Development!
Link Development should have a Cape and a big "S" on its spandex suit as it has so much power it is unbelievable. The following examples are not intended to offend rather show you that link development can make a huge difference without even having the site optimised for the keyword.
To prove the power of link development we are going to use president Bush as an example. If you look up the following words in google, George Bush's White house Biography are the first to show up. I urge you to try this, read over the biography and notice that the words "failure", "worst president", and "worst president ever" do not show up in the biography at all, but if you look those same words up in google, you will see that his biography comes up first for all 3 of those words. Now this is an extreme case and is known as googlebombing, but this does show the true power of link development.
If Link Development can make a site that is totally unoptimized for those keywords come up first in a search that has about 213,000,000 sites competing for the word failure, imagine what a good link development campaign could do for your site that is optimised and ready to be found on the internet.
If you are thinking of getting SEO done to your web site, look into companies that do Link Development as this is a powerful way to gain rankings for your web site as shown with the example in "The Power of Link Development". Make sure that when asking about link campaigns that SEO companies follow an ethical approach to Link development, you would not want to wake up one morning to find your site dropped off the rankings because of unethical link development practices.
Monday, October 6, 2008
How To Get The Best From Meta Search ???
Metasearch is a great way to search several search engines at once. It's effectively a way of querying the indexes of dozens of search engines. If you want to search Google, Yahoo, Live and Ask at the same time, then metasearch is the only viable option.
However, not all searches are alike. There are terms you can use to get make your searches on a metasearch engine even more efficient. This means you will get better results. One way to do this is with search operators. Here's a guide to some of the main ones.
Searching With Quotes
One way to force a search engine to search for a phrase rather than individual words is to enclose the phrase in inverted commas. For example, as search for the words dog collars will return web pages with the word 'dog' and web pages with the word 'collars'. Think how many of those pages there are and you will realize that you need a way to tell the search engines what you really need. If you put the phrase 'dog collars' in inverted commas, then the search engine will search for the phrase rather than individual words.
Plus And Minus
The plus and minus signs are common math symbols, but they are also used with search engines. The plus sign shows that a particular term is required (for example dog+collar returns only results that have ). In contrast, the minus sign shows that a particular word or phrase should be excluded from the search (example: dog-collar)
Going Boolean
Some search engines also use Boolean operators, which narrow a search. The Boolean term AND narrows your search. It means that both or all of the terms linked by AND need to be included in the search results. (example: dog AND collar). In contrast, to broaden your search, you can use the Boolean operator OR (example: dog OR collar). This tells the search engine to search for either word. Finally, you can use the operator NOT to search for pages that contain one term but not another (example: dog NOT collar).
Combinations
You may also be able to combine some of the operators above to get an even more focused search. For example, you could search for "dog collar" NOT labrador, so that you didn't get any results about that particular breed of dog. You could search for "dog collar" +"Jack Russell" to find a site that offers dog collars for these small dogs.
How This Works With Metasearch
One issue for using operators with metasearch is that metasearch engines are searching other search engines, and all search engines have their own ways of using operators and querying their databases. This means that not all operators work with every metasearch engine and in some cases this can skew the results. However, there are other metasearch engines that use the accepted operators for each search engine they query, making the results you get totally reliable - as long as the indexes are up to date.
Metasearch is a great way to search several search engines at once. It's effectively a way of querying the indexes of dozens of search engines. If you want to search Google, Yahoo, Live and Ask at the same time, then metasearch is the only viable option.
Greg Aldrich created the Widow.com meta search engine in 1996 and continues to host and manage it today. Widow searches multiple search engine indexes in parallel and displays collated results based on relevancy. Widow also tracks the top searched keywords on the Internet.
__________________
However, not all searches are alike. There are terms you can use to get make your searches on a metasearch engine even more efficient. This means you will get better results. One way to do this is with search operators. Here's a guide to some of the main ones.
Searching With Quotes
One way to force a search engine to search for a phrase rather than individual words is to enclose the phrase in inverted commas. For example, as search for the words dog collars will return web pages with the word 'dog' and web pages with the word 'collars'. Think how many of those pages there are and you will realize that you need a way to tell the search engines what you really need. If you put the phrase 'dog collars' in inverted commas, then the search engine will search for the phrase rather than individual words.
Plus And Minus
The plus and minus signs are common math symbols, but they are also used with search engines. The plus sign shows that a particular term is required (for example dog+collar returns only results that have ). In contrast, the minus sign shows that a particular word or phrase should be excluded from the search (example: dog-collar)
Going Boolean
Some search engines also use Boolean operators, which narrow a search. The Boolean term AND narrows your search. It means that both or all of the terms linked by AND need to be included in the search results. (example: dog AND collar). In contrast, to broaden your search, you can use the Boolean operator OR (example: dog OR collar). This tells the search engine to search for either word. Finally, you can use the operator NOT to search for pages that contain one term but not another (example: dog NOT collar).
Combinations
You may also be able to combine some of the operators above to get an even more focused search. For example, you could search for "dog collar" NOT labrador, so that you didn't get any results about that particular breed of dog. You could search for "dog collar" +"Jack Russell" to find a site that offers dog collars for these small dogs.
How This Works With Metasearch
One issue for using operators with metasearch is that metasearch engines are searching other search engines, and all search engines have their own ways of using operators and querying their databases. This means that not all operators work with every metasearch engine and in some cases this can skew the results. However, there are other metasearch engines that use the accepted operators for each search engine they query, making the results you get totally reliable - as long as the indexes are up to date.
Metasearch is a great way to search several search engines at once. It's effectively a way of querying the indexes of dozens of search engines. If you want to search Google, Yahoo, Live and Ask at the same time, then metasearch is the only viable option.
Greg Aldrich created the Widow.com meta search engine in 1996 and continues to host and manage it today. Widow searches multiple search engine indexes in parallel and displays collated results based on relevancy. Widow also tracks the top searched keywords on the Internet.
__________________
Google Web API Tutorial
If you always wanted to give the Google Web API a try, but never did, I'd like to give you a small step-by-step tutorial.
What is the Google Web API?
The API* exposes the Google engine to developers. This means you can write scripts that access the Google search in real-time. For example, you could query all pages containing "hello", and output the page-count. Or anything else imaginable.
Limitations
You have a default limit of 1,000 queries per day, you cannot get over the 1,000th result, you can only query for 10 results a time, and you can only access Google Web Search (not Google Images, Google Groups, and so on).
* Depending on the source, the abbreviation "API" stands for Application Programming Interface, Application Programmer's Interface, Application Programmer Interface, Application Program Interface, or Application Programmatic Interface. In short, it's a wrapper around a program that helps developer's to easily access its inner functionality. The Google Web API is also called "Google Web Services".
Do I have what it takes?
What you need is a server that allows you to execute server-side scripts. If you got www.example.com, you should check your contract and wether or not you can do that; email your host support if in doubt. Ask them if they have CGI, scripting like PHP, Pythôn, Java, ASP, or the like.
Second, you need to know the programming basics. But using the Google Web API is not very complicated, as there are several wrapping tools to get you started.
For this small tutorial, I will give examples of a PHP implementation. You can use other languages as well (like Perl). You should be familiar with HTML as well. PHP is a language, besides other things, to dynamically create HTML pages.
The Google API (currently in Beta) is further based on the Web Services technology SOAP (the XML-based Simple Object Access Protocol). But you don't need to details of SOAP to use the API, really.
Downloading the API, and registering for a key.
Create your own folder on your computer and put all the needed files in it; first, you should download the toolset of the Google Web API (note that you don't need it for this sample), and get your developer key (which you do need for the sample):
*
Visit the Google Web API home and download the API tools (below 700K).
*
Get your developer's key by creating a Google account and write it down. You shouldn't pass it on to anyone else. It's like a personal password to make the Google Web API work.
Second, get the helpful file called "NUSOAP" by Dietrich Ayala. It's free and helps you to implement a Google Web API script in PHP. (Note that I put NUSOAP on my server because I made a small but important change to the file which was necessary to get the filter-parameter to work.)
Now that everything's unpacked and waiting in your folder, create your own test project by creating a sub-folder called "test". Put the "nusoap.php" file in the folder.
Next, use Notepad – or another text-editor, like my Netpadd – and write the following testing PHP script as "index.php" and upload it to your server via FTP (you can use Absolute FTP for that; it's free to test for 30 days):
What is the Google Web API?
The API* exposes the Google engine to developers. This means you can write scripts that access the Google search in real-time. For example, you could query all pages containing "hello", and output the page-count. Or anything else imaginable.
Limitations
You have a default limit of 1,000 queries per day, you cannot get over the 1,000th result, you can only query for 10 results a time, and you can only access Google Web Search (not Google Images, Google Groups, and so on).
* Depending on the source, the abbreviation "API" stands for Application Programming Interface, Application Programmer's Interface, Application Programmer Interface, Application Program Interface, or Application Programmatic Interface. In short, it's a wrapper around a program that helps developer's to easily access its inner functionality. The Google Web API is also called "Google Web Services".
Do I have what it takes?
What you need is a server that allows you to execute server-side scripts. If you got www.example.com, you should check your contract and wether or not you can do that; email your host support if in doubt. Ask them if they have CGI, scripting like PHP, Pythôn, Java, ASP, or the like.
Second, you need to know the programming basics. But using the Google Web API is not very complicated, as there are several wrapping tools to get you started.
For this small tutorial, I will give examples of a PHP implementation. You can use other languages as well (like Perl). You should be familiar with HTML as well. PHP is a language, besides other things, to dynamically create HTML pages.
The Google API (currently in Beta) is further based on the Web Services technology SOAP (the XML-based Simple Object Access Protocol). But you don't need to details of SOAP to use the API, really.
Downloading the API, and registering for a key.
Create your own folder on your computer and put all the needed files in it; first, you should download the toolset of the Google Web API (note that you don't need it for this sample), and get your developer key (which you do need for the sample):
*
Visit the Google Web API home and download the API tools (below 700K).
*
Get your developer's key by creating a Google account and write it down. You shouldn't pass it on to anyone else. It's like a personal password to make the Google Web API work.
Second, get the helpful file called "NUSOAP" by Dietrich Ayala. It's free and helps you to implement a Google Web API script in PHP. (Note that I put NUSOAP on my server because I made a small but important change to the file which was necessary to get the filter-parameter to work.)
Now that everything's unpacked and waiting in your folder, create your own test project by creating a sub-folder called "test". Put the "nusoap.php" file in the folder.
Next, use Notepad – or another text-editor, like my Netpadd – and write the following testing PHP script as "index.php" and upload it to your server via FTP (you can use Absolute FTP for that; it's free to test for 30 days):
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