Search Engine Optimisation Advice

There are many ways to generate links to your website, some better than others. It is important to say straight away that not just any links will not do when link building, you only want to attract and build links from reputable websites with some kind of tie to your own site, e.g. they offer the same types of products, services or information.

So now we know what types of websites we want to get links from, how do we get them?

1 – Just Ask

First things first just ask the owner or webmaster of the site that you would like to have a link from. You would be surprised by the number of website owners who are willing to give a link for free or in exchange for a reciprocal link back to their own site. If you don’t ask you will never get!

2 – Pay

Target a number of websites you feel are very valuable to your business and be willing to pay to have a link on them. The website might be a valuable one if it has a high page rank or is a site frequented by your key demographic. If you don’t have a budget available then try to offer your services as payment for the link.

3 – Blog

Blogging is a great way to introduce new links to your website. Webmasters are often looking for interesting and useful articles to use on their own websites or use as a reference for their own discussions. By creating good quality articles you will be linked to as a good information resource, over time 1 article can be responsible for dozens of incoming links.

4 – Current Customers

Don’t overlook your current customer base for generating links. You may have already performed a service for a customer who has a website that you could automatically get a link for free. You may also have provided a client with a testimonial that they are using on their own site that is not currently linking back to you.

5 – Social Internet

Get on to web forums and help provide information to people or solve their problems. Being an active forum member means that your replies can be viewed by hundreds of people. By adding a signature to your user profile with your web address on means that your link will be present on dozens on web pages as well as being viewed by a new audience.

As part of my job I talk daily to people who are either just joining the online revolution or are already a member but commonly have something in common… the distrust or dislike of online advertising and promotion.

The main argument that comes back is “I have all the promotion I need for my business, my sales team tell people daily about our website and we have lots of print media out in the marketplace with our website address on it”.

Now this argument could almost seem like a reasonable statement at first glance, but we need to stop and think about what effect traditional advertising and promotion has when used for online purposes.

Established businesses with large sales teams and large print media advertising budgets certainly do tout their online wares quite well through the papers and magazines as well as other forms. Many times I have seen some interesting looking two door vans whizzing around the streets of Dublin with their brand name and website address splashed across the side of the vehicle. But can I honestly say I can name one website I saw off the side of that van, or even what service they provided? No not really. The main reason is that unless I am looking for a person to trim my hedges or power wash my drains at the time those vans advertising those service drove by then I am more than likely going to be a potential customer that slipped through the net.

New technology such as a website cannot be efficiently utilised with old style advertising and promotion techniques. The evolution of the internet has allowed hundreds of millions of people to search for information, products or services in real time from their homes or offices. This introduces the question, why spend money on an advert in a newspaper which may be in only 5% of people’s homes who are looking for that particular product or service when you can advertise online only to people who are actively searching for that product or service right now?

The power to tailor how and when your advert is shown makes a small budget go a long way online than it would through traditional means, usually with a much higher return on investment.

There will always be a place for traditional forms of advertising for online products and services, especially in niche markets but as long as someone can successfully target a product or service to a customer on a shoe string budget and make a profit there will always be a need for online advertising.

Every online and offline business owner is concerned about how to increase profitability. With a traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ business it is usually very difficult (if not impossible) to judge key statistics beyond how many sales were taken that day. Eg; How many people walked past my shop today? Of those people how many came into my shop? Without this key information it is very hard to determine how well a business stands out in a busy market place.

This is where online business has the advantage. Online advertising such as Google’s pay per click provide key statistics to show any advertiser exactly how many people viewed their advertisement (impressions), how many people clicked to see more information (click through rate) and with conversion tracking you can actually see how many people went on to purchase your product.

With this information it is possible to make changes to your campaign to increase your AdWords conversion rate; however there is a large amount of information that Google AdWords does not provide that is critical to having a fully optimised campaign.

This is where having an analytics (statistics) package can take your business and profit to the next level. By integrating your PPC campaign with Google’s Analytics package you can view data to show you how well your PPC campaign is really performing.

You will now be able to view key information such as how well your landing pages are performing, what times of the day people are most likely to purchase and what region or country does your conversion rate shoot through the ceiling or fall through the floor.

There are many factors beyond the keywords and ad text that go into making a fully optimised pay per click campaign, getting analytics on your side is just the beginning.