MR Web Design Blog

Healthy Link Building – Content Is King

admin — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 17:29:02 +0000

I’m sure all or most of you have heard the cliche “content is king” when it comes to link building. But is it true? The simple answer is yes. Having quality original content on a website, or blog as it may be, is vital to the success of the site. Good content can help build solid back links, keep visitors coming back, and draw in new unique visitors. But what constitutes quality content? And even if the content is the best out there how are people going to find it? These are a few of the questions I plan to answer in this article.

What constitutes quality content?

The sad and sometimes horrifying truth is that quality content is subjective from person to person. What one person may think is the greatest article or post ever written another mite think is the biggest piece of garbage on the Internet. You must accept and come to the realization that no matter what you write not everyone is going to like it. However, you shouldn’t be out to impress everyone, you should be out to write content that is unique, original, and that you feel would be beneficial to the readers you are trying to attract. Doing this may be a bit of a challenge, but here are a few tips to help..

1. Be original : Original content is some of the best around. Write about something that no one has written about before. It could be a personal experience, a bit of research you’ve done in to something, or an extension or personal view on someone else’s work. Whatever it is though make sure it is your own original work, contains your own views and opinions, and portrays you, your business, organization, or other as a unique source of information.

2. Be beneficial : Most times people will come to a site to find some sort of information on something. The content they’re looking for will obviously vary by niche / category, but there is one thing every post / article / or other work should have in common, and that is that it should offer something beneficial to the reader.

3. Write to your audience : In order to write to your audience you must first know your audience. Find out who they are, where else they visit on the Internet, and what they like and dislike. There are various methods you can use to do this ranging from the use of forms and analytic tracking software to researching market trends but such content doesn’t fit within the scope of this article. However, I will be covering this in the Healthy Link Building series so check back for future posts.

Once you know your audience you can write content that is appealing to them. Do they like an informal style of writing? A technical writing style? A business writing style? Or something entirely different? Do they like pictures and videos? Are they looking for opinions, new research, or something completely different? These are all questions you need to know the answers to in order to write to your audience.

How will people find my content?

The answer is content. But not the content you write on your own site, but rather content you write on other websites or “off-site” content. This type of content can range from press releases and article directories to blog comments. The same methods mentioned above for “on-site” content ( content you write on your own site ) are still applied to “off-site” content.

1. Be original : Make sure your content is unique. Don’t read someone else’s work, paraphrase it, and then claim it as your own. Write from your own mind. If your content is unique people will be more likely to consider you an authority, and be more likely to click over to your site.

2. Be beneficial : Whatever you write make sure it would be beneficial to the reader. A good way to do this would be to answer questions. Often times on blog and forum websites users will ask questions. If you know the answer, post it. Maybe even leave a link to your own website where you have a post or page explaining the answer in great detail. If you answer the question properly people will remember you, recognize you as an authority, and be more likely to link to your answer and any links you leave in your post.

3. Write to your audience : If you’re leaving a comment on a blog or forum write within the style of the page. If it’s a technical website write with a technical writing style. If it’s a personal blog write with a personal or informal writing style. Doing so just mite entice people to click over and link to your website.

Concluding thoughts…

“Off-site” content in general relies on your “on-site” content, and in many ways your “on-site” content relies on your “off-site” content. Your “off-site” content will bring users in to your own website, but if your “on-site” content isn’t up to par people won’t link to it. Your “on-site” content can be truly amazing, unique, and beneficial, but if your “off-site” content isn’t very good ( or is non-existent ) people may never know it exists. A balance between the two is required to help build solid back links.

Thanks for reading this post. If you like please link to it. What I just did there is a form of an SEO tactic called “link baiting.” Check back for our next post which will go in to more detail about “link baiting” strategies. Hope you enjoyed this post everyone and as usual feel free to leave comments.

Healthy Link Building – Link Directories

admin — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 01:44:49 +0000

Hello and welcome to our second post in our Healthy Link Building series. In this post we’re going to take a good hard look at one of the most popular, one of the most abused, and one of the most misunderstood methods on building links. This method is submitting your link to online link directories. But before we get in to the do’s, dont’s, and questions about submitting to link directories lets look at what exactly a link directory is and learn a little about their history.

Directories have been around on the Internet for a long, long time. In fact, before search engines they were the primary way of finding what you were looking for on the Internet. Similar to a phone book, an online link directory contains listings organized by some manner with each listing containing a description and contact information. And just like phone books, a link directories primary purpose is to help someone find the information they are looking for.

When submitting to link directories you must keep the primary purpose of a link directory in mind. You don’t want to submit your link to directories where no one is going to find your link right? So how do you decide what directories you should submit to and which ones you should pass on?

1. Look at how the link directory is constructed. Is it eye appealing? Is it easy to find what you’re looking for? Would you use this link directory for anything other than submitting your link? These are all important questions to ask yourself. You want to submit your link to directories that are easy to navigate.

2. How visible is this link directory? Is it easy to find on the Internet? What’s the directories Alexa Rank and Page Rank? Where does it rank in the SERPS ( Search Engine Results Page ) on the major search engines ( Yahoo, Google, and Bing ). Where did you find this link directory? You want to submit your link to active directories with high visibility and regular traffic.

3. Does the link directory have a category that fits your website? Submitting your site in the proper category is crucial. Not only will it be easier for people to find your site if it’s in the proper category, but the search engines will also associate your website with the name of the category influencing what keywords you will rank for.

4. Are any of your competitors websites found in this directory? Are they getting any traffic from the directory? You want to submit to link directories that will send you direct targeted traffic. Don’t worry about what the link directory can do to get your site ranked higher in the SERPS because if the link directory is sending you targeted traffic you’re completing your end goal any way. Plus in general if the directory is sending you quality regular traffic chances are the increase in the SERPS will soon follow. If you’re not sure how to find out if your competitors are getting traffic from the directory simply ask them. It may seem nerve racking but 9 times out of 10 a webmaster ( competitor or not ) doesn’t have a problem giving you some information about a link directory.

So now you have a good idea on what types of link directories you should submit your site to. Before I end this post I leave you a small list of some of the best directories. Some are paid, others are free, and all of them have something unique to offer. In our next post we’ll be discussing another popular link building strategy. Thanks for reading and please feel free to leave comments.

1. DMOZ ( Open Directory Project ) – This directory is free, human edited, and can be very difficult to get in to.

2. Yahoo Directory – Arguably the best link directory on the Internet the Yahoo Directory will bring your website quality traffic and help you in the SERPS. However, it is a little pricey.

3. Best Of The Web – Best of the web is a great paid, human edited link directory that can really help your site get noticed on the web.

4. Search Sight – Some say that this is a search engine but it’s really a link directory with a search bar. Search Sight can really help you get some high quality traffic to your site.

5. Business.com – This is a great directory for B2B traffic. However, just like the Yahoo directory it is a little pricey.

Healthy Link Building 101

admin — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 20:29:59 +0000

Link building is one of the most important aspects of SEO, and yet so often it is done incorrectly. People read that having many inbound links coming to their website can help them rank better on the search engines and thereby increase their web traffic and hopefully their ROI, but many never take the time to fully read the webmaster guidelines and learn how they should be building links. Instead they send out email requests to other webmasters, submit to every link directory they can find, participate in artificial link swaps, and often times even purchase links. Then when their site is dropped and they lose traffic they wonder why. Well, in the next few posts we’re going to explore some of the common misconceptions about link building and look at some healthy white hat strategies to help any website build some quality back links.

First things first, before we continue you should read and have a good understanding of the major search engines ( Google, Yahoo, Bing ) webmaster guidelines. It is very important that you familiarize yourself with these guidelines so you understand how you should build your website and gain an understanding of what types of websites you be trying to get back links from. Here are links to these guidelines…

1. Google : http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

2. Yahoo : http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/basics/basics-18.html

3. Bing : http://help.live.com/help.aspx?mkt=en-US&project=wl_webmasters

Once you’ve read and have a good understanding of those the next step is to truly gain an understanding of what a link is. So lets break it down….

anchor text or image

1. : open anchor – used to define anchors and hyperlinks in html

2. href=”destination” : href attribute – defines the link address

3. anchor text or image : text or image that is click-able to take you to the href address

4. : close anchor – closes the link

This is a link in its simplest form. There are many more elements which can be added that can affect the way the link is expressed and the value the link passes, but we’ll touch a little more on those in later posts. For now you should recognize that a link is really only meant to do one thing, and that is send a user from one point to another. This has and will always be the primary purpose of a link. A good link will direct the user to an appropriate page that corresponds with the content of the page and the links anchor text. So getting or placing links on pages with little or no traffic is worthless because the link doesn’t fulfill its main purpose, and hiding a link from users is worthless as well regardless of whether or not the search engines can find it because again it is not fulfilling its main purpose.

This concludes our first post on healthy link building. In our next few posts we’ll take a closer look at some of the common misconceptions about link building and begin to take a look at some healthy strategies to help any website get some quality back links. Thanks for reading and please feel free to leave comments.

Happy New Year

admin — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:40:12 +0000

2009 has been a good year for us at MR Web Design. We’ve worked with some great clients, built some great websites, and have come out more knowledgeable than when we started. We hope to continue our success right on through 2010 and we’ve come up with some ideas to help us do so. So what new things can expect from us in 2010?

1. WordPress Store : Accompanying our new site we have added a WordPress theme store. Throughout the year we will be offering both free and premium themes from our store, and will be adding new themes regularly. All premium themes will also come with support and have installation and customization options for a small fee. Prices for our premium themes will range based on a variety of factors including complexity but all will be offered at very affordable prices.

2. Blog : We’ve decided to add a blog to our new site. Through our blog we’ll be covering Internet topics ranging from web standards and SEO to web design trends and Internet news. Our blog will be updated with new posts every week so be sure to check back regularly for updates. You can also sign up for our RSS feed to get the latest information from our blog even faster.

3. Open Source Project : While we’ve always offered custom platform development we have never made an open source project which could be used by everyone. This is going to change in 2010, and while we can’t announce exactly what this open source script will be we can tell you that it will be some sort of content management system. We hope to have the script ready to launch for some time this summer.

In addition to the new things you’ll get from MR Web Design in 2010 you can expect to get more of the old things which have helped us be so successful in 2009. We still offer custom web design, web development, Internet marketing and web hosting services, and just like always we will continue to provide the best quality of service and experience to all of our clients. Thanks for reading our first blog post, and from everyone on the MR Web Design team we wish you a happy and healthy new year