If like us you are being bombarded by telephone calls from companies selling 20 thousand social media bookmarks, or social media campaign management or social media monitoring  packages then you’ll understand. They’re as annoying as those vuvuzelas every body’s complaining about that are ruining the world cup.

So what should you be on the lookout for?

Basically, if they do manage to get through your switchboard or past your receptionist then listen for the buzz of people in the background – it’s a sure sign of a call centre.

Social media bookmarking offers

The typical first lines will be

“would you like 20,000 social bookmarks to sites like Digg, technorati”

“we guarantee to get you on the front page of Googele with our social media packages”

Getting social media bookmarks and links in vast quatities like this means spamming the social media sites and this is frowned upon both by the social media websites and search engines.

The methods used to get thousands of such links involves automiatic submissions programmes that submit under false accounts. The accounts themselves may have been generated automaically or have been created by people slave labour call centres in 3rd world countries.

Social media monitoring offers

Whilst these aren’t scams we’d strongly advise wasting any money purchasing such tools and offers. We’ve had numerous calls in the past few weeks from companies selling social media monitoring packages. There are numerous free packages that do the job every bit as good as some of these “branded” packages.

Have you been called by the latest scammers? If so we’d love to hear your story.

Fill in our comment form below.

Redesigning your website won’t make you more money.

Spending thousands of pounds on redesigning your website won’t make you more money or convert more customers unless you test the impact. Products that go on supermarket shelves always go through market testing so what makes you think a website redesign is any different? People have different tastes and you may put off more people than you attract, so don’t risk it for the sake of vanity.

Don’t believe everything a web design company tells you.

Most web design companies selling redesigns aren’t interested in the bigger picture, such as your search engine optimisation or your long term marketing strategy – they’re only interested in making money from a redesign. Their sales staff work on a commission basis, and their designers will almost always push one of their designs rather than a design that will attract new customers and enquiries, so bear this in mind before you fork out expensive design fees.

Learn from the mistakes of others – a true story!

A client contracted a web design company to redesign their website but it had disastrous consequences, which saw their site drop from the search engines and all their enquiries disappear over the course of a single week. The web design company responsible for the redesign had replaced the clients’ website with a “Joomla” based content management system, renaming their existing pages and removing all of the on page optimisation they had done previously. The bill for redesign cost £4500 with the client losing £3000 in online sales over the same week. On top of this, the client had to launch an emergency adwords campaign of £2000 to cover the period where the site dropped from the rankings leaving them out of pocket by £9500. Even after the original site was reinstated their rankings took over 4 weeks to reappear in the search engines, during which, the company lost several thousand pounds in online sales.

Note: 40% of all our new clients who came to us in 2009 describing drops in enquiries and sales were as a direct result of their websites being redesigned.

The moral of the story is this;  if you have an existing business website that earns you enquiries and sales, then do not redesign until you have assessed what you could lose!

Tweak your way to success with conversion optimisation and split testing.

Tweaking your website with small changes over a few months is far safer and can save you thousands of pounds in design fees and lost sales. This method is known as conversion optimisation. It involves making small changes such as changing the colour of a button, adding a form, changing page header and asking asomething the right way.

Read about how conversion optimisation is done.

Each time a change is made, the effects on orders and sales are measured in a process called split testing. The best performing changes are kept and the process begins again; increasing your sales!

After a few months your site will have changed from what it was into something new and beautiful that makes you more sales. Best of all the small changes are very cheap to achieve.

If you want to know more about conversion optimisation then give us a call.

The new interface now sports a number of new features such as 3d form buttons, a left hand side bar, highlighting and graphical icons to name but a few.

The new interface however, does not seem to have surfaced across the globe yet. We’re seeing it in our Edinburgh office but not in our London office. Reports from clients accross the country are mixed with some seeing it and others still experiencing the old inteface in search.

One thing that is common is that it is only appearing on IE browsers. We have “straw polled” our clients and none are seeing it on any of the other browsers so this may point to Google doing some kind of split testing on IE before rolling it out to the rest of the browsers.

Reaction from those of our clients who are currently seeing the new interface is a unanimous thumbs down. Features such as the radio buttons to switch bewteen pages from the web and pages from the UK has been replaced by a text link nested in the left hand sidebar. All clients made reference to this new change and we also have to agree that it was much simpler to click the radio button on the classic version.

On the whole our clients have said that navigating round the new GUI is much less intuitive, frustrating and slower.

New Google Sidebar

The new sidebar now shows highlighting, icons and serveral “sort by” features giving the user several ways to find more accurate results but are they actually making life any better for the searcher?

To our eye, it seems like a poorly designed database interface. Sort by filters are commonly placed on top of columns such as those in a spreadsheets or highly visible forms on a web page, so it’s a little puzzling to us why these would be hidden in a collapsible section of the sidebar. It kind of defeats the purpose and we’re not alone in our opinion as our straw poll indicated.

Interestingly, when you look at such things from Google, it’s easy to not see the wood for the trees and clients can surprise you with the simplest of comments. For example, first impression feedback we received from a few clients was highly supicious of the new changes, citing that the new Google GUI was designed to keep people on the site longer so that more people would click on the sponsored links. No doubt, conpsriacy theorists will agree with such observations and this may turn out to be true in time. Certainly, the perception of Adwords amongst the majority of our clients has been less than favourable of late. Many are blaming the unreliable results and the number of totally irrelevant USA/dot com sites appearing in UK search as a way to boost Google’s Adwords take up and they see the new interface as yet another way for Google to force businesses into going down this route..  Google do earn their revenue from advertising so maybe there’s a “debate-worthy” article on the back of this.

Other new changes include a localisation feature. Whilst this may be of use to many on a local search, the question is…will it have implications in search when seeking national or international companies to deal with or sell to? This is one area where we will be keeping a close eye on Google’s tinkering and we intend to conduct a few experiments to explore variations in search.

If it ain’t broke….

It’s obviously early days for Google’s new interface but no doubt many questions will arise as to why the change was needed at all. The classic Google GUI has stood the test of time and this is undoubtedly what has made Google so popular in the first place. Tinkering with interfaces, adding sidebars and complicating how we interact with Google in our opinion is the wrong thing to do. We just want search results and this new GUI seems very much like adding corners to a wheel.

As the saying goes….if it ain’t broke then don’t try and fix it!

Ok (I paused and thought)… I’ll politely try and explian that they are acually deliberate. But when I tried to offer an explantation, his rather rude response was that we were unproffessional and we were writing like call centres from other countries! He then continued to “educate” us briefly for a momento on SEO and we took his advice then ended the call politely and wished him luck in his quest for an SEO quote.

Needles to say, we, like every other industry, get these calls from times to time and in moist cases they come from individuals who tink they know better than a professional SEO company with 12 years track record and globally clients…but I digress!

Wot I tried to explian was that the misspellings are deliberates and form part of an advanced SEO testing technique that has proved time and time again to be successfully for many of our client’s websites. We are constantinople testing the pages of our website and include misspellings as prat of split tests or as pages on their own in order to measure the impact they may have on rakings. We use our own site to experiment and any successes we get, we pass on for the benefit of our clients.

These misspellings do not mean that we are unprofessional or “call centre-like” in our approachings. Far from it actually, because most so called SEOs haven’t got a clue when it comes to misspellings and wouldn’t know-how implement them in a solid SEO campaign.

Google accounts for over 10 million misspellings in search every single day. If you put this into context then that is a LOT of potential customers to mis if your website is grammattically correct and 100% free of such misspellings.

Google even provides misspellings in their keyword suggestion tool for adwords campagns. For example, two of our clients’’ we promote online are targetting keywords related to” accountancy” and “jewellery” and Google kindly provides us with common misspellings people are searching for every day.

For example…see these images from April 15th 2010 below.

As you can see clearly above, there are far too many people searching on these misspellings to ignore in an SEO campaign.
SEO on the page is about optimizing your web pages for key phrases that people are actually searching for. People misspell words evry minute of every day so do we ignore these and miss out on a large number of potential clients? Obviously not, but it has to be crafted carefully and precisely into any SEO or PPC campaign. It’s not just a simple case of misspelling words and throwing them on your pages for the sake of it. Reasearch and discovery of these misspellings need to be undertaken so that they can be optimised into your pages the same way you would optimise any correctly spelt version of your content.

There are many ways to identify misspellings which can be implemented into your website. These can be obtained from Google’s adwords tool, your analytics, misspelling generators or even by trial and error. Web pages on the whole are “skim read” by the vast majority of visitors and it’s very rare that someone will read every word on every page of your site, so you can quite easily afford to dot the odd misspelling here and there and measure the results.

Want to talk about misspellings opportunities for getting more visitors? Give us a call or fill in our form.
Disclaimer: This page was spell checked by a Cray II computer operator on the planet Venus.

Search Engines are the first port of call for almost everyone who uses the internet whether it be conventional computer based access or via a mobile device such as an iPhone, or Blackberry. Mobile device users will be searching for your products and services in the same way that someone sat in front of a computer does.Your company should take this into account when you look to the internet for new business and steer your efforts towards meeting the needs of every type of online visitor possible.

Maximising your online visibility profile ensures the best possible chance to make your online business a success and depending on the nature of your business, and what you sell, your profile should include most (or all) of the following;

1. Relevant, content rich website
2. Found on search engines
3. Mailing list
4. PPC adverts pointing to your sales landing pages
5. Online PR
6. Articles on your products, services such as top 10 tips, faqs etc
7. Social media stuff like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace
8. Google merchant centre account for free product listings
9. A blog
10. RSS Feed
11. A forum
12. Videos (youtube, metacafe etc)
13. Local listing
14. Mobile device friendly alternative website

Relevant Content Rich Website

Unique relevant content on your website is attractive to search engines, meaning you can be found in searches. Unique relevant content also makes it good for your visitors to make informed decisions about your products and services. Unique relevant content is attractive to other website owners encouraging them to place links back to your website increasing your visibility further.

Be found on Search Engines (SEO)

Being found on Search Engines is crucial to getting new visitors and customers. You must perform SEO on your web pages as well as build links to your important pages.

Mailing list

Every time someone visits your website, offer them a way to subscribe to your mailing list. Every time someone places an order with you, offer them a way to join your list and be kept up to date with new products, special offers or tips on how to use your products. Offer your customers every opportunity to join your list and be kept up to date on everything your offer or sell. Offer them a way to recommend a friend.

PPC (paid advertising)

Paid advertising gets customers actively looking to buy your products and services. Learn as much as you can from data you gather about successful sales techniques and apply these to your organic pages. Watch market trends, peaks etc and advertise during seasonal periods such as Easter and Christmas. Watch out for sporting events, news articles or anything that may give you an opportunity to sell products and services during these times.

Online PR

Your online PR is a wonderful method to increase your visibilty and make potential customers aware of your products and services. Regular press releases can increase your visibilty far and wide.

Articles

Write articles and place them on your site. Articles are excellent sources of content for search engines, searchers and potantial customers. Submit versions of your articles to some of the popular article directories. Links to your website from articles can help your rankings. A good quality article can attract a potential customer.

Social Media

Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook can put your products and services in front of specific groups ready to purchase your products and services. Twitter can be useful for broadcasting special offers.

Google Merchant

Upload your products to Google Merchant Centre regularly. Google lists your products for free in their product search and your products can appear in blended results on the first page of Google results. These listings are often percieved by customers as a “recommendation” from Google.

Get a blog on your site

A blog is a fantastic way to produce regular content and comment. Post regularly with new information and articles about your products and services. Post opinions, news, topics on everything your offer. Blogs attract links and are attarctive to search engines.

RSS Feed

Get an RSS feed installed on your website. Potantial customers can subscribe to your feed and be kept up to date with your products and services.

Create a forum

If you offer products or services that you can create discussion around then install a forum. Your forum can be a valuable source for building a community, building a list of potential customers and making your company an online authority in your marketplace.

Videos

Post videos of your products and services on video websites like Youtube, MetaCafe etc. Make your videos informitive, instructional, saleslike or wacky. Your videos can be cited as good sources of information or go viral increasing your company’s online visbility dramatically.

Local listing

A local listing is essential if you only operate in a certain geographical area. Even if you operate globally your staelite offices will benefit from a local listing. Mobile device searchers will regularly search for local companies to meet their needs.

Mobile friendly website

Install a mobile device friendly version of your website. Mobile device users are set to expend rapidly in the next few years so you should provide an alternative version of your site so that your pages can be easily accessed on mobile phones.

If you’re serious about getting more customers from your website then it’s essential that you know particular information such as; how many visitors you have, how they found you and where they clicked. Without this information it’s almost impossible to mesasure your successes and build upon them in the future.

The bare minimum tools you’re going to need are;

• A rank checker
• A spreadsheet
• Web analytics

Whilst these tools above will help you do a good job, there’s a couple of additional tools we strongly recommend that will take your optimisation efforts to the next level. These are;

• Web optimiser
• Click tracker (heatmap software)

Don’t worry, you can get all of these for free and we’ll provide links to these below, but first let’s briefly describe what each of them do in turn.

Rank checker

You need some form of rank checker to see where your website ranks in search engines like Google and Yahoo. These are great tools that automatically check your website against a number of key phrases and where they rank on search engines. There are a number of online web pages that do this for you but we recommend you download the the firefox browser plugin from SEOBook. Of course it’s no use without the firefox browser which is the best browser on the planet.

Spreadsheet

A spreadsheet is a great tool for comparing your rankings, your orders and your conversions on a month by month (week by week if you’re really obsessive) basis.

A couple of free spreadsheet software programs can be found at;

Google Docs
Open Office

If you have Microsoft Excel you can download our ready made SEO Rankings spreadsheet here

Website analytics

Website analytics software is brilliant for learning about your website’s visitors.It tells you lots of great information such as what key phrase they used, where they came from and what links they clicked on. There are lots of analytics packages to choose from, and you may already have analytics installed free on your web hosting, but the best free one is Google Analytics.

Website Optimiser

By making simple changes to little things and testing them over a few weeks, like titles, words or images on your website, you can increase conversions and get more customers. Sounds crazy but it’s absolutely 100% totally completely true. (It’s also really cool!) Google’s website optimiser is a software program that compares the results between two or more versions of your web page so that you can fine tune it to get more customers. Download it here

Click tracker

Click trackers are extremely valuable in telling you where your visitors are clicking on your page, but just as importantly where they don’t click. You can tell a lot from clicks on a web page and these prove to be invaluable in split tests (see above). For example if you had an advert on your web page for a special offer, a click tracker will tell you if people are clicking on it or not clicking on it. Maybe a change of colour would entice more people to click on it, maybe a different wording would. Either way you won’t know unless you test this and evaluate the results.

Click trackers generate images called “heatmaps” that show you where visitors are clicking on your web page. The hotter (redder) the area, the more people have clicked – simple as that.

There are many commercial click tracking software programs available but you can download this one for free.

So now we have all the basics covered, what do we do next?

Identify your website’s goals.

Setting out your goals, no matter what type of website you have, or what market you operate in, is the foundation for your website’s success and the good news is that there are only two types of goal you really need to think about. These are…drum roll….

1. Long term goals
2. Short term goals

Simple as that!

Setting out your goals is also really simple (it just happens to sound pompous). Here’s a few examples of some long term goals you might set for your website;

1. Get 1 million hits to your website by the end of this year
2. Get 5 orders per day by the end of this year
3. Quadruple the number of subscribers to your mailing list in the next 6 months

Your short term goals on the other hand, are probably more meaningful and can quickly tell you if you are on target or not, or were just too ambitius with your long term goal in the first place.

Short term goal monitoring and measuring is a whole lot more fun. Here’s a few examples of short term goals you could set for your web pages;

1. Send a refer a friend offer out in your next mailshot to get 30% more subscribers
2. Advertise a buy 3 for the price of 2 offer on last month’s stock products
3. Place an end of month 7 day sale on one of your products

So there you have it. You have your tools in place and your goals firmly set. You’re now ready to optimise your web pages and conquer the world!

Alternatively, if you’d like to work with a really cool company with bucket loads of expertise then move your mouse over and contact us now.

Far too often we see companies either targetting the wrong keywords or spending too much on Adwords, but it’s always a pleasant surprise when we show new clients how we can save them money as well as increasing traffic to their website.

There are two ways to generate targetted traffic to your site;

1. paid traffic from PPC, banners, affiliates
2. natural traffic from SEO

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising – make sure you get it right.

Paid traffic from PPC is instant, highly targetted and highly prominent. Your adverts are visible as long as you pay. Stop paying and your adverts disappear.

PPC has the distinct advantage of displaying your advert on the front page of a search engine, precisely when a visitor is searching for your products or services, and you only pay when someone clicks on your advert. Now, whilst this may sound like an easy way to get targetted traffic, the real danger is that if you don’t manage it carefully, then your costs can creep up and up and up. Trust us when we tell you that the number one problem we discover when we speak with the majority of new clients is spending too much money on PPC.

Now, we’re not warning you against PPC advertising, but it’s one of these things that needs to complement SEO, not overtake it completely. Forewarned is forearmed (as they say) and it’s very easy for costs to spiral out of control through lack of expertise.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Non paid listings are known as the organic, natural or free listings and unlike PPC adverts, you don’t have to pay when someone clicks on your listing. The advantage is that unlike PPC adverts, your listing isn’t an on-off switch and they stay there more or less all the time. This is much more desirable than paying for PPC adverts and if you consider this next example, it’s easy to see why.

If you have a free listing on the front page of Google and you get 100 clicks from this per week, then it doesn’t cost you a penny. On the other hand if you didn’t have a free listing on Google and you had to rely on PPC adverts to get those same 100 clicks, at say, £5.00 a click, then it’s going to cost you £500 a week!

When you think of the possible benefits for your website being ranked at the top of Google, it’s easy to see why a free listing is much more attractive than a paid listing. Many companies however, obsess about ranking their home page number one on Google’s free listings, so much so that their efforts are mostly in vain and the rewards are very poor as a result.

Indeed, almost every client  that ever comes to us for help makes exactly the same mistake. They target the keywords and keyphrases that they think are best.

The number one starting point for SEO on any website is keyword research. Without it, it’s like throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. You can’t presume that your visitors are searching on what you think.

For example, if you asked 10 people from the street to sit down in front of your computer and search for a website that sells “blue widgets”, how many do you think would enter the same phrase into Google’s search? The chances are that only one or two would and the rest would enter varying versions of blue widgets.  We know this from experience because we’ve done this same test for our selves many times and what you will see are variations on the “blue widgets” phrase such as…

• blue widgets (2 people)
• find me blue widgets
• where can I find blue widgets
• blue widget companies
• blue widget company (2 people)
• companies selling blue widgets
• website selling blue widgets
• blue widgets ebay

So, presuming or guessing what your visitors are searching on can be a waste of your time and resources. If your competitors are doing the same thing then this means your work will be made a lot harder due to the increased competition.

We can make a difference to your online marketing and your bottom line. Contact us to continue.

Why conversion rate optimisation is really important

The majority of websites do a really bad job of converting their visitors into customers. Typically they will only convert 1 or 2% of their visitors into customers. This is effectively turning away 99% of your visitors which is bad enough but when you consider that the people visiting your website are actually looking for your products and services then then it’s really bad. Why you really need to improve your conversion rate

1. With 98-99% of your visitors turning away you are losing money hand over fist – literally!
2. Adwords, PPC  is getting increasingly more competitive and more expensive each passing month. For too often companies will increase their advertising spend just to compensate and they just end up throwing money away needlessly. PPC is costing too many companies a fortune and the only people getting rich are the PPC agencies and Google so you should be looking at ways of reducing your adwords spend.

On the flipside of the majority of websites turn 99% of their visitors away and that’s bad – and when you consider that these same visitors are actually looking for your products and services then it’s really bad! That’s why conversion rate optimisation is really important.

So how do we do conversion rate optimisation?

Let’s start with your existing website and see how it well it converts as it stands. Now that we’ve got our base conversion rate we now want to duplicate the pagea couple of times but this time we’re we’re going to change the buy buttons with something more eye catching. We’ll also try different wording and this is known as the “call to action” or “sales command”. We’re now going to test the new pages using a technique called split testing. We use Google optimizer to serve up different versions of our test pages to each visitor in a loop so that we obtain different sets of results. Just like this;

Visitor 1 sees page A………Visitor 2 sees page B………Visitor 3 sees page C As you can see the changes we made have made a difference and page C performed the best giving the highest conversion rate. This is great stuff so we now want to use page C as the basis for a repeat of the test we just did. This time we’re going to introduce a catchy headline and change the colour of one of the buttons. See below; As you can see, the addition of the catchy headline has improved the conversion rate but the combination of the catchy headline and the different colour we used for the button has had a bigger increase. Great – we’re definitely on the right track. We can take this even further again by adding things like;

• bold text in the descriptions
• bigger product images
• persuasive text phrases in the product descriptions such as
  • take action now
  • when you order
  • when you make the purchase

In fact there are hundreds of things you can add to increase conversion rates. The main point to remember is that you can only make changes in small steps and you have to measure the results every time. There are no shortcuts and not even the best brains on the planet can predict what will produce the best conversions. If you would like us to evaluate your site and help you increase your conversions then contact us now.

Any new customers you win as a result of the work you put into converting them have been impressed by your hard work so you have to live up to their expectations and nurture the new relationship to it’s fullest. You can nurture this in several ways, by upselling, cross selling and gaining new customers by way of recommendation. So how is this achieved?

Welcome then enthusiatically and show them your word is your bond.

When you first obtain an order from your website, acknowledge and welcome your customer, thanking them for their order with a well written email. In the case of ecommerce websites this can be done to automatically send on receipt of their order. Don’t just give a simple thank you – provide them with helpful advice on the product, helpful tips on it’s use or provide positive experiences and testimonials from other customers who have bought the same product.

If you don’t sell products online and sell services then the same rules apply. Once they have ordered a service from you make a point of sending them tips on what to expect, positive experiences from other customers or explain the timescales when the service will start and finish.

In either case, any helpful, welcoming information you send makes them feel cherished and will ost often result in a word of moth recommendation or an email recommending your services and products.

Survey your customers on performance or quality of products and services.

Invite your new customers to complete a survey of how well your products or services performed. One or two questions work well. After you complete your survey make a point of communicating back the results – this shows you listened and made any improvements where neccessary. Additional sales from your existing customers may result.

Incentivise referrals

Offer your new customers an incentive for referring your products and services to other companies. Be it a discount off their next purchase or service offering. This works in both B2C and B2B. We often hear from clients in B2B where they have recommended a service abd received discounts or finders fees as a result.

Customer forums

Customer forums can be a great way to up sell new products and services. Build communties around products. Provide free updates or tips for use, applications etc.

Offer exclusive pricing on new product lines

Give your customers exclusive discounts on new product or service lines. Encourage extra incentives for referrals and allow affiliate rewards.

There are many ways to optimise after sales and we will post more innovative techniques here soon so check back often.

]]> http://www.breezemedia.co.uk/after-sales-optimisation-cross-selling-up-selling/feed/ 0 http://www.breezemedia.co.uk/seo-website-optimisation-faqs/ http://www.breezemedia.co.uk/seo-website-optimisation-faqs/#comments Sun, 07 Feb 2010 01:08:26 +0000 admin http://www.breezemedia.co.uk/?p=1097 Is your head hurting with all the jargon? Are you confused by all the terminology? Hopefully our handy faqs, definitions and glossary will help you.What is SEO?

SEO is short for “Search Engine Optimisation” or “optimization” if you’re  from the USA. It’s the process of getting your website at the top of search engines for your chosen keywords or keyphrases. There are two types of SEO – on-page SEO and off-page SEO.

What is a keyword?

A key word is a single word used in a search to find a website, a brand, a product or a service etc. Typical keywords could be…laptops, shoes, apple, plumber. Single keywords are often described as trophy words or prime keywords and are generally high competition.

What is a keyphrase?

A key phrase is s series of keywords. For example…pentium laptops, black leather shoes, apple computers, on call plumbers. Keyphrases are often more descriptive and result in better results whenever you search.

What is on-page SEO?

On page SEO is the process of placing  keywords in the page titles, meta tags, anchor text links and body text of a web page..

What is off-page SEO?

Off page SEO is the process of obtaining and pointing links to your website. This is also known as link building using a mixture of one way links, reciprocal links or three way links.

What are page titles?

Page title are the visible short descriptions displayed in the top bar your your internet browserBrowsers such as Firefox and Internet Explorer. The page title of this page says “Free SEO & Website Optimisation FAQs”.

What are meta tags?

Meta tags are blocks of text embedded in the code of a web page. They are hidden from view from the visitor and were used to help pages rank in search engines. They are not of high importance nowadays and only certain search engines value them. Google does not use them to rank web pages.

What are anchor text links.

Anchor text links are basically any form of link. However in SEO terms they are used to describe the subject of the page that it links to. For example click here is a link but a SEO company Edinburgh is a descriptive anchor text link.

What are one way links?

One way links are links from another website that point back to your website. These are also known as inbound links or backlinks.

What are reciprocal links?

Reciprocal links are where two websites link to each other by mutual agreement.

What are three way links?

Site A -> Site B -> Site C  or any permutation.

What is link building?

Link building is the process of obtaining links to your website. Linkbuilding cane be very boring, very interesting, very skillfull and or very easy depending on the method you use. Regardless, linkbuilding is the most successful way of promoting a website.  There are numerous methods of linkbuilding such as;

• Article link building
• Press releases
• Directory submission
• Content attraction
• Link baiting
• Direct requests
• Social Media
• Blog posts
• Blog Comments
• Forum signatures and posts

There are many more ways of linkbuilding that are very inventive and ingenius. SEO companies often devise very clever ways  of obtaining links which in turn can bring lots of traffic and obtain very good positions on search engines.

Article link building

This involves writing an article on the subject of your website, products, services etc. You place a link in the body of the article then submit it to an article website (commonly known as an article directory). If your article gets published then you obtain a new link back to your website.

Press Releases

Similar to article link building. This time you submit press releases about your company, products or services to a new website such as a newspaper, TV website or a website that specialises in news stories.  If your press release gets published then you obtain a new link back to your website.

Directory submissions

Submit your website to a web directory. Web directories are websites that list millions of websites based on category, geographical location etc. You submit your website by filling in their form. If accepted you have a link back to your website. Some directories are free and some require you to pay for a listing. Yahoo is a directory website that requires you to pay for a listing.

Content attraction

If your web pages have great content then you will attract natural links back to your website. For example if your website has great content and information on say stamp collecting, then if another website owner finds your website valuable they may link back to your website.

Link baiting

Link baiting attracts links by way of writing spoof content, parodies and hoaxes. For example, a hoax article can cause great interest or an equally great stir and subsequently attract hundreds if not thousands of links back to your website. Linkbaiting is a somewhat contentious practice and can also attract bad publicity as well as good publicity. So it has to be considered very carefully.

Direct requests

Simply asking another website owner to link back to your website. This can either be one way, reciprocal or three way link requests.

Social Media

Social media websites such as facebook, twitter etc. Such sites are very popular with search engines and any links from thse can be valuable. Registered users on these sites write small articles, posts or bookmark your website providing a link back.

Blog posts

Write blog posts with a link back to your website.

Blog comments

Commenting on a blog posts – you can in some cases place a link within the post.

Forum signatures and posts

If you are registered on an internet forum you can place a link in the signature area of your account. Equally, if permitted you can place a link on a forum post.