Building links is an important means to running a successful website. Incoming links improve your relationship with Google and influence your placement amongst the search engine results pages (SERPS). After you have exhausted any directories and other submission-type links with value, the next step is to begin building relationships with other websites in an attempt to earn yourself links. Below I have outlined nine top tips for writing link building e-mails.

1. Spend time targeting your desired audience
Begin by compiling a list of potential targets that you believe you could either negotiate a link from or who you believe you can offer something of value. Do not mass e-mail or spam people, it is important to research and contact other companies that are related or would have a reason to want to link to you. Consider bloggers – if you have interesting information or value to offer them, this could lead to them linking to you.

2. Keep your email short and sweet
Do not make your e-mail a daunting task to read or it will end up straight in the Trash. Get to the point and include only vital information and you stand more chance of your recipient actually reading it. Whether they reply is another matter, but getting them to read it is the first successful step.

3. Key information – who/why/what
Begin your e-mail by introducing yourself as a person rather than a company, and move quickly to informing them with why you are contacting them and what you propose.

4. Write the email with a personal touch
Try beginning your letter by describing why you like their site and use their names if you know who you’re writing to. It is important to the recipient that it does not feel mass produced and batch e-mailed as a personally written e-mail is much more likely to survive the trash. Mention individual content they have produced to personalise further.

5. Don’t ask for anything at first
If you go straight in asking for a link without offering anything first, the only thing you’ll get back may be an impolite response suggesting you do not contact them again. Instead suggest/offer something, such as interesting or related content or offer to write some unique content for them in the form of articles or blog posts. Also, iff you can generate interesting material, ultimately people will want to link to it.

6. Sign the e-mail off
Finish your e-mail off with your full name, contact details (including phone number) and company address as this looks much more professional, and gives greater credibility.

7. Be flexible
Be prepared to offer more than you originally offered. The person may come back to you with a slightly different proposition that you originally had not enquired about. However, if you are serious about securing links from external sources then you may need to meet them half way.

8. Build on your relationships
If you have successfully had a positive response, ensure that you continue to build on that relationship as this may help develop more links in the future.

9. Do not give up (but do not harass)
Try offering a product that they could review, or offer a product as a prize that could be presented as part of a competition on your targets website. This could lead to you ensuring a link on your targets homepage.

Right, now you are fully equipped to start building contacts with other websites.

Go get your writing hat on and good luck…

I read a lot of SEO blogs and forums and it never fails to amaze me how the same, fundamental basic SEO questions crop up time and time again, and the same old advice is wheeled out, rinsed, and then wheeled out again. And then when that is finished, it is wheeled out again for good measure.

So, I thought I would compile the 10 most common SEO questions, and issues we come up against when assessing client’s websites.

• 1. URL’s and Duplicate Content: Do you have both a www version of your web pages AND a non-www version of your web pages? If so, Google sees these as 2 separate pages (the www version is effectively a sub-domain) and may determine either version as duplicate content. Also, natural incoming links may pass juice to either version of your page rather than a single one, diluting your incoming ‘link juice’.

• 2. Internal Links and Duplicate Content: Does any part of your internal page navigation link to a duplicate version of another page? The most common scenario here would be that your home page URL is ‘www.monkeyheadfood.com’ but your internal navigation points to ‘www.monkeyheadfood.com/index.html’ (or similar) which serves the same content. This also leads to duplicate content issues and the potential for incoming links to be split between the different versions.

• 3. Poor Keyword Selection: I think it was Darth Vader who said ‘the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant compared to the power of keyword research‘. Something like that anyway. All websites, new, old, good, bad and ugly, need to have conducted a full keyword research otherwise you are indulging in the webmaster equivalent of trying to nail jelly to a wall. If you haven’t produced a full keyword research document (or had one prepared for you) how on earth do you know what to target? How do you know where the search volume is? How do you know which keywords you actually have a chance of ranking highly for? You get my point.

• 4. Ignoring The ‘SEO Spine’: I have just made ‘SEO Spine’ up. Impressive little term, eh? Ok – I will move on. By ‘SEO Spine’, I am referring to your on-page keyword targeting. Ideally, your page should have your target keyword in the URL, the title, the heading tag, and the content, creating a ‘spine’ (but don’t over-do it and spam keywords). Can you see what I did there?

• 5. Images (only) For Navigation: The main search engines are still in kindergarten when it comes to reading text on images. They just aren’t very good at it. So, you should not be using images for navigation because you wont receive the positive ranking score from your anchor text, (which can be very valuable).

• 6. Title Tag Suicide: Your title tag is the ‘pocket dynamite’ of your web page. There isn’t a stronger signal of relevancy and Google loves to allocate bucket-loads of value to them. So, read this post about SEO and Title Tags now!

• 7. Unfriendly URL’s: Although the search engines can index ‘unfriendly’ dynamic URL’s these days, they still prefer the static versions of the same. I can tell you, for example, that Google certainly DOES prefer static URLs to their dynamic buddies. Perhaps more importantly, having keywords in the URL will increase your click-through-rate from the search engines as they appear in bold in the displayed listings.

• 8. Poor Site Architecture: Your website should be as ‘flat’ as possible to minimise the number of clicks from your home page to any other page (without using a search box). If you have less than 10,000 pages then you should, ideally, be able to reach any other page within 3 clicks.

• 9. Sub-Domains Not Sub-Directories: Google has changed the way it looks at sub domains and so, these days, it is much more beneficial to add any additional content (e.g a blog or an ecommerce facility) in a sub-directory. Reading reference: SEO Sub-Domains

• 10. Link Building:  We love link building. However, it seems that many webmasters don’t! A web page’s inbound link profile is the most important signal to Google when determining a pages trust and authority, which in turn, helps determine rankinings.We all-too-often see either very few links, or the worst set of spammy links since spam was invented in the world, ever, ever, ever. You need to build quality links, and when you have finished, you need to build some more.

Looking for a competitive SEO and/or link building quote? Contact us now!

A lot of time and money can be put into the design and development of a company’s website as they move into the daunting world of online retailing. Of course nowadays, especially given the weather Britain has encountered recently which has prevented people venturing to the high streets, you really need to be online if you want to compete with your competition.

So you have bought your desired domain name, you have designed (or paid for) your website and it has just gone live as you launch the site that is either going to earn you your crust or is a bit of fun/provides some kind of helpful service to others. Let’s assume this is your shiny new portal to online sales, you now need people visiting your site. There are various ways of boosting traffic to your site as blogged about here. There are, however, some easy ways of finding such places as free and paid directories to begin spreading the word about your new site.

If you are a regular reader of these blogs, you will know that ‘Link Building’ is a powerful method of building your reputation with Google, whilst trying to avoid places such as link farms and link exchanging. So where do you start trying to find free or even paid directories where you can submit them your site?

Google! (Or your preferred search engine )

The power of Google is often underestimated and a bit like Photoshop or an Android mobile phone, you may be comfortable using it but deep down you know it can do more, it’s just being informed of its capabilities. That’s why we are here to help!

Search engines have been around long enough now that most people know that you can search using +, -, OR and “quotation marks”. However there is more to searching than this, so make the most of it. Below is a list of search operators that are useful for finding potential  link targets or directories that you can submit your site to.

Combinations you can use in order to find directories:

keyword + “suggest url”

keyword + “suggest a url”

keyword + “submit a site”

keyword + “submit your site”

keyword + “add a url”

keyword + “add a site”

keyword + “add listing”

keyword + “add your listing”

keyword + “submit a listing”

keyword + “submit listing”

keyword + “submit your website”

These search terms are identifying websites containing the keyword and are primarily directory submission sites.

As you can see you need to conduct your search, exploring every combination when identifying directory submission sites. This can be a timely exercise, but can be performed by anyone and provided you stick to free directories, this method costs you nothing more than the time you invest into it.

So there you have it, link building can be made easy by the use of Google’s powerful search capabilities. Just be sure to have a quick look at our blog about Google’s penalties to refresh yourself with the potential dangers of embarking on an aggressive link building campaign over a short period of time.

Thank you for the introduction Joe, you have all welcomed me into the team so wonderfully and I am enjoying myself. I am looking forward continuing to work with you all.

As my first post I thought I would give you a few tips on how to write a press release.

It’s important to understand the power of a press release when done well; it’s an affordable promotional tool that can get you exposure within 24hours, which means that it can effectively increase the traffic to your site/products or services.

So here are some top tips to consider when writing a press release;

Write something NEWSWORTHY

This is quite a common mistake. You need to write news, there is not point writing a press release just because you haven’t done it in a while, this can be quite evident and will stop journalists from picking it.

Think about the audience

Make sure you concentrate on who your target market are, read blogs and magazines so that you know what type of news your target market would like to hear.

Write the headline first

This will ensure you focus on the content and not ramble on, even if you change it at a later date. Try not to add puns/cliché phrases, this is the sign of an amateur writer, and avoid the fluffy/flashy language.

First paragraph

This should be a brief introduction about the main body, always answer the following questions, who, what, where, when and why.

Second paragraph

Expand and try to make it factual.

The more you back up your story the better; this gives your release credibility and people like to read about facts/figures about their lives.

Be clear and concise

Short, clear sentences are key, this ensures you get straight to the point and stops you from waffling. Try to space the main body out to make it easier to read and write as the third person.

Lastly, it’s very important to use good spelling and grammar.

Well, I hope this has helped you gain an insight into how to write a good press release. Always remember, practice makes perfect, so get typing!

It is important that your web pages have a diverse range of inbound links from a range of different websites.

When considering the value of multiple links from the same website, bear in mind that the first link will pass most of the value, and all subsequent links will pass much less equity, if at all.

So, spend your time broadening your link sources in order to increase the authority of your web pages.

I recently wrote a blog post over at our new Link Builder blog regarding the value of incorporating NoFollow links into your link building campaigns.

You can read the entire article HERE.

Sometimes, we make the most simple of mistakes.

I recently started a link-building campaign on behalf of a gaming client who was prepared to pay very well for PR3+ gaming links.

As usual, a part of this was to identify partner websites that could offer nice, juicy, and nutritious link placement. Then, after the usual to-ing and fro-ing of negoatiations, I secured a total of 46 website links for the client.

Now, what happened next astounded me…

Of the 46 links I had placed, 16 of them were initially placed with a URL redirect! This was especially a case with webmasters using CMS ‘link’ modules.  So, in short, aside of anybody deciding to click through, the ad placement would have been useless in terms of SEO.

So, the moral of the story is… make sure your links are direct to your site!

Otherwise, you may as well just invest your cash in an Icelandic bank…