In our last post we looked at the basics of link building for SEO, and I promised that I’d come back and explore some of the types of sites you can use to build inbound links to your website. The secret is to build links naturally, in places where it’s perfectly acceptable to leave links, rather than to use sites that are solely designed for this purpose. There are lots of different places you can begin, but here are three of the best resources for effective link building – and in our next post we’ll be exploring another three useful resources.

3 resources for effective link building

Forums
Type any topic and “forum” into Google and there’s bound to be plenty of results. Forums are big news on the internet and you can use them for your own agenda. Look for forums that you have an interest in (personal or business), are relevant to your business or are places where your potential customers hang out. That way, it won’t feel like such a struggle to use the forum as you’ll either find it enjoyable or beneficial to you personally, or you’ll be building relationships with future clients as well as building valuable links to your website. To get started, simply join in the conversations. Get involved and offer help where you can – and if it feels appropriate to link to your website in a reply, do it – but don’t spam every post you make with irrelevant links. Make sure you include links to your website in  your profile and also in your forum signature, as this will be displayed every time you make a post.

Blogs
Most blogging platforms allow people to leave a comment, their name and a website link, so this is a great opportunity for you to build links. Make sure you leave a comment that’s worth reading – not just “nice post” or “I agree” but something of interest to other readers, and that might spark a conversation with the blogger. As well as being an effective way to build links, you may find you get more traffic to your website if your comments attract attention and people want to learn more about you.

Social media
Every time someone tweets about your latest blog post or links to a page on your website it provides you with another backlink. It also counts as a vote of authority in your content – after all, Google reasons that if people think your site is worth sharing there’s got to be something of quality there. Make it easy for people to share your stuff by adding social media share buttons to your website, and post links to your blog posts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ so people can retweet them for you. Make sure you use relevant groups on LinkedIn, because you can build links as well as meet people wjho may become clients, suppliers or partners in the future.

We would recommend that you use all three of these resources to build inbound links to your website. Just by spending a few minutes every day on forums, social media sites and reading other blogs you can quickly build links that are valuable and will help boost your website’s search engine ranking.

For more help with link building give us a call on 01793 608777. We would love to talk to you about the best way to do it, and we can also arrange a free website review to determine the best ways to improve your SEO.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In an earlier post we talked about 3 key factors to improve your SEO – one of which is link building. There’s a lot of misunderstanding about link building, with some people thinking it’s an underhand way of promoting your website using link farms or other similarly dodgy websites. That’s not the case at all. When  done well, link building is a vital tool to help your website improve its SEO, and it can also help drive genuine traffic to your site too. In this article we’ll look at the basics of link building for SEO – what link building is, how to do it and where to do it for maximum impact.

The basics of link building for SEO

What is link building?

Link building involves developing inbound links to your website that help your website rankings and send traffic directly to your site. However, link building is about quality, not quantity. Yes, you can go out and find thousands of places to leave your links, but if those sites are irrelevant or not well ranked themselves, your links will be worthless. The trick is to leave links on websites that are relevant to your business (so you get targeted traffic) and recognised by the search engines to be of good quality themselves.

Where should you start building links to your website?

As we mentioned above, there are plenty of “link farms” – sites that are basically a huge directory of links to websites. These sites used to be quite useful for SEO but Google now knows that their sole purpose is to host inbound links so those links no longer carry any weight. Instead, you need to look for relevant, high quality sites where leaving links is a more “natural” thing to do. The best places to leave your links are forums, blogs, social media sites (in your profile and your updates), review sites, bookmarking sites such as Digg or StumbleUpon, wikis and local directories. We’ll look at each of these type of site in a future post.

How do you start link building?

The way you leave your link depends on the type of site you’re using. On forums and review sites you can often set up a profile which includes your link, and you may be able to include it in a signature that appears on everything you post on that site. Blogs invite you to leave your name and a weblink, and if it’s relevant, you may be able to include anchor text in your comment too (but make sure it doesn’t look spammy).

In the past link building just involved adding some text like “Click here to find out about our Pay on Results SEO”. The anchor text – the text you click on to go to a link – was “Click here”– and that was good enough. Then webmasters got clever and started using more specific anchor text. For example, in the example above you’d change the anchor text to be “Click here to find out about our Pay on Results SEO”– with the “Pay on Results SEO” bit a live link. While this isn’t such a direct invitation to the visitor to “click here” it does tell the search engines that the link is to a page about pay on results SEO and most people realise that the underlined text is the bit to click. Recent changes to Google’s algorithm mean they are now looking for some variety in the anchor text, so you need to use variations on the “pay on results SEO” text – such as “Pay for Results SEO”, “Results only SEO” or “Pay on Results Search Engine Optimisation”.

For more help on the basics of link building for SEO call us today on 01793 608777. We’ll also be covering it in more detail in a future blog post.

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Article marketing can be a really useful  way of gaining backlinks to your website. To start using article writing as a marketing tool you need to choose an article submission site such as ezineartices.com or buzzle.com, write an article and submit it. Then you sit back and wait for people to find your article and use it on their site. They will need to publish a “resource box” alongside the article, which explains who wrote it and includes a link to the writer’s website – and that is where you get the backlink. However, as easy as it sounds, it’s not always so simple to write articles that will be picked up and published on other websites. Here are some tips to help you along the way.

Article Marketing Tips

1. First, you need to write about relevant subjects. If you’re an accountant and you write an article about web design no one is going to publish it, because after all, what does an accountant know about  web design?! OK that’s an extreme example, but do ensure you are knowledgeable in the subject you write about.
2. The most popular and most published articles are those that are timely and newsworthy. Make sure you keep up to date with developments in your industry, so you can write about them. A tip here is to sign up with a site like Google that gives you alerts on news topics you choose.
3.  Some writers post one article and that’s it. A better strategy is to post lots of articles – if web publishers like your first one, and use it on their site, they’re likely to look for more of the same – so make sure you give it to them.
4. Attention spans on the internet are short, so keep your articles short, simple and straightforward. Don’t waffle. Do be aware of any minimum word counts on article submission sites though – for example, on ezinearticles.com the body of the article must be at least 400 words.
5. Proofread your articles carefully. More people are likely to use your material if it is free from typos and spelling mistakes.
6. How many articles should you write to start increasing traffic to your website? The good news is that it could be as few as two. Writing articles with helpful titles, such as “How to do x, y and z” and “ 7 tips for  this that and the other” will capture attention and start attracting traffic to your site.
7. As well as submitting your written work to article sites, don’t forget to use them on your own website too. Alternatively, if you write for your blog you can re-use the material on article sites. And if you end up with a dozen or so articles on the same topic, consider putting them together as an e-book and giving it away to customers or anyone who signs up for your newsletter.

With any luck these tips will help you get started with article marketing and benefitting from the traffic it can bring to your website. However, if you would like someone to write articles for you, HodgesNet has a professional copywriter who can help. Just give us a call on 01793 608777 for details.

Image(s): FreeDigitalPhotos.net

We cover all sorts of topics on the HodgesNet blog. You may sometimes think we cover too wide a range of subjects, or perhaps you don’t see the link between them. However, the reality is that everything we write about here – SEO, blogging, social media, email marketing and so on – are interlinked and form part of your internet marketing hub. However, when there are so many different aspects to consider internet marketing can sound confusing. Here’s a clear cut guide to how to build your internet marketing hub.

At the centre of your hub is your website. This is where people can find out about you, the services/products you offer and how they solve problems or help people make more money. Your website is full of useful information but without some help, it’s unlikely anyone will find it in amongst the billions of other websites out there. This is where the other elements of the hub come into play.

If you want to make the most of internet marketing having a blog is vital, and blogging has many benefits. It drives traffic to your website through featuring useful articles, often on niche topics. It helps your website rank better in the search engines – through on-page SEO, fresh new content and by increasing the size of your website quickly. It also gives you the chance to demonstrate your knowledge and builds your profile as an expert in your industry.

Having a blog also means you have something to talk about on social media sites. Every time you add a new blog post you can send the link and some details to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and a multitude of other social networking platforms. You can also bookmark your blog posts on sites like Digg and StumbleUpon. If your posts are interesting, entertaining or informative other people will retweet your tweets or share your posts. And what’s the point of all this? To bring more traffic to the centre of your hub – your website.

Another part of the hub is email marketing. Having a blog requires people to come to you, either by checking your site every few days, or via links on social media sites. With email marketing, you contact people directly and can control who you contact and what you say to them. You can reuse blog posts in your email newsletters, or you can write original material. Again, the result you want is that people will visit your website and, ultimately, buy your services.

There are other elements in the internet marketing hub like affiliate marketing and article submission, but the final links are SEO and linkbuilding. While Google places less importance on SEO expertise these days, it’s still important that you make sure your website is properly signposted through using relevant keywords. And linkbuilding – where other websites link to you – lets the search engines know that your site is worth visiting.

When you get all those elements right – your website, the blog, SEO, linkbuilding, and social media – you get ranked higher in the search engines, you demonstrate your expertise and you build up a following – and all this results in more visitors to your website, more sales and more profit.

If you need any help with any of the elements of your internet marketing hub give the team at HodgesNet a call on 01793 608777. And look out for our next blog post, where we’ll be introducing some workshops where you can learn more about the internet marketing hub and how you can build and develop yours.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

There are many ways you can increase the traffic to your website – optimising your site for the search engines, for example, or link building, or using PPC (pay per click) campaigns. One of the most effective ways though is through article marketing. This is where you write relevant, original articles and then post them on various article portal websites such as Buzzle.com or ezinearticles.com. Other people can use your articles on their own websites so long as they include the “author biography” box – which contains a link back to you. The more articles people use, the more links you get – simple. But with thousands of writers out there, how do you make sure it’s your article that’s chosen? Here are some of the secrets of article marketing.

Write a catchy title. The phrase “Curiosity killed the cat” is very true in this case – the more intriguing your title, the more people are likely to want to read it. Make sure you include some relevant keywords in the title too – both to let people know at a glance what it’s about, and to help promote the article in the search engines. It’s worth making sure the title promises some benefit to the reader too. For example, my title here is “Secrets to Article Marketing” – people are intrigued that I’m giving away secrets, I’ve included the keyword “article marketing” and people know there will be some benefit to them as I am giving away information!

Make sure your article is organised well. Don’t just write a few paragraphs of text – think about using bullet points or numbered lists or sub headings to break up the text and make it easy to follow.

Write in plain English. You may know all the technobabble that goes with your industry but your reader is not likely to, and if you use complicated jargon you’ll just put them off reading and perhaps they won’t want to use your article. Be informative, but you can do that by using simple language and expressing concepts clearly, rather than confusing the reader.

Proofread carefully. Once you’ve finished writing the article, read it through and make sure it all makes sense. Also keep an eye out for spelling and grammar errors – spellcheckers aren’t perfect and no one will want to use your article if it’s full of mistakes. Better still, let someone else read it through and give you some honest feedback.

Create several versions. It’s worth changing the article slightly for every site that you submit it to. It’s easier to do than it sounds – you can change the order, tweak the wording or perhaps add some different facts and figures to an article to alter it.

Write a strong summary. Most article sites will want a short summary of the article, just 3-5 sentences, so that people can get the gist of what you’re saying and decide if they want to read the full thing. Make sure you put as much effort into the summary as you do the main article – if it’s poorly crafted you won’t get people wanting to read on.

So to summarise, to benefit from the traffic that article marketing can bring to your website you need to:

1. Write a catchy title
2. Organise your article well
3. Write in plain English
4. Proofread carefully
5. Create several versions
6. Write a strong summary

When done properly article marketing can be a powerful source of web traffic. And the best secret of article writing is that once you have written your articles you can also use them in your blog or email newsletter campaigns. If you would like to find out more about article marketing, or would like to outsource the writing to a professional copywriter, give us a call on 01793 608777.

Image: Paul / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

There are all sorts of factors that matter when Google and the other search engines rank your website. For example, the age of your domain, the relevance of your content to the keywords, the number of pages and frequency of updates all make a difference. Another factor is the number of “backlinks” you have. Backlinks are external links that point to your website and, to a search engine, a high number of backlinks is an indication that your site is valuable and useful. After all, why would people want to link to your content if it was no good? One of the ways you can improve your web ranking is to find a way to increase the number of backlinks you have. You could ask all your friends to link to your site – but there are easier ways to build links to your website. Here are five of the best.

Forums
Most online forums and communities let you include links, either in your profile or in a signature file –text or images that appear along the bottom of every post you make. If you use forums make sure you include your website URL in your signature, because every time you post on the forum you’ll be adding another backlink. Each link on its own is not hugely valuable, but if you are a regular poster you can very quickly build up a high number of backlinks, which will make a serious difference.

Social media
Posting links on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook is another good way of getting a high number of backlinks quickly. Google recently changed the way it approaches links in social media updates, especially to retweeted links, because it sees them as a vote of authority to the website. Make sure you include links to your blog posts, web pages and special offers in your updates. And retweet other people’s links – because they’re more likely to return the favour.

Blogs
While your own blog is likely to only include internal links to pages on your website, try guest blogging for a business blog that complements your own. Not only can you include some valuable backlinks in your post, you’ll naturally also increase the traffic to your website through being exposed to new readers. Also if you comment on blogs or articles you can often leave your name and a web link – make sure you do. This is especially powerful when commenting on high ranking news sites like the BBC or the Guardian.

Article directories
Google recently decreased the value of links on article directories but they are still worth using. If you have content that’s informative but not salesy, try submitting it to sites like ezinearticles.com and buzzle.com. As well as benefitting from the links on those sites, if people use your content you’ll also get backlinks from their sites.

Social bookmarking
Many people use sites like StumbleUpon and Digg to save web pages they enjoyed and share them with their friends. Many of these sites don’t actually create backlinks but they are still worth using as they let people see your content – and those people in turn may share your links on social media or blogs.

Linkbuilding is a really effective way of improving your website’s search engine ranking – but it does take time. If you don’t have the time and would like someone to manage your linkbuilding for you, have a look at HodgesNet’s SEO and Linkbuilding Services or give the team a call on 01793 608777

We’ve talked a lot about SEO – search engine optimisation – and we’ve looked at a lot of different techniques you can use to improve how well your website performs in the search engines. There are so many things to think about when it comes to SEO that you may find it all a bit confusing, so here are our top three SEO tips. Spend some time on each of these areas and you should see a noticeable difference to your search engine position and an increase in traffic to your website.

Our top three SEO tips

Regular unique content
We can’t stress strongly enough how important it is to update your website regularly. The easiest way to do this is to build a blog, and then update it with new articles as often as possible – at least once a week is ideal, but more if you can! You don’t have to write pages and pages – in fact, it’s better if you keep your posts short and sweet because internet users tend to have the attention span of a gnat! Make your posts interesting, informative and entertaining and with any luck people will share your content and keep coming back for more. You can also use your blog to target very specific keywords, which is also really useful in improving your web traffic and search engine ranking.

Meta Data
The meta data for your website is part of the coding; it can include a page title, page description and keywords and  you can specify different information for every page. Manipulating the meta data used to be pretty much the only way you could influence your search engine ranking, but nowadays Google in particular places a lot less importance on it – but other search engines still use it to understand what your page is all about. Don’t be lazy when it comes to meta data – it’s easy to use blanket keywords to cover your whole site, but that won’t do your ranking any good at all. Make sure you set the meta data independently for every important page on your website so each page has different meta titles, descriptions and keywords.

Inbound links
Many people think it’s important to have lots of links on your website going to other places. Actually, the reverse is true – it’s inbound links that affect your search engines ranking. Inbound links – links on other websites that point to a page on your website – act like a badge of trust and authority. In other words, if a website thinks yours is a good place to connect with then the search engines see that as a sign of approval, and that gives your website a bit more kudos and moves you up in the rankings. Not all sites are equal though, and the search engines use a number of criteria to rank pages in order of importance. For example, the BBC website is given a “page rank” of 9 as it is seen as an “authority” site. The higher the ranking of the page, the more valuable the inbound link – so posting on forums on sites such as the BBC and including your website URL can be really useful.

If you’d like to find out more about SEO and how HodgesNet can help people find your website, have a look at our SEO Services - we even offer a Pay on Results SEO service. To find out more, give the team a call on +44(0)8432 894 402

SEO is one of those acronyms you’ve probably heard used in connection with websites and internet marketing, but what exactly is SEO? Why is SEO important? And why would having an understanding of SEO benefit your business?

What is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimisation, and it basically means optimising web pages so they perform better in the search engines. Every time you search for a topic on a search engine, it looks through its directory and delivers a list of relevant pages. These pages are ranked by order of importance and relevance in the hope that the first site or two it shows you will give you the information you need.

Why is SEO important?

So at its heart, search engine optimisation means setting your web pages up so the search engines know exactly what the content is. But why is SEO important? It’s quite simple – there are millions and millions of web pages out there and you need to do everything you can to make sure that the search engines know exactly what your pages are about and include them in the list they deliver. It’s a well known fact that people rarely look further than the first page of results, and that they are most likely to click on the top three sites, so you need to make sure your website is on that first page to have any chance of being visited. It doesn’t matter how good your website looks, if you haven’t got the SEO right you’ll never be found.

The trick is to understand what each page’s main topic is and then think about what people would type in if they were searching for that topic. Those words will become your keywords, and they act as signposts to the search engines to point to what your page is about. Careful use of those keywords in the right quantity and the right places within the page will help the search engines to understand what the page is about and include it in the list of results it delivers.

It’s not as easy as it sounds though. It’s actually quite difficult to get the balance right. You need to include enough keywords to tell the search engines what your page is about, but you also need to ensure that your text reads well because ultimately it’s people who visit your site, not computers!

SEO goes further than keywords though, and there are other ways you can improve your website’s SEO. One of the factors that the search engines use is the number of inbound links to your site – that’s where other people link to you. Both the quantity of external links and the quality of the sites where the links are placed plays a part in determining where your site will rank in the search engines. Article submission is another useful tool in the SEO armoury, but knowing where to place articles is not so easy, as not all article sites are equally useful. Blogging is a great way to improve your search engine optimisation, both through letting you use very focussed keywords in your posts, and by increasing the size of your website quickly. And though meta information is not so important to Google these days, making sure your metatags match your keywords and the page content is a worthwhile exercise.

I hope that helps to answer the question “Why is SEO important?” At HodgesNet we can manage the entire SEO process, and we can get you on the first page of Google – where all those important clicks happen – for just £175+VAT. If you’d like to know about how SEO can help your business online, just give one of the team a call on +44(0)8432 894 402

Pay Per Click (PPC) has long been seen as a cost-effective way of advertising on the internet. In a PPC campaign, adverts promoting (mainly) websites are displayed on search engines, are triggered when someone searches for a specific keyword – Google, for example, currently shows PPC ads above the organic search results, and down the right hand side of the page. There is no charge for the adverts to be displayed, but advertisers pay for every click on the advert. Webmasters can also choose to display PPC ads on their websites, in exchange for part of the Pay Per Click fee.

Google announced this week  that they are going to run a test by stopping the display of Pay Per Click adverts down the side of the search results page.

After monitoring how the positioning of PPC ads affects the number of clicks they receive, Google will now display these “sponsored” adverts at the bottom of the organic search results. According to Google, “In many cases, we have found that displaying ads below search results fits better into the user’s flow as they scan the page from top to bottom. On average, this placement performed better than side ads in terms of click-through rate in our tests.”

The trouble with Pay Per Click