Wikipedia SEO: Learn from the world's most search engine optimized website

If you've tried searching Google for some type of generic keyword lately, you might have noticed that the first result is a Wikipedia page with information about that keyword.

As an example, Wikipedia is first in the Google search engine results page for the following terms:

• SEO
• Chair
• Charles Dickens
• Baseball
• Computer
• Cool
• Cantaloupe
• God
• Love
• Derek

...You begin to get my point.

So, the question is, why is Wikipedia's SEO so good? Well, the domain has a Page Rank of 9, and its individual pages obviously receive a fair amount of links, depending on the page.

The back links coming in to Wikipedia are a huge boost to it SEO. But the site also features amazing on page optimization. The page title is an SEO keyword, the url has the keyword, the headers have the keyword, and every page on Wikipedia linking to it uses the same keyword. It's consistent.

And, of course, there is an absolute tonne on content on Wikipedia. How many hundreds of thousands of pages is it at right now? The point is: with SEO, content is king, and Wikipedia is the king of content.

If you're looking for a good example of a deep linking / interlinking SEO strategy, Wikipedia is probably the best place to start. When you're writing content on your website and you're wondering whether or not to link something, think back to Wikipedia's SEO. Is this the kind of keyword that would be linked on Wikipedia? Is it a keyword on your website? Then it should probably be linked.

Wikipedia is also a good example of how much text to link. In other words, link the keywords, and don't link entire sentences. If you link a big long sentence, you're diluting the anchor text's keyword density... and anchor text should be 100% keyword dense (as opposed to body content, which should be have a keyword density of about 3-4%) .

Overall, Wikipedia gives a pretty good lesson in SEO. Next time you use Wikipedia to look something up, make sure you pay attention to the SEO.

16 Links to Really Really Really Useful SEO Tips

Want an absolute ton of SEO tips? You've come to the right place.

The truth is that after I initially learned the gist of what SEO was and how search engines basically worked (which can be done by reading one or two articles, assuming you're familiar with the Internet), I learned the most not from SEO "how to" guides or anything, but simply from picking up neat SEO tips here and there, and then fitting them together myself into the bigger picture.

Pasted below are a few lists of tips I'm going to go ahead and recommend. Read what I've posted here, and even though none of them are a guide or a really in-depth look at SEO strategy, you'll still get a good idea about what good SEO really is.

General SEO Tips

Daily SEO Tip Blog (one SEO tip per day, everyday)

52 SEO Tips

Top 100 SEO Tips to Learn Search Engine Optimization

10 SEO Tips

20 Hard Core SEO Tips (these are pretty hardcore... but, uh, not that hardcore)

100 SEO Tips to Promote Your Site

55 Quick SEO Tips Even Your Mother Would Love

Link Building Tips

SEO Link Building Resources

15 Link Building Tips for New Websites

10 Link Building Tips

131 (Legitimite) Link Building Strategies

101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website

(Oh, and here is a helpful YouTube rap about linkbuilding)

SEO Copywriting Tips

10 Tips for SEO Copywriting

14 SEO Copywriting Tips

20 SEO Copywriting Hints (Not tips - hints)

101 SEO Tips for Writers

Spelling Mistakes and Typos as an SEO Marketing Tool? Who knew!

Here's an interesting stat: experts estimate that approximately 21% of all Internet searches are misspelled!

By incorporating spelling mistakes and intentional typos into your website (usually via HTML, which hides these errors from viewers) you can actually boost your website's traffic. Elementary school teachers everywhere must be cringing.

Using a typo generator is a good way to find out all the ways a given keyword or keyword phrase has ben be misspelled. Here's an (extremely long!) example:

arketing articles mrketing articles maketing articles mareting articles markting articles markeing articles marketng articles marketig articles marketin articles marketing rticles marketing aticles marketing aricles marketing artcles marketing artiles marketing artices marketing articls marketing article mmarketing articles maarketing articles marrketing articles markketing articles markeeting articles marketting articles marketiing articles marketinng articles marketingg articles marketing aarticles marketing arrticles marketing artticles marketing artiicles marketing articcles marketing articlles marketing articlees marketing articless amrketing articles mraketing articles makreting articles marekting articles markteing articles markeitng articles marketnig articles marketign articles marketin garticles marketing raticles marketing atricles marketing aritcles marketing artciles marketing artilces marketing articels marketing articlse marketingarticles narketing articles jarketing articles karketing articles mqrketing articles mwrketing articles msrketing articles mxrketing articles mzrketing articles maeketing articles ma4keting articles ma5keting articles matketing articles magketing articles mafketing articles madketing articles marjeting articles marieting articles maroeting articles marleting articles marmeting articles markwting articles mark3ting articles mark4ting articles markrting articles markfting articles markdting articles marksting articles markering articles marke5ing articles marke6ing articles markeying articles markehing articles markeging articles markefing articles marketung articles market8ng articles market9ng articles marketong articles marketlng articles marketkng articles marketjng articles marketibg articles marketihg articles marketijg articles marketimg articles marketinf articles marketint articles marketiny articles marketinh articles

marketinb articles marketinv articles marketing qrticles marketing wrticles marketing srticles marketing xrticles marketing zrticles marketing aeticles marketing a4ticles marketing a5ticles marketing atticles marketing agticles marketing afticles marketing adticles marketing arricles marketing ar5icles marketing ar6icles marketing aryicles marketing arhicles marketing argicles marketing arficles marketing artucles marketing art8cles marketing art9cles marketing artocles marketing artlcles marketing artkcles marketing artjcles marketing artixles marketing artidles marketing artifles marketing artivles marketing artickes marketing articoes marketing articpes marketing articlws marketing articl3s marketing articl4s marketing articlrs marketing articlfs marketing articlds marketing articlss marketing articlea marketing articlew marketing articlee marketing articled marketing articlex marketing articlez nmarketing articles mnarketing articles jmarketing articles mjarketing articles kmarketing articles mkarketing articles mqarketing articles maqrketing articles mwarketing articles mawrketing articles msarketing articles masrketing articles mxarketing articles maxrketing articles mzarketing articles mazrketing articles maerketing articles mareketing articles ma4rketing articles mar4keting articles ma5rketing articles mar5keting articles matrketing articles martketing articles magrketing articles margketing articles mafrketing articles marfketing articles madrketing articles mardketing articles marjketing articles markjeting articles mariketing articles markieting articles maroketing articles markoeting articles marlketing articles markleting articles marmketing articles markmeting articles markweting articles markewting articles mark3eting articles marke3ting articles mark4eting articles marke4ting articles markreting articles markerting articles markfeting articles markefting articles markdeting articles markedting articles

markseting articles markesting articles markerting articles marketring articles marke5ting articles market5ing articles marke6ting articles market6ing articles markeyting articles marketying articles markehting articles markething articles markegting articles marketging articles markefting articles marketfing articles marketuing articles marketiung articles market8ing articles marketi8ng articles market9ing articles marketi9ng articles marketoing articles marketiong articles marketling articles marketilng articles marketking articles marketikng articles marketjing articles marketijng articles marketibng articles marketinbg articles marketihng articles marketinhg articles marketijng articles marketinjg articles marketimng articles marketinmg articles marketinfg articles marketingf articles marketintg articles marketingt articles marketinyg articles marketingy articles marketinhg articles marketingh articles marketinbg articles marketingb articles marketinvg articles marketingv articles marketing qarticles marketing aqrticles marketing warticles marketing awrticles marketing sarticles marketing asrticles marketing xarticles marketing axrticles marketing zarticles marketing azrticles marketing aerticles marketing areticles marketing a4rticles marketing ar4ticles marketing a5rticles marketing ar5ticles marketing atrticles marketing artticles marketing agrticles marketing argticles marketing afrticles marketing arfticles marketing adrticles marketing ardticles marketing arrticles marketing artricles marketing ar5ticles marketing art5icles marketing ar6ticles marketing art6icles marketing aryticles marketing artyicles marketing arhticles marketing arthicles marketing argticles marketing artgicles marketing arfticles marketing artficles marketing artuicles marketing artiucles marketing art8icles marketing arti8cles marketing art9icles marketing arti9cles marketing artoicles marketing artiocles marketing artlicles marketing artilcles marketing artkicles marketing artikcles

You can also prioritize and abridge this list by entering these keywords into the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to get the search volume, then plug the most popular into your website.

Who knew that spelling mistakes could be so useful?!

Matt Cutts speaks about SEO and Google

Matt Cutts recently gave a "State of the Index" talk on his blog in video format (think "State of the Union" for Google). It's quite long, at over 23 minutes, so make sure you have the time to absorb it all. Here's the video embedded right here, for the oh so lazy.



I found the video on Search Engine Journal, so kudos to them.

What I enjoy about the video is the fact that Matt Cutts makes it clear that Google is out to help webmasters as long as said webmasters produce "white hat" content. "Black Hat" content or Black Hat SEO are methods of SEO that are, basically, fraudulent and attempts to "fool" the search engines.

I think that when you see SEO from Google's point of view, you soon find that SEO is more about creating great content that users want to find. Everywhere you look on the net, researching SEO or what have you, you'll find "content content content" or "content is king."

Google's job is to provide its users with what they are looking for. Therefore, the job of an SEO firm or SEO specialist is to make it clear what their website is about, so that Google puts it in front of the eyes of the right people. Now, because we generally want to pick who sees our website (we want to show up for the right search engine keywords) this means that we don't produce content blindly or in a vacuum. We use keywords in our copy, in our headers, in our meta tags, etc. We aim to get links not just from every random site on the Internet but from relevant websites. And we link out to relevant websites.

Do it right, and everyone wins.

SEO Book Releases New SEO Competitive Research Tool

SEO Book's new Competitive Research Tool looks pretty darn good.

The main advantage of it I can see is that it shows the positioning of your SEO competitor for each individual keyword. This makes it very easy to tell where the SEO keyword opportunities/openings are.

I'm already imagining easy-to-make Excel charts with a column for the keyword, and the search engine positioning of every competitor. We already do this at MB, but this tool will make the creation of such a chart much, much easier.

Checking Our Own Most Valuable SEO Backlinks

In doing some search engine optimization (SEO) homework before the launch of MB's hip new website (shh!) I was checking out our backlinks to see if we had any especially valuable ones that pointed to specific URL that would soon be out of date.

The most valuable SEO back links were from websites we'd helped clients to build, and which had then gone on to the top of the Google search results for their own keywords (keywords which aren't that valuable to us). Clients who've just had their websites launched in the last week or so obviously didn't provide as valuable a back link.

It just goes to show that doing good work for clients pays off for you too. It's also why I'm convinced that in the long run, proper SEO will be synonymous with high web standards.

SEO Tip Posted on Search Engine Journal

Just posting to say that today Search Engine Journal posted a tip I submitted to Daily SEO Tip.

Check it out: Use Excel to Plan Meta Tags, Titles and URLs for SEO

Daily SEO Tip - A Great New SEO Blog

Daily SEO Tips was recently launched by the good people behind Search Engine Journal.

The premise of the website is exactly what you'd expect, given its title: every day they will post one SEO tip. What's cool, though, is that at the top of the page they have a link to "Contribute an SEO Tip." The link takes you to a simple form where anyone is able to contribute to the blog. The blog isn't as radically trusting as Wikipedia, however, as they do screen tips to weed out the good from the bad. I contributed a tip myself, and I was pleased to get a personal email from Ann Smarty thanking me for the tip.

I think it's a great idea for an SEO blog because content is literally being written for it. I don't think this would work for a new blog, but as an extension of an already popular SEO blog like Search Engine Journal, it works wonders. And so far, judging from the first two posts and some comments, the authors are not abandoning the site just to let guests do all the work for them - the SEO tips they give out are useful.

Of note is how active the comments section is for their posts so far. In fact, their mission statement comes straight from a comment: "Bitesized daily tips to help keep your SEO knowledge fresh without cluttering up your feed-reader."

They acknowledge where the mission statement came from in their footer, an SEO blogger named Ken Jones. It's a nice gesture and definitely promotes commenting. If you check out the comments so far, you'll see that the authors are actively participating in the discussion. The people who do give a tip also get a link back, obviously, when their tip is posted. The blog has created a true win-win situation.

Although I'm getting more and more reserved with adding yet more blogs to my RSS feeder, I will definitely be subcribing to Daily SEO Tips.

The Ultimate Introduction to SEO Resources List

Awhile back I wrote a post which was basically an introduction to link building, which is the process of getting back links from other websites pointing to yours, in order to increase your Page Rank and authority in the eyes of Search Engines.

I've since realized that I probably should have begun with an introduction to Search Engine Optimization, instead of an introduction to a single SEO strategy. So, that being said, this post details a pretty good introduction to SEO.

Even if it won't make you an SEO specialist, by reading this post and browsing some of the resources here, you'll have a solid understanding of what exactly SEO specialists are talking about when they mention things like Deep Links and Link Back Campaigns and so forth. If you're a small to mid sized business owner looking to hire an SEO specialist, this post will give you enough of an understanding of SEO to know when the specialist know what they're talking about and when they don't.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Search Engine Optimization - Wikipedia

Wikipedia defines SEO as "the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results." It's a good definition, and it also comes from Wikipedia, a website who just happens to rank in the top results for a heck of a lot of search terms.

An Excellent Intro to SEO - Search Engine Watch

Search Engine Watch has a number of good articles on SEO you might want to check out. I like this intro because it breaks down the important aspects of SEO pretty well, and gives you the background you need. (For example, they don't go into link building before they get into "How Search Engines Work," as I did.)

SEO Terms and Definitions - Marketing Breakthroughs

This is an article from our parent website, Marketing Breakthroughs. Before moving on to the nitty gritty, I think it's always good to have a resource nearby that can give you a definition for any new SEO terms you come across.

Optimizing Your Website Navigation for Search Engines

Definition of a Web Crawler - Wikipedia

Again, this is from Wikipedia. The sections on search engines in the Search Engine Watch article is pretty good, but I think we can focus on web crawlers or "spiders" for now. Understanding how a web crawler works will help you to build more search engine friendly websites with site maps, deep linking, and intuitive navigation.

Ingredients of a Search Engine Friendly Website - Search Engine Guide

Pay special attention to the "Is Your Site Crawlable?" Section. It will help you make sure that your links are set up in a way that leads Search Engines to all of your content, and helps ensure that your website gets indexed (the process by which a search engine "remembers" and stores everything on your website).

Keywords and Keyword Density

Introduction to Choosing Keywords - SEO Zombie

This is a basic introduction that gives you a pretty good overview. What it could use more of is competitor research. It's always important to know what you're competitors are ranking well for, what they're going after, and where the SEO opportunities are.

Effective Keyword SEO Research Part 1 - Clickz.com
Effective Keyword SEO Research Part 2 - Clickz.com

This two part article gives a good background into finding and selecting keywords. There are several more tools and methods we use at Marketing Breakthroughs, but the background is all in the article above. I enjoy SEO keyword research and trimming because it's where the real fun and strategy is. Which keywords are you competitors ranking for? Which low-competition long-tail keywords are going to convert buyers? Which keywords by themselves will help out solidify my position with my long-tail selections?

Keyword Density Tool - KeywordDensity.com

This tool looks at all the scannable content on a web page and determins what the density is for a given keyword. I prefer to use Word, because generally I'm targetting a keyword density goal within the main copy or article, and not the whole page (navigation, any links in your footer, etc.).

The Next Step: SEO Courses and SEO Certifications

If you are looking for a really good understanding, I suggest enrolling in some SEO courses. The fact is, a lot of SEO secrets are withheld from the general public unless you flat out are willing to pay for them.

SEMPO Institute

SEMPO offers the most in depth course I've found with the Advanced Search Engine Optimization course. They also have other internet marketing and an "Insider's Guide" to Search Engine Optimization. The courses are at your own pace, at your computer, and can be completed anywhere.

SEOBook.com Training - SEO Book

SEO Book offers a membership for $100 USD per month. With this, you get access to their tutorials, videos, and their forum. It's a pretty low cost investment if you think you can absorb most of it in a single month.

Link Building

Link Building is the process by which you get links from other website to point to your own. It gives the impression that your website is more popular and that more people find it useful. As such, search engines will rank your website higher.

11 Awesome Link Building Resources. - The Daily Breakthrough

This is an earlier post of mine with links to some of the most popular link building resources on the net. Based on a comment on this post, I would also add:

The Link Building Cookbook - ColinLahay.com

Again, this was recommended by a commentor on this blog. The amount of link building resources on this site is phenomenal. At this point, it's up to 52 different link building techniques.

SEO Blogs

This is pretty much just a quick list I pulled from my RSS reader:

SEO Book - A lot of free training and SEO news. They are trying to convince you to go for the paid training, but it's not in any way obtrusive with the free SEO advice they do provide.

Ranked Hard SEO Comics - These SEO comics are good for a laugh. I admit that, uh, they won't teach you much about SEO.

Search Engine Journal - I regularly read this, and it's a good blog to go through the archives of because there's a lot of good stuff buried back there.

Occam's Razor - I don't read this as much as I should. It's a little more advanced, but the insights it provides are always top-notch. The author also wrote, "Web Analytics: An Hour A Day."

ProBlogger Blog Tips - This blog is not pure SEO. But it does have a few SEO tips in there, and reading it will give you a good idea of integrating your SEO with a larger web marketing strategy, which is always important. Nothing should be done in a vacuum.

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I would also add that there is a bunch of SEO software out there available for building links. I'd check out Link Assistant (especially if you use a Mac! A lot of SEO software appears to be PC only). Search Optimization Marketing also has a pretty decent list of SEO software and SEO tools.

How your website displays in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

How your messaging is displayed in the Search Engine Results Page is very important. It's your first impression towards potential website visitors.

The Search Engine Results Page is the page on a search engine with a list of links to websites, their descriptions, and their URL.

This is what it looks like:

The blue underlined text is the link to the website. It is the page title on your website (what displays at the very top of the browser title. Google indexes the first 70 characters of page titles.

The black text is your meta description. Google will display the first 150 characters of your meta description. However, if your meta description is not relevant, Google will just grab some text from your website that it does think is relevant.

The bold words in the page title and meta description are the relevant keywords that Google has found. In the example above, I searched "example" and so it is bolded in all of the results.

The green text is the URL of that page that Google is displaying.

For SEO, Google looks at all of these things! But if you cram keywords into your page title and your meta description, things will just look ugly!

Your page title and meta description is a chance to advertise to potential customers. Here are some tips and ideas for your page titles and meta descriptions:

1. Treat your URL like a headline.
2. Include your company name in your page title.
3. Consider asking a question that will draw interest.
4. Include a call to action ("Visit our website," "See our Knowledge Centre," etc.) in your meta description.
5. Speak in complete sentences.
6. Use only your most sought after keywords with their modifiers, so that they don't turn your page title and meta description into a nonsensical list of keywords.

Remember, your display is like an advertisement... but you may not want to treat it exactly like an ad. If you're only getting people looking to purchase something, then go ahead: give 'em an advertisement. But if they're looking for pure information, they will be turned off by anything that looks like an advertisement.

So be careful with your page titles and your meta descriptions, and always keep the end goal in mind.

SEO should improve your website, not ruin it

If you manage to get your website to the top of Google and it's filled with spam links and a poor user experience, what have you accomplished? Nothing, really. There's some money in it if you're one of those spam blog filled only with Google adwords suckering in folks who are new to the web, but this doesn't seem to be a very solid or sustainable way to make money. If you're doing your best to go behind Google's back, eventually they're going to figure out a way to dock your website to the bottom of the rankings. That's kind of their thing, y'know?

But that's not my point. My point is: if you get to the top of the rankings but your website is poorly optimized to do it's job (i.e., sell your products and/or services) then you've wasted your time. SEO isn't an ends, it's a means.

Besides, good SEO will actually improve your website's conversion and user experience. Good SEO means that you use a site map that conforms to what search engines and what people expect. If you build your site according to standards, people will know how to use it. If you make up your own insane navigation scheme, the search engines won't know what to do, and neither will your users.

If you help out the search engines by deep linking to various back pages on the website, you'll also help out your users. Search engines don't want to "click" more than a few times to get to the "meat" of your website, and guess what? Neither do your users.

Good headers tell the search engines what your page is about. It also tells your users what your site is about. Same with page titles, links, and every other aspect of navigation.

Don't suck up to the search engines at the cost of user experience, because in the end you'll be hurting both causes. For example, if we spammed our own website, MarketingBreakthroughs.com, with only one or two keywords, the entire site wouldn't make any darn sense! But we still keep our keywords in mind and make sure they show up in the text. We put them into page headers where appropriate. We try to describe out inbound links as accurately as possible.

It's not simply about balance, because serving one end often serves the other.

Registering SEO Domain Name Keywords

One of the SEO strategies that we often use at MB is to register keyword rich domain names. In terms of SEO, domains play a very large factor. If you basically register "keyword.com," and you have a decent number of outside website linking to your (Google rates this by "Page Rank") then there's a good chance you'll come up in the top results for anyone searching "keyword." If you register "modifierkeywordlocation.com" then you're almost guaranteed to come up for anyone who searches "modifer keyword location" or "modifier keyword in location."

This is a common SEO strategy, but to do it well you need to think a little first. To begin, you should always have a branded domain name. Forget SEO until you have a branded domain.

Let's take the Marketing Breakthroughs website as an example. Our main domain name is http://www.marketingbreakthroughs.com. The purpose of this domain is 99% branding. As well, there's the added benefit that some people will, even if they know a URL, will still type "marketing breakthroughs" into Google to get to our site. We obviously want to catch those users, but even if this weren't an added benefit, the branding advantages of having "companyname.com" make it your first choice for a domain.

Now, after doing an SEO Audit, you would come up with keyword phrases. There are too big factors when prioritizing keyword phrases:

1. What's the Search Volume - how many people search for this keword?
2. Are users searching for this keyword likely to buy?

The second factor takes a bit more explaining. You could easily sort a list of keywords by search volume and pick the top ones, but that's a losing proposition. For one, those keywords will be extra expensive. And secondly, you don't want to burn all your resources targeting keywords that won't bring in qualified buyers.

Let's say you have a website that sells baseball equipment. So you head over to Google's Search Based Keyword Suggestion tool and you type in "baseball." One of your options you'll see is "fantasy baseball." This has a high search volume, but is anyone searching for "fantasy baseball" likely to be looking for aluminum baseball bats to purchase? No. Someone searching for aluminum baseball bats will search "aluminum baseball bats" or "cheap baseball bats" or something. Those are the type of keywords to target. Don't target unqualified buyers with your keywords.

I don't want to get too much into brainstorming keywords, so I'll move on.

Domain names are competitive. You're not going to get baseball.com. Sorry. But you might get "baseballleaguesinottawa.com" if you register it. You might also get "ottawabaseballteams.com" or something. It all depends on what people are searching for. Depending on your location, you might also trying .ca names instead of just .com names. There will probably be less competition, and if you're actually in Canada, this won't hurt you.

Once you have a few domains registered (the number will depend on your budget and how important targeting various keywords are) you should try and get a few links to them with good anchor text. Good anchor text will be very similar to the keyword. Just don't make all your anchor text for backlinks identical.

You'll also want to look at your competitors and see what they're targeting with their keywords. See if any of them have SEO domains registered.

Also, don't register super long domain names. It's kind of tacky, and the likelihood of people searching those exact phrases is minimal.

It's 2009 ... So Why is Your Website Still Stuck in the '90s?

Here were are the dawn of a new year. Out with the old, in with the new, right? And yet here we are, in the year 2009, and the Internet is still littered with websites that look like they were written and designed during the mid-90s heyday of Geocities and Alta Vista.

While an old book in a library might be a comforting sight, on the Internet, old is bad. Take a look at websites such as the aptly-named Web Pages That Suck -- does any of it look familiar to you? If your company's site looks anything remotely like the ones posted there, it's time to make a new New Year's Resolution and get with the times -- and fast.

Your website is your "virtual storefront", the place where first impressions are made and sales won or lost. And if you have a poorly designed website -- or even one that was a state-of-the-art "online brochure" 10 years ago -- people will quickly leave your site and never come back.

For whatever reason, bad websites can happen to the very best of companies (for more information on this topic, I recommend reading the series of posts at EvoBlog). However, that's not an excuse to just let your website slide into obscurity.

Yes, you'll need to invest in a reputable

web design firm

to do much of the work on your behalf. But there are so many easy ways to improve your site, and you don't need to be a programming guru to make thing happen. For example, writing

search engine optimized web content

is easier than ever thanks to

Google Analytics

and its plethora of SEO keyword tools.

With a few clicks of a mouse, you can find out what exactly people are searching for, how many people are searching for it, and what they are doing once they finally reach your website. Having this information at your fingertips makes it extremely easy to revise your copy, as necessary, on a regular basis. So what's stopping you?

Of course, if you need help getting the most out of your website, or simply don't have the time to write copy, well, that's where web marketing companies like Marketing Breakthroughs come in. Our staff of Web 2.0 and web marketing specialists has turned around numerous websites, providing extraordinary results to our clients.

The pages of the calendar have turned. You owe it to yourself and your clients / customers to make sure your company's website isn't stuck in the past.

11 Awesome Link Building Resources

What is Link Building?

The purpose of link building is to increase authority. Relevant links tell Google what similar sites think of yours. The more inbound links you have, the more "authority" you have, and the higher you'll rank in search engines. The following list of resources has everything you need to get started with link building:

Introduction to Link Building

You'll notice that in the introduction to link building section that I include a few really long lists of link building tips that aren't really "introductions." However, I think you'll find that the wide variety of tips gives you a glimpse into the many different variations of your basic link building strategy there are.

A Linking Campaign Primer - EricWard.com

This is a great introduction to link building campaigns. It's list of the data you should record when compiling websites to contact for a link - keeping track of your links and such is very important. There are also a few tips as to why outsourcing link building may not be the best option.

101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website - SEOBook.com

As you can probably imagine, this is just a huge collection of link building tips (101, to be precise).

I read it often, because with these types of huge lists (very popular with bloggers) it's easy to miss stuff. However, you'll also note when reading it a few link building themes start to emerge that you'll want to keep in mind.

131 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies - SearchEngineWatch.com

These aren't organized like a bulleted list, and I don't actually like a couple of the tips, but the sheer range of tips from various SEO experts means that by the end of the article, you'll pretty much know the basics what's really being done out there.

Five Link Building Strategies That Work - CopyBlogger.com

There's more to link building than emailing other people and suggestion you each link to each other. This goes into other methods, like social media sites, article directories, and guest posting.

Emailing Bloggers and Webmasters for InBound Links

Website Traffic Series Part 12: Emailing Bloggers to Showcase Your Best Content - DailyBlogTips.com

Emailing other bloggers to get links is important, but what do they link to? Remember, every link that's created, whether inbound or outbound, should provide value to readers. This post goes into detail on how to sell that great content. However, this ones goes into detail about creating your most popular blog post ever. (And check out the "Having Something to Link To" section below.)

Linking Out: What's in It For Me? - SearchEngineGuide.com

Put yourself in the shoes of someone receiving a link request. What are they looking for? They want benefits, and so you have to ask yourself: what's in it for them?

Having Something to Link To

Killer Flagship Content - chrisg.com

This is a PDF for you to download when you sign up to Chris Garrett's newsletter (it's pretty easy to unsubscribe if you really need to). Sign up for the newsletter - get the PDF.

I cannot recommend this free ebook enough. If you want to create content that people want to link to, then read this ebook now. Chris Garrett knows his stuff.

How to Build Links with HOW-TO Content - SearchEngineJournal

This has four good ideas for creating link bait content - in other words, content that will get people to link to you of their own free will.

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I've only put two in this section, because this "section" really deserves its own post (or even its own series of posts, or even its own blog.)

Miscellaneous Link Building Tips and Resources

Excel Database Tutorial - EdFerrero.com

Remember that I said keeping track of your inbound links is important? Here's a tutorial that'll help show you how to do it.

Link Building Tips for Advanced Google Search Engine Placement - SEOBook.com

Once you've read the above resources, give this a run through. After you've gotten a good handle on the basics of link building and how to build links, you'll find that a lot of the tips in the above resources are common sense. But the tips in this link building article are the kind of tips that'll really make you think, "Aha!" It'll get you starting to think ahead-of-the-curve, which is extremely important with SEO.

Important SEO Link Building Research Tips

Getting

inbound links

is one of the most important parts of SEO.

Here's the criteria for getting great inbound link:

• The site is related to yours but is not a competitor
• The site has a high page rank
• The site has a lot of authority
• The site does not use link-building strategies that Google will penalize

Okay, great. Where are all these sites?

Here's how you might begin a research campaign:

• Google the keywords you want to target. See who comes up. Make a list of all the sites that are relevant but are not competitors.

• Now go through all the actual competitors. Run them through some SEO software to check all of their inbound links. Who's linking to them?

At this point you have a big list of possible sites. Now you need to narrow things down a bit.

• I suggest putting the list into Excel. Include columns for the website URL, the title, the webmaster or main content writer, its

  Google page rank

  , and where on the site a link to your site might be good, or why THEY might benefit.

• Use your head. Spend some time on each site to determine how good a fit linking between the two of you is.

• Don't just spam a zillion people. You'll get bad links and it'll hurt you in the long run.

• Before you discuss linking with the webmaster, know exactly why a link would benefit you both. This will help when you email them, and it'll help make sure you're

  setting up links between relevant sites

  - which means more benefit for you, more benefit for them, and more benefit for the readers who'll eventually come across those links.

• Have a good landing page for them to link to (not just your homepage all the time) so that they're providing their reader with value by linking to you. This is a lot easier if you've already written helpful search engine optimized articles for your site.

• Find a page on their site you might link to, because you want to provide value to your readers. This info will also help you when you email them.

Link building takes time.

But if you ask any SEO experts, they'll say that it's a snowball effect. You start linking to others, slowly, slowly, slowly, until people start linking to you, and you're getting tons of options to link to high quality, authoritative sites.

When your link building campaign is focused on only grabbing high quality links, you'll get

better SEO results

and you'll provide more value to your readers.

In the long run, this is probably exactly what Google wants. They're a pretty smart bunch, those folks.

SEO Book Releases a Great Keyword Flowchart

The nice people at SEO Book put together a rather useful keyword research strategy flowchart.

The image is way too big to post right here, but you should check it out.

One of the things that's neat about is is that individual points on the keyword flowchart also link to corresponding articles. They aren't all "How-To Keyword Optimize This Step," but they are all related enough that they are very, very useful.

The main thing I would note from this chart is that it, even when you pick the "My Keywords are Ranking Well" paths, you're

never done search engine optimizing your keywords.

Google has a New Search-Based Keyword Tool!

Google's old keyword tool is pretty useful.

But they've just released a beta version of a new search-based keyword tool.

Here's the Adwords blog post on the subject. The main idea is this:

Here's the scoop: you know that the Google search engine starts with searches conducted by users and helps them find relevant pages. But for keyword targeting, what you want is a tool that goes in the opposite direction by starting with your pages and identifying keywords that potential customers are searching on to find your products or services. The Search-based Keyword Tool does exactly this, leveraging search query data relevant to your website's content. In other words, this new tool gives you keywords that are highly relevant to your site but are not part of your AdWords campaigns. This helps you take advantage of missed opportunities.

I'm sure just about anyone who is at all interested in SEO will be taking advantage of this new tool.

The Democratization of Google: Step One

Some months ago, Steve blogged about Google instituting a beta version for a few testers that would allow them to rate search results, similar to Digg.

Well, Google has now released it publicly: Google SearchWiki brings custom search results

It's now open to anyone with a Google account -- people just like me and you! It looks like this:

See the arrow and the X? Neat!

Important Points:

1. Right now, your ratings do not affect anyone else's search results

2. Google has not "closed any doors" about allowing this in the future.

From the CNet article:

"We don't close any doors. We constantly evaluate signals that are incorporated into the search results algorithm ... Search is adapting to the Internet as it becomes a more participatory medium. Now you have people telling us specific things about how they'd like to see their search results."

If you do make a vote, Google gives you a nice popup explaining the new "SearchWiki". Here is a search for "bears."


Right now, I'm sure Google is waiting to let your votes affect others until after they can truly "democratize" this system so that companies can't just create a zillion Google accounts and bump their results to the top. Google tends to be pretty good at preventing people from thwarting their system and search algorithms.

It's true. Just look at an SEO optimized website. What makes up an SEO optimized website these days? One in which there is an abundance of clearly labeled content that can be found through intuitive website design and navigation.

Lots of others have blogged about this already.

Seth Godin has some interesting thoughs in Google gets jiggy, and of course SEO Book couldn't avoid writing a post about the search engine announcement.

From an SEO perspective, I'll be very interested to see how this develops. An SEO company's job, when search engine optimizing a website, should be to provide value to the website owners by provideing value to the website users. No more loading meta tags with keywords to nudge out the actually useful stuff!

How to Search Engine Optimize Your Website

Is your business launching a new web site? Have you fallen off the Google map? Perhaps you are in the backwoods of blacklisting, having followed an ill-advised SEO strategy? Whatever your challenge, these practical tips will set you on the proper SEO track.

Planning, Patience, Process

First, you have to realize that it is going to take some time. You won't be sitting atop the SERPS (search engine results pages) tomorrow. A single strategy, a single action is not going to do it. However, if you start today, have patience, and embrace a deliberate process, profits will show.

Content Brings Contentment

Having plenty of content on your site will put you ahead of your competitors. In fact, too many businesses continue to fail the content test. Remember, there is nothing like a contented visitor, whether that be a search engine spider or a user.

Keywords for Life

Keywords should be part of your DNA. Build and maintain a list of keywords and use them in your content (especially at the top of the page), headings, page titles, file names, links, and meta-tags.

Keep abreast of changes in your industry. Listen to the words used by clients, peers, and competitors. Freshen up your list when new words arise and old ones fade. Finally, while keyword-rich content is good, use common sense. Don't make the user feel like they are reading the ingredients on a cereal box.

Theme and Variation

Be on theme and stay on theme. If you sell lollipops, explore every possible aspect of lollipops (e.g., history, colours, different names for lollipops, etc.). Google's spiders dance to themes. Therefore, your content should be on theme, you should link to similarly themed sites (inbound and outbound links), the indexing for your site (the architecture) should hum the theme, and if possible, develop content (e.g., articles, reviews, press releases, quirky facts, etc.) that is on theme and can be posted on other sites with links.

Keep It Fresh

Maintain up-to-date content. Google absolutely loves to index fresh, new content. If your basic products or services have not changed, think of new variations on your proven theme, and track how these changes effect your SERP placement and make further changes (even reversal) when required. You'll find the right balance between stability and freshness.

Building Links, Building Reputations

Building links is like building a reputation: you are known by the company you keep. If spiders find links to and from respectable sites, you'll get a boost on Google, MSN, etc. Foster reciprocal links with reputable sites that share your theme, but not identical service offerings. Make sure to use text links with top keywords.

SEO Spam: The Dark Side

Be cautious -- certain Search Engine Optimization practices can be tagged as unethical or in bad taste. You don't want to be similarly tagged, by clients, or blacklisted, by search engines. Stay away from schemes that promise instant results or sound 'spammy'. This includes doorways, cloaking, keyword stuffing, blog spamming, link farming, mirror sites, etc.

Diligence: Maintain SEO

Remember, Search Engine Optimization is a continuous process. Keep watch and make adjustments when required. Track the SERPS using your keywords. Check out your competitors and see how their placement and keywords are changing.

Mini Funnel Websites Are a Great Idea to Boost SEO and Web Traffic

There was a neat tidbit on Dosh Dosh today about creating mini funnel websites to drive high quality web traffic. It's basically just a Search Engine Optimization strategy.

The example they gave boils down to this:

1. People search "Is Barack Obama Muslim" on Google.
2. Because the domain is "www.isbarackobamamuslim.com", this funnel site is the top hit.
3. The content on the site links traffic to a number of websites, including a page on Barack Obama's website that goes into more detail on the topic.

Because the landing page on Obama's site specifically satisfies the visitor's questions, he or she is going to be a happy customer.

And, of course, the funnel pages provide valuable back links to Obama's main site.

Win win!