If you do any reading on search engine optimization, you will assuredly come across the term 'backlinks' and depending on what you are reading, you may decide that backlinks are the equivalent of the Holy Grail. This is not entirely true as a general matter, but even more importantly, not all backlinks are created equal.
There are basically five types of backlinks. The first is pretty simple, and is simply the URL of your website. You get a little bit of juice from this, but the downside is that it lacks any type of anchor text, so you do not gain any type of keyword bump on Google.
The next type to know is the nofollow link. This is the type of link where your URL is on the site, but the code of the side flags it as nofollow, meaning that search engine crawlers will not head to your site from there. These also have very little juice, and typically are not as strong as the normal URL of your website listed above.
Next are footer links. These are the types of links that appear on the bottom of blogs or websites, and are typically a wee bit stronger than the previous two mentioned.
One of my favorite link types is the sidebar. These are links that appear on the side of a website, normally on blogs, and are stronger than footer links. These can be great for search engine optimization, and also are a nice way to get your site name out there.
The best type of link in my opinion is a contextual link using your keywords of choice. For example, if you were selling yellow bananas at a site called Monkeyingaround.com, then you could create a link whose text reads yellow bananas but clicks directly to Monkeyingaround.com. This type of link is the one that you should go for the most, and has the best potential to help your site rank well.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Sometimes, SEO Will Drive You Crazy
There is one certainty when it comes to search engine optimization, and that is quite simply that sometimes, SEO will drive you crazy. I do not mean that type of crazy where you are imagining seeing things or hearing voices, but rather the kind of crazy that has you banging your head on your desk and asking questions out loud as you lie in bed late at night trying to figure out what went wrong.
SEO is a funny business, and things change constantly in ways that are hard to keep up with. You can be doing poorly and do nothing, and suddenly you jump way up in the organic results. You can be number one and working hard on a daily basis, and suddenly find yourself dropping without any understanding as to how it happened. Sometimes it seems like you are working magic and are unstoppable, and other times you ponder whether you have any business working on search engine optimization projects at all.
I will give you a prime example. One of our projects was ranking number one for it's top keywords, and of course we were looking to continue that trend across other keywords as well. We were making a couple of tweaks with the H1 tags (page title) and even messing around a bit with meta data (which really should not have any type of effect). I think we got rid of what was considered an irrelevant phrase and added one that we felt was certain to help our work.
The next day, after our page had been crawled, we suddenly experienced a drop, falling from number one to number two. Of course, this set off a bit of a panic as we tried to figure out what we did and why it was happening, and even at this moment we still have not quite figured out the problem. It could be the H1 shift, it could be some change elsewhere in the site, it might be that our competitors are doing something different, or it could just be that there was an algorithm shift.
For awhile, the thoughts just kept running round and round, and tempers were starting to flare. It was at that point that we realized that we will might never know, and that we should focus on what we like best about white-hat SEO- working hard, doing the right things, and trying to achieve that number one position again. So we are going to keep experimenting, try to figure things out, and have a little fun trying to figure out all the complexities of organic search.
The same should go for you if you experience a setback. Do not beat yourself up, keep working hard, and strive to always stay positive. Today's setback can lead to tomorrow's success if you let it.
SEO is a funny business, and things change constantly in ways that are hard to keep up with. You can be doing poorly and do nothing, and suddenly you jump way up in the organic results. You can be number one and working hard on a daily basis, and suddenly find yourself dropping without any understanding as to how it happened. Sometimes it seems like you are working magic and are unstoppable, and other times you ponder whether you have any business working on search engine optimization projects at all.
I will give you a prime example. One of our projects was ranking number one for it's top keywords, and of course we were looking to continue that trend across other keywords as well. We were making a couple of tweaks with the H1 tags (page title) and even messing around a bit with meta data (which really should not have any type of effect). I think we got rid of what was considered an irrelevant phrase and added one that we felt was certain to help our work.
The next day, after our page had been crawled, we suddenly experienced a drop, falling from number one to number two. Of course, this set off a bit of a panic as we tried to figure out what we did and why it was happening, and even at this moment we still have not quite figured out the problem. It could be the H1 shift, it could be some change elsewhere in the site, it might be that our competitors are doing something different, or it could just be that there was an algorithm shift.
For awhile, the thoughts just kept running round and round, and tempers were starting to flare. It was at that point that we realized that we will might never know, and that we should focus on what we like best about white-hat SEO- working hard, doing the right things, and trying to achieve that number one position again. So we are going to keep experimenting, try to figure things out, and have a little fun trying to figure out all the complexities of organic search.
The same should go for you if you experience a setback. Do not beat yourself up, keep working hard, and strive to always stay positive. Today's setback can lead to tomorrow's success if you let it.
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