Posts Tagged ‘Attorney website marketing’

Blog Commenting as a Valuable SEO Tool

Sunday, February 5th, 2012

Aside from starting a blog of your own, one of the most powerful tools for promoting your site and increasing SEO lies in commenting on other blog sites. Leaving comments on other’s blogs is truly one of the simplest, yet most overlooked strategies, offering exceptional opportunity, increased visibility, and, overall, little competition.

Finding Your Niche

Consider that specific blogs are likely to represent a niche community that you would like to—and should be—a part of in order to further your own website, not to mention that blog commenting can push your website up the rankings quickly. When you leave comments on another’s blog site, you are, in essence participating in the online version of networking, and most business owners are fully aware of the importance of networking in their “regular” business. There are many more benefits to blog posting, but you should be aware of some basic “rules” to truly make your comments stand out from the crowd.

Blog Commenting as a Branding Tool

People who are active in their industry benefit greatly by sharing opinions and promoting themselves and their ideas. The results of such sharing and promoting is an ever-increasing network, not to mention continued awareness of the person’s specific niche, resulting in a personal brand of sorts. “Branding” is a buzzword which is more and more tossed about, but essentially means what you stand for, where your experience and expertise lie—basically what exactly it is that you are well-known for. Our increasingly social world desires connections with others who are, well, like them, and branding helps facilitate those connections.

Blog Commenting to Build a Loyal Fan Base

As you know, building a loyal fan base can take time, not to mention commitment. Most of us begin building our fan base when writing for our own blog, which links to our website. Our goal is generally to share our own little corner of the world—our journey, so to speak—with the rest of the world. As you build your fan base, remember that commenting on other people’s blogs, especially those which lie within your own niche, can promote you and your brand in the same manner, slowly building a loyal fan base who follow you wherever your comments may lead. Use the same techniques for blog commenting that you use in your own blog’s development—consistency, creativity and value to the reader. Share your personality, and do your best to give those who read your comments something they can’t find somewhere else—in other words “Great posting,” is not considered a beneficial comment—to anyone!

Blog Commenting to Generate Highly Targeted Traffic

If you follow certain guidelines, you will soon reap the rewards of highly increased—not to mention targeted—traffic to your own website. The first guideline is to write truly great comments which are both insightful and intelligent. Secondly, throw a little controversy in the mix—we humans seem to be drawn like moths to a flame to controversy. Offer different points of view (politely) and you will see the conversation take off. Keep your commenter name consistent so others will begin to recognize your postings, and, hopefully, specifically look for them. It is helpful to add your blog name or tagline to your name when posting comments, such as Ginger Smith, CatLover, but whatever you decide keep it the same. Comment early, and comment often on the same blog posts. Many folks only read the first 15-25 blog comments (or even less) before they move on, so always consider the short attention span of the web reader, and give them a reason to continue reading.

Make Your Blog Comment Stand Out

In order to ensure your blog comments stand out from the herd, do your best to add value to the original article through your comment. Ask a question, disagree with the rest of the community (in a reasonable and intelligent manner), show some emotion, and post often. These things will get you noticed and will ultimately improve your site’s SEO and push you up the page ranks.

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Could Anchor Text Become Irrelevant?

Monday, January 16th, 2012

Each time Google updates their algorithm, the process by which they rank web pages is altered in some way, whether slightly or in a more significant manner. The latest change in the algorithm saw quite a few websites which were previously ranked fairly high, drop down by a number of places. Although this phenomenon does not appear to be a penalty of any type, the only common characteristic between these sites seemed to be that their rankings leaned heavily on anchor text rather than on site optimization. Some SEO experts believe this to be the biggest flaw in Google’s latest program, while others feel it is about time.  While the goal of all search engines is to consistently show the most relevant and trusted websites at the top of the search results, Google feels that anchor text has little connection to trust for most all search queries due to misuse in the form of paid links full of keyword-stuffed anchor text.

Is Anchor Text Overused?

Google’s algorithm theorizes that just because a site may have thousands of anchor text links using a keyword such as “solar” doesn’t necessarily mean it will be a relevant search result for those who query “solar.” It is generally believed that there are two types of site rankings for commercial queries. The first one is the sites which rank due to the trust factor of their incoming links, meaning their links consist entirely of newspaper websites, quality blogs and such, and the second are the sites which rank highly due strictly to thousands of paid links with anchor text full of keywords. It is these sites Google is targeting, attempting to discount those paid links with competitive keywords anchored in the text.

No “Click Here’s” Please

If you are using the phrase “click here” as your anchor text link, shame on you! This technique is not only old-fashioned, but is just downright lazy. The goal of your anchor text is to include words which specifically relate to your website, the service you are offering, the idea you are promoting or the product you are selling. As a general rule you should keep your anchor links under sixty characters in length, and avoid at all costs using the same anchor text over and over in the same article or page content. This technique not only appears unprofessional but you also risk a rap on the knuckles from Google. And spider bots aside, do you really want to risk boring your reader to tears by repeating anchor text?  Research your keywords, and experiment on various search engines to see which are the most effective.

Think Like Your Readers

Diversify your links, and strive to make them as professional as possible. Avoid stuffing anchor text on any single webpage, article or blog post as it could be regarded as spam. Two or three highly relevant backlinks are really all you need to get your readers to trust your site, and search engines to recognize you. Once the search engines pick up your site based on the successful use of anchor text and careful search engine optimization, it should be ranked by your chosen keyword. Once you are ranked, the site will get more and more traffic, become more popular, and move quickly up the rankings. Never forget that there are real human beings out there reading your website’s content. If it appears to your readers that your site is simply anchor links and SEO, they will quickly click elsewhere, looking for a more trusted, professional website.

Google has made it crystal clear that if they judge a site to be stockpiling links in a way they don’t approve of–simply for the purpose of moving up the rankings—they will penalize the site. While relevant links from other sites can go a long way in helping your site move up the search engine rankings, violate Google’s rules regarding anchor text and you may see your site virtually disappear overnight from the search results. So, use anchor text judiciously, but cautiously, working it into your overall SEO plan.

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Building Internal Links Which Satisfy Google

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

Once your website is up and running, there will be lots of different people and programs perusing it. Internal links are crucial whether helping human users understand what your website is talking about or helping search engine spiders or bots crawl and index your site.  While it can be challenging, it is possible to build internal links that will satisfy robots as well as your human users. If you are unsure of just how you can build those critical internal links, here are some tips which can help.

Contextual Link Building

A contextual link is one in which clickable text is made up of one of your primary keyword phrases—a phrase you are using in hopes of obtaining a page one Google listing.  Keep in mind that a contextual link won’t be effective unless it links to a page which is primarily about your keywords. Contextual links which are content based and theme-related are especially valuable in boosting SEO. When you are creating contextual links in your keyword-rich articles, keep the links high on the page.  Contextual links which show up toward the top of the page are given more weight and influence by search engines than those which trail in at the end of the article.  The goal of a contextual link is to encourage your visitors to find out more information, and using anchor text which is very descriptive is always better than simply having a “click here” button for internal and external links.

Using Breadcrumbs in Building Internal Links

Aside from the kind used in making meatloaf, bread crumbs are a navigational tool on many websites which you can see at the top of the browser window. Bread crumbs are essentially links to the pages you have already viewed—a map, if you will, of how you got to where you are. The benefit of using breadcrumbs, aside from helping your visitors navigate and stay oriented on your site, is that breadcrumbs can direct links back to more general categories. As a bonus, breadcrumbs are useful in helping spiders stay on track as well. Breadcrumbs may look something like this: Home>Support>FAQ>General FAQ.

Navigation is Key

Your users should be able to easily navigate your website. If it is difficult to get from A to B, they will likely become frustrated and go somewhere else to find what they need. For this reason you will want to internally link to the top pages from your navigation menu. Internal linking structure on your website is fundamental, and the more logical and intuitive it is, the easier your user and search engine spiders will find their way around your site. Equally important, this effortless navigation will increase your overall response rate exponentially.

Using Hypertext Links for Effective SEO

Hypertext links may actually be the simplest navigational element involved in building internal links. Hypertext is simply text which contains links to other text. The components of a hypertext link include a URL as well as a set of words generally known as anchor text. A simple hypertext link looks something like this: anchor text and is basic code that directs where your visitor is sent when they click on the highlighted anchor text. Search spiders actually prefer hypertext link to almost any other type of linking structures, and anchor text is given much more weight in Google’s algorithms than ordinary content text. The logic behind this is that search engines believe you would normally only link to a page you considered highly important, and if you consider it important then Google may also. The downside of hypertext links include the fact that hypertext links create blue underlined text and if used in excess can make a page messy and hard to read, so don’t overuse. Choose your hypertext links carefully, use specific keywords, and link to your most important pages, and the Google sun will shine on you!

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