Step Wise SEO

Put on your PR hat-or get your team’s most talented communicator in the room-and get started on your SEO link building campaign:

Surfing Is not Slacking
If there are no actual restrictions on web surfing in your company but you just feel like a slacker when you’re surfing the Web, just remember what surfing does for your company:

• Surfing helps you find and assess the quality of sites linking to you and locate new sites that may want to link to you.

• It helps you find new search products and opportunities that may be useful for promoting your organization.

• It helps you to think like a searcher, using a variety of techniques to find important information.

• And it helps you get familiar with the wide range of available search engine and directory listings.

Every SEO expert has a favorite generic search term to use for testing, one that’s broad and popular enough to be represented by the full gamut of paid and unpaid listings,

directory listings, and text snippets, not to mention official sites, unofficial sites, and misspellings. Ours continues to be “Britney Spears.” Have fun finding yours!

Your Existing Links
First, you need to assess your website’s existing listings and links with an eye toward improvement.

To learn hoe you could  determine the total number of sites linking into your landing pages, Click Here.

But now you will take a magnifying glass to these sites and document them in your Link Tracking Worksheet. Here are the steps you’ll take:

• Document inbound links.
• Assess existing link quality.

Document Inbound Links
You need to identify the URLs of the first 10 or so sites that are linking to each of your landing pages.

Ten should be plenty to work with for now-you will build on this list throughout your SEO Plan.

Find the URLs using one of the following three methods:

• On the search engine of your choice, perform the special search for finding inbound links.

• If you have access to a website statistics program, review it for referring URLs.

• Use a backlink analysis tool, such as the Neat-O Backlink Tool built by the kind people of We Build Pages, www.webuildpages.com/tools/.

This tool provides backlink URLs and also the text that the linking sites are using to link to you. Like the title says, the tool is neat-o!

Perform this step for each of your landing pages, ignoring links coming from your own site. If your site has no incoming links from other sites, you can skip the rest of today’s task!

Assess Existing Link Quality
Search engines care about the quality as well as the quantity of inbound links. And you care, too, because a link is a direct pathway for potential customers to get to your site.

Now, you’ll ask a few key questions about your linking sites that will help you determine if each link is going to help the right audience find the right page on your site.

The following key questions will help you assess the quality of your inbound links. It may seem like a lot to think about, but once you get a feel for it, you won’t need the checklist.

In fact, you’ll probably be able to assess each link within 30 seconds of opening the page.

Starting with the first inbound link URL on your list, open up the page and think about the answers to these yes or no questions:

• Is this site in the same topical community as mine?
• Does the linking page content speak to my target audience?
• Are my target keywords included in the text that links to my site?
• Are my target keywords included elsewhere on the page?
• Does the link work?
• Does the link go to the best landing page choice?
• Is the link up-to-date?
• Is the link flattering, or at least noncritical?

While there are numerous factors that can contribute to the quality of an inbound link, these are the most important.

The more yes answers, the higher-quality link you have. If there are any no answers, flag this URL with a note of the problem.

Obviously, some problems (like a link being from an irrelevant website) can’t be fixed.

And if a link is coming from inside a forum post, it’s good to know about, but there’s no point trying to modify it. But others, especially links that don’t work, are red flags that need to be addressed.

Get into the habit of asking these questions anytime you review a website and it will serve you throughout your campaign especially when you are looking for new links.

Submit to Directories
Ah, directories…the dinosaurs of the SEO era. Once upon a time, getting into human edited directories was one of the most important elements of an SEO campaign.

Nowadays, directory listings have fallen out of prominence. But they represent a chance to describe your site in your own well-researched, well-targeted words, and that’s good for your site (and for your inner control freak!).

Here, you’ll learn about human edited directories, discover the ones in your niche, and decide whether they’re worth your time and energy.

Think of a directory listing as just another inbound link with a slightly different link request process (usually there’s a submittal form to fill out, and specific editorial guidelines to follow, instead of a free-form e-mail correspondence).

If you happen to have a nonprofit or noncommercial website, you have greatly increased potential for free links on directories.

Your directory requests will be accepted or rejected based on the judgment of human editors, and part of what they judge is whether your suggested title and description match your site’s content.

So if you have substantial optimization that needs to take place before this is the case, use the task just to gather submittal information. You can perform the actual submittal when your site is ready.

We’ve boiled down the wide world of directories into three areas for you to review:

• The Open Directory Project
• Yahoo! Directory
• Paid or niche directories The Open Directory Project

The Open Directory Project
The Open Directory Project (ODP), at www.dmoz.org, goes by many names, including Open Directory, DMOZ, and Netscape Directory.

Unfortunately, getting your site listed in the ODP can take, quite literally, forever, and its importance as a linking site has diminished greatly over time.

However, your ODP description is still used by the Google search engine as the description that displays in some search results rather than a snippet or meta description.

For this reason alone, we think that your ODP submittal is worth the time. And for sure, it’s worth the price (thankfully, this submittal is free).

First, determine whether your site has a current listing in the ODP. Go to www.dmoz.org and search for your URL.

But watch out; sometimes the ODP misses URLs. If a URL search shows no results, follow up with a search for your company name.

If you find a listing for your company, assess its quality with these questions:

• Is the link functional and current?
• Is the title and description accurate?
• Do the title and description contain my target keywords?

ODP listings are so rarely updated that it’s likely your listing needs some fixing. Click the “update listing” link near the top of the page and submit your edits.

The ODP provides extensive guidelines within the update submittal screens. We won’t bore you by repeating the guidelines, so promise us you’ll read and follow them as you go!

If your site doesn’t have an existing listing on the ODP, you’ll follow nearly the same steps to submit a new listing.

However, first you must choose a good category for your site. Here are some tips to help you make the choice:

Cluster with your competition. Search the directory for your top business competitors. If they’re all in the same category, you want to be there too.

Get specific. Browse the directory, starting from the biggest, top-level categories and working your way down to the one most specific to your organization.

For example, if you provide tennis lessons, you don’t want to be in a generic category like “Sports.”

You want to be in a more appropriate category like Shopping – Sports – Tennis - Training or a local category like Regional - North America - Canada-Ontario Localities – T - Toronto-Recreation and Sports - Tennis.

Use category tiebreakers. If you are faced with two categories that seem to fit your site equally well, choose the better-quality category page based on the link quality factors Click Here to See for inbound links in general.

If all of the page quality factors are equal, choose the category with more editors listed at the bottom of the page.

The editors are the people who review and approve your listing, but they sometimes go missing or permanently vacate their posts, so the more listed per category, the better your chances.

Once you have found your category of choice, click on the “suggest URL” link near the top of the page and follow the guidelines to proceed.

Most likely, you will want to submit your home page, but it’s possible that a different landing page will also work.

In rare cases, if your site has landing pages with unique content, directories may include multiple listings for your site.

Use the HTML page title and meta description tag (To learn more about HTML page title and meta description tag, Click Here) as a launching point to write your title and description.

Make sure to consider what your competition is saying (or not saying) about themselves when you fine-tune your suggested listing.

Now, and here’s the important thing: once it’s filed away in your worksheet, forget about checking up on this submittal for the next six months. It’s just not worth it.

Yahoo! Directory
There’s plenty of debate among SEO professionals about whether the few hundred dollars for a Yahoo! Directory listing (oh, wait, it’s not the price for a listing, it’s just the price to be reviewed.. .no listing is guaranteed) is worth it.

We’re going to stick our necks out and give our own answer to the question: If spending a few hundred dollars (or more for adult sites) per year is going to be a significant portion of your SEO budget, don’t do it.

If, on the other hand, a few hundred bucks is a small drop in your online marketing budget, a listing may be worth the cost.

And here’s some good news for nonprofits: If your website belongs in a noncommercial category, you can submit for free.

However, keep this fact in mind: Once you have a listing in the Yahoo! Directory, the directory title and description, rather than snippets from your website, will be displayed on the Yahoo! search results pages.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Possibly more bad than good because, even though you suggest your own listing, it’s ultimately the Yahoo! editor’s call and you have no control over this text.

On the other hand, a complete sentence rather than a snippet might read better in your listing description, especially if for some reason you weren’t able to put text on your website during your basic optimization.

You will have to make the judgment based on your own website’s characteristics.

If you choose to submit your site to the Yahoo! Directory, start by selecting the best category for your site, as described earlier in the section “The Open Directory Project.”

Click “suggest a site” near the top of the page. Follow the instructions to submit your site and payment information.

Paid or Niche Directories
Niche directories are small, but they can be powerhouses for targeted traffic. You know your company, and you know your niche.

Now it’s time for you to find directories that speak to it. Here are ways you can go about it:

What are your competitors using? Check links to your competitors and take some time to read through the listings.

Are there any directories listed? Click them and see if this may be a good directory for you too.

What offline opportunities do you already know about? Many publications, such as Sweets (http://sweets.construction.com) and Thomson Local (www.thomweb.co.uk) have online directory components.

Check to see if your company is included in any such publication.

What comes up for your target keywords? Are there any directory pages among the top search results for your target keywords? You could benefit from their ranks by getting listed.

Last but not least, be sure to search the search engines for relevant niche directories. For example, if your organization is a day spa located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the search terms “day spa directory” and “Albuquerque directory” will both turn up many possible niche directories.

But watch out for these pitfalls as you consider niche directories:

• Many of the directories that will come up in your searches will be repurposed versions of the Open Directory.

If a submittal process starts to feel a little too familiar, look to see if you’ve been taken to the dmoz.org domain. If you find it, you’re smack dab in the middle of an Open Directory submittal.

• Don’t believe the hype: If a niche directory wants a payment for your listing, you need to carefully check the link quality factors before you pull out your pocketbook.

As we mentioned earlier, your directory listings are really just like any other inbound link and should be assessed accordingly.

You may decide that there are so many opportunities out there that the paid or niche directory listings aren’t worth your bother.

Surf for More Link Opportunities
In the previous section of this article, you began building the list of potential linking websites.

Here, you’ll surf the Web to expand your list of sites. First, you need to know what makes a link worth chasing:

• Quality links defined
• Expanding your link requests list

Quality Links Defined
As you surf for potential linking sites today, you may be tempted to build the longest list you possibly can, with dozens or hundreds of sites.

But every one of these link requests is going to take a 5-minute chunk of time out of your life-why, that’s only 12 per episode of Survivor!-so you need to be choosy.

Quality Link or Time Sink? An Expert’s Opinion
We asked blogger and search marketing expert Aaron Wall of www.seobook.com how to assess the quality of inbound links. Here were his thoughts:

“I love organic SEO, which currently is primarily driven by link building…. Many factors go into measuring link quality-to be honest, it is not entirely measurable.

I like to think of a document or site as having signs of quality. Some examples:

• ”Page or site is well cited from resources like educational institutions or major web companies.”
• ”Page links to quality related resources.”
• ”Page ranks well in related search results.”
• ”You keep running into the page even outside of search.”
• What about finding signs of poor quality linking pages? Here are Aaron’s ideas:
• ”Page will sell a link to any off-topic site.”
• ”Link price seems far cheaper than it should be for that kind of page….”
• ”Page is hard to find in search results.”
• ”Site is of low quality and there is limited reason a human would want to go there or link at that site or page.”

In case you didn’t notice, Aaron never even mentions Google PageRank in his assessment.

Google PageRank may be an at-a-glance measure of a page’s significance to a search engine, but it simply doesn’t give you the full picture of what a link can do for you. Thanks for the advice, Aaron!

Between Aaron Wall’s factors to consider in the sidebar “Quality Link or Time Sink? An Expert’s Opinion” and the link quality factors, you’ve got a lot of tools for analysis.

But there’s one more angle to consider: whether the site makes it possible for you to do your link-gathering job. Make sure to take these administrative issues into account:

• Is contact information available on the site? Without it, you can’t request the link.

• Does the site appear to be regularly updated? Do a quick scan for the “last edited” date or other signs of life. If nobody is manning the store, there won’t be anybody to add your link.

Now that you know what you’re looking for in an inbound linking site, here are some ideas for where to look.

Expand Your Link Requests List
So far, you’ve only scratched the surface of your potential high-quality linking sites. Here are some places you can look for additional opportunities:

Sites linking to your competitors By now, you’re a seasoned pro at finding inbound links using the search engines.

Do this now for your Big Five competitors. Who is linking to them? Can you get a link there too?

Any sites doing well for your top keywords Go through the top listings for your target keywords-both organic results and sponsored results-with a fine-tooth comb. These would be great places to get links.

Your clients/customers/fans Do you have a client base that is pleased with your service? Do they have websites that speak to a segment of your target audience?

If so, they may be happy to provide a link to your site! Bonus points if they put your link alongside a glowing recommendation.

Your service providers/vendors Are you a major client of any organization with a Web presence that has a tie-in to your target audience?

Maybe they would like to link to your site. Maybe they’d even like to list you as a “featured” client!

Your partners Corporate partners are likely to include links on their websites. Check and see if there’s one for you.

Sites that already include your company name Perform a search for your company name in quotes.

You may be surprised to find many websites that include your company information, maybe even a URL written in text, without making it a link! With a flick of the mouse, those could become inbound links for you.

Local and regional directories Any site that includes listings of local businesses will probably be happy to have their information updated-preferably with your organization’s web listing!

Business associations and accreditations Most professional and trade associations include lists of their members. If your organization is accredited in any way, there may be a link in it for you.

Sites that are “related” to yours. One of Alexa’s database of information tastier tidbits is Related Sites, other websites that draw the same audience as yours. Take a look at your related sites for linking potential.
Sympathetic sites If your site has a religious, political, or philosophical theme, there is likely to be a large circle of similarly minded folks on the Web.

These people will likely be enthusiastic about supporting one of their own. Ditto for specialized hobbies and enthusiasms.

As you surf, be open to wandering down unexpected paths-sometimes that’s the best way to find new opportunities.

And be sure to make a note of the site URL (location of potential link), name of site, and contact information in your Link Tracking Worksheet.

The Art of Link Letters
If you own a website, surely you’ve seen them: annoying requests for links. Usually they go something like this:

“Dear Webmaster. I reviewed your site and feel that it would be appropriate for a link trade.

Please add the following HTML code to your home page…after your link is added, we will add your link to our links page.”

Most of the time, this type of letter goes straight into the Trash folder. Follow these Dos and Don’ts to craft link letters that do get results and don’t annoy their recipients:

DO include key information. At a minimum, your letter must include the following: the URL from which you would like a link, your landing page URL, your landing page title, and your landing page description.

Remember to choose the best landing page on your site, which, depending on the nature of the linking page, may not be your home page.

DON’T offer a link trade. If your site is appropriate for a link, you should be able to get it without a reciprocal link agreement.

DO explain the benefits of the link… Website owners want to link to sites that their site audience will like. Specifically describe how your site relates to theirs.

…but DON’T write a novel. We’re talkin’ 25 words or less.

DO write from a company e-mail address. Webmasters want to know that you really come from the company that is requesting the link.

DON’T mass-mail. Figure out the name of the person you’re writing to, and use it. Then, sign with your own name and title.

And finally:

DO say Thank You.

Nowadays, there are blogs on every subject, from lost socks to lost souls, and surely there are some in your industry.

At some point in your link-building campaign, you’ll probably want to approach one. Keep these guidelines in mind when you do:

• Get to know the blog first. Read it for a while before you approach its owner.

• Remember, it’s less about selling your site to the blogger and more about convincing them that your site would be interesting to the blog’s readers.

• If you really want a blogger to review your product, you’ll have better success if you send them a freebie.

Likewise, if your product is on a page that requires a login, consider offering login information for the blogger’s sole use (but don’t send out login information in your first correspondence!).

And, finally, imagine your e-mail posted on the blog for the whole world to see. Would this be embarrassing in any way to you or your organization? If so, you need a rewrite.

Submittals and E-mails
You now have the two elements in place that you need for your link-building campaign: a list of quality sites that might be interested in linking to your site and a sample link request letter.

Now, step through the list on your Link Tracking Worksheet and, one by one, personalize and send out your link request e-mails.

If you encounter a site with a “Contact Us” form, it’s perfectly kosher to paste your link request e-mail into that so long as you dutifully enter your contact information into the proper fields.

As you go, record the date that you requested the link, and who you e-mailed, in your worksheet. You will want this information later if you wish to send a follow-up request.

Step through your list of potential linking sites and send link requests to as many as you can.

Finally, let’s take one last look at the niche directories you began reviewing previously. If any of them include a free submittal option, go ahead and do it now.

However, if a niche directory requires payment for a listing, take a step back and evaluate it further before submitting:

• As you were searching and surfing related sites, did the site pop up regularly?

• Are your competitors listed there?

• And, does the directory have a PPC or other advertising campaign of its own?

Websites are so easy to create that there are thousands of directory sites on the Web that aren’t worth the virtual paper they’re printed on.

Unless you can get a several month free trial, you should be very cautious about paying for niche directory listings.

Now: Submit your site to niche directories.

Now that you’ve gotten a strong start on the organic side of your SEO campaign, it’s time to create a pilot pay-per-click campaign. To learn more Click Here.