SEO|The Full Insider SEO Details Exposed

It’s the timeless question: how do you get other sites to link to you? The most commonly discussed ways are reciprocal linking (swapping links) and buying links. Yet there’s another important tool for building links that should be a part of your toolbox: distributing content in exchange for one-way inbound links.

Comparison with Other Linking Methods
Reciprocal Linking: The big advantage of content distribution over swapping links is that the links built are one-way, and therefore presumably more valuable. Of course, reciprocal links still have value, but relying primarily on them might hamper your SEO efforts.
Indirect Reciprocal Links: I link my site A to your site, so you link your site to my site B. The problems are that this can be a lot of work, and also, Google can detect indirect links if you do it more than once with the same group of sites, which might make your linking arrangements look like a link farm.
Paid Links: The problem with paid links is 1) the costs add up; 2) search engines are getting better and better at discounting paid links. According to Matt Cutts’ blog, “I wouldn’t be surprised if search engines begin to take stronger action against link buying in the near future…link-selling sites can lose their ability to give reputation (e.g. PageRank and anchortext).”

Kinds of Content to Distribute
Articles. This is the essential kind of content distribution, to the point that many people consider content distribution simple as “article marketing.” However, you’re missing out on a few other sources of links if you only do articles.
News blurbs. A lot of news-style sites will only reprint pieces of a couple of paragraphs. The good news is that often enough the whole point of these news blurbs is to include links to other sites, in a sort of “look what we’ve found” kind of way, a la Slashdot.org
Press Releases. There are some sites that aggressively reprint press releases. A press release is like an article, only in a very specific press release format, and frankly that’s not that enjoyable to read. I don’t know why some sites are so head-over-heels over press releases, but, hey, that’s their business. The good news is that even if you can’t write and don’t want to hire a writer, press releases (at least basic ones) are pretty easy to do.
Tools, games and other webware. Sites with popular tools, software, Flash games and other webware often let other sites use it in exchange for a link. The big potential downside is technical support.
Images. Images, especially charts and photographs, are important forms of content on the web. If you have great images on your site and people ask you to use them on their sites, require a backlink in exchange. The problem with images is that they are so easily stolen. Stolen words can be uncovered with a web search. You could try to watermark images with a copyright symbol, URL, and the link requirement. But in the process you’d make the image much less desirable.
Web design templates. These have been freely distributed for a long time. Yet they are even more easily stolen than images. Also, if you embed a link in the footer of a web template, what you’ll get back are sitewide links, which are often thought to be filtered out in search engines.

Maximizing Content Distribution Links’ Effectiveness: Anchor Text
Anchor text. You need optimized anchor text to rank high for any competitive keyword. That means you need your target keyword in the anchor text, and very importantly, variants of the target keyword (too many links with the exact same anchor text may be filtered). The problem is that some sites by default don’t let you choose the anchor text of the link to your site. So you need to: 1) look for sites that do reprint content with optimized anchor text; 2) specifically ask for your target anchor text to be used. Also, do keep in mind that a true natural linking structure will require you to have a number of links that are not anchor-text-optimized, typically with the URL as the anchor text.

How to Find Sites
Finding sites to submit content is the biggest challenge. You can start by asking around to any other webmasters you already have a relationship with. Next, web-search. The classic method is “submit article” + [keyword]. Most of the sites you find this way won’t be good candidates, which is why this can be a bit labor-intensive. I use offshore labor for this step, as well as a program that will sort and store all the search results into a spreadsheet; otherwise it might not be worth it. Then again, the same would be true for finding reciprocal linking partners.

Ethical Issues & Best Practices

Golden rule: remember that there’s a human being who has to approve your article for submission.
Read and adhere to all submission guidelines.
Avoid automation. There’s almost always some detail of submission that requires a human eye: a multitude of html formatting requirements, changing site themes, etc.
Don’t submit by email unless specifically instructed. Using a contact form prevents possible sp@m accusations.
Only approach websites that request content submissions.
Don’t misrepresent reprint content as original.
Don’t submit the same content too often. After about two hundred reprints, a lot of people will be seeing the same thing over and over again and possibly complaining.

In short, as SEO gets more competitive, having more and more linking methods at your disposal gets more and more important. Don’t overlook this important tool.

Many people wonder how search engines really work. Although the details are complex, this article aims to give you some insight into the process without getting too technical. Read on…

Most search engines have three parts: a crawler, an index, and a search interface. Let’s look at each part individually, to get a better understanding of them. Each part has its own role to play in the process, with all the parts working together to make searches possible.

The Crawler.

Also known as a ’spider’ or ‘bot’, this part of the search engine wanders the web, following links and picking up information for its database. Crawlers do most of their work at times of the day when search engines are less busy, but they typically visit frequently updated pages more often. This is something to keep in mind when you’re working on your pages. As you may want to perform updates locally and update them when they have been finished rather than updating bits and pieces and hoping that the search engine runs into the correct version.

Also, crawlers ignore some things: your site’s code, for example. Your site’s title and text - your ‘content’ - is the most important thing to a crawler. The fastest way to raise your sites search engine ranking for specific key words is to implement them into your title and your content.

The Index.

Once the crawler has collected all that text, it is then stored and indexed. This allows people searching for keywords and phrases to get results relating to what they were searching for - their search results. Most sites will incorporate rating systems such as Google Page Ranks or Alexa rankings in positioning your site. These ratings are used to attempt to ensure that sites that are important receive more traffic than unimportant sites.

To see this in action, go to a search engine and type in a word. You’ll see some text on the page saying something like “results 1-10 of 345,000″. This means that the search engine’s index contains 345,000 pages it believes are related to the word you typed. If you wanted to, you could look through all these pages to find the information you’re looking for.

In order to understand rating systems more thoroughly consider your own site. When you place links on your site you generally due so in order to increase your users understanding of the content of your site. If every site in a particular field links to a particular site, this site is probably very important to that field and should, therefore, be listed highly in the lists of search engine results. Thus the basic ideology of Google Page Ranks.

Consider again, a site that receives a great deal of traffic. If a site is receiving loads and loads of traffic, it probably has some information or service that is very important to its users. Alexa ratings attempt to estimate the amount of traffic that a particular site gets and compare it to the amount of traffic that other sites get. The closer that a site is to the most trafficked site on the internet, the more likely it is to have important content if it is relevant to the search query.

The Interface.

Search engines provide a public interface for users who want to find information on the web. They can type the word or phrase they’re searching for, and the interface will run an algorithm to find the pages relevant to their search and display them.

These algorithms are an important part of the SEO (search engine optimization) business, and the search engines are constantly changing them. You’ll notice when the algorithms change, as the rankings of your website will change with them.

No two search engines are the same. They all work differently, with their own unique features, and they will all respond to your website in their own way. You should familiarize yourself with the most popular search engines, to better understand how each of them works.

The most popular search engines today include Google, Yahoo, AltaVista, AllTheWeb, MSN, and Ask Jeeves. There are many other search engines available, though, and you shouldn’t ignore them altogether.

When you submit your website to the search engines, there’s no way of knowing when they might add it to their indexes. Since each search engine has its own crawling and indexing methods, you can’t be sure how long it might take. In some cases, you might see results within a week, but don’t count on it - it may take several weeks or even months before you see anything.

It’s not easy to get a high ranking unless you spend some time on it, and learn the proper methods. When you take the time and do some research, you’ll find that it’s not as confusing as you first thought. Learning the basics will enhance your experience more than you would have thought possible.

When all is said and done, the only way that an Internet based business is going to thrive (even survive, in point of fact), is through ever increasing traffic to a particular Internet based venue. Traffic to a website is the key to the success of Internet business. One of the most effective methods of increasing traffic to a business website is through search engine optimization or SEO.

In this day and age, a great many people continue to find out information about businesses that are operating on the Internet and World Wide Web through search engine searches. Additionally, for the most part, people tend to visit only those websites that are generated after a search engine search that are listed towards the top of the search results. Therefore, if you want to have people visit your site after a search engine search, you will want to work to endeavor that your business website is ranked high on the search engine result listing.

Through search engine optimization, or SEO, an Internet based business can accomplish the goal of having a link to that business enterprise listed higher up on a search engine search result list.

In this day and age, there are professionals that specialize in SEO. As a result, if you are new to the Internet, if you are new to the world of Internet business, you will want to consider the hiring of a professional. While SEO truly is something that a business owner of operator can master in the long run, if you are new to the Net and really are intent on getting your business up and running, you will want to take the time to consider engaging the services of a SEO professionals. You can avoid the trials and travails of the learning curve — and get your Internet based business up and running (fast) in a shorter period of time by engaging the services of a qualified SEO professional.

In conclusion you also need to keep in mind that SEO optimization is only one of the Internet marketing tools that you should use to promote and expand your Net based business enterprise. SEO alone and without other marketing techniques will not be enough to ensure business vitality and success in the long run. The Internet is very competitive and you will want to include SEO optimization as one of the marketing tools that you rely upon to promote your business enterprise.

You have heard it time and time again: Content is King. Yet still people ignore the truth of this common-sense phrase. People use the web to find information its the content of a page that is important to them, because thats why theyre there.

The content of a page is the primary thing that a search engine will look at when considering your site. The meta tags and the hidden text that many people like to place on their pages in order to draw search engines to their sites is much less important to the search engine. Many search engines dont even consider meta tags any more. Dont get me wrong, meta tags are a necessity when optimizing, but they are much less important than content.

Hidden text is not only skipped over by most search engines, it can give you serious problems with search engines. The king of search engines, Google, will remove sites from its index if they utilize hidden text. Hidden text is categorized as text that is the same color (or similar color to) the background or text that is the set as transparent using CSS.

When people arrive at your site, one of two things will happen. They will either find something of interest and stay, or theyll turn around and leave. They make this decision within seconds. You need to have things that people want to read, or all your precious click-throughs will be for nothing. If you cant come up with something to put on the front page of your site, hire a writer. Writers are there to create reasons for people to stay. They get paid for a reason, they are worth while.

You can never have too much information its a fact that people want information. The web is great for information because you can find so much out there with so little effort. Hidden somewhere in all that information, you can be sure theres something that youd love to find. Search engines are there to help you uncover it.

You could take some of this information and tailor it to your websites needs, using bits and pieces that will be easy to read and useful to your visitors. The more interested in your website a visitor is, the more likely that theyll stay a while, and come back some other time. You might even see some money from them, sooner or later.

Borrowing content word-for-word isnt the way to go, though, because of copyright laws but you can always create your own content. Remember that the most valuable web content is unique information that no-one can find elsewhere.

Another great method for delivering content is to provide RSS feeds from other sites straight onto your site. Many sites i.e. the New York Times site will allow you to put their RSS feeds onto your site. An RSS feed is basically an online news bulletin. If you are using Internet Explorer 6.0 or lower you probably havent encountered RSS. If you use FireFox or Opera for your web browser, you probably already know how great RSS can be for personal use. Imagine having all of that content available on your web site without having to pay a writer!

When selling products and services, make sure that you have enough information about your products features. Include everything anyone could ever want to know about your product. If you are running an affiliate site, buy a few of the products that you are selling and use them on a regular basis. This will give you the opportunity to find out what their major selling points are and allow you to make them into featured products and provide high quality reviews.

Think of it as leading your reader for a walk through your mind arrange the site to help your readers see what you see.

For example: a page on music, could lead to a page on rock music, which in turn leads to one about the various forms of music, which leads to a page on equipment, and so on and on. Each page on the site can lead into the next, in a reasonable progression of thought. Your content becomes not only new but also fun to experience, as you make it easy for the reader to understand where youre coming from. Tell a story with your pages.

Almost daily, I see a report about a company or individuals who is trying to fool Google through SEO. When are they going to learn that you just cant fool Google? Why would you even want to try it, with when you risk being banned from the biggest search engine in the world? Many people seem to try just because they wonder if it could ever be done. As a general rule of thumb: it can’t!

There are some instances in which people think that they have tricked google. They believe that something that they have done has rocketed their site to the top of Google’s listings and they truly believe that they have managed to “stick it to the man.” Nine times out of ten when this happens they either performed an SEO procedure that Google allows or even endorses or they just happened to fill Google’s criteria better than other sites in their category without even realizing it.

Once in a while someone will actually come up with a way to fool Goggle. They will be enjoy a nice high spot on google’s listings for maybe even several months, but then the end comes for these proud sites. As soon as Goggle notices that it has been cheated, these sites are removed from the index; sometimes permanently.

The fact is that these people dont understand the power that Goggle has. Anyone with a real interest in making money from the web should consider that getting banned from the search engines effectively removes your site from the web. They dont have to let you back in, and they dont have to give you any right to respond youre entirely at their mercy. You dont want to get in their bad books.

Aside from the fact that Goggle will remove you from its listings, there is another incentive against trying to fool Goggle. If you fool Goggle, you are fooling your clients. There is no reason to try to lure visitors onto your page expecting to get something and really giving them something else. This is a poor way to conduct business and more often than not it will chase the customer away for good.

If you want your website to be found in categories that dont apply to it, try purchasing ads on pages that are listed towards the top of the Goggle listings in these categories. You can actually increase your sites reputation in Googles eyes rather than hurting it by adding another link to your site. This is an excellent form of marketing because it allows you to reach out beyond your market simply by dishing out a few dollars a month.

Some of the most popular methods of trying to fool Google’s PageRank system are link farms and link exchanges. Link farms are basically websites that exist only to get links to specific sites counted by the search engines. Link exchanges are groups of websites that each pay a monthly fee to link to each other like link farms, only more expensive and dodgy. In both cases, the websites involved are attempting to climb the ranks of Google’s search results through the sheer quantity of links to them this is known as Googlebombing. But it doesnt always work.

Goggle knows that cheaters can ruin their search engine for the rest of us. After all, if link farms inflate the rankings of less-useful Websites, then well all start seeing worse search results. Thats why Goggle constantly updates PageRank to keep those kinds of sites away. The Page Rank formula that Goggle implements is mysterious and ever changing. This is the primary reason that Goggle cannot be fooled.

It has been found recently that Goggle is now sending out cloak bots, disobeying robots.txt to find out whether sites are cloaking serving a different page to search engines than what visitors see. These cloak bots are controversial but seem to have some positive effects on the Googles results.

Unethical methods make it difficult for people who are trying to do SEO the proper way, which is one of the reasons why it needs to be monitored so carefully. If people stopped trying to find ways to manipulate the system, it would be much easier to keep up with whats going on.

As you may already know, Goggle publishes a list of guidelines suggesting legitimate ways to improve a site’s ranking, by making it more accessible and better. One of the tips is to make pages for users and not for search engines. Youd do well to listen to their advice.