If Content is King, then Surely Relevance is Queen!

There has been a lot of to-ing and fro-ing in the search engine world of late and there are lots of conspiracy theories as to why these things happen.

It is easy as a webmaster to get caught up in these webs of intrigue.

You get email notes about them, you view so-called experts' thoughts on bulletin Boards - hey you probably even read things in newsletter articles!

Well I hope so anyway....

The big driver for webmasters currently appears to be content and link building.

While link building is important I don't believe it makes Queen. Maybe a Prince. Content and links DO go hand in hand but, without relevance, the Kingdom is doomed. Sorry I will stop the analogy now! :-)

If your site is about finance, then finance content is best supported by finance link exchanges. Relevance!

If your site is about finance, then finance content supported by casino link exchanges from a PR8 site while in the short term may help,…but all the signs are saying this is not a long term strategy.

Okay,so what is the best strategy?

Keep EVERYTHING relevant. It is that simple.

Make sure that you only swap or link to sites that are relevant to the content on your pages. Yes I am suggesting link exchanging on pages of your site not a links page.

Links pages seem to be being abused. There are rumours that pages called links, resources or partners are not passing page rank. You could be wasting your time building links that are not giving you any benefits!

Delivering relevant links from relevant content is the future.

Look at sites such as www.bbc.co.uk or www.independent.co.uk. News sites have the right idea. They have 2 or 3 relevant internal links to other articles on the same topic or links to internal tools that are related. These usually can be found at the right hand side of the article.

They also then have weblinks or external links to sites of interest that are related to the topic. These are relevant!

Another benefit of this is that with a content rich site you can add hundreds of links quite legitimately and really add some value both to your Rankings and your users.

With a content-poor site it is difficult, you have to add link pages or create a links directory. A five page site will need to add 10 or 12 good link pages to compete and even then with algorithm changes, this may not be prudent.

Having a site with 400 pages means you can easily add 3 links per page, so you have 1200 link options straight away.

Hopefully this explains that relevance runs a close second to content.

Always bear in mind when writing content that relevant links will not only boost your search engine rankings, but you will also add a service to your visitors.

Combining PPC and SEO to Completely Dominate a Niche

Alright. So recently I was examining a niche that I previously succeeded in, and decided “Why not? I’ll throw up an adwords campaign in the same niche”. Well people, that solidified the belief that PPC and SEO need to be done together, as I’ll explain in this entry. It’s pretty amazing to me how many companies will do only PPC, or ONLY seo, and not both.

How Much Traffic Really gets Driven to the Search Engine Results?
Right now CTR hovers around 20-35% on an ad I’m running in niche X that I’m also ranking for. My position is 1.5. So given that, we can assume that the upper position (#1) probably drives 30-35% of searches for that keyword to my landing page. #2 probably drives 20-25% of searches. Assuming 10% for the other placements, we’re sitting at only 20% of the actual searches for that keyword ever have people click the search results(assuming they only click one result). As a result, it seems like getting high search engine placement for that keyword is not very profitable. However, this is not the case….

So Why is That Ranking Worth it?
If we control 1 top ranked PPC ad, and 1 top ranked search engine position, we can control the entire mood of the niche. We can give people their first impression of the products, and use both things to control their thought process.

What are you Getting at XMCP?

Example 1: The Scam Approach
Let’s say we have an anti-snoring medication site. On it, we have review pages for 10 different products. We rank highly for each product name. Let’s say amongst these are My Snoring Solution(a real product with Advaliant), Snore-Be-Gone, and Nasal Noise Stopper. We also rank for the term cure snoring. Ok. Now let’s say those products have a fair amount of search traffic(My Snoring Solution is one of those “As Seen on TV” offers, so it for instance would get a lot).
We set our adwords campaign around those keywords, and promote ourselves as a “Review” site, preventing against scams. This type of ad(in my somewhat limited adwords experience, and the experiences of others who have been doing it longer) seems to get a very high CTR on it’s own. Hopefully they’re not set as copyrighted terms.
With properly phrased creatives, it should begin our goal. Casting doubt on the niche competitors. Our goal is to be seen as the authoritative source, while the others appear to be potential scammers/less trustworthy.
Note: Directly calling other products a scam is generally against the advertisers TOS, so be sure to either promote just as a review site, or include a question mark in anything involving the word scam, so it’s not a declaration.
Ok, so now that our AdWords campaign has cast a layer of initial doubt, it’s time to use the rankings to drive the point home. For our page that ranks for “cure snoring”, let’s try a title of Which Snoring Cure Works? and a meta description that says “A Lot of Products to Cure Snoring are Scams. Read our reviews and figure out which cures work”
For the product names we rank for(so long as you’re within the TOS for the advertiser) try the basic title “Is _PRODUCT_ a Scam?” or (if that’s already your adwords title) “Reviews of _PRODUCT_”.
What is Achieved Here?
With those being the first 2 things the user sees when they search for the niche, suddenly a haze of distrust is put over the entire niche.
We have effectively changed the entire way the niche is perceived by the consumer. So long as nobody else picks up on it, we are established as the authority. The light in the dark.
While the traffic may not convert as well if they decide your landing page/reviews are not trustworthy(which should be your goal), it should make your competitors appear even less trustworthy. Following the declaration that there is apparently a lot of scamming going on within the niche, the readers are going to definitely want to read a review or two of any product before they buy. Ideally, everyone else’s adwords CTR tanks, and your clicks get cheaper. Plus you get more traffic to your ranked reviewsite of the product.
Example 2: The Brand-Trust Approach


For this example, let’s say we rank for “cheap web hosts”, and own a hosting company. Since we cannot even infer our competitors are scams or inferior without fear of repercussion, we’re going to instead try and make ourselves seem trustworthy via nicer methods.
If you want to play nice with this method, conduct a survey on your current customers. Get a list of commonly used hosts in your niche, and ask them which of the list(with your own brand included, of course) provided the best value for them. They’re your customers, so in theory you should come out on top.
Set the AdWords campaign to go to a landing page with quotes from this survey. Title may just be your company name or “Cheap Web Hosts”(yay for adwords bolding), and creative may be “98% of customers say _company_ Provides the Best Value“.
Use your ranking description to point out something else that’s a big seller. A coupon, how cheap the server prices are, etc. The title should obviously contain the company name, since you’re using the adwords ad to pump up it’s credibility.
Since the 2 statements appear to come from different sources, they seem more trustworthy. Where the ad itself gets rid of the fear that they may get a crap server, the search engine page is left in a position where it can say what the people w/ that search are truly going after. “Cheap” web hosting. All angles are covered, and seemingly corroborated.
There’s a lot of expansion someone can do on these ideas (getting the PPC ad to compliment the SEO ranking). I shared a few basic examples, because I’m still formulating thoughts on some more complicated ones, and want them to still be useful when I finish these thoughts.
Don’t take my ad copy and think it will work as-is I’m still grasping the ropes of adwords, and this is just a trick I picked up on that worked. I’m sure you guys can think of better copy than what I mentioned.

Done properly, this should increase both adwords and search engine traffic to your site.

Link Building

Getting more traffic from search engines is a common goal for every webmaster and web enabled business. Natural traffic from search engines is not only free of cost, but also can be highly converting. But it’s not as easy as it seems. To get considerable amount of traffic from major search engines like Yahoo, MSN and Google in particular, your site should rank very well for some specific keywords and phrases related to your niche.

Link building campaigns is one of the proven off-site SEO activities by which you can rank well in your niche. If you rank higher in SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) for popular and frequently searched keywords in your niche, you enjoy good and free stream of steady traffic; targeted to your business and website theme.

Achieving top placements in SERPS for your keywords on search engines like Google isn’t easy. Your website can only rank well if it has good rankings. Backlink count and link value of those backlinks is one of the most important aspects which decide if you’d rank well for particular keywords. If your site is established and offers good information, products or services, many other sites will naturally link to you; but not in a way as you’d need for better rankings. Natural link backs to your site builds up slowly, only after your webpages are indexed in search engines and rank well enough so that people can find and link to them from their websites out of their own discretion; hence the need for professional link building and SEO services.

Anchor texts and link titles of the backlinks are very important in terms of off-site SEO. Link building and off-site website optimization services from trusted individuals and SEO firms are a great option to build quality backlinks with optimized anchor texts and link titles from trusted and related websites to your niche. Such services and packages ensure you get linked from pages highly related to your niche and with good link value.

The link value of pages linking to you is determined by various factors like domain age, page content quality, number of outgoing links, credibility and so on. Backlinks from authority and high page rank sites are highly rewarding but difficult to get. Similarly, one should be careful not to submit for FFA (Free For All) sites and directories and unrelated niches or “bad neighborhoods” as it may seriously hurt your search engine rankings, SERPS position and credibility.

There are several ways to build backlinks with great link value to your website:

* Blog Review Posting
* Directory Submission
* Text Link Advertising
* Press Release Submission

Professional and ethical link building activities always have a positive result on your SE rankings and increase your link popularity substantially; bringing you more free, natural or organic traffic. I’d suggest you not to involve in shady link building practices like spamming and Black Hat SEO activities which may bring good results for a few months, but can get your sites banned from search engines indefinitely.

SEO for a New Website or Blog

You have launched a new website or a blog now you are looking for getting traffic on to your website. The biggest source of traffic is the Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, Msn, AltaVista etc.

These Search Engines have become quite smart for the last several years and now it’s not all that easy to fool the technology by link stuffing or similar Techniques. However, if you are serious about this then over a period of time which could be from 5 to 6 months you could bring your website up at a competitive position in these search engines.

However, the question arises for the newbie’s where to begin. Well once you have acquired a website or created a website or blog follow these steps;

1) Submit your website or Blog:

After creating the website your next target should be to submit that website to all the major search engines and web directories. The must submit websites include Google, Yahoo, Msn, Technorati, Alltheweb etc. The process is fairly easy, similar to filling any from. If you can create an email then surely you can very easily submit your websites and blogs.

2) Verify your websites:

Verification and submission of the website or blog are two different things for some search engines. Like if you are going to verify your blog or website to Google then what is required is for you to have a Gmail Mail Account and then you have to login to “Google Webmaster Central” and there you will find the tools and instruction required to submit the website. Similarly follow the easy instructions on the Technorati and Yahoo to complete the procedure.

3) Quality and Frequency of Content:

Now the next step that is required is to keep the content of your website fresh. Keep updating your website as much as you can. In such a competitive age you need to update your website twice or three times a day at times. The more fresh content you will feed the more trust you’ll gain from Search Engine’s point of view.

The Second step in this was to provide quality content. Search Engine Optimization or SEO not only refers to the doing things for the Search Engine. On the contrary you need to provide quality content to your visitors too so that they could keep coming back to your websites or Blog.

4) Building Links:

On frequent basis you have to build links with other websites who are dealing with the same topic as yours. This Back links process actually is a sort of voting system by other websites that this website is worthy enough to link to as it contains useful information.

Now these are the first few beginners’ steps you need to start doing as frequently as you can if you want to optimize your website for the Search Engines. In this article I have highlighted a few broader points which are the decisive factors for a website to rank well in a website.

In my next article I would be writing more about each and every factor in detail so that all the beginners should start focusing on all the steps same as the SEO PRO are doing. More quality articles could also be traced back at http://www.212articles.com/.