Website Design Kilkenny Blog

Note: Part II of this series of articles was published on July 21st, 2009 and can be viewed at http://www.istech.ie/blog/?p=123

Intended Audience: Small Business Owners/webmasters and anyone new to the world of web design and search engine optimization (SEO) particularly those working with small businesses and sole traders.

Abstract: A detailed look at this area of search engine optimization focussing on link exchanges targeted towards small businesses and sole traders.

The second article in this series focused on link building and that theme will continue in this 3rd article as I will take a more detailed look at the topic of link building including the benefits, suitability of the reciprocal website and the golden rules of link exchanges.

My assumption at this point is that you have an SEO friendly website and have decided on the objectives of your link building strategy:

• Generate Traffic
• Build Backlinks
• A combination of both the above

As discussed in the previous article the criteria for link building strategy objectives including geographical location of you business, products and services offered, website facilities, target audience etc.

In the first instance we’ll take a look at reciprocal links. A reciprocal link describes an exchange of links between two websites for the mutual benefit of both. Historically reciprocal links have been used to improve search engines rankings as opposed to traffic generation though their popularity has being steadily decreasing over the last few years owing to their use by spammers, unscrupulous SEO companies etc.

There does appear to some evidence that search engines such as Google no longer consider reciprocal links as a major factor when calculating a website’s ranking. The conclusion we can probably draw the conclusion that the practice of link exchanges between companies with no discernable connection should be discontinued. An example of this would be a construction company in Madrid exchanging links with a bicycle shop in Toronto.

Here are the current golden rules of link exchanges:

1. Only exchange links when a discernable connection exists between your website and reciprocal website. A good example would be exchanging links with your suppliers.
2. Never accept link exchanges from unsolicited email messages. In most case these are scams where you given the illusion that the third party has provided you with a link on their website.
3. For every outgoing link you give away on your website you must have at least 4 incoming backlinks i.e. only a maximum of 25% of your incoming backlinks should allocated to link exchanges.

The next article in this series will expand on the topic of link building strategies for small businesses trusted backlinks, free and paid web directories, social media, local directory services etc.

Eoin

Note: Part I of this series of articles was published on July 1st, 2009 and can be viewed at http://www.istech.ie/blog/?p=103

Intended Audience: Small Business Owners/webmasters and anyone new to the world of web design and search engine optimization (SEO) particularly those working with small businesses and sole traders.

The first article described a number of organic SEO steps for small businesses during the construction of their website and touched on the issue of link building and the associated pros and cons.

This article will take a detailed look at link building strategies for small businesses and determine the most suitable strategies for different types of business.

At this stage of a website project your target market/audience should already be defined in terms of the following factors:

• Business/Residential
• Demographics
• Geographical Location

All of the above items will play a role in determining your link strategy and should be reviewed on regular basis.

Let’s spend a moment on the definition of a link often referred to as a “backlink”. A link is a connection between another website and your own website. It allows a visitor to directly access your website by clicking on a hyperlink on another website. The name of the link, which is known as the “anchor text” may contain your company name but consideration should be given to including your primary key-phrase, i.e. Manchester plumbing services, particularly if your company name is not very descriptive of your business’s services and products.

So what’s the purpose of a backlink? As outlined above it may bring visitors to your website and it may increase the popularity of your website on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. Some backlinks will perform both functions. Some websites will require links that perform both functions while others will require links to generate website traffic or increase the ranking (popularity) of their website. A number of factors will determine this criteria such as the geographical location of your business, facilities available on your website i.e. e-commerce, your business type etc.

Let’s now take a closer look at how you start to arrive at a determination as outlined in the previous paragraph.

Example: Small business providing local services only, website does not include any e-commerce facilities.

Solution: There is little point in generating traffic for this website unless it is from visitors in the same geographical region so the likelihood is that a link building strategy for this company’s website would involve the sourcing of backlinks that improve their website’s ranking on the search engines.

Estimates now suggest that 60% of users now use the Internet to source products and services locally with the vast majority using Google to find companies and service providers in their area. Backlinks that improve the ranking of your website are crucial in this regard and may also reduce your reliance on pay per click (PPC) programs such as Google AdWords to generate business leads. Google AdWords can then be used for tactical internet marketing such as new product launches, new service offerings or expanding your business into a new geographical region.

The third part of this article will expand on the topic of link building strategies for small businesses including example plans, trusted backlinks, free and paid web directories, social media, local directory services etc.

Eoin