Internet Marketing Clinic » Links, Linking, Link Building

How Google Works!

rgm — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 15:08:36 +0000

In many of my class presentations, I take a few minutes to review the basics of a Google search operation. I just “stumbled upon” a great summary of the Google operation on the web.

This is a nice step-by-step guide to what happens when someone goes to Google and looks for something. It is all interesting, but the key parts for people wanting to get rankings for their sites is understanding the “index” database (where the engine stores all the information that will later be provided in a search, as well as the information that will determine who ranks where in the search results), and understanding the importance of the links that Google tabulates.

There is not much discussion here of where the links come from or how they are evaluated, but that is what we have the free Internet marketing Clinic for. Stop by some Wednesday evening when we are in session and see how we can help you promote your business over the web!

PS: If the StumbleUpon link above stops working, you can read the article at its original location here, “How Google Works“

Review Sites, a reference list

rgm — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 22:13:34 +0000

Review sites are sites that feature reviews of other sites. These sites provide a valuable service by setting up referrals to your site and adding links directly to your site. You certainly need to be aware of anything that is said about your business on these sites, and it can be a good idea to encourage your satisfied clients or customers to go to these sites to give you a testimonial. Most of these sites will allow you to edit the information they have on the site about your business, and this is an important part of the process. You should definitely take the time to do this!

There are many of these sites around, but here is a list of some of the better known sites for you to work with:

As with any list, the organizations listed can vary in their focus and requirements, so you have to investigate each one on the list to see whether it is appropriate for your site or business before you go to the trouble of submitting your site to them. In this case, in particular, you might want to get familiar with the site and the kind of traffic they have before you try to send any of your clients to the site to write reviews for you.

Article Submission Sites, a reference list

rgm — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 21:25:23 +0000

One effective way to publicize your site is to submit informational articles to sites that make the articles available to other web sites for republication. We have put together a short list of some sites that you might consider for this purpose:

Some of these sites have different targeted demographics in their readership, so you have to look them over to see if your material is a fit. Don;t submit articles that do not fit in with the focus of the site your are submitting to. It is not only a waste of your time, but it could give you a bad reputation on the web, which will not do you any good!

Links for your site?

rgm — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 22:32:21 +0000

Getting good links for a web site is one of the most important steps a developer or webmaster can take. Directories and local search engines are two of the most important resources for acquiring good links. A handy listing is available on this site under the caption “Sites Related to Links“.

Sitemaps are Important!

rgm — Sat, 15 May 2010 13:57:15 +0000

In our last Internet marketing clinic session, a question came up about site maps.

There are two kinds of site maps, and they are both important tools to achieve better rankings for your site. One is a sitemap constructed as a page on your site. This is visible to the site users, and is a convenience for them, as well as a good tool for helping search engines to find the pages on your site. Because is is for site users, it should reflect some logical order to browsing your site.

When building it, you need to think about who is using your site and what they might be interested in seeing. You want to make it easy for them to find the information they are interested in. Because it is for readers, it may not include a link to every page on your site. That could become overwhelming for users and defeat an important purpose of the page. At the least, it should include a direct link to every major page on your site.

The second kind of sitemap is specifically for search engines, and the rules for it are different. It will definitely include a link to every page on your site, no matter how big your site is. For sites over 50,000 pages, this map has to be handled differently, but most sites for small businesses need not be concerned with this issue. A definition of sitemaps and good discussion of them is available on Wikipedia.

My class notes for the evening provide more information and a link to some software for creating a sitemap for your site.

This protocol for creating and using sitemaps goes back to 2006 and has been adopted by the top major search engines, so it provides excellent coverage and should not be overlooked by any webmaster! One important point to keep in mind is that you should set up a pointer to your sitemap in your “robots.txt” file, which all search engines look at. The sitemap won’t help you if the search engines don’t find it!

Linking Tips

admin — Sun, 09 May 2010 14:18:48 +0000

We talk a lot in our clinic about the importance of linking your site properly in order to improve your search engine rankings. When you set up your links, there are some details that can be important.

For example, create your links as “absolute” links, not relative links. What that means is that your link in your code should contain the complete address to the linked page, like “http://www.your-domain-name.com/page-name.html”, not something like “…/page-name.html”.

This makes your reference clear, and will get you link credit if someone “scrapes” your page. Little things like this do make a difference if you apply the rules persistently. You get a cumulative effect from doing things the right way that can really make a difference in how your site performs!

Also, always refer to pages on your site in the same way, that is, if you use “www” as part of your domain name, always use it. Don’t refer to your site sometimes with it and sometimes without. Those would count as different links and will not give you the same benefit.

Google just called me!!

admin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:06:06 +0000

What a surprise! I picked up the phone (actually, I listened to my voice mail) and a perky voice says to me, “Hi, this is Sharon from Google!” I never heard of Google calling people before. I am just not on that kind of list.

What the call was about, as it turned out, is they are promoting their local business center. This is the place where you can enter information about your business so it will come up on Google Maps when people search for your products or services. I have had a listing for years and recommend it to anyone with a web site and any kind of local business. It is a free service from Google.

I guess the reason for the call is that they are offering enhancements to the listing that you can pay for and they are actually informing people of that by phone (seems a little retrograde to me, but, hey, whatever works!)

I went to the site (click here for Local Business Center information) and found some new features that I had not seen before. Most interesting to me was the statistics that they provide on your listing, so you can see how many impressions you have gotten and how many clicks from those impressions. This is all available on a dashboard where you see other sites that you may have entered, say, if you have multiple businesses, or have entered site information for companies you are supporting.

Anyway, this is good information and worth your time to review just to update yourself on how the whole thing works. If you don’t have a listing for your business yet, this is a great time to set one up. Remember your keywords when you set up your business description, because that is what it is all about. This is one more way to give your business an edge that others (like your competitors) are not so astute about.