Tag Archives: SEO

Keyword Vs Brand Inbound Links

Blogging, content marketing, guest blogging, SEO, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Viral marketing, , , , ,

internet marketing strategyWith Penguin 2.0 upon us you should be adjusting your inbound link campaign accordingly. Matt Cutts (Head of Google Spam) has given us plenty of warning about Penguin 2.0 and how you should tacking your link building.

You Will Not Get Ranked With Links Alone

Internet Marketing is not just about link building anymore; you need to focus on various other factors as well if you want to perform well on search results. If you take a look at the below graph, inbound marketing does play a large part in search engine rankings, but you cannot just focus on link building.

If your website has poor onsite SEO, no regular blog posts, no social signals and no brand signals, you will never rank. Every section in the above graph is as important as the other. Do not think of Internet marketing as ranking high on Google, instead think of it as earning high traffic volume as your goal.

In this article I will be only discussing about inbound links, Brand vs Keyword. I thought I would add this note and graph so website owners wouldn’t think creating backlinks alone would earn them more traffic!

How Your Links Should Be Created

For those of you that are not 100% keyed up with inbound marketing, I will quickly go over it. Do not do any of the below:

  • Pay for backlinks.
  • Waste your time adding links in headers, footers or sidebars.
  • Join any link scheme or automated service.
  • Include your link in spammy content.
  • Have your link on irrelevant, untrustworthy sites.

Basically keep your links looking natural by guest blogging quality content with your link included naturally.

Keyword Backlinks

For many years now having keyword backlinks used to play a huge role in the positioning of your website on Google, not so much today. A keyword backlink is your targeted keyword used as an anchor text and usually pointing back to your homepage.

I believe keyword backlinks are important, but something you shouldn’t focus all your attention on. You should never only focus on your homepage, you should always build links to all web pages within your website. Every page is important, not just your homepage so build links to all.

If you wasn’t already aware, you should only try and optimize 2 main keywords for each web page, anymore than 2 will start looking unnatural. From these 2 keywords you need to build a list of variants using Google Keyword Tool and Trends. If you are using the same keyword backlinks to your pages, it will start looking unnatural. This is why having a list of variants will keep your links looking natural with the added advantage of being ranked higher for more key phrases.

Brand Links

Brand backlinks are anchor links that contain your company name, website address or a company employee. Branding is huge with Internet marketing at the minute and will be for many years.

Creating brand backlinks will increase your websites traffic on search results in the long run. The key is creating the quality content surrounding your backlink. If your end goal is to get ranked for keywords along the lines of ‘Builder London’, your content should be focused around that theme. For example, you could write an article on how buildings have evolved in London over the past 100 years. This content will be high value and of interest to users, at the same time, 100% focused on your keyword. Instead of using a keyword backlink, use a brand backlink. This way Google will connect your brand and website with the theme of your article (Builder London), thus increasing your sites authority and trust, which will then lead to higher rankings for this keyword, amongst other variants.

Brand backlinks will give your site more authority over keyword backlinks as your content will be connected to all text within the article. Not around the targeted keyword link.

Maintain A Ratio

Before reevaluating your inbound link campaign, have a company generate an internet marketing strategy for your business, not only for your links, but for blogging and social signal. If you are promoting all of these sections, your site will see a return on visitors. I would suggest creating 5 brand links for every one keyword backlink. This way your inbound links stay looking natural.

By Kev Massey – Kev is the Sales Manager at SixtyMarketing and writes the majority of blog posts for SixtyMarketing giving free, useful Internet marketing & web design tips. Please follow Kev and his team on Facebook for their latest posts.

How Google Glass Could Change SEO

Blogging, Google glass, SEO, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Technology, , , ,

How Google glass will change EOMost of us who have been in the SEO game for a few years, will be somewhat reliant on Google to continue our trade. Google is the largest search engine by far, so it’s there that we want to reach the top of the SERPs, and it’s generally ‘what Google say goes’ as far as our promotional strategies are concerned.

But Google is reliant on hardware to be any use. In order to access Google at all, we need to be using a computer, smartphone or tablet of some kind – and so changes in the hardware industry could very easily have a big effect on the way we optimise for search. With Google Glass poised to make a huge splash in the hardware scene sometime soon, how might we expect this to alter the way we use search?

Factors to consider

Of course for Google Glass to have any impact on SEO, it is somewhat necessary for the device to actually be a hit. If nobody uses Google Glass, then it’s not going to affect search – end of story. That said though, even if Google Glass doesn’t take off in a big way, it could certainly prepare the market for the introduction of other augmented reality hardware. It might be that Google Glass flops, but ‘The Viewmaster 5,0089’ becomes a huge hit. And if that happens, then Google needs to make sure that it is the number one search provider still – lest Bing get in there first and steal a big portion of the market.

The New Search

How Google Glass will change search

Assuming though that Google Glass is a hit, and that the competition doesn’t turn up and throw a spoke in the works, we will likely all be using Google to search still – just on our faces.

Currently Google Glass isn’t really a device that you might surf the web with, but as developers start creating apps for it, we’ll probably find browsers popping up and people searching the web ‘hands free’.

And to do this, people will want to be able to use voice commands. With no other way to input text, they will be completely reliant on the in-built voice-recognition software in order to get the search results they want. In turn, this means we might start seeing a change in the kinds of keywords that people use – they’ll be searching for things that come more naturally to say rather than things that come more naturally to type.

This will likely mean a wider variety of keywords, and it will probably mean more ‘long tail’ keywords – though because voice-recognition isn’t perfect, most people will still probably want to keep their searches rather brief.

Searching on the Move

Augmented reality with Google glass

The fact that people will be walking around as they wear their hardware though, might also affect the kinds of things that they search for – we might start to see people searching for local conveniences more often for example, or for the weather reports.

Likewise, Google is likely to include location services even more closely as more and more people start searching on the go (something that has already happened to an extent thanks to the popularity of smartphones). Watch this space to find out what else might change, but just make sure that your site and your SEO is ready.

Today’s guest writer, Mike, is an internet marketing consultant who works at Wisdek. He is a passionate blogger and likes to share his strategies and views on marketing. He loves technology and is fond of knowing more about the latest gadgets that enter the market.

Can Small Businesses Compete with Big Ones?

SEO, Small Business Marketing, Social Media Marketing, , , ,

Marketing online has brought about more changes than probably any other medium. The biggest difference between the online age and the dawn of TV and radio is this: small businesses have more of a level playing field than ever. When TV and radio came upon the seen it was only the large corporations or successful small businesses that were able to afford to advertise. With the advent of the internet start-ups can present themselves with the look and feel of a large business on a shoestring budget. If you have time and a little bit of creativity you can write a blog or make videos that can appeal to your customers and make you an expert in your field. This in turn leads to business for you by making you the go to guy for your given field. Inadvertently this also leads to better search engine optimization for your website which leads to you ranking higher on the search engines. Yes, big businesses can do this as well but that’s where being niche oriented comes into play. If you take on a small enough niche that big businesses are ignoring but that would still be lucrative to your business you can outdo the big corporations and be more appealing to your market in the process.

There has never been a better time to be a small business but you need to utilize the technologies and methodolgies that can elevate you above your competition and seperate you from other businesses in a unique way.
If you need help with blog writing, video production or search engine optimization please feel free to utilize our services today!
Be small and proud!

Copywriting Tips that Can Make or Break Your Marketing Campaign

Copywriting, Web Design, ,

Copywriting is the one skill which all online business owners should learn. As an online marketer you communicate through words – if those words aren’t effectively conveying your message, then you’re in for a long and bumpy ride or a short drive off a cliff!
Here are a few copywriting tips to help you get started:

1. Know your Target Market – Good copywriters know exactly who they’re writing for before starting. They speak directly to ONE person and keep that same person in mind at all times. If you try to reach too many people with your copy you’ll end up missing your target altogether and not reaching anyone at all. Before starting, know exactly who you’re writing your copy for and stick to it.

2. Headlines that Intrigue – Use clear headlines throughout your copy to guide the reader. Your main headline should be in bold and large letters to grab the reader’s attention. It is often the headline which can either make or break your copy. Use a benefit-focused headline, which explains in powerful detail how you can help solve the customer’s problem. Then use sub-headlines throughout the copy to keep the reader intrigued so they will keep reading.

3. Don’t use Big Words – Online writing is different to the writing you did in English class. Throw out the text book and forget all those rules your teacher taught you. Online writing is casual and needs to convey emotion and a clear purpose. You need to speak to the person as though you’re sitting down with them and chatting over a coffee… stay away from big words and long adjectives or risk boring (and losing) your prospects!

4. Be Persuasive – If you love your product that’s great but it’s also a bit biased. Your customers want to hear from other unbiased people who have used your product. Include customer testimonials but not just any testimonial will do, the more information you can include the better. Try to include the person’s full name, city, state, website URL and if possible a picture of that person. The more information your testimonial includes the more persuasive and believable.

5. It’s not all about you! – In fact, it’s not about you at all. Effective copywriting is concerned with the needs of the customer. The writer doesn’t really matter… Of course, you may need to add a little personal information about yourself in order to gain trust and to explain why your customer should trust you, but even in this case it’s all about what you can do for them. Go through your copy, does it contain a lot of “I’s” then it’s time for a serious re-write. Go back and change most of those “I’s” to “You’s”. Your writing should always be about the customer.

6. Don’t forget the call – The call to action that is. You must guide your visitors and tell them what you expect them to do. If you want them to click over and purchase your weight loss product, say so, and say so in a clear way which promotes all the benefits of your products “Click here to learn how you can lose those last 10 pounds and keep it off for good” . You may want to “Twitclick” the hypertext to track its performance. If it is a brochure, flyer or self mailer I recommend you have a special splash page made to drive visitors to and use a free google analytics tool to see the ROI of your campaign.
Above all be precise in your wording and always include a clear call to action. If you can’t invest the time to write or lack the talent to do so hire a copywriter. It’s the best investment in advertising that you can make!

By Peter Marino