Engage Web January 2010 - Engage Web

How can I increase my PageRank?

Posted on January 31, 2010

One of the most talked about phrases with regards to websites is ‘PageRank’. PageRank is Google’s little green score between 0 and 10, showing how important or powerful a website really is.

Now before we go on we should explain that PageRank isn’t important. It’s not the size of your PageRank that is important, it’s what you do with it (kinda catchy that!). How green your bar is has little reflection on your website’s rankings within search engines, yet so many people are still obsessed by it. They want a bigger PageRank, certainly bigger than their competitors’ PR.

You should also realise that there is a difference between your Toolbar PR and your REAL PageRank. The PageRank shown in the Toolbar is just a snapshot in time of what your PageRank was. Google updates this very rarely, sometimes just a few times per year, so don’t expect to see your Toolbar PR increase overnight – it will take months (unless of Google updates it tomorrow, depends when you’re reading this really).

So, how do you increase your PageRank? Here are some tips to do just that.

Links – PageRank is all about links to your website, and pages on your website. The more links you have, the better. These links should be (more…)

Posted by Carl Hopkinson

Does news make great content?

Posted on January 30, 2010

Some content writers contend that news makes great content. They advocate that websites are filled with items from Google News, newspaper websites and sources of industry-specific news. As long as content writers acknowledge their sources and add opinion to pieces of news, this strategy can yield significant rewards. This is especially the case when the effort is made to keep up with the latest industry-specific news. However, an overdependence on news can be problematic in terms of giving readers sufficient content diversity. (more…)

Posted by Matt Jones

SEO today, not tomorrow

Posted on January 30, 2010

If there’s one thing you can be sure about with the Internet, it’s that it is very fast moving. Once an idea breaks, it can cause a flood of the market that can happen within days. You can’t afford to sit around with the Internet and hope that you’ll find time to put your idea into action, or that your website will start ranking and earning you money without any SEO effort.

For example, the milliondollarhomepage.com was conceived in 2005 by Alex Tew, and within months there were countless websites copying his idea – the idea that everyone pays for a pixel of advertising on his site, earning him $1 million. Had Alex just had the idea and told some friends, or wrote about it on a blog or forum; he would have (more…)

Posted by Cheryl Mathews

Which James Bond Actor would make the best SEO?

Posted on January 29, 2010

James Bond 007 is the master spy working for the British Government, battling the enemies of freedom. Over the years, Ian Fleming’s character has been portrayed by numerous actors, from the heights of Connery and Craig, to the lows of Lazenby. However, which incarnation of James Bond would make the best SEO expert, and all round Internet marketing professional.

Let’s have a look at the candidates:

Sean Connery
Connery was the first, and some would say the best, James Bond. While Connery may have played Bond long before the Internet was even thought of, he knew the power and importance of links. Connery’s Bond cut a swathe through most of Europe in his pursuit of SPECTRE, but he always had contacts on hand to help him out and point him in the right direction – contacts such as Felix Leiter in the CIA.

Connery was link building way before the (more…)

Posted by Matt Jones

Why was my article submission declined?

Posted on January 28, 2010

Article submissions are a common way for webmasters and SEO companies to build links for websites. An article submission is an article or news story written about your industry. It has to be unique, and of course good quality. Once it has been written it can then be submitted to article submission websites and article directories. The article will then act as a link back to your website, improving your back links.

There are thousands of article submission websites, all with different rules regarding how articles should be formatted and submitted. This means it can be very time consuming actually finding which are the best websites and what rules you have to follow, never mind actually doing the submissions.

Some people like to do this themselves, but due to time constraints it’s often better to hire a professional content writing company to handle article submissions for you. If you do wish to handle it yourself, you’ll invariably find that a large portion of your articles are rejected from the article submission websites. Here are some of the main reasons that articles are rejected.

Using article Spinners
Article Spinners allow you to regurgitate the same article over and over again, or to reuse already existing articles. If these Article Spinners aren’t used properly then can leave (more…)

Posted by Cheryl Mathews

UK copywriters must consider geography

Posted on January 28, 2010

During the 1990s, the internet appeared to some to be part of an unstoppable juggernaut: globalisation. National boundaries seemed less relevant as communication and trade became revolutionised by technological progress. However, as the tensions in the globalisation have become evident there has been a renewed appreciation of the local area too and many SMEs use the internet to provide information on local goods and services. The question here is how should UK copywriters write geographically sensitive content? (more…)

Posted by Cheryl Mathews

Affair dating website angers church goers

Posted on January 27, 2010

In the online world there are fewer more competitive sectors that the dating sector, with millions of dating websites, all competing for the subscription fees of members. Since the Internet was first created, lonely hearts have looked online to find love, and found a wealth of websites ready to take their money, in exchange for offering them potential matches in their area.

Because of the competitiveness however, dating websites need two things to be successful: They need a niche, and they need a large SEO budget. Anyone looking to launch a dating website that offers just normal dating wouldn’t stand much of a chance. They need an angle in order to break into the marketplace. An angle such as senior’s dating, dating for athletes, college dating – or perhaps dating for married people looking for an affair.

That’s just the angle taken by the website maritalaffair.co.uk – and their huge advertising campaign as angered church goers so much that they’ve (more…)

Posted by Carl Hopkinson

Why your search engine rankings are unimportant

Posted on January 26, 2010

When you hire an SEO company, or contract the services of an SEO consultant, what is the most important thing you’re hoping they can do for you?

If you said ‘to increase the ranking of your website in the search engines’ you’ve missed the point of search engine optimisation.

Now yes, SEO is about optimising websites so that they appear higher up the search engines. This is obvious. However, this doesn’t necessarily help your website to receive more traffic, or more sales. Your website ranking higher in the search engines is akin to your company increasing (more…)

Posted by Matt Jones

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