Dreaming of thousands of links for a teeny tiny investment? Thinking it would be nice to have all the links you need within budget and within time? Why not try this wonderful new link scheme. All you have to do is give your money to the little guy wearing the green suit and the cheeky grin. He’ll lead you to the end of his rainbow and (more…)

When your site’s going a-courting, it really needs to have every hair in place, its best shoes shined, and that cheeky gleam in its eye. It can’t be the sort of site that looks like the love ’em and leave ’em type, but it doesn’t want to look like a site that wears cardigans either.

When on earth would a website go a-courting, I hear you ask? Really, your site is on the dating market from day one. Your website is constantly looking to attract Internet users, courting Google’s good opinion and trying to get linking sites to commit. If your site’s social life was a TV program, it would come out with more drama and action than (more…)

You may not know it, but your link building efforts will benefit if you begin to act a little like Indiana Jones. Okay, maybe you don’t need the well-weathered fedora, and you can probably leave the whip at home, but imitating old Indy’s tenacity and talent for digging up long-forgotten treasures is definitely a plus.

The reason to imitate the intrepid whip-wielding adventurer of Spielberg‘s famous trilogy (plus one turkey) is that he isn’t above doing the hard work to uncover things. Above all, Indiana Jones is a dedicated archaeologist. That’s exactly what you need to be when looking for links as part of your search engine optimisation.

There are two ways you should dig up secrets when (more…)

What to look for in the consummate SEO professional: some technical expertise, analytical skills, and a Machiavellian grasp of the political connections of the Internet. This isn’t a list you’d often see when looking at ads for SEO sales jobs, but it pretty much pins down what someone in a search engine optimisation career needs to succeed.

It may sound ominous. After all, Machiavelli, philosopher and political mastermind of Renaissance Italy, has a fairly dark reputation. Unlike the dark images of midnight stabbings that the word ‘Machiavellian’ conjures up, your SEO expert needs to be what the real Machiavelli was like – a man who knew which links led to where.

A successful search engine optimisation plan requires (more…)

In many ways, SEO is like conquering kingdoms. A site assembles its resources and wages war on its competitors, looking to gain control of particularly enticing pieces of search engine real estate, or land. There may be a little less romance and far fewer horses involved, but getting your site to the top of the rankings is not unlike the medieval politics of war.

With the building of a kingdom, it’s best to start local, and the same goes for SEO. Careers have been built on this idea. A lot of businesses tended to neglect their localities, not so long ago, but local identity has now become (more…)

Speedy Gonzales

The Internet is a fast place. Things happen really quickly. When you act like Speedy Gonzales, though, all you end up doing is running into quicksand.

Speedy Gonzales, the Warner Bros Looney Tunes creation, always flummoxed the hungry Sylvester the cat when the latter tried to have him for lunch. What Tweety Bird did with cuteness and wit, Speedy did with, well, speed. In the cartoons, there was nothing that Speedy couldn’t outrun.

If a website chooses to act like the speedy little Mexican mouse, though, it means certain doom with the Google. This is because the search engines, unlike cartoon-watching children, know how things work in reality. Mice don’t run at the speed of sound, and websites don’t acquire (more…)

Not doing anything is really hard work. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to do it, but it’s seriously tough. Doing something, doing anything, can’t hold a candle to doing nothing in terms of difficulty. This is why a lot of website owners make a mess of their SEO. Sometimes, search engine optimisation has to have a bit of Zen for it to be successful, just like Bruce Lee’s art of ‘fighting without fighting’ in Enter the Dragon.

A lot of the SEO jobs you’ll do require, well, doing. Running around organising optimisation consultants, emailing off for links, picking through code to find and repair faults – it all needs doing. There’s an awful lot of work in the initial stages of SEO, which can make it all seem very active. There are times, however, when (more…)

'Twitcher' Malcolm, and Brenda, in ITV sitcom 'Watching'

Like every obsessed twitcher, Pokémon nut or train spotter with his glasses held together at the bridge with a sticking plaster, it’s important to have a field guide to hand when embarking on a link building campaign for your website. Why is this, I hear you ask? Well, if you’ve ever flirted with link building, even in passing, you should be aware that links can vary in quality from the truly excellent to the ‘kiss of death’ type. If you’re trying to cultivate links for your site, it’s handy to know what links are the most desirable, what ones can be considered as low hanging fruit and what ones to avoid. Here’s a quick round up of the most common links available to you:

The Authoritative Link
This is a highly desirable link to have. Positively bursting with link juice, it’s a difficult one to snag. It’s a link from a site which is considered an authority, but it doesn’t have to be from a site that operates within your industry – a link from Wikipedia or (more…)