SEO Philippines: Link Building Best Practices 2013

Search engines are continuously updating their algorithm for better search results and ranking of websites. For search users, these updates may pose more positive effects. For the SEOs’ side, however , after Google’s Panda and Penguin updates, optimization has become even more complicated. One of the SEO strategies affected by the Penguin update is link building. This specific update aimed at decreasing the ranking of websites that use blackhat SEO techniques such as cloaking, keyword stuffing, content duplication, unnatural backlinks and others.

Black hat SEO techniques, while giving quick-results for short-term goals, can harm your website in the long-term.The backlinks used will become devalued and website ranking will drop. Majority of sites that practice black-hat SEO techniques are now adjusting to the changes and removing all unnatural links to their website, or continue to suffer zero visibility to customers SEO experts continue to find new link building techniques; and here are some trends / observations to take into consideration in 2013: Press Releases for Link Building

 1.)  Press Releases for Link Building

According to Matt Cutts in this forum, press releases are not that effective as backlinks as before. However, based on a test done by Search Engine Roundtable, Matt Cutts’ blog ranked for the keyword “sreppleasers” – the group experimented on the claim by putting a link redirecting to Matt’s blog in a press release. Though it is not yet clear whether Matt Cutts was pertaining to competitive keywords in his specified scenario, there’s still a possibility that press releases are still effective based on the test results. In any case, I recommend a well-written, accurate, and newsworthy press release to share to your audience.

2.)  Analysis of Competitor’s Backlinks 

Every website has its own different SEO techniques and tactics. Researching and analyzing your competitor’s backlinks is a good start linkbuilding; to help gain competitive advantage in SEO. You can use backlink tools such as Open Site Explorer or Majestic when doing this activity. Also, when reviewing at your competitors’ backlinks, observe what top backlinks they use, how they are obtaining links from these sites, and whether they are contributing guest posts, and if the site contributing to the backlink is their clients. These will help you get ideas on the SEO tactics they are doing.

3.)  Start Blogging 

One of the known effective strategies in link building is the link bait. Link bait is the practice of creating blog posts to attract visitors. As more and more people search for information using search engines, SEOs are taking advantage of blogs as link bait to gain more traffic.  Some SEO experts’ blogs use infographics, famous names, newest gadgets, and other attention-grabbing content to get virality from readers. To make sure that your link bait will be effective, write on topics that will entertain your readers, or those that will provide relevant and comprehensive information to your target market.

5 Things You Should Know about SEO for 2013

 The year 2012 was one of the most active years for search engines especially Google. We have seen several official updates to Google’s algorithm and among which, were countless Panda and Penguin updates. These changes made a huge impact to most online businesses and SEOs need to adjust to these changes.

Did you know that Google did all these updates to increase their revenue and profits? In fact, Google relies on organic search just as much as their Pay-per-Click (PPC) product for profits. They value what users expect to find, because if users are not satisfied with the search engine experience, chances are they will look elsewhere (in other search engines) and these will result to a drop in Google profits.

As far as SEO is concerned, here are the 5 things you shouldkeep in mind to improve your website’s searchability:

1. Monitor Your Backlinks

You should forget about old techniques when getting backlinks to your website. Since the Penguin update last year, Google is now checking websites with clean and natural backlinks and place these higher in search results.

2. Optimize Your Content for Users

Remember to write content for users not for search engines. Anticipate what users are looking for and give them what they need. Try to look at your website from a user experience point of view, users expect to find what they are searching for and if they don’t get what they want, users will tend to look at other websites.

3. Have a Good Site Architecture

Maintaining a clean and organized site structure is a good start to optimizing your website. As mentioned in No. 2 above, user experience is important-- thus, you need to make sure that your website is user-friendly and inner pages are easy to navigate; to also make it easier for search engine robots to crawl all your pages.

4. Optimize Your Website for Local Search

Since search results are designed to place higher depending on the proximity of the searcher, you should optimize your website for local search. Failing to optimize for local search can be the difference between someone searching you and finding one of your local competitors instead.

5. Incorporate Social Media Marketing

With the help of social media, your website can generate more traffic. Many people use social media to create, share, and exchange information and ideas within their communities. Imagine if these communities from social media talk and share your website to their networks, no doubt it will have a positive effect on your website in terms of branding and traffic.

Source:

SEO Blog: 2013: Top 5 SEO Tips for Content
SEO in 2013: 7 Surprisingly Simple Factors That Will Take The Lead

What are the Advantages of SEO Services in Forward Solutions?

Search Engine Optimization, or more commonly known as SEO, is the process of improving the visibility and ranking of a website or webpage in a search engine’s organic search results. Search engines like Yahoo, Google, Bing, among others, establish their own algorithms or metrics to ensure that the search results that they display are most relevant to the user or the person searching for the information. The more significant the website, according to the metrics of the search engine, the higher it appears on the list of search results. Each website or webpage has a page rank corresponding to its compliance with the algorithm; and this is affected by a number of factors including brand popularity, relevance of content, authority and links backs from other webpage considered of high authority by that particular search engine.

Most SEO experts divide SEO services into two parts: On-Page Optimization and Off-Page Optimization. On-Page Optimization is the process of optimizing the website’s content and its pages with relevant keywords; to increase its page rank when searched using those particular words.  Part of On-Page optimization is also removing barriers in the website’s HTML codes to make it easier for search engines to crawl through content and maximize use of keywords chosen. Off-Page optimization, on the other hand, makes use of backlinks or inbound links from higher authority websites – it is considered the more strategic approach of the two because it builds the popularity and credibility of the website through promotions from third party and trustworthy sources.

Doing On- and Off-page Optimization requires planning, effort and analysis of the website. The Forward Solutions SEO Team in the Philippines knows this; and they strategize on competitive keywords and off-page activities to make sure efforts are maximized and results bring higher returns. With highly skilled SEO experts, Forward Solutions brings noticeable positive results to every website by making sure that pages are properly optimized—the company ensures that the website is not only highly visible in search engines’ organic search results; but also acquires the maximum amount of traffic from targeted customers.  As such, Forward Solutions’ SEO services make your website increasingly more visible, more comprehensive of your target market, more hardworking, and ultimately, more value for your money.