3 Common Link Building Mistakes

by Niki Payne

Builing links to your websites is an integral part of the SEO process. It takes time and it takes research. You can waste a lot of time and money from errors in link building judgement. There are a lot of short cuts out there, but are they really worth it?

One mistake a lot of beginning link builders make is not checking for the "nofollow" tag. A "nofollow" tag tells search engines not to follow the link. If you have a link on a reputable website that uses the "nofollow" attribute, then you won't receive the linking power credit you were shooting for. So whether you are posting a blog comment or a regular link, double check if the page is using the "nofollow" attribute.

Another common link building mistake new link builders make is relying on link exchange services for building links to their site. Some of them are actually scams. I always like to check out how they do on their own link building. You can usually separate the scams from the legit companies by the quantity and quality of the sites linking to back to them.

A third common link building mistake is buying a good bad link with irrelevant anchor text. Relevancy is an important factor in Google's search algorithm. Having the wrong anchor text for your website could result in a high bounce rate for lack of relevancy, especially if a visitor is expecting one thing based on your anchor text and gets something else instead. Not cool.

These are the three common link building mistakes you can avoid when building links to your website in an effort to improve relevancy in search engines. Focus on building links using relevant anchor text from relevant sites that do not use the "nofollow" attribute.

Niki Payne is a Social SEO Specialist for Extima Web with experience writing for newspapers, magazines and the Web. Learn more about Extima by visiting www.extima.com.

The New On-Page Optimization

We love Whiteboard Fridays at SEOMoz. Last Friday, they talked about some advanced techniques search marketers can use to optimize their landing pages. Check out this video to learn more about the kinds of techniques we've been using to keep up with the current trends in online marketing and search engine optimization.

5 Common SEO Mistakes

Does Anyone Watch Whiteboard Friday?

We do!

Infographic: How to do keyword research

One of the first things we do when we get a new client is conduct a website analysis to learn more about their business and to brain storm keyword opportunities that will drive more targeted traffic to their website. We also conduct competitor research to best determine which keywords will have the best ROI.

To help our clients get an idea of the process we have in place, we actually found an awesome infographic online we wanted to share with you that outlines the keyword discovery process fairly well.


From: Promodo.com

Do you know what keywords you would like your website to rank for?

How to create SEO content for your blog

Just came across a good article on CEO Blog Watch about developing a content strategy for your blog. As part of the services we offer here at Extima, we are constantly developing new content for our client's blogs and social media campaigns. After awhile, it's easy to lose your mojo and run out of things to talk about when you don't have a set content plan in place to work from.

Looking for ways to revamp our daily content calendar, which we use to keep track of which clients needs content and for which website properties, we discovered a new way to develop a stockpile of blog topics that will not only enhance your the search engine optimization of your blog, but will also help determine what is important for your readers.

The first step is to identify your blog's theme, whether it's medical weight loss, kosher summer cruises, gourmet food or boutique clothing. Once you had identified your blog's theme, you'll want to use a keyword tool to research what people are searching for on the Web. For example, if your blog's theme happens to be sports betting, then you'll enter than keyword or key phrase into the keyword tool which will then generate a list of related keywords or phrases you can use for possible blog post topics.

The next step you'll want to take is to create a spreadsheet with all the keywords and phrases listed with an added column that says "Completed" so you can mark which keywords you already used for blog post topics. Then you repeat the process pretty much. And if you start to feel like you're running out of keywords, repeat the keyword research process, create a keyword list spreadsheet and start blogging away until you need to repeat the process all over again.

Once very important thing we want to note is asking yourself the question: What kind of content can I create that will benefit my readers, educate my target audience or demonstrate my expertise? Creating valuable content for our clients is something we definitely strive for which is why we are always staying up-to-date with new and innovative ways to help our clients create SEO content for their blogs and websites.

How to get real time web analytics

Google Analytics is an awesome tool for tracking web analytics in relation to any online marketing campaigns you may be running. But the problem with Google Analytics is that you  have to wait a day to review the analytics for the current day. For example, if I wanted to see how much traffic our website has gotten today, I'd have to wait until tomorrow to find out.

Well, now there's a way you can get real time web analytics as it happens. No more waiting around to see which buzz words are driving traffic to your website. No more day late blog posts on time relevant topics you could have optimized your website with a day earlier had you had access to real time results. The solution: www.getclicky.com. We're still playing with it on our end to learn more about its capabilities, but in the meanwhile, you should check it out yourself and let us know what you think about this new tool we recently discovered.

Happy Friday everyone, and have a good weekend!