This was written by one of our staff members prior to joining the ONERank team. I find it interesting that the approach is a bit rudimentary (no offense) but can be fairly effective for smaller sites in non-competitive niches.
While adding backlinks is a big piece of the current SEO strategy for ranking improvements, don’t lose sight in the fact that it is just one piece of the proverbial puzzle. Derivative content metrics aside, we’re seeing a huge shift in several of the simple site improvement pieces we used to employ only 6 months ago. Google is setting the pace, so we maintain and keep up with implementation, testing, regression, reporting, analysis – constantly. Never lose site of the end goal, regardless of how it “works” for your own website – building traffic AND conversions/sales.
I’ve been working at website search engine optimization for some time and I’ve always thought that the content of the website was everything. It seemed to me that a combination of keywords, meta tags, and actual content was the magic formula and that a wise balance of these components would guarantee one of the top positions in Google search results.
At present it seems that having good quality website content is not enough to rank well in Google. I have read numerous articles about SEO and discovered that SEO experts and many webmasters considered link building as the main SEO strategy. It seems that everything is about backlinks now. The site which has more backlinks from other sites wins. So, I decided to focus on backlinks.
How to get backlinks? The first thing I thought of was web directories. Web directories are online catalogs which accept the links to websites and sort them by different categories accordingly to the site content. There are directories that will add your website absolutely for free. Some directories require a submission fee. Others will ask you a reciprocal link in return. There are plenty of directory submission services on the web. So, if you don’t have much time, you can outsource your site submission to a third party company. If you prefer managing your link building process by yourself, search for a directory submission tool. I used a free website submitter to add my site to directories. Such tools already have a database of web directories so you don’t need to waste your time for searching for the directories on the Internet. I submitted my site to about 2,000 directories in a couple of days. Link submission software also allows you submit your website with different anchor text and descriptions so each submission looks unique and more natural. The directories place your submission into the validation queue. It can take days or even weeks for your link to be approved. So, be patient and don’t expect an instant improvement of your site PageRank in Google.
Another good idea is WordPress Blog Comment Posting. Blog users can leave comments on the articles and stories they read. To leave a comment, you are asked to provide your name, URL, email address and comment itself. When your comment is posted your name becomes a link to your website. The key is to use your keywords as your name (although not all blog owners like it). So, I started posting comments in blogs that are relevant to our company’s business. In order for you to not take me for a spammer, I want you to know that I only posted a comment if I had something relevant to say. I have to deal with e-mail spam every day, so I hate spam whatever it is. Post a comment only if you have something of value to add to the discussion and not just to get backlinks. You can read the comments which are already posted by others and follow suit.
As my goal was to improve our retail company’s website rank for the keywords related to our business, I put the keywords as my name and for my URL (obviously a link to our site). Then I posted my comment. Like directory submissions blog comments are usually set as “pending” for moderator approval. Now I must admit I made a blunder (since I was doing it for the first time). I should have saved the links of the pages where I posted comments. You see blog owners may not like to see keyword links in the comment “Name” field and will promptly delete the comments. Other blog owners may not like the link in the name and will remove it. So, because not every comment is approved, you should find the blogs where the comments are posted and save them. You will return to those blogs later, post another comment and get one more backlink.
I worked at this for about two months. As I had other work to do, I didn’t dedicate too much time to find blogs and post comments. I managed to leave 2-3 comments a day. After a couple of months I noticed that our website was listed higher in search results. Now it is on the first page in the results for our keywords. I should say that it’s not a 100% guaranteed method but it is one of the possibilities to get a higher rank in Google. How much money could I spend trying to get listed? I hope someone else can benefit from this. Blog comments may stand as one of the truly free ways to get the search engine ranking you desire for the keywords you want.
Always trust that honest and trustworthy SEO professionals do not try to “GAME” or “MANIPULATE” the SERPs (search engine results page). An ethical SEO is just like a good mechanic – they all work on the same core principles, but some will use tricks that only employ a temporary fix – costing you more in the long run. An Ethical and Honest SEO Company works hand in hand with your business, growing assets and properties that will serve you and your business over the long term – think of it as an investment. These assets should belong to you and your company as a result of the efforts provided by your chosen SEO, saving you both time and money.
For all your internet marketing, SEO friendly web design & web conversion optimization needs, call ONERank Internet Marketing & SEO: +1 (877) 771-7265 or visit us on the web at: http://www.onerank.com