MKLINK Internet Marketing Tips

A Killer Backlink For Your Website
Checkout http://www.mklink.com/getstarted for more internet marketing tips.

How to get the best Backlinks for Your Google Ranking.

Ok, so you know by now how important inbound links are to your website’s search engine ranking.

And hopefully by now, you’ll have made sure that your site is linked on the appropriate directories and sites for your industry.

Even better, you’ll be creating fresh content and getting articles written. Either you’re doing the articles yourself or you’re getting someone else to do them for you…but either way, they’re getting done right?

But that’s not my point today.

The point I’m making is that people very often ask me how to get links from other, relevant websites without going to link farms or paying people directly.

Well, here’s an idea to try.

Most people engaged in article marketing are hell bent on getting their articles into the article directories so that they benefit from all the back links on the sites that they are syndicated on. Great - nothing wrong with that.

But - what if you want to get a great back link from a specific high page-rank site?
Well, why not write an article , specifically for them!

It’s not as daft as it sounds..let me explain why.

Let’s say that you sell a herbal product that cures smelly feet. I don’t know if one exists - I’m just making this up.

So, you’ve got a nice, niche little business and you need some good back links.

Well, what about some of the bigger “fish” out there, with their big websites, lots of traffic and hopefully a decent page rank that’d be worth linking from?

Here’s what you do : You approach them, tell them that you’ll add some great value to their website in the form of great help, advice and tips, in return for a link back to your specific product. Of course this works for service businesses as well - there’s almost always synergy to be found.

Caveat:
It is IMPERATIVE that your articles are professional, useful and NOT BLATANT ADVERTS. Otherwise, even if you are allowed the first article, you won’t be invited back.

You could do worse that write some sample articles, using the prospect’s name dropped into the article a couple of times.

Psychologically, they’ll be more likely to take “ownership” of the idea when they see that the article makes them look good and has their name associated with it.

Send off the samples and see what comes home to roost. At this stage, you haven’t agreed any kind of exclusivity so you can effectively mail the same article to several prospects and simply change the name within the article.

If one of them sees the value in you adding content to their site for zero cost(you might even consider amortizing them for any traffic they send because this can be measured without affecting the link value by NOT using a direct affiliate link) then you’ve scored ….possibly big time.

Plus - if no-one takes the article from you(i.e. Clarke’s Shoes or Hush Puppies don’t play ball for example) then just stick it on your website and you’ll at least get the search engine optimization benefit from it, so you’ve recouped your “time investment”.

By the way, I’ll be running another teleseminar about article marketing soon.

Until then, visit http://www.mklink.com/getstarted/

’till Next Time,
Mike Knight. MKLINK Internet Marketing Tips

Drawings and Doodles. (And Pics of Women)

Checked out http://www.mklink.com/getstarted/ yet?

Adding Illustrations, photographs & “doodles” to your site.
By now, you’ll know just how important it is that you do whatever you can to improve your website’s conversion rate and that you are constantly looking to improve it.

One thing that all serious marketers know - but not a lot of website owners(or even website designers) is that adding “human” components to a web page can greatly increase the response rate.

To demonstrate what I mean, let’s look at an offline example. Let’s say that you receive a letter through the post.

If the envelope is printed and has a logo on it, you’ll know that it almost certainly comes from a company and consequently, you’re less likely to open it with any great speed or enthusiasm. You might even have it opened by someone else.

But when you receive a letter with a handwritten envelope and a good old fashioned stamp, you know it’s been written personally and with any luck there might just be a cheque in there!

So you open it…and read it. Job done.

So use this knowledge on your website!

Studies have shown that having photographs of people on the site will increase response. Unsurprisingly, images of attractive women on a website can increase response from men…and women too! I can vouch for this personally when I setup a call-to-action button on a client years ago who sold industrial castors - the response almost doubled!

But when I said “humanising” your web pages, I didn’t mean turning into a semi-porno website…

I meant things like adding cartoons, illustrations and even handwriting font (but judiciously as handwriting’s harder to read than say Times New Roman).

So, if you have a web page advertising handbags, you could do worse than show an image not only of the handbag, but add an image on a lady using it and write(you’ll need handwriting font) next to it - in say lipstick red for example, that the price has been slashed - or something like that.

Or add an image of a handwritten post-it note. The opportunities for making your website less “advert-like” and more “hand-written message ” are endless.

In exactly the same way (although it’s a little dated now) when you see an advert in the classified ads with a hand-drawn circle around it, your eye is naturally drawn to it.

The whole point is that the site contains handwritten messages or an image of the owner, or a little cartoon or something that not only makes it less boring but add personality to it.

Remember - people buy from people.

My own website contains illustrations and they helped my conversion rate.

The ultimate way to humanise a web page is to add a video clip on it, with someone demonstrating, endorsing or explaining the product or service on that particular page.

As always, test & measure & tweak for maximum response.

I know it’s a pain in the proverbial but this is the stuff that saves you money and can mean the difference between success and failure.

Meantime, if you think you’d benefit from some straight advice, just go to http://www.mklink.com/getstarted

’till next time,

Mike Knight. MKLINK Internet Marketing Tips

Is Your stuff being Nicked?

A Very Quick Note About Plagiarism.

I was going to write about the basics of article writing.

You know by now that its important to have regular fresh and original content on your website. It benefits your Google Rankings, attracts inbound links, boosts customer loyalty and generally adds credibility to your site.

But I stopped because I realised that a lot of people don’t even know that their stuff may well be nicked from their website.

But worse than that, if someone else takes your content and copies it blatantly on their website, then it can actually harm your Google rankings because you may be penalised by Google for “duplicate content”.

The upshot? It’s important to check if your content is getting ripped off.

Conversely, it goes without saying that you should never copy content without getting permission and crediting the author.

Getting sued for breach of copyright is becoming increasingly commonplace and very likely a simple “cease and desist” order won’t be enough anymore to placate the aggrieved party.

How to Check?

Of course, a quicky and dirty way of doing it is to highlight/select some random text on your site (which you believe is unique to you) and then paste it into Google’s search bar.

Put a “double quote” on either side of the text to force the search to yield only ‘exact’ matches and if any are returned, they should only come from your website…

This can get a bit repetitive and of course you have to remember to do it regularly.

The scary thing is when you have other people writing content for you.

Staff, outsourced content writers or even your web designer. It’s important to make sure that you’re not copying anyone and that no-one is copying you.

I wrote my own php script to automate this (with a cron job) but if you’re not comfortable doing that then something like Copyscape would probably be a good investment (http://www.copyscape.com/ )to free up your time and put your mind at rest.

More in depth stuff about article writing soon…

If you would like some training with your internet marketing, please visit http://www.mklink.com/getstarted today.

’till next time,

Mike Knight. MKLINK Internet Marketing Tips

Moving Web Pages - The Risks
Checkout http://www.mklink.com/getstarted for more internet marketing tips.

Precautions to take when moving and changing web pages – 301 Redirects.

Most webmasters / website owners put a lot of time, effort, money and worry into making sure their web pages feature as highly as possible in the search engine results for their main keywords and key phrases in the natural listings of Google i.e. the not paid-for results on the left hand side.

This is understandable since Google is going to deliver the vast majority of all your search engine referrals, and not having to pay for clicks and not having the worry of no clicks at all when you stop paying is surely the best situation.

If and when you do manage to get a good position in the search engine results, and assuming the conversion rate is good, the thought of moving pages, changing page names, and therefore ‘fixing what isn’t necessarily broke’ can bring a good deal of anxiety. There are risks involved with moving and changing pages i.e. combining pages into one, changing page names, removing some pages altogether and moving a whole website to different domains.

The risks exist because of the interconnected nature of the web, and the way the search engines compile and store information about web pages.

Potential risks include:

• Losing the value of the incoming links to pages that have been moved / removed / had the URL changed i.e. losing the positive effects of Google PageRank™.
• Losing search engine positioning for certain important key phrases and therefore losing visitors, enquirers and customers.
• Dropping out of the search engines effectively i.e. losing page 1 and page 2 positions.

Minimising the Risks

What steps should you take when making changes to the structures (rather than the content) of your web pages website? i.e. changing page names / directory structures, combining pages and removing pages…

Save a copy, make a map, record your vital stats

Before making any major changes to web pages it’s always worth downloading and saving a backup copy of the web site.

Also, you need to get a good idea of the structure of the website, and find out exactly what the size and scope of the job is.

Using a site mapping / link checking software can help you achieve this quickly and accurately e.g. Xenu’s Link Sleuth, Electrum’s PowerMapper.

If you’re worried about losing valuable incoming links and search engine positions for specific key phrases, you won’t know how big the effects on these will be unless you have a record of you site’s stats at the moment. Your website’s stats package should keep track of things anyway, but at the very least check your rankings (e.g. using IBP’s Ranking Report), check your Google PageRank™, and check your incoming links e.g. use the link: command in the search field at the top of the Yahoo home page followed by your full (http://www…) URL.

Have a Clear Plan

Study the information shown above, study your web pages, and have a good idea of exactly how you want to change things.

Expect a possible 1 to 3 months of lower rankings while the search engines re-crawl the incoming links.

Use 301 Re-Directs

The web works using certain protocols that are understood by software like search engines and browsers. HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) uses a series of response status codes which mean that more action of some sort is required (by a user agent) to complete a specific request.

These status codes are shown as numbers, each of which represents a specific type of problem / specific action required – there are 5 classes of responses that a HTTP client should recognise. For example, you may have clicked on a link i.e. looked for page, and found a ‘404’ error page – file not found.

This code means that a client could find the server, but couldn’t find the file you were looking for on it.

A 301 Redirect means that a file e.g. a web page has ‘Moved Permanently’ (the URL or page name has been changed or the page has been removed). The “3″ component of the number makes the browser go to another location (identified by you).

There are different ways to implement a redirect e.g. server side scripting, using mod_rewrite (e.g. with Apache), JavaScript or Meta Tag redirects.

JavaScript and Meta Tag Redirects

This refers to either using JavaScript in a page, or placing code in the Meta tags of a web page to redirect to another page. These methods are the least search engine friendly, i.e. the least friendly to page visitors (because they waste time), and are unlikely to allow you to retain your valuable PageRank™.

Using this method means that the headers and the pages have to load before the re-direct takes place (using just a HTTP header method means that the re-direct happens straight after the HTTP headers load). Wherever there’s a loading, then a refresh / redirect, there will at least be a flickering of the browser while the redirect takes place – this doesn’t look good.

Also, some browsers may have Javascript or META Refresh disabled, which is another reason not to use them. It is still commonplace to see JavaScript / META Refresh on websites e.g. where a message appears on page saying that the page has moved and you’ll be transferred there within a certain time – or click a certain link if this doesn’t happen automatically.

The Meta Refresh code actually goes in the head of a web page could look like this e.g.

<HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV=”refresh”
content+”0;URL=http://www.thenewpage.com/yournewpage.htm”>
<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW”>
<TITLE>The page has been moved to a new location<TITLE>
</HEAD>

N.B. In this particular example the search engine robots have been told not to read the page (to avoid the search engine ‘slap’).

JavaScript and Meta Tag Redirects have a history of being used by spammers, and therefore the search engines are very wary of them. Pages can easily optimised for certain key phrases and therefore attract visitors to click on them, only to be redirected to a page they didn’t want to visit.

For these and more reasons, it’s worth avoiding these methods of re-directing if at all possible.

Server Side Scripting

Whenever a search engine spider or web page visitor requests a page, the web server checks the .htaccess file for any particular instructions e.g. how to deal with errors, security issues etc. Search engine spiders follow the instructions that they find in this file, and will recognise as valid a response from the server in this way. Therfore the .htaccess file is a much safer and much more preferable place to put a 301 redirect i.e. a response that lets the search engine know that the page has moved permanently, and gives instructions of where the search engine can find the new / intended page.

So how is this actually achieved?

.htaccess file redirect – example for ‘static’ pages (e.g. html)

For example, download the .htaccess file (that’s generally stored in the root directory of your web pages), scroll down past the existing code (leaving a line space) then write a line of code like the following:

Redirect 301 /old/directory/youroldpage.htm http://www.yoursite/thenewpage.htm

The first half of the code gives the old page location (and doesn’t need the http://www part) and the second half gives the new page location.

N.B. If there is no .htaccess file you will need to create one using soemthing like notepad.

By saving this, uploading it to the web, and typing the old URL into the browser you’ll be able to see if it’s worked.

Redirect example for ‘dynamic’ pages

A dynamic page could be database generated e.g. a forum, ecommerce-shop etc. This will have a query string on the end of it e.g. http://www.yourdynamicsite/page?id=15

The following code could provide a 301 redirect in the case of these dynamic pages:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^id=15$
RewriteRule ^/thepage.php$ http://www.yourdynamicsite.com/thenewpagename.htm? [L,R=301].

Using mod_rewrite

Apache web servers have a mod_rewrite engine (which should first be made active on the web server) that allows all manner of URL manipulation e.g. for the server (httpd.conf) and in directories (using a .htaccess file). This is powerful and flexible way for administrators to e.g. to provide 301 re-directs.

The Reality

Although the server side .htaccess file method is the safest and generally best way to use 301 redirects and ensure that your website doesn’t lose precious ranking, momentum and PageRank™, it’s only natural to expect some temporary disruption bearing in mind the complicated and interconnected nature of the web.

As mentioned earlier in this article, it may even take a couple of months in many cases for the search engine robots to get a full picture of the site and its incoming links after the introduction of the 301 redirects.

This is infinitely better however than losing all PageRank™ and getting on the wrong side of the search engines which could result from other methods.

Want more Tips? Visit http://www.mklink.com/getstarted/

’till Next Time,
Mike Knight. MKLINK Internet Marketing Tips

Comment:

Hi Mike

It didn’t work but I discovered why.  You said add this ‘Redirect 301
/old/directory/youroldpage.htm http://www.yoursite/thenewpage.htm’ which
didn’t work but I found another site that said add this ‘Redirect 301
/youroldpage.htm http://www.yoursite/thenewpage.htm’ which does
work…at least for mine.  It seems it does not need the directory if
the files are on the root, just the file name.

Hope this is helpful

Sally