Posts tagged Search Engine Optimisation

Just reading an article about the link building mindset.
It lists 13 valuable points about the mindset to start a link building campaign:
1. Know your marketplace
2. Obsess about your customers
3. Understand the language that your customers use – this was a big one for when i decided to use cybergoth as a keyword for Hairfreax, and also added my site to any sites that came up with that keyword!
4. Be wary of automation – on a small scale these are ok, but go for a personal letter/email/phone call to key websites.
5. Be generous with your outbound links – link back you meanies!
6. Watch out for great content, no matter where it comes from – its all about the content baby
7. Get your message out
8. Incorporate writing into your daily routine
9. Obsess about quality – massive quantity might suggest to search engines you are a spam site.
11. Monitor your results – you can do this quiet easily with Google analytics
12. Anticipate – be prepared for the unexpected
13. Be relentless and determined

The most important point for me is point three:

3. Understand the language that your customers use

Keywords are just ‘the words people use when they search’. It goes without saying that using keywords is fundamental to successful link building: there is nothing better than getting keyword rich links coming back to your site.

Keyword rich links are easy when you’re buying directory listings or text link ads, or indeed when you have relationships with other sites and can ask them to link to you using your chosen keyword phrases.

But there are other ways to get keyword rich backlinks. When people link, they often use the name of a product, a publication or the title of an article or blog post, as the linking text. So use keywords wherever you can in names and titles – it’s a great way to influence the words people use when they link.

Most customers are not pioneers within your industry so they might not really know the service or product they want and what to search for. I find this a lot when searching for code snippets, half the time I know the effect I need but not what to call it!
I knew that as the cybergoth sub genre was synonymous with fantastical hair extensions, this keyword was appropriate to build links with for my Hairfreax Hair Extensions site. I sometimes wonder if the keyword ebay design which so many companies bid for has a high search volume.

Lets let SEO Book tell us by using The SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool!

-203 searches on average per month for ebay design!

According to my Adwords account, low search engine volume and high advertiser competition! I wonder how many companies are hitting the wrong keywords because they do not know their customer? Have they ever bothered to find out? Can they find out? A lot of research needs to be done on this one I think! So what are customers looking for ebay design really searching for?