[Plasterer]

Hi guys,

Not sure if I qualify to be on here as I'm not a developer or designer or anything. I'm just a plasterer.

So hope you can help. I have had a site built and it's amazing, I really like it. The designer said he has put some seo in the site but quoted me a monthly fee to google it.

I just can't afford it. He mentioned something about links, so I did a bit of research and ended up buying a 1000 links.

I was on page 2 now I am on page 3 at the bottom. I now know that this is it the way to do things. Have I been penalised?

I am about to start writing articles and submitting them. I think I know how to include "anchor text" but just wanted a bit of help in how to do it so I benefit.

I also want to build links for related sites to do with plastering. If I may ask how do I identify what sites I should approach to get links. What's in it for them, I'm just a small local firm.

Finally has buying these stupid links caused me a problem? I just don't know what I'm doing.

Hope you can help.

Thanks,

S

[roothost]

Hi, and welcome.

Firstly, yes buying links can cause you problems, especially if they are irrelevant random links.

Submitting articles is a great idea, the only problem from an SEO point of view is that most forums/blogs operate a 'nofollow' rule on their outgoing links. This means that when the search engine spiders come to these links they are not allowed (!) to follow them, thus passing no pagerank value to the external site (yours in this case). It does, however, help increasing your clickthrough rate from inquisitive humans simply clicking on the link, so I would still say go for it!

Google likes content, and it loves unique content. By linking to related sites this can help show google that your site is of relevance and carries useful information and they will reward you for this.

The 2011 way to get noticed is social media. Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc. Set up these accounts and work them - work them hard! I am not necessarily saying spam with loads of random keywords as that will be a sure fire way to lose face and ranking. Be clever, post about anything related to your industry, news, events etc.

Do we have a link to your site btw?

[Plasterer]

Hi thanks for your reply, afraid I'm no good with social media, wouldn't know where to start!

I see what your saying with the articles, may I ask, if I just post them on my blog will google pick then up and as a result increase my position?

Thanks,

L

[roothost]

Plasterer, on 26 October 2011 - 10:57 AM, said:

Hi thanks for your reply, afraid I'm no good with social media, wouldn't know where to start!

I see what your saying with the articles, may I ask, if I just post them on my blog will google pick then up and as a result increase my position?

Thanks,

L

The short answer is yes. The long answer is it depends what blog setup you have (wordpress, blogger etc), what rss feeds you have setup, if any, how are your sitemaps defined? Do you use descriptive permalinks etc.

Social media, start with twitter, its easy to use and is a great source fro driving traffic to a site/blog.

[Phil Comforthost]

Hi Plasterer,

I know all this stuff can seem a bit intimidating if you a completely new to it but, as mentioned above, Twitter and Facebook are quite easy to use once you know how. They have 'help' sections with questions and answers on how to do everything, I recommend checking them out.

The idea with these social networks is that if you're site is worth a look, then once you tell people about it then they might tell others, and everytime someone posts a link on there to your site then thats a new backlink so the social network takes over and your message goes further.

[Black Nova Designs.co.uk]

Too second that, Twitter, Facebook and Google+ are a great way to increase your ranking, and also creates a nice easy place to connect more users. Also other media networks can be a great help, such as Youtube and linkedin for another audience. There is alot of different marketing areas.

The main ones we use for our ranking are:

Twitter
Facebook
Stumble
Youtube
Digg
LinkedIN

But the key thing to keep away from is the SEO tools, that give you so many vistors for every click you make on one of their ads.
This is false traffic in such a way, as who says they are actually "visiting" your site so to speak, are they actually staying on the site and looking across the site and not just clicking the link and closing the webpage back down, to increase their traffic themselves. Unless you have a traffic monitor, Analytics or such a program to see if they are browsing correctly. SEO is best to be done by word of mouth and getting advertisements out.

Good ideas are to, add your site to forum signatures, add advertisements to forums where you are allowed, Spread the word by mouth, Offer something on your website that really attracts users and also looking for sponsors, talk to other companies and take on as much infomation as possible. Sitemaps can be also be a great way to get page rank up, and help your bounce rate improve.

[a1digitalmedia]

When building links for your website you want them coming from relevant sources related to your niche with the keywords in the anchor text of your link. If you just have lots and lots of links coming from random places, Google doesn't understand anymore about what your website is about. Say all your links were coming from Gardening websites, Google is going to assume your website is about gardening.

Your right to start writing articles but always make sure they are relevant to your targeted website and include keywords you are optimising for in the text with a ratio of around 3-5%.

[rallport]

a1digitalmedia, on 01 December 2011 - 04:03 PM, said:

Your right to start writing articles but always make sure they are relevant to your targeted website and include keywords you are optimising for in the text with a ratio of around 3-5%.

Give me a break. We're in 2011, close to 2012 and people are still talking about keyword density.

[Jason Dexter]

a1digitalmedia, on 01 December 2011 - 04:03 PM, said:

Your right to start writing articles but always make sure they are relevant to your targeted website and include keywords you are optimising for in the text with a ratio of around 3-5%.

Whatever happened to writing an interesting, informative, useful and insightful article that gets linked to as opposed to a spun, spammy as **** article which languishes on a high OBL article website.

[opensesame]

First off don't buy links, I think matey has learnt his lesson there, the reason you have been penalised is because its un-natural link building, you get 1 link a month for 3 years and all of a sudden 1000 links in a day Google will see something dodge has gone on there.

You should look into guest blogging, you write an article 400 words long and it goes up for grabs to blogs, which would like to use it. In return they give you a followed anchor text link to your website.

Smashing magazine does this and mashable to name a few (although hard to get on those sites) but you can join myblogguest and find smaller blogs to guest post on, and it does work, I promise

[apollo-articles]

Tips for links:

- Make it a continual process
- Get links from domains which match your site ie. sites ending in .co.uk
- Don't waste your time posting on blogs/squidoo all day long, check out
some decent services.
- Learn about Google PR (remember this is done on a page basis not site)
the higher the PR link the better.
- Syndicate your content for the best links
- If you want to rank understand you will need backlinks


Unproven rumours
- You need links from similar pages i.e. a link from a car site for
a website about cars - This isn't true

- Buying links will only cause trouble
Again untrue you just need the right ones!

- .EDU/.Gov/.ac.uk links are better
Nope, untrue they are only better since generally
they are well built sites with a high PR there domain
extension has nothing to do with it.

- You should only build "follow" links
No, make it natural build nofollow links as well

- Social media
Personally, I've found social media as a very poor
way to increase my rank.

Tips for general SEO
1)
Most website designers don't really do SEO since it's outside
what your paying them for.

You need to focus on "keywords" (phrases people Google) check out:
https://adwords.goog...EAS#search.none

(You will need a gmail account to sign in).

Tick the "exact match" box on the left hand side and enter a phrase
it will tell you how many searches are performed a month, choose
one keyword per page and make sure it's in your url, title, description
and keyword tags, in header tags, image name/alt image, anchor text,
bolded, italic and underlined.

And when building backlinks get the anchor text as the keyword which you
want to rank for.

Hope that helps and remember the only way you will find it if something
works or not is personally testing it.

2)
Get your main keyword in your domain address! This is a mega benefit in seo!

3)
The older your domain the better you'll rank.

4)
The more pages/content the more your site will be found.

5)
Make sure your host is based in the UK!

6)
Make sure your domain address ends in .co.uk

7)
Post your site here for more suggestions!

Not everyone will agree with what I've said but it all comes from
personal testing, a lot of people "follow the crowd" but never
test to see what actually works.

Google is forever evolving and the truth is no one really full knows
the algorthym so we must test.

Sam

This post has been edited by apollo-articles: 16 December 2011 - 10:54 AM

[RJG Designing]

great post above! thanks.

[McGarryMA]

My 2p's

Once you've decided on your keyword search criteria, enter it into google and see who the top 3-5 websites are. Then search for alexa.com... they can show you what these top ranked websites have been up to ie. where their backlinks are coming from, traffic sources and page clicks etc..

Good Luck

[oakleaves]

Instead of trying to bend the rules and outsmart Google, you should try and think along the lines of a search engine.

The job of a search engine is to present you with what it thinks is the article / site you were looking for.

By artificially creating backlinks etc what site owners are doing is warping the results so that they can come to the top, and in my opinion this is diluting the quality of the search results.

That is why Google keep looking at their algorythms so that they truely do serve you want you wanted, not a site that has got there by being 'pimped out'.

That being the case, you need to study what people are searching for and make sure your site is offering this - and make it obvious to the search engines that your site is offering exactly the thing that the person is searching for (ie correct title tag, meta description, h1's, well thought out unique content)

Forget about the 'meta keyword' tag. Avoid keyword stuffing.

Quality content will always win in the long-run.

[jamesosix]

Lots of talk about page rank and yet not many truly understand it. Personally for a site as localised as yours I wouldn't worry about trying to increase its page rank yet. In my experience page rank and serp (search engine position rank) have no connection. I have sites on the first page of google with 0 page rank for a good broad term.

I am honestly surprised nobody has mentioned long tail localised seo.

This is basically when somebody goes to find a plasterer, they dont just search for "plasterer" they (the majority of time) search for something like "plasterer cardiff" or wherever. Make sure your content and seo is optimised for these types of searches. You will gain a much better serp.

Also, I am sure I dont need to tell you the dangers of buying those mass links.

If you want to link build i suggest finding blogs that relate to your business (for example home decorating etc) blogs and buy a link on their sites. This is where you will need to have a rough idea of how much a link will cost you, based on that blogs page rank and serp.

If you need any more help it would help us by having a look at your site so we can better advise.

Good luck

edit:
Just read the above and i personally wouldnt ignore meta keywords, as there is taalk that google still use it (just not for indexing purposes) and other smaller search engines still use it, so whilst i wouldnt waste a great deal of time worrying about it, i also wouldnt ignore it.

This post has been edited by jamesosix: 22 January 2012 - 07:59 PM

[karanwalia]

Purchasing links would do more harm than good to your website.

Just concentrate on doing the basic SEO of your website, and do it yourself. No one knows your website more than you. So, search for basic SEO tutorials on Internet, and go ahead with it.

Good luck

[EpicWebs]

From personal experience we have learnt that if you write a really useful article that people will share, they do the back linking for you.

Good luck.

[Glowbridge]

Make a site that humans can navigate and might want to actually read/share/come back to. The rest will take care of itself.

[bOnline]

Hi Plasterer,

Firstly, well done on getting your new site up and running.

As opensesame says Guest Blogging could be a great way for you to get your name out there and get quality links to your site - you should sign up at http://myblogguest.com/ and http://www.bloggerlinkup.com/ both these sites will allow you to signal you're areas of expertise and present guest blogging opportunities to you on a regular basis.

On the SEO and Social Media front, we have lots of articles on our site which will help with SEO basics and getting started with Twitter

Hope this helps you somewhat as it can be quite daunting to get everything going.

[Bomb]