Wouldn’t it be great if people who came to your site WANTED to show off a link back to your site?  There are plenty of company’s out there enticing people to do just that.  Let’s take a look at a few:

Kiva – People rave about Kiva and are proud to place a big, colorful, ad about Kiva on their websites.  Why?  Because they feel great about donating to Kiva and want to publicize their generosity. 

Bruce Clay – Bruce Clay has hundreds of backlinks from relevant, related, SEO sites.  Why?  Because Bruce Clay set the standards for SEO and then allowed people to boast their Bruce Clay seal of approval on their websites.

eZine Articles – There are hundreds of content writers promoting the link to eZine Articles on their websites.  Why?  Because eZine articles offers authors a collection of “expert author” labels that increase an author’s credibility.

In each case, the company’s have created a demand for their logo by devising a program that increases the website owner’s credibility.  In order for someone to WANT to add your link to their page, they’ve got to WANT to show off their affiliation.  When an affiliate with you boosts another person or business’ credibility, they are happy to promote your link!

Also, each of these sites makes it easy for others to add the link. They provide a selection of images and the ready-made HTML code so that it can be easily placed right on the website.   

How can you incorporate these ideas on your site and start building your backlinks?

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Many people have never heard of Google Base – and if they have, aren’t really sure what it does.  This tool, found by logging into your Google profile and clicking on “Base”, allows you to upload all of your content directly into a Google information database. 

Google Base gives you full control over your content with its WYSIWYG editor.  Unlike many other places where you can distribute content, Google Base allows for unlimited use of anchor text, images, formatting, and even offers stats. 

Still, the impact of Google Base is elusive… I’m experimenting with it by posting some articles and press releases on it – mostly for the anchor text, but also to see if Base drives any traffic.  There have been a few hits on the content, but nothing to get excited about. 

I think where Base will really shine is for home shopping or car shopping or types of shopping where products have lots of attributes.  For example, you could use Google to find all 4 bedroom houses with a pool and a 3 car garage in San Diego – rather than going just to one site’s MLS listing.  Same with cars – search for all 2004 blue BMW 325i’s within 100 miles of your house instead of going to one site and viewing their listings. 

This is a hunch – anyone else have any personal experiences or theories about the direction of Base?  Leave a comment and share!

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If your business is one that serves the local community rather than the entire US or world, you may wonder if a lot of the money spent on search engine optimization will be wasted.  Not at all!  There are lots of ways to optimize for local search. 

This is mainly accomplished by adding city, state, or neighborhood names to your keywords, for example “Atlanta search engine optimization.”  Another small thing you can do is to add your full address to the footer of your website template so that it appears on every page of your website. 

Adding your listing to Google Maps through the Google Local Business Center is another way to obtain high rankings in local markets.  If you’ve ever done a search and seen a map image with listings to the right of it on the top of the search results, then you’ve seen the impact that Google Maps can have. 

Google has also teamed up with coupon giant ‘ValPak’ to offer localized coupons for those listed in Google Maps. By adding setting up coupons with Google for your customers, your listing to the right of the Google Map will have a link labeled “coupons” below it. 

Localizing search terms can increase your 1^st page visibility

Even if you do serve more than the local market, lots of people may be searching for with local keywords attached.  For very competitive industries and terms, this can greatly increase your number of first page listings.

We are an Atlanta search engine optimization company and although we work with businesses throughout the US and around the world, we also optimize for local search which and hold first page rankings for the terms Atlanta search engine optimization and Atlanta SEO. 

So give it a try - localize!

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There are lots of SEO Tools out there to help you gain perspective of your website from a search engine’s point of view. Perhaps the most fun and intriguing are those that allow you to learn more about your competitor’s SEO strategy.

Get ready to spend a few hours going down this rabbit hole… here are 5 of our top picks for tools that reveal SEO insight on your competitors:

Spy Fu:

Find out who’s paying what for online advertising among your competitors. Spy Fu is the follow up to Googspy.com and offers tons of features. Because SpyFu is currently in Beta, some of the data may be a few months behind, but incredibly insightful nonetheless.

Cost: Free

Niche Watch

Before you go spying on your competition, you have to know who they are. Niche Watch gives you a quick overview of the top 20 sites you must compete with to take the top spots. You’ll also get an overview for each competitor about of the number of backlinks to the page, backlinks to the domain, on-page keyword count, number of pages indexed in Google, and more.

Cost: Free

SEO SpyGlass

Shows you at a glance all the techniques your competitors are using to gain a foothold in the search engine rakings. By analyzing their tactics, you can formulate an optimization strategy that’s a step ahead.

Cost: $87 for a professional license

NeboWeb Search Engine ScoreCard

This nifty little tool allows you to size yourself up next to your competitors. Compare page rank, inbound links, on-page optimization factors, and ranking position for keywords in Yahoo, Google, MSN, and AOL. This tool doesn’t offer too much information you can take action on, but shows how you stack up to the competition.

Cost: Free

The Way Back Machine

There is something very rewarding about looking back on your competitors websites over the years. You’ll see how their websites have changed and gain insight about how their strategy has changed over the years as well.

Cost: Free

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Many of our customers get confused about the term “Off-page Optimization.” The fact that there is still a great deal of confusion about this topic motivates us to publish more information about off page SEO so that more and more small business owners and web developers can be better at SEO and enjoy its benefits.

So What is Off-Page Optimization & Why Do We Need It?

Off-page optimization refers to links from other websites that point to your site. For a site to achieve high search engine results (10-1 positions) search engines must regard yours as an “authority” website.

The term “authority” in SEO refers to links from outside pages (other websites) that point to yours. Not every type of link carries the same weight though. The more inter-connected your links are with websites that relate to your industry, your interests, your business, and your topics, the more authority you have from a search engine’s perspective.

A critical error that many make is thinking that off-page optimization means simply exchanging links with other websites (link exchange), but link exchange is much less valuable than it once was. Search engines consider one-way in-bound links much more significant than the reciprocal links gained in a link exchange agreement.  Search engines are smart and have a technique to uncover reciprocal linking and don’t assign these links as much value as a one-way link.

The interconnection or linkage with other websites in this case means websites linking to your site without a specific request to back-link (or link back). These links are non- reciprocal.  This hints to the search engines that your page must offer some real value, because another site owner felt compelled enough to share it with his or her audience without getting anything in return.

The art of attracting one-way inbound links is the topic of our next discussion. In brief, you can buy links, rent links, or bait for links. Generally however, your website must provide high value in order for other website owners to feel compelled to link to your pages. When your content is great, the link building task will be much easier.

There’s a debate over which is more important: on-page or off-page optimization. The answer: you can’t have one without another

Hopefully explains the concept and the value of off-page optimization. If not, check out our “WHAT IS SEO?” section for more details or drop us a line via the CONTACT FORM.

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