How search engines evaluate links is an important part toconsider when it comes to building quality links for a website. Typically asearch engine will give more value to links from pages with a higher PageRank. Thisprocess of determining valuable links has gotten more refined with the introductionof two new factors, relevance and authority.

Relevance

Relevance in simple terms is how relevant your website is tothe users query. This means that when users search for specific websites, theywill get related websites to their words typed in the search box. What doesthis mean for a marketer? It means that getting links from related websites isimportant.  If the keywords for a websiteare “used cars Miami”,that website should focus on getting links from sites that will support thosekeywords. A link from a car review website and a City of Miami website will be sufficient as far asrelevance is concerned. Although relevance deals with relating links, anotherimportant aspect is the considering which websites those links are from. Thisis where authority comes into the equation.

Authority

Website authority concept is the value the website has tothe community. To clarify, authoritative, or trusted, websites are those whospecialize on a specific topic. In continuation of the above example, a link fromthe City of Miami website would be authoritativeenough to support that our website is in fact doing business in Miami. The used cars partwould need to be supported by a website dealing with car reviews. Authoritativewebsites are not easily found and links from these sites are not easilyacquired. If a website gives out too many links from a single page and theselinks go to all kinds of different websites, chances are that site is notauthoritative. When building quality links, focus on building back linksfrom websites related to your own website. PageRank is first indication of howvaluable that website is, or how authoritative it is. Authority and relevancego hand in hand as you want link from websites that are related to yours andare authoritative. 

When building quality links, focus on building back links from websites related to your own website. PageRank is first indication of how valuable that website is, or how authoritative it is. Authority and relevance go hand in hand as you want link from websites that are related to yours and are authoritative.

About Linking In Simple Terms

To keep it as simple as possible, SEO Link Building is simply the internets’ way of networking websites to each other that are of close similarity and/or of close relevance. Link Building is an SEO must. I will list below 3 commonly used approaches to link building.

Asking For A Link

Asking for a link is a direct approach in which you ask another publisher to include your link on their website. This approach is for sites that are of the same topic or closely related and possibly have an ongoing business relationship. As an example, lets’ say you are an exhibitor at a hardware trade show and are a manufacturer of plastic containers for organizing/storing items aka Store-All Containers, Inc. The majority of customers or prospects that will visit you at this show are current buyers, or new buyers that will meet you for the first time.  Both of them are considered closely related to the topic/industry and as a result are relevant to Store Alls’ business. These links will be considered to have authority and search engines would consider these links to be of utmost important in determining the degree of trust that the site has.

Links From Quality Directories

In this method, the publisher would list the sites description and URL in a chosen directory. There are directories that are free and ones that are fee based, but most important is that they should be considered by search engines to be of high quality. Obtaining links from quality directories can be of significant value to the link building process, but each directory must be scrutinized for quality classification. In doing so, directories should be sorted by A) Sustainable links; B) Links That May Not Be Sustainable and C) Do Not Pass Link Juice. The first is of most importance as it is considered to pass on link juice for a foreseeable future while the other two are quite limited. Detecting a directory classification is a process that must be done when choosing directories.

Content Based Link Building

In this method, the overall idea is to build out great content that others would want to link to. This is broken down six ways. A) Creating A Rich Resource Site: A site that provides great resources that would be of particular interest to others in a given industry. B) Rifle Shot Content: Create a single great article or few articles that would attract allot of interest/attention. C) Content Syndication: Post content on other sites such as article specific sites. The content would link back to the publishers’ site via URL or by targeted anchor text. D) Social Media Campaigns: Enables publishers to post articles about topics that relate to very competitive keywords and are optimized by using competitive keywords in the title of the article itself. Others are bookmarking sites which enable users to mark pages on the web that can be retrieved easily. E) Links From Social Media Profiles: Enables publishers to link back to their own sites which intern produces link juice. F)  Blogging: Creating a blog that would interest others in a particular industry.

Wordpress has announced a Twitter Widget for the Wordpress blog. You can read about it here….

http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2009/03/26/twitter-widget

Of course, we will add it to this blog as well, as we have on www.searchwizmarketing.com and www.webcast1.com.

Twitter is growing rapidly in popularity and usefulness in marketing strategies. Twitter is a micro blogging platform which addresses the question of “What are you doing now?”

I’m actually going to post there now that I am posting this Twitter module here….

It is said in the travel business word of mouth is by far the best form of advertisement. The internet has now become the biggest sounding board for your customers so reputation management needs to be an important part of the process to any travel search marketing campaign.

With internet travel scams being so prevalent these days it is not uncommon for a customer to look up your company name before choosing to stay with or do business with you. Therefore it is important to know where to look for customer reviews and make every effort to try and solve any customer service issues.

Unfortunately it takes just one or two disgruntled customer reviews to give your company a bad internet presence. If the website they are writing the review on is popular enough, the review will show when your company name is searched for. Many companies in response to this have taken to suing customers for slander and while that is an option it is a much more costly option and can result in more negative press for your travel company.

Slander can also be difficult to prove as you need to convince a judge that your disgruntled customer is not telling the truth about your company. It is better to try and respond and help solve the customer’s problem. Many of these review websites offer rebuttal sections for companies to tell their side of the story as well as the chance to offer the customer some kind of resolution. There are several consumer sounding boards but I have listed the most popular below.

General Travel Review Websites

• www.tripadvisor.com
• www.travelpost.com
• www.mytravelguide.com
• www.realtravel.com
• www.hotels.com
• www.squaremouth.com
• www.viewpoints.com
• www.bootsnall.com
• www.yelp.com
• www.bbb.com

City Guides with Hotel and Service Provider Reviews

• www.fortlauderdaleflorida.travel
• www.neworleansvacation.travel
• www.denverco.travel
• www.LosAngelesCA.travel
• www.DaytonaBeachFL.travel
• www.NewYorkNewYork.travel
• www.AspenColorado.travel
• www.BreckenridgeCO.travel
• www.ColoradoSpringsColorado.travel
• www.VailColorado.travel
• www.SummitCounty.travel

So make sure to watch these websites often and keep your customers happy. For more information and for professional help with your search marketing campaign please visit www.searchwizmarketing.com

Search market giant Google has announced this morning that it has launched a new product called Google Voice Google Voice is a free service that is similar to Call Wave that gives you one number for all your phones, voicemail that is easy as email, and many enhanced calling features like call blocking and screening, voicemail transcripts, call conferencing and free international calls. While Google voice is not currently available to the public you can get an invitation sent to you via email when it becomes available by going to https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite. There are many other cool features as well for more information about Google Voice go to http://www.google.com/voice/about

Twitter is not the only micro-blogging platform anymore. Here comes one of many similar websites….SPNbabble is a micro-blogging service that enables you to share comments, tips, and insights with friends and colleagues here as well as on Twitter, Friendfeed, Plurk, Tumblr and Facebook. Register today. http://spnbabble.sitepronews.com/

Twitter is no longer the only 140 character micro-blogging platform. SiteProNews has announded a twitter compatible clone: http://spnbabble.sitepronews.com which can broadcast on Facebook and Twitter at the same time.

It appears, according to a UStream broadcast I viewed last night, that the SMS based micro-blogging platform is taking over as the leading internet social networking phenomenon, so be on the lookout for many Twitter-like websites in the near future.

Starting today, Google is deploying a new technology that can better understand associations and concepts related to search terms. This is of particular interest to us because it is a change to the Google algorithm, please see this post on the official Google blog for details. Also of note is that starting today, whenever you type a search query of more than three words, Google will give you an expanded “snippet” (the first few lines of text that Google displays the site description).

Initially, I wrote this first post: Sometimes it pays to read those newsletters that come from various companies. A link on Jayde.com’s newsletter reveals a great free SEO and website stats tool. The “Link Popularity” tab will return instant results which eliminates the need to look up these findings manually…. Check it out here: http://www.getip.com But then, I double checked the stats against the tool I use regularly, Quirk’s Search Status for Firefox which can be found here, or at Firefox Extensions. Comparing the two, or conducting a manual check for backlinks indicates a flaw in the getip.com reporting. The Google PageRank and Alexa Rank seem to be correct, but the backlinks are way off compared to SearchStatus. I recommend the Search Status extension for Firefox, but I’m going to use the getip.com site for other things as well. Maybe it was just a temporary glitch. Too bad, I really thought I was on to something! What’s your opinion?

Initially, I wrote this first post: Sometimes it pays to read those newsletters that come from various companies. A link on Jayde.com’s newsletter reveals a great free SEO and website stats tool. The “Link Popularity” tab will return instant results which eliminates the need to look up these findings manually…. Check it out here: http://www.getip.com But then, I double checked the stats against the tool I use regularly, Quirk’s Search Status for Firefox which can be found here, or at Firefox Extensions. Comparing the two, or conducting a manual check for backlinks indicates a flaw in the getip.com reporting. The Google PageRank and Alexa Rank seem to be correct, but the backlinks are way off compared to SearchStatus. I recommend the Search Status extension for Firefox, but I’m going to use the getip.com site for other things as well. Maybe it was just a temporary glitch. Too bad, I really thought I was on to something! What’s your opinion?