Search Engine Optimisation Tips - Part 4

Off-Site Optimization - Link Building

Are many articles on the Internet about links building and what to avoid and what to do...

I just want to point out that Google treats links as appreciation of your site from others and it gives value to each inbound link that you get.
More value, the better, so a good source to get valuable  links would be websites with high PageRank and less outbound links,because value of a link is direct proportional with page PR and inverse proportional with number of external links that that page has.

On the other hand, quantity matters, even if you get links from Sites with low PR and lots of external links, you still get some value for your links and, most important, these Sites could evolve in the future and get higher PR.

How to get links?

If your Site is new, a good source for links could be link-exchange. Software Packages like SEO Powersuite offers  powerful tools to get started and manage your link-exchange campaign.
Link Assistant let you find link partners, sends customized emails, tracks  status and scans their websites to find your links. Link Assistant is a very useful tool to control your link building campaign.

Of course, you should ask all your friends and family to posts ONE WAY links on their sites. ONE WAY links are powerful. If you can get SITE LINKS - links posted on each page of a website - they are more powerful, if not at least bargain for a link on a main landing page - like HOME PAGE.

A pretty easy way of getting valuable links is commenting on BLOGS - especially blogs that are posting DO FOLLOW links. Search in Google for "Do Follow Blogs" and you will get a list of them.
Important thing when commenting on Blogs is to read the article first and get a response that is relevant and not SPAMMY.
If you SPAM your comment will be probably deleted by BLOG Admin/Moderator.
Try to be reasonable first time....

Many people are saying that WEB Directories are DEAD... I wouldn't say so, it still important to get your Site enlisted to the major ones and then if you have time and patient send your sites to more directories. A manual submission is preferred, or at least a smart semi-automatic.

I would recommend you to submit your Site to DMOZ and any directory that you find and has a page rank higher than 6. Many directory lists could be found just searching Google.

Witting articles is a good source of links and a good way of growing content. Articles could be sent to Article Directories, published on your on Site Blog, posted on external blogs, other blogs.
Just remember, from our experiments - Blogspot and WordPress pages are indexed each 5-15min. It's a good spot to publish something cool/explosive/viral....you name it.

Don't forget about social media - a strong presence in social media will give you links and visitors.
Social media sites are extremely valuable because they are free to join and have high PR. It takes few minutes to join a social media site and set up a page that contains a link to your website. Are sooo many, start with Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Digg.
Search "list of social media sites" in Google and find a huge number of Social Media Sites not mentioned here.

These are only 'the classical' way of getting links.
More details are coming soon.

What should you use as links title?

Of course links are valuable, but are more valuable if are using as title your most marketable keywords. Use your keywords as title for these links, vary them to get similar amounts of links for each and don't forget about image links. Use ALT attribute to key in your keywords.

Another important step in link-building is to scan your competition and analyze what links they have, which are more valuable and how did they  advance in SERP (Search Engine Results Page).
You could do it using Yahoo linkdomain search operator or you can expand this analysis using professional software - SEO SpyGlass  - it offers a range of professional reports that surgically analyze your competitors pages and their most powerful links. Get links from same source and you could get in front of them, in SERP.

That's about it, for today.

Cheers,
Nick
 

Search Engine Optimisation Tips - Part 3

On-Site Optimization
  
Content matters, but few things have an immediate, positive effect upon your Site, so add them in your TO DO LIST of ON-SITE Optimization.

Write your Meta(s) - Meta Title and Meta Description are the most important ones - for people and for Google bot.

Meta Title is the blue underlined text displayed in the search results page for each site. 

Meta Description is the black text that usually follows, underneath the title.

Both represent the essence of your business, you have less than 100 characters to summarize your activity in your title and a bit more than that in your meta description.
 
They both need to contain your most valuable keywords, written in a human-friendly and Google-friendly way.

Once you have done this, could be enough to get your site listed in Top 100. Of course is not enough to be in Top 100 and everybody wants to be in Top 10.

If you want to play tough, on-site optimization could be applied further and you should optimize your:

• meta keywords - add more keywords
• body text - stuffed with your most marketable keywords, do not over-do it
• H1 Headings - good place for a strong keyword
• bold text - another nice place for few more strong keywords
• anchor text -add your most valuable keys
• image alt texts - first thing, all images should have ALT text; secondly, they should be stuffed with keywords - smartly put - human readable and BOT friendly
• Don't Forget - Site Load Time Matters - if you have a huge, highly optimized Site, which is very slow - it will not DO well - speed matters a lot and keep an eye on it.

 If you need software help to DO all these ON-SITE OPTIMIZATION stuff, WEBSITE Auditor is a nice software, that lets you analyze and export pretty useful reports.


You can try it for free from here.
 

For more  info about ON-SITE OPTIMIZATION - drop us an email at: info@nicks-software.com

Cheers,
Nick 

  

Asus Transformer - the new rising IPAD killer

The guys from ASUS got it perfectly right, when they design and released the Asus Transformer.

 

They got it right with the design and smart combination between a tablet, a good keyboard and docking station...and 16 hours combined battery life. You have to go to sleep before you finished the battery, yes kidding, but still impressive.

On top of that they got it right with the price (not in Australia - where everything seems to be more expensive without any reasons).
Buying from a $400+ for a great tablet is awesome.


Deals of ~550$ for tablet and keyboard are quite common - I could not resist and I ordered one.
It looks so perfect and the Android 3.1 is really promising and is Open Source.

Open Source is a magic word that will bury in the "I" and the "W". 

After a horrid decade of dominance of "W" and Microsoft who the heck needs the rise of the "I" or read it Apple.
Enclosed, proprietary OSes, over-praised hardware arrogant CEOs.



Enough about 'others', Asus Transformer has:

• NVIDIA® Tegra™ 2 1.0GHz dual-core CPU for excellent multitasking & 1080p video playback
• Android 3.0 Honeycomb O.S. with Adobe® Flash® 10.2 support*²
• Full QWERTY keyboard, touchpad input with Polaris® Office® for mobile productivity
• 16*¹ hours long battery life for all day computing with docking station
• Brilliant IPS panel with ultra-wide 178⁰ viewing angle made from scratch resistant and super tough glass
• One year of Unlimited ASUS WebStorage, two USB ports, SD and Micro SD card readers for easy sharing & storage expendability
• 3D stereo with max bass response with SRS premium sound

It has enough power under the hood to play nice games and do real multi-tasking.


But the thing that really makes me happy is the KEYBOARD and TWO in total SD plus Micro SD slots and TWO USBs. That's quite amazing and transforms ASUS TRANSFORMER in a mini-laptop, because I believe it is already more powerful than a Net book.

It should have had also a mini-laser-projector sticking out from somewhere and then would have been the most powerful entertainment and business tool.
See, the laser-projectors are still not on the manufacturers agenda, but I assume will enter soon, once the camera(s) (face and rear) will be something common...


Enough dreaming, what about apps - good support, so far, from Android Market, but still a bit disappointed because nobody thought that would be useful to group apps per compatibilities - apps good for Android Phones and Android good for Android Tablets....not talking about a more detailed split per tablet name/type.....

Anyway, stock apps are good enough to cover all the immediate necessities.... beyond that EXPLORE.



I could say already, after a week, that games rules and office and CAD still suck, but we are watching and .....developing apps to make the experience more pleasant.

I was impressed with its stock BROWSER - responsiveness and hot buttons - when you press your thumb near any age - very handy for quick navigation.

A big disappointment was the Google's Honeycomb developers decision to eliminate the posibility of creating......folders.......very strange....but you can find plenty of free apps on the Markets that could do that (I'm using Apps Organizer).

Anyway it looked awkward when I started to fill up my ALL 5 DESKTOPS with downloaded APP's ICONS without a real possibility to group them in FOLDERS as I'm used to DO.
This should be a MANDATORY FEATURE not a reason to research the development BLOGs and FORUMs.

Overall, I'm impressed and really like the tool/toy...ASUS TRANSFORMER and I would put it on the wish list of any......anybody.




Cheers,
NIck