Ultimately your position in the search engine rankings will be determined by the number of back links pointing to your website. Whilst reciprocal links still have some value, by far, the most valuable are one way links. These are links from an external website pointing to your own site but you do not link back.

There are a number of ways that you can develop one way links to your site, as follows:

Directory Submissions

There are literally thousands of online directories that offer free listings and directory submissions offer a great way to boost your link popularity.

Article Submissions

Writing articles about your product or service and submitting to the wide range of article directories offers another effective method for developing one way links.

Social Bookmarking

It is important that you invest time to Bookmark your website on as many Social Networking sites as possible.

Online Press Releases

It is also possible to promote your product or service via online press releases which will help to promote your website and develop valuable one way links.

Without doubt, if you do not make any effort to develop your link popularity, your website will fail to achieve any significant search engine ranking. This is such an important subject that can make or break your online presence.

In future posts I will go into more detail about the different methods mentioned above and how your link text should be structured, in order to ensure that your links are recognised by the search engines.

More than 60% of the websites I review contain poorly written Title Tags. Many simply contain the company name or trading name of the website.

From a search engine perspective, your Title Tag is the most important Meta Tag and should contain the top two or three keyword phrases that you are targeting. Title Tags such as “Welcome to PetsRUs” or “The Acme Insurance Website” will not help your search engine rankings and will not produce high volumes of traffic to your site.

It is easy to achieve a high ranking for your trading name.

In most cases, search engines will list your website within the first few pages, when searched by your company name, especially if your domain name matches your trading name. That’s the easy bit. The more difficult challenge is to be found by users who are searching for the products or services you provide, using a more generic keyword search term, relevant to your business.

Including your company name within your Title Tag is a wasted opportunity.

Think about it, if a customer knows your company or brand name it is relatively easy for them to find you, not just via the internet but by more traditional methods such as Yellow Pages, offline advertising or even Directory Enquiries! So why waste valuable space promoting your company name within your Meta Tag?

As a guidline, your Title Tag should contain a maximum of ten individual words. Therefore do not waste this space, choose your keywords carefully and make sure that they are relevant to the page content.

Make sure your Title Tag includes your targeted keywords.

I recommend that you review all of your Title Tags and if necessary change them to include at least a couple of the top keywords you are targeting. You also need to ensure that each page of your website contains a unique Title Tag. Although simply creating a well written, search engine friendly Meta Tag is not sufficient to propel you to the first page of Google, it will make a difference and you should see some improvement in your search engine rankings over time.

For further information on creating search engine friendly Title Tags read my article “How To Write A Killer Title Tag“. Alternatively visit our Meta Tags Optimisation page.

Well it is Friday and it is for a very good cause!

I know this is nothing to do with SEO and Internet Marketing but what the heck “Do Something Funny For Money” - Red Nose Day - 13 March 2009

Admittedly Bryn was more excited about singin’ with Tom Jones and Robin Gibb than I was, but that’s only because I got a bit of history with the both of them, and that was a bit embarrassin - international music legends or not. But at the end of the day we did it to raise cash, and Comic Relief’s a tidy cause so we were more than happy to do it, y’know what I mean?

The video’s nine minutes, I’m not gonna lie. And it’s set in Vegas, I’m not gonna lie again. Press play now to see it in full, then download the single on March 8th. Or if you prefers it, and I knows a lot of you does, then buy the CD on March 9th. You’ll be doin your bit for Comic Relief even if you think the song is rubbish.

The way I look at it, it’s a win-win situation – you’re getting a bit of Tom, a bit of Robin, a bit of Bryn and best of all a bit of me all for a very small amount of cash.

All the profits go to Comic Relief to help poor and vulnerable people in the UK and across Africa so you’ll be doing something crackin for people less better off than you. So don’t be selfish, be tidy. Buy it and enjoy a crackin Red Nose Day. End of.

Nessa

Would you like a free page one listing on Google?

Is your website listed in the Google local search results?

For small businesses, especially those that rely heavily on local trading, it is important to ensure that your website is included in the Google Local Search results. Local Search offers a primary opportunity for your website to be found by potential customers, searching specifically for a local business. Local Search should be top of the list of priorities for any small business marketing strategy.

If you are not familiar with Local Search, try searching for “carpet cleaning tunbridge wells” in Google. You will see that ten local search results appear at the top of the page. Similar results are also available on Yahoo. Google are in the process of expanding their Local Search results from ten to hundreds of businesses. Instead of just plotting the first ten search results on the map, Google will soon be including hundreds of other businesses across the map using small red circles. This enhancement has already been rolled out in the USA.

Local Search offers a fantastic opportunity of securing a page one listing on Google and best of all it is free. If you are a local business without a Local Search listing, now is the time to get included!

Local Search offers page one exposure quickly.

Unlike organic search results which can take a long time to achieve a decent ranking, Local Search can provide you with a page one listing very quickly. You will need to register your business with Google Maps in order to get listed. Once your business has been accepted you will start to benefit from the major exposure to potential local customers immediately. As this service is completely free it offers a cheaper alternative to traditional local advertising methods.

Local Search offers detailed business listings.

Local Search listings allow you to include far more information about your business than standard search results. These detailed local listings make it easier for customers to choose your business for their needs.

A similar free Local Search listing is also available on Yahoo.

To learn more about Search Engine Promotion visit our main website or view our range of Search Engine Optimisation Articles on our Blog.

Yahoo! are in the process of updating their crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms, according to a recent post on their Blog.

According to Sharad Verma from Yahoo! Search “We’ve rolled out some changes to our index with fresh web data and updates to our crawling, indexing, and ranking algorithms over the last few days. We have had two updates since last November: one in December, 2008, and another in late January this year. We expect the update will be completed very soon. Throughout this process you may see some changes in ranking as well as some shuffling of the pages in the index”.

As usual, the updates will bring mixed results for website owners, with some enjoying improved rankings, while others will see a drop in their search results.

I would recommend that you monitor your Yahoo! results over the next few days to ascertain if you are a winner or loser.

If you have experienced any changes to your Yahoo! rankings, share your experiences with us, via the comments form below.