drop back to where it was when you started out. Effectively they hold you to ransom. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 35 Step 5 Generate links back to your site 35 Don't get caught out When you're researching SEO companies to generate links for you ALWAYS ask them how they will do it. If they can't or won't tell you DO NOT engage them. If they tell you but rankmaniac 2012 you are unable to completely understand DO NOT engage them rankmaniac 2012 there are no link generation methods which are too complex for the layperson to understand when explained properly. Also always be clear in your own mind on exactly what you're paying for. Remember that there are two parts to obtaining a high ranking optimizing your site and generating links back to your site. Always get your SEO company to explain exactly which parts they will do for you rankmaniac 2012 and how they plan to do it. Chapter Summary Generally speaking the rankmaniac 2012 more links you have back to your site the higher your ranking will be. Some links are better than others. Dont use autolinkgeneration software Dont set up websites simply to host links to your main site Add your site to DMOZ Yahoo Directories Check where your competitors links are coming from Write and submit articles for Internet publication Submit your site to local and industry directories Look for link partners but dont spend too much time on it Link generation rankmaniac 2012 takes a long time no matter how you do it SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 36 Step 6 Monitor your progress 36 Step 6 Monitor your progress Now that youve done the lions share of the hard work you can sit back and observe the results of your handiwork. Its very important that you monitor your progress. Keep an eye on how many links youre generating where theyre coming from and the overall impact on your ranking. Monitor how many links youre generating Its important to monitor how many links youre generating because you can crossreference that information against improvements in ranking to estimate
how much effort your rankmaniac 2012 SEO push is going to take. e.g. If you generate 300 links and your site goes from number 150 to number 15 you know that you should be topping the rankings before too long. If on the other hand your ranking has only marginally increased you know you need to work a lot harder. You can monitor how many links youre rankmaniac 2012 generating in a number of ways Search Google for www.yourdomainname.com. Google will then display a screen which says Google can show you the following information for this URL At the bottom of the list of option is Find web pages that contain the term www.yourdomainname.com. Click on this option. Google will display all the pages it can find that have www.yourdomainname.com on one of their pages. Normally this indicates a link to your site. TIP Bookmark the search results page so you can perform this search quickly and easily as you will probably find yourself doing it quite often. Go to httpwww.marketleap.compublinkpop and type in your domain name. This tool itemizes your links by search engine i.e. tells you how many links each search engine has found and also provides graphical trends. Go to httpwww.alexa.com and type in your domain name then click Sites Linking in from the left of the page. TIP Alexa can also be used to track your ranking metrics. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 37 Step 6 Monitor your progress 37 TIP Youll notice that each of these tools return different figures. Dont worry about this. Just pick a tool and stick with it this way youre always comparing apples with apples. Monitor whos linking to your site Always keep track of whos linking to your site. Apart from simply being interesting it will give you some idea of who is interested in your site and your material you can assess
their importance PR and also more accurately target their needs with future link generation tactics. Probably the easiest way to track whos linking to your site is to set up a Google Monitor at rankmaniac 2012 httpwww.google.comalerts. Google alerts notify you when your URL has been published on a web page. Google doesn't pick them rankmaniac 2012 all up but it picks up a lot. TIP Whenever you receive an alert you can visit the page to make sure the article in unchanged and the link back
to your site is functioning. Monitor your ranking Obviously you should be rankmaniac 2012 monitoring your ranking to ensure that your hard work is not wasted and to adapt your SEO and link generation strategy rankmaniac 2012 as needed. Manually You can check your ranking rankmaniac 2012 manually simply by doing a search for your keyword at the appropriate search engine. rankmaniac 2012 TIP If you prefer to check manually make sure you bookmark the search results page as youll probably find yourself performing this search fairly frequently. Dont perform it too frequently though as this can impact the perceived desirability of your keywords and it is argued that Google takes exception to repeated searches of this type. Automatically You can check all the major search engines AOL Google HotBot MSN Netscape YahooFastAltaVista at once using MarketLeaps verification tool httpwww.marketleap.comverifydefault.htm. NOTE This tool returns a page number e.g. it will tell you your site appears on page 2 of Yahoo. There are plenty of other tools out there that you can use to monitor your ranking such rankmaniac 2012 as CleverStats Free Monitor for Google see httpwww.cleverstat.comgooglemonitor query.htm. Shop around until you find rankmaniac 2012 the tool that suits you best. The important thing to SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 38 Step 6 Monitor your progress 38 remember is that you dont have to pay anything for a rank monitoring tool as there are plenty of free ones on offer. Chapter Summary Monitor how many links you have and crossreference that information against improvements in ranking to estimate how much effort your SEO push is going to take. Monitor who is linking to your site to more accurately adapt future
link generation tactics. Monitor your ranking and adapt your SEO and link generation strategy as needed. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 39 Conclusion 39 Conclusion Search Engine Optimization is not a black art its a science. There are defined rules and proven methodologies. And although theres a lot rankmaniac 2012 more to it than can be contained in a book of this size you shouldnt need any more than what youve just read to obtain a high ranking in the search engines. But theres no denying that its hard work and takes a long time. Whatever you do dont rush into it. Make sure you understand the fundamentals rankmaniac 2012 then take some time to plan your approach. In other words SEO strategy must be part of your marketing plan alongside traditional promotional activities such as print radio and TV. Just as importantly it must be part of your marketing budget. Dont fall into the trap of thinking that the search engines are free advertising. Theyre not Companies like Google and Yahoo may not accept payment rankmaniac 2012 rankmaniac 2012 for a high ranking but that doesnt mean it comes for free. Someone has to do the work to get you there. Whether you spend the time to do it yourself or you engage an expert to do it for you SEO requires a serious investment. But the spoils are well worth it. Research suggests that being number rankmaniac 2012 1 in rankmaniac 2012 Google means twice as much traffic as being number 2. Imagine how much difference it would make to your rankmaniac 2012 web traffic SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 40 Frequently Asked Questions 40 Frequently Asked Questions Search engine optimization SEO is a foreign field to a lot of people. Rarely does a day go by when I don't rankmaniac 2012 get asked a few questions on the subject. So I've decided to post this FAQ article in the hopes that it will help people understand the basics and make them a little more comfortable with the whole domain. rankmaniac 2012 Q Why are search engines important to me A 85 of all website traffic is rankmaniac 2012 driven by search engines. The only online activity rankmaniac 2012 more popular than search is email. 79.2 of US users don't go to page 2 of search results. 42 of users click on the no.1 result. For the under40 agegroup the Internet will become the most used media in rankmaniac 2012 the next 23 years. Q How do search engines decide on their rankings A IMPORTANT You cannot pay a search engine in return for a high rankmaniac 2012 ranking in the natural results. You can only get a high ranking if your content is seen as relevant by the rankmaniac 2012 search engines. Search engines identify relevant content for their search results by sending out spiders or robots which crawl analyze your site and index record its details. Complex algorithms are then employed to determine whether your site is useful and should be included in the search engines search results. Q Can't I just pay for a high ranking A No. The biggest concern for search engine companies like Google and Yahoo is finding content that will bring them more traffic and thus more advertising revenue. In other words their results must be relevant. Relevant results makes for a good search engine irrelevant results makes for a shortlived search engine. Most search engines these days return two types of results whenever rankmaniac 2012 you click Search NaturalOrganic The real search results. The results that most users are looking for and which take up most of the window. For most searches the search engine displays a long list of links to sites with content which is related to the word you searched for. These results are ranked according to how relevant and important they are. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 41 Frequently Asked Questions 41 Paid Pure advertising. This is how th