SEO Case Study: Maximize the Links You Control

by on July 2, 2008

The anchor text of links is vitally important to ranking for highly competitive search terms. The search engines look not only at the anchor text of your own on-site links pointing to pages within your own site, but also to inbound links from outside of your site.

Considering how vitally important this anchor text is - it is surprising that most businesses give it scarce amount of attention. Often times the anchor text for any given link is left up to web designer, copy writer, or both.

For instance, a multinational software client had a problem: their main corporate site on a .com domain wasn’t ranking as well as it should for primary search terms.

A review of the site showed this footer:

intl_footer.jpg

The company had several country specific website existing on country specific TLDs (.uk, .ca. .br, .fr, etc.). At the bottom of every page of every site the same exact footer structure existed with the same anchor text and links. All told it was over 1700 pages of relevant content spread out on 17 domains.

A discussion with the client revealed that due to corporate structure and local customs the country specific sites had to remain independent from each other.

Since the United States was their primary market, top rankings in U.S. search engines would be a meaningful boost to the company’s bottom line.

It was explained to the client that instead of having the anchor text for the main .com domain being “Corporate Website”, that a more meaningful keyword phrase could be used (ie. Logistics Software).

Afterwards, the footer of the site looked like this:

intl_footer2.jpg

This minor change gave all of the 1700+ links (across 17 different domains), that pointed to the main corporate website, the anchor text of “Logistics Software”. When combined with the relevancy of the on page content and the existing inbound links outside of the company’s control, a surge in rankings was experienced within weeks.

Further modifications were made to the client’s sites that included page rank shaping through selective use of the rel=”nofollow” attribute, as well as changes to mitigate any possible duplicate content across the different domains.

Lesson: There are so many factors that influence how well you rank in the search engines, a lot of these are out of your control. So make sure you maximize the factors you do control including the anchor text of links that are within your power to change.

SEO Case Study Disclaimer: To protect the requested anonymity of clients, some details involving keywords, domains, and company names have been changed. All other information, including issues explored in the case study as well as results should be considered accurate and reliable.

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Monologue versus Dialogue

by on July 1, 2008

One of the first things a business blogger has to understand is that they are part of an ever growing conversation.

Too many business bloggers come into the world of blogging with a monologue mindset. They may have a pre-set agenda of what topics they’ll discuss, what products and services they’ll promote, or what reputation issues they’re going to try to mitigate.

But as business bloggers we need to remember that in order to influence a conversation, we must first become a part of the conversation. We need to have an audience before we can be heard. The best business blogs get this. They know that you simply can’t build a blog and expect it to find its audience. And that once you get an audience you have to interact with them.

conversations

Leadership is about influence and in order to influence you have to interact.

Somewhere on the Internet right now it is very likely there are conversations going on about the products or services your company offers. The conversation may even be about your own company.

Your job as the blogger is to join the conversation. And there are some very simple steps to do this.

1) Find the blogs that are likely talking about what you want to talk about. Read as many blog posts and as many of the comments as you need to in order to feel like you know who the participants are. Try to answer the following questions: What are their views? Do they have any bias toward a particular company or product? Who comments the most? Who gives the most value-added comments (not always the same as the most)? Which commenters have thier own blogs? Read those as well.

2) After you feel you have a firm understanding of the particular dynamics of the blog, start to leave some comments on some relevant posts. You don’t need to comment on every post and your better off commenting on the newer posts rather than on something that is a few months old. If possible, make sure to leave a link to your own blog when you comment.

3) If a blog post interests you enough to write your own post then link back to the original blog post in your entry. This will let the people involved know that the conversation has moved.

Even if you choose not to participate in the conversations on other blogs, make sure you participate in the conversation on your own blog.

If someone leaves a comment on your blog, don’t ignore it. Respond kindly to it and thank them for their time. It can also be a nice touch to send them a personal e-mail thanking them for their time.

Remember: The more you interact, the more opportunities you have to influence.

photo credit: Brian Solis

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