For many these days, the answer is “NO.”  It may simply be too labor intensive.  Long gone are the days that you can just join a link building service, and have those links come rolling in.  Once you did that, you could just get yourself a few quality links, and the website traffic could come rolling in.  It was a true “set it and forget it” time in the history of search engine optimization and website marketing.

To make matter worse, Google starting dinging everyone for this type of behavior.  More links suddenly became a red flag, and people started losing PageRank.  So, the only one’s left in the “link building business” were the scammers, who just wanted your money, and could not be bothered with your Page Ranking.  So, I really can’t blame people for getting discouraged about link building of any king.

People then moved to trading links one for one with other folks.  “Do Follow” networks developed.  And this did provide some good links for a while.  In today’s time, though, too many one to one links can also get you in trouble.

So much for the nay sayers.  Now I want you to consider that links are still worth the effort.  Here are some of my reasons for still doing link building:

• Links help others find your website, even if Google doesn’t give you much credit. This is especially true on social media platforms. If your part of a “tribe” on a social website, I suspect your trading links for all kinds of good stuff.
• Good quality outbound links to sites like yours, with a PageRank of 3 or better, still count in your overall PageRank score.  Plus, it lets people know the kind of sites you feel are important.  I still think it is good to have some of these on your website. Just look at my website here, and you’ll know I still practice this.
• Good quality links in from comments on your site are also good. But they must be relevant.  I have an essential “do follow’ website here, but I still monitor the comments.  More importantly, I monitor the links added. So, don’t even think about adding a Viagra link to this site!  (Though Askimet will probably get you first!)
• I still think the best links are those that are created by people bookmarking your quality information. I don’t believe you have to be a genius either.  Just provide people with solid information. Discuss what works and what does not, etc.  These links are definitely worth the effort.

That’s my take on it,

Raymond Province

I found another video from my friend Scott Willoughby that I wanted to share with everyone. Hope you enjoy the video.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Getting Indented Listings from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Good search engine optimization takes an investment in time. Too often, our society has the expectation that we ought to be able to just do some “dark SEO magic,” click a button, and we done. Boom! That is just not the case. The game played with our search engines changes all the time. We are also competing against all the other businesses that want the same business.

If you are a small business, try investing 30 minutes a day in adding good content to your site, blogs, articles, videos, etc. Add links to your site. Make good use of social media. In time, it pays off. If you don’t want to invest the time yourself, find someone to help you.

In the healthcare It world, and I suspect other IT worlds, we have used a process for years to evalute how well our optimization efforts are working.

1. Set a clear goal for what you want to accomplish. You should know how many people have to visit your site to generate one sale. You should know how many people need to visit your site every day. Step one may be this easy. Step two may be to get analytics on your site, so you do know how many are coming.

2. Set a plan on where you want your business source. Good analytics can tell you how customers got to your website. If all your business is coming from Twitter, let’s say, and you are doing all your optimization on some obscure website that is not in your demographic, you are wasting time.

3. Decide who you want to target: Age, Sex, Income, all that. Do research on where your demographic is spending time online. Target some of those places for SEO. Do some testing to make sure you are getting return for your time investment.

4. Implement a plan based upon your testing.

5. Measure the results. Zero based thinking applies here. If something is not working, change it.

6. Adjust or optimize your plan.

So, you can continue to improve this process through the old 4 step plan: measure, report, analyze, optimize It will be worth the time you spend, if you put metics to your process.

Ray Province

Ray Province is an IT programmer in the healthcare industry and owner of Celtic Ozark Solutions, an IT company that specializes in website development, SEO, and social media marketing. You can reach Ray at celticozarksolutions@gmail.com or @celticozarkian on Twitter.

One trick that can really help is finding a niche for your keywords. This is how I define niche keywords: they are a subset of a very popular, more generalized keyword phrase. For example, your favorite keyword might be “real estate investing.” Now log in to Google.com, and run a search for this keyword phrase. Good luck taking this one over in a day.

With time, you might be able to even take over these type of generalized keyword phrases, but it will take many days of consistent work. In addition, Google ads tend to dominate these type of searches. This makes fighting for the so-called “organic space” tough.

Niche keywords, though, can really make your website easy to find. A simple addition of something like “real estate investing Springfield Missouri” now makes the search look a whole lot different. My website can still key in on the REI component, while also capturing a section of the market in the area that I work. I have found a niche.

There is also a psychology to this type of niche marketing. There are lots of real estate investment “gurus” in the game. Yet, most people will want to do business, off the bat, with someone local. Niche keywords will give me a way to reach those people. In time, the website can take on a more natural evolution to the national or international level.

If you want to do this quickly, spend a million or so in ads. If that is out of your budget, give niche keywords for your chosen website business a try. It will bring you more search engine success.

Ray Province

Ray Province is a retired minister who currently works as an IT programmer in the healthcare industry. He is also the owner of Celtic Ozark Solutions, an IT company that specialized in website development, SEO, and social media marketing. You can reach him at celticozarksolutions@gmail.com , or @celticozarkian on Twitter.

1. The first commonly misunderstood notion about SEO is that it is not important to do at all. A customer of mine recently said to me, “why bother with this SEO stuff anyway, it only gets people to my site. It doesn’t make them buy!” In one sense of the word, this is true. SEO is an “art” that is designed to help people find your website from search engines, emails, social media sites, etc. To use an analogy, it sets people into your storefront. In today’s world, though, that is huge! There are literally millions of websites out there world wide. Without some help, you almost have a better change of winning a lottery than someone finding your website.

1. The second commonly misunderstood concept is what I like to call “if you build it, they will come.” This type of marketing centers more on just having a website that is a “landing page” or “squeeze page.” A landing page just wants you to enter an email, and then you can look at the store. There are many of these types of websites out there, that you will find making lots of money with Google PR ratings of O. In most cases, these sites are owned by famous people, or people with massive email lists, that just need a place to market the next affiliate product. You can be “lured in” by offers from some of these places to build websites free, or for a small amount of money. Unless you plan on getting famous first, you might want to do some SEO. If you want an example of 2 people that still do SEO, take a look at Terry Wygal or Jeff Johnson.

1. The final commonly misunderstood concept centers around the idea that “SEO is a one time setup.” Savvy website designers will now optimize your website to be “SEO friendly.” Then, the process stops. The site is prepared, but articles, blogs, emails, videos, audios, banners, pictures all need to be made SEO friendly. I try to do 30min of work on SEO every day for my sites. This is a great way for small business owners to really help their website. Of course, you can outsource this task to others as well. Elance.com is a good source for this type of help.

Till next time,

Ray Province

Celtic Ozark Solutions

Ray Province is an IT programmer in the healthcare industry, and owner of Celtic Ozark Solutions. The company specializes in hardware sales and installation, website development, SEO, and social media integration. You can reach Ray at celticozarksolutions@gmail.com or @celticozarkian on Twitter.