Blog

This is a guest post by our good friend James Agate over at Skyrocket SEO. James and his team are really informed & active so worth following on twitter & their blog. They are also a really nice bunch! Hope you enjoy the post

Where do you usually look for link opportunities?

Photo by Martin Pettitt

The answer to this question often involves prospecting for fresh link opportunities using your favourite tool or digging through your competitors backlink profiles to find some juicy targets to close the natural search gap.

There is one source of links though that often goes completely untapped – our own network (or our client’s network) of contacts.

We all have a network of contacts and your client is likely to have intimate industry knowledge, awareness and connections that you would be crazy to pass up on. Also if you are an agency worker, your colleagues and your employer likely have their own “little black books” of contacts and there is so much potential in pooling your connections.

Every time we get talking to clients about their industry, we uncover masses of useful information, from the blogs the insiders really read to the topics that are key at the moment as well as their CONNECTIONS.

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We reached out to a selection of industry leaders to get their thoughts on various aspects of search engine optimisation (SEO) in 2012 and we’ve compiled all the interviews here.

We approached a cross-section of the SEO industry from 1 person companies to leaders of larger SEO teams with the aim that some of the contributions will benefit you regardless of the size of your team or which aspect of SEO you are currently involved/interested in.

The answers are intended to help you:

1. Decide how best to get started in SEO & keep up to date
2. Determine where best to focus your efforts in 2012
3. Learn some useful strategies – tools, services, techniques, tips & lessons
4. Discover new SEO leaders & find out a bit about them

If you have any feedback or thoughts on the interviews please use the comments area at the bottom of the page.

Hope you enjoy!

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There’s some amazing SEO tools around but nothing can do everything and sometimes Excel can be very useful as it gives you so much freedom to manipulate your data.

Here’s some tips on using Excel for SEO and link building which i’ll add to as I come across them or they’re suggested in the comments.

1. Automatically check the number of characters in a cell.
   
   This is handy for checking you don’t go over the recommended number of character in your Page Titles and Meta Descriptions. SEOMoz suggests a limit of 70 characters for Page Titles and 170 for Meta Descriptions.
   
   Simply use the code =LEN(D3) in a cell to check the number of characters you’ve used in the cell you’ve referenced. In this case D3.
   
   
   
   
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Something which often gets overlooked on SEO link building strategies lists is Crowdfunding (sometimes called crowd financing or crowd funding).

There are hundreds of crowdfunding sites around and hundreds of companies on each of them pitching for investment (donations).

Typically a company looking for funding offers a range of fixed amounts you can donate to their project/business. The amounts you can invest normally range from £1 – £1000 and each donation amount has a reward assigned to it.

Often the smaller amounts get you some kind of small thank you gesture or a product sample and the larger donations get you coverage on their promotional materials and larger scale publicity.

What I absolutely love about using crowdfunding for building links is:

1. Cheap and easy link. Very often donating one of the smaller amounts get you a link or thank you on their website. This is easy for them to do and costs them no money so they see it as being less attractive to a donor than say your logo on corporate printed materials which they reserve for the larger donations. Except for link builders this reward and price point is perfect! I often find projects who will add your link in exchange for the £1 donation…


2. Link for life. It’s unlikely your link will be removed. They won’t want future investors/donors to see that ‘thank you’ links are removed once they get the money and they will also feel a moral obligation to keep your link live as you donated during their infancy.


3. Donations for every niche. There’s so many projects/businesses looking for funding you can normally find a project that’s spot on or related in some way to most SEO topics you’ll encounter. Often the projects are categorised making them easy to search through quickly. Sometimes if you can’t find the perfect project for a niche you’re working on there’s something related.


4. Could be huge. Some of these projects/businesses MAY just become very successful in a few years. That £1 link now could be worth a LOT more down the line on a site which becomes impenetrable to get links from once it takes off.


5. Brand association. Following on from point 4 you are connected to that brand for life. If they become big there’s association there and also inferred wisdom that you donated in advance of a project becoming successful.


6. Publicity. Aside from the link you might also get publicly thanked on Twitter/Facebook etc which reflects well on your business and gets you additional positive publicity.


7. You’re helping. You got the link you were after but you also helped someone launch their project/business too. Nice to get a link with the knock on effect of helping the person you get it from. Sometimes I find myself going a donation level up than I have to in order to get a link because a project really connects with me. Win Win!

Crowdfunding link building considerations:

1. You might end up on a page with 100 other donations. Not ideal but can you complain for £1?
2. The project might flop after x months/year and the site with it.
3. The link might end up getting removed if they revamp the site once they become successful and forget to include that thanks page.
4. Normally donations are not collected unless the project reaches it’s funding target. Don’t assume because you pledge a donation you’ve got the link so check back on donations periodically
5. Brand association was mentioned earlier but this could also work against you if in the future the project takes a direction you don’t like or want to be connected with.

Have you used crowdfunding for your linkbuilding excercises before? Is there anything you think should be added to what’s above? Just use the comments..

Learn Business Success Strategies & Gain Expert Online Marketing Advice to Help You Compete Online

This really is a don’t miss event for anyone who is starting out in business, young companies who compete online or anyone involved in online marketing and search engine optimisation.

Dixon Jones from Majestic SEO will be giving a presentation at the Angus Centre for Enterprise in Arbroath on June 6th (morning event - time tbc).

There are a strictly limited number of tickets available and this FREE event will sell out VERY quickly.

It’s likely to attract attendees from local web design & online marketing companies as well as the young entrpreneurs passing through the centre so make sure you book your place early to avoid dissapointment.

Follow us on twitter to find out as soon as tickets are available or keep an eye on the Angus Centre for Enterprise Website.

Gain invaluable business advice & expert internet marketing insights

• Lessons Learned in Business
  Dixon shares his own personal experiences of setting up in business
  
  
• Business Success Strategies
  Key insights into making your bricks and mortar or online business succeed in 2012
  
  
• Online Business Fundamentals
  Understand what it takes to compete and get ahead online
  
  
• Search Engine Marketing Explained
  Dixon strips away the mystery surrounding Online Marketing & Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
  
  
• How To Get Started With SEO
  Expert takeway advice on how to market your business online from an industry leader
  
  
• How to Leverage Majestic SEO
  Discover why sole traders right through to Microsoft use this amazing tool and what to do with it
  
  
• Coffee & Networking
  Network with Dixon and the other attendees

About the Enterprise Centre

The Angus Centre for Enterprise is a dedicated Centre located in Arbroath College’s former Conference Centre.  The focus of this new Centre is to support anyone who may be looking to set up in business as well provide training and mentoring to more established local companies.  The Centre provides a one-stop-shop for individuals to gain training, advice and support in enterprise and entrepreneurship.

Hit Reach support the cause by bringing business leaders and expert speakers to the Centre to help and encourage young business and entrepreneurs and we are very excited to have secured this highly respected speaker and industry figure.

Dixon immediately recognised the importance of this type of initiative for young businesses and very kindly offered to get involved!

About Dixon Jones

Dixon’s background includes a degree in Mathematics and Management Studies a Presidency at Brunel University in West London following an upbringing in Hong Kong. His first business venture was formed in 1989 and still survives in an online form to this day.

Dixon has been involved in internet marketing since 1999 and is now, amongst other things, a highly respected speaker who is regularly invited to present at worldwide Search Engine Optimisation and Link building events such as SMX San Jose, SMX Jerusalem and SES New York.

In 2009, Dixon became the Marketing Director of the world largest link analysis engine, Majestic SEO.

About Majestic SEO

Majestic SEO has transformed the SEO industry by providing link intelligence on a scale not previously available to the industry. Bringing their technology to the search marketing industry has resulted in the company receiving an eConsultancy award for “innovation in SEO” and a user base of thousands ranging from WordTracker to Microsoft.

Majestic SEO surveys and maps the Internet and has created the largest commercial Link Intelligence database in the world. This Internet map is used by SEOs, New Media Specialists, Affiliate Managers and online Marketing experts for a variety of uses surrounding online prominence including Link Building, Reputation Management, Website Traffic development, Competitor analysis and News Monitoring. As link data is also a component of search engine ranking, understanding the link profile of your own, as well as competitor websites can empower rational study of Search Engine positioning. Majestic SEO is constantly revisiting web pages and sees around a billion URLs a day.

Majestic SEO is available at variety of price points, including a free registration and subscription options from £30 per month. Plans and pricing details here.

Connect with Dixon

You can follow Dixon and Majestic SEO on twitter, or visit the Majestic SEO website for their full company details and product info.

Got a question for Dixon or about the event?

Let us know in the comments below! Hope to see you there

Background

One of our long term clients runs conferences. Hundreds of them a year.

Many of them are big conferences with big speaker names and big sponsors which typically involve household names the likes of Microsft, Google, IBM. They often attract more than 1000 attendees which range from sole traders and start-ups through to other household names or market leaders.

They also attract sponsors, exhibitors and media partners which range from small niche blogs through to fortune 100 companies .

For the past 8 years one of my roles has been to manage a team who design and build the websites, update them (on a daily basis), and create promotional materials like brochures and mailshots for  the 250+ conferences they run each year. This means we see all the content supplied by both the large corporations and the small website owners.

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Below is a web design glossary of the most commonly used terms and their meanings. If you would like to suggest more please use the comments area.

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z
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What are Dreamweaver commands?
Adobe Dreamweaver commands can perform almost any kind of edit to a user’s current document, other open documents, or any HTML document on a local drive. Commands can insert, remove, or rearrange HTML tags and attributes, comments, and text.

Commands are HTML files. The body section of a command file can contain an HTML form that accepts options for the command (for example, how a table should be sorted and by which column). The head section of a command file contains JavaScript functions that process form input from the body section and control what edits are made to the user’s document.

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If you use Dreamweaver a lot you’ll inevitably have to paste content in from Word or direct from your email client from time to time. UPDATE: Following requests for the tool to remove multiple empty lines in the code as well we have updated the command to do that.

Annoyingly, when you paste text in directly to Dreamweaver from either it adds multiple consecutive white spaces. In does this in multiple places and the white spacing can vary in amounts between 2 and 7 spaces each time.

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There might come a time when you want to free up space on your Gmail account but keep a copy of the emails for future reference and this guide will show you how.

This is a follow on post for people who are using Windows Live Mail as their IMAP client for gmail.

I like to keep copies of all my emails regardless of age but Gmail has a storage limit so it means having to clear it out regularly. There are some great 3rd party services you can use to back your mail up and store it online but accessing older emails is never really an urgent task so I use the cheaper and simpler method of just backing them up to a local machine which can be accessed as and when needed.

Just to restate in case you’re skimming this. This is not a solution for storing your old emails online to access from multiple locations. It’s just a great way of keeping a local copy of the emails and freeing up valuable space in your Gmail account.

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