Firstly I must mention that no SEO strategy will be complete if you rely on one source of backlink means only – so make sure you vary your backlinking methods and stay away from bad neighbourhoods. The backlinks article is a recommended read for anyone looking to achieve long term search engine rankings.

Why are Blogs important in SEO ?

Blogs can be hosted on your own private server or you can use sites that allow you to create free blogs which will be hosted on the blog site server – for example blog.co.uk and wordpres.com. In this article when i refer to blog sites then i am referring to the many blog sites which allow you to create free hosted blogs.

These blog sites are used by millions of users all around the world – they get updated very frequently and the sites have earned much authority. You will usually find these blog sites with page rank 5+ –

These blog sites allow you to create your own blog – add your own posts with your backlinks – There are a number of benefits to this – firstly your backlinks that you add to your blog will become relevant due to the subject on which you have blogged about – secondly the page rank and authority of the sites domain holds value which will be filtered down to your blog – This is very valuable and has much affect – Not forgetting the amount of targeted traffic you can get through the blog internal searches. Finally the blog itself has a good chance to rank in the search engines and send targeted traffic.

The key to using these blog sites is to create a number of blogs – not only from one provider but from many – this will ensure c class ip diversity and unique backlinks. I would also suggest you bookmark your blog posts and help them rank – Many of the blogs we create here at big seo techniques also increase in page rank when there is an update – im sure you all know how important Page rank backlinks are when it comes to search engine optimisation, when these blogs increase in page rank then they hold your links which of course are filtered down to your site – adding more value and extra authority.

Using blogs alone can get you the sought after results you are looking for depending on your competition however we would always advise a variety of backlink sources to ensure you website will still rank high should these blogs be devalued by the search engines looking forward.

At Big SEO Techniques we use a variety of backlinking techniques to ensure long term preferential rankings and the creation of blogs is an important part to our strategy

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1. backlinking techniques ensure long term rankings
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In the last article we wrote about how top seo gurus narrowed down almost 200 google ranking factors and voted on the top 5 which held most importance. If you missed the last article then feel free to have a read by clicking the link above.

Google top ranking factors

Google have so many ranking factors that its hard to keep up, many of these factors when compared by importance have different values. So its fair to say that if you cant keep up with them all then try and focus on the main factors with the highest of importance. Below we dig deeper into some more ranking factors.

Keyword usage in the title tag

We discussed this to be amongst the top 5 ranking factors in the previous article – again i cant stress enough how important it is to spend some time and optimise your titles. Better still if you can use your keyword as the first word in your title tags then your on your way to a great start.

Using your keyword in your domain name.

This is something you need to consider before registering a domain name. Its clear that domains that are using keywords as the name have a better chance of ranking for the given keyword. This is important but not the end of the world if you dont have your keywords in the domain. Ive worked on many sites and have outranked keyword rich domains for their own keywords. If you pay close attention to other ranking factors then you will be fine.

Using your keywords in your <h1> tag

A great deal of emphases is placed on <h1> tags – using your keyword within this tag will not only help search engines understand you website better but it will also make sure your giving the robots the right message as to what keywords your website should rank for.

Using your keywords as anchor text when linking internally.

linking internally using your anchor text is a great way to show search engine robots what your webpages are about. In the same way that its important in using your keywords for your backlinks its just as important to link back to your pages internally using your keywords.

Using anchor text when building backlinks

Again this was mentioned in the previous article, but just to emphasis that its important to use your keywords as the anchor text when building backlinks. Dont always use the same keywords – vary them and use the LSI structure.

Keyword use in the first 50-100 words in the html of the page 

Its also important to continue with the usage of varied keywords in the first paragraph of your body text.

I will continue this subject and explore deeper into more ranking factors in our next article to come.

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2. googles-ranking-factors-offsite
3. Googles ranking factors – onsite

In this article I would like to write about the top 5 negative ranking factors as obtained from a poll completed by top SEO agents around the globe. So in other words factors which will go against your SEO work. You will need to avoid these in your seo quest.

Google's top 4 most negative ranking factors

Lets get cracking

in order of importance

Cloaking with malicious intent

68% of the poll results showed that this was the biggest negative ranking factor today. It basically means cloaking your website so that search engine robots see a different result to that of a user. This is normally done by hiding text on your webpage so that users do not see it but the search engines do. It can be done by placing keywords around your page and changing the background color of the text to match that of your page body. As far as the webpage is concerned the text exists and the robots will see them however a user will be unable to see the text as it has the same color as your background.

Acquiring of links from known link brokers or sellers

56% of the poll results showed that this was voted as the 2nd most negative ranking factor. We all know that Google and other search engines dislike the fact of being able to buy links. My advise to my readers will be to stay away from buying links especially form websites that advertise this anyway. If google finds out then this will effect your seo. Do not buy links from brokers or other websites.

Outbound links to spam sites

51% of the poll results showed this to be the 3rd highest negative factor. Its ok to get backlinks from many sites and Google understand that a webmaster does not have control in who links to them. If a Spam site was linking back to yours then it would just get devalued or the backlink will not get counted. However its the opposite when your outbound linking. Google knows that all outbound links will have been placed by yourself. The last thing you want is for your website to link to these spammy sites. Stay away as the Spam site reputation will not work in your favour.

Server downtime and site accessibility

51% of the poll results showed this to have the 4rth most negative impact. Everyone wants to be able to visit a site however if its always down or its down alot of the time then its no surprise that Google will pay close attention to this. My advise would be to try and get a host which will provide you with 99.9% uptime. Its not hard finding such a host. Personally I would suggest using Hostgator. they are great and have a 99.9% uptime. you will never fall victim to this negative ranking factor again.

If you enjoyed this article then please feel free to share it and use the bookmarks on the right to bookmark it.

Our next article will be looking more closely to Googles ranking factors. Why not sign up to our mailing list on the right – we will send you a free seo ebook and also keep you updated with new articles

Related posts:

1. Googles top 5 ranking factors
2. Googles ranking factors – onsite
3. googles-ranking-factors-offsite

In this article I will be writing about the top 5 ranking factors. These ranking factors have been voted to be of the most importance by a poll voting system which was completed by top SEO agents.

So lets get cracking

Googles Top 5 Ranking Factors

Using your keywords as the anchor text from External links 73%

73% of the poll results showed this to have the most importance. I always knew that using your keywords as the anchor text is important but didnt realize that so many other SEO agents felt this to be the most important factor. 

Please note that in order for any SEO strategy to work then it must look natural. If you will be using the same anchor text over and over again then that looks spammy. Vary your anchor text and use a LSI structure in the same way that is needed for onsite optimisation.

External link popularity 71%

This was voted to be the 2nd most important ranking factor. Your link popularity refers to the quantity and quality of the backlinks. I would say that link quality plays a bigger role then quantity but its no good having just 2 or 3 good quality backlinks you will need loads.

The diversity of link sources 67%

This was voted as the 3rd most important ranking factor. This is a very important area to focus on. Its no good just getting backlinks from directory sites or blog comments – you really need to diversify your backlinking methods.Use the many web 2.0 sites – article sites – high profile sites – rss promotions – blog comments and the many more areas in which you can get backlinks from.

If tomorrow Google turned round and devalued certain backlinks then this could harm your rankings if you relied on this method of backlinking only. Dont hold all your eggs in one basket!!

The usage of your keyword in the title tag 66%

This was voted 4th most important ranking factor.  The title tag is a very important area for your onsite optimisation. It will be shown in the SERPS and it also helps the robots understand what your page is about. If you dont spend much time on onsite optimisation then this is one area I would advise to concentrate on.

Trustworthiness of the domain 66%

This was the 5th most important ranking factor. Its not very clear as to what makes a trustworthy domain however its important that Google trust your domain in order to get higher rankings.

There are many areas which will help towards making your domain trustworthy – such as the age of the domain. The older it is the more chance its not going to be a spam site. Getting backlinks from already trustworthy sites with high page rank. These websites have already earned their trust and if they link back to you then Google will pass trust to your site in the same way that authority will also be filtered down to your site.

There are many more ranking factors. I have only named the top 5 in order of importance. I have not built the order that they are in but they have been voted in this order of importance.

Please note that concentrating on the above factors alone will not guarantee you a high rank as many more factors are also considered. As mentioned about 200 in total. These ranking factors are split between onsite and offsite factors. 

If you enjoyed this article then please join our mailing list on the right hand side for updates and a free ebook.

This is a set of many more articles to come. The next will be the top 5 negative ranking factors and then we will split the onsite and offsite details and look at them in more detail.

Related posts:

1. Googles top ranking factors continued
2. googles-ranking-factors-offsite
3. Googles top 4 most negative ranking factors

So lets get cracking

What not to do – SEO

I will list the what not to do and what to avoid when working on your websites SEO

1. Duplicate contents/ duplicate sites :- When building a website do not use the same contents on different pages. If you need to use similar contents then try your best to make it at the least 30% unique – Using the same contents and just changing your keywords will not fool the Big boys. It will not work in your favour so avoid it.
   
2. Cloaking:- Cloaking is a black hat technique which must be avoided – It is a technique used to show search engine robots different contents to that which your visitors will see – when people cloak their websites then the webpages are normally filled with many keywords which the user will not see but the search engine robot will. One way black hatters are doing this is by changing the color of the keywords to match the background color of the webpage. This must be avoided at all costs as you can get your website banned.
3. Linking to bad neighbourhoods:- Linking to bad neighbourhoods is different to them linking to you. If they link to you then Google understands that a website can not help who links to them – however when outbound linking to another site then Google understands that this has been done by the webmaster. If you link to bad neighbourhoods then you are associating your website to theirs. Avoid linking to adult sites – gambling sites and any other website that uses any method mentioned in this article.
4. Title stacking:- Title stacking is when you assign more then one title to your webpage in order to use more keywords in your title. – This was once an effective little trick used by some however search engine robots now class this as a dirty trick to stay away from using more then one title per a page.
5. Doorway Pages: – Doorway or gateway pages are pages that are set-up for one keyword topic but then they take you to different content pages.  These pages usually have little value in the way of content and have little to do with the rest of the site. They are used solely to try to get a higher rank in the search engines. If your website went to human review and you was using doorway pages then be prepared to face the consequences.
6. Hidden links:-  Avoid using hidden links on your websites – these are normally created and set to a font size which are barely visible by a human however they are picked up by the search engine robots – These may work for a small time but again if your website went to human review (which it will at one point-especially if your in a high competition niche) then it will not go in your favour.
7. Keyword stuffing:- Stuffing your webpages with keywords is not a good idea – if you use the same keyword over and over again and your keyword density is high then you risk getting penalized. Your contents should read well and use the LSI structure. remember Google now use synonyms much more then they used to so try your best to write for your visitors on a targeted subject and you will do fine. Just dont spam and stuff keywords when they are not needed.
8. Invisible text:- Again invisible text is similar to cloaking – as you are actually showing the search engine robots something different to what your visitors will see. This is unethical and will get your site penalized so stay away from this.

As long as you stay away from these and concentrate on publishing valuable contents and creating quality backlinks then you will be fine. Just remember never to link back to sites that are using similar techniques.

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1. Googles top 4 most negative ranking factors

The majority of my readers will know that the formerly MSN search engine has changed over to Bing – Its new and has some great features. We will be looking at how websites will need to be optimised in order to achieve high rankings in Bing.

There are many areas which are common in SEO regardless of the search engine that you are working to achieve your rankings in, however Bing concentrates and puts more weight on areas which are different to that of Google.

Its without a doubt that I would always advise my readers to optimise for Google first as Google dominates the search engine industry, however achieving first page positions on Yahoo, Bing and other search engines can send masses of traffic your way.

With this in mind its very important to utilise Bing in our SEO quests.

How to optimise your website for Bing?

As usual its very important to have good Titles for your pages – so optimise your titles accordingly:- you can refer to the onsite optimisation article for more assistance.

As with Google its also important to have sitemaps – good keyword density and the many other factors mentioned in the onsite optimisation article for Bing.

Bing also likes it when websites link out externally to relevant websites – Many people that practice SEO do not like the idea of having external links on their websites as they feel it will lower the Google page rank  – As long as you have relevant external links then this should not be a problem – I would also recommend using the 'no follow' attribute for your outbound links so that no authority from your website will be passed to the outbound link.

Bing likes contents and text in the same way that Google does – the difference is that Bing likes more text – so try and keep your text on each page to at least 350 words. The majority of search engines do not consider the amount of text as a factor but Bing certainly does. So add more text it will help you for your Bing rankings.

Bing also puts alot of weight on the age of the website. So if you are thinking of creating a new website your better off buying an old domain for your Bing rankings.

Bing also pays much attention to your HTML coding so make sure its all validated. Close paired HTML tags and make sure your links are not broken – I would also recommend you make sure that your links open the correct page. If you have broken links on your website then the MSNBot might not be able to access your website properly – this will cause lack of indexing and Bing will not rank your website high in the SERPS.

If you have changed your web-page or website then make sure that you use an adequate redirect – so if its a temp redirect or a permanent redirect then make sure you use the right one.

As standard its very important to make sure MSNBot is authorized to crawl your website – with this its also important to use a robots.txt file. Dont forget that a robots.txt file is the first place of access for any search engine robots. Make sure that you have authorized MSNBot to access your website.

Finally work on your offsite optimisation – get plenty of quality backlinks and use your keywords as the anchor text. In the same way that Google treats a backlink as a vote for your website then so does Bing.

Social media plays a very big role for Bing rankings – so play an active role on Facebook – my space – use web 2.0 accounts such as hubpages – squidoo etc – from my experience Bing loves social media and ranks websites very high in the SERPS when they activley use social media sites.

Social media is becoming even more important for Google too so its a great idea to start practicing it from now.

Please feel free to comment – Only relevant and on subject comments will be approved.

If you liked this article then please share it and bookmark it.

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Its important to mention that even though SEO has many more long term advantages then PPC advertising, PPC advertising can also be a cost affective and efficient way to gain targeted traffic to your website. If done properly it can be a good way of promoting your business.

The many people that practice SEO will already know that SEO is not a magic formula which will shoot your website to the top of the SERPS over night, it actually requires alot of patience and many factors are considered. During this time webmasters will need to use additional forms of advertising and PPC will work treats.

However there are a few things that New to Pay Per Click marketing users should be aware of.

What is PPC and how does it work?

Pay Per Click aka PPC is a form of paid advertising on the search engines or content sites. Google is very famous for its PPC advertising. Google shows paid advertising results in the right hand side of the search results and also the top 2 or 3 yellow shaded areas above the organic results. You can get on the first page of Google in no time at all.

To participate in PPC advertising the user is required to open an account with whoever they want to advertise with – for our examples we will stick with search engines like Google or Yahoo.

Once the advertiser has set the account up they will then need to start building their campaigns – choose what keywords they would like to bid for – create their ad-groups and write up a ads copy just to name a few.

Once this has been set up the advertisers Ads will get reviewed by the guys at Yahoo or Google and then the campaigns will be managed by them – provided that everything is ok – so there are no violations of guidelines then your ads will start to show.

Many new advertiser think that's all they need to do, then sit back and wait for the traffic to role in. I wish it was as simple as that, unfortunately it isn't. What we need to realize is that the guys at google and yahoo get so many updates and new ad campaigns which all need verifying that many times your updates or new ad-groups may not get approved because the big boys haven't had a chance to review them.

I must mention that this is more of a problem with Google then it is with Yahoo. With Yahoo you can actually see the status of your campaign which will read something like 'editorial pending' If you see the status of your campaign has been like this for 10 days or so then you know that someones forgotten to do their job. A quick email to your account manager should get this sorted.

With Google this is a little different. As soon as you submit new campaigns the status will read 'active' , however when you go over to the google search engine and do a search for one of your keywords you will see that you don't come up. So you check your account the following day and see that you haven't had any impressions. The status says active but still no impressions so you might think that the keywords you have chosen are no good. This is not the case – even though your status shows as active in reality the reasons why you don't have impressions is because someone at Google hasn't reviewed your campaign.

So the best piece of advise to a new PPC user would be to make sure you monitor your account frequently – If you see something strange or something doesn't add up then send an email to your account manager. Don't worry about sending multiple emails in one day – Your job needs attention so get your account manager working for you.

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What is the google sandbox?

The Google Sandbox is basically a time period that websites must wait in order to start ranking for high competitive keywords. Its a filter system that Google place on new websites which have little to no trust.

There are many theories on the internet regarding the Google sandbox as its not entirely clear, however we do know that some sort of filter system exists which lasts between 3 to 9 months(some claim even longer). This filter system will affect highly competitive keywords and will not show them in the SERPS.

Its important to mention that the sandbox affect is keyword related only and will not affect the whole site. It will affect the site if all of your keywords are highly competitive which require extra trust by Google in order to show the results in their SERPS.

Can I avoid the Google sandbox?

Im afraid this is not possible, Many people claim that doing this or that can reduce the chances of your site getting sandboxed. To avoid being sandboxed is never going to have a clear path. Some of the many claims are very useful to your website and rankings even if they will not actually get you out of the sandbox.

If there is a way to get out of the sandbox then you will need to:

Earn Googles trust - this is done by getting some high quality backlinks from sites such as dmoz – yahoo and other sites with high page rank including .gov and .edu domain.

Write quality contents – write quality contents so that it will become very popular – people will bookmark it – it will appear on delicious – fliker and on many blogs – Google loves contents and if you keep producing excellent content which gets syndicated and used by others then it should speed up the time your website spends in the sandbox.

Some people even say that by building backlinks slowly will also get the site out of the sandbox or avoid the sandbox altogether. To be honest this isn't a factor which will affect the sandbox.

What to do while im in the sanbox?

To come out of the sandbox requires patience and no one knows this better then webmasters who have been in the sandbox for their competitive keywords. If you are in the sandbox then dont give up –

Keep promoting your website -when you get released from the sandbox filter you should have some great rankings.

Target long tail keywords – Remember that the sandbox only affects competitive keywords – optimise your articles to target long tail keywords – you will start to rank for them quickly.

Points to consider

Being caught up in the sandbox filter is one of the worst experiences that any webmaster can have. The period ranges from 3 to 9 months – some people say that this period focuses on the site age and others say that it focuses on the age of backlinks. Either way when you get a new site make sure to start creating backlinks to it asap so that the backlinks can also age with the domain. A quality aged backlink has great power.

Remember to keep working on your optimisation for the website as when you will come out of the sandbox you should benefit from great rankings.

If you have found this article useful then please feel free to bookmark it.

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In short do follow backlinks get followed by google and authority will be filtered down to your site – this is the best kind of backlink to go for.

No follow backlinks have a special code on them telling the search engines not to pass authority to the backlink.

I would still recommend using no follow backlinks as they make your offsite seo look natural and they still hold some good value. I previously ran a test on No follow backlnks by using yahoo answers which only give no follow backlinks. the results were amazing and this is the reason why i would encourage all of my readers to still go for no follow backlinks especially when they are coming from high page rank domains.

The video tutorial is below.

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2. Backlinks
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In this article I will be talking about Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) and its importance to SEO.

What is Latent Semantic indexing?

Latent Semantic Indexing aka LSI is a form of indexing that the search engines use.It  is a technique of  analyzing, listing or categorizing certain keywords or phrases in the contents of various websites in such a way that they have contextually and conceptually the same or related intent and meaning despite the different words used in them.

The explanation above may sound a little long winded, in short it means using different variations of your keywords. So for SEO you would use search engine optimisation – Search engines – Onsite – offsite – ranking factors and so on.

As you can see the keywords above are all related to SEO. In the past if you wanted to rank for the keyword SEO then you would use that very keyword a number of times on your website. The search engines have now evolved and this no longer works.

So using synonyms of your keywords is the way ahead and the way in which the major search engines such as Google advise us to layout our text.

In the same way a LSI structure of contents is required then so is a LSI structure of anchor text. SO instead of creating a number of backlinks pointing to your website with the keyword SEO for example, you would rather use variations of your keywords as in the example above.

Optimising your text and webpages in this LSI form and also using the LSI structure for your anchor text will ensure that you do not get pulled up from spam and it will also help you to rank for many more keywords.

To drive certain keywords up in the rankings then I would advise to build more backlinks with that keyword as the anchor text however, do not forget to vary your anchor text along the way. I would also suggest using your domain url as a backlink alone as if your website was to get pulled up for human review then it will not be striking that all of your backlinks are anchor text backlinks which can be a sign of spam.

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