Anchor text  is the text that is used to make a hyperlink. The following is anchor text: SEO Blog Tips. When the link is clicked it points back to this site. The same link without anchor text would read: http://www.seoblogtips.co.uk/. The HTML version looks like the following: <a href=”http://www.seoblogtips.co.uk/”>SEO Blog Tips</a>.

Why Use Anchor Text

When you click on links on the internet you will find that most are through anchor text links. Having links without anchor text can make everything look very unpleasant and untidy. Imagine all the links on this page including the navigation links without anchor text, how long would you keep on this site for? Reading the anchor text also can sum up a little what that page/link maybe about and will determine if you wish to click that link.

So, using anchor text not only makes the link look better than a long URL and sums up the link that you are about to click, it has a bigger purpose.

Search Engines Love Anchor Text

Search engines use anchor text in their algorithms to determine how to rank a site. It is 1 of the major factors that Google uses to rank sites and it can carry a lot of weight.

If a site is ranking number 1 in Google for the term “Laptops” that means that site has a high number of links pointing to that site with the anchor text “Laptops” and other variations. That does not mean that pointing loads of links with the term “Laptops” will get you number one, ranking is more complicated than that and there are over 200 ranking factors that Google uses in their algorithm. Infact, doing this is considered unnatural linkbuilding and it can trip a filter in Google.

Google Bombing

In the early days, SEOs/Webmasters could easily rank for Keywords/Phrases with just getting links with the correct anchor text, regardless if the ranking page was related to the Keywords/Phrases. This technique was knowing as a “Google bomb” or “Link bomb” and many started for a prank, but  as from  January, 2007, Google placed an algorithm in place to stop the impact of these in their results. Click Here for the official post by Google.

One of the most famous Google bombs was for the term “miserable failure” which linked to George W. Bush’s White House biography. Click Here to read more on that.

This list was not put together for people to spam the hell out of them, doing this will just spoil it for other people and will just get your accounts deleted, and then you will have just wasted your time.

Article List

Article sites are a great way of getting one way links back to your site. They let you write content that is related to your site and then they let you post a link back to your site. Articles that are too short or that are just advertising your site will not get accepted by the article directories.

The Free Library – Page Rank 7

Ezine Articles – Page Rank 6

Zimbio – Page Rank 6

Idea Marketers – Page Rank 5

Article Dashboard – Page Rank 5

Al Articles - Page Rank 5

Article Click – Page Rank 4

Go Articles – Page Rank 4

Free SEO Webmaster Tools – Page Rank 4

Amazines – Page Rank 3

Social Bookmarks

These sites allow you to post a link back to your site with a small description.

Hit Marks – Page Rank 5

Blurpalicious -Page Rank 4

Buzz Up – Page Rank 4

List of Advertisers – Page Rank 3

Joontz – Page Rank 1

Blogs

Blogs can be great places to get both blogroll links and post links. If you sign up to any blog you need to make sure you write meaningful posts; make your posts descriptive/useful. Try and build a community around the blog and that way you can drive traffic to your site because of the blog.

WordPress – Page Rank 9

Bloglines – Page Rank 9

My Opera – Page Rank 7

Other Places

Squidoo

Buying a Domain Name

Before you go anywhere, you need to buy a domain name (a URL/website address). To do this go to: Reg-123. This site is easy to use and offers cheap domain names. You will then see a box saying “Domain Search”. Type in a domain that you would like to call your website.

Think about what your blog will be about and think about what keywords you would like your blog to rank for in the search engines. As search engines give credit to the keywords that are contain in a URL towards ranking a site, if you want to rank for terms which include the word “Dog” and you are writing on subjects about dogs, then you should include this term in your blog’s name. A suitable name in that case would been: www.thedogblog.com.

More than likely, you will find the URL you wanted has been bought by someone else, it is now a matter of trial and error until you find a URL that is free and you are happy with.

Preferably, you want a domain that ends in .com, or a URL that is assigned to your country, such as .co.uk for a UK site. Reg-123 also offers suggested domain names at the bottom of the page if your domain name is not available after your search.

Once you are happy with a domain name, make sure the box is ticket next to it and press “add to basket”, then press “ok, lets continue”. You will then proceed to check-out, to pay.

Once you have paid for your domain name you will receive an email saying that you have bought your domain, this could take awhile in some cases.

After the email, go back to Reg-123 and click “login to your control panel”, located at the top of the page. Then click “view domains”, then click your domain name, then “Change Nameservers”. Keep this page up!

Getting a Hosting Package

Next, go to the following site: Host Gator. If you are using Firefox, hold down “Ctrl” and press Host Gator. This will open a new tab. Click “web hosting”, located at the top of the page and then choose a hosting package. Any of the following will do:

• Hatchling Plan
• Baby Plan
• Business Plan

Press “Order Now”, then enter you domain name in “Use an existing domain name”. Fill in the details on the next page to register an account and set up the hosting plan.

Your account will go into the pending department and then you will receive an email with a link to your Cpanel. Log onto your Cpanel and scroll down to the bottom, you will see something that says “Name Servers”, Copy them both and replace them on your Reg-123 account, and press “change nameservers”.

It can take upto 48hours for your name servers to change, but if you reset your internet it usually works straight away.

Go back to your Cpanel on Host Gator and follow the following video:

You now have Wordpres installed on your site! Type: http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin into your browser for you to login to your wordpress account. Replace “yoursite” with your URL.

The search engines love fresh content; they want to show users new information as soon as they can. As blogs are typically updated more often than websites the search engines typically index them more frequantly, especially if you send out Pings.

No Free Blogs Please

If you are serious about blogging then free blog platforms such as Blogger can only take you half way. For more people to take you seriously and for you to build up a better reputation you need to think about buying your own domain name and hosting the site on a paid server rather than a free one, doing this will get more sites to link to you, more comments, more subscribers and an over all acceptance of users interested in what you have to say.

Use WordPress

WordPress is a CMS and helps you start up a blog on your own domain name without the hassle of learn HTML. You can simple install it on your website and then you are good to go. Read the following post to install WordPress: How to install wordpress

Using WordPress has its good points:

1. Everytime you write a new blog post, WordPress sends out an Auto-Ping to tell various sources including Google that your website is updated and tells the spiders to come crawl that page.
2. There are tons of free templates out there that you can use on your site for free.
3. WordPress offers tons of plugins that you can use on your site, also for free.
4. Built in RSS Feeds.

All in One SEO Pack

This plugin is a must if you use WordPress on your blog! It lets you easily:

• Edit the Meta-tags for the home page.
• Rewrite URLs. (without this the URLs are not search engine friendly at all)
• And More

Content

If you are going to have a blog, you need to update it frequently. To keep users and the search engines coming back, you need to write posts as often as you can, atleast once a week. If not, then there is no reason for people to re-visit your site once they have been once. The search engines also pick up on this and if they see your content has not been updated in a while they will not visit your site as often to see if their is any new content.

Nofollow links are links that are given an attribute value in the HTML code that tells the search engines no to count these kind of links towards ranking a given site. The code looks like the following:

<a rel=”nofollow” href=”http://www.seoblogtips.co.uk>SEO Blog Tips</a>

These kind of links were invented to try and fight blog spam comments. As webmasters and SEOs used to spam the hell out of blogs just to get links back to their site Google decided to make the nofollow to try and tackle this obstacle.

Each search engines has different rules for nofollow, some count the links, others only just follow the links to get to new pages/sites. Below is what the main search engines do:

• Google - follows nofollow links but simply does not pass on anchor text or page rank.
• Yahoo – follows nofollow links but simply does not pass on anchor text or page rank.
• Bing- follows nofollow links but simply does not pass on anchor text or page rank.
• Ask.com – does not use nofollow links at all.

How to Spot Dofollow/Nofollow Links?

There is a Firefox add-on that tells you which links use the attribute. You can download the attribute HERE. The add on works like the following:

Nofollow= Links are highlighted in red
Dofollow= Links are highlighted in blue

When you have the add-on installed, you can enabled it by right clicking and pressing “NoDofollow.” Have a look above to see the Nofollow highlighted in red and the Dofollow highlighted in blue.

Should I use Nofollow Links

You make think, just because the search engine do not count nofollow towards ranking then there is no point going these kind of links, but there are three main reasons why you may/must:

1. The main reason to not worry about nofollow is, if you are getting links for advertising. If you have links on websites that are just for click-throughs, then nofollow does not matter.
2. The other reason is, as Google looks for natural link building, not everyone that links to your site will use dofollow links and if you go out their and get tons of dofollow links then this does not look very natural does it? You need to mix the link building up and get some nofollows also.
3. The last reason is, just because the links do not pass page rank or anchor text, that does not mean the backlinks can not be used to get pages indexed by the search engines.

We will firstly discuss what the meta description tag is for those of you who are unsure what it is. The Meta description tag is a piece of HTML code that goes inside the <Head> </Head> section of a Website. It usually looks like the following:

<META NAME=”Description” CONTENT=”Your Meta Description would go here.”>

Whatever you put in the Meta Description will usually go towards creating a snippet created by the search engines if they feel it to be useful for describing your site. Below is an image of Google snippets, the meta description tags is the text below the titles in blue.

For SEO Purposes

Do not think that if you use a Meta Description tag for the search engines that include your kewords 10 times, or keywords completely irrelevant to your site that you will rank higher for those keywords.

Google does not use the the Description Tag to rank any sites and if you did not use one then you would still rank as high or as low as you do with/without them.

Why Use Them Then?

The main reason to use Meta Description tags is for better CTR (click though rates). If your description is more compelling to someone when they search a query then they will be more likely to click on your site than someone else’s.

If you do feel the need to submit your site to the search engines then you can submit your site to the top 20 search for free: Submit your site.

What You Need to do First

You need to make sure your site is actually up and running, if your site is just a blank page, or it is still showing hosting ads your site will not get indexed. You need to make sure your site has some content on it. A few pages is better, but you can get indexed with just one page of content.

Get the Search Engines to Come to You

You may ask, “how is this  possible?” Well, it is simple, you need to get backlinks to your site. Backlinks are websites that link to your site, just like the “submit site” link above. Below are a few sites that you can get dynamic links from and will improve your chances of your site getting indexed. Enter your URL on the following:

Dynamic Sites

AboutUs - Enter your URL in “Search” box, then press “search.”

Alexa – Enter your URL in “Search Alexa,” then press “search,” then press “Get Details”

Markosweb – Enter your URL in “Check Website”

Quarkbase – Enter your URL in “Enter a website”

CQcounter – Enter your URL in “Enter Domain Name:,” then press “search.”

Cash81 – Enter your URL in “Calculate your website”

Twitter

Go to: Twitter, create an account and then post a link back to your site, both in your account setting and on your wall once your account it up and running. You then need to start following people. This can be done by following “The Top 100” or by searching for people related to your site using Twitter’s Find option. Following people will give you a greater chance of people following you and is needed to get your twitter account indexed.

Add a picture to your twitter account and details about yourself to show people that you are a real person. People will following you more if they can tell you are a real person.

Remember! Do not spam twitter as your account will just get banned. You can then post new posts everytime you set up a new page on your site, or when you have something interesting to say.

Creating a Blog

Creating a blog can be a great way of getting your site indexed. Although there is more work involved they are one of the best ways to get your site indexed by Google and also help you gather a following if done right.  Use the following for free blogging platforms:

Blogger

WordPress

These sites are easy to set up and are free to use. When you start your blog you need to make sure you write a good posts and not just a 1 paragraph meaningless post; writing other posts is also better. You can then put a link back to your site either in the blogroll or in the post itself.

When you have posted a new site these blog platforms send out automatic pings that tell the search engines that your blog has new content and tells the spiders to come crawl your blog.

If these steps are done right your site should get indexed usually with 24 hours.

What is Cloaking?

Cloaking is a black hat technique and is mentioned in Google Guidines,

“Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”"

Cloaking is when you show the search engine spiders a different page to what you show visitors and is done through the HTML code of your website. Cloaking was a trick that some SEOs/webmasters used to do to try and trick search engines for better ranking and also visitors to their site.

For The Search Engines

If you are cloaking for search engines then you could rank for terms that your site would not normally rank, or rank higher for the terms you do rank for which would bring you more visitors. This would be done if: your site was all in flash, you wanted to rank higher for your keyword so you needed to show the search engine spiders more relevant content, but you did not what the text to clutter up your site, or you just wanted to rank for any key term just to bring more traffic to your site.

For The Users

If you are cloaking for visitors then you could show a different meta-tag snippet to the search engines then to visitors, your site could turn out to be porn and have nothing to do with what the user searched for in the search engines, and because you showed a different page to Google, Google would believe your site was relevant for the key phrase the user searched for.

H1 tags refers to text that has a code before and after the text. The code would look like the following: <h1>This is heading 1</h1>. This should be used in the HTML source and it makes the writing appear larger then any normal text on the page and also appear much bolder too. They are intended to be used for headings and titles. Here is an Example:

This text uses H1 tags

This text does not.

Why Use H1 tags?

The search engines use keywords that are contained in the H1 tags as a ranking factor. If you are wanting to rank for the term, “cheap cars” and you have that term in the H1 tags you would have a better chance of ranking for that term compared to someone who has not included that term or a H1 tag.

Do not over do it though! Some people try to get all their keywords in their H1 tags and it can look really messy and long. You need to remember the H1 tag is like a title and needs to read well and sum up your text underneath.

You can use more that one H1 tag on a page and this can not harm your rankings. However, if you over use them and disguise them with CSS Google algorithm can detect this and they will not help you in any way.

I would firstly like to point out that I would not recommend any webmaster to use any black hat techniques on their site. Although some techniques may get you higher rankings, if you are found out by the search engines they will either penalise your site, or worse, ban your site completely from ever showing up at all in their search engines.

What is Black Hat

Black hat are techniques that are used to help boost your rankings that the search engines do not like. There are many black hat techniques that people do and I will go over some below.

Keyword stuffing

The Keyword meta tag used to be a high ranking factor years ago but SEOs used to abuse them to gain higher rankings. Keyword stuffing is repeating a lot of keywords, both on your page and in your meta titles to try and achieve better rankings.

As the search engines look at a sites content to see if that site is relevant  for a given keyterm/phrase they look to see if that word(s) is/are mentioned on that page. If a page mentions “dog collars” a lot then it must be relevant for that term.

With this being a ranking factor some SEOs will over use this keyterm on the page to try and boost that page, using this technique can drop your rankings rather than improve them and it is also bad for visitors as they do not want the term “dog collars” repeated every 4 words as it does not read well and it is very off putting

Hidden Text

This techniques was also bigger years ago more than it is today, it can also be linked with keyword stuffing. As people do not want sites with over used keyterm people sometimes put their keyterms hidden on their page so you are unable to see them but the search engines can, this techniques is used to try and trick both you and the search engines.

Hidden text is hidden by either making the text the same colour as the background or setting the font size to 0. Hidden text is usually used at a bottom of a page on a white background. Hidden text however does show up on the page source and search engines are easily able to detect hidden text now.

Link Farms

Link farms are just websites with loads of random links on them and serve no informational purpose at all, they are used to try and boost rankings.

Bad Neighbourhood Sites

Linking to a bad neighbourhood site typically with a reciprocal link can hurt your ranks, what bad neighbourhood means is, if a site is doing something that Google does not like and you link to them Google may think that you are involved or you would have not linked to them.

Cloaking

Cloaking is given to the technique where one page is given to the search engines and a different one is given to the visitors. This technique is used to help pages rank for terms they would not normally rank for and help boost your rankings.

Doorway pages

Doorway pages are pages  that are keyword rich and their purpose are just to send visitors to a different page that you want them to go to. They are created for the search engines and usually read very badly and include many keyterms in a specified niche to try and rank that page higher. A “click here” or meta refresh HTML is also used.

Content Scrapping

This is used for people who do not write their content for their websites, they just go out and steal other peoples and mash it up and try and make it their own, this goes into the duplicate content issue and if your websites content is simply all copied your site will not rank, but the original source will.

Grey Hat Techniques

These techniques are between white and black hat, some SEOs use them and some stay clear of them.

Auto Software

Some SEOs use automated software to build up links to a site, these kind of softwares are used to save time and may get lots of links to a site, but are of poor quality so offer little success. Blog posting and article submissions are just a few.

White Hat

Using white hat techniques are essential for better search engine visibility and to make sure your site never gets banned/penalized. Following the following rules are a must.

Google - http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

Yahoo - http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/basics/basics-18.html

You need to make sure any techniques mentioned in the “black hat” section are not used on your site and the search engine’s guidelines are followed.