Search Engine Optimization Tips Blog

SEO experts are rapidly discovering the power of Squidoo lenses to help boost rankings and generate inbound links. Basically, a Squidoo lens is a web page hosted on the official Squidoo site. People who build Squidoo lenses are called lensmasters. A Squidoo lens can really be a great way to promote products or services, or to spread information that increases your authority in the field. Squidoo lens creation may be challenging, but you can always enlist professionals to help.

Do you Squidoo?

In addition, Squidoo lenses tend to get ranked very high in Google. This is due in part to the excellent reputation Squidoo has for providing good information. Squidoo has a page rank of 8 which is very good! If you have put valuable, relevant information on a Squidoo lens that is linking back to your website, you will definitely benefit. Squidoo lenses get indexed on Google very quickly and usually rank very high for the keyword that they are targeted toward, assuming SEO is done. This can increase both traffic and conversions to your site.

Squidoo accounts are free! You don’t have to pay a monthly or yearly fee for lenses or your account. This means that you will be able to have as many lenses as you want. In addition, Squidoo lenses transfers are free. You can actually hire someone to build a lens for you, and then they can transfer it to your account. This means you will have future control over the lens, and can add items, delete them or edit your lens in any way you see fit – without having to contact someone to make the changes for you. (You are also protected from the possibility that your lens could be subsequently accidentally deleted by the builder.)

Once your Squidoo lenses are up and running, the next step is to let people know they are there. You can rank well in the SERPs, but also use other methods. Your SEO firm can also probably help with Squidoo lens promotion in the same way that they promote your articles and other content using social media.

Many people feel it is difficult to build a lens on Squidoo when they are first getting started. Without an experienced guide to show you exactly how to set up your lens it can be very hard to figure out what to do with the various different modules. With no instruction on how to upload photos and correctly optimize and tag your lenses, you may find it hard to get them indexed and ranked in Google.

In addition, you must take care to inform yourself about and avoid certain topics that Squidoo will not allow you to build a lens about. If you create a lense on a topic blacklisted by Squidoo, you will run into trouble. Fortunately, all your problems can be solved by getting a professional team to take care of Squidoo lens creation and promotion.

Determining the value of any one link to your site is more than PageRank. There are many simple techniques and strategies to help determine the value of a link. Basically, the best links come from the best sites – you can indeed follow in the footsteps of others and ride their coattails to success. The trick is getting them to let you.

Decide how much top rankings are worth to you, use the best SEO tactics to get you halfway there, then budget appropriately. A Link Building Service can help you get the best links – but you need to know what those are.

Determining link value can be very subjective. The best bet is to examine a few main signals of quality and trust, then target links that display those quality indicators.

Aged links are better than new links, so look for sites that have been around a while. Links from older sites tend to have more value and trust to pass on, because they have had more time to gain trust from users and search engines.

Even just a handful of links from older, trustworthy sites will increase rankings dramatically. You want to have quality links. That doesn’t mean it only takes a handful of links for top rankings; you have to take into account the industry, competition, current rankings, and the individual site. In a competitive niche, this will be an ongoing race.

A text link from the content section of a page has more value than a link from the sidebar or footer. The part of the page will drive the most click-throughs should be investigated and should determine link placement. A perfect link is one that drives traffic AND passes link juice.

So don’t skip over a great linking opportunity because some people say the placement won’t have much value. Remember, not all raffic comes from the SERPs, non link juice links can still be enormously valuable.

Yahoo!’s Link Domain queries can tell you how many links are going to the page and site you want your link from, and can give you an idea of where thier juice is coming from. You might even find a few new places to get direct links yourself.

Also, don’t skip over sites lack hundreds or thousands of domains linking to them. A small industry site with 100 domains linking to it from other industry sites, competitors, and related sites is better than some random site with links going everywhere, many unrelated to your niche.

You want associations that will help you position your site in neighborhood that can help search engines figure out your relationship to the industry. High numbers aren’t everything. A solid link building package that balances quantity with extremely high quality niche links is your best bet.

Hiring an SEO firm to generate backlinks can help you, but only if they follow the rules and don’t get you tangled up by using black hat tactics.

To buy backlinks is against Google’s Webmaster guidelines, paid links are taboo:

Buying or selling links that pass PageRank can dilute the quality of search results. If you believe a site is engaged in buying or selling links that pass PageRank, please tell us about it. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.

Google has a form to report paid links that were bought or rented in order to get PageRank, and asks webmasters to turn sites in that are in violation, so don’t think you won’t get caught, and know thaty you and no-one else will be held responsible for your site, no matter who actually bought the links.

Hiring a link building firm is still a great help if they do it right.You can build as many links as you want and Google will be fine with that as long as you follow webmaster guidelines. In fact, Google actually encourages you to add links to build a better, more authoritative web site. More pages, more articles and more links makes your site user friendly.

Building links is a lot of work, though. You can significantly reduce your work load by hiring a link building company, as long as the firm that you hire really knows what they are doing and follows all the rules. Linking back is the key to getting the traffic plus search engine rankings.

Enlisting the services of a link building company can even help you get your site on the front page of Google, increasing traffic and business for you, so consider that as a good option.

Do you want your website listed in DMOZ? It can be frustrating – you know that being listed will probably help your Google rankings, but approvals can take a very long time. Actually, most problems stem from what you do when submitting your site.

DMOZ is also called the Open Directory Project (ODP). It is a manually categorized directory of websites and pages which are reviewed by a staff of volunteers before inclusion; all listings in DMOZ are free.

DMOZ isn’t generally utilized for search like Yahoo or Bing, but does serve an important function for Google users as Google takes DMOZ listing into account, including it in their own directory. This means that websites that are listed in DMOZ may have a better ranking, since DMOZ has mad PageRank. Since PageRank is a huge part of Google’s ranking algorithm, your website’s PageRank is increased by DMOZ listings since you will receive one link from DMOZ and one from the Google directory. Just being listed in DMOZ can also get you many more links from sites that download the directory.

The main problem in getting listed in DMOZ is the time lag – the site appears to say they have nearly 60,000 editors (volunteers who review and categorize websites) but this is actually a number reflecting all editors the website has had since inception, most of whom are no longer with the project. This means there are hundreds or thousands of submissions daily, and very few editors to review them all. Each editor in addition can only review in their assigned categories, and this means backlogs can occur frequently.

However, this is not the only reason for delays – often, the DMOZ submission is done wrong to begin with. If you submit to the wrong category, it can take forever as it works its way up the queue, only to be bounce to another editor and start over at the bottom of the pile. If that category still isn’t the correct one, the process could start all over again! This means that it is very important to research and make sure you are submitting to the right category.

If you have multiple sites, this may start to eat up a lot of time – so having a DMOZ submission service help you out might be a wise move. They can guarantee that your site is sent to the correct category and editor the first time and keep you from getting stuck in a huge traffic pileup waiting your turn at wrong tollgates.

Some sites may even be rejected because they do not have enough unique content. An SEO can look at your content and tell you if it is unique enough to be considered for  DMOZ. Affiliates are the most often rejected because of too much duplicate type content. Also, sites may be rejected because the submission was done wrong in regard to the title or description – these must follow DMOZ guidelines or editors will throw the request out.

People are not informed that their site has been rejected, so it can be nerve-wracking to wonder if you are stuck in queue or already kicked back as not correct. A submission service can help ensure that everything is done correctly and help you avoid sleepless nights wondering ‘Did my DMOZ submission get rejected?

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