Since the Google Penguin update hit earlier this year, online marketers have been faced with a simple choice: go ethical, go high-quality, or go home. 

Black-hat techniques such as keyword stuffing, duplicated content and link bombing were heavily penalised by Panda and Penguin – with many search queries affected. What this means today is that it’s more important than ever for a website to feature good quality, regularly-updated content and links from reputable, relevant sources.

These algorithm updates have seen guest blogging – once the time-consuming, rarely used side of link building – become a key feature of campaigns as SEOs realise they must chase quality over quantity. 

But how exactly can guest blogging help a brand?

Backlinks

At the very basic level, guest blogging opportunities will provide you with a relevant link or two back to your website. What’s more, the blog on which you’re guesting on is likely to enjoy a higher page rank than standard article sites, which will give your link much greater weight. However, limit your backlinks to around 2 per article; any more than that and your great quality blog may start to look spammy to search engine spiders and, more importantly, to anyone reading it.

New, relevant traffic

When writing a guest blog, you’re also introducing your website and its services to a new, receptive audience of hundreds, maybe thousands of people – generating traffic for your website and potential customers for your business. This is about more than links. This is about people.

Authority

What’s more, by talking about aspects of your business in an authoritative way, you’re establishing your brand as an expert voice in the industry: a trusted, familiar face amongst the faceless millions of the internet!

Social media-savvy bloggers

Recent Google algorithm updates have given greater authority than ever before to social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. These social factors are now crucial in determining a website’s popularity and its competitiveness, and bloggers are some of the most active groups on social media. By submitting a guest blog, you’re building a relationship with users who could retweet, share and blog about you now and in the future. 

But be careful…

However, it’s important to be wary. Many blog owners are seeking to capitalise on the popularity of guest blogging and their blog’s respectable page rank by charging for links from guest blogs. This black-hat process can’t be condoned; while it may result in a short-term boost up the rankings, if Google finds out (and they often do) your site could be heavily penalised. 

And unfortunately, as the practice becomes more popular, the fact is that your competitors may step up their guest blogging activities – making it harder to find truly valuable, unique guest blogs. Expertslink builders will still find traction in the area, but you’ll need truly innovative, well-written and interesting articles to get featured.

Your online marketing agency have performed miracles - your website has shot up to rank as number one for all your chosen keywords. So now what? Is that the end of your SEO project?

The short answer is no. It is never over. The role of your agency will change slightly now that you have reached your desired position, shifting from an aggressive ‘rankings conquering’ approach to a more defensive, consolidating strategy which maintains your position on the top spot.

Once you’ve reached your target rank, you’ll need to keep yourself there and the only sure-fire way to do this is to stay on the ball with your SEO. If you allow your SEO project to stagnate, you risk Google seeing your website as stale and irrelevant, this gives competitors the opportunity to climb up and snatch the coveted position you’ve attained through many months of hard graft.

And it isn’t just the competition that you need to worry about. Search engines are continuously updating their algorithms which calculate your rank. Nothing stays still on the internet for long, so an on-going defensive SEO strategy is essential if you want to maintain your prime position.

So once you have reached your goal rank, what’s to be done?

SEO Maintenance

First of all, your online marketing agency should now put in place an effective SEO maintenance strategy. This will include continuous link building which ensures that your website still looks relevant and up-to-date to the search engines. It will also ensure that your SEO project does not become lax and allow more aggressive competitors to outdo you.

SEO Expansion

Once you’re comfortably in your target position, you can start thinking about expanding your strategy. You might have conquered your chosen keywords but there are thousands of others out there to chase and each one could bring you a plethora of new visitors.

There are a couple of directions that your chosen online marketing agency could take your SEO expansion. You could set off on a whole new link building strategy with new sales pages for each new keyword, or you could take a more relaxed approach by setting up a regular blog which targets all the long tail keywords that could bring traffic to your site. The route you choose to go is entirely up to you, your budget, your market and your aspirations.

The most important thing to remember is that SEO is not a one-off cost. It is a continuous process which must be factored into the on-going cost of marketing your business. Failing to maintain your SEO means that all the hard work of your online marketing agency - and all the money you spent on ranking highly - will very quickly get washed away.

If you want to stay relevant and maximise your audience, Liberty Marketing can help. As Wales’ largest online marketing agency, we have experience helping clients reach, maintain and maximise their target ranking in a transparent, ethical and effective way. Get in touch today to find out more on 029 2076 6467.

Even with the best online marketing services to hand, rankings do have a horrible habit of fluctuating. You can spend huge amounts of money on strategy, but - if your online marketing agency isn't prepared for Google updates - it could all go out of the window very quickly indeed.

So what are Google updates and why do they cause such havoc with your place on the search engines? Above all, how can you make sure that you're investing in online marketing services that are future-proof and will withstand even the more radical change in Google's algorithm?

What are Google Updates?

In basic terms, a Google update occurs when the techie team at the search engine giant make changes to the way websites are viewed and ranked. Google uses an algorithm to work out where your website belongs in the rankings. There are hundreds of different factors, which Google's algorithm takes into consideration, some of the most crucial factors are:

• Internal links
• External links
• Anchor text
• Web copy (originality)
• Keywords
• Social metrics
• Site architecture

Agencies providing on-the-ball online marketing services will make sure that your site ticks all of the right boxes with regards to these factors. This will get your website ranking highly. Yet it isn't quite so simple because Google are constantly changing the goal posts. To paraphrase one person's remark at the recent Brighton SEO conference: "Google are the opposing team as well as the referee, plus they own the ball, the pitch and the goal posts!"

Every time Google updates their algorithm, the way they rank websites shifts. There are hundreds of updates every year and usually they are very subtle, but sometimes these updates are big news and can make a big impact. For example...

Google Panda

Many online marketing service providers will shudder at the mention of Google Panda. It was a huge update to the algorithm, which was designed to eliminate the use of unhelpful, duplicate and plagairised content and give priority to highly original, high quality websites. It hit the UK in April 2011 and dramatically impacted 11.8% of all search queries.

Many high profile websites took a real beating and many online marking agencies were left blinking in horror at the un-doing of all their hard work.

How to Get Google Update-proof

Google keep all their updates thoroughly under wraps, which means that online marketing agencies can't really do much except wait and then work with what they're given once changes hit. Even if they do hint at what changes have been made, they usually don't give too much away...

Although it's impossible to know which changes are going to happen, there are ways to help protect your website against any negative impact that updates might have. As the motivation of Google updates is to weed out low-quality, spammy webpages, an ethical online marketing strategy which places quality at the forefront of its approach is vital. If your online marketing agency or in-house team implement this sort of plan, Google is unlikely to make changes that majorly (and negatively) affect your site rankings. By creating the kind of content and links that Google likes, you're less likely to be penalised by an update.

To run a good, ethical, high-quality online marketing strategy the basics need to be covered:

• Good, unique, keyword-rich content,
• A large, varied in-bound link profile, with lots of domains, a variety of anchor text and a mixture of dofollow and nofollow links,
• A blog/news section will help keep the site seen as fresh,
• Social integration and social media work will be important in the months/years to come.

If you want to succeed online, you’ll need to work with an ethical SEO agency that provides quality-driven online marketing services. As staunchly white-hat SEO and PPC experts, Liberty Marketing can help you weather Google updates and make a big splash on the web.

A great SEO link building service can do wonders for your website's rankings. The more incoming links which direct visitors - and search engine crawlers - to your website, the more relevant and useful your page will appear to search engines like Google and Bing. But what does a link building service do? Find out all about the different kinds of links a good link building service will set up and how they work.

Social Media Links
As any link builder worth their salt will tell you, social media links are becoming more and more important. Recent changes to how search engines rank pages have meant that Google is taking far more notice of the social media links, which an SEO link building service can put in place for you. This is because social media sites are among the most used resources online, with one study suggested that social media accounts for more than 22% of all Internet use. This is why factors like Facebook 'Likes' are beginning to have a real effect of rankings.

A link building service will be able to use this to their advantage. On sites like Facebook and Twitter, an online link building service can go in and direct traffic to your site by using links placed in profiles, groups and posts.

Social bookmarking is also becoming an important tool for any top link builder. Resources like del.icio.us, Diigo and HeyStaks enable users to bookmark and then share their collection of links to their favourite sites. When a link builder sets up links to your site using social bookmarking tools, search engines then index them.

Directories & Links
Directories are essentially online collections of links, organised into categories and sub-categories. They were primarily designed to allow browsers to find new information and websites but many an SEO link builder will submit their websites and links to directories like Yell.com, Qype and Hotfrog, to get your site indexed quickly by search engines. A good SEO link building service will know which directories search engines check most regularly, allowing your site to get indexed - fast!

Blog Links
There are two different forms of blogging which your link builders should use. On-site blogging not only boosts your reputation as an up-to-date industry leader and allows you to target hundreds of long-tail keywords, but it also allows you to create links to your own site. Search engines take less notice of internal links of this kind, but it does help search engine crawlers to navigate and index your site.

Off-site blogging will do far more favours for your rankings, which is why an SEO agency will often put more energy into this side of blogging. Blogging platforms like Tumblr, blogspot.com, WordPress and Posterous can be used to create links, either by embedding them in a brand new post, or by putting links in blog comments on other people's posts. Web 2.0 sites like Squidoo can also be used by a link builder in very much the same way.

Guest blogging is something that is important to any good SEO agency. It is related to both blogging and to reciprocal links which we will discuss later. Essentially, your link builder will approach an established blog and ask if they can post their own blog, which will include a link, on the blog, this will allow some really high quality traffic to be directed to your site and impress search engines. This takes a little more effort though, as your link builder will need to convince the owners of the original blog that the post they will be adding is going to be useful and relevant to readers. Anything else will seem spammy.

Ezine Article Links
Ezine article links are used by SEO agencies to surround their link with relevant content which tells the search engines that your website is about what it claims to be about. This increases its perceived relevance, doing wonders for its rankings!

Forum Links
In terms of what your link builders will do, forums work in a similar way to blogs. The SEO agency will include you link in their profile, their signature and in the post they actually make. Forums can be tricky for an SEO specialist because they often have restrictions which try to prevent the link builder from using the forum for link building purposes.

The best way to build links in forums is to use an exceptional team of SEO link builders that knows how to use forums to make genuine, highly relevant comments which also include your link which will actually be helpful to readers.

Reciprocal Links
Your link builder will also 'broker deals' which allow you to swap links with other, relevant websites that get a lot of traffic. Essentially if you provide a link to a different website on your page, that website will then provide a link back to your site in a mutually helpful agreement.

There are a few ways that a link builder can go about securing these reciprocal links: they can approach a related site themselves, they can send link request emails or they can wait to be contacted by another SEO agency, in charge of a different website.

Where Can you Find the Best SEO Link Building Service?
Well of course we're biased, but here at Liberty, our in-house link building service really is fantastic. Nicola, Andrew, Mona, Rachel, Adam, Sridhar, Ceri and Steve are our talented team of SEO account managers, social media marketers, search engine marketers and dedicated link builders; they know their way around SEO like nobody’s business. Their combined talents and expertise allow Liberty to offer an exceptionally effective link building service which will get your website to where it needs to go!

As we prepare for the introduction of The Bribery Act 2010, agencies and companies that pursue a paid linking strategy could end up in deep water.

Paid linking has always been a somewhat dubious technique and one that Google specifically singles out as being against their guidelines. The recent action taken by Google against major US retailer JC Penney is a good example of why the use of paid links isn’t a good idea. Following the discovery of a paid linking strategy, Google imposed a harsh penalty on the retailer, seeing their site drop significantly in the rankings.

The new Bribery Act could bring more than just a Google penalty. The bribery law states that an offence is committed by a company when:

• A person "associated" with the commercial organisation (i.e. performs services for it) bribes another person;

• The bribe is intended to obtain or retain business for the commercial organisation or retain an advantage in the conduct of the organisation's business.

In short, it will become an offense for a company to knowingly themselves, or through a third party agency, make payments to a company or individual in order to gain competitive advantage; which is exactly what paid linking is. You are paying someone to link to your site thereby gaining competitive advantage in the search results.

It is important to note that The Bribery Act 2010 was not created specifically to counter paid linking and therefore those using this strategy will no doubt find a way to skirt the wording of the law. Any links promoted as advertising are difficult to pin down as bribery, but greater consideration will now be placed on the wording of link requests. Those posing as expenses may slip through whereas blatant payments for links will stick out like a sore thumb.

Bottom line: if you want to avoid a Google penalty and avoid the long arm of the law then it’s best you stick to links that don’t require payment.

The New York Times has recently investigated the “black hat” SEO techniques employed by large US department store, JC Penney. In an article entitled "The Dirty Little Secrets of Search," the newspaper brought in an SEO consultant to find out how JC Penney had all of a sudden leapfrogged almost all other online retailers for some very competitive, very juicy terms.

You can read the full article here but the summary is along the lines of:

• The Times and their SEO consultant spot a tonne of link building, including a lot of paid-for links.
• The Times sent Google the evidence it had collected and the leader of their Web Spam team, Matt Cutts, responded by saying "I can confirm that this violates our guidelines” and that Google would take “corrective action”.
• Google did as they promised and started placing rankings penalties on the retailers’ website which promptly saw it fall down the search rankings for numerous search terms. For “living room furniture” it went from 1st position to 68th within a matter of hours and for “Samsonite carry on luggage” it fell from 1st to 71st.
• JC Penney claims no knowledge of these practices and fires its search engine marketing firm.

This isn’t the first example of a very large brand being slapped by Google. BMW and Go Compare have both previously been penalised for over-eager SEO tactics that fell foul of Google’s guidelines. If you have bought links or are thinking of doing so then consider the fact that if the search engine is willing to upset brands of this size, then they won’t have an issue doing the same to your site.

We often take on new SEO clients who have been penalised by Google for just such practices. Unfortunately, overcoming a penalty can take considerable work and a long time. Whilst it does take longer to rank at the top with more ethical SEO campaigns, the long-term positions and peace of mind are worth the wait.

In essence, SEO (search engine optimisation) is two areas: keywords and links. Whilst most people who have a website have thought about keywords and most website designers will help include these in the important parts of your web pages, links are often an afterthought, if considered at all.

This can be good news for your businesses as if you haven’t bothered seeking out links then your competitors probably haven’t either. If you start getting the type of in-bound links that the search engines like, then your site will soon start to rise to the top of the search results, bringing you much more traffic and enquiries.

Why are links so important?

The search engines need to be viewed as a popularity contest. Just because your website says that you sell cheap widgets doesn’t mean Google believes it. You need other websites to point Google towards yours, with each link acting as a vote of confidence. This means that Google finds your site more often and pays more attention as other sites it trusts are telling it about yours.

Where should you get links from?

There are many different types of link and it is important to build a diverse link profile, so seek links from a wide range of sites. Here are a few of the more common areas:

1. Directories. Directories list and link to other websites. It is a good idea to request links from popular general directories, such as DMOZ and Hot Frog, as well as niche ones that specialise in listing sites from within your industry. Quality is key with directories, so if it looks like a site full of spammy listings then move on and find another.

2. Blogs. Commenting on other blogs is popular in the link building world as you can choose the text displayed in the link and the page on your site that it links to. Blog comments can also bring high quality traffic but you need to leave a valuable comment and not spam them with some meaningless drivel.

3. Link requests. Send an email to other websites asking them to link to yours. If it is someone you know, such as a supplier or friend, then they will probably not hesitate to help. If it’s an unknown website then you may need to provide a reason why they should, e.g. an interesting article or special offer they can link to.

How do you find these links?

There are numerous ways of finding links but we only have a few hundred words here to try and describe what can be a full time job. Have a play around with these search strings and vary the words to find an array of sites that are easy link targets (substituting the word ‘keyword’ for your keyword or keyphrase):

If you are looking for directories then try typing this into Google:

keyword “add URL”
keyword “submit site”
keyword “suggest website”

Want to find relevant blogs? Try these and see what comes up:

keyword “add comment”
keyword “powered by Wordpress”

The entire ranking algorithm that Google uses is based on the concept of link popularity, so focusing on this area can bring in huge improvements to your search engine rankings. By doing nothing but building links, we have helped many businesses reach very high Google rankings for very competitive keywords. It really does work, so best of luck!

Oxford House Menswear is a clothing retailer based in South Wales and offers plus sized items under its OH Big Man brand. The business has used Pay Per Click advertising to generate sales for a number of years and recognised the potential and importance in improving natural search engine rankings.
 
OH Menswear engaged the services of other local SEO companies before speaking to us and was disappointed with the results. Undeterred, they were recommended our services and in mid 2009 asked us to help develop their SEO with the goal of significantly greater website traffic and sales.
 
How did we improve their online marketing?
 
Keyword research- We explored the keywords used by their target markets as well as the levels of competition for each one. We then made recommendations on where to concentrate efforts so that a large return could be made quickly.
 
SEO advice - Once keywords were decided upon we advised on ways the site should incorporate them, both in the makeup of the page (titles and meta data, etc.) and within areas of the body copy.
 
Inbound link building - A link building campaign took place where we sought in-bound links from sites related to clothing and e-commerce.

What did this do?
 
At the time of writing there were over 7 million web pages indexed on Google for "XXL Shirts" and OH Menswear have been sat in the first position for a number of months. They also appear on the first page for a number of other important keywords such as "large mens clothing" and "Ben Sherman XXL". Coming up high on the search engines for these keywords has brought in a lot of new, high quality traffic and has meant that the business could greatly reduce its Pay Per Click advertising spend.
 
How has this helped OH Menswear?
 
Online marketing is now a crucial part of OH Menswear. Sales have been growing month on month throughout 2009 and last month sales were up 82% when compared to the same period in 2008. This is remarkable when you look at the market they are in, one where most retailers are currently posting losses and the highest profile competitor, High & Mighty, recently went into administration. The business has actually had to take on additional premises to cope with the increase in orders from within the UK and, for the first time, from various countries around the world.

Freed & Co Solicitors approached us to help with their online marketing and SEO (search engine optimisation). They were having a new website developed and wanted to come up on the first page of the search engines for a mix of local and national keywords.  Their original site was built as a flash image, so had not been indexed by any search engines and didn’t contribute towards the marketing of the business.
 
How did we help improve their online marketing?
 
SEO copywriting – As the site was being developed, we advised them on the keywords to compete for. We then created new copy as well as amended existing copy, so that it held these keywords in the right places and presented the company well.
 
Inbound link building – A link building campaign took place for a number of months, to help give the site credibility within the search engines.
 
Pay Per Click advertising – A small but focused Google Adwords campaign was set up to bring in some quick traffic and new enquiries.
 
How has this helped the business?
 
Within a month of starting, website traffic was over 300% higher than it had ever been before and online enquiries had started to come in. Within a few months the website could be found on the first page of Google for national keywords like "property development solicitor" and local ones like "commercial conveyancing Cardiff" and "solicitor in Cardiff" and they had their first introductions as a result of this SEO work.