Panda and Penguin. If you’re in any way connected to the world of SEO, these are two animals you need to know about. You’ll probably have heard about these cute, fuzzily-monikered Google algorithm updates (which change the way the search engine ranks websites) at some point. Especially since every time another algorithm update hits, online marketers everywhere descend into a frenzy. 

How new algorithms unfold can impact enormously on any online marketing you have in place. That’s why it’s important to have at least some understanding of what it all means for the SEO work connected to your business - so here’s a brief summary of what Panda and Penguin were all about, and what you need to be aware of...

About Google Panda

Panda first hit in February 2011 (US) with Panda 1.0 (also known as the ‘Farmer’s Update’) targeting websites with low quality content, in particular content farms and second rate article directories. Google had enough of these clogging up the search results so took action. It’s estimated that Panda 1.0 affected almost 12% of US search terms when it first emerged.

Following this initial rollout, Panda continued with updates every few months (we are currently on Panda version 25) , taking the update global and targeting spammy, low quality, thin content, as well as duplicate and keyword heavy content, in order to improve the experience for web users and to improve the search engine results.

Websites that were hit particularly hard were content aggregators. The way Google sees it, sites that gather and store articles from other sites don't add much value to the web, so were penalised for the heavy amount of duplicate content on them. When they launched Panda, Google said that they were: "evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels even lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others' content and sites with low levels of original content … attention has shifted to ‘content farms’ which are sites with shallow or low-quality content".

Unfortunately for webmasters and online businesses the world over, there was a tonne of collateral damage. Ecommerce sites in particular, were hit too. The reason being that they often have the exact same product descriptions as other sites, often passed straight from the manufacturer and uploaded to the site. Google saw a lot of these Ecommerce sites as copying other content so they failed the Panda test and rankings plummeted.

About Google Penguin

Penguin waddled onto the scene and first caused waves in the SEO world in April 2012; Penguin made its entrance by penalising questionable SEO tactics and hitting sites that were violating Google’s Webmaster guidelines by using manipulative or ‘black hat’ SEO techniques to improve their rankings. Whereas Panda was about content and on-site SEO, Penguin zoned in on off-site SEO, in particular low quality links and over-optimised anchor text. It delivered a slap to any sites that appeared guilty, which at the time saw a large number of sites fall. 

Lots of businesses that had been outsourcing their SEO on the cheap (i.e. either by responding to one of those "We guarantee rankings. We build thousands of links for $99 a month" type emails or by using an agency that outsources to these people) got hit, even when they had been ranking well off these dodgy tactics for months or even years. The reality of Penguin is that it put many people out of business, as the rankings penalties were often so huge that sites would go from thousands of visitors a day to none.

How to stay out of trouble

If you want to stay on the right side of the Google Panda and Penguin updates and keep your site safely at the top of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), you need to understand what makes them tick and what they love. Adhere to their preferences and you shouldn’t have any problems.

Panda hates content thin pages, content farms, duplicate content and has set out to penalise these in order to increase the relevancy of pages and show users pages that have high quality, unique content. Therefore, you need to focus on producing strong, engaging content that is relevant and that your users will find useful. If you can ensure that your site copy is unique, of a high quality and provides useful information to your audience, then you will have one happy Panda!

Penguin is effectively a link filter and doesn’t like sites that try too hard to cheat the SERPs; it hates low quality links and too many keywords being used in the anchor text, so what makes Penguin happy? Well Penguin loves websites that appear to be naturally good without having to overdo it; it likes to see natural links based on quality, Panda-friendly content. If you are building links then you need to ensure you have a varied link profile, with hyperlinks pointing in from authoritative, relevant websites and when you have the option to choose anchor-text, make sure you vary it and don't always make it keyword focused.

Panda and Penguin check-list

Follow this quick check-list to ensure you’re not in the Panda or Penguin firing line:

• Keep content relevant and engaging - write for users, not for search engines
• Make sure your backlink profile is natural and doesn’t contain many spammy links, paid links or links from sites that Google would consider low quality
• Ensure that content is unique and not taken from other websites
• Don’t over-optimise your anchor text
• Avoid link building from rubbish websites that only exist for the purpose of manipulating search engines i.e. general directories with no quality control, article submission sites that publish any old thing, link farms, etc.

What’s coming next?

But don’t rest on your laurels: there are new updates every few months. Google changed over 500 times last year and there were many other changes on top of Panda and Penguin. The word on the web is that another major Penguin update is on the horizon; Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, revealed last month that they are working on Penguin 4, cryptically stating that the way Penguin works will be changed. So, while we all sit and wait for this next big Penguin update in anticipation, it’s worth clearing up that backlink profile, refining your content, and checking that you’re not currently stepping over the line!

The Webmarketing123 “State of Digital Marketing 2012 Report” is out and it is full of fascinating figures for marketing professionals and SEO specialists alike. Drawing on responses from over 500 Business to Consumer (B2C) and Business to Business (B2B) marketers, this report and the infographic it produced makes very interesting reading indeed.

Take a look at the infographic here.

Amongst the findings is the news that increasing numbers of B2C & B2B marketers are turning to SEO to secure firm results for their brand and business. According to industry professionals, the emphasis is no longer solely on creating brand awareness; it’s about producing measurable results that have a real impact on revenue. To achieve these figures, marketing professionals are increasingly relying on the measurability of online channels.

One key factor behind this trend is that SEO and online marketing are much more measureable than traditional offline marketing techniques. By investing in SEO you can clearly gauge your spend and the volume of lead generation this spend has created. Perhaps this is the reason that, in the report, 59% of B2B marketers and 49% of B2C marketers said that SEO is the marketing technique with the biggest impact on lead generation.

At Liberty, we have been committed to providing measurable SEO for years and want all clients to accurately gauge the results they are getting. Using Webmaster Tools (WMT), Google Analytics and specialist SEO software, we have the ability to provide extremely accurate statistics about:

• The amount and quality of traffic any one channel is producing
• The number of conversions achieved through SEO vs other online channels
• Your SEO conversion rate
• Your SEO cost per conversion 

Whereas up until fairly recently, it has been quite complex for a lot of businesses to accurately tell how well their SEO has been performing, with the right software, it is now easy to determine ROI and compare it to other markeing activities.

The 2012 report contains more good news for online marketing agencies – proving that in-house SEO rarely holds a candle to SEO undertaken by a specialist team. Businesses using an online marketing agency were found to be twice as likely to be ‘highly satisfied’ with their SEO strategy than those using an in-house team.

Other interesting nuggets from the survey include the news that, when it comes to social media, B2B marketers are hot on the trail of B2C teams. Social media was once deemed to be the realm of B2C business, allowing them to engage personally with individuals. Yet, B2B marketing professionals are quickly catching up and utilising the power of social media to increase brand awareness, reputation and relationships.

It has emerged that Google has announced updates to its search ranking systems. From now on, websites who are gaining a false start on competitors by using pirated content are likely to be penalised. 

Google’s Amit Singhai said: 

"We will begin taking into account a new signal in our rankings: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site. Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results.” 

But what does this mean for you? 

The good news is that if your site is chock-full of cracking content that’s yours and yours alone, then you’ve nothing to worry about. In fact, these updates could help your rankings if your competitors use content that infringes copyright law. 

But now more than ever, it’s clear that if you’re going to be ranking well in Google, you need to be featuring content that’s definitely yours. Make sure that your website uses copy, pictures and videos that are purely yours or used with permission. 

Help! I’ve been slapped by the updates and it’s not my fault! 

Fear not. Nice Mr Singhai will allow you to state your case, and any unjust removals will be reinstated:

“We’ll continue to provide ‘counter-notice‘ tools so that those who believe their content has been wrongly removed can get it reinstated. We’ll also continue to be transparent about copyright removals.”

Phew. 

If you are worried that your content may have been copied, or that the person who wrote it may have ‘lifted’ it from elsewhere, then one handy tool for checking duplication from Copyscape can be found here.

Would you like to make your business more visible on Google? Does your website need original, compelling content? Find out how we can help by contacting us today on 029 2076 6467 and have a chat with our friendly SEO and copywriting teams.

In Part 1, we explained what keyword research is, how it works, what data should be collected and considered, and why it's so important as a foundation for your SEO strategy and campaign. In Part 2, we examine 6 common mistakes people make when conducting keyword research, which could make the difference between the data being correct or potentially inaccurate and even worthless...

I've spearheaded the majority of Liberty's keyword research in the past 1-2 years and have come across a variety of keyword research mistakes made by businesses, in-house marketers and even other SEO agencies.

Here are the most common, so that you know to avoid them:

1. Choosing keywords based on search volume alone: Some people consider effective keyword research to consist of only collecting search volume data for keywords, and choosing keywords based on that information alone. However, as explained in Part 1, obtaining competition and ranking data as well can give a much clearer picture of where there might be opportunities.

2. Recording broad match data: The default match type in the Google AdWords Keyword Tool is broad match. Make sure that you change this to [exact] match, in order to obtain more precise data on individual keywords. Check out our guide on PPC match types for more info. I've seen a keyword with 5,000 monthly searches on broad match that only receives 50 on [exact], so you don't want to be assuming that a keyword will bring you up to 5,000 visitors when it might actually be 1% of that!

3. Not considering keywords that customers would use: I remember hearing a story about a company that wanted to rank #1 for a particular keyword, but didn't realise that it was purely an industry team, and that their customers called this particular product by a completely different name. Therefore, they might've ended up ranking for a keyword that might not have necessarily brought any new customers to their door. One example might be "sweatshirts," which might also be called "sweaters" or "jumpers." You may want to opt for the phrase that your customers use, even if it's not necessarily what you yourself would call it.

4. Only focussing on head terms: I wrote a blog post called 'There's More To Life Than "Shoes",' and at that time, I discovered that although "shoes" had 50,000 searches per month in Google, it still only made up for less than 2% of the entire search market for that industry! Don't just concentrate on head terms - they are harder to rank for, they may not convert as well (as they're much broader) and ultimately you could miss out on a lot of other areas, which may have less search volume but may also be easier and more profitable to you.

5. Missing out long-tail opportunities: Did you know that the Google AdWords Keyword Tool has a word limit, depending on the length or the words you enter? Make sure that you haven't missed out wordier variations of keywords, such as keywords consisting of 6 or more words. After all, if you spot them - and your competitors haven't - then they could consist of some worthwhile opportunities.

6. Missing singular/plural and hyphenated words: The Google AdWords Keyword Tool can also be quite finite, depending on what you put into it. If you were to put in "keyrings" and tick the box that says 'Only show ideas closely related to my search terms,' you will only get keyword suggestions that have the word "keyrings" in them. In order to get singular variations, you would have to put in "keyring" separately as well. It also wouldn't show "key ring" or "key rings" (i.e. with a space), so you would have to manually include those variations, too. It may be long-winded, but then it could make the difference between seeing all the potential keywords out there or only a handful of them.

Liberty provides comprehensive keyword research services, whether it's to help kick-off an SEO campaign or as a one-off service to those who want to double-check that the keywords they're going for are the right ones for them and their business. For a no-obligation chat with an ethical online marketing agency, please call +44 (0)29 2076 6467 today.

Just like every good house has strong foundations, and every good marketing campaign is preceded by a well thought-out plan or strategy, in-depth keyword research should be carried out in order to give an SEO campaign the best possible chance to succeed.

Even so, some businesses and marketers either research their keywords quickly and haphazardly - not giving the process the attention it deserves - or don't even bother doing it at all and simply select keywords based on guesswork and assumption. It may be because they are simply so eager to get started on their SEO, but it’s worth taking the time to conduct proper keyword research before any actual work is started or carried out. You never know, it could make the difference between absolute success or complete failure in the SERPs (search engine result pages).

So what is keyword research?

Keyword research is simply the case of establishing which keywords you should be targeting as part of your SEO campaign. Wikipedia's definition sums it up pretty well, too.

Ideally, keyword research should be carried out right at the start of an SEO campaign, as its results may dictate which keywords you use, and therefore how you word the content on your website (in terms of SEO copywriting) and the types of links you try to get (in terms of link building). It should also be reviewed on an on-going basis, just in case keywords become obsolete or less important going forward.

What's important to consider in keyword research?

There are a number of factors to consider when conducting keyword research for SEO:

• Search volume: Obviously, one of the most important factors is the number of people who actually search using a particular keyword. The last thing you want to do is assume a keyword gets lots of search volume, only to find that no one actually uses it!
  
  Fortunately, Google provides search volume data, via the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, which is free to use. Although it's designed for AdWords/PPC users, its data is general and can therefore be used for SEO purposes, too.

• Competition: Marketers should also consider the level of competition for each keyword. Logic dictates that a keyword with high search volume should be more competitive (e.g. it may be more difficult to rank #1 for "shoes" compared to something like "ladies black and white shoes"), and although this is often the case, it's worth looking into, as you may find a golden, uncompetitive opportunity that’s there for the taking.
  
  But how can someone judge competition more accurately? The main way is to consider the number of competing pages. When you search for the keyword, how many pages does Google say it's found (when it says "About x results," below the search bar)? Is it in the millions, thousands or dozens? Another way is to use SEOmoz's Keyword Difficulty Score tool, which gives a rough indication - based on its own metrics - on how competitive a SERP might be. However, this particular tool is only available to PRO members of SEOmoz.

• Current rankings: It's surprising how much this one tends to get overlooked. If you're already on page 2 for a particular keyword, it might be easier to optimise it further - and get it onto page 1, where it's more likely going to get spotted and clicked - than to spend time concentrating on a keyword where you're currently on page 10, for example.

It's time to choose some keywords - now what?

Once you've gotten your list of keywords along with their search volume, competition and ranking data, it's not simply a case of choosing based on the best numbers alone...

You should also consider the following:

• Trends: Is a keyword likely to see a major increase or decrease of searches in the future, based on what's happened in the past? This is important to consider, especially as the Google AdWords Keyword Tool is based on past data. A good example would be keywords including "2012," e.g. "best careers 2012" - this keyword will probably get a lot of search volume in 2012, but come January 2013, is it likely to continue performing so well? A good tool to use to judge trends in Google is the Google Insights for Search tool, which is free to use.

• Demographics: It's also important to consider demographics. Who are your customers? Who do you want as a visitor for your website? Do older searchers (the elderly) use different types of keywords compared to younger searchers (young adults), for example? This could be important if your site or business in general is targeting a particular demographic - you'll want your keyword choices to reflect that demographic, wherever possible and if it's possible to ascertain such information.

• Conversions: Do some of your products or services convert better than others? If you know of some areas of your business that convert well, does it make sense to concentrate on those areas more than others with your keyword choices and overall SEO campaign?

• Profitability: Similarly, are some products and services more profitable to you? Should you be concentrating on areas that would be worth the most money to you?

• Long term plans: Keywords can take a while to rank and can be difficult to change mid-campaign. Will you still be providing a particular product or service in 6-12 months' time? For less permanent and more short-term online marketing efforts, you might want to consider PPC as well or instead. I recently wrote a guide explaining the differences between SEO and PPC for small businesses, which covers this aspect in more detail.

Ideally, a mix of keywords should be selected. You do not want to put all of your eggs in one basket and rely on just a handful of keywords. Consider a mix of short-, mid- and long-term keywords (perhaps a mix of easy/uncompetitive keywords as well as difficult/competitive keywords) as well as content-related keywords for possible content creation purposes.

What's so important about keyword research?

As mentioned above, keyword research is important as it acts as the foundation for your overall SEO efforts. The keywords chosen are likely to dictate all onsite and offsite work, including copywriting, content strategy and on-going link building.

The last thing you want to do is realise 3-6 months down the line that you've been concentrating on the wrong keywords. You may find that your previous efforts have been a waste of time, and rectifying them may absorb additional time as well as money.

So as eager as you might be to get started on SEO, spending a few hours on keyword research might help you to avoid wasting hours, days or even weeks of time in the future. You might also find a keyword that the rest of your competitors have missed, which could be very valuable in terms of generating new business.

In Part 2, we'll cover the 6 most common mistakes people make when conducting keyword research. Keep an eye out for it next week!

EDIT: Part 2 is now live and can be found here!

The world of SEO does not sit still for long. One of the biggest changes to the digital landscape and addition to the tools available to inbound marketers is the implementation of on-page data mark-up languages such as Schema.org.

The aim of on-page data mark-up is to increase the amount the search engines actually understand about the information they are categorising, ultimately leading to more accurate search results.

Thus back in 2011, as a result of collaboration between the search engine superpowers Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, Schema.org was created to improve the search engines ability to understand the web by creating a structured method of microdata mark-up. By sharing a microdata mark-up vocabulary, webmasters are able to ensure their efforts are properly rewarded.

As is often the case in the field of SEO, a simple process has been made to sound more complicated than it actually is. Hopefully an example will clear up any underlying confusion:

When using a search engine, people have a primary understanding of the information they are viewing. Until now it has been impossible for search engines to replicate such an understanding. For example, if as your header 1, you have the word ’Flipper’, there is no information to tell you what the text string actually means – Flipper could of course refer to the popular film about a 12 year old boy who befriended a dolphin, or the popular swimming aid. This can make it difficult for the search engines to display content relevant to the user.

By using the Schema.org vocabulary, it is possible to tell the search engines that this information describes a specific movie, place, person or video, helping to tidy up the search engines understanding of your content.

So, will Schema.org help your website to work its way up through the rankings? Well no; as yet mark-up is not used for ranking purposes. However, there is still a huge benefit to implementing Schema.org to your website.

Google has slowly begun to roll out rich snippets within the search results for those webpages that have used microdata such as Schema.org, to help display authorship, videos and review data.

There are many different kinds of snippets Google supports, and the number keeps growing. Rich snippets are having a tremendous impact on a visitors click through rate within the search results with some webmasters reporting a 30% increase in CTR after implementing rich snippets.

Applying the mark-up isn’t a difficult process on small sites and there is a great guide for getting started with Schema.org at: http://www.schema.org/docs/gs.html

Once you have implemented your microdata mark-up, use the rich snippets testing tool to make sure that Google can read and extract your marked-up data, and enjoy your improved CTR.

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.

As a website owner, if you are only using natural search or Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising to generate traffic to your website then you could be missing out on a significant number of visitors. The majority of search engine marketers are of the opinion that a search engine marketing campaign budget should be split between PPC advertising and a more prolonged SEO (search engine optimisation) strategy. The importance of both can be illustrated by the fact that - even with a #1 search engine ranking - up to 25% of the traffic that lands on the results page for your key terms will click on the PPC listings. On the other hand, there are plenty of online consumers who completely disregard the PPC listings, so without a natural placing on the rankings, a website only involved in PPC advertising will miss out on a vast proportion of the total market.

Of course, as always, there are exceptions to the rule. In market sectors that experience particularly high levels of competition, it may be that the CPC (cost per click) is so high that smaller operators simply cannot compete. In this case, it may be more worthwhile to spread the cost over a far longer time span by opting for an SEO strategy, which will help your site to show in the organic results over time.

In many cases, website owners will invest in a PPC advertising campaign to create a revenue stream whilst they wait for their SEO campaign to drive the site up through the rankings. The amount of time an SEO campaign will take depends on a wide number of factors, although obviously the available budget and competition already in the market will heavily influence the time span.

Before spending too much money on a PPC advertising campaign, it is important to ensure that you understand the process intimately, or hire a team of professionals who can do this for you. Without very carefully tracking PPC advertising campaigns, if you are operating in a high CPC market or competing for a high volume search phrase then you could have spent thousands before you know it - so take care!

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!