Link building is one of the most important search engine optimisation steps. Without good inbound links, your website cannot get high rankings. Although it is very important that your website has optimised content, without the links to your website, search engines won’t consider that content to be relevant.

It’s important to get the right links to your website. Link spamming doesn’t work. You must make sure that you get high quality links that Google and other search engines like.

Make your website linkworthy

You must make your website linkworthy. You cannot expect that other websites will link to your website if your site is basically a collection of affiliate links, or an online shop that looks like a thousand other online shops.

Your website must be different & unique in some way. Try the following:

* Add articles about your products or services to your website.
* Add tutorials and how-to articles about the topic of your website.
* If you have a lot to say, add a blog to your website & update it regularly.
* Add a directory with links to valuable resources on your website.

Check your competitors

The best way to start link building is to duplicate the links that your competitors have. Find all websites that link to your competitors and then try to convince them to link to your website. I use a couple of tools to find links to competitor sites, IBP & SEO Elite. The good thing about SEO Elite is that you can select to include the Page Rank of sites as a parameter, so that you can choose to apply for links only on sites with a higher Page Rank than your own. IBP shows the Page Rank of sites, but there is no setting not to include low Page Rank sites in the results. However, it is worth using as many tools as possible & IBP is very easy to use!

Get links from blogs

There are millions of blogs on the Internet and they all need something to write about.
Bloggers give out millions of free links each month & getting links from blogs is a good way to get links from related websites. For example, you could enter “real estate blog” or “music blog”, depending on what you sell on your website.

Using IBP to find these blogs also allows you to contact the blog owners quickly and easily and it automatically keeps track of the websites that you’ve already contacted so that you don’t contact the same person twice.

Get links from Internet directories

Submitting your website to Internet directories can be a good way to show Google that you have a reputable website. Low quality & fly by night websites usually don’t invest the time and money that is needed to be listed in Internet directories.

Inbound links are very important if you want to get high rankings on search engines. You should optimise your web page content first to make sure that search engines find your website relevant to your targeted keywords & then submit to directories & blogs.

If more than one website has been optimised for the same keywords (and that’s usually the case) then the website with the best links will get the best rankings.

If you want permanent backlinks for your website, then consider using the FreshBidz Bidding Directory! Newly launched, you can buy links in your chosen category and then bid your way to the top of the list from just £1. Increase your bid to take a top position, & get listed higher on the directory homepage.

It appears that Yahoo! has given up in their efforts to compete for advertisers PPC dollars, with the signing of an agreement to allow them to syndicate Google ads within their search results. This Yahoo!/Google agreement means that Google’s dominant position in the Pay Per Click market, is now set in concrete.

The share price for Yahoo has been falling after rejecting Microsoft’s takeover bid & shareholders have been very angry at what they feel was a bad management decision. Yahoo has been under pressure from shareholders, for major management changes, while others have even filed lawsuits. This deal with Google is meant to assist Yahoo!’s under performing revenues & appease the shareholders.

With Yahoo! now only achieving 19% search market share, it appears that they have now abandoned the PPC market, its users and advertisers. Google have now increased their already dominant position and bought even more market share, which can only reduce competition & increase costs!

Competition also breeds innovation – for both search consumers and the advertiser & without it, will Google now rest on its laurels & just rake in the money? The paid search market is still relatively young and has been going through rapid changes and growth. But with the battle already won, the need for product innovation is gone. Microsoft may very well have deep pockets and control of the desktop, but Live Search lacks the traffic to be a true competitor – and they also seem to have diverted their attention elsewhere – at least in the short to medium term.

A lack of competition also means that advertisers are likely to pay more for each click. Advertisers will be forced to pay for Google, rather than the cheaper Yahoo! rate & without an alternative, the Google monopoly will mean that they can increase their charges as and when they like! Whilst this is great for Google & the Yahoo! shareholders, it is not great for anyone who is already struggling to make a return from PPC marketing.

Whilst a combined Yahoo!/Microsoft might not have been perfect, it at least would’ve provided competition for Google, benefiting advertisers and searchers alike.

With the small advertiser being frozen out of PPC markting by the big players with big budgets, it looks like search engine optimisation & high natural search engine listings will be even more important for affiliate marketeers!!!

I posted the cashback shopper rankings about a month ago & then revealed that all my rankings had taken a big hit on Google & Yahoo, which I now suspect to have been because the site had reached 6 months old & had lost the “new site bonus” that Google (& possibly the other search engines) awards to new sites.

Continuing with normal SEO efforts seems to be moving the site slowly back up the SERPS & it has even improved on some phrases (albeit disappearing on a few others!), so I’m hopeful that continued efforts will get the site back onto the top 3 pages for more keywords. The current positions are:

Google

cash back shopping 33
cash rewards online 1
cash rewards online shopping 5
cash rewards site 8
cashback deals 47
cash-back directory 13
cashback from shopping 13
cashback online 21
cashback shopper 1
cashback shopper site 1
cashback shopping 44
cashback shopping site 18
cashback site 3
cashback sites 18
cashback uk 54
deals cashback 44
earn cashback 6
extra cashback 2
get cashback 45
online cashback 35
pay cashback 36
paying cashback 24
rewards cashback 33
rewards online 5
rewards online shopping 8
rewards online shopping site 6
shopping cash back 11
shopping cashback 10
uk cash back 31
uk cashback 17
UK cashback shopping 14
UK cashback shopping site 32
UK shopping cashback 26

Yahoo

cash back shopping 1
cash rewards online shopping 10
cash-back directory 24
cashback from shopping 14
cashback online 10
cashback shopper 1
cashback shopper site 1
cashback shopping 19
cashback shopping site 9
cashback site 21
cashback uk 48
earn cashback 33
free cashback 5
get cashback 6
online cashback 2
online retailers 35
online shopping site cashback 2
pay cashback 14
paying cashback 16
rewards cashback 29
rewards online shopping 21
rewards online shopping site 11
shopping cash back 23
shopping cash rewards 18
shopping cash rewards online 7
shopping cashback 2
shopping rewards 18
shopping site 35
shopping site cashback 3
uk cash back 25
uk cashback 4
UK cashback shopping 6
UK cashback shopping site 5

A new report suggests internet searchers are getting more impatient and now 68% of users make their choice from the top 10 search engine results!

The report was conducted over December 2007 & January 2008 & tried to develop an understanding of how search engine users behaved in their searches on the three largest search engines: Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

The study revealed that 68% of search engine users click a search result within the first page of results and 92% click a result within the first three pages of search results! The importance of appearing high in the search results has always been emphasised by SEO companies & it seems this importance is steadily growing! There is a clear pattern developing between the data from 2002 to 2008 which indicates that more search engine users click the first page in 2008 (68%) as compared to 2002 (48%). Inversely, fewer search engine users are willing to click results past the third page in 2008 (8%) as compared 2002 (19%). In both these cases, there is a year on year rise & fall respectively.

So more than ever, it is vital for search marketers to ensure that their sites appear within the first three pages of search results and especially on page one.

In a second related finding, the study revealed that 49% of search engine users who continue their search process when not initially finding what they seek, change their search term and/or search engine after reviewing just the first page of search results, rather than search further down the SERPS & 91% do so if they do not find what they seek in the first three pages. Again from 2002 to 2008, it seems that more users are abandoning their query after reviewing the first page in 2008 (49%) as compared 2002 (28%) & fewer users are willing to continue their review of results past the third page in 2008 (9%) as compared to 2002 (22%).

Again, the need to obtain top placements on search results pages has progressively increased in importance for search engine marketers.

Finally, the study reveals that brand equity is conveyed upon companies whose websites appear among the top search results by roughly a third of the search engine users. In 2008, 39% of search engine users believe that the companies whose websites are returned among the top search results are the leaders in their field. This figure has grown from 33% in 2002. Another 42% feel neutral on this question, with only 19% believing that top search engine rankings do not automatically denote an industry leader.

Initiatives that produce top search engine rankings can clearly help companies achieve their branding goals.

The study, tabled by Yahoo!, iProspect and JupiterResearch, paints a dark picture for website owners who are sitting below the top 10 results! Theoretically, they are only exposing their sites to 32% of searchers by sitting off the first page.

Freshwebz have partnered with one of the UK’s leading Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) companies to offer your website guaranteed Top 10 Google rankings for your desired keywords in the natural listings.

High Google natural rankings will provide high levels of ‘ready to spend’ traffic to your website and unlike the Adwords/sponsored listings each click is free, meaning a greater level of return.

You will receive your own dedicated Account Manager that will guide you through the process and the results are guaranteed!

Guaranteed results or your investment back..it’s that simple

Hot on the heels of all the recent (& ongoing?) Google upheaval, Yahoo! have just applied another update to their search ranking algorithm which will see changes in the Yahoo SERPS (search engine results pages). This update is the latest in a string of recent ranking algorithm tweaks with the previous update just over a month ago.

The process of crawling applying the algorithm to all the sites in the Yahoo index will take some time, which will shuffle around some of the pages in the Yahoo! index. Quote from the Yahoo blog:

“We’ll be rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms over the next few days, but expect the update will be completed soon. As you know, throughout this process you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index.”

Algorithm updates are especially important for webmasters because it gives a chance for any SEO efforts to be picked up and translated into ranking improvements. Some comments in the Yahoo post indicate that the update may have reduced the reliance on social sites and increased the “keywords in the URL” importance

Lets see what this change does to my rankings over the next few days/weeks! Fingers crossed the use of keywords in all my sites URL’s will make a difference!!

I did say I would be writing about the ups AND downs of affiliate marketing & today is the turn of a considerable down followed by a slight up!

I wrote previously about how well Cashback Shopper was doing in the rankings, but within days of that post, my rankings took a big hit from both Google & Yahoo ( With drops of up to 60 places on Google, I was astounded & quite disappointed.

I have read a recent rumour that there is a new -60 penalty that Google applies to websites in which it has lost trust; defined as sites that are guilty of spamming! However, the definition of spamming in this case seems to be that many of the websites that seem to have been penalised, had many inbound links from websites that linked to them from every single page of their website (so-called site-wide links). Sitewide links are an indicator of paid links, which Google sees as an unwanted way to artificially inflate search engine rankings.

Although I have not carried out such a campaign, I recently had Cashback Shopper added to a large number of directories and although all of these were free directories & spread over a few months, I believe it is possible that the number of new links may have grown too fast & Google has become suspicious. But, although I have taken a big hit, now is a time not to panic & give the rankings time to recover.

It is interesting how the different search engines look at websites….for example, for the phrase “cash back shopping”, on Google my ranking has plummeted from 14th to 65th, but on Yahoo it has risen back to 1st! In general, my rankings have improved in Yahoo, but deteriorated in Google. I’m sure that this is because Google looks at the relevancy of the inbound links & the directory entries, while valued by Yahoo, are deemed irrelevant & possibly even negatively by Google.

So, the idea now is to find linking partners that are relevant to cashback & work on recovering my Google rankings, which seem to have stabilised now.

I have also been adding linked key phrases from the Cashback Shopper blog, which may also be classed as site-wide links, so I will remove some of these & see if this makes any difference over the next few weeks.

But, if this penalty for paid links really exists then even websites that follow Google’s rules can get in trouble. Your competitors could harm your website simply by buying links or by creating mini-net websites with site wide links to your website. Instead of penalising seemingly “bad” links, Google should simply ignore them. That way, people could not harm competitor websites.

People not involved in website optimisation often have difficulty understanding search engine optimisation and the different methods that are involved. Some of the following basic SEO concepts may help you:

1. Link building is important

Links are like votes for a website. The more votes a website has, the better the rankings.

2. There are different link types

Search engines consider the relevance of the links. Links from unrelated websites don’t help as much as links from relevant websites. A link from a website that has many inbound links for itself counts more than a link from an unpopular website.

3. It’s important to keep on link building

It does not help to get more links than your competing web pages. At least one of your competitors will continue to build links and pass your website. For that reason, it’s important to know that link building is an ongoing activity.

4. Buying links can get you in trouble

Search engines don’t like paid links because they consider the links to your website as editorial votes. Google has officially stated that it considers paid links as an attempt to game the system.

Google penalises websites that buy links. Even if Google cannot automatically find all paid links to your website, your competitors might report your website.

Try to get high quality organic links if possible.

5. Redirects can cause problems

Redirects have been used by spammers in the past and some search engines still have difficulties with that. If you have to use redirections on your website, only use 301 redirects.

A 301 redirect is the only server side redirect that is defined as a permanent redirect. That means that search engines will follow the links and pass the links from the old URL to the new URL.

6. Duplicate content can cause problems

Search engines want to return as many different results as possible in their results. That is why search engines only list one copy of a document in their search results.

For that reason, you shouldn’t promote more than one domain for the same website and you should have unique content on your web pages.

Near copies are also considered duplicate content, for example, when the same article is listed on more than one website.

7. Why your web pages must be optimised

Search engines use simple software programs to index web pages. These web pages analyse the text on a web page to determine what it is all about.

If a keyword is mentioned in the right places and in the right frequency, search engines will consider the web page relevant to that keyword. If a keyword is mentioned too often, search engines might penalise a website because it looks like a spamming attempt.

8. Keywords are the key to your success

It’s important to choose the right keywords for search engine optimisation. Single word keywords can be very popular but they seldom lead to sales. Industry specific keywords can be so special that no one searches for them. The perfect keyword is targeted, has a high search volume and leads to sales.

Search engine optimisation is not rocket science but it requires some work and ongoing efforts. If you understand the basic SEO concepts, it’s easier to get top 10 rankings on Google and other major search engines.

If you want guaranteed top 10 Google Rankings, then contact us to discuss our search engine optimisation plans, if you want to try SEO yourself, then we recommend Internet Business Promoter, an award-winning web site promotion suite that helps you to get top 10 rankings in Google, Yahoo and all other major search engines.

IBP is the only SEO software tool that guarantees top 10 rankings for your keywords. IBP offers all the tools you need to get top rankings, including tools for website optimization, link building, search engine submission and more.

In my previous blog(!), I had recorded details of Cashback Shoppers ranking position for various keywords. However, as that information has been lost forever ( I’m posting the rankings here for the first time!

Bearing in mind that Cashback Shopper was only launched in November 2007 & the amount of on-site optimisation was limited to just the front page by the original control panel provided by eDealsUK, I’m pretty pleased with how the site progressed. However, following a major rankings update by Google, the site slipped in and out of the results for a few weeks, but seems to have stabilised again now.

First of all, the site jumped straight into the Cashback News top 20 most visited cashback sites with an Alexa (Alexa rankings are only a rough indicator of how popular a site is) ranking of 400,468!! This put it above NHS Cashback (21st) & Cashback To You (26th), which are both run by eDealsUK themselves! As well as this, Cashback Shopper is the highest Alexa ranked white label site registered on Cashback News!!

Over the past couple of years there has been an explosion in the number of cashback sites & Cashback News tracks the major news from the UK’s Cashback sites.

Their top 20 as at 31st March 2008 is:

# Quidco 25,348
# Rpoints 76,403
# GreasyPalm 77,747
# Give or Take 81,311
# Top Cashback 116,208 – ↑1
# MutualPoints 119,432 – ↓1
# eDeals UK 167,891
# Free Fivers 197,208 – ↑2
# Cashback Rewards 205,521
# Linemypocket 246,858 – ↑4
# MoneyBackMadness 249,117 – ↑1
# RupizCompare 265,300 – ↑5
# Cashbin 270,200
# eCashBack 287,635 – ↑19
# Comparison Plus 299,291 – ↑15
# CashbackChief 321,828 – ↑5
# Cashback Junction 333,294 – ↑6
# trollyCASH 375,873 – ↓7
# CashbackCascade 397,672 – ↑9
# Cashback Shopper 400,468 New

As some of the sites in the Top 20 have been established for many years & are all unique cash-back websites rather than white labels, I’m very pleased with my Search Engine Optimisation efforts so far )

Since this chart, the control panel for Cashback Shopper has been updated to Version 2 and allows for much more customisation of other pages. This can only benefit my SEO efforts & I look forward to the next chart which is due at the end of May.

But although this is nice to see, the most important “chart” is the one known as Google (plus Yahoo & MS Live Search!). So a regular rankings check on popular keywords will show how my site is doing in the search engines & what they think its value is for these key phrases.

Google
cash back 38
cash back shopping 14
cash rewards site 9
cashback 36
cash-back 39
cashback from shopping 48
cashback shopper 1
cashbackshopper 1
cashback shopping 15
cashback shopping site 12
cashback site 3
cashback sites 4
cashback uk 12
earn cashback 6
get cashback
online shopping uk 38
online shops 87
shopping cash back 11
shopping cashback 10
uk cash back 6
uk cashback 5
UK cashback shopping 4
UK cashback shopping site 11
UK shopping cashback 6

Yahoo
cash back 42
cash back shopping 1
cash rewards site 83
cashback 77
cash-back 44
cashback from shopping 23
cashback shopper 1
cashbackshopper 1
cashback shopping 13
cashback shopping site 5
cashback site 19
cashback sites 16
cashback uk 27
earn cashback 15
free cashback 6
get cashback 6
internet shopping 81
shopping cash back 11
shopping cashback 2
uk cash back 10
uk cashback 6
UK cashback shopping 7
UK cashback shopping site 4
UK shopping cashback 9