Managing an SEO campaign boils down to measuring and managing key performance indicators. Rather than focusing on one keyword for example, optimize an entire array of related keywords.
Rather than looking for links obsessively, focus on capping the link flow and internal linking within your own site to seal up any hemorrhages your website may have. By doing this, your pages become less dependent on external links (granted they have authority).
Create Authority:
Naturally the next question is what is authority, to put it simply, an authority website has a great foundation of useful content. By the merit of the content it attracts a steady base of readers or new visitors.
Create Popularity:
Website popularity toggles authority and trust, so without igniting the proper metrics, you can have solid internal links and great content, but without traffic to endorse your site or a few backlinks from the right places, the time it take to gain authority and trust will take longer.
So, authority is great content, strong internal links augmented by popularity, time and trust. But, before you can develop trust, search engines and people have to know your content exists, which is why building links is important.
Link From Within:
Going back to basics the rule of thumb is build links from within to make inbound links more effective. So, here is one simple tactic we use to manage the way a website ranks.
1) Check you server logs for the keywords or the most searched queries your website received.
2) Identify the most appropriate pages to funnel those keywords. Most websites have one relevant page, if there are two or more then make sure the internal links from the 2nd, 3rd, 4th in line all point to the preferred landing page to funnel link weight.
3) Go back and edit older pages that have sprouted authority or page rank and can rank in the SERPs, one good way to find sleepers in your site is look for pages that are returned from your own site using a link:mydomain.com search command in Google or use our nifty little SEO Tool.
Use Internal Link Self -Referral:
Also, sub folders have a tendency to rank like external sites if you use absolute links in your own site http://websitename.com/page.html instead of /page.html
The point is, once you find those pages, edit the first link in the body copy to the root phrase of the anchor text for the most traffic phrases deciphered from your analytics. By doing this, you are invigorating keywords that have the metric of traffic and creating buoyancy within your own site through an internal linking self-referral mechanism.
This is a particularly great method to create surges of link weight into pages starving from link attrition. If pages do not have a sufficient influx of links, traffic (popularity) then the tendency is for them to wane in the search engine result pages as well.
Reflect to Move Forward:
Here are other posts that provide more in depth strategies about this topic:
- SEO Sleuthing – Tracking Your Progress
- A Great Post About Tilling Keywords from the Past
- How to Create Synergy with On Page / Off Page SEO
Hope you enjoy the optimization tips and thanks for visiting SEO Design Solutions.
Remember, in today’s competitive Internet environment, if you would like a successful site then you have to do at least as much or more SEO than the sites on the first page of search engine results.
A main keyword or keyword phrase and some permutations of it linked internally can create some real SEO traction.