The Rank Magic Blog

4 Quick Ways to Build One-Way Links

December 24, 2009 ::: While reciprocal links (you link to me and I'll link to you) certainly help your rankings, one-way links are even more powerful. Naturally, they're harder to get. If you're doing your own link building, or if you're supplementing link building that we're doing for you, here are some approaches to consider.

Can You Do Your Own SEO?

December 20, 2009 ::: Can you really do your own search engine optimization? It's not brain surgery, but it does have a learning curve. If you approach it with the idea that there's a lot to learn, there should be no reason you can't learn to do an adequate job, given some time and effort. Jill Whalen has a series of articles called Avoiding SEO Brain Freeze that can guide you through the learning process. It's a good start, but if you get stuck we're always here to help.

Which Search Engine Is Best?

December 14, 2009 ::: Clearly, the three main search engines are Google, Yahoo and Bing, and Google serves far more searches than the others (see the post below). But which is actually best? In other words, which gives you the results you're actually looking for?

Now you can find out.

Conduct a blind test. Just go to BlindSearch, enter your search query, and review three sets of results, side by side. Mark the best one, and then BlindSearch will reveal which sets of results came from which search engine.

How Important is Google?

December 9, 2009 ::: How important is Google, really? We all know that Google gets more searches than the other search engines. But how much more does it get? Check out this chart from Pole Position Marketing, based on the Nielsen ratings. Pretty impressive.

Monitor Your Rankings!

December 3, 2009 ::: While organic rankings achieved ethically often tend to be stable for months and years without further attention, they aren't permanent. As your business changes, you'll update your website and may inadvertently de-optimize parts of it. As competitors rise in their ability to compete for rankings, your visibility may drop. A former client of ours had achieved a visibility score of about 50% (which is actually much better than it sounds) when we last checked his rankings five years ago. At the time, he was so busy from the SEO we did that he was reluctant to do anything further lest he be unable to keep up with the business. Now it's five years later, and he's blaming his slow business on the recession. But a quick check showed that as a result of changes to his web site that partially de-optimized it, his visibility had slid to only 6% over the past 5 years.

It'll be much harder to get his rankings back now than it would have been if we'd attacked the problem in a more timely manner. That's why our SEO Monitoring  program checks your rankings in a detailed report every three months. If you don't want our rank reporting program, you need to at least check your important rankings manually on a regular basis so you'll know if you start to lose visibility and need to take corrective measures.

Other blogs of interest

The Computer Lady