The Rank Magic Blog

Make Your Internal Links Consistent

June 26, 2008 ::: Mark Jackson has a good article in Search Engine Watch about making sure your internal links are consistent. While there's enough good stuff there to make it worth your while to read the entire article, of particular importance is his discussion of links to your home page. We find many (perhaps most) of our clients commit this easily fixed mistake.

Other blogs of interest

The Computer Lady

Boost Your Local Listings

June 20, 2008 ::: If you serve a specific geographic area, like Connecticut, or Boston, or Northern New Jersey, you need to be listed prominently in the major local search engines. Here’s how to do that:

Google Local is actually located at maps.google.com. Yahoo Local is located at local.yahoo.com. And MSN/Live local is located at maps.live.com.

Go to each of them and follow these instructions:

Do a search for your company name plus your actual address. For example, search for Skillman Doors, Bloomfield NJ or Total Image Consultants, Boston MA. That ought to bring up your listing, if it exists.

If it’s not there, look for a way to add your listing.
• In Google Local, the link is in a section headlined Can’t find what you’re looking for? And says add a place to the map
• In Yahoo Local, the link is at the very bottom under Local Resources and it says Add a Business
• In Live Local the link is near the bottom left corner of the page in gray type and quite small – you really have to look for it. It says To add or edit your business listing, use the Local Listing Center.

Once you’re at the Add Listing page, enter all the information requested and submit or enter.

But Wait! You’re Not Done!

All three of these local search sites have an option for customers to rate businesses. The more ratings you have, and the better they are, the more prominent you may be listed. Don’t overdo it or try to fake out the search engines by logging in as fictitious customers. The search engines are wise to those tricks and you could find yourself severely penalized.

However, do ask some of your best customers if they would be willing to give you a rating in one or another of these local search engines. Typically there’s a link right next to your listing for them to use. Tell them where to go and how to look you up. And ask them if they would write something nice about you.

After a few weeks, check back in to local search and search for yourself by keyword instead of by your company name – such as lawyers East Hanover NJ or fashion stylist Boston MA. Over time, you should see your visibility improve.

Participate in Blogs

June 16, 2008 ::: Social media web sites offer some great opportunities for relevant backlinks to your website. The more of those you have, the better your reputation with the search engines, and the better that is, the higher you'll rank.

New web site BackLinkSpot.com provides a way to find blogs on topics you search for. You can enter some of your keywords and find a large number of blogs that are more or less related to your business. If those blogs allow guests to respond to postings, go ahead and do so. Be sure to include a link back to the most relevant page on your web site for the topic you're writing about.

Depending on your search terms, this may take a bit of time, but once you've found some really good and relevant blogf, you can bookmark them and visit them again and again.

Welcome New Clients

June 10, 2008 ::: We're very pleased to welcome four new clients and we're looking forward to bringing many new visitors to their web sites.

• Business By Promotion has an online store for custom imprinted promotional products & advertising specialties, with a special emphasis on signs and banners.
• Manufacturers Representatives connects nationwide manufacturers from all industries with independent manufacturers sales. representatives for 100% commission sales opportunities.
• Custom banner maker Rocket Banner Company creates unique banner designs available online for delivery anywhere in the US.
• Timecruiser offers several software solutions for colleges and universities, including College portal software CampusCruiser - a comprehensive campus portal for communications, collaboration and eLearning.

  
  

3 Lines of Code can Improve Your Rankings

June 3, 2008 ::: Many webmasters and web site owners aren't aware of this hidden killer of search engine rankings. The problem occurs when multiple URLs can access the same page on your site. For example, all of the following are likely to point to the same page:

• http://samplesite.com
• http://www.samplesite.com
• http://www.samplesite.com/index.html

If other web sites link to yours inconsistently (which will happen sooner or later), different versions of the same pages can get indexed in search engines. This forces the search engines to choose the best URL to rank. Your PageRank will be diluted by the fact that some links are going to different URLs for your page.

Do you have this problem? It's easy to check. In your browser, navigate to www.yoursite.com (substituting your own domain, of course). Then go to yoursite.com (without the "www."). If both go to the exact same URL (check the address box in your browser), then you're in good shape. But if one displays your URL with the "www" and the other displays it without, then you have this problem.

How to Fix This

First, choose which version you want to use -- with or without the www. Then, have your webmaster injsert the following at the beginning of your .htaccess file. (Don't worry: your webmaster will know what that file is. Unfortunately, this only works if your site is hosted on a Unix or Linux server. If it's hosted on a Windows server, your webmaster will have to check for the proper way to do this on your server.)

To use the with-www version of your site, use this code, substituting your domain as appropriate: