Copyright © 2010 I-COM International 2010-09-09T20:24:46+0100 2010-09-09T20:24:46+0100 http://www.i-com.net/blog/ Leading Manchester SEO, SEM and web design agency blog. http://www.i-com.net/blog/ http://i-com.net/images/icom-net.gif http://www.i-com.net/blog/ Leading Manchester SEO, SEM and web design agency blog. I-COM International blogmaster at i-com dot net I-COM International I-COM International en SEO, SEM, Web Design, Web Development 1440 http://www.i-com.net/blog/why-keywords-in-domain-names-is-a-stupid-ranking-factor-356/ So you have a brand. You sell red widgets, but really high end, luxury widgets with all the bells and whistles. You learned to make widgets by hand when you were 14 and you take great pride in your work - and people phone you from all over the country when they want a really special red widget. When you first set up in business, you chose the name your brand very carefully, so it's unique, memorable and evokes your brand values and history. This week you decided you wanted to make the move online. People are always asking whether you have a website so they can see pictures of your widgets and read information about how you make them. You've realised it would be a great way to capture traffic and would save you a bomb in printing brochures so you hire a web designer and a developer and they also bring someone called an 'SEO consultant' into the meeting to help you market your site online. Choosing a Domain Name - Your Brand or Your Primary Keyword?The first thing you have to do, they explain, is register a domain name. You want to use the name of your brand because it's how people know you - only your SEO consultant tells you that instead you should  buy the domain www.luxury-red-widgets.com because your brand name doesn't have any keywords and it may harm your ability to rank in Google.Can anyone tell me that this isn't an entirely ludicrous scenario?Yet, even today, with all the technology in place to understand websites, it is still possible to get a huge boost in the SERPs just by having a keyword rich domain name - something made even more ludicrous still by the fact that as more businesses go online, there's fewer and fewer decent keyword-rich domain names left. So, if you're lucky enough to own www.mobile-phones.com is it really right that you should have a decided advantage in ranking over a site called www.bobsfonestuff.com if Bob's business is just as legitimate, well-optimised and well-coded and his only mistake was buying a domain relating to his offline brand instead of buying www.mobile-phones.com?Take the SERP for 'lcd televisions', for instance. The first result  goes to a very generic looking blog site set up using a template linked to the faceless "Electrical-Deals.co.uk" shop - but set up on "http://discountlcdtv.co.uk/" - something which sets alarm bells ringing for me. Not a great result as I wouldn't trust a site which has one URL in its logo and another on my screen.Result #2 is an affiliate site full of ads. Despite saying it's a review site, I couldn't find any reviews - I gave up after being sent off site 3 times via an affiliate link masquerading as "more info."These are not what you'd consider great results - they're not even particularly well-optimised sites - so one can only assume that their domain names - which contain 'LCD' in them - are helping them rank for these big money terms.What I would expect to find when I type in "LCD Televisions" are some legitimate sites - Amazon is at #3, but I wouldn't bat an eyelid if it were at #1. Where's Sony? Panasonic? Toshiba? Where's Currys? Comet? Thankfully, Richer Sounds is in there at #10, below Pixmania, Kelkoo and Pricerunner - also established brands you'd expect to find - but brands lacking keywords in their domain names. All of these sites regularly rank very well for equally competitive keywords so I cannot imagine that our top 2 have done a better job of optimising for 'LCD televisions'.While I understand the logic of using the name of a specific page as an indication of subject - I mean why would you call a page about bird watching lcd-televisions.html - using the domain name itself as a factor in the algorithm is something that really needs to go. It's causing a lot of garbage to clog up the SERPs and it's also diluting the effect of having a really great, identifiable brand name - and it's penalising businesses for not being the first to have bought a domain name rather than rewarding them for building great websites.To learn about a host of other stupid ranking factors, take a look at our SEO training page. Search Engine Optimisation 2010-06-03 10:15:56 http://www.i-com.net/blog/why-keywords-in-domain-names-is-a-stupid-ranking-factor-356/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/what-should-i-blog-about-a-list-of-blog-post-ideas-346/ When it comes to utilising the powers of the blog I-COM has been leading the way, and in a number of blog posts we have explained how to use a blog in order to turn your site into a content driven, visitor and search engine magnet. Recently I gave a presentation at the Manchester Growth Show Ten Reasons Businesses should Blog. Since then I have received a number of emails from people who attended the show saying that they understand the value of the blog, they just dont know what to write about! So here are some ideas for you to start blogging about. Helpful how-to tips related to your product. Reviews of the products you sell. Reviews of products you dont sell but your audience would appreciate; you never know this might create another route to market. Offer product tutorials, either for your product or others your customers use. Answer FAQs you get from your customers. What inspired you to take the jump into starting your business? Explain why you are so passionate about your business. Describe your customer service philosophy. Share a photo or video "walking tour" of your business. Share testimonials you get from your customers. Admit mistakes! If you've done something wrong in the course of building your business, share that information and explain how you dealt with it. People love learning from others' mistakes. What do you like about the current state of your industry? What do you wish you could change about the current state of your industry? What will the future of your industry be like and how should people prepare for it? Reveal a generally unknown secret in your industry. Which famous people have been associated with your industry lately? Debunk the top myths that are currently floating around about your industry. Offer a case study of how someone has successfully used your product or solved a common problem. The ten best online resources for people in your industry. Make a list of "must-have" free resources your audience will appreciate. Run a contest, offering a free product sample or service for the winner. Then ask them to comment about what they thought of it and make that its own blog post as well. Post weekly or monthly wrap-ups about what you accomplished with your business. Review other blogs related to your industry. Review an online magazine related to your industry. Review print publications related to your industry. Go to a trade fair or conference and then write reports about it. Take a stand on a controversial issue related to your industry. Identify the most prominent experts in your industry, explain why they're famous or important. Disagree with a well-known authority in your industry and list reasons why they're wrong. Post about the best things you've read online in the past week (related to your industry). Its important to remember, when you write for a business blog you have to provide VALUE to your readers. If you offer them useful, interesting information they will thank you for it -- and when the time comes for them to make a purchase, your site will be the first one they think of. If you would like to know more about how to utilise Social Media to profit your business call 0844 704 4954 and book a free one hour consultation or look out for the I-COM Client and Guest Internet Marketing Summit. Notification of date, venue and time will be posted shortly. In the meantime, happy blogging! Social Media Marketing 2010-05-04 09:03:22 http://www.i-com.net/blog/what-should-i-blog-about-a-list-of-blog-post-ideas-346/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/why-solicitors-need-to-crack-the-online-market-327/ A report published in the Law Society Gazette revealed that the internet has become indispensable when choosing a solicitor. The YouGov poll of 2,266 people found that after recommendations by friends, internet search engines and online review sites were the second most popular way to select a lawyer. The research showed that 21% of the people polled would use search engines to select a law firm.This sentiment was echoed by Simon McCrumb of Darbys Solicitors in Oxford, who explains: "This reflects the fact that even the lawyers world is changing. Companies that do not invest in raising their on-line profile will receive less calls and enquiries than a firm that does - its as simple as that. This brings two challenges though. First - will the callers be as profitable and as productive as callers in 'the old days' were, or will this generate lots of calls that take a lot of time to deal with but which go nowhere? Our view is that you have to kiss a lot of frogs in order to find a prince. The second challenge is whether these people, who are coming to law firms in a very modern way, will still want personal and face-to-face service and whether they will want to pay for it." As Simon rightly points out, these findings show that solicitors firms can no longer afford to ignore the internet. A good position in the search engine listings for a variety of highly relevant keywords is essential to gaining clients.Establishing an online presence for your law firmHowever creating a successful website that turns site visitors into paying clients, not to mention one that conveys the personality of your law firm, your expertise and also speaks to your visitors using language they understand, isn't as easy as it sounds.The poll also revealed that almost 10% of respondents would use specialist web directories of solicitors to find a lawyer and a further 4% stated that they would ask for recommendations for contacts on Facebook and other social networking sites.Sites such as Twitter and Facebook that allow social interaction are gradually going to take the place of personal recommendations so getting a head start in these emerging fields is essential for any business, especially a law firm.Understanding how people search for solicitors onlineThe key to online success is to find an internet marketing agency that you trust, one that understands enough about what you do to know what to say on your website and also knows how people search for solicitors on the web. You need to find a company that can engage with that audience both on your website, through use of compelling content that answers all the right questions, and elsewhere on the internet through social media, online PR and other forms of online advertising.Through years of work with law firms of all sizes, I-COM has established a solid base of knowledge and understand about how people search for legal services online.  Integrating search engine optimisation into site development we can build a firm base for the web presence of any law firm which brings in the right visitors who convert into leads and eventually clients. Our experience of sponsored PPC advertising can ensure high quality traffic and prove return on investment. I-COM also has great experience working with directory owners and developing social media campaigns which can provide law firms with a route into social media. We provide social media training to help customers understand the requirements of working in a social media environment and avoid the many potential pitfalls of bad social media practise that have unsettled many reputable brands in the past. If your law firm is looking to take its first steps into establishing an online presence or if you're simply not happy with how your website is performing online, read more about our expertise in the legal industry or get in touch with us on 0870 164 2389. Search Engine Optimisation 2010-03-23 09:59:27 http://www.i-com.net/blog/why-solicitors-need-to-crack-the-online-market-327/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/some-free-link-building-tips-that-will-help-you-to-get-to-number-1-in-google-313/ OK so it may not be as simple as that but, as one of the senior SEO Consultants here at I-COM, I thought it was about time I shared some of my tips and tricks that I've gathered over nearly 10 years of Search Engine Optimisation and link building. While we all know that social media (microblogging, etc.) is fast becoming the new metric for Google to measure the relevancy and freshness of websites (and rank accordingly) it's still important to remember that links are still the life blood of the internet and a properly managed backlink building campaign can generate qualified traffic and better conversions. So, we're not talking about a link building free-for-all like the old days where 'the most backlinks wins' in the listings race - we're talking about quality links from on-topic sites, with authority and relevancy in a specific niche or topic. So how do we go about getting these types of back links? Well the simple answer is there are many different ways and over the next few months I will begin to give you some idea of the various methods and techniques that I've used (and still use) to find these back links.It's worth remembering that before you begin researching back-links it's a very time-consuming process - you'll need to set aside lots of time (and energy) to the process. You'll need to understand what makes a back link good or bad for your website.  Think about it - have you got the time to do this? If not, are you better off outsourcing this process?Adrian's Link Building Tip #1Identify your competitors in the Google listings - then you can identify their back-link footprint (the number of back-links they have, the quality of those links and where they are). You will need to understand what keywords you want to your web site to be found for and who your main competitors are in the top ten listings. Here's what I do:Make sure you have a full list of the products or services being sold or supplied by the web site. From this I can check each of the keyword phrases in Google to find the top ten competitors. For example, if the web site is a law firm and it's based in Northampton, check in the top ten listings in Google for the keyword phrase 'solicitors in Northampton': Once I have a list of the top ten competitors for the keyword phrase "solicitors in Northampton" I can check the back-links to each of the individual competitor web-sites using Yahoo Site Explorer:Yahoo! Site Explorer is a tool that lets you access the information Yahoo has about a site's online presence. You can see which sites and subpages are indexed by Yahoo! Search, track sites that link into each webpage, and view the most popular pages from any site. Use Site Explorer to: Find which sites and subpages are indexed by Yahoo! Search Find inlinks or pages that link to any site or any page View the most popular pages from any site Yahoo Site Explorer only allows you access the information for 1,000 back-links. There are other methods to find out about competitor back-links but I'll save that for another day. With Yahoo Site Explorer you'll need to make sure that you click on the Inlinks button (highlighted in the images below) and that you change the drop down to exclude links from within the domain you're researching - otherwise Yahoo Site Explorer will show you all the internal links of the web site as well. Once you've done this you should have nice list of back-links to the website which you can export using the "Export first 1,000 results to TSV" link.Make sure that you import the TSV links using MS Excel. You'll now have a nice list of your competitors' back-links to help you find suitable inbound links; i.e. sites featuring the same or similar subject matter with well-written content that is not duplicated on other web sites. Also make sure that the links you pursue are on pages with a less than 100 links on them as Google doesn't like more than 100 links on a web page. Also, you will want to find the contact details for the webmaster or owner(s) of the web site. These are whole different tasks in itself and something I will discuss in some detail in the next few posts. Search Engine Optimisation 2010-02-15 08:36:30 http://www.i-com.net/blog/some-free-link-building-tips-that-will-help-you-to-get-to-number-1-in-google-313/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/4networking-business-breakfast-tuesday-260110-premier-inn-trafford-centre-west-304/ I'll be sharing my online marketing secrets with attendees to the 4Networking Business Breakfast on Tuesday 26th January, at Premier Inn, Trafford Centre West. The event will run between 08.00 and 10.00am. Here at I-COM we believe that having a great looking website is useless if no-one ever sees it, which is why we offer all our clients comprehensive SEO strategies, designed to get them into the most relevant SERPs to their business. I'll be sharing my inside knowledge on the ins and outs of search engine marketing, including tips on how you can make the most out of your online presence, turning those casual visitors into paying customers. Attendance to the event costs just 10. Book your place today. If you only attend one business breakfast this year, make it this one. I guarantee you'll be enthused, amazed and inspired! I-COM News 2010-01-25 13:50:39 http://www.i-com.net/blog/4networking-business-breakfast-tuesday-260110-premier-inn-trafford-centre-west-304/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/a-lot-of-buzz-about-nothing-site-speed-optimisation-for-caffeine-280/ Those of us in the online marketing industry, in fact in any industry which relies heavily on the internet to generate revenue, are waiting with baited breath for the introduction of Google Caffeine. In fact, weve already blogged about it here. If youre a client of I-COM, I had some intriguing news recently that just might make your day, particularly if we have designed and built your website.Website Loading Speed will Affect Rankings Google's spokesperson Matt Cutts has revealed in several interviews and blog posts that Caffeine will take into account a brand new website ranking factor when it is rolled out in January 2010 this factor will be the amount of time it takes for a website to load. Simply put, will look more favourably on websites that load faster. This will put a premium on websites being designed and built to load quickly.SSO Gurus So, does this mean were now going to see a load of Site Speed Optimisation experts, the new Caffeine version of the SEO guru? Quite possibly. However the simple fact is that if your website has been designed and built properly and correctly optimised to load quickly, you will have the edge when Caffeine is introduced after Christmas.Good News for I-COM Clients If youre a client of I-COM we will be monitoring site load speeds and following Google Caffeines progress. Whats more, if your website has been built by us the job will have been completed by one of the UKs top Web Development teams, as voted by TopSEOs.com, so it should already have a fast and efficient loading speed. If you are not as yet a client of I-COMs and would like an independent FREE report on your website from an SEO, Web Design and Web Development perspective get in touch today. We will provide a detailed breakdown on your website's load speed and include cutting-edge recommendations for better ranking in the I-COM Optimisation Report. This is your chance to take positive steps to optimise your website speed before your competitors even hear the rumour. Obviously the earlier you identify any issues and put them right the better placed your website will be when Caffeine launches in January 2010. Search Engine Optimisation 2009-12-01 16:02:59 http://www.i-com.net/blog/a-lot-of-buzz-about-nothing-site-speed-optimisation-for-caffeine-280/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/google-caffeine-its-too-early-to-tell-235/ Like everyone else in the SEO world, I've been following the news on the Google Caffeine infrastructure update with interest, but as always I'm surprised by the rush within the SEO world to declare what's different, especially as Caffeine is still in Beta and is likely to continue to change - possibly quite a lot - as Google continues to test and tweak and take data provided from the Beta site into account. Is content still king? Looking at results from Caffeine - in a completely unscientific manner - reveals that initial differences in the index are subtle. This makes sense because it's not about an algorithm change, it's about a change in the way Google works and stores the information it has. The basic fundamentals on what makes a good site will not change - well-designed sites with good information architecture and relevant, unique content will continue to do well in the search engine rankings. They will always do well because Google can understand the subject matter of these sites. In other words, if you have a good, readable site and you've got authority and trust now, you probably will continue to rank well when Google implements Caffeine. A good site is a good site is a good site.   But what about the links? Well, this is where speculation sets in. We all know that for a while Google has been having difficulty identifying good back links from bad back links (even to the point where Google has asked people to contact them where dubious back linking may be apparent). By good and bad I mean links given out freely as recommendations of other good sites as opposed to links bought and paid for in order to "game" Google's PageRank algorithm. Webmasters gaming this vote-based system have been a problem for over 10 years now, and although Google has modified and changed its algorithm to take the emphasis off PageRank, added the LocalRank factor in and improved its ability to understand relevancy and provide block level analysis of pages, it still remains impossible to spot all the paid links on the internet in order to decide if they should pass link authority. Most recently, Google implemented update Vince and most people believe that this update gave a push to established brands because, frankly, people trust these brands. Google's Eric Schmidt said as much in an interview last fall. So how can Google possibly solve this quandry? Well, they can start using click through data and bounce rates to help determine which sites are considered most relevant. They can also start looking at sites which are updated on a continual basis by millions of users to determine who's saying what and about which websites in order to determine which sites people really do read and recommend. Social media, citations and speed The internet moves much quicker now than it did in 1997, or even 2007, with mobile web and lifestreaming enabling people to stay plugged in and updating the web 24-7. People now get news online in realtime through RSS feeds, social media sites and online video streaming. People are now empowered to review sites, products and services. Wouldn't it be a sensible move for Google to use these social media streams more and more, as a co-operative or an an 'army of reviewers',  tracking the information that they generate and incorporating it into their search engine ranking algorithm as part of the decision making process? Google initially updated its index roughly once a month or so, in the so-called Google Dance. Then the dancing stopped as Google began to do continual updates, rolling out data as it crawled and recalculated. Often, however, it still takes days, if not weeks, for Google to revisit pages and then several more days or weeks for changes to appear in the index. These days, this time lag is simply not good enough - not if Google wants to keep up with the likes of Twitter and Friendfeed providing real time news and popular links to people. If Google wants people to use Google News and Google Search to keep up to date then Google needs to be able to index relevant information on breaking stories quickly. One of the things many bloggers have noticed about the Caffeine update is that social media sites are gaining higher prominence in SERPs - without cached versions of the pages. Perhaps the new infrastructure will help Google to update its index in real time as it crawls the continuous stream of information coming through popular social media sites - thereby keeping them (almost) as up-to-date as the likes of Twitter and with the added benefit of offering blended results to news, blogs and images as well as older, more established pages that may be able to provide background information. How does this fit in with links though? Well, by placing more emphasis on crawling lifestreaming sites, video sites and other types of sites which respond and react in real time to the world, Google can tell what's really popular. If a website that has attracted 10,000 new links in a few days also has a lot of social media mentions, it's fair to assume that those links may be the result of people really looking at the site. To gain those links without any other citations elsewhere - without the word of mouth necessary for those to be real recommendations - that may look a bit suspcious. I wouldn't be surprised if Google is trying to find a way to compare online mentions by real people to link data in order to determine where in a SERP a site should sit based on what users think. Plus, this falls into line with Google's new opinion of trusted brands - won't trusted brands be the ones talked about most on social media? Won't these be the sites people are recommending to their friends and links to whose pages people will want to share? Of course. Will it still be possible for spammers to game this system by making sure their sites get loads of social media mentions? Of course. What does this mean for SEO? Well, it means that we're going to have to become experts at social media and online PR because having a presence in the right places and having people talking with you and about you is going to become increasingly important. It's not just about having the most mentions though, social means social so it'll be about engagement with genuine users who are willing to talk about your site and pass along links to your content. Your social media profiles will have to be useful and interesting - and you must use them to promote content rich websites that offer useful products and services. So, in the end, content is still king but if that content isn't meaningful, then consumers are likely to dethrone him. Advanced Search Marketing 2009-09-07 10:34:00 http://www.i-com.net/blog/google-caffeine-its-too-early-to-tell-235/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/whats-on-the-page-can-affect-your-listings-233/ Every day businesses are bombarded with offers from companies hoping to help them acquire links to boost their site's performance on Google.We'd be the last people to suggest that links don't have an effect, but as has been discussed previously on this blog you have to be careful how you use them.As a business we always start our work with what's on the page itself, because unless it aligns with the listings you're trying to achieve you are unlikely to have long term success. I thought it might be useful to provide a bit of a case study on how we might approach the site of someone who's not a client but has visited our site recently. Superstarsceilings.info is a site whose owner has a bit of an interest in SEO, Manchester-based Mark Watts. The site promotes his business of creating cosmic ceiling murals, glow in the dark representations of the night sky that appear when the lights are turned out. The idea is great and looks fantastic on chidren's bedroom ceilings. In terms of his site we can see that the market for his services is quite focussed and so it's critically important that he should achieve good listings for the key phrases. From our limited research we'd be focussing on the phrases "ceiling murals" and "cosmic ceilings". "Ceiling Murals" is a more general search phrase and the site will have to compete against sites describing the Sistine Chapel, amongst others. "Cosmic Ceilings" is a more specific term used by people who know what they're looking for and should be easier to achieve good listings. At the moment the site is not in the first 100 listings on Google.co.uk for "ceiling murals" and sits at number 39 for "cosmic ceilings".We think that achieving better rankings for both of these search terms can be addressed by the site's homepage and that implementation of the following changes to meta could have a positive effect:Title TagThis is currently too long and the structure could be improved. It also refers to parts of the business that aren't really covered on the homepage (sale of UV paints, etc) which should be targetted on the relevant subpages of the site.We'd recommend changing the title tage to something like, "Glow in the Dark Cosmic Ceiling Murals - Superstars Ceilings" this includes all of the key words in the correct order. Some people might argue that the title tag should include some geo-targetting, however, in this instance we believe that because the listing competition and search volumes are relatively low it's better to keep things generic.  To get focussed results from SEO, Manchester or other targetted areas could simply be included in the body copy.Meta DesciptionAgain the existing description on the site is probably too long and not focussed enough. We'd recommend changing it to something like "Unique glow in the dark cosmic ceiling murals. Give your ceilings the wow factor. Our cosmic ceilings make the stars come out at night in your bedroom."These changes, if implemented, could also result in an improved listing that would be more likely to convert, looking something like:Headers and Body CopyThis is not the place to re-write the homepage, as we may run into duplicate content isssues, we'll send a separate email to Mark with advice. Suffice to say, the copy could be made more compelling and the headers used more effectively. At the moment the main header (h1) is "What do I do?" we'd change it to something that includes our target phrases but also answers very clearly the main questions that visitors might ask.The key thing to remember with all re-writes though is to ensure the copy reads well, including your key phrases but not stuffing the content so that it's obvious you're trying to manipulate results.Hopefully this blog provides a little practical advice for small business owners to help themselves improve their listings and avoid the tricks of the SEO cowboys that can provide short term results but long term issues for sites. There are no easy answers, good search results are all about hard work and making sure the site gives the searcher what they're looking for Search Engine Optimisation 2009-09-03 09:26:00 http://www.i-com.net/blog/whats-on-the-page-can-affect-your-listings-233/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/seo-ranking-competitions-are-so-1998-227/ So it seems someone has set up a blog to promote an "SEO competition" amongst Manchester SEO firms.If you don't know, an "SEO competition" traditionally involves picking a specific keyword phrase or term and setting a time limit and the winner is whoever's at #1 on the finishing date. The thing is, this encourages people to "spam" and use less than ethical methods to push their way to the top of search engine listings, where it would affect businesses legitimately trading in that area.To be honest, businesses already undertaking Search Engine Optimisation for a reasonable period of time should already be ranking (or working on ranking) for some or all of the terms they need anyway.This is all besides the point because everybody whose knows even the slightest about SEO understands that web ranking is pretty much a meaningless metric these days. Reputable SEO companies will prioritise Return on Investment, the number of unique visitors plus bounce and conversion rates well above ranking position. Being #1 in Google means nothing at all if you are not getting a reasonable return for your investment.Yes it still advantageous to be showing up in Google in the top half of the web page listings for your most important search terms - but the introduction of universal search, local search, personalised search images, news results, social media and different data centres presenting geo targeted results by Google and the other search engines means that search engine results can differ dramatically from PC to PC. So how could you even determine who is truly #1 anymore if it changes from location to location and PC to PC? Well the real answer is that it's not that important to prioritise being top of the search rankings - instead good SEO practices should prioritise and target quality traffic that converts.SEO is not solely about rankings and anybody who prioritises this metric above ROI, quality of traffic, conversions, bounce rates and unique visitors really doesn't know much about SEO in 2009. Search Engine Optimisation 2009-08-18 08:57:40 http://www.i-com.net/blog/seo-ranking-competitions-are-so-1998-227/ http://www.i-com.net/blog/linkbuilding-a-matter-of-trust-212/ Over the years many SEO companies have touted link building as "the magic bullet" for improving search engine rankings - you get lots of back links with the correct anchor text linking to your site and the sheer weight of numbers will make your site rank in the top ten for a certain keyword phrase - easy as that. Over time, a whole industry has been built up sourcing and supplying both relevant (and irrelevant) back links to "game" the search engines and improve web site rankings. Offering packages of 50, 100 or 1,000+ links of a certain Page rank in 3, 6 or 12 months these companies offer top ten rankings for competitive keywords that couldn't be simpler. However the truth is that sheer weight of numbers of back links is no longer the way to rank effectively for many highly competitive terms. Large numbers of similar back links from similar, or same web sites, will build a linking pattern that the search engines can easily spot and eventually penalise. Research has shown that sites with much less but very high quality and, very importantly, trusted back links are now ranking much higher than those with thousands of back links with search engine optimised anchor text. By trust we're talking about those sites which appear to have been around for ages, or are considered sites of authority. Those sites you would visit to find out information that can be trusted as correct or accurate. In addition these quality back links will bring more qualified visitors who are really interested in your web site. Trust rank - the "new" Page Rank. Think about it - the search engines need to effectively rank sites and back links have been gamed to the limits, so new factors have been introduced to assess the "trustworthiness" of a website and to make the search engine ranking positions (SERPS) less of a back link numbers game. Factors of Trust There are several factors that will have a big impact on your site's trust rank, such as: The age of the web site -  if a site has been around for many years your site will have a much higher trust rank than a site that is less than a year old, regardless of how many articles that new site can produce or the number of back links with relevant anchor text that it gets. Quality content - good, well-written content will get read and referenced by the right web sites and also get back links. Quality Back Links - not just thousands of back links with relevant anchor text. If you source and get good links naturally from other related sites which will have a high trust rank, you will be rewarded with better ranking positions. Linkbuilding in the Future So what does this mean for linkbuilding? Linkbuilding has now moved on - back links should be sourced by experienced link builders and Search Engine Optimisers, not package bought, and any link building projects should be bespoke. It's not about getting 500+ back links with optimised anchor text - it's about getting the best quality back links that you can. It's better to have 10 quality back links from sites that are considered to be of authority or value to the subject matter than 100+ poor quality optimised links. Link building projects should now be seen as a long term strategy and not a short term strategy to rank quickly. So where am I going with this? Well if you want to rank effectively in the search engines building thousands of back links with anchor text is not really the answer. Sure it may get you a boost in the SERPS but this is now a short term strategy and the rankings may soon drop if the keyword terms are highly competitive and then you're caught in a back links "arms race" that will cost you more and more and may even result in your website being obliterated by the search engines. Search Engine Optimisation 2009-06-26 14:44:18 http://www.i-com.net/blog/linkbuilding-a-matter-of-trust-212/