Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website

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engine ranking, and directly, by bringing visitors to your site through the link. In short,

inbound links are valuable, and that’s why Your SEO Plan will include some serious

efforts in that arena.

Search engines are looking at not just the number of inbound links, but their quality

too. Does the hyperlinked text say, “Click here for Computer Equipment Deals” or “Click

here for Overpriced Junk”? Are the links buried deep within a domain, among millions of

other outbound links? Search engine algorithms take these things into account—and so do

your potential customers. You’ll learn how to fully assess link quality in Part III, when you

start your link-building campaign. For now, you’ll stick to gathering the numbers: How

many links are pointing to your landing pages?

Finding the total number of other sites that are linking to your landing pages

can be quite simple: many search engines include search shortcuts that allow you to

view a list of other sites that the search engine knows to be linking to specific pages

within your domain. For example, on Google, MSN, and Yahoo! search for “link:http://

www.

yourdomain.com

yourpage.html

” (using your own site address in place of

yourdomain.com/yourpage.html

) to find links to your page of choice. See the companion

website at

www.yourseoplan.com

for a current list of search shortcuts and instructions.

You only need to find inbound links using one search engine, so choose the one

you care most about. (Hmm…we wonder which one that will be?) And a warning:

these numbers are not exact. Just use them for trend spotting.

Friday: Site Assessment

Suppose you’re a real estate investor, looking for a good money-making opportunity.

You see two homes, both the same size and price. One home has been totally renovated

and looks pristine. It’s got a few recent add-ons and it fills up its lot nicely. The other

home has some ugly carpeting over wood floors, chipped paint, and kitchen appliances

that have seen better days. There’s plenty of room for expansion on the lot. Clearly,

you have a better chance of adding big bucks to the value of the second house after

some investment of your time and money.

The same principle applies to your website. If your site is already well optimized,

looking for big conversion increases from your SEO campaign may be a challenge.

On the other hand, if your site is missing basic optimization, you can probably expect

Now:

Now, using the search engine of your choice, go to your Rank Tracking Worksheet and fill in the total

number of inbound links to each of your landing pages.

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