Tag Archive for: links

Get Free Publicity for Your Website Using HARO

Wouldn’t it be spectacular to get free publicity for your website with a link and a quote on a major news publication like the Washington Post or Huffington Post? It’s actually easier than you might think and it involves using a website called “HARO” or “Help A Reporter Out” – www.helpareporter.com. HARO is a service that connects journalists in need of sources and marketers hungry for publicity.

Get Free Publicity for Your Website

HARO is a great way for small businesses to get free publicity. All you need to do is sign up and choose between the free or paid plans. The free plan subscribes you to 3 emails a day that you have to comb through and respond to. The paid plans allow you to go on the HARO website and search and filter to the specific category that you might respond to with a pitch. The paid plan also gives you a profile on the HARO site.

Whenever there is something that is relevant to your business in HARO, you can respond with a pitch. Many small businesses have been featured in local newspapers, on blogs, and in several online news magazines. If you’re lucky, you can build up a relationship with a specific journalist. 

The Truth About Search Engine Optimization – How To Rank Higher on Google

Let’s face it – everyone wants to rank #1 on Google.  After all, doesn’t ranking #1 on Google mean that you are the best in what you do? The truth about ranking #1 on Google requires a discussion about search engine optimization.

The idea behind search engine optimization (SEO) is to put great content on a web site that is designed in a manner that helps attract visitors and entertain them enough that they will return to your web site and tell other people about your web site.  Depending on how you go about doing this, there is a very wide range of possible outcomes. Be wary if anyone promises that you will rank #1 on Google.

The fact is that you give yourself the best opportunity for higher ranking if you provide quality content, use a search engine-friendly design, and encourage people to link to your site. Let’s take a look at these three critical ways to rank higher on Google.

Good Content

The single most-effective way to get good rankings is by providing good, fresh content. A search engine’s objective is to deliver answers that are most relevant to a particular search query. The only way to develop that relevance is by having keyword-rich content on your web site. Suppose you sell personal technology gadgets. It is imperative that you provide as much content and commentary regarding personal technology gadgets as possible.

Search engines place a lot of weight on the content of each web page. After all, it is this content that defines what a page is about, and the search engines do a detailed analysis of each web page they find. The detailed analysis is called a semantic map which seeks to define the relationship between the concepts on your page. The search engine uses this match to present the best web pages for a particular user’s search query.

Search Engine-Friendly Design

When two sites provide similar content – using our personal technology gadgets provider as an example – a search engine-friendly design can be the deciding factor between success and failure.

Search engines cannot see images, text in images, Flash files, pictures within Flash files, audio and video files, any content contained within a program (e.g. AJAX), embed tags (not visible to all search engines), frames and iframes.

Search engines rely on HTML (good content), the page title, Meta keyword and content descriptions, alt attributes for images, and content that is rich with keywords relevant to search terms.

Good Links

In the early days of the Internet, many web sites relied on the Field of Dreams logic – If You Build It They Will Come. Now, with millions of web sites competing for eyeballs, one of the most important and difficult things you can do to improve your search engine ranking, is to increase the number of links to and from your site.

Search engines like Google place a range of value on the links that point to your web site and the ones your site points to.

Bottom Line

Search engines are constantly evolving. Google now provides search results that are optimized for each unique searcher. This means that your personal technology site might rank #1 for the keyword “personal technology” for my search but not for yours. So what does this mean for search engine optimization and the auspice of ranking #1 on Google?

The Bottom Line is that your objective should be to increase web site traffic so that more people will enjoy the value you provide through your content and the products and services that you offer.  If you do this, you will improve your search engine ranking.