Hi, We are Ponn Sabra & Janet Thaeler, founders of Publicity Spark. Our goal is to help small businesses and entrepreneurs increase their visibility using the online PR techniques we’ve used for ourselves and clients since 2005. WorkingWAHM has graciously allowed us to guest post this week, so we will share a few of our SEO and online PR tips with you. Thank you WorkingWAHM!
To add some extra spark to the tour, we’re hosting a contest giveaway on Monday and Wednesday. We will announce the winners on Friday. There will also be one grand prize winner at the end of the Blog Spark Tour which we will draw from all the blogs in the tour. To learn more about our Blog Spark Tour and where we’ll be each week, check out our schedule.
Don’t let these mistakes hurt your SEO!
- Not including any links in your posts: Even if you are posting on a site that does not allow clickable links, you can still spell out your site in order get it out to your readers. Some sites will remove anchor links in your posts, so including the complete http://www.XYZ.com link in your post is crucial to generating more clicks to your page.
- Making “click here” your anchor text: Searching click here on Google will result in over 3.1 billion results. Don’t let your links get lost in the crowd. Make sure your links have some description of what they are linking to, ideally a keyword or phrase that will also increase your SEO.
For Example: Instead of inserting your link like this, “Nike released new running shoes this week, click here to check them out”, change your anchor text so that the link appears like this “Check out the new Nike running shoes, released earlier this week”.
When you use a keyword phrase with a link to a related page it helps that page rank higher in search results for that page. In the above example, if someone typed “Nike running shoes” into Google, the nike.com home page should come up higher on the list of sites.
- Stuffing your post with links: Adding too many links into your post makes it look spammy and will automatically place your release on the editorial hold list on many sites. To avoid this delay, limit your links to 1 per 100 words of text. This will increase to value of the links you choose to include, increase their click-through rates, and stop search engines from assuming your post is spam and devaluing it.
Have a question about our article? Did you learn a new tip? Do you have your own tip to share? Please comment below. We’re looking forward to keeping the dialogue open all week long.
Contest Announcement! Enter to Win The Ultimate Online PR Kit (Value $97)!
Deadline date: Thursday, August 11, 2011 at 11:59 pm Eastern Standard Time.
Contest Rules
You must adhere to all the rules as stated. Shall a winner be chosen who did not complete these rules, he/she will not be eligible to win. To be eligible to win you must be 18 years of age or older.
You must comment below telling us why you want to win the Ultimate Online PR Kit.
For Additional Entries
For additional entries, you may chose to complete any one, or all of the below actions. You must write a separate comment for each additional entry you complete below. (A winner is chosen by the number of comments, not the number of actions taken.)
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GIVEAWAY Win #Publicity Spark #SEO & #PR products & services from @ponnsabra & @newspapergrl http://publicityspark.com/?p=493 - Add a Publicity Spark button to your site,
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Determining a Winner
Each comment below designates an entry number. Create a new comment for each entry requirement you complete. We will use Random.org to pick a random winner from the total number of comments below. The winner will be contacted by email. If no response is received in 48 hours, another winner will be chosen. Confirmed winners will be announced in each Friday’s blogpost and on our blog at PublicitySpark.com
Great post about linking and SEO! I never thought about the 1 to 100 rule — Great tidbit, thanks!
Glad you found this article helpful, Phil.
Thanks for the tips. I also think that a “click here” link is just a waste of space. People see if there is a link or not, so you don’t have to point it out.
Agreed! Sometimes I’ll use “click here” if I’m linking to an outside source but never when I’m linking to another of my own articles or submitting articles to directories.