SEO - Links Vs Content

Now this is a subject that makes my blood boil. And you will find so much contradicting advice when it comes to what is more important, content or links?

I have just been blogging on SEOmoz with regards to this subject and it is such a split in opinion. Now I usually agree with Rand in most of his advice about SEO, but this is one thing I find it hard to believe I will ever change my mind about.

Basically my opinion is that RELEVANT content is more important, not to mention ESSENTIAL to be able to rank at all. It's just plain logic to me that if you don't have the keyword you are trying to rank well for within your content, you will NOT get to the top of the search engine. It's like looking in the phonebook for someone you don't know the name of? WTF? Exactly, you can't expect to be found for something you haven't listed yourself for, can you. Now that is just the basic, BUT the relevance of your main copy plus other crucial content such as title tags, H-tags, Alt tags etc etc is imperative for your rankings.

Now I'm not saying links are not relevant as well, BUT again it's a relevancy must also connected with what links you have pointing to your site. Now if you have 1000 websites linking to you that have no relevance to your industry this might help your Google PageRank but not necessarily your Google ranking...Google PageRank and ranking well on Google is not one and the same thing. Now on the other hand if you had 10 websites all closely related to your industry, this would really have an impact.

Now another issue when it comes to link building is: what is your goal? Are you looking to rank well on the search engine or getting masses of traffic? Or both?

Basically to sum it up, links can help your search engine ranking position, no doubt, BUT it is not more important than content!

The Google Dance

The Google dance is the term used to describe the index update of the Google search engine. This indexing usually happens around once a month, although some SEOs insist this Google Dance happens continuously. Whilst the Google dance is in process you will notice changes in your rankings, and after the “dance” has finished you will be able to see ranking/position changes and improvement in Google PageRank (that is if you have made any improvements to your site).

The Google Dance is rumoured to happen during the last third of each month, although this is speculations rather than fact.

Google has two other servers apart from www.google.com these are www2.google.com and www3.google.com. Most of the time the results are the same on all three servers, except from when the Google Dance occurs. The rankings that can be see on www2 and www3 is thought to be the new rankings, which will transfer to www once the “dance” is over.

Below is a Google Dance tool from SEOchat, which will show you the results for all three Google servers:

Google Dance Tool

The Search Engine Relationship

Search Engines – Who Feeds Who?

In contrary to popular belief, and what some dodgy search engine marketing companies want you to believe, there isn't that many search engines out there! Have you ever come across someone saying they can get you listed in thousands of search engines, and more importantly did you believe them?

There might be thousands of search engines out there, BUT it's very few search engines that actually have their own indexing spiders. Which is basically what a search engines does. They visit websites and index the content so that when someone searches for a particular keyword, volla your website pops up in SERPs (Search Engine Results pages).

The search engines that primarily have their own robots/crawlers/spiders indexing sites are: Google, Yahoo, ASK and recently MSN. These are basically the four that feeds all other search engines. When I say feed, I mean if someone does a search on another search engines the results that are shown are from one of these four search engines.

The search engine relationship

Yahoo feeds:
Primary Search Results (organic) to: Altavista and Alltheweb
Paid Results (PPC) to: Altavista and Alltheweb

Google feeds:
Primary Search Results (Organic) to: AOL & Netscape
Paid Results (PPC) to: Ask, Lycos, iWon, Hotbot, Netscape and AOL

ASK feeds:
Primary Search Results (Organic) to: Lycos, iWon & Hotbot

MSN feeds:
Primary & Paid Results to themself. MSN used to get it's paid results (PPC) from Yahoo but have recently aquired their own PPC advertising system.

Keyword Density - Is it Important?

Keyword density = The number of times a keyword is used on a web page divided by the total number of words on the page.

Optimum keyword density all depends on the competition of the search term you are targeting. Anything from 3-10% is usually recommended, although most SEO professionals argue that keyword density is not as relevant as people will have you thinking. Google certainly pays more attention to which keywords you have optimised your title tags for. So for example the first 4 keywords used in your title tags should be the keywords you are optimising the relevant page for.

Don't obsess about keyword density
Instead of obsessing about keyword density use your most important keywords in page titles, bold text, H tags (headings), site maps and anchor text on your site.

If anything keyword density is taken more so into consideration when a page has been heavily stuffed with keywords. A keyword density above 30% is too much. Basically if you have too much keyword density, Google and others can consider this spam, and may penalize your site.

I use SEO Chats Keyword Density Tool to check if a keyword is repated too much on a page

Technorati Profile

Technorati Profile

Great interview on SEOmoz

G-Man a regular SEOmozzer published a great interview with Jeremy Schoemaker yesterday. Highly recommend a read!

The interview covers Jeremy's opinion on AdWords, black hat teqhniques, white hat, how to make money of your blopspot and more...Now this guy is seriously an internet entrepeneur we can all learn something from.

My Top rated SEO tools

Ok so you have started doing search engine optimisation for your site, or you might be new to the search engine marketing profession. Where do you start? What tools are good?

Well here are my top rated SEO tools, the ones I use the most and that have proved useful:

SEOmoz Page Strength Tool
This tool is in their own words designed to satisfy the curiosity of webmasters, SEOs and web marketing professions seeking a better metric to quickly asses a site/page's relative importance and visibility on the search engines. It includes information such as Google PageRank, Backward links to domain and url, listings in dmoz etc

SEOchats Keyword Density Tool
Although I'm not entirely sure that keyword density matters as much as people will have you believe. This tool is really good for analysing how many times a keyword is repeated, I use it mostly to see if a page is close to spamming (as in repeating a keyword too many times, which can get you penalized by Google)

SEObook Keyword Suggestion Tool
A pretty good all in one keyword suggestion tool, which gives stats from several sources. You can also specify for which country you are doing keyword research for. Although I think the best way of finding accurate data for how many impressions a keyword gets is to run a PPC campaign for a few months, but if that is not an option this tool does the job pretty well.

WebConfs Search Engine Spider Simulator Tool
This tool shows you what content and links is visible to the search engine spiders/bots and what they index.

SEOblog

New SEO Blog
I am transferring my blog from MySpace to this bloggin software, hoping I can get some more traffic.
What I basically want to achieve is simply being a good source for people that are intrested in search engine optimisation and search engine marketing. Sharing my knowledge as well as problems, issues, success stories and so on.

I work as a Search Engine Marketing Manager for a Digital Marketing Agency called Base One Interactive. My agency is relatively new to the search industry and I am currently solely responsible for all Search Engine Marketing & Search Engine Optimisation for 10 clients. Doing both PPC Advertising with Google & Yahoo and optimising the clients website for the search engines.

A few of my Search Engine Optimisation clients:
Market Location - a data list provider company
Powwownow - a conference calling company
BBT - online recruitment agency
Saab London Dealers - Saab Dealer in London

So if you are intrested in SEO and want to know more or you simply want to share your experience please feel free to watch this space!!