I received a great question today from an ambitious company. They asked about trading links with other sites to increase their visibility in search engines. It's a question that's not too uncommon so I thought it worthwhile to share my response here.

While I don't know all the details of the link sharing that you have in mind, generally speaking, I strongly recommend not posting links to external sites unless it unambiguously provides value for your prospects and clients. The ultimate long term determination of your site's success, and coincidently search engine prominence, will be the consistent quality of the content and resources you serve up on your site—not how many links you have traded.

In theory, trading links with another site does little, nothing, or is actually detrimental to your search engine rankings. You usually gain search engine prominence (called Page Rank by Google) from getting links to your site and usually lose it when linking to another site. So if you trade links most of the page rank cancels itself out and not much is accomplished. I don't want to over dramatize this next point, but if you have your site linked from some sites it can be actually be detrimental:

"Google is known to actively penalize link farms and other schemes designed to artificially inflate Page Rank. How Google identifies link farms and other Page Rank manipulation tools are among Google's trade secrets." (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_ranking)

When sites advertise that they want to trade links a red flag immediately goes up in my mind that these sites might not be good company to keep from Google's perspective. But even if they are, by trading links there's not much to gain.

As a rule of thumb, the more links you can get pointing to your site the better, the fewer you can get leaving your site the better.

I'm going to stop myself here because I can go on an on. The basic principal to remember is, make your site for users, not for search engines. (This is a quote from Google)

Here are some good sites from Google with their guidelines.

• How can I create a Google-friendly site?
• Webmaster Guidelines

Also, I've written a number of other articles on this topic you might find helpful:

• 7 All Time Best Strategies to Increase Traffic

• SEO is free | Top 25 backlink sources

• SEO is free | The truth about Search Engine Optimization

If you have any questions about SEO, don't hesitate to give us a ring.

PS. I should mention that if you have resources available for developing your web presence and would like to increase awareness, one of the most effective strategies is to implement a blog and make the commitment to post new content on a regular basis that will add true value for your clients and prospects. When this happens, your site can become like a media station that broadcasts out into the Web rather than just a brochure waiting to be discovered. In my opinion, active blogs (they must be maintained!) with properly optimized RSS feeds, and which are listed in the prime blog directories, offer the most significant opportunity today for increasing awareness of your site on the Internet.

Labels: Search-Engine-Optimization, Web-Development-Strategy

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Posted by Douglas Case @ 5/16/2007 03:16:00 PM | 0 comments

Where is your company's domain registered and when does it expire? If you're like many executives and managers you have no idea. How do I know? I talk to them all the time.

Here's a typical scenario: ten years ago your company launched a web site...no one in-house knew where to start so the person who claimed to know how to program their VCR was given the task of registering a domain for the company. This person registered the domain but used their name, address, and hotmail account. What's more this individual may no longer even be employed by the company, probably could care less, and hopefully is not disgruntled with their former employer.

What would be the consequences to your business if your Web site was suddenly gone and all your company email accounts ceased working or now featured a porn site? Does this sound crazy? While this scenarios might be on the extreme, you are guaranteed some degree of misery and loss if you let your registration lapse.

If you are not immediately and unquestionably certain where your domain is registered, and more importantly to whom your domain is legally registered, stop everything right now and get it fixed!

Here's how:

• Access the Whois public database and enter your domain name. Assuming your domain does not have a private registration, look through the list of information and find the following:
• Registrant Name: If this is not your name or the company's name you're at risk.
• Admin Name: Do you know this person? Do you trust this person with your entire business? Your domain needs to be registered under a name of a corporate officer, owners or executives—not an employee. All it takes is one disgruntled employee to reek havoc on your business.
• If you need help registering, renewing, or transferring a domain name please visit http://risinglineweb.com or call one of our domain registration experts at 480.624.2500.

More information on domain registration:

• How to protect your domain name from hijackers, porn pirates, and your registrar.
• Why it matters to master your domain
• For general information on domain registration visit the RisingLineWeb domain registration page and see the FAQ tab.

Labels: Web-Development-Strategy

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Posted by Douglas Case @ 5/08/2007 08:02:00 AM | 0 comments