Wordpress SEO Expert

Peter Warwick-Mahoney

  • SEO Overhaul
  • SEO Campaign
  • WP Support
  • Blog
  • Praise

Backlinks are great for SEO but only if they’re legitimate

August 26, 2019 by Peter Warwick-Mahoney

All off-site SEO basically comes down to is creating backlinks.

Directory listings, local citations, they’re all much the same when it comes to it.

Backlinks help if they’re legitimate – which means someone likes your site and has a proper reason to link to it. Any attempt to manipulate your own link profile goes against Google’s guidelines – and they’re adept at catching people and penalising them for it.

I’ve blogged about this a number of times – you can read some of those if you’d like more information.

My approach to SEO is entirely Google friendly; I very much believe the best approach is to match the search engines’ approach and fulfill their guidelines and recommendations.

This is sort of a catch-22, because while you shouldn’t fake links you do want them. My usual advice is to make use of your real life contacts to get some – ask suppliers or related sites to link to you, that sort of thing.

I should add too when people DO get links without properly asking people they really know for them – they tend to get extremely low quality ones. Too many low quality links hurts rather than helps. For example, every single person I’ve ever seen selling a BBC, Apple or Huffington Post link are actually just creating user profiles on those systems and sticking URLs in the bio section of those profiles.

That’s not really a proper link on the BBC! People think they’re going to get something in a news article, but more often than not they’re on pages Google doesn’t even index. The effect is people buy a back link on a ‘high quality domain’ but don’t get any SEO authority for it at all.

The people selling these links aren’t even doing it manually. There are automated tools they use to create hundreds of links in a few minutes. Google is smarter than this.

Because Google says explicitly that trying to manipulate your own link profile is against their terms there is no such thing as paying for Google safe links. It’s an oxymoron.

Filed Under: Google, Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Tagged With: back-links, backlinks, Google, links, search engine optimisation, search engines, SEO

Fill in your social media profiles

July 12, 2019 by Peter Warwick-Mahoney

Far too many WordPress sites end up with empty social links

I see this all the time; in the header or footer of WordPress sites, a series of little social media icons that links to – nothing.

A lot of WordPress themes have sections for you to fill out your social profiles, so those little buttons can link to them correctly. But a lot of those themes will show them regardless of whether or not you’ve entered proper URLs. Some go a step further, and by default will have a link entered as #. That just means it links back to the page you’re on, but it’s enough to get the buttons showing and essentially linking to nothing.

It’s an easy enough oversight to make. But it means you have dead links which isn’t great for your SEO, and if visitors notice then it just seems wildly unprofessional.

If you have social buttons, they really need to link to social sites. It’s not hard to do – these sorts of WordPress themes are intended to make everything as simple as possible – but at the very least have a quick check of your own site and make sure your social button links, well, link.

In all honesty I see this in perhaps a third of WordPress sites overall, so there’s a good chance it affects your’s.

Filed Under: Hints & Tips, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Wordpress Tagged With: links, social, social profiles, themes, wordpress, wordpress themes

External links to and from your site

February 12, 2016 by Peter Warwick-Mahoney

A leaking glass more than half-full

Links pointing in to your site are really important for SEO. Google has started suggesting they may be less and less important, and give it 5-7 years I think they’ll be one of the lesser important SEO criteria (in favour of RankBrain and Artificial Intelligence tools that can really determine how quality the site and it’s contents are.). But for now, external links from other sites are still important.

But, well, let’s think of links in and out like a glass of water being filled up and poured out.

  • For each link pointing to your site, lets fill up the glass a little. As it gets fuller it gets more SEO authority, which is great.
  • But for each link out, we can empty the glass a bit too.

So if for every link you have in you also have one out, the glass actually ends up empty*.

People used to make sites called “link traps” that didn’t link externally to anything, trying to full their glass right up. But as you’d expect Google got wise to this technique, and started to penalise sites if they did this—it’s contrary to the idea of a well-formed world wide web, and Google wants to help steer the web to be as useful as possible.

So it’s important to have some links out. I usually recommend a ratio of 4/1 – for every four links in, have one link out. That does vary based on a couple of factors, but it’s a good rule of thumb.

The glass fills faster than it empties, so Google is happy, and we are too.

* – important note, this is a very simplistic metaphor. Not all links are created equal, so if you have a link to your site from the BBC homepage, and a link out to your friend’s Etsy shop, you’d still end up with more water in the glass because in that case the link in has more SEO authority than the page you’re linking to. But because most sites aren’t in that position (most sites will have links in and out from sites swimming with them in a similar depth in the pool of link-juice; but I’ve used enough liquid-based similes for one day), it’s still a useful analogy.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Tagged With: backlinks, external links, Google, link profile, links, metaphor, search engine optimisation, SEO

Search Engine Optimisation, primer complete

June 10, 2013 by Peter Warwick-Mahoney

On Friday I published part five of my five part primer series on search engine optimisation.

For your convenience, you can get to each piece of the SEO puzzle here:

  1. Code
  2. Site speed
  3. Social integration
  4. Blogging
  5. Back-links and all other things link oriented

The series will give you an understanding of SEO, how to approach it conceptually and practically, and contains some easy to replicate tips and tricks.

And if you need help with any of it, let me know.

Filed Under: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Tagged With: #soontobeinpaperback, backlinks, blogging, code, links, primer, puzzle, search engine optimisation, SEO, social, social integration

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): Links & stuff

June 7, 2013 by Peter Warwick-Mahoney

In the final part of my SEO primer series, let’s look at the bit most people think about first. Links.

Back links, social links, white-hat links, black-hat links.

I called this post “Links & stuff” because while the value of links is simple enough to understand, the jargon and terminology can make it seem more confusing than it is.

At its most simplistic—you really want as many links to your site as possible. You want them on blogs, local news sources, forums, social media, even from competitors sites (I’ve got a tip for that later on).

Because the more places on the Internet that link to you, the higher you get ranked in search engines. Google has always been very transparent about this, in fact the idea of indexing websites based on how many other places deem them useful enough to link to was their whole original idea. Which naturally has been replicated by other companies ad nauseum.

In a nutshell, that’s it. But like everything with SEO, it’s the nuances that make a real difference.

A link to your online presence from a popular website dedicated to your industry is better than a little-read blog. Links from Facebook sit somewhere near the lower end of that scale, with Twitter slightly behind. It’s all worth having, but what you really want are high quality links on respected websites.

Sometimes the best way to get high quality links back to your site (backlinks, as they’re known) is to just ask for them. You’d be surprised how many professional blogs relish having guest bloggers—people who write once off entries for them, or perhaps even a short series of posts. It can take the stress of deadlines off them, or help them out when they can’t work owing to illness or preferably, a holiday. And of course they always link back to your site in the byline.

A quick way to generate backlinks that are from well known sites related to your field of expertise is to comment on posts that are already there. It’s quick and effective. In my case, I go to Google, search for “SEO”, and click on a recent high profile blog result. After quickly reading the article, I’ll post my thoughts in the comments, and link back to a related post on my own site. If I don’t have a related post, I make sure I do very quickly. It never hurts to have published my own ideas on a recent hot topic anyway.

And that brings us to the cheeky competitors site tip. Go to their site, and comment on their blogs. If possible, find an article there that relates to something you’ve already written about, and say so. “Interesting to see you finally catching up with this one, I’ve been thinking about it for ages”. Cheeky. But include a link to your post, and not only do you get the SEO benefits, but you can hijack part of their readership.

Make sure you have Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin profiles that can be publicly accessed, and link to your posts from there.

Make sure other people can share your posts socially easily too; sharing buttons beneath each post on your website can make a real difference.

I maintain a separate blog, peter.webcraft.co, which has the sole purpose of containing links to my own work. But (importantly) it has other short content there too, after all if it was nothing but links to my own work Google would see right through me.

And that brings us to the whitehat/blackhat concepts. In computer jargon whitehat is most simply defined as “not doing anything dodgy”. Blackhat is the opposite.

There are all manner of techniques for building backlinks to up your search engine ratings. Anything you pay for is usually blackhat. Not illegal, but not exactly cricket either.

Here’s an example. Link pyramids. These used to be very popular, and at times quite costly. You’d pay someone to create an army of low-level links on social networks and lesser known blogs. Then those would link to more popular sites, but again these were all manufactured by the vendor. Then they’d point to a few really highly ranked site, and in turn they would point to your pages.

You were at the top of the pyramid, enjoying the view from the top of search engines rankings.

Then the search engines realised what was happening, and wrote highly intelligent algorithms to find these pyramids, and penalise them. A lot. I’m managing SEO for a client who had to move domain names just to get away from their previous ill-gotten reputation (earned before my involvement, I hasten to add). They had thousands of links, felt at the top of their game, then woke up one morning to find in the eyes of the world wide web, they barely existed anymore.

And then the link building industry moved to a link wheels, and again the cycle began, only to fall later.

And this is a very important lesson I can’t impart strongly enough. SEO is a long game, because it should be organic.

Yes, you can optimise your code, your site speed, your images, etc. Yes, you can spread the word by sharing links to your site on other related blogs, but that’s all real people doing real things. Have great content that people will want to engage with, and share.

But if you try to cheat the system, you’ll be slapped for it. And for many of us, with so much of our business conducted online, a slap can send us under.

Organic growth. Humans interacting. It’s what the Internet was supposed to be about. Search engines make unexpected guardians of that dream, but when it comes to being found online, they hold all the keys.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Tagged With: #hereendiththelesson, backlink, backlinks, bloackhat, dodgy, Google, link pyramid, link wheel, links, search engine optimisation, search engines, SEO, whitehat

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), a primer

February 18, 2013 by Peter Warwick-Mahoney

I’m starting a series on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to help explain a few key concepts, as well as helping guide you towards the right SEO expert. Ideally me of course, but whoever is telling you they’re an expert really should know how to cover more than the basics.

The number of people I see selling SEO services who really have no idea is appalling. (I’d say shocking, but there are a lot of opportunists out there!)

I’m going to break my series of SEO posts into the following sections:

  1. Code
  2. Site Speed
  3. Social integration
  4. Blogging
  5. Back-links and all other things link oriented

Naturally there is a lot of cross-over between them, but over the course of the series you’ll get a better idea of some key concepts, and some fairly original (but proven) ideas for their implementation.

All of course to get you more quality visitors!

Filed Under: Hints & Tips, Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Social networking Tagged With: back-links, backlinks, blog, blog series, blogging, code, links, lotsoftags, posts, search engine optimisation, SEO, site speed, social

Get FREE Wordpress SEO tips!

I send regular newsletters with WordPress SEO expert-level tips. Sign up to get them, along with my FREE e-book “Ongoing SEO Success”.

Did I mention they’re free!

Subscribe for free

Praise

I have over 1500 5-star feedback reviews (and I’ve never received less than the full five.)

Here’s just one example, from Mike who runs Costello Entertainments:

Migration, Hosting, SEO and Speed Work on our new website all completed quickly and efficiently and Peter was most helpful in fixing an issue with a Popover on the site as well. If you’re thinking about asking Peter to do a job for you or hesitating, JUST DO IT! – He knows programming and the internet inside out, he’ll get the job done for you professionally, with a smile. I wish I could call a plumber or a tradesman to do the jobs I can’t do myself with the same level of confidence.
Read a lot more.

Recent Posts

  • There are still plenty of SEO cowboys out there
  • Search Engine OptimiSation or Search Engine OptimiZation
  • Backlinks are great for SEO but only if they’re legitimate
  • Trust the WordPress SEO Expert to advise on your WordPress SEO
  • A few ‘key words’ about keywords

Peter

About Peter

Contact

Let’s get started!

Just email me.

Topics

  • Branding
  • Content
  • Freebies
  • Google
  • Hints & Tips
  • Hosting
  • Marketing
  • News
  • Online community
  • Opinion
  • Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
  • Social networking
  • Tools
  • Tweets
  • User experience
  • Website Speed
  • Wordpress

Legal

  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Disclaimer

Also read

  • Payment information

RSS

Peter Warwick-Mahoney, WordPress SEO expert blog

Recent Posts

  • There are still plenty of SEO cowboys out there
  • Search Engine OptimiSation or Search Engine OptimiZation
  • Backlinks are great for SEO but only if they’re legitimate
  • Trust the WordPress SEO Expert to advise on your WordPress SEO
  • A few ‘key words’ about keywords

© Copyright 2019 Wordpress SEO Expert · All Rights Reserved · Site by Peter Warwick-Mahoney