By : Nidhi Gupta

Google bowling is pure evil and it deals with how to frame a competitor’s site as a spamming site to convince Google to drop its rankings. This type of negative SEO deals with links — and many links at once. These links are generated automatically, over a short period of time, using special software. They’ll mostly come from bad neighbors and they’ll all have the same anchor text, to make the spam picture complete. Google is just a machine, so there’s no real way for this machine to know who is behind the link spam. The “guilty” site might lose its position in the SERP or even get banned. Some sites never recover after a Google ban, others see their rankings vanishing and their pages landing into the supplemental results and they never learn why.

If something like this has happened to your site, all you can really do is to find out who hates you so much. Google bowling is not the only negative SEO technique that might hurt a competitor site.

Tattling, as correctly identified by Forbes, is something that even Google’s Matt Cutts encourages, by asking people to report sites that buy links. But its like a wonder how Google verifies such complaints.

Basically anyone can assume that a contextual link in one of the blog entries is a paid link.

There are many other questionable SEO strategies to demolish competition. But these may be a waste of time and energy. The Forbes article quoted above contains a pretty interesting statement: “Matt Cutts, a senior software engineer for Google, says that piling links onto a competitor’s site to reduce its search rank isn’t impossible, but it’s extremely difficult.”

If negative SEO is difficult, we are prone to believe that it seldom happens. In some niches, it happens quite often. But these are simple theories.

There are simpler ways to harm competition. Scrapper sites harm writers by copying their content. And it is not that difficult to understand where the “harm” lies.

For example, when a scrapper copies the content of your site, your rankings are harmed, especially if the scrapper site happens to have more authority than yours. There is not much you can do to protect your rankings and yours copyright. But if you decide to report the guilty site to the search engine (file a compliant) the search engine will remove the site from its index for 10 days, to give you (the copyright holder) the time to sue for infringement.

Many bloggers wake up one day to find their articles duplicated on obscure sites, MFA sites and so on. They are often frustrated and they ask in forums the classic: “What can I do if someone copies my content”. Well, now you have a possible answer: you don’t need to go to court to punish a site for copyright infringement. It is enough to file a complaint at Google and you’ve got the guilty site out of the Google SERPs for at least 10 days.

Careful though, a fraudulent copyright complaint can get you in trouble, and not just with the search engines. So don’t just go around filing complaints. The Google ban theoretically lasts for just 10 days, but the trust rank of the accused site will lower. Another similar complaint and the site’s integrity will be seriously questioned. Just remember: what goes around comes around.

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By : Admin

Getting your site to rank highly in the search engine results and getting searchers to click through to your site is one of the first objectives of B2B search engine optimization. In the B2C world, conversion can happen in a matter of minutes. In the business-to-business realm, however, conversion can take months or even years.

The goal of most B2B searchers is research. Your goal is to identify who the site visitors are and to develop a relationship with them. First of all, you should be analyzing your web traffic as it can be a rich source of leads.

While you likely won’t generate a B2B sale in a single visit, there are a number of strategies to help begin converting site visitors into customers. In business-to-business realm, your job is to increase the number and quality of those encounters by offering opportunities for them to engage with you.

The primary intent of business-to-business searchers is research and education. Your site should contain a generous amount of optimized educational content. This helps prospects both find you and get to know your firm and your approach in a non-invasive, largely anonymous environment. While much of your web content should be open to all, you should reserve a certain amount of valuable content available by registration only. That registration will give you valuable lead information.

There are a number of tools you can use to drive engagement, accelerate conversion, create leads, and measure the return on SEO. Here’s some of them.

Newsletter Sign-ups: Newsletters are a great way to stay in front of B2B prospects and develop an ongoing relationship with them. Keep newsletter registration simple. E-newsletters are ideal. Most importantly, make sure your newsletter has great content.

White Papers: White papers are a great way for prospects to see how you think, to evaluate your knowledge and perspectives. Be careful not to turn the white paper into a blatant promotional tool. Links should be limited to those whose destination provides other objective, educational material and information.

Podcasts: B2B podcasts are an easy way for people to assimilate what you have to say. Keep podcasts valuable and short, and use newsletters and blogs to promote them.

Webcasts. Business-to-business webcasts are non-invasive forums in which to share research, information, and product demonstrations. They’re much cheaper than on-site seminars, and you can use webcast registrations for leads.

Your Blog: A blog serves as another touchpoint for your brand. Business-to-business blogs are a great medium to further engage prospects. If you have a related blog, refer visitors and allow them to your main site to click through to it.

Site analytics will let you evaluate your conversion efforts in terms of depth of visits, length of visits, and whether time spent on specific pages and the number of repeat visitors is increasing. In addition to continuing to convert visitors into customers, the number and quality of leads from each of the conversion strategies above can be used to evaluate return on investment for B2B search engine optimization.

SEO’s ability to meet prospects exactly when they’re forming the intent to buy makes it one of the most attractive marketing strategies for B2B. Yet most business-to-business companies have not begun to implement search engine optimization. For many, it’s not even on their radar and that can represent a competitive advantage for your firm. If you understand B2B search engine optimization and how to engage visitors each time they find your site, you can create a rich pipeline of prospect relationships and sales leads.

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By : Nidhi Gupta

Did you know that by simply participating in various forums and posting your various views and ideas, can potentially bring new growth and life to your online business?

Let’s look at some of the positive aspects that forum participation can bring to your business:

1. We are all looking for traffic to our websites and if we can get it for free with little effort, that’s even better. Did you know that when you sign up as a new member at a forum, you can usually create a signature line that will be attached to every post that you make in a forum? This signature line can contain your website address, and as other members read your post, this will provide another route for potential customers to find your website.

2. One of the worst things about trying to advertise on the Internet is the lack of trust between website owners and customers. Everyone is afraid of being scammed. A good way of building trust with potential prospects is by giving them a chance to get to know you, and by letting some of your knowledge, honesty and integrity show in the post that you make at a forum.

3. Most webmasters on the Internet exchange links with other like sites, because exchanging links will boost your link popularity. It’s a proven fact that you get higher search engine rankings when your site has a high PR due to your link popularity. But did you know it’s even better if you have a link pointing to your site that isn’t reciprocated? Every post that you make in a forum will create a one way link pointing to your website. If you make 1000 posts in a year, you have potentially created 1000 back links pointing to your site. As the search engines crawl the Internet and detect all these links pointing to your site, your website is going to move towards the top of the search engine listings.

4. Running a business on the Internet can be a very lonely occupation. There is very little interaction with other people and this can be devastating to some. By participating in forums, you will meet other people who have online businesses and who have a lot in common with you. It’s sometimes comforting to know that there are others who share your occupational frustrations, and will be there to support you if you need them.

5. It’s a proven fact that two minds are better than one. Everyone goes through learning curves on the Internet. Whether that learning curve involves starting out, building websites, search engine optimization, or the millions of other things that you must be prepared to do on the Internet to establish your business, there is someone in your favorite forum that has been there and done that. These people will be more than happy to give you free consultations.

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