OK, there’s a few links I promised myself that I’d put in to help with technorati and other search rankings so they are here (they don’t have much to do with working at home - sorry)
Outdoors Gear Blog
Another Outdoors Gear Blog
SEO from Scotland
Scottish Holidays Blog
I know I keep linking to these, but I guess whenever I find a good work at home website I want to share it. This one has been around for ages - I remember looking at it a few years ago. Busy forums and a really nice feel to the site make it a pleasant place to spent time researching work at home business and opportunities.
The site is http://www.wahm.com and is primarily aimed at work at home mums, but I think work at home dad’s are made just as welcome.
When you’re getting your fledgling work at home company off the ground you’ll probably be thinking of a website too. Watch out though when you’re buying your domain that you don’t end up with something like these ones on Independent Sources site.
The owners of these domains probably didn’t realise what they were doing at the time but I bet they haven’t changed them due to the huge link popularity they must be enjoying from people linking to them. My favourite has to be www.ipanywhere.com. If only I’d bought that one up for my toddler I’d be laughing.
I know I’m not alone in this venture of being a work at home dad. Here’s a few other sites I’ve come across:
I know there are loads more of you out there, drop me a line at bigcrags aT gmail dOt com and let me know about your site.
Jeremy Shoemaker, aka Shoemoney is well know amongst internet forums but has recently started a radio show on webmasterradio.FM.
This week’s show is about making money from forums and social networking sites. I’d guess there will be a bit about monetising through advertising, which can be difficult enough as forum users are not distracted from the forum content that easily. Hopefully he’ll also talk a bit about doing business through forums, forming business relationships and maybe buying and selling websites etc.
I listened to last week’s show and it is well worth your time to listed to this guy.
At the very heart of how you promote your shiny new website online is the issue of links.
A couple of years ago the question of links was easily answered - just get more links than your competitors pointing at your website (assuming your website has reasonable content) and you’d get higher than them in the search engines. You could do link swaps, sitewide links and links on completely unrelated sites and it would get you the result you wanted.
All that is changing now though.
For a start, affiliate links (link swapping) no longer hold any clout with regards to how your site ranks in Google. It has been abused by the spammers and Google in particular does not give it the same emphasis that it used to.
Links from unrelated directories and spams sites similarly hold no clout. Usually your link is placed on a page with no pagerank and a hundred other links going who knows where. Save your energy and don’t bother with these either.
Sitewide links still hold a bit of clout in Yahoo, but not in Google. So, if you are buying a link from a website save your money and just buy a link on one page. Buying a link on every page might not bring the same rewards.
So how do you get good links?
First you’ve got to identify pages within sites that rank highly for the search term you want your site to rank for. This just takes research.
Next you have to contact the owner of that site with a personal email asking if they’d consider giving you a link from said page. Webmasters of popular sites get loads of these emails every day, so you need to make your request attractive. Try and find out the name of the person you are requesting the link from. Praise their site. Say something to let them know you’ve actually looked at their site. Then make your request. But you need to offer something in return.
So what can you offer in return for a link?
1. Cold hard cash. This is often the simplest option and generates lots of results, but doesn’t work in all cases. Anywhere from $10-$50 is average.
2. Offer a discount voucher on your products. If you are selling online, offer a decent, one time discount voucher. Who knows, they might never use it but at least it will get you the link.
3. Offer a discount on services. Same as above.
4. Offer a free trial of your service, software, subscription etc. This is a great way to get links and spread buzz about your service.
If you don’t get a result, don’t despair and move onto the next site. Perseverance will pay off.
All in all, it is much harder to get links these days, and will cost you more, but keep to high quality related pages and a few links will pay you back much more than the 8,500 links you had listed in Yahoo in the bad old days.
This post includes basic guidelines for attributes and features to include in new HTML sites and Flash sites. If you are not competent in HTML it may seem slightly complicated.
HTML Sites
URL’s
Use static URL’s whenever possible, or if using dynamic URL’s, ensure you do not use session ID’s as they block search engine spiders.
Title, Meta-description, Meta-keywords
Provision should be made for the inclusion of individual title, meta-description and meta-keywords on every page.
H1 tag
Include best search terms for the page in an H1 tag near the top of the page. Format the font and size by redefining the H1 tag in your stylesheet.
H2 tags
Use H2 tags to highlight any subheadings. Format the font and size by redefining the H2 tag in your stylesheet.
Text content
Include high quality text content on each page. Aim for 200-500 words on every page. Identify your main search terms and include them near the start of every paragraph.
Try not to hide your text content within images – it cannot be read by search engines.
Bold text
The first few times you use your main search terms in the text content, format each instance in bold.
Contextual hyperlinks
Examine the text content for any terms that may relate to another page, or even another website. Hyperlink these terms to the appropriate place.
Alt-tags on images
Ensure all images can have an alt-tag applied to describe them
Navigation
Where possible use text links for navigation rather than image buttons. Give each link in the navigation a title or id tag.
Drop-down navigation
Sometimes drop-down navigation is necessary. Depending on the way of implementing it, it can block search engines. Avoid JavaScript, Java or Flash to create these drop-down’s. Ensure the main link that generates the drop-down also links directly to the top level page for that category.
Sitemap
Include a sitemap for site users and search engine spiders to use. Also provide an xml sitemap to aid indexing by Google Sitemaps.
Links page
Often the process of exchanging links is required to boost search engine listings, so make provision for having a links page on the site.
Flash Sites
Flash sites are notoriously bad at gaining search engine results. Although most search engines can now read the text within swf files, they are not generally applied to the index because of the opportunity for hiding spam text within the file.
The general advice for Flash sites is that title and meta-tags should be included on each page that shows a Flash file. The rest is down to inbound links.
Flash Site Inbound Links
A links page should be applied as an HTML page, and linked to from below the Flash file, not within it. A link swapping campaign is then recommended to help attract inbound links from other subject-related websites.
Link swapping campaigns are notoriously time consuming and involve identifying appropriate sites, collecting the site details and contact details. Adding the outgoing link to your site then contacting the site owner to request an inbound link. Verification is then required and any denied requests would then have their outgoing link removed from your site.
HTML Mirror Site
We always recommend creating an HTML mirror site to sit alongside the Flash site, using all the recommendations for a standard HTML site as detailed earlier in this document. This site should mirror everything that is possible from the Flash site.
Each page within the HTML mirror site should point out that it is a text representation of the main Flash site and should provide a link into the Flash site. This allows visitors arriving from search engines to access the main site.
If you cannot create a full scale mirror site, it is wise to create an HTML page to describe each of the main sections in detail within the main Flash site. This will act like a mini-mirror site and will still attract visitors from search engines.
The main home page of the site should provide an HTML link to the HTML mirror site. This would normally be a small link below the Flash that reads “No Flash” or simply “HTML”.