In a previous article, 4 things to look at when promoting a new site and doing Search Engine Optimization, I explained link building to some extent as well as the concept of Meta Tags.

Now I wish to clarify these concepts a bit more and set the priorities straight. Those of my clients who do write their own meta-tags often struggle and take a long time. I think the trick is not to over-think it. Meta tags are only 10 – 20% of what makes your site rank high on searches. So let me talk about the other 80 – 90% first. I will cover meta-tags in more detail next week.

Link Building

Why do it?

Not building link to your site after having it created is like BMW spending 30 billion dollars on research and production on a new car model and then not advertising it anywhere. What would happen? A great product would go unnoticed. You’ve hopefully paid graphic designers with some savvy (like me, hint hint) to build a really nice site, so make the most of it. I have too often seen that good advertising and weak products make more money than good products with bad advertising. I prefer to have both a good product and good advertising, but sadly many firms do not hold this belief. Most firms believe in the making money only.

You have to realize that a great site with no links pointing to it is invisible to google. How will google know about your content?

How to advertise?

Paid options: There are paid options like google ads which allow your site to show up in a little yellow block above the search results when when your terms are searched for. You pay for this service per click. There are also other sites that offer similar services. These are not bad services but I will not claim to be an authority. If you do go this route you had better make a sale for a significant amount of clicks to your site since you pay for every click.

Free options: Get good sites and industry-related sites to link to you using the right text for the links. There are many ways to do this. Links from older sites rank higher and from sites with higher PR rank higher. For example, if you were able to convince Sony.com to put a link pointing to your site on their home page using the words “CD players” and you had a site about CD players, the chances are good that your site would perform well for that search and that your site wwould get a good Page rank in general since Sony.com has an excellent reputation and has been around for years and years.

What are my options to get free links?

Networking sites: Many people post links on Facebook groups, Facebook profiles, Youtube video descriptions, Myspace pages etc. There is one problem with this… While I do think it is good advertising, those pages use, what is called, a “No-Follow” attribute. Don’t worry about the technical jargon. It’s basically just something that was created so that a site like Facebook doesn’t have to take responsibility for all the links going out from it. If people put up links that linked to blacklisted sites and low-quality sites Google would start to see Facebook as a low-ranking page. Therefore the no-follow attribute protects facebook, but it also means that that link means nothing in terms of how highly Google thinks of your site.

Blogs: Any site can use the no-follow attribute and blogs are no exception. Most blogs use it. I can’t believe how many times I get mailed comments for my blog that are obviously fake spamming attempts. They try to appear real, giving a fake email, real web-site, fake name, and a message that is general and vague. I think it’s hilarious since it wouldn’t make any difference to their sites whether I accept the comment or not. Even funnier is the fact that the name of the sender is used as the link text. So if “Allan Parson” posts a comment and puts his new site in the site field, he would be improving his ranking for the search term “Allan Parson” if my site wasn’t protected by “No-Follow”. That certainly is ridiculous.

Some blogs don’t use No-Follow so in those cases it can work. Leave a sincere comment and in the name field, put your keyword. E.g. “potatoes in pretoria” and put your site link in the site field. To determine which blogs use no-follow you will have to Google to learn how to do that. It is beyond the scope of this article. Google does look at links from blogs differently though so it can’t be your only solution.

Link exchanges: Find sites that are in the same field and that you want to exchange links with. Make sure they are not banned from Google’s search results though. If you wish to check their Google Page rank and Alexa ratings, use Firefox as your web browser (www.firefox.com) and then use this handy plug-in (searchstatus) to see the Page rank and Alexa rating in the bottom right of the browser when you are on a site.

Remember Google rewards sites with good content. DO NOT link to sites that are about everything and anything. Sites in related fields and in the same country will provide far more valuable links than random insignificant sites will.

Article marketing: The last option I will mention, which is also very popular, is the use of articles. Write an article about a topic your site is about and publish it to a big article directory like http://ezinearticles.com/. Put some text links in the article. E.g. If you sell potatoes and you want to show up for that keyword, link the word potatoes in the document to a relevant page on your site. If the article is good and popular and many webmasters put it on their sites, you get a link for every time it is used. The problem is that Google dislikes duplicate content, so don’t use the same articles on your own site, and keep writing articles monthly, or weekly. This is a long process and is what many paid SEO companies do for you.

Finito

These are all the options I will list for now. If you can think of any others, don’t hesitate to leave them in the comments!

Related articles by me:

• How to write website content and make sure your design works
• More thoughts you should have before starting a website
• 4 things to look at when promoting a new site and doing Search Engine Optimization

An observation by a Freelance Designer: Outsourcing to design companies and design firms often means you get taken for a ride and lose your money. Here are a few reasons to use freelance designers. The following is my perception after working at a few different design/media firms.

Here are the reasons in short. Find the extended explanations below.

1. Freelance designers are less expensive
2. You do not know who a design company employs lately
3. Freelance designers tell it to you like it is
4. Communication with a freelance designer is direct
5. Freelancers don’t juggle your job as much
6. Freelance graphic designers will try to impress the heck out of you

1. Freelance designers are less expensive

This might sound blatantly obvious, but let me explain why it is so important. If you read my article about ” Why do graphic designers like me freelance” you will see that I mention some facts about what percentage of money a worker receives. A freelance designer (or any other kind) might charge you a large sum of money for a job, but I can almost guarantee that a company or firm will charge you at least double what the designer is asking. The simple answer is that the company pays the designer less than his freelance fee, but they also do need to make about 60 to 90% on top of that in order to stay in business.

2. You do not know who a company employs lately

If you insist on using a company, do a THOROUGH background check and check the current state of their business. I have often seen design companies charging REDICULOUS fees for video editing projects right after they have hired a new designer who has just started editing video. This is blatantly dishonest for a start and means that you pay for the quality the company has provided in the past (which might be years ago), but only receive the services of a new upstart designer. Often these are the same guys that will freelance for you for a whole month for a 3rd of the price of the 2 day video editing job that the design firm is charging you.

3. Freelance designers tell it to you like it is

Design company managers, or managers in general have too much psychological experience. Yes, you read that right. It might not make sense now, but think about it. A manager can usually win the client over with words of reassurance and little “white” lies. A freelance designer usually tends to tell you the truth about a project or job. They simply don’t have the same amount of smoke and mirrors in their arsenal to use against you.

4. Communication with a freelance designer is direct

When you ask a freelancer to do your job, you tell them what you want, they brainstorm, get your opinion and get on with the job. When you work with a design company, they listen to you, maybe take notes, and then explain the concept to the designer. The designer often has to brainstorm in near seclusion and with little feedback. I have seen this backfire many times. I have seen brilliant designers layout and entire magazine in a great style, only to have editorial shoot it down. Then after redo-ing the WHOLE magazine I have seen the client say that they wish to completely change it again… So that means the layout was done 3 times. Simple communication between a graphic designer and a client without the middle man would avoid this situation right from the start.

5. Freelancers don’t juggle your job as much

What I mean by this is that companies often have about 10 balls in the air at any time. And by “balls” I mean jobs from clients. This often means that you are paying for the time spent on other jobs. It is not uncommon for a design firm to charge you for the hours that the job was estimated to take by the designer, yet then only spend a fraction of the time on the job and make the poor designer overwork themselves to get 5 jobs out in the time span of 3 or 4 jobs. Freelance designers are simply less prone to working in this way.

They want their work to look good and get return business, so they will put in the hours they planned to (and often quite a few extra) just so that they can be proud of the product and get a good reputation. After all, word of mouth is still the best advertising you can get. Design firms usually ask monthly fees to maintain websites and software. I have often been aware of design firms who charge a big client more money every month than it takes to pay ALL of the employees that are under management. That means that they can almost run the ENTIRE company on the money they get from one client… often for only 10 hours of work per month; Never mind all the other jobs they juggle.

6. Freelance graphic designers will try to impress the heck out of you

Trust me. Freelancers don’t want to keep looking for new clients each time they need work. They want to build strong relationships with several core clients and get more than one job from them. In fact, they will do backflips for you if it means a steady flow of work. Freelancers also want you to refer them to your friends and colleagues. So they really are going to go over an above the call of duty to impress you and let you know how much they appreciate the work.