What about these links - Internal vs External Links

Have you ever had an itch inside of your head? If so, you probably realize that every possible scenario of how to relieve that obnoxious tickling sensation would end up in a painful death.? Long pointy tube directly through the ear: death. Jumping straight up into a spike: death. Pulling your head off: death.

More importantly, why the hell would the inside of your head itch anyway? We may all have our suspicions, but for me I tend to get those uncomfortable itches when I am asked a question that I do not know the answer to. Naturally, I make something up and go on with my day. But usually, later in the day when eating a cold reuben sandwich, that stupid inner head itch comes back.

Fine. Seeing that they do not make those handy back-scratchers for the inside of my head, the only alternative is to sit down and hash out the answer to that question that has driving me bonkers: When should you open links in a separate tab?

Internal Vs. External Links

Fundamentally, they do the same task. They are embedded onto a page of a website, and upon clicking – they open a page. However, one version opens in the same tab, and the other opens in a fresh tab. However, the question is not what is the external link – but when should it be used?

Internal Link
<a href=”markoleszczak.com”>Link</a>
External Link
<a href=”markoleszczak.com” target="_blank">Link</a>

Analytics

Anybody that has worked on the web for more than a few minutes understands how obsessive people can become with metrics they do not understand. Bounce rate is not like a golf score, time on site should not be equivalent to the number of hours there are in a day, and unique visitors and total visitors are not the same thing.

So what is the big deal on the way you open links? Well, this is a tricky one, as it begins to sound more like an ethics question than a logistics question. While we all loathe those inflating pageviews, we also despise those sharing false metrics with Mr. Boss Man to make things look better than they are.

It may not appear a big deal, but you can drastically change the result of time on site, and inaccurately gauge the people bouncing from your site.

Case 1: External Link

 

External links falsify the total time spent on the initial web page.

• Visitor lands on Website A
• After 10 minutes, she clicks a link (Website B) opening a fresh tab
• She stays on Website B for 20 minutes
• She closes the Website B tab
• She returns to Website A and finishes reading for 10 minutes

Time on Website A = 40 minutes
Per Google Analytics, Website A’s inactive time will continue being tracked until it is timed out after 30 minutes

Case 2: Internal Link

Internal links allow for correct analytics.

• Visitor lands on Website A
• After 10 minutes, she clicks a link (Website B) opening in the same tab
• She stays on Website B for 20 minutes
• She clicks the back button to return to Website A
• She returns to Website A and finishes reading for 10 minutes

Time on Article A = 20 minutes
As you will notice, this is an identical scenario, but with two different results.

Forced Behavior

Allow your website visitors to choose for themselves when they want to open a new tab.

While growing up, a lot of your decisions were made for you. Spinach was delicious and homework was fun. Nobody likes having their mind made up for them, but as you grew, you had more of an opinion. You were able to select the foods you liked. You could choose your favorite classes to take. You finally had an opinion, and the world was a happier place.

For links it is the same thing. People should be able to decide themselves if they want to open a link in a new tab. With a simple Shift+click, any link can be opened in a new tab.

Reasons Why You Should Not Open Links In New Tabs:

• This disables the back button on the new tab. The back button is the second-most used navigation feature in a browser
• Visually impaired & less tech-savvy users can have a hard time navigating through tabs
• Increased number of clicks for visitors on smart-devices

When Is It Acceptable To Use The External Link?

It is important to understand that this “target_blank” command is not always a buzzkill. With everything, it is best used in moderation. Many times this command is used when printing a page or when paired with an icon indicating it will open a new tab. As long as people know what to expect and they will not try to hit the “back” button, a new tab can actually be a convenient way to present certain information.

Just keep in mind that one should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself. Do not assume everybody likes browsing the web the same as you. And do not assume that everybody likes spinach. Now grab a cold brew, raise your glasses, and salute the beloved link.

Cheers.

 

Five Factors Web Style Organizations Can Help You With

The internet is a fast growing environment and the ecommerce is a fast growing field that attracts the attention of more and more people. The top trends in online sales change even from one month to another, so it is a good idea for your business and for its success to have a marketing team always aware of what is new and what should be changed.

However, you should know that there are numerous online companies that offer all the services you need as a freelancer, so it is only a waste of money to pay someone as a full time employee for this type of services when any ecommerce web design company can do the same thing.

Such companies offer you web design services, creating your website, they provide maintenance services, as well as upgrade services whenever they are needed. Now, it does not matter what if you choose an individual, a person who works on his own in the web design field or if you choose a firm. What matters is that you offer all your attention to the 5 elements that help you become the owner of a successful website.

The first element of these five is the search engine optimization. Those who already know the term refer to the search engine optimisation as SEO. This element is a very complex one and it can be used with success only by someone who completely understands the process. In search engine optimization, the specialist creates keywords and uses them in the sub headings of your website in order to attract the attention of all search engines to your website. The specialist also uses back links that can be created through article submission, forum posting and blog posting for the same purpose: to attract the attention of search engines upon your website. If you get a good search engine position, then you also get a good traffic and a lot of possible customer.

The second element is called Content Rich Copy. This implies offering descriptions of the items or the services that you sell and reviews. Numerous internet users appreciate this very much and in many cases, when they stop for a review, they also purchase something.

The third element on the list is known as Email opt in. If you already attracted the attention of some customers, you should make them keep coming back to you and by building an email capture box, you can send them special offers and information from time to time if they consent.

Fourth comes the Easy Navigation element. You have to make sure that your website is attractive, but also easy to use. You need maps of the website that will help them easily find what they need and even graphics that attract them to explore your website.

Last but not least, the number five element is Let Customers Contact You. Make sure that your contact details are easy to observe and at the disposal of any visitor of your website. By doing this, you might attract more of those who are too lazy to search for certain information.

know About Guest Posting

Guest blogging is riding high right now and the whole Internet Marketing sphere is buzzing with talk about it. Some people consider guest blogging to be one of the more powerful of available tactics, while others disparage this viewpoint, saying that guest blogging is highly misunderstood and that people are misusing it.

In my honest opinion, both mindsets are correct. I recently did a cartoon post on my blog discussing (in a humorous style)  how guest blogging is powerful and how it is misused by many who have failed to understand the scope of awesomeness in this practice we call guest blogging.

Guest blogging is, indeed, one of the powerful ways of building strong, high-quality relationships that may help you in multiple ways, including developing business opportunities and professional connections, setting brand value and, of course, acquisition of link juice.

But, there are many people in the industry who aren't grasping the real worth of guest blogging. They tend to view guest blogging as just another link building tactic. Because of this, they continue to build low quality content for submission to blogs that accept guest posting. Sadly, I estimate that one out of ten blogs actually publishes this junk, polluting the web with garbage.

Discussion about guest blogging as a relationship development tool vs. guest blogging as yet another vehicle for mere linkbuilding is all over the web.  What makes this post different from others is that I will provide case studies and success stories to back my opinion of the real potentials of this practice.

Let’s cut the theory part and talk about the real figures! Properly executed, guest blogging can help you:

Build Relationships

So many blogs state this, but I remember when I wrote my first ever guest post. Very few people tweeted it and I wasn’t able to make any good connections out of it. I was a newbie, and didn't play my part well.

There is another common industry phrase that states, ‘Building relationships takes time’. If I merge these two phrases, it reads something like this.

Guest blogging helps you build relationships, and as it takes time,  you should be consistent in your activities.

Let's hear what blogging and SEO expert, Kristi Hines, has to say about building relationships through guest blogging:

Words from Kristi Hines:

"I've built great blogging relationships through guest posting on other blogs as well as inviting others to guest post on my own. The strongest relationships you will build with other blogs are the ones on sites where you contribute regularly vs. submitting one-off posts."

Submitting a single guest post isn't enough. If you intend to forge a relationship, then your job doesn’t end with submitting your post. Plan to interact with the audience (usually through the comments) and follow up with the blog owner or editor to see how your guest post did. This will prove that you aren't just another link builder; you actually care about the community.  Who knows? This might open their doors for you to a future of more guest posting opportunities and even partnerships in other areas.

Social Media Examiner is one example from my own guest blogging experience of building relationships through guest blogging. They treat all of their writers as a part of their team. They organize meet-ups at blogging conferences like New Media Expo (formerly BlogWorld), they include you in their roundup posts when your expertise matches the roundup topic, and they always offer to help you in any way they can. I've met a lot of great people through their community and even gained some clients for my freelance writing business, which is always a plus.

Become An Expert

Guest blogging can act as your doorway to gaining status as an expert in your field. The more in-depth, well-researched posts you publish on authoritative blogs, the more chances you will get to communicate and interact with people. Over time, you can become an authority in eyes of your target audience.

That's advice you'll read everywhere, but let's gain deeper insight from the words of guest blogging queen, Ann Smarty, about her journey towards the respect she has earned in the industry:

Words from Ann Smarty

"It somehow happened without me trying too much. I started blogging and was invited to guest post at Search Engine Journal. I didn't even know what a guest post was and was too humble to even include an "About author" page. Then guest posting invites kept coming. I saw traffic and more people recognizing me as an expert. I saw the benefit! So I started guest blogging actively. Then the idea of MyBlogGuest was born and my name became associated with "guest blogging" because of it. I started to guest post even more promoting MyBlogGuest. It was promoted 100% with my guest posts: no paid reviews, no ads, just "free" guest posts. And it started growing! I guess that's the best evidence of the benefits of guest blogging."

Discover Business Opportunities

This is the most delicious bite in the whole meal. Yes! With proper implementation, guest blogging surfaces new business opportunities. Don't laugh. I know it works. Rather than quoting an expert here, I'll share my own personal experience.

My last post on SEOmoz was about writing an email in a way that gets a better rate of response and it went very well. I danced twice; once when my post got promoted to the main blog and again when I received this message in my SEOmoz private message box:

While I can't reveal all the details of this message, I think it proves my point. In fact, I have received several emails like this after guest blogging elsewhere.

If you've tried guest posting without achieving this kind of success, keep the following tips in mind:

When attempting to attract business, nothing matters more than the quality of your offering. Your submission must accurately showcase your level of expertise in your field.  

If you want to see traffic flowing towards your website from your efforts, you must produce the best post ever (I really mean this) on your topic and submit it to a high quality blog. Be sure your website is ready to welcome the new traffic. Make sure it's as awesome as your guest post!

Capture A Wider Audience

It's generally accepted that the more targeted traffic your website captures, the greater the chance of a high conversion rate.

The formula for a blogger is pretty much the same, but the question becomes one of how to reach that target audience. Again, enter guest blogging!

Thanks to SEOmoz for coming up with this post analytics feature on their blog. I am again highlighting a previous guest posts on SEOmoz and showing you my stats.

Around 3,016 people actually visited my post’s page and average time of their stay on the page is around 4 minutes and 20 seconds (enough time to read and comment on the post).

I am sure that if I had published my post on my own blog, I would not have gotten the same amount of traffic. My limited audience and smaller circle of influence cannot compare to that of SEOmoz (obviously).  Through guest blogging, I had the chance capture a wider audience and make an impression on new people.

Moreover, a good guest post can win more blog and Twitter followers. I've noticed how my followers have quickly increased whenever I've had a post published on one of the major SEO blogs.

Retaining these followers is a completely different story, but as far as the increase in followers is concerned, I consider this one of the best gifts guest blogging offers.

...And Get The Link!

Let's not forget linkbuilding. The highest quality links will come from submitting your best content to the best blogs publishing in your niche.

My blog is in its infancy - only two months old. I currently have a Google PR of 3 and DA of almost 35. Most of my incoming links are the result of guest blogging.

I should add that I've been guest blogging for more than a year now, long before I launched my personal blog, so I haven’t been doing it for the purpose of linkbuilding, nor do I recommend this approach.

Within a few months, I achieved a reasonably good DA and Google PR score because I was getting links from valuable sites. Check out this screenshot of my link profile in OSE to see what I mean:

For me, guest blogging is fun and it provides a chance to enhance communication as well as my interpersonal skills. It also pushes me to read more and think outside-the-box to come up with something really amazing for guest post content.

If you want to enjoy all the benefits of guest blogging mentioned above, then just think creatively and put together the best (BEST ever) article for guest posting.

Source: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-real-benefits-of-guest-blogging

Minimum Bounce Rate is Always Good for Website

Every website owner want a lower bounce rate for the website but the question is how to achieve a good (lower) bounce rate?

What is Bounce Rate?

Simply, bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who enters in your website and bounce or leaves the website. You can easily check your website’s bounce rate from Google Analytics, the ultimate and one of the easiest tool for checking stats for your website.

Bounce rate is basically only the tool which shows the importance and relevancy of your website to your online visitors. If your bounce is low, then it shows that your visitors like your website and love to have a stay but if you are on the wrong side i.e. high bounce rate; then its to re-think and to do some effective actions to make it down. But the main question is HOW to Reduce Bounce Rate of a Website?

Tips to Reduce your Bounce Rate -

1. Website Load Time – Check the load time of your website. You need to understand; in this fast face life,  nobody likes a slow website. So, it’s better to monitor your website load time and do necessary actions. Some of easy-to-use tools to test the load time for the website -
1. http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/
2. http://www.iwebtool.com/speed_test
2. Website Navigation – Put an easy navigation on your website. Your visitors shouldn’t get confused to navigation your website pages. It will irritate a visitor and he can probably leave the website without surfing more. Your website director is the best person to interact with for this issue.
3. Browser Compatibility – Your website should be compatible with all major web browsers like Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Sometimes, website owners neglect to check this compatibility issue which is basically an important factor in the website usability. Browsershots.org is one of the best tool to check your website browser compatibility.
4. Too much ads & Pop-ups – Excess of everything is bad and the same is related with the high bounce rate. If your website is full of ads and pop-ups which hampers your visitor’ action, he will be jump to another website. It’s always better if we have a separate column for sponsored ads. Everybody wants money but if you see visitors are basically your money. If you don’t have revisits, you can’t make money. Please think about your visitors too!
5. Your Targeted Keywords (SEO) – Don’t stuff your targeted keywords. Make your web page relevant to your visitors instead of just created for Search engine rankings purpose. After Google Penguin Update, it is strongly advice that you don’t use any kind of Blue/ Grey/ Black SEO technique to fool out search engine spiders and to gain fast rankings. You can be seriously penalized or can be banned too! Give your visitors, what they want i.e. relevant information.

Online Promotion Tools - Beneficial for Business

This information creation was designed to help notify and notify every affiliate professional and website owner on how easy it is to use web 2.0 resources. It also reveals the potency of these resources and how they can help you build and sustain a significant online existence through a number of services. Example: Sites, For, Observe Research, Etc.

How To Improve Ranking Of Your Website With Help Of Cranny Keywords

Dear Friends, you will agree that now day when various new techniques are being applied for performing different work how cranking of your web pages can be left from this. In early days it was easier to get your website placed at top ranking of various Search engines result page (SERP) with help of matching keywords. This period was considered as “Golden Era” of SEO period which begin to disappear with introduction of Panda 3.3 to Panda 3.4 and finally with Google Penguin. After this the new period of SEO came into existence dynamically.

Ignoring the fact of changing scenario of SEO, still we are placed in position in which to be placed on top pages of SERP’s we need to work on suitable keywords so as to capture huge traffic for your website to explore your business. In our today’s discussion we shall be focusing on factors which may enhance us to capture top ranking on search engines through targeted keywords. This can be done in following steps:

Step 1: Search of keywords:  Before you want to acquire top position in search engines page with help of your keywords you should go through Google’s Keyword Tool which will provide you information regarding keyword search. From this you can find as many words that are related to your website. However one thing which should be kept in concern is that length of keywords should not be more than 30.

Step 2: Comparing your present page rank: Once you have made collection of compatible keywords which you think will help you in acquiring top position in SERP. The second step which you should follow is to check your present ranking with help of different tools available for checking your rank. MySEOTool is regarded as the best tool to find your present rank. This will enhance you to identify which pages of your website are acquiring top position.

                 

Step 3: Organizing keywords:  As the third step you should organize your keywords in such a way that get close to same group. It is advised to place keywords in the same group but at different places with help of singular and plurals.

Step 4: Placing of each keyword to Specific URL: Now once you have grouped different keywords according to their group, you will be required to choose a common keyword for each group. After which you should assign specific URL of your website for each common keyword. If your existing website does not have any page relevant to that particular keyword than you need to create a new page for that specific keyword.

Step 5:  SEO for each URL: Now after assignment of specific URL for each keyword the next step is to follow basic on site SEO best practices that will help that particular URL of your website on top page of different SERP’s. It would be worth mentioning here that you can also make use of meta description tag for each URL. You should use other keywords at least for once in content of your web page. Apart from this you can also inter link pages of your website to other pages of website.

If you follow all the above mentioned steps properly you will find dramatic improvement in ranking your website. However if you are operating an E-commerce business than you should follow following steps:

• Arrange list of your products in their specific groups and design separate page for each group;

• If you have minimum groups than link each group to homepage of your website;

•  Make sure that each of your products meets requirement of SEO;

• Make sharing of your products through various social networking websites.

Source::: http://blog.ribbun.com/how-to-improve-ranking-of-your-website-with-help-of-cranny-keywords/