Citation Optimization 101
Link-free
means guilt-free!
How should and SEO go
about planting citations?
Well, since
you’re not posting on a blog, commenting on an article or leaving feedback on
someone’s site with a request for a link then they will likely feel that you’re
actually seeking solid answers to your post or providing quality related
content to their reader's post. The thing is that
if you can provide quality information to their users that you’ll find they don’t
mind you putting some information that benefits you in return.
The best kind of sites are general sites where you’re brand isn’t a problem - as competition is not a
matter - they deal with all brands of that subject so your talking about one specifically is
relevant. I’d add that you should make
the reference to your brand applicable to the conversation. If they’re asking about washer machines that
spin at 1,000 RPM which offer the best green footprint and your company has one
then it’s relevant to the discussion.
You don’t need to link back. If you
can get one then make it good. Again
though, you don’t need to. You can put
the brand name with the .com as the name so that instead of yoursite you say
yoursite.com near your keywords and you’ll be just fine.
Proximity
of the target keywords and relation to the brand and/or domain are
important. You can also include a
classic bold or italic on the keywords and the brand.com to highlight to Google
that they’re really “key” words. Don’t
throw them into H1’s or anything but a little accentuation of the positive can
help without making you seem like a spammer.
Throw your
brand’s subject matter into Google and you can even add some site types like
directory, blog or other and find some current conversations or articles with
comments that pertain to you. Then
respond with a quality response but write it in a citation-optimized manner.
Optimizing
Citations:
When
posting a citation you want to optimize it since you’re not putting the keywords
into linktext; you’ll want use proximity, font features, and others to increase
relevance association of the keywords to your brand.
Using the
example of the washing machine I would post this if I was looking to promote my
brand’s new XYZ1000 Green Machine. I’m
trying to promote the keywords “green washing machine” and ”1,000 RPM green
washing machine” and some other related terms:
Joe’s
Washing machine Blog (Sandy from Oklahoma’s post):
Hi Sandy,
I’m Bob,
the lead engineer of Washer-matic.com's Green
Washing Machines and I wanted to comment on your post. There are many 1,000 rmp green washing
machines (from Washer-matic and others) on the market and though they do offer
a reduced carbon footprint some do so a bit more than others as the technical
and electrical aspects behind each allow a 1,000 rpm washing machine to be more
green or less green. When looking for
the cheapest or best quality washing machine that fits your needs you should look
into the following factors. (XYZ, listed
factors) and if you want any more information we do offer a guide at
washer-matic.com/green-washing-machine-guide.
We also welcome anyone’s comments and thank you for going green!
You’ll see
here that we placed the brand as a domain name “Washer-matic.com” next to the
main keyterm “Green Washing Machine”.
Since we did it as the announcement of a brand we bolded it and included
the keywords as if it was a tag line.
Next we
used the term “1,000 rpm green washing machines” as the start of a sentence referring
to the keyphrase in a simple form. We
then immediately followed it with the brand.com in parentheses which allowed us
to place the brand.com in close proximity and yet not in a spammy way. We then repeated the target keyword in a
number of forms and then ended with a written-link to a section of the site
which provides the brand.com and the keywords.
We would of course have that page live and awaiting traffic to help
convert to sales and track referrals so that we can judge the success of the
post or campaign.
Gotta give
to get… a fair exchange and no robbery!
Nothing is
free in life so your posts aren’t either.
Any place you’re posting expects quality content in your post so that’s
why they won’t have a problem letting you promote yourself as long as you
contribute something of value to their readers.
Also honesty is of value and can build a good reputation and customer
loyalty. By having
Bob the Engineer post that comment for the company directly we're showing that the company is reaching out to the public and
isn’t lying about being some random customer.
That’s the
beauty of link-free posts.
If asking
yourself “how does Google connect the post to your domain name like a link”
then remember that Google reads the code to find the code of a link (<a>
tag) and then reads the destination URL and the linktext. It doesn’t need to actually have the
<a> tag to know that a .com is there (which is why we do brand.com) and
it gets the keywords from proximity and the overall keywords focus of the page,
topic and post. It’s still parsing code
as it’s all HTML whether it’s found between <> </> or not. If your brand is different from your domain name then you can also use the target keywords in close proximity to the brand name to increase the relevance association between them.
So get on
out there and find some relevant blogs, articles and other delicious places to
plant a citation and watch your site and brand’s relevance (and hence rankings)
grow like an redwood!
See you on the next post here at the Co-citations blog (The Website about Web Cites!) and don't forget to cite us!
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