A previous post of mine Subdomains – Pros and Cons for SEO/ explained how search engines were seeing subdomains as a separate website to the naked domain.

This has some serious points for consideration when deciding whether to use a subdomain from an SEO perspective as any link juice from the root domain may not be shared onto the subdomain.

However a recent announcement by Google Webmaster blog has changed this strategy as now subdomains are regarded as internal links in Google Webmaster Tools.

So what does this mean?

Basically links from subdomains such as cats.example.com or pets.example.com will also be categorised as internal links for www.example.com.

Large publishing networks such as ninemsn often use subdomains for different aspects of their site i.e. News, weather etc – linking from subdomains to other subdmains on their own network will have previously given authority as these subdomains were treated as separate websites but now this network linking will only contribute to each as an internal link.

For these large websites it is worth now considering external link building pratices outside of their network directly to the relevant subdomains to aid authority in each aspect of the site.

Note that, if you own a root domain like example.com or www.example.com, your number of external links may appear to go down with this change; this is because, as described above, some of the URLs we were previously classifying as external links will have moved into the internal links report. Your total number of links (internal + external) should not be affected by this change.

Anyone who spotted the Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors as featured on SearchEngineLand.com will know this quirky little illustration summed up basic ranking factors in a niffty graphic that people can share with their pals.

That is the beauty of inforgraphics, if the are interesting or relevant enough people will share them. And did they ever! check out the shares on this one!

Now as previously mentioned social signals are important to driving traffic after all if you can get people to spread the word about you, your product or your service then volia! your reach increases considerably making it great for increasing traffic.

What to remember if producing an infographic-

• Make it simple – don’t over egg the pudding with snazzy graphics if it means the infrographic is confusing or does not tell a story
• Provide something useful – make sure that it has a “stickiness” to it, that people want to read on and find the information on it useful so they might want to pass it around
• Consider technical issues – the aim is to get people to share this so consider making that easy for them, offer them the code to embed on their own sites and blogs, don’t make the image too large in physical size and file size
• Include a back link – now you want people to share this but if they are going to find it useful enough to promote on their own websites why not ensure that in the embed code you include a back link to your site to help with link building
• Optimise the image – if your subject is around stats on a certain subject ensure the title etc is relevant to a search around this subject. Also make use of the ALT and TITLE attribute to allow for it to be found via Google images.
• Make it relevant – make sure it relates to you, your business or your service, develop a page to place it on and optimise this page around the subject of the inforgraphic to allow for a better chance of this page ranking. (don’t forget all your share buttons and embedded code elements on this page also)

And there you go. Whether you are producing an infographic for link baiting, link building or to help drive traffic and increase your reach bear one thing in mind…make it shareable!

Recently I have been more “hands on” with link building and link building strategies as part of SEO. I thought I would share my findings – although I have kept this basic and brief!

What is Page Rank?

Page Rank is an analysis of links which is used by Google to establish a numerical weight of the page of your website based on the volume and relevancy of links to your site from other sites of a similar genre and good page rank.

As my own page rank has lapsed a little in recent months I decided that I needed to take on more research into this subject and optimise my page rank and that of my clients.

My research and professional opinion is that link building is an important part of any SEO strategy.

Why is link building Important?

Well in order for a site to gain creditability and maximum exposure you need to look at getting back links from other websites linking to you.

Think of back links as a “vote” for your site. So a “vote” from a high page ranking site is a very credible “vote” and a high page ranking site will be a site that will be crawled often so you link will be picked up.

Now this sounds easy but it takes quiet a strategic approach as it is not productive to target just any websites for you back links.

The websites page rank is important and its relevancy in relation to your website. So this means taking the time to indentify websites with high page ranks who are themed around the same subjects or products as your own website.

Where to start…

Well a good place is look at submitting to Dmoz (Page Rank 8 ) and other directory sites (basic stuff). Dmoz is great as it is a high page rank and gets crawled by Google regularly so there is a good chance your site will be picked up and associated with the category you have submitted to. Also to submit to Dmoz is free! Just make sure you submit as specifically as possible i.e. drill down you category as far as possible rather than trying to get submitted to the highest level of category. Dmoz is edited by real people and a more narrow category may mean that your submission gets revised quicker.

Another place to look at getting back links is simply use web searches for subjects you want your site associated with – then approach them for a link to your site. Not all sites will offer you a link for free or at all so be warned you may need to pay for links – the question to ask yourself at this point is whether the back link from this site is worth the money.

You can purchase software which will analyse your website and find sites associated with the same subjects/products that may be looked at for potential back links – however my experience of this software is that it still need a human touch to filter out competitors (who aren’t going to give you a back link) or sites that are just of no value.

Another area is to submit well written optimised articles to various websites and contain a back link to your site. These sites are usually reputable with a high Page Rank and categorised so you will find a relevant category to post your article. Just three sites I have found are www.HubPages.com/ www.ezinearticles.com/ and http://www.articlesbase.com/

Another area to explore is social networking site but I feel this is a subject in itself so I will post separately about this.

You can also opt for link exchanges (sometimes called reciprocal links) although I believe this is to be avoided where possible to avoid search engines seeing a straight forward link from a site, to another site and back again.

In some circumstances this needs to be adopted to take advantage of a sites relevancy and page rank although this need to be kept to a minimum and only considered from sites that will enhance relevancy and page rank.

Another common technique is commenting on blogs relevant to your site – this is fine but check for no follow links and ensure your comments are constructive and relevant to the post not a blatant attempt at shoe horning you url in as this will be seen as spamming and removed.

So what have I learnt from my recent link building 101? Well it is certainly organic process and takes time. It needs to be a natural progression and well strategized . There are lots to consider and it really involves thinking outside the box. You are also in the laps of the gods as to when your link will be picked up as it depends on the webmasters of the website you are linking from and how often they submit sitemaps, and how often Google visits.

As I submerge deeper into link building I will do my best to share my experiences with you. Watch this space!