Should we pay for links?

The web as we know it could be in jeopardy Should you have to pay to link? Sadly, it's a question we keep having to ask, because organizations and lawmakers keep giving us reason to. If you're a longtime reader, you probably already know my stance on this: the web is based on pages freely linking to each other, and when barriers are set up that impede that, it makes for a broken web. Should any person, organization or aggregation service have to pay to link to content for any reason? Let us know what you think in the comments. Search Engine Regulation Opposed by Citizens, According to National Taxpayers Union - Watch the Video >> In October, web pro news ran an article with the title: "Should You Have To Pay To Link?" Back then, it was about Central European News (CEN), a media organization that provides news, images, research, etc. to various media outlets, for money. CEN had sent payment invoices to The Huffington Post, simply because the site was linking to sources (such as The Daily Mail), which had paid for CEN's content. A couple years ago, there was the whole thing with News Corp. blocking search engine/news aggregator NewsNow.co.uk from using/linking to its content. NewsNow founder Struan Bartlett had this to say at the time: It also led to the creation of the "Right To Link campaign". A more recent example of some interesting linking policy would be this one from Lowe's. They require sites that link to Lowes.com (I'm not sure what the legal grounds here are) to fill out a form and get permission first. This is done by fax. Yes, fax. The latest incident comes in the form of proposed legislation from German lawmakers, who reportedly seek to enable content creators to charge aggregation services for using snippets, for as long as lone year. The Register points to an official document about the proposed law (in German). It's unclear whether we're only talking about the actual snippets, or if that includes the titles. According to the Register's report, aggregators may be forced to pay license fees, but if if the titles (which are essentially links), aren't included, aggregators should be able to display titles/links without snippets, without having to pay. If such a law goes into effect, it would probably make more sense to do this, for most aggregation services, though user experience could be damaged. Of course, there's one news aggregation service that we know is all about user experience (at least at the PR level) -- Google (and Google News). Would Google pay to provide snippets? If titles/links are included, that's a whole different ballgame, and in fact is really where the bulk of this threat to the web comes in. If we're talking about titles, which are essentially links, we're talking about having to pay to link to something. Even if this is only at a news aggregation service level, it's a dangerous precedent to set, given that the web at large is based on linking. There are no clear lines when you're talking about the subject of news aggregation -- particularly in the age of user-generated content and social media. I mean, what if you create a Twitter list of accounts from news agencies, and share that with your friends, for example? For that matter, the lines between what should actually be considered a news source are pretty gray too, when you're talking about blogs, social media and citizen journalism. Laws like this would have to be governed by interpretation, and any interpretation -- right or wrong -- could have tremendous effects on the web, and really, society. And let's not forget, that while a law may be designed to govern the people and companies of a country, the web is worldwide. Linking knows no geographical boundaries. When you're talking about how an aggregator like Google News delivers results, how is it any different than how Google itself delivers results. It's still about snippets and links. Such government control could not only jeopardize current news aggregation practices, but how search, as we know it, works. Matthew Ingram, who writes for GigaOm these days writes a lot about this kind of stuff, and often makes great points about the state of journalism, and the whole citizen journalism/traditional media debate. As he presents it, aggregation and curation are synonyms, for all intents and purposes, and I agree. But curation can not only come from a system like Google News or a Techmeme. It can come from a news publication itself. It can come from a single person using any publishing format on the web. That means it could be a blog, a Google+ account, a Twitter account, a Twitter list, a Facebook account or whatever. It's all about the following you have, as to how much that contributes to content being consumed by its audience. So laws like this could jeopardize how we use social media too and Seo Coventry sources . But more than that -- they could jeopardize how people use the web. It's why the publishing world wants the paid app model (like The Daily) to succeed so well, but that model will never pan out to its full potential as long as that pesky web is around -- a tap away via your phone or tablet's browser. Perhaps news organizations should start lobbying for the death of the web browser. That would go over well. Links are the web. The web is links. Links are what keeps the web alive, and are the reason we have not all been completely consumed into closed app ecosystems (though we certainly spend more of our time there than ever). One thing that continues to baffle me, is that so many publishers and news organizations are still so opposed to how the web works. Links gain you more exposure. There are legitimate points on the other side of the argument, but the fact is that links give more people more opportunities to read your content, and if they're not reading your content, they're just going to read someone else's -- someone that has figured out a better way to monetize their content -- perhaps someone that doen't care about monetizing their content. Regardless, it's not benefiting you. Of course, all efforts to see "aggregators" paying to link aren't being driven by governments. News organizations (The AP, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Gazzette, McClatchy, and numerous others) have banded together to form NewsRight, a collaboration designed to find ways of getting aggregators to pay. I haven't heard a lot of success stories about that one yet.

New Clients

SEO Go are proud to announce that we are currently working on a complete branding package for a newly formed Coventry based children's dance company. We can confirm that the company is to be called Twirling Toddlers. SEO Go will be doing all of the website design and branding to help Twirling Toddlers get the best start.

Seo Go Reach top ten for Designer Menswear.

Seo Go have been working with National Designer Menswear company Chameleon Menswear. Chameleon came to us after their previous 2 champaign with other SEO companies were unsuccessful. Seo Go designed a campaign that would not only prove we could achieve their goals, it would help with their lack of belief in Search engine optimisation companies. Unfortunately Seo Go is fully aware of the miss selling of Seo and lack off results by some companies and are well on our way to prove that we are one of the leaders in our field. Chameleon Menswear are now in the top 10 on google for Designer menswear, this was achieved in 3 months, less than half the time spent by other companies and with no results.

SEO Go at the Blaze

Yesterday we went to see the Coventry Blaze play and found our advertising board sneaking its way into all of our photographs. We know of SEO Go thanks :)

Bit 10 specialise in Website Development Coventry and build fantastic websites supported by Umbraco content management system (CMS). Umbraco is an open source web CMS based on the Microsoft .NET platform. It offers an easy-to-use back-end interface that runs in all major web browsers. Although open source, it offers the majority of features associated with enterprise CMS systems including content versioning and scheduling, media library, workflow notifications and multi-lingual support.

Improving back links

How to Improve Backlinks to your Website It's good to know that your competitors have hundreds of backlinks. However, this won't help you much!. If your website does not belong to the big players that dominate internet then it is a lot more difficult to get good backlinks. It's not jsut the amount of backlinks that makes the difference. It is also very important to get the right type backlinks. If you get the right kind of backlinks to your website, you can outrank other websites in the search results, even if they have many more backlinks than your website. Step 1: Find the amount of Backlinks Pointing to Your Website The first step to improve your backlinks is to get a report of the current links that point to your website. To get a report, search for "link:yourdomain.com" on Google and Yahoo this will show you a list of the backlinks. Google and Yahoo will show you some of the links that point to your website as well as the total number of links that they found for your site. In general, Yahoo shows many more backlinks than Google. Google has confirmed that they show only a small selection of the backlinks to make sure that you don't reverse-engineer the rankings of a site by analysing the backlinks. You can also search for your backlinks on the seogo.co.uk there is a tools page with many useful tools. Go to our backlink checker page and enter the URL of your website in the search box. For most domains, you will get many more results than Google will show you. Compare the total number of backlinks that of your competitors websites that currently have top rankings for your keywords. This will give you an idea of how difficult it will be to get a high position for these keywords. Step 2: Check the Anchor Texts of the Links Pointing to Your Website The anchor text of a link is the text that composes a link to another web page. The anchor text used in the link to your website is very important and affect the position of your web pages on Google and Yahoo. If you have other websites link to your site with the anchor text website designers Coventry then Google will show your website on the first result page for the search term "Website designer Coventry." To check the anchor texts that point to your website, click through the pages that Google and Yahoo show for a link. If you searched for your domain on Soporiferous, you will automatically see the most popular anchor texts of links that point to your website in a table with a chart. If the majority of anchor texts of your website do not contain your main keywords, you should work on the links by contacting the webmasters of the websites that link to your site and ask them to change the anchor text. Step 3: Check the Linked Pages of Your Website The pages of your website that have the most backlinks are the pages of your site that get the highest rankings on Google and Yahoo. The home pages more than most are the linked page of most websites. To find the most linked pages of your website, analyse the pages that Google and Yahoo show for a backlink search and follow their links. If the most linked page of your website is not your home page, you have a good indicator of what page on your website other people find the best.

So, how exactly can an SEO report help you at this point? To record your website’s initial metrics you, can either: Using SEO Go reports at this point is a matter of convenience. We Can Supply Keyword Research Report The report helps you easily pick profitable keywords for your SEO campaign by displaying each key term’s search volume, competition and traffic. Website Audit Report It shows in what condition your website’s content and structure are, so that you can measure them PRIOR to beginning with your SEO. Competition Analysis Report To run a competition analysis report, you have to first identify your competitors. It’s best to make a separate list of top competitors for EACH of your main keywords in EACH of the search engines you are targeting. Then, run a website audit report and a website backlinks report for each competing site. You can use the data you receive for 2 purposes: (1) to get insight into your competitors’ on-page and off-page SEO strategies and (2) to monitor THEIR progress over time. Get a report of Your Site’s Structure An SEO report also comes in handy when you need to see your website’s entire structure in a snap. An SEO audit report provides you with what is similar to an X-ray of your site’s architecture. It lists all your webpages and subpages. It also helps you identify problems that exist on each page, such as broken links, coding errors, server response glitches, etc. It’s important to identify them, because these structural issues degrade your site’s positions in the SERPs. SEO Go audit reports should be run on a regular basis, since you never know when your site’s structure may get crippled. particular keyword really pay off and whether your keywords bring just the right kind of visitors. Get New Keyword Ideas By looking at some SEO Go reports, you can get quite unique insights regarding keywords. For example, a traffic report may become a revelation in a way that it shows you, in plain view, what keywords are not getting you traffic, even though you are ranking highly for them. It also lets you see which of the keywords that you are ranking on page 3 for are actually bringing you visitors, so that you can just go ahead and boost up your positions for those search terms. Also, a backlink analysis report lets you harvest competitor’s anchor texts, which is another valuable piece of backlink- and keyword-related intelligence. Dig Into New Backlink Opportunities Speaking of backlinks, SEO Go reports offer the easiest way to discover “juicy” backlink sources by analyzing backlinks on competing websites. Let’s say, you simply grab a competitor’s URL and enter it in Google’s search box like this: “link: competingsite.com” You will be shown some portion of backlinks on the website you just entered. However, certain expertise and experience are required to determine which of those backlinks bring the website the most link juice. You can even use a backlink checker tool and get a plethora of backlink metrics, but even then you will have to spend time analyzing those metrics and picking out the best backlink sources. At the same time, a clear-cut backlink analysis report highlights and lets you see the most profitable backlink sources in plain view. Just grab them and go. As you see, SEO Go reports can be used in a variety of ways, besides being used to report to clients. They help tremendously to record the initial state of your website before you start the optimization work. They also allow you to track yours and competitor’s SEO progress, help you get keyword ideas and discover new backlinks sources.