11 replies to this topic

[WebDev22]

I've been doing some research on getting relevant links, but wanted to reach out to the osCommerce community to see if there were any good suggestions. One of our sites has been around for nearly 10 years, but has surprisingly few backlinks, with only two. When we transitioned to osCommerce two years ago, it really affected our rankings. Any suggestions where to start to build links? We are ranked #21 for our most important keyword phrase. One of our competitors is listed #6 for this same phrase but has over 3,000 links. They've only been around half as long.

[WebDev22]

brettg22, on 10 August 2010, 02:59, said:

...but has surprisingly few backlinks, with only two.

Strike that statement. I don't think the two links are correct. I found more referenced in Google Analytics.

[WebDev22]

brettg22, on 10 August 2010, 03:09, said:

Strike that statement. I don't think the two links are correct. I found more referenced in Google Analytics.

www.backlinkwatch.com counts 52 incoming links... many duplicates and irrelevant.

[Jack_mcs]

Backlinks, if relevant, can help your sites index position but they mainly affect googles Page Rank (PR) of your site. That is diffent from your indxe position, which is the most important consideration. Also, google won't show all of your backlinks and the number they do show will vary. They do that on purpose to stop people from figuring out how that system works.

There are two basic ways to add backlinks: pay for links to your site or exchange links with other sites. There are various other ways, like link directories and web rings but they are less beneficial, for the most part. If you are going to do Link Exchanges, then I suggest installing the Links Manager II contribution (see My Addons). There is also the Reciprocal Links contribution if you are looking for something simpler. Either allows you to manage and display the links.

If you want to improve your sites index position, then you need to start with the installation of a meta tags contribution. I recommend Header Tags SEO (see My Addons again) but there are another ten or so contributions that fall under that category.

[WebDev22]

Jack_mcs, on 10 August 2010, 03:25, said:

If you want to improve your sites index position, then you need to start with the installation of a meta tags contribution. I recommend Header Tags SEO (see My Addons again) but there are another ten or so contributions that fall under that category.

We have Header Tags SEO installed. Great contribution. On that note, I noticed in the source code that the product name and product code were both wrapped in the same H1 tags. Shouldn't it just be the product name?

[Jack_mcs]

brettg22, on 10 August 2010, 10:03, said:

We have Header Tags SEO installed. Great contribution. On that note, I noticed in the source code that the product name and product code were both wrapped in the same H1 tags. Shouldn't it just be the product name?

What's the product code?

[WebDev22]

Jack_mcs, on 10 August 2010, 11:35, said:

What's the product code?

Sorry about that. I was actually referring to the "Products Model".

[Jack_mcs]

The h1 tag is supposed to be used for the top text. If the model is listed with the name, then both should be in h1.

[WebDev22]

Jack_mcs, on 10 August 2010, 12:42, said:

The h1 tag is supposed to be used for the top text. If the model is listed with the name, then both should be in h1.

I can see how that would make sense. Thanks for clarifying. Back to the original topic, I found this article interesting: http://www.clickbank.com/blog/2009/12/03/5-killer-seo-tips-get-backlinks/.

[Jack_mcs]

Before bothering with posting on blogs and forums, as suggested in that article, be sure to view the sites source and make sure they do not have the no follow tag set. If they do, any link you post won't be followed by the search engines, thus removing any advantage of posting there.

[WebDev22]

Good point. So we'd look for something like this?

<a href="http://www.example.com/" rel="nofollow">keyword phrase</a>

[Jack_mcs]

I was referring to the meta tag for the whole page.