Secrets of Marketing on the Web for Your Alpaca Business

Knowledge: Increasing Your Footprint Online

Who is Linking to Your Web Site - and What Does that Say about You to Google?

Linking is the mechanism that connects all the pages on the Internet. You've got links throughout your alpaca web site to let people navigate their way around. You may have links going out to other web sites that you think will be useful for your visitors. And hopefully you have links coming into your web site from independent sources.

All types of links can play an important role when it comes to helping your web site show up online. Though the hardest to control, inbound links pointing to your site can make the biggest impact.

The concept is that if several high-quality sites are linking to your web site, then Google and other search engines figure your site must be a popular, valuable resource - and they will be more likely to show it higher in their search results. In effect, your site receives "link juice" from other web pages that link to it.

However, it's not enough to secure a couple links and then sit still. The Google PageRank algorithm looks at the pattern of links to your site as they build over time.

Building the right kind of links can bring a major payoff, while a wrong turn could get you penalized - and the Google Sandbox is not easy to dig out of.

Armed with a bit of knowledge and some creativity, you can build up valuable incoming links naturally and powerfully, avoiding the traps that plague amateurs.

Featured Marketing Resource

Alpaca Angel Acres Learning Center

A new farm in southern Colorado, Alpaca Angel Acres is getting a head start with an extensive web site that contains several great resources. A growing library of articles and an informative newsletter published monthly make this up-and-comer one to watch. Visit the Alpaca Angel Acres Learning Center here.
 

Q&A from Readers

Question: How do I choose a good web address for my new alpaca web site?

Answer: There are several things to consider when selecting a web address. Also called a URL or domain name, your web address should meet these following criteria.

Easy to remember - This includes the order of the words as well as the words themselves. (Was that davis roberts or robert davis...?)

Easy to spell - Avoid words that people commonly have trouble spelling. It'll save you misery when you're trying to give your URL over the phone and help avoid typos in any press coverage you get, too.

Contains keywords (alpaca, your state, etc.) While it's sometimes debated whether there are any optimization benefits, all things equal, it may help. Use hyphens to separate the words so the search engines can recognize the separate words (seo-advantage.com versus seoadvantage.com). But make sure you buy both versions, so you can redirect any people who enter your URL without the hyphens.

Brief - What's a good length? Well, that depends. Don't sacrifice the other criteria just to have a short URL - your initials, for example, are not going to carry a lot of benefit unless that's how you and your farm are known across the industry. But don't make your web address so long and full of keywords that people will confuse the order or leave out words if they're trying to enter it directly. Consider that it should also look good on your farm business cards, brochures and other marketing materials.

The web address you choose will be influenced by your particular farm name and situation. If your farm is well known or its name already meets some of the criteria above, you'll be best off simply using your farm-name.com or farmname.com. After all, that's your brand, and you want to build it to the max. Another thing to keep in mind is that you can purchase multiple domain names that you think people may try to type in to find you and then point them all at your main address.

Some final advice: Get impressions from a few people before you settle on your alpaca farm web address. You never know what a set of new eyes can pick up that you might have missed. We wouldn't have these hilarious URLs to poke fun at if the owners had done that: Experts Exchange: www.expersexchange.com; IP Anywhere: www.ipanywhere.com; Speed of Art; www.speedofart.com...you get the idea!

What's New at SEOAlpaca

National Alpaca Directory Gets a Facelift

Our National Alpaca Directory just got a facelift. Logos are now displaying next to listings, so if you haven't added yours yet it's a good time to put it up to help your farm stand out. (If you don't have a logo, we can help!) All listed alpacas for sale are easier to view. Basic listings are still free when you link back to our home page and we've added some options to make it easier to add the link to your site, too.