Tips On How To Promote Your Site
05 2010 Thursday
27
By admin in Linking Strategies
If you’ve got your own web-based business, you might be asking yourself how you can market your site. There are lots of ways to make this happen, and this article talks about all the demonstrated strategies that would make you have favorable outcomes in this particular field.
The traditional way of promoting a business venture would be to pay for want ad space in your local newspapers. This would let everybody know about your website, but carrying this out regularly would make your overhead costs go up.
A lot of people utilise the web to obtain details, plus the constant progression of the internet means that there will always be many different strategies to market your webpage. Among the choices that you could utilize is pay per click advertising, wherein you will spend money in order to put your ad on the results pages of search engines. While this is a proven way to market your site, it can get costly if you are bidding for keywords that are popular. One other way to publicise your webpage is by making use of weblogs. Crafting blog entries about your products or services and also placing the right amount of information in your weblog would draw in potential customers.
But the fastest method to publicize your site is to write content pieces and also submit them to many different article publication sites. The reason why this strategy gives the most results is due to backlinks: if your content is posted, you’ll be required to include a backlink. This particular link will let your readers visit your site if they want more information about your services and products, and you will acquire more page views.
You need to create articles that are short and educational, and you have to come up with lots of articles so that you’ll be seen as a specialist in your chosen field. Article directory websites will always be in need of new and also excellent content since this would help them receive better search engine rankings, and people will always be on the lookout for specialized information for their own webpages. When your content piece is published in an online directory and that specific article directory website acquires a high page ranking, that result could be achieved by your webpage as well since you will lead your readers to your site through your posted write-ups. In other words, everybody wins in this scenario.
But there are a few vital things to bear in mind when composing content pieces. You have to make an effort to compose around three to five articles every day, as well as restrict your write-up to 300 to 500 words; people will not read through content pieces that go past that restriction. Also, originality is of high importance. Never ever reproduce a posted content piece online or in publications and call it yours. Plagiarism isn’t accepted in any industry, plus your write-ups wouldn’t be posted if you’re caught. You can borrow an idea from another article and extend it, but remember to cite your sources.
If you do not have the time or ability to craft your own articles, you can employ freelance content writers or maybe content creation services to make your content pieces for you. Aside from offering you extra time to pay attention to various other aspects of your internet business, outsourcing this endeavor would mean getting a lot more write-ups for you to send for publication.
The main ideas guiding this specific site publicity tactic would be to provide valuable material and compel your audience to take a look at your site to obtain more details on your products and services. The secret is to make them desire more of what you are offering.
The search engines thrive on content and backlink count. Without both your site is dead! Learn effective site promotion and increase your search engine ranking by getting your FREE Marketing Report at UniqueArticleWizard.comWhat Strategic Link Building Means To You
04 2010 Friday
9
By Charles McDuffie in Linking Strategies
Strategic link building can gratify your desires to make it big online. Despite the fact that you might find that even a minor tweak in your site can get you enough traffic through search engines, there are other more sensible procedures to use your time and money to ensure a high influx of target traffic. For one, you could incorporate your link building campaign with competitive intelligence and see the change. Achieving this will not only double, but triple your conversion rate.
Strategic Link Building: How To Use It?
We all know that link building is related to SEO. This is why many web users also fail to see that link building can have a separate strategy away from search engine optimization as well. By itself too, strategic link building can get you a lot of traffic for your website. Let’s discover how:
The first approach is straightforward to use. Go browsing the on the internet and zero in on the sites you like. If you like them, in all probability your visitors will like them too. Once you have a list of some great sites, set them in priority and choose the number of sites you’d like to link with.
Request a reciprocal link or a one-way link from these site owners. As all websites might not respond favorably to your request, it’s advisable to request links from a number of sites. With time and effort, you’ll notice that websites won’t refuse your requests as often.
While you’re sending requests for links, be certain you let those sites know that you’ve visited their site, liked what you saw, and find that a link with them would benefit both parties. This will make your e-mail sound more sincere and not a spammish.
The second strategic link building method involves submitting articles to free content sites. By doing this, you’ll reach those sites, e-zines and newsletters where you’ll get a amazing chance to market yourself though the utilization of your resource box at the end of each and every article you write.
With each article that you write, you can do some strategic link building by placing your website URL into the resource box. Your prospective clientele will read your articles, and if they like what they read, should click over to your website and view what you have to offer.
The third strategy involves writing a press release. If it’s very good and gets publicized on numerous websites, you might even get to publicize your work and website on TV or even in a nationwide magazine. You could begin with writing press releases for the community media in the beginning.
The fourth strategy entails posting to forums and news groups. It’s an easy and fun way to make strategic links. While going about it, be honest. Seek to post in only those forums that you like, and those that deal with topics you believe in.
The fifth strategy is to use competitive intelligence to give a boost to your strategic links. You could use the Google toolbar to know the keywords that your competitors are using, and also to know the websites that are sending target traffic to your competitors.
You’ll have to use the link called “Backward Links” on the tool bar for this work. Many of such competitive intelligence tools could help you to monitor your competitor’s traffic sources. All in all, strategic link building can make you a favorite with search engine spiders, and enable your website pages to enhance in the rankings as well.
Charles McDuffie is an author and entrepreneur for ASB Enterprises, a continuing education and business development company showing people how to build business success in home-based businesses and affiliate programs. Visit his website at: http://www.legacyofwealth.comLink Building in Online Marketing: Tougher Than It Sounds
02 2010 Thursday
25
By Paul Marshall in Linking Strategies
You probably don’t need to read the latest advice from the online marketing consultants to figure out the basic idea behind link building. Without links, your site won’t develop authority. Without authority, it won’t move up on the search engines. But even the most savvy online marketing consultant would have to admit that doing that is just not as easy as it sounds.
More Is Not Better In Link Building
Just going out and getting a bunch of links won’t necessarily help your site. You need quality links to get higher search rankings. But sometimes figuring out what makes one link better than another is tough. This is where you do need to keep up with what the online marketing consultants are recommending or you may just be wasting your time.
Targeted Anchor Text Is A Must
When you start pursuing links on sites, you need targeted anchor text. However, you don’t want to use the same text everywhere. Google will notice that in a bad way. You want to use two or three different phrases and the proper name of your website. If you can’t get anything but an image link, make sure the site owner puts your anchor text or the name of your site in the ALT tag of the image.
Pay Attention To Links In And Out
Google looks at the site where your link appears and decides how much benefit your site gets back. A site with a lot of inbound links passes more authority to your site. At the same time, being linked on a site full of low-quality, outbound links probably won’t help you much.
PageRank Isn’t Everything
Don’t be one of those site owners who sees nothing but PageRank. A site with high PageRank can still have low link value. This is especially true of sites that sell links. Steer clear of sites that use phrases like “sponsored by” or “paid for by.” Google may not let that site pass PageRank at all. Move on. They’re not worth your time.
Concentrate On Site Relevance
Let’s say your site is about red widgets. You get a link on a site about purple doohickeys. That link isn’t worth as much as one on a site about red widget management. Make sure you’re pursuing links in relevant places and look at how those places are optimized. If a site owner gives you a choice of having a link on a page titled “About Us” or one with the title “About Red Widgets,” which one do you choose? The link on the optimized page, “About Red Widgets,” has more value.
An Online Marketing Consultant Checks What’s Not Obvious
Take your cue from the pros and check sites in ways that aren’t obvious. For instance, in any search engine, you can type in “cache:” followed by a site url and find out if the site has been indexed and when it was last crawled. But what do those dates mean?
Chances are good that if the site hasn’t been crawled in 30-45 days, it’s not a good place for a link. But some domains have more value than others. For example, links from .edu domains are better than from a .com, but .info is worth less. All these factors should be weighed in judging a site’s worth in your link building efforts.
Does Social Networking Matter?
We’ve all seen the little link bars under blog posts and in forums asking people to Digg or Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. Do you need to try to get links in places where social networking can happen? Yes. Alone those links may not have a lot of value, but Google is increasingly looking at the “active Web” in determining site authority.
It’s time consuming, but participating in forums and social sites and getting blog owners to run your articles with your linked anchor text included can be worth your time. But remember, relevance is a basic rule in online marketing consulting.
Are You Getting Clean Links?
When you get a link on a site, do you go look at the page’s source code? Is there anything extra in the “href” tag on the link? Is the site using redirect code? Is there a “nofollow” in the site’s meta data? If there is, the link is useless to you. It won’t pass any authority to your site because that code tells the search engines not to follow the link. Make sure you’re getting clean links.
When you’re on a tight budget and trying to develop your site and get higher search rankings, it can be a tough decision to work online marketing consulting into your thinking. The Web used to be pretty much a do-it-yourself place. That all started to change in 2004 when people began talking about “Web 2.0.”
It’s harder than ever to judge quality link building in the new world of Web applications and social networking. You can do it, but try to stay up to speed on what the online marketing consultants are recommending as good strategies. The Web is changing all the time. Good link building takes time and effort; you don’t want to waste those any more than you want to waste money during hard times.
Marketing online since 2004, Paul Marshall can help you market on a realistic budget. He’s an Online Marketing Consultants expert offering professional marketing services (and d-i-y Coaching). He also offers Paul Marshall
Targeted Web Traffic – 5 Tips For Great Traffic
01 2010 Tuesday
26
By Riley West in Linking Strategies
Targeted Web Traffic is the “holy grail” of webmasters who want good sales results at their sites. It’s a simple concept.
You want traffic. Otherwise your site sits unobserved and unvisited in the blackness of cyberspace.
But you don’t need just ANY type of traffic. You want, for your “rain umbrella” site, customers coming to you that typed in, ideally, “buy rain umbrellas.”
Now, one of the problems with generating targeted web traffic is the fact that there are a LOT of webmasters out there trying for the same thing. Competition, in other words.
It can appear daunting, but if you keep these 5 tips in mind, and you work at it, you can increase traffic to your site and have the happy coincidence of “better quality” traffic from what we call in the business, “buyer keywords.”
1. Know thy target!
You need to know certain things about your typical buyer, but the one most important thing to know is “Which keywords do they use to search for what you are selling.” Right there is an “aha!” moment.
And don’t neglect putting content on your site that is highly relevant to your targeted audience so that they will find your site informative and interesting and return to your site in the future.
2. Writing Articles.
A good strategy for making articles work for your site, and thereby pushing the site up in the rankings for certain keywords, is to write an article that… a. Interests your target and… b. targets your keywords.
Here is the “aha!” moment for the prospective article marketer.
There’s a “resource box” at the bottom of the article and in that box you are to put links back to your site! But here’s the nugget, those links are to be “keyword text links” wherein “your keyword here” is the clickable link. Google loves keyword links and you WANT Google to like you.
3. Links – One Way And Only One Way.
One of the surest ways to get your site ranked high on your specific keyword is to get “one way links” from high PR sites that are relevant to yours. Google loves this. Google sees the one way link as a “vote” for your site for that keyword.
You’ll accomplish building one way links with the article strategy above, but you need a variety of links, and many sites that are relevant to your target will NEVER publish your article.
An awful lot of the article sites are of low page rank (PR). There are many hundreds of article submission sites and out of all of them all there probably isn’t 50 with good PR. Those are the ones you want!
I highly recommend Ezinearticles and Goarticles and especially Sitepronews. A mass submission company like Submit Your Article can be a real help, too!
A blog comment works too. Find a high PR relevant blog and make a comment! Easy. You can get a link back to your site on the comment. Make sure it’s a good, meaningful, well written comment with relevant copy.
So, backlinks count. And from higher page rank sites…all the better. Pass the link juice, please. Targeted web traffic can be right around the corner.
4. Optimizing Your Website.
Search engine marketers are looking for targeted traffic and they insist on having the basics of search engine optimization in place on their site. This is made up of good and relevant content in the form of articles and posts.
This, and your link building efforts can put your page at the top of page one, resulting in a great flow of targeted web traffic.
5. Building A List.
A list is typically made up of people that decided to get onto your list because they were interested in what you have! You can’t get much better “targeted” than that. So build one. It’s a grand experience and can be very profitable, too!
One of the things we all like about targeted web traffic from the search engines is that it generates a higher quality prospect AND it’s free! You really can’t beat it.
For more on driving Targeted Web Traffic visit Riley West’s Famous Blog – Making An Internet Marketer – and, as long as you are there, be sure to visit Targeted Traffic for more on how to get started driving the kind of traffic to your site that you want.How to Get in with Social Influencers to Build Links
01 2010 Monday
18
By Tom Shivers in Linking Strategies
Cultivating online credibility requires currying favor with Google, which is best done by link-building. So let’s think: If your business and website were top of mind and authoritative, where would you expect to be listed or referenced on the Internet? Are your competitors referenced there already?
The most powerful and credible links on the Internet are placed by individuals who have influence over your online target audience. Often, these are bloggers, editors, industry experts – those with numerous social media followers. Wouldn’t it be good to have an industry influencer who likes you and promotes your stuff by mentioning your business to his or her vast audience? In many cases, that’s the magic touch a business needs to step up to the next level.
Social media sites can be a great source for identifying these key individuals. They act as a virtual trade show, streamlining your ability to “meet” and build a relationship, and win them over to actually promote your ideas to their audience(s). If you’re in the sports industry, it’s kind of like having Michael Phelps or Tiger Woods (ahem) say good things about you. When this happens, you will have many new relationships, followers and links to your site.
Here are some of the keys to building relationships with influencers online.
- Know what the influencer likes or wants before you introduce yourself. The fastest way to get ignored by the influencer is to try to sell them your idea before they even know who you are. (Think spam filters). Instead, get involved in the group and listen to what’s being said. If it’s appropriate, provide interesting, thought-provoking comments or responses. Some influencers aren’t a bit shy and will tell you flat-out what they are looking for. If you possess what the influencer is looking for, it’s time to make your introduction.
- Introduce yourself by letting them know that you have something they might want and then give some details in a respectful way. Remember: you want to pique their interest, not bury them in details. If they’re interested, you’ll know it soon enough.
- Wait for their response. If they don’t respond in a reasonable timeframe, find another way to introduce yourself: phone calls often work, but it’s best to speak face-to-face.
- At this point, it’s assumed that you really do have what they want and that the influencer will act on it immediately. Otherwise, it’s back to step one again; in some cases, it’s over for your shot with that influencer.
In my industry of SEO professionals, getting in front of an influencer can be very tough, but I’ve done it several times by writing articles that deal with issues few others write about. In particular, I try to write articles that editors of well-known blogs will want to publish.
I recently contacted the editor of a popular blog because I learned that he was interested in good SEO articles. I provided a sample of my writing; he liked it and gave me access to his blog to post my next article.
A few weeks later when I posted my article in the drafts section, the editor liked it so much he asked if he could publish it in another blog he edited that was much more popular than the one I had already been approved for.
One thing that helped to get my article accepted involved closely reading and following all of the guidelines for guest blog posting. Don’t make an editor postpone your article because it didn’t meet one of the guidelines. I also used a professional copywriter to tweak the article after it was written. A professional can give your article that extra polish it needs to stand out – and get you noticed.
Within a few days of my article going live, my post was tweeted 15 times – by the editor as well as several other industry influencers – and I got some encouraging feedback in the comments section.
What about links? Not only did this blog post link to my site, but the post itself is linked from a few places, adding even more power to the links in the post.
For those of you who like to keep track, that initial successful relationship with an industry influencing blog editor yielded:
- My name and business on 2 blogs aimed at my target audience
- 15 tweets, and re-tweets from additional industry influencers
- Several high-quality links to my website
- Instant credibility within my industry (now I can boast a bit, “see my article on this respected industry blog”)
- A new relationship with an industry influencer (to get more quality links to my site)
- A foundation for building more relationships with influencers in my industry
Sure, it takes some work to figure out who’s who in your field, then to spend time with them socially, learning what they like (and want). But it can pay large dividends for your credibility and business.
Tom Shivers is an SEO consultant and president of Capture Commerce, Inc. – a professional SEO company focused on tailored Internet marketing since 2000.
How Many Links Does It Take To Get To The Middle Of Google Page One?
10 2009 Friday
30
By Bill Platt in Linking Strategies
Everyday it seems, people are asking me the optimum numbers of inbound links they need to acquire for their website in order to rank well in Google.
My answer is going to seem a little flip, but it is the honest, best answer.
Answer: You need more inbound links – of equal or higher quality – than what your competitors have.
Albert Einstein argued that any mathematical formula that required pages of calculations did not contain within it “the mind of God”.
So when Albert Einstein developed E=mc2, then Einstein had fulfilled the promise of a simple formula that could encompass the brilliance of God.
When people wonder as to how many inbound links they might need to acquire in order to rank in the Top 4 of Google’s search results or even the Top 10 of Google’s SERPs, they are generally hoping that someone will be able to give them a numeric answer, so that they know whether they can afford to undertake the process or not.
I understand the WHY of the question, but there is no canned answer that will work for everyone.
Remember, your competitor may be asking the same question and undertaking the same processes as you are, trying to accomplish the same goal.
No one can truly begin to understand the answer to this question, until one has take the time to do an Inbound Link Comparison Analysis of all of your competitors in the Top 10 spots of Google’s SERPs.
- You need to look at the Top 10 listings in Google for a particular keyword.
- You need to do backlink checks for all ten URLs in Google’s search listings, and you need to check those numbers across a variety of sources, including Google, Yahoo and any other tool you can find to do a check. (Google and Yahoo both tend to understate the actual link counts. While Yahoo will show you more than what Google does, they also show a number of “no consequence” links in their results.)
- You need to look at the quality of a few of the pages that offer links to the URLs in the search results.
This is not an easy process to undertake. I have done it before, but the best you can hope for is a “snapshot” of what is out there, and therefore, what you need to accomplish.
Note: If Wikipedia turns up in your search query, few people with small budgets will ever be able to dislodge Wikipedia in the search results. What they make up for in a small number of inbound links, they more than make up for with links from dozens or hundreds of PR4, PR5 and PR6 pages. Wikipedia is the king of Internal Linking, and they use that to a great degree to rank extraordinarily high in Google’s search listings.
Your analysis should seek to uncover how many links a page has to it.
As a general rule of thumb, Google will show you less than 1% of the existing number of links for a web page. Yahoo will sometimes show closer to 5% of the existing number of links for a web page, but they will not show you the highest quality of those links.
So, as you strive to gain a “snapshot” picture of the playing field, you want to take Google’s Inbound Links number and multiply that by at least 100. Then you want to take Yahoo’s Inbound Links number and multiply that by at least 20, then cut the number in half to acknowledge the number of worthless crap links they have in their database. Once you have achieved these two numbers, then I tend to call the truth “somewhere in the middle”.
With your “somewhere in the middle” number in hand, then you need to look at the quality of links to a few of those search listings, to get an idea of whether those links exist on higher quality pages or simply junk pages.
If those links are on junk pages, then the goal could be achieved by just working the numbers. But if there are a lot of high PageRank pages in the mix, then whatever number is in your hand, should be multiplied, perhaps 100-fold, to overcome the quality of pages that link to your competitors.
If you get the idea that my simple formula leads to a complicated answer, then you are right.
All of the numbers that I have included in my sample formula are based on rough speculation, as the “snapshot” offers you your best hope of understanding the challenge in front of you.
While the number of inbound links may be relatively easy to determine, the link quality is a factor that is really hard to pin down.
- If you determine that you only need 300 inbound links to rank with the big boys, you may be right.
- Your 300 inbound links number should also be quantified against the number of links that Google will count worthy, so you may need 1200 links to get 300 links that Google will deem worthy. This calculation depends more on the “quality of your content”, rather than the “quantity of your content”.
- When all is said and done and your 300 Google-worthy links have not yet put you on page one, then you know that the quality of the links pointing at your competitors is greater than the quality of the links pointing to you.
If you were hoping for an easy answer, I am sorry that I could not help you with that.
But with this explanation of the challenge, you may be better prepared to answer the big question, the question that is really on your mind:
=== Are my hopes of achieving good rankings in Google within my reach?
I tend to throw “worry” to the wind and just start working. I don’t worry if I can afford to do it or not. I simply start doing, and I know that in one month, one year or five, I will have built enough value in my website that my competitors are going to be the ones who are trying to figure out if they can unseat me!
Bill Platt has provided SEO services since 2004. In 2009, he transformed his SEO service, into one that helps people defeat negative search results in Google. By improving the rank of positive website reviews in the search results, negative search listings begin to disappear from the public eye. If you would like to learn more about how Bill’s Reputation Management SEO service can help your business, visit: http://911reputation.com/ Bill has also owned http://thePhantomWriters.com/ since 2001.
Read more articles written by: Bill Platt
Backlinks for Search Engine Optimization- How Important are They?
09 2009 Wednesday
16
By Julie Ann Ross in Linking Strategies
Backlinks are a key component in search engine optimization. Search engine consultants talk about the importance of backlinks for achieving higher search engine ranking. That’s because the more one-way backlinks you have leading to your website, the more important the search engines believe your page to be.
There are two types of backlinks: one-way links and reciprocal links.
One-Way Links are basically backlinks that only go one direction. Maybe it’s a link that goes from your website to another website. Or maybe it’s a link that goes from another site to yours. Either way, it’s only going one way.
Reciprocal Links are backlinks that go from one website to another, and then back to the original website.
It’s important to differentiate between one-way back links versus reciprocal links. Many search engine optimization experts believe that one-way back links are more valuable than reciprocal links because they’re much harder to earn. The thinking is that since they’re harder to earn, they must be more valuable, which means other people think very highly of your site. If people think highly of your site, it must be an important site, which means the search engines will give it a higher ranking than those sites that do not have a lot of one-way backlinks.
As search engines like Google grow and improve, they’re putting more emphasis on how popular a website is, not whether they use all the right keywords. This popularity is measured through one-way backlinks. They’re like votes to Google, and search engine ranking is more like a popularity contest: have a lot of links to your site and your site achieves a high ranking. The easiest way to find the number of backlinks that lead to your site is to visit Google or Yahoo! and type in the following command:
link:www.yourwebsite.com
You will be shown a list of all the websites that have backlinks to your own domain. If you want to see who has links back to a particular page on your site, then type in the whole URL to that individual page.
Although no one can be sure of the exact algorithm Google and Yahoo use to rank sites, it’s commonly believed that if a website has more backlinks, it will achieve a higher search engine ranking. There are other factors that go into the whole search engine ranking, but backlinks are one of the more important ones.
But it’s important you have good quality backlinks, not just links that appear on any page you can find, like a link farm or sticking a comment on a page that has nothing to do with your website at all. That is, if you sell hammers, don’t put any backlinks on a page that sells children’s shoes.
That’s because search engines like Google have started cracking down on link farms and backlinks spammers. The search engine spiders know how to tell the difference between backlinks on a link farm and links on a quality website. If you are caught spamming, you will be dropped in the rankings, or possibly even dropped completely from Google’s index.
So you need to pay attention to the quality of your backlinks, now more than ever. One way to do this is to make sure you use the proper anchor text in your backlinks. For example, do not ever hot-link the words “click here.” What you’re basically telling the search engine spiders is that the website is about Click Here. Instead, use the keywords about the site that the backlinks are leading to. If you’re creating backlinks to a site about hammers, put the word hammers in your links. “Click here” isn’t about hammers.
In short, if you want some great search engine results, be sure to include backlinks as part of your search engine optimization strategy. You’ll see it pay off with improved search engine rankings.
With 20 years in marketing, advertising and 10 years in internet marketing, Rostin Reagor Smith has refined the SEM SEO Expert Formula. Hundreds of case studies have combined to build the formula that drives search engine ranking through Social Media Optimization, Online Reputation Management, Social Marketing, Link Building and web 2.0 communities and resources.Using Back Links to Improve Your Website SEO
09 2009 Tuesday
15
By admin in Linking Strategies
Using Back Links to Improve Your Website SEO Put simply, back links are inward-bound links to a particular internet site or page. What this means is that the other site has a hyperlink “pointing” directly to your website. Regarding search engine optimisation, you want as many back links pointing to your site as you possibly can, even more so if the site is directly related to your area of interest.
As the number one goal of a website is to achieve traffic, i.e. people actually looking at the site, it follows that you must make the website visible. Generally speaking, to make your website visible, people must be able to find it when they search for keywords directly related to your product, niche, service or whatever else your website represents. Individuals tend to be seeking such information via the big search engines, whose operators have rather complicated algorithms to help them decide whether a certain website is applicable to the searcher’s request, or not.
Although they will not divulge exactly how they go about composing these algorithms, the search engine operators do assure us that relevancy, as viewed by others, is most important. If they see that you have a back link or a number of back links from other websites that have some relevancy to yours, this is a plus. In addition, if the site linking to you has a fairly high “page rank”, this helps as well. Page rank is Google’s proprietary method of allocating a number (zero being lowest and moving up to ten) indicating how important a site is within its particular niche of operations.
There are a number of ways to achieve back links for your site:
ARTICLE MARKETINGAs Bill Gates once said, “content is king”. Article marketing is known as one of the most solid Internet marketing methods. By writing highly relevant and informative articles and submitting them to high profile article directories you do several things, not the least important of which is to help establish you or your site as an expert in your niche. Within your article, published in the article directory, is a resource box which contains your details – who you are and what you do, and a link back to your site, the all important Back Link.
SOCIAL BOOKMARKING
There are many hundreds of social bookmarking sites, and their primary motive is basically to provide a way of informing people about the existence of content related to any niche or interest in a very manageable format. You can sign up and initiate a process of notifying social bookmarking sites about fresh content, including back links in many cases. You should note at this stage that some webmasters apply a “no follow” tag which can void the effect of a back link, as the tag instructs the search engine spider not to give you points, or what’s called “link love”.
SOCIAL MEDIA – TWITTER
Whilst Twitter and other similar sites are becoming increasingly more powerful in marketing terms, you should know that to include links within your “tweets” or in your URL profile box is not a powerful back linking strategy, as these are all allocated the dreaded no follow tag. However, you may find that it is possible to link within a bio box and get some link love this way. Also, if you syndicate, your Twitter feeds are updated via the RSS aggregators, earning you back links.
BLOG COMMENTINGFirst of all, you will have to locate blogs or forums that are relevant to your area of expertise. This is fairly simple to accomplish as a straightforward and pertinent search will locate hosts. Once you find these blogs you can sign up and create a profile. Often you will be allowed to create what is called a “signature”, and within that signature you incorporate your links. Note, you should check to see if there are any no follow tags, as these will appear occasionally.
Enter into the spirit of the place by interacting with other members and making entries and posting comments that are relevant, useful and educational. As well as a back link being displayed each time you post a comment, you’ll also create a potentially profitable bond with other members – and this has the potential to lead to all kinds of new possiblities.
Back link building remains one of the most important SEO strategies to adopt.
Michelle Dale is CEO of Virtual Miss Friday, an adept and highly-proficient Virtual Assistant Service which works closely with enterprising people who really want to succeed in their chosen field. If you’d like to learn more about online business building success strategies that are tailored to your needs, Contact VMF Today at=> http://www.virtualmissfriday.com
Blogs and Forums: Only Comment if You Have Something Meaningful to Say!
09 2009 Wednesday
9
By admin in Linking Strategies
Posting and adding comments on blogs and forums really needs to be a fundamental part of your Internet marketing approach. Yet again, we can see the influence of networking at work in this field, and similar key points apply – be consistent, be interesting and always avoid the “hard sell”.
Whatever niche you’re in, there are forums galore out there. Here you can meet people who are actively and intently interested in your subject, and have taken the time to become a member of the particular forum because they value the information. Where could you find an audience with better potential? While there are numerous forums for each particular field, there are even more independent blogs, created by people who are also interested in your speciality. You may think of these individuals as rivals in many instances, but that shouldn’t mean that you can’t engage with them for general marketing reasons.
One thing to always remember when commenting on blogs or forums is that you should consider the power of the content that you post as opposed to any potential benefit that you could receive from links. This is very important. Some people undertake a commenting strategy with the sole purpose of getting back links. In some cases this can be technically flawed anyway, but you had better make sure that the content posted next to your individual or corporate name is good!
Blog and forum commenting is highly recommended as part of an overall strategy. As is the case with blog production in general, or with social media network interaction, the material that you publish will be read and its composition judged. You don’t want to be posting irrelevant comments, or comments that are designed just to get your name out there. It’s largely pointless just writing “great post”!
Blog owners will usually look at comments with great interest, and forums are almost always moderated by motivated individuals. In every case, whatever you write will have an impact. If you have something contrary to say, make sure that it’s constructive. It’s not necessarily wrong to be negative, as long as it can be seen as a positive addition to the discussion in view. Being negative just for the sake of it, or to create some kind of viral controversy isn’t really a good overall marketing technique for you.
You should note that some blogs have installed a “no follow” link policy, which means that if you have a link associated to your post, either in the signature or otherwise, the search engines are being told not to score the link. Most experts in this area recommend that you give more attention to the content of your posts and make sure that they are informative and contributory, rather than worrying about a potential back link to your site.
Start a strategy of posting on active blogs and prominent forums connected with your niche. Use your competitor’s sites in a creative way to build your credibility as well. Remember, as is the case with many Internet marketing strategies, a subtle yet consistent approach is key.
Michelle Dale is Chief Executive of Virtual Miss Friday, an adept and highly-proficient Virtual Assistant Service which works closely with enterprising people who really want to succeed in their chosen field. If you’d like to learn more about online business building success strategies that are tailored to your needs, check out the Campaign for FREE Virtual Assistance right away!Link Building: Who Is Your Website’s Biggest Competitor?
07 2009 Wednesday
22
By Steve Shaw in Linking Strategies
Have you ever noticed that competitive runners achieve their best race times when they are pitted against worthy competitors?
You can be an excellent sprinter, but odds are you will not run your personal best on a track by yourself–most of the time it’s the spirit of a heated race and a determined runner breathing down your neck that makes you dig down deep give it all you’ve got.
The quest for a higher search engine ranking and more website traffic is much like athletic competitions. When you’re trying to get your site ranked higher in Google, you are not operating in a vacuum–you have competitors, whether you acknowledge them or not.
Your progress is not only dependent on your own efforts at marketing your site, but the efforts of your competitors–if other website owners are more consistent, more reliable, and more focused in their marketing, there’s a good chance that they will outrank you.
With website rankings, there is a constant jockeying for position, so it is extremely helpful when you’re trying to market your site and get a higher search engine ranking if you will use your competitors to your own advantage.
Before you start your next link building campaign, take a look around the playing field and gather some intelligence about those you’re running against.
How Can You Tell Who Your Competition Is?
It’s actually quite easy to tell who your top competitors are–just do a search for each of your keywords in Google.
What site is at the #1 position?
Unless it’s you, that website is your top competition. Repeat this search for each one of your keywords.
When you’re starting out, you may want to limit yourself to 3 main keywords whose competitors you’re keeping track of. That way you have 3 competitors to keep track of, and that will give you a good idea of how you’re progressing and also how far you need to go to catch up to the #1 position.
What Type Of Information Should You Keep Track Of?
Alright, now that you know who your top competitors are, it’s time to do a little investigating. Here are the main bits of info that will help you get an idea of where your site stands in relation to site holding the #1 position.
1) How many backlinks does the competing website have?
You can do a backlink check by typing the word “link:” (following by a colon) and then the competitor’s URL into the Google search box. The results will be a listing of sites that are currently linking to their site, and at the top of the page you can see a total number of backlinks.
2) What is their search engine rank for the keyword?
For the first month at least, their ranking is #1.
Another thing that will be interesting to you is to see how the site that is ranked at #1 can fall if they are outdone by another site further down in the ranking. If you are consistent with your link building campaign, you can see your site climbing up the rankings each month, until finally your #1 competitor drops from the number one position and your site takes over.
3) What is the other site’s PageRank?
PageRank (PR) is a tool Google uses to reflect the authority of a web page. The rankings go from 0-10, where 10 is the best. You’ll likely notice that a website does not need to have a PageRank of 10 in order to hold the top ranking for a keyword–many times sites with lower rankings hold the top position. Why is this?
Remember, it’s all about competition–the top ranking website may have a PR2, but the other sites who are competing for top listing for that keyword have lower authority. Of course, there are many other factors that go into determining who has the top rank in Google, and only Google knows all of their criteria for judging.
At any rate, it is helpful to know the other site’s PageRank, especially in comparison to your own. If you see that the competing site has a PR4 and your site has a PR2, you can set a goal for yourself to achieve PR4 or higher.
With all of these indicators, it’s nice to get an idea of what you’re shooting for. Being aware of your top competitor’s stats can help you strategically jump up the rankings and keep your motivation going to earn the #1 spot.
To supercharge your link building results, it’s a smart idea to enlist the services of a trusted article submitter. SubmitYOURArticle.com distributes your articles to hundreds of targeted publishers with the click of a button – for more information go to http://www.SubmitYOURArticle.com
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