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The Forgotten Method of Marketing - Forums

By Dave Ashe in Linking Strategies

Forums are a great way of marketing alongside articles, email and blogging - there is no real way to compare all of these, they are just a different way of communicating. The big difference however with forums is that many many more people will see you and get to know you which builds trust as you interact with the community.

Forums have been around in many forms since the dawn of the internet, they provide a means of conversation with like-minded people in a community-driven atmosphere of helping one another with problems. If you don’t know how they work, let me just tell you a bit about them.

First off, you have to find your forum in your niche, the best way to do this is type in subject forums as the keywords (replacing subject with your topic) into a search engine. Once you have found one in the topic you’re interested in, with a nice community going on, registration is the next step.

Registration is pretty simple, its just a case of filling your details in and perhaps entering a captcha (one of those funny sets of digits and numbers that tell the site that you are not an automated spammer!) You may have to click a link in your email to register the fact that you own the email address you registered with.

There usually is many sub-forums, i would reccomend finding one that usually reads something like “introduce yourself” and post a brief overview of what you are about and say hello. I would advise against just registering and posting “buy my product now” or “come to my website” etc. type comments as you’ll end up with a flame war - if you dont know what that is please do a search on it as its not a nice thing to happen to you!

Get involved in the forum, post replies to people’s problems to help with any questions that you can - its a community-type feeling that you will enjoy. Forums which are busy have the advantage of many more people in the nich you are targeting, so you can find out about some really exciting new widget thing in your niche that is very important to you, and also reply and ask more.

Some forums have a specific buy, sell or trade section where you can sell your products, this is the place to be if you want to directly pitch your product. Another way of pitching your product is to enter links to your website in your signature, this is shown directly under each post that you make and is updated automatically - be careful however, some forums dont like this and will ask you to remove them. Some have rules on the size of images or links allowed, please read these before adding it.

Some of the more advanced forums that run vbulletin have private messaging which can be great to directly carry out business to people privately on the forum, i’ve bought many websites and domain names using this - some sites like digital point have itrader which is also a way of showing how trustworthy the user is in terms of buying and selling, similar to the ebay feedback system.

One last thing to remember, forums are a great place to communicate rather than a place to pitch-fest - if you want to advertise on a forum, but you cant find any other method other than the ones i’ve outlined, contact the owners of the site and ask for banner rates, this is a great way of getting in front of these people, then you have the right to freely talk about your product or service which is a huge bonus compared to advertising on a static site!

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Dave Ashe runs Marketing Forums, a friendly atmosphere for marketers of all types - come along and register here.

Free and Easy Link Building Tips

By Enzo F. Cesario in Linking Strategies

Okay, you’re the proud mama or papa to your brand new website. Now what? This isn’t like the movies - just because you built it doesn’t mean they’ll come. The Internet is a huge limitless space with ever-growing numbers of websites. You are just one small website among millions. How will anybody ever find you? How do you become visible? Right now, you just exist out in the web, untethered. You need to become visible when someone searches for you and one way to become visible to people is to become visible to search engines. And one way to become visible to search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN is for your site to be tethered, or linked to other sites.

If you’ve spent any time reading Internet marketing blogs you know that link building is a huge part of a marketing campaign. Backlinks - links that point to your website - are a major factor in determining your popularity or ranking with the search engines. And of course, just like in high school, you want to be popular.

You can buy your way into links, but here we’re talking about a few free and easy ways. An obvious and natural way to build links is through content. When you start a link-building campaign for your new website, focus on attracting links that will add value for your website visitors and best represent your most important keywords too. It is invaluable to have visitors go to your site and share your content.

Here are a few easy and mostly free ways to build links for your website.

Blog-Based Link Building

One way to get natural links back to your website is by setting up a blog for your company. Make sure you network online with other blogs that complement yours. If you share industry news and have useful and relevant content, you’ll attract links. Reference other bloggers in your content and link to other blogs in your industry.

For blogs, content is extremely important. Every time you add words to your blog or website, you are presenting yourself to a potentially huge audience. How does your blog’s content reflect your company? This content could be the page that carries your company’s name around the Internet world. Cheap content is just that - cheap. Create content that people want to read and that will make them come back again and again.

Reviewing products and services and posting those reviews on other sites is another way to build links. Your honest evaluations and smart opinions can also build your reputation as an expert in your field.

Link Building with Social Media

Another way to build natural links to your website is through social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter. These sites allow you to set up a user profile where you can add information about you and your company including a link to your website.

Some sites, Facebook for example, also have a way to promote your business with a page, ad or group. Just keep in mind that there are good ways and bad ways to promote your business on social sites and you should observe proper etiquette when you do.

Link Building with Organizations and Directories

If your industry has professional organizations or associations that you belong to, check with them and see if they have an online directory with links to member sites. They may or may not charge a fee for this. If they do, it shouldn’t be much.

Check with your local Chamber of Commerce or Better Business Bureau. Links from sites like these can be very helpful. Check with other local businesses and organizations that have lists of businesses and request links from them, too.

Online directories are another opportunity to look into. Yahoo! Directory is a good one. If your business is in a specific geographical area, you might also find some local directories to submit to that will boost your local visibility.

Links from Charities or Non-profits

If your company makes charitable donations to organizations and non-profits, see if they have a “donors” list on their website and ask if they will link to your website.

Links from Press Releases

Has your business just started or have you just launched a new product? A press release is a great idea to announce your news. There are quite a few press release distribution services available and some have a free first time offer.

Links from Partners

If your website offers information about other partner websites like business directories, you should make sure to use all your linking potential. You could have a badge that your partner could put on their site linking to you and one for your site that links to theirs.

If you have an RSS feed or a widget on your site that has good value to visitors, those can be taken from your website and displayed on another person’s website, linking back to your site.

The Internet is constantly evolving and there are thousands of ways to build links. Look around at other websites and see what they have and how they work. Look at your business, think outside the box and you might come up with other ways to develop links. If it all seems like too much, there are many online consulting companies that can help with link building, SEO optimization and brandcasting.

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Enzo F. Cesario is a Copywriter and co-founder of Brandsplat, the only online marketing and advertising company employing Brandcasting, the most effective way to brand your company on the web. Brandcasting uses informative content and state-of-the-art internet distribution and optimization to build links and drive the right kind of traffic to your website. The approach is simple, highly effective and affordable. Learn more at: http://www.Brandsplat.com/

Link Building: When Will Backlinks Show Up In Google?

By Steve Shaw in Linking Strategies

Many times website owners who are new to link building simply don’t know what to expect when it comes to the timeframe for registering backlinks.

Here’s a common question I get:

“I’ve just started marketing my brand new website, and I know I have backlinks coming into my site, yet when I do a check for incoming links, nothing shows up. Am I doing something wrong?”

Probably not–A backlink check will tell you how many incoming links are registered with a particular search engine, but it will not tell you how many backlinks you actually have.

Why is that? Well, it usually takes search engines months to re-evaluate incoming links, so if you do a backlink check today, there are likely links that are going into your site that haven’t yet been calculated in.

It would be nice if we could build links and then immediately have them show up in a backlink check, but that’s just not the way the internet works.

As you’re building links to your site, here are some ways to keep track of your progress and build links effectively over time:

How To Do A Backlink Check

It’s incredibly easy to do a backlink check for your site. In Google, just type this into the search box (replacing the ‘yourwebsite.com’ part with your URL):

• link:http://www.yourwebsite.com/

The results of that search will bring up a list of sites that are linking to your website address. In the upper right hand corner of Google you’ll be able to see a total count of your registered backlinks.

An even better tool is Yahoo Site Explorer https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com which provides a list of your registered backlinks and much more detailed information. Both of these backlink checking tools are free, so you can try each one out (or do both).

Why Are Backlinks Not Showing Up For My Site?

Let’s suppose you know that you’ve build links to your site, but nothing is showing up when you do a backlink check (frustrating, I know!).

There are some logical reasons why backlinks may not be showing up:

1) Perhaps your website is brand new and has not yet been indexed by Google.

When you launch a new site it does not automatically appear in Google–it usually takes several months for Google to realize that the site is there and to index and categorize it.

Until your site is indexed, it will not show up in any search engine searches and no backlinks will be registered. You can even do a search for your exact site name or URL and nothing will show up–that is how you know that your site has not been indexed yet.

If this is your situation, don’t fret! This waiting period is something that all website owners go through, and Google (and the other search engines) will eventually index your site.

It can take anywhere from 3-5 months for a new website to be indexed.

I remember the last time I was launching a new site it took about 5 months for the site to be indexed in Google. On that 5th month, all of the backlinks that I had been building over the preceding months finally showed up–whew!

2) Not enough time has elapsed since building the links.

Even if your site is already indexed, it usually takes search engines several months (3-4) to recalculate the backlinks. So, if you have been doing article submissions for the past 2 months and you know for a fact that you have quite a few incoming links, those links will not show up in a backlink check for another month or two.

This doesn’t mean the links aren’t there–they are! The search engine just hasn’t registered them yet.

As you can see, one necessary component of any link building campaign is PATIENCE. There will be a time delay from when you build the link to when you see the fruit of your labor in Google.

Keep in mind, this time delay does not impact your marketing campaign–whether the links have started to show up or not, you should continue to market your website and submit articles. Immediate results are not the goal–you should be going for a long lasting impact on your search engine ranking for your keywords, rather than a brief shot of traffic that fades away after a day or so.

When you’re link building, you need to market your site consistently–develop an article submission schedule for yourself and stick to it, submitting articles each and every month.

You will be rewarded in the long run with an increased search engine ranking for your major keywords, which can of course build traffic dramatically for the long-term.

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For more powerful link building results, it’s a smart idea to use a trusted article submission service, such as SubmitYOURArticle.com. Steve Shaw created the web’s first ever 100% online-based article submitter, SubmitYOURArticle.com, which distributes your articles to hundreds of targeted publishers with the click of a button. For more information go to=> http://www.SubmitYOURArticle.com

Source: http://www.submityourarticle.com

Permalink: http://www.submityourarticle.com/a.php?a=56881

Linking Strategies: “To Buy or not to Buy, That is the Question”

By Merle in Linking Strategies

Buying text links for your website is a highly controversial subject online. Like it or not, approve of the practice or disapprove, it does exist and there are many website owners who are doing it. I’m not going to debate the issue one way or the other; just shed some light on what some consider a “gray subject.”

So why would you want or need to buy a text link on another website? It all goes back to “link popularity.” Search engines look at how many other sites are linking to yours when deciding on your ranking. Granted, this is just one criterion, but nevertheless an important one to pay attention to.

If you don’t know how many other sites are linking to yours, go to any search engine and type this in: link:http://www.yourdomain.com … you should get a pretty good idea of your “popularity.” Keep in mind that Google never shows all sites linking to yours, so what you see in the results will not be an accurate presentation of those linking to you. Why they do this is not clear (it’s one of those “Google Secrets”), but a possible explanation is that it’s one of the methods they use to keep their ranking algorithms private.

When considering a link purchase, only buy from sites that are related to your theme and use the Google Toolbar to check their page rank. You can download it here:
http://toolbar.google.com/

A page rank of 4 or above is pretty good but a 7 or 8 is excellent. Never buy a link based on page rank alone. If the site doesn’t relate to your site’s content, don’t do it.

Here are some things to keep in mind before making any purchases:

There are two types of links: one-way and reciprocal. A reciprocal link is when two sites agree to link to each other, a one-way link is just one site linking to another without linking back. Purchasing a text link is an example of a one-way link. One-way links are counted higher by most search engines and therefore are more valuable then reciprocal.

When supplying your text link to other sites, make sure to include your keywords in your anchor text. The anchor text is the part of the link that is clickable. Use a variety of key phrases so as not to raise any red flags with the search engines.

You also want to be consistent with your url. Use the “www.” part in all incoming links, as links to “yourdomain.com” and “www.yourdomain.com” could be treated as two different websites by the search engines.

Another tip when buying links is to do it slowly. Don’t buy too many at one time. You want it to look natural to the search engines. Hundreds of sites deciding to link to yours in a week is not “natural” and may catch unwanted attention from the powers that be.

Stay away from link farms when choosing link partners. Just associating with “bad sites” can be enough to get you banned by the search engines. You’ll also want to make sure you’re getting links from different IP addresses. Search engines will give the links more weight if they don’t all come from the same IP.

So now that you have the basics, where do you buy the text links? I thought you’d never ask.

1) LinkHaul: http://www.LinkHaul.com

Purchase static links to PR 4, 5,6, 7 or 8 websites. Pricing starts at 3.00 per month.

2) Text Link Brokers: http://TextLinkBrokers.com

Offering a variety of link building programs to increase your link popularity.

3) LinkAdage: http://www.LinkAdage.com

Buy or sell text links within an auction format or buy direct thru a broker.

4) Text-Link-Ads: http://www.Text-Link-Ads.com

Offering $100.00 in free text link ads when you spend $125.00. So you only have to spend an initial investment of $25.00

5) BackLinks: http://www.BackLinks.com

A service that allows webmasters to trade, sell or buy text links.

When you buy a link, it’s usually billed on a monthly basis and you’ll always pay more for a site with a higher page rank, and also for having them put your link on their main page compared to a page deeper down within the site. Once you purchase a link let it run for a few months at a time, search engines will need it in order to find and spider them.

Right or wrong, purchasing links is one way to improve your link popularity quickly and move your site up the ranks in the search engines. Remember, there are many ways to increase your website traffic, and buying text links is just another means to an end.

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Merle - “Blah…Blah…Blog..Rantings by Merle”- The Blog that’s loaded with online marketing techniques and strategies that will help you increase your website traffic and make more money online. Tips and tricks for online entrepreneurs, and marketers to grow your net biz. Visit today - http://mcpromotions.blogspot.com/

Directory Submission: The Key to site Promotion

By SEO Expert in Linking Strategies

Most website owners fail to differentiate between a directory and search engine, failure to do so has resulted in failure to harness the powers of Internet directory effectively.

Search engine uses the spiders - (an automated software program) to locate and collect data from web pages for inclusion in a search engine’s database and to follow links to find new pages on the World Wide Web. While directories depends on human editors, who in most cases examine every single new listing before they are added to their directory. Most major search engines these days use links from human edited directory to measure the quality of the site they index. That is why you should place emphasis on the type of website or directory you list to and how to do that effectively.

However, there are some significant differences between the two link sources, Directories have only one purpose in life and that is to provide links to other sites. Directories are an established source of authority in regard to various subject matters. Being listed in directories serves as a level of measure as to the site’s worth.

A Directory Submission Service, in my opinion, is a company that will submit your website to directories. Now, the client must be careful when selecting a company. Many I have seen say something along the lines of “We submit you to over 800,000 Search Engines and Directories”. This statement alone lets me know that they are not trustworthy. We can all fire up ANY free/shareware submitter and boast the same statement. What I LIKE to see, when checking my competition, is a listing of directories they will submit to. And, of course, no one can guarantee inclusion.

There are several ways you can submit your RSS newsfeed to directories. The first, obviously, is by hand. You can get a list of the directories (http://www.rss- software.net/rss-directories.php), then go to each website and add your feed manually. Since there are many RSS directories, this can take quite a while. To save the webmaster time, two ways of automated directory submission exist.

While the article directory submission site is growing, granted yes, they may not get as much traffic as the big guys. But that means that the visitors that they do get, are more likely to see and READ your article. This means your article can find its way to ezines that want unique and fresh new content.

Search Engine Optimization is a fuzzy art in which the rules and techniques change as quickly as the Internet changes. Nonetheless, a good SEO consulting expert will always be able to help move your website towards better search engine placement, greater visibility, and consequently higher levels of targeted traffic. When it comes to choosing any professional — a dentist, doctor, travel agent or hair stylist, it may take you a couple tries to locate the right SEO professional for your business, but it’s usually better to focus on what you do best, and hire experts who spend all their time staying informed and practicing effective website promotion.

SEO Tips: Read About Search engine Optimization Also Read About Free Directory Submission and Directory Submission

Google Strikes Again! Why Your Links Are Now Worthless

By Margo Little in Linking Strategies

It is no secret that Google shifted from content based ranking to link based several years ago. The way most people discovered this was by seeing their pages disappear from top ten placements overnight. Unfortunately that same lesson is being re-taught today as Google shifts from an “all link” model of determining popularity to one of “inbound only.”

It should not come as a big surprise. It’s been happening slowly for the past year or so but is now in overdrive. Pages that have dominated top spots for years are suddenly disappearing without a trace and linking is the key. In short, reciprocal links no longer count as they once did. Google expects to see one way inbound links in its top ranked sites. The reason apparently being that worthy sites can attract links without having to reciprocate.

Talk about a popularity contest! It reminds me of junior high school on Valentines Day where the most popular students would be buried in cards while sending out only a few of their own. Google even refers to inbound links as a form of “votes.”

So how does Google judge the value of inbound links? Let’s just say a nod from the prom king or queen is a lot more desirable than one from the kid who had to escort his first cousin to the last school dance due to lack of options. But even still, every vote counts even if just a little.

I agree that it is sad and unfair that quality of content counts for so little but Google, perhaps naively, believes the links (or votes) will go to the most deserving sites naturally. I can’t change Google’s mind, but I can help you crack Google’s link value code. Just follow these simple steps.

First: Know your link targets. You want pages whose topics relate to your topic and with the highest PR possible.

Note: PR refers to Google PageRank which is a value assigned to the page on a scale of 1 to 10. Pages begin at 0 and earn PR points for various reasons. There are plenty of ones and twos but anything above three gets scarcer and more valuable. You can easily find a page’s PageRank by using the Google Toolbar available at http://toolbar.google.com.

Second: Forget about just linking to the home page. Google now prefers deep links so make the majority of your links go to pages at least one level deep below the home page. And be sure that page is named after its main keyword, such as “main-keyword.htm” or “main-keyword.htm.”

Third: Make sure the pages you are linking to, link back to your home page by using their main keyword as anchor text.

Note: Anchor text is simply a clickable text link. It is usually a different color; such as blue and underlined to show it is a link. You want your main keyword to be a clickable link leading from the topic page to the home page.

Fourth: Be sure the inbound links you build consist of your main keywords embedded in anchor text.

Recap: So if “online business services” was the main keyword the words “online business services” would be embedded as anchor text leading to a page called “online-business-services.htm” and that page would in turn link to the home page using “online business services” as its anchor text link.

Fifth: Google scans not only the area immediately surrounding the anchor text but also the whole page of text around it. It will be looking for consistency of topic throughout the page so be sure your link is coming from a page closely related to the topic of the keyword you are targeting.

Note: This last part is crucial because if you can control what is on the page you get links from, you can rocket to the top of Google. This can be done through blog postings, article publishing and even simple directory submission. If you are in a hurry, try a pre-packaged solution that removes the guesswork. I use a combo training and automated software system called “Link A Minute” (http://www.linkaminute.com) that does the trick for me. There are good ones out there so hunt around and find one you like. Just do not try any link farms if you value any future placement on Google.

Follow these tips and you can steal a top spot on Google in no time.

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Margo Little is a successful SEO marketing consultant who got her start in 1997. Today SEOSoftwareSurvey.com benefits from her knowledge. From finding a killer suite to a simple keyword tool, she can help.

Why Backlinks Are The Single Most Important Thing To Long Term Internet Success

By Jeff Schuman in Linking Strategies

First of all let me say that if you do paid advertising this article is probably not for you. However if you are looking for long term Internet success I want to talk about the importance of developing backlinks to your website.

I find it interesting that as the Internet continues to change the basic premise of the World Wide Web has not changed that much. The Web itself is composed of links all pointing to each other.

If you grasp this concept you can quickly understand why the more backlinks you have pointing to your website from a multitude of different sources the more potential traffic it you can bring to you.

Not only that but the traffic will continue to be there over a long period of time as long as the backlink remain. This means you must spend the majority of your time marketing your business in ways that create quality backlinks.

In the early days of Internet marketing reciprocal linking was very popular. Trading links with other sites was a way to create backlinks to your site.

This strategy is not as popular today because link directories are pretty much discarded by the major search engines. Not only that but you want to spend as much of your time creating one way backlinks to your site and not away from your site.

So how do you go about creating one way backlinks? Here are 3 easy ways that are working very well today and should be incorporated into your linking strategy.

1. Write and submit articles to the top article directories. In each article include a resource box that contains a link pointing back to your website.

For additional keyword relevance try hyperlinking your primary keyword phrase to your site as well. As you begin to develop backlinks to your homepage begin deep linking to sub pages within your site from your article resource boxes too.

2. Write blog articles and submit them to the top social directories. Search engines love fresh content and your blog articles will be spidered quickly if you submit them to the top social directories. We are talking about sites such as Digg, Stumbleupon, Propeller, Technorati, and more.

Each article submission creates a backlink to your blog or specific blog article. If you do not have a blog you are missing out on easy traffic and long term quality backlinks.

3. Utilize social networking to create links pointing back to any web page you have. For example when you create a new web page announce it as an update on your Twitter account.

When you Tweet your followers this way you are creating back links to any webpage or blog post you make. Again the search engines will find these, as well as your readers, giving you more potential traffic.

Other popular social networks to join and create a profile with your website address in include Facebook, My Space, eEntrepreneur, and many others.

I feel no matter how the Internet changes in the future backlinks will still be the most important thing you can do to create a long term Internet presence. These three ways right now are excellent to create backlinks to your website and blog!

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Jeff Schuman invites you to visit his make money online website for JV With Jeff free training, 4 ways to make $10 a day taking surveys, and Hands Off Article Marketing. Please click here now:====> http://www.Team-Schuman.com

The Mysterious World Of Building Links To Your Website

By Pete Moore in Linking Strategies

Ok maybe it’s not mysterious but how to get links to your website? seems to be a common question amongst newbie webmasters and internet marketers, so I have decided to share 5 tips you can use to start building incoming links to your website.

Why is link building important?

There are 2 reasons, how many links your website has coming from other websites on the internet is one of the major ranking factors for all search engines. Second the more links you have on other sites, the more exposure you site will receive (meaning more traffic).

1. Create a list

People love lists for example lists of resources, tips, top 10’s and how to etc this will give other websites a reason to link to you. To put this tip in overdrive you could contact other sites in your niche and tell them about your article/ blog post, especially if you have linked to their site as part of a resource list. A list can have a massive viral effect if the information is useful to others in your market.

2. Submit articles

I know this is an oldie but it is still a very effective way of building links to your website. Other sites may publish your article especially if the articles are good. Also some article directories tend to rank well so you can use their authority with the search engines bringing in traffic for highly competitive keywords. The key here is to write a compelling resource box so the visitor clicks through to your site.

3. Social Bookmarking

Create accounts and bookmark the pages on your website or blog, this can be a tedious process as with most link building activities so using tools like socialposter.com and socialmarker.com will semi automate the process.

4. Use Free Blog Type Sites

There are many places you can create sites for free e.g. wordpress.com, blogger.com, squidoo.com, hubpages.com, wetpaint.com and the list could go on. Get some articles written and post them to the various sites this gives you the power to link to your main site using whatever keywords you want. Again this is another traffic generation tactic as your free sites will get traffic on their own.

5. Sign up for Google alerts

If you’re not familiar with Google alerts let me enlighten you. Google has a free service where they will email you news stories, articles and blog posts related to any keywords you specify. What you can do is have a scan through these alerts for any stories related to the topic of your site. Then you would check out the site the story or article came from and see if they have a way you can leave a comment directing people to your useful resource list in a very helpful manner of course

There are absolutely loads of ways you can build links to your website or blog, just use your imagination and make sure you allocate some time everyday to building incoming links you will be surprised how quickly your traffic will increase.

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Pete Moore is the business development manager for Public Domain Resource. We show you how to profit from public domain information in our FREE Public Domain Profits Report.

SEO - A Non-Spammy, Natural Linking Strategy

By Tracy Mu Sung in Linking Strategies

Despite there being over 200 parameters taken into account by search engines when ranking sites, one of the most popular facets of search engine optimisation (or SEO) continues to be linking.

However, this article isn’t about non-spammy content, it is about non-spammy linking strategies. Yes, although linking has fast become an industry whereby directories have popped up everywhere and links are put in footers, headers, background color, or a myriad of other disguised ways, there is still a non-spammy way to do links. Whats more, my history shows that this way works better for your ranking over the long term as well.

Before we get started, a very brief introduction for those newly initiated into the world of SEO. The bottom line is this - Google will recommend your site, if others recommend it first. This means, to get high rankings in Google, Google needs to know that others find your site useful. How does a search spider know what people think about your site? Links. If people are linking through to your site, the Google spider will think your site is well liked. If relevant sites are linking through to you, this is even better, because Google will consider you to be an authority on this topic.

So, how do you go about getting the nice mix of links that Google might consider appropriate? Well, you can just dive in and submit your site everywhere you can think of. Or you can take the longer, more well thought-out way around…

1. Before you even start - look at who your client is. What is and isn’t going to be effective for them? Where and where wouldn’t they want to be seen? You need to know exactly what the limitations of your link building strategy are going to be. For example, if you have a government body as a client, you are going to have to think VERY conservatively. Similarly for national brands or straightlace industries like insurance. On the other hand, start ups, media and online retail might be more willing to take risks. You need to note all this down, and make a memo of what kind of strategy you will be following. This is particularly important if you are sharing this client work with others.
2. Similar to point 1, point 2 is about relevancy. you don’t want to damage your brand image for some basically worthless links, so make sure all your links are on topic in some way. Its best for your SEO and it is best for your brand. The effect of directory links seems to be negligible these days, so you might want to consider if this is worth your time. In content links however are much more valuable.
3. Assigning the work. Link building is often assigned to junior staff, or as a starting task. Now, sure, it might seem like brainless work - but if your junior gets an irrelevant or inappropriate link for your client, and your client or a competitor sees it, you will have a lot of explaining to do. Make sure that the person doing your links has some experience or good training, and most importantly, that they have read your client memo.
4. Now, in the interests of corporate knowledge and continuity, it is also recommended that you keep good records of every link you do for your client. No, not so you can copy this strategy for the next client (see point 1.- client suitability!), but so that you can go back and see what has worked and what hasn’t. Going hand in hand with this is the obvious monitoring of rankings to see how your efforts are affecting them.
5. Step 4 will help you with step 5. Evolution. You can’t just get links and then stop. You need to constantly increase, improve and diversify your sources of links. This takes creativity and experience, and is yet ANOTHER reason why the most junior people in your organisation shouldn’t always be given linking to do. As part of evolution you need to monitor your progress, learn more about your client and keep up with their latest developments (look for linking opportunities), and also keep on top of general SEO industry developments.

This is the general overview of how a linking strategy should be undertaken. Sure it is a lot more complicated than just submitting your site to link farms, or sending out a mass email, but SEO is about having the edge over your competitor, and these steps will help you get there. Website Marketing is an increasingly popular and competitive form of marketing, you need to make sure you are keeping up with the Jones’s not just looking for the fast or easy route.

If this advice is too vague for you, here are some more specific do’s and don’ts:

Do use relevent anchor text, which helps Google to know what exactly it is you are an expert about.Don’t use ‘click here’ as your link - ever! * Don’t forget to check if a site you are trying to link from is nofollow’ed * Do try to diversify your links - 100 links from one site isn’t the same as 100 different links * Don’t use irrelevant links - Google can spot this a mile off, and may penalise you. Also, it just doesn’t look good if you want to retain some dignity for your brand * Do try and generate buzz with good content so that links will come to you naturally * Don’t undertake any paid links without thinking very very carefully about the implications * Do contribute valuable content/comments/reviews to other sites, with relevant links embedded * Don’t try and contribute spammy content with embedded links that aren’t relevant. Your content will either get blocked, or Google will devalue the links. * Do think laterally - always be on the look out for good, relevant, linking opportunities. There are opportunities out there if you remember to keep thinking, developing and diversifying.

This article was written by Tracy Mu Sung for MooMu Media, the search engine marketing experts. MooMu Media provides search engine optimisation, PPC marketing and web analytics advice. MooMu’s clients include multinational companies including professional services, online retail and digital media.

The Link Building Constellation - Mapping The Ideal Profile Of A Link Building Campaign

By John McElborough in Linking Strategies

The link building constellation maps the ideal link profile of a website for a link building SEO campaign. Covering the main sources of links which make up a typical campaign, the graph shows where each fits in the ‘link constellation’ and the sort of proportional quantity each should be sourced in.

The diagram is based on the makeup of some of the most successful SEO link building campaigns I have run and although its far fom an exact science following this visualisation as a guide will, I believe, result in the most successful possible link campaign for improving PageRank and keyword ranking.

The diagram breaks the link profile of the website down into 6 main categories, 5 of which are built up in the link campaign, the 6th ‘Organic links’ are those links gained naturally through the increased preveliance of the website and the creation of quality content.

1. Internal satellites- 10% of total links

These are internal links and particularly links on sub domains. The suggested examples are subdommains of the main domain which stray from the main content of the site and therefore justify their own domain but are very much part of the main website such as blog.mainwebsite.com, affiliate.mainwebsite.com, jobs.mainwebsite.com- each of these has the same or similar top level navigation as the mainsite and links back to the mainwebsite.com homepage.

2. External satellites- 10% of total links

External ’satellite’ links are links which come from content created on external domains but operated with full editorial control by the mainwebsite (or the link builders). This mostly refers to external blogs, microsites and community portals setup by the optimisers usually for the sole purpose of creating new quality links to the main website.

3. Quality links- 25% of total links

These are the links built usually entirely by the link building campaign on quality, relevant websites. Gaining these links will involve approaching the relevant websites and getting a link put somewhere on their site either by asking, adding to their content (i.e. comments on blogs) or most commonly link baiting with article distribution.

4. Free links- 15% of total links

This is the old school of link building but is still a very important part of creating total link volume. The link profiles of some of the most successful SEO link building campaigns are based massively on free link building alone but this is increasingly becoming a difficult area of utilise to maximum effect. Free directory submission is the most common type of free link building but social media distribution of site content through RSS and tagging is a more modern spin on free link generation.

5. Paid links- 10% of total links

I debated wither this should be included but ultimately accepted that somewhere in any large scale link building campaign paid links would be used to increase total link volume, target some quality relevant sites and also build up link numbers from some high PR (PageRank) sites.

6. Organic links- 25% of total links

I strongly believe that no successful link building program is complete without a substaintial contibution from sites which are not sourced for links as part of the SEO campaign but whom choose to link of their own accord based on the quality of content on the main website or the internal satellites. Adding a blog to the top level domain/ a subdomain of it is a great example of a way to instigate this natural linking process as people are far more likely to link to a corporate blog than a corporate site.

This part of the link profile is the icing on the cake and the realisation that the quality content production as part of the SEO campaign has been successful and the brand has achieved the neccesary exposure to attract attention from the online community. often this goal will only be reached with big brands and the support of offline marketing campaigns.

About the Author: John McElborough - Vanilla Digital the digital marketing blog. View the link building constellation diagram this article discusses.

© Copyright 2009 All rights reserved. Jayde Online, Inc.

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