Digital Marketing Consultant

So From Where Do We Get Valuable Links?

Other websites will link to your website if you have good content that they wish to refer to. In this case your website will acquire links without much intervention from you.

Many webmasters soon realized that external links would get their website ranked well and that is when they started to use techniques that are seen or termed as Black Hat SEO. A term used when one engages in activities that try to manipulate the search engine rankings.

The objective with link building is to get links back to your website using your “product keyword” or variable thereof in the link text. This is seen as a valuable link and not easily manipulated.

Links can be created by the following link building strategies:

• Blog posts that promote, discuss or compare products
• Article marketing – where one writes product related articles and submits to Article Websites where webmasters can use your article on their websites. The rule is that they cannot change your content and must leave the authors signature where links are pointed back to your website.
• Reciprocal links from other industry related websites. Where webmasters agree to swap links with one other using requested valuable link text.

Where Does Social Media Marketing Fit In?

Social Media could mean many things to us especially if one is not familiar with the term.  Social media could be looked at in the following categories:

• Social media advertising – using paid text or banner ads on sites like Facebook. These ads allow you to target your market based on their demographics
• Social media book marking – Sites like Digg and Stumbleupon provide users with the ability to tag websites that they like or recommend. Social Book marking supports your search engine linking strategy
• Social media optimization – upload your videos to Youtube and optimize them using product related keywords and you stand the chance of getting on Google’s first page for your related keywords. By posting optimized content on websites like Craigslist & Yahoo Answers (or it's successor), one can get ranked for related keywords in a short space of time.
• Social media networking – many business owners attend regular networking meetings where the objective is to meet other business owners with the objective of doing business with each other. Social media websites like LinkedIn provide professionals with a way to establish relationships online where one can build credibility and introduce their products and services in an educational manner.

Anchor content and being an authoritative domain are both very important: but maintaining both while successfully building links can be challenging.  This can be accomplished with some simple methods.

Guest Post

One of the most powerful ways to get linked by domains and pages of authority is to obtain guest posts.  By sharing content, you can effectively build links with guest post.  You can search for blogs that will be most flexible with the allowed content.   Domains that offer self syndication and are known as a power-packed domain offer many advantages to link building.

Staff Member Site Links

Staff which have blogs, websites, and other media sources that can offer links can also prove to be a viable way to build links.   Links developed in this manner provide for the most flexibility and control when it comes to content.

Testimonial Links

Offer testimonials of other website products and services in exchange for a link.  A couple of good sources for testimonial links include consultants and contractors you may work with. Virtually any company or anyone you may do business with is a potential for a testimonial link exchange.   You can also reach out to select customers for testimonial link exchanges.   A little research to identify potential testimonial links can be very rewarding.

Keywords

Attracting links by strategic keywords can lead to high quality links.  Obtaining links with your exact content text can be beneficial in your link building campaign.
Internal Links

A lot of Internet marketers miss the opportunity for Internal link building.  Ranking on the search engines will be enhanced by building internal links to pages within your own domain.  These are just a few of the rock-solid methods to use in building quality links to your website.  Talk to us about how to do everything better.

With just a little bit of effort and research, you, too, can be successful at building links without compromising your site content.

by Karen Scharf

The task of search engine optimization for your website can seem overwhelming at times. You have enough work to do just running your small business, so it’s easy to put SEO at the bottom of your priority list.

However, without proper search engine optimization, your website is very unlikely to be much of a success. This can mean the money and time that you spent getting your website designed and developed becomes wasted.

There are several ways that you can improve your SEO without spending tons of time or tons of money. Here are 10 of the quickest and most affordable SEO tips out there.

You want to make sure that your website has been submitted to search engines. SEO is all about optimizing your position in various search engines, but this is only relevant if you are actually listed in the search engines. When your website is brand new and it has no incoming links yet, it can be difficult for the spiders to find it, so it’s a good idea to hand submit your site to the search engine.

2. Clean up Your Site

Make sure your website is organized and clear. It is especially important to clean up any dead links. Fix any errors that may appear on your site and double check to make sure your entire site’s html is up to par. There are online services that can help you do this. Since search engines primarily work and rank websites through the use of robots it is important to make sure all of the technical aspects of your website are in good working order. This helps ensure that the robots can quickly and freely crawl through your site and they won’t encounter any errors or roadblocks that force them to abandon your site too soon.

3. Use Good Keyphrases

If you’re trying to optimize your brand new website for a single keyword, you’ll be fighting an uphill battle. Try longtail keyword phrases instead (a phrase that is four words or longer) because they are less competitive and easier to get started with. Be sure to research the phrases that your target market is actually searching for, and then do the competitive research to ensure that you actually have a chance of ranking for those phrases.

4. Create Good URLs

Creating readable URLs is especially important if you’re using a content management system or otherwise generating dynamic URLs. While evidence suggests that Google’s new algorithm does not apply much weight to keyword rich URLs, other search engines do. And since it’s such an easy step to create relevant URLs, it’s worth the few seconds of extra time it might take, if only to make it easier on your human site visitors. Make sure that your URLs are indicative of the kind of information that your visitors will encounter on that page.

5. Improve your Title Tags

Title tags are still an important aspect of search engine placement, and since they are so extremely easy to update this is a step that definitely needs to be included in your affordable SEO plan. Make sure that your title tags are keyword rich and appropriate to the subject matter of the particular web page. And make sure you use a unique title tag on each and every page in your site.

6. Check your ALT Tags

Make sure that your alt tags are clear and keyword rich. While Google does not take into account alt tag text for ranking purposes, some other search engines still do. But the key issue to keep in mind with alt tags is that they are meant for usability. They are designed to aid website visitors with visual impairments navigate through your site and understand all of your content. While Google may not take the content of the tag into account, it couldn’t hurt to show Google that you are running a professional website that caters to all users.

7. Get Backlinks

Getting relevant links coming into your website can be tedious and time consuming. So this isn’t exactly considered a “quick tip”. But there are a few things you can do to help speed up your link building program. First, take advantage of industry groups or trade associations that you belong to. They usually have online directories where you can include a link to your website in your membership profile. Join a forum that is related to your niche and include your website address in your profile and signature.

Submit a press release announcing the publication of your new site and include a link to your URL. Keep in mind that none of these are considered “high value” incoming links, but they are all quick and easy ways to get your linking program off the ground.

8. Create and Update Regularly

Keep your website or blog fresh and relevant.  You don’t have to go overboard, but be sure to make small updates regularly.  This ensures that the search engine spiders will return often. Use unique content, avoid private label right articles, and keep information as current as possible.

9. Generate a Site Map

Creating an XML sitemap makes it easier for the search engine bots to crawl through and navigate your website.  This is especially true if your site is rich in script and flash. The structure of your sitemap does matter, so if you’re not sure how to create one, check with your webmaster. Chances are, he or she will have software that will simplify the process.

10. Use Social Media

Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are quickly becoming the new search engines.  Make sure you are adequately represented on sites like these. Set up a page for your company and post regularly.  Have friends, family, customers and fans sign up for your page and encourage them to advertise to their friends, family, clients, and fans.  This is a great way to build up your reputation and yet another way to quickly multiply reputable backlinks to your page.

Search engine optimization can be intimidating for many small business owners, and it’s true that a full-fledged optimization program will take time. But by following these quick and easy steps, you’ll be able to create an affordable SEO program that gets your new website off the ground in no time.

The economical challenges today create both a need and opportunity to identify low cost strategies to build and Digitally Market your business.   There are several cost effective strategies that can be utilized.  Link building is one of the best traffic building strategies available for internet marketing.

You can also write articles for submission to some of the article submission sites.  Provide relevant material for your articles to prevent spamming.

You should have social bookmarking placed on your content and product pages on your website.  This will make it easy for visitors to share the content, services and products on your website with others.

Set aside time on a weekly basis to continue building links using the strategies noted.

Guest Blogging Opportunities   

This is different than just posting comments on a blog.  The time it takes to produce good quality blog post will limit the number of posts you can provide each week.   Thus, it may take several months before you can receive the results you are expecting.

Forums

Popular online forums also provide opportunities for one way links.  Simply register on the forums, setting up your signature with anchor text including your website link and begin posting.  Be careful not to directly promote your website in the post.  If you do, you will probably be kicked off the forum.  Again more posts results in more links.  

Professional Services

You should not close the door too quickly on hiring a professional service for building links.  If you do not know the ins and outs of link building, a service could be a cost effective method for you to consider.  A trustworth Digital Marketing Consultancy will deliver higher search engine ranking faster and more effectively.

Surprise. I have found another secret use.  Okay, it is not secret, but it is a good surprise.  As much as I am in the business of getting clients found by the search engines, I have not considered going outside of Google, Yahoo, and now Bing.

Advanced Link Manager Assistant lists 110 search engines.  Most of the reason for this has to do with geography and language.  But, in fact, they do have them all and they update them every day. 

Why is this interesting?  I can see which search engines in the world are indexing which pages of any website.  It either gives great satisfaction showing many indexing each page or great frustration if pages are not indexed.

I have not really been fair to Advanced Link Manager Assistant since I have not covered all the functions.  But then I have other things to do while Advanced Link Manager Assistant and Advanced Web Ranking let me do it.

Another surprise...it has a webcrawler function.  As they describe it, "Website Crawler lets you crawl an entire website or pages until reaching a specific level and provides helpful information about each crawled page.

"The results gathered following the crawl can be exported as Google Sitemap(XML) or Yahoo Sitemap(TXT).

"For each crawled page, Website Crawler provides it's page rank, meta information (title, description, robots, keywords, author), the number of outbound and onsite links, HTTP response and the size of the respective page.

"Website Crawler can help you not only crawl your website and export the results as a sitemap for the main search engines, but also analyze each crawled URL and see if the page meets your optimization requirements. In this way your optimization and marketing efforts will have a positive impact for your website rankings."

For someone in our business, this type of control is essential.  Being able to do it with such ease is a dream.  But one drawback is that this feature is only available in the Enterprise version.

As a disclaimer, I should tell you that the company has offered the software to me for review.  I have not had time to use the software over any longer period of time, so I may have missed something.

Why?  Let me list the reasons…some of the reasons.  There are just too many to list them all.  But here we go just naming the menu headings:
•    View My Links
•    Analyze Links Evolution
•    Analyze Links Text
•    Compare Link Popularity
•    View Search Engine Statistics
•    Find Link Partners
•    Add Referrers
•    Send Link Exchange Requests
•    Generate Link Pages
•    Manage Link Page Layouts

And that is only half of the menu!

Link building is a process…a tedious process.  But it is the most important process you can do for your website, or equal to.  (The other important process I have talked about in other postings.) 

This program is built with that understanding.  This is not some easy-way-out program.  It finds and builds links for your business website in the manner that Google’s guidelines and spider look for.  But the program organizes your work and saves an incredible amount of time because it guides you in a proper fashion.

It then reports to you and helps you schedule your tasks.

But there is more.  I will tell you what I found most handy.  See you tomorrow.

As a disclaimer, I should tell you that the company has offered the software to me for review.  I have not had time to use the software over any longer period of time, so I may have missed something.

You have to think of links as being an indication that your site is so serious and interesting that others want to link to you.  But remember that the only reason other sites would want to link to yours is that there is a connection...a relevancy.  The little robots that look at your links make this judgement, and if they find that there is not relevancy, they will note this and not count that link.  Having enough irrelevant links and you get kicked out of the club.

Link trading impact upon the search engines

The search engines use algorithms to establish ranking of websites.   The algorithms give consideration to the number of sites linking to your website.   There is some logic to how the search engines view number of linked sites.  The more sites with links back gives credibility to content that is relevant to the website.

Software applications for link trading management provides for:

•    Link directory creation
•    Link addition to the directories
•    Link submission request to other sites
•    Request response tracking methods

The first step is to identify a site which you are interested in trading links.   There should be some connection between the sites by way of similar topics or a segment dedicated to your niche.

Tips for link trading

•    Choose compatible or related sites
•    Choose site with good search engine ranking results

Once a site has been identified as acceptable for link trading, a link to the site is then posted on your site.   It may be, however, that the link may not be posted on the other site.   This method is a non-reciprocal link which is more favorable to the search engines.  In other words, sites linking to your site (and your not linking to their site) tells the search engine that your site is quite popular and important.

Once you post the link to your site, you should request a link back be posted for your site.  Making a request for a link without first posting the other company’s link to your site is not good etiquette for link trading and will not end with a link trade normally. You will need to specify in your request for a link-back that, if this is not provided, you will probably remove the link to your site.  If you do not receive a response, you will need to follow up on your request.
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And finally, if you would simply like to read some excellent material on the subject, go to WSIwisdomBook starting at page 93.