Search Engine Optimization Tips Blog

Finding good, free links is the chore every webmaster agonizes over. Simply asking works sometimes, but not for the huge authority sites that really count! So what should you do? Yopy your competitors and try the same places they have links from? Or strike out on your own and find your own good sources?

A possible danger you encounter by following others is also that you end up with a basic set of sites all linking to the same people and here comes Google’s anti-spam team. Realtors networks have been wiped out, then ticketing network, al because they inadvertently used the same sites to link from.

Lateral, creative thinking is needed to get strong editorial links. A great strategy is to do things offline that you know will have some effect online. You can still offer products to bloggers to review - just be careful and don’t abuse this old and tested method! First, identify the regular bloggers in your vertical, then offer them something to review for your own market research purposes. Make sure to let them know you aren’t ‘payiong’ or ‘bribing’ them for a good review - you want brutal honesty in their review.

Do NOT ask for a link when you ask for the review. That way any links will be all on their side, adn you are not required to ‘no-follow’ them - plus, reverse psychology comes into play. Thsi sounds kind of at cross purposes from your real needs and wants, but the actual result will be that they review your product, they  generally try and be nice with constructive feedback (free tips on how to improve! no need to hire a consulting team!) - and often they fill out space by covering your other products.

On the other hand, if you go in asking for a link you’re more likely to get a blah post with a single link, because the blogger doesn’t think you really like their blog or style so why bother - you just want a link! Blogging works well in many B2C and B2B verticals to boost your profile.

Guess where the biggest and most powerful links come from? You get them from traditional media. Being newsworthy is the number one most powerful link building method there is, and this concept should heavily impact your lead generation process.

All the links won’t be keyword targeted - but quality can be through the roof when it comes to authority. Consider running your own news aggregator, and getting others to link to yo9u. Tie in social networks, and maybe you’ll go viral!

Twitter is the exploding social network everyone is - well, tweeting about! How effective is it, really? Is Twitter actually a tool to be taken seriously?

The idea behind Twitter is that less is more - and boy, is less more! When it comes to the enormous followings some individuals and companies have, the one hundred and forty character count limit makes brevity a virtue. Recently, internet marketers and SEOs have been discovering even more ways the power of a tweet can help their business.

Twitter asks ‘what are you doing right now’ - but really, no-one wants to hear you just took your Metamucil or are going out for a jog. The people who know what and when to post present them selves as highly interesting on twitter, and can develop a following of thousands of people who actively track what they say.

 Ashton and Demi, Oprah, Ellen and various other celebshave cracked the Twitter barrioer, nearly crashing the social app at times, as when Ashtone requested an ‘I love you’ sent to his wife from all his followers.

The four secrets to marketing with Twitter are as follows:

1. Seriously, we said it above, and will repeat it - don’t post everything you do! Stick with just the things that are interesting to others, and stuff you want others to see. News you want to spread the word about, info about an event that is happening, an alert for an offer you are presenting – things that will benefit and not bore your followers are best! Ask the question “is this beneficial information for my followers?” and don’t post if the answer isn’t yes.

2. Search twitter for others who have similar interests, or that you find fascinating, and follow them. When you follow another Twitterer, everything they post will go into your personal timeline. Youc an also retweet stuff they tweet and get it out to your own followers.  

3. Search for stuff posted on twitter through the free website Quotably. This site will show tweets in conversation mode and you can reply to people by logging in with your Twitter details.

4. Use a twitter agent and keep your essential twitter information close to hand and also plug your other social networks into Twitter - many have plugins that allow you to Tweet really important stuff automatically. The almighty Tweet is a powerful tool, and you can learn how to use it to develop your own contacts and business.

You know you are supposed to get links from sites with a high reputation as they are considered ‘authority’. How do you decide this? Is it solely based on PageRank?

Finding websites with authority is major consideration when you start planning your linking campaign. There are many ways to measure domain authority; the quality and quantity of the links, PageRank, domain rankings and relevancy of domain keywords.

If an older domain which has 1000 links from other trusted sites links to you, it is worth more than a site with 10,000 junk links or from a site with 10 links. You have to balance the quality and quantity. Paid directories, where you can buy links for PageRank and Google allows it are a dying practice.  Paid for links are on the whole not allowed.

PageRank can help you if it is coming in from another site, but remember there appears to be a several month lag between real time stats and the visible toolbar! Other factors may have a greater impact. If a site already ranking for some of the keywords you are targeting links to you, that is a plus. If they are already ranking for that term and find you worthy of a link, Google pays attention.

Some sites do rank for keywords which don’t appear prominently on their site, sites with a domains similar to yourscan help you by linking to you. Keywords and anchor text help improve the quality of links. Be the kind of site other webmasters find valuable, and they will like to link to you.

If your links are coming from .gov and .edu sites that have relevancy to your topic, then you are linking well. Links from quality websites to you (when the linking page itself has good authority) can give you some authority.

The url significance can also have an effect. You don’t want to be linked to from a session ID or randomly generated url.  .PDF or .doc extensions can affect weight quality - if the doc itself has numerous inbound links giving it authority of its own.

A static page with links to it being added over a long period of time is valuable as it is not outdated. A news site which is updated daily may also be a high quality link since they are being kept up to date. It depends on the type of site.

Authority sites meet the above criteria. The more high quality links you have, the more your site becomes an authority in its own right and the closer you are to the top of the pile.

I know. Once you jump in, you’re in, and you have to sink or swim. Intimidating, isn’t it! Never fear, your forays into the world of social marketing can be painfree if you find teh right social networks to start with!

Digg. People love Digg, and it can be sed for all sorts of sites and purposes! Make sure you have a Digg button on your site or blog, and Be active in the network.

Yahoo Buzz. Buzz it up! This is still a powerful tool, and can be used in conjunction with otehr things to drive your rankings up in Yahoo’s search engine.

StumbleUpon. This is good for use in conjunction with your articles especially for affiliate marketing. Just be careful - as with any social network, abuse of the community will get you nothing but heartache!

Reddit. What I said about heartache above? Take that and triple it if you don’t take care with this site. You have to be very active promoting other people’s stuff, or the long timers will drive you out. Redditer’s can be vicious!

Technorati - if you are a geek, definitely go here. This is nerdville to the max, and if you have a widget or gadget,  they wanna know!

del.icio.us… Still crazy, after all these years. People love del.icio.us, and it is a gathering place for all social butterflies. Don’t miss out!

There are plenty of others - Kaboodle, Mixx, Slashdot - but start small and work your way up. You have to devote time and effort into building a respectable online profile, and you can’t get away with spamming these sites so don’t even try.

Check with your SEO firm to see if they offer social bookmarking, networking and marketing services - this is a good way to cover your bases if your time is too limited to handle it personally. SubmitEdge is skilled in developing positive online profiles, so they can handle it even if you can’t.

Don’t be caught without a strong online presence. Your competitors are pouring time and effort into becoming well known - you can’t afford to ignore it!

Squidoo is one of the fastest growing ways to get your site noticed!

Squidoo can be used for getting links for your website, but first you must understand how Squidoo works.

Squidoo uses tagging to categorize the user created ‘lenses’, so when users create Squidoo lenses, then tags for each lens. All of the user-generated lenses are linked to tag pages. These in turn link back to all the lenses that use the same tag, generating automatic links for the all the lenses you create in Squidoo. Your Squidoo lens’ PageRank increases exponentially because of the links it automatically receives from the tag pages, and you can kick that juice back to your site.

Links from authority sites are more valuable than links from non-authority sites. Squidoo has quickly become an authority site, and as such can help you achieve a higher ranking. Authority sites are really just credible online resources on a given topic. They have other websites linking to them on the strength of that credibility, which strengthens them even more; then, when search engines notice links from them to you, you get a little bit of that credibility. This is why a Squidoo lens can be so valuable for creating quality links.

SubmitEdge can build Squidoo lenses for you, and integrate the resulting links back to your iste. Google and other engines appear to like Squidoo lenses, so you can get indexed fast for your keywords if they aren’t extremelycompetitive. In addition, most article directories are willing to allow you to connect to your Squidoo lens pages from the article resource box. This allows you to make the double play of article marketing and affiliate marketing! In most article submission sites you cannot use your affiliate links in the resource box, but on Squidoo you can.

You can also join Squidoo groups to generate extra links from other Squidoo lenses and youc an have ads on your Squidoo pages as well. If SubmitEdge creates your Squidoo lenses, they will include a minimum of one 500 word article with relevant pictures plus four to six other modules and the link that you would like included.

Even better, your Squidoo lense will be automatically promoted on social networks and bookmarking sites, submitted to search engines for indexing and you can add more to it at your own convenience!

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