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Archive for December, 2009

What Are Backlinks And How Do I Get Them?

There are basically two aspects to SEO “on page” “off page” optimization.

“On Page” SEO is easy because it’s totally under your control. It’s simply a case of making sure you have optimized your web pages correctly.

OK so there is a bit more to it than that like keyword research keyword density frequency which html tags to use making sure your site/pages are W3 Compliant using relative/absolute internal linking structures to feed the pagerank where it’s most effective using titles and descriptions that encourage people to click through from the SERP’s etc.

But essentially once you know how to do all that it’s not difficult to get it right for all your pages/sites.

It’s also less important in the long run than getting sufficient links to your site/pages from other sites.

Getting links to your site is fundamental to getting visitors and without visitors all the time effort and money invested in getting your site up and running and looking “nice” is irrelevant.

No Visitors = No Point!

So links are essential to the health of your site and indeed your business but all links are not equal in value to your site.

Reciprocal links will help but they are far less effective than one way backlinks i.e. links from another site where you don’t have to link back to them. These “One Way” backlinks will give your site a far greater boost in the search engine results and bring you more traffic providing of course that you have chosen good relevant keywords for your links.

There are many ways of getting these powerful one way backlinks but most you will have no control over the anchor text used i.e. keywords in the link which means their “power” in unfocused and therefore of less use to you in achieving the targeted keyword results you are looking for.

For example submitting your site to website directories can be a very effective way of picking up some high quality one way links from high PR sites but you will seldom be able to choose the keywords/anchor text used for the link often ending up with the site name as the link.

This is not a waste of time as the Pagerank passed to your site will with the correct internal linking structure be passed on to your sites internal pages helping them to rank better for their targeted keywords.

So how can you get highly targeted one way links?

It’s fairly common for webmasters to now buy or “rent” links to their sites through service like TextLinkAds and these services will allow you to choose the anchor text but they are far from cheap. A link from a PR 8 site can easily cost 150 per month. In fact there is now a business model emerging based on building sites simply to sell these kind of links see LazyGitMarketing.

Google has also publicly stated that they disapprove of this practice and are actively seeking to downgrade the value of such “paid links” although personally it seems like a valid form of advertising to me but maybe I just don’t have Google’s wisdom in these matters. ;

As always in business there are entrepreneurs who have identified this need in the market and a whole new branch of linking services are popping up offering new solutions for one way backlinks.

I’ve been testing some of them out over the last few months and have found a couple that have had a significant positive effect on the sites I used them for.

The Backlink Solution BacklinkSolution

This first solution is a monthly subscription that provides a network of high quality blog sites for you to post comments on including a link to your sites using your chosen anchor text.

Note: As you make the link yourself you can also link to internal pages on your site to improve their rankings as well which you can’t do with directory submissions.

It is a manual process but is easy enough that it can be outsourced fairly cheaply.

The Pagerank of these blogs varies but the links provided are very “natural” in appearance to the search engines and as you can post unique relevant content on market related blogs the links are highly relevant. You are also limited as to how many blogs you can post to each month to ensure that the links grow naturally over time rather than all in one go.

Three Backlinks Way Links 3WayBackLinks

The internet marketing market is highly competitive so it’s hardly surprising that another service with a different twist has popped up from this market.

This is an automated “three way links” system where you link to site A which then links to site B which then links back to you. Whilst this is arguably not as powerful as true “one way backlinks” it’s still a significant step above one way “reciprocal” linking that is the more traditional method used by the majority of webmasters.

The process is also automated for you making it very hands off. You can submit up to 20 sites with just one account and you can specify three different anchor texts to be used as the links for each sites making sure you don’t incur any penalties for over use of just one text link keyword or phrase.

It is also set up to gradually build up the links over time to make it all appear very natural to the search engines.

Your Own Authority Blog BetterThanLinks

There is one final service that I’ve found to be very useful although it is more ideal for people with multiple sites to promote.

The service gives you your own blog on an existing high PR authority site. The site has 833039 backlinks listed in Yahoo and gets spidered several times a day by all of the major search engines. For example in June 2007 Googlebot visited it 14470 times and Yahoo Slurp 52436 times so you can see why it’s an regarded as an “authority” site.

I have used this to link to brand new sites and had them indexed by Google within 24 hours so it’s a great way of getting a new site in to the SE’s quickly and the link weight will obviously also help any site linked to.

As a side note I’ve also found that my blog on this site can get fairly significant traffic itself when I take the time to keyword optimize the posts which is always a nice added benefit.

I haven’t traded reciprocal links for any of my sites in almost two years you can probably see why I don’t need to. Using powerful new linking tools and services like these means I am able to take total control over the “off page” SEO linking strategies for my sites in the same way as I do for the “on page” SEO factors.

Wouldn’t you like to do have the same level of control over your sites search engine rankings?

About the writer:  Get more information at http://www.dominoseo.com/ Read more articles like this one at http://getlistedinternetmarketing.com

Web Site Advertising For Free

As a consequence of the rise in web site marketing traditional link building strategies have become less useful and more difficult but there are marketing techniques which still work extremely well indeed. This article is about how to get a massive number of web site visitors from a free system which promotes your website both online and offline by viral means.

Lately I’ve been experimenting with less conventional ways to get traffic and I’m going to tell you about one system in particular which I believe opens up almost an entire untapped resource.
For any Internet entrepreneur web site advertising is always going to be vital to your online business. But link building is not the only way to increase your traffic. Have you tapped into some of the new and exciting ways to get traffic that require almost no investment of time whatsoever?

Web site traffic is the life blood of any site. Without it you can’t make money or generate leads. Lately I have noticed that with the rapid growth in web site creation and promotion tools it’s become much more of a chore to get a new site noticed as everyone is fighting it out for links. Viral techniques however still work very well indeed but few people seem to know how to fully capitalize on them. In reality many webmasters fail to exploit these at all and even when they do it’s almost always online marketing techniques that get used. But you can also promote a web site offline virally and the system I want to tell you about exploits both. This is a very powerful tool in your search for more web site traffic.

Have you even considered automated viral offline web site advertising? The answer is probably No and if not then you have been missing out on a huge almost untapped promotional opportunity. It’s a fact that there are many millions of people who have computers spend a great deal of time online but who do not have websites. Can you imagine how good it would be if they worked to give your web site traffic?

Sure they cannot promote your site either by posting an article or by linking to your site but despite this they can still play a vital part in helping your web site advertising as long as they have the tools and the motivation to do it.

What these millions of people do have is the power to distribute information offline for you about your website which can be even more powerful than online promotion. This massive offline resource is almost completely ignored when it comes to stimulating web traffic because few people have worked out how to tap into it. Recently though a brilliant British programmer has created a free to use system which allows you to exploit this huge resource to the full in order to promote your web site or even affiliate url.

Without going into detail there’s no doubt that it can simply explode your web site traffic by means of simple mathematical principles and some basic psychology. This is the only system I know of which anyone can use for web site advertising and which combines online and offline advertising together which is why it’s so powerful.

It’s radical design encourages a natural exponential growth and all you have to do to promote your own web site is to update it for free and then give it away. This deceptively simple strategy gives you ready access to a staggeringly large number of people who do have access to the Interntet and who will become your web site visitors.

You can download the free software here at http://www.getamillionhits.com/download.html and you’ll also find a link through to the press release on the same page which explains in detail exactly how it works.

About the writer:  Steve Gates Internet Marketeer

Webmaster Staffing: Your Link Building Solution

“Don’t own a cafeteria: Let a food company do it. Don’t run a print shop: Let a printing company do that. It’s understanding where your real value added is and putting your best people and resources behind that.
Back rooms by definition will never be able to attract your best. We converted ours into someone else’s front room and insisted on their best. This is what outsourcing is all about.” Jack Welch exCEO of GE

If you want to be found in search engines and attract visitors to your sites with little or no funding then webmaster staffing or outsourcing is the answer to your problem.

According to Jupiter Research 48 percent of large marketers are currently outsourcing their search engine marketing SEM programs. Their research also shows that 80 percent of companies that are into outsourcing are satisfied with the performance of their campaign compared to just 58 percent for those that handle SEM inhouse.

Outsourcing has hit virtually every industry and now it has become a vital strategy for search engine marketing firms that not long ago are very adamant about webmaster staffing.

One of the webmaster services that are frequently outsourced is link building

Using webmaster staffing the customer can choose to direct the link building strategies that the webmaster staff will follow. These include deciding what techniques to use what criteria to use for selecting sites to gather links from etc.

If you read in the webmaster forums there are lots of different techniques for link building. These include directory submission reciprocal linking buying links writing articles about your industry and submitting them to directories and press releases. There are lots of link building tools available online for identifying partners or evaluating how your link building is going.

Link building is a laborious process but if done properly it is most definitely worth the effort. A properly executed link building campaign will help boost your ranking with many search engines. The more links pointing to your site the higher your search engine ranking is. Linking also increases the credibility of your website. Engaging in link building also increases the number of people you reach thereby establishing your connection within the internet community. The more people you reach the more traffic you draw to your site.

If you want to rank well acquire targeted traffic and build brand you’ll need an effective link building and marketing strategy as part of your overall Search Engine Optimization SEO program. Link building takes time and building link popularity takes effort. And there are no quick fixes.

If you are really serious about business and wants to get ahead of your competitors but you don’t have the luxury of time and money then its time you consider webmaster staffing.

About the writer:  Amy Grace Remollata is working for Agents of Value a webmaster staffing company located in the Philippines. Her current project is for Prosper.com.