The Basics of Link Building For SEO

Link building is still one of the best ways to increase your website’s link popularity and page rank. While it sounds simple enough, it can be a mammoth task and you want to make sure that you are being linked to by high quality websites that people respect and trust. You also want to make sure you are building SEO links in positive ways that will not undermine your brand. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Quality over quantity. Sometimes the most important principles are also the most obvious, but people still overlook them all the time. While you want your links to be visible and attract the attention of as many people at once, you do not want to flood the internet with irrelevant links. If you are foolish enough to do that, you will dilute your brand, and your links will become synonymous with spam. Instead, be mindful of where your links appear, and make sure if someone clicks them, they lead somewhere relevant and engaging. Remember this is the guiding principle of good SEO practices. You provide quality content that is optimized so people can find you, not junk content that is trying to trick people into landing on your page.
2. Embrace social media. It seems every web page you go to these days is asking you to like it on Facebook, Tweet about it on Twitter, or share it over a variety of sites including Digg, delicious, and LinkedIn. If someone does decide to do any or all of those things, you have just received the most valuable word of mouth possible. We all tend to pay more attention to these because people we like and admire are deciding something is noteworthy enough to recommend. Depending on your venture, this can seem silly sometimes, but it is a simple element to integrate into your website which can pay off big time.
3. Share your opinion. Both Review and Q&A sites are extensions of social media, but they do deserve their own special category. While tracking what others say about your company and responding in a professional way are both good practices, writing reviews of other products and answering questions are also excellent ways to establish yourself as a resource. Amazon’s review and list sections are great ways to build relationships (and links) with consumers. Make sure that when you do this, your submissions are genuine, relevant to your brand, and truly helpful.
4. Expand your website. These days, the most interesting (and SEO link friendly) websites are ones that offer more than just an avenue to whatever you are selling. Resource sections that explain things that relate to your products and provide instructions or ideas on how to use your services can add some quality content to your website. Yes, your website needs to be functional, but it can also be fun and informative. Blogs and forums are two other great ways to expand your website’s reach and foster deeper connections with prospective clients. Just make sure you are offering quality content and not content for content’s sake. If you need to hire a person or an SEO firm to manage that for you, do so. It will be a worthwhile investment.

Focus on what is a good fit for you. Whether you are manufacturing widgets, making rock n’ roll, or offering a service that makes people’s lives easier, your primary focus should be on doing whatever it is you do well. When you provide something of value, link building will happen as enthusiasts spread the word. That does not mean you should not run contests, upload instructional videos to YouTube, or be an active internet presence. It means that balance and authenticity will mean more than throwing everything on the web to see what sticks. Invest your resources wisely and do not hesitate to secure some professional SEO help.

Link building is still one of the best ways to increase your website’s link popularity and page rank. Building SEO links in positive ways makes a significant impact. Ryan Michael Farrell is a professional off site SEO specialist for the search engine marketing firm Wpromote.

Social Media Ninja Technique To Increasing Blog Traffic

This is a guest post by By Iszuddin Ismail

I feel like kicking myself over and over again. At least my Jeet Kune Do training will be of some use. Sometimes the simplest things can increase traffic tremendously. And I am mad at myself for not doing it sooner.

Do you know that most of your blog readers would definitely have some kind of social media account? It could be Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus or maybe something else. Why not? Don’t you have a social media account with any of those websites? I bet you do. Because you are a blogger, a part of a blogger natural skill is to network online. And social media is a no-brainer thing.

If you have a social media account, why don’t your readers?

And because of that, you could easily be increasing traffic to your blog if you simply add a simple way for your existing readers to share your website with their friends.

I am going to tell you how — including a little ninja technique along with that will get more of your readers to share your website with their friends. (this guy does JKD and now he’s a ninja?)

I am sure you have seen it on other websites. You see little icons and buttons with logos of most common social media sites. Those little things are so tempting to click on. Especially when the blog that you read really captures your attention and you feel that this is worth sharing.

And when you click on them, the URL of the page that you are reading instantly appears on your Facebook Wall, or maybe just got Re-Tweeted it on Twitter.

Well, if you are using WordPress, there a really easy way to do that. You can simply add a plugin to your blog. And I recommend Socialize.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/socialize

Now, this part of the ninja thingy.

With Socialize, you can simply add buttons to major social media sites like Facebook and Twitter in each of your blog post instantly. It will appear in little buttons with the share count. Of course the share count starts with zero, indicating nobody has shared your blog post. But the share count itself acts like a reason to click on because you feel like you are obligate to get the numbers up.

And here’s the ninja technique: when you have bigger number in those boxes, they tend to get shared a lot more. So here”s what you need to do. First install the Socialize WordPress plugin. Next share those blog posts yourself first, especially all the new ones you just created. Just make sure that the number in the box is not zero.

Now, the second part of the ninja technique to increasing your traffic with social media. With Socialize you can have the social media share button appears on the top right or at the bottom of the blog post. The one at the bottom is called the Call-To-Action box.

I want you to use the one that makes the buttons appear at the bottom. Because that is the best time to ask your readers to share your blog post with their friends. Well, in business, you got to ask for the things you want. If you want your readers to share your website, ask them to do it. And that is exactly what you are going to do.

Write a big headline calling the readers to do something after reading your blog post. It could be “Finished Reading? Now Do This…” or “Tell Your Friends”. You could test those out and see which works best for your blog. Well, blogs write about different things and communicate differently to different readers. I believe you know your readers best. So I am going to leave the call-to-action phrase to you. But make sure you do have a call-to-action. Customers are more likely to act when you tell them to.

Now don’t start saying that these are not really ground-breaking techniques, even though they aren’t. If you have not done this, do it. Give it a month and then compare your statistics from the previous month. You will be amazed.

When I did this at one of my old blog, traffic increased by 35%. I am not getting any new keyword rankings at Google. I wasn’t doing any new link building. But I am seeing a lot more traffic coming in from Facebook, Twitter and StumbleUpon.

Maybe it is your turn?

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By Iszuddin Ismail – Apart from helping businesses and online entrepreneurs get start blogging with his WordPress blog installation service, Iszuddin also shares his wisdom on how businesses can generate new leads, build stronger relationship and increase profits. http://blog.prowpinstall.com

How to Get More Traffic to Your Blog

This s a guest post by Nicole Rodgers

Without consistent and healthy amounts of traffic, your blog doesn’t stand a chance of becoming profitable. It’s a simple concept to grasp, but many still struggle to attain the numbers they want. While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to the problem, there are some general best practices every webmaster should follow to maximize their traffic numbers. Here are five simple steps you can take to increase your daily page views. Follow these tips, and you’ll be guaranteed a noticeable uptick in the traffic you receive.

Link To Your Own Content – When Google sees that a site has a lot of internal links, that helps your PageRank because it views your site as having some depth and value to offer. If you have a particular post that’s ranked highly in the search results for a certain keyword, link to that post from other posts in your blog using that same keyword as the anchor text. It’ll boost that post in particular and your website as a whole in the organic results. Do the same with other posts and their main keywords and you’ll see a significant increase in your rank overall.

Interact With Your Readers – Your job isn’t done when you post a great new article. If people react positively to your content and leave comments, you should go out of your way to respond to them and keep the conversation going. It’s always flattering when something you write inspires passion in other people. Capitalize on that momentum by making your blog a site that people remember for being more interactive than most of the others they visit throughout the week.

Ditch The Small Talk, Solve A Problem – Nobody cares about how your day went or what your thoughts on Donald Trump’s defunct bid for the presidency are. Instead of broadcasting your inner monologue, use your blog to give people a solution to a problem. Write a step-by-step tutorial on something you just learned how to do or give them information that’s not widely known that can save time and money. Our time is precious, and people will pay more attention to you if you cut right to the chase and deliver the goods without the extraneous commentary.

Tweak Your Title Keywords – Sometimes, a post you write gets a decent amount of search engine traffic from people who were using an entirely different keyword than you would have expected. You can see this by looking at your analytics and back-end stats, under your traffic sources section. If that’s the case, change the title of the post to include the keyword that’s getting you that traffic in the Search Engine Results Pages. It’ll boost the ranking of that article even further, bringing in even more unique hits.

Get Social – Social media has been over-hyped to some degree over the past few years. But it’s still a valuable tool when it comes to raising your profile. The key is to take a more targeted approach to attracting new readers. Don’t “friend” everyone you run across on Facebook or follow every Tom, Dick, and Harry on Twitter. Find people with similar interests, and start to build an actual community and following that matters. A hundred like-minded followers are worth more than a million who will never read your blog.

In Closing – These suggestions are easy to implement, but nonetheless quite effective when it comes to driving more readers to your website. Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg and there are many other techniques which you can use to boost your blog’s search engine rankings. You probably won’t see immediate results overnight. But Rome wasn’t built in a day, and if you use these optimization methods consistently they’ll begin to pay off in short order. The trick is to just keep at it. As with anything else in life, the key to success in blogging is persistence.

Nicole Rodgers has been blogging in the finance and technology industries for three years; she encourages you to create a website and start blogging today.  Blogging is a great way to increase your business network and Nicole’s small business phone is constantly ringing with incoming leads for new clients. Blogging has definitely changed the way Nicole conducts business.

Link Building Strategies That Work

Getting links back to your site is the number one most important factor to getting ranked well in the search engines. What are some link-building strategies that really work?

Twitter and Facebook!

Though many of these links are no-follow links, the exposure will often get you in front of other people who will create permanent links to your site.

Have a Facebook group or fan page. Also make sure the like button and the retweet button are both on all the pages that you want people to link to.

Link Bait

Create content designed to spread virally on sites like Reddit and Digg. What tends to do well on these sites?

* Infographics tend to get a lot of attention. Put a bunch of little-known statistics into one infographic.

* Slightly sarcastic content.

* Funny content.

* Content relevant to a news topic that these groups support. They tend to be more liberal than conservative and also more technologically oriented.

Guest Articles

There are many sites in your industry that depend on outside articles for their success.

Do a Google search for terms like:

* Keyword + “Submit an Article”
* Keyword + “Guest writer”
* Keyword + “Guest article”

And so on. Try to find websites that regularly host other people and try to get an article on their sites.

Directories

Directories are one easy way to build a bunch of backlinks quickly. You can submit them by hand or hire out the process very affordably in internet marketing forums.

Submit Press Releases

Send press releases to news services like PRWeb, PR Newswire and PR Leap. Some offer free press release services, though typically you’ll have to pay a small amount of money.

These releases will almost definitely generate a handful of backlinks to your website. If your story is especially good, you may even get picked up by news media or a prominent blogger and get a high profile link.

Chamber of Commerce

One easy, high quality link is to get a link from your chamber of commerce.

All you need to do is show up at your local chamber and register as a business. They’ll then put a link to your website from their high authority, high PR site back to your site.

Forums & Blog Comments

Forums and blogs are two easy places to get links. The most important thing to keep in mind with these link sources it that every post you make should be a high quality post, not a junk post designed just to get a link back.

Write high quality responses in forums and blogs and include a link back to your website. You’ll build both your backlinks and your credibility in the field as you get more well know.

There are many link-building techniques out there. While some work more than others, they all work to some degree. The most important thing is that you get out there, take action and start building links today.

7 Ways to Attract More Links

1. Content - The first and most important way to attract incoming links is through great content. When you publish content that is entertaining, valuable and informative people will naturally link to your website or blog. Content can be video, audio, print or any combination. The essential element is that it is worthy of being linked to. If you are having a hard time coming up with great content, try outsourcing to someone who loves writing. Check out Happy Outsourcing by Rachel Rofe: a great step by step plan that anyone can use right away.
2. Social networking – Once you have great content on your website you can use social networking to generate attention. Post links to your best content on your social networking site of choice. Interact. Generate awareness and attention for your website. People will notice your website and again they’ll naturally link to it.
3. Blog (and guest blog) – Blogging is another natural way of creating content. When you publish guest blog posts then you are reaching a new audience. The more attention you generate for your website, the more people will link to you. Additionally, you can create a blog to support your website. This blog can link to relevant content and web pages to help increase incoming links.
4. Online directories – There are a number of online website directories. Simply register with the directories. They can provide a few powerful incoming links.You can also list your business website with local search directories like Google Places. It’s free. It’s easy. And it’ll generate a few quality incoming links.
5. Social bookmarking – Social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon and Digg can provide incoming links. Join a few bookmarking sites. Create a profile. Interact with others much like you would on a social networking website. Bookmark web pages that you like. Also, when appropriate and relevant, bookmark a few top-notch pages on your own site. This process boosts awareness for your website. Other people will bookmark your pages. And the pages you bookmarked will receive attention and incoming links.
6. Content marketing – Publish articles on article directories and other people’s websites. This actually generates a substantial amount of incoming links. Also consider creating syndicated content. You might publish a newsletter. In each newsletter you’ll have an article or two. You can include a snippet that tells others they can publish the article if they don’t change it and if they keep your links and bio. When your content is top level, people will publish your articles on their site with the links intact.
7. Press releases – Finally, consider publishing press releases when you have news to share. Use services like PRWeb to distribute them. It’s another great way to generate incoming links.

Incoming links help you climb your way to the top of the search engine rankings. They boost traffic. Create a plan today to start increasing your links and grow your business.

For more non-stop, viral traffic ideas, click here.