Top 10 Link Building Strategies

This list of top 10 strategies for building links is based on my own experience of building links to my sites throughout the years. It is important to keep in mind that when it comes to SEO, nothing is set in stone. SEO is a cat-and-mouse game, so I will revise this list from time to time as the field continues to evolve.

Please note that the order in which these methods are listed do not necessarily reflect their order of effectiveness. Some methods may work better than others for certain sites.

1. Submit to web directories

Submitting to web directories is a vital part of every successful link building campaign. Apart from driving traffic to your website through direct referrals, web directories provide static, one-way links to your site, boosting your link popularity and improving your rankings on the major search engines like Google and Yahoo.

It is important to note that not all directory listings are equal. Listings from trusted, established directories like Yahoo! and DMOZ are more valuable than those from the thousands of others on the net. All else being equal, a link from a directory focused on your niche is worth more than one from a general directories.

Submit to both free and paid directories. Free directories provide one-way links to your site with no strings attached, but they can take forever to review your link. Paid listings can be a good investment if the fees are reasonable and the pages on which your link will reside have decent PRs. Your sites will be listed with fewer competing links on paid directories.

2. Write articles and press releases

Submitting your article to directories is a highly effective way to build one-way links to your site. First, you write a thoughtful and informative article on an topic in your area of expertise. Then you submit it to article directories to be read by the general public and reprinted on other web sites. Appended to the end of your article is a resource box which contain links to your site and email address.

While there are hundreds or even thousands of article directories on the web, you should focus on writing a high quality article and submitting to a handful of the more popular ones. Having your article published on a top directory can be worth more than a hundred less reputable ones. If you write something that people find useful, they may pick it up and reprint it on their blogs, newsletters, etc. This is how a quality article propagates virally in cyberspace– it virtually distributes itself without your having to manually submit to a thousand article directories.

3. Exchange links with related sites

Online forums like Digitalpoint are an excellent place to find reciprocal linking partners. Avoid sending out spammy e-mail solicitations like those generated by many SEO software programs. I get dozens of these everyday.

4. Make use of social bookmarking sites

Social bookmarking sites help bring together internet users from every corner of the world into a virtual global village. Submitting content to sites like Digg.com, YouTube.com and Del.icio.us can bring lots of visitors in a hurry.

It is important to understand that sites like Digg and YouTube are not necessarily shock sites. Although there is some publicity to be gained from the shock value of an article or video, one must not resort to tasteless and offensive materials to gain attention. There is only so much value in the attention gotten by being the village idiot.

5. Buy text links on other sites

Although link buying is somewhat an unnatural way to build links, it may be the only way to increase your link popularity if your site is not unique or interesting enough to get people to link to you on their own. Most commercial sites fall into this category.

You should buy links in a way that simulates natural linking as much as possible. Buy text links from sites that are related to yours. Vary anchor texts and descriptions. Buy links from internal as well as home pages. Buy links from both high- and low-PR sites (which can be gotten at a bargain prices).

6. Participate in online forums

Sharing knowledge can be a very powerful way to establish your online presence and credibility. If you check your backlinks on search engines like Google and Yahoo!, you may notice that a number of them come from the signatures of forum posts, that is, if you post in forums. Most forums allow signature links. I don’t participate in forums that don’t as allowing them is the least the forums can do to compensate me for contributing to their contents.

7. Write testimonials and reviews.

Writing a glowing review about a product or service and submitting to your vendor or service provider can give you a very high quality link back to your site. But this strategy can prove time-consuming as many vendors publish only a handful of testimonials from their customers. Don’t waste your time by sending a testimonial to a vendor who does not have a “Testimonials” page on their site. When submitting a review or testimonial, don’t forget to mention to your vendor that they should be feel free to publish your comments on their site (along with a link to your site).

8. Ask vendors and clients to link to your site.

I once bought a $350 script package and asked my vendor if they could feature my site as site made with their script. They obliged and gave me a PR7 text link from their site. Since the link is worth at least $40 a month, my initial investement for the script has paid for itself many times over. Besides the SEO benefits, it is responsible for thousands of visitors to my site a month through direct clicks. The moral of the story: don’t be afraid to ask. The worse that could happen is that they say “no”.

9. Blogging

Setting up a blog is a no-brainer. Even if you’ve no web designing experience whatsoever, you have a blog up and running in no time. Blogs allows for a more informal setting to get your words across. So, it’s much easier to write a blog entry than an article to submit to article directories. Use your blog to share knowlege, voice opinions, connect with others with similar interests, and of course, to link to your other sites.

Avoid spamming blog networks like Blogger and MySpace. These spam blogs (”splogs”) are a waste of time as they will not get much attention from people and will yield little, if any, SEO benefits. Write about something you know and have a genuine interest in. Focus on quality rather than quantity.

10. Content is king.

Yes, content is still king. In fact, content is by far the most important of the ten strategies I’ve mentioned. Having fresh, unique, engaging content is an excellent way to attract natural linking from other sites. This is the type of links that search engines like.

You may have heard of the buzz phrase, link-baiting, that is being tossed around in the SEO community nowadays. The idea is to get others to link to you voluntarily, perhaps by causing some type of sensation or controversy on YouTube, Digg, the message boards, or whatever. Link-baiting, in my opinion, is no more than a new play on the old “content is king” mantra.

Oudam is the webmaster of UnlimitedTraffic.net Website Promotion Services, a site that offers a wide range of effective and affordable website traffic building solutions. Visit his site for more free tips and tutorials on optimizing and promoting your site.

The 7-Step RSS Marketing Plan

If you’re wondering how to get started with RSS marketing, here’s a basic 7-step plan that should provide some needed guidance. Use these steps as your personal RSS marketing checklist to get your started and help you see whether you’re on the right track.

1. START USING RSS AS AN END-USER

The first step to getting started with RSS marketing/publishing is getting your own RSS aggregator, subscribing to other RSS feeds and just seeing and understanding how it all works.

There’s a variety of RSS aggregators to choose from. Just a small sample:

a) Web-based RSS aggregators (websites): http://my.yahoo.com, http://www.pluck.com, http://www.newsgator.com, http://www.bloglines.com

b) Desktop RSS aggregators (software): http://www.awasu.com, http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/, http://www.stevenwood.org/stories/2003/06/08/voxLite.htm

c) Integrated RSS aggregators (integrate with IE or Microsoft Outlook): http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ (browser with integrated RSS features), http://www.newsgator.com, http://www.pluck.com, http://www.attensa.com/index.php?ys=1

2. PLAN YOUR RSS FEEDS

Planning your RSS feeds might be the most important thing you do about RSS. You most certainly need an RSS feed for your e-zine, your news section, your articles etc.

But how you will package these, what others you might want to offer and other important issues, are much more complex than we can cover in this space. A precise overview of all of the opportunities is available in the “Unleash the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS” e-book at http://rss.marketingstudies.net?src=sa13

You might also want to do follow-up (autoresponder) RSS feeds, feeds for your affiliates, feeds for your employees or business partners, feeds for the media, and so on.

3. CREATE A LIST OF RSS MARKETING/PUBLISHING REQUIREMENTS

Then create a list of requirements for the RSS marketing/publishing solution you will be getting to publish your feeds. The list should answer the basic questions, such as:

a) Do you want to integrate RSS publishing with your existing content management system?

b) What RSS metrics you’ll want to watch? For example, are you satisfied with just a rough idea of how many people are reading your RSS feed, or are you interested in more precise subscriber counts, clicks and even individual content item popularity?

c) Do you need feed personalization, such as personalizing your RSS content with the receipient’s name and other details?

d) Do you want to provide your subscribers with the ability to precisely select the content they want to receive in your RSS feed (customization), such as by content topic, keywords, authors and so on?

e) Do you want the RSS feeds to be hosted on your own server?

f) Do you need the ability to target promotional messages or other content to your individual RSS feed subscribers, for example based on their previous clicks and reading habits, or even their subscription data?

g) What’s your budget?

h) Etc.

More information on all the different possibilities provided by RSS is available in the free Business Case for RSS report at http://rssdiary.marketingstudies.net/case/index.html?src=sa13

4. CHOOSE AN RSS PUBLISHING TOOL AND CREATE YOUR FIRST FEED

After you’ve prepared a list of requirements you can start searching for the appropriate tool. These come in a few general categories:

a) Desktop feed generation tools

Desktop software you can use to inexpensively, quickly and easily generate RSS feeds, but doesn’t allow for more advanced features such as content targeting. The market leader in this category is http://www.feedforall.com.

b) Hosted online RSS publishing solutions

If you don’t want to be bothered with a desktop tool and having to constantly upload your RSS feeds to your server, you could try a basic hosted online RSS publishing solution, such as http://www.myrsscreator.com. Using their simple service you don’t even need your own website to publish via RSS. Another good choice, especially if you’re in PR, is http://www.press-feed.com/

c) Advanced RSS marketing solutions

These will cover more advanced RSS marketing capabilities, such as metrics, scheduled autoresponder messages, database building capabilities and similar. The strongest contenders in this market are http://www.simplefeed.com, http://www.nooked.com, http://myst-technology.com and some other strong players as well. Solutions aimed especially at smaller companies include http://www.rssautopublisher.com and http://www.market-soft.com/bypass/

d) Other options

There are many other options as well, one for example being using your existing content management system to publish RSS feeds, or using a blog publishing solution such as http://www.movabletype.com

5. PROMOTE YOUR RSS FEEDS THROUGH YOUR OWN CHANNELS

a) Create an RSS presentation page, on which you explain: what RSS is; how the visitor will benefit from using RSS; where they can get a free RSS aggregator (recommend one yourself!); how they can subscribe to your RSS feeds; and why they should subscribe to your own RSS feeds.

Then, on this same page, include the links to all of your RSS feeds. In addition to the standard orange RSS button, also include direct links for subscriptions via MyYahoo! (get it here http://my.yahoo.com/s/button.html) and other relevant services, such as Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com).

b) Now promote this RSS presentation page as much as you can using all of your available channels.

c) Promote your RSS feeds directly below your e-zine subscription box, and always “above the fold”. Promote your RSS presentation page (telling your visitors that’s where they can subscribe to your feeds) on the most prominent locations of your site.

d) If you’re publishing more than one RSS feed, but rather a couple of focused topic feeds, promote each of them next to their topics on the site.

e) Promote your RSS feeds in all of your e-mail messages and e-zine issues.

f) As for the content, don’t just say “Subscribe to receive news from my site”, but rather prepare compelling copy to specifically show your visitors why they need to subscribe to your content in the first place and why they should subscribe specifically to your RSS feeds.

e) Enable Auto-discovery

Just include the following piece of HTML code in the section of your webpages and you’ll be all set: link rel=”alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”RSS” href=”ENTER_RSS_URL”

6. PROMOTE YOUR RSS FEEDS THROUGH EXTERNAL CHANNELS

a) Submit your feeds to the appropriate search engines and directories. A good list can be found here: http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

b) Ping the RSS aggregation sites each time you update your online content, letting them know that new content is available to be indexed. You can use this free service: http://pingomatic.com

7. OTHER KEY RSS ACTIVITIES

a) Measure and optimize your feeds

b) Syndicate your feed content to other web media

c) Display third-party RSS feeds on your site

Copyright 2005 Rok Hrastnik

About the Author:
Immediately find out how you can power your online business with RSS and instantly increase your internet success. Request the free 28-page Business Case for RSS report, with easy-to-follow instructions, examples and advice on how to get the most out of RSS in the shortest possible time. Get the free download here: http://rssdiary.marketingstudies.net/case/index.html?src=sa13

Tips - Website Promotion - Increase Traffic

1. Fill your web site with content

Your web site visitors are not interested in you, they are more concerned with their own world, their own problems, their own difficulties. If your web site is full of information that can help them cope in their world, remove their problems, or ease their difficulties, they will appreciate you. So, focus your web site on the content you provide. There are several ways you can do this. One is to provide a blog as part of your site, though you will need to update this at least daily if it is to have any real impact. An alternative is to have an articles section where you include more detailed information than you might have in a blog. You could also have in-depth reports that people download directly from your web site. However you do it, just focus your strategy on providing content - and lots of it. But the content must be practical, useful material that your readers can directly benefit from.

2. Use the words your web site visitors use

Whatever your web site is about, it will only attract attention if it is using the language of your target audience. If, for instance, you have a web site that offers "take-away foods" it is not going to get much attention in parts of the world where they call such things "carry-outs". In other words, your content must match your audience. Don't use the words and jargon you might use in your business, but use the words your potential customers use. If you don't know what they are, ask them. Also make sure you check the words that people will use to search for your site using Wordtracker.

3. Have a design that follows the standards

People have become used to certain online conventions - links in blue, underlined, for instance. Even though it may be tempting to appear different or unique, if you do not follow the standard conventions your web site becomes less appealing to people. So this means, for instance, having the navigation down the left hand side of the page, or along the top. It means having a footer on each page with your contact details. It means using the conventional colours to signal links, emails and so on. If you try to do something different you confuse your visitors meaning they are less likely to return and even less likely to tell their friends about your site.

4. Get your site listed in directories

People often use directories to find appropriate web sites. You need listing in all the relevant directories to your business. To find specific directories that you can get listed in, use a program like Internet Business Promoter. This helps you locate subject specific directories and manage your submission to them. Also, get yourself listed in DMOZ - it might take some time, be patient, but a listing here is helpful as many other directories and search engines use data from DMOZ. Getting a listing in the Yahoo Directory is also worthwhile paying for. Within seven days you could be listed on one of the most popular online directories.

5. Gain benefit from Wikipedia

One of the most popular online resources is Wikipedia - the online encyclopaedia edited by volunteers. Contributing content on your areas of expertise will help bring attention to you and your web site. You cannot simply put up a Wikipedia page all about your business - that would be considered "spam". But adding to existing pages, including your links where appropriate to relevant content on your web site, would be valuable to readers of Wikipedia and to your business.

6. Get links to your site

Having other people link to your site is essential. It shows that they trust you and like you enough to recommend you. Don't look for any old link; have a strategy to gain links from relevant sites that are also respected. A link on a relevant and respected site is worth many, many times more than a link on someone's site just because you happen to know them. So, if you are selling lawn mowers, get your site linked on gardening sites, web sites about grass growing and so on. Another way of generating useful links is to get your site bookmarked in del.icio.us and on Digg. Look for other social bookmarking sites like these in your spe******t field. Try also StumbleUpon and ReddIt. To find useful sites to link to your web site you need Internet Business Promoter's Arelis feature.

7. Get involved online

Take part in forum discussions, Google Groups, Yahoo Groups and other discussion sites. Contribute also to Yahoo Answers. In doing so you bring attention to your expertise and also you get the opportunity to add a link to your web site or some of your appropriate content. Also, be on the lookout for blogs to which you can add comments, again showing your expertise and adding links to your web site, bringing it even more attention. To find suitable blogs use Google Blog Search.

8. Use traditional Public Relations

Many web site owners focus all their efforts online, forgetting that the "offline" world is a great way to publicise their web site. Indeed, the owners of Google did a considerable amount of PR to get their venture up and running. So take a tip from them, get as much "offline" publicity as you can. Get yourself listed in Expert Sources - journalists use this to find people to interview. Also make sure your web site has a "media" page that has all your contact details, examples of the kind of media exposure you are available for, links to articles about you, radio programmes you have featured in etc. Also, your web site media centre will need a selection of high resolution photographs of you and your business as well as a short business and personal biography. Your media centre should also include your press releases, if you have them. Journalists look at your web site and if they see a media centre they realise you are "friendly" towards the media and therefore are more likely to approach you. You can also distribute press releases automatically using Press Equalizer.

9. Take part in social networking sites

Use sites like Facebook, MySpace and Ecademy to bring attention to your expertise. On Ecademy you can become a "club leader" for your particular topic and on Facebook you can set up spe******t groups on your area of expertise. By contributing to these sites - and others in your spe******t area - you bring even more attention to your web site. Furthermore, you make it easy for your online contacts to mention your web site to other people online, thus further promoting your site. For a list of sites you can work with go to this list of social networking sites.

10 New Ways to Make Money Online

So you want to ditch your corporate cubicle and join the ranks of web workers? But you have a mortgage, maybe a dependent or two, and a taste for Venti Mochas from Starbucks? You can make money in the new economy, though it might not be as easy or cushy as keeping your old economy job.

I’m not talking about advertising or affiliate marketing or selling your junk on eBay. Those are so last millennium! I’m talking about the new economy.

1. Offer your professional expertise in an online marketplace. These days, you can do more than just sell your old books via Amazon and your old Coach handbags via eBay—now you can sell your professional capabilities in a marketplace. No longer are you limited to looking for a permanent or contract job on Web 1.0 style job sites like Monster or CareerBuilder. The new breed of freelancing and project-oriented sites let companies needing help describe their projects. Then freelancers and small businesses offer bids or ideas or proposals from which those buyers can choose.

Elance covers everything from programming and writing to consulting and design, while RentACoder focuses on software, natch. If you’re a graphic designer, check out options like Design Outpost or LogoWorks–you don’t have to find the customers, they’ll come to you. Wannabe industry analysts might sign up for TechDirt’s Insight Community, a marketplace for ideas about technology marketing.

2. Sell photos on stock photography sites. If people regularly oooo and aaaaah over your Flickr pics, maybe you’re destined for photographic greatness or maybe just for a few extra dollars. It’s easier than ever to get your photos out in front of the public, which of course means a tremendous amount of competition, but also means it might be an convenient way for you to build up a secondary income stream. Where can you upload and market your photos? Try Fotolia, Dreamstime, Shutterstock, and Big Stock Photo.

3. Blog for pay. Despite the explosion of blogs, it’s hard to find good writers who can turn around a solidly-written post on an interesting topic quickly. GigaOM is always looking for bloggers with great content ideas and solid writing skills. How do you get noticed? Comment and link to blogging network sites. Write blog posts that are polished and not overly personal (although showing some personality is a plus).

4. Or start your own blog network. If you like the business side of things–selling advertising, hiring and managing employees, attracting investors–and have the stomach to go up against the likes of Weblogs, Inc., GigaOmniMedia, b5media, maybe you should make an entire business out of blogs. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’ll get a lot of time to write yourself though.

5. Provide service and support for open source software. Just because the software is free doesn’t mean you can’t make money on it–just ask Red Hat, a well-known distributor of Linux that sports a market cap of more than four billion dollars. As a solo web worker, you might not want to jump in and compete with big companies offering Linux support, but how about offering support for web content management systems like WordPress or Drupal? After getting comfortable with your own installation, you can pretty easily jump into helping other people set them up and configure them.

6. Online life coaching. Who has time to go meet a personal coach at an office? And don’t the new generation of web workers need to be met by their coaches in the same way that they work: via email, IM, and VoIP? You could, of course, go through some life coaching certification program, but on the web, reputation is more important than credentials. I bet Tony Robbins isn’t certified as a life coach–and no one can argue with his success. For an example of someone building up their profile and business online as a coach, check out Pamela Slim of Ganas Consulting and the Escape from Cubicle Nation blog.

7. Virtually assist other web workers. Freelancers and small businesses desperately need help running their businesses, but they’re not about to hire a secretary to come sit in the family room and answer phone calls. As a virtual assistant, you might do anything from making travel reservations to handling expense reimbursements to paying bills to arranging for a dog sitter. And you do it all from your own home office, interacting with your clients online and by phone. You can make $20 and up an hour doing this sort of work, depending on your expertise.

8. Build services atop Amazon Web Services. Elastic computing on AWS is so cool… and so incredibly primitive right now. Did you know that you can’t even count on your virtual hard drive on EC2 to store your data permanently? That’s why people are making money right now by offering services on top of AWS. Make it easier for people to use Amazon’s scalability web infrastructure like Enomaly has with elasticlive, a scalable web hosting platform built on AWS.

9. Write reviews for pay or perks. If you blog for any length of time on a particular topic–parenting, mobile phones, or PCs, for example–you will likely be approached to do book or product reviews. You can get free stuff this way, but are you selling your soul? Is there any such thing as a free laptop? These are decisions you’ll have to make for yourself, because no one agrees upon what ethical rules apply to bloggers. Even less do people agree on services like PayPerPost that pay you to write reviews on your blog. Check out disclosure rules closely and see whether such a gig would meet your own personal standards or not.

10. Become a virtual gold farmer. A half million Chinese now earn income by acquiring and selling World of Warcraft gold to gamers in other countries. If you’re not a young person living in China, this probably isn’t a viable option for you. But what’s intriguing about it is the opportunity to make real money working in a virtual economy. People are making real-world money in Second Life too.

Make Money Uploading Youtube Videos

Youtube started a new program this month where you can make money when you upload your videos. The program, called the "partner program," will give you a share of the money from ads that are featured on your video.
The reason Youtube is doing this is because they're legally not allowed to put advertising on copyrighted-content. To put ads on a video they first have to get permission from the copyright holder. Therefore, by entering the partner program, you give them permission to put ads on your video and they will give you a share of the money that's made.

Since Youtube videos have the potential to reach millions of viewers this can be very lucrative for the big names on Youtube. It may also be a good reason to take out your camera and start using Youtube if you haven't already.
Here are the requirements for the program:You must own the copyrights and distribution rights for all videos you upload.You must regularly upload videos that are viewed by thousands of Youtube users.You must live in the US or Canada.If you meet these requirements, you can apply now and start making money off your videos. If you live outside of North America, keep your eyes open because they will probably be expanding the program in the near future.