Link Building Insider Tips: A Six-Step Link Building Strategic Plan

Link building is an ever changing strategy in the online world. The old standbys like press releases, Adwords, and web directory submissions, although work to some extent, do not provide the outcome they did at one time. Link building is one tried and true strategy that still provides an impact for search engine optimization (SEO). Following is a six-step strategic plan which will assist you in implementing an effective link building program.

1. Submit to General Directories. Website site submission to directories will assist the web owner to grab hold of his or her first links. This is usually the quickest manner in which the search engines find you and file your site in their listings. An insider tip is to submit your site under several categories. Several of the big directories are paid services, but the payback is huge. If you do business online, you can be guaranteed that the market leaders in your industry use the paid directories. It is best to first check to see if the top websites in your field have good keywords that show up on the search engine result pages (SERPs). You will also see if they have links in the directories. If they do not have a presence, it is possibly a good move for you to make.

2. Other Directories. Most industries with a presence online have niche directories. These also may be a good move for your website to be submitted to. The niche directories most times allow anchor text in the submissions. Because most times people overlook niche directories, this may be your way to get ahead.

3. Social Networking Sites. If you ever want to get ahead online today, you must have a strong presence on all of major social media sites. The most important part of social media sites is the profile you build for yourself. Your profile is how people will find you and be attracted to you, your website and ultimately, your products. Social media sites do receive much attraction form the search engines, but that's OK. This is a lesson in building community, a following, and to have others link to you. In a very short time, you can attract followers in the hundreds if not thousands.

4. Linking to The Big Dogs. Write out a list of your keywords and then run Google searches on each. Make a list of the top 50 to 100 websites that come up that you would like to link to. All of the websites on the top of any Google rank page will have the highest Google page rankings. A couple methods to use is by entering their website address into your site's trackbacks. This will notify the site that you are linking to them. This is a do unto others type of a thing. Because you are linking to them, if you have a good website, they are more inclined to link back. You will also ride the wave of their high page rank. next, and probably the easiest, is to research their websites for a reciprocal link tab on the site. This would allow you to enter your website address onto their site and in return you add theirs to your site.

5. Become a Blogger. Do you have a blog? If not, why? Google and the other search engines love blogs because they are jammed packed with content. After you have 10 or so posts, submit your blog to the top blog directories. When you do this, make sure you enter your blog address or its sub-domain. If you don't nothing will link to you. Whenever you make a blog entry, email your list notifying them of it and paste in the blog post sub-domain. Also, make entries in all of your social media sites too. The easiest way to do this is to use OnlyWire or Ping.fm which submit the blog page to 25 to 40 or so media sites at the same time.

6. Article Submissions. Article marketing is by far the easiest and sometimes the quickest way to build links, traffic and credibility at the same time. Much like this article, you must provide content in your article that is specialized and strategies that are need to know information for your readers. Many ezine editors go to the article directories for blog and website content. Every time one of your articles gets picked up, you will receive at least one link back. Using software like Article Submitter will assist you in working smarter not harder by submitting one article to over 300 directories at the same time.

So, here you have it, a quick and easy to implement strategic plan for link building. Take one at a time and hit it hard. Some will take longer than others, but in the long run, it will pay off in an avalanche of links.

Article source http://www.examiner.com/x-13133-Columbia-Internet-Marketing-Examiner~y2009m6d10-Link-Building-Insider-Tips-A-SixStep-Link-Building-Strategic-Plan 

Small software cos make the most of slowdown

20 Feb 2009, 0113 hrs IST, Jayashree Bhosale, ET Bureau

PUNE: The current economic slowdown is proving to be a time for growth for the really small software companies. These tiny-to-small software 

companies, which provide search engine optimisation

(SEO) and e-marketing, are in huge demand. “Thanks to the slowdown, my business has grown 200%, I have doubled my manpower and have had to turn down some business. 

Companies from sectors as varied as pharma, insurance, retail, malls and fashion houses are in search of business. Hence they want to move more traffic to their websites by going for SEO,” said Anand Chaini, proprietor of Ujjain-based Webcraft.com. He expects to clock a turnover of Rs 72 lakh this fiscal.

SEO refers to ensuring that a specific company figures in the top ten list when a key word is used to search the web.Similarly, there is a spurt in non-conventional marketing media like SMS-based and e-mail marketing as companies are looking for low-cost advertising. “There is a 100% growth in the number of customers using e-mail and SMS marketing. The minimum cost per client in targeted emails is 15 paise,” said Nihar Vaidya, proprietor of Pune-based businessyatra.com.

The top real estate companies, speciality malls, car rental service providers, etc, are opting for this medium of advertising. Most of them prefer smaller companies for cost benefit. Website designing has also managed to maintain the status quo despite slowdown. However, working capital has shrunk, leading to layoffs of around 20-40%.

“Our sales have not been affected by the recession. As people have less business now, they find time in such periods to give attention to their websites. But our outstandings have increased, forcing us to lay off 4 to 5 people,” said Ankur Raje, proprietor of Pune-based webpage designing firm Proweb.

Graphinet Solutions, a Pune-based company with a turnover of Rs 1.7 crore in the last fiscal, has also witnessed a 20% growth in business after November, 2008. “A large number of US-based companies outsource their website designing to us. This flow of business is intact and growing. Yet, we had to lay off about 10 people from our team of 45 employees,” Graphinet director Chetan More said.

Above article published on economictimes.indiatimes.com

4 Quick Ways To Build Quality One-Way Links

How to build quality one-way links for keeping your website at the top of the search engine rankings for your profitable keywords.

byTitus Hoskins

How well you do in this "link quest" will largely determine the success or failure of your site or online business. Assuming of course, you're going after free organic traffic from the search engines and not using PPC (Pay Per Click) or other means of succeeding online.

Link building and achieving top placements in the search engines (especially Google) has been my main objective for over ten years of online marketing. It has been a constant daily struggle to build those quality one way links and to get those top rankings and keep them.

First, some general tips on how you should approach your link building from the get-go. You must realize the web is based on content; web surfers/users are looking for quality content. If you can supply valuable content that the surfers want, you will build your links naturally. People will see your content and want to link to it. This process is often referred to as link baiting - you make your content/offer so irresistible, they will not only want it but they will go out of their way to tell others about your fantastic content.

Quality content is the first key to link building but there are many more. Especially if you take a more "hands-on" approach to actively building your quality one-way links. Be careful not to link to "spammy" link farms and it's probably a good idea to always check the Gooogle PageRank PR of any site or page you link to on the web.

Many cautious webmasters/marketers won't link to anything less than a PR3 page but use your own judgment here. Buying links is frowned upon by Google but many webmasters and marketers do use this method to purchase embedded one-way links with their chosen "anchor text" which is the clickable, underlined part of a link.

Actually, over time big business will probably dominate most, if not all of the "profitable keywords" on the entire web. They have the resources to "buy" their way to the top and this process will only accelerate, despite Google's objection or efforts to stop it. Money talks, morality walks.

In any case, most starting webmasters don't have the resources to buy links and it's much more easier to get them through free methods on the web. There are numerous ways of getting quality links:

• place your links in directories - free and paid
• join online forums and place your links
• do recommendations and testimonials
• viral videos with your embedded links
• join social media sites like MySpace Facebook, etc.
• use hub traffic sites like Squidoo and Hubpages
• use Google sites like Google News, Google Docs, Google Knol
• use Wikipedia to build links
• use Yahoo Answers and those types of sites
• use eBay and sites like Craigslist
• use viral ebooks and software programs

Now, I have used all of the above link building methods and many more over the years but I would like to explain to you my most effective link building techniques since these are the proven methods that have worked for me. For in the end, we can only discuss our own marketing experiences and what has worked for us. No doubt you may have heard of many of these link building methods before... but here goes:

Article Marketing

This is still one of the most effective ways to build good one-way links to your site. I know this is "old school" but it still works. At least for now, there are rumors Google is cracking down on article links but for now links in your article resource boxes are still very effective. From my own experience, article marketing is my most effective technique at building links. My sites and my online marketing were going nowhere until I started writing articles. Now I do aggressive article marketing using all the major online article directories...

The Top 5 Ones I Use Are: www.ezinearticles.com www.goarticles.com www.isnare.com www.ideamarketers.com www.buzzle.com

Now just look at my stats from ezinearticles alone and you will know why I use them. Account Statistics Articles Views: 421,327 Profile Views: 2,573 Articles Published: 4,787 URL Clicks: 49,480 Emailed: 115 Live Articles: 203 I have roughly 200 articles which have been viewed over 400,000 times which has sent around 50,000 visitors to my sites. Plus, I have around 5,000 places where my articles are published. And this is only for one online article directory - I have my articles in hundreds of them. It all adds up to a lot of links and traffic. For a good popular viral article I can get 2,000 to 3,000 links spread across the web. Whether you're just a webmaster or into online marketing you must realize all this stuff is a "numbers" game.

The more content you have out there, the more links you have on the web - the more traffic and visitors you get coming to your site. It's not rocket science, it's simple math. The more links you have, the higher probability someone will click them and come to your site.

The same goes for high rankings in the search engines, the more good quality links you have, the higher your rankings. Article marketing will give you highly targeted keyword links to your web pages. I also use SubmitYourArticle which will automatically submit my articles for me to many different article directories.

I use this service to save time but you can hand-submit your own articles. One last point about article marketing - you're not just using articles to build links, you're also using articles to "pre-sell" yourself, your site and/or your product. It's a very effective way of funneling interested visitors/buyers to your site. Many of my sales are already made before visitors reach my site.

AddThis Bookmark

Now I am not really into the "social media" sites but that has not stopped me from using them to my advantage. And it would be a BIG mistake not to use these social media sites for your own link building. Sites like MySpace, FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter, Digg, Linkedin... and thousands of others are very important for link building.

They are becoming even more important as Google moves away from articles and focuses on the "real interactions" taking place on these sites. Couple of years ago, I added the free AddThis Bookmark to all my sites. This is a simple code which lets your visitors bookmark your site or content in any or all of the major social media sites.

What's actually happens is that your visitors are building your links for you. I have gotten hundreds of links from these sites just by placing this simple bookmark on my sites. Truth be told, I nearly laughed at this idea at first - sure visitors to my sites would automatically bookmark and build links for me? No way that would happen? Wrong again! This really works, so if you want this simple way of building links just use the Addthis.com bookmark to your site or pages.

Link Building via Google Alerts

This method of building good quality one-way links does take a little more work but it is extremely effective, especially for getting high rankings in Google.

Here's how it works:

You sign-up for Google Alerts for your major keywords that you're promoting. Google will send you email alerts whenever a new page/site/link is created containing your keywords. You then go to those newly created pages to make a comment and add your link. Many of these new pages will be on blogs so you can easily add your comment and link.

The trick is to add valuable comments/content which the site moderator will approve because it adds to his/her site's value. Many will also approve your link because your link is related to their site and this is just good SEO practice.

The key here is to put yourself and your site in the whole discussion of related blogs, sites and forums relevant to your content. You want your site in the whole mix of things so that relevant links will flow naturally from the discussion. Now all your links won't be accepted but you can easily add 2 or 3 links each day with very little time spent on this. Great way to build links, hope you can give it a try.

Above article published originally on Promotionworld.