Posts Tagged ‘link building’
How to Build Links the Easy Way
Building links has never been easy but there is a key to building links faster – Organization. Yes there are various ways to build links, to name a few:
• Directory Submission
• Article Writing and Submission
• Social Bookmarking
• Social Media like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube
• Blogging
Sound easy, yes but it eats up most of your time and could be boring, a tedious job. But this could get complicated if you do not plan properly and organize your work. Organization is always the key to build links faster, know how and where to build links. To do that, you only need three (3):
• First ask yourself this, what does my competitor do to build links and where? Always start with your competition and take note of it. Conduct an in-depth competitor analysis. If you are familiar with the Blue Ocean Strategy – Create uncontested market space. Make the competition irrelevant. You don’t necessary outperform the competition but rather you create a new market space. Even if it’s use on running a businesses there is still a way to adapt this concept on your SEO campaign as a whole or on link building activities – adapt the concept on how you are going to formulate and execute your strategy.
• Next thing is creating a list of topics if you need to create blogs or write an article, list of top quality article directories for submission, directory sites, niche blogs and forums for posting. In short, create a list of where to post to and proper documentation of other things you need to build links like photos and videos for your Social Media Campaign.
• Lastly, keep a record of information for directory, article submission among others. For directories at least create 3-5 variations, to cover directories that require a certain number of Titles and Description, also keep note of the keyword and contact information all in one doc file. For article directory, create an author bio, one in HTML and one in doc/text file, this way it would be easier whenever you sign-up for an account. Keep track of all this information, create a folder for this campaign. When you submit article/directories, create an excel file to keep track of all the activities.
By being organized, you can build links fast because you eliminate redundancy of work, unnecessary work load like going through the list of top directories over again every time you submit to directories, manually typing the information or worst providing all the information needed only to find out you already posted on that site. You minimize confusions by having an organize list of the things needed and the output of all activities. You can really build links fast, just stay organize and see the result. 5-10 minutes deducted on each activity you perform can make a big difference as a whole.
For additional reading on link building strategies visit 10 Link Building Strategies.
When to Stop Building Links?
You should never stop building links; you should always be on guard for sites vying for the same keywords. Everybody wants to be on the first page of Google, Yahoo or Bing and when you reached that target it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to stop. Let’s not forget that being visible on the web opens a door for bigger opportunities. If you want to stop building links just because you reached your target, ask yourself if you’re ready to lose your spot on the search engine result page (SeRP), maybe then you’ll have a second thought.
Building links is easy you just have to do it the right way to prevent being considered as a spammer. Another, you also need to educate yourself from time to time of other ways to get a free traffic or a back link to your site. It’s not just about Directory Submission, Article Submission, Blog Commenting or participating in community forums, if you know how to strategize, you’re up for a hundred possibilities. You don’t have to tire yourself writing articles all over again, comment to blog post you’re not interested reading, try out something new. I’m not saying article marketing is not an effective tool. All I’m saying is, sometimes building links doing the same activity could be tiring plus if you don’t try out something new, you’ll never know which works best or which also drive traffic to your site.
If you’ve reached your target, keep on building links, but this time ADD something new to the activities that brought you to the first page of SeRP. Also, add a new keyword to target, remember, you don’t need to stop targeting the same keywords, you only have to add additional keyword to the list and promote it as well. You can strategize on this one. Believe it or not, it could drive more traffic to your site without losing your position – more traffic to a new set of keywords added, therefore, expanding your horizon.
Don’t stop building links…just be creative…strategize…
Link Wheel Building – Will it Wheel for You?
Yes, definitely, link wheels are an excellent way to generate more traffic to your site. Some may not be familiar with it since people tend to focus on what’s talked about with regards to link building. We always hear the same old approach of getting back links, and jump start right with it without proper planning.
I am not saying that this don’t work, of course it does, blog commenting works provided that you post comments on relevant site, else it will not give any PR boost to your site. Directory submission is an excellent way to establish your site. Article marketing is another way to build back links. What I am actually saying is a strategy or an approach you could implement to build links.
First let me define what is a link wheel, basically, it is a set of links interconnected with one another and pointing towards your main website. Link wheel building therefore is creating interlinked pages pointing in one direction.
This is Web 2.0 properties comes in handy, such as Squidoo and Hubpages. The idea here is to create unique article for each high PR site. This article then has an anchor text pointing back to one of the pages created.
For example your site offers website design, web development and search engine optimization (SEO) services. You then build article pertaining to website design like “How to Create SEO Website Design Friendly”, create an anchor text, your strong keyword that you want to rank and submit it to Ezine or other high PR article directories (the resource box is the great place to place your anchor text). Next create another hub or lens on Squidoo or whichever you choose pertaining to SEO, with another anchor text pointing to the article you just created and another to the main website. The same will step will follow until you have created 6 spoke, preferably unique article – every spoke has two links, one pointing to the main website and the other pointing to the other sites you have created.
If you try to visualize the basic steps on link wheel building, it’s actually like a wheel in motion. When done properly, it could generate huge traffic to your site. It may be time consuming preparing articles and creating accounts but it’s a proven and tested way to boost your chances on appearing on Search Engine Result Page (SeRP).
10 Link Building Strategies
Various link building strategies can be implemented. To name a few, I listed down 10 common strategies that are use by most SEO experts. And before implementing your link building strategy make sure to analyze your competition. This could help you decide how to go about it.
1. Directory submission – make sure to submit your website to various website directory. Include paid listing such as Yahoo Directory, Yellowpages and Best of the Web, it would cost a bit but it pays to be more credible on the web.
2. You probably have an idea where your competitors are linking if you’ve analyzed your competition, from here try to get hold of any links linking back to your competitor site. You can send in a letter of intent to have your link included on their page, perhaps through link exchange or paid inclusion.
To make your job easier, Firefox offers various plug-ins like Foxy SEO tool to easily identify your competitor’s backlinks.
3. Write a Press Release. A well written Press Release could dramatically increase your sales and expose your company to the public.
4. Create a blog and actively read and write comments on other blogs.
5. Join online communities and actively participate in Forums.
6. Article Submission – this is a good and proven method that will ensure that your links will last for years. Listed down are some of the few article directories available on the web:
- Ezine Articles – Submit Your Best Quality Original Articles For Massive Exposure.
- Go Articles.com – Free content search engine and article directory.
- ArticlesBase.com – Submit articles for distribution, publication and promotion.
- Artcle Dashboard – Submit articles to the Article Dashboard directory, search and find free website and ezine content, and open an author submission management account.
- Article Alley - Submit articles to Article Alley for free syndication
7. Write a product or service review.
8. Link Baiting – natural method of link building. The key here is writing a buzz worthy content or providing free online tools. Read more information on Link Baiting
9. Resort to Pay Per Click (PPC)
10. Buy ads space.
In link building a combination of method is used to improve Search Engine position. This should be done regularly. There’s no sure way or a guaranteed combination of method and span of time to get your website ranked in Search Engines, it’s how you implement your strategies that will spell out your success.
10 Tips on Search Engine Optimization
There are so many ways to optimize a site but the key is to plan ahead and know exactly where to start before pushing through with your campaign. Below are some tips to help you optimize your website.
1. Choose the right keyword, you must first decide on what keyword you want to get higher ranking. Website owners would typically bid for a keyword to get higher ranking, you should optimize your site the best way you could to beat the competition. How? Analyze your competitors’ website, keywords they use, incoming links etc, in summary analysis of how they made it to no. 1 of Google or other Major Search Engines (SE’s). It will be your benchmark regardless of how old the site is.
2. Optimize your meta-tags using keywords
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Title that you would like to appear on SeRP</TITLE>
<META CONTENT=”description of the content”>
<META CONTENT=”keywords separated by comma”>
</HEAD>
Do not repeat your keywords on each tag and do not resort to unethical practices such as keyword stuffing. Suggested keyword density is 3-5 it’s the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page, according to Wikipedia.
Develop content that is unique, again, this should include your keywords with suggested keyword density.
3. Build SEO friendly URLs
4. Create Sitemap
5. Establish your site by submitting to trusted directories like Open Directory Project, Yahoo Directory and Yellowpages.
6. Submit to Web Directories and Search Engines
7. Build Links
8. Know when and how to use Social Media
9. Use Analytics to monitor progress and know which works best
To add to the list, don’t be afraid to experiment and be patient. SEO is a continuous process what works today may not work tomorrow.
Link Baiting – Has it Vanished?
Link baiting is a white hat technique which has been around since 2006. It has not vanished, it’s in fact one the safest method of link building. It’s a natural method of having viewers to link on your site perhaps because they find it interesting or worth the buzz. Although I personally no longer read a blog regarding link bait, successful companies usually implement this strategy, viewers are just not aware of the term with what they do when they link to other sites.
According to Wikipedia:
“Link bait is any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites. Attempts to create link bait are frequently employed in the overall task of search engine optimization. Matt Cutts defines link bait as anything “… interesting enough to catch people’s attention.”
So how are you going to create link bait? There are actually dozens of ways to do it, it’s not that easy, in fact you have to keep experimenting, same way as catching a fish – use the right hook and drop it at the right place. But when you succeed on this, you could make even millions of dollars. What do you think readers do when they link to a certain article on ezine to their site, or simply sharing it with others? Its link baiting, Search Engines prefer it because it’s “organic” – meaning natural, its quality vs. quantity when it comes to link popularity.
Some ideas on creating a link bait
- Writing something controversial (works all the time)
- Write a review (new gadgets, establishment or service)
- Oppose someone’s idea
- Write entertaining articles
- Provide useful list of resources
- Conduct a research on something
- Be up-to-date with what’s going on, technology, celebrity, economy etc. and share your opinion
There are far more than I can imagine, you just have to be creative and ask yourself what is your goal for creating link bait? Is it only for the link popularity or to attract a certain niche? You always have to start with something before preparing your bait to catch a big fish.