Building Mailing Lists, List Building, Social Media, Niche Marketing

Linking is the mechanism that connects all the pages on the Internet. You’ve got links throughout your web site to let people navigate their way around. You may have links going out to other web sites that you think will be useful for your visitors. And hopefully you have links coming into your web site from independent sources.

All types of links can impact your search engine optimization results, helping determine where your web site shows up online. Though the hardest to control, inbound links pointing to your site can make the biggest impact.

At its most basic, the concept is that if several high-quality sites are linking to your web site, then Google and other search engines figure your site must be a popular, valuable resource – and they will be more likely to show it higher in their search results. In effect, your site receives “link juice” from other web pages that link to it.

However, it’s not enough to secure a couple links and then sit still. The Google PageRank algorithm looks at the pattern of links to your site as they build over time.

Building the right kind of links can bring a major payoff, while a wrong turn could get you penalized – and the Google Sandbox is not easy to dig out of.

Armed with a bit of knowledge and some creativity, you can build up valuable incoming links naturally and powerfully, avoiding the traps that plague amateurs.

Spice Up Your Links With Some Variety

There are all kinds of link farming schemes to grow links, and you need to run the other way from these. This is also called reciprocal linking, where you exchange links with other web sites that will then link to you on a mass scale. Warning: Google is onto this.

While it’s perfectly advantageous to link to high-quality sites that also link to you, the key here is to cultivate a natural mix of links over time.

Is it natural to suddenly have 100 links pointing to your site, all with the same text? Of course not. When people link to you naturally, they might use your business name (SEO Advantage) or some variation on a descriptive phrase (search optimization company). If too many similar links exist, it can signal that those links were generated artificially and potentially result in penalties.

Also consider which pages on your site inbound links point to. Your home page is probably going to get the most, but it’s natural to have links pointing to specific pages inside your web site, too. Cultivate links to your services, your blog, your news pages, your articles, etc., to help those pages get indexed and build their own PageRank. Called deep links, these can help bolster your site’s overall performance.

Some links also carry a title tag, which is indicated in the source code. This is a little too technical to go into detail here, but if you can influence this you’ll want both the link text and title to vary a bit among the links pointing to your site. Once again, the key is to grow your links in a natural pattern.

Not Every Link Carries The Same Value

Links from popular, established web sites usually carry the greatest value. That’s because they have high PageRank from plenty of other people already linking to them. A link from CNN.com, for example, will carry much more weight than a link from a free press release distribution site that few people know of. Likewise, a link from www.sbdpro.com will have a greater impact than a link from a directory that uses no-follow tags.

No-follow tags are the bane of naive link builders. It’s tempting to think you can just link to pages on your site from your Twitter tweets, Facebook and other social media applications. However, many of these sites as well as online ads and also some directories employ “no follow” tags that prevent the search engines from following a link to your site. In this case, it’s as if the link doesn’t exist in the eyes of the search engines. (That doesn’t mean the links aren’t valuable to people who find you and follow the link, it’s just not helping your web site show up in Google.)

So, How Can A Business Build Incoming Links Naturally?

The mix of links created out on the web pointing back at your web site should avoid skewing toward any particular type. A good mix that you can influence may include:

• Directories – Professional organizations, online communities and forums, business directories, etc. can all potentially provide good links to your site. There are several premium directories that are staples in an SEO firm’s link building toolkit, like DMOZ.org. Keep in mind that your listing itself should be optimized in order to reap the full link juice benefits.

• Press Releases – Writing and submitting press releases online can help you get your news in front of more people and build links to your site. (Be sure to use best practices for writing and evaluate carefully your outlets for good links).

• Blogs – Link to relevant pages on your site from your blog. Build relationships online with other bloggers, too, and they may want to link back to you! Active blogs with high visibility and large followings are going to be your best bet, but you can mix it up over time targeting lesser known bloggers, too. Keep in mind that as other sites grow in PageRank, the value passed to your site will also grow.

• Create Some Link Bait – Make sure your content is so fascinating or funny that people will want to tell others about it. This is the ultimate for building naturally growing incoming links but of course hard to do.

A sample schedule could mean every month you líst your site in two good dírectories, link to interior site pages from a couple relevant posts in your blog, distribute one press release to news sites, and write one great article that other people may want to link to and then let them know about it.

A word about selecting outlets is in order, too. You’ll need to carefully assess each place you target in order to determine the link value they can pass onto you. For example, different press release submission sites and directories can offer you a wide variety in link value. This can be time-consuming to determine but worth it when your site’s PageRank starts to climb. (Find some information on how to evaluate outlets in this article on press release optimization.

See Who’s Linking To Your Web Site

You can see all the links pointing to your site via a couple handy tools online. Go to Google.com to see who Google is crediting with a link to you. Enter in the search box [link:www.yourwebaddress.com] without the brackets.

Not all your links are going to show here, though, but you can use Google’s free webmaster tools for more in-depth research if you’re inclined. You can also use the free Yahoo! Site Explorer to see what links Yahoo! shows pointing at your site.

Every month, make it a part of your link-building strategy to check for any new links and build relationships with more web properties. After all, a link is a compliment and a great way to network in addition to an important way to build value for your web site.

About The Author
Stone Reuning is president of SEO Advantage, a search engine optimization company that helps businesses harness the revenue generation potential of their websites. Referenced in books such as “Writing Web-Based Advertising Copy to Get the Sale” and the BusinessWeek bestseller “The New Rules of Marketing and PR”, http://www.seo-advantage.com offers information to help small businesses content online.

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Time and time again I hear webmasters complaining about their sites getting slapped. In fact, if you take a look at Google’s official webmaster forum, you’ll be shocked at the number of new threads where business owners are pleading with the moderators for a reason why their site has dropped 10 pages down the rankings.

It’s soon brought to their attention that the moderators have no control over the listings and 9 times out of 10 there’s nothing they can do to resurrect their sites’ rankings other than playing the waiting game.

How would you feel if you relied on Google for 80% of your traffic and it suddenly dropped in the rankings overnight? And, if you’re sitting there shaking your head thinking that it won’t happen to you because you’re a ‘good guy’ and you follow all the webmaster rules, then you need to seriously re-evaluate your mindset because time and time again I see innocent sites with great content get the “good news”.

Google reportedly updates its algorithm over 200 times a year

This time next week 50% of the backlinks pointing back to your site could be instantly discounted because the latest updates deems them as being too “spammy”. Where does that leave you? 50 places down the rankings and a dismal outlook for next quarter’s financial results.

So, now that I’ve scared the heck out of you, I’m going to give you five ways in which you can safeguard yourself from Google’s right hook and put you in a position far stronger than your competitors. It’ll also help you sleep at night!

1.Take Advantage of Untapped Traffic Sources

I am serious when I say the traffic generating potential online is incredible. By going one step beyond that of your competition you can really get a foot up and get your brand in front of a TON of laser targeted prospects.

Did you know that there are literally hundreds of high traffic web sites out there that will publish your content and let you include a small pitch and link back to your web site? I’m not talking about article directories here! I’m talking about hugely established and well respected sites that get hundreds of thousands of hits per month. So, do you think it’s worth spending a couple of hours writing an article to get your name in front of that hoard of traffic? Of course it is!

Are you skeptical? Don’t think that it works? Well, you’re reading my article aren’t you?

Not only will you get hugely targeted traffíc, but you’ll also get some incredibly powerful back links (to keep the big G happy until it gets trigger happy again), brand recognition and be able to establish yourself as an expert in your field.

Here’s a tip, if you’re a new startup and you’re doing something interesting and something that people will want to read about (a USP that nobody else delivers or an alternative way of thinking for example) then head on over to http://www.mashable.com and write them a nice little article. That’ll kick start your new business for sure!

2.Build A List Of Subscribers

Outside of the internet marketing niche and large corporate companies, I rarely see líst building done effectively. Yet building a list tripled my income within the first couple of months and helped me to build a relationship with prospects that over time I converted into buyers, some of whom became repeat buyers. Without a list I simply would not have a way of building up a relationship, trust, authority and my bottom line. So, in basic terms a list makes you more money, but it doesn’t stop there…

It also provides you with a sense of security – you have the peace of mind that comes with knowing that if at any time every single last piece of traffic dried up overnight, you’d still make the payroll and survive until you figured out the underlying problem.

But how do you build a líst of subscribers if you’re not technical? Hosted services such as Aweber have made it so simple to set up your autoresponder service that all you need to know how to do is copy a bit of code into your squeeze page – it’s as simple as that.

3. Start An Affiliate Program

I know some companies that do absolutely nothing to get traffic to their web site. They don’t write articles, they don’t backlink to their site, they literally do nothing and let an army of affiliates do the job for them. And the army produces incredible results!

The great thing about an affiliate program is that there is no risk as a vendor. You do the sums up front, figure out how much you’re prepared to pay someone for making a sale on your behalf and that’s that. How would you like a no-risk, pay on results, unlimited sized sales force at your disposal?

You can really attract a bucket load of affiliates if you’re selling digital products with reasonably high profit margins, high valued products so that you can afford to give quite large payouts per sale or, the gold pot of them all, a service that is billable on a monthly basis so that the affiliate can earn a small monthly retainer per sale.

And don’t be afraid to start an affiliate program – you don’t even need to run it yourself if you don’t want to. There are a number of excellent affiliate brokers out there who will manage the tracking, payments and creatives on your behalf – you just need to find one that suits you and get cracking. Should you choose a managed affiliate program then you’ll usually be expected to pay a small fee up front for setup costs and then a small percentage of earnings thereafter.

In Summary

Please, take my advice and don’t get into the position where your business is relying on Google. In the offline world it’s akin to being in the wholesale business with one contract to a huge retailer. What happens when that retailer doesn’t renew the contract? Bad things happen!

You can choose the three methods I’ve mentioned above, or find other ways of generating laser targeted traffic such as PPC, press releases, e-book creation, video marketing and so on – it doesn’t matter how you do it, just do it!

About The Author
95% of affiliate marketers are doing it wrong. Discover the 5 shortcuts to huge affiiliate cheques: http://www.amshortcuts.com – Paul McCarthy is a full time internet marketer who specializes in traffic generation, SEO, article marketing and consultancy.

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