Link Building

Author : Henry Adaso
Internet Copywriter

Oh boy, what a week it’s been in SEO land. In the past few days or so, we’ve seen the launch of a revamped version of Google Trends, the rise of Plurk, the all-around drop in traffic, and some SEO battle between the websites of our two presidential candidates.

Google Trends - The search engine behemoth we all know as Google has added yet another fun little tool to make our Internet experience a lot more exciting. You can now rely on Google Trends to predict the future of your business.

Plurk - It seems there’s at least 1 new social media site (or 10!) out every day. Plurk, the Twitter-like networking portal, is the latest to hit the web. I can’t complain, though; that just means one more social media tool for all of us.

Candidates’ Sites - The SEO watchdogs at Search Engine Land couldn’t wait for the inevitable presidential debates to point out the differences between John McCain and Barack Obama. Their post on the layout differences between JohnMcCain.com and BarackObama.com stirred up an interesting debate on Sphinn.

Link Building - And what’s an SEO week without some pointers on link building? We paused to examine 10 ways to get natural links for search engine optimization.

Traffic Plunge - If you suddenly noticed a traffic plunge, you’re not alone. Many high PageRank sites have seen a huge loss in traffic this past week. Most of these pages are still being indexed, even if their PR values have taken a hit. There are several reasons why you may be losing traffic, but that’s a topic for another day.

For now, continue in your path towards SEO nirvana by creating high-quality content, relying on natural link building techniques, and staying ahead of your competitors in the SEO rankings race.

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Author : Thomson Chemmanoor
SEO Coordinator

There is no doubt that the power of backlinks is an important factor to improve your search engine ranking. There are several people trying to game the search engines by falsely inflating backlinks to their site. This methodology of getting links will fail when Google slaps them right on top of their head as they loose all the ranking which they were trying to build.

One of the effective ways to get natural links coming from other sites is by making your website a quality source of content for visitors. By this way, people naturally start linking to the site because of the quality of the content.

Here are some effective natural techniques to get you the backlinks you will need:

1) Syndicate News and Articles Distributing articles and press releases to article directories, industry related PR sites, and media outlets can generate authority links which will boost your website ranking. Creating newsworthy press releases and interesting articles gets noticed by other website owners, journalists, and bloggers which can attract natural links from their websites.

2) Conducting Web Contests - Web contests are very popular now a days and it can go viral if the winning prize has a good cash value. These kinds of online contest products create an incredible amount of buzz around the blogsphere if you are able to get the word out. A few hundred dollars can result in getting thousands of dollars worth of traffic and backlinks.

3) Offering Freebies Everyone loves to get free offers. You must offer good quality content that has value without any obligation attached to it. It will spread the word and people start linking back to the offer. One of the best examples is creating a free tool like an online calculator or a tool which is valuable to the industry.

4) Product Review and Testimonials Most people look for reviews that they can trust before buying any product. Try reviewing products on other websites and if you have the option - put your website URL in the review. Also, companies will be interested in getting testimonials from their customers. If you have a chance to put a testimonial along with your website address, this will give your website a back link.

5) Sign Up with Social Media Adding your website in your social media profile will get you backlinks. For example, profiles in your Twitter and Linkedin accounts give you the option to add your website which shows up as a backlink in search engines.

6) Share Knowledge Sharing your knowledge will get you backlinks too. Answering peoples questions in sites like: answers.yahoo.com, www.linkedin.com/answers, and www.answerbag.com will make others think that you are an expert in the field and will link back to you. The key is to give quality information to the question they post.

7) Run Your Own Affiliate programs Run affiliate programs for your website address embedded within the JavaScript of the tracking code. Offering higher commission is the key to get more people to join your affiliate program and start promoting your program.

8 ) Creating Widgets for Blogs Coming up with widgets for blogs and spreading the word out to bloggers can get massive amount of links back to your site. Widgets are easy and simple way to add some flare to blogs which generates a ton of backlinks.

9) Offer Free EBooks Offering free information through downloadable eBooks can get links. You need to embed the links within the content of the eBook to get back links. You should allow the users the right to republish those eBooks without changing the embedded links.

10) Comment on Do-Follow blogs There are several blogs which have do-follow links on the comment files where you can put your website address while you engage in the blog posts conversations. By default, all blogs have no-follow tags, but you need to identify those blogs that allow do-follow on their comment fields.

A good link building strategy is just a good way of marketing. Its all about being creative and thinking outside the box. When you incorporate these tactics, it will set you apart from the competition as it gets you the backlinks that you will need to create a presence.

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Author: Henry Adaso
Internet Copywriter

So now that you know why you should start building links today, are you ready for some tips? If you’re an expert in the field of search engine optimization, you may already know most of these. For the rest of us, here are 5 characteristics of a quality link.

Informative - No reader will fault you for linking off to an article or website that adds value to their experience. But linking to a sub-par site is an easy way to lose readership.

Credible - Quality inbound links come from credible sites. Elevate your own credibility by offering only fair, objective, and accurate information to readers. If you establish yourself as a trusted source, inbound links will be less difficult to obtain.

Descriptive - Explain what the link has to offer. Why should a reader click on the link? Don’t use phrases like “click here” when crosslinking. Use a creative signal phrase instead.

Brief and Useful - Writing links in blocks of sentences or paragraphs is bad SEO practice. Keep it brief and user-friendly or it will look like you forgot to close a tag.

Groundbreaking - Be the first to report a breaking news story in your niche and others will be happy to credit you for the gesture.

In summary, a quality link is brief, useful, descriptive, and enhances user experience. If you’re new to SEO, you may first want to get acquainted with linking, inbound & outbound links.

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Author: Henry Adaso
Web Copywriter

Link building, a term which generally refers to the strategies people implore in order to attract inbound links, is a good way to improve search engine ranking. Web users sometimes worry that building links too fast might land them on Google’s bad side. The truth is, as long as you’re building links organically it doesn’t matter how fast you do it. I’ll get back to that later, but for now, here are 5 reasons to get started with link building:

• It gets you noticed: Link building gets you clean, direct (almost always free) click-through traffic. If you’ve been blogging for a while with no real traffic success, link building just might be the tool you need to get closer to your dream of becoming a webtrepreneur.

• Your readers will like you better: Your readers come to you for the unique insight you have to offer, but they also like to get other people’s perspectives on the same issues. So, linking off to fresh web content elsewhere that they may not have noticed will make them happy campers.

• Google will like you better: Linking to legitimate sites is a great way to improve Google ranking — even better, if they link back to you. As I mentioned earlier, the key is in cultivating links naturally.

• Others will appreciate your gesture — and probably return the favor: Directing your readers to valuable content on other people’s sites engenders a feeling of gratitude on the other side. It’s still one of the most effective reciprocal linking strategies.

• All the cool people are doing it: Take a look around. Every successful site is making link connections (internal and external) these days. It’s the Internet version of neighborhood block parties, minus the ol’ skool boombox.

One more thing (aka fine print):

Not all links will get you the search engine optimization success you’re looking for. Linking to scam websites or other “bad” sites, for example, is an easy way to get penalized by search engines. In the same vein, starting a random blog about gulpers and purchasing 10,000 inbound links in one day isn’t exactly smart link building technique. Peruse the website you’re linking to and see if it can be valuable to your readers. Reciprocal link is better than no link at all. Form good relationships with other bloggers. That will enable you to send brief, polite link requests to them whenever you have something unique to offer.

Keep in mind that it may take a while before your efforts start to yield dividends, so exercise some patience.

Happy link building!

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