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Backlinks – A Little Used Method of Getting Your Link on High PR Sites

Technorati Tags: backlinks, building backlinks, ethical link building, inbound links, link popularity, one way links

Small Business – SEO Basics – Where Do You Begin Promoting Your Business Online?

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Cathy Henry

How do I get Traffic to my website?

Many small business make the mistake of beginning with their website when they want to begin promoting their business online. For those who are inexperienced, this would seem the logical place to start. Unfortunately, just having a website is not enough. You must be able to get traffic to the website in order to do business online.

Where does SEO begin?

Ideally, you would have consulted with an SEO specialist before having your site built. For most, that is not the case. There is a great deal to learn when it comes to how search engines work and how to get buying traffic to your website. You do not have that kind of time to spend. The logical solution is to hire someone with experience to help you along the way. It does not have to cost a great deal but you do need to spend money on your website to get the full potential from it and to bring your website in front of your prospective buyers.

One of the first things your web consultant will want to do is define who your target market is. This is done through keyword research and market analysis. Once your market is clearly defined and the choice keywords selected, you will be able to make the little changes to your website and all of your promotion materials that will bring traffic to your website. More traffic means more sales.

In a few months, once your website begins to build traffic, your consultant will be able to help you monitor the progress of your success. She will take the time to put together a monthly report so you will be able to see what is working and what is not. Once you see trends of success, you can then tailor your efforts and streamline them into spending more time on what is working and less time on what is not.

Because search engines and traffic trends are ever changing, your SEO consultant will be a valuable asset to your business. Their business depends on staying on top of these trends so you can be sure your website promotion campaigns are as current and effective today as they were in the past. You are busy running your business. You do not have time to spend staying on top of another industry, namely SEO.

How much does SEO cost?

Your SEO consultant will take the time to work with you to find a solution within your budget. Even small business, or should I say, especially small business, can benefit from a helping hand when it comes to SEO. This service is not reserved for big businesses. Who knows, when you start getting enough traffic to your website, your small business may just turn into a big business.

Technorati Tags: getting traffic to website, outsource SEO, promoting small business websites, seo help, small business websites

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Backlinks – What if a Bad Neighborhood Site Links to You?

Posted on September 30, 2010 by Cathy Henry

Quality backlinks should always be your goal when planning your SEO strategy. We all know there are good links and bad links, but what should you do if you find a link to your site from a site that is considered to be a “bad neighbor”?

We talk a great deal about how to get high quality inbound links, but we rarely discuss what to do if you get links from sites that are considered to in bad neighborhoods. Managing your site reputation is also a factor to consider in a good SEO strategy.

As far as SEO is concerned, what are bad neighborhoods?

A site with illegal content, no original content or sites that practice banned behaviors have been labeled by Google as bad neighborhoods. These sites are typically spammer domains or sites that use techniques to attempt to manipulate search engine rankings.

Will it damage your reputation if these types of sites link to you? Technically, no. Google recognizes that you do not control who is linking to you, but you must be very, very careful not to link back to them. For this reason, you want to really monitor your trackbacks and blog comments to be sure that you do not approve a site in a bad neighborhood. Any links you have on your site are considered your own responsibility so you must be very choosy about the ones that you approve.

If you find that you have an extremely large number of inbound links that are low quality, you must double your efforts to get high quality links to balance them out. You can try to contact some of the sites and request that they remove your links from their sites, but in all honesty, you are better off spending that time increasing the right kind of links to your site.

Concentrate on getting some very powerful links such as links from .edu or .gov sites and sites that have a page rank above a PR 5. Google expects you to have some lower quality links as it would not be natural to have all PR9 links. Making steady efforts to get the best sites to link to you will negate any ill effects you may have gotten from bad neighbors linking to you.

Monitoring your progress and the source of links to your site is a good habit to get into. There are a good many tools available online that will help you do this. Link checker sites and Yahoo Site Explore will provide you with a good deal of information on where your links are coming from. If you find some that really bother you, you can then take action to contact the webmaster and request they remove the offending link.

For the most part though, you need not concern yourself overly much about things that are out of your control. Just keep your eye on the ball when it comes to the things you do control and never stop building the highest quality backlinks yourself.

Backlinks – Useful Content Encourages Viral Linking

Backlinks – A Little Used Method of Getting Your Link on High PR Sites

Technorati Tags: backlinks, link building strategies, linking to bad neighborhoods, managing site reputation, what are bad neighborhoods, what makes a site a bad neighbor

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Backlinks – Getting What You Want By Giving What Bloggers Want Most

Posted on September 30, 2010 by Cathy Henry

Quality backlinks are easy to come by if you are creative and think outside the box when it comes to how you approach a blogger for a link to your site. A wise person once told me, “You can have or use anything anyone else has if you just give them what they want the most in exchange.”

For bloggers, the one thing they need a never ending supply of is good quality content. If you are comfortable with writing articles and blog posts, you can have a never ending supply of quality inbound links just by leveraging what you have to get what you want.

Let’s say you have your eye on a particular site within your niche that has a high page rank and you would really like to put your link on the site. You know that a blog comment has a good chance of being rejected if it is obvious that you are only leaving the comment for the sake of the backlink. Instead, try emailing the site owner and offering to write a couple of articles for them. Tell them that you would be happy to write on any topic they wish in exchange for placing your anchor text link within the article. Make sure you let them know it will be original content and they will have the full rights to it.

This will mean they can post it to article directories if they so choose, but you must stipulate that the article be posted on their blog and your links need to be left intact. They may ask to see a sample of your writing before agreeing so make sure you have a few really killer articles already prepared or already posted on your blog that you can show them as an example of the quality of articles you will be providing for them free of charge.

Most often, a blogger that posts daily on their blog is likely paying for ghostwriters to create content for them. By offering to write a few articles at no charge, you are saving them money so they may very well jump at your offer.

If for some reason they turn you down, be gracious. Tell them that the offer still stands should they ever consider it in the future. You want to keep the channels of communication open because you never know if there will be an opportunity down the road when your site is very well established to possibly joint venture with this site at a later date.

Remember that you can leverage what you have to get quality backlinks, even if you do not think you have anything to offer. Your time is worth money to those who have little time to spare themselves.

Backlinks – Useful Content Encourages Viral Linking

Backlinks – A Little Used Method of Getting Your Link on High PR Sites

Technorati Tags: backlinks, building backlinks, how to get high pr links, quality backlinks, where to get high pr links

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Backlinks – A Little Used Method of Getting Your Link on High PR Sites

Posted on September 30, 2010 by Cathy Henry

Getting quality backlinks can be tough, but there are a few little tricks you can use that work very well. There are two things that most webmasters and marketers love; one is talking about themselves and the second is having others talk highly about them.

It is human nature to like to hear good things being said about you. You can use this to your advantage and get desirable sites to link to your website. It’s easy really, all you have to do is write a glowing review on your blog. You might review the product, the website or the person heading the business.

Don’t make it too cheesy, you want it to be believable and genuine. Don’t make it too obvious that you are just writing it in hopes that they will link to the post, although that is exactly what is motivating you. Give an honest and heartfelt review. It helps if you really have bought and used their product. They are much more likely to give you that coveted link if they know you are indeed a customer.

An unsolicited testimonial is a valuable commodity to any business. A wise business owner knows that word-of-mouth referrals can mean more business for them. Not only will they enjoy the bit of ego stroking you are giving them, but they will recognize the potential business your generous words may generate for them. This just may make them feel like the least they can do is link to your website.

The trick is to not ask for the link. When you email them to let them know you have posted about them on your blog, give them the link to the actual blog post where their review can be read and make sure you include your main domain in the signature of your email. You can be almost certain, they are going to want to share your testimonial with all of their visitors by including the link to the post somewhere within their site.

You can use this method many times, with many sites, but a word of caution; do not make them generic, reuse the same template for them all or make the reviews a “cookie cutter” type of post or it will backfire on you. You can be sure that when they come to check out the review you have written, they will check out your site to learn a bit more about you. If they read identical posts about other businesses with just the names changed, they will discount your review as spam and you will not get the desired results.

Make sure you have lots of other posts that are not business reviews in your site. This will make the website owner feel more special. If you blog daily, then try to do one of these reviews no more than once per week. You don’t want to turn your blog into a review site, unless that was the main intent in the first place.

Give it a try, you will be surprised at how easy it is to get those quality backlinks by just saying something nice about people. As the saying goes, “You attract more bees with honey…”

Backlinks – Useful Content Encourages Viral Linking

Technorati Tags: backlinks, high PR links, how to get backlinks, quality backlinks

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Backlinks – Useful Content Encourages Viral Linking

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Cathy Henry

Getting organic backlinks can be the toughest challenge a website owner faces, but it doesn’t have to be that difficult if you create content that is not only informative but also useful. The question I always get asked is “How do I get other sites to link to mine without having to chase after them?”

The answer is simple. Provide the type of useful information that anyone in your market will use on a daily basis or is difficult to find anywhere else.If you start to pay attention to the sites you are visiting on a regular basis, or better yet, take a look through your own personal bookmarks, and look at what types of pages you have saved because you thought they were important enough that you might want to return to them in the future.

Those pages will give you the biggest inspirations as to the types of content you should be making available on your own website to entice your visitors to not only bookmark them for later use, but to also share with their friends and web visitors. Most importantly, ask people to share it. Tell them that you really appreciate them passing the info along to others and give them the ability to easily post it to social sites by providing a “Like” or “Tweet” button right on the page.

These are a few suggestions for content that attracts organic linking.

Be the first to report news related to your market. If you do this on a consistent basis, your visitors will soon start linking to your site as a great source of information.
Create a resource. Whether it be a tool or a list, if it is useful to people they will place a link on their site to share it with others. Everyone wants to provide value to their visitors, by doing the grunt work yourself and offering it as a free resource, the other webmasters can benefit from your hard work.
Contests. These can spread like wildfire. Hold a contest and send the word out to your visitors and subscribers. Get them to pass it along to others. You might even consider offering incentives for people who share it on Twitter or Facebook or create a blog post that includes the link.

These are just three examples of ways you can use your content to encourage people to place links on their websites. There are many more ways and you should put your thinking cap on to come up with other creative ways of creating very useful or valuable content for your visitors.

Technorati Tags: back linking, backlinks, inbound links, link building strategies, viral marketing

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Backlinks – Why Does It Have To Be So Hard?

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Cathy Henry

High PR Back Links

Getting backlinks is one of the most important aspects of an SEO strategy. Some even think that if you do nothing else, this is the one thing that can get your site to rank well in search engines. While, as an SEO specialist, I believe there is more to it than that, I do agree that building backlinks ranks at the top of importance as far as getting your website to the first page of search engines.

The one thing I would stipulate is the difference in quality inbound links as compared to one way links you would get from an unranked blog comment. There is a vast difference in the effect it will have on your SEO campaigns. You can waste your time building massive numbers of links from the small, low PR sites and it will likely have very little impact on your site position in the search engines.

You need some heavy hitters in the mix to really advance your standings. By heavy hitters, I mean High PR backlinks. These are links from sites that Google, Yahoo and Bing consider to be of the highest quality sites.

Why do quality High PR backlinks have to be so hard?

Simply put, if it were easy then everyone would be doing it and it would soon become a non-factor in ranking your site. You should celebrate the fact that it is difficult to get them. That means that if you concentrate your efforts on getting some high quality backlinks, you will always have an advantage over your competition because most people will not put in the time, or simply do not know how to go about getting them.

If you know the tricks that SEO experts use to help their clients get to page one of Google, it really is not that difficult. One of the fastest ways to make an impact on your search engine results position is to get some .edu and .gov links. These are considered the highest quality links but they are extremely hard to come by. The fact that they are near impossible to get is one of the reasons they factor in so highly when it comes to page ranking.

Now, before you rush out and pay some college kid $100 to place your link on their student blog, you must understand that in order for your .edu backlinks to really count, they must be on the main site and not just on a low pr student blog.

Technorati Tags: back links, backlinks, edu back-links, gov back-links, high pr backlinks, inbound links

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Backlinks – Quality vs Quantity

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Cathy Henry

Backlinks are the basis of any good SEO strategy. Without them, you will never get the best rankings for your website in search engines. But do not assume that any links will do. The search engines are looking at a number of factors when deciding where to put a website in their search results.

While the number of inbound links is part of the picture, the full picture includes quality and relevance of links. A site with a smaller number of backlinks pointing to their side may well outrank a site that has a massive amount of back-links only because the first site has inbound links from quality, trusted sites. Some venture to guess that a high page rank link is worth more than 100 from poor quality sites. I personally think it is worth much more.

There is a big difference between high quality links and poor quality links. Gov or .edu website links can make all the difference when it comes to obtaining the first page of search engines. One of the reasons why these connections have such an effect is because they are harder to come by and it is believed that this type of sites only links to other reputable web pages.

Another factor is the relevance. Just sending your links out willy nilly can improve your numbers, but it will do very little when it comes to SEO benefits as the sites are not related to your keywords or site topic. There is also being associated with a “bad neighborhood” to consider and that may be harmful to the reputation of your site if you are connected to sites that are flagged as such by the search algorithms.

So many times I see inexperienced webmasters who want to buy large amounts of links from inexperienced link building suppliers and think they are growing their link popularity, when in fact they do more harm to their own page quality score by practicing this method for link building. That’s another thing that Google, Yahoo and Bing also look at. There should be a natural progression of this popularity. It does not look natural to have 5,000 new links pop up one day and then nothing for another week and then another 5,000 suddenly appear. This pattern shows the search engines that you are trying to manipulate their ranking and may well be that your site gets de-indexed or banned.

The best way is to find a means to get good, high quality inbound links and build a few each day. If you build 10 of these every day, it will mean that you grow your link popularity by 300 per month. That is nothing to be sneezed at, if they all count and all good from all areas and from trusted sites. Doing this for even one month, your site jump into the top spot if your keyword is not incredibly competitive and if it is competitive, without these kinds of links you have no chance no matter how many low quality links you get.

There is no way around it, backlinks are important to your success so you might as well get used to this and start working on building the types of links search engines value the most and stop wasting your time and money on methods that do nothing to improve your page ranking.

Technorati Tags: back links, backlinks, building back links, inbound links, link building, link popularity

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The Importance of Backlinks to Your SEO Strategy

Posted on September 28, 2010 by Cathy Henry

If you have read anything about or studied Search Engine Optimization, you have come across the term “backlink” at least once. For those who are new, you may be wondering what a backlink is, & why it is important to SEO. Backlinks have become so important to the scope of Search Engine Optimization, that it is the foundation of any good SEO strategy. In this article I’ll explain what a backlinks are, why they’re important & what you can do to gain them while avoiding getting into trouble with search engines.

What are “backlinks”? Backlinks are links that are pointing to your website. Sometimes called inbound links (IBL’s). The amount of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of your site. Backlinks are important for SEO because some search engines, especially Google, will give more credit to websites that have a good amount of quality backlinks, and consider those websites more relevant than others in their search engine results pages (SERP) when someone searches for your keyword.

When search engines calculate the relevance of a site for a keyword, they consider the amount of QUALITY inbound links to this site. So we shouldn’t be satisfied with merely getting inbound links, because the quality of the inbound link really does matter.

A search engine considers the content of those sites and determines the quality of the link. When there are inbound links to your site from other sites, and those sites have content relevant to your site, these inbound links are considered more appropriate for your site. If the inbound links are on sites with totally unrelated content, they’re considered less relevant. The higher the relevance of incoming links, the better is its quality.

For example, if a webmaster has a website on how to rescue orphaned kittens, and it received a backlink from another website about kittens, it would be considered more relevant in a search engine quality score than say a link from a site about boating. The greater the relevance of the content linking back to your site, the greater the quality of the backlink.

Search engines like web sites having a level playing field, so they look for natural links built slowly over time. Although it’s fairly easy to manipulate links on a web page to try to achieve a higher ranking, it’s much harder to influence a search engine with external backlinks from other websites. This is also a reason that backlinks factor in so highly into a search engine algorithm. Recently, however, the search criteria for the quality of incoming links received has become even more difficult, thanks to unscrupulous webmasters trying to manipulate inbound linking by by deceptive or sneaky methods, such as hidden links, or automated pages whose only purpose is to provide incoming links to websites. These pages are called link farms, and they’re not only ignored by search engines, but if your site is linked to one it could get your site banned or deindexed.

Many marketers have multiple websites. These websites are sometimes related, sometimes not. You must be careful about interlinking multiple websites on the same IP address. If you own 5 related sites, a link to each of these websites on a single page can hurt you because it may appear to the search engine that you’re trying to manipulate them. Too many links to sites with the same IP address is considered backlink bombing and is frowned upon.

The interconnection of these sites do not help you from a search engine standpoint. The only reason you might want to link your sites in the first place might be to give your visitors extra resources to on the subject. In this case, it’d probably be okay to provide visitors with a link to another site, but try to avoid numerous instances of linking within the same IP address. A couple of links on a page now and again will probably not hurt you but only if those links provide value to your visitors.

Building quality backlinks is extremely important to SEO, and because of their importance, it should be very high on the priority list in your search engine optimization efforts. I hope you now have a better understanding of why you need good quality inbound links to your site.

I have discovered to get an unlimited number of high quality .edu and .gov backlinks to your website. Nothing unethical or black hat. Not even grey hat. This is 100% pure gold content.