Are There Any Great Link Building Activities Left?
A friend and fellow search engine optimization expert asked if I knew of any good link building tactics. I thought he must know the same thing that I know. That is, that relevant link building is getting harder and harder...it has been over the last 3 to 4 years. We both agreed that the best way to get links is to simply write great content and over time, people will then link to your great content. But what about beyond that? Directories? Articles? Blog comments? Online Publicity? The search engines always seem to be playing this never ending game of cat and mouse with links and search engine optimziation folks trying to build them. Truth is, link building is not CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Link Building Sources That Are Important
Everyone keeps telling us links are very important for our ongoing search engine optimization efforts. Some of these types of inbound links are obvious but some are not so obvious and could still generate both power and visitors to your website. It is important to understand all the variety of different types of relevant links that you are capable of achieving over time. Here are some of the most important types of links to build to your website: 1. Press Releases: Press releases are a very important ingredient to any online marketing campaign. Links embedded into the press release can generate very useful links for your website from other industry related sites. If it is a really newsworthy topic and other websites pick CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
PageRank Sculpting Is A Waste Of Time
Danny Dover at SEOmoz posted a "scientific" study on whether or not PageRank Sculpting works and his conclusion was - surprise! - it works. Michael Martinez at SEO Theory wrote a scathing refutation of the report. Who is right? I have to say that my concern is the same as Michael's and a few other prominent SEOs. Why doesn't Dover provide the list of websites he used for his study? He's asking us all to take his results as gospel without providing the necessary proof. That said, I'm willing to accept that maybe, possibly, PageRank Sculpting works under a few isolated cases. If the conditions are right you can influence your PageRank using internal links. But I'm not willing to buy CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Are Your Links Gaining Traction?
In the early days of the web people linked to the content they liked. And if it was considered "great content" then a certain page might attract a lot of links. At that time, a larger percentage of the actual Internet population were webmasters or Web marketers. But over time, more and more people came online and there is a much smaller percentage of people actually on the Web who are webmasters and who will link to you. There are a greater number of people who might link to you, but the percentage of people with link potential vs. people actually on the Web is smaller. Therefore, your pool of link partners appears smaller. That makes it more difficult to find those link partners. But you can CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Online Publicity is a Great Link Building Outlet
Many PR firms and search engine optimization companies know that press releases distribution online are a great relevant link building outlet as well as a promotion and buzz building outlet. But many SEO companies still do not employ press releases on a regular basis despite knowing their SEO potential because of the amount of work that is sometimes involved. Well, since social media has risen in popularity in the last couple of years, the press release has become even more important. A press release, like an article or a web page, can be optimized and faces the potential to be found in the search engines as well as any of online content. But social media can drive even more traffic to the press release and to CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Does Great Content = Great Rankings?
The age old question in the search engine optimization world is if you build wonderful, user focused content, will this lead to great search engine positioning and rankings? It's repeated often enough that you'd think it is true. Great content will get linked to and that will increase the search rank and the cream will rise to the top. Isn't that how search engine marketing works? In theory, yes, that is how it is supposed to work. And it's a nice theory. However, as is often the case, there is a gap between theory and practice. This gap is carefully pointed out by Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz. I'm not so sure about Rand's remark about 70%+, but I do agree that relevant CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How To Build Links For Bing
Link building is one of the most important tasks for any webmaster or marketer that is looking for long term search engine optimization growth. Google has taught us all that. But what about Bing? Now that Microsoft has waged a third quarter blitz to gain some competitive advantage against its arch nemesis, the folks in charge of indexing websites at Bing want to make sure we all understand the best practices for building inbound links to our websites. The good news is it's not a far cry different than building links for Google. The bad news is it's not a far cry different than building links for Google. Let me explain that. First, a little snippet from the Bing blog: Bing's position on link building is CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Is Article Marketing A Thing Of The Past?
More and more, I see articles popping up as guest post's on blogs and as premium content on websites. Of course, people are still using article directories to mass submit their articles to a variety of websites as well. But is that still an effective way to do it? It is true that article marketing has changed a lot in the last couple of years. The top-tier search engine marketers today are writing premium original content and sending it out to other websites for a link back. That's becoming much more effective than the old school way of mass distribution. But I wouldn't count mass distribution out just yet, just pick better places to submit your articles, such as eZine Articles, HubPages or Work.com. People said the CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
The High Value Of Second Generation Links
Off site search engine optimization or relevant link building is not just about building inbound links to one site and forgetting about it. A true link building plan is about building links for the purpose of driving up authority. But how do you do that? Well, authority is based on a number of factors, but one of those factors is link relevance. Another factor is link age. And another is the authority of the site linking to you. If the authority of the site linking to you is important then it makes sense that your inbound links need to be from a high authority site - some of them, at least. So how do you get high authority sites to link to you? One way is to CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Launch an Affiliate Program to Build Your Links
There are many white hat ways to build relevant inbound links, but there is one method of link building that is almost guaranteed to build you links if you do it the right way. I am talking about building an affiliate program. But you do have to do it the right way. Remember, I always recommend building your offsite search engine optimization efforts (link building) from many different relevant sources over time. Launching an affiliate program can be another excellent way to build your inbound links to your website. So what is the right way? Let's first talk about the wrong way. Don't go to one of the third-party affiliate program sites like Commission Junction. It doesn't matter how good they are at managing CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Do You Approve The Wrong Pingbacks?
A pingback is a notification from another website that your site has been updated. It can happen in a number of ways. You could ping a ping service, which will then notify its subscribers that your blog has been updated. Services like Technorati.com and BlogCatalog usually fall into this category. Another type of pingback is when you link to another blog. That blog owner is notified of your link through a pingback. Still, another type of pingback is when you bookmark your website at one of the many social bookmarking services available online. Those services will pingback to your blog because, after all, they are linking to you. A pingback usually appears in your comments. In WordPress, you'll get a notification in the Admin area of your CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Link Buying – An Important Thing To Know
Gab Goldenberg has an interesting post on 101 ways to buy text links. Understand that I don't endorse any of these methods. It is your decision as to whether or not to purchase text links. You know how Google treats those links. Of course, what Google doesn't know wont hurt you. But will you take a chance? In fact, here is exactly what Google has to say about link buying and paid link: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66736 The fact is, link building is link building. You can do it the organic way or buy your links and the effect, from a search engine optimization standpoint, is the same. With one proviso: It is done the right way. But buying text links is fraught with its dangers. That doesn't CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Different Ways You Can Build Links
New webmasters get caught up sometimes in the different methods of link building and lose site of the big picture. Perhaps the most common form of link building is directory submissions. Talk to anyone who has done a fair amount of link building and they will almost always recommend link building through directory submissions (really good quality ones, such as Yahoo! Directory, DMOZ or Business.com). However, directory submissions is one only method of link building. In order to build a more diverse portfolio of links you need to branch out from there. The most important thing to remember about link building is diversity. It isn't enough to have high quality links. It isn't enough to have a high quantity of links. You need to build a CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Your Links – High Quality Vs. High Quantity
It seems the big push among search engine optimization folks right now is to sell you on the idea that high quality links are better than high quantity. It depends. What's really important is the aggregate portfolio you build. That is, the highest quantity of high quality links that you can find. Let me try to explain this in simple terms: Question - Which number is higher, 1 + 499 or 200 + 300? If you said they are equal then you'd be right. And this is precisely what the argument over high quality and high quantity is all about. In most cases, SEOs are comparing apples to oranges. But put 5 bad apples on a table and 1 good orange next to it and tell me CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Is Link Cloaking Immoral?
Whenever you read about link cloaking you almost always hear it in a negative sense. There is a negative connotation to the conversation as if it should be a given that it is immoral and unethical. And some people might even add that it should be illegal. But that's not necessarily the case. Link cloaking is nothing more than obscuring the destination URL of your links so that readers don't see where the final destination is. Why would a webmaster want to do that? The best reason I can think of to cloak your links is to protect your affiliate IDs. Many affiliate marketers use link cloaking to protect their affiliate IDs and to increase their click throughs. It's a viable tactic. Remember, if you are an affiliate CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
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Nick Stamoulis:
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