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February 7, 2012

Top 7 tips for effective link building

A lot of people have the misconception that link generation is an uphill task. In fact the majority of the people also think that they need sophisticated looking website to attract backlinks.

Here are simple but effective tips for generating backlinks to a website.

  1. Your membership to Industry association could be helpful
    If your company has received an award before, or if you are in membership with any related industry association, you can find out whether these sites link to your site, you may possibly stumble on related businesses that you can extend invitation to link to your site.
  2. Make your website linkable
    Do you have features on your site that can attract other websites to link to you? Create a page that reflects the uniqueness of your business, your success stories, attractions such as freebies and other specialties that people can find hard to resist. This can greatly increase your chances of generating more backlinks.
  3. Create testimonials
    The testimonial is for another company that you love their product or service. Simply construct a great testimonial to such a company. They are most likely to list the testimonial on their website, together with a link to your company’s website.
  4. Keep a track of the places that your target audience go online
    You are likely to generate links from the social networking platforms, forums or websites where your target audience congregate.
  5. Assess the existing backlinks
    Going through your existing links would reveal the most linked content on your site, so that you would work out how you can use the same content or a modified version to generate more backlinks.
  6. What social activities or sponsorships can you benefit from?
    If your company sponsors any local activity or relief groups, you can gain from such activities in return by asking the sponsored organizations to link to your site. It would be sensible as well, to write a linkable content that would reflect your sponsorship activities. You would place the content on your site.

You can also take advantage of the link manager to find related sites, forums and blogs. The tool would also go through the new backlinks pointing to your website. You can also employ some commonly available link managers to verify if there is nofollow attribute featured in the sites that linked to you.

The importance of generous backlinks cannot be overemphasized; it is one of the criteria for ranking high on Google’s search result page.

3 Top ways to generate natural backlinks

Google is increasingly adopting more sophisticated techniques in spotting poor quality webpages and links. Thus, if you employ a ridiculously low price PR links services, or embark on complete automated linking system, Google would ultimately penalize you for attempting to play a fast game on them.

One of the best ways to move yourself forward to the top 10 results on Google search page is to ensure that the links that point to your website are relevant to your site’s topic and theme. Also, the linking should be acquired naturally.

Here are top ways to get natural backlinks:

  1. Make your website link-worthy
    Webmasters are not interested in a site that is merely a collection of affiliate links. A website with quality content is what appeals to webmasters. Here are some pattern of articles that webmasters love linking to; they include controversial content, as well as ‘how to’ articles.
  2. Your website should be in the right framework
    Links from internet directories do not have high quality effect as before. However, they are still very useful for structuring a website’s context the right way. First, ensure that you list your site under a relevant category. This way, you can easily rank higher for keywords or phrases related to the chosen category.
  3. Become a Problem Solver
    One of the best ways to be a problem solver in your niche is to provide valuable content that solves a specific problem. Then, it would be easier to convince related quality websites to link to your site – they would certainly be interested in content that provides solution to a problem. Also, contact bloggers who have such content featured on their sites, they are most likely to link to your website.

When the websites that link to you, employ the keywords that are related to your linked texts (the texts are usually the ones you want to achieve higher ranking), your chances of achieving quality ranking would be improved. Also, the texts that these webpages use in linking to your website should not be the same, otherwise it would appear unnatural.

Also, do not concentrate the back-links on your homepage, ensure that you circulate them to other pages of your website. If you employ the right techniques for generating natural backlinks, you will be on your way to occupying the first 10 positions on Google’s search result page.

Top tips for generating links from authority websites (plus alternative plans)

Links generated from authority websites produce the biggest result on the ranking of your webpages in Google search results. You have good chances of ranking among the first top 10 in Google search result when high authority sites link to your webpages, with your keywords featured in the anchor text.

Meaning of High Authority Websites

Simply, those websites that Google trust are known as high authority websites. There are a few standards that websites should meet to be regarded as high authority websites;

  • The website should be well established and quite old
  • No trace of spam has been identified with such website in the past
  • There are several backlinks from other websites to the authority sites
  • They are part of the highly rated sites for a specific subject or topic

Steps to Generating Backlinks from Authority Sites:

First Step: Locate the high authority websites

You may argue that the PageRank displayed by Google in its toolbar is debatable; well, it remains a good pointer to authority websites – check for PageRank 7 or something higher.

Here’s how to find websites:

  • The ‘Add sites’ tool featured in IBP’s link manager is useful for this purpose
  • Take advantage of any of the search options such as “find websites linking to your competitor”.
  • Add up to 500 new websites using IBP
  • By clicking on the ‘PR’ column header featured in the list, you can sort the list by PageRank

Second Step: Generate the Links

Once you spot a high authority site, do your best to acquire a backlink from such website. Take a tour through the IBP’s link manager’s list and get in touch with your chosen authority sites’ webmasters. Provided that your website is good and features quality content, the high authority sites are most likely to link to you.

Alternative Plan: Your next line of action if the authority sites refuse to link to your webpage.

In many cases, authority sites link to several other webpages. However, a webmaster of an authority site may decide not to link to you for certain reasons. If this happens, you will not lose out from the link benefit of such a site completely. What you should do is to get in touch with those websites that the authority sites have linked to, so that those websites (linked to by high authority sites) would link to your own site. This is what is known as second-tier links. Although the second-tier links would not have exact effect as the high authority sites, they are beneficial and are more valuable compared to most links you can acquire over the web.

Tips on getting in touch with second-tier links easily and quickly;

  • Locate a page on the authority sites which is linked to external sites (one or more).
  • Follow this process to import the link page of the first-rate page featured on link builder providers websites. This process would achieve link importation and generate more info on each featured site.
  • You can contact the websites using such link providers in-built web browser and in-built email client.

When it comes to achieving high ranking in Google, links from high authority webpages are quite valuable.

Generating Links From Authority Webpages

The links that come from authority sources play the biggest role to enhance the ranking of your webpages on Google search result page. You are most likely to be listed among the top 10 on Google result page if established authority-webpages link to your website with the anchor-text featuring your keywords.

High Authority Websites

These are webpages that have gained Google’s trust. Here are the criteria for determining if a website is a high authority site;

  • The site must be such that has been established several years back
  • There was no issue of spam with the website in the past
  • The website will have several backlinks from other webpages
  • The site must be part of an established site for a specific topic

First Step: Locate high authority webpages

Regardless of the controversies surrounding the PageRank displayed by Google on its toolbar, you can still take advantage of the displayed PageRank to locate authority websites. There are several service providers that help would be helpful.

Second Step: Obtain links from the high authority webpages

When you locate a high authority site, do your best to generate backlinks from the site. The list on several service providers link-manager would be helpful in terms of contacting the authority sites webmasters. If your website is excellent and features valuable content, the high authority sites would not hesitate to link to you.

If the authority site refuses to link to your site for certain reasons, contact the sites that are already linked to the authority sites you selected. Thus, the chain goes this way; the high authority sites link to the other websites, and these websites link to you. This is known as the second-tier links. Although the second-tier links may not have similar effect as getting links directly from the high authority sites, they are still quite useful and could be far better off than most links you already got, or likely to get from the internet.

Contacting Second-Tier Links Easily and Quickly – Tips

  • Locate a page that links to external webpages on the high authority site
  • Some of the service providers help to import the link page on their link builder featured top-notch pages
  • These service providers not only import the links, but will also return more information for each featured webpage
  • Contact the websites using the built-in web browser and the service providers built-in email client

Links sourced from high authority websites are very essential for achieving high rank on Google. When more of these links point to your site, your chances of ranking high are enhanced. The service-providers tools are at times very useful when trying to get links from authority sites or second-tier links.

Reciprocal Links: Don’t Be Deceived by Wrong Information

The first or initial element on the Web was the reciprocal links – they’ve been in existence long before we started hearing of ‘social media’. There’s no complexity when it comes to reciprocal link concept. The concept is as simple as this scenario: I “Like” your site – (so, I link to it), you “Like back” – (and link to my own site).

The position of your website can substantially improve in Google’s search results since links are excellent pointers that other folks place-value your website.

FUD

The few years of recent past has recorded several FUD about the effectiveness of reciprocal links. Some people are of the opinion that reciprocal links are no longer effective, while others went as far as propagating the information that reciprocal links can result in serious issues with Google.

Is anything actually wrong with reciprocal links?

A lot of opinions and statements have been made regarding the efficiency of reciprocal links; however, none of these statements or opinions are accompanied by evidences. Nothing has gone wrong with reciprocal links – they are still as effective as they were at their inception.

Simply analyze the backlink profile of your competitors who rank high (perhaps using a backlink analyzer). You will discover that a good volume of the links are reciprocal links. What are the sources of these links?

The links come from:

  • Mutual contextual linking – like the type exchanged between bloggers
  • Link resources/exchange pages
  • Directory links
  • Blogroll links

Reciprocal links are more effective for decent websites – websites that do not feature the ‘xxx’ content. There are some sites that find it difficult to generate links without something in exchange. These are the sites that reap most of the fruits from reciprocal links.

I read that Google is at loggerheads with reciprocal linking – what about that?

Google has no issues with reciprocal linking. The only thing that Google advocates against is complete automated, large volume linking techniques or systems. Normal reciprocal linking is not part of this. If you are not convinced yet, go ahead and carry out an analysis on your competitors’ backlinks.

Plus improved search engine rankings, you can get quality traffic from your partner’s website via reciprocal links. This is the essence of links.

Which are the best links – one way links or three way links?

None of these links are better than another, they are all equal. Whether reciprocal, one way link or any other type of link, the most important thing is that the source of the link should be such that it would be relevant to your site in the eyes of search engines.

Why the complexities by search engines? Well, it is the way you look at things. Do the right thing and you will see that there is no complication with the search engine. Ensure that links to your website are relevant as well as trusted – it is for the good of your site.

Looking to rank high in Google? Then, there is need for high quality backlinks to your website. You could also include reciprocal links in your blog posts, especially if your site does not provide the possibility of links or resources page.

Best Tips on Developing Link Building Strategies

Link building is seen as the part two of any Search Engine Optimization campaign, after on-site optimization. Link building is a crucial element when it comes to keeping up your site ranking and making your site trustworthy in the eyes of search engines.

As an ongoing campaign required to enhance inbound links of a website, link building is a powerful key for brand promotion and general visibility to search engines. It also boosts exceptional visitors to your website which eventually translates to increased conversions. The efforts involved in link building would include blogging, local profiles, social networking, blog commenting, online publicity, directory submission and others.

The whole essence of developing a link building strategy is to generate links from multiple, distinct, but related sources over a period of time. Majority of the strategies employed in link building range from three months to 1 year, and would integrate a wide range of scheduled monthly tasks – about 10-20. It is very essential that you create an excellent specific link building schedule and stay on to it. If you embark on a marathon links expansion spree, search engines will raise the eye of suspicion on your website, and this can turn out as an ill effect on your reputation.

How It Works

The initial step to creating link building strategy is to carry out a link audit on your site; you will do the same for your site’s three top competitors. A helpful tool for analyzing your site is Google Webmaster Tools; then, Link Diagnosis would be helpful in analyzing your competitors. These two services are free! With a link audit, you will be able to establish a baseline strategy by ascertaining the number of one-way links that are pointing towards your website already.

It is possible for an audit to generate return with up to 100,000 (or less) one-way links pointing traffic to your various web pages. However, this will depend on the size and age of your website. You may not need to visit the entire 100,000 links, but it is very necessary that you take appropriate sample (at least 1000) of the links listed; then, go to each link to evaluate what kind of link it is. This is what it means to create a link portfolio.

In the course of the link audit, watch out for “Undesirable” links – links from sites like gambling or adult sites. Search engines closely monitor links from these types of sites. A site that has more of these links is at risk of losing value in the eyes of search engines. Just as the same way that trust is necessary between you and your existing or potential customers, trust is also an essential element between your site and the search engines. The trust factor on a website can be dented by increased number of “bad” links.

With the right link building strategy, you will not only achieve an enhanced traffic generation, but will also come across an increasing base of quality customers.

Achieving natural Link Building with Link Baiting service

Don’t get overwhelmed by the term ‘Link Baiting’, it is just another term used for Natural and Viral Link Building.

Why Is Link Baiting Service Necessary?

As competition online gets fiercer each day, webmasters are coming forth with new strategies to remain on the lead of the search engine competition. Link baiting is a notable SEO concept; the underlying idea with this concept is to build a completely unique concept that would be circulated in significantly trafficked media. If your published content is exceptional, many web visitors will be attracted to it, and a good number of sites will insert links to your content in their own websites. This way, you will generate organic one-way link back to your site.

Our service ensures that a lot of web visitors see your article by getting it published in highly trafficked social networking sites. With the passage of time, the amount of your one-way links will grow significantly. Your website will surely be noticed by Google since the increasing number of one-way links will get the attention of search engine spiders. Of course, you should know by now that one-way links generated through this procedure is completely appealing to Google. An SEO expert Matt Cutts, has confirmed that link baiting is an SEO technique that is highly search engine-friendly.

Benefits of Our Link Building Service

  • We submit to all directories manually; our staff consists of trained experts; they know the submission rules and adhere strictly to them.
  • We ensure that your site stays fresh with original and completely unique content.
  • Our strategies would ensure that search engines visit your website quite often.
  • The links you will generate are one-way and natural.
  • Your brand name will be eventually established.
  • Your site is viewed faster by any web visitor.
  • Massive links are generated within a short duration.
  • We will ensure the optimization of your site with different targeted keywords that are relevant to your niche.
  • Massive traffic would be driven to your site.

Procedure Involved

  • First of all, your site is reviewed; subsequently, relevant and compelling blog posts that best match your site are created.
  • You will get to review the blog posts first before we proceed; subsequently, the posts will be hosted in your site, or you can choose to let us host it for you by giving us access to your blog.
  • Your blog posts will be published in over 200 high trafficked social network websites – this is a strategic one-way links generation, as well as target-audience attracting strategy.
  • We will provide you with detailed report of the service rendered.

Frequently Asked Questions

  1. Do you have content writers?
    Our team of expert writers will create exceptional informative content for you, which would be posted to your site. But first of all, there is need to install a blog script to your site – Word Press is highly recommended.
  2. How do you achieve social bookmarking of each blog post?
    We have effective strategies for achieving social bookmarking of your blog posts after uploading them to your site.
  3. Can you install Word Press Script on my site?
    Sure, we will gladly do that for you. We also help you achieve other blog platform features.

Five reliable ways to build links and boost traffic to your site or blog

With experience, every diligent webmaster conjures up a list of on-site best practices that help websites occupy a top rank on popular search engine pages for relevant keyword phrases. Search engine rating and ranking of your website is highly influenced by linking structure, Meta tags, image alt tags, unique content as well as page load time.

Regardless of the on-site factors usually focussed by webmasters, the most effective technique that can be applied to raise your organic search traffic is the effective implementation of an intelligent link-building startegy. The tactics is quite simple; as you have more relevant links pointing to your site from other domains, it will have increased opportunity of ranking higher for your target keyword phrases.

But if you are an off-site SEO novice, just thinking of link building could be quite intimidating. Given the wide range of options for achieving linkbuilding, do you know the result-oriented ones? Bear this in mind; it is not just the mere quantity of links that aid in pushing your website to the top positions for your target keywords, the quality of pages linking back to you also count.

Below given are 5 proven link-building techniques that are counted among the most consistent and highly effective practises by web-experts who have spent several years on search engine optimization. Although these five are not the only ways to generate links that point back to your blog or website, they are the most effective and have been proven to work on a wide range of sites. Remember, it is important not to limit yourself to a particular link building technique and to not stop from exploring novel online sources to generate greater an relevant backlinks.

  1. Article Marketing
    Numerous webmasters use article marketing quite frequently to build relevant follow-up-links back to the domains; however, it is usually not performed effectively. Undoubtedly, original articles publishing on marketing sites create applicable links back to your domain; however, the articles on their own seem to have very minute search engine authority… in other words, there is need to publish numerous articles so that you can make significant difference. If your articles are well-written and beneficial to your target audience, it is most likely that some webmasters will pick them up and publish them again on related blogs. This will generate more links pointing back to your domain from other websites.

    If you want to achieve limitless success with your article marketing, have a sound plan to publish numerous articles monthly while ensuring that you include the URL to your WebPages in the resource box. The popular article directories to publish your articles are Ezine Articles, Article Dashboard, ArticleBase and SearchWrap.

  2. Related Link Exchanges
    Be careful to observe that ‘related’ or ‘relevant’ is used to qualify link exchanges. The notion of some people that link exchanges have been made unproductive for accomplishing SEO by search engines is not true. Provided that link exchange is achieved between related sites and is not excessively done, you can attract substantial authority using it.

    Before suggesting exchange of links, it is wise to establish professional relationship with webmasters that their sites are related to yours. Participate actively in your online niche community; submit guest posts, leave comments, interact with bloggers and remember to make reference to your website at the right time. With this, it becomes easier to convince webmasters to exchange links with you.

  3. Guest Blog Posts
    If you use this tactics appropriately, it has the potential of becoming the top influential off-site SEO tool for achieving link-building. The challenge with guest blog posts is that it is difficult to come forth with a result-oriented guest blog post, it is even easier to achieve link exchanges, article marketing and directory submissions. This technique ensures a much higher quality link to your website but with much effort.

    If you want an influential blogger to accept your content for guest post, you must make it relevant, valuable, and it should be thoroughly written. You can also achieve result by submitting your guest posts to less popular, smaller blogs. My Blog Guest is a valuable community online that can help you come across other bloggers that would want to work with guest posters.

  4. Embarking on a Website Contest
    Another effective tactic for building links is to give away gifts or prizes to those who visit your site regularly – it is effective both in performance and cost. Although prize or cash award is a huge no-no with the search engines when it comes to link building, it can be an effective avenue for motivating your fans to visit your site and tell others about it.

    Instead of giving out monthly prize to a person that links back to your website, it is better to make it an entry requirement for the person to just talk about your site somewhere. It doesn’t matter if the contest participants talk about your domain on their Facebook profiles or blog, they will still build recognition of your brand and generate links for you on the long run.

    Remember to advertise the contest on some free contest forums online; examples are Contest Blogger, About Blog Contest as well as Lucky Contests. Don’t think for a moment that it will require a very expensive price to lure people into participating. Simple items like books, fun trinkets and t-shirts can attract user interaction.

  5. Submitting to Authoritative Directory
    One of the standard SEO link building tools that has existed for a long time is directory submissions. A massive number of directories online will link to your website without charging you any money. The only challenge is this; the technique has been made less effective by search engines as a result of link building abuse.

However, site submission to few relevant and renowned directories remains a great way to build a profile of back-links. Webmasters with extra bucks should think of submitting their sites to authoritative directories such as Yahoo Directory and a few others. It is a guaranteed way of generating quality links back to your site.

A Realistic guide to Link Building

Whether it’s the large corporations or small business establishments, search engines play a very crucial role in their growth and hence in their promotion efforts. The most popular way of finding websites is through search engines; you will get more visitors if your site shows up frequently on the search engines.

The major determining factor which determines how your site ranks is link popularity, which is basically ascertained by the quantity and also quality of links to your site. Link building, which is the technique for increasing the number of links to your site, is controversially among the most challenging SEO tasks. However, you need an extensive set of back-links to outrank your competitors.

Although link building process may look disheartening initially, it can get unexpectedly exciting along the line. There is no best-proven strategy yet, when it comes to link building and the entire SEO system. There has been a continuous evolvement in the art of link building, and everyone has a slightly different way of accomplishing the task.

Here are 3 techniques concerning link building which every business ought to adapt.

  1. Acquire Ideas From Your Competitors
    Analyzing what your competitors are doing is one of the most important ways to start or redirect your link building effort. The target is to discover, assess, and access the websites that link to your top competitors. You can achieve this in several ways, but the easiest is using free resources on the net. You can find large number of back link providers on the internet; they provide the anchor texts and URLs of tons of Backlinks from competitors. It may be laborious to go through the links to find quality ones, but the end result is worth the effort. The logic is to get the authority sites among the URLs to link to your own site. Another good tool we have used is SEO Spyglass.
  2. Generate Useful Content – Write Valuable Articles
    The proven way to obtain just the exact back links and the best optimized anchor text you desire is via article and blog posts. But authority links do not come on a platter of gold, it costs you greatly. Also, the strategy of using articles to build links, naturally requires much effort and lots of time. The main objective is to create articles that feature relevant information with links – back to your website. You also need to publish the articles on article directories or relevant websites; the former is a great way to generate back links.
    Each article directory has its posting rules, it is important you adhere to those rules. Generally, they will provide at least an author’s resource section where you can leave your URLs.
  3. Employ Directories
    You can also generate faster back links through directories and thus achieve quick results on the search engines. However, websites submission to directories is constantly a controversial matter in the SEO circles, and abuse of this technique is punishable by search engines. Notwithstanding, following the correct guidelines for directories submission can yield rewarding SEO results.

There are numerous high volume directories that you can submit your WebPages to – at no cost. The best way to avoid search engine penalization when using this technique is to submit only to directories that feature categories related to your site.

The techniques mentioned above provide excellent opportunities to substantially enhance online visibility of your business. However, successful link building campaign is achieved on the platform of variety.

Why landing pages are necessary for your PPC Campaigns

More often it has been observed that PPC campaigns are directed to pages within the client’s website that seldom have the essential features needed for a visitor to accomplish a choice based on an action or goal. Also, many pages seem to have content more focused on achieving organic rankings as opposed to conversions or more importantly sales.

When you embark on paid search campaigns, you are investing in traffic generation, with the desire that visitors are converted into leads and then into sales.
To accomplish a result with your investment, your pay per click traffic should be sent to landing pages that have been specially created to convert users to leads and sales.

You can find several features that have the potential of assisting users to complete the lead form. In order to maximize leads, the following should be applied on PPC landing pages:

  • The Lead Form
    The lead form should feature only form fields that are useful for following up a lead, and should be above the fold. Avoid creating several fields so that the user will be attracted to fill out the form. Try and keep the form as simple and short as possible.
  • Calls to Action
    You need compelling messages on your landing pages to get users to do what you want them to do. In the case of leads generation, you want users to complete the form; the secret of achieving this is the way you structure the message provided on the page. Having a single desirable goal helps a majority of the landing pages to convert best.
  • Testimonials
    This is probably the most excellent way to obtain more business. Testimonials are simply references to your business, from the previous customers.
  • Offers
    Offers are a great way to attract users. They are what you give users in return for the information they supplied you. Offers can be in different forms such as free downloads, whitepaper, or a free product. A juicier offer attracts users to supply their information.
  • Value Propositions
    The competitive advantage at your disposal is value propositions, they are also techniques you can apply to assist your customer’s business. Value propositions should be made simple to read; preferably, outline them with bullet points.
  • Recognized Awards from Your Industry
    This is a way to showcase the competency and excellent nature of your company. Mentioning or even providing evidence of awards from your industry shows that your business is among the top rated in your industry, and it encourages the user to choose your company.
  • Fewer Content and navigation
    The exciting thing about paid search marketing is the ability to select where to direct a user depending on the search term or keyword entered by such user. For this purpose, there is no need for much navigation since the user is already provided with exact information to match the search query entered. Also, keep landing page’s copy precise and brief.

The factors above are proven for maximizing conversion rates, and will help increase the return on your PPC campaigns investment.