Friday, September 11, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Creating Keyword-Rich Inbound Links
Build Keyword Rich Inbound Links
To rank well in search engine results you need to score well on both ‘on the page’ and ‘off the page’ factors. ‘On the page’ factors are about what is on your own pages and therefore within your own control: ‘off the page’ factors are the links from external websites to your own, and these are much more difficult to control.
Most external links will use your domain to link to you, but if you can persuade them to link using keyword rich linking text (sometimes called anchor text), then you’ll get a significant search engine boost.
So while AbeBooks.com would be pleased with a link like http://www.abebooks.com, they would be even more pleased with a link like used books from AbeBooks because the linking text contains one of their important keywords, ‘used books’.
For many website managers and owners, getting an external link of any kind is achievement enough, without having to manage the even more difficult task of persuading an external website to link to you using specific keyword phrases of your choice.
So how do you get keyword rich inbound links?
In an earlier section, we showed you how to choose product and publication names to get such links: and there are other methods that if you persist will bring you many valuable links.
But before we list them, you need to do some preparation:
• Start by choosing 5-10 of your most popular keywords that you’re going to use in your initial link building campaign.
• Now write variations of the links that you’d like to use. For example to create the link used books from AdeBooks, I’d write the following html used books from AdeBooks You’ll want to create a variety of inbound links using different variations of linking text.
There are simple steps you can take to start getting keyword rich links. They include:
(i) Simply show people how you’d like them to link to you. Write the html, make it available and ask people just to copy and paste the code into their own web pages.
(ii) Buy directory links or text ad that allow you to specify the linking text.
(iii) Build contacts and relationships within your industry. Be generous in linking to useful external resources and you’ll find that the people you link to take notice and your generosity will often be rewarded with links back to your own site. If you’ve built a good relationship,
people will be glad to use the linking text you suggest.
(iv) Write newsworthy press releases and use services such as www.prweb.com to distribute them. For a small additional fee they will allow you to embed links into the body of your press release.
(v) Write and publish quality articles and blog posts on your own site. Make sure that you include important keywords in the titles of each article or post. People will generally use those titles when they link to you.
(vi) Quality news and information sites in your industry will often accept well-written articles for publication. When they do, they’ll normally publish a signature box describing what you do and linking to your site in whatever way you specify. Link building is a time consuming business but it is essential work if you want to rank well on search engines. Your efforts will be doubly rewarded if you go the extra mile and look for keyword rich inbound links.
from: www.wordtracker.com
How to beat Wikipedia to the top of Google...
With permanent search engine optimization (SEO) you can secure and defend the keywords you are successful for and find new keyword niches to target. Mark Nunney explains why SEO never stops and how you can use this to beat the toughest of competition.
Click the link to read the full article.
Been busy, will try to post often this week.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Social Media Networking
To get results on social media sites you need great content with great headlines that will grab readers’ attention, make them want more and pass on a link to others. You will also need a significant network of friends and contacts or to be very nice to someone who has. Lyndon Antcliff is one such connector and here he gives 17 top tips to help you build your own social media network.
There is no shortcut for building a quality and sizeable network. It takes time. Use the following tips to make sure you make the most of your efforts:
Start with your own blog and make it the focal point of all your social media accounts with links to and from it. Your blog is where you show who you are and that you are a real person. People want to know about the people they do business with, and in a digital world your blog is the best place to show them.
Open accounts with Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Digg and LinkedIn. On each of these sites, find users who share your interests. There are thousands of social media sites, but start with the biggest.
Make sure people know about your social media accounts. Link to them on your blog, in your email signature and on your newsletters.
Find and join social sites for the specific markets you work in, eg WAYN for travel, Kaboodle for shoppers, Peak Performance for athletes, Sphinn for online marketing, MPORA for extreme sports, etc.
Pick an avatar that stands out. This is the photo or graphic accompanying your accounts and it is how you will be recognized. It is best to have a photograph or a graphic which stands out. If in doubt about what to use, keep it simple.
Make sure you have only one active account per social site. Admins take a dim view of people trying to manipulate their sites and it may get you and your website a ban.
Be open and accessible. Make all your social media accounts known and open to contact, comments and chat.
Be authentic. Don't fake it. Be yourself - you are what is unique and interesting about you.
The easiest way to be popular is to be helpful. Everyone loves someone who will help them at no cost. It also displays your expertise, builds your brand and reputation.
Be polite.
Make friends. This is harder than it sounds when you start out as there is little reason for someone who does not know you to be your friend. The key is to make yourself useful and to avoid being irritating. Searching for people with the same interests as you usually gets good results.
Spend a small amount of time each day on your accounts. Regular contributions over time will work and help you get noticed. The more people see you around, the more you will build trust.
Only present high quality stories to sites like Digg and StumbleUpon. Do not submit your own content initially. Vote on stories that are in your niche. Be seen to be the expert that you are.
Following a power user will not get you noticed as they already have too many followers to care about you. Follow people who are in your niche and have a desire to communicate and network.
Do not pay for votes or use automated processes to inflate your votes artificially, this may get you and your site banned and at best will only bring short term success.
Find interesting stories within your niche before anyone else. Use RSS or Twitter to subscribe to news and specialists sites whose content users of your social sites love. This is how power users got to be who they are.
Be persistent.
I had the most amazing learning experience this past week. I'm trying to put it all into practice. I, who once thought twitter was USELESS, can now see how it can be used to get your message out there! Tying your blog, twitter and facebook sites together, you can drive traffic to your sites by sending out the right types of messages.
Twitter search allows you to find tweets that are compatible with your goals and you can respond to them. Feed your tweets to your facebook or blog and you now have 3 ways of getting people's attention!
Don't be scared, give it a try!
Monday, July 13, 2009
Social Marketing
Social media marketing (SMM) on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon and Digg has exploded in the past year. But what exactly is it? And what’s in it for you? And what’s in it for you? Let social media marketing expert and the man behind Magnetic Web Content, Lyndon Antcliff, gently introduce you to the subject and perhaps change your marketing life.
Earlier this year police closed Liverpool St Station in the UK after 13,000 people ‘flash mobbed’ the station, mimicking a TV advert for a phone company by all dancing to music playing on their MP3s. The idea for the flash mob was spread on facebook.
When a user of a social media website discovers your story and likes it, they have the option to share it with their friends. This can cause the story to 'go viral' and be shared with even more people. This can deliver hundreds of thousands of visitors, launch a website or new product and bring significant [inbound links]. Those inbound links will directly bring your site visits and indirectly help your SEO.
When using social media marketing the quality of your content is crucial, the better it is the more likely it will be passed around. We’ll be talking about how to create such ‘sticky’ content in a future article.
Stunning content will still need a push to get going, the bigger your network on these social media sites the better. Your network can help you give it that initial push, increasing the chance of the story going viral.
Direct marketing will reduce the chances of a piece of web content going viral. People do not want to be sold to, the initial social media marketing push should be more about the conversation than the sale. A more aggresive sales angle can be added later, once the social media push has ended.
Keywords and SEO in social media
Your social media marketing can support your search engine optimization (SEO) by including target keywords in headlines. Then when your story goes viral and other sites use your headline to link back to your site – Bingo! - you get keyword-rich inbound text links.
Smart SEOs love social media.
Keyword research can also be a great way to find ideas for stories that people want to read. One of the points of keyword research is that it shows you what people are searching for. Many is the social media marketer who goes to Wordtracker’s Keyword Question Tool to look for inspiration.
Smart social media marketers love keyword research.
Bigger than TV, radio, newspapers, magazines and books
This conversational aspect of social media is crucial to understanding social media marketing because you can’t fake a conversation and you can’t automate it.
We’ll now have a quick look at four gorillas of the social media jungle – Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon and Digg.
Facebook is growing faster than Google ever did
Facebook is the world’s online scrapbook and meeting place in one. Friends, customers, stars, fans, and anyone who crashes the party use Facebook to stay in touch, swap photos, pay homage and talk to each other.
At a recent meeting, a client told me ‘I don’t use email anymore, I only use Facebook’. Everyone she communicates with (including for work) is on Facebook, so why leave?
If you have a large network on Facebook and talk about something interesting enough or present a Facebook application (like a game or a quiz) that users like, then it can spread across the internet. This is what happened with the Liverpool St Station flash mob.
Twitter is a microblogging site on which each post is no more than 140 characters long. Friends, colleagues, admirers and the interested all ‘follow’ each other and can read each others’ posts.
The result is a collection of thousands of different conversations and mini monologues. This can seem like a mad mess but that chaos is like the hum of chatter at a lively party - narrow your focus and you find that people are amusing each other, helping each other, sharing ideas, making connections and doing business.
If you have something interesting to say then networking on Twitter can help your business. Try Wordtracker’s How to Twitter to get started and follow Wordtracker on Twitter.
Stumbleupon can seem peculiar at first. As a ‘viewer’, you ‘stumble’ via a browser toolbar and are shown seemingly random website pages. But they are selected by an algorithm that considers your tastes and others’ ‘votes’.
For many sites, StumbleUpon is amongst those that bring the most traffic. Below is a report showing referring traffic for a sports injury site and StumbleUpon is the biggest referrer with almost 19,000 visitors:
Below is a screen grab of the Stumbleupon toolbar on my browser:
Please use the link above to read the rest of Lyndon's article.