Thursday, June 5, 2008

Back Links - What Are They, Why Do I Need Them and How to Get Them?

Search engines use a number of criteria for ranking websites. No one can say exactly how the search engines weigh their criteria, since the search engines protect this information as a trade secret. But SEO experts are able to give us a reliable picture of what we need to do to get the highest visibility in Internet search engines.

The three keys to search engine ranking are content, keywords, and back links. Ultimately, a high ranking in search engines is the result of high traffic. How do you drive more traffic to your small business website? Content, keywords, and back links.

The content of your website must be chosen carefully and with plenty of research. A lot of websites look pretty with flash designs, detailed artwork and pictures. If you have a small business, then concentrate on that with your website. You are not trying to impress prospective clients with all of your fancy technology on your website. Use your website to find leads, entice customers, and make long lasting relationships.

Content, meaning the text and descriptions of your business and your services, should be chosen carefully. You can choose the right content by doing keyword research and using many keywords in your web pages filled with facts, portfolios of your work, and newsworthy information.

Don't try to trick them! A small business website with 50 pages of hot air won't fool the Internet community. Keyword-stuffing will only work temporarily. When visitors find nothing but fluff on a website, they won't go back and they won't create word of mouth in their own blogs and websites. When your traffic drops, the search engines find out in a hurry and the bottom falls out of your ranking.

What are backlinks? Back links are backward links. Basically they are links that point back to your website, blog, etc. They are somewhat like trail markers that you can leave, pointing passersby to take the path toward your homebase.

How are they created? Back links are created whenever someone has a link for your website on their website. The easiest way to make back links is by submitting your web content to article directories, websites, and blogs.

For instance, if you post an article on About.com, the smart thing to do is fill the article with links back to your website. Sometimes websites have restrictions on how many links you can have in your article, so a link to your website in your bio or signature is good as well. The search engines find this "back link" to your site on another web site, which tells them that your article is popular.

Successful backlinking is like a word of mouth popularity game. Whomever has the most links pointing to their site helps determine who gets the best ranking on the Search Engines. Also, a back link is better than a reciprocal link because if someone links to you, but you don't link back to them, it's like you're cooler than they are. Reciprocal linking is still a valuable tool to be utilized smartly, but back linking will bring you the most juice. The more back links you have, the more popular you are with search engines, and the higher you rank. Literally.

Article submission is widely recognized as one of the most effective strategies for optimizing search engine ranking. Creating plenty of back links with quality content is the single best strategy for driving traffic to your Small Business website and boosting your search engine ranking. In order to get more people to hit those links is to write articles and post newsworthy, keyword rich postings. Research which keywords people might search for to find your business, and use them in your articles. This will ensure that people who could be interested in your business' services will find you.

Always remember the first principle of search engine optimization: Rich content is the single most important determinant of search engine ranking. Write high-quality web content and blog posts, submit your content to article directories, and the search engine rankings will come.

Brett Miller, the founder of HoopJumper WebSystems, is the creator of Webepreneur, an easy-to-use website building program for small business owners and individual service professionals that makes it easy to get your website visible and popular engine-wide. If you're a Small Business Owner and you want to get back links, go to http://www.webepreneur.com/ or http://hoopjumper.com/ to see the other services offered.

7 Things You Need To Succeed At Internet Marketing

If you are looking to be successful at internet marketing it is important you have the right plan, structure and tools in place. This article outlines seven things you need to succeed at internet marketing:

1. A target market with a big problem

Research is so very essential when you are looking to succeed at internet marketing because without it you have no idea who your target market is and without knowing that you have no idea who you are targeting your advertising too and without knowing that you are sending out messages that are not hitting a mark.

You need to decide on your target market and then discover what their problem is, what is it they need to solve and how can you help them with that.

2. Customers who buy from you over and over again

You want to make sure that once you have your target market that you have a variety of products that you can sell to them so that you don't have to keep finding new customers for new areas. There are people who work in this way but it is hard work because you are effectively starting again with each new area.

A website or blog

With the amazing changes in blog templates it's possible to create a blog that looks like a website without the hassle that having to maintain a website needs. To succeed at internet marketing you need a base to promote from and that base could be a website or a blog and it can also be both. You never have to limit yourself to just one either, three blogs all with different templates and providing slightly different information is a great way to get yourself noticed.

A product

You can't succeed at internet marketing without a product and it doesn't have to be your own. Find digital products that you can sell as an affiliate marketer or try drop shipping physical products. You might prefer to promote a membership site or develop your own information products that you sell. There are a number of opportunities so it is important that you find one that works for you.

A list

Succeeding in internet marketing without a list is not impossible but it does make your job much harder. Having your target market and then getting customers from that market who buy from you over and over again is the best way to succeed. I didn't start to make a living in internet marketing until I started to build a list.

Traffic

Of course you can't build a list if there isn't anyone visiting your site. Getting visitors to your site and then converting those visitors to buying customers should always be your ultimate goal. Using article marketing, press releases, social bookmarking, blogs, social networks and all those online resources will mean that you can get a lot of your traffic without having to pay. Of course eventually using pay-per-click advertising is still an effective way but it is not as essential as it once was.

A Winning Attitude

Marking and mindset go together if you want to succeed at internet marketing and you should never underestimate the benefits of a winning attitude. It may not make you money in itself and it will not guarantee your success but it will get you though the tough times and negativity will almost certainly cause you to fail. You need to keep going in the face of adversity but you also need to know when to walk away! You need to believe in your ability to set a goal and achieve it but you also need to know when you have set yourself too high a target.

So there you have it, the seven things that I believe anyone needs to succeed in internet marketing. If you start with those as your focus it will be difficult for you to go wrong and if you are struggling at making money online you might want to look at which of those seven are currently missing for you because adding them may make a big difference to your internet based business.

Diane Corriette provides free information on easy and low cost ways to make money online at http://www.womeninternetmarketers.com/easy she also shares her internet marketing mistakes at http://www.myinternetmarketingmistakes.com Join the Women Internet Marketers social network to connect, learn, share and network with other women running an internet based business http://www.womeninternetmarketers.net

Link Building Service - Lift Up Your Page

Your site is your sacred possession and you definitely want to see it flourishing day by day. A person sheds his sweat in popularizing his site. He wants that his site be used by one and all. Once it comes in the World Wide Web, you want it to rank high. Today, the online businessmen are fighting tooth and nail to make their site famous. If any searcher tries to find any information and your site does not appear in spite of having a strong content then it is a big loss for the company. Therefore, promotion is a very important factor. There are various methods to promote a site but the best way is link building service. This service will remove your entire headache and make it use by lot. Once it gets a respectable position, you will feel job satisfaction.

Link building service is capable to bring traffic to your website. It should not be ignored at all. It is one way of advertising your site. It is a method of linking your website to a host site. Whenever he or she visits the host site, they will find the link of it on the host page and their queries compel them to click that particular site. In this manner, it comes before the eyes of a new user. In addition, your site will get a new visitor. However, the most important thing is that once a new user views your page it is very necessary that they get all the answers of their questions. Therefore, it is very important that your content is sufficiently rich. Keywords should be very much appropriate to get your page appear on the first page of Google, Yahoo and MSN. There are many books on keywords that need to be referred every time.

For effective link building, online businesses hire expert professional or often hire firms that are involved in providing such various kinds of services. It is very important that the person whom you hire is well experienced and efficient; otherwise, it would invite problems for your website. The host link should be very strong and popular because if nobody visits the host link then obviously there is no question to clink your website. Before you exchange link with any host site, be sure that the host site is complete.

Such services will definitely improve your position in the web world. It will help to increase the traffic on your site. There are certain guidelines to establish those links and one should be acquainted with those rules. Links are the important elements that helps search engine in determining the level of popularity of any site on the web. In simple words, if you have more links to your site from other site all the major search engines will rank your site highly. Once it reaches its desire position, then only your work will successfully finish. You will feel your existence in the market.

Steve Waganer has specialization in web marketing. He is expert in search engine marketing, search engine marketing firm,search engine optimization,social media optimization, link building service. To get the SEO tips from,SEO firm for your website to get high rank and top position in major search engines visit http://www.cometsearchenginemarketing.com

How Do I Drive Traffic To My Website?

Achieving a high ranking in the search engines for competitive or high searched keyword phrases is something that all webmasters wish to achieve. Unfortunately this is much simpler said than done. Sometimes people have the illusion that it could just take a couple of days or months before they will be receiving hoards of web traffic after they have done their various strategies. I suppose this can be possible if your website links to the right sources, but it can generally take several months and possibly even years before a website or blog will rank well for a keyword phrase, once the link building process has been completed.

I would like to share my knowledge and provide you with 4 important link building tips which should help you get the rankings you desire.

Website SEO Tips.

Your meta tags and website content are first factor.Make sure your website has as much unique content on it on all the different pages it has.Your title should be a highly searched phrase in your niche with little competition and your keywords must contain all the necessary combinations of searchable phrases separated by commas.

Link Building.

1. Articles.

Write articles based on your niche and submit them to article directories.Always make sure to have a link back to your website and use anchor text. It is important to vary your content from directory to directory otherwise you will be penalized for duplicate content.

2. Directories.

The quality of backlinks from directories is questionable but can still provide you with free links. There are loads of directories out there to submit to. Just make sure you once again alternate your title and description when submitting your website to the different directories.

3. Forums.

Join a forum which is related to your websites niche and put your website link in your signature with anchor text. This will help your website ranking greatly and give you quality backlinks. Try not to spam too much with this method as moderators will just ban you.

4. Link Exchange.

If you can contact the owner of a website in the same niche as you with a high ranked website, you can offer to exchange links which can dramatically help your rankings. One link from a high page rank homepage with many backlinks can be more effective than a couple of hundred directory links.

I hope these 4 link building tips will help you in your campaigns.

If you would like to read more about the top 5 link building tools which can help you automate your link building process then please check out the website below.

Web Site Traffic Building Tools

Breakthrough Article Marketing - Uncover 4 Popular Steps to Explode Your Article Marketing

Article marketing is undoubtedly the most efficient and cost effective product and website promotional tool these days. It is being used by a lot of webmasters from across the globe because it can easily augment website's traffic and increase their sales potential.

Here are the 4 popular steps to explode your article marketing:

1. Target market. The one element that will guarantee you success in article marketing is knowing how to satisfy your target market. When you do, you can be assured that your articles will be widely read and distributed online. This is the reason why it is very crucial to know the people you are writing for even before you tap on your key board. Get to know their needs, demands, profile, and preferences. These can help you make your articles more targeted and focused to their demands.

2. Titles. When people search for information online, they are usually presented with numerous articles. People choose the article to read based on title alone at least on this point. Don't let your articles be ignored by giving them titles that are truly interesting and attention-grabbing. This can help you dramatically increase your clickthrough rate.

3. Writing skills. Never be contented with what you know and strive to improve on your craft so you can always offer the best to your readers. This can easily be done through constant practice and by attending seminars or coaching programs that are specifically created to help you excel in the field of writing.

4. Quantity. One of the best ways to excel in article marketing is to multiply the number of your output to easily augment the number of your inbound links. If you can't extend your writing hours, you can hire ghostwriters to do the legwork for you.

To learn more, download my free guide, "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online" here: "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online"

Sean Mize is an internet marketing mentor who teaches people to generate over $15,000 per month online via automated systems and product funnels.

Say No To 10000 Paid Links - Get The Good Ones

You got to understand that Search Engines have changed their algorithms years ago. Building links is still as important but it is more important to build relevant links than just having thousands of rubbish links to your website. Even Google has voiced its unhappiness in paid inbound links and has started on their campaign to penalize paid links. One important thing is that getting too many inbound links over a night or a week can also be penalized by Google.

Why waste your dollars ?

I know it sounds tempting. 10000 links at only $10... But the real thing is whether these 10000 links are helping your website to rank better in search results or Page Rank. I can tell you that the answer would be a definite NO. So invest that $10 on some other more useful things or you can even choose to donate to the Orphanage. Be meaningful.

Getting Quality links NOT Quantity.

Getting 10 Quality Links is far better than getting 10000 rubbish links. Search engines value quality website that contains rich and helpful information and having such websites link to you, will be telling the search engines that you also deserved to be a quality website too.

Paid Links : The Grey Line

News of Google going down on paid links have been published all over the Web. Is it time for Google to step in and take control of the situation where by webmaster buys paid links to get high Page Rank and SERPs ranking? I am really unsure how Google is going to penalize paid links, but i have already started seeing decrease in my paid inbound links in Google's indexes. Time to build quality links...

Rif Chia is the Founder & Private SEO Consultant of EzBusinessNeeds.com with more than 5 years experiences in SEO Web Design Consultancy and Search Engine Marketing

Advanced SEO - The Characteristics Of A Perfect Incoming Link

What is a quality incoming link? This article describes the key characteristics of a perfect link. For explanation purposes, the sample company is a shoe retailer called Fred's Sports, and the keyword phrase being optimized for is "blue Nike sneakers".

Key word phrase in anchor text
Unless you put your keyword phrase in the anchor text (the text that describes the web site being linked to), you are wasting a lot of link power. Unfortunately a lot of people don't know this an end up putting their company name in the link text rather than the keyword phrase that they want their company to be found by. Much better that they link anchor says "blue Nike sneakers" than "Fred's Sports Store".

The link is from a relevant page
Google and the Google-powered search partners seek relevance in the interconnectedness of web pages. Incoming links should be from pages where the content on that page is related to the content of the page that is being linked to. A fishing related page linking to a casino site is an example of a non-related link. A jogging related page linking to a blue Nike sneakers product page is related and is looked upon favourably by the search engines.

The link goes to a relevant page
Another mistake that people make is always linking to the home page rather than to the most relevant page to the anchor text. If the link anchor text is "blue Nike sneakers" then the link should go to a page about blue Nike sneakers, not the home page. This is by far and away the most common linking mistake.

The link is from an authority site
Links from high Google PageRank sites are worth more, a lot more, than links from other sites. It's all about trust. A link from a trusted site tells the search engines that the sites linked to are also trusted - it's a vote of confidence from a credible source. Links from .gov, and .edu sites are also reported as having more weight than standard links. They are also more difficult to get adding to their perceived quality.

The link is at top of the page
Links from the top of a page (except for the header), are said to have more weight than links at the bottom of pages. It's the same with keyword phrases. A keyword phrase in the heading is worth more than in the body text.

The link is one-way, not reciprocal
Google's algorithm looks for link exchanges between sites and rates these links lower than straight one-way links. If possible, look for one way links by creating link bait - compelling content that will encourage people to link to your pages.

The link is within the body copy - not an advertising zone
Linking should be a natural part of the body copy. Recent reports suggest that the search engines will derate links from parts of the page that are traditionally sold for advertising. these tend to be the margins, header and footer areas of the page.

The link does not have a nofollow tag
The nofollow tag is a recent innovation that tells the search engines that although I am linking to this other page, I do not vouch for the page's integrity. In short, the nofollow tag tells the search engines to ignore the link. Obviously you do not want links to your web pages to have nofollow tags. Be careful with link exchanges. Some dishonest people will exchange links with you but use nofollow tags in the links to your pages to preserve their own link power.

There are few links on page (less than 20)
One link to your web site from a page with hundreds of links does little for your SEO results. The page's SEO power is being distributed over all the other links on the page. Goo;le's guidelines recommend no more than 100 links per page, but I believe 20 is a reasonable goal. You never know when the Google algorithm may change. The perfect page that links to your pages should have no more than 20 links.

John Hacking, SEO Brisbane, is Product Manager for Search Tempo, a Brisbane specialist SEO company. Search Tempo also conducts Australian SEO training. For daily updates, check the SEO Blog.