Link Building Strategies - an Overview

This is an article about Link Building Strategies that really sums it all up:

Search engine marketers are well aware that Link Popularity plays a significant role in determining a web site's search engine rankings. The number and quality of inbound links are measured by search engines and considered when determining a page's rank.

If you're already a link building guru, then this article is not for you. However, if you're fairly new to these ideas, then you should benefit from this introduction to the topic. I intend to summarize some information presented at the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York this year, as well as ideas presented years ago in these two excellent articles on link building:

Do's and Don'ts for Building Your Site's Link Popularity (by Robin Nobles & Brent Winters)
12 Essential Strategies for Building & Structuring Inbound Links (by Stephen Mahaney)


Offer Quality Content

The best (and most obvious) way to encourage other web sites to link to yours is to create high quality content! To present your content, create a web site that has a professional look and feel, and an easy-to-use navigation system.

Write articles of interest to others that host sites related to your own topic area. Provide additional information about the topic to make it easy for your visitors to learn or gather information. Create some kind of online tool that might be useful to others.

In short, give them a reason to link to your site because it's unlikely they will do so if they do not find your content worthwhile.


Submit to Directories

One of the first places to look for high quality inbound links is from search engine directories.

Of course, submitting your site to a directory does not guarantee inclusion. Submission to these directories are typically evaluated by human beings, and your web site will be judged based on their impressions. If your site meets their standards, it will be included in the directory. If the quality of your web site content is high, then the likelihood that it will be accepted is greatly increased.


Evaluate the Competition

After submitting to the search engine directories, the next step is to evaluate your competition.

Do a thorough analysis of your top competitors' web sites and make a list of web sites that are linking to them. Contact the webmasters of sites that link to your competitors, and try to get them to link to your site as well. If possible, convince them to remove your competitor's link in favor of your own.


Natural Links are Best

If anything has changed in the last few years since the above articles were written, it's the ability of search engines to detect artificial links.

It's therefore more important than ever to build your Link Popularity naturally and gradually to ensure that you are given the credit for those links. If search engines detect a sudden massive influx of inbound links to a web site, it will be assumed that these links were purchased or otherwise artificially generated.

Search engines prefer to see links gradually accumulate from various web sites that relate to the same theme or topic of the site being linked to.

This is reasonable, because that's the way inbound link growth would occur if a site is becoming known over time for the quality of its content.


Choose Quality over Quantity

It's much better to have a single link from a popular web site related to your own topic area than a great many links from unknown sites unrelated to your site's topic.

The quality of your inbound links is much more important than the quantity.

Your time is much better spent cultivating a relationship with quality web sites in your topic area that are themselves already well ranked.

Some things to consider when evaluating the quality of a link are:

• The amount of traffic the linking page actually receives -- a page that receives a great deal of traffic will expose your link to a greater number of visitors.
• The location of your link on the page -- if the link is prominently positioned, the likelihood that it will be noticed by visitors is increased.
• How many other links are on the page -- the boost your Link Popularity will receive from a given link is diluted by the number of other links on the linking page; the fewer links on the page, the better.

For more information on link quality, read this informative article entitled

The Smart Marketer's Guide to...Evaluating the Quality of a Link.

Post on Blogs Related to your Site Content

Blogs [like this one] or forums related to your own content area are excellent places to post material and include a link to your web site.

You should do this whenever possible because readers of the blog will at the very least become aware of your web site if they are not already.

Fairly recently, however, the power that links from blogs or forums have to affect your Link Popularity has been diminished with the introduction of the nofollow tag. This tag was introduced to discourage what Google refers to as "comment spam", which is essentially the use of blog posts to inflate link popularity even though the post was not really appropriate on the blog. If a nofollow attribute is used in a link, then search engines will not give the link any credit for Link Popularity.


Try for Links that are not Obvious

There are several places on the web to try to get links that are not obvious to those new to link building.

For example, links from .edu, .gov, or .mil domains are excellent sources for quality inbound links. These sites usually have good Page Rank and search engines will give these links high value.

Other great links to strive for are those from "Best of the Web", or "Picks of the Week" pages where new web sites are highlighted each week for their quality. Good examples are Yahoo! Picks and Forbes.com Best of the Web. These links are difficult to get, but are well worth the effort and will result in a good deal of traffic for your web site.

Try to be creative in your efforts to build links. Any web site that is somehow related to your site's content can be a potential link.


Keep URLs Consistent

To the extent that you can, try to make sure that your inbound links have a consistent format.

For example, make sure they say "http://www.marketposition.com" consistently, and not "http://marketposition.com" or "http://www.marketposition.com/". Despite the fact that all three of these URLs will lead a web browser to the same page, they are still 3 different URLs as far as the search engines are concerned.

If you focus on a consistent URL to link to, the benefit to your rankings will be maximized.


Don't Focus on Reciprocal Links

Although exchanging links with other web sites is a fairly common practice, it's not the best way to enhance your Link Popularity.

Search engines tend to regard reciprocal links as artificial. That's not to say that your site would be penalized for linking back to a site that links to you; it's just that the effect a link has on your Link Popularity is optimized if you do not link back to the site.

The reasoning behind this is that sites that link to yours in this way are doing so because they value your web site content, not because you have promised a link back to them in return.


Conclusion

Link building is a critical component in any search engine marketing strategy.

It's important to implement a link building plan and stick with it over time to build Link Popularity gradually. The ideas presented in this review are fundamental and should help any webmaster begin accumulating links for their web site.

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contributed by: Richard Drawhorn [Article shortened]

The difference between a flop and a hit

The difference between a flop and a hit can all be in the product description.

In fact if you are selling from a website what else does the customer have to go on?
They cannot actually see your product so they rely totally on what you say about it and any pictures you choose to use.

Obviously one of the things that tells them a lot about the item is its name.

About 4 years ago I had the rights to a product called “Product Development” which is hardy exciting, so instead we called it “How to Make £30,000 a Month Working from Home”. It was the same thing but sounded a whole lot more enticing. The name came from the real results of what was revealed to buyers, which of course was all about developing your own products.

The thing is that very few people want to make products, what most people want to do is sell products to make a load of money, and if they can do that easily, that is without leaving their own home, then they like that even more, hence the name was much better anyway.

The name of something can often flow into the description as well. In the case above it was much better talking about the joys of working from home and those that had done so already rather than trying to explain what developing your own products was all about.
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©Copyright Tim Lowe & Markiteer {article shortened}.

7 Essential Title Tag Strategies of High Ranking Web Pages

I am featuring here the best strategy, resource, article, newsclip that I came across recently by reading a ton of online marketing information.

Make sure you check back here regularly to get the latest and best from the online marketing world. You can also get the Hot Spot delivered by requesting your free newsletter here.


And the Winner "Best excerpt from the Online Marketing world" is:

The 7 Essential Title Tag Strategies of High Ranking Web Pages in 2006
John Heard, Head Researcher Planet Ocean Communications.

... The 'title' tag was, and still is, the single most important onpage element of high ranking webpages.

[You can find the 'title' tag in 'View Source' of your browser, at the top of the web page.]

Today the 'title' tag remains a critical component of top scoring webpages. While it's true that inbound links can cause a webpage to rank very well even if the keyword is missing from the body of the page, you'll seldom find a page without the keyword in the 'title' tag that ranks highly for a competitive search.


The 7 Essential Title Tag Strategies of Today's High Ranking WebPages

1. LENGTH OF TITLE

When creating titles for your webpages, remember that anything more than 63 characters is mostly superfluous. From a search engine ranking perspective, you should limit titles to only your best keywords while remembering that, typically, pages rank better when there is more than one keyword within the 'title' tag.


2. WORD PROXIMITY

Search engines actually do pay attention to the distance between words for multiple keyword searches. For example, in a search for Chevrolet Corvette, a webpage 'title' tag that contains these two words grouped together will typically hold a ranking advantage over another webpage with a 'title' tag such as Corvette, a legend by Chevrolet.

As for punctuation in the eyes of the search engines, Chevrolet/Corvette is on equal footing with Chevrolet Corvette, since the slash is regarded as just an empty space. Therefore, the engines view the distance between these keywords as exactly the same.


3. KEYWORD LOCATION

As a general rule, the closer you place your keyword to the beginning of the 'title' tag, the better the ranking advantage. However, bear in mind that we've seen fluctuations on this element from engine to engine and even from month to month. Regardless, on the whole, you can expect better results by placing your keywords first in your 'title' tag.


4. WORD ORDER

Consider the search dell computers. This will generate far different results than a search for computers dell. The search engines do pay attention to the linear order of your keywords, so be sure to position them in the most likely order that real people typically use when expressing them in everyday language.

However, be aware of the opportunities that may also be available when you switch the keyword order around. There may be instances where you'll find that reversing the keyword order sends good traffic with less competition.


5. REPETITIONS

Should you use the keyword more than once in the title? The answer is... it depends. First, let's talk about what not to do. Do not repeat keywords one after the other as in keyword, keyword, keyword.
However, there is no denying that a few pages that score well in specific keyphrase searches do, in fact, repeat keywords.

An appropriate use of repetition might look something like: Las Vegas - Sites and Attractions in the city of Las Vegas.

Regardless, you should keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of the top scoring sites do not repeat keywords within the 'title' tag. Once is usually enough.


6. TITLES OF HUMAN CONSUMPTION

There is one enduring constant of 'title' tag content creation that must remain a top priority, which is how well the text appeals to a human.

Because the 'title' tag is displayed as the headline for your page in the search results, its role is to motivate people to click your link. Therefore, the 'title' tag becomes the headline for your page. Its job is to reassure the searcher that, indeed, your page's content is all about exactly what they are looking for. Otherwise, why would anyone bother to click your link?


7. WHAT WORDS TO USE

By now it should be obvious that you should carefully select your best targeted keywords as your 'title' tag (duh!). However, it's surprising to see how many sites are apparently unaware of this very basic and simple fact of search engine marketing and optimization.

We are still seeing many, many web sites that use the same 'title' tag on every single page of their site, usually the company name or domain name. And, that's a huge mistake.

Now, if your site is guilty of committing this error, then you should probably jump up and down for joy! ...Why? Because your traffic is likely to substantially increase once you correct the error.
By inserting descriptive, keyword-rich 'title' tags into your webpages you'll be giving the engines exactly what they need to better index and rank your pages.

Remember that it isn't difficult to rank well for your company or domain name. After all, such names are usually relatively unique and consequently have little or no competition. In many cases, it isn't even necessary to include your company name in your 'title' tag to rank well in a your company name search.

And also be aware that your SE-knowledgable competitors will be rolling on the floor laughing at you if they ever see Untitled Document as your webpage title within the search results, a mistake caused by neglecting (forgetting?) to give the page any 'title' tag whatsoever!

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by John Heard, Courtesy of SearchEngineNews.com

{article shortened, see extended version on www.website-traffic-resources.com}.

Doing something about the world's climate change!

If you ever wanted to do something about the world's climate change, here is your chance!

Your help is needed for the world's largest ever climate experiment.


The Oxford University needs your computer power to run the world's largest climate change experiment!

To give you the essence here: You can 'donate' your computer's unused power to participate in this experiment. This experiment need thousands of people to help. All you have to do is to download the 'climate change experiment' program from the BBC website to your PC.

It is easy to do and 'runs in the back' meaning, you just carry on as before and you're making your contribution to the world at the same time.

Just download the program from the BBC website now at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/climatechange/.


If you ever wondered what is going on with all these hurricans, the mudslides, the melting polar caps, the tons of snow this winter, there is a lot of information on the site too.

Here is a short statement from the organisers of that experiment giving you some background information:

Trying to predict climate change is hard. There are lots of factors involved – air temperature, sea temperature and cloud cover all play a part – as do dozens of other variables. Therefore, there are a huge number of calculations involved.

One solution is for scientists to use the largest supercomputer they can find. But even the biggest supercomputers are only so good.


We think you can do better.

Using a technique known as distributed computing, we’re hoping to harness the power of thousands of PCs around the world. If 10,000 people sign up, we’ll be faster than the world’s biggest computer. And we’re hoping to be even better than that.


What do we want you to do?

Use your model as a screensaver, and watch it progress as a detailed spinning globe.

Taking part is easy.

All we’re asking you to do is download a simple programme, which doubles as a screensaver. Once you’ve installed it, your computer will take care of the rest. You don’t have to send us anything. You don’t have to enter any data. In fact – if you decide not set the programme as your screensaver, you probably won’t even notice it’s there.

However, if you want to, you can follow the progress of your experiment on a 3D spinning globe.


If I’m not doing anything, how am I helping?

The experiment works by making use of your spare processing power. All you have to do is use your computer exactly as you normally would, and the programme will run calculations in the background. When it’s done, it will send results back to scientists in Oxford, who will combine everyone’s results. The more people who take part, the more complete their predictions about the future climate will be.

Take part in the experiment!

Just download the program from the BBC website now at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/climatechange/

or go straight to download the experiment from the site.

A Website That Works

1. Perhaps the most important purpose of your website is to entice a visitor to give you their name and email address. As you will rarely if ever “sell” cold from a website, the email collection is the first, and most important, step in building a reservoir of people to market to, in the future.

Popular wisdom says that as soon as your reservoir is full of 1000 potential future customers then you will start to make sales as long as you keep topping up your fish stock level and keep your fish fed with high perceived value information (via a newsletter/ezine) and tickle them regularly about your products and services. If you have a very niche product or service, this figure drops to around 600.

2. The secondary purpose of a “website that works” is to stamp your unique personality on your site, to give your visitors a way to grow to “know, like and trust” you (while putting off the visitors that will never like you or buy from you – or who would just give you a hard time if they did). This is done via a blog. This can contain your own thoughts, articles, ideas OR feature other writers (with full accreditation of course).

3. The third purpose of a “website that works” is to contain all the information that a returning visitor will need to make a buying decision.

4. The fourth purpose of a "website that works" is to keep a visitor coming back to your site until a buying decision is made - the ezine and blog work together to do this.

5. The fifth purpose of a “website that works” is to make the buying process as automated and easy as possible.

6. The sixth purpose of a "website that works" is to generate enough traffic to be able to tell how the conversion of visitor (suspect) to ezine reader (prospect) is working. This is done using Google Adwords.

7. The seventh purpose of a "website that works" is to get picked up by the organic search results on the major search engines. This is done by a variety of methods, but your blog is key in this and it's essential that it's updated at least twice a week.

8. The eighth purpose of a "website that works" is to deliver meaningful statistics; unique visitors, conversion of unique visitors to ezine readers, subscribers to blog, conversion of ezine readers to sales, cost of acquiring each unique visitor, profit per unique visitor.

9. The ninth purpose of a "website that works" is to grow organically with your business, to be easy to update and change, to stay clear of gimmicks and distractions.

10. The tenth purpose of a "website that works" is to create passive income flows via Google Adsense income, eBay income (if appropriate), carefully chosen affiliate income from 3rd party products or services, sales of information products such as eprogrammes, ebooks, audio, video, home study courses.

p.s. I personally find this quite good but I have no idea who actually wrote it. So if you want to claim authorship, let me know.

Inspirational ways of dealing with the budens of life

These are some great ways of dealing with the burdens of life in the New Year:


* Accept that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue.


* Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.


* Drive carefully. It's not only cars that can be recalled by their maker.


* If you can't be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.


* If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.


* It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply be kind to others.


* Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, because then you won't have a leg to stand on.


* Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.


* Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.


* You may be only one person in the world, but you may also be the
world to one person.


* Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.


*A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.

STRESS MANAGEMENT for the New Year

A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, "How heavy is this glass of water?"

Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g.

The lecturer replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it.

If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem.

If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm.

If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance.

In each case, it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."

He continued,

"And that's the way it is with stress management.

If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later,

as the burden becomes increasingly heavy,

we won't be able to carry on. "




"As with the glass of water,

you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again.

When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden."

"So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down.

Don't carry it home.

You can pick it up tomorrow.

Whatever burdens you're carrying now,

let them down for a moment if you can."

Starting Your Online Business

How should you actually start your Online Business? Take it from the experts (I don't mean myself, just in case ...) and

1. Choose a Product or a Service
2. Register a Domain and get a Web Site
3. Create great Content and write proper Sales Copy
4. Get free Traffic from Search Engines

then pick basic Strategies to grow your Business:

5. Start a Newsletter or a Blog
6. Test your Site, your E-Mails and any Ads
7. Use Pay-Per-Click Traffic (only when tested Ads!)
8. Recruit Affiliates as a Sales Force

Here is a link, if you want a more detailed Step-By-Step Guide how to set-up and grow your own Online Business.

Wishing you Success, sometimes all it takes is to get started and to stick with it.

Karl

"You can never have freedom without financial freedom.
Freedom may be free, but it has a price."

This Blog is dedicated to those people willing to pay the price.

All of us were given two great gifts.

Our mind and our time and it's up to us what we do with it. With each dollar bill (or any other currency) that enters your hand, you and you only have the power to determine your destiny. Spend it foolishly, you choose to be poor. Spend it on liabilities, and you join the middle class. Invest it in your mind and learn how to acquire assets and you will be choosing wealth as your goal and your future.

The choice is yours and only yours. Every day with every dollar, you decide to be rich, poor or middle class. Share this knowledge with you children, and you prepare them for the world that awaits them. No one else will. You and your children's future will be determined by choices you make today, not tomorrow. Choose wisely and then do it! Get into action.

We believe that the Internet, respectively an online business is one of the best opportunities to build Passive Income. Passive Income that will be there when we need it, now and later. We believe that there is no better time, to start an online business.

From no other sector come more millionaires these days, than from the Internet. Costs and financial risks are relatively low, compared to other business opportunities, and the time we decide to spend on building the business is up to us - it can be done in the evenings, part-time or full-time. It's up to us.

blog content taken from www.website-traffic-resources.com