Internet Marketing News – Search Engine Marketing

Getting web links is important, ongoing, and is a search engine optimization strategy that works best for people that approach the activity with a bit of imagination, rather than treating it like a bore and a slog. Today we’re looking at some of the more imaginative ways to get web links … you might just find that you have a little fun with your link building campaigns this month!

1. Write a testimonial
I don’t know about you, but I think good service is very rare and should be rewarded! Write a testimonial for a company that has given you great service or an exceptional product – most sites will give you web links in return.

2. Get in touch with the webmasters
When you’ve created an authority post (one that took plenty of research and at least a few hours to write), let the webmasters in your field know about it. People like giving web links to content that is fresh.

3. Mentor somebody
‘Real’ companies don’t often consider this, as the people with the sites are the people that don’t need any mentoring! However, if you choose to mentor a blogger in your field, a school student or university student in your field, you expand your inbound web link possibilities.

4. Interview someone
People like the ego-boost that comes with being interviewed – do a favorable write-up and they’ll always link to your site from theirs.

5. Answer forum questions
It can be hard to find good, individually tailored expert information on the net, so many people end up posting their questions on forums. Answer questions on your industry’s main forums, and provide your web link on the answer.

6. Put a text translator on your site
It’s easy to forget that there are people in the world who don’t speak English … and that these people use the Internet! An instant audience broadener and web link promoter.

7. Join the Better Business Bureau
People are more likely to link to sites that they can see are considered trustworthy.

8. Donate to an online charity
Especially if they list contributors somewhere on their site, and provide web links to them!

So, you’ve been in the Web marketing game for a while and you know most of the ways to get your web site linking profile up? You’ve got a strategy for creating new articles for article marketing, press releases for syndication, slowly adding to all the relevant directories in your field, and you’ve even established a couple of partnerships with other blogs for doing guest postings? Today we’re going beyond the ordinary, looking at some unusual but very effective ways to boost your web site linking profile.

1. Comment on other blogs
With a couple of caveats: Only comment if you have something relevant, funny, or interesting to say; and always be respectful even if you disagree.
2. Link out to other blogs
Blogs are likely to notice who is linking to them, investigate their identity … and often return the favor!
3. Publish your content on a weekday
More people are online on weekdays, and more people are likely to see your content when it is fresh, and right up the top of the ‘Newest Updated’ results in Google, Technorati, and other content aggregators.
4. Do your own web site linking!
Internal site linking is critical to your Google rankings, but even more, it gives the people that are already engaged with your content an opportunity and a reason to go deeper into your site and find more relevant information.
5. Trade blogroll links
Create a blogroll of sites that you read and recommend to your own blog’s readers. Ask the sites on this roll if they would be interested in linking back to you.
6. Edit and proof every little thing you write
A piece with typos, spelling mistakes and grammatical errors doesn’t make you site look like a link-worthy domain. Polish it all up!
7. Hold a competition
Competitions are exciting, especially when they are skills-based rather than chance-based. Many people will link to competitions to let other people know about them, especially if they have a decent prize!
8. Create a walk-through
Information is easy to find on the net … but comprehensive, valuable information on a particular difficult topic isn’t always so easy. People really value walk-throughs, and they are good fro attracting more web site linking across the net.

You know what opinions are like … and you know that everybody has an opinion! What you may not have known is that carefully considered, well-expressed and constructive opinions can actually be very valuable in building up your website linking statistics. It’s as if you could buy Internet advertising. Reviews are gold on the new Internet, where there is a zetabyte of information (literally!) and very little way to assess the value of it, other than asking somebody who has already been there and read that! Here’s how giving your opinion, or asking for other people’s opinions, could actually make a difference to your website linking profile.

Get links by doing blog reviews or website reviews
All sorts of blogs and websites want to get opinions out there on the net about their site. In these reviews, you can be completely honest … but if you choose to criticize and you’d like to keep your website linking from their site, do at least be constructive!

Review products and services
When people are looking for a particular product or service on the Internet, they are instantly hit with a flood of marketing garbage as soon as they hit the ‘Search’ button on Google. Start a company blog and review products or services that are related to your niche. Here are some tips for writing a highly trafficked (and popularly linked-to!) review post:
* Actually buy the product or service!
* Take photos to support your review
* Take video to support your review, if appropriate
* Give an honest opinion
* Make your opinion easy to find and assess – use a star rating system for various aspects of the product or service.

Host your own user reviews
If one opinion is good, then many opinions is many times better, in website linking terms! People love the ability to get their opinions off their chest … whether they be positive or negative. Host your own user reviews of non-competing products and services, and people will be happy to boost your website linking numbers.

Review products on other sites
Sites like ePinions get a lot of traffic, and if you write an ‘expert’ style review, the website linking that you provide along with your review is likely to attract real traffic from real people.

There are definitely plenty of things that you can do in order to get your website noticed and help you raise your ranking with the major search engines. One of the easiest things that you can do is put together a network of valuable web linking strategies. If you are unfamiliar with how web linking works, then you may want to keep reading in order to gather a better understanding of how they can benefit you and drive long term traffic to your website that you can enjoy both in terms of ranking as well as an influx of business for your company.

Do you happen to have accounts with one or more of the popular social networking sites that are online today? If so, then have you thought about setting one up for your business as well? Believe it or not, there are great benefits that can come from setting up one of these social networking sites and linking it back to your website for your business. Additionally, the majority of these websites are free of charge so you can actually get a decent level of exposure for your company without having to spend any of your precious advertising dollars.

If you run a website that deals with health foods, then you can always take advantage of web links in any number of forums. Go to forums that deal with the benefits of health foods or the various types of health foods. You can then post on these subjects and provide a link to your website at the end or sometimes even in your post. These can be very valuable web links because the people who are truly interested in your content that you have on your website will be the people who are clicking through and more often than not, they will be your repeat business.

Web links can also come in the form of website directories where you can go in and post your website under the proper category. There are a number of directories out there that are well known for helping websites get off the ground once submitted. However, you have to be careful that you are not submitting too quickly to these types of sites as they can have a negative impact on your rankings with the search engines. All in all, there are a number of great ways that you can work with web links in order to get your website fully optimized to drive traffic and your rankings with the major search engines.

Link building services are vital for many businesses, which need good Google rankings but can’t spend the time on developing the expertise to get them on their own. You’ll find a lot of advice about DIY link building on the Internet, and it generally looks something like:

* Submit your site to web directories
* Write articles with good info and real value
* Regularly create press releases
* Comment on dofollow blogs
* Start your own set of blogs and maintain them

These are the core activities of link building services … but they also have a few tricks up their sleeve that aren’t widely known! Here we look at some of the secrets that link building services use to get top Google ranks for their clients.

1. Look for links with no mention

Link building services can use special parameters within search engines to find websites that already mention one of your products, your website or your brand, but don’t actually include the link. Sometimes then a friendly email asking for a followed link is all that is needed!

2. Friends and family

Do a customer’s friends and family have their own websites … and if not, do they have MySpace or Facebook pages, do they participate in forums or Yahoo Answers, or otherwise publish content on Web 2.0 sites? Simply collaborating to get the link out there via people who know the customer personally can get a great deal of links.

3. Profile sites

Yes, many social bookmarking sites and networking sites don’t have followed links. But remember that it isn’t only search engine spiders that crawl the web, and what people see on the Internet isn’t always a direct result of a Google search. MySpace, Dig, Facebook, Delicious, Frappr, Newsvine, Yahoo 360 … real people read these sites and may follow the links from them.

4. Images used without credit

Creative commons images are supposed to be used with a link and credit. Using image identification tools, link building services can discover where your sites images have been used without identification, and contact the website owner asking for the proper credit … and link!

5. Quotables

Ask for a quote from somebody at a company in your niche to use in your site’s press release. Publish it on site, and then your link building service can contact the quoted person, offering the chance to republish whole on their website with a live link back to the customer’s site.