4 Kinds of Link Building Campaigns

Anyone that has spent any time studying SEO, researching algorithms or reading internet marketing blogs and forums knows that link building plays a huge role in a website’s marketing campaign. If for some reason you didn’t know that link building was such a big deal, then it’s imperative for me to tell you now. Backlinks (links pointing to your website) are considered web votes in the search engine popularity/ranking formulas. The more websites there are with links that lead to your site, the merrier. However, it does not stop there. Who links to you, why they link to you and what they say about you are arguably more important factors than how many websites “voted” for you.

There are 1,000’s of ways to build links back to your site and for a variety of reasons. Some will build links to increase rankings while others are looking to increase PageRank. Whatever the case may be, it is necessary that you understand the different types of link building.

Building Links to Increase Total Backlinks

In some industries, depending on the competition link building could entirely just be a popularity contest. For example, you could check the backlinks of your competitors rankings for the terms you are targeting and notice that they have over 100,000 backlinks compared to your 112. Also, for some search engines, having a plethora of links plays a role in your search engine positioning. Furthermore, the more links you have pointing to your site, the more paths you have for bots to find your site and to cache it. Building backlinks to increase your total in-link count in Yahoo or Google is usually done because this is something that can easily be seen by anyone online. Having a site that only has 50 backlinks says a lot. Much can be said about a site with over 40,000 links as well.

A few techniques to increase total backlinks include site-wide link building, blog rolls on blogs with a lot of posts, directory submitting and article distribution.

Building Links to Increase PageRank

Although you want a lot of sites to point to yours, you also want these sites to have high PageRanks. Google uses PageRank as a measure of importance. PageRank is an algorithm that measures how many sites are pointing to you and how many sites are pointing to those sites pointing to you and so on. Google still makes it clear that PageRank is the heart of their search engine algorithm, so getting links from websites with high Page Rank is a must. When you obtain links from sites with a lot of links pointing to them, it shows Google that a trusted domain has linked to you. Another reason you may want to increase your PageRank is because you want to sell advertising placements or blog reviews and noticed that the higher the PR of your site, the more money you can charge.

This form of link building is a very common technique performed by directories. They buy links from pages with a lot of PR to inflate their PR so webmasters will want to pay for inclusion into their directories.

A few techniques to increase PR fast is to get links from sites with a PR4 or better, sitewide/blogroll links, social bookmarking, mass press releasing, text link buying and link baiting.

Building Links that Increase Search Engine Rankings

As mentioned before, backlinks counts as votes. However it is not only the number and type of backlinks that matter, what they say about you could make all the difference in the world when it comes to search engine positioning. The anchor texts of your links are labels that help the search engines bots categorize and rank your site according to relevance. Sometimes getting a few links saying the keywords you’re going after can go a lot further than how many links you may have. So if you are looking to build links to increase search engine visibility, find relevant sites to give you links saying the keywords you’re going after for optimal keyword placement.

A few techniques to increase rankings are niche directory submissions, article distribution, link exchanges, blog reviews, links from sites already ranking for terms you’re targeting, and press releases.

Building Links that Generate traffic

So we can build links to increase PR and we can build links to improve our rankings. However, isn’t the ultimate goal to generate traffic? It’s easy to build links to indirectly generate traffic via the SERP’s and to forget about generating links that send visitors. While some links may increase your PR or even help your search engine positions, links that send relevant traffic directly to your site from a site related to yours could be a better investment than building links in hopes to get some love from the search engines’ proprietary algorithms.

A few ways to generate traffic via backlinks, is through affiliate marketing, paid links, links on pages with top Alexa rankings, reviews from bloggers with a lot of subscribers, forums in your industry, social networking and press releases.

While all of these techniques are valid, the important thing to remember is that major search engines like websites that generate traffic naturally. So not only do you have to figure out which route you want to take (if not all of them), you should also devised strategies that will give your website a natural link building profile.


Backlink tips provided by James Harrison; Link Building Expert & Online Marketing Specialist.

Using social networks for search engine marketing

Some businesses have been reluctant to adopt social networking as a marketing strategy, with companies even blocking access to social networks as part of company policy. Whilst this may seem a good move when trying to keep employees busy doing their jobs rather than completing their Facebook profile, marketing and communications departments have been slowly but surely become more frustrated at lost opportunities.

Social networking is an innate human trait, and in the business world, networking is vital. Hence the rise in networking events, business network breakfasts and so on. Moving this online was inevitable with the rise of the Internet, and businesses who fail to engage in the social network world with a cohesive marketing plan are more than missing a trick.

There are now many case studies of well-known brands who are successfully using social networking, not just for raising brand awareness and PR, but also for getting in contact with new and existing customers, for promoting products and services, offering white papers, freebies, coupons and discounts, and possibly most importantly, for listening to feedback from their customers.

Some companies have been flamed for the lack of interaction on blogs (for instance, disabling or removing comments), and it has not taken long for the lessons learnt by the likes of Johnson & Johnson and the damage allegedly done to reputations, to sink in. Businesses are realising that, whether you like it or not, your customers are sometimes going to make negative comments about your company, products and services. Those comments are going to be out there on the Net, and the realisation that they are better made in a place where you can at least spot them and respond is dawning on many of the large brands.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Ecademy are different types of social networks, but each is valuable if it is the right tool for the job for your company, and is included in a marketing strategy that understands the opportunities and limitations of each network.

Twitter for instance is a great place to disseminate news about your products, to make an offer to your followers, to easily contact your customers at minimal cost, to create a following and conversation. The brand that is Stephen Fry has become synonymous with Twitter in the UK, and as a least cost marketing tool has proven very effective, bringing Stephen's products to a global audience with very little effort. It has also minimised the costs, in both time and money, in dealing with customers and followers through more expensive channels, such as advertising, email, website updates and so on.

Facebook is being used successfully by many global product names to create fan pages and product pages, which then offer viral opportunities when the product is pushed through users' feeds, thereby bringing in more fans and 'groupies'. Facebook users are no longer just bored teens, and many silver surfers are also using Facebook as an easy way to share information with friends and family. This means that the Facebook demographic has changed, and creating pages or groups which are of interest to a particular target audience, geographic region and so on is a desirable, low cost strategy for many businesses.

LinkedIn is primarily a business network, and whilst being effective in bringing your business to the attention of others in the same sector, it has wider uses. Firstly, the chance to develop contacts with your suppliers, potential suppliers and customers, and others within the industry. The value of these contacts can never be underestimated, and there are many deals brokered through LinkedIn which would have been difficult or impossible without some expensive real world networking at conferences etc. Another aspect of LinkedIn which is frequently overlooked by the business world is the ability to create or join groups, where both promotion and discussion are the norm. By contributing to discussions, your company or yourself can be seen to be an expert in the field, and this in itself is valuable in online promotion. Additionally, there are many groups for promotion of products or services, as well as recruitment for specific sectors, and these add to the arsenal of promotional spots for articles, white papers, jobs, discounted services and so on.

Ecademy is similar to LinkedIn but, having been established for longer, has a wider range of available opportunities within its website, reaching both on and offline. Ecademy can be more time-consuming purely because of that, but equally as valuable as LinkedIn when seeking business contacts, and opportunities to bring your knowledge and expertise to a wider audience.

As with all these networks, it is essential to put time into the developing of relationships and holding conversations in order to reap the rewards. It is vital to remember that this must be a two way process. Hard sell will not work on any of the social networks, just as it is not a popular mechanism in much of real life. It is very much about giving first and foremost, and acquiring respect from your peers, customers, followers, as well as listening and showing an interest. The payback can be huge though if you are successful, and many of the internet marketers who tweet are garnering increasing amounts of custom by regularly talking as well as listening.


Phil Robinson is an experienced online marketing consultant and Founder of ClickThrough Marketing - an international Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing agency

If You Build It, They Will Come but a Little Help Doesn't Hurt

You have just finished setting up your first blog, got it looking just right, posted your first article and now you wait. Your content is good, you have viewpoints you want to share with others but how to attract visitors (ie traffic) to your door?

"If you build it, they will come" might be true but how long must you wait before anyone realizes that your site actually exists. A blog like any other business needs traffic in order to survive. There is no harm in using tools, which are already available to you, to increase your exposure and the best thing about them is that they won't cost you a dime.

Probably the most ignored and useful tool that a blogger has at his disposal is the RSS feed. Say what? RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is the equivalent of having a 100% free ezine subscription service. The trick is to submit your RSS feed URL to as many RSS directories as possible. Then each time you post new material on your blog, this is syndicated to your RSS feed and the directories display your latest posts. Lists of RSS directories can be easily found with a simple Google search. Most blogging software such as Wordpress and blogging sites such as Blogger.com come with a built in RSS feed - so make use of it.

Leaving a comment on others blogs is another effective method to attract targeted traffic and to establish firm one way backlinks to your site which in the long run also improve your search engine listings. Find blogs which are somewhat similar in content to your own and post relevant insightful comments in an area in which you are familiar. If your comment is “O.K.'d” by the blog owner then your link will go live. There are numerous free software packages available, one being “ Blog Detective 2.0 ”, which can save you time and effort searching for blogs manually to leave comments on and building backlinks. It also displays the Page Rank of each of the individual blog posts, the home page of the blogs and whether you have left comments on this blog before. A very useful tool and free!

Social bookmarking is of paramount importance in promoting your website but submitting your link to each individual site can be a time consuming task. However there is a site, www.SocialMarker.com, which can greatly reduce the time and effort needed to socially bookmark a website and it is free. Here you can atomatically submit your blog to over 120 Social bookmarking sites. All that you supply is the title of your site, it's URL, a brief description and the keywords (tags) that you wish to be searched for. Voila! All done and the backlinks to increase your page ranking and targeted traffic should soon follow..


These are just 3 of many ways to explode your blog traffic. It's possible to reach dizzy levels of traffic for your new blog right from day one when you have an arsenal of blogger’s traffic tactics at your disposal. Check out http://blogging4bucks.youwanted2know.com for more details... and pick up your free copy of 'Blog Detective ' at the-Savvy-Shopper.com

Article Marketing - for brand awareness or making money?

Should you just use articles to gain brand equity and raise awareness of your business, or should you look to make money from your articles?

Once you have created articles, it is worth considering whether, in this age of the free content mentality, it is worth attempting to make money from your articles and information products, through, for instance, a subscriber or membership model.

There are plenty of websites who do offer premium and paid content, who are very successful in doing so, but there are also many other websites who have chosen to raise awareness of their brand and expertise by giving away the content for free.

The choice is entirely yours, and it is worth looking at the different models that may be available to you to experiment with. No decision needs to be locked in stone, so if you find a partiuclar model does not work for either your users or your business, you can change the model, but bear in mind that this may cause dissension in the ranks of your users if you do so.

1.Partial Access/ Sample Chapters

Many of the online bookstores (eg Amazon) and publishers (eg O'Reilly) offer sample chapters to whet the appetite of the customer and encourage them to buy the whole book. This can also be done with white papers and so on, as well as with music or films, by offering a summary or clip, and selling full access at a cost. The software industry has used this for years by offering a time limited or restricted trial version of the software to allow potential customers to try before they buy.

This model allows you to promote the samples in many different places, whilst maintaining control of the complete document, film or music and controlling the data harvesting from those who purchase the whole product. This data is the basis of your marketing list for existing customers, and hence is very valuable for all future promotions and marketing.

2.Extended Content with Bonuses

Another mechanism is to offer bonuses or additional content in the paid version. This has been successfully used by the movie industry, offering DVDs with extra footage, inside information, director's cuts and so on, but can equally be used with white papers, ebooks, articles and so on.

3.Time Limited Access

There are a growing number of sites who either offer articles free for the first few weeks after publication and then you pay to access historic content (eg Marketing Sherpa), or who offer newly published articles as premium content and then the archive of older articles for free.

The point with all of these models though is that the content needs to be of high enough quality to encourage people to pay for access to it. It is vital to produce unique, quality content for your search engine rankings, to increase your market share, and for brand equity. Whether you also use the articles to increase your income or revenue from your website is a decision that needs to be made based on knowing your target audience and understanding your competition. If similar content is available elsewhere for free, it is inevitable that your potential membership and hence income will be reduced. In which case, it may be better to provide the information in your articles for free to help develop brand awareness and show your company's expertise in the field, rather than seeking revenue gain.


Phil Robinson is an experienced online marketing consultant and Founder of ClickThrough Marketing - an international Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing agency

Build More Twitter Traffic

There are a lot of social networking sites out there that are quickly replacing Blogs as the preffered method of generating traffic, Facebook and Twitter are two of the best examples that come to mind.

Thats why when I found out about a way to increase the number of followers for any Twitter account I had to try it out.

Unless you are already super popular or follow tons of other people it is an uphill challenge to build as many followers as the TwitterGetter says they can get for you.

Besides which it is free and fully automated. I had 5 new followers in just a few seconds.

So give it a try. http://tweetergetter.com/rankbullet