Looking for a simple way to get an edge on your competition?
Successful businesses who are in it for the long haul continually apply innovative marketing strategies and tactics to differentiate themselves and get that edge. Two such killer marketing strategies are positioning and relationship building. And guess what? Article marketing is a proven tactic that just happens to address both of those marketing strategies. Is it the “be all, end all” of positioning and relationship building? Absolutely not. However, it is an excellent step in the right direction. And on top of that, there’s probably a good chance that your competition is not using this tactic. Face it. It takes some time, skill, and effort to write and effectively use articles, that’s why the masses don’t do it however, those looking for an edge do.
So why choose article marketing as one of you marketing tactics? Here are 7 exceptional reasons:
1. It is quite simple. People love to buy from and deal with the best. Writing and effectively marketing your articles helps you position yourself as the expert in your field.
2. Let's take this first concept a step further for reason #2. Let’s be blunt here, as an expert, you can justifiably increase your rates and charge more for your products.
3. If your articles are good and distributed properly, they can spread like wildfire and literally cause a viral marketing frenzy. Ultimately driving business your way.
4. A big part of Internet marketing has to do with the Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. It’s critical that we play their game. That being said, Search Engines love content such as articles! Many Internet marketers try the latest fad to trick Search Engines into getting a better ranking. If you have a lot of time and/or money on your hands to keep up with the latest trends and the ever changing Search Engine rules, then do what you feel is right. However, one tactic still holds true with improving Search Engine ranking, and that’s article marketing.
5. People love to be and feel well informed – It helps them make better decisions. Your articles can serve as the source for the input they seek. And who better to buy from then the source that provided the information in the first place.
6. Talk about getting major bang for the buck, articles can easily be repurposed in a variety of ways. For example:
==> They can become content for your or someone else's newsletter;
==> Used as free giveaways to prospects/clients, in seminars, at networking events, etc;
==> Used to spark conversation in a blog or an online networking group such as Ryze;
==> Combine multiple articles into an eBook, book or info-product that can be sold or given away in exchange for contact information;
==> Become the basis for a live seminar or teleseminar;
==> And we can go on and on and on.
7. Articles when distributed properly are a great way to stay in touch with clients and prospects. Studies have shown that on average it takes around 7 touches before a prospect buys. Why not use articles as some of those touches? This will help continually boost your prospect’s perception of you as someone who consistently adds value.
We live in an age where information is king. We all know something others would be interested in knowing. Share your knowledge and like a magnet you’ll draw your prospects towards you.
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
6 Costly Mistakes Affiliate Marketers Make In Their Career
It’s always one of those “I can’t believe its true” moments for new affiliates once they discover the world of affiliate marketing. When they realise you don’t have to worry about product development or shipping. They immediately jump on board, forgetting to perform their due diligence on the company they are joining. Then soon afterwards they expect to start making money within weeks of starting, but reality always strikes. They are yet to be millionaires. Here are some mistakes and tips on how to avoid them.
1, Lack Of Patience: Patience is a Virtue like they say. It took years for MacDonald’s to be a successful; it took years for Microsoft and other big companies to take off to success. Infact most business takes up to 5years to start seeing profit. Treating your affiliate business as a real business is important. Super affiliates that earn $20,000 a month took years to get to that point. Research a program before signing up. Commit to stick it out. If they offer guides and training take advantage of it. Update and maintain your site with fresh contents. Don’t jump ship when the going gets tough.
2, To Many Programs: Avoid the temptation to subscribe to too many programs. When the going gets tough, its easy to think the grass is greener the other side. The problem about subscribing to too many programs at the same time is that you’ll fail to give them the attention and focus they deserve to make you money. I recommend two or three programs at the same time to enable you turn your hard work into cash.
3, Wrong Choice Of Program: When it comes to choosing affiliate programs, choose the ones that have a generous commission structure, and that pay their affiliates easily and on time. Have affiliate products that fit in with your target audience. Choosing programs that offers products that might not interest people means no commission or money for you. If you join a program that offers products that are “hot” you will be competing with thousands of others who are promoting the same product. Choose a niche you KNOW information about! Check the profitability of that niche.
4, Generalized Marketing: Focus on Niche Marketing: Focus on a tiny niche, the tinier and narrower that niche is, the better. Try improving on a single key aspect of your business at a time. Putting your efforts in one of two ways will help you achieve your affiliate program goals. Try getting people to join your list. Then keep in touch with them by sending out valuable info.
5, Organic Traffic Only: Another mistake most affiliates makes is the idea of generating only organic traffic. This form of traffic that is naturally generated by a website, is a myth. There is no such thing! Organic traffic is the one that is created by the website naturally. This concept is nothing but a fairy tale story and this is not a reality.
6, Link Exposure: Hiding your affiliate link on your website is crucial nowadays. Most affiliate marketers still make the mistake of making there links visible. The truth is that internet users have become more sophisticated and the honest truth is that most web users won't click on an affiliate link or anything that looks like it. You’ve got to learn how to hide your affiliate links to ensure click through’s. Also, stories of people’s affiliate links being changed to divert traffic has happened and is still happening.
There are many big mistakes made by affiliates that can be easily avoided, but these are just a few of them. However making mistakes in business are inevitable and important. I recommend failing and making mistakes fast and early in your business than learning from them. This would move you forward towards success.
1, Lack Of Patience: Patience is a Virtue like they say. It took years for MacDonald’s to be a successful; it took years for Microsoft and other big companies to take off to success. Infact most business takes up to 5years to start seeing profit. Treating your affiliate business as a real business is important. Super affiliates that earn $20,000 a month took years to get to that point. Research a program before signing up. Commit to stick it out. If they offer guides and training take advantage of it. Update and maintain your site with fresh contents. Don’t jump ship when the going gets tough.
2, To Many Programs: Avoid the temptation to subscribe to too many programs. When the going gets tough, its easy to think the grass is greener the other side. The problem about subscribing to too many programs at the same time is that you’ll fail to give them the attention and focus they deserve to make you money. I recommend two or three programs at the same time to enable you turn your hard work into cash.
3, Wrong Choice Of Program: When it comes to choosing affiliate programs, choose the ones that have a generous commission structure, and that pay their affiliates easily and on time. Have affiliate products that fit in with your target audience. Choosing programs that offers products that might not interest people means no commission or money for you. If you join a program that offers products that are “hot” you will be competing with thousands of others who are promoting the same product. Choose a niche you KNOW information about! Check the profitability of that niche.
4, Generalized Marketing: Focus on Niche Marketing: Focus on a tiny niche, the tinier and narrower that niche is, the better. Try improving on a single key aspect of your business at a time. Putting your efforts in one of two ways will help you achieve your affiliate program goals. Try getting people to join your list. Then keep in touch with them by sending out valuable info.
5, Organic Traffic Only: Another mistake most affiliates makes is the idea of generating only organic traffic. This form of traffic that is naturally generated by a website, is a myth. There is no such thing! Organic traffic is the one that is created by the website naturally. This concept is nothing but a fairy tale story and this is not a reality.
6, Link Exposure: Hiding your affiliate link on your website is crucial nowadays. Most affiliate marketers still make the mistake of making there links visible. The truth is that internet users have become more sophisticated and the honest truth is that most web users won't click on an affiliate link or anything that looks like it. You’ve got to learn how to hide your affiliate links to ensure click through’s. Also, stories of people’s affiliate links being changed to divert traffic has happened and is still happening.
There are many big mistakes made by affiliates that can be easily avoided, but these are just a few of them. However making mistakes in business are inevitable and important. I recommend failing and making mistakes fast and early in your business than learning from them. This would move you forward towards success.
3 Essentials Before You Submit To Article Directories
One of the oldest yet still more effective techniques in driving targeted prospects to sites and converting them into buyers is information-based marketing. This is why article writing, submissions and publications are at an all-time high.
There are many tools that you can use to make the process of distributing your articles easier. However, although this is invaluable in getting your article exposed to more sites, there are common mistakes that some people make before submitting their articles to directories.
Let us take a look at the more common mistakes made in 3 key areas:
1) Confusing the reason to promote articles with the reason to write them.
In article writing, the main benefits of you promoting them is branding, lead generation and promotion, which are all part of your optimization efforts.
However, there is one reason why you write articles, and that is to inform your audience about a subject. It is greatly important that your article is based upon this fact, or else you stand to fail in the promotional benefits as outlined above.
Of course, it is also highly important that you figure out how to get people to read you article, and then to click on your site link in the resource box. I have produced a couple of articles that cover these areas so please check them out :-).
2) Failing to realize and maximize the promotional opportunities of article marketing.
You will more than likely already know that your article can generate links back to your site from the article directories themselves, and also from any sites who publish your article from these directories. However, did you know that you can attract more visitors and better search engine results from the same article?
The first step to achieving this is to provide relevant keywords at strategic places in the article. However, do not overdo this. A good benchmark is to aim for between a ten to fifteen percent keyword density. I won't go further into this here as I've discussed this in other articles but if you would like to find out more, look out for more of my article marketing articles.
You shouldn't just aim for your article to be accepted by article directories, but should ultimately aim for it to be used by publishers who scour the directories for website content. You should not underestimate the potential that this can have on your promotional efforts, as many of these publishers may have hundreds or thousands of regular visitors who could then view your article.
Start out by having a plan of what you want achieved and make sure that you reach your targets. It is important to do this so that you can reap the maximum benefits of every article that you write.
3) Creating articles with content that does not help your readers.
Maybe your only plan is to create an article and get links back from article directories, and that any visitor that you may get from this is fine.
Well you may need to think again. Many article directoriesclamp down on the amount of articles that they accept that are simply not up to standard. And even if a poorly written, uninformative article does make it into the article sites, then the potential of being picked up by webmasters seeking quality content is certainly lost.
The benefits of one publisher with a hundred thousand website visitors picking up your article should be enough incentive for you to write an informative article. This is by no means impossible, and you may find that this value is conservative in what you may achieve from a number of publishers running your article on their site.
Researching into a topic that is sought after is important. There may be many readers of this article who will feel that this information is all well and good but feel that they cannot write an article well, or may not know enough about a certain subject to write an article. This is by no means a dead-end. There are many places where you can research into a topic, or hiring a writer might be an option worth considering.
The choice really is yours on how dedicated you are in increasing the exposure of your article, and consequently your website. On a basic level you can choose to gain a few backlinks from article directories, or with a little more effort you can enjoy massive exposure from providing quality content.
There are many tools that you can use to make the process of distributing your articles easier. However, although this is invaluable in getting your article exposed to more sites, there are common mistakes that some people make before submitting their articles to directories.
Let us take a look at the more common mistakes made in 3 key areas:
1) Confusing the reason to promote articles with the reason to write them.
In article writing, the main benefits of you promoting them is branding, lead generation and promotion, which are all part of your optimization efforts.
However, there is one reason why you write articles, and that is to inform your audience about a subject. It is greatly important that your article is based upon this fact, or else you stand to fail in the promotional benefits as outlined above.
Of course, it is also highly important that you figure out how to get people to read you article, and then to click on your site link in the resource box. I have produced a couple of articles that cover these areas so please check them out :-).
2) Failing to realize and maximize the promotional opportunities of article marketing.
You will more than likely already know that your article can generate links back to your site from the article directories themselves, and also from any sites who publish your article from these directories. However, did you know that you can attract more visitors and better search engine results from the same article?
The first step to achieving this is to provide relevant keywords at strategic places in the article. However, do not overdo this. A good benchmark is to aim for between a ten to fifteen percent keyword density. I won't go further into this here as I've discussed this in other articles but if you would like to find out more, look out for more of my article marketing articles.
You shouldn't just aim for your article to be accepted by article directories, but should ultimately aim for it to be used by publishers who scour the directories for website content. You should not underestimate the potential that this can have on your promotional efforts, as many of these publishers may have hundreds or thousands of regular visitors who could then view your article.
Start out by having a plan of what you want achieved and make sure that you reach your targets. It is important to do this so that you can reap the maximum benefits of every article that you write.
3) Creating articles with content that does not help your readers.
Maybe your only plan is to create an article and get links back from article directories, and that any visitor that you may get from this is fine.
Well you may need to think again. Many article directoriesclamp down on the amount of articles that they accept that are simply not up to standard. And even if a poorly written, uninformative article does make it into the article sites, then the potential of being picked up by webmasters seeking quality content is certainly lost.
The benefits of one publisher with a hundred thousand website visitors picking up your article should be enough incentive for you to write an informative article. This is by no means impossible, and you may find that this value is conservative in what you may achieve from a number of publishers running your article on their site.
Researching into a topic that is sought after is important. There may be many readers of this article who will feel that this information is all well and good but feel that they cannot write an article well, or may not know enough about a certain subject to write an article. This is by no means a dead-end. There are many places where you can research into a topic, or hiring a writer might be an option worth considering.
The choice really is yours on how dedicated you are in increasing the exposure of your article, and consequently your website. On a basic level you can choose to gain a few backlinks from article directories, or with a little more effort you can enjoy massive exposure from providing quality content.
"Maximum Exposure on Low Cost Internet Ad"
Advertising had long since been a major determinant of a business' success. This would include the presentation of the product / service to the consumers. What really matters is how it is presented to the target market to be able to capture it.
Whatever the package, the ad media also plays a great role in determining the success of the product or service awareness.
What may be its advantages over other proven medium like the best-selling TV ads?
Advantages
1. Low Cost
Eventhough the Internet ad might be viewed as "classy" or far-reaching, as compared to other medium, this is far cheaper than most. Internet Ad Packages are offered for as low as $29.99 for a one-month run-time period.
2. Capture market
Should your product / service aim to cater to the younger generation or the corporate-oriented ones, Internet ad would be best since they would always be "hooked-up" into the net surfing sites that might have a link to your very own. Result, a great number of "hits" on your site!
2. Hassle free
All you would ever really need is a PC (and some knowledge and bright ideas in forming your site) wherein you could open your site, search for the best Internet Ad package, and check / update the status of your ad. You may actually never have to leave your home to advertise!
3. Updated ads
Unlike the TV ads that need to be updated on a regular basis, Internet ads may run for quite some time without the need for change. If so, change in the site is very minimal and may be done easily at home.
Disadvantages
1. Scope
Limited market may be captured if one would solely use the Internet Ad for advertising. Although most people now are into the use of technology, i.e. surfing the Internet, still, majority of the average consumers still relies on the old form of advertising as a means of gathering information about certain products / service.
2. Additional cost
If one would enlist the help of another professional or establishment to produce the site for their product or service, this would entail additional costs on the part of the entrepreneur.
Given the stated list of advantages and disadvantages about low-coast Internet Ad, an entrepreneur may now weigh in its applicability to his / her product or service.
The aim of Internet ad is to offer the widest range or "Maximum Exposure" of the brand at the least possible cost. Now, does that not sound good or what?
Whatever the package, the ad media also plays a great role in determining the success of the product or service awareness.
What may be its advantages over other proven medium like the best-selling TV ads?
Advantages
1. Low Cost
Eventhough the Internet ad might be viewed as "classy" or far-reaching, as compared to other medium, this is far cheaper than most. Internet Ad Packages are offered for as low as $29.99 for a one-month run-time period.
2. Capture market
Should your product / service aim to cater to the younger generation or the corporate-oriented ones, Internet ad would be best since they would always be "hooked-up" into the net surfing sites that might have a link to your very own. Result, a great number of "hits" on your site!
2. Hassle free
All you would ever really need is a PC (and some knowledge and bright ideas in forming your site) wherein you could open your site, search for the best Internet Ad package, and check / update the status of your ad. You may actually never have to leave your home to advertise!
3. Updated ads
Unlike the TV ads that need to be updated on a regular basis, Internet ads may run for quite some time without the need for change. If so, change in the site is very minimal and may be done easily at home.
Disadvantages
1. Scope
Limited market may be captured if one would solely use the Internet Ad for advertising. Although most people now are into the use of technology, i.e. surfing the Internet, still, majority of the average consumers still relies on the old form of advertising as a means of gathering information about certain products / service.
2. Additional cost
If one would enlist the help of another professional or establishment to produce the site for their product or service, this would entail additional costs on the part of the entrepreneur.
Given the stated list of advantages and disadvantages about low-coast Internet Ad, an entrepreneur may now weigh in its applicability to his / her product or service.
The aim of Internet ad is to offer the widest range or "Maximum Exposure" of the brand at the least possible cost. Now, does that not sound good or what?
"I am an AUTHOR" - Is this the next big fad?
Write an article, get the traffic. Well sort of! Since the birth of writing articles, our industry has caught on to the phenomena of increasing your website’s traffic by becoming the professional in your field. The only problem with this is that for every serious professional in one field, there are a thousand other writers who are jumping on the "band wagon".
This article phenomenon is hurting every industry!
From bloggers, column writers, and e-books, the writing industry is yearning for more great writers. The internet marketing community is especially hurting for better content.
With the birth of SEO (search engine optimization), people all over the world are searching, browsing, and reading everything they can on how to promote their business on the internet. Because of this demand for different content, the supply of writers are increasing everyday but the quality of articles is decreasing exponentially.
Everyone is writing about the exact same thing! My company receives on average 10-20 articles per hour submitted to us. I would have to say that only 1 in about 100 articles submitted are ever published within our website. Those numbers are extremely low and for good reason.
It's all about "substance" - or lack of it!
Many articles we review are nothing more than simple "babble" and most of them are pointless. You can seriously tell right away whether the article is just a promotional piece or something with actual substance within the content.
Great content is very important. There is a misconception out there that most people won't read your content and you can pretty much post anything you want within your website as long as your website is clean, professional looking, and can be found online.
YOU ARE SOOOOO WRONG!
website content development
If there is one constant online, it's the fact that the general public is getting smarter and more knowledgeable on how to research for honest, reputable companies on the internet.
Unfortunately, authors these days are simply stealing from other great authors!
I am not talking about posting someone else's article on your website! Copying content from other leaders in your industry will only hurt your company. This is why the writing industry is getting worse; many writers out there simply select a topic they want to write about, then they go online and find 5 articles on that topic. Once they have some other great articles, they simply proceed to combine each article for themselves, by personalizing the content a little.
Do you ever wonder why for specific topics within your industry, you can find hundreds of authors that wrote almost the exact same thing? I call these people "Content Copiers".
Even worse are people who buy articles to post online ! ! !
This gets me every time. Did you know that you can now hire a company to write something for you and insert your company information as the source and author of the article? This strategy is seriously sad considering I can almost guarantee you that the article you just bought was also sold to a handful of other companies. All they do is tweak the article a little bit and insert a different title.
No one knows your business more than you do. If you are seriously good at what you do, 9 times out of 10, you probably have enough knowledge to write an article that makes sense, that is unique in content, and that has your personal touch.
We've all come across different situations while operating our businesses. These small but important situations are what gives us confidence in what we do. When you learn from your mistakes, you should also consider educating people on what you've learned in order to help your potential clients or even help better educate your industry.
Think beyond yourself and write down something helpful.
I hope you've enjoyed this article!
This article phenomenon is hurting every industry!
From bloggers, column writers, and e-books, the writing industry is yearning for more great writers. The internet marketing community is especially hurting for better content.
With the birth of SEO (search engine optimization), people all over the world are searching, browsing, and reading everything they can on how to promote their business on the internet. Because of this demand for different content, the supply of writers are increasing everyday but the quality of articles is decreasing exponentially.
Everyone is writing about the exact same thing! My company receives on average 10-20 articles per hour submitted to us. I would have to say that only 1 in about 100 articles submitted are ever published within our website. Those numbers are extremely low and for good reason.
It's all about "substance" - or lack of it!
Many articles we review are nothing more than simple "babble" and most of them are pointless. You can seriously tell right away whether the article is just a promotional piece or something with actual substance within the content.
Great content is very important. There is a misconception out there that most people won't read your content and you can pretty much post anything you want within your website as long as your website is clean, professional looking, and can be found online.
YOU ARE SOOOOO WRONG!
website content development
If there is one constant online, it's the fact that the general public is getting smarter and more knowledgeable on how to research for honest, reputable companies on the internet.
Unfortunately, authors these days are simply stealing from other great authors!
I am not talking about posting someone else's article on your website! Copying content from other leaders in your industry will only hurt your company. This is why the writing industry is getting worse; many writers out there simply select a topic they want to write about, then they go online and find 5 articles on that topic. Once they have some other great articles, they simply proceed to combine each article for themselves, by personalizing the content a little.
Do you ever wonder why for specific topics within your industry, you can find hundreds of authors that wrote almost the exact same thing? I call these people "Content Copiers".
Even worse are people who buy articles to post online ! ! !
This gets me every time. Did you know that you can now hire a company to write something for you and insert your company information as the source and author of the article? This strategy is seriously sad considering I can almost guarantee you that the article you just bought was also sold to a handful of other companies. All they do is tweak the article a little bit and insert a different title.
No one knows your business more than you do. If you are seriously good at what you do, 9 times out of 10, you probably have enough knowledge to write an article that makes sense, that is unique in content, and that has your personal touch.
We've all come across different situations while operating our businesses. These small but important situations are what gives us confidence in what we do. When you learn from your mistakes, you should also consider educating people on what you've learned in order to help your potential clients or even help better educate your industry.
Think beyond yourself and write down something helpful.
I hope you've enjoyed this article!
“Essential” Clickbank Traffic Secrets You Need To Know To Achieve Monster Sales!
Clickbank, clickbank affiliates, money clickbank, make money clickbank, cash clickbank, affiliate money clickbank, clickbank profits, make money from clickbank, make money with clickbank, get rich clickbank, clickbank books, clickbank marketplace
Article Body:
One of the single most powerful and free ways to grab targeted traffic is definitely writing articles. Articles like this that you are currently reading serve many purposes.
Firstly, it establishes your position as an “authority” of the subject and also increases your brand name (or your name for the matter). Secondly, the link that is attached at the author resources box is intimately related to this content you are reading. People are more likely to buy after they are “warmed up” to the idea. This is called “pre-selling”. Thirdly, it builds up many one way links thus pushing up traffic and increasing your status amongst search engines. Now tell me why this isn’t a great tool?
How do you go about it? Well say you are promoting an article submission software. Naturally you should write an article on article submission and offer some useful and insightful tips. Churn out at least 2 articles a day submitting it to at least 5 article directories for a month everyday. This is such a powerful method of getting sales.
Which article directories to submit to?
There are thousands out there! For starters you can take down the address of this article directory. Hey I submitted my article here so it must have worked!
Remember this is a totally free medium to get high quality traffic. There are many software out there that instantly submit your articles to hundreds of directory saving you the hassle of doing it yourself if you find it too tedious.
Another method is to participate actively in forums. Again the benefits are quite obvious. You gain tons of back links and you also gain credibility in your niche within the community. This is again, a great way to brand yourself. Remember to genuinely contribute and make intelligent discussion - people will tend to look at your signature more.
Next is to develop a powerful signature with a link to your website in it. Many people overlook this point; your signature is the ‘link’ between the forums’ traffic and your site. That having said, these are not the only ways which you can get free targeted traffic. There are many more ways! Do your research and start exploding your sales.
Article Body:
One of the single most powerful and free ways to grab targeted traffic is definitely writing articles. Articles like this that you are currently reading serve many purposes.
Firstly, it establishes your position as an “authority” of the subject and also increases your brand name (or your name for the matter). Secondly, the link that is attached at the author resources box is intimately related to this content you are reading. People are more likely to buy after they are “warmed up” to the idea. This is called “pre-selling”. Thirdly, it builds up many one way links thus pushing up traffic and increasing your status amongst search engines. Now tell me why this isn’t a great tool?
How do you go about it? Well say you are promoting an article submission software. Naturally you should write an article on article submission and offer some useful and insightful tips. Churn out at least 2 articles a day submitting it to at least 5 article directories for a month everyday. This is such a powerful method of getting sales.
Which article directories to submit to?
There are thousands out there! For starters you can take down the address of this article directory. Hey I submitted my article here so it must have worked!
Remember this is a totally free medium to get high quality traffic. There are many software out there that instantly submit your articles to hundreds of directory saving you the hassle of doing it yourself if you find it too tedious.
Another method is to participate actively in forums. Again the benefits are quite obvious. You gain tons of back links and you also gain credibility in your niche within the community. This is again, a great way to brand yourself. Remember to genuinely contribute and make intelligent discussion - people will tend to look at your signature more.
Next is to develop a powerful signature with a link to your website in it. Many people overlook this point; your signature is the ‘link’ between the forums’ traffic and your site. That having said, these are not the only ways which you can get free targeted traffic. There are many more ways! Do your research and start exploding your sales.
Wednesday, 10 March 2010
3 Things Search Engines Want To See - Using Links The Engines Will Like
Search engine companies are constantly changing their algorithms to keep their results up-to-date. Optimization used to be the primary factor search engines used to determine a website’s ranking. However, it currently makes up only about 10% of their total algorithms. What carries the most weight with search engines now is linking.
Linking is the process of connecting to other sites that are relevant to your target market and that are highly ranked, and of getting them to connect to you. Google has, by far, the largest percentage of the search engine market, and they’re link-driven. The other search engines tend to follow Google’s lead, so the market is moving faster in that direction.
3 Tips for Building Smart LinksM
When choosing which sites you want to link to, keep in mind what the search engines want to see:
• Search engines are looking for organic results. According to Bruce Chapman of http://Linkateer.com, the number one search engine positioning firm on the web, “One of the things we try to do is make sure every single one of our links is pertinent to that particular type of business.” If your website sells makeup, a natural link would be to a site that gives makeup application techniques. An unnatural link would be to an actor’s fan club site. Says Chapman, “If it’s not natural, it’s going to be a problem.”
• Search engines are looking for consistent results. More links aren’t necessarily better. In fact, getting too many links at once, such as by joining a link farm, can actually hurt your rankings. Gaining 20,000 links this month and 13 links next month is going to trip their filters and, for all your work, you’re going to find yourself dropping in the rankings. With links, the search engines are more concerned with quality than quantity.
• Search engines are looking for one-way links. Reciprocal links are often just people exchanging links to mutually increase their link counts. The search engines have grown wise to this practice and adapted their algorithms. Says Chapman, “When one website wants to link to another website, that’s showing that the second website has got something of value… The one-way link is probably worth 20 times as much as a reciprocal link.”
Achieving Natural Results
It takes time to achieve good positioning in the search engines, especially with the more competitive keywords. Any attempts to trick the engines may work for a while; but they’re getting more and more sophisticated, and they’ll eventually catch up with you. Not only will your trick no longer work, but you may get blackballed or be penalized in your rankings. The best way to achieve high rankings is to give the search engines what they’re looking for—good fresh content and relevant links.
Linking is the process of connecting to other sites that are relevant to your target market and that are highly ranked, and of getting them to connect to you. Google has, by far, the largest percentage of the search engine market, and they’re link-driven. The other search engines tend to follow Google’s lead, so the market is moving faster in that direction.
3 Tips for Building Smart LinksM
When choosing which sites you want to link to, keep in mind what the search engines want to see:
• Search engines are looking for organic results. According to Bruce Chapman of http://Linkateer.com, the number one search engine positioning firm on the web, “One of the things we try to do is make sure every single one of our links is pertinent to that particular type of business.” If your website sells makeup, a natural link would be to a site that gives makeup application techniques. An unnatural link would be to an actor’s fan club site. Says Chapman, “If it’s not natural, it’s going to be a problem.”
• Search engines are looking for consistent results. More links aren’t necessarily better. In fact, getting too many links at once, such as by joining a link farm, can actually hurt your rankings. Gaining 20,000 links this month and 13 links next month is going to trip their filters and, for all your work, you’re going to find yourself dropping in the rankings. With links, the search engines are more concerned with quality than quantity.
• Search engines are looking for one-way links. Reciprocal links are often just people exchanging links to mutually increase their link counts. The search engines have grown wise to this practice and adapted their algorithms. Says Chapman, “When one website wants to link to another website, that’s showing that the second website has got something of value… The one-way link is probably worth 20 times as much as a reciprocal link.”
Achieving Natural Results
It takes time to achieve good positioning in the search engines, especially with the more competitive keywords. Any attempts to trick the engines may work for a while; but they’re getting more and more sophisticated, and they’ll eventually catch up with you. Not only will your trick no longer work, but you may get blackballed or be penalized in your rankings. The best way to achieve high rankings is to give the search engines what they’re looking for—good fresh content and relevant links.
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