AJIBOYE Forums - Internet Marketing - Backlinks Development

Secrets of Backlinking

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

The combination of high quality backlinks and authentic regularly updated content is what most internet market experts would treat as the basement for paving a road to the top of search results. The amount of backlinks, also known as incoming or inbound hyperlinks, leading to a particular web site from other resources in the Internet, is one of the indicators, which define the importance of a particular website. Speaking in the most general way, the more backlinks your site has – the more chances for it to be displayed among the top search results. However, it is necessary to keep in mind, that backlinking is not that simple as it may seem at a first glance. There are enough pitfalls in this form of internet marketing, and below we will try to reveal some of the secrets of building an efficient backlink campaign. Well, maybe “secrets” is not the best word here, because these are known to many internet marketing experts, but beginners may still lack this information. So, let’s try to fill that gap.

1/ Do not rush for the amount of backlinks, quality counts more.

2/ Use meaningful and informative anchor text, not just “contact us” or “visit us here”.

3/ Try to use the variations of the anchor text in your backlinks, however, keeping the right keywords is essential.

4/ Turn backlinking into a continuous assignment. SEO experts recommend at least three months period of regular building backlinks before you the results of such campaign will become visible.

5/ Build backlinks not only to your homepage, but to the internal pages of your website as well.

6/ Keep in mind free sources of backlinks – articles databases, forums, blogs, and press releases.

7/ Do not ignore outbound links. You can team up with other webmasters and publish their links on your website in exchange to getting backlinks from them.

Webrings as the Method of Backlinks Building

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 00:00:00 EDT

The idea of a webring or a group of websites, where all the sites form a particular circular structure, resembling a ring, appeared in far 1994. Having passed a long history of development and enhancement, now webrings are among the efficient yet exotic methods of backlinks building and internet marketing.

The core concept of a webring is pretty simple – a definite number of web sites are grouped together around some specific theme, which makes it closely related to social networking. Being part of a webring, each website contains special navigation bar, which allows people visit the next or the previous member site of the webring. It is important to note that every webring has a very definite structure, where all the member sites are rotated in a predefined order. Usually a moderator decides which web pages to include into a specific webring.

Webrings are not very commonly used these days for the purpose of search engine optimization. However, its potential for backlinks building is somewhere promising, as it allows generating some traffic from the relevant web sites, which is definitely good for page ranking.

Webring.com was among the pioneers of webrings technology. Currently the directory of this website contains multiple categories of webrings, such as automotive, business and finance, entertainment, hobbies, pets, sports, science, etc. Actually, any webmaster can easily find here the webring to include his own web resource. However, what I did not like from the very beginning at webring.com is the huge amount of sponsored advertising and pretty poor interface design… However, as one of the means to advertise your website and get a few backlings – this can still be an option.

The Role of Anchor Text in Your Backlinks

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Creating backlinks or reciprocal links is one of the most popular methods of internet marketing. It helps to increase the rating of your website in search engine listings, generate the traffic, and optimize the expenses on advertising and promotion of the web site. Anchor text is considered to be among the key factors, ensuring the success of any backlinking campaign.

By its nature, anchor text is the visible part of a hyperlink that a user can read and click to visit your site. It is strongly recommended to use specific keywords as the anchor text for links, leading to your web site. It is still not rare when people use phrases like “click here” or “visit our website” as the anchor text. However, this is a wrong strategy, as it gives no description of the website to search engines.

It is much better to use meaningful phrases, like “Dell laptops service” or “Download free fonts here” for the anchor text. Such links are capable of increasing the ranking of the page significantly. However, it is important to keep in mind the golden rule of Google, telling us to create content not for search engine, but for real people. It means the anchor text should aim not only at drawing attention of the search engine crawlers, but it should also look and sound naturally for any visitor, who comes across it in the Internet.

How to Investigate the Amount of Backlinks Your Site Has?

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:00:00 EST

Backlinks are an important parameter in evaluating the value of the site by major search engines. Thus, backlinks creation is one of the favorite techniques of search engine optimization and Internet marketing. There many approaches to getting backlinks, from writing your own blog to posting articles on different article directories, and to catalogue submission. In order to assess the effectiveness of any backlinking project, you have to know exactly how many backlinks does your site have at a particular moment of time.

The easiest way to find out the amount of backlinks is to use a “link:” command. Just type “link:www.yoursite.com” into Google and you will receive the list of external links, leading to your web site.

Another approach is to use Google Webmaster Console. It ensures accurate results in regard of inbound links, so it can be used for the purposes of Internet marketing. Basically, this tool is better than “link:”, since it is more accurate and ensures more recent and updated information. However, remember that not all the backlinks are of the same value. Sometimes one link from the relevant and reputable site will value more than a dozen of links from irrelevant web directories.

Backlinks Improve Google Page Rankings

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Backlinks Improve Google Page Rankings

Every webmaster aims to have their website rank high in popularity searches and good webmasters know to achieve this is dependent on website content, style, search engine optimization and the use of keywords to attract the main target audience and also the attention of search engine crawlers.

The first step in attracting more users from your target audience and thereby increasing website popularity is to submit your website to popular search engines such as Yahoo!, Google, AltaVista, Cuil, etc.

In many instances though your main keyword may be so broad that this strategy will only bring about limited success. Take for example the keyword web design.

When a person types web design in the search engine window of their browser, whichever search engine they have selected will return all sites related to the words web design. In the case of Google this is about 231 million references.

Trying to get your website on the first or second page of listings for such a topic is no easy task and submitting your site to search engines alone will have only a limited effect.

To try and increase page ranking a good webmaster will optimize their site with a range of keywords, descriptions, and most importantly, a number of external links and (hopefully) linkbacks from other websites.

External links and linkbacks are the placement of your URL on other websites. The more linkbacks you have from other peoples websites the more traffic you are likely to generate from people clicking these links and visiting your site.

By increasing traffic (visitors) to your site you have a better chance of increasing your page rank in search engine results.

Quite often people will link back to your site without telling you. They might find something interesting or useful on your site and post a link to your site on their own website for the benefit of their visitors.

Likewise you might do the same. Internet courtesy dictates that where a person links to your site, you should provide a similar link to that persons website on your own entries.

How to get Backlinks for your Website

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

How to get Backlinks for your Website

Every one talks about back links for effective SEO. A reader is bound to be a bit confused. Let me first explain what a back link is. A back link is when another website links back to yours. The links assure search engines that your website is not an automated piece of nonsense but genuinely does some work on the internet and they start taking interest in it.

The very first step is to ensure that your link has an Anchor Text. The keywords that you are popularizing need to be a part of your back link. This is important and the foundation of your SEO campaign. Building back links is time consuming and tedious.

Some of the methods of SEO

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Some of the methods of SEO

Comment on other blogs. This is free but time consuming. The best part is that when you comment on blogs that are relevant to your website and they comment back, the links are valuable and build your standing. When you comment on other blogs, do not use your name in the name box, you must use your Anchor Text. When the comment is displayed, the name field is the one that is displayed, and this way you get publicity for your anchor text.

You could enter into a link exchange with other webmasters. Many webmasters agree. There are link services, some free and some paid. Free services trade links for you with hundreds of websites and you are supposed to put their code into your website so that other website links can be displayed.

Initial traffic

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Initial traffic

Getting the back links is one of the complex task in SEO. Because most of the back link providers expect the same traffic or Quality of back links returned to their websites from the receiving sites. This will be the great challenge for beginners who have just started the blogging. In that situation these webmasters should look for the alternate paths for getting back links. So it was wise to request the back links after getting a reasonable traffic. So adding the url to various directories and search engines are the foremost task to gain traffic.

Links from Commenting

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Links from Commenting

Most of them believes that by putting their comments with their hyperlink will provide the enough page rank. But it was not Almost true, Most of the links provided through these comment section will not followed by search engine crawlers. So these links will not considered as valid back links. But by these hyperlink the visitors can navigated to the commenter's pages.But it was very few. By checking the properties of the links will provide the clear idea about whether it is crawlable or not.

Avoid links From Over Crowded links

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Avoid links From Over Crowded links

Don't put your links where over crowded links are placed .Because the page rank was shared among the links. That results that pages will provides very small amount of page rank to sites. It just like sharing the apples with no of peoples. If no of peoples are increased, then every one gets small piece of apple. So try to get links from qualified and less links placed sites.

Avoid link exchange Programs

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Avoid link exchange Programs

The Mistake done by most of the webmasters to get back links are, getting links from exchanging programs. Most of the exchanging programs are only dedicated to exchange their links to each other. The most of the users participating in these programs are webmasters and they are not real end users. And another important point is major search engines ignore these kind of link exchange from crawling .They are constantly improving their crawling techniques to maintain their standard. So getting thousand links in overnight from these kind of link exchange programs will not give the results in longer run.

Article writing

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Article writing

Article writing is the one of the best way to get valid back links. Article submissions will provide the direct back links to sites. Today various service providers are available to post your articles and get back links to your site. Writers can put their signatures on that articles and get back links.

Link building

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Link building

Link building ( backlink development ) finds both competitor sites in another country (to avoid direct geographic competition) and sites on a relative spectrum. These websites are then approached by a member of our team using a personalized e-mail. We do not use any automation in this process whatsoever, as automated e-mails are almost always ignored or sent into the recipients junk e-mail folder.

Backlink Development

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Backlink Development

Backlink development is a time consuming process, webmasters who try and gain high placements with minimal work will tend to fail and the site no closer to ranking on page 1 at any point. Dedicated webmasters generate a good high quality website that has a good backlink profile tend to reap the benefits of higher search placements because of the websites relativity and authority on its subject.

Backlinks are not easily influenced and can take time to build, because of this factor, poorly built or stale websites tend to fail before they get anywhere near page 1, whilst the websites that are dedicated and maintained tend to succeed.

Competitor Link Analysis

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Competitor Link Analysis

This involves analysing the backlinks competitors are benefiting from. The backlinks are populated and filtered to find the highest quality links. From this data, we are able to hunt for additional links from known credible sources. Competitor link analysis allows for the collection of backlinks from multiple competitors, ensuring all the best links are found and approached.

Manual Link Development

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Manual Link Development

This process involves the manual development of backlinks by finding suitable websites to link. Each e-mail sent is personalised to the webmaster and talks about the website itself. These personalised e-mails are written in clear and concise english and have the highest response rates. Manual link development will typically involve finding industry/theme relative websites that are not directly in competition. Since the websites are relative topic wise, the webmasters are far more likely to respond or to acknowledge the e-mail sent to them.

Get High Ranking Backlinks Strategy

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Get High Ranking Backlinks Strategy

When looking at some of the ways to get high ranking backlinks, such as, Link Development Backlinks Forums That Allow Backlinks are a very good strategy to get your website to the top ten of the search engines. The only thing is that you are probably not too excited with the workload. Who has the time to build a website, promote it, lay out and implement a marketing strategy, and write multiple articles?

Most people just don’t have that kind of time. So, it’s important to locate resources to help you build the backlinks that you need. This can take the form of hiring people on your team to help you build or re-write PLR articles or to help with article submission to different directories. Also, you might want to consider article submission software to help automate the process and reduce your workload.

Importance of getting backlinks for Search Engine Optimization

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Importance of getting backlinks for Search Engine Optimization

A backlink is nothing more than a link from another site that points to yours. The search engines view backlinks as "votes" for your site.

The more votes you have the better the chances you have of your site being viewed as trustworthy and important. Basically a backlink, or inbound link, indicates the popularity of your site. These inbound links are crucial to the SEO process of your site because building high quality backlinks helps your site get indexed faster in the search engines. They also increase your chances of improving your rankings for the targeted keywords. When deciding how relevant your site is to a keyword search, the search engines take the number of these backlinks into consideration.

However, just creating backlinks isn't enough. Another thing that search engines like Google consider is the quality of your backlink. The quality of a backlink is given a lot of importance when considering the relevance of a website in search results. So, this is also a factor to your rankings.

What makes a google backlink a quality link?

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

What makes a google backlink a quality link?

If the website that links to yours is of the same theme or niche, that backlink will be viewed as more relevant than one that comes from a site that is un-related. Or if the link to your site is linked with keyword anchor text that is relevant to your site, then that link will be of a higher quality than a link with irrelevant anchor text. That means that the higher the relevancy of the link the higher the quality.

Furthermore, it is also important to obtain backlinks with a wide range of IP diversity. That simply means backlinks from different domains on different servers; it isn't enough to get a large number of links from just one site. This became a major factor when webmasters began to trick the search engines by manipulating their own pages. It is much tougher to manipulate links from sites that do not belong to you.

So to sum up ... What makes a quality backlink?

* Links with relevant keyword anchor text

* Links from similar sites

* Links with IP diversity

Creating backlinks

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Creating backlinks

Creating backlinks is a crucial step to the growth of your site and business. It is very important that you remember to give priority to creating quality backlinks. These links can mean the difference between success and failure for your site. Since time is always a consideration, if you cannot find the time than considering outsourcing looking into a SEO company. Whatever it takes, make sure it gets done. It is time consuming but not impossible to create these backlinks on a consistent basis.

Social Bookmarking

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Social Bookmarking

There are many social bookmark sites on the Internet. Many of these are great resources for creating back links. You can create accounts on these popular sites and share your link with the community there. This is also a quick way to get your site indexed by the search engines. Creating a mixture of these strategies will create an excellent back link arsenal. Take some time to research these strategies so that it can be used to its fullest potential. The most important thing in creating back links is to remember to be creative when finding back link resources. Also remember that back links from sites similar to yours have the most quality. If you continue to implement these types of techniques your site's popularity will continue to grow.

Why deeplinking is of great importance for SEO

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Why deeplinking is of great importance for SEO

If you have spent any time at all learning to promote a website you already know that creating backlinks is one of the most important things you can do to increase your search engine rankings. There are wide ranges of strategies that you can implement that will bring you success. Some are better than others. But one thing that is very often overlooked in backlinking strategies is deep linking. You may have taken the time to create a number of links that point to your main page.

Disk Space and Bandwidth

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Disk Space and Bandwidth

This is pretty much a 'stock' feature in web hosting plans, with prices of hard disks and processors plummeting everyday to make way for more powerful hardware, this is usually offered in abundance by most hosts so make sure you don't compromise on this.

Databases

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Databases

If you are planning on using any kind of web application, the need for databases would usually be mandatory which is where all the data in the application (or your website) would be stored, this is provided generously too and several hosting providers offer unlimited number of databases.

Backups

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Backups

This is one of the most important requirements, you can never feel safe enough with your website, apart from doing your part of making multiple backups in online servers as well as offline, it is important that the web host does this for you on a frequent basis as well, this service varies greatly depending on the server in terms of frequency and the content (files and databases) which are backed up.

Backlink building plan

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Backlink building plan

1. Find out how many backlinks you have. Use a backlink checking tool like the ajiboye.Com to monitor your current backlink amount and sign up for weekly or monthly reports.

2. Find out how many backlinks your competition has. It is important to know how you compare to your competition.

3. Where does your competition get its backlinks? The ultimate goal is to increase in backlinks and to surpass your competition. Finding where your competition has backlinks can give you ideas on what sites you may also obtain backlinks from.

4. Find the best methods to use. Good ways to get quality backlinks include online business directories, online content, article syndication, press releases, social networking, and social media.

5. For directories you want to sign up for, research business directories and write down all that are relevant to your site. Research topics your audience is searching for and write content for each term. Once you have written relevant content, find websites that will syndicate your content.

6. Create an execution schedule. Creating a schedule to actually implement each one of these methods serves to keep the backlink building process on track and ongoing. Create a log for each individual method allowing you to keep track of how often you are applying each method.

Four basic options for linking

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Four basic options for linking

Reciprocal Links – Link Trades that you negotiate.

Directory Links – Links that you request in quality niche directories.

Article Site Submissions – Links in articles that you submit for distribution through article sites.

Paid Links – Links on other sites that you pay to get (or barter for).

Aspects to reciprocal linking- Site Quality

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Aspects to reciprocal linking- Site Quality

You want to make sure that the sites are good quality, and don't trade links with sites that have been banned. Because you are indulging in a trade, their site being listed on your site will affect the quality of your site as well. So be sure that you only link to good quality sites.

Aspect to reciprocal linking- Pagerank

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Aspects to reciprocal linking- Pagerank

Higher pagerank helps you more. This is not a reason NOT to link to new sites, it is a reason to seek links with sites that are a step above yours if you can. Now, the thing about that is, it is harder to get links on higher ranked sites! And some of those lower ranked sites will eventually be higher ranked, so in the long term, getting in on it early may be a real benefit.

Aspects to reciprocal linking- Relevancy

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Aspects to reciprocal linking- Relevancy

Topics that are relevant to your topic will be better trades. Search engines place more importance in links that are for similar topics. But sometimes a relevant link won't appear that way to the search engines, and sometimes one you think is not highly relevant will be to them, because of the keywords that are used. So get them when they seem a reasonable trade, and don't obsess over this detail too much.

Aspects to reciprocal linking- Placement

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Aspects to reciprocal linking- Placement

The area of the site where your links are placed can make a difference. Links on Link pages are not worthless, but links on content pages are given more weight according to some sources. It makes sense that they would be, because content pages are prime web real estate, and you only typically put things on them that pertain to the page information.

SEO Backlinks - Relevant incoming links improve ranking

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

SEO Backlinks - Relevant incoming links improve ranking

Relevant links also count, for example if you have a page about SEO, you should get a backlink from a page about SEO.

But the best way to obtain backlinks, by far, is to write good, quality, content. This way, visitors find that your page useful, will create themselves links to your page. These links are called natural backlinks. Natural backlinks are more valuable to search engines than reciprocal links, as they are harder to get.

Getting natural incoming links, will also save you time from posting your link into directories, blogs, forums, etc., and these links will come naturally from related pages.

The most valuable backlinks are one way links, from a page with a high pagerank and also with related content, the same topic.

What are Quality Backlinks?

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

What are Quality Backlinks?

* Few links on a page

* A link within the body content

* Link from a relevant site

Google recently changed it's algorighym so that if there is an excess of traded links, purchased links, or if you get involved in triangular linking schemes, or buy hundreds or thousands of links all at once, then it will draw a red flag for Google and then Google may apply a filter to your site to prevent it from ranking well.

Find Good Backlinks

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Find Good Backlinks

Google uses age of the site, backlinks as well as PR to rank sites (along with many other factors) so, unless you want to PayPerClick for the life of the site, you need to get gather a lot of links and write a lot of content to get rank as high as possible.

Look for websites relevant to what your site offers but have a different focus, i.e., submit to a gardening site if you sell garden tools.

Another way to find good backlinks is to search for your major keyword in your favorite search engine and take note of which of your competitors is ranking highest. Then search for their domain name and look for sites that have accepted their link then try and submit your website there also.

How Many Backlinks is Enough?

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

How Many Backlinks is Enough?

That depends on your major keywords. Are they popular? If so, you will have a struggle to beat your competition and may have to resort to PayPerClick along with backlinks.

If very few websites advertise what you offer then you may not need very many backlinks to rank high in the search engines but your traffic may still be minimal because of your site being so specialized. In that case diversify and add more information.

Getting Backlinks the Natural Way

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Getting Backlinks the Natural Way

The idea behind including backlinks as part of the page rank algorithm is that if a page is good, people will start linking to it. And the more backlinks a page has, the better. But in practice it is not exactly like this. Or at least you cannot always rely on the fact that your contents is good and people will link to you. Yes, if your content is good and relevant you can get a lot of quality backlinks, including from sites with similar topic as yours (and these are the most valuable kind of backlinks, especially if the anchor text contains your keywords) but what you get without efforts could be less than what you need to successfully promote your site.

Ways to Build Backlinks

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Ways to Build Backlinks

The first step in building backlinks is to find the places from which you can get quality backlinks. A valuable assistant in this process is the Backlink Builder tool. When you enter the keywords of your choice, the Backlink Builder tool gives you a list of sites where you can post an article, message, posting, or simply a backlink to your site. After you have the list of potential backlink partners, it is up to you to visit each of the sites and post your content with the backlink to your site in it.

You might wonder why sites as those, listed by the Backlink Builder tool provide such a precious asset as backlinks for free. The answer is simple – they need content for their site. When you post an article, or submit a link to your site, you do not get paid for this. You provide them for free with something they need – content – and in return they also provide you for free with something you need – quality backlinks. It is a free trade, as long as the sites you post your content or links are respected and you don't post fake links or content.

Forums and Article Directories

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Forums and Article Directories

Generally search engines index forums so posting in forums and blogs is also a way to get quality backlinks with the anchor text you want. If the forum or blog is a respected one, a backlink is valuable. However, in some cases the forum or blog administrator can edit your post, or even delete it if it does not fit into the forum or blog policy. Also, sometimes administrators do not allow links in posts, unless they are relevant ones. In some rare cases (which are more an exception than a rule) the owner of a forum or a blog would have banned search engines from indexing it and in this case posting backlinks there is pointless.

Think Quality, Not Volume

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Think Quality, Not Volume

Understanding this analogy, you begin to see that it isn't the number of neighbors you have, but the type of people you cultivate in your inner circle that makes the different. This can be confusing for new webmasters who think that they are given PageRank based on the number of links that come into their site.

That's really not correct. They attain a higher ranking based on the quality of the people they associate with and the neighborhood they frequent. So, a site with fewer backlinks can still beat one with a larger number of backlinks - if those links are the right type of link.

In a way, this can make your job easier. You don't have to fret about whether you have fifty or five hundred links, as long as you are getting links that are raising your reputation by default. Eventually, those people tell their friends and your reputation begins to grow - and, in the right neighborhood!

So take care when establishing backlinks. There is really no sense in wasting your time on getting links from sites that aren't popular.

SEO Benefits of Getting Backlinks

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

SEO Benefits of Getting Backlinks

Search engine optimization is a useful marketing tool for web hosting companies to drive traffic to their pages and turn visitors into paying customers. A good way to improve your search engine optimization scores and Google rankings is through building of backlinks. The basics of backlinks include relevancy, quantity and quality. Backlinks require structure though, as you will not receive the same amount of SEO points for a grandma’s cat blog pointing to your reseller hosting page as you would with a technology niche blog pointing to the same url. At the same time, keyword phrases and anchor text used to link to a web hosting business can improve your Google rankings when web users are searching for those terms. Quality backlinks with relevant keyword phrases can make Google consider you as an authority in your niche, thus sending more traffic and interested buyers to your website.

Building backlinks for your web hosting company can occur naturally. If your grandma really does have a blog about cats, she should be linking to you. It may not bring in the same SEO scoring, but it will help. Friends, family and websites you network with will often link to your website naturally or as a favor. Customers will often link to their web hosting company’s site as a thank you, or to tell other users where their website is hosted at. You can even encourage this to happen by providing buttons and banners for them to use. The other way to build backlinks is to buy them, and the easiest way to do so is to look for blogs who sell sidebar links or sponsored blog posts. Prefer that those websites do not use “nofollow” linking system and provide relevant anchor text.

The Role of Backlinks in the Success of a Website: Why do you want links anyway?

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

The Role of Backlinks in the Success of a Website: Why do you want links anyway?

This is because search engines consider each link to be a vote. So each link that points to your website from another website indicates to the search engines that the other website considers your content important. Hence each link is a vote for your site. Backlink is a link pointing to your website from another website. The number of backlinks is one of the indications of the popularity or importance of that website or page.

The importance of these inbound links is that search engines love them and greatly appreciate quality links. There are several important factors that determine the value of a backlink. If these back links are from high page rank relevant sites or authority sites then the credibility of your site increases further. These links help to increase the link popularity and also improve the page rank of your website.

Acquiring more such links will indicate to the search engines that your site is an important site with quality content and classify your site too as an authority site. This will enable your site to appear high in the search results for the relevant keywords or keyword phrases.

How Important Are Back Links?

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

How Important Are Back Links?

When setting up your website for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on Google there are several factors you need to look at in order to obtain a high rank on their search engine. Of course your content and meta tags must be inline with positive density percentages and reciprocal links. Google then takes your website and performs a mathematic equation and places a numeric value on your website depending on one of the most important features, reciprocal or back links.

A back link and reciprocal link are identical. They both say the same thing to the Google engine, that your site should be ranked higher in the order because other people find value in what your website has to offer, thus they provide a link to your site. In turn, you keep a closed loop by reciprocating the favor to the other website by extending the same courtesy of a back link. Thus creating a solid network connection. Google likes to see interconnectivity and will reward your website well for planning it this way.

There are drawbacks to the equation. As things change a website that you are affiliated with may drop a hyperlink or a page may get accidentally deleted. When the Google robot goes through your website and finds a dead link it notes that you aren’t keeping good care of your website and punishes your web rank by reducing its point value. If you wish to know what your sites current point value is download The Google Toolbar and search for your website http://www.yourwebsitename.com in the box and perform a Google web search. Upon reading the full URL, Google will go directly to your site first thus pulling up your home page. There on the toolbar will be a page rank for your website between 1 and 10. 1 being a less visited and noted website and 10 a site that screams traffic 24/7.

Cull your own database of contacts

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Cull your own database of contacts

Think about your friends, relatives or business associates who support your company's work and who have websites. Make a list. Ask these folks, individually, if they would be willing to place a link to your site from theirs. Some might ask you to place a link to their site, and some might not. Although this seems like a no-brainer, some business owners never take the time to go after the "low-hanging fruit" for backlinks. These are the easiest backlinks a site owner can get.

Ajiboye Backlinks Creator- Aiding Internet Industry Owner

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Ajiboye Backlinks Creator- Aiding Internet Industry Owner

The biggest challenge for any website business owner is finding customers. Brick and mortar companies are seen by the general public every day when people walk or drive by. These customers are limited mostly to the area in which they live.

Online companies could be seen by the complete planet and while this could produce a lifetime income, the challenge is finding a way to let people know that the business exists.

Ajiboye does not promise guaranteed traffic but what it will do is give you the opportunity to allow search engines to discover your site. The better your website the more the search engines will place your website on the front page of their index. This is the goal of any web industry owner and it is the goal of Ajiboye as well.

The people at Ajiboye have discovered a way to permit Google and the other search engines to discover your site. If they can’t find your website clients will not be able to find it either. This is an continuing process and it is up to you, the business owner, to work the program on a continual basis so that your site will continually be listed on the front page of the index.

Blog posting with the right keywords is really the key to using Ajiboye. The company takes your blogs, which are very small in word count, and posts them around the internet. This is how the search engines find your site. If the website is well-built and has some density, you will find it on the front page after you have waited a few weeks as it can take this long for Google to find a lot of the posts.

Backlinks

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Backlinks

Links are the roads that connect sites to each other, across the Net highway. Links move traffic through a site. Links move traffic from one site to another.

Most people understand the general way a link works -- you click it and you're taken to a new page (or another part of the same page). Sometimes that new page is on your domain and sometimes it's on someone else's domain.

If you're a website owner, you should care about links... and there is a special type of link that matters a little bit more than the rest... it's called a backlink. What is a backlink? It's a link that comes from another site to yours. An inbound link (or incoming link).

Why are they so important? Because search engines use the number of backlinks to a particular website to help determine its importance (backlinks are part of a search engine's overall tally to try to determine popularity, relevance, importance, etc.). The more backlinks, the more "relevant" a website.

Good Backlinks

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Good Backlinks

Here are some proven methods to get a lot of good backlinks:

1. BLOGS – when you have the list of highly ranked sites some of them will be blogs. Verify that the blog does not have nofollow in the links by looking at the code of links for previous posts. If the links are not nofollow then place a comment using your keywords as your name. Do this regularly, and if you have employees have them do it daily also. Here is a list of dofollow blogs at forums.digitalpoint.com.

2. FORUMS – If a backlink is a forum, have employees create accounts there. Create a signature that has links to your website. Sometimes their terms of service require that you post several times – like 10 or 30 – before your signature shows in your postings.

3. Have everyone post intelligent solutions to postings placed by people with problems pertinent to your industry.

4. ANGELA EDWARDS MONTHLY BACKLINKS LIST – sign up for Angela’s backlinks program which sends you 30 highly ranked websites to get backlinks.

Important features of the Backlink Checker utility

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Important features of the Backlink Checker utility

* Checks and monitor the status of backlinks of your website.

* Finds direct links, JavaScript links, and other links.

* Send email notification to the publisher site if backlinks are not present.

* Uses an absolutely legitimate way to obtain back link status.

* Generate report in HTML or TXT file format.

* User style friendly wizard format.

Using Blogs As a Link Building Tool

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Using Blogs As a Link Building Tool

A web blog is a type of website maintained by individuals or organizations with the aim of getting regular comments from the readers. It may include graphics or videos. They provide commentary or news on particular topics while others function as personal web diaries. Link building involves posting a URL (Universal Resource Locator) path in a blog or web page so that readers can follow the path and get certain details on a particular topic. It involves negotiating with web or blog owners in order for them to allow you to build a link in their web pages or blogs. In some instances, some websites offer link building for free and even direct traffic from the blogs to the links.

One of the ways to using a blog as a link building tool is to ask the visitors politely to link or embed your blog to their blogs or websites. Often, the viewers will do so as long as the information provide there is relevant, unique and information that not many others do not offer.

Forum Signatures to Build Back Links - Helping Your Search Rankings

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Forum Signatures to Build Back Links - Helping Your Search Rankings

Building Backlinks! There are several ways to build backlinks. We have discussed Directory Submissions, Article Submission, & Press Releases. The next simple easy and free way to get a back link as well as free traffic is the Forum Signature Tags.

Forums that do get indexed in the search engines create individual pages per thread. Your hyper linked signature tag is now a back link.

If you are a member of any forums throughout the Internet, fantastic. They are usually very informative and helpful. If you are not a member in any forum, find one that interests you and join.

Most Forums allow a user to add a signature tag line to their posts. Usually in the member’s area of most forums, you can edit, add and create a forum signature.

When creating your signature tag it is best to use your real name. Also use a hyper linked URL and briefly describe your service or product. An example of a good signature tag would be:

The Authors Name

“Your Product line description in less than 10 words”

http://www.yourwebsite.com

Your signature tag can also be an Alt text hyperlink to create a keyword target backlink.

For Example:

The Authors Name

“ Your Product line description in less than 10 words”

This entire phrase would be a hyperlink.

Your Product line description in less than 10 words

Each post that you make in a forum is now a back link to your site. Remember though not to spam and that your behavior in a forum can be extremely profitable or detrimental based on your attitude.

When posting in a forum, remember that you are in a public arena. If you are helpful, courteous, friendly, kind and post intelligently you will get traffic from people clicking on your signature tag besides the backlink. If the above does not describe you, then maybe you should avoid the benefits of a hyper linked signature tag ?

Forums allow individuals to build trust and familiarity that is normally not present through the Internet. As trust grows, people will click on your signature tag and will purchase your product or service.

What kind of backlinks do you want to stay away from?

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

What kind of backlinks do you want to stay away from?

* Links from link farms

* Link exchange communities

* Buying links- most of them are complete rip-offs anyway

* Using article submission services that submit to PR0 junk websites

* Interlinking- that is using all your sites to link to each other. It might seem like a good idea, but Google frowns upon this activity.

Some people swear by the methods above, but in my experience I have even minor successes short lived and not worth it in the long run of building links to your site. Some of these methods will not necessarily hurt your site, but they won’t give it a boost either, and since time IS money you don’t want to waste any time or money on methods that simply don’t work.

Link exchanges are not a great way to build links because Google is smart enough to know what’s going on and the link will not be very valuable.

There is a system of building links, however, that has been out a while but has proven to be very effective. It basically makes a triangle out of your links. Linking from site A (your site) to site B, to site C, and site C links back to your site A. This is a sort of link exchange without appearing like it. 3WayLinks is a program that uses this method. It has been out for a year or so and some have claimed it does not work while others claim huge success. I am currently trying 3WayLinks myself to test it out on some of my sites and I will keep the readers of this blog updated. The key is to stay patient in the climbing up the SERPs process and you will see good results. Google swing your site up and down, but keep building backlinks and here is how.

Ways to get backlinks to your website the smart way

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Some good ways to get backlinks to your website the smart way

* Leave INFORMATIVE comments on dofollow blogs (like this one=)

* Use Social Networks to build backlinks

* Social Bookmark sites. Some are dofollow like furl.net, mister-wong, spurl, backflip etc.

* Submit more articles… Yup, you can’t do it enough. You may need to hire a writer.

* Forum posting. You need a lot of these posts to make it count, but it’s worth it. Just make your posts worthy of actually being read.

* Offer to write some guest posts for bloggers and leave links to your site as well.

* Get listed in directories like DMOZ and Yahoo. This should be done early on if possible.

* Write a press release. But make sure you actually have some news first and don’t do this too often.

* Start an affiliate program. If you have an affiliate program for your site than you are going to have marketers linking to your site for you, and all you need to do is give them a commission on any sales.

A short starting guide

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

A short starting guide

1. chose a topic related with a broad category or page in your website;

2. make your article between 400 and 800 words. Evenly distribute your targeted keywords across the body text;

3. make your content extremely informative but incomplete;

4. composes an incentive resource box with a backlink to your targeted webpage having as an anchor text the keyword you're optimizing the page for.

5. submit your article to directories with high PageRank and most importantly, with high traffic volume, a.k.a. Alexa Ranking. The top 50 A.D.s can be found at: vretoolbar.com (/) articles (/) directories.php#

How to build SEO backlinks without lifting a finger

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

How to build SEO backlinks without lifting a finger

Your business marketing campaign has a limited amount of capital, both monetary and time-wise. This means that you need to maximize the efficiency of the effort that you put into your marketing campaigns. Your lead generation is dependent on how adaptive your marketing strategy is to customer demand and market trends, but your business plan depends on long-term, concrete marketing goals. How do you find a happy medium? The trick is to finding what sort of lead generation activities provide the best return on the amount of time or money spent on these endeavors.

In regards to SEO, this means maximizing the efficiency of your time spent on link building. You can go the manual route and painstakingly call, email, and contact other high ranking website for keywords and keyphrases for which you are looking to build relevancy. Depending on what your online marketing campaigns look like, sometimes that really is the only way to go.

For small businesses like home improvement and Rebath, there just isn’t enough time in the day to foster lead generation via manual link building SEO strategies. That’s okay, because you don’t have to! Just stick to what you’re good at, and whip up a quick article about what you know.

If you just got through a Rebath or home improvement project where you su ccessfully battled a common mold problem, why not take a couple of hours to share your success story? In doing so, you can build just as many quality SEO backlinks without having to trudge through directories and beg people to link back to your site. If you share interesting and notable content, soon enough people will build your backlinks for you.

Keep in mind that all these SEO strategies are centered around what you’re already doing, and the only difference is throwing in some documentation and marketing panache.

Don’t waste your time and money by doing things the hard way. Stick to what your doing and share your successes with the world. You can build a good foundation for a successfully online marketing campaign with just that, and that will start you along the path for great lead generation.

Key Advantages

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Key Advantages

Article marketing is one form of attraction marketing that is highly successful and easy to utilize. Here are some of the advantages of utilizing it.

* It is relatively easy to do and most online business owners will be able to do it on their own.

* Use already well established article distribution services or websites to make the process faster and less time consuming.

* You become highly visible online. People can find you, what you are offering as well as your website quickly.

Link building and why it is important

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Link building and why it is important

1. Natural Link Building – This is basically the practice of adding well thought out quality content to your website. It must be content that your intended audience finds useful enough that they link to it with the intent of sharing it with others. They found it useful and figured that others like them would as well. These are generally the best type of links you can get since they are one-way links and you really don’t have to pursue the acquisition of them.

2. Reciprocal Linking – This is the practice of exchanging links from your website with another website that is related to yours. It is a win-win relationship for both websites. Just as anything else this should be done in moderation and you want to stick with websites that you would link to even if you were not exchanging links. The website you are linking to should provide some sort of value to your website visitors and not just be a tactic to help rank better in the search engines.

3. Press Release – This can be done to help build links back to your website and also promote your website at the same time. In one respect it helps get the word out about the usefulness of your website, on the other end it can help build backlinks. To do this it also needs to be a newsworthy topic, if you are releasing garbage or just general information to try and get back links from PR websites that post the release it will not be well received or even ignored by your intended audience.

4. Article Distribution – This is one of my favorites and over time it turns into a tactic that keeps on giving. You write an article about your niche or something related to it and then syndicate it though article directories. At the end of the article you can give yourself credit for writing it and provide an active link back to your website. At first the articles don’t send you all that much in terms of link juice. But give it a little time and as the articles age in their respected homes, gain some page rank and then in turn will pass it to your website. An article you write today that possibly ends up on a few hundred websites may continually increase in values for many months to come and in turn pass that value to your website.

How to find backlinks?

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

How to find backlinks?

Many people who have a website or blog are interested in getting new and varied backlinks as part of their search engine optimization efforts. To get backlinks means to improve their search engine rank, making permanent links highly sought after.

Article marketing and other techniques for getting more backlinks can be effective for getting a better search engine rank, but only if the links stay in place. A publisher who has made the effort to get backlinks should find out exactly how many links they have created in order to see how successful those efforts have been. For those who buy links, they may wish to check them periodically to see whether they have been removed.

Sites That Check Backlinks

There are several sites that can check the backlinks that are connected to a website. Some of these sites check on more than just the backlinks, listing other stats about the URL. Others list only the backlinks.

Though these sites claim to show all backlinks pointing to a URL, sites that check backlinks tend to have their own quirks that can skew the results. Some only show one link from any given site, some include links that are a part of ads and others are slow to update and may include links that are no longer live. By looking at two or more backlink sites, a Web publisher can get a more accurate idea about their search engine optimization progress.

Backlink Watch

This simple site is good for a quick backlinks check. The site is not the most accurate site for backlink results, but it's quick and simple to use and doesn't make the information hard to understand or access.

How do you create backlinks effectively?

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

How do you create backlinks effectively?

1. Blogs. Go to blogs in the niche that you are writing about. Leave valuable comments (no spamming) and create a link back to your article. Wherever possible use the above described anchor text link in your post (instead of a url or name).

2. Forums. Include anchor text links in your forum signature block, if allowed. Again, use your targeted keywords in the hyperlink which points back to your article url. Every time you make a comment your link will be on every page that you post on.

3. Social bookmarking sites. Submit your article to social bookmarking sites. There are easy ways to do this. There are different programs which submit them to many sites at a time. I use Onlywire as well as SocialMaker. First you have to register with all the sites you want your article distributed to, which does take a little bit of time. But once you are registered it is very easy to submit to them through these services.

4. SEO linkbuilding services. Usually, for a monthly fee they will create backlinks for you, or they will give you chosen websites they have researched for creating backlinks. These tend to be very effective. Most are very pricey.

5. Videos. Create videos and submit them to a few video sites, and create backlinks back to your article or website. Video sites are very hot and can create a lot of search engine juice.

How Do You Get More Backlinks?

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

How Do You Get More Backlinks?

• Social bookmarking – For everything you do online, you should bookmark it. You may have your favourite bookmarking sites like Stumbleupon or Delicious, or you may have a strategy whereby you use different sites for different purposes. Bookmarks bring you people and they bring you search engine rankings for your desired keywords. Use keywords and use tags when you bookmark to improve the results!

• Microblogging – Adding your links as part of your Twittering, Plurking, Facebook status updates, etc will point links to your site that bring you people and search engine bots.

• Article marketing – Creating articles pre-sells people on your product and points search engines to your site regarding your topic.

• Linking to authority sites could get you backlinks. Add links to authority sites on your articles and blogs and not only may those other sites link back to you, but if you’re linking to a site with authority it elevates your site’s relevancy to your niche in the eyes of search engines.

• Make Web 2.0 pages like Squidoo lenses and HubPages. Make useful documents that pre-sell readers and send traffic to your site for more information. Use your desired keywords as the anchor.

• Comment on blogs related to your niche. The blog’s readers might visit you and subscribe to you and the search engines will notice the connection, blog commenting is a great way to Get More Backlinks quite easily.

• RSS feeds are great. Submit your feeds to feed directories for extra traffic.

• Press releases – Write press releases related to your product launches and submit them for publications.

• Make videos for YouTube and other video sites and link back to your site.

• Answer questions related to your niche on answer sites and use your link in the resource section.

• Blogroll exchanges – Blogroll sites relevant to your niche and ask those sites to do the same.

• Start a meme – A blog meme is like a chain letter. If you get people to participate, ask them to link back to you. Participate in existing memes as well and others will link to you.

• Post on forums and put your link in your signature. Every post you put on the forum will give you a backlink.

• Buy links – Not everyone does this and seach engines don’t look on it favourably but you may find a perfect blog with a high ranking for a keyword that you would like to be listed on. The blog owner may be willing to give or sell you a permalink on their site.

• Guest posting – Offer to write a high quality and relevant guest post on popular blogs or sites in your niche for a link back to your site. Most site owners are hungry for content and because they can derive revenue from your post, they may be more than happy to let you post on their site for free.

The more links you get from high quality sites, the better it is for your SEO and the more chances of driving targeted human traffic to your site. Hopefully this article has given you plenty of ideas to create your own strategies to Get More Backlinks to your website.

How to Get One Way Backlinks?

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

How to Get One Way Backlinks?

Search engines such as Google have took steps in an effort to prevent this from becoming major problem by placing more importance on one way backlinks. So, how do you get one way backlinks to your web site? Well, there are number of ways to go about this, but the most effective techniques are listed below.

1) Having a useful, and valuable web site, especially if your web site is free, (Such as providing articles, tools, games, and software.) will cause other web sites to link to your web site. Why? Because by linking to useful, and unique web sites offer value to their own web site's visitors, and therefor increases their own value. This one can take while to really pay off because like all new web sites, you won't get much traffic.

2) Getting listed in directories, especially related ones, won't only bring you tons of traffic, but will also improve your search engine ranking. The two most important directories to get listed in are the ODP (Otherwise known DMOZ), and Yahoo's directory. You can also find directories that are related to your web site by searching with your favorite search engine with your keyword, and adding at the end resource or directory.

3) Writing articles, and submitting them to Ezines, and article directories, which are than picked up by webmasters looking to add content to their own web site, which will get you tons of one way backlinks. You can also find web sites that are related to yours, and ask them to publish your articles. When writing these articles make sure they are related to your web site, so that the link will appear more relevant to your web site's theme to the search engines.

4) Write a unique testimonial for products, or services, and put a link to your URL in it. Many webmasters will accept the deal because this will cause more visitors to buy their products, or services. If they decide to publish your testimonial you'll get a free backlink to your web site. Before you write the testimonial make sure you understand the product.

5) Participate in forums that are related to your web site's subject, which also allow you to link to your web site in the signature, make sure to read the rules first though. They will send you visitors that are interested in your web site, and will provide a related backlink to your web site.

6) Anytime you first start a web site, add a new product or service to your web site write a press release about it. Submit your press releases to news sites such as PRWeb. Make sure that the press release is attention grabbing, and unique, this will make other webmasters add the press release to their web site.

How not to get Authority and Backlinks

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

How not to get Authority and Backlinks

On this thought it’s worth my while stating some underhand sources and methods of acquiring backlinks that Google not only disapproves of but appears to be acting to categorize as illegitimate authorities. In no particular order of severity, the common offenders are:

* Paid backlinks – hubs where people buy and sell backlinks

* Comment spam – entries that contain links on blog pages that are just not related to the main theme.

* Low quality and *duplicate content – ‘scraped’ or copied

* Unnatural growth – there are plenty of ways that this is achievable, Google isn’t stupid. Any sudden increase in the amount of backlinks is going to register on Google’s radar, especially if it’s a brand new domain.

* Backlinks from ill reputed web pages – these are particularly destructive as you are guilty by association.

Quantity vs Quality Backlink

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Quantity vs Quality Backlink

There are different ways to work on the search engine optimization of your website. Either you can get lot of back-links for your website or you can get quality back-links. But this can be optimized by getting the right links than the volume.

Getting the links in volume is never ending game and you would be always running in a rat race with your competitors and still at the end of the day, you would be ahead of someone and behind of someone. Most of the times, you end up getting backlinks from untrusted websites and get in eyes of Google for bad practices in SEO.

But what you understand by trusted backlinks – the links which search engine trust. Here the links are known by their good neighborhood. Search engines look for neighborhoods and check where you stand in this neighborhood – are you somewhere at the corner of the neighborhood or right at the center surrounded by nice neighbors. Lets have a look at the link network below.

Back-links Networking for SEO

So now you understand even if 39 has only 3 back-links, it has good neighborhood. The websites at the authority point in the neighborhood are well recognized by the search engines even if they had very few back-links but yes, quality back-links. The websites at the corner, might be having 1000s of back-links – the websites at the corners might have many of them – but they miss being at the authority position and end up having low ranking in eyes of search engines.

The bottom line for every SEO is, get natural quality back links than tons of links in quantity – because volumes may not lift you up to the heights.

The Importance of Backlinks to Your Internet Marketing Home Business

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

The Importance of Backlinks to Your Internet Marketing Home Business

To many, the thought of getting into the business of Internet marketing is overwhelming. Trying to figure out what products are going to sell and getting people to buy them is more than some people can handle. Or so they believe. However, once you learn the basics of the business, you will find that it can be done and you may that you've finally found a career that can pay you what you're worth.

While setting up your Home Business, You already know who your target market is and what product you are going to offer to them. You already understand how your product will help your target market and determined how to best set up your website, using keywords associated with these answers.

The next aspect of the business is understanding the importance of backlinks. A backlink is simply another link that you have put out on the Internet to lead others to your website. For example, if you publish an article and put the link to your website in the author's bio, you have just created another link to your site. The more backlinks that you can put on the Internet, from article marketing, forum posting, and other means, will drive more traffic (or visitors) to your business website.

No matter what you do, do not think that you could not be successful in Internet marketing. This business is all about learning. Dedicate your time to learn everything you can about the business. You will find there are several online classes you can take on learning the basics of the business and, once completed, more classes on advanced techniques.

Introduction of Backlinks

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Introduction of Backlinks

Backlinks (or Back-links in the UK) are incoming links to a website or web page.

In terms of search engine optimisation, the number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or web page. Outside SEO, the backlinks may be of a personal, cultural or other interest - they indicate who is paying attention to that page. Therefore it is important to buildbacklinks using relevant informatin in relevant places on the internet which should also influence other factors such as pagerank, which may be of more importance that the sheer number of backlinks to a page.

In basic link terminology, a backlink is any link received by a web node (web page, directory, website, or top level domain) from another web node (Bjorneborn and Ingwersen, 2004).

Backlinks are also known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links.

Some Ideas on Backlinks Sources

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Searching for backlinks is definitely one of the headaches about a popular web site creation. On the other hand, it is the quality and quantity of the backlinks, which can make your internet marketing campaign a great success. Millions of words have already been written about how and where to get the reliable backlinks. Below are just some of the fresh ideas on how to enhance your internet marketing plan with backlinks.

Write a blog. With your own blog, you can write articles, news or just short comments on the issues, associated with the topics of your main website. Writing blog posts, just insert links to the products or services descriptions on your site, and your blog will soon become a valuable source of backlinks. Once your writing becomes interesting for other people, you will get followers, and many of them will post links to your resources on their web sites and blogs as well.
Create a free template for website CMS . If you know something about web programming or have someone who can do that for you – create and submit a template for one of the free content management systems, such as Wordpress, Dotclear or others. Your template should contain a link to your web site, and a note for users not to delete that link. Every time someone uses your free template for his website, you get a new backlink.
Give Answers. By posting or answering the questions at such services, as Yahoo Answers or WikiAnswers, you can also build backlinks for your website. Finally, do not underestimate the role of participation in the profile forums and social sites, where the issues close to your web site core theme is discussed.

5 Factors to Consider for Effective Internet Marketing

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Internet marketing is a pretty complicated science, where many different factors are considered. However, it is important to know some basic factors, which can bring you a lot for succeeding in website design and Internet marketing. Besides, all the below mentioned factors are important for search engines.

Presence of key words in the URL of a particular web page.
Presence and density of key words in the textual content of a particular web page.
Number of links, leading from your web site to other relevant and reputable websites.
Number of links, leading from other relevant and reputable websites to your website.
Meta data of your web pages, such as description, title, and keywords.

Of course, checking those 5 factors will not make a miracle for your Internet marketing expectations. However, this is a launching pad, where you may wish to start your way to professional website services.

How Many Backlinks Do I Need?

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:00:00 EST

Actually, this question is most likely to remain unanswered because no one can tell you exactly how many backlinks you need for a particular web site to get a desired PR or the top position in the search results. However, for the sake of building an effective internet marketing plan, it is still important to understand at least approximately how many backlinks one requires.

As a matter of fact, in order to understand how many backlinks you need to build, you should look at your market niche as well as the competitiveness of the particular key word. For example, let us say we are building a web site to sell fitness products. Now let us check the competitiveness of our key word “fitness products” - Google returns something about 80 millions results. Of course, climbing through such a mass of websites could be tricky and really challenging. So, let us make our keyword more specific, for example “fitness products for pregnant”. In this case Google gives only 680 thousands of results. Consequently, the competition is lower in more specific keywords.

Thus, it can be suggested that to gain a success with “fitness products” keyword, we will need, let us say, 1000 backlinks, while for “fitness products for pregnant” about 100 backlinks will do just the same job (note – all the numbers are used for reference only and does not represent the actual requirements for the mentioned key words).

So, as you see, successful internet promotion is far away from gaining quantitative results. Instead, professional website services is about deep analysis of your business, market share, and key words profile, which is both competitive and realistic for building enough backlinks.

How to get One Way Backlinks ?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

How to get One Way Backlinks ?

Creating one-way backlinks to your web site, guarantees you better search engine positions and your link popularity, which gives you much better and quality visitors mainly from search engines to your web site or blog. The main question is how to force others to link to your web site.

The best possible way is to keep your website filled with quality and unique contents regularly. When some webmaster or blogger comes to your website, and read something helpful, they would probably linkback to your web site in their post or home pages.

This procedure and process takes much more time than other link building techniques, but once you get better traffic through your web site, it will drastically improve your rating and one-way quality links to your pages. For this technique, you need to have patience and let the nature to do the job! I will write about these links more in my next posts, so stay tuned!

SEO Advice - How You Get One Way and Reciprocal Backlinks

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

SEO Advice - How You Get One Way and Reciprocal Backlinks

Out of all the SEO advice out there the one you will come across over and over again is "you must get links". The problem comes to new site owners who are trying desperately to establish their site. How do we get them? What makes a good link? What is a reciprocal link?

These are all questions new website or blog owners face. In this article I want to explore the different types of link we can get and also the best known methods for getting them. So the first place to start is by defining the links. You are going to need one way and reciprocal backlinks in order to rank well, however there is a significant difference in these two types of link.

A one way back link points back at your site with no link from your site mirroring it. These links hold more weight when it comes to ranking and they also take less monitoring. When it comes to one way back links you don't even need to think of the traffic your getting from them, you simply use them to move you up the search engine indexes.

Reciprocal links are less effective at moving your ranking up however they hold a significant value in terms of traffic and recognition. You should aim to have between 10 - 20 quality reciprocal links from highly relevant sites.

So how do we get these links? Well let's start with one way links. The first thing you need to concentrate on is building unique, quality content that offers helpful tips and advice. You will be surprised how many webmasters will link back to quality content. Next you need to write articles and press releases, this will give you the opportunity to create highly relevant pages to link back to your site from. You should also submit your site to as many directories as possible and make them as relevant as possible.

When it comes to reciprocal links you need to concentrate on picking your link partners. Simply search under your main terms and see which sites appear. Pick a list of ten and email the relevant webmasters. It is also a good idea to have a link already on your site linking back to them, this helps sell the partnership. Also take time to read your potential partners page, and use the information to tailor your email, compliment on features and articles.

When it comes to SEO advice linking is the main subject on everybody's lips and this is for good reason. Using the above linking techniques and working hard will help move your site to the top of Google's SERPs.

Why You Need Backlinks to Increase Your SEO

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Why You Need Backlinks to Increase Your SEO

Every smart web site owner or webmaster is constantly looking for new backlinks, and there are a slew of services online that promise to help -- but are they helping or hurting your rankings?

Google says it frowns on the use of link building sites and services, so do the other search engines, but there is no denying the benefit of such link-building services.

These services provide backlink solutions for a fee, but for many site owners it can be the boost they needed to get into the higher rankings on Google, Yahoo!, Ask, Bing and the like. These services can provide good SEO links to get a site indexed on the engines and, once indexed, they can get a site into the top rankings for search engines.

Most link building services companies outsource their backlinking services or use software to spread links across the Internet. But site owners and webmasters should take care when using this type of service.

Flooding the internet with links to a single web site raises red flags to all the engines. Getting say 1,000 links overnight would tell all the search engines that you have been using a shady link-building services. This could get a site pulled from the search engines altogether and make it basically useless.

Finding a good quality link building service isn't too hard If you so your research, site owners should make sure any backlinking company they use goes slowly, making backlinks appear natural and more organic to the search engines.

Link Building

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Link Building

Anyone, nowadays who operates websites and have online businesses, know that link building is an important aspect of SEO. It is a process that involves getting links from other sites to yours and this is where a link building service might be of sure benefit. In any case, if your webpage is appropriately using this method in the correct manner, then you will find that your site is displayed in the top ten results of the various search tools.

This process offers various advantages and it is the reason why website designers as well as creators are determined to get inbound links to their pages. Down below is a list of the many benefits that come from building links:

1. By acquiring the help of a link building service to create links to your webpage, you will find that there will also be an increase of popularity when it comes to your site.

2. Inbound links will improve your sites visibility in the search tool.

3. A link building service can help your website place in the top ten search results, by bettering building link methods.

4. You can save a significant amount of money and time on your advertising efforts.

5. Your site gets an added source, which is a great advantage for your webpage.

6. Links will create awareness and will increase the creditability of your site. In addition, you will get more exposure.

Everyone is looking for the best ways to improve the presence of their website on the internet. Well, there is a new way and it is called contextual link building.

What is Contextual link building?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

What is Contextual link building?

This process is a new one and has a unique way of promoting a website. This is how it works; it is done by developing back links into the content. If your webpage has exceptional and unique content, search tools are constantly seeking for new and unusual niches. This means that your content may have a chance on being of a high place on the search-page results.

One of the best ways to accomplish this process is by submitting articles. It is very simple to submit content responses with a 300-400 word article, but make sure that you stay on the safe side. You may also need to ensure that your blog is placed in an exclusive IP. You can attempt to get back links for high PR and popular blogs to gain more profits.

This technique is slowly, but surely effective and is becoming increasingly popular as a SEO strategy. However, the process should be completed in a proper and safe manner. So before you get started, make sure that your content is accurate when it is ready to be submitted and published. It will surely be of benefit if you attain the help from a link building service, so you know that the process is done correctly. Of course this means that you will get the results which you want and need.

Link Building to Improve Your Website Performance

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Link Building to Improve Your Website Performance

Link building campaigns are a vital part of improving your search engine rating. Link building is designed to give a website a better rank in search engine organic lists. The quantity of links is a key factor in ranking sites, but numbers alone won't guarantee your success. You will be most successful if you plan out your campaign.

Be persistent. If you only bother about creating links just occasionally, you could be in a lot of trouble. The competition will evaluate your site and change accordingly to obtain a higher ranking. It won't take long for your site to drop out of sight. It is important to consistently and persistently keep up your link building.

Don't be too quick. Search engines use many tools to separate genuine inbound links from false ones; an explosion of inbound links on your site may appear suspicious and won't achieve the desired result. Focus on building links with regular speed, instead of building too many links too quickly.

Make sure your content contains the correct keyword phrases and anchor text. Change up your anchor text. Be careful not to use the same anchor text over and over again, or search engines might suspect you are involved in phony link building practices.

Keep up with your competitors. Keep your eyes on the competition. If they obtain better results than you, investigate what they are doing that works well. Free tools exist to explore the number of back links your competition has and determine their origin. Armed with this information, you can alter your course to stay ahead. Review your competitors' content to better understand their keyword usage. Don't stuff the keywords. Use natural languages.

You won't remain on top with just links. Directory submissions, reciprocal linking, and adding a blog to your site are some things you can try.

Keep the site content fresh. Search engines won't promote stagnate sites.

Backlink Creation

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Backlink Creation

Backlinks are incoming links to your website from other websites. In the search engine optimization (SEO) world, the number of backlinks shows the popularity and importance of your website. This allows you to get ranked higher on the search pages. Outside of SEO, the backlinks of a webpage identify who is paying attention to your site.

In basic terminology, a backlink is any link received by a web node (web page, directory, website, or top level domain) from another web node. Backlinks are also known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links.

Inbound Links And Backlinks Explained For Search Engine Optimization

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Inbound Links And Backlinks Explained For Search Engine Optimization

On occasion called inbound links, backlinks are the means of Search Engine Positioning. In order for a website to be on the top of search engines like Google exclusive of the webmaster having to pay significant money for promotional advertising, the website has to have a large number of backlinks. Backlinks are links on one website that show the way back to an alternative website. The more reputable, superior quality, and prominent Page Rank the website that holds the link has, the added power it has to help the linked website with its search engine position.

If the website that is recieving backlinks gets many High Quality and superior Page Rank backlinks, the better the possibility it has of being in a superior position on the Search Engines. How does a webmaster go about finding high quality backlinks to his or her website? There are numerous ways this can be achieved. Some folks advise writing and handing in articles, posting on forums,generating remarks on blogs. Others talk about handing in their website to various Internet directories. One directory that has an exceptional reputation is named DMOZ.This directory is probably the most respected directory online nowadays.. The only flaw that's been discussed regarding this directory is that it takes so long to have a website included.

An alternative way that numerous owners build backlinks for their website is to make use of Social Bookmarking websites. A Social Bookmark is a website that frequently has a very prevalent'community' aspect to it. Users sign up and create profiles on the sites that show photos and details about themselves. They then can save bookmarks of favorite websites which can be itemized by 'tags', which are single or double word descriptions of what the sites show, and these bookmarks can be saved to a list that's confidential or can be listed publicly, so that the public can observe it.

With the dawn of what is established as Web 2.0, gaining backlinks is easier at this time than in any instance in the history of the internet. Most sites now have an interactive quality to them these days.Viewers can log in and develope profiles. They then are frequently permitted to forward remarks on the stories or articles on the website or blog. In many situations, the website or blog owner responds to these remarks; thus making this area of the website or blog a conversation.

Backlinking methods can be uncomplicated and fun and the website owner who is working on finding more backlinks for his website can gain knowledge of new things, meet additional people, and have a tremendous amount of fun doing something that was in the past a chore: Building backlinks.

How To Get Backlinks and Increse Traffic To Your Site/ Blogs

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

How To Get Backlinks and Increse Traffic To Your Site/ Blogs

Getting back links are the one of the important way to increase the page rank of the sites. Because most search engines calculating their page rank according to the no of back links and the percentage of keyword density present in the WebPages.

Initial traffic:

Choosing Relevant& Qualified Back link Providers

Choosing the relevant& qualified back links providers, is the another important task for the getting back links. Because wrongly placed back links will not provide right results. Getting links from the sites/ blogs which has no enough page rank will not increase the page ranks. For E.g. site A has the page rank of 0.And it gets 50 back links from 0 page ranked sites will not increase the page rank. But getting the links form page rank 4 or more site will surely increases the page rank of the sites. So getting links from high page ranked sites will provide the expected page rank.

Links from Commenting

Avoid links From Over Crowded links

Avoid link exchange Programs:

social networking

Social networking is the one of the famous tool having today to get back links. Participating in these social networking activities will provides quality and direct links to your site. In most fo the social networking groups users can view and share their links. These will improve the page rank and drive more traffic.

Article writing

Why do I need Backlinks?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Why do I need Backlinks?

To understand why a website needs backlinks, you must know what a backlink is. A backlink is an incoming link posted or created on another site resulting in a clickable link that leads back to your website. A good example would be a backlink that is created from entering your webpage information on an online directory. Other backlinks could be found in the form of linked text inside content such as articles. Backlinks are also how a website is measured in terms of popularity and page rank. That is why the generation of backlinks is emphasized in SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

A website is created with the purpose of being seen. Having a website is an opportunity to reach across borders and demographics to communicate your message. Many websites are not able to reach this goal because they do not become visible in the eyes of the search engines. Unless someone types your website URL on their browser and visits your site directly, they will need to use a search engine to find your site. Perhaps you are a local flower shop that is contracted for weddings. A bride will type in “Flowers Miami” in her search query on a search engine like Google or Yahoo. If your website has a lot of local competition, it will be very hard, likely impossible, for your website to show up on the first few result pages without generating more backlinks than your competition.

To increase your chances of ending up in a visibly higher position on the organic search results, your sight has to be “SEO fit.” There are many processes that encompass SEO, but it is essential that your site increases its backlinks on a weekly basis. The more backlinks that are connected to your site, the more relevant your site becomes in the eyes of search engines. Also, there is a connection between the quantity of backlinks a site has and its page rank. Having a high page rank is important, because as a website increases in page rank, the more reliable and significant it gets; over time top page ranks are not only possible – they are even likely… Not only do more backlinks increase page rank and relevancy, it drives traffic back to your site due to increased visibility.

Examples on how to generate backlinks include writing and syndicating content, replying to questions on forums, and submitting your site to various directories. Beware of linkbaiting and other black hat methods; it would only impair the growth and credibility of your site in the long run. Before trying to figure out how many backlinks you need to create, do not forget to check the amount of backlinks you currently have. You can use an SEO tool that measures backlinks on a weekly basis like the LinkVelocity Tool. It also gives you results of your competitors.

Regardless of how well you implement other SEO processes, your efforts will be in vain if you do not mind your backlinks and continuously work on spreading your links through the internet. As your backlinks grow, so will your visibility and your business.

What are backlinks?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

What are backlinks?

Backlinks are links that are directed towards your website. Also knows as Inbound links (IBL's). The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that website. Backlinks are important for SEO because somesearch engines , especially Google, will give more credit to websites that have a good number of quality backlinks, and consider those websites more relevant than others in their results pages for a search query.

When search engines calculate the relevance of a site to a keyword, they consider the number of QUALITY inbound links to that site. So we should not be satisfied with merely getting inbound links, it is the quality of the inbound link that matters.

A search engine considers the content of the sites to determine the QUALITY of a link. When inbound links to your site come from other sites, and those sites have content related to your site, these inbound links are considered more relevant to your site. If inbound links are found on sites with unrelated content, they are considered less relevant. The higher the relevance of inbound links, the greater their quality.

For example: if a webmaster has a website about how to rescue orphaned kittens, and received a backlink from another website about kittens, then that would be more relevant ina search engine's assessment than say a link from a site about car racing. The more relevant the site is that is linking back to your website, the better the quality of the backlink.

Ways to Build Backlinks

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Ways to Build Backlinks

Even if plenty of backlinks come to your site the natural way, additional quality backlinks are always welcome and the time you spend building them is not wasted. Among the acceptable ways of building quality backlinks are getting listed in directories, posting in forums, blogs and article directories. The unacceptable ways include inter-linking (linking from one site to another site, which is owned by the same owner or exists mainly for the purpose to be a link farm), linking to spamsites or sites that host any kind of illegal content, purchasing links in bulk, linking to link farms, etc.

The first step in building backlinks is to find the places from which you can get quality backlinks. A valuable assistant in this process is the Backlink Builder tool. When you enter the keywords of your choice, the Backlink Builder tool gives you a list ofsites where you can post an article, message, posting, or simply a backlink to your site. After you have the list of potential backlink partners, it is up to you to visit each of thesites and post your content with the backlink to your site in it.

Code Defined

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Code Defined

* a href – This is probably one of the most common html codes used on a website. This href code tells an individuals browser that the text immediately following the <> should be treated as a clickable url link. The href code is immediately followed by the url that you are wanting to link to. In this case it is linking to stungunshq.com/taser.html. And do not be mistaken as I did not make a typo, the “a” in front of the href is important and must be there. The “a” is used to define both hyperlinks and anchors but is commonly referred to as an anchor thus the acronym of “a”, and the href stands for “Hypertext Reference”.

* title – The next segment still within the href’s <> is the title code. If you have ever placed your mouse over a link and a little box appeared with a brief description of the link, well that was a title code. To give you an example, place your mouse over the word TASER in the next sentence. ”…when she brought up the fact that she had just purchased a Taser from a local gun…”When you placed your mouse over the word “Taser”, a small box should have appeared on your screen. This is all that the title code does. Not very impressive, huh?

* target – This string of code tells how the browser should go to the url you have placed inside of your code. As in the above example, we have chosen to open a new blank window and send the user to the website link, thus leaving the original website and document open in the background. To send the user to the desired website within the same browswer window that they were originally viewing, the “_blank” can be replaced with “_self”. Pretty self explainatory once you think about it.

* anchor text – This brings us to the actual anchor text in the document. It is any word or sentence immediately following the “>” but before the “<” in the sentence above. In this example, our anchor text keyword here is “Taser”. As in this example, we used a one word achor text keyword “Taser” to give relevance to the taser/c2-taser.html page we were linking to. If you research the maximum number of anchor text keywords which should be used when linking to a website, you will likely get hundreds of different opinions. So, not to be outdone, I will give my opinion here. I believe that a single keyword or keyword phrase holds higher relevance as an anchor text than if you stuffed the link full of keywords. We will actually discuss keyword stuffing in future articles. By stuffing your anchor text link full of keywords, it is my belief that you will receive less relevance for the keywords than if you had listed just a single keyword or keyword phrase. It’s like adding too much water to a pitcher of lemonade. Although it is still lemonade, it’s diluted down and just doesn’t pack the punch that adding the proper amount of water does.

* closing arguements – In our example above, the closing arguements for our html code is the /a. This tells the browser to stop treating the text as active. The /a should be enclosed in <> brackets.

The origin of the backlinks

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

The origin of the backlinks

Backlinks are like votes – the higher the volume of votes (backlinks) the more relevant and popular the page is considered by the search engine. But ‘votes’ cast via backlinks from trusted or authoritative pages to a page have greater influence over the search engines consideration of this page than backlinks coming from pages with less ‘trust’ or authority. Pages from sources such as educational (.edu) or government (.gov) sites naturally posess more trust and authority.

How to manufacture backlinks

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

How to manufacture backlinks

Let me tell you my no nonsense approach for getting backlinks that will make the search engines take notice of you and bring quality and appropriate traffic to your web pages:

* Finding the right keywords from the beginning is essential.

* Your objective should be to end up with a keyword cloud.

* I most often start with a single ‘top’ level keyword or key phrase which has substantial visitor traffic.

* The fastest and cheapest method to find out how much traffic a keyword or key phrase is getting is to use the Google keywords discovery tool.

* The Google tool creates a list of keywords associated with my main keyword and from this list I build my cloud.

* I then generate content in the form of articles and videos in which I have embedded backlinks with the correct ‘anchor text’ to my ‘money’ or ‘target’ page and push these to a wide range of content directories.

* My golden rule is to write content that will attract traffic and compel them to follow the backlinks to my money pages as well as send backlinks.

Importance of backlinks

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Importance of backlinks

What are "backlinks"? Backlinks are links that are directed towards your website. Also knows as Inbound links (IBL's). The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that website. Backlinks are important for SEO because some search engines, especially Google, will give more credit to websites that have a good number of quality backlinks, and consider those websites more relevant than others in their results pages for a search query.

Fine Tuning

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Fine Tuning

The first thing to do is to find your current backlinks. Keep in mind, no search engine will give you an accurate list. Not even the all-powerful Google. Sage Lewis wrote a column last week on on finding your backlinks.

When you find a quality site in your backlinks, examine how it is linking to your site. It would be fairly easy to send the Webmaster an email asking him/her to add your keywords to the anchor text, yet that would not be taking full advantage of the opportunity at hand. Plus, it's likely the email will just be deleted. After all, what's in it for the Webmaster?

Instead, try approaching it from a relationship-building standpoint. There may be opportunities to contribute articles, sponsor a project, or help that site with promotions. Perhaps it wants to expand a section on the site, and your copywriter has downtime you can provide. The site maybe looking to do a research project, and you have access to the resources to make it happen. Explore the different ways you might benefit the site and its users. This is really the key to building a successful, long-term relationship with other sites.

Backlinks and serch engines

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Backlinks and serch engines

For any web page to be ‘ranked’ in the search engines and attract searchers it’s critical it has backlinks. Backlinks have three key properties, the web page from which the backlinks are derived, the anchor text of the backlinks and what’s on the page to which the backlinks directs the visitor to.

The number of backlinks

The amount of backlinks to a page is one of the elements the search engines consider when deciding how to position the page in the SERPS (Search Engine Page Results).

The origin of the backlinks

Backlinks are like votes – the higher the volume of votes (backlinks) the more relevant and popular the page is considered by the search engine.

What are Backlinks?

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

What are Backlinks?

Backlinks are incoming links to a website or web page.

In basic link terminology, a backlink is any link received by a web node (web page, directory, website, or top level domain) from another web node.

Backlinks are also known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links.

Why are backlinks important?

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Why are backlinks important?

Link building is an important component of any Internet business, There are many benefits that come from link building. Some of these benefits include direct traffic, more sales and of course, better search engine rankings.

Most search engines use the number of backlinks that a website has as one of the most important factors in determining the website's search engine ranking. This is why websites often employ search engine optimisation techniques to increase popularity and the number of backlinks pointing to their website.

Not all backlinks are the same

A number of different factors determine the value of a backlink. Backlinks from authorittive sites on the given topic are highly valuable, and if both sites have content that is relevant to the keyword topic, the backlink is considered 'better' and is believed to have a strong influence on the search engine rank of the webpage granted the backlink. Getting a backlink represents an 'editorial vote' for the reveiving webpage.

Use anchor text effectively

Another important factor is the anchor text of your backlinks. Anchor text is a kind of description of the link should contain information as to what the link contains and it should be relevant to the content on the linked page. Search engine bots will examine the anchor text to evaluate how relevant it is to the content on a given web page. Anchor text and webpage content congruency are highly weighted in search engine results page (SERP) rankings of your webpage with respect to any given keyword query by a search engine user.

Importance of Backlinks with Search Engine Optimization

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Importance of Backlinks with Search Engine Optimization

What is a backlink and why are they important? Backlinks or Inbound Links (IBL’s) are links that are directed towards your website and are the building blocks to good Search Engine Optimization. The number of backlinks a website has is in a good indicator of its popularity or importance with search engines. Search engines, namely Google, give more credit to websites that have a larger number of quality backlinks and consider those websites more relevant in a search query.

It is not sufficient to just have a high number of inbound links; they need to be quality links. For search engines to determine the quality of inbound links the content of the site is critiqued. The content of the websites you have inbound links with needs to be relevant to the content on your site. The more relevant the inbound links are to your site helps determine the quality of the links.

It is easy to get a higher ranking using backlinks than it is to influence search engines with external backlinks from other sites, which is why backlinks matter so much in a search engines algorithm. Recently search engines criteria for quality inbound backlinks has gotten harder. This is due to people using deceptive tactics like hidden links or automatically generated pages whose entire purpose is to generate inbound links to other web pages. These pages are called “link farms” which aren’t ousted by search engines. Link farms could be harmful to your site if you backlink with them and may cause your site to be banned.

By having quality backlinks you are attracting visitors to your site. You can’t just build a website and expect that people are going to find you without being pointed in the right direction. People previously used Reciprocal Linking to achieve this.

Reciprocal Links were discussed in a recent Google update as one of the targets for its latest filters. In order to boost website rankings through the number of inbound links, webmasters had agreed upon Reciprocal Link Exchanges. This link exchange occurs when one webmaster puts a link on their website to point to another webmasters website. Many of these were not relevant links and were just disregarded by search engines. The inbound links were not counted but the outbound links were still counted which lowered the relevancy score of many websites and caused them to drop off the Google map.

Google is working on a patent that will deal with the popularity of sites being linked to and how trustworthy a site is that you link to from your own website. This means you could possibly get into trouble for linking to a bad site. To prepare for this now we should chose relevant sites to link with, sites that don’t have an enormous amount of outbound links on a page and ones that don’t practice bad SEO techniques. By doing all those things we can reduce the risk of having our reciprocal links discounted.

A lot of webmasters have more than one website, sometimes ones that are related to one another. In this case, you need to be careful about interlinking multiple websites on the same IP. If you have say ten related sites and you have a link to each of them on a page that could look bad to search engines. By trying to manipulate backlinks by having too many links with the same IP address is called Backlink Bombing. In some instances it is okay to have links with the same IP address. For instance, if you wanted to provide your visitors with extra resources, a few of these will not hurt, but should definitely be kept to a minimum.

A few tools should be considered when beginning to backlink. Keeping track of your backlinks will be helpful so that you know which sites are linking back to you. By keeping track of your backlinks you can find how the anchor text of the backlink uses keywords relating to your site. To keep track of your backlinks the Domain Stats Tool can be used, it will show you the backlinks of a domain in Google, Yahoo and MSN. There is also few other things this tool will tell you about your website like: how many pages from your website have been indexed, your listings in the Open Directory and Alexa traffic rank.

The Backlink Builder Tool is another useful resource. As you know, it is not important the number of inbound links you have but the number of quality inbound links you have is important. This tool helps to find websites that are related to you that would be likely to add you as a link to their site. By inputting a keyword or a phrase this tool will find related sites for you, which makes the task of finding quality backlinks a lot easier.

Anchor Text is also important in creating quality backlinks to your site. Anchor Text is when a link incorporates a keyword into the text of the hyperlink. Instead of putting “Click Here” on your website, words that relate to your site should be inputted. For instance, if your website is about breast implants then you should use words like “Breast Implants Q & A” for your hyperlink. Using the Backlink Anchor Text Analysis Tool will help you find your backlinks and show you what text is being used to link to your site. I suggest that if the anchor text is not being utilized properly on a site that is linking to you, you should request that website to change the anchor text to something that uses relevant keywords. By doing this it will help boost your quality backlinks score.

Backlinks should be priority in your Search Engine Optimization because of their importance. Hopefully you have gained an understanding of why your site needs quality links and are able to use the tools discussed to obtain those links.

SEO Services for Backlink Improvement

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

SEO Services for Backlink Improvement

Link building is one of the most important facets of an internet marketing strategy. The web page ranking algorithms of the three major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, and MSN Live) all rely heavily on the measurement of incoming links, commonly called backlinks, when judging the relevancy and importance of a web page or site.

Gaining backlinks to a website, or link building, is a difficult and often tedious exercise but the positive results from a well planned backlinks program make the effort more than worthwhile. A successful search engine optimization campaign includes the development of relevant incoming links. Because search engines are highly sensitive to manipulation of their rankings, there are several guidelines to follow when pursuing backlinks during your link building campaign.

BackLink Upgrades

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

BackLink Upgrades

Ajiboye will identify all current links that are pointing to your site from other websites. Based on this list Ajiboye will identify all backlinks that have room for improvement.

Ajiboye will provide a custom solution for:

* General body text surrounding the link

* Linking Text

* Link Title

* Destination pages

Quality Backlinks

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Quality Backlinks

There are two main types of backlinks to your web site:

1. One way backlinks – This type of backlinks gives you more quality potential and much better results than second type. One-way backlinks are links that point to your web site from other web sites that are not included into your web site or blog.

2. Reciprocal backlinks – This type of backlinks is not popular these days. Search engines doesn’t care about these links like they do before 5 years. I’d recommend you to concentrate to one-way backlinks which would give you much better results and functionality!

Identifying Indicators of Organization

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Performance indicators differ from business drivers and aims. A school might consider the failure rate of its students as a Key Performance Indicator which might help the school understand its position in the educational community, whereas a business might consider the percentage of income from return customers as a potential KPI.

But it is necessary for an organization to at least identify its KPIs. The key environments for identifying KPIs are:

• Having a pre-defined business process (BP).

• requirements for the business processes.

• Having a quantitative/qualitative measurement of the results and comparison with set goals.

• Investigating variances and tweaking processes or resources to achieve short-term goals.

A KPI can follow the SMART criteria. This means the measure has a Specific purpose for the business, it is Measurable to really get a value of the KPI, the defined norms have to be Achievable, the KPI has to be Relevant to measure (and thereby to manage) and it must be Time phased, which means the value or outcomes are shown for a predefined and relevant period.

On-site web analytics technologies

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Many different vendors provide on-site web analytics software and services. There are two main technological approaches to collecting the data. The first method, logfile analysis, reads the logfiles in which the web server records all its transactions. The second method, page tagging, uses JavaScript on each page to notify a third-party server when a page is rendered by a web browser. Both collect data that can be processed to produce web traffic reports.

In addition other data sources may also be added to augment the data. For example; e-mail response rates, direct mail campaign data, sales and lead information, user performance data such as click heat mapping, or other custom metrics as needed.

On-site web analytics technologies: Web server logfile analysis

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Web servers record some of their transactions in a logfile. It was soon realized that these logfiles could be read by a program to provide data on the popularity of the website. Thus arose web log analysis software.

In the early 1990s, web site statistics consisted primarily of counting the number of client requests (or hits) made to the web server. This was a reasonable method initially, since each web site often consisted of a single HTML file. However, with the introduction of images in HTML, and web sites that spanned multiple HTML files, this count became less useful. The first true commercial Log Analyzer was released by IPRO in 1994.

Two units of measure were introduced in the mid 1990s to gauge more accurately the amount of human activity on web servers. These were page views and visits (or sessions). A page view was defined as a request made to the web server for a page, as opposed to a graphic, while a visit was defined as a sequence of requests from a uniquely identified client that expired after a certain amount of inactivity, usually 30 minutes. The page views and visits are still commonly displayed metrics, but are now considered rather unsophisticated measurements.

The emergence of search engine spiders and robots in the late 1990s, along with web proxies and dynamically assigned IP addresses for large companies and ISPs, made it more difficult to identify unique human visitors to a website. Log analyzers responded by tracking visits by cookies, and by ignoring requests from known spiders.

The extensive use of web caches also presented a problem for logfile analysis. If a person revisits a page, the second request will often be retrieved from the browser's cache, and so no request will be received by the web server. This means that the person's path through the site is lost. Caching can be defeated by configuring the web server, but this can result in degraded performance for the visitor to the website.

On-site web analytics technologies: Page tagging

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Concerns about the accuracy of logfile analysis in the presence of caching, and the desire to be able to perform web analytics as an outsourced service, led to the second data collection method, page tagging or 'Web bugs'.

In the mid 1990s, Web counters were commonly seen — these were images included in a web page that showed the number of times the image had been requested, which was an estimate of the number of visits to that page. In the late 1990s this concept evolved to include a small invisible image instead of a visible one, and, by using JavaScript, to pass along with the image request certain information about the page and the visitor. This information can then be processed remotely by a web analytics company, and extensive statistics generated.

The web analytics service also manages the process of assigning a cookie to the user, which can uniquely identify them during their visit and in subsequent visits. Cookie acceptance rates vary significantly between web sites and may affect the quality of data collected and reported.

Collecting web site data using a third-party data collection server (or even an in-house data collection server) requires an additional DNS look-up by the user's computer to determine the IP address of the collection server. On occasion, delays in completing a successful or failed DNS look-ups may result in data not being collected.

With the increasing popularity of Ajax-based solutions, an alternative to the use of an invisible image, is to implement a call back to the server from the rendered page. In this case, when the page is rendered on the web browser, a piece of Ajax code would call back to the server and pass information about the client that can then be aggregated by a web analytics company. This is in some ways flawed by browser restrictions on the servers which can be contacted with XmlHttpRequest objects.

Advantages of logfile analysis

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

The main advantages of logfile analysis over page tagging are as follows:

1. The web server normally already produces logfiles, so the raw data is already available. To collect data via page tagging requires changes to the website.

2. The data is on the company's own servers, and is in a standard, rather than a proprietary, format. This makes it easy for a company to switch programs later, use several different programs, and analyze historical data with a new program. Page tagging solutions involve vendor lock-in.

3. Logfiles contain information on visits from search engine spiders. Although these should not be reported as part of the human activity, it is useful information for search engine optimization.

4. Logfiles require no additional DNS Lookups. Thus there are no external server calls which can slow page load speeds, or result in uncounted page views.

5. The web server reliably records every transaction it makes. Page tagging may not be able to record all transactions. Reasons include:

• Page tagging relies on the visitors' browsers co-operating, which a certain proportion may not do (for example, if JavaScript is disabled, or a hosts file prohibits requests to certain servers).

• Tags may be omitted from pages either by oversight or between bouts of additional page tagging.

• It may not be possible to include tags in all pages. Examples include static content such as PDFs or application-generated dynamic pages where re-engineering the application to include tags is not an option.

Advantages of page tagging

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

The main advantages of page tagging over logfile analysis are as follows.

• The JavaScript is automatically run every time the page is loaded. Thus there are fewer worries about caching.

• It is easier to add additional information to the JavaScript, which can then be collected by the remote server. For example, information about the visitors' screen sizes, or the price of the goods they purchased, can be added in this way. With logfile analysis, information not normally collected by the web server can only be recorded by modifying the URL.

• Page tagging can report on events which do not involve a request to the web server, such as interactions within Flash movies, partial form completion, mouse events such as onClick, onMouseOver, onFocus, onBlur etc.

• The page tagging service manages the process of assigning cookies to visitors; with logfile analysis, the server has to be configured to do this.

• Page tagging is available to companies who do not have access to their own web servers.

Economic factors

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Logfile analysis is almost always performed in-house. Page tagging can be performed in-house, but it is more often provided as a third-party service. The economic difference between these two models can also be a consideration for a company deciding which to purchase.

• Logfile analysis typically involves a one-off software purchase; however, some vendors are introducing maximum annual page views with additional costs to process additional information. In addition to commercial offerings, several open-source logfile analysis tools are available free of charge.

• For Logfile analysis you have to store and archive your own data, which often grows very large and quickly. Although the cost of hardware to do this is minimal, the overhead for an IT department can be considerable. For example, if you run out of disk space your database may start over-writing old entries which can often be irreparable.

• For Logfile analysis you need to maintain the software, including updates and security patches.

• Complex page tagging vendors charge a monthly fee based on volume i.e. number of pageviews per month collected.

Click analytics

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Click analytics is a special type of web analytics that gives special attention to clicks (Point-and-click). According to Google Analytics, "a 'Click' refers to a single instance of a user following a hyperlink from one page in a site to another" This definition is mostly accurate when talking about click analytics.

Commonly, click analytics focuses on on-site analytics. An editor of a web site uses click analytics to determine the performance of his or her particular site, with regards to where the users of the site are clicking.

Also, click analytics may happen real-time or "unreal"-time, depending on the type of information sought. Typically, frontpage editors on high-traffic news media sites will want to monitor their pages in real-time, to optimize the content. Editors, designers or other types of stakeholders may analyze clicks on a wider time frame to aid them assess performance of writers, design elements or advertisements etc.

Data about clicks may be gathered in at least two ways. Ideally, a click is "logged" when it occurs, and this method requires some functionality that picks up relevant information when the event occurs. Alternatively, one may institute the assumption that a page view is a result of a click, and therefore log a simulated click that lead to that page view.

What is a Hit?

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

A request for a file from the web server. Available only in log analysis. The number of hits received by a website is frequently cited to assert its popularity, but this number is extremely misleading and dramatically over-estimates popularity.

A single web-page typically consists of multiple (often dozens) of discrete files, each of which is counted as a hit as the page is downloaded, so the number of hits is really an arbitrary number more reflective of the complexity of individual pages on the website than the website's actual popularity.

The total number of visitors or page views provides a more realistic and accurate assessment of popularity.

The number of times a program or item of data has been accessed or matches some condition. For example, when you download a page from the Web, the page itself and all graphic elements that it contains each count as one hit to that Web site. If a search yields 100 items that match the searching criteria, those 100 items could be called 100 hits.

Page view

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

A page view (PV) or page impression is a request to load a single page of an Internet site. On the World Wide Web a page request would result from a web surfer clicking on a link on another HTML page pointing to the page in question. This should be contrasted with a hit, which refers to a request for a file from a web server. There may therefore be many hits per page view since a page can be made up of multiple files.

These page views may be counted as part of web analytics. For the owner of the site this information can be useful to see if any change in the page (such as the information or the way it is presented) results in more visits. If there are any advertisements on the page, the advertisers would also be interested in the number of page views to determine their expected revenue from the ads. For this reason it is a term that is used widely for Internet based marketing and advertising.

Visit session or Duration of visit

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

A series of requests from the same uniquely identified client with a set timeout, often 30 minutes. A visit contains one or more page views.

Visit filters which are used by Web log analysis software include or exclude all the data in a visit session.

The specifying ranges or types of data let you limit the web log data that is analyzed, letting you focus on relevant activity.

Types of visits

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

First Visit / First Session - A visit from a visitor who has not made any previous visits.

Visitor / Unique Visitor / Unique User - The uniquely identified client generating requests on the web server (log analysis) or viewing pages (page tagging) within a defined time period (i.e. day, week or month). A Unique Visitor counts once within the timescale. A visitor can make multiple visits. Identification is made to the visitor's computer, not the person, usually via cookie and/or IP+User Agent. Thus the same person visiting from two different computers will count as two Unique Visitors.

Repeat Visitor - A visitor that has made at least one previous visit. The period between the last and current visit is called visitor recency and is measured in days.

New Visitor - A visitor that has not made any previous visits. This definition creates a certain amount of confusion (see common confusions below), and is sometimes substituted with analysis of first visits.

Bounce rate

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Bounce rate (sometimes confused with exit rate) is a term used in web site traffic analysis. It essentially represents the percentage of initial visitors to a site who "bounce" away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site.

The formula used to calculate bounce rate is: Bounce Rate = Total Number of Visits Viewing One Page / Total Number of Visits

A bounce occurs when a web site visitor only views a single page on a website, that is, the visitor leaves a site without visiting any other pages before a specified session-timeout occurs. There is no industry-standard minimum or maximum time by which a visitor must leave in order for a bounce to occur. Rather, this is determined by the session timeout of the analytics tracking software.

A visitor can bounce by:

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

• Clicking on a link to a page on a different web site

• Closing an open window or tab

• Typing a new URL

• Clicking the "Back" button to leave the site

• Session timeout

A commonly used session timeout value is 30 minutes. In this case, if a visitor views a page, doesn't look at another page, and leaves his browser idle for longer than 30 minutes, they will register as a bounce. If the visitor continues to navigate after this delay, a new session will occur.

The Bounce Rate for a single page is the number of visitors who enter the site at a page and leave within the specified timeout period without viewing another page, divided by the total number of visitors who entered the site at that page. In contrast, the Bounce Rate for a web site is the number of web site visitors who visit only a single page of a web site per session divided by the total number of web site visits.

Usage of Bounce rates

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Bounce rates can be used to help determine the effectiveness or performance of an entry page. An entry page with a low bounce rate means that the page effectively causes visitors to view more pages and continue on deeper into the web site.

On an ecommerce site, where the sole aim may be to sell products online, the bounce rate is a primary concern and useful measurement.

Information sources and sites which drive the customer to make contact via email or phone may see much higher bounce rates. This may not be a bad thing as they are only viewing one page of the site (but contacting the company).

Caveats

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

While bounce rate is a useful tool for e-commerce sites, it is of more questionable value for sites such as news and information, where many visitors go to scan headlines and conduct research, and can find what they want immediately on the entry page.

Indeed, for any kind of informational site, sophisticated users are likely to bookmark a page within the site, which then becomes their personal entry page, check it (e.g., for sports scores, the price of pork bellies, etc.), then bounce right off.

The page will have done its job, but might still have a bounce rate above 80%, bringing up the average for the whole site. For such sites, metrics such as returning visitors vs. new visitors might be more informative.

The Why and How of Backlinks

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

The Why and How of Backlinks

Backlinks. What are they and what makes them important?

Everyone wants traffic to their website. However, most people don't know what it takes to get traffic. It's a simple process, contrary to what the gurus will tell you. All you have to do is find good keywords, write quality content based on those keywords, and then build backlinks to that content.

This is where most people drop the ball. They think if they write it, ‘people will come’. This just isn't true. What makes your content any better than the next guy's? What entices Google or any other search engine to show your site in the search engine results as opposed to your neighbor's?

The answer is Links. The number of people, places, sites that are linking to your content is what makes the difference between whether your site shows up in the search engine results, or someone else's. Now you just need to know (a) what backlinks are, and (b) how to get them.

The answer to first question is very simple. Backlinks, simply put, are links pointing back to your site or a page on your site.

The answer to the second problem is more complex since backlinks can be created in many ways. You can write something amazing that someone else likes, and would want to tell others about; so he/she links to your site. Alternatively you can take the process in your own hands and send out articles or make comments on blogs. There are, of course, differing degrees of value between backlinks.

Google counts all the backlinks you have to your site. Some links it gives more weight to, others it gives less to. You will be wise to take on a link building strategy that involves both quality and quantity, because both are important. You want to get backlinks from high page rank sites- Google likes these and gives you a little more credit for them. You also want to get links from directories. Although Google doesn't give you as much credit for the latter, you certainly get credit for having a lot of backlinks to your site.

The best possible backlink you can get is one where you have your chosen keyword in the anchor text of the link. This is important because you are trying to rank in the search engine for specific keywords. Each time you have a link with a certain keyword or some derivation of it, you get credit. So, never, never, write a link and have the words you click on be ‘click here’. That's a ridiculous waste of a backlink, unless you are linking to someone you don't want to give a backlink to.

There are a million places to get backlinks to your site. It can be the most boring part of online marketing, but if you don't do it you will never find yourself number one in Google and getting all that traffic.

User exit

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

User exit is a subroutine invoked by a software package for a predefined event in the execution of the package. Clients of the package can substitute their own subroutines in place of the default ones provided by the package vendor to provide customized functionality.

A typical use is replacing the user exits provided by a sort/merge package, whereby the user program provides its own subroutines for comparing records. The procedures provided by the user take the place of the default routines (usually stubs that do nothing but return to their caller) provided by the package vendor.

Procedures provided as user exits are typically compiled into a static library and linked directly with the package to produce an executable program. Another approach employs dynamic libraries to accomplish the same thing.

Common sources of confusion in web analytics

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

The hotel problem: The hotel problem is generally the first problem encountered by a user of web analytics. The term was first coined by Rufus Evison explaining the problem at one of the Emetrics Summits and has now gained popularity as a simple expression of the problem and its resolution.

The problem is that the unique visitors for each day in a month do not add up to the same total as the unique visitors for that month. This appears to an inexperienced user to be a problem in whatever analytics software they are using. In fact it is a simple property of the metric definitions.

New visitors + Repeat visitors unequal to total visitors: Another common misconception in web analytics is that the sum of the new visitors and the repeat visitors ought to be the total number of visitors. Again this becomes clear if the visitors are viewed as individuals on a small scale, but still causes a large number of complaints that analytics software cannot be working because of a failure to understand the metrics.

Here the culprit is the metric of a new visitor. There is really no such thing as a new visitor when you are considering a web site from an ongoing perspective.

Web analytics methods

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Problems with cookies

Historically, vendors of page-tagging analytics solutions have used third-party cookies sent from the vendor's domain instead of the domain of the website being browsed. Third-party cookies can handle visitors who cross multiple unrelated domains within the company's site, since the cookie is always handled by the vendor's servers.

However, third-party cookies in principle allow tracking an individual user across the sites of different companies, allowing the analytics vendor to collate the user's activity on sites where he provided personal information with his activity on other sites where he thought he was anonymous. Although web analytics companies deny doing this, other companies such as companies supplying banner ads have done so. Privacy concerns about cookies have therefore led a noticeable minority of users to block or delete third-party cookies. In 2005, some reports showed that about 28% of Internet users blocked third-party cookies and 22% deleted them at least once a month.

Most vendors of page tagging solutions have now moved to provide at least the option of using first-party cookies (cookies assigned from the client subdomain). Another problem is cookie deletion. When web analytics depend on cookies to identify unique visitors, the statistics are dependent on a persistent cookie to hold a unique visitor ID. When users delete cookies, they usually delete both first- and third-party cookies. If this is done between interactions with the site, the user will appear as a first-time visitor at their next interaction point. Without a persistent and unique visitor id, conversions, click-stream analysis, and other metrics dependent on the activities of a unique visitor over time, cannot be accurate.

Unique landing pages vs referrals for campaign tracking

Tracking the amount of activity generated through advertising relationships with external web sites through the referrals reports available in most web analytics packages is significantly less accurate than using unique landing pages.

Secure analytics (metering) methods

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

All the methods described above (and some other methods not mentioned here, like sampling) have the central problem of being vulnerable to manipulation (both inflation and deflation).

This means these methods are imprecise and insecure (in any reasonable model of security).

This issue has been addressed in a number of papers, but to-date the solutions suggested in these papers remain theoretic, possibly due to lack of interest from the engineering community, or because of financial gain the current situation provides to the owners of big websites.

Web log analysis software

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Web log analysis software (also called a web log analyzer) is a simple kind of Web analytics software that parses a log file from a web server, and based on the values contained in the log file, derives indicators about who, when, and how a web server is visited. Usually reports are generated from the log files immediately, but the log files can alternatively be parsed to a database and reports generated on demand.

Common Indicators

• Number of visits and number of unique visitors

• Visits duration and last visits

• Authenticated users, and last authenticated visits

• Days of week and rush hours

• Domains/countries of host's visitors

• Hosts list

• Number total pageviews

• Most viewed, entry and exit pages

• Files type

• OS used

• Browsers used

• Robots

• HTTP referrer

• Search engines, key phrases and keywords used to find the analyzed web site

• HTTP errors

• Some of the log analyzers also report on who's on the site, conversion tracking, visit time and page navigation.

Important definitions â�� I

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

• Visibility time - The time a single page (or a blog, Ad Banner...) is viewed.

• Session Duration - Average amount of time that visitors spend on the site each time they visit.

This metric can be complicated by the fact that analytics programs can not measure the length of the final page view.

• Active Time / Engagement Time - Average amount of time that visitors spend actually interacting with content on a web page, based on mouse moves, clicks, hovers and scrolls. Unlike Session Duration and Page View Duration / Time on Page, this metric can accurately measure the length of engagement in the final page view.

Page View Duration / Time on Page and Page Depth / Page Views per Session

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Average amount of time that visitors spend on each page of the site. As with Session Duration, this metric is complicated by the fact that analytics programs can not measure the length of the final page view.

Page Depth is the average number of page views a visitor consumes before ending their session. It is calculated by dividing total number of page views by total number of sessions and is also called Page Views per Session or PV/Session.

Click path

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Click path is the sequence of hyperlinks one or more website visitors follows on a given site. A click path is the sequence of hyperlinks one or more website visitors follows on a given site. A visitor's click path may start within the website or at a 3rd party website and it continues as a sequence of successive webpages visited by the visitor.

Click path is considered an important aspect of website analytics as it provides detail of visitor behavior and helps website marketers to better organize website content and layout.

Click "refers to a single instance of a user following a hyperlink from one page in a site to another". A growing community of web site editors use click analytics to analyze their web sites.

Frequency / Session per Unique and Impression

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Frequency measures how often visitors come to a website. It is calculated by dividing the total number of sessions (or visits) by the total number of unique visitors. Sometimes it is used to measure the loyalty of your audience.

An impression is each time an advertisement loads on a user's screen. Anytime you see a banner, that is an impression.

Bookmarks

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

It can be defined as: To mark a document or a specific place in a document for later retrieval. Nearly all Web browsers support a bookmarking feature that lets you save the address (URL) of a Web page so that you can easily re-visit the page at a later time.

A marker or address that identifies a document or a specific place in a document

Using a World Wide Web browser, a bookmark is a saved link to a Web page that has been added to a list of saved links. When you are looking at a particular Web site or home page and want to be able to quickly get back to it later, you can create a bookmark for it. You can think of your browser as a book full of (millions of ) Web pages and a few well-placed bookmarks that you have chosen. The list that contains your bookmarks is the "bookmark list" (and sometimes it's called a "hotlist.")

Web syndication

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Web syndication is a form of syndication in which website material is made available to multiple other sites.

Most commonly, web syndication refers to making web feeds available from a site in order to provide other people with a summary of the website's recently added content (for example, the latest news or forum posts).

The term can also be used to describe other kinds of licensing website content so that other websites can use it.

Web syndication benefits

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Syndication benefits both the websites providing information and the websites displaying it. For the receiving site, content syndication is an effective way of adding greater depth and immediacy of information to its pages, making it more attractive to users. For the transmitting site, syndication drives exposure across numerous online platforms. This generates new traffic for the transmitting site — making syndication a free and easy form of advertisement.

The prevalence of web syndication is also of note to online marketers, since web surfers are becoming increasingly wary of providing personal information for marketing materials (such as signing up for a newsletter) and expect the ability to subscribe to a feed instead. Although the format could be anything transported over HTTP, such as HTML or JavaScript, it is more commonly XML. The two main families of web syndication formats are RSS and Atom.

Web syndication as a commercial model

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

In addition to freely distributed material, some broadcasters and others use similar methods for the controlled placement of proprietary content on multiple partnering Internet destinations.

Such commercial web syndication borrows its business models from syndication in other media, such as Print, radio and television. Primarily, syndication arose in those other media so that content creators could reach a wider audience. In the case of radio, the United States Federal government proposed a syndicate in 1924 so that the nation's executives could quickly and efficiently reach the entire population.

In the case of television, it is often said that "Syndication is where the real money is."

Additionally syndication accounts for the bulk of TV programming.

Categorising commercial web syndication

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Commercial web syndication can be categorized in three ways:

• by business models

• by types of content

• by methods for selecting distribution partners

Commercial web syndication involves partnerships between content producers and distribution outlets. There are different structures of partnership agreements. One such structure is licensing content, in which distribution partners pay a fee to the content creators for the right to publish the content. Another structure is ad-supported content, in which publishers share revenues derived from advertising on syndicated content with that content's producer. A third structure is free, or barter syndication, in which no currency changes hands between publishers and content producers. This requires the content producers to generate revenue from another source, such as embedded advertising or subscriptions. Alternatively, they could distribute content without remuneration. Typically, those who create and distribute content for free are promotional entities, vanity publishers or government entities.

Types of content syndicated include RSS or Atom Feeds and full content. With RSS feeds, headlines, summaries, and sometimes a modified version of the original full content is displayed on users' feed readers. With full content, the entire content--which might be text, audio, video, applications/widgets or user-generated content--appears unaltered on the publisher's site.

There are two methods for selecting distribution partners. The content creator can hand-pick syndication partners based on specific criteria, such as the size or quality of their audiences. Alternatively, the content creator can allow publisher sites or users to "opt in" to carrying the content through an automated system. Some of these automated "content marketplace" systems involve careful screening of potential publishers by the content creator to ensure that the material does not end up in an inappropriate environment.

Just as syndication is a source of profit for TV producers and radio producers, it also functions to maximize profit for Internet content producers. As the Internet has increased in size it has become increasingly difficult for content producers to aggregate a sufficiently large audience to support the creation of high-quality content. Syndication enables content creators to amortize the cost of producing content by licensing it across multiple publishers or by maximizing distribution of advertising-supported content. However, a potential drawback for content creators is that they can lose control over the presentation of their content when they syndicate it to other parties.

Distribution partners benefit by receiving content either at a discounted price, or for free. One potential drawback for publishers, however, is that because the content is duplicated at other publisher sites, they cannot have an "exclusive" on the content.

For users, the fact that syndication enables the production and maintenance of content allows them to find and consume content on the Internet. One potential drawback for them is that they may run into duplicate content, which could be an annoyance.

Customer Engagement

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Customer engagement (CE) refers to the engagement of customers with one another, with a company or a brand. The initiative for engagement can be either consumer- or company-led and the medium of engagement can be on or offline.

Unlike marketing terms such as positioning, customer engagement has not been traced to a single source. Customer engagement has been discussed widely online; hundreds of pages have been written, published, read and commented upon. Numerous high-profile conferences, seminars and roundtables have either had CE as a primary theme or included papers on the topic.

Customer engagement marketing places conversions into a longer term, more strategic context and is premised on the understanding that a simple focus on maximizing conversions can, in some circumstances, decrease the likelihood of repeat conversions. CE aims at long-term engagement, encouraging customer loyalty and advocacy through word- of-mouth.

Online customer engagement

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Online customer engagement is qualitatively different from offline engagement as the nature of the customer’s interactions with a brand, company and other customers differ on the internet. Discussion forums or blogs, for example, are spaces where people can communicate and socialize in ways that cannot be replicated by any offline interactive medium. Customer Engagement marketing efforts that aim to create, stimulate or influence customer behavior differ from the offline, one-way, marketing communications that marketers are familiar with. Although customer advocacy, for example, has always been a goal for marketers, the rise of online user generated content can take advocacy to another level.

The concept and practice of online Customer Engagement enables organizations to respond to the fundamental changes in customer behavior that the internet has brought about, as well as to the increasing ineffectiveness of the traditional ‘interrupt and repeat’, broadcast model of advertising.

Due to the fragmentation and specialization of media and audiences, as well as the proliferation of community- and user generated content, businesses are increasingly losing the power to dictate the communications agenda. Simultaneously, lower switching costs, the geographical widening of the market and the vast choice of content, services and products available online have weakened customer loyalty.

So today, leveraging customer contributions is an important source of competitive advantage – whether through advertising, user generated product reviews, customer service FAQs, forums where consumers can socialize with one another or contribute to product development.

Online customer engagement refers to:

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

• A social phenomenon enabled by the wide adoption of the internet in the late 1990s and taking off with the technical developments in connection speed (broadband) in the decade that followed. Online CE is qualitatively different from the engagement of consumers offline.

• The behavior of customers that engage in online communities revolving, directly or indirectly, around product categories (cycling, sailing) and other consumption topics. It details the process that leads to a customer’s positive engagement with the company or offering, as well as the behaviors associated with different degrees of customer engagement.

• Marketing practices that aim to create, stimulate or influence CE behavior. Although CE-marketing efforts must be consistent both online and offline, the internet is the basis of CE-marketing.

• Metrics that measure the effectiveness of the marketing practices which seek to create, stimulate or influence CE behavior.

The need for customer engagement

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

CE-marketing is necessitated by a combination of social, technological and market developments:

1. Businesses are losing the power to dictate the communications agenda: The effectiveness of the traditional ‘interrupt and repeat’ model of advertising is decreasing.

• Customer audiences are smaller and specialist: The fragmentation of media and audiences and the accompanying reduction of audience size have reduced the effectiveness of the traditional top-down, mass, ‘interrupt and repeat’ advertising model.

• Customer audiences are also broadcasters: A company’s position is no longer just inside consumers’ minds. As they increasingly speak their minds with the power for circulation and permanence of CGM, businesses lose the power of shouting over everyone else. Instead of trying to position a product using a couple of static messages that will themselves become the subject of conversation amongst a target market that has already discussed, positioned and rated the product, companies must join in. This also means that consumers can now choose not only when and how but, also, if they will engage with marketing communications; they can rely on CGM. In addition new media themselves provide consumers with more control over their advertising consumption.

2. Decreasing brand loyalty: The lowering of entry barriers (such as the need for a sales force, access to channels and physical assets) and the geographical widening of the market due to the internet have brought about increasing competition. In combination with lower switching costs, easier access to information about products and suppliers and increased choice customer loyalty is hard to achieve.

The increasing ineffectiveness of TV advertising due to the shift of consumer attention to the internet, the ability, within new media, to control advertising consumption and the decrease in audience size is bringing about a progressive shift of advertising spending online.

The proliferation of media that provide consumers with more control over their advertising consumption (subscription-based digital radio and TV for example) and the simultaneous decrease of faith in advertising and increase of faith in peers point to the need for communications that the customer will desire to engage with. Stimulating a consumer’s engagement with a brand is the only way to increase brand loyalty and, therefore, “the best measure of current and future performance”.

CE is the solution that marketers have devised in order to come to terms with the social, technological and market developments outlined above. In a nutshell, it is the attempt to create an engaging dialogue with target consumers and stimulate their engagement with the brand. Although this must take place consistently both on and off-line, the internet is the primary vehicle for doing so.

CE marketing begins with understanding the internal dynamics of these developments and, especially, the behavior and engagement of consumers online.

Customer Engagement as a social phenomenon

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Online inter-customer engagement is a recent social phenomenon that came about through the wide diffusion and adoption of the internet in western societies during the late 1990s. Although offline CE predates online CE, the latter is a qualitatively different social phenomenon unlike any offline CE that social theorists or marketers are familiar with.

It manifests itself in the proliferation of online communities that center around the consumption of:

• a particular product category (cycling, sailing, dogs),

• a particular brand or

• a pure dot-com company’s or bricks and clicks vast array of offerings

People also engage online in communities that do not necessarily revolve around a particular product, but serve as meeting or networking places, for instance on MySpace.

People’s online engagement with one another has brought about both the empowerment of consumers and the opportunity for businesses to engage with their target customers online.

Customer Engagement as consumer behaviour

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

CE behavior became prominent with the advent of the social phenomenon of online CE. Creating and stimulating customer engagement behavior has recently become an explicit aim of both profit and non-profit organizations in the belief that engaging target customers to a high degree is conducive to furthering business objectives.

Shevlin’s definition of CE is well suited to understanding the process that leads to an engaged customer. In its adaptation by Richard Sedley the key word is ‘investment’.

“Repeated interactions that strengthen the emotional, psychological or physical investment a customer has in a brand.”

A customer’s degree of engagement with a company lies in a continuum that represents the strength of his investment in that company. Positive experiences with the company strengthen that investment and move the customer down the line of engagement.

Four-level model adapted from Kirkpatrickâ��s Levels

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

This model helps in measuring degrees of involvement and quantifying the stages on the continuum.

• Click - A reader arrived (current metric)

• Consume - A reader read the content

• Understood - A reader understood the content and remembers it

• Applied - A reader applies the content in another venue

According to Kirkpatrick’s (1994) four-level model for assessing training effectiveness, evaluation should always begin with level one, and then, as time and budget allows, should move sequentially through levels two, three, and four.

At level 2, a measure of the amount of information that participants learned, usually assessed using criterion-referenced tests.

At level 3, a measure of the amount of material learned that participants actually use in everyday work, usually assessed using observations and interviews with co-workers and supervisors

And at level 4, a measure of the financial impact of the training course on the bottom line of the organization, assessment for this level is not clearly defined.

Ghuneimâ��s typology of engagement

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Concerns have, however, been expressed as regards the measurability of stages three and four. Another popular suggestion is Ghuneim’s typology of engagement.

The following consumer typology according to degree of engagement fits well to Ghuneim’s continuum.

• Creators (smallest group)

• Critics

• Collectors

• Couch Potatoes (largest group)

Checklist for users retention

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Engagement is a holistic characterization of a consumer’s behavior, encompassing a host of sub-aspects of behavior such as loyalty, satisfaction, involvement, Word of Mouth advertising, complaining and more.

• Satisfaction: Satisfaction is simply the foundation, and the minimum requirement, for a continuing relationship with customers. Engagement extends beyond mere satisfaction.

• Loyalty - Retention: Highly engaged consumers are more loyal. Increasing the engagement of target customers increases the rate of customer retention.

• Word of Mouth advertising - advocacy: Highly engaged customers are more likely to engage in free (for the company), credible (for their audience) Word of Mouth advertising. This can drive new customer acquisition and can have viral effects.

• Awareness - Effectiveness of communications: When customers are exposed to communication from a company that they are highly engaged with, they tend to actively elaborate on its central idea. This brings about high degrees of central processing and recall.

• Filtering: Consumers filter, categories and rate the market from head to tail, creating multiple, overlapping folksonomies through tagging, reviewing, rating and recommending.

• Complaint-behavior: Highly engaged customers are less likely to complain to other current or potential customers, but will address the company directly instead.

• Marketing intelligence: Highly engaged customers can give valuable recommendations for improving quality of offering.

Difference between traditional and customer engagement marketing

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

The main difference between traditional and customer engagement marketing is marked by these shifts:

From ‘reach or awareness focused’ marketing communications and their metrics (GRP or pageview) towards more targeted and customized interactions that prompt the consumer to engage with and act on the content from the outset.

From absolute distinctions and barriers between an organization and its target customers towards the participation of consumers in product development, customer service and other aspects of the brand experience.

From one-way, top-down, formal B2C and B2E interaction to continuing, dialogic, decentralized and personalized communications initiated by either party.

Specific marketing practices involve

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Encouraging collaborative filtering: Websites that encourage their consumers to filter, categorize and rate; that is, to market their products realize consumers are not only much more adept at creating highly-targeted taxonomies (folksonomies) given that they are more adept at delineating the segment they themselves constitute, but, also, that they are willing to do so for free. And to the extent they cannot, they do it for them.

Community development: Helping target customers develop their own communities or create new ones.

Community participation: Consumers do not filter and rate companies and their offerings within company websites only. Being able, with little effort, cost or technical skills, to create their own online localities, a large percentage of the filtering and rating takes place in non-sponsored, online spaces. Organizations must go and meet their target customers at their favored online hangouts to not only listen but also participate in the dialogue.

Help consumers engage with one another: Give them content (viral podcasting, videocasting, games, v-cards etc) they can use to engage with one another.

Solicitation of user generated content: Engage them directly or indirectly with your product by giving them the means or incentive to create user generated content.

Customer self-service: Help them create a customer service FAQ. Create a blog where technical support staff and customers can communicate directly.

Product co-development: Create a blog where product developers and consumers can communicate directly.

Customer Engagement as a metric

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

All marketing practices, including Internet Marketing include measuring the effectiveness of various media along the Customer Engagement Cycle, as consumers travel from awareness to Purchase. Often the use of CVP Analysis factors into strategy decisions, including budgets and media placement.

The CE metric is useful for:

• Planning: Identify where CE-marketing efforts should take place; which of the communities that the target customers participate in are the most engaging? Specify the way in which target customers engage, or want to engage, with the company or offering.

• Measuring Effectiveness: Measure how successful CE-marketing efforts have been at engaging target customers. The importance of CE as a marketing metric is reflected in ARF’s statement: “The industry is moving toward customer engagement with marketing communications as the 21st century metric of marketing efficiency and effectiveness.”

What is an anchor text?

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

An anchor text is a word or phrase that acts as a link. You know, the blue highlighted words that you can click on.

Usually an anchor text provides a link to useful information related to the content of the article. However, if you understand how search engines view an anchor text you can use them to your advantage.

An anchor text tells a search engine what a page is about. When a search engine sees an anchor text it assumes that the text is related to the page content.

For example: if you write an article about growing tomatoes but you have “cow manure” as an anchor text, the search engines will think that your article is about cow manure. But if you have the words “growing tomatoes” as an anchor text then the search engines will assume your article is about growing tomatoes.

Savvy website or blog owners will write articles to distribute among the different article directories and thus secure lots of backlinks to their site, but not just any backlink. That is not good enough. You want super backlinks and for that you’ll need to make wise use of anchor texts. Say, in the resource box of your article you will definitely want to use an anchor text to link back to your site.

Backlinks and reciprocal links

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Let us not confuse backlinks with reciprocal links. Reciprocal links are created when you trade links with a site. For instance if you and I put each others links on our sites then those are reciprocal links and they are less valuable in the eyes of the search engines. Article advertising creates backlinks and thats why everyone is so actively involved in it.

Problem Identification

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Identifying exactly what is wrong is the first big step you can take. If you are not sure what the problem is before you start trying to fix it you will end up spending a lot of money, time, and resources going in the wrong direction. The problem with a failing web site falls into three basic areas…

• Traffic Generation: Getting people to your web site, regardless of how they get there, is the first key item to look at. However just getting any traffic to the site is not helpful; you must be attracting your target audience and prospects to the web site.

• Conversion: Most marketing experts would say that this only applies to eCommerce sites, but in the context of this article I am using it more broadly. Conversion is simply the performance of the web site. When traffic arrives at the web site what do they do? Do they immediately leave? Do they explore a couple of pages and then leave? How long are they on the site? What percentage of visitors to your site buy or take action on something? What features or areas do they spend the most time browsing? These factors as well as others determine how effective the site is.

• Loyalty: How often do previous visitors come back to the site and how much repeat business do you get from your site if it is an eCommerce site? Most sales professionals will tell you it is much easier to get a sale from an existing customer than from a new customer. If you must constantly attract new people and new sales to achieve all of your sales goals and cannot depend on any repeat business you are going to quickly develop a problem.

Outside of technical IT issues or malfunctioning web pages, all of your problems with a failing web site from a sales & marketing perspective will fall into one or more of these three areas and will vary in terms of their severity. Interestingly, many of these issues are interrelated so fixing one issue can have a positive effect on the others. Conversely a problem or shortcoming in one area can have dire consequences on other areas.

Plan of turning around the failing site

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Here is a simple plan of turning around the failing site:

1. Identify the Problem(s): Of the three areas above know exactly which areas are experiencing the problems. It could be only one area or it could be all three, but know exactly where the problem is.

2. Rate the Severity: Any experienced manager will tell you that you can’t fix everything so it is important to prioritize the problems. Of the 3 areas above rate the severity of the problem in each area on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being very severe.

3. Identify Sub Problems: Within the areas above will be specific problems that are contributing to the overall issue. Identify and rank them as you did with steps one and two above. Again, you can’t fix everything at once so a task list and prioritization will be critical to your success.

4. Create a Realistic Benchmark: Once you know where the key problem areas are and where the specific sub problems are, be sure to create a realistic benchmark of where you would like to be. The benchmark can be based on a competitor or on internal factors, but have a benchmark and make sure it is realistic given where you are staring from and the resources you have to work with.

5. Create a Task List: Create a task list of items that need to be addressed to fix each of the sub problems listed above. It may be helpful to be very specific in this step and also include additional documentation of resources available and timelines to fix.

6. Create a Tracking Mechanism: Find a realistic way of tracking the completion of tasks, the corresponding improvements (or lack thereof) and meet regularly with a team or management to discuss these reports. Use this step as a way of correcting your course or refocusing your efforts on things that are generating positive results.

Fixing a failing web site is not an impossible task, but you must approach the problem in a logical and realistic fashion. Trying to tackle a huge problem that seems to change daily will get you nowhere. Once you identify the problem areas and break down the tasks to complete and set up benchmarks and tracking mechanisms you will reduce a huge problem into a manageable problem.

Unfortunately the sub problems or data gathering phases of the above steps can be fraught with problems, internal politics, and lack of resources and/or knowledge.

Forum

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

A forum is a group of people, or a cluster of people that hang out in one place on the internet and generally discuss a certain topic. For example you might be interested in ford cars, so you join a ford forum and you meet other ford fans and discuss ford related topics. if you were selling a product to do with fords this would be a good place to be a member of.

Finding forums is an easy task. To find a forum for ford cars you would go to Google and type ‘ford forum’. Of course this works for any keyword you like. Simply replace ‘ford’ with another keyword or keywords.

You need to be careful when posting in forums especially if you are trying to promote a product. There is forum etiquette which must be followed or you will upset people and have no success. Most forums have some guidelines which you should read before you post anything. The first thing with forum etiquette is your not allowed to simply post an advertisement about your new product, how good it is, and how everyone should buy it. You will get a lot of people very mad and most likely get yourself banned from the forum.

One thing you are allowed to have with most forums is a signature file. Just like with your email you have a signature, a forum is the same. Your signature will appear below every post you make on a forum. You don’t want to use a forum to promote a product directly. Use the forum to mine people out into your own list. In your forum signature you don’t want to promote a product directly. You could have instead a link to a report which relates to your product, or a link to some audio or video demonstration of you using the product. When they click the link on your forum signature they will come to a page which will ask for their name and email address. This is your squeeze page.

Once they fill out the form you then direct them to the report, which they clicked the link for in the first place. The importance of the squeeze page is you are building an asset to your business. You can use your list over and over again to market products.

Forums are a great way to build your lists and start making a name for yourself. If you participate in discussions and contribute quality content people will start to know you and trust you. It is a great way of networking and forming relationships with people who can provide you with more avenues and more opportunity to grow and have a successful business.

Issues must be resolved while selecting the components of a CE-metric

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

In selecting the components of a CE-metric, the following issues must be resolved:

• Flexible metric vs. Industry standard: According to some, CE “measurement has never been one size fits-all” but should vary according to industry, organization, business goal etc. On the other hand, corporate clients and even agencies also desire some type of solid index. Internal metrics could, perhaps, be developed in addition to a comparative, industry-wide one.

• Relative weighting: The relative weighting associated with each CE-component in an algorithm. For instance, is subscribing to RSS more important than contributing a comment? If yes how much more important exactly? Relative weighting links up with the issue of flexible vs. standardized metrics: Is the relative weighting going to be solid – as will be required if the CE-metric is to be standardized – or is it going to differ depending on the industry, organization, business goals etc?

• Component measurability: Most of the components of a CE-metric face problems of measurement. Duration of visit for example suffers from (a) failing to capture the most engaged users who like to peruse RSS feeds; (b) inaccuracy arising from leaving a tab open during breaks, stopping to converse with co-workers, etc.

• Length of measurement: For how long must the various CE components be measured if CE is to reflect loyalty rather than short-term, faddish engagement?

Generating Quality Backlinks -- Reciprocal Linking

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Backlinks are well known for being the backbone of any SEO Campaign. The problem that most marketers face when attempting to create quality backlinks to their websites are several.

Besides the time it takes to actually create quality backlinks, there is the question of where to start when trying to generate backlinks. The truth is that there are many link building methods.

First is by Reciprocal Linking:

Reciprocal linking is the process of soliciting other website owners to exchange backlinks. This is a process that can be quite tedious and frustrating to say the least. Once you locate someone you want to exchange links with, you will have to send them an email expressing your desire to exchange links with them.

The problem with reciprocal link building is that there is a high level of rejection if you are just starting your backlink building campaign. Many established marketers will not exchange links with new marketers with low page ranks. Other marketers with similar page ranks may be willing to exchange links with you but that won’t do much for your rankings.

In addition, reciprocal links do not carry as much weight as one way backlinks.

Creating Backlinks Through Social Bookmarking

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Using social networking sites is a much better way to create quality high PageRank (PR) backlinks to your website. Social networking sites like Digg, Propeller, Slash Dot and Yahoo My Web are great for submitting content and receiving high PageRank backlinks. These social networks are very popular and therefore have very high PR rankings.

There are literally hundreds of social networking sites that you can post your website. The only drawback to posting to the social networks is the time it takes to submit to all the social networks. You also need to be careful not to post too many bookmarking sites too fast, doing so may alarm search engines like Google.

To get the advantage of posting to all these networks without getting your website banned by the search engines, you can use a social bookmarking software. The software automatically creates different accounts for you so it doesn’t appear that one person is posting to all the networks. This feature will keep your from being banned by the social networks and the search engines.

The bookmarking demon is especially effective if you own several different sites or blogs. You can bookmark every blog post to aid in elevating your blog in the search engines.

Social networks are great, but they are not nearly enough backlink if you are trying to overtake a competitor with thousands of backlinks. This problem leads us to our next method for generating quality backlinks.

Generating Backlinks Through Website Directories

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Website directories are the equivalent of getting your brick and mortar business listed in the yellow pages. There are too many directories that you can list your website to. Listing your website is as easy as creating an account with each directory, and creating a title and description. It is wise to create several different titles and descriptions to take advantage of different keyword keywords variations to your website.

Posting to hundreds of website directories can take hours to complete. To simplify the process you can use a directory submitter. Brad Callen has a great Directory Submitter software that can post to up to 1800 relevant directories.

Generating Backlinks Through Article Marketing

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Article marketing is powerful way to build unlimited quality backlinks to your website because there are literally thousands of article directories. Many article directories have high page ranks thus creating the perfect scenario for building one way backlinks.

Marketing using articles is a three prong marketing tool. You not only receive backlinks from your efforts, you also receive traffic from your articles as well as extra exposure when other marketers publish your articles. There are a few issues with article marketing but fortunately for you I will provide the solutions.

One issue with submitting articles to multiple directories is once again, the time it takes to submit one article to thousands of directories. Fortunately, there are services and softwares out that can solve that problem.

The methods that I introduced above are great for creating a lot of backlinks but they are still incomplete. When you submit to these directories you create many backlinks with the same article. This doesn’t hurt you as far as the relevance of the link, but Google often gives lesser value to duplicate content, which takes us to the final solution.

Tackling the issue of duplicate content

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Duplicate content is an issue that has frustrated many marketers for years. Article marketing is a great marketing tool and even though the backlinks are relevant, the duplicate content issue has lessened their strength. This made it difficult if you were trying to compete with a website with thousands of backlinks.

Duplicate content backlinks would often create a scenario where you would have more backlinks than your competitors and still find your website behind in the rankings. I am happy to tell you that this is no longer an issue.

The next three methods I am going to share with you will eliminate all duplicate content issues and create thousands of backlinks virally monthly.

Keyword Research

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

The most important part of building backlinks to your website is being able to locate the best keywords to uses as anchored text. Anchored text are the words that you use to link back to your website. When you use your keywords as anchored text, it lets the search engines know that your website is relevant for that keyword. This practice is what is responsible for ranking well for your keywords.

Keyword cloud

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

A keyword cloud is a search engine marketing (SEM) term that refers to a group of keywords that are relevant to a specific website. The term keyword in reference to SEM usually refers to a word or phrase (combination of words, such as 'San Francisco weather map') used to find relevant and useful web pages. Keyword Cloud Strife can be illustrated using web-based tools as a group of keywords, displayed in different sizes to represent the frequency or weighting of each keyword within the cloud.

Search engine marketing

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion. The industry peak body Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) founded by Barbara Coll in 2003, includes search engine optimization (SEO) within its reporting, and SEO is also included in the industry definitions of SEM by Forrester Research, eMarketer, Search Engine Watch, and industry expert Danny Sullivan. The New York Times defines SEM as 'the practice of buying paid search listings'.

Keyword density

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page. In the context of search engine optimization keyword density can be used as a factor in determining whether a web page is relevant to a specified keyword or keyword phrase.

In the late 1990s, which was the early days of search engines, keyword density was an important factor in how a page was ranked. However, as webmasters discovered this and the implementation of optimum keyword density became widespread, it became a minor factor in the rankings. Search engines began giving priority to other factors that are beyond the direct control of webmasters. Today, the overuse of keywords, a practice called keyword stuffing, will cause a web page to be penalized.

Many SEO experts consider the optimum keyword density to be 1 to 3 per cent. Using a keyword more than that could be considered search spam. The formula to calculate your keyword density on a web page for SEO purposes is (Nkr / Tkn) * 100, where Nkr is how many times you repeated a specific keyword and Tkn the total words in the analyzed text. This will result in a keyword density value. When calculating keyword density, be sure to ignore html tags and other embedded tags which will not actually appear in the text of the page once it is published.

When calculating the density of a keyword phrase, the formula would be (Nkr * Nwp / Tkn) * 100, where Nwp is the number of words in the phrase. So, for example, for a page about search engine optimization where that phrase is used four times and there are four hundred words on the page, the keyword phrase density is (4*3/400)*100 or 3 percent.

Keyword stuffing

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Keyword stuffing is considered to be an unethical search engine optimization (SEO) technique. Keyword stuffing occurs when a web page is loaded with keywords in the meta tags or in content. The repetition of words in meta tags may explain why many search engines no longer use these tags.

Keyword stuffing had been used in the past to obtain maximum search engine ranking and visibility for particular phrases. This method is completely outdated and adds no value to rankings today. In particular, Google no longer gives good rankings to pages employing this technique.

Hiding text from the visitor is done in many different ways. Text colored to blend with the background, CSS "Z" positioning to place text "behind" an image — and therefore out of view of the visitor — and CSS absolute positioning to have the text positioned far from the page center are all common techniques. By 2005, many invisible text techniques were easily detected by major search engines.

"Noscript" tags are another way to place hidden content within a page. While they are a valid optimization method for displaying an alternative representation of scripted content, they may be abused, since search engines may index content that is invisible to most visitors.

Sometimes inserted text includes words that are frequently searched (such as "sex"), even if those terms bear little connection to the content of a page, in order to attract traffic to advert-driven pages.

In the past, keyword stuffing was considered to be either a white hat or a black hat tactic, depending on the context of the technique, and the opinion of the person judging it.

With relevance to keyword stuffing, it is quoted by the largest of search engines that they recommend Keyword Research and use (with respect to the quality content you have to offer the web), to aid their visitors in the search of your valuable material. To prevent Keyword Stuffing you should wisely use keywords in respect with SEO, Search Engine Optimization. It could be best described as keywords should be reasonable and necessary, yet it is acceptable to assist with proper placement and your targeted effort to achieve search results. Placement of such words in the provided areas of HTML are perfectly allowed and reasonable. Google discusses keyword stuffing as Randomly Repeated.

Keyword optimization

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

It would not be a very wise decision to rush into search engine marketing without having a set of relevant keywords ready beforehand. Search engines are all about keywords. The web surfer type in their search in the form of keywords and the search engines show results analyzing the relevance of those keywords in the web world.

A website that wishes to rank itself in the search engine result pages, must have their most related keywords ready before they begin their Search Engine marketing program. These set of keywords are usually segregated into the primary, secondary and other related key words or phrases which best match the core content of the websites. Many web masters also tend to optimize their website with, keywords based on their products, services or content.

The selection of a wrong or unrelated set of keywords will hamper the traffic flow of your website and will inversely affect the conversion rate of the site. It is also important to choose high demand keywords as your relevant keywords. High demand keywords on the search engines are those keywords that are most commonly searched by the surfers. Selecting less popular keywords again will not be effective in attracting influx to your websites.

Another essential thing to remember before making your selection of keywords, is to first decide, what is it that you are expecting to obtain from this marketing campaign. Do you wish to increase your sale or lead, or do you wish more and more people to come and visit your website. Are you doing this campaign only for branding purpose or do you also wish to attain a higher rank in the search engines? Keyword selection for all these purposes varies slightly in nature.

The target audience of a websites also takes active participation in deciding the keyword selection of your site. If you are targeting the youth the key words or phrases shall be more trendy and stylish and latest amongst them, similarly it varies from place to place and country to country too. Implying these simple logistics will enhance your search engine marketing strategy showing effective results in no time.

Considering all these points it becomes extremely necessary that all websites that are planning to venture into the keywords optimization fundamental of the search engines, must do a thorough keyword analysis. Based on your keyword analysis reports you can now decide upon your paid search keyword and organic search keywords. The paid search keywords are generally the most high demand keyword on the internet that are also the top in the list of priority of the website too.

User relationship management

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

User relationship management or customer relationship management (CRM) are methods that companies use to interact with customers. The methods include employee training and special purpose user relationship management software. There is an emphasis on handling incoming customer phone calls and email, although the information collected by user relationship management software may also be used for promotion, and surveys such as those polling customer satisfaction.

Initiatives often fail because implementation was limited to software installation, without providing the context, support and understanding for employees to learn. Tools for customer relationship management should be implemented "only after a well-devised strategy and operational plan are put in place". Other problems occur when failing to think of sales as the output of a process that itself needs to be studied and taken into account when planning automation.

Operational user relationship management

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Operational user relationship management provides support to "front office" business processes, e.g. to sales, marketing and service staff. Interactions with customers are generally stored in customers' contact histories, and staff can retrieve customer information as necessary.

The contact history provides staff members with immediate access to important information on the customer (products owned, prior support calls etc.), eliminating the need to individually obtain this information directly from the customer. Reaching to the customer at right time at right place is preferable.

Operational user relationship management aims atâ�¦

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Operational user relationship management processes customer data for a variety of purposes:

• Managing campaigns

• Enterprise Marketing Automation

• Sales Force Automation

• Sales Management System

Analytical user relationship management

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Analytical user relationship management analyzes customer data for a variety of purposes:

• Designing and executing targeted marketing campaigns

• Designing and executing campaigns, e.g. customer acquisition, cross-selling, up-selling, addon-selling

• Analyzing customer behavior in order to make decisions relating to products and services (e.g. pricing, product development)

• Management information system (e.g. financial forecasting and customer profitability analysis)

Analytical user relationship management generally makes heavy use of data mining and other techniques to produce useful results for decision-making. It is at the analytical stage that the importance of fully integrated user relationship management software becomes most apparent. Logically speaking, the more information that the analytical software has available for analysis, the better its predictions and recommendations will be.

Campaign Management

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Campaign management combines elements of Operational and Analytical user relationship management. Campaign management functions include:

• Target groups formed from the client base according to selected criteria

• Sending campaign-related material (e.g. on special offers) to selected recipients using various channels (e.g. e-mail, telephone, SMS, post)

• Tracking, storing, and analyzing campaign statistics, including tracking responses and analyzing trends

Collaborative user relationship management

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Collaborative user relationship management covers aspects of a company's dealings with customers that are handled by various departments within a company, such as sales, technical support and marketing. Staff members from different departments can share information collected when interacting with customers. For example, feedback received by customer support agents can provide other staff members with information on the services and features requested by customers.

Collaborative user relationship management 's ultimate goal is to use information collected by all departments to improve the quality of services provided by the company. User relationship management also plays a role of data distributor within customers, producers and partners. Producers can use user relationship management information to develop products or find new market. User relationship management facilitates communication between customers, suppliers and partner by using new information system such email, link and data bank.

Web analytics

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage.

There are two categories of web analytics; off-site and on-site web analytics.

Off-site web analytics refers to web measurement and analysis irrespective of whether you own or maintain a website. It includes the measurement of a website's potential audience (opportunity), share of voice (visibility), and buzz (comments) that is happening on the Internet as a whole.

On-site web analytics measure a visitor's journey once on your website. This includes its drivers and conversions; for example, which landing pages encourage people to make a purchase. On-site web analytics measures the performance of your website in a commercial context. This data is typically compared against key performance indicators for performance, and used to improve a web site or marketing campaign's audience response.

Historically, web analytics has referred to on-site visitor measurement. However in recent years this has blurred, mainly because vendors are producing tools that span both categories.

The remainder of this article concerns on-site web analytics.

Landing page

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

An eye-tracking Heatmap showing where a subject's eyes alight on a landing page under test. In online marketing a landing page, sometimes known as a lead capture page, is the page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link. The page will usually display content that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link, and that is optimized to feature specific keywords or phrases for indexing by search engines.

In pay per click (PPC) campaigns, the landing page will also be customized to measure the effectiveness of different advertisements. By adding a parameter to the linking URL, marketers can measure advertisement effectiveness based on relative click-through rates.

Types of landing page

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

There are two types of landing page, reference and transactional.

A reference landing page presents information that is relevant to the visitor. These can display text, images, dynamic compilations of relevant links, or other elements. Reference landing pages are effective if they meet the objectives of their publishers, which may be associations, organizations or public service entities. For many reference landing pages, effectiveness can be measured by the revenue value of the advertising that is displayed on them.

A special type of 'reference landing page' is the 'webvert', the marketing goal focuses on lead generation and interaction with the visitor. A webvert is not 'transactional' in nature. A webvert is a reference based, ethical landing page. The webverts consists of an advert, deigned on the AIDA principle. The traffic is driven from Google Adwords and is designed for two specific marketing tactics;

To attain high Google Adwords landing page quality scores, the benefit being any Adwords campaign costs are minimized.

The webvert has a clear call to action, usually a reply form.

The visitor traffic is immediate as the webvert relies on Google advertising to drive visitors to the webvert.

A transactional landing page seeks to persuade a visitor to complete a transaction such as filling out a form or interacting with advertisements or other objects on the landing page, with the goal being the immediate or eventual sale of a product or service. If information is to be captured, the page will usually withhold information until some minimal amount of visitor information is provided, typically an email address and perhaps a name and telephone number as well – enough to "capture the lead" and add the prospect to a mailing list.

A visitor taking the desired action on a transactional landing page is referred to as a conversion. The efficiency or quality of the landing page can be measured by its conversion rate, the percentage of visitors who complete the desired action. Since the economics of many online marketing programs are determined by the conversion rate, marketers constantly test alternatives and improvements to their landing pages. Some of the testing methods used are A/B testing and multivariate testing.

There is also a third landing page apart from these two above mentioned which is commonly used in Direct Marketing, Squeeze Page. These web pages are very targeted and focus on capturing information about a visitor. These pages have a very high conversion rate and these collect data for an upcoming targeted e-mail or direct contact campaigns.

AIDA (marketing)

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

AIDA is an acronym used in marketing that describes a common list of events that are very often undergone when a person is selling a product or service:

A - Attention (Awareness): attract the attention of the customer.

I - Interest: raise customer interest by focusing on and demonstrating advantages and benefits (instead of focusing on features, as in traditional advertising).

D - Desire: convince customers that they want and desire the product or service and that it will satisfy their needs.

A - Action: lead customers towards taking action and/or purchasing.

Nowadays some have added another letter to form AIDA(S):

S - Satisfaction - satisfy the customer so they become a repeat customer and give referrals to a product.

Marketing today allows a diversity of products. Using a system like this, allows a general understanding of how to target a market effectively. A.I.D.A however is a acronym that is necessary to learn in marketing.

Moving from step to step you lose some percent of prospects. This process is shown as "AIDA Inverted Triangle" figure. To improve AIDA Inverted Triangle sometimes it's recommend to split AIDA formula into two pair of promotional steps: 1) Attention + Interest 2) Desire + Action

Performance indicator

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

A performance indicator or key performance indicator (KPI) is a measure of performance. Such measures are commonly used to help an organization define and evaluate how successful it is, typically in terms of making progress towards its long-term organizational goals.

KPIs can be specified by answering the question, "What is really important to different stakeholders?". KPIs may be monitored using Business Intelligence techniques to assess the present state of the business and to assist in prescribing a course of action. The act of monitoring KPIs in real-time is known as business activity monitoring (BAM). KPIs are frequently used to "value" difficult to measure activities such as the benefits of leadership development, engagement, service, and satisfaction. KPIs are typically tied to an organization's strategy using concepts or techniques such as the Balanced Scorecard.

The KPIs differ depending on the nature of the organization and the organization's strategy. They help to evaluate the progress of an organization towards its vision and long-term goals, especially toward difficult to quantify knowledge-based goals.

A KPI is a key part of a measurable objective, which is made up of a direction, KPI, benchmark, target, and time frame. For example: "Increase Average Revenue per Customer from £10 to £15 by EOY 2008". In this case, 'Average Revenue Per Customer' is the KPI.

KPIs should not be confused with a Critical Success Factor. For the example above, a critical success factor would be something that needs to be in place to achieve that objective; for example, an attractive new product.

How to Check the Backlinks to Your Website

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

How to Check the Backlinks to Your Website

Step 1

Log on to Google's home page.

Step 2

In the address bar where you would normally type in your search phrase, type the word "link" and then a colon.

Step 3

Hit enter, and Google will return all the sites that have linked back to yours. You can view these like you would view search results. Each link will be listed in order for you to view.

Step 4

If you are into SEO, you can also download one of Mozilla's free SEO tools, by visiting their add-on page and typing SEO in the search bar. Download their tools and then bring up your website in your browser. These tools have linking information which you can use.

Step 5

If you like, visit a few more sites to do additional checking. Their are several backlink checkers offered free on the web.

How to Use BacklinkWatch to Check Inbound Links

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

How to Use BacklinkWatch to Check Inbound Links

Inbound links (also called backlinks) are an important factor in determining your domain or individual webpage's position in search engine results. Google relies heavily on links, giving higher ranking to webpages that have a large number of quality inbound links. Using Backlink Watch, you can quickly see what sites are linking to yours

Step 1

Visit the Backlink Watch website (link provided below).

Step 2

Enter your website's URL in the box then click "Check Backlinks". A spreadsheet will be created showing all inbound links to your webpage. You'll receive a message instead if no links are found.

Step 3

Now, you'll want to take a look at the results. If you would like to manipulate the data copy and paste the whole spreadsheet into Excel.

• Backlink URL - The more unique domains that link to you, the higher you will rank in search results.

• Anchor Text - The visible, clickable title text for the link pointing to your site is important. The more relevant it is to your targeted keywords the better it will help your rankings.

• PR - Page Rank. This column is not currently being used.

• OBL - (Outbound Links) The lower the number of outbound links from the referring website, the more help it provides to your page rank.

• Flag - Some inbound links may show "nofollow" in this field. These links will not influence your ranking in Google's search engine index. The nofollow attribute was created to reduce certain types of search engine spam and is often used on blogs for user submitted links.

How to Check if There are Inbound Links to your Article or Website

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

How to Check if There are Inbound Links to your Article or Website

Step 1

Go to the Google Search Engine.

Step 2

In the search engine entry box type “links:” followed by the URL of your website or article. Here is an example “links: www.ajiboye.com/article.html”.

Step 3

Press the search button to bring up a list of links to your website from the website that you have been building links on. You may notice that there are more links than you have built. This will become more prominent over time because as your website or article ages, more people will find it and link to it.

Step 4

Search through the list to check if you are being credited for all of the inbound links you have created.

Step 5

If your links have not been found, submit the link URL to the Google URL submission page. This will get your inbound link found quicker than if left alone.

How to increase your websites backlinks

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

How to increase your websites backlinks

Step 1

Write articles: Writing articles is one of the best ways to increase backlinks. You can either write them yourself or hire someone to write them for you. If you feel uncomfortable writing, you should atleast give it a shot.

Step 2

Social networking: Ever heard it's not what you know it's who you know? This couldn't be more true when it comes to marketing a website on the internet. Not only does this gather backlinks for you on the social networking sites, you also meet tons of people with similiar interest as you. These people you are meeting with similiar interesst is a great way to exchange links, exchange knowledge, and they are potential customers. There are many social networking sites, just do a search.

Step 3

Exchanging links: Exchanging links is one of the more effective methods to build backlinks to your site, and one of the hardest. When you contact other site owners who have sites related to your own, have a link to there site already posted on yours. Send them a message explaining why you like thier site, and a direct link to where they can find thier link on your site. Let them know that if you havn't heard from them within a week you will remove the link as you will be taking that as they are not intereseted.

Mistakes to Avoid While Creating Back links

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Creating back links is still one of the most widely-used techniques in the internet marketing to increase the page rank. However, there are many common mistakes, which may decrease or even put to zero the effectiveness of your whole internet promotion strategy. Here are some of the typical mistakes to avoid while developing back links.

Getting back links with poor anchor text. When you get a back link with an anchor text like “Click here”, such back link is almost useless even if it goes from a reputable website. Try to create back links with the keywords-based anchor text. For example, if you are developing back links for real estate website, it is reasonable to create back links with anchor text like “real estate”, “affordable real estate”, “real estate prices”, etc.

Skipping the use of <ALT> tag. If you create an image back link, do not forget to supply it with the ALT tag, containing the appropriate keyword for your website. Remember that images are not indexed by search engines, unless they are provided with the description in ALT tag.

Creating irrelevant back links. Irrelevant back links stand for the links going from the websites, which have nothing to do with the subject area of your site. Often, trying to get more back links, webmasters use multiple back links generating applications and online services, which create hundreds or even thousands of back links in bulk. However, this approach is not reasonable and it can even be harmful for a page rank, because the majority of back links are created from irrelevant web sites. Remember that a back link is valuable only if it goes from a relevant web site, which is focused on the same issues as your website.

Use of “nofollow” attribute in the back link. Sometimes when you create a back link on some external website, they supply your link with “nofollow” attribute. This attribute tells search engines not to consider this link for indexing and for page ranking. As the result, technically you receive a back link, but this back link does absolutely nothing for your web site promotion.

Getting back links from pages with hundreds of links. If one separate page contains hundreds of external links, such page is considered out of value for visitors, and thus search engines do not put high value to that page and all the links located on it. So, try to avoid placing your back links on the web pages, which consist simply of high amount of external links.

What is Internet marketing?

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Internet marketing, also referred to as i-marketing, web marketing, online marketing, or eMarketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet.

The Internet has brought media to a global audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing in terms of providing instant response and eliciting responses is a unique quality of the medium. Internet marketing is sometimes considered to have a broader scope because it not only refers to the Internet, e-mail, and wireless media, but it includes management of digital customer data and electronic customer relationship management systems.

Internet marketing ties together creative and technical aspects of the Internet, including: design, development, advertising, and sales.

Internet marketing also refers to the placement of media along different stages of the customer engagement cycle through search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), banner ads on specific websites, e-mail marketing, and Web 2.0 strategies. Counting four types of interactions with company websites in addition to the hits from advertisements served from advertising networks, the authors found the potential for collecting data upward of 2,500 times on average per user per month.

Advantages of internet marketing

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

• Internet marketing is relatively inexpensive when compared to the ratio of cost against the reach of the target audience.

• Companies can reach a wide audience for a small fraction of traditional advertising budgets.

• The nature of the medium allows consumers to research and purchase products and services at their own convenience.

• Businesses have the advantage of appealing to consumers in a medium that can bring results quickly.

• Internet marketers also have the advantage of measuring statistics easily and inexpensively.

• Nearly all aspects of an Internet marketing campaign can be traced, measured, and tested.

• Marketers can determine which messages or offerings are more appealing to the audience.

• The results of campaigns can be measured and tracked immediately because online marketing initiatives usually require users to click on an advertisement, visit a website, and perform a targeted action.

• Since the Internet has no geographical constraints; it is good tool for marketing. One can advertise the products on the web to attract the potential customers. One need not be physically present to deal with the client.

• Internet marketing has become a great boom, as one need not travel anywhere for getting and meeting the prospective customers.

• Internet marketing can be done for 24x7x365. If a company maintains a website, this website can be viewed by customers any time during the day.

• In the traditional world of print and audiovisual, there is a limit to how much information can be passed on to a customer. In print the restriction is in the form of the size of the ad. In radio and TV ads one has the restriction, which is measured in seconds. These restrictions cannot be ignored. If a company is having a diverse product line, a website can be a more proper medium of conveying the information to the reader.

Why internet marketing is growing faster than other media?

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Internet marketing is a new age marketing that provides the sellers with never seen before kind of opportunities. Since it is online, it is much cheaper than traditional methods of marketing and can be done by even a small-scale enterprise.

Because exposure, response, and overall efficiency of Internet media are easier to track than traditional off-line media—through the use of web analytics for instance—Internet marketing can offer a greater sense of accountability for advertisers.

Marketers and their clients are becoming aware of the need to measure the collaborative effects of marketing (i.e., how the Internet affects in-store sales) rather than siloing each advertising medium.

The effects of multi-channel marketing can be difficult to determine, but are an important part of ascertaining the value of media campaigns.

Limitations of Internet marketing

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Internet marketing is an outcome of the electronic wave that is sweeping the globe. It has been successfully harnessed and this has resulted in various advantages like online buying and selling of goods as well as the generation of business leads. And following are the limitations of Internet marketing:

• Internet marketing requires customers to use newer technologies rather than traditional media.

• Low-speed Internet connections are another barrier. If companies build large or overly-complicated websites, individuals connected to the Internet via dial-up connections or mobile devices experience significant delays in content delivery.

• From the buyer's perspective, the inability of shoppers to touch, smell, taste or "try on" tangible goods before making an online purchase can be limiting. However, there is an industry standard for e-commerce vendors to reassure customers by having liberal return policies as well as providing in-store pick-up services.

• A survey of 410 marketing executives listed the following barriers to entry for large companies looking to market online: insufficient ability to measure impact, lack of internal capability, and difficulty convincing senior management.

• Internet marketing requires knowing beyond the means, methodology, and the other aspects of traditional marketing. The ever-changing and highly advanced technology of the internet requires technical knowledge too.

• Sometimes, error messages also appear. These websites which are overly complicated can have some bugs which can affect their overall internet marketing campaign.

Types of internet marketing: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

The more traffic your Website receives, the more sales you are likely to close. One way to increase traffic to your site is through SEO (search engine optimization). This means your Website is clear of any obstacles that would deflect traffic and has plenty of keywords and metatags to attract search engines.

In this kind of marketing, the website is made more search engine friendly so that when a specific keyword or search is typed by the user, the site will make it into the top search results. This type of Internet marketing is more appropriate method to attract the potential customers.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

Paid search advertising has not been without controversy, and the issue of how search engines present advertising on their search result pages has been the target of a series of studies and reports by Consumer Reports WebWatch.

Vested interests appear to use the expression SEM to mean exclusively Pay per click advertising to the extent that the wider advertising and marketing community have accepted this narrow definition.

Types of internet marketing: Pay-Per-Click

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Another way to bring more traffic to your site is by using pay per click programs where you create ads and link them to keywords. You only pay when someone clicks on your ad. The rate may be from two cents to hundreds of dollars per click. The more you pay per click the higher your ad appears in the search engines.

Under this category, the advertiser pays the search engine certain amount to get the address of his website featured separately if a keywords relating to his industry of sector is typed in.

It is an Internet advertising model used on websites, in which advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. Content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click rather than use a bidding system.

Cost per click (CPC) is the amount of money an advertiser pays search engines and other Internet publishers for a single click on its advertisement that brings one visitor to its website.

In contrast to the generalized portal, which seeks to drive a high volume of traffic to one site, PPC implements affiliate model that provides purchase opportunities wherever people may be surfing. It does this by offering financial incentives in the form of a percentage of revenue to affiliated partner sites. The affiliates provide purchase-point click-through to the merchant. It is a pay-for-performance model -- if an affiliate does not generate sales, it represents no cost to the merchant. The affiliate model is inherently well-suited to the web, which explains its popularity. Variations include banner exchange, pay-per-click and revenue sharing programs.

Types of internet marketing: Affiliate Marketing

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

It is a kind of marketing wherein a company hires other companies or websites known as affiliates and entrusts them with the responsibility of marketing the product. The affiliates are paid commission. The affiliates can host a website in which it may display the banners or logos of the company. If the visitor clicks on this banner, they are redirected to the sponsor's site. The affiliate is paid a commission.

Affiliate Marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts. It is an application of crowdsourcing.

The Affiliate Marketing industry has four core players at its heart: the Merchant (also known informally as 'Retailer' or 'Brand'), the Network, the Publisher (also known informally as 'the Affiliate') and the Customer. The market has grown sufficiently in complexity to warrant a secondary tier of players, including Affiliate Management Agencies, Super-Affiliates and Specialized Third Parties vendors.

Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, e-mail marketing, and in some sense display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner.

Affiliate marketing—using one website to drive traffic to another—is a form of online marketing, which is frequently overlooked by advertisers. While search engines, e-mail, and website syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers' marketing strategies.

From the advertiser perspective: Pros and cons of Affiliate marketing

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Merchants favor affiliate marketing because in most cases it uses a "pay for performance" model, meaning that the merchant does not incur a marketing expense unless results are accrued (excluding any initial setup cost). Some businesses owe much of their success to this marketing technique, a notable example being Amazon.com. Unlike display advertising, however, affiliate marketing is not easily scalable.

Implementation options: Some merchants run their own (i.e., in-house) affiliate programs using popular software while others use third-party services provided by intermediaries to track traffic or sales that are referred from affiliates. Merchants can choose from two different types of affiliate management solutions: standalone software or hosted services, typically called affiliate networks. Payouts to affiliates or publishers are either made by the networks on behalf of the merchant, by the network, consolidated across all merchants where the publisher has a relationship with and earned commissions or directly by the merchant itself.

Affiliate management and program management outsourcing: Successful affiliate programs require significant work and maintenance. Having a successful affiliate program is more difficult than when such programs were just emerging. With the exception of some vertical markets, it is rare for an affiliate program to generate considerable revenue with poor management or no management (i.e., "auto-drive").

The increased number of Internet businesses and the increased number of people that trust the current technology enough to shop and do business online allows further maturation of affiliate marketing. The opportunity to generate a considerable amount of profit combined with a crowded marketplace filled with competitors of equal quality and size makes it more difficult for merchants to be noticed. In this environment, however, being noticed can yield greater rewards.

Recently, the Internet marketing industry has become more advanced. In some areas online media has been rising to the sophistication of offline media, in which advertising has been largely professional and competitive.

There are significantly more requirements that merchants must meet to be successful, and those requirements are becoming too burdensome for the merchant to manage successfully in-house.

Types of affiliate websites

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Affiliate websites are often categorized by merchants and affiliate networks. There are currently no industry-wide accepted standards for the categorization. The following types of websites are generic, yet are commonly understood and used by affiliate marketers.

• Search affiliates that utilize pay per click search engines to promote the advertisers' offers

• Comparison shopping websites and directories

• Loyalty websites, typically characterized by providing a reward system for purchases via points back, cash back

• CRM sites that offer charitable donations

• Coupon and rebate websites that focus on sales promotions

• Content and niche market websites, including product review sites

• Personal websites

• Weblogs and website syndication feeds

• E-mail list affiliates and newsletter list affiliates, which are typically more content-heavy

• Registration path or co-registration affiliates who include offers from other merchants during the registration process on their own website

• Shopping directories that list merchants by categories without providing coupons, price comparisons, or other features based on information that changes frequently, thus requiring continual updates

• Cost per action networks (i.e., top-tier affiliates) that expose offers from the advertiser with which they are affiliated to their own network of affiliates

• Websites using adbars (e.g. Adsense) to display context-sensitive, highly-relevant ads for products on the site

Online Auctions

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Online auctions are just as the auctions that take place in the real world. Items are put up for sale and the seller quotes the minimum price. Interested buyers then start quoting their price. And the item is sold to the highest bidder. The buyers in case of online auction can be from any part of the world.

The online auction business model is one in which participants bid for products and services over the Internet. The functionality of buying and selling in an auction format is made possible through auction software which regulates the various processes involved.

Strengths of the online auctions

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

The strategic advantages of this business model include:

• No time constraints. Bids can be placed at any time (24/7). This convenience increases the number of bidders.

• No geographical constraints. Sellers and bidders can participate from anywhere that has internet access. This makes them more accessible and reduces the cost of "attending" an auction.

• Intensity of social interactions. The social interactions involved in the bidding process are very similar to gambling.

• Large number of bidders. Because of the potential for a relatively low price, the broad scope of products and services available, the ease of access, and the social benefits of the auction process, there are a large numbers of bidders.

• Large number of sellers. Because of the large number of bidders, the potential for a relatively high price, reduced selling costs, and ease of access, there are a large number of sellers.

• Network economies. The large number of bidders will encourage more sellers, which, in turn, will encourage more bidders, which will encourage more sellers, etc., in a virtuous circle. The more the circle operates, the larger the system becomes, and the more valuable the business model becomes for all participants.

• Captures consumers' surplus. Auctions are a form of first degree price discrimination. As such, they attempt to convert part of the consumers' surplus (defined as the area above the market price line but below the firm's demand curve) into producers' surplus.

Criticism of online auction

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Auction sites, like garage sales, flea markets, classified advertisements and other independent sales venues, sometimes draw criminals wishing to sell stolen products, but for law enforcement organizations, finding stolen goods offered online is sometimes easier than more traditional detection methods.

Some criticism is leveled at online auction websites for uneven representation of items offered for sale. Descriptions may omit important information, and photos may not be adequate. Potential bidders can typically protect themselves by reading the text, studying photographs and asking questions of the seller before bidding. Studies show that a large proportion of unsatisfactory online purchase experiences are the result of careless consumerism.

In the U.S., large retailers have lobbied Congress to require online auction sites to share private sales information about sellers, citing potential illegalities. Within the online auction community this is commonly viewed as an attempt at unfair market protection and trade restraint. Reduced overhead sometimes enables independent online sellers to offer goods at lower prices than large retailers.

Online auction selling has attracted millions of laid-off workers, as well as the disabled, parents of young children, retirees, pensioners and others that are unable to find employment in the mainstream workforce. Online auction venue corporations are accused of engaging in discriminatory trade practices that unfairly impact such customers. Presently, the trading practices of online auction venue corporations are not regulated by state or federal agencies.

Types of internet marketing: Banner advertising

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Here banners of the advertiser are displayed on the website. The advertisers pay a certain amount of money to get the banner displayed on the website for a certain period of time. The banners are usually visually appealing to attract the potential customers. The respond it will get depends upon the website it has been displayed. Again there is no guarantee that the prospective customers will view it.

Banner Ads are usually animated, colorful graphics that go horizontally across the top of a Web page. Sky-scraper Ads are similar but they run vertically on the left or right side of a page. Both ads link to another Website (yours) and entice the visitor to leave the page they are on to see what the other site has to offer. These are losing popularity because people don't enjoy being distracted by the movement. Ads that don't move or talk are more effective.

This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking to the website of the advertiser. The advertisement is constructed from an image (GIF, JPEG, PNG), JavaScript program or multimedia object employing technologies such as Java, Shockwave or Flash, often employing animation, sound, or video to maximize presence. Images are usually in a high-aspect ratio shape (i.e. either wide and short, or tall and narrow) hence the reference to banners. These images are usually placed on web pages that have interesting content, such as a newspaper article or an opinion piece.

Typical web banner, sized 468×60 pixels. The web banner is displayed when a web page that references the banner is loaded into a web browser. This event is known as an "impression". When the viewer clicks on the banner, the viewer is directed to the website advertised in the banner. This event is known as a "click through". In many cases, banners are delivered by a central ad server.

When the advertiser scans their logfiles and detects that a web user has visited the advertiser's site from the content site by clicking on the banner ad, the advertiser sends the content provider some small amount of money (usually around five to ten US cents). This payback system is often how the content provider is able to pay for the Internet access to supply the content in the first place.

Types of internet marketing: Directory Listings

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

It is a service wherein sites are placed in special categories in a directory. Such kind of service can be free or fee based. The listing can be made in yellow pages or directories such as Yahoo.

Internet marketing is thus a new age marketing that provides the sellers with never seen before kind of opportunities. Since it is online, it is much cheaper than traditional methods of marketing and can be done by even a small-scale enterprise.

Types of internet marketing: E-mail marketing

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

There are many web applications which allow website owners to maintain the subscriber database and allow personalized newsletters to be sent in a jiffy. Usually marketing strategies are impersonal in nature. For e.g. an ad shown on TV is simultaneously watched by many. Email marketing gives an opportunity for personally addressing the recipient. If handled tactfully, email marketing can be used to successfully stroke the emotions of the targeted audience and thus elicit positive response. It can be used to send information about the latest product information, launches, beta products, and updates on service workshops, seminars etc to the subscribers.

E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to:

• sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business,

• sending e-mails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately,

• adding advertisements to e-mails sent by other companies to their customers, and

• sending e-mails over the Internet, as e-mail did and does exist outside the Internet

Advantages of e-mail marketing

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

E-mail marketing (on the Internet) is popular with companies for several reasons:

• A mailing list provides the ability to distribute information to a wide range of specific, potential customers at a relatively low cost.

• Compared to other media investments such as direct mail or printed newsletters, e-mail is less expensive.

• An exact return on investment can be tracked ("track to basket") and has proven to be high when done properly. E-mail marketing is often reported as second only to search marketing as the most effective online marketing tactic.

• The delivery time for an e-mail message is short (i.e., seconds or minutes) as compared to a mailed advertisement (i.e., one or more days).

• An advertiser is able to "push" the message to its audience, as opposed to website-based advertising, which relies on a customer to visit that website.

• E-mail messages are easy to track. An advertiser can track users via autoresponders, web bugs, bounce messages, unsubscribe requests, read receipts, click-throughs, etc. These mechanisms can be used to measure open rates, positive or negative responses, and to correlate sales with marketing.

• Advertisers can generate repeat business affordably and automatically.

• Advertisers can reach substantial numbers of e-mail subscribers who have opted in (i.e., consented) to receive e-mail communications on subjects of interest to them.

• Over half of Internet users check or send e-mail on a typical day.

• Specific types of interaction with messages can trigger (1) other messages to be delivered automatically, or (2) other events, such as updating the profile of the recipient to indicate a specific interest category.

• E-mail marketing is paper-free (i.e., "green").

• Tracking and response metrics enables tuning and optimization of the E-mail marketing channel by a process of testing different variants and calculation of statistically significant results.

Disadvantages of e-mail marketing

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Many companies use e-mail marketing to communicate with existing customers, but many other companies send unsolicited bulk e-mail, also known as spam.

Internet system administrators have always considered themselves responsible for dealing with "abuse of the net", but not "abuse on the net". That is, they will act quite vigorously against spam, but will leave issues such as libel or trademark infringement to the legal system. Most administrators possess a passionate dislike for spam, which they define as any unsolicited e-mail. Draconian measures—such as taking down a corporate website, with or without warning—are entirely normal responses to spamming. Typically, the terms of service in Internet companies' contracts permit such actions; therefore, the spammer often has no recourse.

Illicit e-mail marketing predates legitimate e-mail marketing. On the early Internet (i.e., Arpanet), it was not permitted to use the medium for commercial purposes. As a result, marketers attempting to establish themselves as legitimate businesses in e-mail marketing have had an uphill battle, hampered also by criminal spam operations billing themselves as legitimate ones.

It is frequently difficult for observers to distinguish between legitimate and spam e-mail marketing. First, spammers attempt to represent themselves as legitimate operators. Second, direct-marketing political groups such as the United States Direct Marketing Association (DMA) have pressured legislatures to legalize activities that some Internet operators consider to be spamming, such as the sending of "opt-out" unsolicited commercial e-mail. Third, the sheer volume of spam has led some users to mistake legitimate commercial e-mail for spam.

One effective technique used by established email marketing companies is to require what is known as the "double opt-in" method of requiring a potential recipient to manually confirm their request for information by clicking a unique link which includes a unique identification code to confirm that the owner of the recipient email address has indeed requested the information. Responsible e-mail marketing and autoresponder companies use this double opt-in method to confirm each request before any information is sent out.

Opt-in e-mail advertising

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Opt-in e-mail advertising, or permission marketing, is a method of advertising via e-mail whereby the recipient of the advertisement has consented to receive it. This method is one of several developed by marketers to eliminate the disadvantages of e-mail marketing.

Opt-in e-mail marketing may evolve into a technology that uses a handshake protocol between the sender and receiver. This system is intended to eventually result in a high degree of satisfaction between consumers and marketers. If opt-in e-mail advertising is used, the material that is e-mailed to consumers will be "anticipated". It is assumed that the consumer wants to receive it, which makes it unlike unsolicited advertisements sent to the consumer. Ideally, opt-in e-mail advertisements will be more personal and relevant to the consumer than untargeted advertisements.

A common example of permission marketing is a newsletter sent to an advertising firm's customers. Such newsletters inform customers of upcoming events or promotions, or new products. In this type of advertising, a company that wants to send a newsletter to their customers may ask them at the point of purchase if they would like to receive the newsletter.

With a foundation of opted-in contact information stored in their database, marketers can send out promotional materials automatically. They can also segment their promotions to specific market segments.

E-mail drip marketing

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

E-mail drip marketing is a form of e-mail marketing where a company sends ("drips") e-mail messages to subscribers on a scheduled basis established using e-mail marketing software.

As an example, a real estate lead may be interested in home listings for a specific area. He could be sent an introductory message, and then be placed on an automated e-mail drip campaign where updated home listings are sent to him on a weekly basis.

E-mail drip marketing can be an extremely effective way to brand a business to big ticket leads that may still be in "research mode" for weeks if not months. A lead may be more inclined to do business with a company whose email drip marketing campaign is effective, meaning that the company has sent him helpful information throughout the research period.

As with any form of e-mail marketing, e-mail drip programs must be constructed carefully so that the messages will not be intercepted by spam filters.

Interactive advertising

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Interactive advertising -uses online or offline interactive media to communicate with consumers and to promote products, brands, services, and public service announcements, corporate or political groups.

In the inaugural issue of the Journal of Interactive Advertising, editors Li and Leckenby (2000) defined Interactive Advertising as the "paid and unpaid presentation and promotion of products, services and ideas by an identified sponsor through mediated means involving mutual action between consumers and producers." This is most commonly performed through the Internet as a medium.

Interactive advertising objectives

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

The goals of interactive advertising are usually akin to the traditional objectives of advertising, i.e. to sell a product. This in turn means that many of the traditional elements of advertising impact and effectiveness remain relevant, even within the scope of interactive media.

However, according to the Journal of Interactive Advertising 2001, interactive advertising also has some properties that expand the range of potential objectives and that improve advertising effectiveness.

Interactive advertising also has the potential to decrease the losses associated with poorly coordinated advertising, to reduce the difficulties commonly encountered in clearly communicating an advertising message and to help overcome new product hurdles, such as a consumer rejection.

Elements of interactive advertising

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

There are many different facets to Interactive Advertising, including varying methods and types. Using many different types of cognitive tools and advert presentations, organizations can enhance the impact of their campaigns with this type of advertising. According to Thorson (1996), all advertisements can be classified into one of five basic categories, including: product/service, public service announcement, issue, corporate and political. Advert types also interact with the user's motives to influence outcomes, or consumer responses, reinforcing the need for Interactive Advertising as a means of persuading potential consumers and target audiences.

Using the Internet as the main medium for Interactive Advertising to study the methods, types and outcomes, we can then sound out the different user or advertiser controlled aspects.

Aspects of Interactive marketing

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

User generated/controlled aspects

Functions, Internet motives and mode are the main factors of user controlled aspects. In fact, a number of researchers and practitioners argue that consumers have more control on the Internet than do advertisers (Roehm & Haugtvedt, 1999). Some have gone so far as to argue that interactive marketing and advertising techniques will not work unless practitioners "step into the shoes" of and approach the Internet from the consumer's vantage point (Cross & Smith, 1997).

Advertiser controlled aspects

Internet aspects that are under the control of the advertiser. Most of these variables include structural elements, such as ad types, formats and features. This does not mean that consumers never control the structure of the interactive ads. Banner Ads, pop-up ads, sponsorship, hyperlinks and non-carrier websites are examples of Advertiser controlled Interactive Advertising.

Social media optimization

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Social media optimization (SMO) is a set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities and community websites. Methods of SMO include adding RSS feeds, social news buttons, blogging, and incorporating third-party community functionalities like images and videos. Social media optimization is related to search engine marketing, but differs in several ways, primarily the focus on driving traffic from sources other than search engines, though improved search ranking is also a benefit of successful SMO.

Social media optimization is in many ways connected as a technique to viral marketing where word of mouth is created not through friends or family but through the use of networking in social bookmarking, video and photo sharing websites. In a similar way the engagement with blogs achieves the same by sharing content through the use of RSS in the blogosphere and special blog search engines.

Social Media optimization is considered an integral part of an online reputation management (ORM) or Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM) strategy for organizations or individuals who care about their online presence.

Digital Marketing

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

It is the promoting of brands using the Internet, mobile and other interactive channels.

Digital Marketing is the practice of promoting products and services using digital distribution channels to reach consumers in a timely, relevant, personal and cost-effective manner.

Whilst digital marketing does include many of the techniques and practices contained within the category of Internet Marketing, it extends beyond this by including other channels with which to reach people that do not require the use of The Internet. As a result of this non-reliance on the Internet, the field of digital marketing includes a whole host of elements such as mobile phones, sms/mms, display / banner ads and digital outdoor.

Digital Marketing â�� Pull

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

There are 2 different forms of digital marketing, each of which has its pros and cons.

Pull

Pull digital marketing technologies involve the user having to seek out and directly grab (or pull) the content via web search. Web site/blogs and streaming media (audio and video) are good examples of this. In each of these examples, users have a specific link (URL) to view the content.

Pros:

No restrictions in terms of type of content or size as the user determines what they want.

• No technology required to send the content, only to store/display it.

• No regulations or opt-in process required.

Cons:

• Considerable marketing effort required for users to find the message/content.

• Limited tracking capabilities – only total downloads, page views, etc.

• No personalization – content is received and viewed the same across all audiences

Digital marketing: Push

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Push digital marketing technologies involve both the marketer (creator of the message) as well as the recipients (the user). Email, SMS, RSS are examples of push digital marketing. In each of these examples, the marketer has to send (push) the messages to the users (subscribers) in order for the message to be received.

Pros:

• Can be personalized -- messages received can be highly targeted and specific to selected criteria – like a special offer for females, 21 years old or over and living in California.

• Detailed tracking and reporting – marketers can see not only how many people saw their message but also specific information about each user such as their name as well as demographic and psychographic data.

• High Return on Investment (ROI) possible – if executed the right way, push messaging can help drive new revenue as well as brand reinforcement.

Cons:

• Compliance issue – each push messaging technology has its own set of regulations, from minor (RSS) to heavily controlled (email and text messaging)

• Requires mechanism to deliver content – the marketer has to use an application to send the message, from an email marketing system to RSS feeders.

• Delivery can be blocked – if the marketer does not follow the regulations set forth by each push message type, the content can be refused or rejected before getting to the intended recipient.

Other types of internet marketing

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

• E-commerce newsletters allow us to develop relationships with our clients and let them know when we invent something they may be interested in. You may start with just a few names and email addresses asking those folks to forward your newsletter (it should have a link to a permission-based sign up form) to their friends and urge them to sign up. Before long you have a new client base to market your product. You will not be spamming since everyone on your list has given you permission to email them.

• Online magazines offer ad space for a fee (depending upon the magazine's popularity and traffic) and may appear for the duration of the current issue of the magazine. By selecting a magazine that relates to your product you are able to direct your ad to your target market rather than to a generic audience.

• Online city guides or industry directories such as Hellometro.com and CitySearch.com are Yellow Pages on the Internet instead of in print. They feature businesses in a particular area. For example, if someone in Atlanta is looking for a toy store, they may use the search engine to browse the online guide and find all the toy stores within a 10 mile radius of their zip code. In addition to the general listing which are many times free, you may purchase an ad for a related page.

• Website Lead Generation provides you with qualified leads at a set price per lead. These are generated by telemarketing companies who do cold calling to find potential clients for you. Lead Generation Services guarantee a particular level of ROI (return on investment) and frees your staff of marketing efforts.

What are backlinks?

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Backlinks are incoming links to a website or web page. In the search engine optimization (SEO) world, the number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page (though other measures, such as PageRank, are likely to be more important). Outside of SEO, the backlinks of a webpage may be of significant personal, cultural or semantic interest: they indicate who is paying attention to that page.

In basic link terminology, a backlink is any link received by a web node (web page, directory, website, or top level domain) from another web node (Björneborn and Ingwersen, 2004). Backlinks are also known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links

Importance of backlinks

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Backlinks have become so important to the scope of Search Engine Optimization, that they have become some of the main building blocks to good SEO.

Determines quality: When search engines calculate the relevance of a site to a keyword, they consider the number of quality inbound links to that site. So we should not be satisfied with merely getting inbound links, it is the quality of the inbound link that matters. A search engine considers the content of the sites to determine the quality of a link. When inbound links to your site come from other sites, and those sites have content related to your site, these inbound links are considered more relevant to your site. If inbound links are found on sites with unrelated content, they are considered less relevant. The higher the relevance of inbound links, the greater their quality.

Search engines want websites to have a level playing field, and look for natural links built slowly over time. While it is fairly easy to manipulate links on a web page to try to achieve a higher ranking, it is a lot harder to influence a search engine with external backlinks from other websites. This is also a reason why backlinks factor in so highly into a search engine's algorithm. Lately, however, a search engine's criteria for quality inbound links has gotten even tougher, thanks to unscrupulous webmasters trying to achieve these inbound links by deceptive or sneaky techniques, such as with hidden links, or automatically generated pages whose sole purpose is to provide inbound links to websites. These pages are called link farms, and they are not only disregarded by search engines, but linking to a link farm could get your site banned entirely.

Another reason to achieve quality backlinks is to entice visitors to come to your website. You can't build a website, and then expect that people will find your website without pointing the way. You will probably have to get the word out there about your site. One way webmasters got the word out used to be through reciprocal linking. Let's talk about reciprocal linking for a moment.

A backlink could be considered as a Quality Backlink ifâ�¦

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Quality backlinks is one of the most important factors in Search Engine Optimization.

It is not enough just to have a lot of backlinks, it is the Quality of backlinks along with the Quantity that help you rank better in Search Engines.

A backlink could be considered as a Quality Backlink if

1. It links to your website with the keyword (keyphrase) that you are trying to optimize for.

2. The Theme of the backlinking website is the same as your website.

Backlink analyzer

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

The Backlink Analyzer is able to determine the total amount of links to your site. It also reports how many links are from your internal site and who are the top sites that linked to you.

This back link analyzer looks at all backlinks (IBLs) to a website and sorts them according to top-level domains (TLDs). The main TLDs are .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov, and .mil, and the backlink analyzer lists them all.

The backlink analyzer also looks at links from blogs. Blog backlinks are important to gauge how much 'buzz' a website is creating.

To use it, simply enter a domain name in the form above and wait a few seconds for your complete report.

Sample Backlinks analyser

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

All backlinks to your site are valuable. Some may be more valuable than the other, but essentially, a backlink is a backlink, and when you are starting out in developing your site traffic, be thankful what you get. To know how you are progressing, you need to learn what backlinks, especially Incoming backlinks (IBLs), go to your site.

To know who and what websites are linking to you, you can use many free online backlinks analyzers. An example of an ok backlinks analyzer is ekstreme.com/backlink-analyzer. It looks at all backlinks (IBLs) to a website and sorts them according to top-level domains (TLDs). The main TLDs are .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov, and .mil.

This particular backlink analyzer also looks at links from blogs. It’s pretty simple to use, just enter a domain name in the form on the page and wait for your report. Knowing is half the battle so you had better know how ‘armed’ you are so you can plan for the battle ahead.

How to know Quality Backlinks from non-quality ones

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Backlinking is one of the most important aspect of your SEO efforts. It weighs very strongly on your pagerank and therefore your searchability. When backlinking, it is more quality over quantity. It’s not enough to have a lot of backlinks, as it does not really generate the right traffic for you and non related backlinks do not really raise your PR that much. It is the quality ones that get you ranked higher on search engines.

A quality backlink is one that: a. links to your website with the keyword that you are trying to optimize for; and b. the website that is backlinking to you has the same topic or general topic of interest; and c. it is a trusted domain. It’s not only .com ones that rank highly. Educational, military, or governmental websites - ending with .edu, .mil, and .gov, are also useful as they are quite selective in linking to outside sites and are seen as very ‘credible’.

Analysing competitor Backlinks

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

By now you already know that all backlinks to your site are valuable. You also realize that your competitor’s backlinks are essential? If not then wake up! While you are doing your SEO and backlinking, your competitors are also doing the same thing. Some of them may be already reaping the benefits of a great SEO strategy that you are missing out on.

How do you level the playing field? You check out their strategy of course! You can just go to any backlinks analysis sites and put in your competitor’s url and get all the backlinks they are getting. Then you can analyze that and make adjustments based on that.

SEO and the importance of back linking

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

If you've read about and done SEO on your website but have not heard of and have not implemented backlinking, now is the time to pay attention.

Backlinks are links from other sites pointing towards your website. These are also known as Inbound links. This is a prime metric in determining your Page Rank and therefore how near you are to the top of the search results when someone makes a search about a product or service you sell online.

Google especially pays attention to this. When a search engine like Google or Bing calculate the relevance of a site to a search keyword, one of the main indicators that the site is good is the number of high quality backlinks. If you have SEO marketing, PPC, and no backlinking, you are missing out. It’s like you are missing one pole in your tent, it will work, but not as good as if you have all the pole up. Think about it.

Why natural links trump other links over time

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

While it’s just so easy to contact people to pepper the net with backlinks to your site, it may actually hurt you rather than help you in the long run. A backlink is like a good bottle of wine. It gets better with age. Backlinks are meant to encourage people to go to your site and this can be achieved if you provide them with good content or the link is located in a website that is deemed trustworthy.

Do not assume that because search engines use robots and crawlers to rank your site, that they are devoid of logic to know a good backlink from a bad one. Search engines basically does a good job of leveling the playing field by looking for natural links built slowly over time. Link farms, web pages setup basically just to get backlinks and pages that accept linkbacks that are not related to your site can get you banned, so tread carefully.

Besides, a good backlink can get you more traffic than a bad backlink anyway.

The problem with reciprocal linking

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Reciprocal linking is simply a basic website link exchange. You link me, I link you. Scratch my back I scratch yours. However, just because it is easy to do, does not mean you should do it blatantly. Search engines have been wise to this for a while now, especially in instances where you exchange links just for the sake of exchanging even if the websites don’t actually have the same topic. In a link exchange, webmasters place links on his website that points to another website, and vice versa. Very easy but not always useful.

Google is currently working on a patent that will gauge not only the popularity of a site but also its “credibility” or “trustworthy-ness.” The more links you get from those ones, the better for you, so you should be selective about reciprocal linking and not do it just because you can.

Backlink builder program and why and how it helps

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

If you need quality backlinks in a hurry (although that is a bit dodgy as the best quality links usually come from gradual development rather than instant creation), you may want to invest some time into researching Backlink Builder Tools.

It has been established over and over again that it is the quality links that you are looking for, not the quantity of them, but there are some programs there that can provide you with a certain degree of both. What these tools do is they search for websites that have a related theme to yours. They also select which ones are likely to allow backlinking to their website.

All you need do is to specify a keyword or key phrase, and then the tool scours the net to find related sites for you. Once you know where to link, you can work on getting the go ahead to link to them and get them to link to you. This beats just clicking into any and every website you can and building your own database from 0.

The Usefulness of Anchor Text

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

One of the main things you need to look out for in building your backlinks is to look for good opportunities to do an anchor text.

Anchor texts are a great way to gain quality backlinks to your site, but you can’t do it all the time.

An anchor text is a link that incorporates a keyword into the text of the hyperlink, or a text that has a hyperlink embedded into it – thus it is ‘anchored’ to the text. This can be at the same time a keyword or keyphrase which serves a dual purpose for you.

There’s also software out there called Backlink Anchor Text Analysis Tools. Have a quick search for that on Google and you should find one that is free and easy to use. You can even backtrack and look at your other backlinks and see if you can change that to become anchor text.

SEO tips â�� avoid duplicate content

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

There is one thing Search Engines and people love in common – original content. People will not read something they think they’ve read before, and also, search engines sift through many websites that contain duplicate content and just ignore them.

As much as possible, make yourself stand out with original content, and periodically update your content. If your site has material that is similar to other websites on the Internet, or pages from where you are linked to, try and find a way to stand out. There are tools that allow you to analyze the percentage of similarity between two pages. If you find you are too similar, change your content as you may get penalized for that. The lower the similarity the better for your site.

The Art of Backlinking using blogs

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Backlinks, that is links that “come back” to your site helps raise your page rank and ultimately your visibility online.

There is a certain art to backlinking on blogs. One of the main thing about getting onto the good graces of the blog owner to get you a backlink via blog post, blog articles, blogrolls, comments, and guest blogging, is to provide good content.

Blogs are very trustworthy, especially the popular ones. Getting your link up on one can get you linked to all the other followers of the said blog. If you plan on just going to a blog and leaving a backlink, tough luck, bloggers are very protective of their turf. Get their trust first by being a valued contributor. Be a reader first, then several weeks later, start commenting. Then start referring to something you wrote on in your blog. Eventually, when you have proven your worth, they will allow you to provide backlinks without you being seen as a spammer.

Asking For Links

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

One of the easiest things you can do to increase backlinks is to ask. Yes, ask. Funny? Not really. If you someone nicely, what do they usually do? Do they shout in your face or shoo you off? Most likely they will be polite if they will reject you, some will say no, some will say yes. The trick is learning how and when to ask. If you want to ask, it is best to email the blog owner, site owner or website admin. Put is a professionally worded letter stating who you are, what your website is, and what you think you can offer their visitors and readers, they would probably consider your request. If they reply unfavorably but in a professional way, you then have one foot in the door. You can start becoming a constant visitor on their page and ask what you can do before they will consider a backlink to your page.

If there is a benefit for them and for their visitors/readers, you would probably get a positive response. All it would take is a finely worked letter, modified here and there for specific websites and you are in business. To use a basketball adage, you miss all the shots that you don’t take.

Asking for a Link Exchange

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

The best way to ask for a link exchange works similarly to the post I made earlier about asking for links. Basically, the world has a quid pro quo attitude. Give me some, I’ll give you some too. In backlinking terms, I’ll link to you if you link to me.

Some people tend to look down at link exchanges, as it is being done indiscriminately by people just for the sake of building up backlinks and nothing else.

Before you do this, think about why you are making backlinks. You make backlinks to get people onto your site, and what people want is a compelling reason to do so. That compelling reason is good service, good content, etc.

People understand what value they can get, so when asking for a link exchange, make sure you are giving value and getting value in return.

Backlinking on Comments. Yea or Nay?

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

The fast answer is, Nay. No can do backlinking on blogs amigo as more likely than not you will be branded a scammer or a spammer. People are more aware of what’s happening on their blogs and they will strikeout your comment if it does nothing but litter their blog with a link.

However, that does not mean you can’t do it at all. The first thing you need to determine is if the blog owner will let you. This is more likely if you have been a regular on the blog for a while now and you are known in that circle of bloggers as a productive and valuable contributor. Make your contributions meaningful and add to the conversation that people will want to read your say. If you do it good enough, readers may even be bold enough or their curiosities peaked enough to check out your site. However make sure you link when posting on the blog, maybe as a guest blogger.

Backlinking using Signature Links Yea or Nay?

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

When it comes to backlinking, there are many things you can do but to be honest, there is a limit to what you should be doing. One of the things that you should not be doing is to link on comments in blogs.

Bloggers do not like seeing random people placing links onto their blogs, and do go to extreme lengths to strip links from comments even though it is relevant to the topic. Going as far as placing your link to a comment is possibly the worst thing you can do, bordering on desperate. Just stick to guest blogging or being a productive member of the blog or forum and if you are worthy enough, you will be able to get people interested in you and they will eventually go to your site, which is what you really want anyway.

Backlinks from Site Submissions

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

One of the more popular ways to get yourself backlinks is from getting your site submitted and listed in online directories, search engines, and site submission sites. However, as web technology advances, pings automatically announce new activity on your blog to search engines and directories, thus making site submissions almost obsolete.

Site submission services, although fading a bit in popularity having been abused and overused, still do bring in traffic to your site, if your site is worth visiting.

Make sure that you submit content that is worth reading, appealing to a wide audience, and is worth the trouble to link to.

Do not try to force getting content into site submission services if they are not of good quality as low quality content usually gets ignored and could just hurt your reputation more than build it up.

Syndicate Articles for backlinks

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Another way to get backlinks is to syndicate articles. Syndication is a good way to promote yourself and your expertise, and can get you a nice number of links back to your website.

Be very careful though, because the average web reader now is much more selective and savvy, and can identify unoriginal content. Try to be more helpful and informative rather than self promoting. If you can skip mentioning your own webpage or own business in the end, it would mean you really want to offer something not promote yourself. You want your readership in the syndicated articles to believe in you and to be eager for more.

At the end of your syndicated article, have a link near your name and your credentials. Readers will usually understand that you got your info from experience and will more likely believe you and visit your site rather than making the article a platform for self promotion.

Guest Blogging for backlinks

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

One very powerful tool in getting backlinks is this new development in the blogosphere called guest blogging.

This is essentially bloggers hoping from blog to blog providing posts as ‘experts’. You get exposure, credibility, and a backlink to your website as well. To do this, you also have to have a blog of your own by the way. You get a link back to your site and showcase your talents all in one blog post. Now that’s mighty powerful linking.

If you want to do guest blogging, find bloggers with the same content or related content to your blog and business, and strike up a blog friendship. Blog friendships are based on mutual benefit so make sure you offer something good to the person as well. You can also do the reverse – inviting bloggers to guest blog – and vice versa. Treat your blogger friends well, and you will be well taken care of as well. The benefit goes both ways.

Have a Contest to get backlinks

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

If you are a company that has some products that you can raffle or give as a prize for a contest, then having a contest to generate backlinks is an idea you may want to play with. Holding contests on your blog or on your website can work as it will attract a lot of attention and incoming links to your site. Just eb sure you have the right sort of audience, such as bloggers and social networking enthusiasts who are likely to become customers as well.

Check whether the contest you are going to start can raise your image and not tarnish it before doing it, and try it on a small scale first before a massive roll out. Make it something that will attract the user to your site services as you do not want them just coming back for the contest and nothing else.

Blog Challenges and backlinks

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

You’ve probably heard of chain mail. Well there is a thing going on now that you can try in the blogging world to get you some quality backlinks. It’s like a chain mail but it is a blog challenge.

What you basically do is to challenge you readers into participating contests or answering a questionnaire. The challenge moves from one blog to the other, and you can link your site as the originator of that challenge. It helps you generate content and also creates links to and from other blogs.

By participating in and creating challenges, you are also doing a lot of networking and getting new traffic into your site.

Best advice for backlinks - Write Something Worth Linking To

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

You can try all the tricks there are in the book when it comes to creating backlinks but the real key to making lasting and useful backlinks is to create content worth linking to. It could be fun, informative, amusing, inspiring – what it should not be is unoriginal trivial and offensive to anyone. The better your content is, whether your contributions to other blogs or other websites, the more valuable it is to readers. This turns your content timeless (you need to update it from time to time) and more likely readers will be able to use it for a long, long time and also tell others about it. Monitor which posts and backlinks get you quality traffic and see why they give you so much, and try to change your other links to be as useful. You will notice that even your oldest backlinks will yield results if they are worth linking to and worth visiting.

How to analyze your competitorâ��s backlinking strategies

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Here’s a quick practical guide to exploring your competitor’s backlink building techniques and strategies. Knowing what your competitors are doing will help you greatly in learning where they are successful and where they are failing. When you get all the links from your competitors, sort them into several categories:

Basic linking
Blog Linking
Niche link building
Deep linking
Targeted anchor text.

Knowing these details of your customer’s backlinking strategy will help you understand how to counter, how to improve your strategy and also see where they are succeeding and where they are failing.

Investing in an automatic Google backlinking tool

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

There are people who say the best backlinks are natural backlinks. Ones you cultivate and develop until they yield a good stream of visitors to your site. However, some people do not have the luxury of time and can’t afford to hire consultants or hire extra manpower. These people go about backlinking a different way – through Google backlink software programs in order to “build” backlinks instantly.

These automatic tools perform faster in creating total number of backlinks and makes the work a lot easier. It’s like hiring a bunch of “backlink builders”. There are a large number of programs that promise high quality backlinks. Do a search on google and they will pop up. There is a downside however, as these usually cost money and you never know where your links go and where they are coming from.

Before making the choice to purchase or hire services for these automatic backlinking tools, make it a point to visit their website and check out their methods. It’s handy if you don’t have the time, but know what you are getting into first.

Raising your PR

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Here are some basic steps you can take to improve your page rank on search engines. The most basic is to do backlinking. Backlinking is an easy way to increase your visits. Then you can do some article marketing or guest blogging by write articles and submitting them to free article directories and blogs and have a signature line that includes your web address at the end. Don’t overlook social bookmarking sites like digg, reddit, del.icio.us etc. and also try getting yourself listed in the online yellow pages, classified and industry listing websites. Place your site and your site url there and that links back to you.

Get Backlinks With Zero Effort

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Article writing is the one the best ways to create backlinks and should be part of your seo efforts. Here are some tips to create an eye catching article.

Use lists – Lists look interesting, lists look cool. People who surf the internet do not read every sentence, but rather skim through. That’s where lists make the most sense.

Format with big headings – Big headings look important and people are generally attracted to things in bold.

Use the TIPS trick – People love tips. Top 5 tips, top 10 tips etc! Top tips let readers get to the meat of your article quickly and clears up the layout as well.

Now doing these things wont guarantee you getting good backlinks as it is good content that will help you with that. Remember that great content means people will go to it. If people go to it, you have a great backlink that will serve you for a long time.

Linking to Your Website, Naturally

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Natural linking is linking that occurs when people link to you because of great content or great use on your site. It’s different from building up using submissions or guest blogging article marketing in the sense that they want to link to you, without you needed to give something in return.

Natural links mean that your website has some really great content that is compelling that other people want to link to you, or your website provides a certain use that people find useful. Consider your local weather website or your time keeping website. There’s something that people go to often. Going there for the particular usage makes it a natural link magnet. People will want to link to the site. So if you want natural links, make something naturally appealing or useful.

Effective Backlink Strategies - Things to Keep in Mind While Building Backlinks

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Whether building backlinks by yourself or hiring others to do it for you, there are many things you should keep in mind to maximize your money and your efforts.

With backlinks, although the more backlinks the merrier, what’s actually more important is the quality. The higher the pagerank of the webpage your link is on, the better for you. Getting backlinks on pages with high PR.

Pay attention to your anchor text on your backlink. Make sure the text on the backlinks will serve your SEO purposes. Try using the anchor text that is based on the keyword you are trying to rank high.

And remember! Backlink spamming can get you banned! Too many backlinks created in a very short time by software (or yes even manually by hundreds of individuals will get you banned by the search engines. Create backlinks spread evenly over time so that it seems more natural.

What is Link Strength?

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Link strength does not necessarily mean that you get links from websites with a high page rank although that does help. Link strength for your backlinks means the quality of visitors you get from a site, how credible is the site, and how long the backlinks will pay dividends for you.

A strong link does not have to be one that comes from .com domains. You can even consider backlinks from.edu and .gov websites the better choice as getting on them is hard and they are generally more believed and trusted. The reason for that is that the .gov and .edu websites are run by educational and government authorities which have higher credibility – strangely enough – than commercial sites. Backlink strength is often the measure of the website’s authority or credibility.

How to Earn a Link on a Website With Authority

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Getting backlinks on .com and .net domains is much easier than getting links on educational or government website, but it is not impossible.

The easiest and most effective way is to be a guest blogger or commenter on government and educational blogs. Almost every government website now has a blog and you approach a government or educational blog the same way you approach a regular blog, with great content.

Another way is to offer your services or align with the government’s plans by offering products and services for their project. Even local government blogs will make a huge impact for you. Getting on those reliable and trusted sites will be much easier if you are actually a reliable and trusted partner for these sites.

5 things to help your SEO efforts on Bing

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Since it was launched a few months ago Bing has become quite the favorite of Webmasters for the easy optimization it gives them. With a little tweaking you can get your site listed at the top of Bing's results quickly. It also works on new sites as well so if you are new, you can probably get it indexed faster here than on Google.

Here is a list of five things you can do to get Bing to list you:

Bing likes old: The older the domain, the better according to Bing. It places a lot of emphasis on the age so you might consider buying an older domain.

Bing likes titles: Bing places a lot more emphasis on title tags than Google. Use your keywords in the title tags of every page on your site if possible.

Bing loves text: The amount of text you have on a Web page plays a huge role on Bing. It places a higher value on pages that have at least 300 words.

Bing loves outbound links - Bing like outbound links at this stage in its development.

Bing loves Backlinks – Bing’s filtering of Backlinks is not as strict as Googles. At this point it uses backlinks to add to your site’s rank as long as the backlink is relevant. If you feel like your backlinking efforts are not paying dividends on Google, try optimizing on Bing.

Some more tips to rank well on Bing

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Bing's FAQs state that you should do the following on-site SEO to rank well:

· Target no more than two keywords per page

· Use unique <title> tags on each page

· Use unique <meta> description tags on each page

· Use H1 tags

· Use text navigation links

· Create content for your human visitors, not the Bing web crawler

· Incorporate keywords into URL strings

When to let people backlink to you

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

If you constantly receive emails asking to exchange backlinks with your web site, when is the right time to say yes, and when is the right time to say no? These are several criteria you should use to sift through the requests:

Check for good design – Sending people to poorly constructed websites will reflect poorly on you. Associate yourself with sites that are professional looking.

Check for current backlinks – you can use programs to check how many backlinks the site has. If the site has too many backlinks and it seems like it’s only there to provide backlinks fodder, don’t do it. Be picky. Before accepting a link exchange, make sure the content is the same or compliments your own sites topic.

Check for indecent or morally ambiguous content – Is it a Do pornographic or gambling site? If yes, don’t go anywhere near there, no matter how tastefully done it is (unless you are a pornographic or gambling site).

Backlinks â�� when is enough enough?

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

So you have hundreds of backlinks already and you were able to increase your page rank. What now? When is enough enough when it comes to backlinks? The answer to that is simple – what have you achieved from them? have you achieved what you have set out to achieve? Did you get the desired page rank? Did you get the desired traffic increase? Did you get eh desired sales increase? If yes, then you probably have enough, or enough just at least until you have decided that you need more to achieve more. Also, if you want to maintain your PR or your traffic, you have to continually build traffic by creating more or updating old backlinks. So essentially there is no ‘enough’ when it comes to backlinking.

Backlinking mistakes Part I

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Here are some backlinking mistakes that you should avoid:

Do not buy into mass link packages up for sale. More likely than not, these are sleazy and unscrupulous people trying to trick you into buying link packages that are not worth anything except to just claim you have been given a backlink. You pay for spam, spam is what you will get.

Do not do meaningless reciprocal Link Exchanges! Before, exchanging links was one of the main SEO linkbuilding strategies. However, n recent months, Google has cracked down on this when link farms began cropping up.

Make sure you do use anchor text. By using anchor text related to your site, it gives your links what is called ‘linkjuice’ or the relevance of the perceived value of each link.

Make sure you backlink from relevant sites. Google is all about relevance so getting irrelevant links actually hurt you in the long run. When you get backlinks from relevant and related sites, those links count for a lot.

Backlinking mistakes Part II

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Here are additional backlinking mistakes that you should avoid:

As mentioned earlier, Google designed the page rank system to work organically, meaning links that come to your site naturally. Do not use inorganic backlinks, such as those you get from pay per link offers. You need to build your backlinks consistently over time.

Probably the biggest backlinking mistake is buying links. This worked before but nothing as blatant as this escapes Google’s eye. If a link on a high PR site sells, and it becomes monetized, Google will get wind of it and shut it down. If you aid for the link, you may get penalized so avoid paying for backlinks.

Backlinks embedded in text

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Backlinks embedded in page content actually have more value to you.

Links which are found within the page content of your pages or in pages of text on other sites have more value than anywhere else. This is how you can now see bloggers doing linkbaits like blog review or blog contests.

This backlink technique has been known to help bloggers in terms of making their SEO better. An embedded link in a page of text is also recognized by search engines as more natural, and with Google’s insistence on natural links, what can be more natural than links in a good chunk of valuable text.

Valuing Backlinks

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Backlinks are like deposits you make in the bank. Over time you get more and more from it like interest, but it is slow and steady. However, the more savings you have in the bank, the more interest it earns. Also the more banks you have invested in, the more more investments pay back to you. That is the value of backlinks. Backlinks are a gold mine for marketers and website owners. Imagine you have a blog that has thousands upon thousands of backlinks. That means thousands and thousands of views. Views are potential page clicks, potential pay per view ads, potential adsense revenue. Backlinks are an almost certain guarantee of unique visitors going to your blog or site each day. You cannot put a monetary amount to a backlink but it’s value cannot be overlooked.

Internal Backlinking

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

There is one backlinking practice you can do that will not cause you much difficulty or cost you much money. If you have a network of websites within a certain topic, you can do what we call internal backlinking.

This is just backlinking within the site, within a group of sites and cris-crossing across the different sites. Not only are thes easy to create, they also increase the flow of traffic from one website to the other, but all to your benefit.

A lot of publications do this withing sister or affiliate publications in order to ensure that content is always linked to. This makes sure content is never forgotten, always viewed and always being crawled by search engine bots.

Optimize your existing backlinks

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Because of the sheer number of backlinks you have, you probably already have a number of backlinks that aren’t being used to their full potential. For example, you may be listed on a great page but it’s a straight url link without a descriptive text link. It is a good tactic to just spend some time in a month to review some links and see if you can make them better. Even if you only get 2 or 3 sites changed in a way that improves your content or link presentation on a daily basis, that will add up fast.

Improving links is far easier than creating new ones, so make sure that all the hard work in getting the link there pays off by making sure the link performs.

Network and Be link worthy

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

You are more link worthy if your website or you are well known in your industry or in the social circles you move in. make it a habit of talking about your website, your business online, and your company, and always bringing up the topic of sharing with them your content or your expertise. Networking offline and online is also a valid way to grow your backlinks. Remember, if you write like you’re an authority on your subject, and the people who read you believe you, then that’s a powerful tool in helping you get backlinks. People who think you are an expert would like to get you on their site, as it helps their credibility as well.

The source of the backlinks

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

The source of the backlinks

The source of a backlink can pass authority and indeed searchers to the page to which it points. So it follows that pages with backlinks from authoritative pages will receive a much higher value consideration from the search engines. Pages from sources such as educational (.edu) or government (.gov) sites naturally carry more trust and authority.

Google Page Rank

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Google Page Rank

Backlinks from web pages with high page rank (a ‘reward’ awarded by Google to each page that it has observed over a period to have attracted, sustained and continued to accumulate relevant backlinks) pass some of their page rank via the backlink to the target page.

The â��anchor textâ��

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

The ‘anchor text’

Just like a label, the backlink anchor text influences the search engines classification of the backlink. If the content of the page is about ‘parenting’ and the backlink on the page is labeled or given the ‘anchor’ text ‘parenting’ then the search engines consider this to be of more value to the searcher looking for sites related to ‘parenting’ than if the backlink was labeled ‘babycare’.

Discover the secrets about getting Backlinks

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Discover the secrets about getting Backlinks

Simply defined, a backlink is nothing more than a URL posted on third party site. A simple definition, but one of the most effective online marketing techniques that any self-respecting webmaster should be taking advantage of. However, finding out the most effective way about getting backlinks to your site can take a little time to learn.

One proven method about getting backlinks is through article submission. Many would extol the benefits of submitting a high quantity of articles; and whilst this can work to a degree, webmasters really need to apply some thought to the entire process to exploit the potential to the maximum. Indeed, simply flooding article directories with irrelevant pieces where the backlink is the clear aim could prove counter-productive; deterring potential leads. Make your articles readable, entertaining and accurate.

Often working in association with article submission, use your blog to direct people back to your main site. Perhaps merge the two in fact, and give the abstract of your article in the blog, before continuing with the body back on your main site.

Also use other third party blogs to your advantage. Are there any in the same area of work as your site? If so, comment on their postings, and backlink to your site. Key about getting backlinks is relevancy in most cases, so this can reap huge rewards. If your backlinks are removed however, don't complain; just don't visit them anymore!

In many ways, backlinking in another's blog is a form of reciprocal backlinking. Cleaner methods to do this are to immerse yourself into relevant networks, and allow fellow webmasters to backlink from your site. By sharing backlink space with sites in the same sector, it helps collective wealth grow and builds up you esoteric standing and respect.

Press Releases too are an excellent way to get your backlinks working for you. A well targeted PR will not only generate immediate traffic to your site, but will also generate repeat visits and place a useful tool for the ongoing build-up of traffic. New product launches, news items and a refurbished site are all topics guaranteed to have an effect.

Whilst these tips are proven ways about getting backlinks, there are an infinite number out there including Facebook, Twitter, and responsible email campaigns.

Take on board what already works, and see if you can come up with your own novel approach. Interrogate the web for what has proven to work in the past; are there any variations on that theme to which you can give a new angle? People love new things; it keeps them interested, which in itself can generate repeat visits.

Of course, if you do not have the time or maybe the inclination to work on this particular form of online marketing, backlinks can be paid for through ads. If even this is too much for you to give your time to, you could consider the services of companies that specialize about getting backlinks for you.

How to increase back links

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

5 secrets to increase back links from your next article marketing campaign:

1. Keyword Rich Headlines: Back links to your website, blog, micro-sites, or landing pages are entirely contingent on the effective distribution and syndication of your article. That means your article has to attract attention and communicate value.

Publishers must believe in a fraction of a second, while scanning an article directory or article search, that your article will deliver value to their readers, traffic to their site, and revenue through their advertisers. This belief has to be communicated in your article’s headline.

Write your headline with a specific keyword in mind, a call to action, and long tail value. Every article headline should not only be emotionally compelling, but engineered for search optimization.

2. Keyword Rich Copy: Now that you have made it past the initial cut and a publisher is reading your article you need to pop with inherent value.

To a serious publisher that means high-value, high-returning keywords. Most publishers are syndicating your articles for search engine optimization, text link revenue, or affiliate ad revenue. That means your article need to be packed with keywords that sell.

The easiest way to fill your head and writing with valuable keywords is to spend a little time in a keyword analysis tool like WordTracker or Google’s Keyword Analysis Tool. Search your niche and find suggested terms that are paying the highest eCPM. These are the glasses that your publisher (article client) is looking through when reviewing your articles.

3. Call to Action Resource Box: Most resource boxes look like journalistic bylines. These “golden” little boxes are not designed to when you Pulitzer Prizes or even attribution. They are to pitch and sell your product or service.

No publisher or even reader cares who wrote the article. They want to know where to get more advice or (hopefully) buy the secret potion.

4. High Quality Anchor Text: Getting the most out of your anchor text is your prime objective in article marketing. Think about what you are trying to achieve, your perfect customer, and what they are looking for–then capture it.

Your anchor text is like a flashing, neon arrow pointing you site. Make it compelling and accurate.

Do not squander your precious link text on: your name, your website URL, company name or other non-descriptive text. Every anchor text should be a keyword or action you are going to deliver with every customer’s click. This approach will guide search results and consumers into your product or service for the buy.

5. Deep Links Too: Neglecting the development of deep link backs is the number one mistake I see in site development and article marketing. Don’t forget to develop the whole site–not just the home page.

In your resource box, on every article be sure to include not only the home URL, but also a relevant deep link to your site. This can be a landing page, resources page, or the original article.

Most article directories have a quality reputation and credibility with Google, Yahoo!, and MSN leverage this to expand the indexing of your entire site. The more you index the more likely you are to return in organic search and the more credible your site becomes.

The great value of Backlinks

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

The great value of Backlinks

Link Building is the benchmark of being successful on the web. Well, almost everything these days staring from your favorite food, book, movie and clothes among others has a web presence or in other words an online presence. Just having a web presence is not sufficient, but you must be very popular for customers to know about what you are offering to them. So for this you need to build links of your site on the web. Link building services provided by companies are the different strategies which are used for increasing the links of a site on the World Wide Web. Link building has been found to be one of the very successful strategies undertaken for search engine optimization.

Search engines put a major emphasis on the links which are present on the site, to assign them rankings on search engine results. Building up links on the web is not an easy task and one needs to hire professional link building services, if you want to get the best results for your business. Each website is made differently and that is why the potential of inbound link is also bound to be different. The baseline is that the site must get good inbound links and just any other link will not work. The link building service that you will hire for your business must be effective enough to give you the best results.

Each link has a weighted value depending on the search engine and how they deal with link valuations. As a general rule some of the following come into play;

1. Age of the link (how long it has been around)

2. Topic and/or Title of the page the link is on

3. Relevance of the content of the page

4. Freshness of the page (has the page it is on been updated)

5. Number of links on the page (some ranking systems pass a ratio of accrued value)

6. Trust (is the link from a trusted page or a suspect domain)

Link Profiles – to expand the concepts a search engine also looks at the entire portfolio of incoming links to create what we call a ‘Link Profile’ – with this larger global view of your backlinks they can valuate it and even apply temporal metrics such as;

1. when links appear or disappear,

2. the rate at which links appear or disappear over time,

3. how many links appear or disappear during a given time period,

4. whether there is trend toward appearance of new links versus disappearance of existing links to the document, etc.

By doing this they can assess trends and potential attempts to game the search engine by artificially inflating one’s profile. Temporal factors are also important in assessing the current popularity of a site on a chronological scale.

Authority â�� basics

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Authority – basics

The more authority your web pages have the higher you will rank on Google. Authority means that searchers trust you and your content. The good news is that authorities trusted by humans are also trusted by Google. A great example is the .edu and .gov suffixes. These suffixes imply they are trustworthy sources of content and it’s a proven fact that in the eyes of Google backlinks from these domains to your site will contribute authority to your site. Another great example is Wikipedia as the contents here are largely added by by group of humans as opposed to a single source.

So it follows that authority is very heavily influenced by the source of your backlinks and if authoritative content link to your web pages then you inherit their apparent trust and in the eyes of Google you become more authoritative and hence the trust in your site by Google increases.

How Google declares what is and isn’t authoritative is a guarded secret for good reason and falls in line with Google’s thinking of “Do no evil”. The last thing the net needs is an individual or a group manipulating the formulae that Google untilzes in its efforts to try and regulate probably the most important technological development of our times.

Backlinking methods you should avoid

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Backlinking methods you should avoid

In the same vein it’s valuable to state some obvious sources and practices of building backlinks that Google not only dislikes but appears to be acting to ‘classify’ as illegitimate authorities. In no particular order of merit, the common examples are:

* Paid backlinks – web pages where people purchase and sell backlinks

* Comment spam – entries that have links on blog pages that are just not associated to the main theme.

* Low quality and *duplicate content – ‘scraped’ or otherwise.

* Unnatural growth – there are plenty of ways that this is achievable, Google isn’t stupid. Any sudden rise in the number of backlinks is going to register on Google’s radar, especially if it’s a recently registered domain.

* Backlinks from villainous web pages – these are particularly nasty as you are guilty by association – need I say more.

Use Your Bio to Create Quality Backlinks when Guest Blogging

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Use Your Bio to Create Quality Backlinks when Guest Blogging

If you decide to guest blog for someone make sure that you are using your bio to create quality backlinks for yourself or your business. Read on to find out how to effectively increase quality backlinks while you are guest blogging.

Search engines not only look at the keywords on your website and in your content but the types of links that are connecting you with others. Use your bio to help increase those quality links when you decide to guest blog for others.

Guest blogging gives you a chance to interact with other audiences. You have your own readership and they like your voice. But maybe others just haven’t found you because you are in a smaller niche market or you are more general and they are reading in a specific niche. Blogging for others can bring you both together.

When you blog for others, you will get a space for your bio. Now, they don’t want to draw traffic away from their website or blog so you may only be allowed to mention one website. Use that chance to the fullest.

Within that bio, what you say is just as important as the website link that you add. You have one chance to impress them enough to get them to click on the link and visit your website or blog. Mention facts about your business and yourself that will catch the reader’s attention.

What you are hoping to do is build backlinks. Backlinks are the inbound links coming into your website from other places. You don’t want just anyone linking back to you but someone who is interested in the same things.

Guest Blog for Whom?

Choose who you blog for very carefully. When you get the invitation or while looking for possible guest blogging spots don’t just do it for the money or because you are flattered to be asked. Check them out. If their website is reputable and based on a similar topic, you could have a winner.

Even money is not worth a bad association. Let’s say that you are asked to guest blog for a friend. They own a business in Internet marketing. Your blog talks about home-based Internet businesses. There is a commonality here that can work to your advantage.

When you include your website link in the bio, you know that those clicking on it are at least interested in Internet marketing. Some of them could be business owners, who visit your site and will trade links with you. Your readers who take advantage of the online business ideas will need the help of an Internet marketer to get their business growing.

Such quality backlinks help you in the networking arena and on the search engines. You are now being noticed by others who find your business worthy of their time and their name.

Creative ways to create backlinks

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Creative ways to create backlinks

Backlinks are where it is at when it comes to search engine optimisation. Links pointing back to a website that is linking to you decreases the value of the link to your website.

Ingenious ways of creating backlinks to your website:

* Write a genuine testimonial about a web site or it’s products and leave your link in your signature.

* Write an article with links pointing to your site that get’s published over and over.

* Submit to niche online directories.

* Create link bait by putting an interesting tool on your web site that people will use such as a mortgage caluculator. People will link to that.

* Write great content that people will link to.

* Add a ‘link to us’ javascript code for your pages.

* Add the famous ‘furl’, deliciou.us, etc link on the bottom of your web pages.

* Add your web site to online classified ads such as backpages.com.

* Create a website awards program.

How can I get more backlinks?

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

How can I get more backlinks?

In so many, many ways. You might like to try my upcoming “How to build traffic for free” course for a good lesson on backlink development (stay tuned to this channel), but in a nutshell you can do the following sorts of things:

* Do link exchanges with other sites and blogs

* Make comments on other blogs – contribute to the conversation, don’t SPAM

* Post in forums

* Post in newsgroups

* Use article marketing

* Build more websites

If you do all of the above you will slowly build up a huge network of backlinks. Remember your reputation counts, so don’t don’t simply post links to your site all over the web like a spammer. Take part in the conversation and build a good reputation at the same time as you build backlinks.

Why should I care about backlinks?

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Why should I care about backlinks?

Backlinks are important because each time someone links to your site it counts as a “vote” for it, moving it higher up in the search engine results pages (SERPS). As part of a search engine optimization strategy you should aim to build backlinks up over time. The more backlinks you accumulate the better placed in search engines like Google, Yahoo! Search and MSN Search your site will be.

The Significance of Back Links

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

The Significance of Back Links

Back links are basically coded textual or image hyperlinks that connect a website to the content of an article or other piece of information online. These increase the chances that a single unique visitor to a website is possible. Through certain internet directory search engines, many algorithms provide the possibility of increased page ranking on the directory by having many links into the main page.

This makes it possible for many websites to stay on the top of search engine results for relevancy on specific subjects and keywords. This can be influenced in many ways, but back link creation is one of the only ways that provide a feasible alternative to staying on top without breaking the terms of service on many of these directories.

Effective methods to build backlinks from your own web site

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST

Effective methods to build backlinks from your own web site

If you regularly check your backlinks in Google, you can clearly find some links from your own website. Getting backlinks from own website is a good sign. It means Google deems the other pages on your site relevant and worthy of a backlink to your top level domain. But how do you manipulate your own backlinks? The answer is: there is no 100% sure way of controlling which pages on your site Google will count as backlink. There are, however, many practices you can follow to ensure you have the best chance of obtaining a backlink from your own site. These include:

1. Include a Standard Navigation on every page

You should ensure that each page on your site includes your site's standard navigation. This will help to pass link juice between the pages, hence increasing the possibility of obtaining a backlink. You should ensure that keywords are included in the navigation to help push your rankings up for individual pages.

2. Ensure links can be read by Google

This sounds simple, but you need to ensure the links can be read and followed by Google. This means having HTML links and not links in JavaScript or Frames. Also avoid using images if possible as these pass less relevancy than anchor text links.

3. Obtain backlinks for inner pages

Once you have optimized your home page and recieved some return on investment, you should attempt to gather backlinks to your inner pages. For example, you could start an individual backlink campaign for your category pages. As these pages would link to your home page, you would increase the possibility of the link becoming a Google backlink. You should submit individual pages to relevant directories.

4. Ensure inner pages are optimized and have unique content

Optimize your inner pages for your keywords and with unique content will also push these pages up in the search engines. This will increase the likelihood of obtaining one-way backlinks naturally. These pages of course link back to your home page, which again might result in a Google backlink.

5. Create a sitemap

You could create an SEO friendly sitemap. This sitemap should then be deeply linked to from the main navigation. This will again increase the probability of obtaining a backlink from one of the sitemap pages.

Although backlinks from your own site are not as powerful as links from other sites, they will help your site's performance in the search engines. It is important to remember that Google looks at individual pages as different sites. The above advice cannot guarantee you with a backlink from your own site, but should be implemented to give your site the best chance.

Corporate and organizational blogs

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

A blog can be private, as in most cases, or it can be for business purposes. Blogs, either used internally to enhance the communication and culture in a corporation or externally for marketing, branding or public relations purposes are called corporate blogs. Similar blogs for clubs and societies are called club blogs, group blogs, or by similar names; typical use is to inform members and other interested parties of club and member activities.

Blogs by genre

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Some blogs focus on a particular subject, such as political blogs, travel blogs (also known as travelogs), house blogs, fashion blogs, project blogs, education blogs, niche blogs, classical music blogs, quizzing blogs and legal blogs (often referred to as a blawgs) or dreamlogs. Two common types of genre blogs are art blogs and music blogs. A blog featuring discussions especially about home and family is not uncommonly called a mom blog. While not a legitimate type of blog, one used for the sole purpose of spamming is known as a Splog.

Blogs By media type

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

A blog comprising videos is called a vlog, one comprising links is called a linklog, a site containing a portfolio of sketches is called a sketchblog or one comprising photos is called a photoblog.[10] Blogs with shorter posts and mixed media types are called tumblelogs. Blogs that are written on typewriters and then scanned are called typecast or typecast blogs; see typecasting (blogging).

A rare type of blog hosted on the Gopher Protocol is known as a Phlog.

Blogs by device

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Blogs can also be defined by which type of device is used to compose it. A blog written by a mobile device like a mobile phone or PDA could be called a moblog. One early blog was Wearable Wireless Webcam, an online shared diary of a person's personal life combining text, video, and pictures transmitted live from a wearable computer and EyeTap device to a web site. This practice of semi-automated blogging with live video together with text was referred to as sousveillance. Such journals have been used as evidence in legal matters.

Mommy blog

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Family-and-homemaking blogs are weblog which feature commentary and discussions especially about home, family, and parenting. Appellations in media reports of "mom blog," "dad blog," "parenting blog" and "family blog" refer to blogs of this type. Businesses seek to run advertising for household items and children's merchandise on blogs of this type. The greater proportion of authors of blogs of this type is women

Blog carnival

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

A blog carnival is a type of blog event. It is similar to a magazine, in that it is dedicated to a particular topic, and is published on a regular schedule, often weekly or monthly. Each edition of a blog carnival is in the form of a blog article that contains permalinks to other blog articles on the particular topic.

Carnival posts are generally collated by the author by soliciting relevant contributions from interested people. The author collects links to these submissions, edits and annotates them and publishes the resulting round-up to his or her blog. Many carnivals have a home page or principal organizer, who lines up guest bloggers to host each edition. This means that the carnival travels, appearing on a different blog each time.

Blog search engines

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Several blog search engines are used to search blog contents, such as Bloglines, BlogScope, and Technorati. Technorati, which is among the most popular blog search engines, provides current information on both popular searches and tags used to categorize blog postings. The research community is working on going beyond simple keyword search, by inventing new ways to navigate through huge amounts of information present in the blogosphere, as demonstrated by projects like BlogScope

Spambot

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

A spambot is an automated computer program designed to collect or harvest e-mail addresses from the Internet in order to build mailing lists for sending unsolicited e-mail, also known as spam. A spambot can gather e-mail addresses from web sites, newsgroups, special-interest group (SIG) postings, and chat-room conversations. Because e-mail addresses have a distinctive format, spambots are easy to write.

: Email spamboats

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

E-mail spambots collect e-mail addresses from the Internet in order to build mailing lists for sending unsolicited e-mail, also known as spam. Such spambots are Web crawlers that can gather e-mail addresses from web sites, newsgroups, special-interest group (SIG) postings, and chat-room conversations. Because e-mail addresses have a distinctive format, spambots are easy to write. A number of legislators in the US are reported to be devising laws that would outlaw the spambot.

A number of programs and approaches have been devised to foil spambots. One such technique is known as address munging, in which an e-mail address is deliberately modified so that a human reader (and/or human-controlled web browser) can decode it but simple spambots cannot. This has led to the evolution of sophisticated spambots that can recover e-mail addresses from character strings that appear to be munged, or rendering the text into a web browser and then scraping the rendered text for e-mail addresses. Alternative transparent techniques include displaying all or part of the e-mail address on a webpage as an image, a text logo shrunken to normal size using inline CSS, or as text with the order of characters jumbled and restoring the order using CSS, where users are then able to see the address. Although these methods combat spambots, some are not compatible with web page accessibility standards.

E-mail blockers

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

The term spambot is sometimes used in reference to a program designed to prevent spam from reaching the subscribers of an Internet service provider (ISP). Such programs are more often called e-mail blockers or filters. Occasionally, such a blocker may inadvertently prevent a legitimate e-mail message from reaching a subscriber. This can be prevented by allowing each subscriber to generate a whitelist, or a list of specific e-mail addresses the blocker should let pass.

Forum spambots

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Forum spambots surf the web, looking for guestbooks, wikis, blogs, forums and any other web forms to submit spam links to the web forms it finds. These spambots often use OCR technology to bypass CAPTCHAs present. Some spam messages are targeted towards readers and can involve techniques of target marketing or even phishing, making it hard to tell real posts from the bot generated ones. Not all of the spam posts are meant for the readers; some spam messages are simply hyperlinks intended to boost search engine ranking.

This category of spambots has gained considerable notoriety since November 2006, with the introduction of XRumer, a forum and wiki spambot which can often bypass many of the safeguards administrators use to reduce the amount of spam posted.

The easiest way to prevent spambots from posting on forums, wiki, guestbook, etc. is to enable e-mail activation by installing a mail server on the host (eg: Sendmail, Postfix, Exim.), since most spambot scripts use fake or randomly generated names on real e-mail providers, the e-mails will mostly never be successfully routed to them

Spamdexing

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Spamdexing (also known as search spam or search engine spam) involves a number of methods, such as repeating unrelated phrases, to manipulate the relevancy or prominence of resources indexed by a search engine, in a manner inconsistent with the purpose of the indexing system. Some consider it to be a part of search engine optimization, though there are many search engine optimization methods that improve the quality and appearance of the content of web sites and serve content useful to many users.

Search engines use a variety of algorithms to determine relevancy ranking. Some of these include determining whether the search term appears in the META keywords tags, others whether the search term appears in the body text or URL of a web page.

Many search engines check for instances of spamdexing and will remove suspect pages from their indexes. Also, people working for a search-engine organization can quickly block the results-listing from entire web sites that use spamdexing, perhaps alerted by user complaints of false matches. The rise of spamdexing in the mid-1990s made the leading search engines of the time less useful.

Sybil Attack

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

This is the forging of multiple identities for malicious intent, named after the famous multiple personality disorder patient "Sybil" (Shirley Ardell Mason). A spammer may create multiple web sites at different domain names that all link to each other, such as fake blogs known as spam blogs.

A Sybil attack is one in which an attacker subverts the reputation system of a peer-to-peer network by creating a large number of pseudonymous entities, using them to gain a disproportionately large influence. A reputation system's vulnerability to a Sybil attack depends on how cheaply identities can be generated, the degree to which the reputation system accepts inputs from entities that do not have a chain of trust linking them to a trusted entity, and whether the reputation system treats all entities identically.

Page hijacking

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

This is achieved by creating a rogue copy of a popular web site which shows contents similar to the original to a web crawler but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious web sites.

Page hijacking is a form of search engine index spamming. It is achieved by creating a rogue copy of a popular web site which shows contents similar to the original to a web crawler, but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious web sites. Spammers can use this technique to achieve high rankings in result pages for certain key words.

Page hijacking is a form of cloaking, made possible because some web crawlers detect duplicates while indexing web pages. If two pages have the same content, only one of the URLs will be kept. A spammer will try to ensure that the rogue website is the one shown on the result pages.

In some cases, legitimate web pages can be edited by external advertisers via XSS and redirected to promoting web site.

Page hijacking

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

This is achieved by creating a rogue copy of a popular web site which shows contents similar to the original to a web crawler but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious web sites.

In some cases, legitimate web pages can be edited by external advertisers via XSS and redirected to promoting web site.

Page hijacking

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

This is achieved by creating a rogue copy of a popular web site which shows contents similar to the original to a web crawler but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious web sites.

In some cases, legitimate web pages can be edited by external advertisers via XSS and redirected to promoting web site.

Mousetrapping

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Mousetrapping is a technique used by some web sites to keep visitors from leaving their web site, either by launching an endless series of pop-up ads —known colloquially as a circle jerk—or by re-launching their web site in a window that cannot be closed (sometimes this window runs like a stand-alone application, and the taskbar and the browser's menu become inaccessible). Many web sites that do this also employ browser hijackers to reset the user's default homepage.

Typosquatting

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Typosquatting, also called URL hijacking, is a form of cybersquatting which relies on mistakes such as typographical errors made by Internet users when inputting a web site address into a web browser. Should a user accidentally enter an incorrect web site address, they may be led to an alternative web site owned by a cybersquatter.

Selling PR - Blatantly advertising the fact that your high PR site will sell a link to another site in order to boost that site's PR is another big no-no. Selling advertising in the form of a link on your site is perfectly acceptable. Selling a link for the stated or implied purpose of increasing a site's PR is not.

Mirror web sites

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Hosting of multiple web sites all with conceptually similar content but using different URLs. Some search engines give a higher rank to results where the keyword searched for appears in the URL.

In computing, a disk is an exact copy of a data set. On the Internet, a mirror site is an exact copy of another Internet site. Mirror sites are most commonly used to provide multiple sources of the same information, and are of particular value as a way of providing reliable access to large downloads. Mirroring is a type of file synchronization.

A live mirror is automatically updated as soon as the original is changed.

Avoid multiple identical sites and multiple domains

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

In order to increase PR, some web masters will create and interlink multiple pages all with identical or very similar content. This is not allowed.

Creating multiple domains that redirect to one page is not allowed. Also, creating multiple domains with the same or nearly the same content and then interlinking them is a no-no. If you have multiple sites place unique content on each site. Doing otherwise will result in a ban or penalty

Why mirroring of sites occurs?

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

To preserve a web site or page, especially when it is closed or is about to be closed.

• To allow faster downloads for users at a specific geographical location.

• To counteract censorship and promote freedom of information.

• To provide access to otherwise unavailable information.

• To preserve historic content.

• To balance load.

• As a temporary measure to counterbalance a sudden, temporary increase in traffic.

• To increase a site's ranking in a search engine by placing hyperlinks from each mirror to every other mirror (a technique known as link farming).

• Rarely, as a form of plagiarism; this is, however, usually pointless, as a web site popular enough to be worth plagiarizing will quickly discover the copy as soon as one of their many readers stumbles onto the plagiarized site.

• As a form of raising advertising revenue.

• To serve as a method of circumventing firewalls.

How SEO Works

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Most crawler-based search engines have three key ingredients:

• The spider or crawler that seeks out a web page, reads it and follows links to other pages on the site. These powerful little tech-mites return every few weeks to look for changes and adjust results.

• An indexed archive where all content uncovered by the spiders is stored. Also known as the catalog, it contains a copy of every Web page found, and is updated as a web site changes or grows – for example, when you add new products.

• Software that zips through the index database to “match” search requests and rank them by relevance. Because most crawler-based search engines use their own technology, search results vary between them.

How Search Engines Rank Web Sites?

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Internet search engines don’t interact with users and ask for more details or use judgment and past experience to rank Web pages.

Instead, they rely on mathematic formulas called “algorithms.” Despite what you may hear, nobody but the search engine owner knows exactly how their algorithm works.

But they do follow a universal practice known as the keyword location/frequency method. Search engines look over your web site to see if the search keywords show up at the top your pages, in the headlines or the first few lines of text content.

They assume that any page relevant to a given search topic will mention those magic words right from the start. “Frequency” is how often keywords appear in relation to other words on a web page. Those with higher frequency are given more relevance, and higher rankings.

: Some Cautions

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Nobody can guarantee you top rankings – much less the top slots – on Google or other major search engines. Some providers claim to have “unique” relationships with them, or an “inside” source that will get your web site to prime time. Don’t believe it.

The simple truth is that you can’t “buy” your way to the top, because position is never sold. One scam promises top placement, but gets your site only in lists of paid ads, not overall search results, where you need to be.

Rigging the system like making white text (repeating the same keyword on a white background) can actually hurt your placement.

Look around for quality SEO software packages:

• Check in with SEO discussion boards or online forums to see what current users are saying and draw on their advice.

• Ask the SEO provider if it reports any violations of search engine guidelines it finds to Google’s anti-spam project.

• To gauge SEO specialists’ trustworthiness, ask for a money-back guarantee or some other refund if you’re not happy with their work – and get it in writing

SEO Best Practices

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

• Get the most from your URL

• Be specific and creative with your domain name. Use one that uniquely identifies your company and your brand.

• Create search-friendly page titles

• Be sure to use relevant keywords first in your page titles, and keep them under 60 characters.

• Don’t use “home page” in your title

• Studies show it decreases your Google ranking.

• Highlight your keywords

• Be sure the individual words and phrases are in the metatags description of your site, which you build into the code with your design or site-builder software. The description should be no more than 200 characters long.

• Focus on density

• Use multiple key words in a coherent, creative and compelling way on your pages. Be sure your keyword “density” is never more than 5 percent for pages with a lot of text, or 10 percent for pages with little copy, or your rankings could nosedive. SEOChat.com has a free keyword density tool.

• Emphasize your text links

• The wording of the links on each of your Web pages is one of the most important requirements of SEO, and will significantly affect your search engine ranking. They should always include relevant keywords.

• Keyword stemming

• Including all the possible variations of your keywords is called “stemming.” For example, variations of the keyword “optimization” include “optimal,” “optimize” and “optimum.” UsingEnglish.com has a free tool to find similar or stem words.

• Page linking

• Be sure every page on your site is linked to the other pages. Search spiders follow these trails to rank your web site.

• The 2-Click Rule

• As we discussed in Step 4, navigating around your site should be as easy as possible for your customers. The same goes for search engines. Be sure that every page on your new business Web site is at most only two clicks away from the home page.

Register with Search Engines

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

If your Web site is built according to a set guidelines, search engines will find you on their own.

But you can give the process a goose by registering your new site with them.

Start by submitting your URL to the top search engines, including Google, Yahoo and MSN. Basic registration is free. A great clearinghouse for many other search engine links and advice on how to get higher rankings can be found at SearchEngineWatch.com.

You can also use registration sites. They’ll want to sell you additional Web marketing and SEO services, and if you’re sold, go ahead.

Registering is simple, usually little more than entering your complete URL in a form. Sometimes you’re asked for a brief description of your new Web site. Don’t just dash it off. Include two or three keywords that will act as search magnets – one more way to improve SEO.

Buy Ads for Better Placement

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Paid advertising on major search engines is one method used by many businesses to help them climb in rankings. Lately, opinion has been sharply divided on whether the return on investment is high enough to justify the costs or if there are enough safeguards against fraud by competitors.

Before you spend the money, research the pros and cons of specific cost-per-click (CPC) programs and other advertising-related ranking services. Forums such as those hosted by DigitalPoint.com, SEOChat.com, HighRankings.com and many others will supply plenty of guidance for making a smart choice.

: Online advertising models

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

These are the two major online advertising models being used now:

Paid Placement. Sometimes referred to as “Search” or “Keyword” Marketing, Paid Placement advertisers buy a place in a section reserved for them on search results pages. When you hear “pay for placement” and “cost-per-click,” this is also referring to Paid Placement.

Paid Inclusion. You can buy your way into a search engine’s listings quickly, but they’re usually quick to tell you there are no guarantees for improved rankings. Still, it’s a way to get fast visibility while waiting for crawlers to find and list your pages

Pay-Per-Click

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Pay-per-click advertising providers charge a small fee, adjusted according to the competition for your chosen search keywords, for each potential customer who clicks on your ad to visit your site.

Pay per click (PPC) is an Internet advertising model used on web sites, in which advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. Content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click rather than use a bidding system

Some advantages of Pay-Per-Click advertising

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Affordability: Whatever your budget, simple online tools tailor (and limit) your spending to what you can afford.
Performance: You only pay for people who click on your ad.
Targeted Campaigns: You can aim your ads at very specific market segments, and geographic areas as small as 10 square miles.
Adaptability: You can change you ad daily or weekly to compare response rates and effectiveness.
Simplicity: Because these keyword ads are text based, you don’t need a high-priced creative director to design your ads. Can you type? With a little bit of imagination you can effectively run a campaign.

The basics of Web site security

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Fortunately, just a little bit of legwork can help you determine if your site is properly protected.

• Choose a respected and established Web hosting provider. Your host will be your first line of defence. Don’t be afraid to ask questions about what it does for security.

• Be sure that your Web host maintains tight physical security where it keeps its servers. It should also perform regular backups so that your site will stay up and running even if a server goes down.

• Watch out for unusual activity on your web site. A sudden spike in bandwidth usage may be a tip-off that a hacker has infiltrated your site.

• Consider hiring an IT or security professional or consultant to test your site’s defences. This is especially important if you work with highly sensitive data like customers’ health information or financial data.

• Restrict employee access to your web site. Only those who absolutely must be able to update it should have the password and/or administrative privileges. Change the password on a regular basis.

Page title tags --- Dos and donts

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

• Accurately describe the page's content - Choose a title that effectively communicates the topic of the page's content.

Avoid:

• choosing a title that has no relation to the content on the page

• using default or vague titles like "Untitled" or "New Page 1"

• Create unique title tags for each page

• Using a single title tag across all of your site's pages or a large group of pages

• Using brief, but descriptive titles - Titles can be both short and informative.

• Using extremely lengthy titles

• Stuffing unneeded keywords in your title tags

Sping

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Sping is short for "spam ping", and is related to pings from blogs using trackbacks, called trackback spam. Pings are messages sent from blog and publishing tools to a centralized network service (a ping server) providing notification of newly published posts or content. Spings, or ping spam, are pings that are sent from spam blogs, or are sometimes multiple pings in a short interval from a legitimate source, often tens or hundreds per minute, due to misconfigured software, or a wish to make the content coming from the source appear fresh.

How to Get Backlinks

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

A backlink is nothing more than a web site address, or URL, posted on a third party web site. This is one of the most valuable online marketing techniques. However, it can be difficult to find the most effective way of getting backlinks to your web site.

One good way of getting backlinks is through submitting articles. The articles must be of a high quality and submitted to reputable online directories, as they are typically treated with greater importance by search engines. Care must be taken not to flood online directories with irrelevant pieces where it is clear the backlink is the aim, as this can prove to be counter productive.

A blog is also a great place to direct people back to your main web site. The use of third party blogs can also be beneficial. Commenting on a blog with a related topic, and providing a backlink to your site, is one way.

A well targeted public relations campaign has the potential to generate immediate traffic to your web site. A Press Release is a great way to get backlinks to your site. Social networking sites also provide a fantastic opportunity to increase your web site traffic through back links.

Backlink Development

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

One of the most important aspects of any SEO campaign is backlink development. Backlinks are links contained on third party web sites that direct traffic to your own web site. Strategic backlinks are extremely important to natural search engine rankings which can lead to highly targeted traffic direct to your web site.

There are two separate types of backlinks:

One-way backlinks, and
Reciprocal backlinks.

One-way backlinks are where you have a link to your web site from another web site with similar content. Reciprocal backlinks are where you have a link to your web site from another site and you provide a link in return.

How to Get One-Way Backlinks

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

One-way backlinks are extremely important to the success of your web site. The more backlinks to your site, the higher you will rank on search engine results. However, it can be difficult to get the right quality one-way backlinks from high quality sites. Here are some approaches you may like to try:

1. Write as much high quality content as you can, as this will encourage people to link to your web site. Make the articles informative, relevant and interesting to attract people.

2. Submit quality articles to top article directories. This means you will get a backlink from a high page rank directory and the possibility of your articles being used on other peoples web sites, with a backlink to your web site.

3. Be an active participant in forums and discussion boards that are related to your web sites niche. Add a link to your web site in your signature. However, be careful not to spam.

4. Submit your web site to major directories. This will increase traffic to your web site and help improve your search engine page ranking.

Hidden text

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Some webmasters will place hidden keywords on a page and make the font color the same as the background colour (for example white text on a white background). This renders the text invisible to the human eye but the search engine spiders can still see it. This results in a higher Page Rank and search engine listing for those keywords. Hidden text is often used on a doorway page

Hidden links

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

The number of pages that link to one of your pages has a direct effect on how high your page appears in the search results (and that Page's rank). As with hiding text, hiding links will also result in a ban or Page rank penalty.

Hidden links and text are designed to be seen only by a Search Engine Spider and as such are hidden from human users. Tactics used to include having white text on a white background, incredibly small text, links on full stops and other equally as crafty techniques!

Link farms

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

On the World Wide Web, a link farm is any group of web sites that all hyperlink to every other site in the group. Although some link farms can be created by hand, most are created through automated programs and services. A link farm is a form of spamming the index of a search engine (sometimes called spamdexing or spamexing). Other link exchange systems are designed to allow individual web sites to selectively exchange links with other relevant websites and are not considered a form of spamdexing.

A link farm is loosely defined as a page that lists links solely or mainly for the purpose of achieving a high page rank.

Page rank

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

PageRank is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page, used by the Google Internet search engine that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references. The numerical weight that it assigns to any given element E is also called the PageRank of E and denoted by PR(E).

The name "PageRank" is a trademark of Google. However, the patent is assigned to Stanford University and not to Google.

False or spoofed Page Rank

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

While the Page Rank shown in the Toolbar is considered to be derived from an accurate Page Rank value for most sites, it must be noted that this value used to be easily manipulated. A previous flaw was that any low Page Rank page that was redirected, via a 302 server header or a "Refresh" metatags , to a high Page Rank page caused the lower Page Rank page to acquire the Page Rank of the destination page. In theory a new, PR 0 page with no incoming links could have been redirected to the Google home page - which is a PR 10 - and by the next update the PR of the new page would be upgraded to a PR10.

This spoofing technique, also known as 302 Google Jacking, was a known failing or bug in the system. Any page's Page Rank could have been spoofed to a higher or lower number of the webmaster's choice and only Google has access to the real Page Rank of the page. Spoofing is generally detected by running a Google search for a URL with questionable Page Rank, as the results will display the URL of an entirely different site (the one redirected to) in its results.

Web crawler

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

A Web crawler is a computer program that browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner. Other terms for Web crawlers are ants, automatic indexers, bots, and worms or Web spider, Web robot, or Web scutter.

This process is called Web crawling.

Many sites, in particular search engines, use it as a means of providing up-to-date data.

Web crawlers are mainly used to create a copy of all the visited pages for later processing by a search engine that will index the downloaded pages to provide fast searches. Crawlers can also be used for automating maintenance tasks on a web site, such as checking links or validating HTML code. Also, crawlers can be used to gather specific types of information from web pages, such as harvesting e-mail addresses (usually for spam).

A Web crawler is one type of bot, or software agent. In general, it starts with a list of URLs to visit, called the seeds. As the crawler visits these URLs, it identifies all the hyperlinks in the page and adds them to the list of URLs to visit, called the crawl frontier. URLs from the frontier are recursively visited according to a set of policies.

Crawler identification

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Web crawlers typically identify themselves to a Web server by using the User-agent field of an HTTP request. Web site administrators typically examine their Web servers’ log and use the user agent field to determine which crawlers have visited the web server and how often. The user agent field may include a URL where the Web site administrator may find out more information about the crawler.

Web crawlers are unlikely to place identifying information in the user agent field, or they may mask their identity as a browser or other well-known crawler.

It is important for Web crawlers to identify themselves so that web site administrators can contact the owner if needed. In some cases, crawlers may be accidentally trapped in a crawler trap or they may be overloading a Web server with requests, and the owner needs to stop the crawler. Identification is also useful for administrators that are interested in knowing when they may expect their Web pages to be indexed by a particular search engine.

Some Web crawlers

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

The following is a list of published crawler architectures for general-purpose crawlers (excluding focused web crawlers), with a brief description that includes the names given to the different components and outstanding features:

• Yahoo Crawler (Slurp) is the name of the Yahoo Search crawler.

• MSNBot is the name of Microsoft's Bing webcrawler.

• FAST Crawler is a distributed crawler, used by Fast Search & Transfer, and a general description of its architecture is available.[citation needed]

• Google Crawler: early version of its architecture was based in C++ and Python.

• Methabot is a scriptable web crawler written in C, released under the ISC license.

• PolyBot is a distributed crawler written in C++ and Python, which is composed of a "crawl manager", one or more "downloaders" and one or more "DNS resolvers".

• RBSE was the first published web crawler. It was based on two programs: the first program, "spider" maintains a queue in a relational database, and the second program "mite", is a modified www ASCII browser that downloads the pages from the Web.

• WebCrawler was used to build the first publicly-available full-text index of a subset of the Web. It was based on lib-WWW to download pages, and another program to parse and order URLs for breadth-first exploration of the Web graph. It also included a real-time crawler that followed links based on the similarity of the anchor text with the provided query.

• World Wide Web Worm was a crawler used to build a simple index of document titles and URLs. The index could be searched by using the grep Unix command.

• WebFountain is a distributed, modular crawler similar to Mercator but written in C++. It features a "controller" machine that coordinates a series of "ant" machines. After repeatedly downloading pages, a change rate is inferred for each page and a non-linear programming method must be used to solve the equation system for maximizing freshness. The authors recommend to use this crawling order in the early stages of the crawl, and then switch to a uniform crawling order, in which all pages are being visited with the same frequency.

• WebRACE is a crawling and caching module implemented in Java, and used as a part of a more generic system called eRACE. The system receives requests from users for downloading web pages, so the crawler acts in part as a smart proxy server. The system also handles requests for "subscriptions" to Web pages that must be monitored: when the pages change, they must be downloaded by the crawler and the subscriber must be notified. The most outstanding feature of WebRACE is that, while most crawlers start with a set of "seed" URLs, WebRACE is continuously receiving new starting URLs to crawl from.

Blog

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

A blog (a contraction of the term "weblog") is a type of web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (Art blog), photographs (photoblog), videos (Video blogging), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting). Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts.

Blog

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Personal blogs

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

The personal blog, an ongoing diary or commentary by an individual, is the traditional, most common blog. Personal bloggers usually take pride in their blog posts, even if their blog is never read by anyone but them. Blogs often become more than a way to just communicate; they become a way to reflect on life or works of art. Blogging can have a sentimental quality. Few personal blogs rise to fame and the mainstream, but some personal blogs quickly garner an extensive following. A type of personal blog is referred to as "microblogging," which is extremely detailed blogging as it seeks to capture a moment in time. Web sites, such as Twitter, allow bloggers to share thoughts and feelings instantaneously with friends and family and is much faster than e-mailing or writing.

GOING FOR QUALITY BACKLINKS

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

A good way to advance in search results is to apply quality backlinks to your Web site. A backlink is any link that points to your Web site. The more you have, the more popular your site may appear.

But with regard to search engine optimization (SEO), it's not the quantity of backlinks to your site that matters; it's the quantity of QUALITY backlinks. A Web site for sports car enthusiasts that has backlinks from a multitude of cooking schools, pet supply stores, and fabric wholesalers is not going to rank very high in searches for sports cars. The best way to establish the quality of a backlink is to determine if the keywords of the other Web site are similar to yours. If they are, search results will be optimized in your favor.

To locate candidates for quality backlinks, enter your best keywords into a search engine. Your search will turn up Web sites and blogs that use those words. When you find one that could offer a quality backlink, ask the Webmaster for a reciprocal link. Another way to locate candidates is to explore link directories for suitable Web sites.

The most effective way is to contact ABIJOYE about their Internet Marketing and SEO services. The teams at ABIJOYE understand how the strategies work and can assemble the best approach for your Internet Marketing needs, developing a good SEO profile with well researched quality backlinks.

Blackhat backlink development buffer circle

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Blackhat backlink development buffer circle

When developing backlinks for a long term project you are better off either sticking to whitehat techniques or creating a buffer circle in case you get slapped by one of the search engines. (”One of the search engines” sounds somewhat inappropriate. How many of them still play a significant part in your SEO efforts? Yahoo and Google? Possibly Live stumbling along and getting out of breath every few steps. Anyhow…)

If you want to take a safe approach you should not just bombard your main domain directly. Create a buffer zone using various resources freely available to you. Create a free blog or a squidoo lens and point it to your main domain. Now you can unleash your blackhat campaign on that buffer zone without having to worry about your main domain. You will still get to keep most of the link juice, however if something goes wrong it will be that free blog taking a fall for you and not your precious website. There are tons of various pages and blogs web 2.0 offers so spread out, make your circles wider and replace any fallen pages with new ones.

How important are back-links?

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

How important are back-links?

Once you have developed a website that has positive density percentages and reciprocal back-links, Google will perform a mathematic equation and assign your website a numeric value based on your reciprocal or back-links.

According to Google, back-links deserve higher rankings because other people value what your website has to offer; therefore they provide a link to your site. When you choose to have a reciprocating back-link to return the favor to the other website, Google rewards your website for creating a connection.

Why take advantage of our back-link development program?

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Why take advantage of our back-link development program?

Although back-links seem to be easy enough to handle on your own, there are drawbacks. As your website changes and/or those websites you are affiliated with make changes, a hyperlink could be dropped or a page could accidentally be deleted. When this happens, Google robot will go through your website and find a dead-link. To Google, this indicates you are not taking care of your website. Google will then penalize your website by reducing its point value.

AJIBOYE can help you find your point value and help you keep your website’s back-links maintained to ensure a high point value. It is important to maintain your website, especially if you are sharing reciprocal links with other websites. If they receive a lower point value because you are not maintaining your site, than you can be sure they will be in contact with you.

Take advantage of our back-link development program. We will spend the time researching and acquiring back-links that search engines will mark as valuable and relevant. Back-link development, as well as our Search Engine Optimization services and Keyword Analysis, can be a prevailing process for your Search Engine Marketing campaign.

90% of Your Target Market Ignores Paid Advertising!

Natural Search Engines are Essential for Success.

Ajiboye’s Back-Link Development program will develop a back-link process for your Search Engine Marketing campaign. We will focus on the two main types of back-links, which are one way back-links and reciprocal back-links.

We will install a reciprocal-link management program to manage link exchanges with other websites that offer valuable and significant content for your website.

To have a successful website, it is important to understand how search engines work. These days, the Internet is competitive and complex. A quality source of back-links is important to draw attention to your site to search engines; which will give you a higher ranking, which will in turn, attract potential customers and clients to your website, resulting in potentially higher profits.

Most Popular Backlinks Strategies: Natural Backlinks

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Creating high quality backlinks is an essential part of internet marketing. Backlinks brings new visitors to your website and they also increase the “value” of the website for search engines. The website with larger amount of high quality relevant backlinks will be displayed higher is the search results than that with only a few backlinks.

So, a natural question arises here: “Where do I get backlinks for my website”. As a matter of fact there is no a universal solution to build backlinks, however, there are several proven and most widely-used backlinks techniques, that can be used for building your own backlink strategy.

Natural Backlinks

One of the basic Google recommendations on search engine optimization encourages webmasters to think about their actual website’s visitors rather than about search engines. Once your website content is interesting and useful for people, they will not only visit you again, they will also publish links to your website on their own sites, blogs, and forums, thus providing your website with the so called “natural backlinks”. As you website grows, such backlinks will appear without your participation.

Most Popular Backlinks Strategies: Directories Submissions

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

One of the earliest backlinks techniques ever developed, this is still a very commonly used method of getting backlinks for the purpose of internet marketing. There thousands of multiple web directories, where you can publish URL of your website along with short information about it. You can use both local directories to get local internet traffic, or you can use international directories to get visitors from around the globe. The choice is up to you. Directories submissions are usually free of charge. Everything you have to do is to find a relevant directory and submit the information on your site into it.

There is one directory that is considered to be the most reputable in the Internet. It is called Open Directory or DMOZ. When the site URL is published in the Open Directory, this is a very significant sign of website’s success and value. However, submission to this directory is not that easy, because all the submissions are reviewed by humans, and it takes pretty much time to have your website published at DMOZ. Besides, if you will provide incorrect data, you submission will fail. However, once your website is published at DMOZ, you can congratulate yourself on passing one of the most significant milestones in website internet marketing.

Finally, one more note about directories submissions – there are multiple software applications as well as online services, offering free and quick submitting your website URL into thousands of web directories. Please, be extremely careful with using such services – in 98% percents you will get tons of spam in your mailbox, but no qualitative backlinks.

Most Popular Backlinks Strategies: Forums and Blogs

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Forums and blogs is another powerful technique to build backlinks within your internet marketing campaign. For example, if you are selling books on your website, create your own blog at one of the free blogging service and publish short book reviews, summaries, announcements or some other useful information about books and literature with the links to your website. Regular updated blog, which is interesting for people, will soon get regular visitors and followers, giving your primary website a substantial amount of quality backlinks and targeted traffic.

You can also start posting at some online forums, dedicated to you field of activities. Start your own topics, or post comments to the topics, initiated by other forum members, and do not forget to include links to your website – and you will get backlinks from that forums as well. Just do not forget to check forum’s rules, because some of them may not allow or restrict publishing links to user’s own websites.

Most Popular Backlinks Strategies: Articles and Press-Releases Distribution

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Articles and Press-releases writing and distribution has become one of the popular techniques of internet marketing a long ago. There are dozens of free articles databases in the Internet. Write an interesting, easy to read and useful article about the things you are dealing with on your primary website, and submit it to one or several articles databases. Do not forget to link key words in your article with your website, and you will also get a good source of traffic for your website.

Most Popular Backlinks Strategies: Video Backlinks and Social Marketing

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Video Backlinks

Webmasters started to consider video as one of the options to get backlinks relatively recently. The idea is based on the suggestion that people now prefer watching video than reading articles. So, you can create you own video and share it via YouTube, for example. When uploading your video, you will get a chance to create a backlink to your website. Supply your video with the relevant tags to make it easy for other people find your video file. The audience of such video sharing services as YouTube is really huge, so the chances to get targeted traffic from there are really high.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is another new way of backlinks building and internet marketing. Services, such as Digg.com, Del.icio.us, technorati.com and others have already become a powerful means to add, manage and share the bookmarks online among internet users. Supply you website with the buttons, allowing you visitors to bookmark your website with one or several bookmarking services and you will get another constantly-working backlinks building technique.

Sometimes social bookmarking services are compared with search engines in their potential to categorize the websites. As a matter of fact, social bookmarking has particular benefits over traditional search engine techniques. In social bookmarking it is a human, who bookmark a particular website and supplies it with corresponding tags, reflecting the content of that website.

Search engines, on the other hand, rely only on particular algorithms, processed by machines to “understand” what the website is about and where to display it in the search results. Consequently, social bookmarking may provide higher quality categorization of the websites in comparison to search engines. However, the human factor in social bookmarking is also often a source of mistakes, for example, because of misspelling or wrong selection of tags.

Anyway, though there is a lot of space for improvements, social bookmarking has already become a valuable player in websites categorization and defining their actual value for visitors.

Internet Marketing Tool: The Advantages Of Backlink tools And Other Systems For Your Online Business Venture

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

The vast number of tools for Internet marketing often give aspirants quite a scare in developing their own online business. The thing about an Internet business is that many lack the appropriate knowledge and experience necessary to deal with the challenges that comes along with technical web support, and for this they have to invest in tools, certain strategies and consultancy so as to create good traffic for their websites, well-targeted visitors and a high ROI rate (or return on investment rate). To understand how the Internet marketing tools (such as backlink software) work, one needs to have a plan of the online marketing campaigns. The goal of the campaigns is quite clear but the procedure that will attract more customers takes a lot of time and work to implement in the process.

Here are some examples of Internet marketing tools (like the backlinks tool ) available for free download or those that would require a certain amount of fee. Take for instance the Google Website Optimizer, which is a software that increases the search engine performance and the pages’ ranking online. This tool would go hand in hand with programs that give analytical data about the people visiting the websites, and this would create statistical results to reveal how many of the visits have lead to transactions. Such tools come in an array of formats that are more or less cost-effective.

Other Internet marketing tools such as backlink system would contribute to the management quality or make better options of optimization for search engine performance. The lack of these analytic items would result to the impossibility of the data analysis related to the market response to one action or another, given the vast amount of information provided. Priorities can be spotted more easily, not to mention that putting together new action plans is significantly enhanced by the utilization of the right Internet marketing tools. Whether it’s about those advanced type of searches or the determination of the best keywords to use, the maintenance and promotion of the website are more complex than you’ve ever imagined.

When you choose the right Internet marketing tools (like the backlinks tool ), you should ask for professional assistance, due to the fact that you may pay for a tool or software that’s for free with other service providers. For this, it’s a wise investment to contract a web site consultancy agency to cover all the marketing issues related to the online business promotion. Unfortunately, people who think that they can discover the tools as they expand their business are more likely to experience failure than those who acknowledge their limits and seek help from the pros right from the start.

What is a back-link?

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

In general terms, a back link is a link on a third-party site that leads back to your site. Back links are the key to raising your ranking in search engines and as a result garnering more traffic to your site. There are two types of back links – one-way and reciprocal. One-way links are pretty self-explanatory; they are a link from one web page to another. Reciprocal links are made in agreement between two webmasters who agree to exchange links with one another. These are not quite as useful as one-way links because search engines will sometimes discount these links because of the “secret” agreement between the sites.

Backlinks and their importance

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

If youve done any research into search engine optimisation you would have probably stumbled across the term backlink. Backlinks are hyperlinks that point to your website that are found on other peoples sites. Google and other search engines use these links to determine how important your website is. For example, consider the search term click here. On Google, if you perform this search youll find that Adobe Acrobat Readers website is ranked at the number 1 spot. How can this be?

If you click on Adobe Reader’s site and search for the term “click here” I don’t think you’ll find it. The reason search engines think it is the most relevant is because websites all over the planet point a backlink to this website with the anchor text “click here”. The anchor text is the wording that the user sees over a hyperlink. With all these millions of websites pointing to Acrobat Reader for this keyword searches engines rank it incredibly highly for this term.

What Makes a Good Quality Backlink?

With the previous example you’ll hopefully see that backlinks are very important. Howwever, you can get different qualities of backlinks… Backlinks that come from pages that Google considers important (those with a high pagerank) are more important than those that Google doesn’t consider important. If you could get a backlink from the BBC website or Wiki this would be a great quality backlink.

Google also considers the quantity of backlinks, although this may not be as important as quality. The truth is, nobody really knows the Google algorithm.

Another way to improve the backlink is to make sure your backlinks come from pages that are relevant to your own. E.g. if someone owns an estate agent website and points a backlink at a dentist’s website, there is no relevance between the sites so Google will probably not put a lot of weight behind the backlink.

Creating backlinks

You can get backlinks via a number of places – posting articles on websites, writing blogs or replying on forums, all these places can allow you to leave a signature, and within this you may be able to create one or two backlinks. If you ignore backlinks you will probably not get a good ranking, and if competing websites get a lot, you’ll be at a disadvantage.

Why Backlinks Are Important for Website Success?

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

When the search engines developers understood that website relevancy cannot be defined based on HTML meta tags only, since the latter can be easily manipulated by website programmers, they created complicated algorithms to measure the real “value” of the particular website. Each search engine has its own algorithms of website ranking, and all of them are guarded day and night with the diligence of Knights Templar.

However, it is known that all the search engines now evaluate a great variety of variables to define the value of the website. Backlinks or to be more exact their quantitative and qualitative characteristics is one of the important factor to evaluate when trying to make a web site more friendly with the search engines. Backlinks development is also one of the core techniques in search engine optimization.

By definition, backlinks are incoming links to a particular website from other websites in the Internet. Here a simple logic work, if people publish links to your website on their own web pages, it means that they consider your website to be a valuable resource. Thus, search engines also consider a website with backlinks to be more valuable for visitors than that with no or lower amount of backlinks.

However, the amount of backlinks is not the only core factor to consider. Backlinks should be not only high in quantity, they should also be high in quality. What does this mean? Let us take a web site, reselling software, as an example. Here one backlink from a world-known software developer will be much more valuable than dozens of links from personal blogs or local website directories. In other words, if you are dealing with computers, the backlinks from other computer related sites are much more valuable than backlinks from websites, dealing with salads recipes.

You have probably heard about PageRank, developed by Google to hint the webmasters the value of their websites. Now, Google developed more sophisticated algorithms and PageRank is no longer a core value of the website, however it is helpful to illustrate the value of “right” backlinks. In PageRank the value of every website is estimated on a scale from 0 to 10. The higher PR value is, the more “valuable” website is and the more power it can “delegate” to your website through a backlink.

Thus, backlinks development is not only about increasing backlinks number, but it is also about researching the relevant websites with higher PR level and gaining backlinks from them.

Backlinking through Article Marketing

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 EDT

One way to get high quality backlinks from valuable websites is through article marketing.

Article marketing promotes your business or webpage by writing concise and helpful articles that are directly related to your business or industry. These articles are submitted to article directories. Directories are pretty popular and turn up among the top of the search results whenever anyone wants to know something. They can type in a key phrase in Google such as “how to brew beer” and article directories would show articles that explain how beer is brewed.

Article directories are a convenient source of information and, therefore, easy to find for users who may also be looking to purchase equipment or products they would need to, say, brew beer. When you submit an article to a directory, it includes a byline and a short description about you and your business, with contact information, AND a backlink to your site. When you establish backlinks to your landing page through the use of article directories and valuable webpages, you get more than just traffic. You get the visitors you’ve been targeting – already interested about your business and what you can do for them.

By writing good, helpful AND relevant articles, your credibility as an expert on the subject of, again, for example, brewing beer will increase in the market of people who are into it. And you know that credibility will bring in loyalty.