Link Building Tips For The Newbie Blogger

Let me ask you a question …

In terms of your online marketing efforts, what have you done to make sure that the search engines recognize you and your target market can find you?

If you have no idea what I’m talking about or, if the answer is “nothing,” then sadly, that’s exactly what you will be receiving when it comes to free web site traffic.

People who do business on the web are realizing that despite the fact that you can purchase traffic though Pay-Per-Clicks advertising, there is a great deal of benefit to attracting the attention of the search engines, from whom you can gain good quality, free, targeted traffic.

If you want targeted traffic from the search engines however, you have to harness the power of link building.

In fact, I’m going to tell you a little story …

Back in November 2007, the PageRank on my blog increased from 5 to 6 and naturally, I was overexcited. A few weeks later though, my blog was back down to a PageRank 5 again.

Now, I know there are all sorts of reasons for the PageRank increasing and then suddenly changing again in a short period of time but I was convinced that there had to have been something I did to lose my PR 6.

Well, after about 4 weeks, I found the problem …

I am registered with Jonathan Leger’s 3 Way Links program and since I was one of the early adopters, I had 250 links pointing to my site just from sites with the 3WayLinks.net system alone and what happened was that I moved my blog and forgot to set up the resources page which displays all of the links and my account was suspended …

250 backlinks wiped in a day!

It’s no wonder my PageRank went down. Google must have thought I was up to no good. I then discovered weeks after this that at the same time, my BlogRush account was suspended because again, I’d forgotten to set up the widget on my blog.

And yes, I expect to receive some comments telling me that losing the incoming links to my blog had nothing to do with anything, but I have tracked the time period and I’m confidently sure that losing 250 back links to my blog wouldn’t go unnoticed by Google for long.

So why are backlinks or incoming links important to your blog or website anyway?

When determining the ranking of your site, the search engines are really only interested in how popular your site is. This popularity is determined by how many sites are linking to you without you linking back to them.

So, by working on good link building you’ll be able to get to the top of the search engine’s list because of the “assumed” popularity of your site. It also means that you can rank highly for a keyword term that doesn’t even appear anywhere on your blog or web site.

If you don’t believe me, go to Google and type in the term “click here.” You’ll notice that Adobe.com is ranked #1 on Google for this search term and yet the term “click here” doesn’t appear anywhere on that page.

Why is this?

Everyone and anyone has a link from their website to the Adobe website explaining that the document the reader or purchaser is about to download is in PDF format and to be able to read the document, they will be required to “click here” and go to Adobe.com to download the free version of their Adobe Reader.

Because of the huge number of links going to Adobe.com, the search engines consider it to be a popular website and has given it more weighting or higher ranking than any other site trying to rank for the term “click here.”

In truth, who would want to rank for the search term “click here” but I use this example to get my point across.

How to you get your links on other people’s websites?

In my view, if you’re a blogger, the first thing you want to do is provide top quality content on your own site and then provide top quality blog comments on other people’s blogs. You can make the task of finding and commenting on other peoplel’s blogs much easier these days by using Comment Kahuna.

You then need to consider submitting good quality articles to articles directories.

You’ve seen sites like Ezinearticles.com and associatedcontent.com and you will notice that on many of the articles, there is a cleverly placed URL at the bottom.

Every article that you post to these article directories is one more link leading back to your site, and what’s more, other people can post the articles they find at the article directories on their blogs or, publish them to their ezine … including yours.

A word of caution when it comes to link building though … avoid using services that promise to broker link exchanges between you and other webmasters. Too often, this can lead to the search engines deciding that you are link spamming and it will penalize you by dropping your ranking which could be more damaging than if you’d done no link building at all.

This is not to say, however, that search engine optimization services are a bad idea. In fact, for many people who do not have the time or the energy to put into link building, outsourcing to an SEO company can be well worth the fees that they will charge in terms of the Return on Investment.

If you do intend outsourcing your search engine marketing though, look for a company that has a good reputation and that come highly recommended. Ask for references, and if necessary, ask to speak to a few of their previous clients. If they’re good, they will be excited to put you in touch with those they’ve achieved good results for … in other words, don’t shy away from being bold and asking. You want to ensure your money is going to be well spent.

Article marketing isn’t the only way to build links back to your website but it’s a great place to start if you have done little or no link building before. Other options include videos, podcasts and, blogging and if you have the inclination to do it, you can approach other webmasters direct and ask them to link back to your site. However, more often than not, they will not do so unless you reciprocate by linking back to them in return which isn’t as effective nowadays.

For more information on reciprocal linking, see my blog post entitled “Is Reciprocal Linking A Thing of The Past?”

One thing is for certain, link building as a means to getting higher search engine rankings isn’t going to go away any time soon so if you want to get found online, it’s time to start building.

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What’s The Big Deal With WordPress 2.5?

It is acually WordPress 2.5.1 at the time of writing this post, but what’s the big deal anyway?

I only began using Wordpress in Feb 2006 but to me, WordPress looks like the most major overhaul to date of the entire backend and, it was delayed for about three months because of the number of additional features the developers wanted to add.

If you’ve not upgraded yet or, you’re new to WordPress, you may not be familiar with the new user interface which now has a very light blue and grey color scheme. Under the user tab, you can now change the color scheme with one click to suit your preferred style.

However, the aim of this blog post really isn’t to give you a nice little overview of the new WordPress interface, but mainly to highlight that in my view, the new WordPress gave some indication of the direction of the Internet …

What do I mean?

When I started blogging in 2006, just to change the style of the font, you had to edit the code which, is way too technical for most people online. The first and only theme I use for my blogs, Semiologic, released a version many months later that would enable you to change the font with one click but WordPress themselves haven’t reached that level of sophistication yet. They have however changed the text editor to include some neat features to easily add audio, video.

Basically, with every change, WordPress puts the power of blogging into more and more people’s hands giving them less and less excuse not to blog.

They haven’t arrived yet, I was still a little shocked to note that whilst you can change the color of the header with one click, with all the talk about having a unique looking blog, WordPress still does not have a built in option to upload a new header with the click of the mouse.

Maybe I’m just spoilt having been used to Semiologic all these years, but I still think this and some basic elements like changing the font is something WordPress should consider for the future.

That said, I still think it’s worth upgrading but cannot stress that if you have a developer specific theme like Semiologic that you should WAIT until they have upgraded their theme to be compatible with WordPress 2.5.1 - the current version.

Don’t go crying to mommy if you take the chance and your blog breaks because, I can assure you, break it will!

Also, unless you are tech savvy, I would hold off upgrading until all the bugs are ironed out in both WordpPress and your developer’s theme. I have spent the past two weeks upgrading all of my blogs, but it really has eaten up chunks of my time … especially when the feed broke because there was a conflict with one of the plugins.

Still shying away from blogging?

Go and download my Jumpstart Blogging guide which will show you the easiest way to set up your blog … step-by-step.

Reviews: Share A Post - Blog Post Syndication

Jonathan Leger has done it again with Share A Post, his new blog post syndication software!  I just cannot keep up with the outstanding products that he’s been releasing lately for pennies compared to many of his guru competitors.

This one is free and I’ve been using it for the past couple of days and, I’m hooked.

Also, because it works on a Technorati tagging basis, your most important keywords will be picked up.

Here’s an article from the blog sharing site, giving you more information about Jonathan’s new software.

Enjoy and use!

*****************

Yesterday, I got an invitation for beta testing on a blog post syndication service called Share A Post. The invitation was from Jonathan Leger, one of the top SEO and Internet Marketing Expert, and also the mastermind behind GistWeb - one of my favorite web application for brainstorming content producing.

Share A Post basically lets you do 2 things, here’s a direct quote from Jon’s announcement :

1) You can submit your WordPress blogs and allow other users to

post the content of your posts to their own blogs (while also

linking back to your original blog post).

This is GREAT for getting tons of ..

Source: Search Engine Optimization

Tagging Technorati in Your Blog Posts

I wrote an article a few days ago about [tag-tec]Technorati[/tag-tec] and how important it was to tag your blog posts so you get recognised by Technorati.

Well, today I came across a blog post which I felt explained Technorati Tags very well.

I know that when I started using [tag-tec]Technorati tags[/tag-tec] in my blog posts, I wanted a few basic questions answered that seemed so hard to find even on Technorati itself.  Questions like “how to tag posts,” ”how many tags could be used in one blog post” and, “how to determine which words to tag.”

Whilst the post written in Feb 2005, it’s still very relevant today and whilst also quite long, there are no excuses for you not knowing the benefits of tagging Technorati in your blog posts.

The best thing to do is go take a look at this  introductory guide to “tags” yourself.

Video Blogging Quick Tips

With all talk about [tag-tec]video marketing[/tag-tec] and blogging, it really does make sense to start [tag-tec]video blogging[/tag-tec] today.  It really has never been easier to add video to a blog and, it’s a great way to connect with your audience, providing them with interesting information in half the time it would normally take them to read it. 

However, before you go ahead and make a [tag-tec]video blog[/tag-tec], there are a few tips I’d like to offer that will allow you to create a good video that individuals actually want to watch … one that will keep your blog interesting and informative: 

Tip #1: Try to keep your video blog entries short and punchy.  In most cases you will want to make your video last 4-5 minutes although, if you feel that you have much more to say than in this short time span, you can either create a longer video or, create a sequel to your first blog. 

And, it really does depend on the content.  If you’re creating your blog for entertainment factor then 3 minutes in my view is long enough.  If you’re educating then you want to be able to give more meat and in this case, longer videos are justifiable. 

Tip #2: Make the video interesting and give it some structure i.e. a reason for the video, the meat of the video and conclude with getting them to take action where necessary but at least let them know why you felt it necessary to put the video together.  This is the art of good business blogging.

Tip #3: Eliminate background noise.  It goes without saying that having a dog barking in the background, or a baby screeming does not create a good listening environment which could, cause some listeners to tune out and leave your blog. 

Also, if you’re recording outside and it’s windy, put a sock on it.  I mean the microphone of course. :-)  If you’re using a hand held microphone a professioinal sock (like the fluffy ones you see the newsreaders using) is great for cutting down on wind noise.  If you don’t have one of those, try using one of your own socks.  And yes, I am serious.

If you’re using a lapel microphone at least stand in a position where the wind isn’t rushing across the microphone, it may not be perfect, but it’s better than nothing. 

Tip #4: Get a little closer.  Having the microphone so far away from you so your listeners can hardly hear is as bad as distracting background noise.  I personally use a wired lapel microphone that I paid about £30 ($60) for and the wire is is about 8 ft long, long enough for me not to have my face up against the lens of the video camera.

Tip #5: Don’t stand too far away from the camera.  This really does depend on the purpose of the video and the equipment you’re using.  I have seen some great videos of late, especially those created by Alex Mandossian, where he’s walking in the park with his kids in the background but for an [tag-tec]infomercial[/tag-tec] video, you may only want your viewers to see from your chest up.

My suggestion with this one is to experiment until it feels comfortable to you and you’re sure your viewers will be comfortable too.

Tip #6: Use good lighting.  Don’t sit in front of a window that has the sun shining through it because the video will be very dark.  

Tip #7: Use a Flip Camcorder … you will have to worry less about lighting and you’ll have your video blog up in no time at all.  It’s so easy to use, our 6 year old daughter uses it.

I look forward to hearing that you’ve taken the plunge and started adding video to your blogs.

 

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