webmarketingexperts.com.au - SEO Truth » link building

2 Best-Ever Tips for Linkbaiting

Lucy — Thu, 27 May 2010 02:51:05 +0000

A lot of people write a lot of stuff on the net. In fact, we just recently passed the zetabyte mark. And a decent portion of that information is devoted to linkbaiting. Before you read anything on linkbaiting with a view to implementing it in your web marketing strategy, though, you need to keep these two overarching guidelines in mind …

Linkbaiting has to come from the heart

True linkbaiting success very rarely comes from an outsourced article. The most successful linkbaiting pieces are written:

From within the company, using inside company information and expertise
From concepts which have developed over quite a period of time. Even if the actual writing and creation doesn’t take long, the thought process behind it usually does.
With rich media – additional videos, graphs and photos to help explain what has been written
Very rarely as ‘controversy’ pieces. Picking on another blogger or company works well for some … but for most of us, it makes us look like whingers.

Don’t take yourself for granted

Every company does something that outsiders would find amazing. You just need to stop taking yourself for granted, and see it! If you just can’t, grab a few customers or family members, take them on a tour of your working day and ask them what fascinates them. This is how the ‘Will It Blend’ series on Youtube got started.

Social Media/Internet Marketing Case Study: Roxy

Lucy — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:08:20 +0000

It’s easy to get swamped in theory when you’re thinking about SEO for your business. You end up with clear knowledge of what you have to do – but no clear idea of how to translate that into actual reality. Today we are looking at a quick and simple case study, checking out how Roxy, an internationally known brand, uses social media and the power of the internet marketing to build their brand, both online and offline.

Who’s Roxy?

Roxy is the women’s clothing brand owned by the Quiksilver company. They make swimwear, clothing and accessories for surf, snow and skating situations, as well as general purpose wear. They are a fairly high end brand.

Roxy internet marketing implementation

Roxy has developed a ‘Style Squad’ – a group of around 900 girls nationwide between the ages of 13 and 23. Each of these girls was handpicked in stores across the country,, and each of them gets benefits for being a part of the Style Squad:

Welcome pack with the latest clothing designs
Free access to new items
Discounts in store

The Panel Manager of the Style Squad posts questions on message boards when there is a business issue such as thoughts on a new design, how the girls respond to advertising, etc. It can be used for both qualitative and quantitative market research.

How you can follow Roxy’s internet marketing example

Create your own community of brand ambassadors, asking people to become part of the community in your physical stores, and offering significant benefits for doing so.
Make sure there are ongoing benefits for remaining part of the community
Create an online forum – social media like a Facebook page, Myspace account, or Twitter account that your members should add.
Whenever you are wondering what your customers think about a change in your business – a new idea, a new promotion, a competition, a new page on the website … ask them! When people feel valued, they are happy to give their opinion.
Use the information to improve your brand in the eyes of your customers.

The keys to success for Roxy’s web marketing strategy are offering significant benefits to the members, and them implementing enough new strategies and changes to make the effort worthwhile! Don;t forget that this sort of marketing has a direct effect on your SEO, by encouraging backlinks and pushing your traffic (and therefore your Google rank), skyward.

4 Beginner’s Methods for Using Social Media Marketing in Your Business

Lucy — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 02:40:15 +0000

Using social media in internet marketing can be pretty confusing for those who don’t spend a lot of time on the net. It requires quite a lot of finesse in the way you deal with customers, and a complete re-adjustment of your attitude from sales-focused and self-focused, to completely customer focused. More than that, though … most people simply don’t know where to start! These are some of the most common activities in the social media segment of an internet marketing strategy.

A social network

Set up a Myspace profile

Myspace is far more commercially oriented than Facebook. There are spaces to offer music samples and downloads, and facilities to take orders for your products through the site. You are marketing in a normal way, just on a social media. Myspace is a relatively non-threatening way to get into social media marketing.

Start Tweeting

There are plenty of guides around the net about how to use Twitter for business purposes. Read a few of them, and start Tweeting. It is best to do a little research before you get into this regularly – follow some of the leaders in your industry and see how they use the service.

Start a Facebook page or group … and update it

Connect your company with people who like your products, and connect your customers with each other. The average Facebook user joins abouthte same number of groups per month that they leave … so give people a reason to keep following your page or your group. Wish them happy holidays, leave product updates, post news relevant to your product, etc.

Create content with a view to getting it Dugg

The easiest way to do this is to have someone do it for you – it is a fine art! Once you have your content on your site, get a few of your friends to Digg it using their accounts, to get it going.

Marketing on a Budget – What Do I get for $100?

Lucy — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:05:14 +0000

Seeing ads in the sponsored results that say “1000s of unique visitors to your site only $99!”, or “Be #1 in Google for only $299, call today”? If you’ve seen this, you’re probably also noticing that when you get any indication of SEO services pricing over in the natural results, it is hundreds of times what the dodgy PPC ads tell you. Today we are looking at what the SEO industry’s top professionals would do to promote their websites if they only had $100, $250, or $500. Funnily enough, it doesn’t include buying traffic…

Aaron Wall of SEObook would do things like…

Setting up an alternative source of income while he put himself through a self-paced study course, spending around $20 to $200 on books
Buy a cheap domain
Get cheap hosting
Start a Wordpress blog that included no ads whatsoever, and he was truly passionate about and involved in
Get a cheap logo
Use free keyword research and analytics tools

Once the site started making money, Aaron says he would reinvest in the growth of the site first.

Andy Hagans, author of Tropical SEO would do things like…

Buying good quality content
Buying good quality links

He has said he would spend his entire budget on this, no matter whether he had $100, $250 or $500. The ‘good links’ he indicated were joeant.com or botw.org for lower budgets, and the Yahoo Directory for slightly higher budgets. All leftover money would go to hiring writers for linkbait.

By the way, thanks go to SEOish for the SEO expert opinions in this post!

The Dark Side of Linkbait

Lucy — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 01:55:32 +0000

Much as the pundits want you to believe it, linkbait is not all sunshine and roses! There is also a heap of manure at the bottom of that flower bush, helping those roses grow. Linkbait is a great SEO technique – it works in perfectly with what Google wants, and will always want. But it does have a dark side…

Caught by linkbait

Linkbait for its own sake is worthless

Your linkbait content must support your overall internet marketing strategy, or it is almost worthless. The point of creating linkbait content is to get relevant links, pushing your site higher in Google’s estimation, and therefore presenting you earlier in the results when someone searches for your keywords. However:

If your linkbait content is not relevant to your core business, you will get few ‘qualified leads’ clicking through
If you encourage sites that aren’t relevant to yours to link to you, the worth of the links in Google’s algorithm is lowered.

So, you can’t just publish a controversial rant about Barack Obama as a linkbait strategy, if your company sells medical diagnostic equipment. You must think within the box!

Fake Linkbait could get you de-listed in Google

The best example is a story published at money.co.uk, titled ‘13 Year Old Steals Dad’s Credit Card to Buy Hookers’. This FAKE story got plenty of links … but it wasn’t made obvious on the page that it was fake. Matt cutts of Google indicated that the company would view that as dishonestly trying to create links (no matter what the writer’s intention), and could be added to the list of things that will get you banned from Google.

Linkbait’s ROI is unpredictable

This is the case with all activities in internet marketing – you must test and refine your techniques over time to be confident of getting a good return on investment. So just be cautious of investing a lot of money in linkbait content, without an *excellent* understanding of what makes the market tick.

Obtaining Link Popularity through Link Building

webmarketingexperts.com.au — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 02:55:16 +0000

Search engines use your site’s link popularity to determine not only your page rank but your specific position in the search engine results page (SERP). Link popularity is measured according to the quantity and quality of links from other websites leading to your website.

Though on-page optimization is also important in ranking, off-page optimization plays a more crucial role in getting higher position in the SERP and page rank as well. Link building is an internet marketing strategy that is categorized under off-page optimization. Through submitting your website to several social bookmarking sites, guest books, answering or posting comments for various forum sites, commenting to other’s blog entries, and posting blog entries with links in them are the most famous techniques of link building. Because of its effective results, the demand to hire link builders is getting higher. Internet marketers find it worth investing. To rank higher in the SERP, link building has become a necessity for any internet marketing site.

If you are looking for an SEO firm that offers link building services, always ensure that the company you are going to choose is already proven by results over time. Obsolete SEO firms still tend to do reciprocal linking or two-way link. This is when website A links to website B, and B in return links to website A. Of course, this sounds really ideal. But even if this method works, only a few realize that nothing beats one-way linking method. One-way linking method happens when your website is linked by the other, blog posting for instance. There are no hassles of asking various websites to link to your site.