The web today is comprised of trillions of links. Who links to your site and how they link to it is the fundamental factor driving your search engine rank and your website traffic.

If you're not sure where to begin when it comes to building links with other sites, here are 10 easy ways to get started:

1. Create a blog.

Creating content on a consistent basis not only builds links internally (by linking out from your posts), but it also gives you the ability to build links naturally, because content is your greatest asset when attracting links. A blog is essential to many strategies outlined here, such as linking out. You absolutely need a blog in today's online environment to survive.

2. Internal linking.

You have pages and posts on your website, so make the most of them. Internal links are huge for link building because you can control everything about them, from the location on the page to the anchor text. This is something that most people overlook--please do not! Make sure to steer your content in the direction of other posts or pages so you can link to them.

Warning: Do not use exact-match anchor text in your site's navigation (sitewide links). This will most likely be another spam filter from Google.

3. Resources/links pages.

Other webmasters have created links, or resource, pages, and these are legitimate opportunities to get links. If the links on that page are relevant, you've got a chance.

Unfortunately, it's not as easy as just asking for a link. The following two suggestions are specific strategies to help you get webmasters liking you before you ask and greatly increase your chance of getting the link.

4. Ask people you know for a link.

Whether it's your friends, relatives, employees, colleagues, business partners, clients, or anyone else, ask them for a link. Someone you know has a website or blog, so take advantage.

5. Make it easy to link to you.

If you want people to link to you, make it easy for them. Create HTML-ready snippets that people can plug right into their content to link to you, because some linkers in your community might not be too web-savvy. Either create a "Link to Us" page or use a little JavaScript to generate the HTML at the end of each article or post.

Note: This might not be the best option for every community. Are you in the cement niche? Then this is perfect. Are you talking about internet-related business? Then this might not be your best bet, because the majority of your audience probably already knows how to link.

6. Research your competitors.

When it comes to finding new link opportunities, competitor research is one of the first things you should do. Essentially, you're piggy-backing off their success. While some links are unobtainable (that is, a random mention in a news post), others can be diamonds in the rough (a high-quality niche directory).

Try using SEOmoz's Open Site Explorer for this. Plug in your competitors and export their backlinks to a CSV file. Do this for all your competitors so you can get all their links in one place in a spreadsheet workbook. Then you can sort them by various link metrics to find the best opportunities.

7. Link out.

Linking out is huge. Don't be a link hoarder; you're going to create content, so use it to gain favor with other people.

8. Build relationships.

This is the No. 1 link-building strategy in the world. Get to know people! Build relationships with them, because it'll come back to you in the form of links (that is, if they're the right people).

The best part about this is that it's just like real life. Remember how people say, "It's not about what you know, it's about who you know"? The same goes for link building.

9. Niche-specific directories.

As opposed to general web directories, niche-specific directories only accept sites that meet a certain topic criteria. For example, one directory might only accept sites about arts and crafts. Some of these directories are free, while others are paid. One example is Business.com, a directory for business websites. The cost is $299 per year.

10. Paid directories. 

Some directories ask for money before accepting your link(s) in their listings. Dir.Yahoo.com, for example, is a paid directory. Once again, while some of these can pass on legitimate value, others offer little and aren't worth your time or money.





































View the Original article

Outreach and submissions only go so far. Sometimes you have to let your content attract links naturally to get the results you want. If you create content that naturally attracts links, it not only saves you time getting them manually, but it also increases engagement on your blog (if it's worth linking to, it's usually worth reading). This is where your content and link-building strategies meet.

How-tos and tutorials.

Whether it's a tool, DIY project or anything else, showing people exactly how to do something is extremely helpful.


Quizzes and tests.

Testing your reader's knowledge and letting them share their results with their friends is always a great idea.

Timely or seasonal content.

Creating the right content at the right time can get you a ton of attention. Creating an infographic on the statistics behind this year's Super Bowl the day after the event is a perfect example. The same goes for seasonal content. Whether it's Valentine's Day, Halloween or Christmas, you can create holiday-themed content that can get a ton of attention over a short period of time (and every year after).

Case studies.

Everyone loves a good case study. Real results with real numbers can instantly catch people's attention. If you offer a product or service, this is a no-brainer. If you give out advice, find someone who's used it successfully.

Printable resources.

People like hard copies of useful guides. By creating a printable resource with an awesome design, you can almost guarantee a few links will come your way.

Creating contests.

Entering contests is great for link building, but creating them is even better. By requiring your participants to write about and link to the contest from their blog, you'll not only get links from them, but their posts will increase the exposure of your contest, thus growing your number of contestants -- and thus, the amount of links you get -- at an exponential rate.

Infographics.

People love data, but sometimes it's hard to digest. Creating an infographic on it is a popular way to change that. Not only will it naturally attract links, but you'll also get other bloggers embedding it, which means even more links. Not to mention you have control over the anchor text of the embed code.

Web tools.

Creating free online tools, such as specialized calculators, is a fantastic way to attract links. They don't even have to be complex. If it could save me five minutes, then I'll probably use and share it.

Interactive -- content your user can alter, change, or remix.

The next big thing in linkbait is interactive content. The reason: because it's flat out cool and few people are doing it.

Review something new.

Just like with news, if you're the first to review something, and if it's awesome, your review will get tons of attention. You can also use this to gain favor with the creators of the product or service you're reviewing.

Webinars.

Spending a couple of hours every month doing a webinar is a great idea for attracting links over the long term. Set up a page on your website solely dedicated to webinars and as you create new ones, the links will roll in each time.

Surveys.

There's generally a two-step process to attracting links with surveys. The first step is asking people to participate. If it's on a particularly interesting topic, reaching out to bloggers, experts and industry news sites to ask to spread the word both on their blog and on social media sites is a great way to attract your first wave of links.

The second step is releasing the results. Combine the release with some nice visualization and a bit of controversy, and you've got yourself a fantastic piece of linkbait.

Google maps mashup.

Google Maps is a great tool, and you can use it to attract links if you get it in front of the right audience. A great idea would be to map out all the industry events taking place this year.

Lists.

1. People
2. Love
3. Lists.

Why? Because the content is super easy to digest.

Debunking myths.

If there's a common misconception in your industry, make sure you let everyone know. If it's big enough, and if your statements are bold enough, you could get some serious attention.

Interviews.

Interviewing industry experts will always be a fantastic way to attract links, but getting them to interview is only half the battle. The other half is asking great questions. A good way to find out what questions you should ask is by holding a Q&A with your blog's community, whether it's on Google+, Twitter or any other site. Ask what kinds of questions your readers want to see answered.












































View the Original article

Twitter is a great tool to build your brand and spread the word about your business. Here are six tips for building your brand on Twitter.


1. Use your brand name as your Twitter name. 

This seems obvious, but I see many companies not using their brand name as their Twitter name. They use a cute Twitter name that isn't related to their brand name.

2. Use your logo as your Twitter picture. 

Again, this sounds very obvious, but some companies don't use their logo for some reason.

3. Send Tweets that provide useful information to customers and prospects.

Always add a link to more information on your website. It should be a page on your website that adds value to the Tweet but doesn't require them to fill out a web form to view the information. This complements your lead-generation Tweets. You don't want to make people fill out a web form every time or they may get frustrated.

4. Send Tweets to new blog posts or videos. 

You can also send Tweets to older blog posts and videos that are still relevant.

5. You should Tweet 10 to 20 times a day to keep your brand name in the Twitter stream. 

You can schedule the Tweets that have links to valuable content and complement that with five to 10 personalized Tweets where you are interacting with other Twitter users.

6. Create a persona for your Twitter presence so people will get to know your brand.

Investopedia defines brand personality as "A set of human characteristics that are attributed to a brand name." A brand personality is something to which the consumer can relate, and an effective brand will increase its brand equity by having a consistent set of traits. This is the added value that a brand gains, aside from its functional benefits. There are five main types of brand personalities: excitement, sincerity, ruggedness, competence, and sophistication.

• Excitement. It's easy to spot a person who's excited on Twitter.These people love life, and they love everything they do. They also love to share their excitement with the Twitterverse, and it's fun to follow these people. Their Tweets will almost always uplift you.
• Sincerity. We all know the sincere people in our lives. They really care about you and your well-being. They Tweet the same way by always being genuine, caring, and sincere when they converse with others on Twitter.
• Ruggedness. These are the tough guys who never shed a tear. Their Tweets sound like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood confronting their adversaries and never backing down. You'll never see a hint of compassion or sympathy from rugged Tweeters.
• Competence. This is a well-educated, knowledgeable person who loves to Tweet information that will impress others. They love to share their knowledge and use big words in their Tweets, which can be challenging with the 140-character limit.
• Sophistication. Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian are sophisticated Tweeters. They love to Tweet pictures of their shopping trips and expensive cars, and let you know they're eating in the finest restaurants.

Linkable assets are the experts, pages, widgets, tools, discounts, relationships and any other people or pages related to your organization that incentivize others to share a link with their site visitors. When you understand what's linkable about your organization, as well as what types of assets earn links in your market, you'll have a much easier time identifying your link opportunity types. Knowing these types makes you more effective at prospecting for these opportunities.



The following linkable asset categories will help get you thinking about what your organization's linkable assets could be. Thinking broadly and creatively at the beginning of a link-building campaign can open you up to a stronger, more effective campaign design. After all, you could be sitting on a link magnet and not even realize it.

Free apps and tools on your site.

Do you provide any free applications or web-based tools to your site visitors? If so, it's likely that these have already attracted links naturally. If you haven't promoted these tools yet for the purpose of link building, then these assets could help you develop even more links. Be careful, though, when designing and building a tool or app -- they can be expensive (sometimes two to three times what you expect or what you're quoted), can seem to take forever to develop, and could still flop. That said, nothing demonstrates your expertise like a custom tool you've crafted to make your customers' lives easier.

Products and services to give away for donations, contests or review. 

If you have products or services you can give away, you can earn links through donation thank-you pages, through contests, and via product/service reviews from experts in your market. Often this asset is one of the easiest paths to developing links. However, it's fairly easy for your competitors to emulate. Further, these approaches to link building can create enormous and unexpected logistical nightmares, such as shipping and packaging, or even getting the winner's contact information from the site conducting the giveaway.

Widgets, tools, images and data for publishers. 

Have you created widgets, tools, images, or data that publishers of other websites are free to add to their websites? Infographics, embeddable tools, research data, and other types of information created for the express purpose of giving it away is a classic and powerful method for earning links. If you have any of these assets and you haven't aggressively and extensively promoted them, then you're leaving valuable links and relationships on the table.

Thought leaders and subject matter experts. 

Are there thought leaders and subject matter experts in your organization? Do they have time to write or in some other way share their expertise with the market? These linkable assets could generate links in the form of interviews, guest posts, and quote contributions to industry news publications.

Partner relationships.

Do you have business partners, vendors, customers, and technology licensees? Each of these represents a potential link in the form of testimonials, published client lists, and "powered by" buttons. Gather a list of your vendors and partners, and look for ways to acquire (and give) links to all of them. Think interviews, think link requests for their vendors and partners pages, and think updated "powered by" badges.

Job listings, events and coupons. 

If your organization consistently publishes job openings, puts on events, or launches new products, then you've got quite a few link opportunities open to you. Colleges and industry vertical sites are sometimes willing to link to pages that feature new job openings. Many cities have event calendars that will publish details about your event and post links on their site for sign-up and more information. If you consistently offer coupons to your customers, then you'll find massive numbers of coupon-listing sites, many of which link back.

Consistent publishing via blog, video, podcast, Twitter and more.

Do you or does your organization publish content consistently? These linkable assets open you up to numerous link opportunity types from around your industry -- everything from blog directories, to niche social news sites, to blog lists, to PDF submissions, to distribution sites. In some industries, the fact that your CEO blogs is link-worthy and notable in itself.

Budget.

Money is almost always a linkable asset in that if you have the money, you can offer it to another site in exchange for a link. However, the link opportunities that you can purchase are often easy for competitors to duplicate. Further, some search engines aggressively penalize (in the form of lowered search rankings) purchased links that aren't labeled or coded as advertisements, making them a potentially risky investment that could end up costing far more in damages than they bring in search traffic. Some sites, such as directories, require a budget as well.


































View the Original article