Editor of "The View From The Cabin" newsletter
http://www.online-business-centre.com/lan/newsbiz_blog_perm.htm
This article revisits the oldest Web marketing strategy - inbound
links. The importance of inbound links to your Web site
never diminishes. Search engines still value quality inbound links to
a Web site for higher rankings. However, the emphasize is now on
the quality, not the quantity of links. A dozen quality links to
your site from useful sites are more valuable to a search engine
than 700 links obtained through a link exchange program.
Before going into the details of how to obtain quality inbound
links to your site, you should know some don'ts of inbound link
strategy. Never participate in an automated or manual link
exchange program. These programs are useless; they don't benefit
you and sometimes the search engines may even penalize your site
for such links. Also, stop soliciting link exchange from other
sites where your links will be placed in a link farm on a page
along with hundreds of other links. The two don'ts are - link
exchange program and link farms.
The number one strategy is to write articles with your resource
box attached. Your resource box should mention your expertise in
the subject and only one link to your site's home page. If you
have already started frowning on the idea of writing articles to
promote your site, you are not alone. Most probably, you already
know that writing article for site promotion is not a new
strategy and it has been going for the past few years.
Thousands of articles are written everyday and distributed
through article directories and submission services. You can
still continue promoting your site using article directories and
submission services. However, this article will discuss a few new
twists to the old article publishing idea to distinguish you from
the pack.
Write original articles. If you buy private level rights to an
article, rewrite it to make it unique. You don't have to buy the
rights to private level articles to create original article.
Using the Internet, find good quality articles on the subject
that interests you and read those articles. It requires a few
hours of time commitment every week.
On the weekend, take an additional few hours and write in your
own words what you have read in the preceding week. Voila, you
have a good quality original article. Remember, you can always
write in your own words the ideas that you have read in other
articles. You cannot simply copy verbatim from other articles.
That will be copyright violation.
If you are good at writing humorously, do exploit that skill
while writing on any subject. Humor is very powerful and it
attracts more readers. People love a bellyful of laughs. If
possible, say something bold or controversial without being
a hate monger. This will also attract others' attention.
Once you have your original article written, find a few quality
content rich site (not article directories) and offer them your
article for free with your resource box attached. You are not
asking for any link exchange, you are just giving away your high
quality articles for free to a few selected sites.
Once you have a few good articles on the same subject, compile
them into an e-book. Write a short bio(less than 300 characters)
with your Web site link and ask a few selected site owners to
distribute your e-book for free to their visitors. You can also
ask other site owners to include your e-book as a free bonus in
some of their prime selling products. Ask the site owners to
distribute the e-book from their sites with courtesy notes and
links back to your site.
If your Web site has a forum, offer other sites to use it from
their sites. Setup your forum so that it has almost seamless
integration from other sites. Ask other sites to directly link to
your forum from their main menu. In return, tell them that
you will write nice reviews of their sites and their offerings and
publish those reviews in your site.
Develop a tips and tricks section on the subject of your Web site
and update it regularly. Allow other sites to publish your tips
and tricks for free with courtesy links to your site. Make the
process automated (using RSS other techniques) so that when you
update your tips and tricks page, all sites publishing your tips
and tricks are also updated.
Whenever you get an opportunity, use your cell phone to shoot
short videos and take pictures. You need to get a good cell phone
with a camera. Give your pictures and videos to other sites for
free. Ask them to put links back to your site below every video
and picture they publish in their sites.
Join a few social networking sites like MySapce, etc. Create your
Web pages on those sites with videos and pictures. Provide links
back to your site from those pages. Update your Web pages in
social networking sites periodically with fresh videos and pictures.
Publish link to your articles in community based popularity sites
like digg. A well "dugg" story can generate thousands of hits to
your site. If you have a controversial or humorous story, the
chances are even better for "digging" your articles from these
type of sites.
Write reviews of products and services, related to your site's
subject, that you have used and publish those reviews on different
review sites with a clever way to put links back to your site. Some
creativity is required to achieve this feat. You cannot simply spam these
review sites. Be genuine and at the same time marketing savvy.
Network and build good rapport with a dozen or so good site owners.
Help each other in site promotion, idea and content exchanges. For all
content exchanges, don't forget to include resource boxes with links back to
your site.
Tom Taylor
BSc, MSC, PHD (School of Hard Knocks and Real Lessons)
http://online-business-centre.com
Editor of "The View From The Cabin" newsletter
http://www.online-business-centre.com/lan/newsbiz_blog_perm.htm
This article may be republished so long as the resource informationis left intact.
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