Quick SEO Tactics to Push Higher in SERPs

Nearly every SEO tactic today falls into one of three categories; white hat, black hat, or the nebulous gray. White hat tactics are those recommended by Google and other search engines which take a straightforward approach to reaching the top of the SERPs. Black hat tricks, on the other hand, are methods that are considered unethical in the world of SEO. Yet no matter how you slice it, there are plenty of strategies that fall into the gray.

The SEO cheats presented here are neither black nor white; they just are. Some may consider them to fall on the black hat side of things, but that’s only a misconception. Keep reading and you’ll see.

If you are seeking genuine SEO tactics to give you a rise in the SERPs, look no further. Here are three SEO “cheats” that will deliver impressive results.

1. Targeted Outreach with Google Keyword Planner

Most leverage the Google Keyword Planner simply for AdWords purposes and keyword research. This tool, however, is far more powerful than its implied uses. The Keyword Planner is a stellar tool for identifying outreach opportunities for your site to benefit from.

When conducting an outreach campaign, it is vital to focus your efforts on those who are already discussing similar products or services. Anything broader and you are likely to waste massive amounts of time getting turned down. To find the most relevant sources, focus on those who are already incorporating your long-tail keywords into their mix. You can locate these bloggers by simply loading your keywords into the Keyword Planner and filtering the results for low search volume keywords. Once you have your list, export it.

From here, begin plugging your long-tail words into Google individually while actively searching for blogs or articles that cater to these topics. With this list in hand, you can begin reaching out; you will likely have far more success with your campaign as these folks are already engaging in your industry’s conversation and will be far more apt to respond.

2. Building Links through Building Connections

This method involves persistence and patience, but it will pay off if you remain steadfast in your efforts.
The typical route for many SEOs is to employ tools that will automate and scale their efforts for maximum efficiency and effectiveness. The rationale here is fairly solid, granted that the right elements are scaled. For this approach, however, we are going to take a seemingly counterintuitive path and refrain from scaling.

Much of the online world revolves around relationships, and this is exactly what you are aiming to build. This is the sweet spot on how you will earn your links. When reaching out to potential partners, you may have to contact them a half dozen times before making your pitch. Cold pitches are rarely received well so playing the long game is essential for this to work.

Additionally, with this tactic you have to be willing to go the extra mile and do something that 95 percent of SEOs won’t do; pick up the phone and call people.

It may sound absurd calling someone to ask for a link, but the power of human-to-human connection is something that should not be underestimated. Next time you find yourself inspired by someone’s post, locate their contact information and give them a call to thank them for the information and share your feedback with them. As this is an uncommon practice, you are going to stick out in their memory. And in many cases, that will pay off big.

By connecting to various voices, authorities and influencers in your niche in this manner, sharing and interacting with their materials will feel natural and they are more likely to take notice. This amps up the possibility of them linking to you exponentially because they know who you are.

3. Comment on Blogs – A Lot

Commenting on blogs is one of many tactics that is perceived to be black hat. This is simply not true. Google’s Matt Cutts has been a proponent of this strategy for a long time and has even gone on record stating that he does this as well. In reality, blog commenting is a fantastic way to acquire more traffic, gain visibility and even drive revenue. Since very few people leverage this strategy, it becomes all the more powerful.

The key to gaining the benefits of blog comments lies in ensuring your statements feel natural; automating this process will ultimately backfire. Your comments need to be organic and useful to the overall conversation.

Approach this by compiling a list of reputable, high-quality blogs within your industry. Then narrow things down by entering the URLs into the Moz Domain Authority tool; only keep sites that have a comparable domain authority to your own. Once you have your list, start engaging and driving people to your site. Just bear in mind that most sites have an approval filter for comments. To ensure that yours passes, make sure that it looks natural and adds to the conversation in a valuable way. If it doesn’t achieve these two aspects, you are just spamming someone else’s blog. While this strategy is no quick fix, it is quite effective.

If you are trying to reach the top of the SERPs, you can’t just follow the same practices and tactics that everyone else is. You have to think outside the box and employ strategies that others won’t. By breaking away from the herd and forging your own path to SEO prosperity, you gain a much more solid foundation to your ranking status.

Latest Link Building Tips for Online Business Websites

To collect quality and relevant backlinks for your website there are many factors that can increase or decrease your search engine rankings. This article outlines the difference between good and bad backlinks.

A quality backlink pointing to your site should be in the same category and relevant in content to your website. The page where your link is located should be indexed by Google and the page should also have a Google page rank. The webpage where your link is located should also contain no more than 30 other out-going links to other websites. Link pages with more than 30 out-going links are less relevant to the search engines. Having your link posted on this type of webpage can affect your search engine rankings in a negative way. Other excellent techniques of acquiring backlinks are directory submissions, posting articles, blogs and forums. 

For directory submissions select the proper directory category and take a look at how many other websites are contained in the category where your link would be posted, if you can manage to get on the first or second page of the listings, this is a quality backlink. Also look at the Google page rank of the landing page for your link. If the page has a Google page rank this is also a quality backlink.

Stay within your category, relevant content is very important to the search engines. Write an article preferably relevant in content to your website and submit the article to high quality article directories. Blogs are an excellent way to get quality one-way backlinks, Blog sites also receive tons of traffic, which in turn give your site more exposure. Posting your link on forum pages is also an efficient method of acquiring backlinks instantly.

Backlinks to avoid would be a zero page ranked webpage, especially if the home page has a zero page rank. Links posted within framed webpages which will also steal your traffic. Especially avoid link farms, webpages which contain more than 100 unrelated outgoing links, This type of link page is frowned upon by many major search engines. Avoid Webpages with mirror sites containing the exact same content with a different URL, also pages that utilize redirects and URL cloaking. Never post your link on a webpage that contains a "no follow" or "no index" robots meta tag within the source code. Dynamic websites with question marks in the URL should be avoided because they are not always indexed by the search engines. 

Avoid posting your link on a page that opens very slow or contains mostly ads and flash banners. Try not to acquire or purchase great numbers of backlinks in a short period of time, backlinks should be accumulated gradually. Also avoid webpages and directories that list their results in alphabetical order, as their database increases your link could be moved to a less relevant page with less pagerank. Quality backlinks are one of the most important factors involved in the process of achieving high search engine ranking. For affordable SEO Services contact SEO Solutions India 

Top Ten Ways to Drive More Visitors to Business WebSites

For more visitors to your business website specifically, those who at some point want to purchase. Like any other online business, the success of your own business is tied in directly with the amount of targeted traffic your site can attract.

Fortunately, there are many techniques you can use right away to start attracting increasing amounts of quality traffic to your site. And they work long-term too.

1. Recommendations

Recommendations from other online businesses are very powerful, and drive valuable traffic for months if not years. So it’s worth investing time and effort in attaining some of these links.
After all, potential customers are far more likely to believe a third-party review of your business than your own marketing materials.

To help encourage these recommendations:

• Ensure whatever you provide through your business is the best it can be and delivers real value to your customers.
• Prioritize customer support, deal with inquiries on a personal level and build up a personal rapport with some of your best customers.
• Create an affiliate program, providing incentives for other businesses to start recommending you.
• Ask for referrals – you’ll be surprised how often your customers will be happy and willing to refer others to your business.

2. Article Marketing

Yes, article marketing has received some negative coverage of late, but much of it comes from business owners who use SEO as a central pillar in their marketing strategy.

Instead, it’s important to develop links from all over the web that drive traffic to your business independent of search engines, and reduce any such reliance on SEO. Article marketing remains one of the most effective ways in which to achieve that.

The fact is article directories are among some of the most highly-visited sites online … why wouldn’t you want your link on them, siphoning traffic back to your site?

And if you need any proof that article marketing can increase the online visibility of your business – you’re reading this, aren’t you?

In fact, my own articles tend to get hundreds if not thousands of views within just a few days of publication. Some go on to achieve tens of thousands of views. And that’s just one article directory …

Multiply that when you syndicate to several high-traffic article directories, as well as other potential online publishers, and you start to appreciate how effective article marketing can be in raising your profile.

It’s also not always about linking back to your main website either. You can for example also link back to your pages on social media, or perhaps a squeeze page domain to help build your email list.

3. Paid Traffic

Can’t that be costly? Yes, but only if you do it wrong. Get it right, and it’s a continual, long-term profit stream.

Personally, I’ve been paying for traffic for years, as well as using other traffic-building methods.
Take time to master it; be willing to invest some cash up front while you get it working effectively, and it becomes an important asset for your business.

4. Retargeting

Of course, retargeting also involves buying traffic, but it works slightly differently.
When you get a visitor to your site, you then drop a cookie on them, and they continue to see ads for your site on other websites around the web long after they have visited.

This not only brings a percentage back to your site, but can also raise your profile with them and keep your business front of mind, increasing the likelihood of purchase.

5. Email Marketing

Capture the email address of your prospect, and you can then follow-up with them by email for weeks, months, and years to come. Some people on my own list have been receiving emails from me for several years now, and still end up back on one of my sites after clicking links provided in the emails I send out.

Communicate with your list regularly, and invite them to return to your website, whether for a promotion, to read your latest content, or to interract in some way with you.

It’s a powerful way to build a relationship with your prospects, build traffic for the long-term, and of course increase their likelihood of purchase.

6. Blogging

I’ve now been blogging for years, and it’s one of the central planks to my long-term traffic strategy:

• It gives you a lot of content in the search engines, with each post that you write (or have written) working to attract visitors over the long-term.
• It helps build relationships with the people who read your blog, who return repeatedly to read your latest content.
• It builds your credibility and authority, increasing the chance of both purchase and referral to others
• It gives you content to feed your social media activities.
• You can leverage the content for other purposes (for example, this article originates from a blog post).

7. Forum and Blog Commenting

Engage with forums relevant to your niche, and you can drive a lot of targeted traffic back to your site.

For example, link to a blog post where it helps someone’s question. Link back to your site from your signature, and via your profile.

You can also build up some powerful relationships which can result in long-term traffic from referrals and so on.

It works in a similar fashion with blogs. Avoid spam commenting completely, but instead add a useful, informative comment of real value. You can either link back by adding your website details into the field provided, or where appropriate try linking back to say one of your own blog posts where it adds further to the discussion.

8. Videos

YouTube can be hugely effective in driving traffic to your site, simply because it gets so much traffic itself as the world’s second largest search engine. By posting videos that will match up with some of those searches you’ll reach new audiences and attract new visitors to your site.
What’s more, you can create new videos relatively easily by simply basing them on earlier blog posts.

9. Social Media

Social media signals are becoming increasingly important for SEO purposes, and it also allows your content to spread far beyond your own shores and get seen by audiences you otherwise wouldn’t reach.

Every time you create or add new content somewhere, you can also post it to your social media profiles. This drives up engagement, attracts new followers, and raises the visibility of your business in general.

10. Do They Want What You’ve Got?

You might not think it’s a ‘traffic strategy’ as such … but in fact, it’s the most important one.
If people don’t want what you’ve got, you’ll find traffic generation a whole lot harder.

On the other hand, when you sell what people want, particularly when combined with a powerful USP (unique selling proposition) it all becomes a lot easier. People will spread the word naturally, your traffic will grow based on their willing referrals, and your marketing costs will reduce substantially.

Gain Unique Visitors for Your Business Website with SEM Services

One of the chief concerns we have as business website owners is how to gain unique visitors to our business websites. Without knowing how to get more traffic, how else will we get more leads, make more sales and continue to make money online?

There are a number of ways to get more traffic, so I’ve collected this list of my favorite traffic-generation techniques. I’ve tried to organize them into the following categories:

• Content & Article Marketing
• SEO & Search Engine Marketing
• Video Marketing & Podcasting
• Email Marketing & Syndication
• Advertising & PPC
• Public Relations & Spreading the Word
• Social Media & Bookmarking

Content & Article Marketing

1. Start a blog or add a blog to your website. Use WordPress. Tip: Don’t go with the free WordPress hosting offered by WordPress.com. It’s a watered-down version of WordPress you cannot optimize!

2. Research your article keywords using the Google keyword tool. Target your blog posts and articles using these keywords. (Read How to Add Keywords to Your Website.) This will help your posts rank higher in the search results.

3. Update your website or blog frequently. Three times each week is great. Daily is better.

4. Write better headlines. Writing compelling headlines that convert into views is an art. Make sure you research your keywords and work them into your headline. Keep your headline congruent with the webpage it describes.

5. Stay away from duplicating other posts and articles. Duplicate content is one of the big no-no’s according to Google and your site can be penalized or banned if you are engaging in this practice. Tip: If you’re hiring out your content writing, ensure the contractor knows their work needs to pass a plagiarism-detection tool like Copyscape.

6. When considering content for your website or blog, there are two approaches to consider: timely hot topics or evergreen. Hot topics—like world events, emerging technology or celebrities—will offer you a chance to speak to something that is on everyone’s minds, however those topics often cool off and fade from relevance over time. Evergreen content—as the name suggests—is content that provides timeless value, based on principles that aren’t as likely to change with the public’s mood. A good piece of evergreen content can bring traffic steadily, year after year, and makes for a real asset to your website.

7. Convert your blog articles to Adobe PDFs and offer them on Scribd.com.

8. Offer to guest post at other highly-ranked websites. Include your URL in your resource box (your brief description about you and how to reach you for more information.)

9. Comment on other blogs in your industry or niche. Make your comments thoughtful, courteous and use a keyword or two. Include the link back to your site.

10. Similar to blog commenting, offer helpful solutions on Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers and Quora. Place the brief synopsis of your solution in answer to the question you’re addressing and post the link to the full article (already posted on your website) if they want to learn more.

11. Join niche-related forums and offer advice, ask questions, etc. Include links to your websites in your forum signature.

12. Offer a whitepaper that answers a common challenge for your audience. Collect email sign-ups in exchange. Deliver your whitepaper automatically using your confirmation autoresponder.

13. Write an ebook. Include links to resources and to your own URL. Offer the ebook on your website.

14. Place your new ebook into ebook directories for free or low-cost download.

15. Convert your ebook into a PowerPoint presentation and post on SlideShare.

16. Repackage your ebook for delivery on the Kindle, Nook and other tablet platforms. Then offer it for sale through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc.

17. Add your blog posts to BlogCarnival.com. Host a blog carnival to bring exposure to others within your niche while building the value in your own site.

18. Form a blog promotion network. Agree to retweet, mention, link or otherwise promote one member each week. (This requires 100% dedication from all members to make it work. If a member begins falling down on their commitment, they’re out.)

19. Article marketing. Submit your pithy articles to sites like the following and remember to include keyword links leading back to your website. (Read Marketing Mastery Series: 5 Steps to Powerful Article Marketing.)
1. Ezinearticles.com
2. Ehow.com
3. Hubpages.com
4. Articlesbase.com
5. Buzzle.com
6. Associatedcontent.com (now Yahoo Voices)
7. Suite101.com

20. Build a quiz or self-test that shows people something about themselves. Entertaining, informative or both, bring value through self-discovery. Though I am certainly biased, here is an example I especially like: Branding 101: Discover Your Brand Archetype Quiz

21. Create a Squidoo lens. This is a collection of original articles that link back to your site from your Squidoo page.

22. Add a forum or discussion group software to your website. (Be warned: It takes time, dedication and love to grow a thriving community, but it can be well worth it.)

23. Offer regular webinars and communicate the schedule and topics through your website and mailing lists. Tip: Record the seminars and add them to a members area on your website, or make them available 24/7, thereby bringing even more value to your site.

24. Offer a free tool, template or software. When Hotmail was first introduced, each message carried a little signature at the bottom of each email that said “Get your free email at Hotmail”. The email system went viral, spreading naturally from inbox to inbox.

25. Need help getting posts out regularly? Hire a ghost-writer through an outsourcing service like iWriter, oDesk, Elance, etc.

26. Create a compelling infographic. When done well, infographics make even the driest material visually interesting, effectively grabbing and holding the reader’s attention long enough to deliver the message—and your URL.

SEO & Search Engine Marketing

27. Use keyword-centric tags with your WordPress posts.

28. In WordPress, make sure to leave trackbacks turned on. When you link to other site owners, an email will notify the blog owners of the new link and they will likely visit your site. They may even link back!

29. Install the Google Sitemap XML plugin for WordPress. It automatically sends updates to Google and other search engines when you make a new post, helping your material get indexed more quickly. Don’t have a WordPress site? Use Ping-O-Matic to accomplish the same thing.

30. Can’t use the Google Sitemap XML plugin for WordPress* to create your sitemap.xml or robots.txt files (used by Google and other search engines?) Use a sitemap generator like XML-Sitemaps.com.

31. Two words: Google Authorship. Set it up and get your face to appear next to your posts in the Google search results. (Read Google Authorship: How to Get Your Picture into Google Search Results.)

32. Install Google Analytics on your site and actually look at it once in a while. It doesn't even have to be Google Analytics, but you should be able to see how much traffic you’re receiving on a weekly basis and where your visitors are coming in from? How can you intelligently drive more traffic to your site if you don’t know what’s already working for you?

33. Submit your website to search engines and search directories. Seems obvious, but most folks don’t know where to start. Here is a list of some of the top search sites:
1. Google
2. Bing
3. Yahoo! Search
4. AltaVista
5. Excite
6. Go.com
7. HotBot
8. Galaxy
9. Lycos
10. Gigablast
11. Alexa Internet

34. Use the linkdomain command in Google (ex. linkdomain:allseosolutions.com). While this only shows a subset of the links that lead into a domain, it can give you an idea about how your competitors are getting their rankings.

35. Research popular misspellings of your company’s name and those of your competitors. Buy those domain names and forward them to your website.

36. Find expired domain names in your niche that are still receiving traffic and buy them, directing them toward your site. For this, I recommend Expired Domains.

37. Use a custom 404 page to help people find the information they are seeking from your website in the event it moves or otherwise becomes unavailable.

38. Reciprocal linking campaigns with mid- to high-PR sites can offer a boost to your rankings and traffic. The best backlink is a one-way, dofollow link from a high PR site. Also, if you’re just getting started with your website and you have low PR, you had better have some great content, otherwise your opt-in rate with a reciprocal campaign is likely to be low.

39. Join a web ring like WebRing. Advantage: Niche-related linking. Disadvantage: Uglies up your site. (Not as much of a disadvantage if you already have an ugly site. If that’s the case, jump in!)

40. Pay a freelancer or company to generate obscene amounts of traffic for you. Just beware of the very real chance it could be a scam (Read How NOT to Drive Traffic Using Fiverr.)

Video Marketing & Podcasting

41. Read or speak to your ebook contents in an audio post or series of audio posts and place on BlogTalkRadio or iTunes.

42. Why only create audio posts of your ebook, blog post or web content? Create a video demonstrating the same information and post to YouTube and Vimeo. Include links back to your site in your video description and in video captions. Tip: you can do this either by presenting the material yourself, hiring someone to present it, or by creating a video with something like Animoto.

Email Marketing & Syndication

43. Link your blog with your Aweber email marketing account. Take signups for your newsletter, ebook or other promotional/informational offers. This will grow your emailing list.

44. Establish an RSS feed for your site. Add it to FeedBurner.com. (Well.. what was Feed-burner. Google gobbled them up.)

45. Connect your RSS feed broadcasts to your Aweber email marketing service. This will deliver your blog posts in an e-newsletter format to your mailing list. Set the mailing list to weekly or whatever is appropriate for your posting frequency.

46. Email your current and past clients regularly. Ask them about their interest in new products and services (segment your list accordingly.) Send letters of appreciation, short polls, tips, client spotlights and other relevant correspondence to stay at the front of their minds.

47. In your enewsletter, don’t embed complete articles. Instead, display hook paragraphs with links back to the full articles on your own site. This also allows you to gauge what topics are most important to your readers.

48. Don’t stop with only offering your whitepaper from your newsletter signup confirmation page. Include your Facebook, Twitter, Google+ profiles and links to other websites you own that complement.

49. Syndicate your blog with Technorati.

50. Include your website URL in your email signature. (It’s a good place to offer some of your social media URLs as well.)

51. Run a solo ad, whereby you pay someone to market your offer to their list. Research your list owners carefully here; all is not as it may seem. (Proceed with caution. Read Solo Ads Advertising: Why Solo Ad Scams Suck.)

52. Conduct an ad swap. You have a mailing list. Another marketer has their mailing list. Your offers align with each others’ mailing lists. The other marketer sends your offer to their list and you send their offer to yours. All things being equal, you both should see your opt-in lists expand. (Get started at Safe-Swaps.com.)

53. Join venture with another marketer. Similar to a solo ad, you run your ad to their list, with the difference being they get a cut of the sales instead of taking a flat fee.

Advertising & PPC

54. Run pay-per-click (PPC) ads using Facebook ads, Google Adwords or Bing Ads. Tip: Watch your ad performance carefully at first. You can lose a lot of money quickly if you don’t pay attention!

55. Pay for banner ads on other websites. Target websites in your niche, preferably. This is a quick way to begin receiving qualified traffic.

56. Banner exchange. Similar to reciprocal links, you agree to trade banner ads with other website owners. Aim for the same or complementary niches.

57. Post free or paid ads on classified ad sites like Craigslist, ClassifiedAds.com, and Backpage.

58. Begin an affiliate marketing program and spread the wealth! Pay others to promote you to their website visitors and mailing lists by giving them a cut. Make sure you can track referred traffic correctly before rolling this out.

Public Relations & Spreading the Word

59. Offer to start an advice column for local media outlets. Have some example column posts and know your pitch well before approaching publishers. Finally, make sure the publisher’s audience matches your own.

60. Along the same lines as an advice column, offer to write an editorial. This is akin to guest posting on someone else’s blog. By offering thoughtful insight into a common challenge or current event, you bring value to the publication and a spotlight to your own efforts.

61. Write a compelling press release and post to free press release sites and local media outlets. Here is a short list of free and paid press release sites:
1. Free-Press-Release.com
2. Free-Press-Release-Center.info
3. 24-7PressRelease.com
4. 1888PressRelease.com
5. PRBuzz.com
6. PRCompass.com
7. PRUrgent.com
8. Express-Press-Release.net
9. ClickPress.com
10. PR9.net
11. EcommWire.com
12. PressMethod.com
13. PRLog.org
14. I-Newswire.com
15. PressAbout.com
16. NewswireToday.com
17. PRLeap.com
18. PR.com
19. TheOpenPress.com

62. Are your offline marketing materials supporting your online marketing efforts? You should have your URL on your business cards, flyers, brochures, letterhead; any and all stationary.

63. Pay a high school or college student to place flyers with your offer and URL around town. Include college campuses, malls, grocery stores, houses, etc., so long as business proprietors are asked and so long as the location is congruent (or neutral) with your offer. These locations should be places where your target audience frequents. Tip: Not sure those flyers won’t end up in the trash? In today’s age of smart phones, pay for each image of the flyers as they’re placed.

64. Drive your URL all around town. Brand your URL onto your license plate cover, bumper sticker, or have it added professionally to your vehicle’s rear window, tailgate, side, etc. Better if your car is unique in some way (and I’m not talking about that rust spot shaped like Elvis or the Virgin Mary.) Want to take this over the top? Invest in an eye-catching vehicle wrap.

65. Buy a pair of sandals or boots and carve your URL into the bottom of them. Then go walk on wet sand or snow and give those who follow in your footsteps something to think about.

66. Hold a contest. Winner gets a rave review on your site, a fun toy or gadget, cash.. whatever. The more compelling and niche-appropriate the prizes, the better. Announce the contest winners on your site.

67. Join a local business group or association. Members often benefit from being listed in the member directory, complete with their website’s URL.

68. Your business card should have your link on it, of course. Better, use the back of your business card to state a special offer, coupon code, promotion or other thrilling reason for them to visit your site. Now those networking mixers may actually bring some visits to your site instead of seeding your business cards at the bottom of trash bins all over town.

69. Sponsor a league team. This might be softball, darts, roller derby, bowling—even chess. Consider the audience (the players and their families and fans) and your own interests when choosing your sponsorship opportunity.

70. Get seen on television. This technique worked well for Dave Mayer of CleanBottle.com. Dressed in a gigantic bottle costume—complete with URL—Dave was first caught on video running along Tour de France bicyclists. The video went viral and CleanBottle’s orders exploded. He has since made this technique a cornerstone in his marketing strategy, though he’s occasionally roughed up by drunken cycling fans.

71. Give a live talk, presentation, seminar or workshop. At the end of that event, you should be collecting a short survey to see how to improve the next event. Request email addresses from those who confirm they would like to opt into your mailing list.

72. When folks were registering for that event, did they fill out a registration form? It better not have been printed! Any flyers or advertising for the event should point to your website where they’ll find more event details and the registration form.

73. Give an interview. Regardless of the format, a recorded interview can offer you great exposure to your market and places you in the expert seat. As the interviewer for a list of questions ahead of time, or offer your own. Practice being at ease and ask for a copy of the interview for use in your own marketing efforts.

74. Interview others. With every interview you conduct, the easier it will become for you to interview larger names in your industry. The larger the names, the larger the draw. Tip: Have your recorded interviews transcribed and offer them on your website. It’s a great way to generate fresh content!

75. Offer to give a product review (whether positive or negative) or testimonial in exchange for a back-link.

76. Send your product (for free) to other site owners for an online product review.

77. Hand out promotional items with your URL on them. Don’t skimp here. Nice metal pens and USB drives tend to tend to stay with me for a very long time, even if they have a logo and URL emblazoned on them.

78. Hold an online treasure hunt. Contestants compete to answer riddles and collect clues to win mind-boggling prizes. Of course, one of the clues (or maybe the treasure!?) will be on your website.

79. Printed banners, billboards and skywriting. Enough said there. Better: Save yourself the printing costs. To retaliate against political sign thieves, Michigan digital marketing agency, Oneupweb projected a 30-foot video loop of a dancing Senator Obama onto the side of their building. The stunt made the evening news all over the country.

80. Produce viral content. How? One idea is to make a legend come true. Athletic shoe manufacturer Hi-Tec, made a series of “reality” videos showing their new line of running shoes were so water-resistant, people were attempting to run on water—and they were succeeding.

81. Tattoo (temporary or otherwise) your URL onto your body. Anything that important is sure to get looked up.

82. Ask a celebrity to wear a t-shirt or dress with your URL printed on it.

83. When attending a trade show, you and your team wear the same shirts, visibly labeled with your URL. Buttons and hats are another version of this.

84. Create an award program. Establish the guidelines, the award graphics, press release templates, etc. Be discerning about how you select your candidates and make your announcement. Encourage the winner(s) to place the new badge on their website. Of course, it’s a link to the award summary on your own site.

85. Promote a sale, introductory pricing, free trial or other enticing promotion to lead deal-conscious buyers to your website.

Social Media & Bookmarking

86. Facebook. Share interesting or relevant posts, images and videos on your Facebook ‘fan page’. Every now and again, include a link to your own website.

87. Facebook. Install the NetworkedBlogs Facebook app and connect your blog to Facebook. When you post to your blog, your post automatically shows in Facebook.

88. Facebook. Link your Facebook account with your Twitter account so a post in Facebook automatically posts in Twitter. This lightens your need to log into both accounts and adds diversity to your Twitter posts, especially if you’re smart enough to automate some of them using…

89. MarketMeSuite. Manage your social media streams and accounts from one place. Best: Create, schedule and upload your social media broadcasts a week, month, quarter or year at a time. Greatly reduces the social media marketing burden.

90. Twitter. Display your Twitter feed on your website or blog. If you’re using your Facebook or Twitter account regularly, your tweets will display and serve to freshen your website. This encourages repeat visits and updates your website, keeping you fresh in Google’s search results.

91. Twitter. Include your website’s link in your Twitter bio.

92. Twitter. Tweet about your product, service or articles. Include links to your onsite material. Use has tags (#) to add your tweets to relevant topic streams.

93. LinkedIn. Connect your WordPress blog with your LinkedIn account so your blog posts appear on your profile.

94. LinkedIn. Include your URL in your profile.

95. LinkedIn. Start a LinkedIn group. Best: Target your niche and mention your geographical location in the group’s description to build a more focused group.

96. LinkedIn. Too busy to start your own LinkedIn group? Join other groups and add value to those communications. Often, those posts can be expanded to become full articles on your own website. Then offer the link to the group.

97. Pinterest. Add interesting, non-copyrighted graphics to your web pages and blog posts then pin them to your Pinterest account.

98. Create a profile in any of these popular social bookmarking sites. Include your URL in your profile.
1. Digg.com
2. StumbleUpon.com
3. Delicious.com
4. Fark.com
5. Slashdot.org
6. Newsvine.com
7. DZone.com
8. Diigo.com
9. Tumblr.com
10. Pinterest.com
11. Reddit.com

99. Using these popular social bookmarking sites, bookmark links of value, related to your niche. Your own website should be one of these bookmarks.

100. Ask others to bookmark your site. Or bribe them. Either way.

101. Make a “100 Ways to” list post and ask people to share if they found it helpful. Not quite that ambitious? Make the list “10 Ways to”, “3 Ways to”, “50 Ways to”—you get the idea.

Link Building Tips for Quality SEO of Business Websites

When you begin the task of acquiring quality and relevant backlinks to your website there are many factors that can increase or decrease your search engine rankings. This article outlines the difference between good and bad backlinks.

A quality backlink pointing to your site should be in the same category and relevant in content to your website. The page where your link is located should be indexed by Google and the page should also have a Google page rank. The webpage where your link is located should also contain no more than 30 other out-going links to other websites. Link pages with more than 30 out-going links are less relevant to the search engines. Having your link posted on this type of webpage can affect your search engine rankings in a negative way. Other excellent techniques of acquiring backlinks are directory submissions, posting articles, blogs and forums.

For directory submissions select the proper directory category and take a look at how many other websites are contained in the category where your link would be posted, if you can manage to get on the first or second page of the listings, this is a quality backlink. Also look at the Google page rank of the landing page for your link. If the page has a Google page rank this is also a quality backlink.

Stay within your category, relevant content is very important to the search engines. Write an article preferably relevant in content to your website and submit the article to high quality article directories. Blogs are an excellent way to get quality one-way backlinks, Blog sites also receive tons of traffic, which in turn give your site more exposure. Posting your link on forum pages is also an efficient method of acquiring backlinks instantly.

Backlinks to avoid would be a zero page ranked webpage, especially if the home page has a zero page rank. Links posted within framed webpages which will also steal your traffic. Especially avoid link farms, webpages which contain more than 100 unrelated outgoing links, This type of link page is frowned upon by many major search engines. Avoid Webpages with mirror sites containing the exact same content with a different URL, also pages that utilize redirects and URL cloaking. Never post your link on a webpage that contains a "no follow" or "no index" robots meta tag within the source code. Dynamic websites with question marks in the URL should be avoided because they are not always indexed by the search engines.

Avoid posting your link on a page that opens very slow or contains mostly ads and flash banners. Try not to acquire or purchase great numbers of backlinks in a short period of time, backlinks should be accumulated gradually. Also avoid webpages and directories that list their results in alphabetical order, as their database increases your link could be moved to a less relevant page with less pagerank. Quality backlinks are one of the most important factors involved in the process of achieving high search engine ranking.