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Thursday, June 20, 2013

Best Way To Build Your Backlinks and Organic Traffic To Your Website

Even if you manage to get lots of backlinks in a natural way, it is never a bad idea to welcome additional quality inbound links. There are several ways for acquiring backlinks which may be ethical while other ways may be illegitimate and unacceptable and can lead to your site being penalized in the long run. The legitimate ways of getting backlinks include directory submissions, forum posting, linking to other blogs, press releases, etc. Among the unacceptable ways are linking to link farms, buying links in large quantities, getting linked to websites hosting illegal content, linking to other websites that belong to the same person, etc.

To start building backlinks, the first step would be to identify sites from where you can acquire quality backlinks. This can be done with the help of Backlink Builder tool which generates a list of websites on entering keywords. Once you get the list of potential sites where you can post messages, articles, or backlinks to your website, the choice is up to you to visit these sites and start posting your content along with an inbound link to your website in it.

You may have a question about how websites generated by the backlink building tool can provide backlinks free of cost. The answer to your question simply lies in the fact that such sites need content for their site. With you posting and feeding them with content without getting paid for it, helps you to get free quality backlinks in return from them. It is like free trading where you offer something required by others for free and get what you want for free. However, this free trading lasts as long as you post your content to sites that are respected and also as long as you do not end up posting fake content.

Below are some of the most successful methods that can be used to build backlinks.

Directory Submission:
Getting your site listed in various directories is one of the basic steps that you should start with in your efforts to build backlinks. It may be unlikely to get any significant traffic through directories; however, the idea here is to get backlinks to improve your page ranking.

There are several directories to which your site can be submitted. These can range from general directories, blog directories, SEO friendly directories to non-reciprocal directories (directories that allow you to list your website in their directory even if you do not link back to them). Additionally, it is important that you submit your site to only those directories that have a high page rank.

It is also important to know that listing a site in directories is a time consuming process as it requires you to first find out quality directories to which you want to submit your site. Once this is done, you have to search through the categories and sub categories in these directories to find out the specific category to which your website belongs. Therefore, keeping the time constraint in mind, it is a good idea to hire a professional SEO company that provides directory submission services so that you can save time and concentrate your efforts and resources on your other core business functions.

Forum or Blog Posting and Article Directories:
Forum posting and Blog posting is another way of getting quality backlinks to your site because search engines usually index forums as well. Getting backlinks from blogs or forums that are reputed can be very helpful. However, at times there could be a possibility of your post being edited or deleted by the forum administrator if they find that your posting does not adhere to the forum policy. Moreover, there may be times when the administrators may not allow any links in posts until they are totally relevant.

While posting in forums and blogs can be done faster and require lesser efforts, submission of articles to various directories can take a very long time since articles are longer when compared to posts and also involve a though process to write them. However, it would still be worth the time and effort in the long run.

Press Releases and News Announcements:
Though this is not a day to day practice to build quality backlinks, it does fetch good results if done the right way. There are several websites out there which publish press releases or news announcements free of cost or may charge a fee. A press release that is well written can boost visitor traffic to your site and also a backlink from a reputed site to your site is a value addition to your entire SEO efforts. However, a press release can be used as a medium only if there is something newsworthy. That is the reason why press releases and news announcements do not factor in as a daily way to build backlinks.

Content Exchange:
Content exchange can also be very helpful in getting you quality backlinks. For example, you can provide free RSS feeds to websites that are interested in them. When your RSS feed gets published by the other site, you will get an inbound link to your website. This will also drive a lot of visitor traffic that will visit your website to get more details on the headlines and abstract they read on this other site.

Creating Quality Content:
Creating professional and quality content is also very important to get more backlinks to your site. This is because content that is well written is always noticeable and there would be more number of people who would want to link to it.

Leaving Comments:
To create awareness and get visibility for your site, you can also leave comments on others blogs. Leaving comments that are appealing to read will always have a good chance of drawing the attention of more people to your site.

Practices to Avoid While Building Backlinks:
There are several ways in which links can be built, however, it is important to realize that certain link building ways can ruin your SEO efforts. One such practice to avoid is link exchange, wherein, when you place a link on another website, that website in return will place a backlink to your website. There are a few things to be considered with this concept of link exchanging. First is the ratio between inbound and outbound links. Having more outbound links than inbound links is not good. Second, there could be a possibility of your link partner being a link farm. In this case, your site can get penalized or banned by search engines as link farms are considered as unethical SEO practice.

Additionally, you must also be careful about linking to sites that are suspicious or host illegal content. Though search engines will not penalize you for having backlinks from such websites, since you do not have control over what they link to, linking with such sites can ruin your SEO efforts.

Sunday, June 2, 2013

How to Promote Your Blog Through Social Media? What Steps to Promote Blogs Online


Writing blog is not the most difficult part in blogging but getting viewers is the important part.  After writing hundreds of blog posts but attracting no viewers is mere waste of time.  The viewership of blogs determines the popularity of the same.  Social media platforms have made the job easier to get connected to people having similar thoughts.  Here are certain tips that will help you to gain new readers:

Facebook
Post your blog content or the URL of the blog post in your Facebook status or can be embedded on your wall.  Or go ahead and create a fan page for your blog and continue to update the same.  If you believe that your friend is interested to read your blog posts but often forget to come back to your blog, you can directly post the URL in their wall.  When you write about any other brands, you should tag them without fail.  You should also create a “Like” button for your blog post.  Remember to tell readers to hit the button if they find the content impressive.  Further, go ahead and post the URL on their wall, discussion boards, communities etc.

Twitter
One can tweet the title and link of your blog post along with  some relevant hash tagsl  Hash tag will bring your during the searches made by other tweeters.  When you have completed tweets, it is good to do a quick search on the keyword to find out others who speak on the same theme.  Look for questions on the same subject and try to be the first person to answer and divert the traffic to your blog.  Finding out people who are interested in conversation might help you to grow the traffic.

Google+
The traditional way to start is to place the URL of your blog posts.  It supports the same functionality as Twitter to add # tags to your posts.  Look for other authors who are discussing on the same topic and mention them in the tag.  You can call their posts to be an inspirational material and quote them in the tags.  This information might attract the readers and they might actually end up in your blog to go through the information.

LinkedIn
Update the URL of the blog post in your LinkedIn account and add them in the publication tab.  Prospective readers, employers and employees will go through the link if they are interested.  Make sure to install BlogLink application tool in your account.

Online Communities
Search for online communities who are interested in your topic.  Make sure that your posts aren’t blatantly promotional and engage with the rest of the community or you may be labeled as a spammer.

Email
At this time, email is still a popular way to send information.  Try to create an e-news letter or add a self updating RSS feed (like wise stamp) to your email signature.  Alternatively,  you can offer subscriptions via email on your blog.

Triberr
Triberr was created specifically for bloggers to promote each other.  Bloggers use it by creating ‘tribes” of fellow bloggers who are writing for a similar niche audience.  The tribe members all provide Triberr with access to their Twitter account and an RSS feed URL for their blog.  The site creates a stream of formatted tweets promoting all tribe members blog posts that, upon approval by each member, are scheduled for posting to their Twitter account.  The posts are staggered no less than one hour apart.

Pinterest
Pinterest is a social sharing site that allows you to collect & share images & links in a bulletin board format.  You can collect links on visually pleasing boards that you can categorize as you like.  Pinterest only works as an image-based link sharing tool and hence use images that are posted with your blog.
The most important part of your social media marketing campaign is strategy and keep in mind that all social media users are hyper-sensitive to sales & marketing.  Try to be authentic, engage them in a one to one manner, and strive to bring value regardless of whether doing so seems to directly benefit you.  Tricks and active sales will be counter productive and if you can generate trust they they welcome you into their communities.


Compiled by Amit Giri, Digital Marketing Manager, DART Consulting.  He can be reached at amit@dartconsultng.co.in