Out of the Fog Marketing

More and more people are turning to article posts in order to build back links to their website. Here are our favorite article directories:
1. Ezinearticles - They are the strictest and only allow backlinks in the author signature area, but articles posted on this site get great pickup. You can also track stats.
2. Article Alley - Allows 2 backlinks in the actual article body.
3. Go Articles - Promotional links are OK in the Author Bio area.
4. Article Snatch - Allows up to 3 backlinks in the author area.

Also be sure to check for directories in your product or service niche. We have an attorney client that gets great pickup off posts to goinglegal.com. Also consider turning your written posts into videos. It's easier than you think. We'll cover video articles in a future post.

Labels: article directories, backlinks, link building for SEO, top article sites

Companies just entering the world of search engine optimization are often floored when we tell them that just putting up a website--even with all the best on-page optimization-- will not get high organic search rankings for highly competitive terms. You must build back links - links from other web pages, preferably high quality ones, back to your website.

You can check your sites' back link count on Marketleap's link popularity tool or any number of free online tools.

Most web marketing agencies can help you with an initial back link building campaign and then can outline a plan on how to build more back links over time. Some of our favorites are:

1. Write a blog and back link to it
2. Comment on blog posts with high quality that allow website URLs in the comment post line.
3. Write informative articles and submit them to articles banks such as www.ezinearticles.com and www.buzzle.com .
4. Distribute press releases over reputable wires or through prweb.com. In addition to wire distribution, make sure your local or industry press gets the release. Back links in any online media coverage you get is far more valuable than the wire service link.
5. Create Squidoo lenses.
6. Submit your site to free online directories. We hire interns from our local university to do this.
   

Labels: backlinks, link building for SEO, marketleap, website design

Get a free high quality back link to your website by creating a personal and domain page at Aboutus.org.
The Wiki-based site pages get very quickly indexed by Google. If you have not created or edited a Wiki page before it can take a little time to learn the system, but there is a handy tutorial on the site.

Labels: about us, backlinks, build backlinks, link building for SEO

It isn't just a good idea for the environment, recycling is great for marketing your business as well. Recycling ideas that is. Often content such as articles, snippets or topical advice can be reconstructed or updated as an easy way to build more content and, if online, gain valuable back links.
Also if you spend a good deal of time on content such as blog posts, make sure you distribute subsets of the content on sites such as Twitter. You can also put snippets on your email signature.

Labels: backlinks, blog posts, blogging, guerilla marketing, marketing content, twitter

I had a really interesting call from a prospect this week. He found our firm on Google by using a search term that never crossed our minds to put on our keywords list. We did not search engine optimize our site for this term. After I scheduled our first meeting with him, I quickly typed the search term into Google and found we had the #1 ranking for it.
So if we didn't search engine optimize for it, how did it get to be #1? Well we do have a good number of back links to our site and all the code is in the right places. But more importantly in my mind - we wrote copy on our site that really describes our business service offerings well.
If you write great, simple, and straight-to-the-point headings and copy those leads will come your way.

Labels: backlinks, keywords analysis, search engine optimization

Checking Your Links
Web1Marketing has a great set of tools for those firms interested in search engine optimization. I've written before about the importance of quality backlinks - your firm's URL listed on other sites. You can check the number of links to your website AND sometimes more importantly your competitors' websites at Web1Marketing's backlink checker.

Labels: backlinks, search engine optimization, SEO tools