I recently found this really great infographic called “The Ten Commandments of Link Building“.
It covers all the aspects of building and maintaining a strong and varied inbound link profile. I think I’ll have it printed and blown up nice and big!
(Click the Image to Open in a new window)
Source: KliKKi Search Marketing.
If you want to be a successful online marketer there are certain skills that you need to acquire. Onsite SEO is a very good way of getting your online marketing campaign off to a good start, but this should not be the only element to master. Onsite SEO alone won’t get you very far at all.
But what if you work for an Online Marketing company and you have a designer, coder, copywriter, PPC expert and Social Media marketer on hand. Does this mean you should only limit yourself to one element of the online marketing process?
The truth is, in order to be a successful online marketer you can’t focus on one skill only, you need to develop and nurture all the necessary skills.
All of us aren’t web designers, but you need to know what works on a website and what does not. What works for your product review site or blog and what works for your ecommerce site is definitely not the same thing. However, there are certain elements that need to be incorporated into every website design:
Having the knowledge of what works in web design can go a long way in distinguishing your site from all the ‘noise’ out there.
All your online marketing efforts rely on content. SEO, PPC, Social Media etc. Just writing for the sake of adding more content to your site or blog is useless. Creativity and originality is the key when creating content for your site. No one wants to read the same old story just with a different angle or a little extra icing on top. In this day and age where the latest information and breaking news are available in real time as it happens, you need to be the first to get the attention of the world in a unique and engaging way. A good idea is to stay up-to-date with all current news, events and developments in your field or industry. Use social media, RSS Feeds and Google Alerts to do so.
Setting up a PPC campaign is probably one of the quickest and easiest things you can do, but just setting up your PPC campaign and writing a few one liner ads won’t necessarily bring you those clicks and more importantly the conversions.
A recent user poll done by TopRankBlog, shows that SEO is still seen by many as the most valuable online marketing strategy to be used. SEO in itself is a multi faceted strategy that includes Onsite SEO and Offsite SEO or link acquisition. Onsite SEO is quick and easy. It’s getting the votes in the form of links or references to your site that is the backbreaker.
It used to be that building some unnatural links from blog comments, forums, directories and other “free for all” link sources would do quite a bit in getting your search engine rankings up there. With Google’s update of their ranking algorithm named “Google Caffeine”, the value of link sources have been re-evaluated big time. The most valuable link sources are those that are moderated like news publications and high authority editorial sites or authoritative industry blogs.
Research shows that Google’s new algorithm definitely devalues certain types of links. Links from comments, blog rolls, links pages, and footer links just to name a few, mean very little for your site.
Using your brilliant content, industry tools and resources to create something that people want to link to (link bait) is the way to go.
Social Media can play a huge roll in your online marketing campaign if you use it right. Social Media is NOT quick and easy to get into. It involves a lot of research and work on your part. If utilized effectively, your social media campaign can boost your site traffic to incredible heights.
A recently launched viral video campaign by Old Spice, crippled YouTube with the amount of traffic it generated. Be creative and unique with your Social Media campaigns and you will reap the rewards.
As you can see Online Marketing consists of many elements that need to be utilized and catered to your specific needs. Online marketing is not a quick fix that will generate huge amounts of traffic straight away; it takes time, effort and oodles of creativity.
Why are we so reluctant to link out from our own sites, and if we do, why do we so often link to the homepage of a site and not a deep link to a page that is more specific? A quick answer will be that most of us strongly believe that linking out to other sites is a bad thing and that we will lose some of our precious ranking power or Page Rank, if you will.
Let’s think about this for a second. When asking some of the best SEO’s in the industry how to effectively implement a SEO strategy and with it, all the other facets of online marketing, the majority of them will tell you: “Optimize for the user, not for the Search Engines”.
In the world of Onsite SEO this means making your site user friendly and easy to read with sensible Meta data, Headings, great content and ease of access to your conversion elements, just to name a few basic elements.
The question is, how do you ‘build’ links with the user in mind?
Getting links to your site is more than likely done to improve the rankings of your site and to gain traffic. Linking from your site can compliment your product or service offering as it adds value to the user’s experience.
In my book this means you are optimizing for the user and not for the SE’s.
Also consider that this act might also contribute to your rankings because when you link out, you are networking with other webmasters – an act that could just score you a link for you trouble.
Google and other Search Engine algorithms take many factors into consideration when determining the value of a reference or link to your site. Is it possible that Google will reward you for linking OUT? If it’s a good quality link that is relevant to your site and industry, and it adds value to your users’ experience, regardless of the PR you shall be rewarded.
Many website and blog owners believe that linking out to other sites may cost you Search Engine rankings and lower your website’s reputation. That is simply what most of us have heard or read. The point is that the web is one large network of information that is joined to each other via links. Links ARE the internet. When you contribute to the accessibility and information infrastructure of the Internet effectively, providing that you are not linking to crap, it can do a lot for your rankings and reputation.
Another misconception in the industry is that we create exit signs for our site users when linking out. There is ample evidence out there that contradicts this philosophy. Google, Reddit, Digg, Twitter & Delicious are just a few examples that try to get users off their site as quick possible. Yet they keep coming back again and again.
A survey of major newspapers on the web found that sites that actually link out, tend to perform better than those who don’t. Don’t you think it is worth incorporating this into your strategy?
So there you have it. Give freely to those who are worthy of your valued vote and therefore ensure that browsers to your site have the best possible experience.