Even if you are brand new to link building, you should understand the importance of getting links from high trust sites. Last Friday, Rand Fishkin from SEOMoz featured a link building segment on their  Whiteboard Friday series.

Give it a watch… some very good information here.

from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo. [tags] link building, trust rank, SEOmoz [/tags]

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I’d like to thank our good friends at Webhead Interactive (an SEO company in Tampa) for emailing us this video.  Internet viral marketing at it’s best!  Enjoy!

Lyrics:
You create a new site and its content heavy,
With the right amount of pictures you believe it’s ready, 
So you launch it trying to put money in da bank, 
But when you search and try to find yourself, you can’t, 
So you thank until your mind goes blank, 
Got titles and headers but no page rank, 
Sooner or later it will show if I wait, 
In the meantime make sure my code validate, 
And it do, Hmm, now what I’m supposed to do, 
Add meta information and alt tags too, 
Still don’t get listing, 
Something must be missing, 
Brad and Chuck recommended doing link building, 
So you start hunting down sites like a predator, 
Doing back links on all your competitors, 
Whoever linking to them need to link to me, 
Is it free, do we swap, or do I pay a fee, 
Well take it from us, before you take that step, 
Some things about the site that you might want to check, 
Did they use a link farm or some dirty tactics, 
Could have a bad effect on your site that’s drastic, 
Could’ve link baited, look at what they created, 
Compare it to yours, is it even related, 
Take the time, go inspect and see, 
Take advantage of paid directories, 
If you follow all the steps with a little bit of patience, 
Get links from relevant sites that are favorites, 
Update your content on the regular basis, 
I’m confident you’ll make it to first page placement!

[tags] link building video, SEO video, link building rap [/tags]

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• Grab readers with an interesting title of seven words or less
• Summarize the story in the first paragraph with a powerful hook – why is this news so important – what makes this newsworthy to readers?
• Make sure you include the who, what, where, when and why
• Stick to facts, not fluff
• Avoid sounding like advertising – this is news, not a sales pitch
• Include your contact information and a link at the end of the press release

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It’s a simple question, but plenty of people get confused by this one. There’s a huge difference between outsourcing your link building and buying links. One is a simple exchange of cash for particular links. It’s a straightforward transaction – you pay for a particular link; that’s it. I’m not saying that there aren’t many different types of links you can buy – there are. 

[tags] outsource link building, link buying, text links, link building service, press release [/tags]

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Just how successful your articles are depends on a number of factors. The articles have to be interesting, well written and contain enough helpful information to have real value to readers, but they also have to be marketed properly. All of the articles in the world won’t help you if you post them in places where they won’t be found by the right audience. A fascinating, informative article about proper surfboard maintenance isn’t going to help you if it’s lost in a general article directory or posted on a website where most readers are avid mid-west gardeners.

1) Find the right editorial calendars. Look for the editorial calendars of online publications. Most online publications provide an editorial calendar that outlines what the main topics will be several months in advance. Reviewing these can not only give you an idea of when to submit articles you already have, but give you some great ideas for future articles. For instance, www.eweekmedia.com, an IT publication, is focusing on Mobile and Wireless in early May of 2008. In April 2008, there’s a feature titled “Security Focus: Email Security Challenge.” 

Whatever your business’s niche, check the magazines and review editorial calendars and make sure you match your articles to their focus – and be sure to pay attention to their submission deadlines! Editors love to run articles that dovetail with a particular focus.

2) Find niche publications. After you’ve checked out the editorial calendars of the magazines you’re already familiar with, look for publications you aren’t familiar with. For example, if you have an ecommerce website, search for “ecommerce magazines” and you might just find this: www.world-newspapers.com/e-commerce.html.

When you search for Surfing magazines, you can find magazines that include online magazines focusing on female surfers, North Carolina surfers, New England surfing, Australian surfing, competitive surfing, long board surfing…well, you get the idea! Even a niche like surfing can be narrowed even further, so be sure you look for any potential niche magazines that you can really tailor your articles toward that will love you for sending them some high quality content.

3) Find niche article directories. There are good niche article directories out there that either supply niche businesses with quality content or can point you in the direction of respected online publications that are looking for content. Lets say your site is about human resources, here is an example of article dedicated to HR http://www.businessknowhow.com/bkhmanage.htm.

You can do basic searches for “human resource article directory” or whatever your business niche is, and you’ll turn up various directories where you can get your articles published.  Do some homework, however, to make sure that you utilize the best directories for your own articles. A few things to look for in an online article directory are:

• Read several articles in their supply of articles to check the quality. The articles should be well-written, with plenty of information and excellent grammar. If the quality isn’t consistent, then the directory doesn’t set high standards.
• Does the site indicate how many articles are actually downloaded each month? You want to compare figures from directory to directory to see how much of the traffic to the site is actually downloading articles.
• How recently has the site been updated? If there hasn’t been new content added in more than a month, then the directory may not get regular visits from publications. It also means there aren’t very many authors. The more authors, the more frequently articles are added. Publications are looking for fresh content – and fresh content means content that’s new and different every time that a visitor logs onto a directory. Look for sites that are changing every day.
• And of course you might check their pagerank, backlinks, traffic stats, etc. to judge the quality of the link juice or traffic they might send your way.

If you use these three methods of getting your articles out there, you’ll quickly see a difference in your website traffic and inbound links. Any other suggestions from our article experts out there?

[tags] article marketing, article directories, niche markets, website traffic, inbound links [/tags]

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