A little over a month ago, Vertical Measures created a fun SEO infographic about the types of links you can obtain through link building and the value of each types of links.

As a follow up, I thought I would go through the link types represented in this visualization and share which ones we actually received while doing some website marketing for this infographic.

1. Content Distribution

One of the first steps in any good content distribution strategy is getting a few quality press releases and articles written with SEO optimized text pointing back to your content. This helps you get your content out there and hopefully syndicated.

2. Blog / Forum Comments

Blog comments are a particular favorite of mine. One of the ways to promote a new post or article on your site is through commenting on blogs that are CommentLuv enabled.

Comment on related post about a Google Infographic.

Now getting a link to your content in your comment is great, but what is even better is when someone notices your content and goes one step further and writes a whole blog posts on it, which “upgrades” your link, if you will, from a blog comment to an in-content natural link. This is what happened when I commented on a post about an infographic on life in the cloud, which resulted in a post on link data visualization.

3. Purchased Links

According to SEOMoz, paid links aren’t all that bad. But did we purchase any for our infographic? We didn’t outright ask anyone, “Hey, if you link to this, I’ll give you $50.” Nor did we buy any directory links for our infographic.

4. Reciprocating Links

Reciprocal links are another type that we did not touch on for our infographic. One way we could have done this in a relevant fashion would be to ask someone else with a search related infographic to post ours on their blog and, in return, we would post theirs on our blog. So needless to say, not all reciprocal links are a bad thing. You just have to be careful that they are highly, highly relevant.

5. Social Media / Bookmarks

Social media promotion was probably the strongest form of promotion we did for our infographic. We received a lot of traffic from Twitter and Facebook by encouraging tweets with the incorporation of the Tweetmeme button and likes with the Facebook Like Button code, as well as from bookmarking on social voting sites like Sphinn, StumbleUpon, and BizSugar.

6. Embedded Content

One of the best things about infographics is that people want to embed them on their site. In our case, our infographic was interactive, so we created the embed code that people could put in the image and it would link to our site for the animated version.

<a title="Linktoberfest!" href="http://www.verticalmeasures.com/linktoberfest/" target="_blank">
<img src="http://www.verticalmeasures.com/linktoberfest/images/linktoberfest.jpg" border="0"
alt="Linktoberfest! SEO Infographic for Link Data Visualization" /></a>

This code was used to feature our infographic in several blog posts, including 12 Kickass SEO Infographics, Links are Like Beers, and SEO Infographic for Link Data Visualization.

7. Link Reclamation

Link reclamation was one that we didn’t touch on for this content. But again, if we wanted to, we could seek out opportunities where people have linked out to infographics that no longer exist and ask if they would like to replace their missing infographic with ours. It takes a bit of research to find these types of opportunities, but webmasters are often quite appreciative of anyone helping them better their website by replacing broken links and content.

8. Natural Links

Natural links are the holy grail of link building. Once you create link worthy content, the kind of links you want the most are the ones that you don’t have to do any more work for. You want to create content that works for you – content that is just that good to warrant people happily linking to it without you having to even ask, such as the ones we received from link building roundups and best of the week posts.

9. Link Requests

Some of the highest quality links come from link requests. Although natural links are the best, sometimes you have to give your content a nudge to get it on a relevant site to increase exposure and rankings.

For infographics, the best places to start for link requests are on sites that showcase infographics, such as Infographics Showcase who featured our infographic after we suggested it to their site. This highlights the key to any link request – you want to make that the link (or content) you are requesting to put on another site is very relevant and valuable to them. This will ensure that you receive a better response rate to your requests.

Results of Link Worth Content

Now what were the results of our web content development project? Our infographic is now in the top 5 results of Google for seo infographic, and the top 1-2 results for link data visualization and link building infographic. We also received leads for our link building services via the infographic. And last, but not least, we have something that easily explains link quality that we can share with anyone who asks, including potential clients! All in all, a great reason to develop link worthy content!

Your Best Content

When you create content that you hope to go viral, what type do you create and how do you promote it? What kind of benefits and results have you seen from awesome content going viral?

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Have you ever considered outsourcing your social media marketing campaign to an Internet marketing company? Here are some pros and cons to doing so, as well as some ways to ensure you get the best social management for your business.

The Pros

Here are just a few of the many pros to letting social media marketing experts handle your social media campaign.

Skip the initial learning curve.

By outsourcing your social media marketing, your business does not have to invest in time and money for learning the tools and technologies involved in marketing your business in social media. Outsourcing social media to a knowledgeable company means that they will handle the ins and outs of the different social networks in terms of selecting the ones that will be best for you, finding the right contacts, spreading your message, and monitoring your brand using the various tools that are available.

Learn from the best.

Ok, this sounds like a contradiction since the first pro was skipping the initial learning curve. But what you can do that will take less initial investment is to watch what your social media specialist does for your company. Which networks do they use? What tools do they use? When do they tweet? What content do they post to your wall? Who do they connect with?

Since most of the social media activities that your outsourcing companies provide will be public knowledge, it will be easy for you to observe what they are doing and see how it benefits your company. In the long run, simply monitoring what they do will help you learn what you could eventually start doing for yourself.

Going beyond just advertising.

There are times that you may need social media for more than just simple marketing and advertising, such as when your company has a crisis, which could be anything from your website being down to something that may seriously damage your reputation.

Social media can play an important role in crisis management. Having your social profiles and networks already setup and running smoothly prior to your crisis will help you be able to send an upfront message early on in the crisis to an established audience. Your campaign manger can also help you in figuring out the best way to respond to any mentions of your brand to help shed positive light on a bad situation.

The Cons(iderations)

I don’t want to say the following are cons of outsourcing your social media strategy so much as they are things to consider when you are asking someone else to handle your social networking.

You know your business best.

Social media companies are going to be experts at social media and Internet marketing, but they are not necessarily going to be experts in your industry. The exception would be if you happen to find someone who only does Internet marketing for your industry, but that can also lead to some serious conflicts of interest if they are working with you and your competitors.

Someone else is creating your first impressions.

The first contact a potential client will have with your company may come via Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, or another network. This means that it will not be you, but your social media strategist who will be making the first impression of your company for you.

Their hours are not your hours.

Social media is real time. Let’s say that you have a retail store that is hosting a huge event on a Saturday afternoon, and you have a nice sized fan base that may start asking questions about your event starting Friday evening through Saturday morning on Twitter. Most Internet marketing companies work the traditional Monday – Friday, 8 – 5. Who will be answering those questions?

Alleviating Possible Cons(iderations)

So you’ve read some of the few pros and cons, and you still know that the best way to go is outsourcing, but you want to make sure that the cons do not have a negative affect on your company. Here are some ways you can alleviate these, and other cons, from becoming an issue.

Help your social media strategist get to know your company.

You know your company, your industry, and your customers better than anyone. Help your strategist get to know these aspects as well by sharing information with them. This includes sharing your company’s history, where you get your industry news from (magazines, blogs, etc.), and telling them about your targeted demographic for traditional media. This will help your strategist send the right message about your company and industry to the right people online.

Keep your social media strategist "in the loop" of what is going on with your business.

When your company has a sales promotion, it is easy to remember to tell your traditional marketing staff in advance so they can prepare mailers, flyers, brochures, etc. Another person you need to include on this notification list is your social media strategist. If you have a huge sale, promotion, new product or service introduction, and so forth, be sure to let your social media strategist know too so they can help you promote it to your social networks.

Coordinate and schedule updates in advance.

If there are times that you want specific times that you want tweets sent out on your Twitter profile, let your campaign manager know. There are tools that can help them automate your account to send a message at any time you would like.

Have access to your social media accounts.

Make sure that you have your social profile information, including your usernames, passwords, and email addresses associated to each account. This can come in handy for many reasons, including if you see something that you would prefer not to be on your social profile (like a status update that may be questionable to your followers) or if you want to access your account to answer a question or send out an update during your social media manager’s off hours.

Make sure your outsourcing company knows what they are doing.

If you don’t know much about social media, then it may be hard to decide which outsourcing company to go with when you are choosing one to represent your brand. There is a great post on 52 questions that you can ask when hiring a social media company. Even if you don’t fully understand the answers, they can come in handy if you ever want to take over your social marketing in-house.

Your Thoughts on Social Media Outsourcing

What are your thoughts on outsourcing your social media marketing strategies? If you have done it, what has your experience been? If you provide social media marketing services, what information would you like to get from customers to help you provide them with better social networking strategies?

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Last week was National Pet Week and Be Kind to Animals Week. The goal for both is to celebrate the ways animals play a role in people’s lives and to remind everyone to treat the animals in their lives with love and care.

This week, let’s continue to celebrate pet week by taking a look at pet friendly social media and Internet marketing strategies.

Niche Social Media Networks for Pets

Pet owners and pets themselves have become quite popular on social media networks, so much so that pets have their own niche social media sites where pet owners can create profiles for their pets. Some sites include:

• Dogster
• Catster
• Fuzzster
• Petside
• My Dog Space
• My Cat Space
• United Dogs
• United Cats
• Pika Pet
• Pet Brags

And if there was any question as to the popularity of these networks amongst pet lovers, take a look at the traffic for the top pet networks.

It’s easy to see that there is a large audience for the pet targeted demographics active on social media today.

Pets on Mainstream Social Media

Looking to connect with pet lovers on mainstream social media sites? There are a variety of ways to find them on top social networks.

• Twellow allows you to search member bios. A quick search for Shih Tzu, for example, brings up some pets online including Sadie Shih Tzu who has her own blog, Flickr, and Youtube.
• A search for pets (general or specific) on Facebook will reveal many pages and groups with lots of members who are pets lovers.
• LinkedIn has lots of groups with hundreds of members who are interested in pets, personally and professionally.

There are also many examples of pet superstars on social media, such as Maru, the box sliding cat, whose Youtube videos has over 50 million views total and the dog whisperer Cesar Millan who has over 100,000 followers.

What does this mean for social media marketing services geared toward the pet industry? There are many ways to find people on mainstream networks that are interested in pet products and services, and also a plethora of ideas that can be generated from successful pet celebrities on social media.

Social Media Success Stories

I’m sure this is only one of many, but it is proof that social media can play an important role for pets. I have seen many, many emails and alerts from various shelters about pets who have been at the shelter too long and are coming close to a deadline to be adopted or to be euthanized. Many of these animals that are listed do not find homes in time. One such alert was posted on the Dog Files blog for six dogs that needed to be adopted in four days. This post was shared over 300 times via Twitter, including a few tweets by @Alyssa_Milano with the #adopt hashtag. Now I can’t say for certain if it was the number of tweets or the celebrity tweet that made the difference, but I would like to think it played a vital role in this becoming a success story when, a few days later, the Dog Files blogged that all six dogs were adopted in time.

So whether you are Alyssa Milano tweeting about life saving adotpions, the AZPRC recruiting volunteers for the Arizona Animal Welfare League, or the Compassion for Greyhounds organization raising awareness through Causes on Facebook, remember that social media can make a difference in animals lives.

Pet Friendly Link Building

Do you have a pet related website you need to build links to in order to boost their position in search results, or do you provide link building services for pet related companies? Some great places to get links that will not only help boost your rankings but also bring in traffic and build community for your sites include:

Pet Friendly Blogs
Looking for blogs on pets? There are a ton of search engines (including the Google blog search) that can help you find great pet related blogs. PostRank, for example, will show you their top rated blogs on pets and cute animals.

Pet Forums
There are many forums for pet lovers out there. From general pet forums such as pet lovers and paw talk forums that cover all kinds of pets to more specific forums for dogs, cats, hamsters, ferrets, etc., forums are a great place to find a community of pet lovers interacting with each other about their pets on topics about adoption, health, legal issues, and more.

One thing to remember when building links with a pet friendly community is that pet lovers love other pet lovers – so the more personal you are in your interactions on forums and blogs, the better. Talking about your own pets, engaging in discussion about site owner pets, and really helping out other pet lovers will greatly improve your chances of building strong links to your site that will get clicks. Acting like a spammer and blurting out a link will, alternatively, just get you kicked out of the community.

Your Thoughts on Pet Friendly Internet Marketing

What are some of your ideas and approaches to social media and Internet marketing when it comes to pets?

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A great way to celebrate Earth Day is to think of ways that you can help the environment. To get you started in the right direction, here are some ways companies can help the environment and themselves in terms of saving money and more.

Newsletters to PDF

Instead of printing out your newsletter or flyer, convert it to a PDF (for free using Primo PDF) and send it via email instead.

Business Benefit: You will save a lot in printing costs, especially if you do regular newsletters.

Online Seminars

Instead of hosting a class, conference, or seminar everyone has to travel to for attendance, host it online like the upcoming Social Media Success Summit.

Business Benefit: More attendees can afford the registration fees and come to your event because of the savings in travel costs.

eBooks

Instead of publishing a hardcopy book, report, or training manual, make it an eBook instead.

Business Benefit: Free eBooks can help you build your email list, as well as be distributed and updated easily.

Resumes by Email

Instead of having job applicants fax their resumes, have them email it instead.

Business Benefit: Review resumes on your PC and keep them organized for future reference while keeping your desk clutter free!

Work at Home

Instead of having employees who live far from the office drive into work, let them work some or most days at home instead.

Business Benefit: Save on in house office supplies!

Digital Business Cards

Instead of giving out a lot of business cards, setup a bluetooth business card that you can share with others between smartphones.

Business Benefit: Your contact information will go directly into someone’s address book as opposed to being lost in a pile, plus you can include more information without cramming it all on a small card.

Online Invoice Delivery

Instead of mailing or faxing invoices, why not email them?

Business Benefit: Invoices get delivered the same day and usually with the added bonus of having a delivery receipt from Outlook so clients cannot say they did not receive it as an excuse to delay payment.

Your Earth Day Tips

These are only just a few ways businesses can help the environment – tells us how your company helps the environment in the comments below.

Earth Day Resources

Learn more about ways you can help the environment in your personal life, as well as great deals and freebies you can get today!

• Earth Day Network
• Sierra Club’s Earth Day Sweepstakes
• Earth Day Freebies
• 20 Ways to Do Something for Earth Day
• 5 Ways to Go Green for Earth Day

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Ready to immerse yourself into the world of link building? Here are over 100 links to the best resources on link building training, blogs, tools, and more.

Link Building Education

Free training guides, webinars, and presentations on link building.

• Link Building Training – A comprehensive training guide to link building including affiliate program links, deep linking, link quality evaluation, free link sources, link analysis and more.
• Link Building on Slideshare – Presentations and webinars on link building.
• SEO Webinars – Free SEO webinars including Link Building Strategies for 2010.
• Whiteboard Fridays – Custom search of all SEOMoz Whiteboard Friday presentations focusing on link building.

Audio / Video Podcasts

Audio and video podcasts on link building featuring experts in the industry.

• Search Cowboys – Link building Q&A with Christopher Cemper and Google document indexing.
• SEO 101 – Directory link building with Loren Baker of Search Engine Journal and using social media to improve search engine rankings and help with SEO training.
• SEO Rockstars – Roundtable with SEO experts on link building topics (spamming, black hat, white hat), link inheritance attributes, and more.
• SEM Synergy – Link building strategies with Eric Ward, link building best practices, and more.
• Search for Solutions – Internet marketing scams with paid search links.
• Ofice Hours – Paid links are evil and overlooked on site issues.
• Webcology – Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz discussing his Professional Guide to Link Building and link building with Debra Mastaler, author of Link Spiel blog.
• SEO 101 – Building ranking for sites, link building 101 parts 1 and 2, link building and exchange schemes, nofollow, and more.
• Run Marketing – Link building for small business.
• iGary – Link building with search marketer Gary Reid.
• Bella Web Design – Link building with Desiree C. Scalses of Bella Web Design.
• Think Around Corners – A link building strategy to gain organic link popularity.
• Internet Marketing Street Smarts – Sam Niccolls of SEOMoz discusses business strategies of multi-million dollar companies including the best way for a complete beginner to start link building, how personalised search will change rankings, and the number one way to get a site ranked organically quickly in highly competitive markets.

Link Building Blogroll

The following are blogs with link building categories, including the full RSS feeds and link building category feeds when available.

• SEOMoz (Full feed )
• Search Engine Journal (Full feed )
• Search Engine Watch (Full feed )
• Search Engine Land (Full feed or link building only )
• Web Pro News (Full feed or link building only )
• Search Engine Roundtable (Full feed )
• Top Rank Blog (Full feed or link building only )
• Link Building Blog (Full feed )
• Search Engine Guide (Full feed )
• David Naylor (Full feed )
• Small Business Search Marketing (Full feed or link building only )
• 97th Floor (Full feed )
• Daily SEO Tip (Full feed )
• SEO Smarty (Full feed or link building only )
• Link Spiel (Full feed or link building only )
• Stone Temple (Full feed or link building only )
• Old School SEO (Full feed or link building only )
• Audette Media (Full feed )
• Natural Search (Full feed )
• Yoast (Full feed or link building only )
• SEO Speedwagon (Full feed )
• SEM Synergy (Full feed )
• Local SEO Guide (Full feed )
• Link Buildr (Full feed )
• Vertical Measures (Full feed or link building only )
• Receptional (Full feed or link building only )
• Canadian SEO (Full feed )
• Seer Interactive (Full feed or link building only )
• WordStream (Full feed or link building only )
• Cemper (Full feed )
• Social SEO (Full feed or link building only )
• Think Around Corners (Full feed )
• Linkers Blog (Full feed or link building only )
• Stuntdubl (Full feed )
• Marketing Pilgrim (Full feed )
• Links Manager Blog (Full feed )
• FMS SEO (Full feed )

Good to Know

Articles and resources for specific link building elements and strategies.

• Advanced Keyword Research – Ten ways to go beyond basic keyword research.
• The Value of a Link – The most important factors the engines consider when judging the value of a link.
• Anchor Text – Decide what two to three word phrase to use as your keyword phrase for anchor text.
• Local Search – Get listed with links on the best local search directories.
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective One Way Link Building – Link baiting, article marketing, forum marketing, guest posting, and more.
• 101 Ways to Build Link Popularity – How to build links fast.
• Link Baiting Resources – Ideas, techniques, case studies, and drawbacks.
• Top Web Directories and Directory Critic – Find the best directories for link building.
• Link Building Case Study – One link builder’s documentation of the link building process.
• Link Building Strategies – Great visualization / infographic on link building strategies.

Popular Link Building Stories

Social bookmarking sites with link building tags and categories.

• StumbleUpon
• Delicious
• Digg

Link Building on Twitter

Link building discussion and experts on Twitter.

• Tweets on link building
• People with link building in their profile on Twellow and WeFollow
• Link building Twitter Lists

SEO Forums

Discuss link building on the following SEO and website related forums.

• Link Development on Digital Point
• Link Building on Search Engine Roundtable
• Reciprocal Links, Buy / Sell / Swap on Warrior Forum
• Link Popularity on SEO Chat
• Link Building on SEO Forums
• Directories and Link Building on Search Engine Forums
• Buy / Sell / Exchange Links on V7N
• Link Building on Search Engine Watch Forum
• Link Building on High Ranking SEO Forum
• Link Development on Webmaster World
• Link Popularity on Submit Express Forums
• Link Exchange Market on Site Ground

Groups

Active groups on link building.

• LinkedIn Groups – Link Building and Linking and Promotions (must be logged in to LinkedIn)
• Google Link Building Groups

Free Tools

Tools, applications, and browser plugins to aid in backlink research.

• SEO Book Tools – Free link analysis and keyword research tools brought to you by SEO expert Aaron Wall.
• Link Diagnosis – This tool can show you all the important information about your competitor’s links. The report includes PageRank, anchor texts, no-follow information and more.
• Bad Neighborhood – This tool will scan the links on your website, and on the pages that your website is linking to, and flag possible problem areas.
• SEOMoz Tools – Over twenty SEO free and premium tools designed to help with every aspect of search engine optimization, including on-page targeting, site crawlability, competitive analysis, rank checking and keyword difficulty.
• Yahoo Site Explorer – Site Explorer allows you to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search.
• Google Adwords Keyword Tool – Use this tool by Google to get new keyword ideas.
• SEO Quake – Seoquake allows user to obtain and investigate many important SEO parameters of the internet project under study on the fly.

Search Operators

Advanced search operators for popular search engines to aid in backlink research.

• 13 Search Operators for Ultimate Link Building
• Advanced Google Search Operators, cheat sheet, ways to learn them, and ways to use them.
• Advanced Bing Search Operators, cheat sheet, and ways to use them.
• Advanced Search on Yahoo, cheat sheet, and ways to use them.
• Special Search Terms on AltaVista
• Query Lanugage on AlltheWeb
• Search Operators Cheat Sheet and Comparison Chart

Additional Resources

If you have additional resources for link building, please share them in the comments to help turn this into the best link building resource available.

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