Every Tuesday we pick a vertical market based on the number of votes a market receives at our Vertical Market Poll. This week it is the home furnishings market.  We invite all of you out there to post (in the comments) a specific link building recommendation for the home furniture market (a good directory, authority website, blog, link search, etc.). If it adds value, we will approve it, give you the credit and a “dofollow” link to your site. However, we will just delete stupid, irrelevant, spammy comments – only truly useful information will be allowed. 

This week we are going to demonstrate a fairly simple route to some home furnishing backlinks for your site.   This is an often over-looked method of obtaining links that are helping your competitors get high search engine rankings.  In this example we will work with backlinks according to Google, but the process also works with Yahoo Explorer and other similar backlink tools.

Let’s assume you have a home furniture site and you would like to work on your rankings for the keyword phrase "bedroom furniture".  The first step is to conduct a search for "bedroom furniture" in Google.   Now we want to take a look at the backlinks for some of the top ranking sites for this search.  EverythingFurniture.com is the #1 site.  You need to go to their website and using either the "link:" search or click on the Pagerank button in the Google toolbar and select backward links.  This brings up the list of sites Google shows as linking to your competitors website.  (We are going to skip this website as their backlinks are not exactly the best example in the world and it’s not our place to blow the whistle on them.)

So let’s move to #5, BedroomFurnitureNMore.com.  They have very few backlinks and several of the ones they have are based on reciprocal links.  If you don’t mind reciprocal links, we suggest you swap links with these sites — obviously Google doesn’t seem to mind them.  You should quickly be able to get 3 or 4 links from this example.

Now let’s take a look at #6, TheFurnitureWarehouse.net has about 27 backlinks, a few of them are the same as listed for BedroomFurnitureNMore.com, which is a good sign.  But if you keep clicking through to many of the sites listed, you will find several other opportunities for links.  You should be able to pick up another 3 or 4 links here.

If you happen to offer eco-friendly furniture, you might look at the backlinks for Eco-Furniture.com.   They have over 400 backlinks, many from their own site, but they also have many backlinks from sites more than willing to link to eco-friendly furniture.  Just looking at the first 20-30 results indicates you should be able to find another 4 or 5 links.

The bottom line: if you are willing to do some reciprocal linking and can set aside an hour or two to work on this, you should have no problem obtaining many new links back to your website that certainly seem to be helping these sites get a first page ranking on Google for "bedroom furniture".  Just keep moving through the various sites and checking their backlinks, you will find low hanging fruit and every once in a while a real gem.

Now let’s hear from the rest of you. Place your advice for link building for the home furnishings market in the comments below. Those that are accepted will get a nice "dofollow" link from us.

Make sure you sign up for our email or RSS feed so that you are alerted every time a new niche market is covered. Even if we are not focusing on your niche, you just might see a pretty creative idea that will trigger an thought for your market. 

Please be sure to vote for your market today!  VOTE HERE

[tags]home furnishings, home furniture, bedroom furniture, eco-friendly furniture, link building, reciprocal links[/tags]

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Every Tuesday we normally pick a vertical market based on the number of votes a market receives at our Vertical Market Poll. However, due to the Labor Day weekend here in the USA, we will not have our normal DoFollow Tuesday post.  We took the weekend off.

However, we’d like to provide some value today, so here is our top 5 most popular DoFollow Tuesday posts!

1) Auto Dealer Link Building
2) Jewelry & Watch Link Building
3) Mortgage Link Building
4) Hotel & Resort Link Building
5) Home Improvement Link Building

Make sure you sign up for our email or RSS feed so that you are alerted every time a new niche market is covered. Even if we are not focusing on your niche, you just might see a pretty creative idea that will trigger an thought for your market. 

Please be sure to vote for your market today!  VOTE HERE

[tags] auto dealer link building, jewelry link building, mortgage link building, hotel link building, home improvement link building [/tags]

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Every Tuesday we pick a vertical market based on the number of votes a market receives at our Vertical Market Poll. This week it is the Gif t & Novelty shop market.  We invite all of you out there to post (in the comments) a specific link building recommendation for the gift or novelty shop market (a good directory, authority website, blog, link search, etc.). If it adds value, we will approve it, give you the credit and a “dofollow” link to your site. However, we will just delete stupid, irrelevant, spammy comments – only truly useful information will be allowed. 

In the world of SEO, it’s fairly well known that link building can be pretty tough sometimes, if for no other reason than the fact that finding appropriate pages for one’s links is a hit-and-miss endeavor.  Well, today is a lucky day for gift & novelty shop retailers because we’ve done some searching and come up with some good potential pages. When attempting to get a link, you will still have to write a relevant, quality comment and get it approved, but the research is already done for you.

Now let’s hear from the rest of you. Place your advice for link building for the gift and novelty website market in the comments below. Those that are accepted will get a nice "dofollow" link from us.

Make sure you sign up for our email or RSS feed so that you are alerted every time a new niche market is covered. Even if we are not focusing on your niche, you just might see a pretty creative idea that will trigger an thought for your market. 

Please be sure to vote for your market today!  VOTE HERE

[tags]gift website, gifts and novelty sites, gift shop, novelty shop, link building, blog commenting [/tags]

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Every Tuesday we pick a vertical market based on the number of votes a market receives at our Vertical Market Poll.  Since our Business Services category has received so many votes, this week we are going to help out the Employment Agencies.   We invite all of you out there to post (in the comments) a specific link building recommendation for the employment agency market (a good directory, authority website, blog, link search, etc.). If it adds value, we will approve it, give you the credit and a “dofollow” link to your site. However, we will just delete stupid, irrelevant, spammy comments – only truly useful information will be allowed. 

We conducted a quick Google search for "employment agencies" and the first thing we saw was a box asking us for our city or zip code. (see below)

 

The fact that Google wants you to put in your location should already tell you how critical it is to have local listings.  However, as we have pointed out here and here, you can often find big discrepancies when you look at the businesses listed in the local results as opposed to those listed on the first page of the natural results.  In fact, when we entered our zip code into the example above, not one of the companies listed in the top 10 of the natural results appeared in the local results!!   

Not only do you need to optimize your site to get organic rankings, but you must set your self up in Google local as it only takes a few minutes (as opposed to months or years for organic results) and you make quickly appear on the top of Google for your area.  Going back to our example above, in the top 10 natural results, 3 of them were directories.  So you may also find is worthwhile to be listed (in this case) in YellowBook.com, Business.com and DexKnows.com.

Other places to be listed for local search results include Yahoo, MSN/Live, and MerchantCircle.  When we set up our listing on MerchantCircle, we chose the title Link Building by Vertical Measures, within a few days, our listing was #1 on Google for Phoenix link building. 

Many local listings are free, so there is no excuse not to create them for all of your physical locations.  Once you do, get some customers to add reviews and maybe even point some links to your local listing.  It all helps!

Make sure you sign up for our email or RSS feed so that you are alerted every time a new niche market is covered. Even if we are not focusing on your niche, you just might see a pretty creative idea that will trigger an thought for your market. 

Please be sure to vote for your market today!  VOTE HERE

[tags]employment agency, Google local, MerchantCircle, Yahoo local, Dex Knows, YellowBook, Business.com, link building, local links, local directories[/tags]

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Every Tuesday we pick a vertical market based on the number of votes a market receives at our Vertical Market Poll. This week it is the Home Improvement market.  By this we mean home improvement as it relates to remodeling services, roofing, etc.  Not retail outlets.   We invite all of you out there to post (in the comments) a specific link building recommendation for the home improvement market (a good directory, authority website, blog, link search, etc.). If it adds value, we will approve it, give you the credit and a “dofollow” link to your site. However, we will just delete stupid, irrelevant, spammy comments – only truly useful information will be allowed. 

This week’s suggestion from our staff is all about local.  Since this industry is just about 100% local, we think it is critical for you to appear in local search results. 

For example, when conducting a Google search for ‘phoenix home remodeling’, you get this result.   Notice the local search results dominate the top of the page.  If we were consulting with Republic West, we would recommend they work on their Google local listing as they are completely missing from there, and since they rank 7th in the natural results, they are now pushed below the fold on the screen.  One trick to getting listed higher in the Google local results is to get several positive customer reviews.

Other places to be listed for local search results include Yahoo, MSN/Live, DirectoryM and MerchantCircle.  Many local listings are free, so there is no excuse not to create them for all of your physical locations.  Once you do, get some customers to add reviews and maybe even point some links to your local page.  It all helps!

Make sure you sign up for our email or RSS feed so that you are alerted every time a new niche market is covered. Even if we are not focusing on your niche, you just might see a pretty creative idea that will trigger an thought for your market. 

Please be sure to vote for your market today!  VOTE HERE

[tags]home improvement, home remodeling, roofing, link building, local links, local directories[/tags]

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