When promoting your newly created website, you want traffic from as many sources as possible. That’s because as an online business owner, you want your business to be as stable as possible. If there is any chance of a traffic source drying up, it will cause some inconvenience to you but your online business can continue to thrive.

There are many different sources of traffic, and one of the most important source of traffic, is from the search engines. For many websites, the three major search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN Live Search) deliver as much as 90% of the traffic. That’s why webmasters are spending a lot of time, energy and resources on promoting their sites, so that they can rank high in the search engines. Once a site gets ranked for various popular keywords, the website continues to get a constant stream of targeted traffic. And often, this traffic source converts very well, which means more sales for the website owner.

The process of getting high rankings in the search engines is called search engine optimization (SEO). This used to be a tightly guarded secret. Because whoever knows how to get their sites to rank in the search engines can look forward to making a killing.

But today, SEO is no longer a secret any longer. Over the past few years, bit by bit, the cat has been let out of the bag. Now, anyone can visit a webmaster forum or an Internet marketing blog and learn all about SEO. It’s a process that’s simple enough, as you will soon find out.

There are two major components to the SEO process: (1) Internal page factors, and (2) External page factors. When done rank, it’s very hard for competitors to rob you of your search engine rankings. Once you understand more about this process, you will begin to see why.

(1) Internal page factors.

Always start with the internal page factors when doing SEO work. That’s because you have control over what you want to create for your own website. If you know what you are doing, all the internal page elements required for SEO can be completed in a single day.

There are several factors that you should take note of. For starters, make sure that you place important keywords in your page title. This is, by far, the most important factor. If you don’t, you can still rank your pages, but it’s going to be an uphill battle. Also, remember to sprinkle important keywords throughout the content of the web pages. Don’t overdo it. As long as everything appears natural, you are doing fine.

Next, include Meta tags in all your web pages. Meta tags are not visible on your web pages, and they are not part of your content. But search engines look at them for relevancy, and will often display the Meta tag description in the search results.

Finally, make sure that your URLs appear as static URLs. That means your web pages should be named something like “my-important-keywords.html” instead of “mypage.php?id=5″. Some content management systems still use ugly looking query strings like the example given. Try to avoid them as much as possible. Use Wordpress as your content management systems whenever possible. You can configure it to look like a personal blog or a corporate website. And all your URLs can be set as static URLs, so that solves your problem.

(2) External page factors.

This is where things can get a little tricky. Unlike internal page factors, there is limited amount of control over external factors. There are 2 external page factors you must know.

First, what is your link popularity? That means how many websites are linking to your web pages. These links are also known as back links. The more back links you have, the higher your chances of being ranked in the search engines.

Secondly, the texts in the links matter as well. These texts are known as anchor texts. So if the links pointing to your site says “gardening tools”, then your site is likely to come up in the search results for the keywords “gardening tools”.

When you combine the above 2 factors together, you know what you have to do. You have to constantly get other webmasters to link to you. The more back links you can get, with your desired anchor texts in them, the better. This is why it’s a little bit tricky because you don’t own these other websites. So how do you get others to link to you?

One of the quickest way to do this is to submit your site to search engine friendly link directories. These are often free, and if it requires a small submission fee, this fee is often nominal. If you are targeting Google, remember to watch out of page rank.

Page rank is Google’s indication of how important a website is. Authority sites tend to have higher page ranks. So you want to get your site listed in authority websites. These links are more valuable, and will get you better rankings.

Recently, a few high quality bidding directories have sprung up in various webmaster communities. The way bidding directories function is very similar to ordinary web directories, except that the highest bidder gets top position in the directory. That means whoever bids the highest, also get to enjoy the most advertising exposure.

In addition, most web directories also offered featured links. Featured links are displayed prominently in certain sections of the web directory. Buy featured links if you need to promote your website urgently.

In summary, there are 2 major components you need to take note off. For internal page factors, pay more attention to the title tag, the meta tag, and the URLs. For external page factors, your back links and anchor texts matter the most. Your SEO efforts will only see good results when everything is done correctly – that is, both components are taken care of. Most webmasters find it harder to build back links, but this can be easily overcome by submitting to high quality web directories.

By: Jonathan Haryanto

Backlinks have become one of the most important aspects of Search Engine Optimization. Backlinks, also known as “Inbound Links,” refer to the links that are placed on other websites and that are directed towards your website. They are what tells the search engines that you have a site of interest to others who have linked to it, thus raise your ranking on the search engines.

Backlinks are important to climb the page ranking in the search engines. What other websites say about you is critical for search engine credibility. If you can control what the links say and where they link to in your site then you can influence the search engine results. Therefore, your marketing campaign for your sites has to include the effort of obtaining link popularity.

While building backlinks, you need to aim for quality instead of quantity. Search engines give more credit to a link from a site related to yours than a link from a site that is not related to yours. A site with few quality backlinks will have a higher position for its targeted keywords compared to a website with many unrelated links. Especially if you combine that with relevant content, links to important pages, meta tags, descriptions, title, h1 tags, and sitemaps. However, most search engines do not consider hyperlinks as backlinks.

There are a number of ways to build backlinks for your site. Backlinks can be bought or obtained for free. There are a number of directories available on Internet, and you can find free or paid directories for submitting your site. Your site will be listed in these directories after the editor has approved it. You need to make sure that the directory is an established one since search engines give more credit to links coming from quality sites. In bidding directories, you can place a bid and if your bid is among the highest bids then your site is displayed on the homepage. If someone outbids you then your listing is removed from the homepage.

In a link exchange, one webmaster places a link on his website that points to another webmasters website, and vice versa. But here you must note that one way link holds more strength than a two way link. Moreover, in the last Google update, reciprocal links were one of the targets of the search engine’s latest filter. Many of these links were simply not relevant, and were just discounted. So while the outbound links still got counted, the irrelevant inbound link was ignored.

Many webmasters have more than one website. Sometimes these websites are related, sometimes they are not. You have to be careful about interlinking multiple websites on the same IP. If you own several related websites, then a link to each of those websites on a page could hurt you, as it may look like to a search engine that you are trying to do something fishy. You will probably have heard of ‘3 way links’. There are some issues with that as well. Other than price, the most ‘popular’ system is a little clunky to use and the links are not so close to topic.

Article directory, a directory that maintains a large collection of articles, is one of the best ways to build links. It allows you to publish your articles along with your links in the resource box. You provide them for free with something they need content and in return they also provide you for free with something you need quality backlinks. Of course, you should make sure that the article you submit is of good quality and informative in order to get approved and published. They usually have a number of categories and you will have to find a category suitable for your website.

Posting in discussion forums and blogs is also a way to get quality backlinks with the anchor text you want. There are a number of forums and blogs that allows you to place your links in your profile and in your signature. You need to look for a forum or blog that is related to your niche and then make some quality posts or comments and add your links in the signature. Once your posts are indexed, search engines will give some credit to your website. If the forum or blog is a respected one, a backlink is valuable. In some cases the forum or blog administrator can edit your post, or even delete it if it does not fit into the forum or blog policy. Also, sometimes administrators do not allow links in posts, unless they are relevant ones.

Every website needs to have a high page rank in search engine results and to achieve this result; a website not only needs to contain good and creative content, but also needs to build link popularity. In any search engine submission, one of the most important factors is your link popularity, which may be achieved through directory submission or you can buy high PR links for you.

The latest concept in the field of directory submission for increasing page ranking is bid directory. To increase traffic to your website, you can employ bid directories, which enables you to bid for a high page ranking in search engine submission. The entire concept of bid link directories has brought a new trend throughout the SEO industry.

The method is quite useful and the popularity if the link increases tremendously, which is why some of the best Link building Services have adopted this technique. But one has to be really careful and thoughtful while using the method of web directory. The major difference between traditional web directories and bid directories lies in the fact that, the earlier had listing criteria that used to involve listing date, alphabetical order etc. However, the latter gives lesser priority to the above mentioned points. To get a high position in page ranking one has to bid and the highest bid is located at the top.

The home page of the web directory consists of the highest bidding web links and thus, the benefit to any business website listed on the same is obvious. The advantages of bidding for a place in a web directory are:

• The search engines regard such websites which have a link from any other website to your home page much more. It shows that your website has been chosen by many. Another important feature to remember is that if the page rank of that website which connects to your home page is higher, then your web page’s significance will automatically increase. Link popularity plays a major role in search engine submission and optimization.

• A bid directory has the upper hand from the web directory as many users may just follow the link and come to your web site. Better visible links always have higher bids. The traditional method of linking the links on the other hand is normally almost hidden in various categories, and their visibility diminishes.

In today’s world, which is constantly evolving and becoming competitive with each passing day, it’s really important to have the upper hand in the competitive market. By employing bid link directories along with keyword search and article directories, one can actually increase page ranks and build link popularity.

Link development has become more of a quality driven process and the quantity of links are no longer a defining factor. This shift in perception is a direct consequence of scenarios wherein websites have attained higher search engine rankings with fewer quality links than compared to websites with tons of back links. This shift has fuelled the need for development of quality back links. However, developing the coveted quality link is no child’s play and requires careful planning and manual execution.

The adage “well begun is half done”, as always, holds true for the link development process. The process of identification of potential link pages is time consuming and the most challenging part of the entire process. In fact, identification of the potential link page is crucial to every link building exercise. Let’s delve into the details of ways to ensure that the process of identification of potential link is in sync with the widely accepted quality parameters. .

Link and the link page can be evaluated on the following two parameters. .

Relevance: It is imperative that the links be obtained from pages that are semantically relevant to the page being linked to because such links are given due credibility by search engines, and helps in driving classified traffic. The links should therefore have the following qualifications. .

The page from where the link is to be obtained should be thematically related to the page to be linked to and therefore ensure that you get qualified visitors.
Links should be from the same domain but none competing in nature.

Authority: Once the relevancy of the link page has been established, the next step is to decide whether the page commands substantial authority. The authority of the webpage can be assessed by the number of times the page has been referenced by search engines. A high number is an indication that the page attracts a sizeable amount of traffic. Also, it is important to check the number of links that point to the targeted link page. The reason why this parameter is important lies in the fact that when you target a link page, you are not only targeting the link page you are also targeting the links that point to that page.

Adhering to these points would help you identify potential link pages that would add value to your page and build its authority. Targeting link pages that feature your competitor’s links are passé.

Having a great looking website does not bring home the bacon. There is much more involved in the marketing of your website, optimization of your website pages alone is not going to cut the mustard. Your website will need many back-links pointing to your website.

One thing to always remember when it comes to search engines, quality back-links are the life blood of your website promotion. But actually getting these links to point to you is an extremely frustrating place to be, but Bidding Directories have a process which allow you to obtain relevant links, while making the decision to invest in your site first priority.

There is a new smooth way of buying quality links on the internet which allows webmasters to list their website for maximum exposure and receive targeted traffic.

Bidding Directories know the value of many one-way incoming links. When using Bidding Directories you will be placing your link in the appropriate category/ section of that directory, the directory also displays links alphabetically, and lets you bid your way to the top of the list. Increase your bid to take a top position, and not only will your link list higher in the directory, but you could join the link leaders on the homepage, not to mention these directories are widely promoted and well established directories of premium bidding websites.

Directories offer affordable ways to receive deep links to your website while also categorizing all listings and displaying them in order of contribution received. This allows webmasters to gain a quality link for their site and increase their bid to appear higher up in their chosen category. By being the top bidder for your link, you will have the opportunity to have your link displayed on every page of the directory.

Choosing to advertise with an Online Bidding Directory should be a completely trusted source for directory traffic. Directories are constantly promoting their directory for maximum exposure for their clients.

Using this service complies with guidelines of the search engines.

So if your still wondering why you should use a bidding directory?

Links get results. Link popularity for websites is one of the most important factors in search engine rankings.

Increasing the number of back-links to your Web site can get your site listed higher in search engine results, thus bringing more visitors to your site, and improving your site’s overall strength.

As the owner of a website, finding new ways to advertise your website is sometimes a mind blowing task. Link bidding is a terrific approach to getting the word out on your website. A bid directory offers webmasters the opportunity to bid on a sponsored spot. After you submit specific details about your website, your bid will also determine how much PR your website will receive.

With all of the SEO companies popping up everywhere how do you know your SEO efforts are going to pay off? I spend a significant amount of time reviewing SEO offerings from other companies and find that the range in quality of SEO can vary greatly. While doing proper SEO is very important, will SEO alone dramatically improve your ranking in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP)? If you don’t have an effective Search Engine Marketing (SEM) campaign, the answer is probably not! SEM uses several techniques that could include but aren’t limited to, SEO, Link Building, Pay Per Click, Social Media and more. The focus of this article, and one of the more difficult and time consuming aspects of a good SEM campaign, is link building.

What is link building and why is it important?

Link building is the process of building your sites link popularity, or simply put, creating links back to your site from other sites. This is very important and arguably the most heavily weighed factor in determining your site ranking in the SERPs. Through building a large amount of outside links back to your site, the Search Engines will view you as more relevant, credible (possibly), and popular. Ideally you should try and build links from credible websites with content related to you site. The more popular and credible the linking website the more it should help you. There are all sort of potential ramifications for building links from unsavory websites and link exchange services which are beyond the scope of this article. But suffice it to say you can actually be doing more damage than good if you try and take shortcuts. Remember if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is… and it’s been my experience that this adage holds truer today, on the internet, than at any point in history! (Thanks Nigeria!)

Why link building today is harder than ever.

After many years of link building abuse from comment spammers and the like, Google came up with an answer, the nofollow tag. Because of rampant misuse of people posting spam comments on blogs, bulletin boards, and content sites, the nofollow tag was introduced. This is a method by which sites could still allow users to post links, without lending any of their sites credibility to the referring link. In other words, your site now gets NO credit for linking if the referring site uses the nofollow tag. It seems major sites, that were once a staple of link building (both credible and otherwise) are all going the way of the nofollow tag. Wikipedia, craigslist, yahoo answers, and the list goes on. While I am not sad to see spammers lives made more difficult, this has made credible link building more difficult for the rest of us. Below are 5 ideas for good and credible link building after the nofollow tag.

1. Article Syndication – Writing relevant articles with good content, that will interest readers is always a great idea for more than just link building. It helps establish your reputation as a professional and build credibility. It is also very time consuming but over the long run well worth it. As part of your link building campaign consider writing 2 to 3 articles a week and syndicating those to 10 – 20 different article syndication sites. Part 2 of this article will include syndication sites listed by popularity and that will be a great place to start! It may take you an extra 5 or 10 hours a week, but your efforts will pay off big time over time. If you don’t have the time, consider hiring someone who will work with you to develop link building plan and submit your articles for you. There are many good companies out there that can help you with this.

2. Press Releases – Have you recently launched your business or a new website, product or anything else worth telling the world about? Consider issuing a press release. While most of these services are not free they are a very effective means to get the word out about your company and create links from highly trusted websites. PR Newswire offers a large variety of services that can reach many different audiences. It’s not free but it is effective.

3. Social Bookmarking – Social bookmarking sites are a great way to promote your content. Part 2 of this article will include a current list of social bookmarking sites that do not make use of the nofollow tag and more detailed strategy using social bookmarking.

4. Blogging – Blogging is a great way to add content to your site, gain a following of readership, gain relevancy and credibility with the search engines and your prospects and clients. Blogging can also be a great way to link build. Once you have established your blog and have a decent following, you can make use of guest bloggers from other popular blogs, or even link to another popular blog when you see a post that you think is excellent and your readers would appreciate. There is a reasonable chance the owner will notice your inbound link and link back, if you have good and relevant content. Warning: if you do plan to blog, make sure you stay on top of it and post content frequently. Weekly if not daily is preferred, but even more important than frequency of posting, post GOOD CONTENT.

5. Trade Links (if it’s relevant and beneficial) – Email the webmasters of sites that compliment your site but generally do not compete with it, the more popular the better. Outline the benefits for them to link to your site. Explain how their readers could benefit from the content on your site and how your readers benefit from the content on theirs! ALWAYS HAVE A LINK TO their site on your site already BEFORE you do this. Include the location of this link on your site in the email and explain why your visitors benefit from linking to them. This can be a very effective tool when done right because you are building links from highly popular and highly relevant sites to yours. Part 2 to this article will discuss strategy to trade links in much more detail.

For more tips or information on how T2T Marketing can help you market your business online successfully, call us at 858-952-0848 or visit our website at for help with your SEM or SEO Campaign.

In order to have success with an online business it is essential you take the time to promote your site heavily. Without advertising and marketing no one will know you exist. And without traffic it is impossible to keep a business up and running. So what methods can you use to promote your site?

There is a wide array of methods that can be used to market your site and reel in traffic. Some do cost money, but there are a number of free methods as well. One of the top marketing methods on the internet right now is article writing. Article writing allows you to display your expertise on a topic to the entire web. But how do you use it for marketing purposes?

There are two ways articles can be used for promotion. First, you can target specific keywords within the article to climb higher on the search engines. This is known as keyword optimization and can truly benefit you. The second is through your resource box. The resource box is where you insert your name, a couple of sentences on your business, and the URL to your web site.

Another free method to promote your site is simply posting in forums. There are hundreds of forums spread across the internet for you to look into. By posting in forums you can market specific products of yours or promote your entire site. Either way, it is a great way for you to meet new people and build relationships. Relationships can carry your web site to the next level.

When it comes to promoting your site and getting traffic to your site, backlinks are imperative. Backlinks are when your link can be found on another web site on the internet. This allows people from other sites to be directed to your site. The more backlinks you have, the better chance you have of getting traffic. One popular method of getting backlinks is link exchanges.

A link exchange is an agreement between you and another person on the internet. You agree to place their link on your site in return for them placing your link on their site. In order to benefit from this you want to make sure you trade links only with people that have a page rank equal to or higher than yours. This will help increase your site’s page rank over time.

Lastly, bidding directories can be another great way to promote your site. A bidding directory is different from a web directory because it has a minimum bid option that allows you to submit your site. This is something that can be quite costly, but it is extremely effective. The more money you are willing to spend, the higher your site will be. Typically the top ten bids are placed on home pages of web sites, which is monumental for your site. It is a very easy process and it can be very profitable for your website.

The term SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can be defined as the process of escalating the amount of visitors to a website by ranking high in the search engine rank page. Link building plays an important role in any website for getting higher search engine placements and good traffic. However, it is defined as the practice of obtaining links from external web sites to your own to enhance both direct referrals and search engine ranking as well.     

There are a number of links that can be built while doing online business; a few of them are explained below:   

One-Way link – One-way link building means that a website links to other websites but doesn’t get back links. Popularly known as non-reciprocal links, one-way links are much more difficult to get than traditional reciprocal links.  

Press Release links – Press release submission can be of great help if it is submitted in various directories and leading news sites in order to get natural back links from your articles.

Article links – This can be a distinguished way to get some good authority links from high profile sites. Individuals can write articles as much as they want and submit articles to gain quality traffic. Quality content also helps to increase the visitors.  

Reciprocal link – Reciprocal link building is another widely used strategy of link building. The process of link building is performed by exchanging links based on some agreement between two trusted websites who share the same business interest with a plan of raising website traffic and link popularity.

The Advantages of Link Building

Links Create Direct Traffic – One of the most popular ways of finding a new website is to click on a link. Generally, users follow links that trusted website recommends for valuable and relevant information. Hence, link building creates direct traffic to your website.  

Links Build User Trust in You – Link building also increases the level of trust in what you say or what you offer. Blog readers have a certain ‘trust’ in the author as it creates this same link-trust factor.

Links Build Search Engine Trust in Your Site – For determining websites’ ranking, link building plays a vital role as major search engines consider it to be a great factor. It is also obvious that if you have many links pointing to your site from other sites, your content must contain quality and important information.

Link Building Advertising is Less Expensive – Advertising through Web is quite expensive. A number of link building programs are free, but there are many paid programs available to grow your traffic. You will need to stick to a site for about a few weeks to see great results.

Quality back-links are the life blood of your website promotion. But actually getting these links to point to you is an extremely frustrating place to be, but bidding directories have a process which allow you to obtain relevant links, while making the decision to invest in your site first priority. Choosing to advertise with an online bidding directory should be a completely trusted source for directory traffic. These directories are constantly promoting their directory for maximum exposure for their clients. Using the services of a bidding directory complies with all guidelines of the search engines. Remember increasing the number of back-links to your Web site can get your site listed higher in search engine results, thus bringing more visitors to your site, and improving your site’s overall strength.

As the owner of a website, finding new ways to advertise your website is sometimes a mind blowing task. Link bidding is a terrific approach to getting the word out on your website. A bid directory offers webmasters the opportunity to bid on a sponsored spot. After you submit specific details about your website, your bid will also determine how much PR your website will receive along with back links from other listed websites.

Any SEO campaign is just impossible without a strong link building tactic. If you think about the structure of a successful optimization strategy, link building is the backbone of it. Here’s the second part of my article on the 12 effective ways to build quality incoming links to your website.   

6. Participate in Forums and Discussion Groups

Most forums out there allow you to put a link to your website in your signature which gives you another effective way to build links. Just make sure you don’t make the same mistake a lot of website promoters seem to be falling into: don’t post just to get a link. That means you don’t just drop into every single thread with a ‘me too’ post or start tons of ‘hey guys, check out my sweet website’ topics in every forum you come across.

Try focusing on the forums you can get some valuable info from and have something to give back to the community. Answer questions, share some interesting and useful information. This way the links you drop in your sigs won’t just hang there giving you a pure SEO effect (which is rather small) but you’ll also see a substantial flow of traffic and if your website happens to be just as valuable as your forum post, people will end up linking to your website.

7. Create Great Content and Let People Know About It

I’m sure you’ve seen this link building tip tons of times. However, a lot of people supporting it somehow stop half way telling you just to create outstanding content. But that’s just a part of the job and although it’s the main part, you still need to spread the word about the work you’ve done. Once you’ve written a great blog post or article on some topic that you believe will resonate with people and spark their interest you need to tell the world about it.

Go to blogs and websites that have similar or related posts and tell how you agree, disagree or complement the points made there in your article. Whenever someone asks a question that is answered by your blogpost, give a short summary answer and drop a link. Submit your story to social bookmarking sites, and if your content is really worthy people will notice it and link to it.   

8. Fix existing links

Some sites maybe linking to the pages of your website that don’t exist. You can find these links with the help of Google Webmaster Tools and ask the people linking to you to change the anchor URLs to the actual pages of your website or 301 redirect the links. This way you’ll not only get the credit for the links from the search engines but will also tap into the visitors that were led to 404 error pages instead of your website.

9. Exchange Links

This is the old proven method of to build links to your website. Find relevant websites that are indexed and (preferably) well ranked by the search engines and offer them to exchange links with you. Sounds easy isn’t it? However, alongside with getting reciprocal links you need to make sure they stay in place, which is a very time consuming task. Good news you can save a lot of time on finding link partners and maintaining your links by using quality link building tools.

10. Hold Contests

People get excited about contests in every possible way: we like to participate in them, we like to win them and we like to tell others about them, which online means linking to them. Think of a contest you’d like to jump into and create one, if it resonates with more of us, you’ll get a lot of top quality links.

11. Give Away Freebies

Yep, we like stuff, especially, we like free stuff. If you have something to give away be it a product, free wordpress template or simply valuable information, just share it with others and the links will follow.

12. Think a Step Ahead

In every industry there are certain events that happen on a regular basis and draw a lot of attention. Prepare for these events beforehand and start covering them on your website or blog before everybody else does. This way early searchers interested in the event will come to your website and a lot of people will link to you as the first to deliver information on the topic.

Hope these techniques will work for you helping you achieve higher search engine rankings. Find out more about link building to ensure strong and lasting SEO success for your website.