SEO experts know that the most important way to get to the top of the search engines, particularly Google, is to build high-quality, relevant links. While good links can get you noticed by Google, bad links can work against you and can even result in Google banning your site. So it’s important that you use legitimate, quality strategies for building your links. Here are two temptations to avoid in the process of link building.

•Link Farms

Links farms are websites containing tons of links. Their sole purpose is to get spiders to index pages, and they are of absolutely no use at all.

If you think you’ve come across a link farm, note whether it contains more links than a typical website. See if there’s an explanation of the site’s purpose. Link farm URLs are often very long and contain lots of hyphens. Of course, there are plenty of legitimate sites with URLs that have lots of hyphens, but make sure you research them thoroughly before adding a link. Also note if the extension is .info or .biz. Many link farms use these extensions.

Next, determine whether the potential link farm looks like other links farms, meaning that it looks like a generic template without any alterations or personalization. Does the website look like someone takes care of it and updates it frequently? Is there a way to contact the site owner via e-mail? Beware of any site that doesn’t provide contact information.

Last of all, are there more links crammed on the page than really makes sense?

A good rule of thumb is to avoid at all costs any site that gives the appearance of being a link farm. You’re better off missing a good link that linking to a link farm and risking adverse consequences for your search engine rankings.

•Irrelevant Links

Every site that you link to should have something to do with your product or service. Online business owners who link to pages that are not relevant to their own market niche do so to either increase page rank or to get a website indexed. Even if another site is a legitimate one, don’t link to it unless has something to do with your product or service. The same is true for asking another person to link to you. A link to your site from one that is completely unrelated to your field does no good either for you or for the person who is linking to you.

Thoroughly research any site to which you link or links to you. Make sure it’s relevant. Furthermore, if you choose to submit your site to directories, or if you’re submitting articles you’ve written to article directories, send your information to the most pertinent sections and topic headings.

Remember that you can be identified as a link spammer even if you had no intention of collecting links in a shady way. Listen to your gut as you’re trying to decide who to link to and who to ask to link to you. If you have any doubts, stay away. It’s hard work, but the only way you’re going to get high-quality, relevant links is to do lots of work.

Many online business owners choose to do the hard work of obtaining inbound links on their own. If you feel that you have the time and energy to do this without neglecting other crucial aspects of your business then you’ll find that it’s interesting and rewarding work. If you don’t have the time to put into collecting inbound links for your site, or if you’re just not interested in doing it yourself, you may want to consider contacting an internet marketing company or SEO expert. These professionals have years of experience getting good inbound links for their customers. They have more strategies than you can ever imagine, and they can get the job done for you at a reasonable price.

• 9 Keys to Quality Link Exchanges
• The 4 Levels of Link Building
• Free Directories or Paid Directories: The Pros and Cons

Any SEO expert will tell you that there are a number of ways to build inbound links to your website, an activity known in the SEO world as “link-building.” Some are more effective and efficient than others, however. Here are four.

1.Article Marketing. Article marketing is not only a great SEO tool for getting inbound links, but it also serves other purposes as well. First, it helps you create great content for your website. Second, it helps you establish yourself as an authority in your field. But for the purpose of inbound links, article marketing is exceptionally effective. When you write an article and submit it to an article directory, you have the opportunity to fill out what is known as a “resource box.” Within the resource box is a place to enter your business website. And since the search engines reward inbound links from well-established, well-respected websites with higher results, you increase your ranking simply by submitting your article.

2.Social Media. Believe it or not, social media sites are a great resource for inbound links. If you are interested in using social media in this way, simply add the AddThis Bookmark to your website. It’s an easy way to notify your readers that you’d like them bookmark your content on the social media sites. This means that your readers are essentially building your inbound links on your behalf, and it doesn’t get much easier than that. Even if you’re not an avid user of social media sites, and you should be if you’re serious about SEO, this is a pretty painless social media tool that can net big results.

3.Google Alerts. Figure out which keywords you’re promoting in your SEO efforts and then sign up to get Google Alerts for each of those keywords. Every time a new page or site is created that has the keywords that you’re optimizing for, go to that page or site and leave a comment with a link back to your own page. The obvious caveat is that you should never do this unless you can appropriately contribute your voice to the conversation. If you act overeager, you’ll turn off the very people you’re hoping to attract. The whole point of using Google Alerts for building inbound links is that you want to find a way to become part of a larger community that’s talking about your product or service. The more you can naturally become part of that community by offering good advice and by listening to what others have to say, the more visitors you’ll attract to your own site. People will be intrigued by your offerings and will want to know more about you. And that’s good for business.

4.Press Releases. Press Releases certainly aren’t the cheapest way to get inbound links, but they certainly are effective. The advantage of press releases for SEO and link-building is that you can put your links in body of the release using keyword-rich anchor text. When other sites pick up your release, you’re automatically receiving inbound links from authoritative, relevant sources, and this is richly rewarded by the search engines.

Link-building is an invaluable SEO tool, and one with which you should familiarize yourself if you haven’t already. Search engines give higher rankings to website that contain both good content as well as inbound links from relevant sites. There are a number of ways to go about getting inbound links, but there are several that stand out as being particularly effective. Spend some time learning more about press releases, Google Alerts, social media, and article marketing, and learn what those activities can do to bolster your SEO efforts and drive more traffic to your site. An SEO expert or internet marketing professional can also help you in your link-building efforts, so don’t hesitate to take advantage of their expertise!

• SEO: 5 Tools for Analyzing Your Website
• Search Engine Optimization: 4 Keys to Convincing Visitors That You’re “The One”
• SEO and Article Marketing: The Anatomy of a Good Article
• SEO and Conversion Rates: 9 Points to Consider
• SEO, Keyword Research, and Inbound Links
• SEO and Link Building: 5 Considerations
• SEO: The 3 Keys to Marketing Your Website
• 10 On-Site SEO Essentials
• Small Business and SEO: Creating a Good Website
• Successful SEO Content: 8 Elements That Need Your Attention

If you’re really serious about your SEO efforts, then you need to know exactly which words people will type into the search engines when looking for products and services similar to the ones you are selling. These are called keywords, and they are the focal point of most SEO. Now, you probably already know that one of the most important ways to drive traffic to your website is by getting plenty of inbound links. Since the search engines reward websites with multiple inbound links from relevant, authoritative websites, it’s in your best interest to get as many links to your site as possible. Even more important, however, is getting inbound links that contain the keywords for which you have optimized your pages.

For the sake of example, we’ll pretend that your website is about unicycles. You build unicycles, repair unicycles, and teach people how to ride them. You’ll probably have a difficult time getting a high ranking for a search that only uses the word unicycles. But if you can figure out other that people use to search for the products and services that you offer, then you probably have a chance of getting high rankings for those. Here are the next steps you should take in your SEO keyword efforts:

1.Narrow down your keywords. There are several great tools available for doing keyword research. Pick your favorite and type in the keyword around which you plan to optimize your page. In just seconds you’ll see a whole list of the words and phrases that people use most often to find products or services like the ones you offer.

2.Find Successful Keywords. Google’s Adwords tool is great for this. When you type a keyword into the box and press Enter, you’ll end up with a whole list of keywords that are related to the one that you typed in. You’ll also get a whole list of other keywords that might work for you. You’ll see little bars under the heading of Advertiser Competition. Pick one or two words whose bars are less than half green. Those are the words that have less competition that the ones whose bars are mostly green.

3.Check out the Competition. Once you’ve found two or three keywords and phrases in the previous step, go to Google and type in: inanchor:“the keyword I just picked.” All the pages that you see are those with whom you would be in competition for the keyword or phrase that you just chose. You’ll notice that the list is much shorter than the list you saw when you just typed in unicycles.

4.Build Your Backlinks. Once you’ve chosen your keywords and optimized your pages around those keywords, it’s time to build some backlinks, another very important SEO task. Much has been written on effective ways to build backlins, but three of the most obvious are including a link to your webpage in your signature file and then posting to forums that are related to your product or service, commenting on blogs and leaving a link back to your webpage, and engaging in article marketing strategies.

Keyword research is one of the most important SEO tasks that you will undertake, so be careful that you don’t give it short shrift. And if you’re really serious about SEO, then consider consulting with an internet marketing expert to discuss the keyword research that you’ve done and to get pointers on optimizing your pages around your chosen keywords. These professionals can also help you build quality backlinks to your site, which will results in higher search engine rankings and therefore more traffic to your site. When you see what a different a little keyword research can make in the success of your business, you’ll wonder why you hadn’t done it sooner!

• SEO: 5 Tools for Analyzing Your Website
• Search Engine Optimization: 4 Keys to Convincing Visitors That You’re “The One”
• SEO and Article Marketing: The Anatomy of a Good Article
• SEO and Conversion Rates: 9 Points to Consider
• SEO and Link Building: 5 Considerations
• SEO: The 3 Keys to Marketing Your Website
• Small Business and SEO: Creating a Good Website
• Successful SEO Content: 8 Elements That Need Your Attention
• 4 Keys to Link-Building for SEO
• 10 On-Site SEO Essentials

If you have researched SEO at all then you understand the importance of link building for increasing your search engine rank and thus driving traffic to your website. Inbound links are a major consideration of search engines when determining your search engine rank, so the more inbound links you have from high-quality, authoritative websites, the better. Inbound links also increase your exposure on other sites, and exposure is exactly what you need if you’re going to increase your traffic. Here are 5 considerations for link building.

1.Make a Top Ten: People love lists. Lists allow you to place important information in a format that’s easy to read and easy to digest. And they give the impression that you’re able to consolidate a lot of pertinent information into a few succinct points. If you want to use a Top Ten list as an SEO or link building tool, contact other business owners in your niche and let them know about the list you’ve created. If all goes well, and if they consider your information helpful and relevant, they will link to it from their own site.

2.Article Marketing. If you write a high-quality article, chances are that other website owners will publish it on their own blogs. This both increases your inbound links and increases your exposure, establishing your credibility as a knowledgeable professional in your field. If you really want article marketing to work for you as a link building tool, you have to create compelling copy for your resource box.

3.Social Bookmarks. There are many social bookmarking sites to choose from, so do a little research and find out which sites other professionals within your market niche use. Then create accounts for each of those sites and bookmark your blog and website pages. Like article marketing, this is a good way to both establish your credibility and increase the number of inbound links to your site.

4.Blog. There are a number of free blog platforms to choose from, so pick the one that you like best and start blogging. Then create some relevant content about your product or service and post it on the blog. Link to your website from your blog. This will increase your search engine ranking since search engines will see that your blog contains content relevant to that which is already on your website. You can increase your exposure even more by commenting on other popular blogs within your niche. Commenting on other blogs is tricky, though. You want to demonstrate enough expertise to compel other blog readers to click on your link back to your site without pitching your products in an obnoxious way. Use comments with care.

5.Google Alerts. Google alerts let you choose keywords of interest to you, and then emails you any stories, blog posts, and articles that are related to those keywords. If any of the alerts you receive show content related to your website, find out if the source of that content allows you to leave comments. If it was an online newspaper article, for instance, you could leave a comment with a link back to your website. This increases your inbound links while letting other commenters know you have something worthwhile and relevant to say about news relating to your business.

One of the worst mistakes to make in the process of SEO is ignoring the importance of link building. Inbound links are given great value by the search engines and can go a long way in increasing your search engine rankings. If link building continues to elude you or if you have further questions, contact an internet marketer or SEO professional to help you increase your inbound links, drive traffic to your site, and increase your profits…all in no time!

• SEO: 5 Tools for Analyzing Your Website
• Search Engine Optimization: 4 Keys to Convincing Visitors That You’re “The One”
• SEO and Article Marketing: The Anatomy of a Good Article
• SEO and Conversion Rates: 9 Points to Consider
• SEO, Keyword Research, and Inbound Links
• SEO: The 3 Keys to Marketing Your Website
• Small Business and SEO: Creating a Good Website
• Successful SEO Content: 8 Elements That Need Your Attention
• 4 Keys to Link-Building for SEO
• 10 On-Site SEO Essentials

SEO professionals know that building links is one of the most important factors in driving traffic to your website and increasing your search engine ranking. The question is how you, as a business owner, can go about building links efficiently. Unfortunately, link-building is a tedious job. It takes a lot of time and effort and, frankly, it isn’t all that exciting. One of the best ways you can build links is to submit your site to web directories.

Web directories are listings of websites divided into categories and subcategories. If an internet user wants information on a particular subject, he or she has only to search in a directory to find multiple listings that will provide the information that he or she is looking for. Imagine how great it would be if your site was included! One of the best things about having your site listed in a web directory is that your listing counts as a one-way link to search engines. As you probably already understand, search engines give greater value to one-way links than to reciprocal links, so this is a great way to increase your search engine ranking.

As you begin to research web directories, you may be tempted to utilize the mass submission software that’s available. After all, such software gets the job done easily for you without all of the tedium. The problem with submission software is that each directory has its own submission requirements. Furthermore, each directory has its own human editor who will be all too happy to reject your submission if it doesn’t meet the guidelines.

Your best bet is obviously to submit your site yourself. But is there anything you can do to speed up the process? Have the following information at the ready:

1. Your website’s full URL, including the http://

2. Your site’s full title. Some directories will allow you to include keywords with your title, so be sure to have two alternate entries. One entry is just the title. The other is your title with keywords.

3. Your site description. Write several versions of your description to align with the requirements of different directories. Make one as short as 100 characters and another as long as 300 characters. Additionally, write in regular, complete sentences. Make your description compelling, but don’t make it sound like a sales piece. Don’t overdo your keywords. Remember that your submission will be reviewed by a human editor who will notice right away if you’re trying to stuff your submission with keywords

4. Your name, address, and email address.

5. The categories in which you think your site will be most appropriate.

6. Two lists of your keywords. In one list, separate your keywords with commas. In the other list, separate your keywords with spaces. That way you’ll be prepared for whatever format the directory requires.

While mass submission is definitely to be avoided, you may find that, sometime soon, someone may produce a really great submission program. The perfect submission software would look something like this: Fields that are identical to the forms that directories provide and that allow you to enter alternative titles and descriptions to meet the requirements of the various directories; details about each directory’ PageRank and traffic; a preview page where you could see the directory submission form already filled out before you actually submitted your site; and the ability to choose your own categories rather than having the software do it for you. It wouldn’t be as fast as mass submission software, but it would give back some of the control to you while shaving precious time off of the directory submission process.
If you’re new to the directory submission process, consider consulting with an internet marketing professional who can help you determine how to best use directories efficiently and effectively for your business.

• 3 Tips to Ensure that Your Directory Submission is Accepted
• Free Directories or Paid Directories: The Pros and Cons

If you’re a business owner just starting out, you probably have a pretty idea of who’s linking to you. Either you’ve posted to a directory or you’re part of a link partnership, or you’ve personally asked other website owners within your niche to link to one of the pages in your website. But after awhile it’s easy to lose track of who’s linking to you. Google Webmaster Central has made it much easier to determine who’s linking to you by giving you page-by-page report. This begs the question, what do I do with this information now that I have it? Here are 6 ways to make backlink information work for you.

1. Find your link-bait. You might find that you have several links to an article that you never even promoted. This is a hint that the article may be of interest to a wider audience and that you should spend some time promoting it to get even more hits.

2. Create More Good Stuff. Once you’ve discovered which pages attract links you didn’t even intend, figure out how to create similar pages with similar content and form that might attract an audience. The hard work in this scenario comes from discovering the characteristics that your popular pages have in common and duplicating it rather than promoting your articles.

3. Optimize. If you find that a page you haven’t intentionally promoted has garnered a lot of links, capitalize on the link strength of that particular page. Optimize it for other keywords, or just optimize it if you haven’t done it already.

4. Identify Those Linking to You. Some of the sites that link to you won’t come as a surprise. After all, they’re in your niche or they’re interested in the same things you are. But you might be surprised by some of your links. Google sites related to those that are linking to you unexpectedly and see if you can get similar sites to link to you as well.

5. Find Out What Pages Others Are Linking To. If another site is linking to one of your pages, maybe they’d also be interested in other pages as well. Why have them link to just one page on your site when they can link to five or six?

6. Use Article Directories. If you’re serious about SEO, then you should be submitting articles to directories religiously. You may find sites that have picked up your articles without you knowing it. Find out if those sites would like you to submit articles right to them and eliminate the middle man of the directory.

Backlink data is an invaluable tool for SEO and for your overall internet marketing strategy. If you’re not sure how to take advantage of it for your business, consider consulting with an SEO expert or internet marketing professional. These professionals will be able to help you figure out even more ways to use backlink information to optimize your website and to get your valuable information to a larger audience. The only real mistake you can make is choosing not to use this information, and choosing not to hire a professional to help you determine how it can best be used for your purposes. So figure out how to make backlinks work for you and your business. You’ll be glad you did!

• 4 Keys to Link-Building for SEO
• Search Engine Optimization and Social Networking: 5 Keys to Success
• Search Engine Optimization and Viral Content: 3 Ways to Make it Work for You
• SEO: 5 Tools for Analyzing Your Website
• Search Engine Optimization: 4 Keys to Convincing Visitors That You’re “The One”
• SEO and Article Marketing: The Anatomy of a Good Article
• SEO and Conversion Rates: 9 Points to Consider
• SEO, Keyword Research, and Inbound Links
• SEO and Link Building: 5 Considerations
• SEO: The 3 Keys to Marketing Your Website

There is some debate within the world of SEO about the wisdom of using link exchanges. While it’s true that one-way links are valued much higher by search engines than are reciprocal links, there’s no need to avoid link exchanges completely. Here are 9 keys to creating quality link exchanges.

1. Has the page been cached by Google? This is the most important criterion for determining whether or not it’s worth exchanging links. If Google doesn’t know it exists, then there’s no sense in exchanging links, because if Google hasn’t cached it then it’s likely completely useless to both humans and search engines. And you don’t want to be associated with that.

2. Relevance. This is another key question. If you discover that it isn’t relevant to your topic, then it had better have a lot of other things going for it before you offer your link. The same goes for relevance to your search phrases. If it’s not, then it had better stand out in every other way.

3. How it is optimized? Believe it or not, some websites out there are actually optimized for the words “reciprocal links” and “link exchanges.” Talk about showing your hand. Don’t bother with these sites.

4. Is it part of an automated script? If so, you might as well just tell the search engines that your site is so bad that you can’t get your own links from other quality websites.

5. Prominence. Let’s say that the website you’d like to exchange links with isn’t guilty of any of the four previous issues. Now it’s time to start looking at the nitty-gritty, like how easy it is to find the page. How many clicks does it take to get there from a directory? If it’s two or more, it’s time to find another page to exchange with.

6. How many clicks deep is it? The further away it is from the homepage, the more you’re losing value from the link.

7. Quality. Overall website quality is definitely a consideration. Does it look like a site that you and potential customers would trust? Does it look professional? How does it rank for keywords that are similar to the ones you hope to rank for? Are the categories contained in the directory at least remotely related or are they completely random?

8. What kind of page is it? A link from a page full of content might compel you to look past many other egregious issues, particularly if the content is well-written, relevant, and helpful to visitors.

9. How many links are on the page? A good rule of thumb is to only use pages with 50 or fewer links. If there are more than 50, at least make sure that your link is close to the top of the page.

If you’re new to SEO and internet marketing, learning your way around inbound link building can be tricky at best. If you’re unclear about the best ways to build inbound links, consult with an SEO expert or internet marketing professional. They can help you determine how and when to go about building your links, and they can help you create an internet marketing plan that will take advantage not only of link building, but of a number of SEO strategies that can increase your search engine ranking and help you turn visitors into loyal customers.

The only real mistake you can make is trying to solve the SEO riddle by yourself. Your competitors are using a whole bag of tricks to optimize their websites. If you’re not, then you’re losing potential customers, potential revenue, and the chance to make your business the best it can possibly be.

• The 4 Levels of Link Building
• Getting One-Way Links: 2 Strategies to Avoid
• 3 Tips to Article Marketing for SEO
• 6 Ways to Use Googles Backlink Data
• Free Directories or Paid Directories: The Pros and Cons

If you’re a small business owner, then you know the importance of hiring great employees with the least amount of expense. Not only do you want to hire qualified employees who will work for a wage that you can afford, but you don’t want to break the bank in the process of recruiting. Here are 7 steps to hiring the right person for the job.

1. Clear Job Description. The first thing you need to do is to create a clear and concise job description with as much detail as necessary. This is only way to make your expectations clear and to measure an employee’s job performance. Don’t do anything else until you have a job description in hand.

2. Clear Qualifications. Be as detailed as you need to be in order to be clear about the qualifications that you require. This is the place to go into detail about the work environment, as well as the skills required to do the job well. This puts everyone on the same page as far as expectations.

3. Transparency. If you hide information from potential employees, it’s only going to result in heartache. Be clear about everything you expect and put it down on paper. Inform everyone, current employees as well as those in your candidate pool, about how the process is going. You’ll build the trust with current employees and future employees, resulting in higher loyalty and job satisfaction.

4. Look Internally. Now that you’re clear about your expectations, the next step is to begin recruiting. The logical place to begin is with current employees. If you’re not in the position to hire current employees for an open position, go to them for hiring suggestions. What kind of team member are they looking for? What’s missing within the structure that will help them do their jobs better? Do they know people who can get the job done?

5. Ask Questions. Once you have possible candidates, vet them within your existing community of employees. The information you glean in this step is invaluable and can help you avoid awkward situations.

6. Put One Person in Charge. Appoint one person within your company to be the contact person with potential candidates. This streamlines the process, helps avoid communication issues, and protects a candidate’s confidentiality. This person should manage all interactions between potential candidates and your company.

7. Expand your search. If you’ve heeded the above steps and still haven’t found the perfect candidate, then it’s time to expand your search. One option is to take out an ad. If you choose to do this, be prepared to be bombarded with emails, phone calls, and resumes from an overwhelming amount of unqualified people. If you still want to go this route, just make sure you don’t print the name of your company. Competitors don’t need to know what you’re up to.

Another option is to utilize the services of a recruiter. Recruiters can bring amazing candidates to you, candidates that they’ve already screened, thereby saving on the amount of time you waste talking to halfway-interested, unqualified people. But the truth is that it’s hard to find a top-notch recruiter. There are too many opportunities for conflicts of interest and shirking of standards and loyalty.

If you choose to use a recruiter, find out how big their pool of candidates is. They’re not allowed to recruit from companies with whom they already have a relationship, so you run the risk of using a recruiter with a small candidate pool. Get testimonials, at least five, from satisfied customers. Never pay a recruiter’s expenses unless you’re recruiting for a top-level executive position. Finally, put down deadlines and timelines in writing and be clear about what penalties they will incur if they miss those deadlines.

In all you do, remember that, as a small business owner, you should always try to get the most for the least.

• Hire Your Friends: 6 Reasons to Give it a Shot
• 5 Free Ways to Build Your Brand
• 15 Ways to Stay Focused With Effective Time Management
• The Entrepreneur’s 8 Tips to Making it Big
• 6 Reasons to Keep Marketing, Even During A Recession
• Have a New Business Idea: 5 Questions to Ask Yourself
• 7 Ways to Connect with Success
• 3 Reasons to Invest in a Premium Domain Name
• 9 Ways to Keep the Cash Flowing
• 10 Do’s and Dont’s for Running Your Business in a Tight Economy

SEO experts and internet marketing professionals know that the key to high search engine rankings is link building. They will also tell you that link building isn’t all that easy until you’ve done it for awhile, and that there are so many techniques for link building that it’s hard to sort them all out. Here are the 4 levels of link building to take you from novice to expert.

1. Do It Yourself, Quick and Easy. The easiest links to build are those for which you don’t have to rely on anyone but yourself. The easiest way to do this is to submit your site to directories. Simply submit your URL, the name of your company, and a short description of your company. Know before you begin that directories are managed by humans, so you may not see results right away. Also know that some directories require a small fee for your listing.

You should also use social media as a way to get links to your page. SEO experts don’t find these crucial to success, but they’re still a pretty simple and cheap way to target an audience that’s going to be using the sites anyway.

2. Do It Yourself, Not So Quick and Easy. Before you start on Level 2, make sure you’ve started a business blog. This is crucial if you want to have good content to which others can link. And the way you’re going to get these links is through press release optimization and article marketing.

When you’re writing your articles and your press releases, always keep your keyword strategy at the front of your mind. Links should coincide with your strategy. Before you send your press releases and articles into the ether, use a press release grader to see if they pass muster.

3. Networking Plus Significant Time. Networking is by far the most effective way to get links to your site. It’s time consuming and it can be frustrating, but it can also get you results that you never dreamed of. There are many ways to go about this type of networking, but the key is putting yourself amongst those who are potentially interested in what you have to say.

The best way to do this is to establish yourself as an expert in your niche. But never make people feel like they would be lost without your presence. Engage them. Show compassion. Share your own opinions and ideas and vulnerabilities. Start by reading industry-related blogs and commenting on them. Eventually you’ll want to establish a one-on-one relationship with bloggers, probably by casually mentioning third-party content that they might find interesting.

Ideally you’ll soon be asked to be a guest blogger on blogs that are related to your niche. In the process, you can link to yourself and let others in your niche know that you know what you’re talking about. If all goes well, they’ll start following you as well, which leads to the final level…

4. Links Resulting From Good Content. Once you’ve reached this level, you have established yourself as a knowledgeable resource within your field. Although you can probably never afford to abandon the strategies mentioned above, you are now generating most of your links from people who respect you and enjoy reading your excellent content. This kind of success doesn’t happen immediately. It takes a lot of time and effort, including effort in providing your followers with an array of high-quality, interesting, and relevant content. You may do his through your blog, through hosting webinars, or through publishing white papers.

The key to keep in mind as you’re starting out is that, while content is crucial, you’re going to have to start out doing more than creating great content. You’re going to have to go out and find followers, and then give them a reason to stick around. It’s not easy, but it’ll pay off in the end.

• 3 Tips to Article Marketing for SEO
• 8 SEO Mistakes to Avoid
• 3 SEO Considerations Before Changing Your Website
• 7 Top Tips for Writing Blog Articles
• 5 Signs That Google Has Penalized You
• The 4 P’s of Inbound Marketing
• Free Directories or Paid Directories: The Pros and Cons
• 11 Small Business SEO Tips
• Search Engine Optimization and Keyword Research: 5 Steps to Get You Started
• Search Engine Optimization and New Websites: 10 Things to Remember

A web directory is nothing more than a list of websites categorized by subject.  If an internet user wants information about a particular subject, she simply goes to a directory, searches for the information she needs, and she’s given a list of relevant websites.  Web directories are managed by humans, so each directory submission is reviewed before the website is added to the directory.  This means that website owners need to be very meticulous when submitting a site.  Submission guidelines must be followed to a T. 

Despite the potential tediousness of directory submissions, they are very valuable for driving traffic to your site and increasing your search engine ranking. Each link from a directory is viewed as a one-way link by the search engines, and search engines place much higher value on one-way links than on reciprocal links.  The older the directory is, the more value it is assigned by search engines, too, so submitting to well-established directories can also increase traffic and search engine ranking.

There are two ways to go about submitting your site to web directories.  The first is to use free directories, and the second is to use paid directories.  Here are the differences:

Free Directories

The primary advantage to free directories is that they are just that—free.   Beyond that, there isn’t much redeeming about them, particularly if you’re serious about using directory listings to build your business.  The major drawbacks are that you’ll have to wait awhile between the time you submit your site and the time that it’s listed, your link will be lost in a sea of other links because free directories are often so crowded, and a general devaluing of your link since it will be listed with many lower-quality sites.

Owners of free directories have to make their money somehow, though, and that’s usually by using Adsense or selling advertising space.  Both Adsense and paid advertising space distract a visitor from the actual free listings, which can cost you traffic and business.

Paid Directories

If you’ve decided that you want to use a paid directory, you need to make sure that you’re getting the most bang for your buck.  Make sure that any directories you pay for are maintained by professionals and have a professional-quality layout.  They should include a lot of content, including articles and high-quality resources.  A paid directory should be able to guarantee you a turnaround time of 24 to 48 hours between the time you submit your site and the time your site is listed in the directory.  It should offer the opportunity for deep linking as well.

Make sure that Adsense is not included in a paid directory, and a paid directory should have more features than just a sea of links.  Look for a blog, articles, or other things that are there simply to enhance a visitor’s experience.

The next step is up to you.  As a business owner, you have to decide whether paid directories are the right investment for you.  After all, they are more well-respected by directory users, and links from paid directories are given more value by search engines than links from free directories. 

If you’re not sure exactly how to proceed, consider consulting with an internet marketing professional or SEO expert.  An internet marketing professional can sit down with you and help you decide how to make directory listings part of your overall internet marketing strategy.  She can help you weigh the benefits of free directories and paid directories, and can ultimately help you pick out which directories will be most beneficial for your business.  Don’t hesitate to get expert help from an experienced professional. When you see the increased traffic to your site and see all those sales, you’ll be glad you did!

• The 4 Levels of Link Building
• 3 Tips to Ensure that Your Directory Submission is Accepted
• Top 10 SEO Tips
• 5 Keys to Effective Content Writing
• 3 SEO Considerations Before Changing Your Website
• 11 Small Business SEO Tips
• Getting One-Way Links: 2 Strategies to Avoid
• Search Engine Optimization and Keyword Research: 5 Steps to Get You Started
• Search Engine Optimization and Broken Links: Tools You Need to Know About
• Search Engine Optimization and New Websites: 10 Things to Remember