All About Building Succesful Online Marketing Campaigns
Internet Marketing
Google Analytics & Social Media
Jul 14th
Understanding who your site visitors are is one of the most critical steps in optimizing your online presence. Google Analytics can help you to understand who your visitors are and what their expectations are. Yet, too often, companies focus exclusively on marketing or overall site performance, without taking the time to understand the types of people they are trying to interact with.
This article will not only challenge you to dig deeper into oft-ignored reports for insights, but it will also point you to some other tools to analyze the data.
The ultimate goal of web analytics is to improve your site and marketing. To do this, you need to know what’s working and what’s not. And if something isn’t working, you need to understand why not and how you should begin optimizing it. In other words, you need to come away from your analysis with a list of to-do’s.
Many Google Analytics users read the reports without knowing what to do with them. For most people, reports seem to satisfy curiosity more than inform any kind of action.
…and Social Media Tracking
Many business are tapping into the value of social media. It operates unlike any other type of online marketing, and the rules are constantly shifting. With this shift in focus, web analytics vendors have started to announce partnerships or tools to integrate social media tracking into their product.
Companies using web analytics have to decide how they will track and measure their social media efforts alongside their online marketing and website traffic. How can social media be tracked in Google Analytics? How can a company compare their social media against their banner ads?
The short answer is, they shouldn’t.
To put it another way, with other digital marketing, if there are not visits to the site (and conversions), the marketing failed. That’s a relatively straightforward proposition. In social media, on the other hand, a successful campaign will increase influence but may not directly bring any visits to a site. (Taking customer care as an example, a successful campaign may actually reduce the number of visits to a site.) In any case, the number of visits to a site and the comparative conversion rate for them is not an indicator of whether a social media campaign has succeeded or failed.
The Importance of Social Media Marketing
Jun 22nd
Social media marketing is the process of promoting your site or business through social media channels and it is a powerful strategy that will get you links, attention and massive amounts of traffic.
There is no other low-cost promotional method out there that will easily give you large numbers of visitors, some of whom may come back to your website again and again.
If you are selling products/services or just publishing content for ad revenue, social media marketing is a potent method that will make your site profitable over time.
Those who ignore the efficacy of social media usually fall into three categories; the ones who don’t know much or anything about social media, the ones who are interested but don’t know how to use it and those who don’t believe in the value that a social media strategy can bring to any site or business.
Social media marketing benefits organizations and individuals by providing an additional channel for customer support, a means to gain customer and competitive insight, and a method of managing their reputation online. Key factors that ensure its success are its relevance to the customer, the value it provides them with and the strength of the foundation on which it is built. A strong foundation serves as a stand or platform in which the organization can centralize its information and direct customers on its recent developments via other social media channels, such as article and press release publications.
The most popular platforms include:
The goal of a strong foundation is to create a platform that engages and empowers its customers with the opportunity to communicate with the organization. This platform is important because it also allows the organization to measure and monitor the effects of their organization on their customers. All platforms are tailored to each organization’s endeavors, taking into account factors such as the biggest opportunities and challenges brought on by the platform, the primary demographic being targeted, and metrics used to assess the information gained from its customers. Tools offered by certain platforms are more applicable than others in achieving goals set by their customer. Examples of such tools and customers are as follows:
- Likes, wall posts, and fan size on the Facebook page of an organization
- Tweets & blog posts to announce new releases
- Rating and ranking videos, as performed by YouTube
- Music posts as performed on MySpace
Social Media Fear?
May 31st
When it comes to Social Media, a lot of individuals and companies are quite afraid. Fear of the unknown. Fear of lack of privacy. Fear of retribution and negative response. Fear of ex-girlfriends’ new boyfriends, or of strangers stalking your kids. I hope to quell some of those fears with some good old fashioned rationalization and logical determination of what Social Media can do for you.
Social Media for Personal Use
When it comes to personal use, there is a lot more to fear from Social Media on an individual level than on a corporation level. There is a level of comfort that some were able to adapt to quickly (they all work in PR) and some took a little while longer to come around. Some still haven’t come around, but have their little toes in the water and some flat out refuse to be involved at all. Most of the fear in the latter categories come from lack of knowledge about the Social Media networks and false assumptions about what kind of information you are required to share.
Let’s talk about that for a moment. What information, on a personal level, are you required to share? That’s actually a very simple answer, one that seems to elude many. None. You are required to share nothing. Plain and simple. I think this fear of being forced to provide personal data just because you signed up comes from cell phones. I’m serious. When cell phones became mainstream I remember people lamenting that now their friends & co-workers would be able to get hold of them wherever they were and an expectation was set that they would. That’s the way the behavior drove the technology. Few people, if any, mentioned to me that the solution to that is to just not pick up the phone.
It’s the same thing for Social Media. You are only required to share as much information as you feel you should share. This is a fear I myself had to conquer when moving my persona onto Facebook. But then I realized that I can put whatever I want up there. I don’t have to tell people my innermost secrets, I don’t have to put my correct birthday or favorite foods. That’s all optional. I don’t even have to use my real name. The fear here is lack of privacy. People are afraid they will give away too much information. Well, only if you give away too much information. Again, at a personal level you aren’t obligated to do anything at all, so it’s completely up to you as to how you want to represent yourself online.
When it came to more career oriented sites like Linkedin, the logic there was easier. What information would I be putting up on that site that wasn’t already up on Monster.com or Careerbuilder? My resume, after being spread around the internet like herpes backstage at a rock concert, was pretty much public record. With that thought in mind, creating my profile on Linkedin was a walk in the park.
The other thing that really scares people, especially when it comes to networking sites, is connecting with the past. A lot of people have skeletons in the closet that they just don’t want to let out. Or they don’t want to be faced with the decision whether to “friend” an ex on Facebook or not. There is a lot of trepidation about what the expectation is when it comes to selecting your “friends” online. A great rule of thumb when it comes to that is – would you stop and talk to this person in real life? Is this someone you’d recognize in a crowded room? Someone you’d sit with uninvited at a coffee shop if you knew them? I have acquaintances from high school that try to connect with me on Facebook, but I either A.) didn’t like them then and probably wouldn’t like them now or B.) have no freaking clue who they are. Why should I feel obligated to connect? Am I that self centered to think that if I don’t connect they are brooding over it? Chances are, I’m one of a hundred invites they sent out that day.
I spoke to a friend who is consumed by the fear. The media hasn’t helped, with stories of MySpace & Facebook predators and so on. That’s where his fear stems from – he’s afraid his family would be targeted. It may be a harsh conclusion, but you may as well never leave the house and never let your family out of the house as well. It’s a rough and tumble world out there, and even more so online. You have to have a particular constitution about you and be armed with the knowledge of what’s out there and what kind of programs you are working with. The fact that Linkedin pulled in his gmail account address book scared the crap out of him. You can’t be participating online with that glaring lack of knowledge about how the internet and it’s related applications work. Arm yourself with knowledge and the fear will subside.
Getting over these fears are tough. However, they are clearly worth the benefits. I have several thousand connections on Linkedin, people I don’t know in industries I’ve never heard of – but they are there. Ready and mostly willing to provide information and insight when needed. I’ve made advantageous connections on Facebook with people I’ve not seen in years, working for or running businesses that could benefit my life. I’ve connected with people outside my zip code – which is the most important part. I’ve gotten freelance jobs through connections, been involved in projects I never would have known about had I not been connected. With networks like Twitter, I’ve got a constant stream of what’s going on in the world and with subjects I’m interested in. Not to mention the quick availability to self promote via utilities like Digg. Those are the benefits.
In a future post I’ll discuss the overuse & abuse of these networks that only propagates the fear, but again – the fear is only what you make of it. If you don’t post the picture of you getting drunk with a bunch of underage kids at a frat party, then no-one will see that picture.
Social Media for Business Use
With business use, whether it be to self promote or promote your business, there are different fears but based on the same inherent base fears. Lack of knowledge is the big one, followed by general apathy and ignorance. Businesses don’t worry about the privacy issue as much as an individual would.
What they do worry about is the return on investment. Is Social Media worth the time and effort? Based on Social Media consulting being a whole sub-industry of public relations, I’d say many companies think it is worth the time and effort. Basically, companies need to ask themselves if they have the time and resources to commit to networking. If they don’t, then it’s a moot point and less of a fear of using Social Media than an apathetic response.
The bigger question for companies or individuals looking to self promote, is do their customers use it? For me, the answer was a hearty “yes.” As a writer, joining Twitter was one of the best ways to promote my own work. Did I mention that you can follow me? See? Self promotion.
Businesses hire Social Media experts to guide them onto the internet and promote their service and/or product. This is especially useful if a good percentage of their customer base is deeply rooted in the social networks. More companies are adding a Twitter feed to their contact page, or their CEO suddenly has his own blog to rant on.
A fear here is feedback. A lot of companies are flat out terrified of negative feedback. Terrified. Like walking in the dark and likely be eaten by a Grue terrified. However, that suggests something exists that would cause negative feedback. A good key for any company using Social Media is honesty and clarity with customers and consumers. If you have something to hide and it’s revealed, there will be negative feedback. In any forum however, there will always be negative feedback. Have you ever read the op-ed section of the newspaper?
Businesses can benefit the most from Social Media, more than any personal usage outside of self-promotion. Because there is money to be made. How is there money to be made? It’s basic economics. Reach a larger audience, sell more product/service and make more money. There are companies that wouldn’t exist right now if not for Social Media. Independents based online are thriving because of the networking possibilities of Social Media. As are Social Media consulting firms. Self promotion is another great side benefit as well. Can you think of how you would self promote a blog post before Social Media? Email everyone? That limits you to people you know. Send them certified mail?
Author of this post is Curtis Silver, from the Geek Dad
Read More http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/09/social-media-fighting-the-fear/#ixzz0pYM0rUfk
SEO Mistakes When Redesigning Websites
May 11th
1. The Domain Problem. Companies often decide that with the makeover, they need a new domain name. What they don’t realize is that the old domain name had earned a lot of trust with the search engines. It may take a year to just “convince” the search engines to love you again for who you now are.
2. The Redirection Problem. Webmasters sometimes create new pages (and new URLs) but don’t take the time to redirect the old ones. This is arguably the worst problem we see. An older site has built up a lot of link love, and without those redirects, the links are going to pages that don’t exist. That’s also bad for all your users who end up frequenting your error page.
3. The Duplicate Content Problem. Unfortunately, the implementation team sometimes doesn’t prevent the search engines from crawling and indexing their staging server. This creates duplicate content and a big mess to clean up after launch.
4. The Flash Problem. Designers frequently replace keyword-rich sites with gorgeous flash-based sites. Search engines are only now learning how to read links in Flash. Sadly, they have a long ways to go. Some flash-based sites also have the problem of only having a single URL — the homepage. When you click on a link to a different page of the site, it really just takes you to a different segment of the Flash movie. Too often these “pages” of your site are hidden to search engines and users can’t bookmark them, link to them, or share them on Facebook.
5. The “Crummy Old Articles” Problem. Web teams sometimes decide to “clean house” and get rid of a lot of old content, articles that have links to them and earn traffic for the site. Rankings for keywords associated with that content — along with search traffic in general — plummet. Oops.
6. Content Management System URL Problem. Techies are satisfied with new URLs produced by a Content Management System (CMS) that look like so: www.oursite.com?pid=123&cid=876&country=1&lang=en. However, they don’t understand that a keyword rich URL such as www.oursite.com/product/productname produces higher keyword rankings. Those ugly URLs are also less informative when they appear in the search engine results pages (SERPs), which can lead to a lower click-through rate.
7. Content Management System Title Tag Problem. The e-team invests in a new CMS (to go with their new site). But the CMS makes it hard for them to change their most important “real estate” — i.e. their title tag. Make sure your CMS allows you to write your own title and description tags!
8. The “Haste Makes Waste” Problem: Companies don’t take the time to move some things slowly enough to preserve their old rankings. For example, if you’re moving to a new domain name along with the site redesign, you can make the change in two phases. First, move the old site to the new domain. Then, after things have settled down a bit, launch your redesign.
From story by Robbin Steif , May 11, 2010
CSS – A Vital Part of Contemporary Web Development Services
Apr 28th
Many developers believe that with the coming of CSS style sheets, the realm of web development services received the potential to effortlessly manage web pages. CSS or Cascading Style Sheet is a style sheet that facilitates the developers to easily link to other documents in the website. However, it is important to mention that CSS only describes the structure and content presentation of a website and is in no way linked to the design of a website. A single CSS sheet manages positioning, font style of the website and colour. Hence, it imparts them the convenience of retaining complete control over the various elements in all different pages of the website and thus, is a preferred choice of every leading web development company.
Viewing the Pros and Cons of CSS
• CSS imparts the convenience of easily positioning the elements in the web page. Even during the phase of development, the developer can effortlessly re-position any particular links or columns to increase the creditability of the same. It significantly lowers down the menace of website maintenance.
• CSS style sheets consume less bandwidth as compared to table layouts. The sheet is required to be downloaded only once and then it is stocked up in the cache memory, which helps the subsequent pages to load at a much faster rate.
• Developers prefer using CSS for building their HTML based web applications since it facilitates the creation of print friendly web pages. Moreover, other things such as images, colours etc that are hard to get printed can be easily eradicated and printed.
• CSS renders the facility to modify the layout of the website without disturbing its content. Externally stored CSS style sheets let the user to craft required amendments. In addition, leading browsers also allow user to come up with their own sheets.
• Use of CSS during web development brings a desirable level of consistency to all web pages. Every expression and text receives its characteristics from external style sheet and can be easily modified at point of time during the web development, without having to bother developers much.
• No matter how incompetent HTML is believed to be if used independently in website development, it leads to the creation of technically strong web pages when supported by CSS.
• As far as the cons of CSS are concerned, there is only one problem with CSS and that is of poor browser compatibility. Browsers exhibit altering levels of compliance with Style Sheet. According this statement some Style Sheet features are supported whereas some aren’t. To complicate things further, few browser manufacturers prefer to surface with their own proprietary tags.
• Besides the inconsistent browser support, a few other problems associated with CSS are larger initial time commitment and bugs. However, these issues are minor and can be tackled easily by any efficient web development company.
BrainPulse Web Development India also offering E-commerce Solutions India builds highly scalable E-commerce business solutions for budding E-commerce companies.
By Tarun Gupta 
Blog Title and why it is important to be optimized.
Apr 22nd
Do you know it is important to have the first impression for your blog? Yes, it is important besides the design of your blog. Maybe it is the best way of creating that good first impression is through your blog post’s title.
Great written titles are important on many fronts and they are including the followings:
Grabbing attention in major search engines: You must have a great title on your blog because this is most highlighted that the readers would decide which result to click on when they go to Google and search for information most of the time. They would have a very little information to go by. There is a title, very short excerpt, and URL. You have to have your title stand out among millions of search results that the readers got after a research.
Getting RSS reader’s attention: Similarly, you need to have your title grab attention of those following your blog via RSS feeds in new aggregators. Those readers tend to scan the titles of posts for things of interest rather than reading full
text. They stop and visiting the posts that pique their interest.
Getting attention in social bookmarking sites: Apply the same principle to the social bookmarking sites such as Digg.com and Onlywire.com. They have the potential to send your site thousands of visitors based almost solely on the title of your blog post.
Loyal readers: Your good blog post title has a great impact on your loyal readers. It will make them pause as they roll their eyes down to your site because your blog title intrigues them enough to slow down their frantic web surfing and actually read some of the content that you have poured time and energy into.
Search engine optimization: Your good blog title can contribute to how search engines rank a page of your blog besides other factors they use. And one of the most powerful onsite factors is the words that you use in the title of the post. Most blogging platforms will include your title in the title tags of your post and the URL structure.
These two factors contribute to that page’s search engine ranking. On top of that, other bloggers often use your title to link to your blog and then your titles become a very important factor in ranking and generating traffic in search engines. Your blog post title is like an advertisement for itself and it can mean whether the readers would read your content or not. Creating a great blog title is a skill. Learn how to do it and you will appreciate it later.
by Paul Yun on April 5, 2010
Operational efficiency for better web analytics, SEO
Apr 18th
The Real Value Of Web Analytics
OK, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say something that might not make sense at first: the most important outcome of successful web analytics (or SEO effort or landing page testing, etc.) is not a better web site. The most important outcome is a better, more functional company.
Let’s pause from the execution side of analytics this week to focus on something a lot more important. Yes, web analytics can identify a host of issues with usability, marketing, technology, information architecture, etc., and fixing these things leads to improvement in volume of visits, exposure to new visitors, increased conversion rates, increased revenue, increased profits, and on and on. These are wonderful, almost magical things. But they all completely pale in comparison to what small improvements in operational efficiency can mean to an organization. In simple terms, it is stupendous to know what your business needs to do next, but it is so much more important to take notes when your company tries (and sometimes struggles) to get it done.
Now I should probably take a small step back and say that the impact of this idea scales with the size and complexity of an organization. To say that the best outcome of web analytics on a blog is an increase in operational efficiency is crazy. Unless, of course, the writer frequently gets into arguments with himself and defends his own bad decisions. But beyond a very small operation, nearly every company doing business online has significant operational issues, and thus, significant dampening to their upside.
Think about analytics in your own company for a moment. Let’s say you’re a crack analyst (or SEO, or paid search marketer, or whatever) and you figure out a few things you think will really move the needle, or that are broken and are harming conversion. It is not unheard of for an update to a home page, a change to a form, a new small feature release, or even a repair of a broken image or link to take two weeks, a month, a quarter, even six months. And let’s say that the upside of fixing one of these things is a +0.1% increase in your conversion rate (which, let’s say, is already 2%). The day you fix the issue, you are making 5% more per visit. That is huge. But what sucks is that you didn’t have that 5% for six whole months. You might not realize it, but that may have cost you millions (or scale to something that sounds scary to your own business).
The problem with the operational issues a company experiences is that they limit literally everything, and they are almost all preventable or can be significantly improved. They don’t just hold back that 5% upside. They hold back the next project and its upside. The backlog of work means hiring more people, which means greater overhead, more process, and more complexity. And the endless meetings to bring everyone and their dog into each decision means that people aren’t free to think and innovate around new opportunities. Whatever Linchpins you do have are snapped.
What you can do
The approach depends largely on who the “you” is, but here’s the gist of it:
The first step is admitting you have a problem (don’t worry, this isn’t a 12-step program). Without placing blame, the organization has to realize that it can be a whole lot better than it is today.
The second step is creating overlap. On the web, specialization can be a big problem when web sites are built on assembly lines (product to UX to design to IT…) and people protect the borders of their particular discipline. People are going to have to learn to trust one another so small issues can be corrected without assembling the whole village. And to build that trust, people need to learn how to do a few things beyond what they’re doing today.
There are plenty of .NET developers in the world who can make something pretty. There are plenty of usability designers who can write good PHP. Overly-specialized people actually work against each other because they can ignore the context of their work. If you have a company full of single-purpose employees, you may need to rethink your strategy. And this overlap allows you to…
Get small (or act small). As small as possible. Break up into groups where you can go from brainstorm to prototype in a couple days. Let the IT guy draw a picture. Let the design guy ask questions about the code. For some organizations, this is going to be very hard, but I’ve seen big companies do it and it’s amazing.
Remember that there is such a thing as too fast. The student who does best wrote her essay a week before it was due and had time to think about it. The one who did worst was the one who stayed up writing all night before it was due. But the good student’s paper would have sucked just as much if she turned in her work immediately without that week of thought. Get done quickly, but let things marinate before you make them final.
So use your analytics, SEO, PPC and other awesome skills to come up with ways to make your site a conversion machine, but pay close attention to why it takes you so long to get there. Will the above approach work for everyone? Probably not. But the first of your competitors who gets it done is going to mop the floors with you. History has shown us that companies that can be efficient and work in concert make a mockery of those who can’t.
Article written: Apr 16, 2010 at 7:00am ET by Evan LaPointe on Search Engine Land
Online Reputation Management
Feb 25th
70% of online consumers have said they use the Internet to research everyday grocery products. (Prospectiv, January 2008)
41% of Europeans claim to have changed their mind about what brand to buy as a result of researching choices online, according to EIAA’s latest Mediascope survey. (Mediascope Europe, November 2008)
Brands with the highest “social media activity” (includes reviews) increased revenues by as much as 18%. (Media Post News, July 2009)
Over half (51%) of consumers are using the Internet before making a purchase in a shop. They educate themselves on the best deals available. (Verdict Research, May 2009)
Do you still think online reputation is something you may ignore?
It is very important for present-day businesses to carefully listen to what is said online, even if what is said is negative. Listening gives you the ability to react, resolve problems and disprove untrue information that may negatively affect your brand and corporate reputation.
Consumers use search engines to gather information. When they search for your company or product names, you will want positive information to be found in the top positions of search engines results pages (SERPs).
Online reputation management is a combination of marketing, public relations and search engine marketing efforts. Visibility and high keyword positions are the main goals for good publicity, because you can facilitate favorable information to appear and spread and, at the same time, push negative reviews out of the SERPs and, accordingly, out of the potential consumers’ sight.
The aim of online reputation management is to make search engines index and rank highly all positively associated web sites and corporate communications. It should result in the increase of positive Web presence, i.e. occupation of multiple top positions for your targeted keywords in search engines. Online reputation management lets you defend and manage your reputation by putting forth proactive efforts to achieve predictable search engine results through a three-step process: monitoring – analysis – influence.
What to monitor and how:
o Set up Google and Yahoo Alerts to catch mentions of your company and product names in the news.
o Use blog search engines like IceRocket and sites like Technorati to watch your keywords in blogs.
o Customize RSS readers for brand tracking. The free FeedReader3, for example, lets you create search feeds to be alerted when your keywords are used on Twitter, eBay, YouTube, etc.
o Keep track of all names including your company name, product names, and key employee names.
o Be sure to monitor industry-related sites, forums, social networks.
Analyze sites under your control to dominate SERPs. They include:
o Your corporate site
o Your product sites
o Corporate blogs
o Your employees’ blogs
o Partner or affiliate sites
o Corporate communications like press releases, your articles and news
Document positions that your site have ever occupied, so you can monitor future movements and activities (Web CEO Ranking tool will provide you a report on how page rankings change over time. Double-click on a page address in the main Ranking report to get to that report.)
Influence your results by active participation
Your participation will give you the opportunity to improve the perception of your brand. Take part in your industry conversation, become a regular contributor to blogs and forums, make this a two-way communication experience and use comment sections of others’ blog and forums to get your viewpoint across and lead the conversations about your brand. Choose the most authoritative sites in your niche and participate in them. In addition to a constructive dialogue, think of potential sponsorship opportunities – this will help you build relationships and alliances with the authoritative sites.
Remember that online reputation management through monitoring, analyzing and influencing online communications can prevent damage to or even collapse of your business and ensure the ongoing success of your company.
SEO Companies’ Visibility Rate
Are SEO companies as good as they claim to be on their sites? Will they return the efficiency they promise? Are their skills qualified? The only way to find it out is to check how they optimize and promote their own sites.
Here we share Top 10 SEO Companies according to their search visibility rate for January 2010.
Web CEO analysts use objective evidence to rate SEO firms according to their search engine visibility. SEO companies’ visibility rate is calculated using a special formula that considers the positions of SEO companies’ sites in search engines results pages for the keywords their potential clients use, popularity of these keywords and number of competitors.
What is and how to proper link your Website Pages
Dec 21st
Reciprocal link
A reciprocal link is a mutual link between two objects, commonly between two websites to ensure mutual traffic. Example: Alice and Bob have websites. If Bob’s website links to Alice’s website, and Alice’s website links to Bob’s website, the websites are reciprocally linked. Website owners often submit their sites to reciprocal link exchange directories, in order to achieve higher rankings in the search engines. Reciprocal linking between websites is an important part of the search engine optimization process because Google uses link popularity algorithms (defined as the number of links that led to a particular page and the anchor text of the link) to rank websites for relevancy.
Relevant linking
Relevant linking is a derivative of reciprocal linking in which a site linked to another site contains only content compatible and relevant to the linked site. Relevant linking has become increasingly important because most major search engines stress that — in Google’s words — “quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating.”[1].
The engines’ insistence on reciprocal links being relevant developed because many of the methods described below — free-for-all linking, link doping, incestuous linking, overlinking, multi-way linking — and other schemes were designed to unethically “fool” search-engines into awarding undeservedly high page ranks and/or return positions to sites engaged in search-engine spamming.
Though the engines warned site developers (again quoting from Google) to avoid “‘free-for-all’ links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines (because) these are typically useless exercises that don’t affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines — at least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive [2]” they also took proactive steps to recognize linking schemes and downrate or de-index sites using them.
This, in turn, led to the development of search-engine compliant link-management systems enabling webmasters to benefit from the upside of reciprocal linking without putting themselves and their sites at risk from inadvertently straying over into the darkside.
Since many linking schemes — particularly those involving some form of link farming or free-for-all linking — were (and still are) based on variations of a 1999 patent [3]for an automated system of gathering links and adding them to a website without the possibility of editorial direction or intervention, development of a solution based on a polar opposite approach became highly desirable.
In 2006, after six years of evaluating the company’s application and its underlying editor-based technology for acquiring and managing links, the U.S. Patent Office awarded Creative Net Ventures of Atlanta patent #7,082,470 [4] for its LinksManager application.
To date, the LinksManager system remains the only proprietary, patented, semi-automatic link-exchange enabler to comply with all major search-engine quality guidelines and Web best practices standards.
Three way linking
Three way linking (siteA ? siteB ? siteC ? siteA) is a special type of reciprocal linking. The attempt of this link building method is to create more “natural” links in the eyes of search engines. The value of links by three-way linking can then be better than normal reciprocal links, which are usually done between two domains.
Two-Way-Linking (Link exchange)
An alternative to the automated linking above is a link exchange forum, in which members will advertise the sites that they want to get links to, and will in turn offer reciprocal or three way links back to the sites that link to them. The links generated through such services are subject to editorial review.
One-way linking
One-way link is a term used among webmasters for link building methods. It is a hyperlink that points to a website without any reciprocal link; thus the link goes “one-way” in direction. It is suspected by many industry consultants[who?] that this type of link would be considered more natural in the eyes of search engines. One-way links are also called Incoming Links or Inbound Links.
An effective way to build this type of one-way linking is by distributing articles through content sites and article directories. These articles generally contain an About The Author box that contains a one-way link back to the author’s URL. When publishers use these articles, those one-way links help authors increase their page rank.
Multi-way linking
Multi-way linking is a technique used for website promotion whereby websites may create similar one-way links that each involves 3 or more partner sites. This provides each website with a one-way non-reciprocal link. This technique has evolved from reciprocal linking. According to Google and Yahoo, the latest search algorithms have evolved to hold less favor towards websites that contain a high percentage of reciprocated links, and a higher favor towards websites that maintain a high level of incoming non-reciprocated (one way) links. How to filter out excessive reciprocal link schemes is even being mentioned in anti link spam patents.
The term multi-way simply refers to the fact that the link exchange is between 3 or more websites, however each link is singular by only pointing to one other website. Other means of linking that may increase your web presence may also include other indirect methods such as loading images, videos, content or RSS feeds from a third partners website.
Link campaign
Link campaigns are a form of online marketing and SEO. A business seeking to increase the number of visitors to its web site can ask its strategic partners, professional organizations, chambers of commerce, suppliers, and customers to add links from their web sites. A link campaign may involve mutual links back and forth between related sites, but it doesn’t have to require the reciprocation of links.
Incestuous linking
Incestuous linking is an SEO strategy used by a webmaster to promote a collection of their own web sites, or those of close friends.
Due to the domination of the search engine market by Google, and its underlying PageRank technology, sites are deemed to be more important if they have large numbers of inbound links. If those inbound links are also from highly ranked web sites, they will boost the web site further. With the take-up of blogging and social networking sites such as MySpace, this has resulted in lots of web sites that are inter-linked and can artificially improve the ranking of a web site without merit, i.e. without valuable or unique content.
When the sites are not directly owned, this is referred to as a web clique.
Overlinking
Overlinking in a webpage or another hyperlinked text is the characteristic of having too many hyperlinks.
It is characterized by:
* A large proportion of the words in each sentence being rendered as links.
* Links that have little information content, such as linking on specific years like 1995, or unnecessary linking of common words used in the common way, for which the reader can be expected to understand the word’s full meaning in context, without any hyperlink help.
* A link for any single term is excessively repeated in the same article. “Excessive” is usually more than one link for the same term in a line or a paragraph, since in this case one or more duplicate links will almost certainly then appear needlessly on the viewer’s screen.
Underlinking
The opposites of overlinking are null linking and underlinking, which are phenomena in which hyperlinks are reduced to such a degree as to remove all pointers to a likely-needed context of an unusual term, in the text-area where the term occurs. Underlinking results whenever a reader encounters an odd term in an article (perhaps not even for the first time), and wants to briefly browse more deeply at that point, but he or she cannot without an extensive search of the article for a (possibly non-existent) instance of the linked term.
The extreme case of underlinking is a dead-end page, a page with no links at all. Usability experts discourage making dead-end pages.
Underlinking also occurs when web pages use the rel=nofollow attribute to prevent search engines from considering these links when performing link analysis, weighting or ranking.[5] Wikipedia is a well known example of this kind of underlinking.[6][citation needed]
Link doping
Link doping refers to the practice and effects of embedding a large number of gratuitous hyperlinks on a website, in exchange for reciprocal links. Mainly used when describing blogs, link doping usually implies that a person hyperlinks to sites he or she has never visited, in return for a place on the website’s blogroll, for the sole purpose of inflating the apparent popularity of his or her website. Since the search algorithms of many web directories and search engines rely on the number of hyperlinks to a website to determine its importance or influence, link doping can result in a high placement or ranking for the offending website.
Originally used in an essay published in Sobriquet Magazine and on Blogcritics.org, link doping has been confused with the related practice of excessive hyperlinking, also known as “link whoring”. While the two phrases may be used interchangeably to describe gratuitous linking, link doping carries the additional connotation of deliberately striving to attain a certain level of success for one’s website without having earned it through hard work (as an average athlete on steroids might perform better than a naturally gifted athlete not on performance-enhancing drugs).
Free for all linking (not recommended)
A free for all (FFA) link page is a web page set up ostensibly to improve the search engine placement of a particular web site. Webmasters typically will use software to place a link to their site on hundreds of FFA sites, hoping that the resulting incoming links will increase the ranking of their site in search engines. Experts in SEO techniques do not place much value on FFAs. First, most FFAs only maintain a small number of links for a short time, too short for most search engines to pick up. Second, the high “human” traffic to FFA sites is almost completely other webmasters visiting the site to place their own links manually. Finally, search engine algorithms count more than link numbers, they also check relevancy which the unrelated links on FFA sites do not have. Another drawback to FFAs is the amount of spam e-mail webmasters will receive from members of the FFA. Using an FFA can be considered a form of spamdexing.
Link popularity
Link popularity is a measure of the quantity and quality of other web sites that link to a specific site on the World Wide Web. It is an example of the move by search engines towards off-the-page-criteria to determine quality content. In theory, off-the-page-criteria adds the aspect of impartiality to search engine rankings. Link popularity plays an important role in the visibility of a web site among the top of the search results. Indeed, some search engines require at least one or more links coming to a web site, otherwise they will drop it from their index.
Search engines such as Google use a special link analysis system to rank web pages. Citations from other WWW authors help to define a site’s reputation. The philosophy of link popularity is that important sites will attract many links. Content-poor sites will have difficulty attracting any links. Link popularity assumes that not all incoming links are equal, as an inbound link from a major directory carries more weight than an inbound link from an obscure personal home page. In other words, the quality of incoming links counts more than sheer numbers of them.
Link bait
Link bait is any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites. Matt Cutts defines link bait as anything “interesting enough to catch people’s attention.” Link bait can be an extremely powerful form of marketing as it is viral in nature.
Link bait in search engine optimization
The quantity and quality of inbound links are two of the many metrics used by a search engine ranking algorithm to rank a website. Link bait creation falls under the task of link building, and aims to increase the quantity of high-quality, relevant links to a website. Part of successful linkbaiting is devising a mini-PR campaign around the release of a link bait article so that bloggers and social media users are made aware and can help promote the piece in tandem. Social media traffic can generate a substantial amount of links to a single web page. Sustainable link bait is rooted in quality content.
Types of link bait
Although there are no clear-cut subdivisions within link bait, many[who?] attempt to divide them into types of hooks. This is a short list of some of the most common approaches with brief descriptions:
* Informational hooks – Provide information that a reader may find very useful. Some rare tips and tricks or any personal experience through which readers can benefit.
* News hooks – Provide fresh information and obtain citations and links as the news spreads.
* Humor hooks – Tell a funny story or a joke. A bizarre picture of your subject or mocking cartoons can also prove to be link bait.
* Evil hooks – Saying something unpopular or mean may also yield a lot of attention. Writing about something that is not appealing about a product or a popular blogger. Provide strong reasons for it.
* Tool hooks – Create some sort of tool that is useful enough that people link to it.
* Widgets hooks – A badge or tool, that can be placed or embedded on other websites, with a link included.
Forum signature linking
Forum signature linking is a technique used to build backlinks to a website. This is the process of using forum communities that allow outbound hyperlinks in their member’s signature. This can be a fast method to build up inbound links to a website; it can also produce some targeted traffic if the website is relevant to the forum topic. It should be stated that forums using the nofollow attribute will have no actual Search Engine Optimization value.
Link broker
A link broker is a company that allows you to buy or rent links. Link brokerages function in a few different ways but all offer the same service: selling or renting you links. The quality of the sites, the links they sell and the prices vary greatly, as do the effects those links can have at the search engines.
Blind link
Some links are created to intentionally hide the ultimate destination of a link until the user has clicked on it. It’s accomplished via redirection (possibly a URL shortening service) or client-side JavaScript. Blind links are usually used for deceptive or advertising reasons, and are most associated with TGPs and Rickrolling.
Blog comments
Leaving a comment on a blog can result in a relevant do follow link to the individual’s website. Most of the time however leaving a comment on a blog turns into a no follow link, which is almost useless in the eyes of search engines such as Google and Yahoo. On the other hand, most blog comments get clicked on by the readers of the blog if the comment is well thought out and pertains to the discussion of the other commenters and the post on the blog.
How to Blog for Your Business
Dec 21st
Business blog is an incredible online marketing tool that saves you thousands of dollars but provides great business opportunities in just one click. Blogs are user-friendly, customized and flexible medium for disseminating useful information for effective positioning of your products in the market.
Companies engaging in business blogging have a definite edge over its competitors. Here are some advantages:
>Word-of-Mouth. In a survey, there are currently 14 million blogs with 80,000 more being added each day and about 30 percent of the 50 million users are blog readers. Imagine how much gain your company will have, if your products are advertised through blogs. With Internet, information spreads so quickly especially if an impressive write-up goes with your product. Soon your blogs will be passed on to hundreds of possible customers.
>Awareness and loyalty. Open communication with your customers creates trust and loyalty among them. Being there to respond to their questions and comments make them all the more willing to try your products and services.
>Feedback. Blogs is good for product research and reviews. It would be easier to improve on your products if you observe your customers’ thinking and behavioral patterns. You can also take immediate action to your customers’ concerns.
>Community halo-effect. Bloggers are reasonable, friendly and helpful. They are more than willing to create blogosphere of comments regarding your product. The only thing you have to do is embrace and take active part in the culture and your product will surely be considered in their next stop to the supermarket.
For better marketing results, actively promote your business blogs by submitting your blogs to blog search sites and directories. Do not forget to paste in with your blogs, your URL. Be sure that your blogs contain exclusive information with value and are always updated to keep readers popping in, read up your blog, move on to the next and click on again for updates.
Blog is like a setup booth in the biggest trade show on earth everyday. Marketing possibilities are just around the corner waiting to strike your sale scales up.
The Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds are important too in conjunction with your blogs to get the best benefits. Use effective keyword phrases to generate high ranking status in the search engine traffic. In this way you have better chances of people finding your website leading to your blogs. More traffic means more potential sales.
For this to be successful, you can use RSS for news update feeds which can be read through RSS reader application. This is a very useful tool for business and internet marketers as well.
If you are already convinced with the potentials of business blogs for marketing and targeting sales increase, your company is now ready to start blogging. But first, you have to be in tune with your company’s business objectives and determine if blogging will really help you achieve your goal.
1. Several blogs are dedicated to teaching people the do’s and don’ts of blogging, READ them! Include in your reading materials blogs that are consumer-based too to give you an idea.
2. Setup several test blogs right away.
If your initial try out with blogs worked well, you can now start setting up your blogs.
1. Study blog design. Blog hosting services provide pre-designed templates. But if you opt for paid blog service, you can ask your artist to design and layout your blog site to match the company’s identity and needs.
2. Choose a topic. Its good to have a line-up of topics you want for your blogs but be sure they are in consonance with your business objectives. This would be a test of your flexibility and open-mindedness since results may be going against the set objectives.
3. Remember the following safety measures in blogging:
>legal issues are sometimes involved in blogging; it is safer to include disclaimers and limitations of liabilities;
>corporate communication and legal department are responsible in educating the senior management on how blogs might affect business;
>create blogging policies; set limits on who gets to blog and what information are allowed to be made public;
>avoid outright marketing blog or you will shy away your readers;
>make content updated, relevant and fresh;
>reinforce the company’s core values; and,
>encourage employees to use it.
4. Start blogging and complete 20 posts before going to marketing.
5. Begin marketing.
6. Regularly monitor the coming ins and outs of readers and get updates. Then, measure your results.
7. Adjust if needed. You can always play with your designs in the blog site as long as it remains to match the company’s identity.
8. Strive to be consistent with your topic all the time.
9. Try to have unrelated topics with general and broad appeal.
10. Schedule updates regularly. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday would be best to update blogs.
Once you have done all these things, you can now ultimately enjoy the benefits of business blogging.
