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This is a guest post from Melvin Dichoso . It is part of The “Bad Ass” SEO Guest Blogging Contest.

Most people who have just got started in their online ventures usually focus too much on SEO. It’s no secret that its really one of the biggest misconceptions most beginners and even experienced guys run into as far as their online businesses are concern. Today in this blog post, I’m very much hoping I can address this by writing about SEO as well as its connection to SEM and Social Media.

First and foremost I’m not an SEO guru or whatsoever. Heck, my blog is even PR0 up to now, although I have managed to reap a lot as far as  the blog’s traffic is concern. Just consider me as you’re typical online entrepreneur and blogger.

Setting up some Initial things

So what does these three things I mentioned above have something in connection? When building a website or any online-based project, you want to build SEO in it from the get-go. You want to optimize it for those key terms that you’re looking into from the start. I know you’re saying, “how can you do that, you don’t even have content yet?” Yes, you’re right but what I mean is that with every websites you can already set up things from the start that would give you a dramatic effect later on. Let me explain.

For example, if I’m building a site based on a WordPress platform, I can start fine-tuning the site’s search goals by doing the necessary things like adding an All in One SEO pack, canonicalizing the domain, setting up the meta descriptions properly and creating a robots.txt (and many more of course). You see, these are the things that you can already do from the start yet it doesn’t take that much to do those. On the flip side, it may not yield that much results for the first few months but its future benefits would be enormous for sure.

Search Engine Optimization isn’t a short-term goal in the first place right? Organic rankings is something that can be achieved over time and if you’re getting lots of traffic from search engines then you know what I’m talking about.

Before the SEO our site picks up

Now we all know that ranking in search engines does not happen overnight, but does that mean we’re going to wait that long before doing anything? No! That means we have to work on something that would alleviate the lack of traffic from our new site.

There are two things that you can do that would offset the need for SEO for short term. One is utilizing social media and the other one is via search engine marketing. Let’s tackle both of those things here.

Social Media

Social Media is something that everyone these days wants to utilize but only few can do it well. With that my tip has always been to focus on one niche targeted network first and forget everybody else. If you’re into Stumbleupon then focus on it, work on it first.

The problem with people is that they try to get everything from each and every social media sites but the truth is its never gonna happen. These social sites have different audiences and you can only target the ones which is the most relevant to what your business is. Also social media has an effect to search rankings. Indirectly you can see that it can boosts links, search rankings and web traffic in particular.

Popular site Mashable has even written an article on how SEO and social media goes hand in hand together.

Search Marketing

Unlike social media, search marketing does not have an effect with your search rankings. Instead this can be a quick way to boost your site’s traffic immediately from the start.

Let’s go back to our WordPress Site example. After we’re able to set up all the basic SEO-related stuff to our sites, we can immediately focus on running search campaigns for our sites via Pay Per Click. The way I do it is I focus on the top three networks, Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and MSN Ad Center. These three have the biggest market share and there’s no reason to go to other 2% of small search engines that can give you almost no traffic.

Running pay per click campaigns can be really tricky and hard. You need to focus on a lot of things like Ad copy, keywords, targeting different demographics, quality scores and a whole lot more. I had learned all of this for quite some time and to be honest, I spent a lot of money testing things but  I could say it’s all worth it.

I know not all of us can run PPC campaigns so there’s always an option of hiring a search marketing person or a team to run your campaign for you. This can be an investment on your part but the way these guys could do the job for you could later on offset the cost.

The logic behind running search campaigns is to immediately drive traffic to your site, find the top markets and top demographics for what you’re business is about and penetrating that market. We could also experiment on our campaigns and as a return this could only give us the whole pie of what we’re trying to achieve. We could forever do these campaigns until our search traffic starts picking up. In short, SEM is for short term and SEO is for long term.

Conclusion

Driving traffic to our website, more generally our business is an unending cycle. We as business owners continue to tweak and test things and try to find more sources that could give us the maximum return for what we spend.

These three components that I mentioned namely SEM, SEO and social media play a key role for that. They have their own ideal time to get implemented and it’s all about connecting them and making  them work harmoniously.What do you think?

This is a guest post from Kristi Hines . It is part of The “Bad Ass” SEO Guest Blogging Contest.

There are many SEO tips that are not only good for search engines but they are very helpful for people looking for and perusing through your website. Here are nine SEO tips you can do to help search engines and visitors love your site.

1. Keywords and Research

If you choose the right keywords for your homepage and your internal pages, blog posts, etc., you will be helping visitors find what they are searching for easier. The best way to do this is to think of a keyword that fits your page, then a 2 – 3 word phrase that fits including that keyword. It’s really as simple as that.

Keyword Resources

• Google Adwords Keywords Tool
• Google Insights (plus ideas on how to use Insights)
• Microsoft Advertising Intelligence plugin for Excel (plus how to use it)
• Popular Searches
• Anchor text

2. Titles

The title tag is important because it is the heading for search engine listings and it is usually the anchor text when people bookmark your homepage, blog post, or single page on your website. The easiest way to create a title for your page is to include the keyword phrase you thought of during keyword research and include it in the up to 70 character description of your page.

Title Resources

• Title tag best practices
• Creating Killer headlines
• All in One or Platinum SEO for WordPress

3. Meta Descriptions

The meta description is essentially your sales pitch for your page when it comes up in search engines. It is also usually the description that is picked up when people bookmark your site socially. To create a good meta description, create a short sentence or two under 155 characters that includes the main keyword phrase for your page.

Meta Descriptions Resources

• Ultimate guide to meta descriptions
• Meta description best practices

4. Header Tags

Header tags break up your page into easily digestible sections to help readability. Think of your page’s content in outline form – the header tags break up each main section of your text. Header tags should include keyword phrases you would like your page to rank for.

Also, note that the text right after your header tag can play a significant role. For example, I had an H3 header in one of my recent posts that said Most Valuable Guides (not the best keywords, but bear with me). In search results, without any other optimization, link building, etc., search engines pick up that phrase as follows:

So needless to say, header tags are valuable and need to be optimized as well as careful consideration given to the first sentence after the header tag as well.

5. Images

<img src="seo-optimized-image.jpg" alt="A SEO Optimized Image" title="A SEO Optimized Image" />

To get the most out of your keywords and help break up text for visitors with something eye catching, be sure to include an image in your post with keywords in the filename, alt text, and title.

Where does the alt tag come into play outside of SEO? If you were visually impaired and using a screen reader, the alt text would be read to you by your program.

Image Resources

• SEO optimizing images.
• Creative Commons and Flickr image search
• Image copyright laws
• SEO friendly images WordPress plugin

6. Internal Linking

Once people get on your site, you want them to stick around and find more relevant content. Using internal linking will help them learn more about what your site has to offer, especially if you are using the right anchor text as a guide.

Internal Linking Resources

• Never use nofollow on internal links
• SEO Smart Links WordPress plugin

7. Link Building

So what benefit does link building have to offer potential visitors without mentioning any SEO benefits? When I am seeking out link building opportunities, I find that pages already offering their visitors resources for a particular topic. Link building is simply offering another site’s visitors more resources to choose from for more options.

Link Building Resources

• Top 100+ link building resources.
• Link building for beginners.

8. Social Media

Social networking allows you to really connect with your website’s audience, which helps you learn more about their needs and create content, product, and services that will really appeal to them.

In link building, even though Twitter, for example, only gives you nofollow links, someone who sees your link through Twitter may like it so much that they link to it in their blog or elsewhere on their website, which essentially means that nofollow social media link turned into a dofollow one.

Also, it’s not just the social networking you do – it’s the social sharing you make possible. Installing buttons or widgets to make your site more socially sharable makes it easier for your visitors to tell the world about you!

Social Media Resources

• Top social media blogs
• Social media snapshot series: your hub, content, network, and impact, plus creating a dashboard on a spreadsheet.
• Add This, Add to Any, and WordPress plugins

9. Guest Blogging

Last but not least is the ever popular guest blogging. If you have expertise that others would benefit from, then guest blogging will help you share that knowledge with an even wider audience. If your visitors are also bloggers, you can even help them by guest blogging on their site, sending some of your visitors in their direction. The benefits to doing both of these (the right way) are really exponential in helping establish yourself as an authority in your industry.

Guest Blogging Resources

• My Blog Guest
• How guest blogging gets subscribers, links, and even a better Google ranking
• A comprehensive guest blogging guide

Your Thoughts on Search Optimization for Visitors

What ways do you optimize for SEO with your visitors in mind, and what tools and resources would you suggest to help other website and blog owners to do the same?

This is a guest post from Jason Capshaw. It is part of The “Bad Ass” SEO Guest Blogging Contest.

It is tempting to make SEO-related decisions simply based on search data, such as traffic volumes and competition. Yet, there is a far more important factor involved–profitability.

I have seen webmasters rank for ridiculously competitive keywords with tons of traffic, and have it bring very little value to their business. On the other hand, I know webmasters who rank for low-competitive keywords that convert better than their head keywords, and as a result, bring in much more profit.

There are a couple of factors that can cause this phenomenon:

1. The site’s product offerings do not match the searchers’ intent
2. The site offers good information, but does not brand itself well, so the viewers do not come back when they are ready to purchase

I have found that a large number of searchers type generalized keywords when they are conducting research in the early stages of the buying process. If you can provide that information and facilitate all the buying stages, you will do well with generalized keyword searches.

However, searches that are done in the later stages of the buying process are usually more specific, and these searches will include specific keywords that indicate their intentions, such as “buy,” “discount,” or “price.”

Identifying these keywords in your research and targeting them on your landing pages will help you cherry pick the best traffic from the search engines–traffic that converts well.

The Use of Brands in Searches

I have a close friend that runs a start-up ecommerce store that is a little over a year old that sells equipment to builders and construction workers. Let’s just call this equipment the standard “blue widget.”

He has good top ten rankings for both the head keyword “blue widget” as well as other mid-level keywords: specifically, “brand-blue widget”, where a specific brand or model number is used in the search. Originally, all he cared about and obsessed over was his head keywords. However, he didn’t see quick results for his new site, so he relegated himself to mid- level keywords.
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Yes, you read correctly, it’s time for The Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest. For the next month, I’ll be accepting guest posts right here on my blog. As you can see below, the top guest bloggers are eligible to receive cash prizes (current pot is $2100.) cash and there are a couple non-cash prizes.

To clarify, you don’t have to actually be a bad ass SEO (although it wouldn’t hurt) to enter the contest. The general theme is SEO and the contest itself is bad ass since we have several generous sponsors that put up cash and a few other prizes.

What is the Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest? Blogging is always fun, but it’s even more fun when there is cold hard cash involved. Starting today (August 2nd) until September 2nd, you can submit guest posts to my blog. I’m pretty flexible as far as acceptable topics as long as they fit within the general theme of this blog. So, anything from SEO to blogging to social media will do.

How long does the contest last? The contest starts today August 2nd and ends September 2nd You must submit your post between these dates in order to be eligible to win. The winners will be announced 15 days after the contest ends. This will allow us ample time to publish any remaining posts and to judge all contest entries.

What can you win? Take a look at all the sponsors, cash and other prizes!

$200. Prize Sponsors

Daniel McGonagle Link Building

BestTravelWebsites.com Best Travel Sites

ArrangeYourVacation.com Vacation Rentals

$150 Prize Sponsors

Candy Store

$100 Prize Sponsors

Alisa Bowman Marriage Advice

Internet Marketing Services

SEO Software

SEO Ottawa

Virtual Assistants

Hesham Zebida Thesis Skins

Gerald Weber Houston SEO

Toni J Young Network Marketing Training

Quillcards Distinctive Ecards by Quillcards

Ghostwriter Dad Ghostwriting services

$50 Prize Sponsors

Whitney Segura Whitney Segura’s Internet Marketing Blog

James Brown James Brown

Raxa Design Houston web design

Eric Brantner Freelance Copywriter

The Servant Media Houston Business Development

Ana Hoffman, Traffic Generation Cafe Increasing Targeted Website Traffic

The Lane Real Estate Team Kennewick Homes

Other prizes: Non-Cash Sponsors

Hostgator.com 1 year Business Hosting plan. Includes toll free phone number and SSL $179.40 value Business Web Hosting

David Harry A full years membership at SEO Dojo, a value of $250.SEO Training Dojo

Link-Assistant.Com SEO PowerSuite Enterprise (max. functionality license) $599 worth with a life-time Live! Plan subscription. SEO tools

Special thanks to the contest media partner: My Blog Guest. MyBlogGuest.com is the free guest post exchange community where users meet to exchange guest posts and network.

What are the rules?

1. Register for a user account with SEM Group so you can submit your post for review. Please fill out all of your profile information and if you don’t have a Gravatar please get one. You may have up to 3 links in your bio.

If you have already published a guest post here in the past there is no need to register. If this is the case and you aren’t sure about your login just send me an email and I’ll let you know your login credentials.

2. You must submit your post by September 2nd 2010
3. Your article must be original content, and it must be written by you.
4. On the day your post is published, you must write a post on your blog about the contest that contains a link to the official contest post and links to all of the sponsors using the correct anchor text. Also these links must remain do-follow. You can get the code to link to all of the sponsors here
   ^?View Code HTML

   <p style="text-align: center;"><strong>$200. Prize Sponsors</strong></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Daniel McGonagle <a href="http://linkvanareviews.com/">Link Building</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/besttravelwebsites.png" alt="" title="besttravelwebsites" width="391" height="90" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1575" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;">BestTravelWebsites.com <a href="http://besttravelwebsites.com">Best Travel Sites</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/arrangelogo.png" alt="" title="arrangelogo" width="100" height="100" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1576" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;">ArrangeYourVacation.com <a href="http://arrangeyourvacation.com">Vacation Rentals</a></p> <strong>$150 Prize Sponsors</strong> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/bestcandystore1.gif" alt="" title="bestcandystore" width="200" height="39" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1509" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.bestcandystore.com">Candy Store</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><strong>$100 Prize Sponsors</strong></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Alisa Bowman <a href="http://www.projecthappilyeverafter.com/">Marriage Advice</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/New-Logo-with-White-Space-350.jpg" alt="Vertical measures" width="350" height="50" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.verticalmeasures.com/">Internet Marketing Services</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1438" title="sheerSEO_banner" src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/sheerSEO_banner1.gif" alt="" width="120" height="60" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.sheerseo.com/">SEO Software</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/logo_with_border1-150x150.jpg" alt="" title="logo_with_border" width="150" height="150" class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-1499" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.seo-writer.ca/">SEO Ottawa</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/logo.jpg" alt="" title="logo" width="334" height="43" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1591" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://offshoreally.com/">Virtual Assistants</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Hesham Zebida <a href="http://www.thesisawesome.com">Thesis Skins</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Gerald Weber <a href="http://sem-group.net">Houston SEO</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Toni J Young <a href="http://www.tonijyoung.com/">Network Marketing Training</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Quillcards <a href="http://quillcards.com/">Distinctive Ecards by Quillcards</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Ghostwriter Dad <a href="http://ghostwriterdad.com/">Ghostwriting services</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><strong>$50 Prize Sponsors</strong></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Whitney Segura <a href="http://www.whitneysegura.com/">Whitney Segura's Internet Marketing Blog</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">James Brown <a href="http://www.jamesbrownmarketing.com/">James Brown</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Raxa Design <a href="http://www.raxadesign.com/">Houston web design</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Eric Brantner <a href="http://ericbrantner.com/">Freelance Copywriter</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">The Servant Media <a href="http://www.houstonbusinessdevelopers.com/">Houston Business Development</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Ana Hoffman, Traffic Generation Cafe <a href="http://www.trafficgenerationcafe.com/">Increasing Targeted Website Traffic </a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">The Lane Real Estate Team <a href="http://www.joelane.com/">Kennewick Homes</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><strong>Other prizes: Non-Cash Sponsors</strong></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Hostgator.com 1 year Business Hosting plan. Includes toll free phone number and SSL $179.40 value <a href="http://www.hostgator.com/shared.shtml">Business Web Hosting</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">David Harry A full years membership at SEO Dojo, a value of $250.<a href="http://www.huomah.com/dojo/">SEO Training Dojo</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Link-Assistant.Com SEO PowerSuite Enterprise (max. functionality license) $599 worth with a life-time Live! Plan subscription. <a href="http://www.link-assistant.com/">SEO tools</a></p> <p style="text-align: center;">Special thanks to the contest media partner: <a href="http://myblogguest.com/">My Blog Guest</a>. MyBlogGuest.com is the free guest post exchange community where users meet to exchange guest posts and network.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://myblogguest.com/"><img title="myblogguest" src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/myblogguest-125-30.gif" border="0" alt="" width="125" height="30" /></a></p>

5. You can be either a sponsor for the contest or you can compete in the contest. Unfortunately you can’t do both.

Post Guidelines

1. Guest posts must be at least 450 words, not to exceed 1000 words.
2. You may have as many links as you wish in the body of the content. However, please limit links to your projects or websites to your bio. Absolutely no affiliate links allowed.
3. Your bio must have a Gravatar. Please use a picture of yourself and not a logo.
4. Keep your post relevant to the overall theme of this blog. SEO, link building, internet marketing, pay per click, social media, blogging tips are all acceptable topics.

How to win

1. Write a post about the contest to help spread the word in the blogosphere. Your post (contest submission) will be judged First on quality of the content and style of the post.
2. Add Sponsors links to your post using the correct anchor text and make sure the links are do-follow. This is extremely important and your post won’t be eligible to win if you haven’t fulfilled this requirement. The sponsors are the ones making the cash prizes possible, so show them some link love.
3. A high value is placed on the number of and quality of comments received on your guest post. Also, be sure to interact with and respond to your commentators. This will help you win! Ambiguous and/or spammy comments will not help you.
4. Spread the word about your post through all your social media channels: Twitter, Facebook, Sphinn, etc. A high value will be placed on number of Tweets and overall social media promotion.

Keep in mind, the sooner you submit your post the more time you’ll have to promote it. So the early bird gets the worm!

Also feel free to use the donkey image in your post. You can get the code here

<img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1397" title="badd_ass2" src="http://sem-group.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/badd_ass2.gif" alt="" width="450" height="300" />

Also feel free to upload the image to your server if you like.

IF you have any questions feel free to contact me. Also you can contact me on Skype, I’m searchengineguy.

Let the blogging begin! Woot!

SEO Copywriting is typically not a difficult skill to master. Provided that you have some grasp of how keywords function in your writing and write well without grammatical mistakes, you can usually be sure that the search engine optimization of your writing has already been taken care of for you. However, there are ways that you can take your SEO content to the next level.

1. Think About the Man AND the Machine. Do not make the mistake of assuming that only the crawlers need to like your SEO Copywriting. You can write pages that earn you a very high rank on Google but, if visitors do not enjoy reading it, they will likely not trust the content or link back to it.
2. Get Rid of the Fluff.Whenever you complete a sentence, ask yourself what value it gives to the reader. Of course, introductions will have some expository information. However, the remainder of your SEO Copywriting should be good solid facts and information.
3. Dense Keywords – Not Saturated Keywords. Your main keyword should be situated at the beginning of your article, in the majority of paragraphs in your main body and relatively close to the end. Do not try to overuse keywords in your article. Total keyword saturation should be around 2-3%.
4. Bringing Words Out With Accents. Save your bold, italic and underlined words for keywords. This will bring keywords not only to the attention of your readers, but to the attention of search engines. However, using these techniques too often, especially when the words are not keywords, can have a detrimental effect on your SEO Copywriting.
5. Content is King, Lists are Emperors. Today’s Internet readers love lists. If your article cannot be a list, be sure to include a few within your article. Lists are a great way to squeeze some keywords economically into content and are easy to scan.
6. Frames = Mistakes. It’s very simple. Do not use frames. They will destroy your content and likely prevent it from being recognized properly by search engines. Enough said.
7. Keep HTML Code Simple. HTML code is a simple tool to help you keep your content organized. However, stick to simple HTML codes when creating content. Paragraph, header and list tags as well as a few strong tags on keywords are all that are needed with good SEO Copywriting.

This is a guest post by Corry Cummings, who enjoys internet marketing and content writing. He runs a custom content creation business.

What’s the most important factor that determines whether your press release gets read by an editor or thrown away? It’s the headline. With editors and journalists receiving hundreds of press releases each day, they typically scan over the headlines to determine which ones seem interesting enough to read fully.

With that in mind, your goal is to write a powerful headline that sucks cynical editors and journalists in, making them want to learn more about your story. This gives your press release the best chance of getting picked up, earning your company valuable coverage.

Here are some tips to write better press release headlines.

• Strive for being clear rather than clever—Don’t write your headline to impress other writers by showing how “clever” you are. Editors are only concerned with trying to figure out what your story is about. Your press release headline should clearly reflect what’s covered in the body of your press release. Focus on answering as many of the who, what, when, where, why, and how questions in your headline as possible.

  Here’s a little test you can run to determine if your headline is clear enough or not. Send just the headline to several friends. Ask them to describe what they think the rest of the story is about. If they can’t make a decent guess, it’s probably time to rewrite your headline.

• Make sure the headline is accurate—Don’t try to trick editors into reading your press release by misleading them in your headline. A misleading headline might grab their attention for a moment, but it will lead to them getting upset when they find out you’ve duped them. This will cause you to lose all credibility, and it will burn any potential relationships you have with the media.
• Ditch the hype—Sure, the goal of press release distribution is to build brand awareness and to create a buzz around your brand. However, that doesn’t mean you should treat your press release like an advertisement for your products and services. It’s not. So, your headline shouldn’t sound like Billy Mays (RIP) wrote it. By all means, be interesting, but above all else, be factual and straightforward.
• Lists work—There’s no denying it: List headlines just work. You see them on blogs, magazine covers, and in newspapers. The reasons lists work are because they clearly describe what the story is about, are easy to scan through quickly, and can create controversy and debate.

  So, when you’re thinking of an angle for your press release, try to find a way to structure it in list form. I think you’ll find it gets a lot more attention than most other headline formats.

• Keep it short—If you can’t get the main idea across in about 10 words or less, you don’t have a good enough grasp on what your message really is. Remember, the reporters and editors you’re sending your press release to are in a hurry. They’ll likely only give you a few seconds of their attention, so you need to get your message across quickly. Focus on creating concise headlines that clearly deliver your message. Write several different versions of your headline to find the perfect combination of brevity and clarity.
• Include the targeted keyword—Never forget the importance of optimizing your press release. The search engines tend to favor press releases, giving them high rankings for the targeted keywords. Always try to get your main keyword in the headline, and whenever possible, place it toward the front of the headline.

Do you use press releases to spread the word about your business? How have your press release marketing efforts helped your business? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment.

This article is written by Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases, the online leader in affordable press release distribution. Grab your free copy of the Big Press Release Book – Press Releases for Every Occasion and Industry here: press release samples

There are hundreds, if not thousands of different ways you can acquire links. Every link buildling tactic comes with pros and cons. I have found that the most effective way to build links is by taking the time to build relationships with experts in your industry, than to just dropping a link in a directory or forum. I understand this is a time intensive process and it requires a lot more work, but the end result are highly relevant, authoritative links. Below is a step by step process to effectively approach potential link partners.

Follow this 4 step process:

1. Make a Potential Link Partner List

If you read industry blogs, than you probably have a pretty good idea who the major influencers are in the industry. Start by generating a list of potential experts/bloggers you would like to contact. Take note of their blog (if they have one), what sites they contribute to, and any social media sites they engage in.

2. Start Following Them

Before you even begin contacting anyone, start following them. If they are on Twitter, start following them. Pay attention to what they tweet about, who they tweet about, who they are tweeting with, and pay attention to their style/personality.

If they manage or contribute to a blog, sign up for their RSS feed and being reading recent and upcoming posts. Start to understand their style of writing, how often they blog, and what topics they cover.

If they use social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, start following their bookmarks. See what type of sites interest them. Find out if they have other types of passions besides just the industry you are in. You may be able to connect with someone on a deeper level (similar intersts, location, background, experience).

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Before I start this post, I want to make it clear that I like the SEO Hosting Blog. In addition to being a regular reader and commenter, I also have a professional relationship with two of the SEO Hosting writers. However, with that being said, I have to admit that I was quite disappointed with a post that I came across on Wednesday.

The post that caught my attention was titled “Why Does a Blog Help SEO?,” and was written by Garry Conn. Since I am a blogger and own an SEO company, I thought this post was going to be right up my alley. However, my opinion of this post changed once I reached the second half of it. In the spirit of fairness, I’m going to quote the entire section of the post that I have an issue with:

“Last item is gaining inbound links to your site. Now, this part is something that not many people do very often. If you have a website and you’re trying to get it to rank for top rated keywords, the blog itself is what can thrust your website into top rankings. The key to doing this is to make sure that you’re blog is completely separate from your website. Meaning, if your website is YOURBUSINESS.COM, don’t make your blog YOURBUSINESS.COM/BLOG or BLOG.YOURBUSINESS.COM.

Instead, make your blog something like YOURBUSINESSBLOG.com. Additionally, your blog and website should be different IP addresses, in fact, maybe hosted by different companies. The purpose of doing this is to have the ability to point links back to your website and have search engines credit these links as true external inbound links.

This part handles a portion of inbound links to your website, which there should also be other link campaigns going on as well. Perhaps a second or third blog as well.”

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What is a discovery?

You discover a page when you are the first to submit it to StumbleUpon. You can see the member who discovered the page as well as the date when it was discovered to the right of the submission page (http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/url-of-the-submitted-page):

What is a category?

A page is discovered in one of the multiple categories. The category the page is submitted to determines who will see it. StumbleUpon is based on the relevance mechanism: each member is categorized based on his interests – these interests are determined based on the preferences specified by him and also based on the member’s browsing behavior (topics of the articles the member usually stumbles and reviews).

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If you read Internet marketing and SEO blogs on a regular basis, you undoubtedly come across posts about free SEO tools quite often.  While there are a lot of great free tools on the Internet for SEOs, I have recently noticed that almost all of these posts profile the same core set of free tools (such as SEO for Firefox).  Since you most likely already use the most popular free SEO tools, I want to look at five SEO tools today that are very useful, but simply don’t get as much attention as they deserve:

Google Insights Bookmarklet: While Google Insights can provide very valuable keyword information, you can waste a lot of time switching from one window to another window in order to use Google Insights.  To eliminate the need toswitch browser windows , add the Google Insights Bookmarklet to your browser, and anytime you are browsing one of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo or Live), you can instantly access the Insights data for the keyword you were searching with a single click of the bookmarklet.

Social Media Metrics Greasemonkey Plugin for Google Analytics: I know I’m not alone when I say that Google Analytics is one of my favorite analytics packages.  Although it’s not perfect, this package can provide you with a significant amount of very useful information.  In addition to the information that is already provided, you can increase the data you have at your fingertips by installing the Social Media Metrics Greasemonkey Plugin.  As you can see from the screenshot above, this plugin not only adds data for content from all of the major social media websites, but it also adds Yahoo’s backlink data directly for you to see.

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