Picking And Choosing Guest Posting Opportunities

Not all guest posts were created equal. Guests posts offer a variety of different advantages for your blog – one that isn’t summed up with just one Internet marketing strategy like providing your web site with more “link juice” or getting a trickle of traffic because of your opportunities. No – guest blogging is more than just that.

There are many blogs out there that are strictly dedicated to the idea of guest blogging and what it can do for your website. It is something of a huge phenomina in which whole websites were created for (like MyBlogGuest.com and BloggersLinkUp.com) to help people find better and more guest blogging opportunities. It is a marketing strategy that has taken hold of the SEO and it seems as if it might be here to stay for a while because of all the benefits it provides, not only the people that are doing the guest posting, but websites that are created from guest posting. [Read more]

Interview With an Online Marketer and Link Builder

Ready for a peek around the other side of the desk?  as a blogger you are likely approached by link builders. But what do they really do on a regular basis?  This interview will take you through the ups and downs you can expect in the position, what it takes to land the job, what you can expect to earn and more. This is a true career story told anonymously, to get you closer to the truth about this line of work.

What is your job title? How many years of experience do you have in that field?

My official job title is link builder, i.e. I optimize search engine results for different websites. I have been working as a link builder for almost one year.

Would you describe what you do on a typical day?

I work from home, so after having breakfast I log in to the main dash board where I am able to view the work plan for each site I optimize. I assign, proofread and publish articles on different online magazines. Then I search for possible link partners, and send them emails asking them to place links to my sites. [Read more]

Analyzing Competitor Information for Your Link Building Strategy

While creating a solid link building strategy can at times be overwhelming, with a good plan it should not be as difficult as it sounds. To begin, you always want to start with strong market research and competitive analysis. In other words, your best strategy will be to find out what the market wants and then design your strategy accordingly, rather than the other way around. A competitive analysis of the market lets you benchmark the best, strongest, and most worthwhile practices in your industry.

More established websites shouldn’t be seen as a threat. In fact, these can teach you a lesson or two. Indeed, studying competitor websites will give you an idea as to which link building strategies work, and which do not. Steps you can take include… [Read more]

5 Tips to Leverage Free Mobile Apps for Link-Building

WebTrafficROI has a very interesting link-building tip: create an iPhone Web app. They’re not talking a native iPhone app, which would take a lot more time and money, but rather a Web app that would run in the iPhone Safari browser. Why? Well free mobile apps (native or otherwise) are today’s hot freebie, assuming you’ve done a good job. So WebTrafficROI suggests that you create a mobile Web app for the iPhone and then submit some PR to various sites that review or feature such apps. Their logic suggests that when a site covers your app, you’ll get an inbound link. Do this with enough sites and your search engine ranking will build.

Now while they’re absolutely right about that, and this is definitely a legitimate link-building technique, don’t be so sure you’ll get a lot of sites following through. I know from researching for my own mobile apps startup that while there are a growing number of mobile app review sites, many are either backlogged, some are not interested in mobile web apps. They also mention Apple as a site that features mobile apps. Again, this is true, though it’s not that easy getting featured. (I’ve heard tell that wooing some Apple employees with dinner might get you a contact name for getting featured, but that’s not necessarily true, and you’d have to live in Silicon Valley.)

Some Mobile-Related Link-Building Options

An iPhone and iPad are part of my blogging computing setup, and I think WebTrafficROI’s mobile approach to link-building is still a legitimate and good approach. They give you some mobile Web-specific tips for code to detect when an iPhone/ iPod Touch device is requesting a web page. However, I wanted to add to the conversation, and suggest a slightly broader approach. When it comes to what you can offer in the mobile space, here are some options, possibly overlapping with what WebTrafficROI wrote:

1. A mobile version of your site with the same or similar functionality, but obviously geared towards a specific mobile device, possibly an iPhone. This is the simplest approach and often the least expensive.
2. Offer a native mobile app with the same or similar functionality as your website.  There are some things your mobile Web app just cannot do, depending on what smartphone(s) you are targeting. (If you are promoting a blog, offer an app that provides a mobile view of your content. There are some development tools that make this very easy to do, provided your site has an RSS feed.)
3. Offer both a mobile Web version and a native app. Presumably the latter would have additional features not available to the mobile Web version.
4. Offer a mobile Web or mobile native app related to your niche.

For example, I’m working on two iPhone/ iPad apps that I’m hoping to give away in the future. One is for bloggers in any niche, a very broadly-scoped app. The other is Twitter-related but geared to the social media marketing side of things, so it should appeal to web-based entrepreneurs and small business owners. Each app’s release will have a different market but the same objective: build brand presence and back links for my mobile apps startup.

Considerations for Leveraging a Free Mobile App

If you do want to release a mobile app, Web or native, as part of a link-building strategy, here are some things you should consider, especially if you plan to offer a native mobile app instead of a mobile Web app.

1. Partner up. You can partner with other bloggers to help cut the cost of development, or if the scope of your app is broad enough,  you might even partner up with a mobile app development studio (I’m partnered with two). In fact, you may need to partner if you don’t want to go through the effort of registering with Apple or Palm or Google, etc., as a developer — which in some cases costs money. The cost of using an app development studio can be defrayed by bartering your writing services, or offering advertising, or something else entirely.
2. Target one platform. I might be biased but I’d say go with the Apple iPhone OS platform, which includes the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. (As a starting point in your research, you might want to check out SplashPressMedia’s AppleGazette blog and my CallStyle blog. I’ll share other links in the future, as appropriate) While the Google Android platform is gaining ground, the problem as I see it is fragmentation, with far too many handsets with different screen footprints.
3. Go beyond free. If you’re giving away a free mobile Web or native app, great. But consider a paid premium native app with additional features. This might be one way to pay for development costs. You might not make a profit directly from the paid app, but if you achieve your objective of building back links, which in turn bring indirect revenue, then you’ve succeeded. Don’t forget that your blog can be your marketing vehicle.
4. Brainstorm your app. Be sure of your objectives for the app. Who is the target user? What will it do? Will you support it by offering upgrades? Why are you creating it? For the latter, be completely honest with yourself. Just like web designers were giving away free WordPress themes in hopes of getting backlinks to their site, it’s okay if you’re doing this for the for the purpose of link-building.
5. Have a marketing plan. Oh you didn’t that “they” would just come if you “built it”, did you? Create a list or spreadsheet of all the mobile sites that might feature your mobile app. They don’t have to all be about mobile apps or smartphones; they could be niche-specific. Have a press kit for your app, and include screen shots or links to video, a description of the app, your intent, your contact info, and whatever else is appropriate. Then systematically contact each site and offer them interview time, if they want it. While you are waiting to be covered (don’t necessarily expect a response to your email), move on to the next site in your list. Promote your app in Facebook and Twitter.

This is a very nutshell overview of how to leverage a mobile app for link-building. If there’s enough demand for covering more mobile topics as they relate to blogging and building an online presence, I’ll do so. I do have a couple of mobile-related posts up my sleeve for the near future, so keep an eye out.

Via: WebTrafficROI.

The Two Core Principles to Building Quality Links

I like to keep things simple when it comes to building quality links. If you make link building too complicated, you can often over analyze and overthink things that you don’t get much done.

Most of my quality links have come from applying these two simple principles.

Connecting

I like what Aaron Wall at SEO Book said about link building. He said you should think of links in terms of social connections. The better connected you are to influential webmasters, the more quality links you’ll build.

Therefore, you should be connecting regularly with the webmasters of the quality sites in your niche.

Too many bloggers have the mindset of “build it and they will come”. In most cases though, it doesn’t matter how awesome your blog, you need to let others know about it because there are so many websites on the net. How will anyone find out about your blog unless you tell others about it? But if you get the attention of other webmasters, they will often promote your blog if you have content that adds a lot of value to the industry.

Moreover, many webmasters with quality sites are busy and don’t have time to keep up with all content in the niche.  Therefore, you’ll need to contact them directly to get their attention.

Especially in the beginning of your blog, you’ll need to make yourself known by connecting with other bloggers. Here are some ideas to consider:

• Introduce yourself to other bloggers and tell them about your blog. If you have good content, many of them will add you to their RSS reader and they may link to you in the future.
• Send them a guest post.
• Create something really good.  Content that is unique and comprehensive is the best.  Then, contact bloggers and ask them to link to it if they like it.  Don’t be shy. Most bloggers don’t mind a little bit of self promotion as long as you have quality content and don’t overdo the promotion.

Content

It’s not enough to have the right connections, you also need to provide something to attract the link. This is usually content.

There are many ways to do this – from in-depth resources on your sites to interesting guest posts on other blogs – but the main thing to keep in mind is to keep the quality very high.

Consider guest posts. Many of my guest posts used to get ignored until I started putting more into each guest post. My motto now is that every guest post should be better than the posts on my blog.  Leo Babauta of Zen Habits has excellent content on his blog of over 100,000 RSS subscribers, but I think his guest posts are actually higher quality.

Quality sites have quality content so you will need the same kind of content for them to link to you or for them to publish your guest post.

By connecting with other webmasters and producing high quality content, you should be able to build quality links.  Now while these two principles are simple to understand, they do take hard work to apply in real life.  But just stay consistent and focused with your link building efforts.  In time, you’ll enjoy top rankings and huge increases in traffic.

If you don’t have time to apply either of these principles, consider our link building service.

In Link Building, Quality Trumps Quantity

One of the misconceptions many bloggers have about SEO is the more links, the better. This statement is misleading because not all links are created equal.  As I do SEO work for Performancing Services, I often come across sites with a low number of links doing well on the search engines.  These sites outrank their competitors who have much more links than them.  How is this possible?

This is possible because Google puts much more weight on the quality of links over the quantity. [Read more]