Link building isn’t always easy and can be quite time consuming.  But some people are just not sure where to start.  Here are a few tips to give you a little kick start and help you drive your link building campaign in the right direction.

Look for sites that are relevant to your market.

Search engines look for relevancy and 1 link from a good, relevant site will be much more beneficial to your campaign than a load of low quality, irrelevant links.

Avoid directory sites.

Ok, when I say this I don’t mean all directory sites are bad.  But if you come across a low quality directory, that’s irrelevant to your niche, and will link to anyone, it’s best to completely avoid it.

Avoid pages that have over 50 external links (can check this using the seoquake toolbar for Firefox)

Google’s Matt Cutts recommends webmasters keep their links per page to under 100.  But when it comes to getting a link do we really want a link on a page with 100 other links on it?  The link juice on this page will be shared making the links very weak.  That’s why I always recommend looking for quality pages that aren’t stuffed with too many links.

What is their page rank and authority.

Many SEO’s hate the use of page rank but before disagreeing with this point hear me out.  Although page rank shouldn’t be used as a definitive measure is does still hold some credibility.  PR does give you a good idea of the quality of a page and the higher the PR the higher the chances are of that page having decent authority with the search engines.  This doesn’t mean if a page has PR0 it’s not worth going for.  Especially if it’s a good relevant site.

Try to get links in content if possible

Links in sidebars, links in footers, links in links pages… we see them all the time.  But the links that are of real quality to users are links within content.  The search engines see it this way and love these links.  So go for links within content if you can get them.  Even if this involves offering to write an article for a site yourself.  Article exchange is an increasingly popular method of acheiving this.  Some people offer article exchanges on sites like Webmasterworld.

If links on the page are nofollow, don’t bother!

We want quality links that are going to pass link juice to our site and help us rank higher in the search engines.  So avoid links that ask the search engines not to follow them as these will not pass link juice.  It’s all about link power.  Use the SEOmoz toolbar to check for nofollows.

Choose the right anchor text

Time and time again we see links saying click here or view.  Ask the webmaster of the site you want a link on if they can give you specific anchor text and try using one of your key terms.  Doing this will help your chances of ranking for that particular term.  So rather than click here, go for something like Puppies for sale.  Also consider approaching sites you already have links with to see if you can have your anchor text changed to something more keyword friendly.

So, time to get started.  Start looking for relevant sites, contacting some webmasters and getting those good quality links.

Many of us are often concerned with linking power and know that the right links can make a big difference to our campaigns.  With this in mind I wanted to share with you a great piece written by Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz about the valuation of links.

Check out this article HERE

Linkbaiting can be a great method for obtaining a large number of natural backlinks.  Here are just a few ideas to get your brains kicking into gear for those great linkbaiting tactics:

1. Top 10 lists: Or any other number for that matter.  Maybe a top 7 or even top 101 list.  This could be anything related to your niche.  Top 10 WordPress Themes or 101 linkbuilding tips for example.
2. Interviews: If you can bag an interview with someone interesting in your niche, or maybe even a celebrity, this could gain you a good number of backlinks.
3. Tools: If your company has a tool that could be made available to the public you could gain great links this way… especially if the tool is free.
4. Humour: People love linking to humorous material so if you can come up with something funny related to your niche, publicise it and see how many backlinks you get.
5. How-to’s: ‘How to’ info can be great linkbait… especially if there’s not much alternative information out there.
6. Controversy: Give a potentially controversial point of view and get a debate going.
7. Reviews: People love to check out reviews before they buy.  Review some products in your niche and make these reviews available for people to see… and link to.

Good luck!

You may have heard the term Linkbait buzzing around quite a bit but if you’re unsure as to what exactly Linkbait is then this is for you.

Linkbaiting is a means of obtaining a load of natural backlinks to your site by creating some material that people will want to link to.  Something that will catch people’s attention and make them want to share this material.  This may be something funny, informative or maybe even controversial.

Check out our Linkbait Ideas for some thought provoking tips.

Keyword research can be time consuming and there can often be times when you hit a wall with the tools your are using or your own suggestions.  However, many people don’t think to make use of Google Suggest.  Ok, some of the suggestions made are getting little or no results but it can produce many results that you may not have thought of or that your other tools just didn’t pick up on from your original keyword entries.

Try putting in one of your main keywords follow buy a space then a, then b, then c etc.  See how many new ideas pop out at you.  For example, imaging you’re researching fitness related keywords… here’s an example based on that keyword:

As you’re going through them and you see some terms which may be good ones, throw them into Google’s Keyword Tool and see what the searches are like.  I then also like to check out the competition by popping that term back into Google with quotes around it.

I tried this recently (on a different subject) when keyword researching for article titles and additional content keywords and it really helped me find a decent list of good quality terms.

So make use of the tools around you… even the not so obvious ones.

Many of you may have noticed apps on Facebook which promise to reveal those friends who have been viewing your profile.  These apps are bogus so please don’t be fooled.

This interesting post on Facebook Spammers explains all.

So, as expected, Google announced last week that they would now be using site speed in their search ranking algorithms.  It is therefore important that we take the speed of our site into consideratation… you can do this by checking your labs section in Webmaster Tools.

But how important is this new algorithm?  Some people are already panicking about the speed of their site but before you get all worked up about it remember, Google has thousands of algorithms and speed is just one of those and not a high factor one.  Sure, if your site needs speeding up then sort the issues, for your users sake.  But don’t panick and think your rankings are going to plummet because you site speed is slightly below par.

In Google’s words…

“While site speed is a new signal, it doesn’t carry as much weight as the relevance of a page. Currently, fewer than 1% of search queries are affected by the site speed signal in our implementation and the signal for site speed only applies for visitors searching in English on Google.com at this point.”

So don’t set all stations to red alert just yet… relax my friends, relax.

According to Online Intelligence company Hitwise, last week saw Facebook become the most visited website of the week ahead of Google in the US.  Facebook also managed this on a few days over the Christmas and New Year period, as well as one weekend in early March.  Quite an achievement and makes you realise just how big Facebook is and how much it is still growing.  Facebook and Google’s visits in the US last week accounted for 14% of all visits… quite a chunk for these two internet giants.

Do you know the difference between Facebook Pages and Groups?  You may be promoting a business or website or even a band.  If you are then you’re probably aware that Facebook can be a great marketing tool and one that you should definitely make use of.

Check out this great guide we found on Facebook pages that will explain the difference between pages and groups and help you get started.

Facebook Page Help

I recently had to convert a huge column of data into separate rows and it took me some time to find a solution so rather than you having to go through the same seaching, I thought I’d share that solution with you here.  Firstly, here’s a brief explaination of what I mean by converting columns to rows in Excel.

For example, I may have the following list in Excel, all in one column:

A1: Bob
A2: 1 The St.
A3: London
A4: 0207 123456
A5: Jim
A6: 3 This Road
A7: Sydney
A8: 02 9999 1234
A9: Bill
A10: New York, NY
A11: 555 234-5678

I may want to separate this data into rows such as below:
Bob          1 The St.                London                     0207 123456
Jim          3 This Road            Sydney                     02 9999 1234
Bill           2 Some Avenue      New York, NY           555 234-5678

The following link will give you some simple steps in order to achieve this
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/214024