Top 20 Link Building Strategies – Detailed Analysis – What Works and What Not? – Part V
Continuing on Top 20 Link Building Strategies, and it now takes a small diversion.
Local Business Citations:
Local business citation also called as Local business listing is not a direct part of Link building, however this process has considerable significance in Local (& GEO targeted SEO). Use the same business name that is used on your website when adding your business to local listing websites such as Yelp or yell.
Some Search Engines use Local listing as a factor in ranking Geo targeted keywords, and local business directories also send direct leads and clients. A good practice is to forget about SEO and concentrate on convincing the visitors to your local listing profile (within the local listing website) to visit your website or contact you. By providing convincing content, business details such as portfolio and images you can easily attract your potential leads via Local Business Citation sites.
A few Local Business Citation Websites in USA: (Local citation changes from nation to nation)
- Google Places
- Yahoo Local
- Yelp
- Yell
- Yellow pages
- Bing
- Merchant Circle
- com
- Four Square
- Hot Frog
Try using different contents for all of them, so that SEs can value your Listing and rank it high when someone searches for local area based result. Also always ensure your provide enough means to contact you, for most customers visiting local listing website prefer to call or mail directly to you rather than leave a message within the Local business directory. If effectively done, local citations will certainly help you reach beyond SEO in to safe zone where your business will not just be depended on Search Engines.
Next to Come on Top 20 Link Building strategies after Panda – Classified Ads
Top 20 Link Building Strategies – Detailed Analysis – What Works and What Not? – Part – III
Top 20 Link building strategies of 2014 after Google panda and penguin updates
Lets continue on Top 20 Link Building Strategies – Detailed Analysis – What Works and What Not?, if you missed previous parts, visit PART I, PART II before reading this.
Social Blogging:
Social Blogging is one of the few remaining content marketing strategies that are still considered to be valuable in the SEO industry. The demand for good quality content by online users and searchers drives Search Engines such as Google to recommended Social Blogging. Social blogging is exactly the same as weblog (onsite blogging) but written and posted out of your website, particularly on a Social blogging Platform. Social Blogging is also easy to access, you can simply register a wordpress.com blog (subdomain) which is free, and start blogging with information related to your niche (industry).
However unlike Guest blogging or Article Marketing, Social blogging doesn’t have its own traffic source or reputation at start. However a new WordPress or Tumblr blog can be improved over time and it too can generate traffic and attain higher PR, which can then be diverted to your website. Although it takes a lot of time and energy, Social Blogging is a safe modem of link building as well as traffic generation. Since you control your social blog, there is no need to worry about the quality of the links.
Social Media Sites:
Although most social media switched to no follow, it is still valuable to get links from social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Google Plus. Google counts these links as signals from your social audience and hence the benefits that these links provide are more important than a Dofollow Link. Furthermore social media sites can also send a lot of visitors to your website adding more to incoming traffic.
Social Media has already emerged as a potentially important internet marketing strategy almost equal to search engine optimization, and for some business niches Social Media sends more clients than Search Engines can, so focusing on Social links and participation is critical for present and (most likely) future Internet marketing success.
Forum Posting:
Unlike many other link building strategies, forum posting has endured time and tons of Search Engine updates. Although most popular forums are still ready to provide Dofollow backlinks, forum submission for link building is not that easy to achieve. Most forums strictly monitor each and every post that are submitted. Users who contribute to the community (other users) can get their share of high PR Dofollow backlinks from these forums in return for valuable information of their posts.
Having said that, it is important to understand that the best practice for forum posting is to start with providing information for some time and over time adding your links on signatures would give better chances of approval. Using anchor text is allowed on some forums while others prefer plain website link like www.example.com rather than visit site.
Choosing forums that are directly related to your niche, would also add more value to the backlinks as Google recommends links from quality as well as related websites.
To be continued – Part IV of this article will soon follow…!
How to run an effective off page Optimization campaign
What is Off-Page Optimization?
Off-Page Optimization includes any optimization (Promotion) carried outside your website. Building links, bringing in traffic (visitors) and increasing PR are some of the most common factors achieved through Off-Page Optimization.
Common misconception about Off-Page Optimization:
Most SEO Analysts believe Off-Page Optimization means just link building links back towards the targeted website. In fact Off-Page Optimization is not to be entirely focused on Search Engines such as Google.
Also most SEOs are worried about Dofollow links and PR rather than link relevance. Such aggressive and link focused Off-Page SEO process creates one of the most common spamming issue to web masters of reputed websites. The term “SEO Spamming” refers to the practice of creating links by any means around the web.
What should be the focus of an Effective Off-Page Optimization?
Off page SEO should try to bring in Potential leads and not just ideal traffic such as the case with spammy article directories. An effective Off-Page SEO campaign should include creating Off-Page contents, Social participation, and activity on Forum/discussion sites and on freelance job posting sites.
A smart Internet Marketing expert should be capable of filtering the traffic that enters his/her website. This can be done effectively by sharing links exclusively on sites that are highly lead centric. It is more important to consider the conversion ratio rather than empty traffic that only adds to bounce ratio.
Most Important activities – Off-Page Optimization:
Off-Page Optimization should be focused on bring in potential leads and customers from other websites and to help overall SEO process. Most advised Off-Page Search Engine Optimization activities are as follows:
- Classified Ads Creation
- Brand Mentions or Branding Links (use your product or brand name as Anchor Text)
- Local Business Directories
- Social Blogging (Consider it as FAQ and answer your client’s issues and drive them to your site)
- Social Media (most important of all SEO Promotions)
- Social Book Marking (Still works)
- Forum Participation
- Participate on QA sites
- Free Lance and business (Project) posting sites
- Most Importantly don’t leave a plain link with keyword and expect it to work (any more)
On-Page elements that impact Off-Page Success:
It is needless to explain the importance of website content, beyond that always make sure your website has a blog and it is regularly updated. Besides adding more content value to your websites, blogs enables a wide window of SEO opportunities. Internal linking, Site structure, frequent Google Crawl, PR and most importantly you can use your blogs as a means to build natural links through social Bookmarking, Discussion sites and Forum sites.
Note: Always remember On-Page Optimization is the most important part of SEO and you need to ensure your website’s On-Page is perfect before you can initiate Off-Page Optimization process.
Beyond SEO:
Most online business firms restrict their marketing and promotional opportunities by developing a narrow Search Engine centric mindedness, or Google centric to be frank. Off-Page Optimization should include elements that are beyond SEO Link Building, and focus on bring in filtered Leads rather than just focusing on Ranking a website on Google.
For instance some Classified ad sites don’t provide links, but are of high value to get potential leads, just make sure you provide some other means for people to contact you directly such as Phone number or mail Id. After all a lead is a lead and it matters little from where it comes, always make sure your business has different modes of lead generation.
Conclusions:
Consider Off-Page Optimization as a means to increase your lead generation and reputation along with SEO results, not just towards GOOGLE.
Beyond Links - NEO SEO 