There are many benefits to article marketing. One of the most important advantages is the number of backlinks that your articles can generate. Backlinks are one of the ways that the search engines determine the importance of your site. Sites that are most important show up on page one when someone searches. Sites deemed to be less important show up on the pages that follow. A page one search result on Google can significantly increase your traffic, while a page 237 listing is absolutely worthless. To increase the importance of your site, develop backlinks.

One of the best, easiest, and least expensive ways to generate backlinks is through article marketing. A good article can generate hundreds of valuable backlinks. However, the technique to generate backlinks is different than writing articles for income.

Articles written to maximize income should contain one or more text links in the body of your article for maximum exposure. These links pop out at the viewer and almost compel him to click. Articles written for backlinks should never include any type of link in the body. Webmasters who might otherwise publish your article, will not publish content that contains links in the body. Most webmasters want your links confined to the author’s resource box.

Another important factor to maximize backlinks is the number of links in your resource box. Your article will get the most exposure if it contains just one link back to the main page of your website.

One final technique to consider is the articles directories that you submit to. When writing for income you should submit your articles to the largest 20 or 25 sites. However, to generate backlinks, you need to submit your article to as many directories as possible. Doing this manually can be quite time consuming. Using some type of article submission software is ideal for submitting articles for backlinks.

 

The importance of generating backlinks to increase Page rank can not be emphasized any more, it is absolutely mandatory. Once you start your backlink building campaign, you will find that it can be a difficult task if you don’t know which direction to take.

 

The traditional way to acquire backlinks is to search the internet for websites with a high PR that share the same or similar interest with your own and ask them for a reciprocal link. A reciprocal link is an link exchange between two website owners where each party agree to place each others links on their websites. The problem that occurs when searching for reciprocal links is, if you are just starting out, then your page rank will probably be zero. Most sites that are already established do not gain any incentive to exchange links with you.

 

The other alternatives to finding established sites to link is to get a little creative in order to build some backlinks. We all know that Web 2.0 social networking sites have bombarded the internet, but what most people do not realize is that they are a great source of high Pr backlinks. You can set up an account with several networks, submit a blog with a link to your website and voila!; you have created a quality backlink to your website.

 

Another source for acquiring backlinks that usually goes unnoticed are RSS feeds. You can use RSS feed for a variety of reasons. One reason is to receive great exposure for your website or blog. Once you submit your website to an RSS Feed Directory your feed can be subscribe to by numerous readers, thus creating great exposure for your website. RSS feeds are also a great backlinks tool, you can not only generate backlinks every time your RSS feed is subscribe to, but you will also get free backlinks from each RSS feed directory you use to submit your website.

 

For best results submit to about 15 directories at a time to spread the amount of traffic you will receive. Spreading your traffic will also help with you Google ranking. The search engines rank websites with consistent traffic higher. You also do not want to generate too many backlinks too fast, as to not raise any eyebrows with Google.

 

Website owners who keep up to date with SEO competition are finding out that if you are not learning and evolving you’re falling behind. It’s becoming more and more difficult for websites to maintain high rankings on search engines and that’s even if your site is already a few years old. If you are starting a new website it’s even more difficult to make your mark on a SEO. Expectations for new sites should be set up with the goal for long term results.

The most important factor in determining your website’s success is to know what you are looking for from your site. Most owners believe that rankings dictate a website’s success and while rankings are important they do not determine the overall success of the site. Owners should pay attention to the traffic they receive because that is going to factor into your business success and put money in your pocket. That’s why you have the site, correct? To make more money! Most website owners want to be in the top five of Google and Yahoo searches, when at the end of the day those rankings to not affect their bottom line.

This will not change the fact that rankings will continue to be a highly sought after commodity. Website owners need to think outside the box if they want to move up on SEO rankings. Owners have been expanding their keywords in hopes of attracting more surfers to their site. What they should be doing is figuring out what keywords people are using and incorporate those words and phrases onto their site.

At the end of the day websites are all about content, but what constitutes good content? In one word: Creativity. Your website is an extension of you, just like your business is. Use your voice and be unique with the content you decide to put on your website. This includes videos and pictures as well. Look at the resources you have and incorporate all the good things around you into your website. Do not steal or copy from other websites, it is superficial and that comes across to the visitors on your site. Make your content genuine. Do what you do best and speak from the heart. Make sure you write content for your site and not based on search engines. It’s a disservice and will not help your business or rankings.

The best advice one can give a website owner is: Do not compete with other websites! Continue to expand and evolve your own website and don’t saturate your brain with other people’s ideas. There is no right or wrong, what works for one does not work for another. Start with what you need to have on your site and work up from there.

You can pay all the money in the world to a SEO company and be number one on all the search engines, but did you really start a website to spend money or to make money?

PageRank is that magic number between 1 and 10 that Google assigns to every website. It is a number that is computed using the link structure of the World Wide Web and it measures the relative importance of all pages. It is an important number that partially allows Google to return the best results to a user’s query.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) gurus spend much of their time trying to improve a site’s PageRank because the larger this number the larger the traffic driven to the site via organic search results. Even though the algorithm for computing a page’s PageRank was published by Google’s founders in 1995, the algorithm has since been modified to scale up to the web’s enormous size as possible and also to circumvent being exploited by SEO experts. These continuous changes to the algorithm are not published and SEO engineers often find themselves trying to understand how the algorithm works by monitoring Google’s behavior.

It is widely believed that the larger a page’s PageRank the higher it will appear on Google’s homepage and the more traffic it will receive. As a result, many webmasters lose a lot of sleep over improving their site’s PageRank. Since the value of PageRank depends on the number and quality of incoming links, webmasters often pay a premium to have a high PageRank site link to theirs. In addition, webmasters can monetize their site by selling links to others; if they manage to get their PageRank to a value larger than 5 then they can sell these links at a high cost. All these have created an entire economy around Google’s magic number.

Matt Cutts is a Google engineer who maintains his own blog often talking about Google’s competition, marketing strategy and technology. Occasionally, Matt talks about the calculation and significance of PageRank. Needless to say, many SEO gurus study his blog trying to read between the lines and figure out how PageRank is computed and used. Recently, Matt wrote to answer some frequently asked questions about PageRank. In this posting, he reveals that PageRank is not an integer between 1 and 10 but instead a floating point number in the same range allowing Google a high degree of precision. In addition, he tells us that the number actually exported and shown on Google’s toolbar is in fact only an integer value. In addition, he points out that Google continuously calculates this number and only exports it to the toolbar once every a few months. People often notice that PageRank numbers are changing on the toolbar every 3 months and mistakenly assume that those are the only times that the numbers are actually computed.

Finally, I would like to point out that Matt specifically says that PageRank is considered by Google when a user performs a search. Matt says, “By the time you see newer PageRanks in the toolbar, those values have already been incorporated in how we score/rank our search results.” Some people have questioned as to whether Google still uses PageRank in their search engine algorithm. They claim that it only exists to sidetrack SEO experts with malicious intent. Matt’s sentence claims that Google still uses PageRank in ranking search results reinforcing the belief that it is still relevant; the actual importance of PageRank, however, is hard to establish and as Google has said in the past, the results presented to users are the product of a very complex algorithm with many parameters including PageRank.

My advice to webmasters is to have a link strategy and try to gain a healthy PageRank value. I would not recommend that people obsess over PageRank and instead focus on content. Good content will force other websites to link to yours helping you improve its PageRank. Be very careful of SEO companies that promise you many riches if you are willing to pay them a hefty sum of money to improve your site’s PageRank. Increasing this one number by itself is not likely to have such a large effect. Original, fresh and keyword content is still the best way to achieving success online.

You’ve probably heard the buzz about social media marketing (SMM). One of the components of SMM is social bookmarking. With the right advice and the right strategy, you can use social bookmarking to boost links to your company site and increase your site’s relevance for the keywords that pertain to your business.

The Opportunities in Social Bookmarking

Inbound links to your website are tremendously important to your search engine ranking. In fact, most search engine marketing experts believe that Google’s ranking algorithm is weighted far more heavily towards links than it is to keywords.

SMM offers many ways to generate these links for little or no cost – articles, social media sites and blogs are just a few examples. Social bookmarking is another.

With bookmarking, you save bookmarks to blog posts, articles and web pages (including your own). You tag them with a “keyword” of your own choosing (preferably related to your business). You can then add a “tag cloud” to your website. The tag cloud contains the tags you have created and directs users to the bookmarks you have saved for that tag.

What is the benefit for your business? Each bookmark links to your website or blog. With tag clouds, each keyword appears on your site, increasing the site’s relevance. Between the bookmarking site and the tag cloud on your website, you have a really great cross-promotional tool that opens up myriad opportunities for people to find you.

Consider the website of a Toronto marketing firm. They have a tag cloud with words like Toronto, search marketing, social media, blogging and so on. Each time someone visits their site, that person can click a tag and find the company’s bookmarks. They can then share those bookmarks with other users, which will point those users back to the marketing firm’s site.

Going in the other direction, people searching a bookmarking site may find the marketing firm’s bookmarks. Seeing that the company has posted some interesting and valuable articles on online marketing, they decide to visit the company’s site and add it to their social bookmarking network.

The Challenges of Social Bookmarking for Businesses

Like any kind of social media marketing, social bookmarking is low-cost, at least in terms of money. Where the “costs” escalate is in time. To do social bookmarking right, you need time to evaluate the various sites, add your bookmarks, comment on them, and interact with other users who share your interests. It is a big job.

Let’s look at the first step – deciding which sites to use. If you do a search for the top social bookmarking sites, you’ll get a huge list, like the one published on ebizMBA. So which ones do you choose? Delicious is one of the biggest, but would it be better to go for a smaller site, like furl or faves.com? Is it better to use all three, plus some social news sites, like Digg or Reddit?

Once you have made that decision, you need to decide how and when you will create the content you want to bookmark. Blogs, articles – what is the right amount of content and how often do you need to create it? You can really only answer that question by looking at social bookmarking as part of your overall social media marketing plan.

Answers to Your Social Media Marketing Questions

Social bookmarking and social media marketing are powerful marketing tools. To make the most of them you need to devote a lot of attention to the sites and create content regularly. You also need a comprehensive social media marketing plan that incorporates all of your content initiatives and your efforts to create bookmarks that direct people to that content.

A marketing agency that specializes in SMM can get you started. They can help you navigate the sites, schedule your content and get involved in the social media sphere. Even if you just sign on for a short-term contract to get started, you will find the SMM firm an invaluable partner in your “new media” marketing plans.

 

By: Jonathan Haryanto

Backlinks have become one of the most important aspects of Search Engine Optimization. Backlinks, also known as “Inbound Links,” refer to the links that are placed on other websites and that are directed towards your website. They are what tells the search engines that you have a site of interest to others who have linked to it, thus raise your ranking on the search engines.

Backlinks are important to climb the page ranking in the search engines. What other websites say about you is critical for search engine credibility. If you can control what the links say and where they link to in your site then you can influence the search engine results. Therefore, your marketing campaign for your sites has to include the effort of obtaining link popularity.

While building backlinks, you need to aim for quality instead of quantity. Search engines give more credit to a link from a site related to yours than a link from a site that is not related to yours. A site with few quality backlinks will have a higher position for its targeted keywords compared to a website with many unrelated links. Especially if you combine that with relevant content, links to important pages, meta tags, descriptions, title, h1 tags, and sitemaps. However, most search engines do not consider hyperlinks as backlinks.

There are a number of ways to build backlinks for your site. Backlinks can be bought or obtained for free. There are a number of directories available on Internet, and you can find free or paid directories for submitting your site. Your site will be listed in these directories after the editor has approved it. You need to make sure that the directory is an established one since search engines give more credit to links coming from quality sites. In bidding directories, you can place a bid and if your bid is among the highest bids then your site is displayed on the homepage. If someone outbids you then your listing is removed from the homepage.

In a link exchange, one webmaster places a link on his website that points to another webmasters website, and vice versa. But here you must note that one way link holds more strength than a two way link. Moreover, in the last Google update, reciprocal links were one of the targets of the search engine’s latest filter. Many of these links were simply not relevant, and were just discounted. So while the outbound links still got counted, the irrelevant inbound link was ignored.

Many webmasters have more than one website. Sometimes these websites are related, sometimes they are not. You have to be careful about interlinking multiple websites on the same IP. If you own several related websites, then a link to each of those websites on a page could hurt you, as it may look like to a search engine that you are trying to do something fishy. You will probably have heard of ‘3 way links’. There are some issues with that as well. Other than price, the most ‘popular’ system is a little clunky to use and the links are not so close to topic.

Article directory, a directory that maintains a large collection of articles, is one of the best ways to build links. It allows you to publish your articles along with your links in the resource box. You provide them for free with something they need content and in return they also provide you for free with something you need quality backlinks. Of course, you should make sure that the article you submit is of good quality and informative in order to get approved and published. They usually have a number of categories and you will have to find a category suitable for your website.

Posting in discussion forums and blogs is also a way to get quality backlinks with the anchor text you want. There are a number of forums and blogs that allows you to place your links in your profile and in your signature. You need to look for a forum or blog that is related to your niche and then make some quality posts or comments and add your links in the signature. Once your posts are indexed, search engines will give some credit to your website. If the forum or blog is a respected one, a backlink is valuable. In some cases the forum or blog administrator can edit your post, or even delete it if it does not fit into the forum or blog policy. Also, sometimes administrators do not allow links in posts, unless they are relevant ones.

 

After the registration of domain name selection of web host is another rational step a user need to consider. Though, finding an ideal host is a daunting task. One can find several companies offering web-hosting services to the clients. While locating keyword web hosting in the search engines one will find more than 100 million outputs!

One cannot deny the fact, for a successful online presence a dependable web hosting is must. Online presence and accessibility of a web site is must. If not, one should remain ready to loose clients and prospects. For an instance, if one compare this with a traditional business.

CATEGORIES OF WEB HOSTING:

One should select a web hosting deal according to his/her site. One cannot fulfill his/her requirements from same hosting deal for a personal web site, web site meant for email newsletter subscription and archives, e-commerce site or web forum. Web hosting can be divided into four prime categories:

1. Virtual (shared) hosting,

2. Dedicated server,

3. Collocation server and

4. Reseller hosting.

Two most applicable hosting are virtual (shared) hosting and dedicated server.

What is Virtual (shared) hosting? It is a condition in which several web sites share one server. It is a low cost hosting because price is divided between several users. One can locate a standard virtual hosting at a rate of $100 a year.

In a Dedicated server hosting company lease the whole web server from a particular web hosting company. The site of web server is the web hosting company. One can opt dedicated server as a suitable option who does not wish to share a server with other web masters. One can find a dedicated server in two forms managed and un-managed. If one talk about managed server, company will take care of all the setups of user’s server. However, in unmanaged server user needs to take care of all these by him/her self. The benefit of this sort of hosting is that one can fully lodge web hosting as per his/her requirements. Moreover, for a site with ample amount of visitors a dedicated server is the only rational choice. Due to higher cost, starting from $100 per month, those companies that know the worth of Internet business generally use it.

One can say that Collocation server is quite identical to dedicated server. Disparity lies in the fact that company doesn’t take the web server on lease. Their own web server is placed in the web hosting company. In addition to it, company has material access to their web server, which is not available while talking about a dedicated server.

If one mention about Reseller hosting it is aimed to those companies only wishes to begin their own web hosting business.

ASPECTS, WHICH ONE NEEDS TO CONSIDER:

There are many factors which a user needs to consider to prevent any future miss happens:

Web space:

Requirement of Web space vary from site to site. Off course, if user requirement is only a web site containing basic information about him/her and his/her work excluding the use of web applications, then space of 50 MB is quite sufficient. However, a complex e-commerce site along with numerous products in one’s database demands a capacity of 1 GB.

Bandwidth:

The term Bandwidth refers to data transferred from user’s web site and that comprise of graphic details, images, banners and files for download. One should have accurate knowledge of Content before going for an amount of bandwidth. When one talks about the majority of sites, bandwidth of 10 GB a month is quite sufficient, though for few other sites like sites related to desktop wallpapers can frequently consumes even hundreds of GB a month.

Up time or visibility:

It symbolizes time articulated in percents displaying the period a site remained online. One should not be cheerful because someone assured him/her to provide say for 98% up time because it is not going to fulfill his/her requirement. One should get at least 99.7% uptime. Believe it or not, it definitely matters.

Email accounts:

Email accounts are an integrated and crucial part of web hosting package. It is quite interesting to know for how much will one get only a so called catch –all forwarding which means that all emails sent to somewhere@mydomain.com will arrive to one’s email address or one can set-up email accounts for several users? Also the thing is for how much? Is it intended for 5, 10, 100 or limitless email accounts? In addition to it, there is no harm to verify whether user get a so-called POP3 email address (“real” email address), web mail or rather both? If one has a POP3 email address then he/she can check his/her emails via favorite email client and web mail facilitate the user to inquire his/her emails at any place demanding just a computer and Internet connection.

Form of Server, tools and control panel:

When one mention the two generally utilized hosting then the name of Unix-based or Windows platform comes first. It matters for the result program languages, databases and scripts that one can apply. When one talks about Unix-based platform, general selection is relayed to PHP language along with MySQL, however, when it comes to Windows platform ASP or ASP.NET language will be along with SQL Server. One should enquire that is database is available with package or not, if yes, then how many? Nowadays, contemporary web site must be database-driven.

Too, one should have full knowledge related to tools coming along with web hosting package, if there is only applications for web statistics, file manager and things it is not an concern issue.

Technical support:

A crucial aspect while selecting a web hosting particularly for a user without having adequate technical skills is technical support. A proper technical support does not take a responsive time more then a day. This is not liable only to selection of web hosting company, but, crucial to any of the company selling products and services, Software Company can be one of the examples.

The coordination of few of the companies is so well thought-out that it takes only 1 hour to give response to user’s queries! Through their source of contact one can predict about the future response. Do the concern company has only email support or also have phone support? Does they provide a toll-free number? Do they offer the facility of trouble-ticket system? Working time is another crucial aspect. What is their strategy of providing technical support is it during working hours only i.e. 9 to 17 or does they provide the facility of 24×7 technical support? An ideal way to detect their professionalism one can create a list of fake queries, drop a line to them and hang around to know their reply time.

Testimonials:

Several web hosting and software companies have this smart way to increase their customer strength. Testimonials section contains the approval of satisfied customers, attracting more people to their service. This section is not completely reliable. Several hosting companies offer their clients to analyze their portfolio, instead of doing that one should contact webmasters who are taking the service of concern host and register their opinions. One can take help of several sites for further information regarding best web hosting deals and suggestions.