Getting your blogs or websites well-ranked in Google is important to help you get recognised as an authority site. One straight-fortward way to achieve this is to get high page-ranked backlinks by linking only to dofollow social networking sites. These are networks that can give you fast direct backlinks to your web pages and home pages. The main thing that distinguishes them is that they use dofollow links, otherwise your backlinks will not get picked up by the search engines.
Mike Alexander
Author of ‘Internet Traps, Ripoffs And Pitfalls‘

Finding Sites For Backlinks

Image via Wikipedia

Social sites are very easy to find as there are so many on the web now. The sequence to use when looking for suitable sites is as follows.

1. The first step, as always, is to search Google.
2. Make sure you include DOFOLLOW in the search phrase.
3. When you find a DoFollow site, check its PR (PageRank).

Google Page Rank

Without going into huge detail and boring  you to sleep, the higher the Google PR (meaning a site that impresses them with their content, number of visitors a day, how well it is built, how well it functions and many other factors that change all the time) the more valuable the backlink is perceived to be.

PR is scored from 0-10 with ten being the highest quality in Google’s opinion. The higher a site’s PR the more authority it has, basicly meaning that Google trusts the site and therefore has ranked them accordingly.

PR is not something that can be earned overnight and getting a PR10 is near on impossible. It would take you and I a whole lifetime without guarantee of even getting PR1.

So if you get your link on high page-ranked sites Google will see your link and say lets check it out and give them some notice, (because you have your link on a trusted site). That’s why when I say get your link on high PR sites you can understand the massive importance of this.

DoFollow And NoFollow

Next the difference between DOfollow and NOfollow. A site that is ‘dofollow’ will allow Google to follow the links on its site back to the site they come from with the authority that Google has given them.

A ‘nofollow’ site, on the other hand, means it has a ‘nofollow’ meta tag that will not let Google trace the link back to your site, and really it’s a waste of time you having your link there. That’s why you must only use dofollow social bookmarking sites.

Simple Timesavers

I have used so many bookmarking sites and wasted so much time finding ways to make this easy that I would like to share a couple of simple time savers with you.

1. If you need to find the PR of a social bookmarking site, I recommend using hypestat.com. It is 100% free to use and all you do is put in the full URL and the details of the site will show up. This is how I check all sites for info or PR, earnings, keywords etc.
2. Probably the most helpful thing I can give you is the list that I use:

a1-webmarks.com
bukmark.net
digg.com (This is my favorite social site)
dzone.com
ebaumsworld.com
folkd.com
linkagogo.com
matamosatuvieja.com
mylinkvault.com
reddit.com
soforce.com
sugarsymposium.net
tagza.com
touchthedrop.com
videowasi.ws

If looking for great backlinks then use this list. All the sites on it hold PR1 – 8 and most important of all, they are all dofollow social networking sites.

About The Author

http://workingonlineblog.com  I’m just an ordinary guy making a living online and, to be honest, I love it! I love being online and working online beats every job I’ve ever done. I’m looking forward to the coming years with the way the Internet is growing.

On their own, SEO and social media channels offer attractive opportunities for reaching industry influentials as well as end-consumers through push and pull public relations. Together, SEO and social media combine to create a competitive edge that can boost online public relations results.

Why is this so? Changes in the way the media and end-consumers discover, consume and share content illustrate the intersection of opportunity for both the search and social Web. Today’s increasingly social media savvy content consumer not only expects to find what they’re looking for on search engines, but to interact with the results. Those interactions take many forms including: commenting, voting and sharing. As a result, social media can affect search engine visibility in numerous ways, creating new promotion opportunities for public and media relations efforts.

Of course, throwing keywords at social media tactics isn’t quite the same thing as developing and implementing a plan to reach specific goals. Dropping links to news being promoted on social networks can have impact but is difficult to sustain. For long term value from effort with SEO and social media, public relations professionals should follow best practices as well as the fundamentals:

1. Identify the specific audience to reach. What are their behaviors and preferences for content, sharing, media types, etc? What keywords are used in a social AND search context? Empathize with their content preferences and the context in which they consume and share. A blogger often has very different preferences than a TV reporter or a newspaper journalist.
2. Set specific goals and objectives that can be measured. Mentions, comments, links, rankings, traffic, media coverage or other “engagement” metrics. Leverage tools from search engine optimization and social media marketing to track Web-based metrics.
3. Develop a strategy for reaching those goals with the intended audience. Content creation and promotion is essential for an SEO and Social media public relations effort. Today is not just the age of “Brand as Publisher” but “PR Practitioner as Publisher”. One effective strategy for gaining unsolicited media coverage is to become the media. Or at least perceived as such through attracting a significant audience to a brand news portal or blog.
4. Figure out which mix of tactics (blog, social networks, media sharing, microblogging, etc.) will support and execute the strategy. Original content is ideal but often not practical or sustainable. Content curation mixed with original content can scale. Develop social networks and build channels of distribution for promotion of news.
5. Identify which specific social tools to use. If social networks are the right channel, which social network? Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace or niche networks? If video is in the mix, does distribution need to be limited to YouTube or does it make sense to syndicate to Vimeo, Metacafe and others.
6. Put proper measurement tools in place and identify what events and outcomes to analyze. Web analytics and social media monitoring services are essential for collecting useful and reportable outcomes from news SEO and social promotion.
7. Identify individuals and resources necessary to implement. Forecast time, internal reporting, and feedback mechanisms for participants. The most effective social media SEO efforts for public relations involve the agency or public relations practitioner working together with content creators, SEOs, marketers and others in a position to publish and promote content online.
8. Plan for success and what it will take to scale when you succeed. Be ready to address issues or failure as well. Test, test, test! Social media SEO can amplify reach but it takes work and resources. Find out what has to be displaced or subordinated in order to incorporate social media and SEO into the online public relations mix.

This post originally appeared in the PRSA TechConnect Newsletter Jan 2011.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a hot topic right now and this article by Asem Eltaher sums up how to use a popular free tool by Google to your ultimate advantage for it. If you find the article useful, be sure to follow the links to be found in About The Author at the end.
Mike Alexander
Author of ‘Internet Traps, Ripoffs And Pitfalls‘

First Task

What is the first task before building your website? Before using keywords for your site, it is always better to check for the popularity of the sub-theme keywords. Some or all of the tools mentioned in the keyword tools section could be utilized to measure the popularity of  keywords.

Popularity

How to measure popularity for free? I would definitely recommend using the Google Adwords Tool. This is the case not only because it is a free tool, but because of its effectiveness. It gives you an idea how often your target keyword has been searched and in what format (exactly or just in a long phrase). Furthermore, Google gives you a list of related keywords to consider in the hope you will find the best one for you.

Why do I recommend this tool? Another golden feature that most other free tools do not offer is the ability to see a statistical graph about search volumes over the last year. This way, you can formulate a realistic image about your target niche and whether it is still a hot niche or not.

Things To Avoid

What should you avoid here? Do not run after globally searched numbers each month. It is the average of all searches, i.e. the total number of searches divided by 12. So, newbies will want to optimize their websites around keywords that enjoy high global search volume.

You should think once again about the distribution of the keyword. If the keyword enjoyed a high search volume in the first half of the year, but not the second half, then I would not target it. It’s is a bad indication that this keyword is no longer searched for by internet surfers.

Check The Competition

What is your next step after popularity check? It is simply to check the competition. To do this, you should follow these three steps:

1. Type your keyword in quotes in Google. This will give you the number of pages that are optimized  for this exact keyword. I would also keep my distance from each keyword that returns a number of pages more than 100,000.
2. Type the keyword as allintitle: keyword. This will give you the number of websites that have this keyword in their title. This means that these websites are well optimized for this keyword. If the returned number of sites exceeds 50,000, I would look for another.
3. Type the keyword in Google without quotes too. This gives an idea about the type of websites that occupy the first 10 positions in Google. I would also look for another keyword if my competitors are well-established authority sites such as Wikipedia.com, ehow.com, etc. or any other sites with a Google page rank above 5.

About The Author

Can you answer the most important questions about the best search engine optimization consulting? Discover now for FREE how to turn your efforts to take your home business empire to improve search engine ranking.

If you want to build a successful business on the Internet, you need to spend as much as you can afford on a Google AdWords campaign and other forms of advertising. However, it has been proved over and over again in the search engine marketing arena that at least forty per cent of the time, your clients will find you through Google or one of the other search engines. This fact alone makes it very important for any serious Internet business owner to learn the basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). If you can’t do it yourself, at least you won’t be left in the dark on the methodologies if you decide to hire an SEO specialist.
Mike Alexander
Author of ‘Internet Traps, Ripoffs And Pitfalls‘

Website Design And Navigation

These are the most important aspects of SEO. A website that succeeds with both search engines and website visitors is one that is easily navigated and is designed in simple HTML. When these two elements are combined, they make for a good visitor experience and easy crawling by the search engine spiders.

So it follows that some of the things to avoid in website design are dynamic pages and URLs, frames, flash elements, Javascript, and image maps for web page interlinking or sitemap generation.

Keyword Research

SEO is based on the premise that an unknown number of Internet users are searching for a host of things by typing in search terms utilysing keywords. To discover popular keywords that are appropriate to the business or niche that your website represents, do some exhaustive research on the subject. It will pay off handsomely.

In deciding what keywords to use, there is one over-riding rule: ‘the more specific the better’. If you own a dating site, for example, “true love” or “soul mate” might be too broad. Run the keywords on Yahoo and Wordtracker. You might find keywords that are more appropriate and focused to your site, such as “true love for marriage”, and similar terms.

Keyword Density And Relevance

Search engines, especially Google, determine what websites should appear at the top of your search results based on their relevance. This is determined in part by keyword density, or in other words, how many instances the word or phrase appears in the web page’s content. Write your content accordingly. Do not spam, though. Aside from sounding gibberish, spam content also gets flagged by search engines and websites containing it are removed from their indices.

Relevance And Inbound Links

Search engines also consider inbound links to your site (specifically, their number and quality) to determine your website’s ‘popularity’ as judged by the Internet population. That’s why you need to make time to find sites related to yours in terms of your market niche. Also make sure that hyperlinks to your site found on other websites have your keywords in them.

Don’t ‘scoop and link’ though. At one time Google penalized websites that linked with 200 to 300 other sites per month and they still change their algorithms (the criteria by which they decide Page Rankings) constantly.

An Opportunity On Each Page

On each page on your website there is actually an opportunity for you to rank for a different keyword each time. Notice how two different pages on the same website are generated for the same keyword. Go ahead and assign different keywords to each. Write and optimize accordingly.

Adrian So wrote this piece  about using search engine optimization as a form of advertising. He has covered his subject well and broken it down into easily digestible parts for the sake of clarity. Please be sure to read his ‘author’s bio’ in the About The Author paragraph.
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

Online Advertising

Online advertising is becoming more and more popular over the traditional advertising because of its benefits. Its greatest benefit is that information can be made available to the viewing public in a very short time (that is, there is no need for publication etc.) and in a wide geographical area depending on the advertiser’s needs.

Online advertising can be quite costly however. Some companies spend thousands of dollars every month to run their advertisements. Of course this depends on the form of advertising you select. If you do not want to spend money, then there are some techniques you can try out. One of the most popular online promotional techniques for many advertisers is search engine optimization (SEO).

Your SEO Campaign

With SEO, your main target is to get listed in at least first 2 pages of the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing for specific keywords. The goal of being listed here is that when someone types or searches for a service that is similar to yours, your page will be listed in the search results and hopefully will gets the clicks.

Being listed in the first 2 pages of the major search engines gives your website a higher chance of being discovered by prospective customers. The good thing about it is that you do not have to pay for every click. In a way, you can have a limitless number of clicks.

SEO Strategy

To optimize your website you need to have a very basic knowledge of HTML. You can begin by fixing the META tags of your pages. Focus on your website’s page title and page description. Page title is what appears in the search results of the search engines. Make sure that your page title accurately identifies the contents of your page. For your page description, make it as appealing as possible. Your page description also shows in the search results and functions in a similar way to a marketing tag line, so make it eye catching.

Next to the META tags, make sure that your index page has good written content that talks about the service or product you are offering or selling. As the index page is the most important page in the eyes of the search engines, make it as appealing as you can. If you have images, do not forget to include alt tags and make them descriptive.

Linking Strategy

Once you have fixed your pages, then it is time for you to link your site to other websites in the internet community. Send articles to the bookmarking sites. You can also advertise your site further by sending articles to different sites and asking them to link back to you.

Just keep on creating back links and after few months you will see your rankings slowly coming up. It is not a quick process, so just have patience and just keep on improving your site.

About The Author

Learn more about the best Online Advertising Strategies such as Search Engine Optimization which can help boost your business without spending thousands of dollars every month.

This article by Lou Fresco not only explains the essence of how search engines and SEO works but offers a little background information about the history of Web searching to put it in context. If you enjoy it, or if you find it enlightening, I hope you take the trouble to follow the links in his bio (under About The Author in the last paragraph).
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

Improving Positioning

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) refers to the process of improving the position of a given website in the organic or natural results of a search engine. How are websites found? When someone uses a search engine to find something on the web, the listings that show up are a result of the keyword terms they type in. The search engine determines the most relevant result and places it first on the listings and the remainder are those that have a somewhat more limited relation to query. Improving organic search results increases relevant traffic volume and quality to the website of potential customers.

Algorithms

The mathematical formula used by a search engine to determine which websites are most relevant to the terms in the search is called an algorithm. Search engines determine these results based on their individual algorithms. What algorithms are designed for is to produce the most relevant results for the words being searched for. More searchers will find and visit a site if it is placed earlier in the search results or if it is ranked highly.

How SEOs Work

SEOs, or Search Engine Optimizers, take into account how search engine algorithms work and how the target audience will search for a particular product or service, in their marketing strategy for increasing a website’s ranking or relevance. A website’s coding, presentation, content and structure, as well as any problems that could prevent search engine indexing programs from fully indexing the site, are all involved in SEO efforts. Adding unique content to a site, ensuring that it is easily indexed by search engine robots, and making the site more user-friendly is what the SEOs would often do.

Background

SEO became necessary because of the history of search on the Internet. When the World Wide Web first went public, search technology was very basic. It was similar to a self-governed library where the search directories relied heavily on the input of individual webmasters to accurately enter information regarding their websites. Even though Google is now king, it knows that it can only remain so as long as it continues to present good results. Every year, billions of dollars are spent by search engines to fine tune and adjust the algorithm to weed out unwanted information. To make the client’s website rank high enough within the search results to promote the needed business traffic, is how SEO works.

About The Author

Lou Fresco, freelance writer. We are committed to providing free helpful information about dynamic Internet marketing, the history of search and SEO importance. To know more about SEO and the history of search visit <http://www.cost-prices.com/what-is-seo/>. Grab a totally unique version of this article from the Uber Article Directory.

Thanks are due for this article by James Scott on how to get real publicity for your business. Make a point of following the links in his ‘bio’ paragraph headed About The Author at the end of the article if what he says inspires you to want to learn more.
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

Real Publicity

We get calls all day, every day from companies that talk about ‘wanting’ real corporate publicity that will transform their company but few have the stomach for what it really takes and even fewer have the financial dedication it takes to obliterate their competition and take their place at the top of the food chain. Of course it’s important to cater to the traditional media (TV, radio, newspaper, industry journals, etc) but the genre of publicity that wins every time is viral publicity consisting of video, social and news bookmarks, article submissions, press release submissions and photo/logo sharing sites. The reality is online publicity is where you have the opportunity to completely annihilate your competitors and claim your rightful position.

Viral Publicity

When you take into consideration the ultra powerful medium and stealth of viral publicity, all other promotional genres cower in comparison. Online, your pre-public or post-public company will claim instant viewers and a cult-like following that TV and radio can’t even remotely match. Billions of searches take place every day and it is the viral publicists job to do what SEO and traditional publicists can’t do and that is to get solid search engine ranking while simultaneously bringing in powerful results that are targeted and strategically placed.

Forget pay per click, it’s a waste of your time and money. Crush everything in your path with viral publicity that claims power positions on the natural search results of all search engines. You must have a solid combination of media at use to take control of targeted keywords and industry genres.

Get Real

So the next time you tell your self-proclaimed publicist or SEO agent that you need publicity that will claim your position and deliver virtually instantaneous results for your company, you’ll understand why there is silence on the other end of the line. It’s because they have not got a clue as to what it takes to get serious results that will rip and shred everything in your path. The powerful combination of viral publicity and massive exposure will force-feed your concept to the willing masses who are pleading with a company in your industry to step up and spoon-feed the very information that your company is offering.

Stop wasting time and money with so called ‘solutions’ that don’t work. You need a publicist, investor relations specialist and SEO demigod who will take you by the hand and pave a way for your company to succeed.

About the Author:

For Corporate Consulting or Investor Relations Solutions, call Princeton Corporate Solutions at 267-233-0183 Corporate Publicity That Works the easy way!

SEO and its fundamental concepts is a very important subject in this day and age and the notion that it has become redundant due to the arrival of ‘Web 2.0′  is somewhat misguided. This article, kindly offered by Remus Lim (see his ‘bio’ below) spells out the major components of a successful SEO campaign for the modern era.
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

The Need For SEO

The technique of SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization, aids in increasing website traffic from search engines by optimizing the website for specific keywords. As the spread and complexity of the internet rises, people increasingly depend on search engines to find information online conveniently. This has given search engines a major role to play in directing visitors to various websites and thus the focus on SEO is essential.

As the number of websites is continuously increasing on the internet, the dependence of users on search engines has risen even further. Most websites now get over half of their visitors from search engines, which has increased the significance of SEO even more. In fact, without an appropriate SEO strategy, there is very slim chance that you will be able to achieve real success on the internet.

Content Optimization

The first and foremost thing to take care of in SEO is content optimization of your website. The use of relevant keywords at a reasonable frequency in your website’s content works successfully towards making it search engine optimized and helps in increasing the search rankings of your web pages.

Link Building

Link building is another extremely important component of SEO, wherein you seek inbound links from other sites as a sign of your website’s popularity, which will then impact your search rankings. Make sure that the sites you seek links from are of the same content type and relevant to your website. You could get into problems with search engines if they perceive that you are creating misleading or unnatural links to your websites.

Ongoing Improvement

It is essential to realize that SEO is not a one time process but a continuing one. If you develop a good website, optimize it for better search rankings and then ignore SEO, your benefits will soon disappear. Do remember to constantly reassess the website’s content, what ranks search engines have allotted to the important web pages of your site for specific keywords, and if the inbound links are still active. To attain a steadily growing flow of traffic, you have to continuously adopt ways to improve the presence of your website in search engine results.

SEO Training

Given the fact that SEO is so essential for any website, SEO training becomes extremely important as well, as you have to comprehend the nuances and ways of executing them. A lot of companies today provide SEO training for you to create a search engine optimized and successful website. Learning SEO from veteran professionals through these services is the most effective means of becoming a master of this field.

About the Author

Learn more about search engine optimization and the available SEO service from SEO Magic Webs Philippines. Grab a totally unique version of this article from the Uber Article Directory

Forward thinking companies would do well to assess the SEO and social media readiness of their marketing and PR resources.  Is the current digital PR effort leveraging improved visibility through search engines? Do current PR and Marketing staff or vendors possess the digital PR tools they need to offer competitive consulting in a “PR 2.0” world? Consider the following questions to assess the SEO and social media readiness of your digital PR assets:

1. Is social media participation conducted without attention to SEO?
   According to the iPressroom Digital Readiness Report, social media adoption outranks organic SEO. Yet more than 82% of Internet users surveyed in “When Did We Start Trusting Strangers” (published by Tom Smith, one of the researchers of the Digital Readiness Report) stated search engines are the tools most frequently used to source information about products, brands and services. That disconnect reinforces the need for search engine optimization as a key digital marketing and PR tactic.
2. Do social media and SEO efforts work together?
   Some companies are indeed implementing social media and SEO programs, albeit separately. SEO and social media have a clear intersection, and if both are in place, they can work together to compound results. The outcome of many social media interactions and sharing is content. One of the most important concepts to grasp when exploring possibilities with search for PR is that, “If content can be searched on, it can be optimized for better performance.” Therefore, content creation should factor in search optimization whenever relevant. Social media marketing efforts that factor in keyword optimization of content can directly influence the discovery of communities and social content via search engines. Additionally, social content can boost links to your website, improving search traffic and Pull PR results. In other words, if you’re going to create it, why not optimize it?  Implementing social media and SEO as silos misses a significant opportunity.
3. Is a search and social media friendly website part of the digital PR strategy?
   The 2009 Edelman Trust Barometer indicates that companies’ own websites are viewed as more credible sources of information than blogs, social networks or advertising.  The positive effects of frequently updated, quality content on search rankings present a strong case for investing in a search and social media friendly content strategy.  Whether PR professionals have influence over content creation on an entire web site or limited to an online newsroom, keyword optimization of news content creates entry points to stories through search for journalists, analysts and bloggers researching online.
4. Where does a blog fit within the social media content strategy?
   The highest-ranked digital skill for large organizations, according to the iPressroom Digital Readiness Report, is blogging.  Blog savvy PR efforts should include the ability to develop a blog content plan that not only publishes news that the company wants to distribute, but information of specific value to target audiences. Such a blog content plan might include a scheduled mix of posts on subjects relevant to an industry niche in formats that are journalist and/or blogger friendly. Now that every company that is promoting themselves online is in effect, a media company, it’s important to begin to think like one by leveraging an editorial plan and to package information that is useful to customers as well as journalists and other bloggers.   Search optimized and social media friendly blog content can extend the reach of company news to search engines as well as social media news and bookmarking sites.
5. Are target audiences profiled and what is the best way to reach them?
   Analyzing survey results is a great start to determine best practices, tools and tactics for a digital PR strategy. But it’s just that—a start. Profiling the target audience should be an early and integral part of the process. Who is the target audience? What are their preferences for types of social content? Which social media sites do they visit, and how often? What type of search do they use for story research?  Answers to these questions and more will make a digital PR effort that leverages both search optimization and social media participation more efficient.  A good model for understanding social behaviors is the Forrester Technographics report. If consumer social behaviors can be profiled, why not journalists and bloggers?
6. What is your PR firm’s true core competency: traditional or digital PR including social media and SEO?
   The demand for traditional PR skills by many accounts is slipping.  18% of respondents in the Digital Readiness Reports said they have no interest whatsoever in traditional PR.  For the vast majority of respondents, knowledge of social networks (80%), blogging, podcasting and RSS (87%), and micro-blogging (72%) is either important or very important when it comes to PR and marking hiring.

The big question for companies that want to stay ahead of the digital PR game is, “How do your online PR resources (in-house or agency) measure up?

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