Guest Blogging

The idea behind guest blogging is pretty simple: you find a fellow photographer or photography website with a blog and offer to create some content for them, which will include an author bio with a backlink to your website. Besides the obvious SEO value of the link itself, the benefits of guest posting also include putting your brand in front of hundreds if not thousands of potential prospects that you couldn’t reach any other way. Sounds great, right? The bad news is that while the theory is easy enough, this strategy requires some work in order to identify the best guest blogging opportunities as well as some ideas on how to go about performing effective blog outreach campaigns. Though the ins and outs of properly executing this strategy are far too in-depth for this post, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Look for the opportunities on well-designed/popular websites
• Look at what their other posts are about to get an idea about their readers
• Use tools to analyze the social metrics of the site
• Craft a well-written approach letter
• Over-deliver on the promised content
• Follow-up with the blog owner and any reader comments
• Repeat several times per month (preferably on different sites)

Creative Commons (CC) Licensing

Releasing your images under creative commons license that requires attribution is another excellent strategy for link building. Flickr and Fotopedia are probably the biggest and most well-known image sharing sites that explicitly allow members to choose which images can be used for commercial and private use as well as the CC licensing options. However, attribution links will usually point to the site that hosts the images, so you may want to host the images on your own site.

Pinterest

Some people may be wondering why I included Pinterest on this list since the links on the “re-pins” are all “no-follow.” It’s simple; Pinterest is hot and hot means lots of traffic. Whenever you have lots of traffic to a social media website, you have the potential to leverage that traffic in a variety of ways, including earning links. While it’s true that any “re-pins” you get will have the “no-follow” tag, it’s very unlikely that your images will ONLY be shared via a re-pin. According to one case study, exposure on Pinterest is a springboard to acquiring backlinks from a wide range of other sites such as Google images, blogs and similar sites because it helps your content get found by both the automated aggregators (Google images) as well as content hungry webmasters (bloggers) that don’t mind giving you a link attribution in exchange for embedding an image. Here’s a quick summary of one guide to using Pinterest for backlinking:

1. Create a list of target keywords/topics
2. Prioritize that list according to priority in terms of search volume, current rank, etc.
3. Search Pinterest for relevant content
4. Cherry pick the best people/websites to contact for outreach
5. Interact with those chosen in step 4 via Pinterest and/or other social media platforms (e.g. re-pin their content and/or share it on a blog post)
6. Determine which ones are the most receptive (i.e. reciprocation of social shares) and approach them for a guest blogging/similar collaboration

Directories

Directory links have become almost taboo in the Post-Penguin SEO landscape. However, getting links from any directory isn’t the problem. The real issue is when you attempt to get a bunch of links from low quality directories that are filled with SPAM and/or completely unrelated to your business. High quality directories can still give you a leg up on the competition. In addition to these more well-known link sources, photographers also have a few niche directories that can get you some valuable links. I compiled this list by finding one photography directory on the SEOmoz SEO Web Directory List (The Photographer Directory) and then using the Open Site Explorer Comparison Tool to analyze potential directories found through Google.

1. Photography Directory Project
2. Pro’s Photos
3. DP Photo Journal
4. Photography Homepages
5. Photographers.com
6. Photolinks
7. Photoclicks
8. Cool Photoblogs
9. Photography Sites
10. Photo Shelter

Wedding Photographers:

1. Fearless Photographers
2. The International Society of Professional Wedding Photographers (ISPWP)
3. NY Mag: Wedding Photographer Directory
4. Best Wedding Sites
5. Wedding Photo USA

Local Public Relations

Don’t be afraid to go old school. Offering a free workshop or series of classes on photography related subjects can have a big impact on your website rankings, especially for local search terms. Nothing tells Google that your site is relevant for San Francisco wedding photographer like a link from the SF Chronicle with the headline of “Local Wedding Photographer Teaches Brides How to Be More Photogenic on Their Big Day.” Once you have the class or classes organized, a simple press release mailed out (email and post of course) to all of the media outlets, your local chamber of commerce and any other organization that helps to spread the word about upcoming events will get the ball rolling. Most of these places will also have websites so when they publish the information in print along with your website URL for more information, they will also be putting it on their websites as a backlink. As the event draws closer, be sure to invite the press to attend as well and you may even be able to squeeze out another couple of backlinks when they do the write up on the actual class. Google loves these types of links because they can’t be faked. That makes them very high quality and much more valuable than other links which are easier to get.

Picking Your Strategy

Deciding how to spend your time getting backlinks to your site is going to depend on what you feel comfortable doing. For some people, trying to come up with content for a guest post or sitting down to write the post itself sounds too much like high school detention. For others, the time required to teach a class coupled with their fear of public speaking may make that option impossible. It all depends on what you think your strengths and weaknesses are. However, I would challenge you to pick the one you are most uncomfortable with and make it work. Once you can prove to yourself that it works and it wasn’t so bad, the rest will come easy. Scared of speaking in front of people? Go teach that class. Do you think it’s hard to put 500 words together? Write a tutorial on how to set the exposure for that perfect shot at twilight. Try each strategy at least once; you never know what you might learn about yourself or how it could change your business.

1. Penguin penalized sites for over-using keyword anchor texts
2. Brand/URL anchor texts are natural
3. URL anchor texts are key
4. Generic anchors like “click here” are needed
5. Google discourages URL and generic anchor texts
6. Keyword anchor texts are best because they help users know what the link is offering (While I haven’t seen this espoused by major publications, it seems rather popular among commenters who are reluctant to move away from keyword anchor texts.)

Personally, I think all of these ideas (except the last one) hold truth. But I’ve noticed a data point that has been missing from the anchor text discussion – what users prefer.

What do users prefer?
I’ve read many opinions on what is “best” for users but never seen any actual user-driven data. I thought that was an important question to answer, so I decided to conduct a quick survey in order to get a better sense of what real, live human beings prefer.

I ran two small surveys – one using a widely recognized brand, one using an unknown brand. To my surprise, both surveys yielded similar results. Note that these surveys reveal which link users prefer, not necessarily which link they would be more likely to click on (CTR data would be the most accurate source for that). In each survey, each of the links pointed to the same URL – the anchor text was the only difference.

Click Here vs. Keyword vs. Branded

“Assuming you are shopping for car insurance, which of the 3 links would be most helpful to you? Which would accurately help you decide whether to click on the link or not?”

The results were clear. The branded/URL option (Gieco.com) was chosen by 59% of the participants while the keyword (car insurance quote) and click here received 32% and 9% respectively.

We also gave the respondents a chance to explain why they chose the answer that they did:

• The biggest reasons that most people chose the branded anchor text was because of the trust that comes from brand recognition. People stated that they liked knowing exactly where the link was going to take them, and that the fact that they knew the Geico brand made it an easy choice.
• Of those that chose the keyword anchor text, most cited their preference for reviewing multiple companies at once as the motivating factor behind their choice. (This should be interesting, as it suggests that the keyword anchor text was misleading, since Geico.com doesn’t provide quotes from multiple insurance providers.
• None of the participants that chose “click here” decided to explain their choice.

Local Keyword vs. Branded

“Assuming you are in Phoenix, AZ and need a locksmith, which of the 2 links would be most helpful to you? Which would accurately help you decide whether to click on the link or not?”

Again the branded anchor text (Phoenix LockMaster) won with almost 71% of the votes over the local keyword anchor text (Phoenix, AZ locksmith).

• Again participants were given a chance to explain what prompted their decisions. Trust was a common theme for choosing the branded anchor in this case as well. Interestingly enough, some of the people who chose the local keyword option did so because they didn’t like/understand the brand’s name (LockMaster).
• As with the car insurance question, most of the people who went for the keyword anchor choice mentioned a (mistaken) assumption that they would be able to see services from multiple companies.

What Can We Learn?

This is hardly an exhaustive study on the topic, but it does provide some potentially valuable data points. I believe the primary conclusion we can draw from this data is that:

“Who” a link points to (i.e. the company name and/or URL) is very important to users. Users appreciate brand/URL anchor texts because they reveal who the link points to. This holds true even when the brand is unknown.

This does NOT mean that brand/URL anchor texts are the best kind, or that SEOs should focus only on building brand/URL anchor text links.

What questions could we ask to get additional and/or more valuable data on what anchor text types users prefer? Please leave your suggestions in the comments. If see an idea I like, I’ll run a follow-up survey. Thanks in advance!

Guest posting (aka guest blogging) has been around for years – since long before the SEO community started using (and abusing it). In the PR world, this tactic has been called “by-lined articles“.

Since you’re reading this article already, I’m going to assume that you already have a pretty good idea of what guest blogging means. Check out “How to Guest Blog Like a Champion” if you need a refresher course, like cool diagrams, or just want awesome info on how to beef up your guest posting efforts. This post will instead focus on 3 specific benefits of actively pursuing this highly effective content marketing strategythat guest posting offers to webmasters and marketers:

• Backlinks for SEO
• Targeted Traffic
• Public Relations / Brand Exposure

The Benefits Of Guest Blogging for SEO

Guest blogging allows SEOs to gain a followed backlink from a relevant article, on a relevant site. Don’t over-focus on SEO metrics, though: guest posting needs to deliver exceptional value to users first and foremost.

After Google’s Panda and Penguin updates dealt a crippling blow to article marketing, many SEOs started to use guest blogging instead. Many of these SEOs simply use the same type mediocre content, though. To gain long term SEO benefits from guest blogging, focus on quality. In short, you should:

1. Create guest blog posts that are of “exceptional” quality.
2. Pick the best blogs to publish your guest post on.

Tip: to help you select high quality blogs, see how many social shares the posts are receiving using our free RSS Social Analyzer.

In addition to backlinks, guest posting can provide another SEO benefit – one that will perhaps be even more important than links in the near future. Guest blogging on authority blogs is theorized to have a positive effect on your AuthorRank. Posting high quality content on authority sites that gets shared on Google+ is believed to increase your AuthorRank. A higher AuthorRank will likely boost other pages/articles you’ve written, as well as boost the SEO value of the links within the content you produce.

How To Guest Blog for Traffic

Guest posting can also be very effective for driving traffic back to your website. To maximize the benefits you get from guest blogging for traffic, ensure you’re following these tips:

1. Only guest post on blogs where the audience is likely to be interested in what your site offers.
2. Choose blogs with strong existing audience (use traffic metrics and/or social sharing metrics to estimate the audience).
3. Write exceptionally good content with a compelling headline.
4. Try to work a link/call to action inside the blog post (most blogs don’t appreciate commercial plugs in guest posts, but you can usually cite and link to data or articles on your website).

With the right content on the right site, your guest post can also gain search engine rankings and social media sharing that will drive more visitors to your guest post. Scoring a guest post on a really high traffic blog could lead to some very big traffic spikes as well as a continuous flow of visitors over the long term if your content is good enough and ranks well in the search engines.

The Benefits Of Guest Blogging For PR

There are many ways that guest blogging can benefit your brand and visibility. Here are a few:

• Gain recognition. If you manage to get published on the top 10 blogs about your industry, people will notice. Once they have seen you on 1 or 2 they may say, “I recognize that person.”
• Get bragging rights. You can cite your guest posts on your website and social media profiles to show that your industry expertise has been recognized by third-party publications.
• Build contacts. Guest blogging will help you create connections with other bloggers and industry leaders.

Is it Worth It?

By now you should understand how a well-planned guest posting strategy can benefit your organization’s SEO, website traffic and public relations. But, like any savvy business owner, you’re probably wondering if the ROI makes it a worthwhile tactic. Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer. The success or failure of this type of strategy is directly related to:

• Your ability to choose the right opportunities
• The quality of the content you produce
• Your strategy to capitalize on the exposure, traffic, and backlinks you gain

Guest blogging isn’t an overnight success recipe. Instead, it’s a marathon approach that will gain serious momentum after you get pass the initial stages. Is it worth it? Why not go and find out?

According to data from Hitwise that was just published on Search Engine Land, the top 10,000 websites got almost 75 percent of all organic search clicks from Google.

According to Netcraft, there are 630,795,511 sites on the internet. Based on that, we can calculate that:

Nearly 75% of Google organic search traffic goes to the top 0.0016% of websites.

That means if your site isn’t in the Alexa top 10,000, you’re part of the 99.9984%!

If you want to rank #1, being good is not enough – be the best!

Google’s goal is to rank the best page/site/company in the top position. So if you want to be ranked #1, your first step should be to make your website is a better resource for your target keyword/topic than any other website on the net.

If your site is not the single best website for the user, why should Google rank you #1? Or why should a webmaster link to your site if there is a better site they could link to instead?

Offering the best to your visitors won’t automatically make you rank #1, but it will make it much easier for you to build backlinks, attract an audience, earn social shares, and eventually gain a top ranking.

Be honest with yourself…

It’s time to take a step back and ask yourself a very difficult question:

“Does my site deliver THE MOST valuable and interesting content to my readers?”

The problem is that each of us tends to be emotionally invested in our site – we believe it’s good, and it’s nearly impossible to see our sites through unbiased eyes. So even if you can say “my content is the very best” with the fiery conviction of a baptist preacher, keep in mind these unbiased measuring sticks:

• Does your content get shared socially?
• Do other websites naturally cite and/or link to your content?
• Run a survey using Amazon Mechanical Turk – have users rate your content compared to the best content your competitors offer.

Cornerstone, Epic, Exceptional, Big…

What type of articles get hundreds of re-tweets, Facebook likes, backlinks, and comments. This type of content that over-delivers for its readers and sparks social sharing and linking has been called by a variety of names:

• Cornerstone content
• Epic content
• Exceptional content
• Big content
• Linkbait
• Viral content

Brian Clark over at CopyBlogger uses the term Cornerstone Content, but he breaks it down in terms of how it can directly benefit you in the long run.

Dr. Pete at SEOmoz talks about “Big Content”:

If you want easy, then stop reading (this article is pretty long, and that sandwich won’t eat itself). The #1 attribute of big content is that it takes time and effort – it doesn’t have to be expensive, but you have to invest something into it.

Whatever you call it, the bottom line is that you need content that stands head and shoulders above your competitors’ content.

Is it really worth all of the extra effort?

At this point you may be wondering if creating these epic pieces of content is really beneficial in terms ROI on your time and SEO rankings. Well, the short answer of course is yes. What benefits does exceptional content offer over “good” content?

• More social sharing
• More traffic
• Easier to get links via blogger outreach
• Get more links without even asking
• Builds your reputation and audience
• May directly impact your rankings, as Google adds more quality factors to its algorithms

How do I create epic content?

Step 1: Be prepared to invest the time, money, and resources to create truly exceptional content. There are exceptions, but most epic content has many hours (or even hundreds of hours) of work behind it.

Step 2: Understand what makes exceptional content. Remember, your goal is to create something that is in a class of its own (i.e. is a new, unique data/research/tool) or that stands head and shoulders above any other content on the topic. Here are several excellent resources on creating great content:
10 Ideas for Link Bait and 5 Ways of Getting the Word Out!
22 Ways to Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have a Clue
Why Big Content Is Worth the Risk
How to Win a Content Arms Race

Step 3: Present your content well. Good content will only get read if it’s presented in an enticing way. This includes a smooth, well-edited writing style, as well as good visual styling. Check out my article on How To Format Your Blog Posts For Social and Linkbait Success.

But, how will I know if my content is epic?

Unfortunately, there are no guarantees that your diligent research and hard work will result in a flood of links, traffic and a huge jump in the SERPs. Even the best content marketers don’t hit a home run every time they click publish.

Here are a couple tips to help you in your quest to create exceptionally epic content:

• Once you have your content done, have someone who has knowledge/interest in the topic review it in a side by side comparison with one of your competitors.
• Use Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to get a lot of opinions comparing your content to your competitors. You can post a job that requires people to read your content and then compare it to another piece of content for as little as a few cents. Since the reader would most likely have had little or no exposure to your previous content or that of your competitor, their opinion would be as objective as possible.
• Ultimately, the proof is in the pudding – you’ll have to get a feel for what content resonates best with your audience.

So there you have it. As algorithms improve and web users become savvier, it’s time to reevaluate your approach to the content you post on your site. Google strives to return the best possible results. You can turn this to your advantage by becoming the most engaging and talked about site in your market. In other words, you’ve got to be #1 so you can be #1.

Now it’s your turn. Let us know what you think about this post. If you like what we had to say just click “like” below and then use your favorite social sharing button to help us spread the word.

Some of the survey answers are hardly surprising, but I was particularly intrigued by two points:

• Users don’t appear to support government involvement in search neutrality – only 20% of the respondents to our survey said they would support search neutrality legislation.
• Privacy gets a lot of buzz, and consumers complain about it, but when we asked what factor(s) might make them switch to another search engine, only 1 user mentioned privacy!

1) Google’s Algorithms

Q: To the best of your knowledge, how does Google determine which webpages to return first when you perform a search?

44.2% felt that search results are ranked through a combination of manual/human factors and algorithms. This was slightly higher than the percentage of respondents that felt that Google’s computer algorithms alone determine which webpages to rank first (43.2%).

According to Google’s official article entitled “Facts about Google and Competition,” the order of their search results are 100% algorithm driven. While Google does utilize quality raters, Google says these raters don’t directly impact rankings, but rather help measure how a particular algorithm is performing. Google also does on occasion manually penalize or remove webpages that are spam, illegal, or otherwise violate their guidelines.

2) User Satisfaction

Q: In general, how satisfied are you with Google in the following areas?
Overall, satisfaction with privacy and the number/quality of search ads lags slightly behind satisfaction with search results. 21.6% are dissatisfied with the way Google protects their privacy and personal information.

• According to our sample, Google is doing a great job when it comes to the quality of its search results. Of the 500 people surveyed, 90% answered with “mostly satisfied” or “completely satisfied” when asked how they felt about the quality of the webpages returned in the search results.
• While it’s also true that 62.2% of the people surveyed were satisfied overall with the way Google handles privacy, 21.6% fell on the opposite side of the spectrum. Though it’s difficult to determine exactly why without further investigation, it may have something to do with concerns related to remarketing ads and/or sharing data across Google services.

3) Other Search Engines

Q: In the past 6 months, which of the following search engines have you used?
69% have used Yahoo, Bing, Ask, or DuckDuckGo in the past 6 months.

Google is still king, but this large percentage of users who have at least tried other search engines recently may be an indication that they are far from untouchable. If users are using other search engines on occasion, then other search engines have the opportunity to deliver a better experience and win users away from Google.

4) Search Neutrality

Q: Some individuals have proposed legislation to govern how Google and other search engines rank webpages (search engines “rank” webpages to determine which webpages to display first when a user performs any given search). The stated goal would be to ensure search engines always rank webpages in an equal, objective, and unbiased manner. Would you favor or oppose passing such law(s)?
51.8% oppose search neutrality legislation, only 20% support it.

Anytime Internet savvy users hear the word “legislation” in conjunction with the way the World Wide Web works it sends up red flags all over the place. Based on how people rated Google’s ability to deliver relevant results, most people seem to think Google is doing fine and that government oversight is undesirable. If the evolution of SEO has taught us anything, publishing a set of “objective” and precise factors that determine how websites are ranked will also bring us back to the keyword stuffing days when unscrupulous black-hatters simply gamed the system at every turn.

What Would Make You Switch?

We thought that the results of question #3 (In the past 6 months, which of the following search engines have you used?) were so interesting that we decided to run a side survey on “Google vs. Other Search Engines”. We had a smaller sample to work with (104 people) but we did discover a few interesting trends when we analyzed the results.

As expected, the vast majority (89.42%) chose Google as their “favorite” search engine.

However, when asked “What could another search engine do to make you decide to use it instead of Google,” we discovered:

• For all the buzz/hype privacy gets (and the fact that nearly 20% in the first survey indicated they were displeased with Google’s privacy policies), only 1 person cited privacy as a potential motivator to switch away from Google.
• Better quality results was the number 1 cited reason (about 42% of respondents) that a user would consider leaving Google.
• The next biggest category (about 16% of respondents) was “nothing” – indicating Google has a pretty significant base of users who can’t envision ever switching to another engine.
• A significant number (about 15% of respondents) also cited a more user-friendly interface, with several making fond mention of how simple Google’s SERPs used to be.

We know that a sample of 604 people is a very small cross section of the hundreds of millions of daily Internet users. But nonetheless, the results are very interesting in terms of gaining insight into the minds of web users.

One of the simplest ways to turn this around is by claiming your company’s Google Places page and making sure it stands out from your competitors’ and convinces them that your company deserve their business. The 5 steps below should have you well on your way toward accomplishing that.

Step #1 – Claiming Your Google Places Page

You may already have a Google Places page. You can find out and claim your page by visiting: http://www.google.com/places/. In minutes you can quickly search for your business and see if someone has provided a review about your company or if information has been submitted about your company.

Step #2 – Claiming Your Page

Once you find your page. You can begin to claim it. Google will ask you to verify it’s your business. A common way to do this is by having Google call your business phone and inputting a confirmation code.

With this step in place you will be on your way to making changes to enhance your page. Enhancing your page is needed to separate yourself from the competition and give prospects a compelling reason to call or visit you.

Step #3- Basic Information on Your Businesses

Having the wrong information about your business, which can happen, would not produce the desired results. Take just a few minutes to provide all of your company contact information.

Step #4 – Hours and Payment Information

Your future customers want to know how they can pay you for your products and services. Take a few minutes to provide detailed information on the forms of payment you accept as well as your store hours.

Step #5 – Photos and Videos Reveal What Customers Can Expect From Your Company Better Than Any Words Can Describe

Your business can post up to 10 pictures about your company. Use the pictures as a marketing opportunity to showcase what it’s like to do business with your company. The types of pictures that have worked well for our clients:

• Pictures of your storefront so they recognize it when they are driving up to your place.
• Pictures of happy customers so they can see how they will feel
• Pictures of the products you have available in the store
• Pictures of employees they will encounter

When you have a YouTube Channel or video you can upload quickly to YouTube you can add up to 5 videos.

We recommend using all 5 video slots for your company. You can use video to provide future customers with a tour of your store, product usage, or customer testimonials.

Step 6 – Additional Details Of Your Products and Services

In the additional services section list out the types of additional services you provide. As an example you might be an accountant who does taxes however you also do book keeping. List book keeping as a service and let future customers know you are there to help them.

Most of all with Google Places taking action is key. Take time to separate yourself from the competition and put your best foot forward.

Bing Ads

Ads on this platform are primarily displayed on Bing and Yahoo searches. Advertisers can also target a small content/display network.

• Click cost: Click costs are about 30% lower than Google Adwords.
• Features: Avoid the Content Network, quality of Search traffic varies – may be better or worse than AdWords Search traffic
• Ideal for: Audiences that lean female, lower tech, more affluent, or older. Also great for high volume keywords when AdWords clicks are too much for your target CPA

Facebook Ads

Displays ads primarily in the right sidebar on Facebook.com to logged in Facebook users. Can provide excellent ROI for the right types of campaigns.

• Click cost: Usually from $0.50 to $1.25.
• Features: Supports targeting by age, gender, relationship status, employer, job title, and school. Supports Sponsored Stories (read featured updates), targeting page connections, friends of page connections, and displaying viewers connected friends
• Ideal for: Ad campaigns where your market can be targeted by persona (demographics, interests, and connections).

Outbrain

Designed for promoting blog posts and other content. Not suitable for driving traffic to sales or lead generation pages.

• Click cost: Minimum bid is 0.02, depending on the competition clicks might be anywhere in the 0.02 to 0.15 range.
• Features: Advertiser’s content is featured in a “related articles” section on relevant blogs, including top publishers such as WSJ.
• Ideal for: Blogs and other content sites to attract new readers at a lower cost per click than Google Adwords offers.

7Search

Small PPC search engine, which has partnership deals with 50+ other small search engines. Distribution partners include FinditQuick.com, Genieknows.com, and SurfCanyon.com.

• Click cost: Minimum bid is 0.01 on most keywords (some are 0.05). Bids are significantly lower than Google Adwords.
• Features: Simple management console, transparent competitor CPC bids, and good customer service. Traffic quality varies and is typically lower than AdWords.
• Ideal for: Testing as a source of cheaper and/or additional traffic with high traffic keywords.

LookSmart

Another smaller PPC search engine, Looksmart has a partner network that drives 2 billion queries a day.

• Click cost: Minimum bid is 0.01, and bids are significantly lower than Google Adwords.
• Features: Simple management console. Traffic quality varies and is generally lower than AdWords.
• Ideal for: Testing as a source of cheaper and/or additional traffic with high traffic keywords.

Traffic Vance

They operate a network of websites targeted toward game and app users. They have the ability to run both text and image based ads. The network has over 350 million targeted impressions per month.

• Click cost: Ranges from .15 to 25 cents per click. All advertisers must start with a minimum of $1,000 investment.
• Features: Conversion and campaign reporting are available. The ability to target non US traffic is also available.
• Ideal for: Companies targeting consumers particularly those who target women with children as a preferred customer.

nRelate

I just recently discovered this network and have not yet used it, but wanted to list it, as it is similar to OutBrain. Requires a minimum $500 per month budget.

• Click cost: No minimum bid, target click cost is 7-10 cents.
• Features: Displays “related articles” on 65,000 publishers, including CBS Interactive and The About Group.
• Ideal for: Blogs and other content sites to attract new readers at a lower cost per click than Google Adwords offers.

What are your favorite PPC traffic sources that I’ve left off the list?

• Have experience, knowledge, and/or interest in web design and online marketing.
• Have excellent communication skills.
• Be highly motivated to start and succeed in a sales career.

Job Benefits:

• Excellent opportunity to start a sales career in the growing digital marketing industry. As traditional media declines, new media is growing each year!
• RYP Marketing is committed to providing the highest quality services, which has resulted in a strong growth pattern over the past couple years.
• Get hands on experience with each of the design and marketing services RYP Marketing provides.
• Built in opportunity to transition into a sales representative with salary + commission.

How To Learn More:

Email us your resume and/or ask us to send you the detailed job description PDF. Contact: adam@rypmarketing.com

Matt Cutts (Photo Credit: Google)

1) Links are (and will continue to be) important for SEO

Every time Google makes a major update related to backlinks, I hear a lot of webmaster chatter suggesting that “links are dead”. One common speculation is that social signals are replacing backlinks as the primary metric for website authority. At least for now, though, that’s not the case. In the words of Matt Cutts: “To say that links are a dead signal is wrong. I wouldn’t write the epitaph for links just yet.” He went on to say that Google has found that Google +1 social signals are “not necessarily the best quality signal right now.”

2) Link building starts with great content

In response to a webmaster’s question on how to build links without building great content, Matt suggested that you need great content in order to build great links: “You do want to build great content, and building great content is often what brings you [organic] links.” Keep in mind:

• You want to build really amazingly great content. If you want to outrank your competitors, start your efforts by publishing content that is way better than theirs.
• Just publishing great content isn’t enough – you also need smart SEO, social, and promotion strategies to achieve success.

3) Create a blog and establish yourself as an authority

Creating a blog is the easy part. Establishing yourself as an authority is the part many marketers skip. A good place to start is with a robust author bio in your blog sidebar or at the end of your blog posts. Next (here it comes again), you’ll want to publish great content on your blog. A few ideas:

• Controversy – a few rants or attacks are OK, but don’t be like the boy who cried wolf.
• Original research – doing research and publishing the results is a great way to attract links.
• Lists – these can increase the impact of your content, but doing too many can become tiresome.
• Tutorials – show your readers step-by-step how to do something, and they’ll appreciate you for it.
• Videos – these can be an easy way to share advice and info with your site users.

4) Build relationships by participating in the community

Share your expertise and knowledge by answering questions via forums, blogs, Twitter, Quora, etc. You’ll be building relationships with people who may own websites and may be willing to link to you in the future. Plus, these relationships will pay off in more ways than just links.

MozCon Speaker Ian Lurie. (See how speaking at conferences helps you get links?!) Photo credit: Thos003.

5) Speak at a conference

Presenting at a conference is a great way to get links, from sources such as live blogging updates, speaker bios, and event announcements. (Don’t forget the publicity and networking benefits, too!)

6) Promote your content via newsletter and social media

Create an email newsletter and use it to drive traffic to your new content. Do the same with social media – choose the platforms your prospects use, and starting building a community there. A loyal base of newsletter and social media subscribers makes a great platform to promote your new content to attract links and visitors.

7) Give away something for free

It could be a Firefox extension, a Chrome extensions, a WordPress plugin, a piece of open source software, a free service, or something else. The key is that you’re giving away something the community will find valuable – people will start talking about it and linking to you.

8) High quality guest blogging is worthwhile
Matt Cutts says if you’re a high quality writer that’s contributing insight and knowledge to high quality blogs, guest blogging can be a great win-win. On the flip side, though, guest blogging can be “taken to extremes” or become “spammy”, in which case Google will take action. Where’s the line between those two? Well, Matt doesn’t say a lot, but you might start by using Google’s guidelines for what counts as a high-quality site as a guest post quality yardstick.

9) You may want to avoid link building via WordPress themes, widgets, etc.
Matt has said that in many cases, links gained via footer links in WordPress themes, site widgets, and similar tactics are not editorially given and as such should be avoided. Ask yourself – did the webmaster freely and actively choose to link to me? If not, the link may not be valuable.

10) High quality directories can be valuable
What makes a high quality directory? Here are a few tips:

• How much value does the directory add for users?
• Does the directory go out and find websites to add, or do they just wait for webmasters to submit sites?
• Does the directory have strong editorially oversight that rejects low quality submissions?
• Is the directory promoting itself as a PageRank link directory?

11) Don’t buy links

Here is one of the gazillion times Matt Cutts has stated that SEOs shouldn’t buy links.

12) Don’t do article marketing

Matt Cutts said he’s “not a huge fan of article marketing.” (In my opinion, Panda and Penguin pretty solidly stated the case against article marketing as a link building tactic.)

13) Come up with a really creative hook for linkbait

Matt cited “Judging a stranger by their tweets” as an example of great, white-hat linkbait that didn’t cost a lot or money to create. Sometimes linkbait success can be as simple as coming up with a really creative hook and successfully promoting the content.

Final thoughts

Matt Cutts and Google may not be unbiased (their goal is to get the results they want, which are not necessarily the same results SEO’s want), but there are certainly some worthwhile tips in the advice they provide. At the very least, these tips help us understand how Google would like for SEO’s to do link building. From there, we can create strategies that stay within the spirit of what Google wants to reward. As SEO’s, it’s our job to implement creative strategies that build SEO success by providing value to the user.