How can an Article be a Link-Building Powerhouse?

Posted on 29. Oct, 2008 by Boyd Norwood in Search Engine Optimization

Take a look at your website and think for a moment what might help you to get more exposure for your site. Wouldn’t it be great if someone who knew the industry that you worked would reference you as an expert in your industry? Well you really don’t need to wait for someone else to reference you to make you an authority in your industry. You can get your own expertise out there and turn yourself into the authority you want to be. How is this possible? The way I’ll be talking about today is articles.

The purpose of an article is to spread general information about an industry or a concept. It can give an overview of the situation of the industry at present, or it can be an analysis of certain parts of that industry. It might be a relevant story about some happening within that sphere of business. Whatever the topic may be, these articles are extended to the readers for the purpose of keeping them informed on what is happening in the industry.

Why then does an article help your website to become the authority for your industry? Whenever you write an article online, you have a chance to make a name for yourself as an author. You will be able to write an author’s biography and describe what you do. In this biography you have the chance to reference your website and place links to landing pages on your site. When you make these links, be sure to use your keywords from your selected clusters as the anchor text. If you don’t, you aren’t building effective links.

These links help your site to rank in the search engines for your keyword phrases therefore establishing you as an authority in your industry because you will be on the top the the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

General Article Marketing Steps:

  1. Write article
  2. Write author bio
  3. Submit article to each of the following directories

The Nitty-Gritty Details:

Writing Your Article

  • Your article needs to be at least 400 words long.  Once you reach 400 words, finish the article as soon as possible.  You don’t necessarily get more benefit from your links if the article is longer so my opinion is not to waste your time going much past 400 words.
  • Create a catchy title but be sure to include one or two keyword phrases that you will be using as links in the author bio.

Writing Your Author Bio

  •  2-3 sentences that include 3 links with each link pointing to a different landing page on your site
  • Use HTML coding to create these links.  An example of an author bio the way it needs to look when pasting it into the author bio form submission field is as follows:
  • John Smith wants to help people learn about the different types of <a href="http://www.fezzari.com/categories/view/Road_Bikes">road bikes</a> and <a href="http://www.fezzari.com/categories/view/Mountain_Bikes">mountain bikes</a>.  Visit Fezzari today to learn more about or to purchase one of their <a href="http://www.fezzari.com">mountain bikes</a>.

Submitting to Article Directories

  • Each article directory asks you to create an author account.  It is free to do so.
  • Create a new email address that you will use just for these article accounts so as to avoid filling up your other emails with a lot of junk mail.
  • Try to use the same username and password for all article directories so you don’t have to memorize more than one.
  • Submit on a regular basis.  I recommend one article a week.  At the very least, one article a month.
  • After you have some article links under your belt, start using an automated submission service.  The best one in the market by far is Unique Article Wizard.It costs $67 a month but it is worth it.

If you can take the time to continuously release articles on the web, you will soon find that you are building a strong ranking in the search engines and your traffic will increase. This tool is one of your keys to SEO success.

4 Ways to Get Links Today

Posted on 28. Jul, 2008 by Rachel Perry in Search Engine Optimization

Links are key to a good SEO campaign. It can be difficult to know where to start though because there are so many different avenues to explore. Linking increases the power and influence of your site faster then any other tactic in SEO, so its importance is undescribable. Here are some quick ways to immediately start your linking campaign. These tactics aren’t an all inclusive list and they are only the beginning of your strategy but they will help.

Create A Squidoo Lens- With Squidoo you are creating an outside site that is sending your site an incoming link. Therefore the more time you take to create a lens that has quality and good volume content the more power your Squidoo lens will carry, meaning the more power your incoming link will have. Now you can take 15 mins and whip up a lens with a few paragraphs containing a link or two to your site. However that incoming link won’t carry as much power as if you created a lens that actually gets traffic. Don’t go overboard and spend more than an hour, but take the extra time to create a quality, topically relevant lens which in turn creates you a quality link.

Submit to the D-List- The D-List is a list of blogs that have Do-Follow link value in their comments, meaning when you comment your name can become a link to your site. Courtney Tuttle offers a list of do-follow blogs, there is a list of links to these blogs there so it is easy to click down the list and make comments. This is a valuable resource but must be used with caution, don’t spam through comments. Go in, genuinely read their posts. Then use the keyword you are trying to rank for as your name and put your sites URL in the website box. Make a comment that adds to the post. This will not only ensure that your link is left in their comment section (instead of removed as spam) but it will also build a positive reputation around your keyword link.

Write an Article- With an article, you are writing the content that will go on another site, meaning it will be relevant content that will point back to your site. Write an article on one of the keywords you are trying to rank for. Make it completely relevant and interesting and then link one or two of those keywords to pages on your site. Then submit the article to a variety of article directories.

Submit to Unspun- Unspun is a site where users can create their own ‘Top 10’ lists and then vote on which item in the list is #1. The lists vary from topics like the” Best Skin Care Products” to “Hardest Disability to Overcome” so you are more than likely to find a list that fits your topic. The 2 coolest parts about unSpun are one; if you don’t find a list that fits your topic then you can create one. And two, you can add your link under the item on the list that fits your topic. On the actual list page the link is no follow but if you click on the item in the list it will take you to a page where your link has followed value. It can take some time for this page to be seen by Google but every link counts so it is worth the 5-10 mins it takes to add your URL.

Link building isn’t impossible, it can just be difficult to know where to start or where to try next. These 4 ideas are just starting blocks but they can help get your site ranked, indexed and become more appealing for future link trades.