Advertising Agencies
Apartments
Architects
Assisted Living Facilities
Bed and Breakfasts
Carpet Cleaners
Computer Repair
Dentists
Dollar Stores
Drug Rehab Clinics
Eating Disorder Treatment
Executive Search Firms
Funeral Homes
Hobby Shops
Home Theater Installers
Internet Marketing
Jewelry Stores
Laundromats
Law Firms
Locksmiths
Public Relations
Realtors
Resorts
Restaurants
Self Storage
SEO / Search Engine Optimization
Skateboard Shops
Staffing Agencies
Temp Agencies
Triathlon Shops
Video Game Stores
Web Design
Web Development
Web Hosting

1. Set up a blog, just like this one.

2. Spend 100+ hours writing posts.

3. Spend another 20+ hours building links to your posts.

4. Give up and don’t bother to update your blog for a year or so.

5. Start posting again, and huzzah! You’ll start getting links from SearchCap.

Well, I wish I could enlighten you more on what did the trick, but I have no clue. The steps I’ve outlined are the exact steps I took. I won’t count out other factors involved like charm, good looks, and charisma, but if you’re looking for anything more I’m afraid I can’t help you.

Yesterday I was reading an article on CNN.com entitled Poll: GOP image goes from bad to worse. I then went to my politics blog and posted asking why are Republicans so unpopular these days? Within a few hours I noticed something happening that hadn’t ever happened before, which was that I was getting multiple comments on this blog post. That’s unusual for this blog, because it’s a new blog and nobody reads it other than one friend of mine. So I checked my stats and I had received about 60 visitors during the day to the page, and they were coming from the CNN page I had linked to.

Now it’s not there anymore, and I can’t link to another page as an example since that page will probably also change before you read this, but on many CNN stories there is a link at the bottom saying “From the Blogs”. If you expand the link, it will show you links to three blogs, along with snippets of what is on those blogs. You can then click through to the actual blog. These links are no-followed, but as I’ve found out, they can generate some traffic. About 100 unique visitors in my case. If you check the source of the page and search for “clearlydeparted” you’ll still find the link to my blog in the code.

However, time is of the essence. Apparently you have to post quickly after the original article is posted to have a shot at being one of the blogs that gets a link back. Which means you may want to sign up for the CNN feed so you can be Johnny-on-the-spot and post quickly.

Utah Web Development Firms
Utah Internet Marketing
Utah Web Design Firms
Utah Advertising Agencies
California Web Design Firms
Boston SEO Firms
Boston Web Design Firms
Utah SEO Firms

Submission is completely free, and all links are dofollow. Simply follow the directions on the respective “get listed” pages.

1. Create your own links
2. Recruit links
3. Buy links

Create your own links. Do you own any other websites other than the one you’re focusing on? There’s an easy place to start. If you don’t have any other websites, have you considered building some? I run an SEO and web design firm. Specifically to promote my site, and also for the fun of it, I admit, I have built, am building, or have taken advantage of the following websites:

Salt Lake City SEO
This website (The Organic SEO)
Don Loper – Adventures in Entrepreneurship
Web Design Blog
My Web Design Company
Bad Billboards
Salt Lake City Audi
Skateboard Blog
Advertising & Marketing Blog
The SEO Consultants
Utah Web Development Firms
Utah Internet Marketing
Utah Web Design Firms
Utah Advertising Agencies
Utah Firms
Laundromatic

There are probably a few I’m forgetting, and several others I’m working on. Of course this requires a bit of work and so I wouldn’t consider it one of the first things you should be doing, but it’s definitely an option. And there are more reasons to do this than just SEO. SEO just happens to be one of the benefits you get from it and so it can add some extra motivation.

You can also create your own links by posting on websites such as blogs and forums. It doesn’t take too much effort to create an account and start posting. Many forums require you to be registered for 7-10 days and/or require you to post at least 10 times before they will allow you to insert live links in your comments. Still, it’s a fairly easy way to go. To find good forums and blogs simply search for some of your keywords + “blog” or “forum” and see what comes up.

Creating your own links is not the easiest way to get links, nor is it the best way, but it’s something you have almost complete control over. And I’m barely scratching the surface here. There are hundreds of other ways to create your own links.

Recruit links. This is the best way to get links, but can also be the hardest, and brings us to the terms “linkbaiting” and “linkbait.” Linkbait is content that is so very, very interesting that lots of people want to see it and lots of people want to link to it. It could be textual content, but it can also be videos, artwork, resources, or what have you. It’s just anything that is super interesting and/or useful. I’d focus on the word “useful” rather than interesting. If you can create parts of your website that are truly useful, and free, then you stand a decent chance that people will start linking to it. Use websites and/or tools like Digg, Stumbleupon, and del.icio.us to create links and attract others to do so as well.

Buy links. This is the easiest way to get links, but not the best way, especially with Google encouraging people to snitch on each other about paid links. Still, it’s easy, and it works, so I say go ahead and do it. Two “link brokers” I trust are http://www.text-link-ads.com and http://www.textlinkbrokers.com/. The latter tends to be a bit more expensive, but you often get what you pay for.

You can also buy links by signing up in paid directories. Some of these directories are paid and some are free, but may require more work than the paid ones.

This should be enough to get you started building some links. If you really want to dive into it consult SEOmoz’s Professional’s Guide to Link Building.

1. Link Quantity. First of all, Google assumes the more incoming links a website has, the more important it is and therefore it should get ranked higher.

2. Link Quality. Second, if Google thinks Website A is important or of high quality and gives it good rankings and Website A links to Website B, then Google also assumes Website B is important. This idea is often referred to by the informal term “link juice.” The more juice a site has, the more it can pass on to other sites it links to.

3. Site Relevance. Third, if Website A which has a lot of content about Topic A, and Website A links to Website B, then Google will assume that Website B also has something to do with Topic A.

4. Link Relevance. Fourth, the text of the incoming link matters. In the case of your site, you want incoming links that include the keywords you’re optimizing for. That being the case, the more incoming links you can build, the text of which includes your keywords, the better. This is because when Google follows a link from Website A to Website B, it reads the text of the link on Website A and assumes, quite logically, that Website B has something to do with the text contained in the link on Website A, and therefore Website B is going to be ranked higher for a certain keyword if it has lots of incoming links that contain that keyword.

Unfortunately, but logically, most of your incoming linktext is going to be either the name of your company, or a url. These are not bad links, they’re simply links that aren’t living up to their full potential.

To sum up, the ideal incoming link comes from a high-ranking website related by topic to your website (i.e. the other website already ranks for the keyword(s) you want to rank for), and the text of the link from the other website to yours would contain the keywords you want to rank for.

Yahoo! Directory – Although it’s out of alphabetical order I’m going to put the Yahoo! directory first in line because it’s probably the most important directory to be listed in.

01 Web Directory
Alive Directory
AllBuziness.com
Aviva Directory
Best of the Web
Bigall
Big Web Links
Business.com
Dream Directory
eWebPages
Excellent Guide
GoGuides.org
JoeAnt
Katakombe Directory
Linkopedia
MassiveLinks
Octopedia
Romow
SiteSnoop
Tygo
Umdum Directory
Web Beacon
Web Directory List

Recently, I decided to give away $1,000 on my skateboard blog to the skater who could duplicate the video segment a certain professional skateboarder created about 12 years ago. I wasn’t really thinking about the attention this post on my blog would garner, and I’ve been surprised by the results from an SEO standpoint.

The traffic on my skateboard blog had already been growing considerably over the past few months, from 6,886 unique visitors in January, to 7,723 in February, and then 9,670 in March. These are numbers I was already proud of. But today is only April 12th, and the site has already registered 7,482 visitors. The traffic is already slowing down, but chances are traffic will reach at least 15,000 visitors this month, and perhaps as many as 20,000.

But traffic in and of itself isn’t going to boost my rankings on Google. But what will is the mechanism by which the traffic is reaching my site. Lots of links. So far this month sublimited.net has picked up links from the homepages of three of the most popular websites in all skateboarderdom, and 15-20 decent links from other skateboard related websites, with the total still growing.

Now here’s where it gets beautiful. All of this hasn’t cost me a dime. “What are you talking about, it’s going to cost you $1,000!” Well, it might, and it might not. You see, I set the rules of the contest, and the rules say the $1,000 only gets paid out if someone meets the requirements. And there’s no guarantee that anyone will meet those requirements. Now, the honest truth is that I hope someone does meet the requirements, and if they do, I’m happy to pay out the $1,000.

The question is, in your world, what kind of contest could you sponsor that would attract attention, what would it cost you, and is there a way to enjoy the linkbait benefits at a cost that is non-existent or minimal? In my case, I believe the $1,000 was necessary to generate enough buzz. In your world, you might only need $500, or $250. Then again, you might need $10,000. But you might be able to get sponsors to cover the cost. Maybe it’s not cash but a giveaway. I’ve noticed that people seem to like free iPods.

Link Building
Building links is by far one of the most difficult aspects of SEO simply because of a lack of control. You have total control over your website, the content, and HTML structure; however you do not have control of incoming links to your website (unless you own the other website of course).

Link Building Methods
Incoming links usually consist of one of the following scenarios (in no particular order):
1. Someone just naturally linked to your website for various different reasons.
2. You paid someone for a link going to your website.
3. You submitted your website to an online directory or similar-type website.
4. You own another website and placed your link on it.
5. You posted comments or an article with a link back to your website.
6. You had a reciprocal link agreement with another website.

Overview of Non-Buying Link Building Methods
Obviously there are other types of incoming links, probably thousands if you got down to the nitty gritty details, but these are some of the most common. The 1st method, having someone naturally link to your website, usually provides the highest quality links however it is one of the most difficult methods of gaining links. Providing useful content or material that someone will want to link to is often called linkbaiting. The 3rd option consists mainly of online directories is an easier method of obtaining some links quilckly and is often useful for new websites, however the quality of the links are usually not the best. Option #4 is a good route if you have a large collection of websites. #5 is ok and can provide some decent links, and #6 should probably be avoided in most cases as search engines don’t put as much value on reciprocal links as they do one-way links.

Link Buying Overview
That leaves us with #2, buying links. There is debate going on right now in the SEO industry about whether you should buy links or not. The main reason for not buying links is that Google can recognize those links and will not give you any credit for the link or even penalize you for it. The other reason is that overall the quality of links that you can buy are not as good as links obtained using other methods. Right up front I will say there is no clear answer on this subject overall, however you can often find a clear answer to specific link buying situations. There are three questions you need to ask yourself for every link buying situation:

a. Can a search engine determine if I bought this link?
b. Do I know exactly what I will receive once I pay?
c. Is the link I am buying going to help with my SEO campaign?

Examples of Good Link Buys
Yes, these questions are basically the questions that address the concerns for not buying a link and some may think you can not find the true answer but in most cases it is possible. Here are two good link buying situations, our examples will be for an ‘SEO company’:

1. You find a blogger in your area that blogs only about SEO, you send an email to the owner and offer to pay him $100 a month in exchange for posting a link on his blog in the right hand column with the text ‘utah search engine optimization’.
a. Can a search engine determine if the link was bought? Not likely at all; since it is a custom website and the owner has other links going to his friend’s blogs and other SEO resources a search engine would have a very difficult time knowing the link was paid for.
b. You were clear on where you wanted to have your link placed and the text, you should be fine.
c. Yes, since the blog is about SEO and not dog breeding or some other un-related topic this should help your SEO campaign at great lengths.
Overall: This is a very good scenario for buying a link and probably the best method. Contacting individual websites on your own that you know are related to your industry can be very profitable. The drawbacks are it is more time consuming and you may have to make several offers before someone agrees; however you will be suprised at how many people will accept money for a link. The other drawback in this situation, specifically a blog, is that the readers may find out somehow that you paid for the link and may look down upon your company or the blogger.

2. You find a text link broker that has an inventory of websites related to yours. You find a few websites and purchase links through their system.
a. This will depend on the link broker’s programming methods. If the links are delivered via javascript, php, etc. you may run into the possibility that the links can be recognized by a search engine as a purchased link. If the link is strictly HTML you have a better chance of the search engine not knowing it was paid for.
b. Again this depends on the system; however usually you know what you are getting, but not the exact website in some situation. You may know it is a ‘PR 5′ website, with one link on the homepage and 40 links on subpage and the topic of the website is ‘seo copyrwriting’. However usually you have enough information to make an informed decision on whether to place the link; as long as the information is reliable.
c. As long as you place links only on websites that are related to yours, are not ‘spammy’ and chock full of garbage links, and are strictly in HTML format you should be good to go.
Overall: This is an easy and quick method as you can sort through hundreds or thousands of potential websites that you know are willing to accept paid links. The main drawbacks are the quality of the links (which you may never really know until you try one for a few months) and the lack of information in some cases (not being able to see the exact website until after you purchase a link). You may also run the risk that the search engines have picked up on certain link text brokers and knows which links are purchased through them.

Link Buying Cautions!
Although the two above examples are fairly safe and effective depending on several factors there are certain situation and conditions you will want to avoid at all costs:

1. Never ever buy a link on a website that is not related to yours.
2. Never buy a link that you have to ask yourself if it will be worth it or not and you are left to wonder at exactly what you will get.
3. Do not buy links that are non-HTML based.
5. Obviously avoid ‘link farm’ type situations.
6. Carefully consider the value of the link and don’t overpay.
7. Monitor your results for 2-3 months to determine if you should continue to pay for the link.
8. If possible buy links that include a link on every page of the website, not just one.
9. Buy links on websites that have few outgoing links and have valuable and useful content.
10. Try to keep links for a minimum of 3 months, don’t keep changing websites that you buy links from as it takes a while for the search engine’s to pick them up and add value to your SEO campaign.

Link Building/Buying Resources
note: I have not tried all of these personally, some I can vouch for but not all. Do your research and follow the above guidelines and you should be ok though.
1. Text Link Ads
2. Text Link Brokers
3. Link Adage
4. Link Worth
5. Great Link Directory Guide
6. iSnare Article Submission
7. Blog Ads
8. PRWeb Press Release Distribution

Feel free to comment or add your own resources for building links.

Nevermind that plenty of other people have probably blogged on the same topic that I did, and probably earlier as well. Nevermind that they were probably better writers than I am. Nevermind that it never occurred to me that somebody would link to that post. Somehow Tony found that post (perhaps by performing this search), chose to link to it, and I am now 583 visitors richer.

This is the essence of something called linkbaiting. Creating content that is unique and interesting enough to get other people to link to it. A post I just created called “If the 2008 Elections Were Based on SEO” is an example of linkbait on purpose, as opposed to my Best Buy post which ended up being linkbait accidentally. Aside from the traffic linkbait can draw, there is also the value of the incoming links when it comes to search engine optimization. Every incoming link that is indexed by Google has a value. That value is generally a positive one unless you’re getting links from a website Google doesn’t like. Links from sites Google adores are worth more than links from sites Google merely likes, all other things being equal, and I would have to guess that Google probably has more than a casual admiration for Wired.com.

SEOmoz’s page strength SEO tool gives the page a 6.5 out of 10, but if only it were that easy to calculate the real value but there are so many factors that go into the equation. The number of visitors is one. The effect the link has on the ranking of my blog’s page for certain keywords is another. The effect the link might have for my blog as a whole is yet another. And who knows but what that link, having led to an increase in traffic, might lead to yet more links from people who followed that link and return later to read more. In the end it’s really impossible. We can guess, and we can approximate, but without an awful amount of work we can’t give a definitive answer. But this I can say, I think it’s a pretty good link and I wouldn’t mind having some more.