You are just one small website among millions. How will anybody ever find you? How do you become visible? Right now, you just exist out in the web, untethered. You need to become visible when someone searches for you and one way to become visible to people is to become visible to search engines.

And one way to become visible to search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN is for your site to be tethered, or linked to other sites.

If you’ve spent any time reading Internet marketing blogs you know that link building is a huge part of a marketing campaign. Backlinks – links that point to your website – are a major factor in determining your popularity or ranking with the search engines. And of course, just like in high school, you want to be popular.

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You can buy your way into links, but here we’re talking about a few free and easy ways. An obvious and natural way to build links is through content. When you start a link-building campaign for your new website, focus on attracting links that will add value for your website visitors and best represent your most important keywords too. It is invaluable to have visitors go to your site and share your content.

Here are a few easy and mostly free ways to build links for your website.

Blog-Based Link Building

One way to get natural links back to your website is by setting up a blog for your company. Make sure you network online with other blogs that complement yours. If you share industry news and have useful and relevant content, you’ll attract links. Reference other bloggers in your content and link to other blogs in your industry.

For blogs, content is extremely important. Every time you add words to your blog or website, you are presenting yourself to a potentially huge audience. How does your blog’s content reflect your company? This content could be the page that carries your company’s name around the Internet world. Cheap content is just that – cheap. Create content that people want to read and that will make them come back again and again.

Reviewing products and services and posting those reviews on other sites is another way to build links. Your honest evaluations and smart opinions can also build your reputation as an expert in your field.

Link Building with Social Media

Another way to build natural links to your website is through social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Twitter. These sites allow you to set up a user profile where you can add information about you and your company including a link to your website.

Some sites, Facebook for example, also have a way to promote your business with a page, ad or group. Just keep in mind that there are good ways and bad ways to promote your business on social sites and you should observe proper etiquette when you do.
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Link Building with Organizations and Directories

If your industry has professional organizations or associations that you belong to, check with them and see if they have an online directory with links to member sites. They may or may not charge a fee for this. If they do, it shouldn’t be much.

Check with your local Chamber of Commerce or Better Business Bureau. Links from sites like these can be very helpful. Check with other local businesses and organizations that have lists of businesses and request links from them, too.

Online directories are another opportuníty to look into. Yahoo! Directory is a good one. If your business is in a specific geographical area, you might also find some local directories to submit to that will boost your local visibility.

Links from Charities or Non-profits

If your company makes charitable donations to organizations and non-profíts, see if they have a "donors" list on their website and ask if they will link to your website.
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Links from Press Releases

Has your business just started or have you just launched a new product? A press release is a great idea to announce your news. There are quite a few press release distribution services available and some have a free first time offer.

Links from Partners

If your website offers information about other website partners like business directories, you should make sure to use all your linking potential. You could have a badge that your partner could put on their site linking to you and one for your site that links to theirs.

If you have an RSS feed or a widget on your site that has good value to visitors, those can be taken from your website and displayed on another person’s website, linking back to your site.

The Internet is constantly evolving and there are thousands of ways to build links. Look around at other websites and see what they have and how they work. Look at your business, think outside the box and you might come up with other ways to develop links. If it all seems like too much, there are many online consulting companies that can help with link building, SEO optimization and brandcasting.

Need to find out more about Building Links to your site? Contact John here or call/sms 0414 955 743

Fortunately, however, an SEO expert usually needs to spend only a few hours to review your web design at certain crucial stages to save far greater expenses and headaches later on.

Stage 1: Concept and Marketing Strategy

You probably have a vision of the content and general site structure you are looking for. Before you meet with your web designer, contact your SEO expert who can provide you with marketing insights and ideas that perhaps you hadn’t considered. As a result of this meeting, your website plans could change dramatically — for the better. At this stage, a lot of money can be saved by firming up a more concrete, search engine friendly site plan.

Stage 2: Presenting the Vision to the Designer

It also helps to have your SEO expert meet with you and your web designer (in person or by telephone) when you lay out your vision and site plan. Your SEO expert is there to answer questions and ensure that your search engine marketing objectives are not thwarted should a grand design concept change the previous site plan.

During this meeting the designer will often provide a time schedule for deliverables and explain when you can weigh-in on each step of the design process. In the presence of the web designer, ask your SEO expert at what checkpoints it is best for him or her to check in on the progress.

Set up those checkpoints and clearly state that the design cannot continue without an official sign-off from your SEO expert. Without this it is far too easy for the design process to build momentum and breeze by these key checkpoints. Important: Even if your designer claims to have SEO experience, you’re still wise to include an independent SEO expert. Your designer’s SEO techniques may well be out of date.

Stage 3: Final Draft Review

Before you sign-off and agree to your final website, make certain to clear the final product with your SEO expert. At this stage any SEO mistakes that may have made it through the design and review process can be caught before final sign-off.

Once you sign off on the final website, subsequent corrections get very costly. There is no question that money can be saved — and in fact made — from having a search engine optimizer involved. After all, if your website is search engine friendly right out of the gate, you are one major step closer to profitable search engine rankings.

Need to find out more about Better Search Engine optimisation for your website? Contact John here or call/sms 0414 955 743

Yet small businesses listen to them, because they don’t know any different.

Before I tell you exactly I do to get your web page to land top 10 in Google, there are a few facts you need to know about the Search Engine Optimisation industry.

1. If your SEO professional isn’t using techniques from the past 4 months or less, you’re paying hard earned cash to them for nothing.
2. The search engine industry is changing almost daily. Google alone uses 200+ double-degree propeller heads to improve their search results accuracy. If your SEO person isn’t constantly studying and learning the new ways Google wants them to react, he’s taking your money under false pretext.
3. If anyone guarantees you a result, they are conning you.
4. SEO professionals should know when NOT to optimise a web page. That’s just as important as knowing how to optimise a page.

Now here’s the meat – here’s exactly what it takes to get your web page to land number one in Google”

Step 1: Each web page must have a primary key word or phrase. We first make sure that your chosen keyword/phrase is the best choice to turn your visitors into buyers.

Did you realise that is a vital step? It’s not about whether you land Top 10 in Google, but it’s about whether the customer buys from you, or contacts you.

It’s of no use to you if your page lands top 10 in Google every ten minutes but the visitor doesn’t click on your link, land on your web page, then do business with you.

Step 2: Next, we check the cache of the page in Google. We want to make sure it’s been freshly visited by the little Google Spiders. If it’s not ‘fresh’ then we know the marketing on your page needs a ‘caffeine’ injection. If it does, we

1. provide suggestions for your content, title, description and body copy
2. organise 5 to 10 quick, real, good-quality links to your page. By ‘good’ I mean links which aren’t buried between Viagra and penis lengthening ads or Free Online Casino chip links
3. Finally, we organise some blog links to your page. Most SEOs don’t even know they need to be doing this in order to most effectively market your web pages

Step 3: We verify the projected traffic levels to your chosen keyword/phrase. Some keywords/phrases are so seldom searched they don’t get hardly any results from one month to the next. We prefer use your money on the pages which deliver you the best results.

Step 4: We check the search engine results pages (SERPS) for your keyword/phrase. Are there Premium ads at the top? Local Ads? YouTube and GoogleVid ads? Are the top 6 places take up by ‘immovables’ like Amazon, Wikipedia, eBay or EzineArticles.com? If this is the case we’ll stop analysis right there and move on to your next keyword/phrase. Again, we don’t want to waste your money.

Step 5: Next, I verify that there’s room for you in the market. We need to size up your competition. We have special software which makes sure what your competition really is when your keyword/phrase is searched. Hey, and do you think we care how many results are against you? We don’t. We’re only interested in the Top Ten search engine results. That’s all.

I mean, if I get you from 200^th right up to 50th, will that do you any good? No way. Almost no-one clicks more than twice after they search. So that’s why I’m on about top 10 all the time. For me, if you not landing top 10 in Google, you’ve still got a way to go.

Step 6: Now I take a look at your page itself. I’ll check your On-Page Optimisation. I look for things like the page name, title, description, keywords and some other metatag stuff which doesn’t show up on the web page people see. I have some more specialised software which helps me out here as well. We might even try for an indented listing if the page looks like it stacks up OK.

Step 7: If it warrants it, now is where I’ll create a focussed page of original content which hones in directly on your keyword/phrase. Compelling title, proper use of the keyword/phrase and body text. Then we upload it up to your server.

Step 8: It’s no good having a hot new page ‘up there’ if it’s not noticed. So at this point I ‘market’ the page using a blog-based technique which should normally get your new page indexed in about 3 hours.

Step 9: I now recheck the new page and verify it’s scoring more than 85% in my ‘yardstick’ software. If not, it’s back to Steps 6, 7 and 8.

Step 10: Now I use two other proprietary applications to narrow in on which Top Ten results are vulnerable, then go after them. In SEO a lot of the deal is all about pages which link back to your own page. Usually if there are a couple of results pages with low back links, we can have their spot or better inside 40 days.

And that’s it. Using the techniques above, you’ll be amazed at how much overall improvement your website can enjoy in just 90 days.

Need to find out more about getting your website Top 10 in Google? Contact John here or call/sms 0414 955 743

That’s a lot of pages for your average mom and pop website and even for some medium-sized companies. So can how can you do it?

To create so much content you first need to know what is going to be written about and then you need to find ways to get it written. You’ll be able to find the answers to both those questions here in the Wordtracker Academy.

We’ll be giving you web content ideas about articles (reviews, case studies, top-10s, how-tos), blogs, news, press releases, widgets, tools, UGC, web 2.0, linkbait, viral, SMM, podcasts, videos, photos.

Because you probably can’t wait, here are some ideas to keep you going…

Ideas for content:

Enter a target keyword into a keyword researcher tool like Wordtracker’s and the resulting list of up to 1,000 keywords usually gives you hundreds of ideas to write about.

• On any subject, ask and answer What? Why? How? Who? Where? When?
• Of any thing, ask and answer the questions How big is it? How many are there? What does it look like? How do people feel about it? What does it feel? When did it exist? Are there any moral issues raised? Is anyone’s virtue questioned?
• On any subject, consider creating pages for articles (reviews, case studies, top-10s, how-tos), blogs, news, press releases, widgets and tools, User Generated Content (UGC) like comments, forums, articles, blogs, podcasts, videos and photos.
• Categorize your content and create lots of useful category pages with short introductions and lists of links to useful relevant content on your site.

Ideas for getting things written:

• Write a page a day.
• Get fellow team members to write a page a week.
• Recruit enthusiasts to write.
• Ask companies and people who want publicity to write.
• Commission students, wannabe writers and real writers (if you can afford them – although you might actually find that their speed and quality makes them cheaper than the usual list of ‘cheap’ writers).
• Don’t be afraid of ‘short’ pages with just a few paragraphs.
• Ask readers to write reviews, articles, comments, blogs, forum contributions, questions and answers.

Contact Us — we can organise top quality work from $5 per article

What is keyword creativity?

It’s about using keywords to help you when you are thinking about marketing strategies and creative ideas. Whenever you use the Wordtracker tool you will inevitably come across keywords which throw up interesting ideas for you to base new content on, or launch a new product line. Applying a creative process to keyword research is keyword creativity.
Keyword creativity and advertising

Davidson says that a lot of people still haven’t fully come to grips with how keyword creativity and advertising can complement one another.

“People respond differently to advertising these days. In the old days people would have a massive freephone number or a URL printed on an advert. They may still, but the reality is that most of us don’t write down that URL or phone number anymore. We go to Google and type in whatever words we remember for that ad.”

Davidson uses Orange, a UK-based company which sells cell phones, as an example of a major telecommunications company which has used keyword creativity in their advertising with mixed success.

“Orange have launched a new campaign called ‘I am’. There’s no URL and there’s no phone number. All it says is to type ‘I am’ into Google search, because they’ve realized people think typing www is too much work”, remarks Davidson.

Every ad campaign has a search response

He says that businesses must ensure that when people search for a word related to the ad campaign, that they are sent to their own website. Businesses have to discover a way to ‘own’ that search term and make it synonymous with their ad campaign.

Going back to our Orange cell phone example, if the potential customer had seen the ad, then went to Google, typed in ‘I am’ into the search box, and Orange where not at the top of the search results, that would have been a lost opportunity.

Davidson said the way Orange has ensured they do come top for ‘I am’ is by paying for a sponsored link.

He added: “What actually comes up top is IAmBored.com – which is a site that offers online games and puzzles.

“I would suggest that Orange could have owned that top spot organically. They should have done the keyword search beforehand and asked themselves; What kind of content can we create which will optimize our site for those terms? If they had put that into practice they would have gone to the top of Google for ‘I am’ organically, instead of paying a lot of money.

Another problem, he said, was that IAmBored.com is “actually a much better site.” Davidson said Orange were running the risk of people being distracted by the site and were more likely to look at it.

“By the time you look at IAmBored you have forgotten about Orange,” he added.

It’s a valuable point to note: if you are launching a new campaign, look at your competition. Can you really ‘own’ the search term, or will you be pulled down the rankings by stronger contenders?

Another interesting thing in the case of Orange is that on www.orange.co.uk there is no mention of the ‘I am’ campaign anywhere on the homepage. The company have simply bought the domain name www.i-am-everyone.co.uk.

This, I would suggest, is a big mistake on Orange’s part. It just goes to show that even a multi-billion dollar enterprise like Orange, which has more than 170 million customers across the world, can get it wrong. It reiterates the point that whatever ad you produce offline should be backed up with a clear online resource which uses the same keywords and branding. This reinforces the campaign message people are searching for. In essence, this is putting keyword creativity into practice.

Keyword research leads to creativity

Davidson told me that before people even embark on an ad campaign, they should do their keyword research first. No one working in marketing or advertising can afford to make assumptions about their marketplace, even though they may have worked in it for years. The main objective is to start a creative process which will lead to an ad that connects with people in an interesting way.

Davidson believes that getting to grips with an audience you are trying to communicate with is the most important part of market research.

Find out what people are searching for online – what does it tell you about the market?
White water rafting and keyword creativity

Davidson puts the theory of keyword creativity into practice by using the example of a website that specializes in selling white water rafting.

“You might start with a perception that people go on white water rafting trips because it’s a thrill, or because they want to take their family on an adventure holiday. Those are the ideas I have in my head, but when I look at my keyword research I may find that a lot of people are looking at white water rafting as a means of team building. “I then have to leave my preconceptions behind and think of an advertising campaign, producing content which reflects that niche, or I may even see that I don’t have a product which fits that audience.”

“People often type in white water rafting and a certain location – I could guess that’s because people have been before, they’ve heard there’s some white water rafting in that area. What that does mean is that I should be including as much information about that area and geography of that location as possible.”

Fuel creativity with keywords

Mind maps often come up when people talk about keywords. The idea behind them is to write down ideas, words, tasks or titles you think relate to a central theme. Tony Buzan was the first person to introduce Mind Maps. He believes they unlock the mind and allow people to open up and think more creatively. They’re also a great way to problem solve, to structure writing or to categorize your own website.

Davidson says he uses them all the time.

“You create the trunks of the trees on parts of a Mind Map out of your own head and hopefully creativity flows from that.”

Mind Maps also allow you to quickly move away from your own assumptions and think laterally across the subject, and potentially into new areas of interest.

A great tip from Davidson is to fuel your creative process with keywords.

Do some keyword research on a particular idea you have. Take a small selection of these keywords and plant them in the middle of your Mind Map.

Open your mind. Look at the keywords you have written and discuss what other words or ideas you think relate to it. Think of it as a word association exercise. Although it may seem non-linear, that’s exactly how the human brain works!

Once you have drawn your Mind Map, think about what to do with it. Can you find a new product idea? Do you have fresh content ideas? Have you discovered a better structure to your site?