Getting inbound links to your site is one of the most important aspects of effective SEO (search engine optimization) practice. Link building tools can make your life a lot easier when you’re trying to structure your site to make it favorable in the eyes of the search engines. Each tool offers different value but here are a few that can help you out.

Analysis tools can tell you how many links point to a specific page or domain and/or which anchor text is being used significantly or even too much. These types of tools can give you a quick, superficial look at the status of websites but you’ll need some others to perform a more in-depth analysis.

Search Status is a group of features offered in a single Firefox plugin. It can provide you with useful information, such as Google Toolbar PageRank, page- and domain links through the Yahoo SiteExplorer, WhoIs information, Google’s cache of the page you’re visiting, an on-page link report and Archive.org. Another very useful trick that Search Status offers is the option to highlight all no follow links which can definitely come in handy when you’re building links.

Another of the useful link building tools is Link Diagnosis. This exists as a web based tool and a Firefox plugin. This one is similar to the Yahoo Site Explorer except it attempts to filter out all low quality links, offers you a list of common anchor texts, and tries to show you a list with the most visited and popular pages of the domain you’re investigating. One great feature of Link Diagnosis is that you can download the data it provides you as a csv file. . .extremely useful. Keep in mind when using this tool that an analysis of a larger site will take more time. A small site may only take a few seconds but a more content/page filled site could take up to 30 minutes.

If you need even more detailed data, you might want to look for tools that demonstrate link building efforts, structures and/or a history of the site. This kind of information can be helpful when you are trying to optimize your own website or that of a competitor.

SEOmoz’s Linkscape and MajesticSEO attempt to create the most complete index possible of the web for SEO purposes. Linkscape is considered more user-friendly while Majestic gets you a wider range of data which can also be downloaded.

Xenu’s Link Sleuth is another excellent tool for on-site analysis. It acts as a search engine crawler and checks websites for broken links and displays a continuously updated list of URLs, which you can  sort by different criteria. Link Sleuth is a good way to get a look at your own website and to evaluate your internal link structure as well. And you can run reports on websites that you’re considering getting links from to see what holes they may have in their site that you could possibly fill.

There are many link building tools to choose from. Hopefully these can get you started on the right foot

 

Technorati Tags: link building, link building tools

There are many elements to finding and using keywords in the right way. One of the most important is keyword frequency or keyword density. This is simply a measure of the percentage of times that a keyword shows up in your on site SEO and your articles.

Most online article directories will let you know, in no uncertain terms, if they feel you are keyword stuffing and trying to get an unfair advantage by using too many keywords for your article.

They will make you delete some of the keywords if you have too many. But what is too many? That can be tricky. It really depends on what you are doing with the keywords. SEO may have different requirements than article marketing, for example (and not all article directories will let you know right away if they think you have too many keywords, some will simply not approve your article).

One of the best rules of thumb is to remember that you are writing for people, not search engines. If your writing style has a fluid easy to read flow, that is what is most important.

Often, of course it does depend on what your keyword is, it is not easy to maintain the fluidity of a piece of writing if you try to stuff too many keywords in it.

Another good rule of thumb is to keep your single word keywords to no more than 6% of the total word count and maintain a 3% ratio for long tailed keywords of three or more words. These averages will need to be adjusted depending on your niche, but it is a place to start.

There are several programs online that will help you calculate the percentage of keywords in your article but one method is simply to do a ‘find all’ search in Word. This will highlight the chosen text, in this case your keywords.

That will give you a visual representation of how many times your keyword appears. While it isn’t a percentage it will give you a clearer picture of what your keyword density really is. If you have keywords in several sentences in each paragraph that is probably way too many and you should simply make some changes to the text.

Using software and searching in a Word document can give you a good idea of how many keywords you have in any given piece. But the best overall thing to do is to read your article out loud and make sure it flows.

When you do that it will immediately sound odd if one word or phrase keeps showing up over and over again. Even if it makes sense in the context of the sentence, it is just not a natural way of speaking to keep repeating the same word or phrase all the time.

Even if your keyword can be put in the article many times and still make sense, it still doesn’t mean that is should be in every single paragraph, that is simply too much and it won’t seem natural.

Remember, the whole point of writing articles is to entice the reader to visit your website. That will be hard to do if they stop reading your article because it seems weird or ‘off′. Keep the keyword frequency to within reasonable limits, as I’ve defined above. You will get much better response from your articles if you do.

Technorati Tags: Keyword Frequency, online article directories, Writing Articles

Internet marketing is a buzzword that encompasses all aspects of promoting products and services online. While there are plenty of different ways to do it, they all boil down to a few simple things. Knowing these things will help you to see better results. With that in mind here are five internet marketing tips to help you make the most of your efforts.
1. People are people. Sure, internet marketing is, in large part, a numbers game. However, numbers and data do not spend money; people do. This means you have to connect with people on a human level. You also need to treat them with respect at all times and remember they are, indeed, people. They will respond in kind and be more likely to take advantage of whatever you′re offering.

2. Numbers do matter. Okay, time to get off the proverbial soapbox. People are people, but numbers are important. Hey, if you could just make money by being nice, the world would be filled with a lot more millionaires. Track your numbers. Which numbers? That’s really up to you, but there is an old business adage that says “if it can be measured, it can be improved”. That’s the power of numbers.

3. Have a plan. You may have heard that you need to draw up some sort of multi-page, in depth, complete business plan complete with table of contents, index and footnotes. While you may need such a plan if you are looking for outside investors, you don′t really need that kind of plan for most internet marketing businesses. Just having a plan–any plan–will help to keep you on the right path, and eventually arrive at your desired target.

4. Test and track. These three little words hold a vast amount of profit potential in internet marketing. One way to do this is known as split testing. To do this, you put up two versions of the same thing, but with a small change between the two. Then you set it up in a way so you can tell which one gets the better results. Then repeat the process, with the better of the two always becoming the new benchmark for the next split test. Testing and tracking takes a bit of time, but as time goes on you will see a steady improvement.

5. Enjoy yourself. This internet marketing tip is just as important as the others. All too often, we get hung up on things that don′t really matter in the bigger scheme of things. When that happens we tend to get frustrated and stressed out. There will be times when things don′t seem all that easy. When that happens, remind yourself that you are doing something amazing…you are an internet marketer!

Following these few simple internet marketing tips will help your business do better. Of course, just reading them once won’t do any good. It’s up to you to actually follow through and make them happen, you′ll be glad you did.

 

Technorati Tags: Internet Marketing, internet marketing tip

It doesn’t matter if your business is online or off, no matter what type of business you have you will need one thing to make it a success: customers. When talking about an online business those customers are your website visitors, or traffic.

To get a steady stream of qualified traffic to your internet marketing site you’ll want to use several different methods to get traffic, some of these methods are free to use and some will take time but the more weapons you have in your marketing arsenal, the more success you will have with your business.

Here is a short breakdown of some of the most common methods as well as the pros and cons of each kind:

1. Article Marketing.  This is one of the best ways for someone to get started because it’s totally free to do but it’s very effective.  With this method all you do is write an informative article centered around your product or service than submit that article to an article directory online. When writing your article you will use one keyword phrase  (pick a phrase that gets at least 1,500 searches a month but that has less than 10,000 competitors)  and use that phrase 3 – 5 times throughout the article. Your article should be between 250 – 500 words in length.

The one downside to this method is that it does take time and you will need a lot of articles. One or two won’t do it, think more like 50 or more. You can always find someone else to write the articles for you if the idea of writing that many articles gives you hives.

2. Email marketing. To do this you will need to get an auto-responder. This is a service  that will allow visitors to sign up to your newsletter list, they are giving you permission to email them so you aren′t spamming them. You can send them helpful information over a period of time and build a relationship with them.

Then, on occasion, you can send them an email recommending that they buy a certain product or service (a product or service that  you’re an affiliate for so when they buy you will receive a commission). As long as most of the emails you send them actually provide them with some quality information and they aren′t all sales pitches, this method works exceptionally well. The only downside is that it does take time to build a list and you already need a steady stream of traffic to your website, this method doesn′t really build your traffic.

3. Search Engine Optimization. This is simply a way to add some keywords to certain areas of your website to make them more ‘search engine friendly’. Again, it relies on you picking out the keywords that people will search for when looking for your product or service.

Then you incorporate those keywords in certain parts of your website. It’s not really that hard, but it is something you will need to learn how to do, or hire someone to do it for you.  This method works great and it’s free (unless you hire someone) but again, it does tend to take a little time to see the results.

For anyone who is just starting out I highly recommend you stay away from using paid methods such as Pay Per Click (PPC).  PPC tends to have a very steep learning curve and you will have to pay as you learn which means a lot of money going out and very little, or none, coming back in. If you want to use PPC wait until the other methods are making money for you than reinvest some of those profits into a PPC campaign.

Getting traffic to your internet marketing site is job one for most internet business owners, use one or more of the  tips I’ve given you and you can get a lot of great, quality traffic to your website for free which will really expand your profit margin!

Technorati Tags: Article Marketing, earch Engine Optimization, Internet Marketing Site

The importance of internet marketing cannot be overstated. Whether your business is online or off, grasping the concepts of marketing online will help you propel your business to ever higher levels. The good thing is that many of the techniques you can use online are very inexpensive, or even free, to use and they can be used whether your business is an online or offline business.

Having said that though don’t think that it′s all sweetness and light. Learning how to effectively harness the huge resources of the internet and put it to work for you will take a little time and practice and that should be step one.

Find a course that can teach you the basics of marketing online. Your first order of business will be to learn how to drive targeted traffic to your website. Without traffic, or customers, you won’t have any type of business for very long.

There are many ways of driving traffic to a website and many of them are completely free.   For example, you can use article marketing to get extremely targeted visitors to your website… all for free. All you have to do is determine what keywords to target

(I’ll give you a hint, you want a keyword phrase that has at least 1,500 searches a month and no more than 15,000 competitors). Once you’ve got your keywords you just have to write an article and include those keywords three to five times in the article. Once it′s written you can submit the article to the article directories where it will be published for free.

As long as you follow the article directories terms of service you will get published. This isn’t like submitting a book to some New York publisher and getting turned down over and over again. Follow the rules and get published, it really is that easy.

Another great technique for getting a lot of very qualified visitors to your website for free is with search engine optimization or SEO. This is just a way of using carefully chosen keywords in the code of your website so the search engines can find your site. It′s really not that hard to do and you can do it yourself in most cases.  Just take a little time to learn the basics and you’ll be good to go (you can learn more in depth techniques if you want, but the basics are all you need for now).

More and more online marketers are realizing the benefits of using a blog platform for their website, and you should too. This is an excellent way to get a high search engine ranking and it′s all because you can quickly and easily add new content to your blog. When you do this you will be rewarded by higher rankings because you are giving the search engines what they want, fresh content.

All of these techniques can help you drive traffic to your website, it doesn’t matter if your business is online or offline, you still need to know how to drive targeted traffic to your website and that′s the importance of internet marketing. Take some time to learn these techniques, or hire someone who does and will do it for you, and you can really improve your bottom line.

Technorati Tags: Internet Marketing, Marketing Online, online marketers