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Links And Traffic :: Seo-services
Link Building For Search Engine Rankings Is A Proven Concept
We have been building links for ourselves since 1999, and for our clients since 2001. Along the way, we have learned many
lessons about using one-way inbound links to drive our search rankings and to drive targeted traffic to our websites.
Where most people fail in their link building campaigns, is that they tend to believe that PageRank is the all-encompassing
purpose of link building. It is not.
The truth is that Link Building is simply one element in an overall marketing plan. A well-designed website
marketing plan will be focused on generating traffic and converting traffic to sales.
Any Website Not Focused On Sales Conversion Is Doomed To Fail
There are few one-stop service providers. Many people mistakenly believe that their website designer is also well
versed in web programming and writing effective sales copy. But, as in real life, the world is a diverse place filled with
specialists of all Kinds.
In our world, we see three specialists who will be essential to creating a website that will convert traffic to sales in an
efficient manner:
- Visual Designer - The visual designer will lay out the
website in a visually attractive manner. We only require visual designers or website designers to build us a template for our
websites. We always use a template within a Content Management System (CMS) that operates our websites.
- The Webmaster / Website Programmer - Our webmaster has
skills as a PHP programmer. The programmer has built a Content Management System (website software) that we can literally
apply to every website we own. (Our CMS is a custom design. As an example, many webmasters utilize Joomla as the CMS they
provide for their clients.) The beauty of a well-designed CMS is that if you decide you want to add special functionality to
your website, that added functionality can often be programmed into your existing CMS.
- The Sales Copywriter - In order to write sales copy
that will be effective in closing sales for your website, it requires a writer who specializes in writing content designed to
sell products or services. Just because your kid writes short stories, does not mean that he can also write effective sales
copy. Shoot. I am a professional writer by trade, but I have hired many professional copywriters to help me with sales copy
on my websites.
What it boils down to is that if you intend to sell products or services, there are writers who have trained specifically in
selling products and services through the written word. But, your sales copywriter is frequently at a loss to how to actually
build a website or to program that website. That is why it is important to understand the roles of specialists in building a
profitable website.
Website Marketing Plans Essentials
- Your Products and Services - What are you selling?
- Your Target Market - Who is most likely to buy what
you are selling?
- Why Do They Buy - Why do people buy what you are
selling? The professional marketer understands that people buy goods and services, based on their emotional reasons, then
they justify their purchase with the logic-side of their brain. If you are selling income opportunities, people buy because
they hate their job or want a better life for their families. If you understand the reasons why people buy, you can build
your marketing around your customer's mindset.
- Where Are Your Customers - Online, people tend to
visit different kinds of websites. If you understand what your target audience does when they are online, you are better
prepared to reach into their world with your sales message.
For example, people who buy performance automotive parts hang out on websites and in forums where they can gather and share
their learnings with like-minded individuals. People who seek love tend to hang out in chat rooms and talk to their friends
online.
- How Are You Going To Reach Your Customers - What kinds
of advertising can you employ on your behalf to attract your target audience to your website? The important word in the
previous sentence is attract.
You can pop into a forum and drop a link to your website, but that will not "attract" customers to your website. In fact,
dropping an out-of-place link in a forum might piss off more people than it impresses. Looking for an excuse to drop a link
to your website is a fool's approach to link building.
Those who are more successful in attracting visitors do so, by employing methods designed to "attract" readers. Advertise in
publications where your potential customers are hanging out. If you have to pay for that advertising, pay for it. If you are
really clever, you might take the time to figure out if there is a way that you can advertise somewhere without paying for
the advertisment. It's not impossible, but it is not always easy.
- How Will You Ensure That People Buy Your Offerings -
This is where the good sales copywriter comes into play. Up until this point, we have been talking about what you need to do
to get customers to your website. Now we must look at what is required to close the sale. Your copywriter will present your
sales copy in a way that addresses the first five steps in these Website Marketing Plan Essentials.
- Payment Processes - In the early days of the Internet,
many customers were dropped in the actual sales pages of websites. Even today, I imagine there remains a lot of what has
often been called, "shopping cart abandonment". It is essential to make the "buying process" as easy as possible for your
customers.
- After The Sale, Customer Service - In my case, since I
offer a lot of services, After The Sale is as important as any other element in the process. Allowing the customer to remain
satisfied with their purchase decision is essential to repeat business and referrals. Recently, I bought my first new car.
Having been satisfied with my used Saturns, I purchased a new Saturn to replace my old one. The Saturn dealership has been
very good at follow-up and making sure that we remain happy with our purchase.
Website Advertising Takes Many Forms
Remember what I said at the beginning of this page? "Link Building is simply one element in an overall marketing
plan."
More accurately, "Link Building is simply one element in
advertising, which is one element in an overall marketing plan."
In essence, a marketing plan shows how a business is going to make money. An advertising plan shows what methods the business
will use to deliver customers to the store or the website. And on the Internet, search engine marketing is part of
advertising, and Link Building can help a business position themselves in the search engines.
If it seems like I am trying to draw the really BIG picture, that is because I am.
Do-It-Yourself search engine marketers must understand the really BIG picture to be successful.
After all, out of all of the billions of websites currently available on the Internet, only ten
websites will occupy page one of the natural search listings in any search engine.
Diversify Your Thinking To Uncover Opportunities
Most website owners make the mistake of thinking that their search marketing should only focus on a half dozen keywords. We
have one website that ranks for more than 150 keyword phrases. We have targeted the advertising for this website to target
better than two dozen keyword phrases.
Singular and plural keywords have no distinction in Yahoo and MSN, but Google does serve up different results for singular
keyword phrases than what they do for plural keyword phrases. So when one undertakes link building activities for the purpose
of influencing the search engines, it is important to target both singular and plural variations in Google.
Providing your website a variety of keywords for which you rank will help your sales over the long run. There are two reasons
why this is an advantageous approach:
- Don't Put All Your Eggs In One Basket - Search
engine rankings are always fluid. If your competitors decide to knock your website out of the top ten results for your
keywords, then resting on your laurels will leave your website on page three of the search results. If the websites linking
to yours lose their value in the eyes of the search engines, then your website is bound to slide in the results. The search
engines may simply change their algorithms, leaving your website high and dry in the search rankings for keyword phrases that
you used to rank well.
When your website ranks well for dozens of keyword phrases, if the search engines drop your website's rank in connection to
one keyword phrase, it will impact in your website's traffic in a much smaller way.
- Not Everyone Thinks Exactly Like You Do - Let's look
at how someone might search for a real estate office in Tampa Bay, Florida as an example. What would you type into the search
engines to locate this example business?
The search engine's user may type in: Tampa Bay real estate office; Tampa Bay Florida real estate office; Tampa Bay FL real
estate office; Tampa Bay Fla real estate office; Tampa Fla real estate office; Tampa FL real estate office; Tampa Florida
real estate office; then they may substitute "agent" for "office", or they may even put the geographical information after
the "real estate office". If we were to continue with this example, we would be looking at 24 possible keyword combinations.
If we add the plural of "agent" to this scenario (agents), then we will be looking at 36 keyword combinations.
There Is A Time And Place For Everything
When advertising a business, the constant challenge is to get the business' advertising message in front of the right
people at the right time. An advertising message needs to be seen by the people most likely to buy what you are selling
at the very time they are looking for your product or service.
There are literally hundreds of ways to get your sales message seen on the internet, in millions of different locations on
the Internet. The search engines are just one method of getting your message to your customers.
Believe me or not, a business can survive and thrive without good search engine placement. But good search engine
placement can significantly enhance the traffic and sales that a website can generate.
With or without the help of the search engines, a business must get its' marketing message within its' potential customers'
line of sight, when the potential customer is looking for it.
Herein lies the secret to successfully marketing a product or service
online.
Inbound Links Contribute To How Well A Website Can Rank In The Search
Engines
If anyone tells you that inbound links alone, generated through only one method, can move your website to the top of the
search engine results, be aware that they likely have something to sell you.
No SEO provider can guarantee any website a top ranking in the search engine results. Sure, they might be able to influence
how well your website ranks through their methodology, but they cannot guarantee specific placement results. If they suggest
that they can guarantee you certain rankings, run away.
Many webmasters fail to take advantage of their own internal linking to influence how well they rank in the search engines.
Links on one's own website can impact how well the website ranks in the search engines. So, use where you can a variety of
keywords in the links on your own website to influence how well your website can rank for your keywords. Always take
advantage of what you can do on your own website.
Most linking services on the Internet can serve only one or two linking methods. As above, when we were discussing the
variety of specialists needed to build your website, there are also a variety of specialists that may be needed to do their
part to influence your overall placement in the search engines.
We primarily use article marketing to influence
our own search rankings, but be aware that article marketing is not the only method we use to build inbound links to our
websites.
This is important. Never use only one method to develop your inbound links. Google at least has gotten wise to
this.
Just as you should use a variety of keyword phrases to advertise your business, you should also use a variety of methods to
generate those links.
For our own sites, we rely upon article marketing, blogging, signatures in forums, social bookmarking, referrals,
recommendations, references, reviews, link baiting, testimonials on other sites, etc.
It is imperative that you also use more than one kind of inbound
links development to build your website's linking portfolio.
Developing A Variety Of Inbound Links From A Variety Of Sources
As we indicated before, there are few one-stop service providers on the Internet, especially when it comes to Link
Building or Search Engine Optimization.
To help you generate a solid range of effective linking for the
promotion of your website, we have researched other companies in the SEO Link Building industry, and we have established
relationships with them to be able to offer you a wider range of Linking Services.
There is not a single company we have found that can offer the perfect, one-size-fits-all solution to good search engine
placement, but many of these companies are the very best in their niche.
Without Any Further Ado, We Recommend:
- 3-Way Reciprocal Links -
Reciprocal links receive a discounted link value by Google's search algorithm. But at this time, Google is not yet tracking
3-way links. Through this system, Google sees that Site A has a link to Site B; Site B has a link to Site C; and Site C has a
link to Site A. Within Google's current algorithm, all three of these links are treated as one-way links.
For only $47.00 per month, you can receive 250-three way links per website, for up to 50 websites.
- BlognList provides Reviews on High Quality,
Well Promoted, and Established Blogs - BlognList offers six packages, offering a minimum of 10 Original Reviews and a
maximum of 60 Individual Reviews that can generate anywhere from about 35 contextual links to more than 210 contextual links.
(All blogs are on different Class C IP Addresses)
- Blogging Service - This service requires a service contract for six months. You have heard many people suggest that the best-run blogging campaign requires for someone to post to their blog at least five days per week. But the question is, how many of us truly have enough time to post to a blog, five days per week?
This service will set up a search-friendly blog, under a custom WordPress blog template, and it will post unique and original content to your blog, five days per week, for the life of your subscription to the service. The blog poster will also create deep-links into your primary domain from your blog, hosted either on your own domain, or from a domain set up host your blog and to serve your specific SEO needs.
- Original Website Content - If you need someone to write sales copy for your website, then you will need another kind of writer. But, if you need unique and original content to place on your website as Spider Food (content that search engines love and want to crawl), then this program can help you to develop the informational content that the search spiders will love to highlight in their search results.
- Hand Submission to Link Directories - Link Directories have their place in the world as another method to increase the variety of websites that link to yours. While the overall value of Link Directories is minimal, they will serve you well in establishing a varied Link Portfolio. This service reflects hand submission to link directories, including up to 750 directories who have a track-record of approving links quickly, and up to 500 directories that accept Deep Links.
- Article Marketing from The Phantom Writers - The Phantom Writers is one of the first companies online to have offered article marketing services. (The Phantom Writers is owned by Bill Platt, who also owns this website.) While many people use The Phantom Writers for the development of inbound links from third-party websites, it continues to serve its clients best, by getting the client articles into ezines and newsletters that can generate thousands of targeted visitors in a few days, from the single publication of an article. Through The Phantom Writers, an article might be published in dozens of ezines or newsletters that have thousands of well-targeted and interested readers.
For Your Success,
Bill Platt - owner
LinksAndTraffic.com
Links And Traffic :: Seo-services
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