At one point or another every webmaster learns that to actively progress any website, you need to have a steady flow of increasing backlinks. Inevitably, the next and most obvious question is how to do so, and how to do it in a legitimate manner?
There are several practices for building backlinks and none of them are quick or have a 100% success rate, meaning they are not always approved and indexed. With that being said, many webmasters consider paying for backlinks because they don’t have the time or the drive to do it themselves.

Main Criteria For Buying Backlinks

• Quality: A company that offers 1000 backlinks in a day for a low price might sound great, but there is a reason for the good news. The backlinks will most likely be from a less that reputable source, with little traffic and next to no rank. In fact, bulk spam backlinks will do nothing but damage your website because there is no balance in their quality after that.
• Time: The amount of time the SEO service is able to provide the backlinks is important, but faster is not better in this case. You want to have your links spread out through a length of time and at a slightly inconsistent rate. You don’t want it to look scheduled or bot like, so how they time at which they build the backlinks is very important.
• Origin: Try to find where the backlinks are coming from. You might want to know the domains they are coming from and how many from each. The overall strength of the source domain is equally as important, if it has a high Pagerank only, then it looks nice but its not worth much real SEO value.

Once you have found your reputable source for building your backlinks, there is one last factor and arguably the most important. Study the most recent Google updates, see if you can spot any changes that might point one way or the others as to what kind of backlinks to buy or how many. Google releases updates on a fairly regular basis so it’s not to hard to keep in touch with their changes.

Every backlink that is placed on Wikipedia must be approved with the moderator of the page. It needs to be beneficial to the Wikipedia community, the category and the webpage it is being displayed on. If the link isn’t necessary or just provides duplicate content then it will be deleted.

Every backlink within Wikipedia is a no-follow link, however it does affect your websites SEO (Search Engine Optimization) more than a traditional no-follow backlinks because of the authority of Wikipedia and the rarity of them approving out bound links. Here are the steps for getting a backlink from Wikipedia, but its not quick, it takes time and effort.

1. Join Wikipedia as an editor.
2. Browse through the topics your knowledgeable on and do some editing useful for the community.
3. Once you’ve become a trusted editor on relevant pages you can start droping a few links here and there, but they have to be useful, if they aren’t they will be removed. You will probably loose your account or be demoted.
4. Maintain a constant awareness on the pages you have left links on, if you keep it up to date your more likely to be able to get away with more.

Attracting Traffic

Content is the key factor in StumbleUpon and whether or not your page will attract readers. The baffling part is what to write, but there are certain articles and bits of content that tend to attract more visitors. Here’s a few key categories, regardless of content, that are sure to get you some hits.

• Top Lists: Top 10 or Top 5 lists are always a good bet for attracting a fair amount of StumbleUpon users.
• Photo Submission: There is a large photography community on this social network, so making elaborate galleries of high definitions is a sure way to generate alot of traffic.
• Online Tutorials: Step by step guides that help users complete specific tasks or teach various techniques.
• Videos: Videos tend to attract the most amount of users within StumbleUpon. If you find or make an intruding video then you should be able to generate a few thousands hits easily.

Your Following

Like every other social network, there is an option to follow the users who have submitted interesting and informative content. The more users you follow the more followers you will potentially generate. Many users tend to follow back the people that follow them. If you want to attract followers without following along, then an exceptional profile page is going to be key. Make sure you don’t leave any fields blank, that is just wasted space that could further enhance your profile.

Make sure you don’t spam your followers or over follow, if you follow to many people in one day you can easily draw a red flag. Respect your following as well, don’t spam them with mass amounts of links or the same thing over and over again. As long as your likable online and promote solid content, you should have trouble building a reputable Stumble Upon profile for generating traffic.

Increase Your Online Marketing

• Search Engine Optimization: Increasing your websites search engine visibility by complying with all of the search engine standards for optimum quality. This can be any where from keyword stuffing to ad placement, the algorithm that Google uses is enormously complex making it very hard to keep up with all the rules. Never the less, attempting to play by all the rules is best, braking them often results in penalization.
• Social Media Optimization: Making your website a social network friendly website is key to your visitors and returning traffic. Make sure users are able to use the basic Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, etc., this way they are able to share your information with other visitors quickly. Quickly is the key, the more lag time there is the less likely your visitor is to share.
• Social Networking: This is all about establishing a following and building your reputation. The more active you are on social networks, the more people will visit your site. The longer your heavily involved, the more you will expand within the network. Long time users of social networks often become power users, there have been many names for them; Power Diggers on Digg or Squidoo Giants on Squidoo.
• Email Marketing: Start getting your visitors to sign up for your weekly or monthly newsletter via their email address can be useful. It tends to be a great way to not only drive traffic, but identify your interested followers, rather than just a casual visitor. Offering various updates on your product or topic on a weekly or monthly basis can help generate a big following base. This is all based on the quality and interest of your content.
• Press Release: A long time favorite for webmasters when it comes to driving traffic toward your website or product. Releasing reviews or updates about your product to various press release sites has the advantage of gaining a fair amount of referral traffic based on active readers.

The Impact Of Outbound Links

It’s impossible to determine how much each link is worth from Google’s point of view, so no one can give a simple answer. Webmasters can only speculate based on their own research, but its clear that a high amount of OBL’s has a negative impact on your SEO (Search Engine Optimization), so the exact opposite would seem obvious. However, no outbound links at all is harmful because it looks unnatural for a website to have no links leading away and many links leading in.

Before you start linking as many sites as possible you need to be picky and do some research. You need to think about which sites are more valuable in terms of linking and SEO authority, they also need to be in the same niche market as your website. The OBL’s should all be linking to useful websites that pertain to the content oriented around the link. Meaning, a flash games website should not like to a free auto insurance quoting web-tool.

Some websites will not be able to avoid the problem with mass linking, web directories, forums and affiliate marketing websites have all been known carry this burden.

In the end, it’s about useful content and drawing user interest. If you have content that’s interesting and unique, you should have no trouble generating traffic. Just keep in mind that a favorable ratio for strong SEO, two interior links to every one outbound link is maximum, anything above that looks to fabricated and can lower your ranks.

Can Directories Provide Any Power?

Whether or not a directory has enough power to spread depends on how well its developed and whether or not it is spammed and over used. A basic rule of thumb for directory submissions is that free directories don’t offer much value. The majority of the time when a webmaster submits a free directory listing it is nofollow and contains very little value compared to the 30 seconds it took to submit it. Not to mention that free directories are often the targets for auto submissions software designed for mass directory linking.

Reciprocal directory links offer a great deal more than the free directory link. They are usually dofollow and assist in your Pagerank and keyword positions. Paid links are usually the best to get if you decide to really invest in your site, they are always dofollow and usually feature on the front page or top of their respected categories.

It Was Good While It Lasted

There is another fault to the general crowding and over usage of the directories, and that is the search engine adaptation to the their role in the online world. A little while back, when directories were undiscovered, webmasters did a great job and seized the opportunity so fast that search engines flagged it shortly after. This lead to the devalue of directories in general. Not to mention well populated directories have an outrageous OBL (Out Bound Links) number, which devalues every link the higher it climbs.

In the end, directory links still offer value to webmasters, it just requires a bit more effort on the submitters side. You need to pick and choose your placement as well as plan ahead. Figure out a budget if need be, for guaranteed paid directory listings that can improve your ranks. Try to find a reputable website that has a direct niche relation with the website your referring for submission. Just remember not to spam hundreds daily, most directories operate with some security or anti-spam protection and flag spammers fairly quickly.

Tips For Updating Your Website

Before you start, you need to backup everything, make a full site backup via your FTP (File Transfer Program). This way if anything is corrupt or goes wrong, you can restore your site from where you started.

• Tracking Traffic: Track your traffic and try to appeal their likes. You can find what posts they view more or what keywords are targeted the most. Then plan strategy to capitalize on your findings, so you can drive more traffic.
• A New Look: Give your website a bit of a facelift with some new images or useful features. A new logo is always a good way to attract some new views, any change that is unique will draw the attention of viewers.
• Load Speed: Most people build a website and fine tune their load speed, once. Your website does get bigger over time and with that your load speed increases. Using a load speed test is helpful for identifying exactly what is slowing your load speed. This will also help your rank and SERP’s (Search Engine Rank Position) within every search engine.
• New SEO: Search engine optimization doesn’t stay the same forever, in fact its quite the opposite. This term, SEO, is a complex system of lines and boundaries that every website must follow and in return the website is rewarded with high ranks and traffic. Fall outside these boundaries and your ranks will drop with traffic right behind it. Do a bit of research every now and then, so you stay updated with how Google see’s your site and not just your viewers.
• Social Media Marketing: There are always new sites to make your mark and get a backlink if possible. Browse around the web and find new and upcoming websites that might offer traffic for usage. Look for new social networks, content sharing networks, social bookmarking sites and online directories.
• Internal Promotion: Doing something nice for your following/subscribers. Release a news letter about new, helpful features you’ve added or expanded. Offer a free E-book or small service to entice your users to share the information and opportunities your website provides.

Getting Started

Squidoo starts with your custom page containing your niche topic and some various information. The information presented on your page are called “Lenses” and they are known for capturing high ranking SERP’s (Search Engine Rank Position) within Google.

To start yourself off, look at some high ranking Lenses and see what they look like, try to mimic their first style for your first time around. Then find out what works for you best after you get the hang of it. First thing to do is choose your topic, which is basic, what ever you submit is going to contain a topic. The keywords come next and they are considerably harder because they contain an inherent competition with other lenses. Keep in mind that your Lens URL will have the keywords contained in it, so you need to choose wisely.

Final Steps and Indexing

The next and really final step to the process in creating and publishing your Lens is to pack it with modules and information to keep your visitors interested. If your lucky you will get the attention of a “Squidoo Giant” and if that users pins and likes your Lens, you will get a major boost in traffic toward it. After you have published your Lens your can ping it using Squidoo’s ping tool, so its indexed by search engines.

The Facebook Timeline

Your probably well aware that Facebook has recently added a few key features to their websites social network, the biggest of them being the ‘Facebook Timeline‘. For the average user this is just another fancy looking feature that offers a few cool perks, but for online marketing professionals, this could be of some use.

Currently the timeline is only available to individual profiles and not company brand pages that utilize heavy marketing. However, Facebook has always released their new design and website changes in two phases. The basic users utilize the features and then the companies and advertisers are integrated later. This means you can almost count on online marketing integration into the Facebook Timeline update.

What To Expect

The timeline takes a users profile and turns it into a sleek, picture decorated page depicting the chronology of the users life and their activity on Facebook. Much of the timeline itself is automated with content, all appearing based on the algorithm that is intended for capturing your activity within Facebook. This usually pertains to pictures, events and other significant events that Facebook targets.

I would expect that Facebook would release a advertising based timeline similar to the personal profile oriented one. You would likely see similar features in terms of promotional offers, group affiliates, announcements, product releases, etc. You can probably expect some less business based material to be added to the timeline as well, such as new admins of the page or new supporters. With the Facebook Timeline also offering the unique advantage of going back in time to add a photo or edit an event. I’m sure the same can be said for a promotional or social event, something that they might sponsor or host.

There is no official release date as to when an advertiser friendly version of the Facebook Timeline will be released for public usage, but there aren’t a lot of reasons to hold it back. As previously stated, Facebook has been a long-time advocate of step-based releases for updates to features and other areas of the online social network.

DMOZ Links Are Powerful

DMOZ is known commonly as the Open Directory Project which started in the early 90′s and is one of the oldest sites on the web. Due to it’s age and authority a DMOZ backlink has a big impact on your  SEO (Search Engine Optimization), especially if your competition has them and you don’t. In that case you don’t have much of a choice, if your competition has one you will need one as well.

In order to get listed within DMOZ your website must first be following guidelines set by DMOZ in order to gain approval. The submission part is fairly easy, but all your information is checked and approved manually, so you need to be honest. DMOZ also gets numerous requests for website submissions daily, which can lead to some lag time before approval, a 2 week waiting period is normal.

Submission Take Time For Approval

Make sure your don’t keep re-submitting your website if you don’t see it approved right away, that will just lead to being labeled as spam. Just wait your turn and it will show up in time, as long as you follow their guidelines you shouldn’t have a problem getting approved. You can also check if you or your competition has a DMOZ link by using a specific DMOZ Backlink Checker.