Social Media is removing some of the road blocks for people to share more stuff with others. The easier it is to do the things we want to do, the more it will be done.

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How to Use Media for Creative Link Building

Much of the content we consume on a daily basis is text-based. As an SEO specialist, you're likely accustomed to associating link bait with the written word %u2014 if you come up with a spectacular article, chances are that you'll earn a few backlinks to those posts.

Written posts are not the only kind of link bait out there. Recently there seems to have been a surge of sites using single image posts, animation or unique videos to entice visitors to spread their message. The interesting thing is in how they spread that message using seemingly grey hat methods. Like it or not, the premise apparently falls within Google's Terms of Use, as there are some popular sites using the concept that have managed to avoid the ban-hammer.

The Concept

The post includes two sections: the media element itself and the code for the visitor to embed the media on their own page. The key is that the code to embed the media includes one or more backlinks back to the site in question.

With such direct control over the link text being used, it's easy to see how a site has a chance to manipulate their rankings with even a modestly successful viral campaign.

Grey Hat or Not?

Interestingly, this is not a new premise, nor is the question of how this may make Google raise an eyebrow. In 2008 Matthew Inman, formally of SEOMoz, began creating widgets for his online dating site JustSayHi.com. After taking a short quiz, visitors were encouraged to copy code and place badges on their sites. As you can imagine, embedded within that code were backlinks.

Eventually those backlinks started pointing to off-topic and spammy sites, and Google took notice, dropping them from the SERPs completely.

Now, however %u2014 two years later %u2014 the site has been rebranded as Mingle2.com, and is doing just fine with a Pagerank of 5. More to the point, the same team started a second site at OnePlusYou.com, complete with a new set of widgets, and they're also doing just fine with a Pagerank of 5.

How Important is Relevancy?

In the explanation of his side of the story Matthew mentions conversations with Google about the importance of keeping the links and widgets relevant to the site being linked to. If I run a site that sells monkey chow, that widget had better be about monkey chow, and any links back to my site should be monkey chow related.

That no longer seems to be the requirement.

Now my monkey chow site can create a widget about anything, as long as the links back to my site are still monkey chow related. Here are three sites with great Pagerank offering media for you to repost that has nothing to do with the topic of the site:

• Atom.com, PR of 7
• OnlineSchools.org, PR of 4
• OnePlusYou.com, PR of 5

As long as you don't link to other domains, and make sure you use relevant keywords in the backlinks, the current rules seem to indicate that Google doesn't have a problem with this technique %u2014 regardless of the topic of the media you use.

How to Implement it Yourself

You've heard enough of the moral ambiguity, you'd like to try it yourself. The biggest step is actually creating the media element you want to spread. Actually applying the embedding code is not difficult.

Coming up with the concept should be your biggest priority. Ideally it will have enough interesting content or humor that people will actively want to spread it. In a perfect world the topic of the media will conform to your site topic, as that will increase the likelihood of the backlinks you receive being relevant to your topic.

Humor topics seem to have more popularity %u2014 and will therefore have greater potential to go viral %u2014 but there's nothing wrong with a list of "Did you know?" style facts, with pictures to associate with it.

Creativity for the Uncreative

If you do not have the ability to create an image or video, consider hiring a creative person to produce your idea. There are several options, depending on they type of media you're interested in creating. For animation or an infographic type of video, I recommend posting the job offer at Toon Boom. Toon Boom is animation software, ideally suited for short animated videos.

You can also post a job requirement at AnimationForum.net.

For a static image, consider hiring a freelancer from a site like Guru.com. I recommend searching on the keyword "cartoon", as those will be the freelancers with the ability to create original artwork for your idea.

Applying the Embed Code

The key to implementing the embedding code is to develop the HTML you want your visitors to be pasting on your behalf, and then run that code through a free HTML encode utility. Here's an example of the embedding code without the encoded HTML.

Here's the HTML that we want our visitors to copy/paste:

So after we push that code through the HTML encoding filter and place it in the input field, we have the following:

<b>Embed:</b><br><input onfocus="this.select()" value="&lt;img src=&quot;

&quot; width=&quot;500&quot;/&gt; &lt;div style='border-top:1px solid #343f43; padding:5px 0 7px 0; text-align:center; width:500px; background:#000; color:#fff; font: bold 10px verdana, sans-serif;'&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yourdomain.com&quot; style=&quot;color:#c1ddf2; margin:0 5px;&quot;&gt;Your Keyword&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/sub-page.php&quot; style=&quot;color:#c1ddf2; margin:0 5px;&quot;&gt;Another Keyword&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/another-page.php&quot; style=&quot;color:#c1ddf2; margin:0 5px;&quot;&gt;Yet Another&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;">

That all reads like nonsense, but your web developer shouldn't have a problem implementing the concept.

Wrapping it Up

It's unclear if Google will continue to turn a blind eye to this approach to backlink building, or if they're disregarding it just for the time being. It's clear that many well-ranking and respected sites are using this idea though, and that should be good enough for most of us.

There are many creative ways to implement this premise, and the sites that come up with the most unique ideas will likely be the ones to profit from it the most.

Will Reinhardt is the administrator at SEO Keyword Ranking, where he helps professionals track their keyword rankings over time.

Tips for Promoting New Blogs

TopRank's recent Blogging and SEO survey of in-house, agency and independent marketing, advertising and PR professionals revealed that 95% of respondents incorporate blogs as part of their online marketing mix. Nearly 88% have successfully increased measurable SEO objectives as a direct result of blogging.

Thousands of new blogs are started by companies and individuals each day. Yet getting a blog set-up, optimized, and launched are just the first steps. No one will know you have a blog to read, subscribe or link to unless you take an important next step: promotion. There are plenty of places you can promote and market a new blog:

• Add A Link - If it's a company blog, or if it's attached to another site, add a link to the blog from the main navigation on the parent website.
• Create A Badge - On the main website, add a badge to the homepage, or sidebar, that promotes the the blog. Images are a good way to catch a visitors attention.
• Email - Add a link to the blog in your email signature.
• Newsletter - Announce the blog in the company newsletter.
• Network - Announce the blog to your Twitter followers, Facebook fans, Linked in connections and any other social networks that you are apart of.
• Press Release - If you feel that the blog is important enough to support a press release, put one out.
• Submit - Submit the blog to blog & feed directories.
• Share - Share your blog with co-workers, friends and others in your network. You never know when they might promote it for you.
• Link - One way to get other bloggers to notice you is to link to them. Summarize someone else's long blog post, expand upon someones shorter post, or just write your thoughts on a topic that someone else wrote about and link back to the original post.
• Give Away - If it's a product blog, run a promotion on the blog giving away one of your products. Sometimes the value that can come out of giving something away can be more beneficial than all the items above.
• Guest Post - If there are other blogs in your industry, ask around and see if they'd allow you to guest post for them. In return, you'd get a link back to your blog in your profile, or post, on their site.
• Ask - Tap into the social networks within the industry you're trying to reach and ask them what they're interested in. Here's an example of a post that did just that on Twitter for this blog. Show interest in the interest of your audience and they'll pay more attention and share your content.

Probably the best promotion tactic is to create good content, post often and share. The more content a blog has, the greater the footprint it has on the web in terms of pages to appear in search results and to link to from other blogs/web sites. Work on creating a posting schedule and according to resources and reader interest, try to get one to five posts out a week.

Build it and they will come doesn't work with web sites and it certainly doesn't work with blogs. Promote relevant and useful content to create awareness and the quality of your information will propel your brand to a much larger audience.

 

9 SEO upgrades you can make right now

January 26, 2010 by ian

SEO is really, really hard. Not because it's mysterious: If you can't do the math there are always smarty pants out there analyzing the algorithms. You can always just read their stuff and learn.

No, it's hard because it's nearly impossible to figure out where to start.

Here are the 10 site upgrades I usually look at first. They're relatively easy and, if you need 'em, you'll see solid results:

1. Put your brand at the end of your title tag. Search engines place more weight on phrases that come at the beginning of the title tag. Hopefully, you already rank for your company name - put the brand at the end! Time required: 30 minutes.
2. Get yourself a link on Joeant.com and BOTW.org. Why not? They're links. Links are good. Time required: 45 minutes.
3. Eliminate links. For example: If you have a 'terms of service' and 'privacy policy' link on every page of the site, consolidate them. Combining the two links helps your site because each page passes more authority: If each page is a bucket, then you're reducing the holes in the bucket. More water comes out each hole. Time required: 1 hour.
4. Consistently link to your home page. Link to your home page to www.site.com, not www.site.com/index.html or other randomness. This is canonicalization 101. Time required: 2 hours, max.
5. Add ALT attributes. Make sure every product image, logo and navigation button has clear, descriptive ALT text. Time required: As much as you like, or 30 minutes.
6. Extend your domain reservation. Search engines look at the expiration date on your domain name. If it expires in 10 years, you could earn more trust and rank higher. Go extend your domain reservation to 10 years. Time required: 10 minutes.
7. Set up Google Webmaster Tools. Look at Diagnostics >> HTML Suggestions. Fix any duplicate title or description meta tags, and insert any missing ones. Search engines are pretty anal retentive. They love that stuff. Time required: 1 hour.
8. Use Google Webmaster Tools again. Look under Crawl Errors >> Not Found. Any broken links from other sites? Set up a 301 redirect to the right page. That'll get back the link authority you lost due to the 404 error. It's instant link building. Time required: Varies wildly.
9. Download Xenu Link Sleuth. Crawl your site and then save a sitemap from the result. Upload it and tell the search engines where it is. Check sitemaps.org for the details. Time required: 1 hour.

There you go. SEO upgrades, 7 hours or less.