Many large companies hire people to create a “link campaign”. The problem is that many companies don’t know what they need and the link builder in some cases only has one method of building links.

The most common link building method is link exchanges. Though search engines like Google frown on them, they can be an effective strategy for raising page rank. For some businesses, however, there simply aren’t a whole lot of people to exchange links with. The biggest problem I see on a regular basis is when people just link to whoever. The link may or may not be related and they always seem to link to a “link page” with reciprocals to either their homepage or back to their own link page. This is not the way to go.

You have other pages of your site. Targeting each page’s keywords with those back links will help you in the rankings. If you must exchange links, spread them throughout your site. Have the incoming links support other pages, not just your homepage. Also don’t exchange links with unrelated sites. These can cause your site to be incompletely crawled and in severe cases, get can you banned.

Exchanging links with other low PR and heavily reciprocal linking sites will not do you good in ranking well on the engines.The only exception occurs when you can link to a new site that is related and that youfeel will eventually have a high PR.In other words, sometimes getting in on the ground floor is a good idea.

Buying links is great, if you know where and how to buy them. Use the same rules as exchanging links above. Always make sure the site is related to what you offer. Don’t be afraid to buy a link on a site if you feel it will drive in quality traffic.

Article submissions are popular, and for good reason.Just write an article and submit it to article syndication sites. It’s highly effective and can be very useful if done correctly. I see many companies fail to take advantage of the anchor text in the articles and when they do it almost always goes straight to the homepage. I also notice a lot of poorly written articles. If you want your article to be placed on other sites or are planning to build your brand, a poorly written article will not help you.

There are many other ways of getting links, but these are the most common. Hopefully, this will leave you with the correct impression that linking is not all about quantity. It is about the quality of the links, the content around them, the pages they are on and the pages they link to.

Podcasting: Creating a podcast that discusses news, tips or information on your industry is great baiting tool. Making your podcast unique and consistent is the key to steady stream of new links.

Interviews: These are great. If you could interview someone well known in your industry, that would certainly be worth linking to. For an added boost, do the interview on your podcast and then transcribe it.

Awards: Awards are another way to bring in traffic, though you can’t (or at least shouldn’t) simply make up an award. It has to have criteria, high standards and most importantly, meaning. If you give awards to everyone who applies, your award will seem insignificant and unimportant. The upside is you can gain a lot of traffic and one way links from award winners.

Tools and games: These will always be popular. Create a new tool for your industry that is legitimately helpful or develop a game related to your industry that is either informative or amusing. Firefox or wordpress plugins will bring steady traffic for a long time.

Content: Content is the easiest of all to create. Articles and blog posts are a great way to go about linkbaiting. You need to use your imagination to make your post compelling. Keeping on top of news and current affairs will help you pick a topic that people are already interested in. There is nothing wrong with piggy backing on some top stories if it relates to what you do.

Video: The is becoming one of the fastest forms of link baiting, in my opinion. Creating a funny or informative video can create quiet a buzz.

Giveaways and contests: These are great for a quick boost in traffic. However, these are also short lived. Giveaways need to have an associated monetary value. Contests, unless they are monthly, will die along with the links after the contest is over.

Blogs and forums: These are usually overlooked as a form of linking baiting, but they are one of the earliest forms of link baiting. Nothing says “link to me” more than a forum or a blog. Proving they have something of interest for the readers.

Guest appearances: This is one I like to use. I like to exchange writings, interviews or ideas with other bloggers and podcasters. Let me post a post on your blog and you can post on mine for a cross promotion. It’s a great way to get a link as well. If you have a podcast, exchange advertisements with other casts along with a link on your podcast page.

Lists: List are very popular. Why? Well, because they are a list of something of value that people want, all in one place. I have a list of over 200 article submission sites to submit articles to, directories that you can submit your podcast to for free and free directories to get your site listed on. These are always my most often viewed posts.

Where to set your bait: Press releases and social networks are the best places to cast your line. Make an enticing headline and real in some hefty traffic.

If you try once a week to do some form of linkbaiting, by at least writing a topical post or putting together a lengthy list that readers will find useful, you will see a steady increase of traffic and hopefully links.

creating apage to put adsense on and to write articles. These are all very good ways for you to use your content. What you need to do iscreate not just content but Content That Works (CTW). This is something Icreated to help me keep my writing goals in mind.

CTW is content that either creates a buzz or is used to start a conversation,so to speak. It’s content that gets people involved in what you are writingIt could be positive, negative or neutral. It’s a way of thinking. How many times have you written an article just so you can submit it forbacklinks? I think just about everyone involved with SEO has at one time oranother. But how many of those articles gave people something to really talk about? Not too many, I would assume. The same goes for messageboards, blog posts and other places where you can use CTW.

We all know content spam is bad. But that doesn’t mean you can’t give people on a blog a reason to see your site. Who is the most popular person blogging in your field? I bet he receives a lot of hits. You can steal some of those hits and gain more readers for yourself. The key is to have knowledge of the topic and give people a reason to leave and see your site. It could be an article you wrote or a podcast you made related to the topic. Ifyour opinion differs from other bloggers and you can back it up, people will flock to your blog or site out of pure curiousity.

Articles are the best way to use CTW. I know we all have written some not so terrific articles. Why was that? Were you pressed for time, short on ideas or perhaps you just didn’t care? The more you care about what you are writing about, the better your article will be. What was the message? Their was a message, right? How attuned are you to what people in the industry you are writing for want to read? I wrote an article about how to spam Google and get away with it. It really had nothing to do with spam. The title alone, however, generated a lot of buzz. That article is one of the the most posted articles I have written to date. It not only created a buzz, but it created traffic. People on message boards discussed it. Some agreed with it, others hated it. The bottom line is, it served its purpose by creating buzz.

Do you frequent messageboard? Are your posts with CTW in mind? Anywhere youcan write something that other’s see is a place where you can potentially gain a new visitor, sale, listener or notoriety for yourself. All if these things are important. I know, we all want backlinks. We want high rankings and we want to brag that we are on the top of Google for our keyphrase. That’s fine. But, with every algorhythm change their is a risk of your methods not working quite as well as they use to. Or, maybe you get banned, or overrun by your competition. Whatever the case may be, as long as youuse CTW with everything you write, Google and all those other search engines can never take that away.

There is so much information available on SEO and SEM. Everywhere you turn there is another article on SEO. One thing I often notice is many people suffer from information overload. They try to read everything they can find and in many situations, they try everything they read. Some of that information is either outdated or ineffective. Some of these self SEO’ers simply don’t use what they read effectively. I have taken some of the most common mistakes and will explain them for you here. Hopefully, this will help you correct any problems on your site.

Keyword research: Many people have no idea that it’s even necessary. I have seen website owners attempt to optimize for key terms that do not even exist. One gentleman created a new product that no one has even heard of. The only marketing he was doing was SEO and some PPC. You can’t optimize for the product name only when no one has ever heard of your product. If no one has heard of it, how will they search for it? They won’t. The research needs to be done to determine what key phrases people would type to find what your product is offering or related to.

Bad web design: This one really gets to me. This is one I see more than any other. People hiring a web design firm or DIYing it before fully understanding what SEO is. The way most strictly online businesses begin is by someone deciding that they want to create a website online. Then they have one built. Then they learn about how to promote it and how search engines are used. The problem there is, if their site is not SEO friendly (meaning clean urls, not in frames, not 100% Flash and other search engine indexing problems), it will hurt their ability to rank well. Many people don’t find this out until after they have their site built. This can cost a new website owner a lot of money. Educated yourself. Do not rely on the web designer to tell you about SEO and what you need to know to have a SEO friendly site. Many web designers are just designers. They have no interest in what is SEO friendly or not. Do all your research before you have a site built and find a web design that can provide what you need for your site and the search engines.

Hidden text: This one still amazes me. That method hasn’t worked since Ebert sat next to Siskel. Why do people still try these old methods? They read old articles, blog entrees or message boards. They think doing things unnaturally will help them in the natural listings. If you don’ know this yet, you do now. It doesn’t work.

Repeating words too often: This one gets overlooked a lot. Let’s say for example you sold tickets. Now let’s say your menu is all HTML (links). Your menu may read something like this; Hockey tickets, Boxing tickets, Wrestling tickets and so on. Now if you have fifty events and you have tickets after every one, you could run into a lot of problems. Especially if you wanted to come up on the search engines on any phrase with the words tickets in it. There are a lot of other factors that would need to be considered as well, such as the length of content on the page, off site SEO, etc. If this was a typical site, it would hurt your rankings in the SERP’s.

This is just a small portion of problems I see. Hopefully, you can learn to avoid common SEO mistakes. Unless you are SEO savvy, it’s almost always better to hire a professional if you can afford to. I know that isn’t always possible. Also, try to get your information and tips from reliable sources. It will save you a lot of back tracking.

Keep in mind it can take anywhere from 2 weeks to a year or more to get listed. In order to be accepted, you need to meet their qualifications. Some of the qualifications are…

You can’t submit a site that is consists of mostly affiliate links.

You can’t submit an individual URL from the same site. For example if you submit www.abc.com you can’t submit www.abc.com/next-page

You can’t submit mirror sites. These are sites that are identical to another. (Same content, just different URL)

Do not submit a site that is “under construction” or only partially finished.

Your site can’t have any illegal content, child pornography, or advocate illegal activity.

How soon can you expect your site to be accepted into the directory? It can take anywhere form a a few weeks to a year or more. Why so long? Dmoz runs on the steam of volunteers. An editor for Dmoz must make an edit at least once every four months. So, if an editor does the minimum and your number 1000 on the list in his or her category, it may take a while…to say the least. Some editors are more active than others, so their level of commitment can greatly affect the process.

According to dmoz’s forum, only 31% of sites are submitted to the right category. How can you get listed faster? Make sure you pick the right category. If you are not sure what your category is, look at other sites in the directory and see where your competition is listed. What happens if you pick the wrong catergory? It will slow your sites’ approval. If an editor has the power to, he will reassign it. If not, it will be left un-reviewed until an editor with the power to move it does so. I also learned that if your site is not listed, 99% of the time it’s because your site lacks quality content or content period.

If you go to submit to a category and you see “Volunteer to edit this category”, that usually means there is no one assigned to that category you are applying to be in. That doesn’t mean it won’t be reviewed by someone higher up, but I am sure it will take even longer than usual. Oh, and if you are thinking about resubmitting every week, month or the rumored 3 months, don’t. I was told that if your site is in “queue” to be evaluated, resubmitting my cause your site to go to the back of the line. That means you’ll have to start from scratch again.

I know this seems like a long complicated process. The editors at dmoz have told me that people should submit their site and forget it.

You can check out their forums and speak with editors at http://resource-zone.com/forum/index.php, but don’t expect them to tell you the status of your submission. They won’t, and you will not get an email saying that you have been rejected or submitted. It seems like a lose, lose situation, but have patience. The best shot you have of getting listed faster is to be in a very non-competitive category or one that doesn’t have a lot of submissions or listings.

Unfortunately, just as with banner advertising, many people simply don’t know when and how to correctly market themselves online. Here is a perfect example; I had a listener from my podcast ask me if he should buy banner space on a web site recently. The site he wanted to advertise on was receiving 300,000 hits a day. The price was actually very reasonable. The problem was that it wasn’t his target audience. He was going to advertise on a site where the visitors were between 13 and 19. The product he was selling is geared towards consumers 21 and over.

Getting back to adsense… Adsense, in my opinion, shouldn’t be on sites that sell a product or service. If you owned a store front, you wouldn’t place your competitors sign in your window would you? Would you endorse them? What do you think it says to your visitors? It tells them a lot, including the fact that your service doesn’t make enough revenues to keep you from having to sell space. It also makes them wonder whether your products or services are of the best quality and gives them an open invitation to check out your competitors. It makes it look as though you are selling out your company and don’t take your own business seriously. Besides, would you make more on a sale or on a click? Google has drop the cost per-click pay out, meaning that no matter how cheap your items are or how much volume you move, you are still highly likely to make less money on a click.

You would be better off joining an affiliate program and place ads on your site that complement your service or product than allow ads that directly compete with you. That would come across as more of a service to your visitors. For that matter, just go to websites that offer services that complement yours and strike up a deal of some sort, even if it’s just a link exchange. The more you do for your visitors, the better off you will be. If contextual ads go this route, it may be worth it to have them on your site.

Same goes for PPC. I have seen so many do-it-yourself-ers waste money on bad keywords, poorly written ads and an overall misconception of how the process works. I wonder how much Google has made off of poor marketing efforts. People should either hire a professional or have a better understanding of how online marketing works. Just because a new form of advertising comes out doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea for your business. Don’t waste money on bad keywords or ads that will bring in traffic looking for something you don’t have or are loosely associated with. Not only will you waste PPC funds, you will also be remembered and avoided by those who may have a need for what you do offer in the future.

Matt Cutts recently stated on his blog that “if you were getting crawled more before and you’re trading a bunch of reciprocal links, don’t be surprised if the new crawler has different crawl priorities and doesn’t crawl as much”. Back in 2004, link exchanges were the “in” thing to do. Now, however, Google is aware of the possible arrangements (including the “triangle” exchange) and as a result, they hold little merit. Linking to bad neighbors or unrelated sites can have a negative effect on your site. Matt stated that owners should be careful regarding link exchange policies as it can be a risky practice that could affect your sites value in the long term. The same goes for buying links on related sites. When buying links, you should be using the no follow tag. This will help ensure the link will not be counted in a negative way. especially if buying from sites that are not related to yours. Fact: The Bigdaddy crawl looks more at inbound than outbound links. The quality of the links will determine how deep to crawl a site or if a site should be crawled at all!

What makes your site hard to crawl?

• Using Cookies
• Using Session Id’s
• Frameset can be indexed but there is room for improvement so becareful, not the best solution.
• Flash still should be accompanied with HTML text

How to make sure your site is indexed correctly?

• Use Google sitemaps
• Stay away from free hosting
• Using too much Java
• Mouseovers
• Over-designing your site

To see how your site looks to spiders, use a text based browser. If you can’t make out what is on the page, neither will the spiders. Making sites clean and useful is the goal. Too many effects, Java, flash and other fancy features can hinder your sites indexing.

Google has also stated they want to align themselves with sites that offer useful content to get links, so content is still king. Quality is more important than quantity.

Google is doing its best to make it so that webmasters cannot control the linking process. They want people to naturally want to link to you, whether it’s because you have a great message board, informative articles or quality related content. Google is trying to push sites that are relevant as it will positively affect the public’s view of their engine. So, before you buy a link, sell a link or try to find a sneaky way to build backlinks, try good old fashion web site marketing 101. When creating a site, give people a reason to want to come back! Too many marketers worry about bringing in visitors for that one time sale or visit. If they took the time to separate their site from the competition with helpful content, a great layout and easy navigation, they would have little trouble establishing links. If your site is informative and resourceful, people will find you and so will the search engines.

Since the site is new, PPC advertising is crucial. Organic listings garnered from proper SEO techniques take time to produce. Still, organic listings are preferred over PPC by the majority of web surfers, so it’s a bit of a surprise that the site is littered with subpar optimization efforts such as bolded keywords and other SEO strategies that haven’t been valid since Mr. Trump woke up next to Ivana. Over time, organic rankings earned through proper SEO implementations will bring in more quality leads and lessen the reliance on paid listings. Every business should have a plan for effective marketing from the outset, and whoever drew up this plan should be the next one to hear the words, “You’re fired”.

A search for airline tickets yielded no PPC results for www.gotrump.com. Perhaps Mr Trump is relying on the popularity of “The Apprentice” or other forms of advertising to make the site a success. Still, considering the comparison shopping nature of most web surfers, one needs to advertise on the net to be a valid contender. Most people rely solely on PPC ads and organic listings to find the products or services they will purchase when shopping online. Suppose Mr Trump placed an ad for the site in each episode of “The Apprentice”, which has an average weekly viewership of around 20 million. The last time I checked, that leaves well over 230 million Americans alone who would have no direct knowledge of the site even existing.

The purpose of this article is to teach people that anyone, even Donald Trump, can benefit from the use of SEO. This is why future web entrepreneurs need to be aware of the marketing avenues that are pertinent to the world wide web. All the money in the world won’t help if you don’t put it to good use. Avoid the aforementioned mistakes by incorporating an effective SEO strategy into your web based business. If you do so at the time the site is created, you will not only have a solid marketing plan but also save money by not having to implement SEO after the fact. Remember, just as in real estate, stocks, bonds and all business venues, the internet has an exclusive set of rules by which success and failure are governed. For a guy who has been successful in almost every type of business venture there is, there is little excuse for being ill prepared.