Inbound links can really help you get good natural search rankings for your website. There are hundreds of ways in which you can achieve this. Here are a few ideas for your link building campaign:

Fantastic content
Yes, fantastic content itself will eventually create natural inbound links to your site. If you are writing unique and unusual content and its what people want to hear about then your information will eventually pick up an audience. The search engines will rank it well and a regular audience will boost the rating.

Social Networking
Participating in social networking can raise awareness about your company and what it does. Extra links from sites like LindedIn, Facebook and Twitter can provide valuable traffic.  Many social networking sites allow people to search for content with particular keywords.

Blogging
Having a well frequented blog with lots of audience participation can create the desire to find out more about your company. Make it easy for visitors to find your site.

Participation
Participating in online discussions with other bloggers and in online communities can help to feed traffic to your own site. Don’t leave a message without leaving your website or blog details. Equally, genuine communication only is valuable in these circumstances. Leaving links just for the sake of it looks phoney and will not encourage traffic – it will just waste your time.

Capitalise on all your marketing
Submit your blog posts to blog directories. This increases your blog audience which you can then direct to your website.

Online video
Creating online video enables you to have another type of media and audience to link back to your site.

Link Swapping
Swapping links with other site owners can increase the number of inbound links to your site but it is important to choose relevant sites to appear on your site. The sites you link to need to be relevant to your readers.

Article submission
Interesting articles with your details attached to the end can hold links back to your site or blog. Article sites are always happy to get good content to fill their pages.

Find out
Find out who is already linking to you. Often this uncovers sectors that are interested in your work that you didn’t even know existed. You can pursue this avenue by finding out where your audience ‘hangs out’ and targeting them there

Quality links
At all times be aware that it’s not just inbound links that are important, they need to be good ones. The best ones have your important keywords in the hyperlink text as part of the link back.

Blogging is one form of social media marketing that can enhance your company. But why and what is the best way to go about it?

The Why?

A shop window
By providing a platform via which your customers can get to know you and your products and services. Like your website, its another shop window but one that is ever changing and dynamic.

Creating links to you website
Blogs can help you to create inbound links to your website. Search engine’s like inbound links from authoritative and content laden sources. If your blog is rich with useful information for your visitors then the search engines will treat links from there as ‘good’ and they will help you to increase your search engine ranking. Creating inbound links is a big part of search engine optimisation so if you are serious about your ranking in the search engines then a blog will definately help.

Communication
Blogs that allow comments from its readers enable your audience to communicate with you. This can provide useful feedback for your company.

Advertising
Advertising your products on your blog and linking straight to them on your website will provide extra traffic for your shopping cart. A good blog can generate lots of traffic and enable you to increase sales directly.

The How?

Posting often and regularly
It is important to post often and regularly when it comes to blogs. ‘As often as you can’ is probably the best phrase to have in mind when it comes to blogging.  Its also important not to leave large gaps between posts.

Great content
Your blog posts have to be informative or interesting or funny (or all three). But seriously, keeping good content going is the most important thing. When you are writing, just think about your target audience. What would they like to hear about? What would they find interesting? What are their interests?

Keywords
Use your main keywords and keyphrases to enable the search engine robots to search through your writing. Optimising your blog for the search engines is important if you want to rank well.

Write naturally
Search engines are looking for natural patterns of writing. This means no formula’s but natural, informative writing. This can seem like a contradiction: You are told to focus on keywords but then you are told to write naturally. It can be done. Focus mainly on writing naturally but keep the keywords to the forefront of your mind whilst you are doing it.

Natural writing is also varied. So write posts of different lengths and intersperse text posts with photos and video.

Patience
It can take time to build up a following on a blog. Just be patient and keep going.

If you are wanting to keep up to date with all your online communications and online marketing you need to make sure you are connected at all times. A new and free service from Deviscape is a user-generated, real-time, wi-fi connectivity guide.

Deviscape’s new wi-fi application has been designed for iphones but is now available for laptops and will soon be available on Nokia phones too.

The programme displays active Wi-Fi connections on a map and picks up on where users are connected and adds their connection to the map. Users will also be able to remove their open home or work networks from the list as obviously privacy and security will be a concern.

Devicescape chief executive, David Fraser is looking for the initial 120,000 locations at launch to grow to 1m in a year. His vision is for Wi-Fi to be everywhere. He said:

‘What’s happening now is that Wi-Fi is changing from being only home and business to being accessible just about everywhere. I’m not talking about muni[Wi-Fi], which has taken a bit of a backseat. I’m talking about Wi-Fi showing up in all the places that people are, even in their cars and in public transportation.

‘It’s mushrooming, and a lot of little fragmented networks can be seamlessly knit together using a technology like Devicescape.’

Having access to the internet at all times is particularly useful if your marketing strategy includes social networking and daily blogging. Keeping abreast of what’s going on and responding with immediate posts whilst you’re on the move can enhance your profile. Equally, being able to responding to client needs makes you a more valuable recourse.

Blogging is popular. It gives everyone a voice where anything goes. A company blog is similar in that it should reflect the company it represents. From a business point of view a blog is your ‘human representation’ online but with this comes a responsibility.

A blog is only as good as the writer
A lot hinges on the individual writer to make sure they fully understand the company they are writing for and what it represents. A company blog can be a great tool to help promote your business but if the writing is inaccurate or misrepresentative it can do more harm than good. In house writers will have a real feel for your business.

Professionalism
Generally criticising your competition is not a good idea. It creates an unprofessional air.

Keeping calm
Keeping a cool head is important. Respond to controversial blog comments when you’ve have a chance to reflect. Controversy can create a buzz but a slanging match will make you look unprofessional.

Give, give, give
Help your readers. What people want is information. Unless you have an exceptional talent for writing or are exceedingly funny most people will read your blog because they want some kind of info, either about your company, its services or the people who work for you.

Keep your promises
Its very easy to publish a blog. Its harder to explain why you can’t keep promises that you have made online. Only talk about what you can deliver. Be transparent, its better in the long run.

A blog is not a press release/advert
No one wants to read the same company information over and over again. Keep your blog fresh.

Awareness of the law
You are obliged by law to stand by what you write. These laws protect innocent parties.

Copyright laws apply online in much the same way as they do in print. Additionally you will be penalised by the search engines if you duplicate internet copy.

Write for your reader
Writing for search engine optimisation works well but nothing works better than writing for you reader.

What is Social Media & How Can it Help?

If you’ve been anywhere near online marketing in the last two years who won’t have escaped the phrase ’social media’. But what exactly is it and what can it do for business?

Social media is any form of online activity which offers a platform for the public at large. Its areas where people can interact with the internet and each other. The important thing about social media is that its growing fast with more and more people enjoying the fact that they can express themselves online and communicate with people.

Here are some areas of social media:

Community forums
Community forums are areas where you can post your opinions and information which will be seen by other people in that community who can then respond to your posts.

Businesses can use forums to find out what their customers points of views are about their company and their products and to establish and deepen their relationship with their customers.

Bloging
Blogs are like online diaries. They are easy to set up and provide a space where anyone can have their voice.

For businesses its a cost effective way of engaging with your audience and can provide a human face to a company. It also helps to drive traffic to your website and increases your ability to communicate information about your company and its services and products.

Bloggers often read other blogs and good or controversial posts can end up spreading virally all over the internet.

(Twitter)
Twitter is a micro-blogging site that is used to send one-line pieces of information to your audience. It is currently very popular and mentioned a great deal on British TV.

Social Networking
Social networking sites enable people to communicate with each other. Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn are all examples of social networking sites.

Businesses can have a presence on these sites both as participants and advertisers. In Facebook, for example, businesses can have ‘Fans’ who sign up to receive information about the company, its products and anything that it wants to communicate to its audience.

From an advertising point of view Facebook can track user information and behaviour that allows them to present very targeted advertisements to their users. This kind of behavioural marketing is great for business.

Video
Online video has really grown. YouTube for example allows people to upload their videos for free allowing thousands of people all over the world to see their recordings. Bands who would otherwise have remained unsigned have become overnight sensations because of exposure on YouTube.

From a business point of view, its easy to get your video marketing out there. Its a free facility with huge viewing potential. It also provides an opportunity for your audience to see the human side of your company and a video can have a far greater impact than just text on a page.

Overview
Overall social media can only benefit business by increasing its exposure and allowing the public to communicate with you.  Social media can increase interest in your business and drive more traffic to your website which hopefully will convert into business. But there are downsides to everything of course and Propero Digial will be addressing the negative side of social media over the next week.