Step 10 - Web 2.0 Link Building and Viral Marketing
Introduction
Finally, we have arrived at the last frontier of improving your website's ranking on the search
engines. We are talking about riding the waves of the social revolution of the Internet. The
truly democratic nature of the web started to shine through a few years ago when new
socially focused applications started to surface. First there was the launch and popularity of
the blogosphere world. Your site could gain instant publicity with well written insightful blog
posts in days or weeks instead of years using traditional old school press releases and other
paper based media. Who wouldn't want to receive some free publicity and a steady stream of
visitors for being opinionated and funny? 10 years later, the blogging world is stronger than
ever, and we'll show you some quick and easy ways to get started.
In recent years Blogger, Myspace, Facebook, Wiki, You Tube and many social tagging, and book marking sites such as Delicious and Stumble Upon had become very popular. A new breed of web promotion techniques has been developed utilizing these sites as a launching
pad for gaining visitors and link popularity on the search engines. We'll cover in detail which
methods can give you the biggest return on your investment.
Blogging with SEO in mind
A few years ago, blogging was considered a hobby of sort by people who had a lot of free
time to spare and very little substance to add. Now, businesses without a blog are looked on
with a certain level of dismay as some type of outcast of the web world. Their clients and
suppliers are probably all wondering if they simply don't have anything to say, or they are
just plain lazy and don't care. It's really not a question of, if you need a blog, but when you
need it. If you don't have a blog yet, you owe it to yourself to develop one and post regularly
right away.
It turns out web blogs are not only a great way to keep in touch with you clients and
business partners, but it's also an excellent way to expand the content on your website.
Every new blog post becomes a unique URL on your site and gets indexed just like any other
web page without any additional effort on your part.
The search engines love content, so it make sense, the more content you have on your site's
main topics, the wider variety of keywords are likely used somewhere in the title or body of
the web blog. This directly increases the chance for other keyword combinations to rank well
and to bring in a few extra visitors every month which ties into the concept of "long tail'
keywords. The long tail keywords are those that are usually more than 3 to 4 words in length
and only come up in the searches very rarely compared to the mainstream keywords. The
most important benefit of the long term keywords is the high conversion rates since these
keywords are extremely focused. Although the number of searches may be very low for long
tail keywords, but attaining top ranking for a few hundred of long tail keywords can
guarantee thousands of well targeted visitors to your site every month.
The other quantifiable benefit of blogging is the potential increase of deep links to your blog
posts. When other websites find your blog posts valuable you may earn unsolicited one-way
deep links to the inner pages of your site, which are the best kind of links you can get.
Here are a few tips to get started with blogging:
- Pick a blogging service or setup your own blog. One of the most popular
blogging services is Blogger.com. It's owned by Google and it only takes a few
minutes to get started. The biggest drawback is the lack of customization ability and
the fact that it's located on a different domain from the one you already own. The
free alternative blogging option is installing WordPress on your website, but you will
need to have a fair bit of technical know how to set it up properly. The other paid
blogging platform alternatives are Movable Type and TypePad which directly
compete with WordPress.
- Successful blogs concentrate on a very specific topic. It's easy to wonder of
topic sometimes and it can be even a good thing to take a break from rehashing
what others already covered, but 90% of your posts should deal with your market
segment's news topics. You can write about your industry, current changes, and
any insider knowledge you may have. It's also ok to be opinionated and funny, but
avoid bad mouthing your competitors or posting extreme views you may regret
later.
- Pick catchy headlines that promise some tangible benefit to the readers
with your keywords in mind. You can easily double or triple the clickthroughs of
your blog posts with well written keyword rich headlines that are also a magnet for
the search engines. The headline of your blog post will become the title tag for the
web page it will be posted on, so it's essential to come up with titles that have some
of your main or secondary keywords in them.
- Write from personal experience with a story line. We are all sick and tried of
self serving promotions and marketing fluffs, so give your readers a reason to come
back again and again. Write from personal experiences that can relate to your
blog's audience. If it could happen to you it can happen to them as well. Tell them
how you solve complex problems in your business that can demonstrate your expert
knowledge, resourcefulness and professionalism.
Submitting your blog's RSS feed to important blog
aggregators
The next important phase is to get your blog promoted on blog search engines, blog
directories, and feed aggregators. Although there are hundreds of blog search engines out
there, you should concentrate on handful to get the most publicity for your blog with the
least amount of effort. We are going to list a few top blog directory sites that you should
consider submitting to. Blog directory submissions are little bit different from submitting your
site to other general directories.
The blog search engines are interested in indexing the so called RSS ("Really Simple
Syndication") feed of your blog. An RSS feed is a format that publishers use to publish new
and updated content that blog aggregators can easily import into their databases. An RSS
feed URL looks something like this: myblogURL/atom.xml or myrblogURL/rss.xml. The XML
based file will contain all your posts, their dates and a short summary for each post.
Selecting blog directories and submitting your blog
If your site is already indexed by Yahoo!, Google, or MSN, there is most likely no need to
submit your blog's RSS feed. All the three search engines can index your blog posts in RSS
format and the only thing you have to do is to notify them with a "ping" from your blog when
you have new content posted.
For example, you can let Google know you have new content posted using this URL
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2 or Yahoo! at this URL
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping.
Her is a list of blog submission sites you should consider getting your blog listed in.
| Blog Submission Sites |
| Bloglines |
| Typead |
| Blogstreet |
| Blogarama |
| Syndic8 |
| Boingboing |
| Search4rss |
| Icerocket |
| Feedminer |
| 2rss |
| Technorati |
Getting your blog readers to spread the word
Your blog readers can be your best assets when it comes to promoting your blog and your
website. People want to share valuable information with others, and if your blog posts are
interesting, your readers will gladly submit them to social media and bookmarking sites. We
have listed a few top social media sites, their icons and submit URLs so you can incorporate
them into your blog. The best place to insert these icons is the bottom of each blog post
linking to the URL of the post. You may need to do a bit of programming in your blogging
software to create the submission hyperlinks on the fly, but its well worth the effort.
The most popular social media and bookmarking sites and their submission pages:
- Stumble Upon http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/your-blogpost-url
- Yahoo! Bookmarks http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/bookmarklet?u=your-blogposturl&=
your+blog+post+title
- Sphere http://www.sphere.com/search?q=sphereit:your-blogposturl&
title=your+blog+post+title
- Magnolia http://ma.gnolia.com/bookmarklet/add?url=your-blogposturl&
title=your+blog+post+title
- Digg http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=your-blogposturl&
title=your+blog+post+title
- Technorati http://technorati.com/faves?add=your-blogpost-url
- Netscape http://www.netscape.com/submit/?U=hyour-blogposturl&
amp;T=your+blog+post+title
- Reddit http://reddit.com/submit?url=your-blogposturl&
title=your+blog+post+title
- Newsvine http://www.newsvine.com/tools/seed&save?u=your-blogposturl&
h=your+blog+post+title
- Fark
http://cgi.fark.com/cgi/fark/edit.pl?new_url=your-blogposturl&
new_comment=your+blog+post+title=your-domain&linktype=Misc
- Spurl http://www.spurl.net/spurl.php?url=your-blogposturl&
title=your+blog+post+title
- Delicious http://del.icio.us/post?url=your-blogposturl&
title=your+blog+post+title
- Slashdot http://slashdot.org/bookmark.pl?title=your+blog+post+title&url=yourblogpost-
url
- Furl http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?u=your-blogposturl&
t=your+blog+post+title
You may want to do some CSS formatting and layout the icons horizontally under your blog
posts like this:
Make a pic!!!!!!!!!
Here is the CSS code to accomplish this:
<ul style="display: inline;">
<li style="display: inline; list-style-type: none;"> the first icon goes here
<li>
<li style="display: inline; list-style-type: none;"> the next icon goes here
<li>
</ul>
Effective viral marketing with Delicious and Stumble
Upon
You are no doubt already familiar with the concept of book marking important pages for easy
retrieval using your web browser. It's called "Favorites" in Internet Explorer and "Bookmarks"
in Firefox, but the name should not matter. The bottom line is, until now nobody else could
have access to your own bookmarks since they are stored on your PC's hard drive.
Now, with the web 2.0 revolution we have a way to make our bookmarks public for everyone
else to see and discover. It's a very neat concept and the growing popularity of Delicious and
Stumble Upon proves that it's here to stay. Stumble upon has close to 3 million registered
users and Delicious boast about the same. That's a lot of eyeballs that can potentially see
your bookmarks and your own website. The avalanche of visitors that can result from a
single blog post or the release of a new freebie can be somewhat scary. It's not uncommon
to see 3,000 or more visitors arrive on a single web page within a few hours after it has been
stumbled or bookmarked by a large number of Delicious or Stumble Upon users.
Signing up with Stumble Upon is easy and fast. Once you have signed up, download the
Stumble Upon toolbar. Now, you are ready to add any page to Stumble Upon instantly.
Navigate to your own site and click on the "I like it!" button on the toolbar and you can
complete the submission process by specifying a title and appropriate keyword tags.
Delicious also has a toolbar, and after signing up, you can use the "Post to Delicious" feature right away to bookmark your sites in your Internet Explorer or Firefox browser.
Now let’s get to the most important benefits of signing up Delicious and Stumble Upon:
- Short, but high volume of traffic resulting from stumbles and bookmarks
discovered by other users. When you bookmark or "stumble" your own web
sites, you are giving other users a chance to discover your site. Beyond the
bookmarking aspects, users can perform searches on other user's bookmarked sites
based on the keyword tags used to describe that site. So, it very important to
properly categorize your site when submitting it to Delicious and Stumble Upon. The
users can also rate websites with thumbs up or thumbs down with the Stumble
Upon toolbar. This helps to create a consensus about a site's quality and it's
completely driven by user input.
- Increased link popularity can result from other users linking to your site
from their own bookmarks or their own websites. It's not uncommon for other
users to add your site to their own bookmarks or even provide links back to your
site if it has something really useful to offer. It's important that you submit your
site only after it's completely finished. Stumble Upon and Delicious users are a
fickle, sophisticated bunch and are attracted to interesting news, good site design,
and unique content and concepts. In order to keep earning links to your site, you
have to develop new, unique content on an ongoing basis.
- Join other groups and check out bookmarks of other users with similar
interests. Getting involved in the community aspect of the social bookmarking
sites can guarantee you a higher exposure and more traffic. First bookmark other
users' sites you like and respect. In return they will most likely do the same. The
key is to get involved as much as you can and provide feedback and reviews of
sites. A great number of users on Stumble Upon and Delicious are there because
they want to socialize and not necessarily promote their business. The more you
can demonstrate your commitment to the community, the better your chances are
of getting recognized by others.
- Keep in mind the searches on Delicious and Stumble Upon are going to be less targeted than searches performed on Google because the searches rely on the user's ability to categorize and tag websites properly. There are bound to be some unrelated sites creeping into the
search results when users conduct searches with your target keyword. So you may not
always receive the most targeted traffic, but overall, it's an excellent source for a quick burst
of visitors to your site.
Facebook powers the new social revolution
You may or may not have heard of Facebook.com, but if you haven't, it's time for an
introduction to the next big phase of the World Wide Web and internet marketing. A few
years ago social website memberships started to explode, and the marketing community
started to take notice. It started with MySpace which Google actually purchased a few years
ago. Now we are in the midst of a new web 2.0 application revolution as devoted fans flock
to Facebook by the millions every day, about 31 million to be exact. Although Myspace is still
growing and valued at close to 10 billion dollars, the Facebook founders have just turned
down a 1 billion dollar offer from Yahoo!.
With millions of people online poking around, making new connections, and posting on each
other's "walls,” there is a huge opportunity for businesses to embrace this new medium and
promote their companies. Facebook may seem like the online hangout for college kids, but
Facebook attracts people from all demographics and age groups from around the world.
There are certainly a fair number of 30, 40, and 50 year old professionals and nonprofessionals
singing up lately who embrace the social aspect of Facebook, but the real
question is, “How can you harness the power of a wildly successful social site like Facebook
to your advantage and forge new business connections?”
You must remember the true power of Facebook lies in the personal relationships you forge
with new people and groups you find through the hierarchies of friends and groups you
discover through search and other member profiles. Facebook gives you the opportunity to
explore every other member's profile, their friends, and the groups they belong to unless
they explicitly block you or place limitations on what the public can see through their privacy
settings in Facebook.
The recipe for successful Facebook business promotion:
- Create a personal profile. The first step is of course to sign up. Next you will
need to create your own personal profile. It's very important that you do a very
thorough job by completing every possible section, especially the personal section.
Almost everyone wants to know more about you. They want to know what your
hobbies are, what your favorite music is among other things to get a sense of what
they have in common with you. Make sure you also complete the Basic, Contact,
and Work information with up-to-date information on what you do and how people
can get in touch with you. It's important that you complete the Work section with
the company and website address you are currently promoting.
- Build up your network and make friends everywhere. Next you will need to
search for friends, family and colleagues you already know and invite them to
become part of your network of friends. You can use the Facebook search feature to
find friends or business associates whom you have lost connection with.
- Start making some interesting new post on your wall about your blog,
business or website. Create a catchy introduction for your website and provide a
direct link to it on your wall. Talk a bit about what it's about and what it has to
offer. This is your personal page, so you don't need to write an infomercial, but do
let others know what you are working on right now.
- Create a new group and set up a discussion group about the theme of your
website or business. You may want to check out other groups first on the same
topic to gauge the level of professionalism and popularity. You can find out a
group's popularity by the number of members, the total number of discussions
posts and replies. If you like any of the groups, feel free to join them as long as
they are not your direct competitors. Now it's time to set up your own group. Write
an enticing description detailing specific benefits the group has to offer. Don't forget
to fill in your website address, contact information and upload a group picture or
logo. Be sure to check you have rights to use the picture for the group. Now it's
time to add a welcome message and your first post to the discussion board. Talk
about something current in your industry, but nothing too controversial. It can be
any topic that invites an honest discussion and lot of questions.
- Invite people to join from your personal group to join your new group if
you feel they would be interested. You have to start from somewhere and
getting some people you already know to join your group is the easiest way to get
started. Once your group gains some traction try to make the group more
interesting by holding contests, off line meetings and inviting experts in your fields
to post articles or give interviews.
- The power of the "My Notes Section." Just like in the blogging world, Facebook
has its own XML/RSS/ATOM feed that is being fed by your notes directly to your
home page. This is very important, because anyone who visits your profile will see
your notes and can visit your site or special offer URLs. Post notes regularly about
anything interesting on your site, such as contests, a new section or product or a
sales special.
- Create a Facebook application gadget. This promotion option can be especially
valuable if you are developing websites for a living and have a good grasp on server
side scripting languages like .NET, PHP, ASP, CGI, PERL, etc. Even if you are not a
developer, you can come up with an idea for a new Facebook application. A
Facebook application is an add-on to the existing Facebook interface, and it's an
enhancement of the core features of Facebook. Some applications have over a
million users, which is very substantial and can result in a flood of traffic for your
sites.
You can post your idea for a new Facebook application project on
GetaFreeLancer.com or RentaCoder.com. One very important advice when you post a project. Keep your project hidden from the public so only the bidders and you can
see it. You never know who wants to steal your idea and if you didn't patent it, it's
too late if someone comes out with it first.
Conclusion
Getting social and participating in different web communities is the next big wave of traffic
generation on the Internet. Google made the Internet a searchable asset for millions of
people around the world by ranking websites according to relevance. The next web traffic
revolution will be in the communities that are determining the value and ranking of websites
based on the users' opinions and participation instead of relying on machines to create the
ranking order.
Anyone who ignores the millions of people who regularly visit blogs, social bookmarking,
social media, and community sites is missing a huge untapped market and potential targeted
visitors. Don't get us wrong, SEO is here to say as long as there is a need for people to
search. With the staggering growth of the number of websites online, there will be even
stiffer competition for the top spots on the search engines in every keyword category.
Visitors from social media sites can be viewed as an extension of your SEO campaign to
reach potential customers who are not actively searching for your products or services, but
nonetheless participating in related web communities.