wordpresshubs: Building

Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Building. Afficher tous les articles

samedi 12 novembre 2016

Revealed: Why Building Your Email List is so Important Today!

Are you thinking about building an email list, but not sure why it is so important? Many bloggers and business owners don’t see the importance of building an email list right away until they see the impact email lists can have on website traffic and revenue. In this article, we will show you the top reasons why building your email list is important (with real case studies). We will also show you how to start building your email list – step by step.

By the end of this article, you will have answers to all your questions about building an email list.

Why Build Email List

What is an Email List and Why is it so Important?

An email list is a list of names and email addresses of people who gave you permission to send them updates and promotions from your business via email.

Why is this so important?

Because these subscribers joined your email list from your website and verified their identity by clicking on a link (double-optin). They are extremely interested in what you have to offer.

According to Direct Marketing Association, email marketing on average sees a 4300 percent return on investment (ROI) for businesses in USA.

In our business, email lists get 10 times higher conversions than social media campaigns. This makes sense if you think about these five advantages of email as a communication channel:

Email is Personal – Email allows you to land into a user’s inbox. There is no ranking system limiting your reach. It is very direct, personal, and casual.

Email is Purposeful – To get your email a user needs to signup for your email list and confirm their email address. Someone doing this much work is obviously interested in hearing from you, and they are much more receptive to your message.

Email is Targeted – As we mentioned earlier the user has already shown interest in your products / content. Since you already know what they like, you can deliver them highly relevant content and offers to get better results. This is called segmentation, and we will cover that later in the article.

You Own Your Email List – You do not own Facebook, Twitter, or Google. Your social media campaigns and SEO efforts can go to waste when these platform change their policies. On the other hand, you own your email list, and it is not influenced by decisions of other businesses.

Email is One-on-One – People read email in the privacy of their inbox. The message is not on a public timeline or newsfeed. They can ask you questions directly in private with confidence. This helps build trust and connection.

This is precisely why every smart business in the world has an email list.

Big name brands learned this lesson a long time ago, and that’s why they spend thousands of dollars on social media campaigns to get people to sign up for their email lists.

They understand that email marketing is the best long term investment with a much higher return. Because people will continue to get their message at a very low cost for a longer period of time.

Social Media vs Email Marketing

Now you’re probably thinking, wait a minute. What about social media?

A lot of social media experts and consultants, in an attempt to sell their services, downplay the importance of an email list.

In fact, we have even been asked isn’t email marketing kind of dead with social media taking over everything?

The best way to answer this question is to look at the information Twitter and Facebook ask you before you create an account:

Twitter and Facebook Signup Forms

Yup, it’s an email address. Because these companies know that emails are the most direct and reliable way of getting in touch.

All social media platforms are building an email list because they are smart business owners. This helps their valuation when selling their business.

While social media is a great way to reach your audience, it’s important to keep in perspective the timely nature of social media platforms.

They come and go.

Not too long ago we had MySpace, FriendFeed, Google Buzz, Plurk and countless others. Most of them are either dead now or irrelevant.

Today we have Facebook and Twitter, but not everyone is as hooked up on these sites. Some prefer other places like Instagram, Pinterest, Vine, Snapchat, etc.

But studies show that at least 91% of consumers check their email on a daily basis.

We are not saying that social media is not important. It is, and you should explore every opportunity to reach out to your audiences.

However you should spend more time and effort into something that guarantees much higher results.

What You Need to Start Building an Email List?

Hopefully by now, you should know why building an email list is so important, and why ignoring it would be a HUGE mistake.

So let’s take a look at what you need to start building your email list.

3 Things You Need to Build an Email List:

A website or blog.

An email marketing service.

High-converting opt-in forms

All three of these are fairly easy to setup, and none of them require you to know how to code.

For the sake of this article, we will only be focusing on the last two items in the list. If you don’t have a website or blog yet, then see our step by step guide on how to start a blog.

Choosing the Best Email Marketing Service

Best email marketing services

There are tons of email marketing services online. Often beginners use the free options to save cost, which is understandable. However, some of those free platforms are not the best option. Why?

Services like FeedBurner or Jetpack Subscriptions offer blog subscription via email. This allows your users to receive an email update every time you publish a new blog post.

The downside to a blog notification service like this are:

You will have to create a blog post to send an email. This means that information you want to share will have to be publicly available first. You can’t send out private email newsletters.

You can’t personalize the email message. It will be delivered in the same format often with no branding or personalization.

You can’t categorize subscribers by interests, demographics, or content type.

There is no reporting. You don’t know how many people got email, what percentage of users opened it, and how many of them clicked on links.

If you later tried to move to a paid service, your users will have to re-confirm their subscription. Many of them will not do it, and you will end up losing subscribers.

This is why we ALWAYS recommend using a professional email marketing service. Yes, they cost a little bit of money, but they are an investment in your business which pays huge returns.

The benefit of professional email marketing services are:

You can send private mass emails to your subscribers.

You can see subscriber activity and group your subscribers based on actions they take.

You can run A/B split tests to see which email subject line, content, and offers work best with your subscribers.

With reporting tools, you can see which country you have the most subscribers from. You can adjust your timezone preferences, and send emails at the right time.

Last, but definitely the most important, you can see the email addresses of all your subscribers.

There are hundreds of professional email marketing services available, but we have compiled a list of the best email marketing services.

For small businesses, we recommend using Constant Contact because they are one of the largest and fastest growing email marketing services in the world.

They offer a 60 day free trial. This gives you plenty of time to setup and start seeing the results. At the end of 60 days, your email list would likely be paying for itself (cost / month). Start your free trial.

Because we know people often like to see options before they make a decision, we also recommend AWeber. They are another popular email marketing service provider, and they offer our users a 30-day free trial.

Once you have signed up with an email marketing service, the next step is to add opt-in forms to your website to allow your users to subscribe.

Growing Your Email List and Getting More Subscribers

While choosing the right email marketing service is important, getting more subscribers is even more important because this is how you make money.

The biggest mistake beginners make is not strategically placing high-converting opt-in forms.

While some WordPress themes come with built-in sidebar widgets, they don’t convert as well. Your email marketing service may also provide you with codes to embed in your theme, but that requires you to know how to code.

This is why we recommend our users to use OptinMonster. It is the most powerful conversion optimization software that helps you convert abandoning website visitors into subscribers and customers.

You can easily create high-converting optin forms such as lightbox popups, floating header and footer bars, slide-in scroll boxes, fullscreen welcome mat, after post and inline forms, and more.

Add beautiful signup forms

But what makes OptinMonster really powerful is the behavior automation and personalization features. OptinMonster allows you to automatically show different opt-in forms based on where the user is coming from, which page they are visiting, and what they are doing on your website.

For example, the Exit-Intent® feature track your users mouse behavior and show them a targeted opt-in form at the precise moment they are about to leave. This helps you convert abandoning visitors into subscribers.

This is important because over 70% of people leaving your website will never return.

That’s why influencers like Michael Hyatt, Neil Patel, and Social Media Examiner use exit-intent on their websites. It helped Social Media Examiner add over 95,000 new subscribers in 7 months.

But for smaller businesses, this is even more crucial. Nicolas Gagne, a small business owner, combined Constant Contact with a single exit-intent optin to grow his email list by 500%. This helped him triple his revenue from his online store (see the full case study).

There are tons more case studies and OptinMonster reviews that you can read as well.

Get started with OptinMonster today — Use the coupon WPB10 to get 10% off.

Note: OptinMonster was started by WPBeginner’s founder, Syed Balkhi, because he wanted to get more email subscribers, faster. It helped us increase our email signups by 600%. Due to popular request, we released this tool for public, and now it’s the most recommended lead generation software in the market.

List Building Strategies and Resources

Email Marketing Strategies

Having the right tools is crucial, but knowing how to use them properly is what makes the most difference.

In your email marketing strategy, the most important thing you should plan out is segmentation. This is the process of grouping your subscribers, so you can better personalize your emails based on interest. It helps you get higher open rates and click-through rates. This definitive guide to email marketing has all the information you need to segment your email list like a pro.

Content Upgrades are the highest converting opt-in forms. It’s a technique where you give your users bonus content at the end of your popular blog posts. These usually convert 5 times higher than a regular opt-in. Here are some content upgrade ideas that you should check out. We have written a guide on how to add content upgrades in WordPress.

If you’re not sure how to create an opt-in form, then use this 63-point checklist for creating a high-converting optin form.

You may want to check out Kevin Duncan’s article on 16 ridiculously simple ways to get more email subscribers in less than 5 minutes.

In case you want more ideas, Mary Fernandez also shared 73 proven and simple ways to grow your email list that should get you going.

Conclusion

It does not matter what kind of business you run, what kind of website you have, or what industry you are in.

If you have a website, and you want to turn your visitors into returning customers, then you need to get them in your email list.

We hope this article helped you understand why building an email list is important and helped you get started on the right foot.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Revealed: Why Building Your Email List is so Important Today! appeared first on WPBeginner.

Building Ajax Solutions With Usability And Accessibility

alt="Building Ajax Solutions With Usability And Accessibility" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/default-image-500x308_c.jpg" />

Guest post written by James Mowery

src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/images/2010/0922-1.jpg" class="right" alt="Ajax Solutions" />

With the explosion of web usage over the past decade, the online applications that users have access to have become more sophisticated as each year passes. While ‘internet time’ is even faster than the proverbial ‘dog years’, one recent development has radically altered online applications and will continue to do so for some time.

Dubbed ‘ajax’, this technology allows for a web application to make asynchronous method calls to perform certain tasks without refreshing the user’s browser. To the user, it may appear that the page changes as they use it, or there may be progress indicators such as ‘loading’ graphics or something similar.

While the technology that allows this to occur isn’t actually new, the availability and ubiquity of broadband internet access, along with wider browser support for advanced Javascript programming, has made it extremely common. Here are some specific points that anyone looking into creating ajax-enabled applications to make sure they aren’t just introducing something that happens to be the latest fad.

First, consider how many times your users may have to do something in the application, for example, clicking a button, which normally may cause the entire page to reload. By working to limit those types of actions to ajax methods, the user’s navigation experience will seem faster, as they don’t have to wait for the page to refresh.

Sure, there is still some time for the page to update, but showing the user a progress bar or some other similar indicator makes the time seem quicker. It should also be noted that ajax methods that update small parts of the web page should not just seem faster, however.
Since less data is being passed back and forth across the wire to the user’s browser, it will actually increase the application’s speed.

Consider, however, being careful that trying to do everything in the application within a single screen may not be the best way to go, either. Some screens simply need a different layout in order to make sense to the user. By carefully deciding which navigation elements should be moved to ajax and which should not, you will improves the accessibility and usability of the entire application.

About the author
James Mowery is a computer geek that writes about technology and related topics. To read more blog posts by him, go to href="http://www.laptopcomputers.org">laptop computers.

Page 28 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

Building A Tribe Around Your Art; One Lovely Person At A Time

alt="Building A Tribe Around Your Art; One Lovely Person At A Time" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/building-your-tribe-500x331_c.jpg" />

Staring into the vast ocean of possible social media interactions can leave an artist lost, bewildered and paralyzed. The options are endless and the fluctuations of social media tools changes rapidly with new IPOs, acquisitions and site overhauls. Millions and millions of conversations are happening every moment on countless platforms- so how do you even scratch the surface of placing your voice in this endless echo-chamber?

Seth Godin made the concept of building a movement by connecting like minds and leading people through connection, culture and commitment in his book, Tribes. Take a moment to watch his href="http://www.ted.com/talks/seth_godin_on_the_tribes_we_lead.html" target="_blank">TED talk regarding Tribes and you’ll see how this concept can connect you with a movement surrounding your art.

Before we tackle the HOW of building your Tribe of loyal art lovers, we need to address the WHY.

Your Story and Why It Matters

style="width: 760px" class="wp-caption alignnone">class="border" alt="Building Your Own Tribe" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/images/2012/0404-1.jpg" width="750" height="503" />class="wp-caption-text">Artists need to take their audiences to greater heights by personally interacting and touching them on a deep level. Building a community around artwork that is personal and meaningful will help create a strong and interesting Tribe.

Let’s assume the obvious that lead you to this article. You have an online presence for your art-based business or art career, but you’re not feeling the connection between your web site, blog and various social media outlets. You know artists and art lovers exist in this great, vast ocean of online interaction- but you’re not sure how to bring them into your online world.

Do you have a story? Of course you have a story- everyone has one! A better question is have you clearly defined your story for your audience in a way that shows who you are as an artist, what drives your work and why it’s relevant to them? Your story is what connects a person to your work and puts them closer to becoming a champion of your art, your passion and your movement.

Take a moment and think of your favorite brand or online personality. Can you see their story in your mind right now? Do you find yourself raving about a brand or product and telling their story in conversation as you recommend them to a friend or colleague? Think of Apple, we all href="http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-04/bz_apple?currentPage=all" target="_blank">know their story.

href="http://garyvaynerchuk.com/" target="_blank">Gary Vaynerchuk took the wine industry and turned it on it’s head- and created a loyal tribe in the process.

Instant brand recognition and association of that brand’s story made you a part of their movement. The moment you excitedly shared another brand’s story as an endorsement to your friends or colleagues, you became a member of their Tribe.

An amazing resource for artists building careers in the online space is Chris Guilleabeau’s href="http://www.unconventionalguides.com/art.htm" target="_blank">e-book Art + Money. In this book, he describes your Tribe in the following terms,

“These are the people who want to be connected with you, with each other, with your work, and with what your work stands for. These are your fans.”

Go Beyond ‘About Me’ Page

style="width: 760px" class="wp-caption alignnone">class="border" alt="Building Your Own Tribe" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/images/2012/0404-2.jpg" width="750" />class="wp-caption-text">Chris Guillebeau, creator of a massive Tribe surrounding his work at his site, The Art of Non-Conformity, took a bold step when launching his first print book based on his website. He visited every state and each Canadian province so that he could meet his Tribe in person. He talked about his book, signed copies, mingled and then congregated at a local coffeeshop or bar after each event so that he and those who connect with his work could meet and grow as a community

Take a moment to build your story beyond the expected artist’s bio or About Me page on your site. Look at the following online artists and notice how they’ve built their stories and intertwined them throughout their online presences.

Kesha Bruce is an artist and art marketing consultant with a strong presence href="http://twitter.com/#!/KeshaBruce" target="_blank">on Twitter. She keeps her passions aligned with her art throughout her online presence and her story helps lead others in the art world.

John T. Unger is a metal sculptor who creates these large installations and is completely unconventional as an artist. His presence in person matches his online story perfectly and href="http://twitter.com/#!/johntunger" target="_blank">his Twitter interactions help reinforce his story and connect his Tribe.

Ken Kaminesky is a travel photographer with a strong following on both his blog and href="http://twitter.com/#!/KenKaminesky" target="_blank">his Twitter feed. Notice his use of graphics and design to help better tell his story and connect people- visually- with his art.

A simple truth to building a relevant audience is that when your story resonates with the right people, your tribe has begun to form. If your story is authentic and a direct reflection of what drives you and your art, people will be attracted to you by your story. These people will become your audience and they will return to learn more about you and your journey through this world. Your story will inspire them and will create a connection that will nourish all those involved.

And then you lead this movement of people- this Tribe- towards something profound using your art and your passion.

Presenting Your Story and Building Your Tribe

style="width: 760px" class="wp-caption alignnone">class="border" alt="Building Your Own Tribe" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/images/2012/0404-3.jpg" width="750" />class="wp-caption-text">An artist’s Tribes come in all different sizes and find them in a multitude of ways. Live performers build their Tribes using their artwork and an intricate network of communication channels- both online and face to face networks.

style="line-height: 1.5em;">We previously tackled the topic of Tribe building for artists and took a more theoretical approach to creating a movement around your art work. A movement of loyal and engaged fans who connect with you and your story on a deep and meaningful level. Building a Tribe is more than just finding followers on Twitter and Fans on Facebook- it’s about being a leader of a group of people who look to your for connection, culture and change.

Once you’ve worked on refining your story, it’s time to weave it throughout your online presence. Be sure your story is placed in prominent locations on your website, blog and social media sites. If you have the time and resources, work with a designer or brand specialist to help refine your story and intertwine it with your site graphics, logos and other visual representations of your business. This step isn’t a necessity, but does help in making a cohesive story of you and your work that flows throughout your online presence.

If your art business has been around for some time or you are at a midway point in your career, hiring someone with brand expertise or a strong copywriter can add the outside perspective that is necessary for solid brand storytelling. Stepping back and looking at your work objectively, without emotion, in order to focus your story and tell it properly is difficult to do when you’ve been creating art on your own for many years.

Another major consideration in spreading your story is to be sure that your social media interactions, online writings and podcasts or videocasts also support the story behind your work. In sticking to your overall strategy of attracting like minded people to your Tribe, be sure that the voice you are using to represent yourself online reflects your story.

For example, if your story speaks to the many years of bartending and your art reflects the rough edges you acquired in your previous life as a master of the martini- speak in the same tone as you might behind that bar. Anthony Bourdain has built a massive Tribe- and a vast body of work- based strongly on the rough and raw voice that he acquired working in kitchens for many decades. For him to sugar-coat this form of his identity to try and expand his audience be being a nice guy would come across as unnatural and would actually turn his true fans away.

Make your story visual and accessible in a variety of platforms. For example, tell your story through a video production or by href="http://www.slideshare.net/jessedee/really-ugly-resumes" target="_blank">creating a visual CV or href="http://www.vizualize.me/" target="_blank">info-graphic based resume and placing them on your website and blog. Or you can use an href="http://about.me" target="_blank">About.Me page to give a quick summary of your story and then link your blog, website, visual CV, Pinterest page or Twitter account.

The possibilities are limitless when it comes to presenting your story online, just be sure the content you produce to tell your story is clear, professional and compelling and that the platform you choose supports your strengths.

Choosing The Right One For Your Tribe

So, with all the social platforms in existence, how do you choose the right one for spreading your story and finding your Tribe? Honestly, this answer could fill an entire library.

So, let’s just look at some basic theories for finding your tribe.

A Step-By-Step Guide On How To Find Your Targeted Audiences

First, you must identify your ideal audience.

Get specific here- who will connect most with your artwork?

Are you a novelist specializing in teen vampire love stories? Just go to the latest screening of a Twilight movie or a blog dedicated to this teen phenomenon and you’ll see how and where your audience is socializing. Are you a mother by day and a knitting fiend at night? Hit the mommy blogs and find women with similar daily juggling acts as yourself. You’ll not only have more women to share your stories with, you’ll have a direct ear into what your target market wants from hand-knitted goods.

Make a list of the main demographic that you feel will connect with your story. List their ages, average income, gender (if relevant), types of places they would socialize in person and online, unique attributes specific to the art you produce, etc.

Create a list of keywords that reflect some of the traits listed in your demographic list.

Go to href="http://www.google.com/blogsearch" target="_blank">Google’s Blog Search and begin typing in the keywords you created. Follow the links to these blogs and find several that reflect your target audience best. Add these blogs to your RSS readers, subscribe to their newsletters or bookmark the sites. Study the best blogs for the types of conversations that are relevant to your work and scan the comment section to see how people are interacting around this topic. Begin to look for problems that you might help solve with your specific knowledge or other way you can be of help to this community.

Go to the Twitter search function and repeat the same process for entering keywords in the blog search. Add a #hashtag before the keyword to help make the search more specific. If a person has added a #hashtag to a keyword, they want other people outside of their followers to notice the topic and engage. When you find someone who might fit your desired demographic, click through to their profile page and scan their information. Visit their website if one exists. If this person is a match, begin following them and add them to a special list that helps you categorize this connection. You might want to keep this list private since you’re using it for business purposes, but that’s a personal preference.

You can repeat these steps with other social media platforms as well. Simply seek out people who fall within your desired demographic and who look as though they would engage with your artwork and your story. Seek people who have something interesting to say and who are active in conversations within their chosen social media platform.

Begin engaging people in relevant conversations using these platforms. Look for people asking real questions and provide useful answers- related or not to your artwork. Be a genuine person here and dive into a conversation. Provide answers, advice or simply make a lovely comment and begin to build strong relationships with people over time.

Listen to your conversations closely and begin providing resources or articles that helps your target audience address a problem or provides entertainment. Create free e-books or manifestos that provide valuable information related to your story in some fashion. Our knitting mommy can create an e-book of knitting tips for newbie knitters. The vampire-obsessed novelist can provide short stories for free as a Kindle book and place weekly teasers about the plot on her blog.

The possibilities are endless for connecting your audience with your artwork. Get creative and provide something of value that people can engage with on a deep level. Creating community and connection will build a solid Tribe who believes in your art work and will create a meaningful online world for you to work within.

Authenticity and genuinely caring about others truly is the best approach towards building your Tribe and supporting your story in the online world. It only takes one person to truly connect with your artwork and you’ve created a fan. Continue to build these relationships and you’ll havehref="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/socialmedia-marketing/5-easy-steps-to-get-10000-followers/"> an engaging and meaningful online community- and a Tribe of devoted fans.

Image Credit: All images by href="http://www.blog.crystalstreet.net/" target="_blank">Crystal Street.

Jerry’s side note: If you like this article, be sure to read Crystal’s followup-article on href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/featured-articles/how-to-build-a-long-term-successful-social-media-campaign/">How To Build A Long-Term Successful Social Media Campaign.

Page 24 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

Smart Link Building (And Web Marketing) For The Average Guys

alt="Smart Link Building (And Web Marketing) For The Average Guys" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/0106-1-500x240_c.jpg" />

We get jaw dropping stuffs on the Internet daily. rel="nofollow" title="Space Jump" href="http://www.redbullstratos.com/the-team/felix-baumgartner/" target="_blank">Record breaking space jumps, rel="nofollow" title="Zappo Tony Hsieh Story" href="http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/07/tony-hsieh-zappos/" target="_blank">smart young entrepreneurs making billion of dollars, rel="nofollow" title="Robot Dance Brothers" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1AwrqoHA2c" target="_blank">stunning robot dancing skills, rel="nofollow" title="Kim Jung Gi" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGjGhU2o7sQ" target="_blank">awesome drawing talents, rel="nofollow" title="Smashing Magazines" href="http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2012/09/27/fixing-broken-user-experience/" target="_blank">in-depth views and studies about UX design, rel="nofollow" title="Noob Online Marketing Guide" href="http://unbounce.com/noob-guide-to-online-marketing-infographic/" target="_blank">extremely long and comprehensive infographic, and rel="nofollow" title="OK Cupid 10 Charts About Sex" href="http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/10-charts-about-sex/" target="_blank">some really interesting research about our sex life.

Cool. Awesome. Great. Remarkable. Extraordinary. Ground Breaking. You know, the usual “extraordinary” stuffs we tend to blog, tweet, pin; in short, link to it from our websites and social network profiles.

But, how about average people and small businesses with low influences? How do we get others to link to our websites when we have very limited resources?

As y’all knew, back link is the lifeline of a website. No links = no exposures + no search ranking = no traffics = no incomes. Having a clear and effective link building strategy is vital to any web success.

In this post, we are going to talk about winning the link building (and indirectly, web marketing) battle as the average guy.

Smart Link Building Is All About Win-Win

Instead of writing down a long list of suggestions, I am going to boil everything down to one simple idea: Think Win-Win. That’s right, before you try to get a link from the others, ask what you can give first.

I know, this sound a little weird at first. You probably don’t get this a lot from other link building guides.

To build legitimate links, most will suggest viral videos, beautiful infographics, free ebooks, valuable blog post with excessive information, etc etc. However, doing all these need great talent, heavy working hours, and probably lots of money (unless you can do everything by yourself, but then again, time is just another type of cost). Bear in mind that in an average guy’s world, talent and money are always in scarcity. This is why we need alternative way to build link when talent, money, or manpower comes short.

My Real Life Experience With The Strategy

Let me describe the idea with two real life experiences.

Pingdom Uptime Checker Tool

class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-58" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/0106-2.jpg" alt="Pingdom Tweets On WHSR Posts" width="835" height="316" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/0106-2.jpg 835w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/0106-2-300x113.jpg 300w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/0106-2-750x283.jpg 750w" sizes="(max-width: 835px) 100vw, 835px" />
I have been using rel="nofollow" title="Pingdom" href="https://www.pingdom.com/" target="_blank">Pingdom Uptime Checker for quite some time. Basically, what the tool does is that it sends an HTTP request to your site every 5 minute 24/7 (to check on the uptime) and provides an overall report to your registered email by end of the month. The tool is accurate, extremely user-friendly, and best of all, free of charge.

The objective behind this free tool is clear: Pingdom wants to build its brand and gain more exposures (and sign ups) among webmasters. Having that in thought, I took the initiative and introduced Pingdom Uptime Checker to our readers in title="WHSR WP Engine Uptime Review" href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/updates-news/quick-update-on-wp-engine-hosting-2-months-later/" target="_blank">this and title="Server Uptime Monitor Tools" href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/web-tools/5-handy-tools-to-measure-server-uptime/" target="_blank">this post. I then notified Pingdom staffs about the post via Twitter mentions. The outcome? Pingdom’s free service is revealed to my readers (counting at 1,200 unique visitors daily at that time); and in return, folks at Pingdom tweeted about the posts to 60,000+ followers. The tweets not only gave us dozens of new followers on Twitter, it also helped us gained a few extra free links from other bloggers/webmasters who saw the tweets – all at the cost of one short posts and one roundup posts.

iPhone Apps For Web Developers

class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-59" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/0106-1.jpg" alt="Tweet By iPhone Apps Developer" width="835" height="402" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/0106-1.jpg 835w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/0106-1-300x144.jpg 300w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/0106-1-750x361.jpg 750w" sizes="(max-width: 835px) 100vw, 835px" />

On another example, some time ago, Danielle and I decided to cover a list of title="Handy iPhone Apps For Web Developers" href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/web-design/handy-iphone-apps-for-web-developers/" target="_blank">useful iPhone Apps for web developers on WHSR. As you probably knew, app developers are always racing fiercely to win market share at Apple Apps Store. What app developers need most, without doubt, will more exposures on their products.

So, without any incentive from the app developers, we simply gave out free publicity and links to the selected app developers. The post was then submitted to dozens of different web design sites and social networking sites for marketing purpose. After a few emails and mentions on Twitter and some Stumbles, our work started to payoff. Some of the featured web developers picked up the post and linked back to us from their high authority blogs, and some tweeted about the post, and some simply emailed and gave us a free trial account (hey, we are web developers too). The link out strategy earned us more than just links; it also helped us to build relationships with other players in the industry, which most probably will help us to thrive in long-term. Sweet!

Your Takeaway In This Guide

If you are reading this, chances are you were looking for ways to improve your site’s link profile. And, if you are like me – an average guy with limited resources (money, manpower, talents, access to useful data) – you’ll need to get smart and work really hard.

So here’s how you can apply my idea to your next link building campaign.

First, Instead of looking for what you can gain from others, href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/web-tools/my-quick-review-on-getresponse/">ask yourself what you can give to others. Compile a list of 50 sites/blogs related to your industry. Briefly review each of them in the list to understand their strengths and weaknesses, jot your thoughts into the list. If you are familiar with your niche, this shouldn’t take too much of time, target spend less than 20 minutes on each.
Now, look at the list and ask yourself: “How I can I help to fill the gap and help the site/blog owners to improve?”
Is there any bad English grammar you can help rectify? Is the site owner/blogger missing certain web marketing skill that you are good at? Can you help pin point the broken links on the site/blog? Does the site/blog need any beta tester for certain program or web service? Is the site owner/blogger looking for users to write a testimonial?

I once did a round of 20 article submissions on my EzineArticles Platinum Account for a guy in order to get a link on his blog homepage. All it took to get that 20 standard articles approved on EzineArticles was some extra labor work and I got that homepage link without spending a dime. The site owner later told me that I’m the first one who did that and he was glad that his other competitors were not following my strategy.

You see, it doesn’t take a genius to create a symbiosis, win-win situation. Just be generous and be that guy who is not afraid to take the first step.”Give and you shall receive” – there is indeed some wisdom in the old sayings. Yes, the process can be a little tiring sometimes but hey, it works. Do this once per week for the next 12 months and I bet your site will have a totally different link profile (and much higher traffic volume one year later). After all, this is how I grew WebHostingSecretRevealed.com from 0 visitors to 80,000 unique visits per month with limited budget in two years time.

Now that’s my link building trick as an average guy. What’s yours?

Page 22 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

Why Good Content Should Be at the Heart of Your Link Building Campaign

alt="Why Good Content Should Be at the Heart of Your Link Building Campaign" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/hearts-featured-image-500x500_c.png" />

Penguins, Pandas and other wild animals have wreaked havoc on many website owner’s traffic levels title="One Year Later: Post Penguin and Google Analysis" href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/seo/penguin-2-0-roundups-studies-and-losers-analysis/">over the last two years. The message from Google was clear: Stop trying to manipulate our search results. The black-hat techniques that many so-called “SEO Experts” had been using for years were no longer working.

Many business owners did not even know that their SEO marketing partners were using questionable tactics to promote their websites, so they were shocked to see their traffic crash to the floor (I can only imagine what lies these SEO companies told their clients). Companies had grown website traffic for years using poor quality articles that were stuffed with keywords, link bombing, and link wheels designed to fool Google.

Google had warned website owners to focus on good content and not try and manipulate their results, however everyone had got away with these black-hat techniques for years so the warnings largely fell on deaf ears. Due to this, many website owners were unprepared for the changes Google introduced, creating what can only be considered an “unmitigated disaster” for them. Their whole business model was built on getting traffic by manipulating search engines. With no plan B, many websites were simply left to die (good riddance to most of them).

The Fall of Content Farms

Search Engine Land Editor-In-Chief title="Matt McGee" href="http://www.mattmcgee.com/">Matt McGee wrote a fantastic article a few months ago entitled “title="Google Panda Two Years Later: The Real Impact Beyond Rankings & SEO Visibility" href="http://searchengineland.com/google-panda-two-years-later-real-impact-149519">Google Panda Two Years Later: The Real Impact Beyond Rankings & SEO Visibility“. The article highlighted just how much some large websites had been hit. Using data from title="Search Metrics" href="http://searchmetrics.com">Search Metrics, Matt showed how badly websites such as HubPages, Mahalo and Suite101 had been affected.

style="text-align: center;">class="aligncenter wp-image-1088 border" alt="Panda Traffic Drop" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/panda-traffic-drop.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/panda-traffic-drop.png 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/panda-traffic-drop-300x133.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />

The fall in traffic they experienced was astounding. HubPages currently has 62% less traffic than it had before the Panda changes were introduced. Mahalo has lost 92% of its traffic and Suite101 has lost a whopping 96%. As professional as these websites look, they have never been nothing more than glorified title="Content Farms" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_farm">content farms that were specifically designed to encourage visitors to click on links.

They were used by many people to promote their new websites as articles achieved a decent PageRank fairly quickly. Therefore it was common practice for an SEO company to throw up an article on HubPages or Squidoo and insert several links to their websites throughout.

These companies always valued quantity of quality (a quick look at any article on the ultimate content farm About.com verifies this). That was was made these websites successful, but in the end, it was also what brought them back down to earth.

For an insight into the world of content farms, I recommend reading former Mahalo employee Andrew Kaufman’s excellent article “title="Confessions of a Content Farm Hand" href="http://freelancecontentstrategist.com/content-farm-hand.html">Confessions of a Content Farm Hand“.

Quality Over Quantity

I saw a few small irrelevant content websites that I own see traffic drop after the Panda update, however across the board, I was largely unaffected with those changes as I had always generated traffic by focusing on high quality articles.

My friends were not so lucky. They were generating thousands of pounds every month from a UK financial comparison website whose traffic was created from links from low PR content farms such as title="Linkvana" href="http://www.linkvana.com">Linkvana and BuildMyRank.com (which Google title="BuildMyRank Closes Down" href="http://ppc.org/buildmyrank-shuts-down-their-link-building-service/">completely deindexed in 2012). It was a simple little website but it generated a huge amount of money from only a few hundred visits per day. I believe it could have sold for at least 0,000 (probably much more) on a marketplace such as title="Flippa" href="http://www.flippa.com">Flippa. After the panda update, it was practically worthless, giving them a harsh lesson on why you should not try and manipulate search engines. On a positive note, they are continuing to rebuild the website by writing high quality articles for visitors. It is a shame they did not do this from the start.

As a website owner, I was not directly affected by the changes in Panda, however the changes did improve my position as a freelance writer. Dozens of website owners had contacted me over the years asking me to write for them. They quickly withdrew their offer of work when I advised them I would not write 500 word articles for -. In their minds, all articles were created equal. The only thing they were concerned about was that an article was unique. The quality of the article was not important. It is no surprise that many of these people turned to title="Article Spinning, Another Bad Idea" href="http://dejanseo.com.au/article-spinning-another-bad-idea/">article spinning instead.

id="attachment_1091" style="width: 760px" class="wp-caption aligncenter">class=" wp-image-1091 border" alt="Article Spinning is a Bad Idea" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/article-spinning.png" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/article-spinning.png 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/article-spinning-300x83.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />class="wp-caption-text">Article spinning is a pointless endeavor…though I do have respect for article spinning companies that stress the importance of unique content and then market the fact their articles only cost a few cents!

The days of generating traffic with thousands of poorly written articles are over. Today, quality is much more important than quantity. It is much better to get a few incoming links from a top website than it is to have hundreds of links from low traffic websites.

“So you don’t need a ton of links. Don’t go for quantity. Go for quality.” – Neil Patel

SEO expert title="Neil Patel" href="http://www.quicksprout.com/">Neil Patel spoke about this in great detail in title="SEO Link Building Best Practices for 2013" href="http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2235536/SEO-Link-Building-Best-Practices-for-2013-Interview-with-Neil-Patel">an interview with title="Jayson DeMers" href="http://www.audiencebloom.com/">Jayson DeMers. He noted that:

These days, if a competitor has a thousand or ten thousand or hundred thousand links and you merely have a hundred, you can still outrank them if your quality is better, and you’re growing organically over time. So, the velocity is much slower instead of getting a thousand links every single day or every few weeks or. It’s like get a handful of links if you’re trying to rank for “dog food”, your best link, quality wise, is someone who already ranks for “dog food” in the top thousand, if not top hundred. Find out those pages, hit them up, try to get a link, right?
And on top of that, you want to make sure the anchor text is diversified. You don’t want to just have “dog food” as all of them, because if it’s all “dog food”, it’s not natural. It needs to be rotated up, have multiple keywords in there, look as natural as possible from the domain name, to the title tag of the page, or the keyword, other various keywords that are related to that main keyword, so forth and so on.
But those are the main ways that I would build links. Slow and steady wins the race. Go for quality and don’t go for speed, right? And don’t try to go out there and buy thousands of links or you don’t even need to buy any links. If you just write really good content, pretty good product or service, you can get rankings more quickly and better than most people out there who are spending thousands of dollars a day on link buys.

Good Content Should Be at the Heart of Your Online Strategy

SEO strategies in the past relied on too many external factors. Your destiny was in the hands of the search engines and a change in their algorithm usually meant your website traffic was going to drop. Traffic was generated by adding content to other websites with links back to your own. Unfortunately, this was always at the expense of adding more value to your own website, and adding value to your website should be your ultimate goal. Any technique that looks to manipulate search results is a short term solution to a long term problem. Search engines are never going to have any problems with websites which publish good content.

My original title for this article was “Forget About Building Links and Start Writing Good Content”. I decided against using that title as I realised that it is a little misleading. title="Link Building Still Works" href="http://purpletrout.com/link-building-still-works-and-its-necessary-for-seo/">Link building is still important. The rules have changed, however it remains an important piece of the SEO puzzle.

It is therefore important that you do not forget about link building, but I strongly believe your main focus online should be creating high quality content. Good content is at the heart of generating links.

The title="SEO Moz Beginner's Guide to SEO" href="http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links">SEO Moz Beginner’s Guide to SEO suggests 5 samples of link building strategies:

Get your customers to link to you.
Build a company blog. Make it a valuable, informative and entertaining resource.
Create content that inspires viral sharing and natural linking.
Be newsworthy (to attract links naturally).
Find directories or listings of relevant resources.

You should quickly notice that every single one of these title="33 Link Building Questions Answered" href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/33-link-building-questions-answered">link building techniques relies on your website having good content. If you do not publish good content, no one is going to link to you, no one is going to title="5 Ways to Get More Retweets" href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/socialmedia-marketing/5-ways-to-get-more-retweets/">share your articles, and no directory is going to accept your website. In 2013, your whole link building strategy depends on you providing visitors with useful information. The days of keyword stuffing are over. Remember, quality over quantity.

href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/">Web Hosting Secret Revealed is a great example of a website that places emphasis on quality rather than quantity. It publishes three or four articles every week, however there is no filler. Each article is a few thousand words in length and was written with the reader in mind.

In the short term, the strategy for WHSR owner href="http://plus.google.com/102377244502422084883" target="_blank">Jerry Low is to attract shares and incoming links to each article. This will not be too difficult to do as all content here is good enough to generate links and shares organically. Long term, the volume of quality articles on WHSR will continue to grow, ensuring that the site generates a lot of traffic from search engines.

Write for Your Readers

Website owners regularly talk about metrics such as social media shares, page views and unique visits. We use these terms so frequently that it is easy to forget that each unique visit represents a human being; a person who is sitting reading your website from their computer, tablet or smartphone.

When you are reading an article on the internet, do you care how many retweets it has or how many likes it has on Facebook? Of course you don’t. All that matters is that the article is useful to you in some way; href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/web-hosting-guides/5-mistakes-to-avoid-when-choosing-a-website-host/">solving a problem or entertaining you in some way.

Keep this in mind when you are writing your articles. If you want an article to be shared and to be title="Link Building Fundamentals" href="http://www.virante.org/blog/2013/03/11/link-building-fundamentals-smx-west/">linked on other websites, write your articles for people, not search engines. Ultimately, it is a person who decides whether your content is good and whether they share it with other people. And if people do link and share your content, search engines such as Google will see that as an indication that your article is of a high quality and rank your page higher in their results because of that.

So my advice to you is:

Write for people, not for search engines.
Connect with your readers. People are more likely to share your content if they like you as a person.
Be patient. When it comes to link building, slow and steady wins the race.
When you contact people to ask for shares and links, be polite, professional and respectful; even if they do not link back. You never know, they might link next time.
Your primary focus should be writing good content. Without good content, you cannot generate incoming links and shares effectively.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article. I am always interested in hearing about the strategies of website owners use to build traffic online, therefore I encourage you to leave a comment and share your views on the issue.

Good luck,
Kevin

title="Featured Image Credit" href="http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1413990">Featured Image Credit

Page 20 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

Building a Networking Group for Social Media Exposure

alt="Building a Networking Group for Social Media Exposure" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/0611-1-500x633_c.jpg" />

Google has made it pretty clear that buying tweets on social media or using blackhat tactics to up your apparent social media rankings is a big no-no. However, new businesses or those who are still trying to build website traffic may wonder how to get buzz going about their website on places like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest without violating Google’s rules or getting penalized.

This is a very gray area and you must proceed with caution as paying for links on social media or linking too often to the same sites can create issues. However, if you want some initial buzz and want to team up with some like-minded (and similarly or higher than you ranked) business owners, then setting up a networking group where you cross-promote for a limited time can be beneficial for everyone.

Make sure you cross promote with integrity. Don’t take people into your networking group who offer a product or information that you don’t feel 100% confident in. Remember that you are going to be sending your customers to this site through your tweets, posts and pins. Do you want to put your name behind it?

Building a Network of Like-Minded People

class="alignright size-full wp-image-1030" alt="Business partnership" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/0501-2.jpg" width="280" height="210" />

Your first step is to find a group of at least five to ten like-minded people to form your networking group.

Watch for:

Business owners who are active on multiple social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest)
People with multiple connections so the groups can be easily switched up or you can pull in one another’s contacts for more social media shares
Businesses that complement yours but are not in direct competition such as a clothing company and a jewelery company

Once you have a list of people you think would be a good fit for your business, write an introductory letter and contact each of them. Ideally, these will be people you know or have done business with, because you want people who will follow through. Your intro letter should explain:

The group is short-term (more on this in a bit when we talk about Penguin)
The group is closed to a select number of people
The group will help promote each other on social media in a natural way and not with blackhat tactics

Send your invitation letter and choose your people carefully. Remember that they will be promoting your brand. You don’t want someone who has cursing or inflammatory comments on their Twitter feed tweeting about your product. You want businesses that are professional and have a separate business account, but also keep stellar personal accounts.

Using the Group to Cross-Promote

Now, this is the tricky part of this proposition. Google frowns on anything that falsely tries to pump up your site ranking or make you look more popular on social media than you truly are. You want to steer away from simply posting a link to an article because that person is in your networking group. Instead, use the network to brainstorm ideas with one another. What can each of you offer to the other that provides value to customers? href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/web-business-ideas/why-good-content-should-be-at-the-heart-of-your-link-building-campaign/">Information is a good place to start.

Articles

Let’s go back to that sample above. Let’s say you own an online clothing retail store. You team up with a network of people and one is an online custom jewelry maker. The perfect information for your readers is how to match jewelry to a particular style of outfit. Your jewelry friend writes an article on this topic. The article can be posted to the jewelry blog or your own blog and then you shout out about it on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Some things to keep in mind:

No spammy articles

The jeweler should focus on what styles of jewelry go with a particular clothing style and not try to sell her own jewelry. The only place her jewelry should be mentioned is in the bio and then it should not say anything like “buy this type of jewelry at her site” or anything along those lines. You are offering “free” and valuable info to your readers, not trying to hard sale.

Make sure the article is well-written and free of grammatical errors

Work together to edit any published materials to be sure of this. Google does penalize for poorly written content.

Don’t overdo it

Just because one article that is tweeted out is successful doesn’t mean you should tweet every article your networking partner writes. In fact, Google has started to look more closely at how many different sites you link to and who backlink to you. Too many from the same source or to the same source can set off alarm bells that you are using blackhat tactics and could impact your site’s rank with Google.

Contests

Team up to do a contest as a networking group. You can set up a page on Facebook or create a separate website for your group. Have users retweet info from each site on different days (or post, share or pin) and enter them in a contest to win a prize you all pitch in together to offer. The better the prize, the more entries you’ll have.

Online Workshops or TeleSeminars

Team up to offer online workshops or teleseminars. Offer the workshop for free if the customer shares the event on social media. In a teleseminar, you can talk about your business a bit more without the worries of being penalized by Google. However, don’t overdo it. No one likes a spammy conference call, either.

Think Outside the Big Three

style="text-align: center;">class="aligncenter wp-image-1725 border" alt="Infographic on SlideShare" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/0611-1.jpg" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/0611-1.jpg 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/0611-1-236x300.jpg 236w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />

The big three players in the social media game by growth and buzz are Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. According to href="http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/resource-how-many-people-use-the-top-social-media/" target="_blank">Craig Smith, who analyzed the numbers visiting these three sites in May 2013, there are now 1.11 billion users on Facebook, 500 million on Twitter and 48.7 million on Pinterest. These numbers vary from study to study, but if you listen to the buzz around the water cooler, you’ll discover that this lines up with what people are talking about. Everyone seems to be on Facebook, but many are tweeting and Pinterest is growing in popularity.

Outside The Big Three: Key Statistics

As a networking group, you’ll want to target these three at first. However, don’t forget the other big players out there, many with even more users.

LinkedIn – title="LinkedIn Stats Numbers" href="http://press.linkedin.com/about" target="_blank">225 million
Badoo – title="Badoo Stats" href="http://thenextweb.com/apps/2013/02/08/social-dating-service-badoo-launches-an-ipad-app-for-its-172-million-users/" target="_blank">172 million
Disqus – title="Disqus" href="http://blog.disqus.com/post/50374065365/whats-cooler-than-a-billion-monthly-uniques" target="_blank">100 million
Flickr – title="Flickr Stats" href="http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/20/4121574/flickr-chief-markus-spiering-talks-photos-and-marissa-mayer" target="_blank">87 million
Google Plus – title="Google+ User Stats " href="http://www.zdnet.com/google-moves-up-to-second-place-in-social-networks-7000010372/" target="_blank">343 million
Living Social – title="Living Social User Base" href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/2036523/livingsocial-gets-hacked-50-million-users-told-to-reset-passwords.html" target="_blank">73 million
My Life – title="MyLife App Users " href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mylife-app-launch-2012-1" target="_blank">60 million
SlideShare – title="SlideShare Stats" href="http://blog.slideshare.net/2013/05/09/10-million-presentations-uploaded-to-slideshare/" target="_blank">50 million

You’ll notice that some of these social sharing sites are not focused around articles. Flickr offers photographs and Slideshare offers presentations. By expanding your social media reach to these sites, you will also come up with material that is unique and unlike anything else out there. On Flickr, the clothing store might offer a photograph of an outfit they put together right down to shoes and jewelry.

Mailing List Sharing

Do you or your networking partners have an online newsletter or traditional mailing list? Take the opportunity to promote one another. You will reach customers you otherwise would never reach. Here is one example of something a business owner could do. Let’s say that one of the networking partners, a service business that creates unique poems for special events, is offering a contest to give away a free poem for anyone who tweets about their contest.

Each person in the network would send a note within the newsletter asking customers to give a tweet out about the contest and by doing so they will be entered to win a free poem. While not every customer will be interested in sharing the event on social media, some will. When using this method, allow everyone to take a turn utilizing the lists to keep things fair.

Watch Out for Attacking Penguins

title="Google Penguin Studies and Analysis" href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/seo/penguin-2-0-roundups-studies-and-losers-analysis/" target="_blank">Penguins are on the loose and ready to attack – one penguin anyway. Google’s Penguin updates are expected to get smarter and savvier at catching any trickery on the part of website owners. That is why it is important that you focus on building excellent content together as a network of business owners rather than playing backlinking games. I would even dare to suggest that you not link to one another at all other than by sharing a tweet about an article on the other’s site.

Because you don’t want to get penalized if Google believes you are each promoting one another’s sites without reason, it is best that your networking group is short lived. Cover a few items that you cross promote with one another and then walk away from the group. Don’t worry, though, you can always form a new group with new like-minded business owners.

Page 20 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

Why Building an Online Community Could Equal Big Profits

alt="Why Building an Online Community Could Equal Big Profits" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/online-community-500x390_c.jpg" />

If you’ve been running a website for a while, you’ve likely already built up a regular following. Readers tend to be pretty loyal to those sites they enjoy and that provide them with excellent content. By using href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/blogging-tips/how-to-magnetize-your-blog-and-build-your-readership/" target="_blank">the tips here on WHSR, you’ve likely already built a solid blog filled with excellent content. Now, it’s time to connect with the readers you’ve gained and start to build a community.

id="attachment_9852" style="width: 760px" class="wp-caption aligncenter">class="border wp-image-9852 size-full" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/warrior-forum.jpg" alt="Freelancer.com Pays .2M To Buy Digital Marketing Marketplace, Warrior Forum." width="750" height="491" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/warrior-forum.jpg 750w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/warrior-forum-300x196.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" />class="wp-caption-text">Freelancer.com Pays .2M To Buy Digital Marketing Marketplace, Warrior Forum.

An excellent example of the big payoff potential in building an online community can be seen in the recent sale of href="http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/15/freelancer-buys-warrior-forum/" target="_blank">Warrior Forum for .2 million. The online forum has approximately 732,000 members. These members were very active in the online forum, making it a strong community. Apparently taking the time to build a solid community can pay off – in the millions.

How to Build a Community

When a customer feels a part of the community, he is more likely to spread news about your site to others. According to href="http://www.marketingcharts.com/wp/online/word-of-mouth-insights-customer-loyalty-big-benefits-of-online-communities-5434/" target="_blank">Marketing Charts, when a site adds a successful online community, it increases word-of-mouth advertising by 35%. In addition, an online forum gives you and your staff a chance to connect one-on-one with customers and interact with them. Which person are you more likely to purchase products or services from time and time again: The person who is nameless and faceless or the one you interact with on a daily basis?

id="attachment_9859" style="width: 760px" class="wp-caption aligncenter">class="border wp-image-9859 size-full" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/building-a-community.jpg" alt="Infographic credit: Charlotte Clark" width="750" height="410" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/building-a-community.jpg 750w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/building-a-community-300x164.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" />class="wp-caption-text">Infographic credit: href="http://visual.ly/building-online-community">Charlotte Clark

Offering Value to the Member

Building an online community affords many benefits. First, people will feel invested in your site, which will make it more likely that they will visit and visit regularly. They will also:

Tell others about your site
Become engaged in conversations with like-minded (or sometimes opposite) people
Learn information
Treat your site as a trusted source of insider information

The intrinsic value to members is tied into the fact that they feel a part of that community, that they add value to it by being there and this creates a href="http://140.124.90.41/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/p3.pdf" target="_blank">strong connection with others in the community and the community forum itself. If the forum is not active enough for members to feel engaged, they won’t hang around.

Making Him Feel Part of the Group

One of the best ways to keep members engaged is to stay in contact. Here are some ideas for ways to keep your members engaged in the community and to draw in new members.

Welcome new members and ask them to introduce themselves.
If you notice a member posting thoughtful, intelligent responses, invite that member to contricute to a feature contribution or have one of your staff write a feature to share.
Recognize birthdays of members by featuring their name and a birthday wish on the official blog. Make your members feel special.
Implement an area where business owners can promote their businesses or areas of knowledge. People love to share or self-promote. Provide an appropriate forum for this and they’ll be more likely to get involved in your site.

Another thing you can do is to create regular events that members who’ve been around awhile will come to expect. They will hopefully explain these events to newbies. A site that has created an excellent sense of community that does this type of thing is Spark People.

href="http://www.sparkpeople.com/" target="_blank">Spark People is a diet community. Membership is free and the site also offers tools for dieting, recipes and articles. However, it has forums with thriving communities that are separated into types of dieting, types of exercise and even topics like 30-somethings. Members help one another with diet advice. Members have come to expect regular events, such as a birthday wish, reminders about goals and Challenge Central, which offers new challenges to members on a regular basis.

class="border aligncenter wp-image-9771" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/spark-people.png" alt="spark-people" width="750" height="343" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/spark-people.png 750w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/spark-people-300x137.png 300w" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" />

You’ll notice from the screenshot of the site above that there are featured member pages. These people are your success stories. They are meant to inspire and motivate you and the idea is that you might be featured there one day, too. Spark also allows members to join teams. Teams have leaders, who will spur you on and be your cheerleader. The community area also has member blogs and message boards for discussion.

Membership to Spark is free, so I highly encourage you to take out a membership and putter around the community a bit to get an idea of everything the community has to offer and why this site was the largest weight loss website as of 2011 and why it has over href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/sparkpeople.com" target="_blank">13.5 million registered users in more than 100 different countries.

Find a Specific Niche

As you can see from the diet website case study above, finding a niche is an important element in creating a successful online community. Yackity yack community isn’t going to be nearly as successful as amateur golfer tips community. The key is to find an area people want to know more about or are passionate about and build on that concept.

If you own a business already, obviously you’ll want a niche community related to that business. If you just want to build an online community and are just starting out, then the sky is the limit and you can choose any niche you’d like. Keep in mind that you should probably be an expert or in close contact with an expert on the topic as your members may have questions for the moderators and owners of the site.

Moz recommends href="http://moz.com/blog/sense-of-community" target="_blank">creating a sense of community by putting up “boundaries”. Your community may be smaller, but if it is stronger, then that is a positive thing as well. 13.5 million members is only an impressive number if those members regularly visit your site, after all.

Moz presents a formula in the guide on online communities that is pretty smart and impressive. It is essentially this:

href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/why-building-an-online-community-could-equal-big-profits/attachment/who-what-what/" rel="attachment wp-att-9772">class="aligncenter wp-image-9772" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/who-what-what.jpg" alt="who what what" width="700" height="163" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/who-what-what.jpg 750w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/who-what-what-300x70.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px" />

Answer those questions and you’ll have a better idea of the niche area your community should cover.

Create A Safe Zone

Have you ever posted an idea or thought in an online community and had another member outright attack you? Most of us have experienced it over some thought or another. How did that make you feel? You probably were aggravated and either argued for a while and then realized it was taking up too much of your time, or you disengaged and left the forum. Either way, when members don’t feel safe to share their innermost thoughts and feelings without being attacked, they also are not going to be engaged.

Creating a safe zone within your online community should resemble a family. Are you scared to be yourself with your family and closest friends? Probably not. That is the same feeling members of an online community should experience. There are a few things you can do to achieve this:

Put firm rules in place (no name calling, no cursing, no racial slurs, etc.).
Appoint community moderators to enforce the rules, keep the peace and get discussions going.
Don’t be afraid to change the rules if you notice abuse.
Don’t be afraid to remove people from the community or to block them if necessary. It is a good idea to start with a warning and go from there.

Once you’ve established some boundaries that protect all your members, it is important to remind them of those rules from time to time. If your community is successful, you’ll be getting a lot of new members, so these reminders are vital to keep everyone on the same page.

Overcoming Challenges

id="attachment_9853" style="width: 760px" class="wp-caption aligncenter">class="size-full wp-image-9853" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/graphs.jpg" alt="Photo credit: 10ch " width="750" height="530" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/graphs.jpg 750w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/graphs-300x212.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" />class="wp-caption-text">Photo credit: href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/10ch/3101275536/in/photostream/">10ch

href="http://www.slideshare.net/fgossieaux/2008-tribalization-of-business-study-447040/" target="_blank">Beeline Labs conducted a study called “The Tribalization of Business”, in which they took a look at some of the challenges online communities face. Those challenges included:

Getting people involved in the community
Time management in maintaining the community
Attracting new people to the community or growth of community

Getting People Involved

I mentioned above that community moderators can get discussion going. Whether you enlist active community members to help with this job or you and your staff cover these tasks, you can utilize the leaders of your community to:

Welcome new members
Start new discussions
Plan regular events, such as an online scavenger hunt, contest or question to answer
Answer questions members have

Time Management

Running an online community can be time consuming. In fact, if the community is active, it can be almost impossible to moderate everything. There are a few things you can do to automate this and watch your time commitments.

Automatically approve posts from members with a certain number of past posts. Trouble makers usually show up within the first 20 posts or so.
Set up a way for other members to report abuse. This will help you feel comfortable with less moderation.
Watch for members who are extremely involved and know a lot about the topic but are not business competitors. Enlist their help (offer a free gift if you don’t want to pay a salary) in starting topics and other minor tasks.

Growth

As mentioned before a strong community isn’t necessarily a huge community. However, to really be effective for your business, the community does need to grow. Here are some ways to achieve that:

Encourage current members to share your site with others.
Make sign-up quick, free and easy.
Place a large href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/inbound-marketing/12-tips-to-improve-your-website-conversion-rate-instantly/" target="_blank">call to action button on your site’s home page to encourage visitors to sign up.
Start social media pages with links to sign up for the community and cross-posts about current discussions.

What Are the Pros Doing Right that You Can Too?

Think about some of the most active communities you know of. What are these communities doing right that you can repeat? We recommend you study sites like:

href="http://moz.com/community" target="_blank">Moz – Their community area has features like “Mozinars”, which are online webinars to help members learn more about marketing. They also have a Q&A area where you can ask your “tough” questions and industry experts will answer. They also feature their top users, encouraging people to get more involved.
href="http://triberr.com/" target="_blank">Triberr – Topic posts are front and center and starting a conversation on each topic is simple and quick. On the right side is a running feed of live conversations. This allows site visitors to see what the hot topics are at a glance and jump into the fray. You can also sort by new topics or trending topics (read href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/interviews/blogger-interview-5-questions-with-dino-dogan/">our interview with Triberr founder, Dino Dogan here).

By studying what others are doing that is working, you’ll be better able to tweak your community into the powerhouse you want it to be. You’ll be happy with all the website traffic and your visitors will be happy because they will have found an online home that is comfortable and a place they want to visit often.

Page 13 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

14 Reasons Link Building Belongs To Marketing (Not SEO Nor Google)

alt="14 Reasons Link Building Belongs To Marketing (Not SEO Nor Google)" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/sitefox-500x226_c.jpg" />

id="attachment_9911" style="width: 760px" class="wp-caption aligncenter">class="wp-image-9911 size-full" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/sitefox.jpg" alt="" width="750" height="340" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/sitefox.jpg 750w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/sitefox-300x136.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" />class="wp-caption-text">SiteFox – “The more sites that link to you, the more your credibility increases.“

SiteFox – “The more sites that link to you, the more your credibility increases.“

I love what SiteFox wrote on the image above–

“The more sites that link to you, the more your credibility increases.“

Sure, a backlink can be placed in a negative context — for example, when the author links back to you to show the world how horrible and unprofessional your site is— well, that isn’t exactly pleasant for you! But, even though the reality of that argument is debatable — or if your link is there only to fill a list of useful resources without a contextual comment — the fact that your site gets links at all is a sign of popularity.

“Yes, We Know! Google Filled Our Head With This Popularity Thing!”

class="alignright" title="an unwitting victim...bwahahhahahaa" src="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4044/4257136773_5634a21fa2.jpg" alt="an unwitting victim...bwahahhahahaa" width="200" />

Yes, I know, too. But it’s not Google popularity I’m talking about here.

This is the popularity you get regardless of search engines.

Regardless of links carrying a nofollow attribute or not.

Regardless of context.

It’s the popularity that follows from visibility.

And it’s why Link Building has nothing to do with SEO.

Link Building Is Pure, Simple, Beautiful Marketing At Its Best

What’s link building if not placing backlinks on other websites to increase visibility?

And isn’t visibility a top marketing goal, the one that begins the selling process?

You make it possible for your target audience to acknowledge the existence of your product or service, tell them why it can be the solution they were looking for, add a call to action, and wait.

And then, will they finally buy? Download? Use?

href="http://linkarati.com/2013-link-building-success/#RogerMontti" target="_blank">Roger Montti (martinibuster at WebmasterWorld’s) says:

“Link building for traffic and sales works. You just have to get over the idea that link building is exclusively for ranking purposes. Once you get beyond that, you will find there are amazing opportunities for growing your business because you are no longer fettered by SEO considerations such as anchor text, PageRank, whether a link is do-follow or redirected.”

class="border aligncenter" title="Social-Media-Campaign" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3154/2973684461_8ecfb1dd10.jpg" alt="Social-Media-Campaign" width="750" height="352" />

1. Building Links Is Building Connections

You don’t make reputation marketing without building connections first— as you genuinely get in touch with people potentially interested in your service or product, help them and befriend them, your reputation score rises— and so do sales.

Where to get started?

You can use social media to connect with prospects. If you sell home or baby care products, you can visit mommy blog directories and find interesting bloggers you can email and start a relationship with before you ask them for a link in exchange of a sample or payment.

“In fact it’s totally doable to get links once you behave like human being. People are social creatures. They want to make friends. You have to be perfectly yourself so that people befriend you and spread the word about your content.” – href="http://blog.ahrefs.com/tao-link-building/" target="_blank">TadChef, “The Tao of Link Building” at Ahrefs.com

2. Link Building Is Engaging In The Conversation

The circuit of backlinks pushes people to interact online and join a discussion. When you bring your link in front of people, you give them a chance to see what you do and comment on it. If you sell shampoo and cosmetics, buying a link from a cosmetics blog has the potential to get you more buzz (see #12 too) from similar blogger who are regulars on the blog you bought from— they will get curious, give your site and your product a try, then leave a comment or a review.

How to encourage conversations?

The easiest way is to buy the link in a blog post containing a short review and to ask the blogger to leave a CTA for their readers. But in general, any well-placed link will spark the conversation if you give your webmaster’s visitors enough reason to give it a try– for example, placing your link where the webmasters lists resources connected to tips or recipes makes for good potential.

3. Link Building Attracts Interested Prospects

If #2 works to spark conversations, it will work to feed your funnel of leads, too! Interested prospects find you via links, so they better be placed where your prospect usually go find them on.

How to spark curiosity?

Instead of sending your prospect directly to your homepage, direct them to a landing page containing a freebie, make the anchor text relevant or let the webmaster choose the anchor text after trying out the freebie (you know the webmaster him/herself can be a prospect, do you?).

4. Link Building Creates A First Bridge

Your website is pretty much a lonely, useless and unknown thing until you get the first backlink. But if you do what Google says — have a good website and hope someone will link back to you — you’re better off without a website at all. Paper flyers and brochures will do a better job for you, if that’s the case.

Link building creates a first bridge between your website and the world of the Web.

Building bridges means giving yourself and others a possibility. Getting known means chance to do business.

5. Link Building Is Advertising

Advertising is all about getting visible in front of prospects.

Isn’t link building just the same thing? It’s href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/category/blog/inbound-marketing/">inbound marketing. It’s all about href="http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/4416/Inbound-Marketing-the-Next-Phase-of-Marketing-on-the-Web.aspx" target="_blank">getting found by prospects and convert them into leads first and customers then.

How to make advertising effective?

Simply talk to the website owner. A webmaster knows their website inside out, they know the weak and strong spots of the page you’re targeting and how to better present your content to their readers.

Advertising should really be more about collaboration and genuine work ethics. Also, all advertisement should be disclosed while still retaining a ‘natural’ factor — back in May, I joined href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/+Copyblogger/posts/XCa2Fo8GuXw" target="_blank">a discussion on Copyblogger’s Google+ account about ethics in native advertising and I suggested two approaches:

Website owner and advertiser discuss advertising content to meet readers’ expectations and interests at least midway, so that the advertised content and its style don’t feel extraneous and suspicious
Avoid the use of “Sponsored By” at the top or bottom of the advert because people just don’t see that– they go straight to the content. An alternative could be a paragraph just above the advert — in normal font size, not fine print! — like this: Note: This article was promoted by ABC Company to spread the word about their product. However, we all made sure the content would be helpful and interesting for YOU. Enjoy the read!

6. Link Building Is For Visibility

Linking makes your site real, tangible, known.

And if your link building opportunity had a face and a mouth to speak, she would shout “Get found! Be acknowledged!” right into your ear.

As I said earlier, title="Simple Steps to Get Ahead of Your Competition Using Social Media Marketing" href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/socialmedia-marketing/simple-steps-to-get-ahead-of-your-competition-using-social-media-marketing/">marketing is all about getting found, liked and used by your prospective clients/readers. The more relevant links you obtain — either editorially or via link building methods — the more chances to make a sale or boost your traffic conversions.

7. Link Building Is Outreach

When you link, you call out to the site getting linked. A link means you ping the webmaster, wave and say “Hey look, you’ve been cited!”.

But you don’t have to wait for the webmaster to find out about your link. You can email them or contact them via social media and let them know—

Dear Webmaster,
I appreciated your blog post so much that I wanted to link it here: URL
Hope you can drop by and let me know if you liked my content!
Thank you!

or—

Hey @Writer! Your Niche article ROCKS! I mentioned it here– URL To when your next post?

Just like you, webmasters love to get mentions, and sometimes they will link you as a sign of gratitude and a seal that a new relationship was created.

This is the most genuine marketing!

Also, you can make friendly outreach your main link building practice, too— check href="http://searchengineland.com/link-building-outreach-5-steps-to-maximize-the-value-of-every-opportunity-24687" target="_blank">what Garrett French says about it at Search Engine Land.

8. Link Building Sells

Link to your business in all right places and those links will bring you targeted customers. Or users. Or readers. Just the right people.

This is why junk link building — done for the sole purpose to manipulate Google’s SERPs — has never and will never work for serious businesses—- unless you get potential customers to click that link, visit you and buy from you, that anchor text and hyperlink are good for nothing.

How to build links that sell

It doesn’t matter that the link is nofollow or not, visitors don’t care. As long as they perceive it as trustworthy and helpful.

href="http://www.makealivingwriting.com/copywriting-crash-post/" target="_blank">You have to be the solution to their problem.

Anchor text that is on-point. Hyperlink that leads to a landing page, a blog post or an information package that offers at least part of the solution for free, before the visitor turns into a customer.

Play your link building cards well and you’ll start to see results.

9. Link Building Helps Other Human Beings

You would think exchanging links to charity sites is nothing but a selfish way to use these poor organizations, right?

Wrong.

Link building on noprofit websites helps create a community for people to seek help and make connections with others who share their problems.

When you create a community, you’re not the only one benefiting from an increased reputation.

Or art/writing sharing links to help others to hone their skills

10. Link Building Holds The Web Together

title="Girotondo" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7220/7236766912_302249d921_b.jpg" alt="Girotondo" />

Like children joining hands in a Ring a Ring-o’Roses, the Web of sites is held together by links. You remove links, you destroy the Web.

What does this mean for marketing?

Well, it’s simple: you need to reach your audience, but you can only do this online when you have ‘roads’ that connect your website to others. Nobody would know your website even exists without other sites linking to it, sharing it socially or emailing it.

In fact, link building creates an optimal environment for effective marketing, because it opens a tunnel to allow other people to find your website, and with it, your services.

11. Link Building Is Traffic

People use links to find new places to frequent, recommend, love. That’s how things should be on the Web. Content should be interesting, but we need links to get it found, and the anchor text needs to make it interesting, too.

‘Interesting’ means either a brand name surrounded by contextual text, or a descriptive anchor text that doesn’t look spammy.

This is a good example–

style="text-decoration: underline;">Example Inc. is my favorite brand because…

This is NOT–

I like style="text-decoration: underline;">cheap hotel rooms Chicago because… is NOT.

You need good links and good anchor text to allure a visitor to click and bring in traffic.

Without traffic there are no conversions. Without conversions, there’s no business.

Targeted traffic truly is the first and foremost role of link building in your marketing plan.

12. Link Building Is Buzz

A bit of emotion doesn’t hurt. Actually, it helps your product or service stand out! That’s why you see so many brands use href="http://socialspark.com/" target="_blank">Social Spark to hire bloggers to write interesting blog posts for them— the honest opinion, the visuals and the links get brands known and appreciated.

Yes, it can work like a charm if you take branding seriously and you help the blogger see the value behind your product. That’s the only way for bloggers to influence their audience and help your brand build a solid reputation.

Needless to remark that the anchor text should look genuine and flow naturally with the text. Read my advice for anchor text after Reason #14.

13. Link Building Is Knowledge Building

Through your links, people learn about new things and their lifestyle improves.

This is marketing, too.

The helpful factor in link building lies in the quality of the content being linked. If your content helps the reader walk away with knowledge they can apply ‘right now’, your brand is sure to be remembered, appreciated, shared.

14. Definitely, Link Building Is Not SEO (And It’s NOT For Google)

In fact, it’s not. Link building existed long before Google and link-based search, so to say that link building is an SEO technique is a stretch— it helps link-based SEO, but it does not belong to it.

Imagine for a moment to be a 1999 webmaster with a website. Search engines are a new thing, you use directories and webrings to find other websites. Definitely, you’re going to add yours to the listings, so that others may find you, too.

But that’s not enough, because directories and webrings list a lot of sites and yours is just a number. What to do? Oh, you’re probably going to ask a friend to link you up on her site. You provide information that her visitors may find useful, so wherever she links you, you’re sure she’s going to do it right.

While you’re at it, why not ask to add you to her blogroll, too? And perhaps she can email her contacts to let them know her buddy has a new website with a lot of good stuff?

Now you grab your URL and go to your favorite forum, ask the admin if you can post a thread about it (or just go and do it if the forum as a board for promotions) and introduce your stuff to the other members.

Great! Visitors start to come and leave you sweet messages via email or on your guestbook. Time to build a mailing list…

That was online marketing in 1999, guys. And it’s evergreen, don’t you think?

class="meteor-notification info icon">
class="icon-info-sign">class="content">
Takeaway: Don’t be afraid to link and get linked!

Anchor Texts? Let The Site Owner Choose!

Never ever ever ever tell the webmaster something on these lines:

Hey! Link back to me with “cheap rooms rentals Paris” and make it look natural in your post!

What?! Are you serious? How do you want your poor webmaster to link you ‘naturally’ with that kind of anchor text?

A request of that kind may not only get your linking request rejected, but it will definitely get you labeled as a big, fat spammer— and we’re not talking search engines, here.

I will never get tired to repeat this— leave the anchor text up to the webmaster!

They know their blog, their readers and their writing style, so if you want to help your cause, don’t mess with a webmaster’s freedom to link out.

And please, please— STOP thinking of junk anchor text. For your own sake. People don’t click on spam links– and if they do, you still won’t score a sale or earn a reader.

Link Building Methods

Before you read through this section, I’m going to get two points straight:

Some of these methods are “deprecated” by Google — meaning that you will probably incur in a penalty if you don’t apply a rel=nofollow to outgoing links.
Use these methods with rel=nofollow if you fear Google’s wrath, but if you’re like me and you don’t give a href="http://www.smurf.com/" target="_blank">Smurf about Google’s opinion, naked URLs will be fine. After all, you’re going to build links with the intention to increase visibility in front of your audience, not to manipulate Google’s SERPs, are you? ;)

Link Proposal

It’s simple— reach out to webmasters you love and appreciate and offer them useful content from your website they can link to. Maybe that will make a nice addition to the resources they already share with their visitors?

Example:

“Hi Name! How have you been? I’m one of your fans, been following you since Year. I loved your blog post/resource page/content and maybe this blog post I wrote would make a helpful addition to the resources you linked? Let me know if you decide to use it. :) I would be honored!”

Link Exchanges

This is one of the most ancient ways to earn visibility online that favors social relationships. And believe me— if it doesn’t start with a relationship, you’re doing it all wrong.

In fact, link exchange should only happen after you’ve made a connection with the website owner you’re targeting. Doing it before you create a relationship (or better, a friendship!) is a surefire way to lose a precious chance to market via link building and to widen your professional network.

So, do it well!

Example:

“Text Link – This is my friend Luana’s website and she offers a lot of freebies. I’m even using one here!”

Yet another example comes from personal website owners, who definitely know how to build relationships via link exchanges — href="http://www.silent-white.com/links/link-exchange/" target="_blank">Cat’s link exchange rules for Silent-White.com and href="http://curls.nu/exits/" target="_blank">Christine’s invitation to get in touch at Curls.nu can teach you something about a relationship-first approach.

Share a Freebie

Valuable freebies go viral pretty easily, especially if what you share is evergreen and niche-specific content.

Don’t just drop links, though— market them!

Make a fun and engaging landing page
Give your users a newsletter to join
Get interviewed (WHY did you come up with this cool freebie?)
Invite your users to share their experience with your freebie as a guest post or newsletter article

Really, sky is the limit to your freebie marketing potential. Get creative!

Social Media Outreach

Reach out to people and make friends. Then they will link back to you.

And no, it’s not the “write good content and hope” that Google spokespeople recommend all the time.

What I’m talking about here is a simple process:

Use social media to build a list of prospective linkers you share something with (a niche, an interest, a business method, even a hobby)
Get in touch and nurture the relationship
At some point, you will get to know each other’s websites by heart– that’s when you can propose a link (see Link Proposal in this section)

Of course, don’t make it look like the link is all you’re after. The relationship should be genuine, even though it comes with a reciprocal benefit as a consequence.

‘Reciprocal’, yes. ;) Because even if you don’t link back to them, you surely have something to offer, do you?

Social Sharing

You know how that works— you grab your link, add a title and an hashtag (for Twitter and Facebook) and you’re set to go. Easy, right?

Uhm, sorry to disappoint, but your social share could end up in the invisible group. What you really need here is to impress!

Add a name or a Twitter handle and personalize that post–/>
“Hey there, @name! Thought you might like this post about Niche – URL – Let me know if it was useful! :)”
Use a CTA–/>
“Hi #bloggers! Our blog converted % of readers into customers in 2013 – URL. What about yours? Share your experience here – URL.”

You can buy social shares, but don’t give your sellers a premade share message. They know their followers better than you do, so leave that up to them. href="http://sponsoredtweets.com/" target="_blank">SponsoredTweets implemented this method and they earned a reputation among Twitterers thanks to their href="http://sponsoredtweets.com/about/ethics/" target="_blank">business ethics.

Blog Comments

Not just the link in your name, but a useful link you share in the body of the comment.

An example:

“I feel you. Been there, done that. I shared my experience on my blog to help others — you can see it here: Link. How are you coping with This and That? It was pretty hard for me.”

Don’t spam, though! The link should be in context, and you better add it after you wrote the comment— that will help you focus on providing href="http://www.blogherald.com/2012/10/08/how-to-write-comments/" target="_blank">a sincere, helpful comment without the thought of a link nagging at you.

And did you know that href="http://blog.ahrefs.com/comment-get-included-original-post/" target="_blank">suggesting good resources in your comment could get you linked in the original post?

class="meteor-notification info icon">
class="icon-info-sign">class="content">

Takeaway: Popularity is not in the number — it’s in the connections.

Looking for More? Our CEO href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/seo/smart-link-building-for-the-average-guys/">Jerry Low wrote a smart post on smart link building back in January. Guys, he’s a genius! :) And href="http://backlinko.com/17-untapped-backlink-sources" target="_blank">Brian Dean of Backlinko.com and href="http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml" target="_blank">Aaron Wall of SEOBook are just as genial.

Your turn!

What are your top 3 link building techniques that have worked best for your website?

Credit: Creative Commons images provided by title="SiteFox" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/70957061@N02/6428807457/" target="_blank">SiteFox, title="Gary Hayes" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/94632411@N00/2973684461/" target="_blank">Gary Hayes, title="bark" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/49503168860@N01/4257136773/" target="_blank">bark and title="Luigi Seust" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/43520877@N05/7236766912/" target="_blank">Luigi Seust

Page 13 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed

samedi 12 novembre 2016

What is an Email List and Why is it so Important?

Social Media vs Email Marketing

What You Need to Start Building an Email List?

Choosing the Best Email Marketing Service

Growing Your Email List and Getting More Subscribers

List Building Strategies and Resources

Conclusion

Your Story and Why It Matters

Go Beyond ‘About Me’ Page

Presenting Your Story and Building Your Tribe

Choosing The Right One For Your Tribe

A Step-By-Step Guide On How To Find Your Targeted Audiences

Smart Link Building Is All About Win-Win

My Real Life Experience With The Strategy

Pingdom Uptime Checker Tool

iPhone Apps For Web Developers

Your Takeaway In This Guide

The Fall of Content Farms

Quality Over Quantity

Good Content Should Be at the Heart of Your Online Strategy

Write for Your Readers

Building a Network of Like-Minded People

Using the Group to Cross-Promote

Articles

Contests

Online Workshops or TeleSeminars

Think Outside the Big Three

Mailing List Sharing

Watch Out for Attacking Penguins

How to Build a Community

Offering Value to the Member

Making Him Feel Part of the Group

Find a Specific Niche

Create A Safe Zone

Overcoming Challenges

Getting People Involved

Time Management

Growth

What Are the Pros Doing Right that You Can Too?

“Yes, We Know! Google Filled Our Head With This Popularity Thing!”

Link Building Is Pure, Simple, Beautiful Marketing At Its Best

1. Building Links Is Building Connections

2. Link Building Is Engaging In The Conversation

How to encourage conversations?

3. Link Building Attracts Interested Prospects

How to spark curiosity?

4. Link Building Creates A First Bridge

5. Link Building Is Advertising

How to make advertising effective?

6. Link Building Is For Visibility

7. Link Building Is Outreach

8. Link Building Sells

How to build links that sell

9. Link Building Helps Other Human Beings

10. Link Building Holds The Web Together

What does this mean for marketing?

11. Link Building Is Traffic

12. Link Building Is Buzz

13. Link Building Is Knowledge Building

14. Definitely, Link Building Is Not SEO (And It’s NOT For Google)

class="meteor-notification info icon">class="icon-info-sign">class="content">Takeaway: Don’t be afraid to link and get linked!

Anchor Texts? Let The Site Owner Choose!

Link Building Methods

Link Proposal

Link Exchanges

Sponsored Content

Share a Freebie

Social Media Outreach

Social Sharing

Blog Comments

Your turn!

class="meteor-notification info icon">
class="icon-info-sign">class="content">
Takeaway: Don’t be afraid to link and get linked!