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

samedi 12 novembre 2016

How to Automatically Link Featured Images to Posts in WordPress



Recently one of our readers asked if it was possible to automatically link featured images to blog posts in WordPress. Most WordPress themes link featured images to posts by default, but some themes may not do that. In this article, we will show you how to automatically link featured images to posts in WordPress.


Automatically link featured images to posts in WordPress


Why Link Featured Images to Posts in WordPress?


Images are more engaging than text. Using featured images can boost user engagement on your site.


Usually, featured images are large and take more space than text. They are more colorful, hence more noticeable. They are also easier to click on smaller devices like mobile phones and tablets.


List25 using featured images to engage users


However, if your post thumbnails aren’t clickable, then it makes it harder for users to view your post.


Most WordPress themes link featured images to the posts by default. Some themes may not use that approach, which makes it difficult for you to properly utilize featured images.


Having said that, let’s see how you can automatically link featured images to posts in WordPress.


Automatically Link Featured Images to Posts in WordPress


This method required you to add code into your WordPress files. See our beginner’s guide on pasting snippets from web into WordPress.


Simply add this code to your theme’s functions.php file or a site-specific plugin.



function wpb_autolink_featured_images( $html, $post_id, $post_image_id ) {
$html = '<a href="' . get_permalink( $post_id ) . '" title="' . esc_attr( get_the_title( $post_id ) ) . '">' . $html . '</a>';
return $html;
}
add_filter( 'post_thumbnail_html', 'wpb_autolink_featured_images', 10, 3 );

This code simply adds a link around the code generated to display featured images or post thumbnails on your website.


This code will also add a link around featured images on single post pages. If you don’t want to link featured images on single post to the same post, then use this code.



function wpb_autolink_featured_images( $html, $post_id, $post_image_id ) {

If (! is_singular()) {

$html = '<a href="' . get_permalink( $post_id ) . '" title="' . esc_attr( get_the_title( $post_id ) ) . '">' . $html . '</a>';
return $html;

} else {

return $html;

}

}
add_filter( 'post_thumbnail_html', 'wpb_autolink_featured_images', 10, 3 );


We hope this article helped you learn how to automatically link featured images to posts in WordPress. You may also want to see our list of 14 best featured image plugins and tutorials for WordPress.


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 How to Automatically Link Featured Images to Posts in WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.







How to Link to External Links from the Post Title in WordPress



Do you want to add an external link as post title in WordPress? Sometimes you may just want to share a link with your users. Instead of sending them to a post, you may want the post title to link to the other website. In this article, we will show you how to link to external links from the post title in WordPress.


Adding External Link to WordPress Post Title


Method 1: Linking Post Title to an External Link in WordPress using Plugin


This method is easier and is recommended for beginners.


First thing you need to do is install and activate the Page Links To plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.


Upon activation, simply create a new post or edit an existing one. You will notice the new ‘Page Links To’ meta box below the post editor.


Adding a custom URL in page links to


Click on ‘A custom URL’ to add the link you want to add to post title. Now you can save or publish your post.


That’s all. The post title will now link to the custom URL you provided.


It is not necessary to use it for external links only. You can also use it to send users to different posts and pages on your WordPress site.


Method 2: Add External Link to Post Title Using Code


This method requires you to add code to your WordPress site. You can use this method if you are comfortable with pasting snippets from web into WordPress.


Simply add this code to your theme’s functions.php file or a site-specific plugin.



function print_post_title() {
global $post;
$thePostID = $post->ID;
$post_id = get_post($thePostID);
$title = $post_id->post_title;
$perm = get_permalink($post_id);
$post_keys = array(); $post_val = array();
$post_keys = get_post_custom_keys($thePostID);

if (!empty($post_keys)) {
foreach ($post_keys as $pkey) {
if ($pkey=='external_url') {
$post_val = get_post_custom_values($pkey);
}
}
if (empty($post_val)) {
$link = $perm;
} else {
$link = $post_val[0];
}
} else {
$link = $perm;
}
echo '<h2><a href="'.$link.'" rel="bookmark" title="'.$title.'">'.$title.'</a></h2>';
}

This code looks simply looks for a custom field containing your custom URL. If the post has the custom field, then it outputs the post title linked to your URL.


The next step is to replace your theme’s default display of post title with this function. You will find it in archives.php, content.php, category.php and other templates. It would look something like this:



<?php the_title( sprintf( '<h2 class="entry-title"><a href="%s" rel="bookmark">', esc_url( get_permalink() ) ), '</a></h2>' ); ?>

You need to replace it with this code:



<?php print_post_title() ?>

The code part is over, now you need to add the external URL to the post. Simply edit the post or create a new one. On the post editor page, look for the custom fields meta box.


If you cannot see the custom fields meta box, then you need to click Screen Options in the top right corner of the screen. This will bring down a menu where you need to check the box next to ‘Custom Fields’.


Show custom fields meta box on the post edit screen in WordPress


You will find the custom fields meta box below the post editor.


Click on ‘Enter New’ and then enter external_url in the ‘Name’ field and the URL you want to add to post title in the ‘Value’ field.


Adding new custom key


You can now save or publish your post. That’s all, your post title will now be linked to the URL you added in the custom field.


Next time you need to add a link, you just need to select the external_url custom field from the drop down menu and enter your external link in the value field.


We hope this article helped you learn how to link to external links from the post title in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to add an external link icon on your WordPress Site.


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 How to Link to External Links from the Post Title in WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.







JustHost Secret Link Exposed!



alt="JustHost Secret Link Exposed!" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/default-image-500x308_c.jpg" />

Here’s how you can get extra 20% discount on JustHost hosting plan. All you need to do is just follow two simple steps shown below. First, href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/justhost.php">visit JustHost by clicking here. Scroll down to footer and look for a link named (Secret Link), click in.

src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/images/2009/0923-1.jpg" alt="JustHost secret link exposed!" class="border" />

Then simply signup JustHost from this special page and you’ll get extra 20% discount.

src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/images/2009/0923-2.jpg" alt="JustHost secret link exposed!" class="border" />

Enjoy! (I hope JustHost folks don’t curse me for breaking the ‘Don’t give it out’ rule.)


Page 30 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed




How to create link with hover image in plain CSS



alt="How to create link with hover image in plain CSS" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/hover-css-skill-500x312_c.jpg" />

style="line-height: 1.5em;">What’s a hover?style="line-height: 1.5em;"> style="line-height: 1.5em;">Definition quoted from style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.uwstout.edu/soe/profdev/advwebdesign/two/glossary.html">UWStout.edustyle="line-height: 1.5em;">:

‘Hover’ is an effect that occurs when you place the cursor over a link of any kind. The link can be coded to respond to the hover by changing color, showing a new graphic, or even playing a sound file.

The hover effect improves web usability and helps web owners to direct their web traffics. When you wish your web users to pay extra attention to a special link, a good way to do so is to create a link with attractive hover effect. A simple hover effect href="#">like this (a simple underline and change of text color) indicates those text are ‘click-able’ and improves web interactions. However, changing text color and styles (underline/overline/bold) is very basics and there are a lot more can be done with hover.

In this article, I’m going to show how you can create good looking links with hover effect.

Example 1: Link with hover button

First, a look at the working example (place mouse over the link to see how it works – change of icon at the side).

class="x">href="#">Example 1 – Link with hover button image

This is the completed version of what will be built in this example.

How we create it in plain CSS?

The Button Image

Step 1, as you can see, we need a arrow icons in two different versions. In our example, I used red (#CC3300) as the default link button; and grey (#333333) for the hover effect. Such button can be easily made using any image editing software.

We now have the red color button (say, b1.png) and the rey color (button say, b2.png). Merge these two into one image file with b1.png on top of b2.png. This will be our final image for the link. Name it (say, x.png) and upload the desired location (for my case, I placed it in my WP template folder).

For your reference:

b1.png alt="" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2009/1020-1.jpg" /> , b2.png alt="" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2009/1020-2.jpg" /> , and x.png alt="" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2009/1020-3.jpg" />

The CSS Code

Next, on the CSS code. Basically what we want to achieve is to indent the link text slightly to the right to make space for the button; and in the same time, display a different image when the link is in hover state. These are pretty fundamental stuffs except that we need a little twist on the background position. The trick is to show the top part of the image (the red button) for the original link; and when hover, displace the background image with a -11px (it might differs on your website) margin to show the grey button.

.x a {
color: #cc3300;
padding-left: 14px;
font-weight: bold;
background-image: url(images/x.png);
background-position: 0 2px;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
}
.x a:hover {
color: #333333;
padding-left: 14px;
font-weight: bold;
background-image: url(images/x.png);
background-position: 0 -11px;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
}

Implementation

To show off this hover effect, simply insert class x into the designated area. Here’s an example on how you can do it.

<p class='x'><a href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com">Homepage</a></p>

Example 2: Link in hover background

With the same concept, there are endless ways you can make your links look cool. Here’s another example on what we can do with the hover effects with a slightly different method. Again, have a look on the finished version.

class="y" href="#">Example 2 – Link in hover background

In this example, what I will do is to create a button-liked hyperlink where the background will change when users place their mouse over it.

How we create it in plain CSS?

The background images

First, create two images of rounded rectangle. For demonstration purpose, we will not merge these two images in this example. We’ll name the red (#CC3300) rectangle as b1.png; and the maroon (#9F2800) rectangle as b2.png.

alt="" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/home/b1.png" />

alt="" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/home/b2.png" />

The CSS Code

Next, here are the codes for your style sheet (we are naming the class ‘y’ in this second example).

a.y {
width: 280px;
height: 42px;
color: #000000;
padding: 10px;
text-decoration:none;
display: block;
font-weight: bold;
background-image : url(images/b1.png);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
}
a.y:hover {
width: 280px;
height: 42px;
color: #FFFFFF;
padding: 10px;
font-weight: bold;
text-decoration:none;
display: block;
background-image : url(images/b2.png);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
}

Implementation

To display the link, simple insert the class (y) into the <a href> tag in your source code. Example:

<a href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com" class="y" >Homepage</a>

Wrapping up

I hope this article brought you valuable information and inspired some of you to use CSS in an creative way. If there’s any other points you think I should add in this guide, feel free to leave your ideas in the comment section.

More CSS tutorials

If you like this post, be sure to also check outhref="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/web-design/30-latest-css3-tutorials-you-probably-have-not-read-before/"> How to make good use of  CSS 3 animations, href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/web-design/30-latest-css3-tutorials-you-probably-have-not-read-before/">Must Read CSS 3 Tutorials 2012, as well as href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/featured-articles/make-your-webite-beautiful-20-must-read-css3-tutorials/">Make your site cool with these CSS 3 techniques.


Page 30 – 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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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?”
  3. 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:

  1. Get your customers to link to you.
  2. Build a company blog. Make it a valuable, informative and entertaining resource.
  3. Create content that inspires viral sharing and natural linking.
  4. Be newsworthy (to attract links naturally).
  5. 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




InMotion Hosting Discount (Link)



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Page 19 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed




WebHostingHub Discount (Link Activation)



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Page 19 – 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:

  1. 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
  2. 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?

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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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.

Sponsored Content

You know, sponsored blog posts, reviews, advertorials, freebies. All that kind of interesting stuff you may have refrained from using because Google frowns upon it (not because of the content, but because advertisers rarely use nofollow links). No matter what, this is content with great potential for conversion, and every link counts.

An ideal outreach message would include the following parts:

  • A summary of what you do, why you’re contacting this specific webmaster to get sponsored and how the collaboration would benefit them.
  • A request for information about the webmaster’s link policy — it’s fine to get either a naked link or a nofollowed link, but you should let the webmaster know before hand that you don’t mind nofollow attributes. Many website owners know that advertisers often only look for link juice.
  • A kind encouragement to visit your website first and then link back to it with the anchor text the webmaster will find more title="12 Ways To Understand Your Audience (And Deliver Stellar Content)" href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/inbound-marketing/12-ways-to-understand-your-audience-and-deliver-stellar-content/">suitable for their content and readership.

As for payment terms, check with the webmaster. Some have a rate list for sponsored content they write.

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?

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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




5 Reasons Why Content Marketing Will Always Triumph Link Building



alt="5 Reasons Why Content Marketing Will Always Triumph Link Building" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/featured-image-500x333_c.jpg" />

Content marketing or link building? Perhaps both? As SEO specialists and digital marketers, we’re caught in a dilemma regarding these two strategies. As always, we only want the best for our clients.

But let’s face it: the SEO land is actually divided into two schools of thought, whether to stick with traditional SEO approach using keyword-marketing and link building, or pursue content marketing that includes several tasks.

This may start from creating quality content, to building an empire of the brand’s online presence through social media and leveraging the industry’s influencers’ network.

So, which is which?

With Google’s ever-changing href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/seo/top-lessons-you-can-learn-from-googles-new-hummingbird-algorithm-changes/" target="_blank">search algorithms, our primary goal is to use a method that’s long-term, highly sustainable, and guarantees measurable results—something that’s Penguin update-proof, not just today, but for the future as well (and whatever animal-based term Google will roll out by that time). And on that note, the traditional SEO that includes href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/inbound-marketing/14-reasons-link-building-belongs-to-marketing-not-seo-nor-google/">link building isn’t the best-fit method alone.

Randy Fishkin of SEOmoz explained these two ‘lands’—link building land and content marketing land—previously in a href="http://moz.com/blog/seos-dilemma-link-building-vs-content-marketing-whiteboard-friday" target="_blank">Whiteboard Friday episode. It’s a thought-provoking strategy discussion among webmasters and marketers, where there will always be two sides of the camp. To agree to disagree with either of these two strategies will ambiguously lead us into a confusing conclusion that will entirely affect our clients’ online strategies.

Digging deep with Content Marketing and Link Building

Our premise to why content marketing will always triumph over link building doesn’t end there. It’s not a question of “which is which,” but rather “what’s your goal? Is it for short-term or long-term?” Once and for all, the former will definitely triumph over the latter if you’re shooting for the long-term goals and results.

In a nutshell, link building is the technical side of web marketing, where SEO specialists’ tasks involve this triple-braided cycle: keyword targeting, finding list of link opportunities, and getting links. Boring? Nope, it’s not! On their side, it’s hard work. And the results are guaranteed to come faster and applicable for the brand’s short-term goals.

On the other hand, the content marketing land is tedious, daunting, and complex that it requires you to hire not just the SEO specialists, but also writers, community managers, copywriters or if you’re in luck, a web marketer who knows the ropes of the trade in content writing, copywriting, and social media. Too complex? Yes, and it is really hard work as you focus on inbound strategies.

The results don’t come overnight. Unlike link building, this would take time, but the results are best-fit for long-term goals and the content are highly Panda-proof. Yet for web marketers, it’s a challenging feat to educate small businesses and startups to embrace this approach because, as obviously stated, the results show up for quite some time.

In short, content marketing is quality content + efforts + time + add-on hiring-sprees equals long-term rewards, while link building is keyword targeting + getting links equals short-term results.

Why Content Marketing Remains King?

Our premise doesn’t imply that we get rid of link building, but we’re clear with this: content marketing remains king and we take link building as the queen on the chessboard.

They’re two different things, but can achieve almost the same goals. They’re generally exclusive, but not limited to driving traffic to website, building branding, and relationships to audience, increase conversions, and improving online presence. BUT, the effect of each one is entirely different—one is for short-term and the other one for long-term.

href="http://www.searchenginejournal.com/link-building-content-marketing-two-different-peas-pod/108865/" target="_blank">Search Engine Journal dubbed them as “Two different peas in a pod.” You see, it depends on what will work for you or your clients’ brands. Let’s explore why:

1. Panda/Penguin-proof

class="alignright wp-image-11292 size-medium" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/21-300x225.jpg" alt="2" width="300" height="225" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/21-300x225.jpg 300w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/21.jpg 400w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />

Google is smarter than you think. Search is becoming more human and natural, which is quite interesting for the SEO World, because finding a new automated tactic to get you on top of the search results isn’t feasible nowadays. If you’ve been hurt by Penguin and Panda updates, here’s what you need to do:

  • Focus on content marketing for SEO strategy. It’s much more defensible with the algorithm updates.
  • href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/blogging-tips/dont-be-a-zombie-humanizing-content-for-the-living/">Be human as possible with the way you write content and leverage on other channels such as social media and inbound activities for scalability in long-term.

2. Quality content is linkable and likable

class="alignright size-medium wp-image-11293" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/31-300x150.jpg" alt="3" width="300" height="150" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/31-300x150.jpg 300w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/31-750x376.jpg 750w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/31.jpg 1271w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />

People want fresh ideas. Ever wondered why Mashable and HubSpot became popular?

Because they offer new and fresh ideas, which are easily linkable, helpful and informative to the readers. Building links would just follow along the way when you go for content marketing.

Search Engine Watch said that you could href="http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2179778/7-Reasons-Content-Marketing-is-Better-Than-Link-Building" target="_blank">measure the value of content easier than you can link.

Why?

It’s pretty simple. When you post content, you can see how many links and organic search traffic it has generated—the number of social media shares and referral visits in the analytics dashboard.

3. Shareable and sustainable

class="alignright size-medium wp-image-11294" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/4-300x228.jpg" alt="4" width="300" height="228" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/4-300x228.jpg 300w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/4-750x572.jpg 750w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/4.jpg 797w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />

Coming from the expert, Randy Fishkin said that just a single piece of content or a couple every year or two can be everything you need to make content marketing strategy sustainable for long-term.

While this tactic can create a division between two camps (a matter of quantity and quality of blogs posted and link building strategies), a great example from this point of view is an article from The Sales Lion by Marcus Sheridan on how content marketing has saved this brick-and-mortar business. He went from a pool guy to a marketing guy.

Marcus’ www.Riverpoolsandspas.com became the #1 trafficked swimming website when he changed his marketing strategy by becoming a storyteller of his brand. How? Simple. His post, “href="http://www.riverpoolsandspas.com/blog/bid/22477/Fiberglass-Pool-Prices-How-Much-is-My-Pool-Really-Going-to-Cost" target="_blank">Fiberglass Pool Prices: How Much is My Pool Really Going to Cost?” written in 2009 is still shareable and sustainable until today and obviously answers the ‘mostly asked’ question of customers and always on page 1 of Google search results.

4. Customer-driven and solution-oriented approach

class="alignright size-medium wp-image-11297" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/52-300x143.jpg" alt="5" width="300" height="143" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/52-300x143.jpg 300w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/52-750x357.jpg 750w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/52.jpg 1268w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />

What can be more rewarding and fulfilling?

For us, it’s all about satisfying our customers and providing educational quality content that solves their daily concerns and questions about the products and services they want to purchase.

With content marketing, you can be as generous as you can on your posts. As often quoted in Copyblogger’s copywriting techniques, “Generosity is sexy.” Not only will it build your authority as an industry expert, but it will help you build an audience that will build your business for long-term. Know your audience. Be generously human on content and enjoy the process.

5. More channels to experiment and opportunity to explore

class="alignright size-medium wp-image-11298" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/6-300x133.jpg" alt="6" width="300" height="133" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/6-300x133.jpg 300w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/6-750x334.jpg 750w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/6.jpg 1217w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />

Content marketing gives you an opportunity to explore other online marketing channels until you find out what makes your customer tick and where they usually flock.

  • Are they Facebook-savvy customers?
  • Are they hanging out in G+ community?
  • Are they a bunch of readers and intellects, hungry for data and useful information?

In content marketing, it’s a requisite to do the following:

  • Identify your target audience
  • Best channel to leverage where they consume content
  • Create quality content that is: informative, educational, inspiring and valuable to the conversation
  • Interact with the community

And on that note, there’s no one-size-fits-all SEO tactic for small businesses and professionals when it comes to social media channels such as B2C or B2B niches, but since you’re not limited to the technical side of link building and keyword targeting, content marketing gives you the turf to explore.

Content marketing includes investing on content that’s well researched and written that could require a good copywriter days to create. Most importantly, it’s clear and directly solves your customers’ concerns.

Over to you

Will content marketing always triumph link building? If we’re talking about long-term goals and building brand’s authority, definitely! This is a pea in the pod that’s worth pursuing, especially when your site has been affected with algorithm updates from the past or you want it to be defensible with Google’s future algo updates.

But remember, the process of content marketing itself is laborious and requires lots of efforts and focus compared with link building, yet it’s one of the best investments in online marketing. What do you think of these two schools of thought in the SEO World?


Page 11 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed




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