Thursday, September 11th, 2008
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Ever Googled your name and wished you where in the top search results? Ever wondered what people see when they Google you? Considering the fact that the second most popular search criterion on the web is searching for a person’s professional background (Pew Internet American Life Project) – it may get some people thinking that it’s time to create a web presence for themselves.
It doesn’t take long to conclude that creating a web presence for yourself is something of necessity to ensure your professional growth, your business success, and taking action to represent yourself accurately on the web. The challenge is to find something unique and innovative the tackles all of the following issues:
• You want people to find you when they search your name on the web
• You want to manage the information people see about you
• You want to create a strong and professional online presence for your name
The people at LookupPage came out with the idea of developing an easy-to-use tool for people to create, enhance and manage their online presence. LookupPage is not a social network like LinkedIn, and focuses on getting your name on Google. Using the following simple rules, they are usually able to present better results than others for your name search:
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Popularity: 8% [?]
Posted in Link Building, SEO Strategies, Social Media Optimization | 11 Comments »
Thursday, September 4th, 2008
Many of you may know about LinkedIn. If you don’t, then let me enlighten. Linkedin is a social networking site that targets business professionals. It is helpful in setting up relationships for business opportunities and partnerships. It also has a more social aspect that is gaining in popularity. You can read more about LinkedIn here: What is LinkedIn?
And while the business networking aspect is great, I’m writing to tell you it can be useful for your SEO efforts too, specifically link building. You may not know this, but LinkedIn does not employ the nofollow attribute on its links, like most other social networking sites. So that means we can use LinkedIn responsibly to build some nice one-way links to our sites and blogs. Even better your employees can use this to build some SEO-friendly links to your company site.
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Popularity: 8% [?]
Posted in Link Building, SEO Tools, Social Media Optimization | 20 Comments »
Thursday, August 28th, 2008
Okay, I fully admit I got this from Search Engine Journal. It was written by Loren Baker, Editor. So be sure to read the original list there with full content. Thank you, Loren.
I put the list I here so I would always know where to find it, since it is our company blog. I did abbreviate the content and I plan on adding more. I hope if any readers find better blog directories, that are particularly excellent, they will add them by commenting below. If they are really good I’ll add them to this list officially.
- Best of the Web Blog Search La Crem de la Crem, Best of the Web’s Blog Directory is very selective and only lists aged and valuable blogs.
- EatonWeb Blog Directory is a real jewel with many aged inbound links and a blog rating system.
- Blog Hub offers a drop down category and member blog list.
- Upon visiting Bloggernity, you find a crisp, clean, and easy to navigate site.
- Blogarama has an impressive listing of over 65,000 blogs.
- Blog Search Engine is owned by Performancing’s parent company and serves search results powered by IceRocket.
- Blog Catalog features a vast directory of categories, from academic to writing, while offering the ability to search by country, language, or user.
- Globe of Blogs has too many features to list. In order to be listed on the site, the blog must not be commercial.
- Blog Universe is the perfect place to promote your video or podcast themed blog.
- Bigger Blogs is a relatively new blog directory with only a few blogs registered. The blog is intertwined with a business directory.
- Bloggeries has the best categories and subcategories home page on the internet
- Bloggapedia has an interesting and eye catching homepage.
- Spillbean is a well-designed blog directory site with categories such as health, society, internet, and personal.
- Blogging Fusion is a blog with over sixty categories.
- Blogflux is not only a tool for bloggers, but a directory that has the listings in alphabetic order.
- Bloglisting are fun, colourful, and catch the attention of the reader.
- Blogio may be a small blog directory with few listings, but it worthy of a submission.
- Blog Explosion claims to be the largest blog promoter on the internet.
- Super Blog Directory is a great site that offers tools to posters that others do not.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Posted in Blogging, Link Building, SEO Tools | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008
We’ve all met that person (or, maybe, we’re secretly guilty of being this person). You know the person — the one who won’t share.
Yup, there, I said it, I’m on to all of you people. Didn’t you learn anything in kindergarten? Seriously, share and share alike. How do you expect to make friends when you never share anything?
By this point, you’re probably wondering, “That’s fine and all, but what does this have to do with linking out to other people’s websites?”
Let me put it very simply — do it. Don’t be afraid to share, put that link out there.
Linking Out Excuse 1: If I Link Out, People Won’t Stay on My Site
Here’s the thing about the Internet, it’s designed (on purpose, mind you) as a way of sharing knowledge. If you’re writing about something and happen to know a reputable resource on the subject, link to it!
This will have various added benefits for you. Your users will think, “Wow, this person is providing a great resource, I’ll come back to them in the future because they’ve really helped me out.” Honestly, do you remember the Boston Tea Party because of the book you read it in, or do you remember it because of your 7th grade teacher who pointed you to the book?
Linking out also tells Google the neighborhood where your site lives. When you’re connected to a bunch of authority sites on fishing through outbound links, and you’re a fishing site, it’ll make sense for Google to rank you higher for fishing. Why? Easy, you’re all in the same neighborhood of fishing authority sites! When you link to other authority sites, it makes Google and the other search engines perceive you as an authority site.
And, seriously now, if you never put an outbound link on your site because you think it’ll keep people on your site, do you really think they don’t know how to work the back button? Or, know how to look for a more authoritative site than yours?
Linking Out Excuse 2: Linking Out Will Lose Link Juice
Alright, let’s ignore the whole neighborhood and authority site status (really, that should be enough to stop you from being scared to link out). Now you’re worried about your link juice. Rightly so, I mean, if PageRank flows from page to page via links, when you link out, it’ll spill onto someone else’s page right?
Here’s the deal: yeah, some of your link juice will flow over there, but that’s not the whole story. When a website gets a link to it, the webmaster will notice. This person will then come over to your site and check you out. If you get a link from a site, you check out the site linking to you, right?
This is the point of SEO, getting people to your site because you have great information. By linking out you have successfully had one more person check out your site! However, the story doesn’t stop there. The webmaster comes to your site, sees that you have a lot of great information and then they might just link over to you themselves, from a post they wrote about a great site they found! Now you’re an authority for them!
Link Out and Reap the Rewards
Remember this when you’re linking out — who you link out to matters! Link out to high quality sites that are relevant to yours. Since you control the outbound links, if you link to trash, your users won’t like it and the search engines won’t like it. Though, when you know of a great site, and have found a great resource, link to it and get ready for the benefits!
Don’t want to take my word for it? Well then, check out what the experts are saying on linking out for yourself!
Popularity: 12% [?]
Posted in Link Building, SEO Mistakes, SEO Strategies | 6 Comments »
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