Many wonder how it is possible to make money with Twitter. The service is free to use, but you don’t get paid for using it. As previously stated, you can make money if you sell a product or a service. This is because you develop a following on Twitter. These individuals are called followers, but they are also your friends or your contacts. Messages are sent throughout the system.

When using Twitter to market or sell a product or service, proceed with caution. You do not want to outright sell, as you may be labeled as a spammer. Instead, do so subtly. For example, do you run a website that sells eBooks? If so, your message could say “It took weeks, but my website is finally complete. I sell eBooks. Checkout the website and tell me if you like the format.” This gets people to your website, but without you technically soliciting a sale.

You can also use @replies to market a website selling eBooks, or any other product or service. Say you receive a message that says “I wish there was an easier way to learn about making money online. There are so many websites to visit.” You can respond with “Hey, I have a website that has an eBook for sale on working from home. It has all the information you need in one place.” Since you are responding to a message, your aren’t outright spamming Twitter members.

As you can see, there are multiple ways for you to use Twitter as an internet marketing tool and to improve your profits. The only problem is you must first develop a list of followers. Yes, your close friends and family are a good start, but they may already know all about your business and what you sell. That is why you need to expand your horizons, but how do you do so?

First, it is important to determine your targeted market. If you sell eBooks on a wide range of subjects, you will have a wide market. If you sell used kids clothes on eBay, your target market will include parents, and so forth. Once you know who your targeted market it, it is easier to find these individuals on Twitter.

As for how you can do so, the easiest approach is to join online communities. In keeping with selling kids clothes online. Join message boards for parents. Start conversations with other members. After a few days, make a post stating that you are a member of Twitter and are looking for other contacts. Say you want people to follow you on Twitter, but that you will follow them too. Not only do you get followers, but you get those in your targeted market.

Next, you can turn to the Twitter website itself. From the main page, you can click the “Find People,” link. Search for members with profiles online. You can search by location or name. Quickly scan a profile to see if a bio is present. If so, read it. What is the person interested in? Are they are parent, pet owner, or do you see other signs that classify them as a member of your target market? If so, make contact. This approach is time consuming, but it does work.

Finally, it is important to know how updates are sent. Although private updates are allowed, many Twitter members send updates to everyone on their contact list. If a reply is sent and not privately, you can see it. This allows you to see the name of other Twitter members. Become a follower. If the person you are now adding is a friend or family member of someone in your targeted market, they may share similar interests.

1. Users Searching for a Specific Service

One way to gain new clients through the use of Twitter is when someone searches for a specific service they need. If someone comes to Twitter and does a search for a ghostwriter the chances of their search term containing those words is very high, right? So, why not create a page just for your writing services? You can make the username something with the term “ghostwriter” or “writing” in it.

2. Overflow from other Service Providers

The second way you can gain clients via Twitter is to network with other service providers in your niche. By following and interacting with these individuals you are allowing them to contact you should they need assistance with a big project or any overflow work that they don’t have the time to handle themselves.

3. Service Providers Who Need Your Expertise

There are tons of business owners out there who are looking for your expertise to help them get their own business running smoothly. It’s not uncommon to see an Internet marketer on Twitter who has spent all afternoon working on their website and asking for advice or direction on what they need to do to fix this or that. They would probably have been more than willing to hire you to do it for them instead of spending all day doing it themselves.

4. Other Twitter Users Stumbling Upon Your Profile

When people start using Twitter they are looking for like-minded individuals to follow and connect with. When they come across your profile for whatever reason and see that you provide a certain service, it might just remind them that they need help with something. Make sure you have your link readily available to them when they see your page.

5. Word of Mouth

By far the most common way to gain new clients via Twitter is through word of mouth. If your past or current clients are members of the Twitter community, chances are at some point or another they will talk about you and/or your business. Now there is a kick here. As with any other type of service, if yours is bad it’s probably got a good chance of being brought up on Twitter. However, the same rings true for exceptionally great service. Provide your current clients with wonderful service and they will pass the word on about your business every chance they get.

Forum Posts ~ add your link with keyword anchor text in your sig file

Blog Comments ~ keyword in the “name” area, and then your url. (will create a hot link with anchor text)

Comments at Ezine Articles ~ this one just occurred to me recently. I checked the source code and they do not appear to use the “no follow” attribute, so google should count these links. You may even get traffic from these too. I just enter my main keyword, and add a relevant comment to the article. I use this like I would a blog comment with my keyword in the name area and then my url. You have to wait for EZA to approve your comment, but it’s worth it.

Set up Google Alert for keywords ~ each time I set up a new site I also set up a google alert for the keyword. I only choose to get alerts from blogs. Now each time someone posts a blog on my keyword I know about it and can get over there and add a comment.

Build free Blogs ~ Build a blog at wordpress.com, blogger, tumblr or wherever. You can do this blog on a related topic and add your site in the blogroll. This will give you a link for each page you publish on this blog. I use PLR for these blogs, and just change up the articles a little bit so they are more original. You can also add links within the articles to your blog for added links.

I didn’t build these blogs expecting to get traffic from them, but I quickly started receiving traffic via the wordpress search function. So make sure your content is at least decent and you may find yourself getting more traffic as well as backlinks.

Hubpages and Squidoo ~ build pages at both of these free sites. Make sure to add a link to your site using keywords as your anchor text. At squidoo you can also add a link to your product or service you are promoting. Depending on how you want to use Hubpages I would be careful adding links to affiliate products over there. I just use hubpages as a way to get one more link from a quality source to my new niche site.

Zimbio ~ this site is new to me. I have used it for my squidoo lenses, by adding my lensmaster RSS feed url from Squid Utils it will post each new lens I write on Zimbio. You can do this with the RSS feeds for each of your sites, including your main niche site, as well as any free blogs you set up. Make sure to do this first so it will catch all your articles as you put them up.

Directory Submission~ there are tons of directories you can add your site url to. Here’s a great list of directories you can get started with. (this site also has a huge list of social bookmarking sites and article directories) I set the timer for 30 minutes and just go as fast as I can submitting. I do this at least once a day for 30 minutes.

Wis.dm ~ A fun little site where you can ask a question. There is space for you to submit a url where people can find the answer. Just think of a question that relates to your niche and then add your site url in the space provided.

Twitter ~ not sure how good this is for backlinks, but if you have some people following you, it might be worth sending a quick tweet about your new site. You might just mention you found a cool site etc, so as not to give away all your niches. You can now add retweet buttons to your lenses (like the one right here in this module) The button makes it super easy for anyone who likes your lens to help you get the word out on twitter. If you like this lens ~ please give it a retweet, all you have to do is click the button in the corner!!

If you want to take things to the next level there are also services and membership sites you can join to build links. I have not joined any of the link building membership sites as of yet. If I decide to do it, I’ll let you know how it goes. If you are currently using a link building site, leave a comment and let me know about it.

I keep remembering this comment from Court’s Internet Marketing School Blog. He talked about how you should be spending 90% of your time building links. When I thought about how much time I was spending in this area it was probably about .5%. Stay focused, and set up a system for yourself and you too can build tons of great backlinks.

Back links are the driving force behind the world of search engine optimization and page ranking. To do well in the results of specific search in the search engines the site must have higher page rank and higher page rank is achievable through getting some great back links.

Basically back links are the links which are in other sites that links to your site. Back links are really easy to create but it’s a boring and monotonous job. There is no good amount of back links that will get you a great page rank or a good rating in the search engines.

How to create back links:

There are many ways of creating back links and these methods change as the field of search engine optimization is growing day by day.

1. Anchor text : To create back links firstly you have to learn how to create anchor text. An example is here :

2. Article writing: Article writing is the best way to get the best back links. There are plenty of article sites to give you a great back link. You have to just write a great article along with your sites anchor text and link. You can use automated software to do this but make sure your article is a great one and it is on your sites keywords.
3. Forum posting : There are many forums and blogs now on the internet to have your precious site’s link. To create you have to add your link like an anchor text. The higher the forum’s page rank the higher your page links are granted.

4. Blog Comments : To create back links in blogs you have to have the keywords in the name area and then your address. Then a link will be created in the name area of yours.

5. Twitter : If there are many following you then twitter is a great way to have back links too. Its one of the new ways to have back links now a days.

6. Wis.dm : This is a new site where you can ask many questions and answer them. Just pick one with your related topic and then give your site’s link.

7. Hub pages and Squidoo : These sites let you build pages in the net along with great back links to support you site. But there is a difference in squido and hub pages. You have to be careful in Hub pages for back links as it lets you add more links than the squido for your site.

8. Google alert for keywords : This is one of the primary way to get updated about your keywords on the internet. Each time for setting up a new site you have to set Google alert for your keywords. For this you get news whenever anyone sets up a new blog on that keyword and you can add your link in that new blog.

9. Directory submission : This method also contain social book marking and many web directory submission. This is a tedious way of doing back links as there are tons of directories and you just can count on any sources. Just take an half hour each day to submit in different directories. But now a days there are many software available that submits automatically to the directories.

10. Social Book marking Site : Its one of the best ways of creating great back links but only if you have much friends and their time. This is a method where you and you friends post and comment on your own keywords leaving you with great back links. But you really want good friends and a great popularity to get this done.

11. Video marketing : Now a days it is very popular among the upcoming web programmers to launch their sites video in different video sites like you tube or other videos site. This gains much traffic to your site rather than back links but it’s an innovative way too.

12. Link exchange : This is one of the ways for the bigger fish with money and less time. There are plenty of sites that sale your link on their ranked site. The higher the PR(page rank) the higher the price. But sometimes if you are out for a look and good communicative skill then you can even buy yourself a free back link in any related site of your preferred keyword. Of course the owner must be as eager as you to let you use his site for free! But be careful about the link farming sites. Those are strictly not supported by the search engine crawlers.

The Mistakes :

The common mistakes on creating back links is giving your site’s link in those sites where you site would not be followed as it is coded in the robot text. Then you site would not be found in the results of your wished keywords.

Another thing is that posting your links in irrelevant sites. This a common mistakes among the amateurs. If you do this then the search crawlers will be taking this as a spamming and cut you off their search.

So this should be taken seriously as if you get cut off by the search engine’s crawler then it would be a disaster in your way of getting a good page rank.

Perfect way :

Perhaps you have already found out that there is no ultimate way of having great back links. But to get in the wrong direction, a thousand doors are open. So be careful with creating back links. Stay updated and most of all spend time. That’s what is important to learn here. The methods may change, the outputs may differ but there are no other ways rather than being steady and industrious over the matter.

So I have tried to go through all the matters found in the great cookbook of creating back links but the world of back linking is changing. So with great keywords, contents and most important great back links can get you a higher search engine optimization.

The same strategies in optimizing a website apply to promoting it through social media networks. Keywords are still the secret to making it work. A professional seo company says you need to create quality content that is relevant, useful, and optimized with keywords.

If you are interested in promoting your website through social media networking, below are some of the most popular social media sites you could start with. These sites are often used not just by seo companies in promoting their sites but by ordinary internet users as well.

1.Digg – A website that lets users discover and share content by submitting links and stories, and then voting and commenting on these submitted links and stories. Good quality content is often described by SEO enthusiasts as ‘diggable’.

2.Technorati – An internet search engine for blogs.

3.del.icio.us – A social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks.

4.Yahoo! Answer – A community-driven knowledge market website by Yahoo! that allows users to submit questions to be answered and answer questions asked by other users.

5.Flickr – An image and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community platform.

6.Reddit – A social news website on which users can post links to content on the web.

7.Wikipedia – A free, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by Wikimedia Foundation.

8.YouTube – A video sharing website where users can upload, view, and share video clips.

9.StumbleUpon – An internet community that allows its users to discover and rate web pages, photos and videos.

10.Newsvine – A community-powered news website which draws content from its users and syndicated content from mainstream sources.

So what is POSH? No, it’s not just some new clothing fashion hype amongst web designers – POSH is the acronym for Plain Old Semantic HTML. The term Semantic HTML is used for a variety of things, but it has it’s origin in one objective: creating (X)HTML documents using semantic elements and attributes, as opposed to using presentational HTML. The term POSH was coined because a group of highly respected web designers wanted to have a short mnemonic to easily capture the essence of the concept of Semantic HTML.

In this article, I talk about why you should use POSH, exactly what you need to do to implement it (many of you are probably doing this already, and a few of you might not even realize it!) and how you can optimize it to improve SEO for your site. I also take a brief look at Microformats at the end of the article.

Why Should I Use Semantic HTML?

You could just say: “because it’s the right thing for the web,” but it’s benefits go far beyond that. For instance, it makes it easier for screenreaders to interpret in an order that will make sense to users with visual impairments.

Secondly, SEO and Semantic HTML are close friends. They might sometimes have conflicts of interest, which we’ll get to later on in this document, but over all, they’re friends. The purpose of SEO is to help search engine spiders better understand what a page is about and therefore categorize them better. Since a search engine spider basically has even less capabilities than a screenreader, it needs even more guidance in determining a page’s structure and topic. Good semantic HTML provides just that structure.

Semantic HTML tries to convey meaning through the words and the tags on a page. Try thinking of it this way: the content on the page is the words you speak. The tags provide the structure, the intonation, the pauses and even the looks on your face. Basically, your tags are half your message.

Site structure

In my previous article on dev.opera.com I talked about site structures, with the aim of providing a clear way for search engines to discover which page on your site discusses which topic – this can be further improved by using Semantic HTML.

Page Structure

A page consists of a title, one or more headings, and content. This content can contain paragraphs of text, lists, quotes, images and tables. All these types of information have their own designated tag(s). We will treat all those tags, starting with the headings. Use this page about sortable tables as an example to follow along with for the coming points.

Headings, from h1 to h6

A good document has headings and subheadings, because headings make it easier to determine the topic of a page. These headings can range in importance from h1 to h6. To be honest, I never use h5 and h6 myself. I usually have only one h1 tag on a content page; on portal pages, blog homepages for instance; you can have multiple h1’s, for all your articles for example. From a semantic perspective that might be weird, from an SEO perspective, it’s great.

Strict semanticists sometimes suggest that you should only have one h1, two h2’s, 3 h3’s etc. I don’t agree with that, as I think it’s very normal for a document to have more than two h2’s, in fact, this document has a lot more of them, and I think it’s very well structured.

Very often, designers who have heard a bit about Semantic HTML will fit the name of a site in the header into an h1 tag. On the homepage of a site, that might be a very wise decision. On every other page within your site, you probably have a specific topic, which might be related to your site’s name but doesn’t have to be. On those sub pages, that topic should be in the h1 tag, and it’s wise to put the name of your site into an h4 tag or maybe even a span.

Search engines give the words used in the various headings more weight in determining the topic of a page. The keyword your page is optimized for should appear at least once in an h1 tag, and related keywords should be used in the other headings, as illustrated in Figure 1.

Images

Images are used in all sorts of ways within documents, and you should apply the proper semantics to them. The only really useful semantic variable on an img tag is the alt attribute, and it should only be used if the image adds meaning to the document. If the image is there only for decorative purposes, leave the altattribute empty. Otherwise, describe what the image is showing in the alt attribute.

If you’re using images to replace text, because you want the text to look nicer (image replacement,) make sure that you’re using normal text in your HTML, and that you replace that text with images by using CSS. You have to do this because both people with visual impairments and search engines cannot read the text in your images. My own preferred method of doing this is through applying the image with CSS background-image, and then hiding the HTML text using a large text-indent (about -1000px or so does the trick.) Be careful though: the text in the image should be exactly the same as the text in your document. If it’s not, you risk losing a lot of ranking value from the search engines.

Abbreviations and acronyms

You’re bound to do it as a web designer – I do it in this article several times – using acronyms or abbreviations. When you do, make sure you provide the written out version of the term using abbr or acronym tags. That’s good for your keyword density too!

Tables

We all know why using tables for layout out web sites is bad, and we also know what they are supposed to be used for – displaying tabular data. Just using basic tables is a big step in the right direction, but there are a number of ways in which you can improve your tables’ semantic value, thereby improving your site’s SEO further:
Use table headings (th) for your table’s headings (it’s really that easy)
If you can, use the thead, tbody and tfoot sections to properly section your table
Provide a caption for your table, describing what’s in it

The caption and the table headings would be a good, and usually natural place to use some of your document’s keywords.

Emphasizing your meaning

Remember I said earlier that tags should be the emotion of your text? This is where the real emotion comes in: you can provide emphasis to certain words using em or strong. In the old days, people used b and i for that, but these tags are no longer encouraged, since they imply a specific styling, whereas HTML should only describe structure/meaning (all style should be created using CSS, of course.)

Search engines give more weight to any words marked up using any of these four tags. Overusing them can do more harm than good, and actually cause a loss of emphasis, but if treated with care, they can apply an extra dimension to your documents.

A few words on (i)frames

It’s quite simple: don’t use them. Search engines don’t get them, and screenreaders have quite a hard time using them as well.

Conflicts of interest

All of the above rules can be bent a little of course, which is a good thing, as sometimes it’s necessary to keep everyone at your organization happy. Say your boss wants a page to have a zappy marketing title you’d rather not have, because it doesn’t exactly describe what’s on the page, and pushes your most important keyword to the second heading. If you’re in a competitive area, it might be wise to make the page look like that for your boss, yet use an h2 for the first heading, and an h1 for the second.

The same goes for iframes and images. If someone really wants you to put a certain block of content on a specific well-ranking page, but you don’t want to risk losing focus, you could of course put that content into an iframe or image, and choose not to provide an alternative.

These decisions are up to you in the end – normal semantics should be the basis of your design, and the conflicts should only arise when you’re really optimizing your pages.

Not so simple semantic HTML – Microformats

Microformats are also semantic HTML, but they are not exactly simple! At the moment, search engines are hardly using microformats in their algorithms, but that might change. The hCard especially (the HTML version of the vCard) has some very easy and obvious uses for search engines, and I suspect that they will start using those within the next couple of years. You can apply intelligent extra semantics within Microformats using the basic set of HTML elements – for example, a good way of marking up your address hCard is by using the address tag as a container!

Conclusion

By using semantic HTML to mark up your pages, you can create pages that are more accessible, both to people with disabilities, as well as to search engines. Good semantic markup helps search engines to determine what the topic of a page is, and if used together with a good site structure, allows you pushy up your web site rankings!

Gmail is the best invention since slice bread. Well, maybe not, but it is definitely the best email client out there. Even hardcore Outlook users get hooked once they decide to give a try. There are several advantages: you can access it from anywhere and from any computer; you can integrate it with other Google tools and web apps; you can customize it extensively; and so on.

2. Make Gmail your email hub.

One advantage of using Gmail is that you can connect and use several email addresses from within your main account. For example, you could connect and use your Yahoo! account that you use for friends and relatives, your work email address and the email accounts of your own domain all under your Gmail account. This means that you would be able to receive AND send emails from all these accounts without leaving Gmail. Neat huh? To activate this you need to first forward the emails of your other email accounts to your Gmail address. Once you have done that go to “Settings” on Gmail, and then “Accounts and Import.” Now click on “Send email from another address” and follow the instructions to add the new accounts.

3. Learn how to use keyword shortcuts.

Once you start using J/K to move between messages, C to compose and tab/enter to send them you’ll never go back. Keyboard shortcuts make you interact with the email client much faster, especially if you are a touch typer. Here is a link to a cheatsheet with all the keyboard shortcuts for Gmail.

4. Learn touch typing if you don’t know it already.

As I mentioned in the previous point, the keyboard shortcuts plus touch typing combo makes you a beast when it comes to interacting with the email client interface. You’ll be replying to messages and blasting new ones out like there’s no tomorrow! But you need to know touch typing. If you don’t, here is a post I wrote about the way I learned it.

5. Schedule specific times during your day to check your email.

Never keep your email client open all day long (unless you have urgent matters that require this). It would be a bad idea even to let yourself open the email client whenever you feel like it. That is exactly when email starts hurting your productivity. Instead, schedule specific times during your day when you are supposed to check and process your emails. For example, determine you’ll only open the email client at 8am, 1pm and 5pm. At all other times you must not touch it!

6. Batch process your emails when you open the client.

Once it is the right time for you to open your email client your should batch process all your messages. That is, read all the important messages, delete the unimportant ones, send the emails you must, and then close it. You need to keep it short and sweet. Email is necessary, but it is not where the money is going to come from (unless you are a 419 scammer…) so don’t let it get in the way of the value producing activities.

7. If a message requires a reply, do it immediately.

Whenever you open an email message that requires a reply, you should do it immediately. If you move on to the next message thinking “OK, later I will get back to this one” there are good chances you’ll completely forget about it. Even if you manage to remember you’ll need to read the message again to be sure of what you need to reply, and this will make you waste time.

8. Use the “Canned Responses” feature on Gmail.

You certainly get a set of messages that always require the same answer, right? Maybe they come from people asking about your business, maybe from people trying to sell you something. For those situations Gmail has a really nice feature called “Canned Responses”. It lets you store messages and load them with the click of a mouse. To install this feature on your Gmail account simply click on “Settings” and then “Labs.” You will find the feature listed there, and you just need to enable it.

9. Learn to use “Filters” on Gmail

Filters are a big time saver if you learn how to use them properly. They basically allow you to manage the inflow of messages. For example, you could automatically delete messages coming from a specific email address or domain, or automatically forward messages containing a specific keyword. You can also use filters with the canned responses feature, auto-replying with a specific answer to messages that contain a keyword or that are coming from a specific address. You’ll find the “Create a filter” link on the right side of the “Search the Web” button.

10. Keep your inbox zeroed.

This is a habit you need to develop. If you are used to having hundreds of unread emails sitting on your inbox, this will seem hard at the beginning, but it is perfectly possible. The first step is to pick a day, probably a Saturday or Sunday, where you can sit for a couple of hours and clean your inbox. After that try to keep it with zero new messages at the end of every working day.

11. Delete useless messages.

The delete key is your friend when managing your email. First of all delete all the messages that you know are useless just by taking a look at the sender or subject lines. Then also delete all the messages you did take the time to read but that don’t need a response and don’t need to remain archived for future reference.

12. Archive directly when possible.

There are some messages that you might wanna keep archived (in Gmail but that don’t need to be read. For example, if you just signed up for an online service you know they might send you an welcome message, containing your user name and password. Archive similar messages straight way, because you already know their content (i.e., opening and reading it would be a waste of time). An alternative to archiving is simply marking the messages as read, so they stay visible on your inbox.

13. Important messages first.

If you want to be productive, you need to prioritize. Once you deleted and archived all the non important messages, start opening and replying to the most important ones. This will make sure that you’ll get to them fresh. Once the important messages are answered and out of the way you can proceed with less caution to the less important ones, until your inbox is zeroed.

14. Write shorter emails.

Writing short and succinct emails is an art that anyone can master. But it requires practice. Whenever you are about to send an email, pause for a second and analyze if you could eliminate unnecessary words, phrases, or even complete paragraphs. Don’t worry about going straight to the point. Most people know that emails are supposed to be that way, and they won’t be offended because you removed the small talk out of the way.

15. Craft your subject lines carefully.

The subject line is probably the most important element of your email message. In fact, with a carefully crafted subject line you won’t even need the body of the email! The rule of thumb is: write relevant and descriptive subject lines. You need to grab the attention of the receiver (with something relevant, like the name of his business or of the project you two are working on) and to quickly summarize what your email is about.

16. Learn how to search your email.

Another killer feature on Gmail is the powerful email search engine. You need to know how to use it though. First of all learn that you can search for labels as “label:labelname”, for places as “in:inbox” and for message statuses as “is:unread”. For a complete guide on how to to search Gmail effectively check out this article on Lifehacker.

17. Always give the full context of your message.

There is a reason why email software usually send the previous messages of a conversation along with your new one. This is to give the full context and help the receiver understanding what is going on. So first of all don’t delete that part. Second, try to elaborate your message to reiterate what was said or agreed in the past. Do not assume people will remember messages even from last week.

18. Separate group messages from individual ones.

If you work in a big office or company, you probably get many group emails that were sent to a bunch of people and that do not concern you directly. It is important to filter these emails out, because they are less important than the ones sent to you directly. On Gmail you can use the “Labels” feature to separate these two kinds of emails.

19. Use an effective signature.

Signatures can save a lot of time, because you won’t need to type a salutation, your name or contact details below every message. Make sure to include only the relevant information there, however. Things like random quotes or images will clutter your messages at best, and annoy the receiver at worst.

20. Re-read every email before sending it.

Common sense but most people forget this rule. Re-read every email before you send it. You should be looking for grammar and spelling mistakes, missing information, missing attachments and so on. Once you hit the “Send” button there is no coming back, and if you need to re-send something you’ll be wasting time, so check it twice.

Now that I may have confused you, let me start by defining exactly what a backlink is, and I will quote verbatim from Wikipedia:

“Backlinks (or back-links (UK)) are incoming links to a website or web page. In the search engine optimization (SEO) world, the number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page (though other measures, such as Page Rank, are likely to be more important). Outside of SEO, the backlinks of a webpage may be of significant personal, cultural or semantic interest: they indicate who is paying attention to that page.”

There is a lot of information on backlinks out there on the Internet, and everyone has their own opinion of how backlinks are weighed by the search engines. What I present to you now is just my opinion on what I have found to actually work, mainly through trial and error. I have done no mathematical equations or uncovered any secret algorithm to help in my research, just plain old trial and error.

Dofollow Comment Spam

The average understanding behind backlinks is to get as many dofollow links from pages with a decent Page Rank from a site with a similar topic as your blog or website. Many people devote a lot of time looking for these blogs where dofollow comments and links are allowed and leave short (rubbish) comments so that they can get a link back to their own site. This is the main reason why nofollow was introduced, to stop this rubbish commenting.

The thing with nofollow links, is that they still hold weight with Google, just not officially, if you know what I mean. You think that the biggest search engine in the world can’t see a link just because it says in the code to not see it? They can. Again, do you want to go around and start commenting on blogs and forums just to get these links seen as well? It depends, you do need links back to your site or blog in order to help your own cause, although running a blog in these times is like running a business, and that means we want to establish relationships with other blogs and websites out there in your particular niche or area.

Getting a backlink from a page that has a high Page Rank and in a similar industry is a great benefit too, although it is not the holy grail that many people aspire too. For most of us with blogs and websites, we are not industry leaders and household names, and if you run a blog on cars you will have a tough time getting Ford to link to you, and in turn getting some of their link juice.
Backlinking Strategies

These are things you could do, although I do not necessarily do these strategies myself. I am just touching on these strategies here, and these are not detailed instructions. If you want further details, let me know and I will write more detailed posts if I get enough interest.

• Now you could set up a strategy to comment on several blogs and forums each day, consistently so that it appears natural. If you were to go and comment on 250 blogs in one day and then do it again in three weeks time then Google would notice this, and they could penalize you and even de-list your site. Slowly and steadily wins the race here.
• A backlink from a .gov or .edu holds more weight in many cases, and there are some easy ways to find places for you to comment on and get a backlink here. I won’t give too much away, although think about your search string when looking for such sites.
• Setting up three or four way linking partners. This can work quite well to get some nice backlinks, although pretty soon you will be leaving a digital footprint that will surely be seen as black hat soon. If you do this strategy, consider changing linking partners often.
• Social Media, this is a big one these days, and if done correctly will not only get you massive backlinks, it will also get you a loyal following of readers, as long as your content adds value to peoples lives.

The Future Of Backlinking

So there you have just a few little backlinking strategies that you could apply to get indexed and improve your SERP’s. I must add, that these strategies do not appear to be sustainable for the future though, and just because they work now, there is no guarantees that they will work in a years time.

So what will work in a years time and longer into the future? How about building a blog/site that offers quality content and just as importantly when you are getting your backlinks out there on the Internet, making sure you are adding value to to other people’s blogs when you leave your comment. Think about building a relationship with the owners of other blogs that are in your industry and niche, and an entire new set of opportunities will open up to you. You will become known as an authority from doing this, and other people will begin to track you down via organic searching. That is worth more to your SERP’s than any backlink will ever get you. The day’s of the quick buck on the internet are pretty much gone, so look at the bigger picture and build relationships more than building backlinks.

Would love your feedback about getting quality backlinks to your blog, so feel free to leave a comment (and get a nofollow backlink) below. Why not start to build a relationship with me and who knows where it will go? That is the beauty of the Internet.

The way a company markets and promotes its business on the internet has evolved in recent years. In addition to traditional internet marketing methods such as search engine optimisation, pay per click or banner advertising, it is essential to promote your business on leading social media websites and networks.
An active social media optimisation strategy is essential to maximise the benefits of internet marketing.

It is common for a company today to use social media to promote its business. Websites like Myspace, Facebook and Twitter have become important resources to promote a business. Other websites like LinkeIn have become established tools for building contacts with other businesses as well as establishing relationships with existing or potential customers.

There is an increasing number of social networking websites targeting businesses and entrepreneurs. This is a list of 20 useful social networking sites for businesses and entrepreneurs.

Social Bookmarking Websites:

The first four websites featured in this list are popular social bookmarking websites that a business can use to drive traffic to their website or blog. The remaining part of the list focuses on other social media and professional networking websites for businesses.

1. Digg

www.digg.com

Digg is another popular social bookmarking service. It is a website that allows users to discover and share content from anywhere. It is an excellent resource for promoting your content as well as for discovering new content of interest to you. You can also participate by voting or commenting on conversations.

According to Compete.com , dig attracts more than 236 million visitors annually. Digg is easy to use and you can tap into its huge following by promoting your online resources including articles, posts or news on digg. Visitors can submit and browse articles in categories like technology, business, entertainment, science and more.

Key Features:

1. Submit News, stories, Images and Links
2. Vote or comment on stories
3. Search, browse or discover online content

2. Reddit
www.reddit.com

Social Networking Website for Business – Reddit

Reddit is a popular social bookmarking website. You can upload stories and articles on reddit and drive traffic to your company’s website or blog. In addition to receiving direct traffic from new submissions, if you submit quality links frequently, you can improve your company’s presence and establish a loyal user-base of followers.

Key Features:
1. Find out what’s new and popular on the web
2. Submit your links – news article, blog entry, video
3. Comment or vote on submitted stories or links
4. Create your own Reddit – Start your own topic or group
5. Also, RedditJobs.com – An independent community powered Jobs portal

3. Del.icio.us

www.delicious.com

Social Networking Website for Business – Delicious

Delicious is another popular and high ranked Social bookmarking website. It is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages from a centralized source.

Due the number of people who use popular sites like delilicious, businesses can benefit by promoting their website, blog posts or articles and improving traffic to their own site or blog. Del.icio.us encourages users to organize and promote interesting items on the internet.

Key Features:
1. Store all your links in a central place accessible form anywhere
2. Promote content on your website or blog by submitting links
3. Submit your news, stories or articles
4. Discover the most useful and interesting bookmarks on the web for any tag

4. Stumble Upon

www.stumbleupon.com

Although Stumble upon works somewhat like other social bookmarking websites, it is still unique in many ways. It is a powerful tool for improving your presence on the internet. It can provide your website or blog with a whole new audience with minimal effort.

Stumble upon is known especially for driving highly targeted traffic to your website or blog. Stumble Upon results in highly personalised traffic based on the market or interest group you are targeting. The traffic you receive is served as a result of active requests from users who are looking to discover sites related to your theme.

Key Features
1. Create and personalise your profile
2. Others can subscribe to your submissions
3. Users rate submissions (thumbs up). As pages are thumbed, they are given more coverage and served to more users
4. Highly targeted traffic
5. Download and use an easy to use Toolbar to manage your submissions

Professional-Networking / social media websites for business

The rest of this list below focuses on social media and professional networking websites useful especially for businesses. By registering and participating on these websites, your business or company can benefit by driving traffic to your company website, promotional, networking and recruiting opportunities and more.

1. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a place for professionals to network and collaborate. It is a popular social networking website with over 40 million users. It is a website that allows professionals to connect with others and expand their contacts. It is website where business associates, graduates and other professionals get introduced and connect with each other.

Key Features:
Inbox and Messaging system to communicate with others

Groups – Join or start your own group

Q&A Section – Where you can you post a question, ask for help, and get answers from any of 35 million people

Events feature – Post your events with automatic notification to others in your network and address book

Many other applications to chose from for your profile

2. Facebook

Social Networking Website for Business – Facebook

Over the years Facebook has become popular among businesses in addition to its growing popularity for personal use. Facebook can be an excellent tool for promoting your company or business. Facebook pages is a section of Facebook dedicated purely for businesses. A company can create a page on Facebook pages in order to share information or promote its services. The popularity of Facebook is increasing every year. Due its sheer popularity, Facebook offers a powerful medium for businesses to connect with others as well as drive traffic to your company’s website or blog. It has an established community and there are a range of applications that can further enhance your profile on facebook. It is easy to syndicate content between your website or blog and Facebook. This makes it easier to share and promote your content.

Key Features:

Facebook pages is designed specially to promote businesses.

Wide reaching advertising opportunities for businessesEvent promotion

Wide range of business applications can be added to profile

Easy to syndicate content from your website or blog

Expand your contacts using Groups or Fans

3. Twitter

Twitter Is one of the most popular and fastest growing social networks. It is a micro blogging service that allows users to communicate with short 140 character messages. Twitter has proved popular for personal as well as business use. Members communicate by posting short messages that users can then answer or add-on to. It has a follower system and your messages are displayed to all followers. Businesses have used Twitter effectively for a wide range of purposes such as providing product information, technical support, latest news or discuss new products. Due to the vast number of members, twitter has turned into a valuable resource for searching all types of information.

4. Xing

Social Networking Website for Business – Xing

Xing was previously known as Open Business Club. Xing is a European business network with more than 8 million members who are business professionals from different countries. The website is available in 16 languages. It is a professional global network that allows users to do business and promote their career.
With its headquarters based in Hamburg and offices in other European cities, XING employs 250 members internationally and is probably one of the only Web 2.0 Company floated on the stock market. Xing is an established platform for business professionals around the world.

Key Features

There is a vast collection of useful applications that members can add to their profile

An established Jobs and career section

5. Ecademy

Social Networking Website for Business – Ecademy

Ecademy prides itself on “connecting business people” through its online network, blog and message-board chats, as well as its premier BlackStar membership program, which awards exclusive benefits. A business network for creating contacts and sharing knowledge.

Key Features:

People section – Find and connect with others

Blogs with posts of interest to businesses and entrepreneurs

Unlimited advertising for your business in the Marketplace section

Groups – Join or start a group

Post your events or find out about others in Events section

6. Focus

Focus is a business website where business professionals can share their expertise and opnion with others. Focus offers quality information for business professional that is freely available and powered by the community. Focus is especially beneficial for professionals involved with decision making by providing them with access to professional advice and expertise. Focus is a business portal for business professionals and decision makers. It helps professionals by providing them with access to research and peer expertise.

Key Features:

Buyer’s Guides: Research and Product Comparisons to support your purchases

Articles : In-depth reviews on the latest trends in an industry

The In Focus Blog : Covering Latest product and industry news

Focus newsletters: Covering Latest business developments

Webcasts : Covering the latest product and industry trends

Q & A: Specific to industry or products

Business Resource Centres: Review the latest trends and issues relevant to your specific business needs.

Groups: Join groups of users with similar business decision needs and network with others

7. Squidoo

Squidoo is another popular website for promoting your business. Squidoo is primarily a content sharing website that allows users to create pages on any topic. The pages are commonly referred to as lense. Squidoo encourages users to create multiple lenses. It is different to a traditional article website as it offers a number of interactive features to include in your lense. According to Squidoo, “everyone’s an expert on something. Share your knowledge!” Share your industry’s secrets by answering questions and designing a profile page to help other members.

There are over 700,000 lenses in total as such it is a valuable resource for information on a wide range of topics. Businesses can benefit by creating profile and creating lenses to promote their business, products and services.

Key Features:

Create a page to promote products, services or business.

Very easy to use

Squidu Forum – Popular forum for discussions or feedback on your lenses (Squidoo pages)

Giant Squid program – Provides better rank, placement and exposure

Lens of the Day and Top 100 feature can lead to massive exposure

Ranking System – A complex ranking system that provides points for a number of items

8. Fast Pitch

Social Networking Website for Business – Fastpitch

Fast Pitch is a website for business professionals to network and promote their business.
It is a fast growing website for business professionals and connects millions of businesses internationally. Fast Pitch is easy to use and offers a simple method for businesses and professionals to improve their online presence.

It allows you to create a profile for your company and connect with others. It also offers a number of tools and resources to allow you to promote your company online.

Key Features:

Post Jobs

Post Classifieds

Promote networking events

Email Marketing – Send up to 50,000 emails

Distribute your Content to Members

Press Syndication

Blog Promotion

Ability to promote multiple businesses

9. Craig List

Craigslist is a simple but widely used website that offers classifieds and forums for many cities and countries across the world. It has a large user base covering many independent cities. It allows users to find almost any product or service specific for each city.

As Craigslist reaches a wide audience specific to many independent cities, advertising products and services on Craigslist can be highly beneficial and cost effective for businesses.

Key Features:

Online directory

Advertise your products and services

A popular job section for finding as well as posting jobs

10. Ning

I have included Ning in the list as it is useful if you want to create your own social network. It provides an online platform for starting your own social network on the internet. If your many or business will benefit from having its own social network then Ning offers an easy method for doing so.

Ning allows you to create your own social network where your company or business can connect with customers, vendors and co-workers in a confidential and secure manner.

Key Features:

Design your own Free social network online

Ability to create private or public network

In other words, so much for Bing (Bing) getting the upper hand in the battle for real-time search. Absent from Google’s (Google) announcement, however, is Facebook (Facebook). That said, the vast majority of status updates on Facebook are not public, so how much of an advantage that will be to Bing is dependent largely on how Facebook is able to change user behavior.

For Twitter though, today marks significant validation of its business. Just two weeks ago, it was rumored that the company was working on search deals worth “several millions dollars,” and today, they delivered, by partnering with the two biggest players in the game. With a fresh $100 million in the bank and both Google and Microsoft implementing tweets in search, it looks like Twitter (Twitter) is in it for the long haul.