How to Build Link Popularity
Very important to building your site’s natural search result status is link building. It is very important to have inbound links to your website from as many websites with a good reputation as possible. Basically, Google evaluates all websites and gives them a ranking for any given set of keywords. One of the primary criterion for rank is how many inbound links are going into your website, and which websites they are coming from.
Getting Links
There are many ways to go about getting links to your website.
One popular way is through seeking out vertical search engines and business directories. A vertical search engine is a website that lists companies in a certain niche or industry. It is important to find these for your own industry and get yourself listed. These are typically free and I strongly caution against paying for any type of listing.
Another method of building links to your website is through blogging. Bloggers are typically very conscious of other websites that are linking to their blog. Many times if you have relevant content on your website they will give you a return link to your own website. Also, commenting on other blogs is also an excellent strategy towards getting links to your site as most times you are able to leave a link to your website.
Building links in social media is ever growing in importance. Search engines are now giving heavier weight to social media websites which means links found there are now stronger. On top of that, high-quality social content will generate links to your own website from outside the social media world as well.
Not all links are Equal:
The greater the reputation or ranking for any website linking to you, the better the ranking for your own website. A link from Facebook, Yelp, a national media website, or a highly viewed blog such as Mashable is ranked very high by the search engines. On the contrary, a link from a local business directory with minimal pageviews is not ranked nearly as high. That means you want to strategically seek links from highly ranked websites in order to bolster your own ranking. Find rankings for any website in the world using Alexa. Obtaining links without investigating how highly ranked the linking website is, only wastes time and effort.
Track your links:
Keep a record of all the websites that link to you. At DK we maintain a spreadsheet with the listings, passwords, and other pertinent information to any website that links to our own site. There are also tools from all the major search engines that provide you with all the links they have found for your site, but they rarely will all agree about where your links come from on any given day. Yahoo Site Explorer is a good place to start researching your own links.
If you’re thirsting for more, find many more tactics on either of these 2 highly ranked locations:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-building-from-a-to-z
http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml
Birth of Confusion – the iPad Debuts Tomorrow
The revolution begins...?
Well greatly confusing things are born on April 3rd it seems.
Tomorrow the iPad is born, and I, the editor of the DK Web Tech Blog, turns 30. So do I and the iPad have anything else in common other than a birthday that is way too close to April Fool’s Day? Yes, as a matter of fact, our ability to confuse.
While my girlfriend wonders how I don’t see the problem in keeping shaving razors and toothbrushes together, the iPad is really shaking people up because no one knows what to think of about it. There have been mixed reviews over the global appeal of the product as seen in this great article. Many people wont find the need to buy a machine that lacks a USB drive, CD drive, and keyboard among other things. However, features such as it being lightweight, availability of 150,000 apps, an amazing e-reader application, and a 12 hour video battery life will make a large number of people splurge on the product.
Confused technology fans are debating that if they already have a laptop and an iPhone, why would they also need to spend a minimum of $500 for an iPad? So, will the iPad be able to gain long term appeal as their iPod or iPhone have? Guy Kawasaki, a renowned Silicon Valley entrepreneur summed it up by saying, “You can’t make a phone call with it, you can’t take a picture with it, and you have to buy content that before now you were not willing to pay for. That seems tough to me.” Much of the confusion about the iPad’s purpose is covered in this New York Times article.
So how will the iPad do on the Apple Retail Store shelf? While it will likely sell out its immediate limited supply, long term success is impossible to predict. It largely depends on the amount of apps that are built for it that will enable its functionality to grow exponentially. Positive signs include the fact that firms such as Kleiner Perkins have committed large amounts of capital to development in this area over the last few weeks in anticipation of the iPad launch. However, unfortunately we likely wont see many apps released for another 6 months.
More helfpul information about the iPad launch: