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Link building is the process of creating links that lead back to your website and point potential customers where you would like them to go.  Link building is a slow and gradual process, although it can be hastened by controlled work targeting specific markets or keywords.

This interesting infographic treats link building as a board game similar to the famous “Monopoly” game. According to the infographic, you should take the following steps to build links that will benefit your company with more website traffic:

• Evaluate every link for value. The link builder with the most valuable collection wins!  If a link is not valuable, do not spend your valuable time on it.  Instead, focus on the links that will give you the most “bang for your buck.”  In Monopoly, think about Boardwalk and Park Place.  Someone who owns those two piece of property generally wins the game.
• Follow the rules. Those engaging in “bad” link building can end up in jail without passing Go or collecting any money!  Not only is bad link building costly but it is also unethical.  Be sure you play by the rules so that you do not end up costing yourself time, money and reputation with a link mess that gets you banned from the search engines.
• Big brands may hold a “get out of jail free” card, but these are not unlimited. Even big players still have to follow the rules.  For small businesses, it is vital that you continue your link building activities within the realm of ethical, moral and legal behavior.  Search engines quickly punish those who engage in sketchy link building by pulling them from their search results.  If you are pulled from Google, Bing or Yahoo for poor link-building activities, you will lose a large portion of your customer base, so it is important to keep your nose clean and follow the rules of good link building.  Beware of companies that advertise link building strategies with instant results.

By playing the link-building game, you can build a library of great links that will get your company noticed on the web!  Link building is one of the single most important ways you can maximize your advertising budget and get the visitors to your site who will be viewing and buying your products.  Think of link building as posting billboards on the internet to catch the attention of passing traffic.  Just as a good billboard reaches drivers on the highway, your links grab the interest of drivers on the web.

Orange County SEO can help you discover approved methods of link building that will give your company the boost it needs to make its Internet presence felt and draw customers to your website.  Talk to us today about our proven link-building strategies and how we can help you boost your business through planned link building activities.

If you are in need of internet marketing for you business, please contact Orange County SEO for a free quote today.

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What is link building and link baiting?  Customers who do not understand these terms may be missing out on significant market traffic, because links are what drive customers to your site.

In essence, links are maps or pointers to send customers where you want them to go.  Unless a customer already has your URL or web address, he or she does not know you have a web presence.  There are millions of web sites on the internet, so customers usually search for companies they want to use by putting key terms into a search engine.  However, they may also arrive at your site by clicking on a link that takes them there from another, trusted website, and this is where the power of link building becomes so important.

If you can manage to build links on trusted websites, customers will be more likely to visit you and to browse your products or services.  This infographic shows the best ways to build links and defines some of the terms used in the process such as “link bait.” Effective link building is a great way to get your company noticed, since links to other websites drive up your natural organic search engine rankings and pull in users from other sites. According to the infographic, you should think about content, video, and images as you begin to build links to other sites.

• Content.  At the end of the day, content is king in all aspects of your website.  Therefore, it should come as no surprise that checking your content is an important part of link building.  In order to attract links from other sites, your content must be high-quality, original and informative.
• Videos.  Customers love videos and other websites are more likely to link to you if you have interesting video content to show them.
• Images.  When it comes to link building, a picture really is worth a thousand words.  A good image or infographic can give you much higher rates of traffic than simple words.
• As you concentrate on link building, do not forget about forging relationships with other websites that can support your efforts.  You should also focus on utilizing all link-building resources such as social media and local business promotion.

Linking to trusted websites is one way to maximize your own online presence.  However, this can be a slow process, especially if you aim too high too soon.  Managing your content can make you attractive to the websites to which you want to link and help you build online relationships with trusted sites that will raise your own value in the eyes of your customers and the search engines that lead them to you.

At Orange County SEO, we have experts who can help you build links quickly and safely that will drive up your internet traffic as well as help you raise your value with search engines.  Talk to us today about how link building strategies can work for you.

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What is link bait? This infographicgives you the answer to that question and shares important points about the link baiting process.

Link bait is designed to drive traffic to your website or attract attention from other websites.  Link bait is one of the most successful link building methods to generate interest and links to your information.  However, link baiting can be a powerful tool or a destructive weapon, depending on how you use it.  It is not advisable to begin a link building campaign without understanding the limitations of links and the damage that can be done with the wrong link-building strategies.

There are a series of steps to be followed if you want to use the power of link baiting to build traffic to your website.  Follow these steps to utilize the real power of link baiting.

• Step 1—Brainstorming.  Brainstorm possible ways to focus on your website’s topic.  This should be a group effort, if possible; the more people involved in this process, the more creative and appealing your ideas will be.  Value input from every source, especially employees who work directly with your customers.  These employees often have a more accurate view of customer needs and wants than those in higher positions.
• Step 2—Production.  Link bait should be simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, appeal to emotion, and tell a good story.  In order to create quality link bait, you have to stand out, especially if you are competing for link with other, similar sites.
• Step 3—Publication and promotion.  Create, edit, refine, and brand your content to produce quality link bait.  For publication, you should decide on content placement, enable easy sharing, use news aggregators, reach out to bloggers, and reach out through Twitter.  Promotion is essential in a successful link bait campaign.  In order to get your message out to as many people as possible, you must consider the ways in which you will reach out to those who will spread the word and link back to your site on their own websites or promote your brand through social networking.
• Step 4—Reviewing and enhancing.  Be sure to review and enhance your link bait with updates and better content, and monitor your results to see if you are getting the outcomes you expect and want for your hard work.
• Step 5—Measuring results.  You do not know if your link bait campaign is working unless you can measure the results.  It is critical to have a defined way of doing this so that you can determine not only how effective the campaign is as a whole but also how effective each part of your campaign is and where you can make improvements.

Orange County SEO can help you create, refine and measure your results from link bait campaigns.  Contact the experts at Orange County SEO today to learn how link baiting can help you improve website traffic and drive customers toward your site where they can see for themselves your great products and services.

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The basic commodity of SEO is the link.  You may understand that a link is a series of letters, words, numbers or symbols that leads a searcher to a particular website.  However, a link is much more than this; it is made up of many parts and serves many purposes.

Dissecting a link is helpful when you want to understand the power that these piece of information have to drive traffic to your site.  Understanding the anatomy of a link makes you more knowledgeable about your total advertising campaign and how links work to build your business.

What is a link made of? This infographic explains:

• Site Authority. While it is obviously better to be linked to a huge and recognized web site, you may be able to build a much larger body of smaller, less important links in the same amount of time.  Site authority is the “value” placed on a link by its location.  Many websites start out with small, relatively unimportant links and build to linking to trusted, reputable giants.  While this process may be slow, it should be the ultimate goal of your link-building campaign.  In the meantime, however, take valuable smaller links when you can get them.
• Page Authority. Whenever possible, try to get links to another site’s homepage rather than a forum or a page considered less valuable. Each page is ranked on its own merits rather than part of the web site as a whole. This is important to consider when link building. Search engines value links based on what they link to.  Linking to a homepage is often considered more valuable than linking to a promoted page or an ad.
• Content and Co-Authority: Google checks to see if your links to other pages relate to the topic of your content.  It is a favorite trick of shady SEO to link to any available page simply to get the link working.  However, Google has caught on to this technique and will devalue your links if there is not at least some connection between the page’s content and your linking page.
• Anchor text. You should not use your firm name as anchor text. Instead, use a word that defines the purpose of the link and the page it links to for the best search engine results.  This helps users who are searching for certain keywords to find your pages and gives more value to your site.  It also helps search engines understand exactly why you are linked to a particular page.  This can raise your site’s overall value to the search engines and avoid the “misdirection” quandry.

Orange County SEO has experts that understand the importance of links and can help you build a set of links that will attract business to your website and also help you improve your search engine rankings.  Call us at Orange County SEO today to learn how we can help you build links and grow your business website quickly and effectively.

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<a href=”http://www.orange-county-seo.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/link-building-value-infographic.png” alt=”The Building Blocks of Link Building”><img src=”http://www.orange-county-seo.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/link-building-value-infographic.png” alt=”link-building-value-infographic” alt=”The Building Blocks of Link Building” width=”450″  border=”0″ /></a><br />The Building Blocks of Link Building:<a href=”http://www.orange-county-seo.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/link-building-value-infographic.png” alt=”link-building-value-infographic”>The Building Blocks of Link Building</a>

To paraphrase a question by Eric Ward:  “If Google disappeared tomorrow, how would people find your website?”

This may seem silly until you consider that if Google’s spider cannot find your website, the search engine has disappeared for you.  Your links should drive users to your website, not leave them in the dark as to your existence.

You cannot rely solely on organic search results, as this infographic shows.  You must also incorporate SEO strategies that drive users to your website through other means, such as backlinks, to take advantage of all the possible ways users might find your website and to protect yourself against the vagaries of search engine algorithms.  In fact, although most people focus on search engine results, links are just as important and, depending on the business you run, may be more important in generating conversion traffic.

Conversion is the number of people who visit your website and become paying customers.  Links have a bit more power to drive conversion because people who land on your website from search engines are often casual browsers.  If a visitor arrives as the result of a link, there is a good chance that he or she already has a strong interest in a particular topic or item.

There are certain questions you should ask about links before publishing them.  Consider these questions when you are considering your link-building strategy:

• Is the webpage publicly visible?  If people cannot see the page to which you are linking, it is not doing your business any good.  A surprising number of links are located on pages that visitors will never see because they have been blocked from search engines.
• Can the spider read the page?  Equally important is the page’s “readability.”  It is unlikely that you can tell by looking at a page if it is readable, but there are simple SEO tricks to evaluate a page and see if the bots can find your links.
• How many links are there on a page?  Are they redirected?  The heavier the concentration of links and the more redirects a user goes through to get to the final page, the less likely it is that a user will stay the course.
• Is the link labeled “no follow”?  If the link is labeled as a “no follow” link, visitors may not be able to get to your page.

It is also important to remember that just because links do not raise your search engine rankings, they still have the power to send visitors to your site.  For this reason, search engine rankings are not the only consideration you should have when evaluating links.  Anything that gets visitors to your site, especially to a particularly good landing page, may have value in driving business to your site.

At Orange County SEO, we understand link strategy and can help you build links that will benefit your business.  If you need help with your internet marketing, please contact Orange County SEO to speak with an experienced online marketing professional.

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