BackLinkFast.com

Getting back links for your website is one of the most important strategies of any search engine optimization. While there are numerous sites offering advice on how to achieve this, and costly programs that claim to help you do this, if you are not aware of whether your strategy is successful all that hard work could be going to waste. If you are just starting out in SEO and are not ready to invest in costly software, or are just looking for another way to check your backlinks, then do not over look the very useful and free Yahoo Explorer!

Yahoo Explorer allows you to see all indexed pages on Yahoo that link back to yours, as well as the most popular sites for particular searches and for particular sites. You can find Yahoo Explorer by following this link, https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com, or by searching for Yahoo Explorer in any search engine. Once there you can enter the URL you want to check at the top, or log-in using your existing Yahoo user name, or if you don’t have one, then create one. Creating an account will allow you to keep track of multiple sites. Once you have typed in the website or specific webpage that you are looking for results for, follow these two easy steps to check your backlinks.

1. Click the “inlinks” button on the left in the results area at the top of the page. And then click the drop-down box at the right, and select “Except from this Domain“.
2. The results will now appear and your backlinks will be featured next to the “inlinks” results. The actual links themselves are listed below that.

It really is that easy to find your backlinks on Yahoo, and this is an easy, quick, and accurate tool that should not be overlooked by anyone who is concerned with the search engine optimization of their website. It is also a great tool to help you get started with SEO and can help you build your strategy and improve your results.

When considering the design of your website or blog functionality, usability and aesthetics are always important considerations; but how your website’s design affects your SEO strategy may not always be considered or even apparent. So how can you tell if your website’s or blog’s design is having an effect on your search engine results, and what should you consider to make your design as SEO-friendly as possible?

Size Matters

Search engine ranking is based on content, so the more you have the better chance your site has of getting top results. A good way to see if adding content would help your ranking is to look at the amount of content your biggest competitors have in comparison to you. A great and easy way to add content is to start a blog or create free resource pages. This can boost your results with little effort, especially if you hire a writer to handle the blog content.

Look at your Graphics

Graphics are a great way to make your website or blog interesting and professional looking, but without adding the appropriate keyword tags to the html code then they will add nothing to your SEO strategy. If you also have little content on your page they may even hinder it.

Are your technical elements ok?

Elements to dynamic websites such as PHP databases can virtually eliminate the amount of content that you have on your site by not having a static URL. While in most cases this cannot be helped, creating a site map can assist you in getting your content seen by search engine web crawlers. Also, take a look at your html code. Messy code can have a negative effect on the methods you may be using to get top search engine results.

Is your Domain Name working for you?

Choosing a good domain name is a very important part of maximizing your SEO strategy and is also usually an important part of your website’s identity. While choosing a domain name that is easy to remember and spell, and represents the purpose of your business or blog is important, considering its effectiveness within the realm of search engine optimization is also critical. Consider purchasing multiple domain names from your web host to take full advantage of the effect this can have on your SEO results.

Finding a balance between the design of your website or blog for the purpose of both appealing to your clients or users and getting them there in the first place is always important, and using these tips can get you the results you want.

Finding it hard to keep up with your SEO strategy, and not convinced that all the tricks and tips you are using are getting you the results you want? Then may be is time to re-evaluate your strategy and make sure that you have covered all the easiest bases before launching into complicated programming ideas or costly SEO software packages. One of the easiest ways to get the most valuable commodity in the SEO world, backlinks, is to use forums; but using this method effectively is not always the most obvious. Before abandoning this technique here are a few tips to get the most of this fairly simple strategy.

• Know your niche and Google the most popular keywords for that niche – Whether you write about knitting or the latest security software, knowing where your potential customers or readers are asking questions will make your time spent on these forums more valuable.
• Identify the top five forums for your niche and join them – For this method to be effective, you have to join at least five forums. Most of your potential readers will be on at least one of these forums, and you’ll want to make sure you are getting to most of them.
• Post Replies – This may seem obvious, but the more you do this the more success you’ll have. Also making sure that your replies are useful to the user and informative to others will make people more likely to want to check out your blog or website.
• Create a keyword optimized signature – This is what will get you the backlinks, and is what will get you the results you want in search engines.

In addition to using this technique in forums to get backlinks, participating in forums can also get your website to rank higher on popular search engines by establishing your reputation as an expert. Posting interesting information that would be of genuine interest to other forum users, or providing accurate and helpful responses to questions can make others recognize you as a valuable source of information. Of course you must still always remember to include links to your website and blog in your signature or else this won’t work.

Overall, forums can be a great way to both optimize your SEO strategy and keep you finger on the pulse of your niche market. Remembering the general rules for creating content on the internet by keeping the quality up, and remembering to use every opportunity to include SEO tags to get the backlinks you want will get you a high ranking website or blog with minimal effort.

To keep a leg up on your competitors, you need to know what people are doing on your site.

If you don’t have appropriate tracking in place on your site, now’s the time to get it. Not knowing how visitors are behaving once their visit your site is only going to hurt you. You could be monetizing basic visitor actions that would make you thousands of dollars if you were only paying attention.

Here we’ll discuss a few free, basic analysis programs available for your website, and how you can best utilize the information they can provide.

Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools

Google provides some very useful, and very free tools that could help you make the most out of the various elements on your website.

Google Webmaster Tools can be found at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ .

With this powerful tool on your website, you can get an SEO analysis of various page factors, as well as an idea of where you stand in SEO rankings. It’s fairly simple to install on your site, and will give you a lot of insight.

Google Analytics is even more useful, in that it will show you how users are interacting with various parts of your website. http://www.google.com/analytics/ . Using Analytics, you can take a look at how long users stay on a page, what sources are giving you the most clicks, and what pages users are “bouncing” from, or leaving, quickly. With this knowledge, you’ll be able to make changes and improvements to your web page that are consistent with your conversion goals.

Another tool worth looking into is Wassup for WordPress. http://www.wpwp.org/ . Wassup is advertised as a “real-time” WordPress plugin, allowing you to take a look at visitor source and the visitor’s path through the website as they browse. Google Analytics and many other analytics tools take a while to process visitor information, and display that to you on your dashboard. Wassup claims to take the time out of that process by giving you real-time visitor info.

I Have the Tools – Now What?

If you have Google Analytics or other tracking services in place, your first step is to wait and gather some data. After a few weeks, you should have an idea of how users are behaving once on your site.

Begin by viewing the different reports available in the interface you’re using, and ask yourself what that tells you about your users. Is there a certain page, or a certain part of your conversion process, where you’re losing the most users? Do you find that people spend more time on some pages than others?

Our next blog entry in this series will talk about specific scenarios where your Analytics information could benefit you, so you’ll know exactly what to look for. Until then, do yourself a favor and put tracking into place that will give you info about what visitors are doing! You may be missing out on much more info than you think. Get started today!

So, you’re coming up with a social media plan for your website or blog, and you want to ensure as many people as possible are going to find you via bookmarking, following, and connecting on various social media websites.

Great – so how do you do that?

There are a few approaches to getting your website out there. We all know that if you don’t start social media profiles and have links to those profiles (like the famous twitter icon), people won’t necessarily know you have a Twitter account. You don’t want your readers to dig through your text to be able to follow you on Twitter.

You also want people who love your blog to be able to get updates from you on social networking services, and to know when you’ve posted something new or updated a feature on your site.

… And of course, the more you’re talked about and the wider your social networking reach goes, the more you’re going to be indexed. If you’re searching for yourself and you’re not seeing your social media profiles in the first few pages, then you have some work to do.

Twitter Me This

People love Twitter. Microblogs give us the opportunity to find out what’s going on without having to read a lengthy blog. The more convenient we can make updates for our readers, the more they’re going to be interested in keeping up with us – and possibly going to your site, where they can dig in deeper.

Twitter profiles and entries tend to index quickly. With such a large number of users interacting and exchanging data, this isn’t surprising.

I’ve worked with people who have 2-3 twitters going on just for one brand or enterprise. They have their Seesmic or Tweetdeck desktops open throughout the day, tweeting and interacting. Is this a good thing to do? Well, if you can keep up with it, refrain from posting too much duplicate content and if you can keep your followers interested, then it’s absolutely a good thing.

Multiple Twitter accounts or too much presence within one social media network becomes bad for your brand when Twitter is as far as you’re going.

Deepen Your Reach

There are far too many great social media networks out there used by people across the world to engage with users in Facebook and Twitter only. If you’re only using these two networks, consider branching out. There are plenty of great social media tools that will allow you to manage multiple social media networks at once.

Consider some of the following tools:

Knowem.com – Knowem will show you what your social media presence is throughout different networks, and can help you find networks that would give you good exposure for your brand.

Ping.fm – Ping will allow you to implement and manage several social networks at a time. It also has nifty plugins for WordPress and other similar services.

Hello.txt – Hello is very similar to Ping.fm, but you can manage multiple Twitter and other accounts using this network.

There are plenty more options out there, needless to say. Even if a social media network that gets less traffic than other networks turns one user on to your site or product, it could be well worth the time you invest in your profile.

If you own a business, then using local SEO could launch your efforts into to the top results for search engines like Google and Yahoo, and ultimately be the key to your success; but there are other ways you can get your local business advertised online. With applications such as Google Maps and websites like yellowpages.com getting people to find your business can be simplified by using this strategy. So what are some of the most popular and effective ways to use local SEO and marketing?

Facebook Local ads

If you use the mega-popular social networking site Facebook at all, there is no doubt that you have noticed the ads that show up on the right hand-side of your wall; but have you ever noticed that the majority of these ads are selected for relevance by your location? Getting your local blog or business advertised on Facebook couldn’t be easier either. By fillings out a quick form, and uploading any relevant images, you can have your ad appear on Facebook before you know it.

Google Maps

Google Maps’ business results are perhaps one of the most effective ways to market your local business. By using the right tags and keywords, you can have your business highlighted when people in your area search for products of services that you offer. Since these appear at the top of the page, and offer map locations based on proximity of the searcher by IP address to your business, it can have a real impact on both your website, and in-store traffic.

Yellow pages.com

Those bulky phonebook, while out of date, still remain a major way that people find local businesses. While it does cost a small fee to advertise on the yellow pages website, it may be worth it, especially if you offer products or services that appeal to the users of sites like yellowpages.com, such as seniors.

iPhone and Blackberry apps

The use of applications for both the iPhone and Blackberry smartphones is becoming one of the hottest mobile markets. Within this booming market the map or business location apps are among the most downloaded, and getting your business listed in one of these apps can really boost your sales.

Local SEO includes not only targeting particular websites and online or mobile applications to include your business, but also involves using your location as part of your keyword meta tags, and while this is the main way that Google Maps works for example, it will also get you hit results on other search engines and for general searches as well. It is all just another way to get the most out of your SEO strategy and make your online business marketing a success.