BackLinkFast.com

Even more than Facebook, Twitter is fast becoming the social networking site of choice for virtually everyone who wants their presence known online. Twitter was developed as a micro-blogging platform that allows users to post text-based messages, or “Tweets” up to 140 characters that are then sent to their followers, or subscribers. While the vast majority of Tweets are personal in nature, the marketing potential of Twitter is fast being recognized, and using Twitter to market your blog can mean a quick, easy to use, and free way to increase your web traffic.

The simplest way to use Twitter to market your blog is by getting people to become your followers, and tweeting them every time you create a new post. Advertising your Twitter account on your blog, topic-relevant forums, through article submission, and on other websites can get the followers to sign up, and then simply sending a tweet can inform them all to check out your latest blog.

Using Twitter, however, can certainly get more creative than that. Likely the more creative you get, the more interested your followers will become, and the more traffic you will draw to your blog. Engaging your followers, soliciting their input on your blog’s topics, and asking for reactions to your posts can gain more interest than simply advertising your latest blog. It is also important to reply to your followers, both on Twitter and on your blog. Making your readers feel like you value their input will keep them coming back, and may even gain you some of those ever valuable backlinks.

Now that you have decided to enter the new world of social networking, avoiding the temptation to over tweet can be difficult. Setting up two twitter accounts is one way to prevent your followers from feeling like they are being spammed. This allows your readers to sign up for tweets that simply update them on new posts, or for those that are interested, receive more information, like appearances you may be making, relevant industry updates, and general responses. This will keep your follower interested and not overwhelmed. Just don’t forget to include a link to the blog too!

Blogging in today’s online marketplace can be big business, and WordPress is the leading blogging platform used. Like Blogger, WordPress blogs can be simple web logs that you can access and update through the WordPress website. This, however, is an option primarily for personal use blogs. What makes WordPress the choice blogging platform for professional and revenue based blogs is the downloadable blog creation and maintenance software.

Being open source software, WordPress’ coding and applications are very transparent and flexible, and can be used by both novice and expert alike. PHP and MySQL driven, WordPress is also compatible with most web hosting options and Content Management Software, making it ideal for use with virtually any web hosting company.

The WordPress Backlink plug-in is just one of the many plug-ins available for this open source blogging platform. Essential it works by allowing you to trade backlinks with other bloggers, and keeps track of both the number and rank of each of these backlinks. By filling out a form, bloggers can link their related blog entries to yours. There is also a feature that allows you to approve the backlinks filled in, keeping your backlinks relevant, and preventing your content from becoming part of the growing spamdexing epidemic. Google and Yahoo both are cracking down on sites that use spamdexing tactics, and this feature allows you to maintain control of your blog.

So while the WordPress Backlink plug-in can offer another great way to keep track of your backlinks, and can be a good introduction to web analytics for your blog, there are some limitations to the type of data that you will get, and little help analyzing exactly what the results mean. For this, you still will need to use a more in depth web analytics tool, such as Google Analytics, or the software that is available to you through your web hosting package.

In today’s web business industry successful Search Engine Optimization tactics are absolutely fundamental to your online business’ or blog’s success. While onsite SEO involves choosing the right keywords or phrases, and correctly embedding them in your html code, Back Linking involves getting as many quality links to your webpage as possible, and is quickly becoming the most important tool to getting top, and lasting search engine hit results.

There are generally two types of Back Links that produce desired SEO results; one-way and reciprocal. One-way links are links that appear on other sites, the higher ranking themselves the better, that lead to your website or blog. It is these types of links that are generally most effective in getting higher search engine result, though are often more difficult to maintain. It is for this reason that more and more online linking businesses, often called Link Farms have sprung up in the last few years, and they usually charge a fee to maintain the links on their page. Though effective, Link Farms are often regarded as “spamdexing”, and can sometimes be removed from search engine results. Reciprocal links are links that appear on your website which take you to another page that also contains a link back to your site. In general these are less effective as a SEO strategy.

From simple contacting webmasters of sites that may attract your potential customers or readers and asking for a link, to paying companies that specialize in one-way Back Linking, there are a number of ways to use this SEO tactic to get online traffic to your site. All methods, however, are not created equal. Avoiding Link Farms, and hiring expert companies or individuals can keep your website active, and produce the revenue you are looking for.

Lastly, an important part of Back Linking is knowing how to keep track of how this strategy is working. The most effective, and ultimately the only way to truly evaluate the success of your Back Linking strategy is implementing software. This type of program can keep track of the live links that Back Link to your site, and the number or percentage of traffic that each brings. Most CMS, or Content Management Software includes these types of programs.

Here are a few tools I regularly use to speed up my blog commenting for link building campaigns.

easyComment

easyComment is a lightweight FireFox plugin that makes blog commenting fast, and easy to maintain. Simply install the plugin, restart firefox, and right click on “easyComment” in the bottom right hand corner of your browser window, then click Manage Profiles. Create as many profiles for as many sites as you want. After you’ve setup a profile, follow our blog commenting tutorial and you’re on your way to building quality back links.

SEOquake

SEOquake is a firefox plugin that every webmaster should be using. I won’t get into all of the details of this extension since it is so powerful, but I will explain how to properly use it in order to maximize your blog commenting campaign.

1. Install the SEOquake Firefox Plugin
2. Restart Firefox
3. Go to Google.com
4. Type yourkeyphrase “remember my information” “notify me of follow up comments”
5. Click “Advanced Search”
6. Click “Results Per Page” and change it to 100
7. Click the “Advanced Search” button
8. Click “Request Parameters”



9. Sort Page Rank by descending order (see screenshot below)



10. Now you have a list of relevant blogs that allow comments, sorted from the highest page rank (top) to the lowest page rank (bottom)
11. You can even export this list for future use by clicking the “Save to File” button, (next to request parameters)

More Uses for SEOquake…

So there is one, fantastic use for SEO quake. But, I’m not done yet! There’s yet another great feature that will help your blog commenting for link building campaign. What you ask? Do you see that little, tiny, square icon in the bottom right corner of your browser? It should say “SQ”. Right click that icon, and click “line through no-follow and no-index”. Now, on every page you visit, there will be a line through any link that is marked as no-follow. Extremely useful if you’re blog commenting only to increase your page rank.

Search Engine Optimization as an industry is growing, and will continue to grow for years to come. As a result, more and more companies are seeing the value in hiring an in-house SEO consultant, which means more opportunities for us. It also means there will be more competition in the future. Notice I said, “In the future”; I recently went on an SEO job hunt and had people contacting me left and right, so depending on your area of the world, it may not be as competitive as you think, and finding an SEO job may be a lot easier than you predict.

So here are my top 5 places to find an SEO job:

1. SEOmoz

The SEOmoz team has put together an amazing resource for SEO professionals. They’ve also went the extra mile and created an SEO services board where you can find very credible SEO jobs. Some of these jobs are very specific (ie: link building, social media manager) and others are very broad (ie: SEO consultant).

http://www.seomoz.org/marketplace/jobs

2. SEMPO

The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization is a non-profit site which feeds useful data to the hungry minds of SEO/M professionals. They’ve taken it a step further and added a regularly updated job board for SEO and SEM jobs alike.

http://www.sempo.org/jobs/

3. Indeed:SEO

If you haven’t heard of, or used indeed yet you are missing out. This glorious search engine searches nearly every job site on the internet to find exactly the job you’re looking for. It’s not always 100% accurate as far as search results go, but it’s definitely very useful, not to mention a huge time saver.

http://www.indeed.com/q-Seo-jobs.html

4. SEO Jobs Finder

This site is growing on me as I see more and more quality SEO and SEM jobs posted every day. Sort jobs by freelance, part time or full time, and everything is properly labeled. This site has a great user interface which makes it easy (and quick) to search for the SEO job of your dreams.

http://www.seojobsfinder.com/

5. Craigslist

Of course, you can’t leave out good ol’ Craigslist. Yes, there tends to be a lot of spam, especially when searching for telecommute or SEO jobs. However, you can often find a diamond in the rough since Craigslist is one of the first places tech-savvy employers post to. To date I have been hired from 3 out of 3 jobs I found on Craigslist.

http://www.craigslist.org/

Blog commenting is one of the fastest and cheapest ways to build quality links. So what’s the catch? It’s time consuming, obviously. You have to find the blogs, skim through the post, write a relevant comment and pray for approval. Is it worth it? Absolutely. Strategic blog commenting can boost your rankings fast. As a bonus, if the link is not marked as nofollow, you can gain a higher page rank by carefully picking the right blogs. I have been blog commenting for close to 3 years now and have found enormous results for the fruits of my labor.

Whether you’re a webmaster, SEO, or a blogger, you should be using the following method regularly. Adapt it to your niche and watch your rankings soar.

Step One – Compile a List of Blogs

1. Go to Google.com
2. Type in: yourniche “Remember my personal information” “Notify me of follow-up comments”
3. Replace yourniche with a keyword related to your niche
4. Click Search
5. CTRL-Click on the first ten results
6. Go back to steps 3-6  and type in a different keyword, repeat as needed.
7. Copy and paste the URLs you’ve gathered into a list for future reference

Step Two – Find High Page Rank Posts

1. Use an internal page rank checker  like This One
2. CTRL-Click 1-3 posts with the highest page rank for each URL you gathered

Step Three – Prepare your Comment

1. Get ready to be witty, inquisitive, and argumentative.
2. Skim through each post and try to find an interesting fact

Step Four – Make it SEO Friendly

1. Go down to the comment section
2. Fill out the comment form like so:

• Name: YourKeyword (Don’t use anything that looks like spam)
• Email: You@YourEmail.com (Use a junk email address, but make it real, some blogs require email confirmation to activate your comment)
• Website: Enter your site’s URL (The one you’re building links to)

Step Five – Write the  Comment

It is very important that your comment doesn’t look automated, if it’s unrelated or too short it probably won’t get approved. Many bloggers are also webmasters who know of techniques such as these. It is your job as a blog commenter to convince them you are a reader who wants to express his opinion. Comments like “I agree with this post. Great blog, keep up the good work!” almost never get approved. Bloggers are smart, and many are SEO savvy enough to know what you’re trying to do. I’m a blogger, and I know of these techniques. However, I embrace blog commenting, as long as it doesn’t look automated.

Comment Approval Tips

• Keep it clean, don’t use profanity
• Check your spelling and grammar
• Comment in the same language as the post, don’t waste your time translating a foreign language, just move on to the next blog
• Ask a question
• Make an argument
• 4 Sentences, minimum
• Only 1 comment per post
• Maximum of 2 words per keyphrase (for the Name: field)