Cover Photograph

With the cover photograph feature you can show your brand photograph at the timeline top so your fans get a visual depiction of what your brand is about the moment they visit your page. The photograph can be customized with an image that is 855 by 320 pixels. You can use this new feature to get very creative with your cover photograph and promote your brand even more through Facebook. There are many companies already making good use of this feature.

Smaller Picture Profile

Another new change with the timeline is the use of a smaller profile picture. You’ll need to change any old photographs you have to use the new format style. Your new picture must use the dimensions of 180 x 180. One way to make use of this is to just use a logo to summarize what your brand is about.

The About Section

The about section was always a part of your Facebook page but it’s now featured near the top of the new timeline. You can update this section to suit your needs on the site.  You can also work with the about section and put in your physical address, hours of operation, telephone number, and other important information about your business. This will only apply if you have a physical location for your business, but it will help people contact you so make use of it. For other businesses you can enter in a clear description so users understand your timeline better.

Banner for Applications

The old photo banner is replaced with the new applications style banner. This will highlight any applications that are added to the timeline. Old application on the left will appear on this new banner. The Admin can decide which three applications to show in the slots on the banner. You’ll want to choose from your most important applications to highlight in this section of the timeline. The images shown in this new application banner can be customized so make use of this feature with your images at 111 x 74 pixels. It’s important to note that you can add more applications but these are accessed via a drop down menu. Be sure to place your most important applications on the new banner feature.

Fan Messages On/Off Feature

With the new timeline feature any fan can now send you private messages. This new feature is located by the application banner on the right corner of the application. You do have the option to turn this feature on and off to suit your needs. This handy feature gives your fans a way of contacting you privately about problems with your timeline so you can handle inquires about services or products with ease.  Access this feature from the administration panel. This new feature is a great way for your customers to interact with your brand and company. You can also now choose to hide recent posts of fans if you want. Go to the permissions section and turn of this section if you need to.

Changing the Visibility of Posts by Others and the Activity Log

You have the ability to approve content before it goes onto your live timeline. You’ll find this feature under the manage permissions section. There are times when you might want to have content approved before it’s placed on the timeline which gives you more control. The activity log feature provides you a listing of posts on your page in the past such as photographs and other content. This content has editing features as well and you can choose to highlight certain sections. A delete features allow you to remove what you don’t want.

The Admin Panel

The administration panel provides you with notifications, settings, insights, messages and other information all from one interface. This is only visible to the admin of the timeline and it gives you a quick overview while you administer your timeline. From here you can invite Facebook friends and other contacts to be a part of your timeline.

Milestone Feature

With the new milestone feature you can add important events that relate to your organization.  You could show when your company opened, add photographs and then how you progressed over time. This feature can gives your users a good view of your company and add some genuine interest to your timeline. To start you’ll need to enter in information about when your company was founded. You can have some fun with this new feature and get creative here.

Use Post Pins

Another feature allows you to pin different posts to your page at the top for up to seven days. This lets you highlight important information for promotion purposes and gets it out to your fans and readers. Find the content you want, edit the information, and then the pin to top to have this as featured content.

An Essential Tool for Your Business

The new Facebook timeline has plenty of tools you can use to make your brand and page more accessible to your readers. Use the new photograph features, change your about section, and place important applications where they are visible. Work with your posts, fan messages, and other content with ease. Use the new milestone feature to highlight events in your company.  Your company can benefit from the new Facebook timeline.

You’ve probably read in some social media article or e-book about the wonderful success of companies such as Blendtec and Old Spice have amassed on YouTube. Have you decided that creating some video content and promoting it on YouTube is the right marketing move for your business? We’re here to help!

This guide will be five-fold. Five steps to drive people to your YouTube video(s).

1. Choosing marketable content
2. Search Engine Optimization techniques
3. Social media marketing
4. Affiliate marketing
5. And well, viral marketing

Marketable content. During the planning stage, the most important decision will be made. The content you decide to create MUST be marketable. People find some things engaging and some things boring. Funny and amazing content are more easily marketed. One of the reasons why the Old Spice guy and the Blentec video series were/are so popular is because they were funny and amazing, respectively. Useful content can also be viral but useful with some sort of twist will help give videos more legs in the race to more video views.

Search Engine Optimization. Using the right keywords and tags can go a long way into getting you some views for your video. If your video has cats in it, put the word cat in the title and the tags. If you have a leprechaun in it, use the word in the title and the tags. Do some research popular keywords used on YouTube. Remember that YouTube is a search engine just like Google is a search engine. Your SEO knowledge will greatly help in your quest for more views. Also, use your website URL in the video description to give visitors a way to get to your website.

Social Media Marketing. I realize that posting a video on YouTube is probably part of your social media marketing plan to begin with. But remember that your YouTube video is can be part of your branding. Promote your YouTube video to your Twitter followers and on your company’s Facebook page. You can also promote in whichever other social media channels you’re using.

Affiliate Marketing. We’ve talked about using social media marketing as a means to promote your YouTube video. Take it a step further by promoting it on your affiliate marketing programs. Give a copy of the video to your affiliate marketers. Actually, post it also on your own blog. Make the most out of the resource that you made. Your blog visitors just may enjoy your video, that’s a good thing.

Viral Marketing. Viral marketing is by definition something you have very little control of since people choose what they want to share to their friends and other contacts. If you do your homework in planning the content for the video to make the virality of the video more successful and have shared it with all of your channels, the next step is to sit back and wait for it to catch on. Keep an eye on analytics and everywhere you see it posted, do your best to promote those locations as well.

No matter how good a video is, it won’t take off without some promotional effort. Creating and promoting a viral video on YouTube is not a perfect science. Some studies say that you might make 15 videos before you get one that goes viral. Those aren’t great odds, however the rewards can be significant and worth the effort.

LinkedIn is quickly becoming a very strong social network for all kinds of professionals across many industries. Recruiters use it to find leads to the right candidates to fill job openings in their companies. Conversely, you can be sourced by a recruiter for the job you always wanted. You can use it to both look for leads for your business and to connect with former or current business partners/contacts. You can interact with people in your own industry or even meet professionals in an industry you’re interested in.

Now that you have a good idea of what you can use this relatively new social network for (and you’re still interested in signing up), let’s get into some tips so that you get off to the right start.

1. Use your real name. It’s a professional network and using your real name is a professional thing to do. I realize some people have reservations about posting their real names on most social networks but this one’s different. People are looking at your profile to get you as business partners or to work for them. It’s not like they’re looking at your private Facebook pictures.
2. Enter all your skills and professional experiences. Since people are looking at your profile for getting business leads, you’ll want to put your best foot forward. Be proud of your tasks and write comprehensively what you’re capable of.
3. Upload your resume. Your profile may act much like your resume but some contacts might still prefer having a copy of your curriculum vitae in downloadable document or .pdf format. You want to make it easy for people to give you those sweet sweet offers. Make sure not to include your address or any other sensitive details though since people with paid accounts can access this information without your knowledge.
4. Add lots of contacts. You’re on LinkedIn for networking and it’s not like you need to be good friends with everyone you network with anyway. The more contacts you have, the more access you have.
5. Join lots of groups. Joining a group gives you access to both people who can prove to be great business leads and insider industry information. Groups let you take part in discussions, ask questions, private message a group member among other perks. Take advantage of this.
6. Link your Twitter account. Especially if you have two Twitter accounts (one personal and another for business), LinkedIn will prove to be a great network to expand your business Twitter following. Lots of LinkedIn users share lots of links about industry news and other valuable information.
7. Take advantage of the applications. LinkedIn has applications just like Facebook. The difference is that LinkedIn apps are usually geared towards a more professional focus. Instead of Farmville and Sims social for example, LinkedIn has apps such as Polls which is a market research tool.

Harness the power of professional social networking to push your career/business to the next level with LinkedIn!

Online bookmarking tools have become very popular in the last ten years. While using the favorite option on your web browser usually does the trick, there are just many extra cool functions that online bookmarking can provide. One of these is sharing bookmarked sites online either publicly or with a certain network. It also allows for the use of informal tags in order to classify what the bookmarked sites are about or whom they are for. The whole thing is a very social affair over the internet since it can be used to share reference links among professionals/practitioners from various industries and even people who share the same humor. It’s also very popular for research collaboration over the internet.

Social Bookmarking Websites:

Digg. This site is a bookmark primarily in the business of sharing news from various industries and topics. You can choose to browse links related to business, entertainment, gaming, lifestyle, offbeat, politics, science, sports, technology or the world news. Its difference from your topic related news site like www.mashable.com is that the content of the site doesn’t come from a single company or user but instead the content is a collection of reference links that come from users. You can share links to your own blog or blogs you’ve found useful and you can check for content that you need to research on. The cool thing is that you can even personalize your own news! http://digg.com/

Reddit. This one is an online social bookmarking community that focuses on what is popular around the internet. The bookmarks focus on humor, gaming and various other tags such as politics, trees and seo among thousands of others. Users submit content and vote on whether they like or dislike a certain bookmark to determine its popularity. It’s a very fun social bookmarking site since they have their own humor and their own “culture” so-to-speak. www.reddit.com

Delicious. Delicious is very similar to Reddit since both are what I’d call the prototypical social bookmarking format. Links are shared. Links are tagged according to category. Users save the bookmarks. Unlike Reddit though, it doesn’t use the like/dislike system. Instead, the popularity of the bookmark depends on site views and how much a bookmark is saved by users. www.delicious.com or http://de.licio.us

Stumbleupon. Stumbleupon is kind of a service that helps bring content that you enjoy to you. You register an account, choose tags that you’re interested in then click their stumble button. You’re then allowed to rate the content that’s they feed you. The content that’s shared depends on your friends (the service can be linked to Facebook) or users that share the same interest as you. It’s a cool fun site that’s very personalized. www.stumbleupon.com

Tumblr. Social bookmarking tools usually rely on sharing reference links but Tumblr is a kind of hybrid between a social bookmarking tool and a blog. Tumblr is primarily a blogging platform and a content management system to the tune of Joomla or WordPress but the majority of the content posted in the site comes from other Tumblr users or content aggregated from other websites. A lot of pictures, videos and articles are shared by users. When you choose to follow another user, the content he or she shares will appear on your dashboard. You also have the option to search tags you are interested in so that you can find content from users that you don’t follow. www.tumblr.com

There are various other social bookmarking sites that focus both on general topics like the ones I’ve already shared and many others that focus on niche topics. If you’re trying to market your blog or website, using social bookmarks can also drive people to your site. Try it and learn the wonders social bookmarking can do for you by monitoring Google analytics.

Learning about social media can be difficult enough when you already have an idea what the industry buzz words mean,  but it’s even more difficult when you don’t.  Have a read through our quick guide and definitions to make sure your social media expert isn’t talking over your head the next time you meet.

Blog – is a website that consists mainly of entries or posts usually in reverse chronological or “most popular” order. Entries usually consist of commentary, articles, pictures or video. The content is usually very dynamic and the pages allow comments. The idea is to be conversational and generate interaction with website visitors. Blogs are a great method to provide fresh content to your website and keep visitors returning to your website to check for new articles/posts.

Channels – are websites, blogs, social networks or threads that have people. Any portal where you engage your market is a channel e.g. Twitter, Facebook, forums etc.

Collective Intelligence – is also referred to as the “wisdom of the crowd”. Social media practitioners believe in the power of groups of people (the crowd or the “tribe”) to create better products, to have greater market reach or to define needs and wants.

Content management systems – are programs or services online that help you create blogs and websites using pre-existing templates and codes. They are used to shorten the time used to code sites from scratch. Popular examples include www.wordpress.org, www.joomla.com and www.tumblr.com

Engagement – is usually contrasted with marketing. Engagement is simply participation or initiation of conversations online through various channels such as www.twitter.com or www.facebook.com. It is used to contrast marketing as social media practitioners find traditional marketing as very one-sided i.e. a message is blasted to the consumer. Of course, a more holistic understanding of marketing will profess a great appreciation for conversation and engagement.

Forums – are websites that contain discussion threads. Someone starts a thread and people reply. The discussions then becomes part of the site until the forum admin removes them or the website is closed down.

Micro-blogging – is a form of blogging that includes only short bursts of contents. Two of the most popular micro-blogging sites are www.twitter.com which sends 140 character tweets and www.tumblr.com which is primarily used to blog pictures or .gif files with 1 or 2 sentence descriptions. www.plurk.com is also a micro-blogging website.

Platform – is a framework in which certain tools are used. Platform examples include mobile, forums, software, a wiki or a blog.

Podcasts – are video or audio streams uploaded by an individual or a business entity. They can be live like television or radio show on the internet or simply viewable through a blog or Youtube channel.

RSS – is a feed system usually used in blogs, news articles and other often updated content channels. You subscribe to the RSS option of a blog and receive feeds of the featured content in your email or another platform.

Social Bookmarking – is similar to the “favorite” option in your internet browser but is shared over the internet. Some social bookmarking sites such as www.reddit.com are used to bookmark the most popular web pages on the internet.

Social Media – are any media that is shared or interactive. They are usually used to converse, share content and links and publish content. Facebook, Twitter, email, forums and blogs are all forms of social media. If the content is primarily user-generated, it is likely a form of social media.

Tags – are informal categorizing tools used for blogs, social bookmarks and other content on the internet. They are usually one-word descriptions of the content. Think of them as the web version of an index in the back of a textbook.

Viral Marketing – is marketing that is “self-replicating”. The marketer created the content but uses the “crowd” as the distributors of the content. YouTube popularity usually comes from viral marketing.

Web 2.0 – is a term that usually refers to internet content that is dynamic, shared and collaborated upon. Blogs, social media, RSS, podcasts and wikis are products of web 2.0. The term was coined by O’Reilly media.

Widget – is an application that can be embedded to a blog, mobile application or your own desktop. The plug-in that features the latest tweets and mentions of a blog owner is a widget.

Rick Santorum finished in the Iowa Caucus a close second behind Mitt Romney with 24.5% of the votes. This was a hard fought victory for Santorum who spent a considerable amount of time in Iowa campaigning. However, Santorum has been battling more than just other the other candidates since 2003. Dan Savage, an editor and commentator who was angered over Santorum’s anti-gay statements, created a website called “spreadingsantorum.com” which defines the word Santorum as “the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.” Even today, six years after the site was created, entering the word “santorum” into a Google search, results in the top ranked site being Savage’s web page, the equivalent of what is known as a Google bomb.

What is a Google Bomb?

A Google bomb uses internet links that associate the name of a victim with a false, usually unfavorable site related to the victim. Also known as googlewashing or spamdexing, a Google bomb uses certain keywords or phrases to artificially place a website higher in Google rankings when someone types those words or phrases into the search engine. Although Google announced in 2007 that they had made changes to their search algorithm in an effort to remove Googlebombs, the Santorum bomb remains.

Effect on Santorum

Santorum spoke out publicly against the Google bomb as far back as September 2008, yet the negative site remains at the top of Google’s page rankings, even above the candidate’s own page and above a Wikipedia article explaining who Rick Santorum is. The same occurs when the candidate’s name is entered into other search engines, such as Bing. Google claims that the ranking is not due to promotion from Savage, nor is it politically motivated on Google’s part, but is simply prominent due to public interest. In other words, Google claims that because people continue to visit the site, it continues to rank highly in their search algorithm. However, it appears that the Google bomb may have faded into the background in light of Santorum’s very close second place win in Iowa, losing by just a few percentage points to Mitt Romney. It appears that, even though Santorum was the 10th most searched term during the Iowa caucus (Source: http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/172069/howis-rick-santorums-google-bomb-holding-up-now-that-hes-surging-in-the-polls/), American’s are perceptive enough to realize that the Stewart site is a personal commentary and that the definition of “santorum” was based on a personal view and not what the word truly means.

Famous Google Bombs

Santorum is not the only public figure to be the victim of a Google bomb. Craig James, a former ESPN analyst and current political candidate was recently a victim when a search on his names brought up sites claiming that Craig James “killed five hookers at SMU.” The accusation is false but James’ political opponents created a site to disparage the candidate and that site slipped through the Google algorithms designed to block Google bombs. President George W. Bush was also a victim of Google bombing when a search for “miserable failure” brought up his website, even though the site never mentioned the words.

Has Google Resolved the Problem?

When Google bombs were first reported, Google repeatedly stated that such practices did not exist until, in 2007, they announced changes that were designed to stop the practice. Google is the most popular search engine, and its success has brought it’s search algorithms under scrutiny in recent months. Google uses different criteria to determine which websites offer authoritative information and many SEO companies have learned ways to increase a sites ranking falsely. Google bombing is successful because the practice manipulates Google’s search algorithms to push the negative sites to the top of the search engine rankings. Although Google is attempting to address the problem, the fact is that Google bombing still occurs, and some web surfers may begin to question the validity of Google’s search results and ultimately switch to a different search method.

Despite Google’s announcement that they had resolved Google bombing attempts, the fact is that searching Rick Santorum’s last name still results in Savage’s site ranking at the top of the search results. This indicates that Google has not completely eliminated the possibility that Google bombs could occur in the future and that their algorithms still need tweaking to prevent such practices in the future.

Terminology across most internet marketing techniques, platforms and coding is usually overlapping. Someone who does web-based and web-related services usually uses industry-terms to describe things on the internet. Whether you’re planning to hire a Search Engine Optimization service-consultant or you want to get into the business, it would be a good idea to be in-the-know on SEO terminology. Here are some of the basic terms:

301 redirect – redirecting a web-address to another web-address. E.g. your old domain is www.example1.com and you have steady traffic already going to that site but you want to market www.example2.com so you direct all traffic from www.example1.com to www.example2.com.

Affiliate marketing – is usually described as selling a company’s product by generating leads to their website. The affiliate marketer is compensated in a variety of ways depending on the amount of leads or buyers generated by the content.

Anchor text – is a text that is clickable and directs to a link. Anchor text tells the search engines what the link is about. A bad example of anchor text use is using something like this:

Click here!

A good example of anchor text would be something like this:

Internet Marketing Tips

The second example tells Google and other search engines exactly what that linked content is about. It tells them that URL that link goes to is about internet marketing tips. Chances are very good that link will help me gain traction in the search engines for that term.

Backlinks – are links from another website to your own site.

Blackhat SEO – the use of unacceptable practices to get a better search engine ranking. As with other forms of “gaming the system”, they only last for so long before they are found out by Google and other search engines and then are devalued.

Conversion Rate – the rate at which visitors turn into buyers when they arrive at your website.

CTR (click-through rate) – is a metric used for judging a variety of marketing efforts. CTR is often referenced when we talk about the effectiveness of advertisements, as well as search engine visibility. Click through rate is calculated as follows:

number of clicks/impressions

Google Pagerank™ – a metric used by Google to determine how “important” a certain page is. A higher Pagerank™ is indicative of that web page having higher value to Google in search. Pagerank™ is seldom updated and no longer looked at by SEOs as a metric of significant value.

Google Analytics – when installed on your site, provides visitor data. Used properly, Google Analytics can help make your marketing efforts less of a guessing game.

Keywords – are specific words on a page that are usually the target of your search rankings.

Keyword density – are the number of times a keyword appears in an article or content. It can be measured by simple counting how many times it appeared or dividing the number of times it appeared over the number of total words in the article.

Landing page – is usually sales-heavy and designed to have a “call-to-action. Landing pages are used to help funnel customers through your website.

Linkbait – is content that is relevant and likely to be shared by others to generate inbound links to your website.

Organic Ranking – is simply the ranking of a web page according to a given keyword.  Organic searches are the unpaid results that are provided by the search engines during a search query.

Link-building – is the process of generating backlinks to your website.

PPC (pay-per-click) – is a form of advertising where you pay a set fee for every click of your advertisement. Google Adwords and Facebook Adverts are forms of PPC.

SEM (search engine marketing) – refers to the combination of search engine optimization and online marketing efforts.

Static website – is a website that is never or almost never changed. Some corporate websites are like this, especially the very old ones.

White Hat SEO – is the search engine optimization process that does not violate search engine term of service/use.

Simply put, Link Baiting is the art of creating content that people are interested in checking out and ultimately sharing within their social circles. It can be an article, a picture, video or downloadable software. Making something interesting enough to actually get people to share it is the hard part. It is also the most rewarding type of link. Keep in mind that creating  “link bait” requires a little creativity.

Some great examples of content for link-baiting:

How-to guides – people use the internet to do a number of things. One of those things is to research solutions to their problems. Well written/produced how-to-guides can be a great piece of content that users are likely to share. It could be a simple article, an infographic or a video.

An interview or news article – if you have articles or videos from interviews about a particular topic or with someone in your industry with some klout, people could be interested in it, republish to their blog and provide a link back to the original content on your website

Contests – You’ve got to admit that people love contests to get free stuff. You could run a T-shirt or poster design contest in order to endorse people to go to your site. Get them sharing the contest with your friends and generate some links.

Lists – Creating lists such as “Top Ten Tips” for a given topic are great forms of content. They are some of the most passed around content among internet users via social media, blogs or email.

Why should you use linkbait?

The primary reason for creating linkbait style content is to generate more links to your website to increase your authority in the search engines.

It’s also a great way to increase your brand awareness and is useful for lead generation.

It is important that you use related, valuable and practical content no matter what the topic.

Creating a great piece of linkbait can take time and investment but is one of the best natural ways to gain links. We all know that links are the most important piece of the puzzle in getting your website ranked in the search engines so get busy creating your next piece of Linkbait content.

If you’ve had success with linkbait, please tell us about it in the comments below!

Conversion optimization is a fundamental concept in modern Internet marketing. Commonly referred to as CRO, conversion optimization is finding ways to turn traffic into customers. In other words, the first step is to attract a lot of traffic to your website, then conversion optimization comes in by trying to turn a high percentage of those visitors into actual customers. There are several proven ways for improving conversion rates. Improving conversion rates is a priority for any Internet-driven business because even a small gain in CRO translates into a sizable difference in profit and market share.

One of the great things about Internet business is that statistics are readily available for a large part of your business operations. In the early 2000s, conversion optimization was born as a way of competing in a market that was becoming increasingly saturated. Conversion optimization seeks to monitor activity in consumption in real time, collecting data on the behaviors of consumers and then applying these concepts to increase the scope and reach of an online marketing campaign. Rather than spend money on attracting more visitors, conversion optimization is designed to reduce the &ldquobounce rate&rdquo, that is, the number of visitors that go away without buying anything.

There are two main philosophies when it comes to improving conversion rates. One school of thought believes that the best way for improving conversion rates involves massive empirical testing. In this approach, constant tweaks are made to a website&39s layout and to an online marketing campaign&39s tactics, constantly monitoring what gives the best results. Another approach towards improving conversion rates focuses on a thorough research of the target audience, designing a message that is specific to the target group. Once this preemptive research has been made, then real-time testing can begin. Most experts today agree that effective conversion optimization should not be limited to real-time testing, but to prior research as well.

Most conversion optimization methods will involve the analysis of hundreds of different variables of data, finding the best combinations for turning visitors into costumers. Some examples of variables that are analyzed for conversion optimization include geographic, demographic, and behavioral variables. Typically, an Internet business sets definite optimization goals, with the subsequent methods geared towards achieving these goals. Conversion optimization methods are derived from methods that have had success in other activities, like supply chain management, air traffic control, and military logistics.

Doubling, or even tripling a company&39s conversion rate is a goal that is achievable in many cases. Most younger companies focus excessively on gaining traffic on their website, but fail to make the changes that are necessary for improving conversion rates. Surprisingly, the changes that are required are often not that big. Simple things like changing the design of a button, making sure that a form stores specific information so a user does not have to enter it again, or managing the advertisements on a website can be the difference between a customer actually buying what you are selling, or browsing around your website and then leaving.

2011 marked a significant year for those who use link building techniques to garner traffic to their websites and to rank well in search engines. Although old school link building tactics still work in 2011, they are falling behind new techniques after Google&39s series of Panda/Farmer updates. Many in the search engine optimization community are switching up their link-building methods to prepare for whatever Google may throw them in the future.

Social media has been drawing attention for a few years now, but has not been a priority for link builders until this year. However, this year Google has released the plus one button and give many indications that social media plays a role in how well a page ranks in the search engines. There is also rumors that social media popularity will plan a big role in future algorithm updates.

Basically, it&39s only a matter of time before old link building strategies take a back seat in Google&39s algorithms. Link builders are taking advantage of this buy creating profiles on Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus and adding buttons to their content that make it easy for readers to share on their social networks. Working to engage readers and encourage them to share in other ways may help get social media links as well.

For the same reasons, using article directories is falling out of fashion. Although many SEO proponents still say it works well, there are many who fear that in time these links will be nearly useless and are adjusting with the future in mind. An alternative is getting guest post spots on authority blogs that are relevant to the website you are trying to rank for. This is not an easy task, however, requiring a link builder to build relationships with a number of bloggers over time, then create quality content for the actual guest posts. To get the most of this venture, it&39s important to select blogs that are relevant to the keywords you are working on.

Quality is another aspect that link builders are beginning to reevaluate. In recent years, almost anything could rank well if the link building strategy was consistent and thorough. This is still true for the most part, but Google has made it clear that it&39s not something they like. They are working day in and day out to create a search engine algorithm that will rank quality websites well. To get ahead of this trend, those interested in using link building are also spending more time developing good content that answer questions posed by keywords.

The intention is to create content that will stand the test of time. Although link-building may get a page to number one in the search engines, it&39s of no use if a future algorithm that factors in quality knocks it out of the results. Link building techniques in 2011 have moved from just link building, to creating quality content and building relationships that will last despite what Google does.