Before implementing effective link building strategies it's important to make sure that your sites are optimized for the keywords you are targeting and the on-site SEO is properly implemented.  There should be a lot of keyword relevant content on your site and the home page should provide a lot of relevance for the keywords you are targeting. In reality, ranking is not just about effective link building strategies, it's also about the relevance of your site to its keywords. Remember that you are dealing with an algorithm in Google, a bot that automatically crawls sites and then decides if the site should rank for the keywords its targeting, it's never enough to just build links with proper anchor text or to have your keywords in the title tag of the page, the on site content must match as well.

The goal of any link building strategy is to become an authority in your niche, that is how Google views the quality links going to your sites, votes for your authority.
But you cannot be an authority if your websites are not loaded with authoritative content and so those high quality links will never come.

Junk Links = Junk Content.... that is how Google sees it!
and in reality that is a fact, high quality sites will not link to junk. So when your content is not top notch you will only be able to get crappy links.

Effective link building strategies in 2011 and beyond are all about Quality over Quantity. For example, while webmasters used to be able to use mass directory links to rank various keywords, those days are gone, and directory links are pretty much useless. Google has gotten really good at detecting and disqualifying links that are manually built, and even penalizing sites that go too far in their link building, so be careful  especially with new sites. Premium link building involves more consideration and a more careful process. What worked last year or two years is no longer viable because Google has gotten smarter and is in essence waging a war on crappy links!

Effective Link Building Strategies For Premium Link Building

1. The most effective link building strategy in premium link building is to make sure your link profiles look natural! All webmasters and bloggers with do manual link building, this is just a fact, but there is link building that is efficient and then there is the kind that's reckless and consequently can be destructive, ie: doing 3 guests posts on relevant blogs vs. 5000 profile links via automated software like Sick Submitter.

2. Don't be greedy in link building and don't rush to rank, long term ranking takes time, patience and quality links, NOT 10,000 profile links. The Google algorithm has gotten smarter, build links slowly and look to quality and not quantity.

3. One of the best link building strategies that I can offer you is that it's better to get 2 premium links than 500 crappy links.

4. Write high quality content and promote it to get natural links as much as possible, this is the best of premium link building that has longevity and guarantees long term success. Commenting on related Comment Luv Blogs is a safe and easy way to give your content exposure, which brings traffic, which brings links when other bloggers like what they read.

5. Google has confirmed that they will be using their own social site ratings, Google +1, as part of the ranking algorithm for SERP rankings, so make sure your content lives up to getting a +1 rating. The best WordPress Google +1 plugin is here.

6. Get links for ALL the pages on your site, NOT just the home page. Many people get all their links to the home page only, another red flag. In reality, you can rank the home page without a bunch of links because as you get links to your inner pages it naturally helps with the ranking of all the pages on your site, including the home page.

7. Build links slowly for new sites. Start with just a few and then let it age for a month or so before getting more and keep adding quality content.

8. Avoid crappy low quality links and especially when your site is new. Try to build a solid link profile with strong links, like contextual links from related sites as much as possible before getting crappy links, like a lot of articles, blog comments, irrelevant site links...etc. New sites do not have any trustworthy quality signals, such as quality links  and that is that's when low quality links can hurt the most.

9. Do reciprocal links correctly. Reciprocal links happen online and in in of themselves they are not bad, I have many here, posts I have written and linked within my posts to a blogger's content that I loved and then they linked to something I wrote, that's fine and happens naturally online all the time, but having pages of reciprocal links is a link scheme and totally useless and dangerous in 2011 link building.

10. The same as above goes for placing hundreds of reciprocal links on blogrolls, another big red flag that screams low quality, spammy link schemes or paid links for both the linker and the linkee!

11. Some of the most premium links and especially for new sites are Press Releases and since those spread around the Internet, that could bring traffic that will love your content and link to you, check out List of 41 Press Releases and How To Write Press Releases.

12. NEVER EVER use link pages, those are those web pages usually named something really stupidly obvious, like domain.com/links or worse yet domain.com/link-partners and the page is full of nothing but reciprocal links to other sites that have your site on their "links page". This is not only no where near premium link building, it's an obvious link scheme only meant to manipulate search engines into rankings. They are worthless, completely outdated and dangerous because it screams link scheme and can you sent to the Google black hole! If you have a links page, DELETE IT NOW!!!

13. Effective link building strategies include links from a diverse set of IP's.

14. Low quality directories are bad news, and especially those that advertise "Improve Your Rankings" "SEO Friendly", "Paid Link Gets DoFollow and Higher Placement", all bad news, useless links that carry no weight or any valuable link juice and can be especially negative for new sites with no trust rank.

15. Vary your anchor texts, vary, vary vary and vary again. Natural link profiles do not have the same exact keyword phrases for their anchors that site owners are targeting for each link, people do not link out that perfectly naturally. Basically each page, especially home page, should have no more than a 25% occurrence of the same anchor.  If every link in your profile has the exact same anchor for each page, then you can be sure to raise red flags and get a quick penalty from Google, like the -50, which lands every singe page of your site on Page 5 or lower, and there they will stay for months and years. Use the URL as the anchor, use click here, this site, add other words to the anchor to go along with the main keywords.

16. Don't do link bombs (yes, 1000 links in one day is a bomb, even 500, even 300).

17. Build links slowly - Quality over Quantity (did I say that all ready?)

18. Make friends with bloggers in your niche and network.

19. One of the best link building strategies is to link out to others. Create "Best Of" "Top 100" type posts referencing other's people work and sites in your niche, when you give other people links you get links back. Linking out is good, contrary to some myths out there, you don't have to hoard your link juice, and worry about losing traffic (if you're worried you probably don't have much anyway), and no linking out to good sites and content won't hurt your rankings, it actually helps, learn more at Linking Out From Your Website.

20. Track rankings to see the effectiveness of your link building strategies. Depending on the competitiveness of your keywords, you can sometimes rank with very few links.

21. Track your link building and anchors over time, Majestic SEO is free and works great.

22. Get both nofollow and dofollow links. Learn more at NoFollow vs Dofollow Links - Why You Need Both.

23. Checking out and duplicating competitor's links is a great link building strategy. Use Open Site Explorer and then try to get the same.

24. Contextual links are best - These are links that are within a related piece of text. Even better when the entire site is in a related niche.

25. Don't waste time on useless links that link directly to your money sites (Forum profile links, ie: Angela's links, directories, crappy article sites, ie: content farms)

26. Use social media. Make friends, connections, reach out to other bloggers and network, this often creates community which results in premium link building opportunities that come naturally. Learn more with Best Social Media Apps To Boost Your Brand.

27. Don't get stuck on getting links only from blogs, try to get links from static sites and various platforms. Learn more at Links From Static Website.

28. Write content that is link worthy, this is the absolute best way to get a natural link profile. Make sure to get that content noticed by using various social sites, Facebook, Twitter, and social sites specific to your niche. Here are 22 Social Sites To Promote Internet Marketing, Blogging, Make Money Online, SEO Related Content.

29. Guest posting is premium link building at its best. You would be surprised how many authority, "high end" blogs and sites accept guest posts, Mashable does, and many others as well. Usually you can find the link in their footer. Check out My Blog Guest, a community for guest blogging. Also, search in Google:

• Your Niche Guest Post
• Your Niche Write For Us
• Your Niche Submit Content
• Your Niche Submit Article
• Your Niche Submit Blog Post

30. STAY AWAY from Themes sponsorships. This is a link scheme where you pay to get links to your sites placed in WordPress theme footers, and users of those themes cannot remove the links, which can result in thousands of useless and harmful toge links and  Google has penalized sites time and time again for doing this, it's an obvious link scheme, useless and harmful to your sites.

31. Getting footer links in general is NOT premium link building. They are old news and scream PAID links!

32. Do not solicit hundreds of blogroll links (unless they are freely given of course).

33. Avoid home page, footer, blogroll, contextual or any kind of links on irrelevant sites. When Google sees a link to Weight Loss on a Laptop site that's a red flag for paid link.

34. Another solid link building strategy is to run a good contest with great prizes. Most readers will link to spread the word.

35. Be careful using link wheels. Link wheel link building strategies can be effective when done properly, which most people don't know how, and so then they become dangerous because they can be easily detected and viewed as link farms, which is against Google TOS.

36. Internal link building within your own site is an essential link building strategy. Placing links to your own content on relevant posts and with relevant anchor text goes a long way for SEO. Learn more at Internal Link Building for On Site SEO.

37. Build Links To Your Links - 2nd and 3rd tier links are very effective for getting a powerful flow of juice to your money or primary sites. Build links to your articles, and social media links, get links for the content that links to you. Example: You get a link on a blog in a post + Write an article on GoArticles and Ezine Articles linking to that post + Submit that article to social media links.  This is where many find profile links to be effective, they use them to boost links to their sites, instead of linking directly to their money or primary sites.

38. Retweet other bloggers work, they notice that you notice and that creates networking that can go beyond Twitter.

39. Ask for links! This is not something I spend a lot of time doing, but probably should, it's tedious work, but many top SEO's spend their days doing this type of premium link building. Most emails I get for this, and I get many each day are useless, because theses people send generic crap reciprocal link page requests, but sometimes some good ones come through and usually these emails contain some good content the webmaster has written and feels the a link on my site to that content is useful and relevant to my readers, so if you have linkable content that's one approach. Learn more about using this link building strategy at: Best Ways To Outreach Link Building.

40. Get an interview from someone important in your niche. This will usually earn you a backlink to that interview on their sites and others.

41. If you are going to comment on dofollow blogs make sure and check out the comment section for blogger moderation of comments. If you see a bunch of casino, sex or viagra author comment links that are being followed, don't leave your link there, that's a bad neighborhood!

42. Link baits are still great link building strategies, learn more here.

43. YouTube is a great source of traffic (and the link in the profile is dofollow), but more important than that link is the fact that YouTube and other video submissions sites are loaded with viewers. You can get a lot of exposure, traffic back to your sites and if your content is top notch - backlinks!!!!!!

44. AVOID 3 way link exchanges, and especially with low quality sites. This is another old school link scheme that can cause issues with Google because if you do a lot of these then a link farm schema can be easily detected. I get lots of email requests for these and it's always shady because the webmaster offers some crappy sites for exchange. Usually these are sites created just for this purpose, they have no real value, they are not updated or promoted correctly so the link itself  is pretty useless, the last email listed a site that had 215 blogroll links all ready, all irrelevant by the way. What a scam, you give them a link on your high end site and they give you a link on crap?!??!

45.  Be careful if you're buying links. It's not worth the penalty, especially avoid buying links at Digital Point Forums, many sites there are so obviously selling links and Google will detect them sooner than later.

46. Convert your best articles to PDF format and submit to the bestPDF directories like Scribd and Docstoc. This let's you show off your work, and can get traffic which can lead to more links.

47. The final link building strategy for premium link building is that link relevance is more important than link quantity! Yes, it's better to get 5 links on relevant sites than 50 links from irrelevant sites.

More Link Building Strategies and Premium Link Building Guides of Interest

• Link Building In A Google Panda World
• Effective Link Builders
• Link Building Q & A With Experts
• 4 Types of Authority Links And How To Get Them
• SEO Checklist for New Websites
• Getting Links From Broken Links
• Understanding Link Based Spam Analysis Techniques (really technical)

Please comment and share with us the link building strategies you use and those that I have missed...

Press releases are a great way to promote websites, blogs, spread the word about an e-commerce site or any web business. Writing press releases that are effective and DO NOT sound like advertising or a sales page is key when it comes to those press releases being spread throughout the web on legitimate and credible sites. A press release is a really viral method of website promotion, where various sources, like press sites, news sites, bloggers, journalists, web announcement sources, search engines and others can pick up the releases and therefore spread the word about your web space all over the net, giving you a lot of buzz, links back to your sites and mass promotion.

The leader in press release distribution is PRWeb, they accept  releases and provide mass web distribution to news sites, search engines, various press sites, bloggers, PR bloggers and other places, their packages start at $80, if you can afford it, it's really worthwhile and right now they are offering $50 Off First Purchase for the SEO Package and also a general 10% off your first news release. If you really cannot swing the money you should not spend it because you can still submit your press releases manually to various free press release sites listed below.

Writing Press Releases

The key to success with press releases is how they are written. Since most good press release sites are very picky about the format of and how a release is written it's crucial to understand how to properly construct them. The worst thing you can do is make the copy sound like a sales page or an advertising piece for your website, that IS NOT the purpose of this, the release needs to be newsworthy, that is really the key. A well-written piece, like this one on Isaac Dabah, will have a fairly neutral, unbiased tone and present a number of detailed facts about the news item. PR Web has the best guide on how to write press releases, (click the whitepaper icon to download) along with a long list of how-to's and tips for press releases and news releases.

I also found another gem, Press Release O-Matic, this awesome free tool takes you through all the required sections of the press release with a wizard like interface section by section, you fill in the info asked for and then generate a full release in HTML and plain format, check it out at  Press Release O-Matic.

If you do not want to mess around with the writing and the learning you can have the press releases written for you, 99 Cent Articles - Modern Products writes really professional press releases and they are very well written. They also have write/distribute packages as well.

Just remember that the better and more correctly the press release is written the more other sites and people are are likely to pick them up and reprint them for mass promotion.

Submitting Press Releases

There are two options for submitting releases, manual site by site submission that is free or paying a service where you submit the release once and they submit it to various sources on their list. Each paid service will have a list of their own places and people where they will submit your release to, some of the paid services have thousands of destinations on their list. Below is a list of free sites to which you can submit your release manually, and then a list of the paid sites that will distribute your release to various places for a fee, like PRWeb mentioned above.

41 Free Press Release Submission Sites
Below is a list of 41 free press release sites sorted by page rank where you can submit your releases. This is the manual method, more time consuming, but it's free, so if you cannot afford to pay a service like PRWeb or the other paid services I listed below then you can do it yourself for free.

Press Release Sites That Charge A Fee

Remember that you do not need to submit to every one of these, with PRWeb for example, you submit one release and they distribute for you to many different places, like news sites, bloggers, journalists and various other relevant web services.

If you guys have any tips for writing or submitting press releases please share in the comments!

Video has become an essential part of the Internet. Many bloggers use video instead of written posts, videos are used as instructional aids, on sales pages and of course, since YouTube became so huge, using video as a promotional and link building tool for websites is one of the fundamental aspects of SEO. Millions of people visit YouTube everyday, as well as other video submission sites, the video's are included in most every SERP result in Google and once again if you make sure to properly SEO optimize each video submission with keywords, tags and a savvy researched keyword title, you will be amazed at the places it will show up over a short period of time making video just one more point of entry to your websites.

Free Video Creation/Screen Capture Software
I think many people are squeamish about using video because they think it's a complicated proposition, and they need a web cam, or some high tech equipment to create videos, well this is not true. Below is a list of the top free video creation tools that actually record what is on your  computer screen and your voice in the background and that provides a lot of options to make videos for any type of niche.

Cam Studio - The cream of the crop for open source video creation and screen capture and completely free! Add music, voice overs and more.

Jaycut - Create marketing videos or slideshows quickly with this online video editor, which is browser-based, can run on mobile  devices and free. Ability to remix and trim videos; add music, transitions, effects, captions and subtitles, automated transcoding and 1 click export to YouTube and Facebook.

Adobe Premier Express - Made for newbies, easy to use and all you need is a web browser and Adobe Flash® Player, which most of us have on our PC's. This is an online based video creation editor that can reorder, split, and trim your video clips; add music, transitions, and titles; add your favorite photos, graphics, and animation.

JING - Make short videos, capture screenshots and add your own labels and writing to them. There is a free version and a pro version for a few bucks per year.

GFX Video Writer - GFX Video Writer is not free, but it is cheap and very useful as it converts written articles into videos. Import an existing article to create a series of slides, then format each slide with fonts, colors, etc... add images if desired and background music from the software or do slide-by-slide voice overs and much more.

Top Video Submission Sites
Here are some of the top video submission sites where you can submit your videos, get backlinks and free website promotion.

www.youtube.com - PR9 - You do get a dofollow link back to your site in your channel profile.

http://vimeo.com - PR9
www.flickr.com - PR9
www.video.google.com - PR9
www.video.yahoo.com - PR9
www.photobucket.com - PR8
www.dailymotion.com - PR8
www.scribd.com - PR8
wordpress.tv - PR8
photobucket.com - PR7
www.blip.tv - PR7
www.metacafe.com - PR7
qik.com - PR7
www.viddler.com - PR7
MySpace - PR9
Facebook - PR10
www.stupidvideos.com - PR6
www.buzznet.com - PR6
www.stickam.com - PR6
www.gofish.com - PR6
www.revver.com - PR6
www.livevideo.com - PR6
www.flixya.com - PR5
castpost.com - PR5
www.videowebtown.com/community/index.php - PR5
vidmax.com - PR5
www.thatshow.com - PR4 - How-to video guides
www.clipchef.com - PR4 Cooking/recipe videos

Automatic Video Submission Software

TubeMogul Free - This is a very interesting site that offers a variety of video submission, distribution and tracking capabilities, I think it will be very effective for video marketing.

TubeMogul OneLoad is a free service that provides a single point for deploying videos to the top video and social networking sites. Users can also leverage our Destinations  functionality to easily distribute to custom sites as well as encode and create RSS feeds to syndicate your video anywhere. OneLoad distribution is accompanied by our powerful analytics showing you who, what and where videos are being viewed. In addition, TubeMogul's InPlay® analytics (for supported sites), provide the most advanced suite of video analytics on the market. See real-time viewership, audience engagement, geographic tracking, stream quality and much more for your videos.

VideoBot - $24.95 This is an automatic video submission software from Incansoft, a company that makes several great tools for marketers. I have not used this particular tool, but I do use SocialBot from Incansoft and I like it alot.

Video Submission Assistant Pro - Free! Haven't tried this myself, but it's free and submits video to several sites.

Video Post Robot - This is one of the most popular video submission software tools, but they are not taking new sign ups now, you can still go over and get on the alert list.

Info for Video Publishing on Your Own Sites

Google Crawling and Indexing Video - Best Practices

Video Sitemaps 101 - Making Your Videos Searchable from Google - If you are putting videos on your own sites or blogs then you should read this.

What kind of experiences have you had with video marketing? Any video submission sites or tools I missed please leave in comments.

Viral Marketing 101 - What Is Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is a phenomenon. It works and works well. Why? Because it puts the power in the hands of the people. It doesn't rely on advertising executives, million dollar campaigns or celebrity endorsements. It is real, down-to-earth, grassroots marketing that, when it comes down to it, might be advertising in its purest form.

Viral marketing is one of the most effective ways of driving traffic to your website with little effort on your part. With viral marketing, you can send your marketing message to selected recipients who then pass on that message to others. Viral marketing is easy and affordable, so anyone can do it. Viral marketing, while driven by strategy and well-planned messaging, is only successful when its audience is captivated. A marketing campaign will only go “viral” if people like it and ultimately, share it with others. Therefore, they have the power. Not the marketer.

Online business owners and Internet marketers alike understand the important role viral marketing plays in the success of their businesses today via a solid social media marketing strategy. Social media networks have become just as much about business as they are about pleasure.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, (ultimate guide to using Pinterest for marketing) and other key players are essential elements in any social media marketing strategy now joining us in the boardroom, in sales meetings and are the hottest marketing venues for bloggers. Blogs are replacing news media in many ways, and we must adapt our marketing approach to become players in the new Internet marketing schema. Image Credit: http://www.rylanclayne.com/

Google +1 is essential now for rankings and for using social media fr viral marketing, learn more with 5 Tips For Using Google +1 For Business.  Blog Engage is a fantastic place to submit your content and network with bloggers that understand the importance of viral marketing and spreading the word.

How To Go Viral Using A Social Media Strategy

Say, for example, you are an Internet marketer with a blog that you want to promote using a social media marketing strategy. You create and sell valuable sales tools, including E-books, reports, videos and webinars and offer valuable content to readers on a specific niche. Not only should you have a list to which you apply your email marketing campaign, but in addition, you can share your offerings on social media marketing channels like, Facebook, Linkedin, tweeting about them on Twitter, YouTube and others, the possibilities are endless.

With a little bit of creativity and a true understanding of your target market, viral marketing has the ability to skyrocket your business to new heights when using a solid and consistent social media marketing strategy. Not only should you consider the favor of your current customer base, but approach your viral marketing campaign in such a way that encourages – and makes them want to – share your business with others. You could offer free products for every ten people your customers share your link with. The more you incentivize, the more likely people are to share with others. 

Think about it, if you were your own customer, what would entice you to share your products? What grabs your attention? Start there and see what works in social media marketing and viral marketing messages. The other great thing about viral marketing is, if one approach isn’t working, you lose nothing by switching gears. Just be careful to settle in to a consistent message, no matter what your approach might be.

Always remember that value is the key to success in viral marketing an social media marketing, people always want to spread something useful around and tell others because they want to share it and show their appreciation as well.

Viral Marketing Via A Social Media Marketing

If you have high quality products, services and content your marketing message will be passed on to many people via viral marketing. Viral is usually best when it is done via word of mouth, like any brick and mortar business. And online it is social media that provides a venue for people to share your content and refer new visitors and customers to your websites and blogs.

A single piece of content can get unlimited retweets from followers, which is really an incredible and free way to spread your content and increase the opportunities for more links and more exposure, and therefore more popularity and in turn higher rankings and more money, this is how viral marketing works via a solid social media marketing strategy.

Viral Content Ideas And Methods To Promote via Social Media Marketing

The key to success with viral marketing is to offer something of value, no matter what niche you are in order to get others to spread it around. The tips below will help you to engage in your viral marketing campaign and use  a social media strategy to set your online business on fire. Image Credit: http://www.mmtc-direct.com

• Always have a variety of social media buttons on your blog, use WP Socializer as previously stated to make this easy. Great plugin with a lot of versatility for easily adding social buttons in many different places on your blog.

• Titles matter - make sure the title of your content is engaging and sparks interest for people to want to go and take a look.

• Use a plugin like Twitter Tools that auto posts your new content to Twitter, this makes it easy, set it and forget it system. Also, check out 5 copywriting strategies to accelerate Twitter marketing.

• If you have a static website, make sure to attach a blog, this is essential for spreading content and making it go viral.

• Learn to build and create meaningful connections on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and not just numbers, quality matters, here.

• You can carry out your viral marketing campaign by creating e-books, reports or articles and distribute them to targeted recipients, giving them away for free. Any Internet marketer can do this; since it simply involves creating the product, pass it on and let other people pass it on further for you.

• Post great images with your content and use Pinterest to promote it.

• Offer high quality products and content that spread your marketing message. Write well-researched reports and e-books on your niche and add your URL on these reports. Many people like getting free reports and e-books. These e-books will provide very powerful information on your topic, and people who read them will visit your website. Further distribution of your reports and e-book will result in more traffic to your website as well as increased awareness of your business or brand.

• Get active on social sites that matter, Facebook, Twitter, Google +, LinkedIn, Blog Engage and other relevant social sites in your niche. If your niche is related to online business, blogging and Internet marketing see this list of 23 social sites to promote Internet Marketing, blogging type content. Be social on social networks, do not just be self serving. Share others information and they in turn, will share yours. Viral marketing is a give and take and the more you give, the more you will get.

• Do not just self promote, reach out to other bloggers and retweet and like on Facebook their content as well.

• Link back to other sites and get your content noticed by influential bloggers.

• You can also offer a free service or product on your web site that spreads your message to an increasing number of people who hear about it. Send out news releases concerning the free service or product available on your site. This in turn will generate huge volumes of traffic to your website.

• Setting up an affiliate program that encourages links to your products can also be helpful. If you can afford it, provide attractive financial incentive for other sites to pass on your marketing message. You can also install a ‘Recommend it” referral system on your website so that other Internet marketers will pass on your website address to their lists. By having your own affiliates promoting your website, you drive a lot of traffic to your website.

• Write good quality articles and encourage other webmasters to post them for free as content on their sites. If you're an expert in a niche, write an article on that niche and give it away for free to complementary sites to post on their site as free content, so long as the article contains links to your site. Write high quality articles and distribute them online for free with reprinting rights. 

• Guest posting is a great way to go viral, and some very high traffic sites, like Mashable, accept guest posts, imagine the viral opportunities there.

Use the power of viral marketing and a solid and consistent social media strategy to spread your marketing message all over the Internet and drive high volumes of traffic to your website.

Social Media Marketing Tools

Here are resources that allow you to manage all your social media profiles and resources in one place, much easier than having to manage one by one and allows you to main stream your personal reputation management.

Hootsuite

Hellotxt

Nimble

Google Spam Team leader, Matt Cutts has announced at a search panel discussion with Search Engine Land at SXSW that a new search ranking penalty will begin in the coming weeks for websites that are over optimized with on site SEO in order to level the playing field for webmasters who offer value to searchers and are not so focused on, or maybe do not use the typical on site SEO tactics.

Here is the quote from the audio transcript from Matt Cutts, as posted at searchengineland.com

What about the people optimizing really hard and doing a lot of SEO. We don’t normally pre-announce changes but there is something we are working in the last few months and hope to release it in the next months or few weeks. We are trying to level the playing field a bit. All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or overly SEO – versus those making great content and great site. We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect. We have several engineers on my team working on this right now.

SEO Is Changing

While keyword stuffing, link exchanges (like those horrible link pages) and excessive SEO has been bad news for some time, this is the first time that Google has openly announced working on a specific penalty for this when done on legitimate sites.

Once again this is another signal that Google is waging war against SEO schemes, along with the recent deindexing of blog networks (sets of blogs specifically used for link building), most famous of which was Build My Rank that has been completely de indexed last week, the many penalties for spammy link profiles that Google has been giving out, like the -50 penalty, the -950 penalty and others.

Cleaning Up Over SEO'd Websites

• Is your site built primarily for search engines? Or for visitors? This is the first thing to analyze, and clean it up.
• Blogrolls filled with hundreds of links, while Matt Cutts did not mention this, I can almost guarantee that this will be an issue, over full blogrolls have long been known for link schemes and paid links. Also, consider if you have a bunch of unnatural blogrolls linking to you and maybe get the bloggers to remove them.
• Get rid of bolding of keywords all over posts, this is not only useless but can be considered over SEO'd optimization.
• Excessive footer links and keywords in footers are bad news. 
• Check your internal linking, while this is good, when done excessively just for rankings can be considered over SEO'd. Example: A link to the home page on every since post and page with your site's keywords, when you have a lot of pages on your sites this can be especially problematic.
• Some plugins out there post "search keywords that were used to find this site" on pages and posts, this is basically a list of related keywords to the post, and this is a classic example of keyword stuffing, yet these plugins are  widely used.
• Get rid of all links pages, these are so useless and for sure those webmasters that have links pages, some going as many as 4, 5, 8, 9 pages long are going to get hit with this over optimization of SEO penalty.
• The Google bot is smart enough to detect the topic and therefore the keywords you are targeting in your posts if you just use natural language, having a keyword density of 2% per page is more than enough. Often I find that just having the title with keywords and then writing naturally about the topic is more than enough to get that post placed correctly in SERPS. If you have keywords in every single sentence, then in H2 tags for every paragraph on every post and page and this reads unnaturally for visitors and the human eye, this can be considered over search engine optimization.

While this penalty sounds like it's going to focus on onsite SEO, link building can still be an issue, and so many make the mistake of using dangerous link schemes, link bombs and spammy links, as I discussed in my post 47 Premium Link building strategies for 2012, getting valuable backlinks and much more high quality link profiles is most important right now.

In general, the best rule of thumb is to ask the question: Does This Help Users? If the answer is no, the it's probably risky business.

The Google bot is getting smarter, and Google is targeting SEO schemes more and more, be smart and be sure that what you are doing is safe, or risk losing those sites in Google.

Managing small budgets these days is something every b2b marketer has to do to stay afloat, let alone be successful. Spending money like water is no longer an option; but it doesn’t mean social media marketing efforts should become less effective. In the modern information world knowledge is the most important commodity, and thanks to the Internet, invaluable knowledge on marketing collateral is available absolutely free – business people simply have to learn where to look for it.

Here are our 10 easy ways to find free marketing collateral online

1. Sign up for free marketing knowledge banks. Nowadays you can find great knowledge banks for b2b marketers offering insider secrets in directing marketing, telemarketing, branding, demand generation, email marketing, return on marketing investment and so on. This information is available for free in the forms of guides, news pieces, reports and downloads, but in some cases it makes sense for serious b2b players to upgrade to a paid account for full access.

2. Download best practice guides. These guides are available online and focus on the most effective platforms, such as Twitter. With a handy Twitter Best Practice Guide marketers can learn to interact with their customers and study their preferences, widen audiences, build brand loyalty and get customers’ trust on a social marketing platform of unprecedented power (250 million tweets daily).

3. Get tutorials from social networks. Each social network has comprehensive guides for different types of users: small businesses, creative professionals, b2b marketers, etc. LinkedIn has a few video guides that can help users squeeze every marketing opportunity out of this professional network. Going through these guides can help you come up with fresh ideas.

4. Get tutorials from blogging platforms. There are thousands of articles online, including those on the blogging platforms themselves, about how to use Blogger or WordPress for marketing purposes – you should pay attention to them and make notes.

5. Follow industry blogs. As a b2b marketer you have to keep your eyes on important blogs, both in your industry and in the sphere of marketing in general. Including industry news and tips on your own blog should also be a priority. Knowledge belongs to everyone, and when you share invaluable information with like-minded people it can build your business reputation like nothing else.

6. Check what is hot in social media. Knowing what’s ‘trending’ and what the hottest thing is at the moment can be an important way to stay up-to-date. Pinterest has become a sensation in social media world, so starting your campaign in that direction can be a good idea, at least while its popularity lasts.

7. Follow clients, partners and competitors. Don’t be afraid to connect with competitors and show your appreciation when partners or customers follow. It’s all about never leaving conversations unattended or taking your followers for granted.

8. Follow advertising news websites and blogs. Knowing what’s going on in the world of advertising can predict shifts in public tastes. Skype had just launched a $12 million campaign at Heathrow that portrays social media such as Twitter and Facebook in a negative light, calling for ‘real human communication’ (via Skype, of course). Could it intensify public concerns of increasing alienation? Possibly. But if your website is lacking a ‘Skype operator’ call button it may be time to get one.

9. Read whitepapers. Free whitepapers on the most burning marketing topics are available online. It will take you just minutes to go through them, yet the experience can be invaluable in terms of knowledge you gain.

10. Join communities and forums. Becoming part of a community to get the latest tips and share your insight with industry professionals is a chance to build a strong platform for growth and true prestige in the industry.

As you can see, you don’t have to spend millions to get marketing tips with a difference. All you need to do is be informed, stay flexible and learn to change your approach with the changing times.

Author bio: Hannah Crossfield – contributor to b2bmarketimng.net – an on-line resource for marketing tips and resources . Bringing a b2b community together.

It's never too soon to start establishing your professional image. Whether you just graduated college or are still working on earning your degree, it's important to take full advantage of all of the many marketing opportunities available to ensure optimum exposure and a successful campaign. Marketing your professional image online is a great way to get noticed by potential employers and colleagues, which can make your transition into a career much easier. However, you'll want to make sure to properly strategize your campaign for the most effective outcome.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a fundamental component of any online marketing campaign because it helps to connect you with individuals in your industry by ranking your website higher in a search engine results list on a relevant subject. Contrary to popular belief, you can't simply spam your way up the results list by stuffing multiple keywords into the content of your website. In fact, Google recently announced the development of a new algorithm for its search engine, which is specially designed to detect websites that are abusing SEO to rank higher. This new and improved algorithm will more effectively match searchers with actually relevant—rather than superficially relevant—content.

Although stuffing keywords is not an effective SEO strategy, using keywords in general is an excellent way to drive traffic to your blog, official websites and social media websites. Google's AdWords is a great tool for determining which keywords in particular will draw the largest audience to your page. For example, the keywords "public relations specialist" generates 9,900 global monthly searches, while the plural "public relations specialists" generates only 5,400 global monthly searches according to Google AdWords. Understanding how people search keywords relevant to your industry will help you prioritize your use of the terms and increase your chances of being matched up with another professional in your industry.

Social Media Marketing

No marketing campaign is complete without taking full advantage of the various social media outlets available. As a professional, you don't have to be limited to LinkedIn and Facebook. An effective social media marketing campaign should include every social media platform available, including Twitter, Blogger, YouTube, Pinterest, Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Google+, Flickr, Digg, Delicious, and more. Including each of these platforms in your marketing campaign will ensure maximum exposure to your target audience.

Each social media account you have should connect your subscribers to your other social media accounts. For example, your Blogger profile should have a link to your accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and all other relevant accounts you have to broaden your audience and give your visitors plenty of ways to get to know you better.

Since your main goal is to market your personal brand, you'll want to make sure that both your SEO and social media marketing campaigns exemplify your professional image. Make sure your educational background is listed prominently on each of your websites and be sure to illustrate how this background contributes to your expertise. For example, "studying public relations at an online college allowed me to develop skills in communication and advertising, while fostering my proficiency with various technological software." Marketing your personal brand can be tricky at first, but synergizing these two essential components guarantees a successful outcome and a quicker establishment of your professional image.

About the author: Jon Dawson blogs on behalf of American InterContinental University and lives in Indianapolis. He covers social media, technology, health, and legal trends.

Have you been blogging for half a year or more without any measurable success? You aren't alone. Most blogs don't end up going anywhere, because most people give up when they don't see anything happening. But if you don't see anything happening, it's not because blogging doesn't work. It's either because you haven't been at it long enough, or because you've been doing something wrong. We'll assume the latter. What could the problem be? Read on for the best blogging tips if your blog is failing and struggling.

Blogging Tips for Struggling Blogs

Are You Indexed?

Take some steps to make sure that your content is getting indexed by the search engines. If it isn't, you've got a major problem on your hands. If people can't find your site in Google at all, chances are low that you'll reach the kind of audience you need.

If you are a news site or freshness is an important factor, you've also got a problem if your content isn't being indexed within seven days. If people aren't finding your site until after the buzz around a particular topic has faded, you're missing out on a huge portion of your audience.

If your content isn't getting indexed, check to see if it has problems with duplicate content. Sometimes the link structure of the site and other issues can create multiple copies of the same text, which encourages Google to avoid indexing it, ie: duplicate content. Use experts in WordPress home page and archive pages to avoid this.

You may also want to make sure that your content is "public." Just go to your WP admin dashboard and go to Settings - Privacy - and make sure Allow Search Engines To Index is checked. Blog software such as WordPress doesn't allow your content to be indexed unless you change the settings.

Are You Implementing Social Media To Promote The Blog?

Networking is a vital piece of the puzzle. If you aren't receiving any traffic from Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, you may need to alter your strategy. Make sure that your content is easy to share, and that people will want to share it. Stay active on the social networks and regularly interact with people in your niche.

Develop a set of strong relationships with influential people in your niche. These may be popular personas, other bloggers, or just people with a lot of friends who love sharing interesting content in your niche. These relationships should be all about give and take, and success requires you to start with the giving. Learn more at viral marketing and social media marketing strategy.

Search Engine Optimization for Blogs

Your site should be optimized for discovery in the search engines. Be sure to include some posts on your site with a title centered around a popular keyword. Social also intersects with SEO because links to your site are a strong indication of relevance. Getting these links requires relationships with people in your niche. Once you get a few guest blog posts out on powerful blogs, you'll start to see some striking results.

Overall Blog Setup

Make sure that the blog is easy to use and pleasant to look at in all major browsers and mobile platforms. Ads may be an important part of your monetization but don't let them overpower your site. If people are only clicking on your ads by accident you'll get low conversions which will drag down your score and reduce your profit. Make sure that your on-site SEO is fleshed out. Include keywords in titles, in posts, and in links between posts. Don't design a site that will confuse the search engines.

Set Goals and Stay on Top of Them

One of the best things that you can do for yourself is set a schedule and stick to it. Devote a certain amount of time each week to brainstorming new ideas, building relationships, doing keyword research, writing guest posts, and writing articles.

Your schedule doesn't need to be overwhelming or extremely rigorous. It's more important that you're able to stick to your schedule than anything else. Eventually you'll start to realize which strategies are working best for you and your niche, and you can adjust your schedule accordingly. Rather than setting traffic goals or income goals, set tangible goals that you know you can accomplish. Set goals like numbers of articles written, amount of time brainstorming, number of emails sent, number of comments written, and number of social media messages sent.

These are realistic goals that you can meet every week, and they will guarantee steadily growing success if you stick to them.

About the Author: Jeff has been blogging since 2007 & contributing on many websites since that time. He is a professional internet marketing and blogging consultant. Jeff is also co-owner of  nPromote, SEO firm from Long Island.

The product I reviewed recently, Jiffy Articles to create unique content is now live and the official launch discount of 40% off is good from now to midnight Friday, November 25th! Also, there is an option to pay quarterly, instead of the year in advance so you can pay less upfront.

What Is Jiffy Articles And How It Creates Unique Website Content And Articles

Jiffy Articles is a great tool to create unique content fast, I can write 600 word articles in 5 minutes with it.

Basically it gives you an article template based on the category you select and keywords you may enter, that is filled with snippets that you can then rewrite and add more info to. This is much easier than writing content from scratch because Jiffy Article writers have done a lot of the research and all you have to do is build on it, so easy and much more fun than writing from scratch.

Check out the video of Jiffy Articles in action, it really is amazing and very unique from any other content software on the web

There are thousands of templates in the software so you can create unique content for these niches:
Business

• Affiliate Marketing/Article Marketing/Home Business/Internet Marketing/Blogging/Forex
• Network Marketing/Search Engine Optimization/Social Media Marketing
• Web Hosting/Website Design

Computers And Electronics

• Computer Security

Finance

• Credit Repair/Insurance/Personal Finance/Real Estate - Buying

Health

• Acne/Aging/Beauty/Depression/Diabetes
• Fitness/Weight Loss/Nutrition
• Panic Attacks/Personal Development/Skin Care
• Stop Smoking/Stress/Teeth Whitening/Tinnitus

Home And Family

• Cooking/Dog Training/Gardening/Home Improvement/Parenting/Pregnancy/Solar Energy

Recreation

• Camping/Golf/Photography/Travel

Shopping

Weddings

Electronics

• Appliances/Camera, Photo & Video/Car Electronics & GPS/Cell Phones & Accessories/Desktops & Servers
• Home Audio & Theater/Laptops, Tablets & Netbooks/MP3 Players & Accessories/Musical Instruments
• Printers & Ink/TV & Video

Create Unique Content For...

Jiffy Articles can be used to create unique content for websites, blogs, promotions, article marketing, blog networks, and all the various places where we need to have unique and original content and articles in Internet Marketing.

Have Articles Written For You

Another cool feature of Jiffy Articles is when you are short on time you can order an article to be written for you.

Just select from one of the thousands of templates (keywords and topic based) and order at 1 cent a word, that means $3 or 300 words, $5 for 500 words..etc. The turn around time is amazing, I ordered a 500 word article and got it back in 3 hours, the quality was excellent, well researched and well written.

CHECK OUT JIFFY ARTICLES AND SAVE 40% NOW!

Google AdWords has been the dominant source of Internet advertising placement for several years, yet its crown may be beginning to fall from its digital head. YouTube’s launch of True View is making AdWords far more powerful, and receiving a higher viewership and interaction as a result. Internet marketers and online users alike are beginning to ask themselves, which is the best route to take for advertising through an AdWords marketing campaign? Is it True View or Google? Well let’s find out once and for all.

True View

True View works as an AdWords campaign, but for Internet video, or more specifically YouTube.  True View is quite unique in that it offers users the opportunity to skip advertisements on display. Now you may be thinking that’s a bit unfair on those advertisers who have paid for that ad placement, but advertisers only pay for their ad if it doesn’t get skipped, which is great.

This goes along the same lines as Google AdWords, where advertisers only pay if their link gets a click, but True View has one exceptional advantage – a 5 second intro.

You might not think 5 seconds is an awful lot to convince an audience not to skip your advertisement. Yet a staggering 70% of YouTube users don’t actually skip these adverts, showing that this 5 second introduction is clearly a powerful influential advertising tool.

A viewer who chooses to skip an advert, obviously does not want to watch an advert, and similarly a user who chooses to let an advert play, surely does want to watch an advert. You’d have to be pretty strange to choose not to skip an advert if you didn’t want to watch it.

What this means is that a user who chooses to freely watch an advertisement must in some way, shape or form be interested to see more about the product, brand or service. This interest shows that the viewer is engaged with the content and as a result of this engagement is far more likely to remember the brand being advertised, take in its message, and take physical or digital action towards the brand or business after the ad has finished. This is the kind of viewership advertisers really want to receive, so this True View approach is beneficial to both viewer and advertiser.

So, what can you really achieve in a 5 second intro? After all it is only 5 seconds. Well here’s a screenshot storyboard of the latest Wii advert on YouTube that uses the True View feature.

During the 5 second True View advert introduction we see the following:

During this first 5 seconds there has been exciting graphic animations, a clear shot of the brand, a shot of a related Bespoke organization, and two Wii users talking to camera (the viewer) in a very excitable fashion. These quick edits grab the audiences’ attention and bring them into the interaction with the two girls on camera. The communication between the two girls towards the viewer engages the audience and encourages them to continue viewing.

So what happens after the 5 second mark?

After the 5 second mark the ad gets even more exciting:

True View is great at allowing users the constant option to skip the advertisement rather than taking the privilege away from them during the ad. This particular Wii advert is very aware the “Skip ad now” feature will begin to appear after the 5 second mark, and as a result of this awareness the creators make the remainder of their advertising content vibrant, fast and exciting. By keeping the audience entertained throughout its duration, the ad can wind down its short 18 second length, spread its brand awareness and gain the favour of the viewer by providing quality ad content, without the viewer being overly aware that they’re watching an everyday advertisement.

Google AdWords
As mentioned above Google AdWords works a lot like True View in that advertisers only have to pay if their ad gets clicked. AdWords is perhaps the Grandfather of such advertising approaches, and annoyingly it looks like it’s a Grandfather too.

Unlike True View, an AdWord placement on Google provides very little personalization. You can have your website name, website header, URL and a small one line text description. Take a look for yourself at this particular example for the term “acting”:

The top 3 listings enclosed in the pale yellow box are AdWord placements. Being at the top of Google is certainly a good position to be in, but the yellow box takes the shine off such a placement. In your eyes do you see “en.wikipedia.org/wikki/Acting” as the more prominent listing or do you see “www.nyfa.edu” as the dominant listing? This is an ongoing debate amongst advertisers and Internet users alike.

Personally the pale box detaches the 3 listings from the rest of the search results, and if anything makes them look more like spammy advertisements, and less like helpful organizations to check out in relation to your search query.

It’s hard to get interested in a dreary looking Google listing, and a text based ad is certainly far less engaging than a 5 second video clip. It’s very surprising Google isn’t doing more to make these ads more engaging, especially considering its unprecedented popularity as a search engine and marketers constant goal to be at the top of Google.

If you had the choice between Google AdWords and True View in terms of advertising placement, it’s a no brainer really. Yes you do indeed have to have a video before you can have a video ad, but the interaction and engagement it provides is far more powerful than a bland, slightly yellow Google listing.

Although Google won’t mind too much if True View begins to take over as the number one AdWord advertising source, after all it does own YouTube...

About The Author

Andy Havard is a Marketing Executive at Skeleton Productions,
a UK based Internet video production company. 

For those who are interested in hiring link building services, let me just say BEWARE! BEWARE! BEWARE!  Many SEO firms and link building services are at the very least shady, and at the very most down right crooks! One of the dangers with link building services is that you never know what their going to do until it's too late. Many webmasters have found out the hard way when their sites go to the Google black hole and they figure out it's because there are thousands of bad links, built too fast by unethical link building services that are suspect and unnatural. And, removing links is a very difficult and often impossible task.

Not all link building strategies are legitimate, not all links are good for sites and not all companies know how to build proper link building strategies and get premium links in the proper time frame to get long term website rankings and avoid various manual and algorithmic penalties that Google is famous for. The truly effective and legitimate link building services and SEO firms costs thousands of dollars, which most people who are trying to make money online can never afford, nor is it really necessary. Learning how to build links properly is an important skill that all webmasters and Internet marketers need to attain and there are plenty of link building services online that are cost effective, legitimate and really work as told by previous users to leave testimonials which allows for a lot more transparency.

That being said there is a proper way to hire link building services without risking your money sites.

Tips For Choosing Link Building Services

• #1 is legitimate user feedback, this is usually found on various webmaster forums, such as, Warrior Forum and Digital Point with reviews being left by real users who have used the link building service. Do not trust reviews that you find on the link building site, Google the services name and find impartial reviews instead.
• Another essential aspect of good link building services is complete and total transparency. It should be evident where the links will be built, what kind of links they are, how many links will be created and in what time frame.
• If the link building service does not rank for its own search terms that is a good sign they do not know what their doing. Just check their site title and see if they rank.
• Link building services that guarantee you #1 Google positions are BAD NEWS! No one can make those guarantees, there are too many variables and many of those depend on your particular keywords, competition, age of your site, and so many other elements that no one can really guarantee that and if they make that claim they are not being honest!
• Before you use any link building service you should have an understanding of SEO, link building and the current landscape of the search engines. This way you will understand how to best spend your money and not waste it on useless services.

Warriors For Hire

If you are looking to build links to your sites some of the most premium link building services can be found on Warrior Forum at the Warriors For Hire Section. The feedback and reviews from previous users is priceless, and there are a lot of various link building options constantly being updated. There are tons of premium link building offers at Warrior that are transparent and you will know exactly what is being done to your site because you can pick and choose those services that you want to use, instead of handing over your site to some link building service where you have no control over what types of links they will build for you. Once again, as I mentioned before, beware of the link building services that offer 10,000 forum profile links in one day, these are real popular now, but they are a useless waste of time and money and can really get you a Google penalty real quick. Many of these offers do not vary anchors and you never want to get thousands of manual links all at once anyway ( unless they are natural of course ). Profile links are so obviously manually built, who else but the webmaster would post a link to his site on a 1,000 different forum  profiles?

Don't rush to build links too fast, long term ranking takes time and sites need to age, many webmasters get ranking penalties because they build too many crappy links too fast. Remember that while there are a lot of great link building service offers on Warriors For Hire you always want Quality over Quantity.