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.

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!

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.

Okay, a quick post here to refer you to a new site that is all about networking with bloggers for guest posts. Guest posting on other blogs and allowing them to post on yours is a fantastic way to build authority, and get precious backlinks and to alleviate some of your own workload by getting fresh, unique content that is NOT written by you, whew!

The site is My Blog Guest and it really is the perfect solution to finding blogs to post on and getting fresh content for your sites. There are lots of members all ready and they just launched recently and new members joining all the time.

Highly recommended by the authority SEO site, Search Engine Journal, My Blog Guest is a sure winner.

Features of My Guest Blog for Guest Posts

1. All niches included.

2. The site uses a rating system (blog power) to rate members sites, based on PR, subscriber numbers, Twitter followers, Facebook fans and age of the site.

3. Also has a rating system to rate members social media power, based on various social media site activity for the individual.

4. Shows how many guests posts members have done.

5. Search for blogs to post on by keywords and categories.

6. Add all or one of your sites to accept guest posts on

My Blog Guest is really a great place to network and build up your sites.

Also, if you are looking specifically for SEO niche sites that accept guests posts then check out:  10 SEO Blogs accepting guest posts.

You also get the chance to guest post on Blogussion, a high traffic, quality blog.

If you really want to learn about guest posting and get a super opportunity to guest post, Ramit Sethi, best selling author of I Will Teach You To Be Rich not only accepts guest posts, but has the most comprehensive, helpful guide I have ever seen on how to write effective posts, and how to get published by big name bloggers, check it out: Write Guest Post on I will Teach You To Be Rich, really a must read!

Another great product from Jonathan Ledger, who created The Best Spinner, which REALLY IS the best content spinner, has just launched a Beta version of his article writing tool called Instant Article Wizard and you can use it now for free and get a big discount once the final launch takes place.

This is a great tool that makes writing articles a lot easier, especially the ones with topics that you know nothing about, watch a demo video of Instant Article Wizard.

I always use and recommend Jonathan's products because he really understands what marketers need to make their make money online ventures easier, more functional and successful. Let's face it when ti comes to any kind of business time is money and whenever you can save time you can make more money. This tool is the perfect solution to creating hundreds of pages of content and articles for money sites quickly and easily, so go try a fully functional copy of this great tool  and see if it is something that can enhance your online business.

If you have a blog then you can get lots more promotion, links, exposure and traffic by adding your feed to the many blog and RSS feed directories that are out there. The RSS directories aggregate blog feeds from around the web and list those blog posts on their sites as they are updated, since these sites get their own traffic, they are great places to promote your blogs, as I previously mentioned in my post 100 + RSS Submission Sites. That list is very long and it's a pain to submit your blogs to these sites manually, so I came across this gem of a software that is free and submits your feed to various directories within one simple interface automatically.

Allscoop RSS submitter Pro (safe and clean download link, I added it here because the one on the developers site is down) is a fantastic free tool from Allscoop Tools that will submit your feeds to many of these RSS directories with an easy to software. It's light on system resources, really fast and submits to many of the best and top RSS submission sites. All you have to do is enter your information into the interface, your name, email, blog name, blog description, url and feed url and then select which RSS directories you want to submit to, I always choose them all. The software then runs the submission  process. Most of the sites allow for easy submission, but those that ask for registration and login and captcha are neatly displayed in the Allscoop RSS software interface and you can register and submit right from the software and then go to the next site. I highly recommend this software, it's fantastic, easy to use and and the most effective way to submit your RSS feeds to the various directories. Download the free RSS feed submitter tool and try it out today.

Create a Feed For Static Websites

By the way if you're website is static and not a blog platform like WordPress that automatically generates a feed, you can still generate a feed for your static sites and use RSS feed submission sites for promotion, just go to HTLM2RSS or FeedForAll (both tools work great) and create feeds for static sites, and then submit them those to these RSS directories.

For those of you running flagship sites for topics relating to Internet marketing, blogging, make money online and SEO here are the best social Web 2.0 sites that specifically focus on those topics only and are great places to to promote that content and get some backlinks as well.

MMO Social Network
This is a great new social Web 2.0 site to promote all your online business, blogging and MMO content.

SERPD -A great site to submit anything related to  online business and blogging.

Blog Engage
Another great place to submit blogging, and Internet marketing related blog posts and engage and network with other bloggers. BlogEngage is now an invitation only site, so to get an invite you can follow the simple steps as outlined in BlogEngage Invitation To Register Information, it is definitely worth the simple steps.

WP Scoop - All stories related to WordPress

Blogger Den - It's Digg but for Bloggers, great place!

Sphinn
Search Engine Journal's Web 2.0 site for submitting search engine related content. I do not feal with them anymore or read their site simply because after submitting several quality pieces of content, some my own and some from other bloggers, they rejected each one. To me their a clik of the "big bloggers" and what they select to publish makes little sense, since a lot of the stuff is pretty mediocre, so I think their site is a waste of time, and stuck up, but I would be remiss to not list them here.

Earners Club

All Internet marketing, make money online, blogging and online business content.

Small Business Brief
All topics of online marketing and social media marketing

SEO Tagg
Submit all your search engine optimization, search engines, SERPS and other related SEO content.

Design Float
All topics related to design, like HTML, CSS, Photoshop and they have a category for Branding and Identity.

Design Moo
All design related links.

Design Bump
All website and blog design related content.

Biz Sugar

Design Blend
WordPress, photoshop and design related content.

IM Answers
This is like the Yahoo Answers for Internet marketing, blogging and other online ventures. You can answer questions, create posts and articles and establish yourself as an authority and get some links as well.

PlugIM
All Internet marketing related content.

Social Media Today
A moderated community bloggers, PR people, marketers and media pros.

Facebook
You can really brand yourself at Facebook for your flagship blogs and sites, like Internet marketing, blogging, Make Money Online and any online business topics, and easily submit your posts and content with the Facebook bookmarklet, these will be become "posted to your wall" there providing for good exposure.

Xing.com
A New site that has bought SocialMedian, it's all about business networking, not sure of its effects yet, but am checking it out now.

Professionals on the Web
If you are a web developer, designer or some other web techie you can network here, showcase your work and much more.

Killer Startups
This is a community driven site where online business pros, bloggers and other IM people can submit their startup to see what others think about it. Not sure how much activity is over these days, but they are a PR6.

BizNik
Biznik is a highly reputable and award winning community of entrepreneurs and small business owners dedicated to helping each other succeed, lots of Internet marketing and online business stuff over there.

YouTube
If you make video guides on your sites or blogs submit them to YouTube

Hub Pages
You can easily promote yourself and your blog by writing something spectacular, lots of traffic there and other bloggers and marketers to network with. Make sure to write Hubs that are not just promotional, but offer some expertise and authority content and then mention your link for more information.

Squidoo
Again, you can easily promote yourself with a Squidoo Lens, and it is similar to Hub Pages, but without the strict rules regarding over promotion of yourself and your sites. Learn more at: How-To Squidoo - Step-by-Step Guide on Building the Best Squidoo Lens.

If you want to start your own Web 2.0, social site, check out Pligg, they have everything you need.

What do you think? If you know of any good social sites for IM content that I missed please let me know in comments or by contacting me.

Comment Luv is a nifty WordPress plugin that parses the commenters blog posts and places them in the comment. It is a fantastic way to network with other bloggers and build traffic and relationships with new readers.

If you write great content and titles and comment on Comment Luv blogs then you will surely attract new readers to your blog. Also implementing Comment Luv on your own blogs is a great way to attract commenters which only leads to increased popularity of your site.

Leave Useful and Interesting Comments

The bloggers that have the Comment Luv feature on their sites are generous and understand the value of networking and sharing the love. It is important that you do not SPAM them or leave useless comments because it harms everyone in the blogging community.

Plus, if you leave a good comment then it is much more likely that you will be noticed by other readers who will want to learn more about you by clicking on your blog post link.

Get the Plugin and Register Your Blog for More Exposure

Get the plugin for your blog and search for other blogs that have it enabled via keywords at the official Comment Luv Website. You can also register your blogs over there as well, so that anyone searching will be able to find your Comment Luv blogs.

List of 132 Comment Luv Blogs by Niche

These are high traffic, quality blogs that offer value and great content. They have lots of readers and commenters so the conversation is good.

INTERNET MARKETING/ONLINE BIZ/BLOGGING/WEBMASTERS

Grow Your Online Business with GrowMap
Gail also provides Do-Follow comments with Keyword Luv!

Sire at Blogging Tips, Tricks and SEO
Sire offers A LOT of link luv at his blog with Keyword Luv Do-Follow comments and Top Commenter!

Free Tools for Webmasters

Twitter, Blogging and Podcasting at Ms. Ilene Speaks

How to Make Money Online Blogging with Chris
Chris is an example of a great blogger. I just discovered his blog, it has great content and even though he has thousands of subscribers, he still replies to his commenters, unlike other "big time" bloggers.

WordPress and Blogging at Serradinho
George also has Top Commenter and the @Twitter in comments.

I'm Dennis Edell
We all know Dennis and he is also do follow and has the Twitter in comments as well!

Work From Home Resources
My long time reader Alan at his blog ReplaceYourSalary.com also has the Twitter Follow plugin for comments.

Make Money Online
Jim, aka the Net Fool shows all the love  with Comment Luv and Top Commenter!

Make Money Online at Pei Profit
A LOT of love going on here, because along with Comment Luv, the Top Commenter feature is enabled as well and...

The Pei Profit True Blue Fan Award - This award goes out to commentators who are able to hit past 40 comments each month before the counter resets and the prizes ranges from free ad spaces to e-book and reviews...What a cool idea!

Work From Home Opportunities

Make Money Online with Stephan Miller

Brad Blogging with WordPress Tweaks and Tutorials
Also offers Do-Follow comments!

Web Marketing and Affiliate Marketing with ZK
Top Commenter also enabled!

Make Money Online with Barbara Ling

Gupshup Blog
Do-follow comments as well with blogging, IM and other various topics.

Blogging Tips by Tycoon Blogger
Lots of link luv here with Top Commenter, Comment Luv and Do Follow comments enabled!

Money Making Ideas with Suzanne Franco
Do-Follow comments as well!

Make Money Online with Affiliate Funnels
Lots of link luv going on here, with Do-Follow comments, Top Commenter and Comment Luv!

Young Entrepeneuer

Tips for Successful Writing and Blog Writing

Blogging and Internet Marketing Tips

Earning Step

Blogussion - Blogging Tips and Tricks

Derek Semmler - WordPress Ninja
Also has top commenter

Authority Domains

Make Money Blogging with Caroline Middlebrook
Also Top Commenter!

Free WordPress Themes and Social Bookmark Icons

Ask Owlbert

Make Money Blogging

SEO Marketing

BlogInTheBag

Blogging Tips and SEO with Another Blogger
Also Top Commenter, and the Follow Me on Twitter in comments.

Drive More Traffic To Your Site

Dragon Blogger - Tech News, Blogging Tips and Entertainment
Also Do-Follow and Top Commenter.

ICT Trends
Also has Dofollow, and find out how to add Comment Luv on Blogger platform blogs.

Make Money Blogging with Famous Bloggers

Blogging for Business
Keith is showing a lot of link luv in comments with  Top Commenter, Keyword Luv and the Follow Me on Twitter in comments.

2 Create a Website Blog by Lisa Irby

FM Seo

Newru - Kelly has a great tagline in her blog, You May Not Be A Newbie…But You Are Not A Guru…Then You must be a NEWRU, I like that! She also has Top Commenter!

Blogging with POTPOLITICS
John is also really spreading the link luv, with Keyword Luv, Top Commenter and the Follow On Twitter in comments!

Tips on Online Marketing with AriWriter

Social Media and Blogging Tips @ Blog Tracker

Win With 1

Website Traffic and Promotion with iWoodpecker

Website Design and Internet Marketing @ InteractOne, and is Dofollow as well!

Blogging and Make Money Online with SmartBloggerz, also has Top Commenter and Keyword Luv for do follow.

Blog With Power with Don Power, is also Dofollow!

Don is also a co-author of BloggerLuv.com, which is a collaboration of 9 bloggers who share the "link luv" and it too has all the goodies, Top Commenter, Commen Luv and Keyword Luv for dofollow!

DMarketing Spot - Jonathan also has Keyword Luv!

Blazing Minds - Blogging - Also Top Commenter, Twitter username in comments and Keyword Luv!

I'm Just Sharing

Hot Blog Tips - Keith also has Keyword Luv and the Twitter follow in comments.

Blogger Illustrated Video Blogging - Also do follow.

How to Make Money At Home with The University Kid. Jason the blog author does not waste time with BS posts, he provides the most useful and hands-on content for making money online, I suggest you go and sign up.

Free WordPress Themes and SEO - PR 5 Comment Luv Premium, Keyword Luv Do Follow, Top Commenter

Home Business Team

INSPIRATION/SUCCESS/LIFESTYLE

Lifestyle Design for You - A very useful blog full of great inspirational, lifestyle and general success and motivation articles. Make sure to read Gordies posts.

HEALTH/WEIGHT LOSS

Free Diets and Weight Loss

Weight Loss Plans

Healthy Weight Loss

Best Acne Treatments and Skin Care

PSP Living - Organic and Healthy Living

GENERAL TOPICS

Blog About Everything
Also offers do follow comments

Mommies Magazine
Health, style, shopping, family and more

Life, Universe and Everything with Mark Knowles

DEBT CONSOLIDATION/LOANS/MONEY/FINANCE

Got No Dough - Saving Money in Slim Times

Debt Free Life at Money Relationship

Top Finance Blog

Personal Financial Planning - Debt Reduction

REAL ESTATE

Foreclosure News - PR2

News About Real Estate and Foreclosures - dofollow comments too!

Real Estate News

Tempe Real Estate

GOLF

Golf Store and Blog

House and Home

Building a Home

RECIPES/FOOD/COOKING

Vegan Soapbox

Traditional Russian Food Recipes

Family Friendly Recipes

Cook Local

Coffee Reviews

SHOPPING

We Magazine for Women

Grechens Online Shopping Blog

PARENTING/FAMILY

Dad's House

Simple Mom

TRAVEL

Travel Wires

Travel Advice

TECH/GADGET/COMPUTERS/LAPTOPS

Laptop Guides

Computer Security and Virus Software

Notebooks and Laptops

Worthy Tips for Technology and Blogging

JoeTech

My Lovely Gadgets

Dragon Blogger - Tech News
Also Do-Follow and Top Commenter.

BEAUTY/WOMEN/MAKEUP/FASHION

Short Haircuts Pics and Hairstyle Guides

Fashion Blog, Purses and Handbags

Makeup and Beauty Blog

Beauty Fool

Makeup and Beauty Reviews at MakeUp4All

Fashion Grail

POLITICAL

Caffeinated Thoughts

WRITING

Men with Pens

Tips for Successful Writing and Blog Writing

Get Paid to Write Online

CELEBRITY/ENTERTAINMENT/MOVIES/MUSIC

Blazing Minds - Music Reviews, Films - Also Top Commenter, Twitter username in comments and Keyword Luv!

Celebrity VIP Lounge

Music Reviews

PETS/ANIMALS

Cool Dog Pictures and Breed Information
Very cool site, with some awesome doggies.

Celebration of Pet Celebrities

Wholesale Dog Supplies

Pet Insurance Reporter

French Bulldog Breeders Blog

GrokHorses

I tried to cover the most popular niches for blogs with Comment Luv plugin enabled, if I missed your niche please search at the official Comment Luv Website. Make sure to register your Comment Luv blogs over there as well!

If you own or have a favorite Comment Luv blog that is not on this list please leave the info in comments, thanks!