Include keywords in incoming links

Incoming links with relevant “anchor text” yield the best results in terms of delivering quality “link juice” to your web site. What is anchor text? It is the text that you click on to follow a link on a web site. Here is an example:

Click Me (but don’t really). The text “Click Me” is the anchor text in this case.

When asking for links to your web site, choose relevant keyword phrases for the anchor text. I’m going to *shamelessly use my own business as an example:

Visit MightyMerchant for great eCommerce Websites

Notice that the part of the phrase that is clickable are the words “eCommerce Websites”. I didn’t make the whole sentence clickable, and I didn’t make the phrase “Visit MightyMerchant” clickable as that is not a phrase anyone is likely to search for.

The HTML for the above link looks like this:

Visit MightyMerchant for great <a href="http://www.mightymerchant.com">eCommerce Websites</a>

If you request a link via email or a contact form, send the exact HTML you would like for your link with your request.

When you are looking to add your link to a directory, look at the existing listings. Many times they will ask for your business name and web address. Your business name often be used for the anchor text and will link to the web address you provide. Instead of just entering your business name, use your best keyword phrase with your business name. Like this:

eCommerce Websites from MightyMerchant
or
MightyMerchant eCommerce Websites

To squeeze even more juice out of the link, link to a specific page on your web site with a web address that also includes the keyword phrase you are targeting, like this:

http://www.mightymerchant.com/ecommerce_websites.html

(If you don’t have such a page, consider creating one! See tips for web site content under the “On your web site” section of this blog.)

*Why do I say “shamelessly”? Because I’ve just created several incoming links to the MightyMerchant web site with keywords in the url as this article suggests that you do. You should be shameless, too - add a keyword rich link to your web site in the comments. As long as I don’t judge it to be spam, I’ll post your comment and you’ll get a keyword rich link to your web site!

Incoming links - why bother?

Seeking out other web sites that will link to your web site, referred to as incoming links or inbound links, is time consuming and staying with it can be hard if your requests for links are ignored. But getting other web sites to link to your web site is the MOST RELIABLE way to help your web site to move up in the search engines.

Aimclear blog recently recounted a presentation at the 2009 SMX conference in Seattle:

“…When Rand [Fishkin, of SEOMOZ] was initially looking for an absolute among metrics, he found only 1 metric that has any ability to predict rankings and that is the number of different domains linking to a URL.”

It’s worth your time to seek out and get incoming links. See my other posts under link building for tips on how to get inbound links.

A quick way to identify sites for incoming links

Here’s a quick way to find web sites that might link to you:

#1. Search google for a phrase that is relevant to your web site. In my example, I’ll use “vintage clothing”.

#2. Identify one the sites with a top listing, and search google again like this:

link:www.rustyzipper.com “vintage clothing”

That search will show you sites linking to www.rustyzipper.com that include the phrase “vintage clothing”.

#3. Scan the listings and identify good possibilities. I’ve shown a few promising listings below that were in my results:

#4. Visit the web sites that may link to you and find out how to request a link to your site.

A few more tips:

- View several pages of search results, not just the first page

- Try different keyword phrases

- Set a goal to request one, or two or ten incomings links per week and then do it!

Bear with me while I figure this out

If you’ve read my about page or my “how tweet marketer works” page, then you know that I’m trying to model this blog after the Flylady’s techniques for bringing order to your home and family life. My focus is helping the small busines owner or online marketer make daily progress on developing a successful online presence.

I am trying to figure out how to present the information on this blog and how to use Twitter to effectively deliver the message. Each week Flylady focuses on different zones. She provides a basic set of tasks to accomplish and adds some special missions. I plan to spend each week focusing on a specific area of online marketing. One week it will be all about Twitter, another week it will be all about PR. I’ll have a “building incoming links” week, “search engine optimization” week. Each day I will lay out specific short tasks and some special missions that may take a little longer. Each topic area will repeat periodically, some more frequently than others. Flylady also encourages participation by issuing challenges and then asking her readers to report back. I’d like to incorporate that idea as well.

One of the great things about Flylady is her writing voice! Which is encouraging, forgiving and commanding all at once. I feel certain I cannot write in the same voice, but I will be trying to cultivate my own voice and will aim to make this all seem as fun and inspiring to my readers as it is to me.

The first thing I figured out is that I need two Twitter accounts, which I actually already have. But, I realized really quickly that some tweets just shouldn’t be coming from tweet_marketer. I responded to a few people on Twitter who are looking for shopping cart web sites, which is our primary business, from my tweet_marketer account. Right away, I see that is a bad idea. I want followers of tweet_marketer to trust that tweets coming from this account will be relevant to online marketing. I may sometimes tweet about my business from tweet_marketer, but I will try to only do that if it has some relevance in the current context. From now on, other tweets (both business and personal) will be coming from my iamstaci Twitter account, which you are welcome to follow as well.

Here is how I am envisioning the process:

I will write a series of blog posts on a single topic, most of them quite short, that each give instructions for completing an online marketing task. I will continually add to the library of tasks and topic areas.

I will create a series of scheduled tweets that mirror the blog content. Monday morning, a tweet will go out announcing something like “This week we’re working on keyword research.”  Each day, I’ll send out a few tweets that include keyword research “missions”. The tweets will link back to the blog posts mentioned above that include the instructions to complete the mission. In addition, I will send out a few tweets a day with ongoing tasks to take care of like “optmize a page title on your site”. All task-oriented tweets will link back to the blog, which will have longer instructions.

I am still trying to figure out the process I will use for the scheduled tweets. I am tempted to use the Twitter API to write my own little script that will do it for me. But I am trying really hard not to get side-tracked, so I may try to use an existing solution. At any rate, the scheduled tweets have to come after I get some more content, so I am not deciding on that quite yet.

I also want to create some tweet_marketer shorthand for the tweets. For example, all action tasks will begin with “do it!” followed by the task. Others might start with “fyi” for interesting asides, or “wdyt” to ask for feedback. This will allow followers to easily figure out how much they want to pay attention to the tweet.

This is my first foray into regular blogging, and I am thinking out loud here. But I think that is what bloggers do, yes?

Add your Business to Google Local Search

Have you noticed that when you include the name of a city in your google search, the top listings are displayed next to a google map? You can control your listing through http://www.google.com/local.

You can enhance your listing by adding your business hours, your logo, keywords, even video! In order to create or “claim” your business, you’ll need a google account. If you don’t have one, create one now. Google offers a ton of features that you can use to enhance your web site, which I’ll be writing about on this blog.

Here’s what to do:

1. Sign into your google account.
2. Visit http://www.google.com/local
3. Click the link labeled “Put your business on Google Maps”
4. Click the link labeled “Add New Listing”
5. Fill out as much as you can.

That’s it!

Sign up for a Google Account

If you don’t have an account with Google already, get one! Google offers a wealth of services that you can use to enhance your web site and your online presence. From Analytics, google’s free product feed, adsense, adwords, and more- you can’t afford not to have an account. So, here’s how:

1. Visit http://www.google.com.
2. Click the “Sign In” link in the upper-right hand corner.
3. Click the link under the sign-in area that is labeled “Create An Account Now”.
4. Follow the on-screen instructions.

Subscribe to Peter Shankman’s HARO

At www.helpareporter.com, sign up to receive three daily emails (weekdays only). Each email contains requests from reporters for sources for different stories. A huge variety of media outlets are represented from small web sites to national television and the New York Times. Skim each issue and if you think you are a qualified source for the story, pitch the reporter. This is great opportunity to get some free press, and it’s fun too!

Market with an Email Signature

Every email program allows you to set an email signature that is appended to every message you send. Take a few minutes to set up your own email signature with a short message about your business and a link to your web site.

Here’s my email signature:

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Staci Schipporeit
HEROweb/MightyMerchant
541-746-6418
http://www.linkedin.com/in/mightymerchant

Take Your Website from Zero to Hero!
Makers of the MightyMerchant Ecommerce Platform

http://www.hero-web.com
http://www.mightymerchant.com
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

My signature includes an alternate contact method (telephone), my web site addresses, a link to my LinkedIn Account (more on this later), and our byline.

Read more about constructing an effective email signature in this article, which has some good tips. If you have a helpful tip on creating Email Signatures, please comment!

The Vision

Just finished the first draft of the About page, which explains what this blog is about (surprise).