BUSINESS TIPS - 6

I. Link Building For Beginners

Link building is an important aspect of successful marketing of a website or online business. In its most basic definition, link building is simply the process of sharing links and getting your links onto others' sites so that you can draw more traffic to your website. It also refers to building your own website's links so that you can offer adequate information and resources to your visitors. However, link building can actually get a whole lot more complicated than this basic definition. Here are some tips and informative bits that will help you to better understand link building, both as a process and in terms of what it can do for your website. To follow are a few tips on link building for beginners.

First, the importance of links should be known and is good basic information as to link building for beginners. Ultimately, someone putting a link to your site on theirs is like them voting for you. It shows the search engines that they find your link useful, which will get it a higher ranking. The more links, or "votes", you have, the higher your ranking will be. However, having thousands of links out there on all sorts of random sites is not a productive act in link building. Instead, it is better to only include links on sites that have a few basic elements that are necessary for the best link building:

- Credibility: if a site is junk their vote will mean less than a link on a popular or credible site.
- Relevance: if you're linking to a website about auto insurance, don't put links on a kid's gaming site. Not only is it pointless, it also looks like unethical link building to the search engines.
- Anchor text: the words that are used in correlation with your link can make or break its value.
- Position: where your link is placed on a page says a lot. Your link is best placed near the top of the page, within content instead of a list of links, and with as few competing links as possible.

Some of the best link building takes place in articles, directory submissions, and forum postings. What does this mean for you? If you can get your links into relevant sites and have them placed among articles or at the top of a directory list, you'll get better results from your link building. The use of forums, or message boards, is also useful. However, you need to be careful not to just drop your link off and say nothing; most forum posters will delete links that aren't useful and just for traffic generation.

This is only the introduction to link building. There is much more to be learned about this great marketing tool.


II. 4 Easy and Proved Ways To Pull In Traffic to a New Website

The reason so many people fail online so quickly is because they don't get traffic, at least not enough of it.

The problem is, people end up spending money on advertising without making much (if any) profit back, or they simply spend too much time trying to get free traffic and burn themselves out.

Of course, once you're successful you can pay someone to get you the traffic, but how do we get out of the never ending cycle of trying to get traffic without wasting time and money?

Well, I am going to start with the fundamental tasks that you should focus on first, then we'll take it from there...

1. Directory submissions.

This can be achieved using automated submission software or can be done by hand. It's a little dull but will result in lots of back links to your website for better visibility in the search engines. This is pay off as you add more content and back links to your site.

2. Social bookmarking.

This is about submitting links to the major Web 2.0 social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Propeller and Reddit (to name just a few). The great thing is you can use software such as socialmarker.com to make the process far easier. You can also buy inexpensive software to automate the whole process.

The benefit of social bookmarking your content is so that you gain back links from these authority sites (which is essential for being found in the search engines) but also, if you content is worthwhile and interesting, you increase the chances of your submission being passed around other readers really quickly, which can of course result in a lot of traffic to your website.

3. Back links.

Back links are the backbone of getting your pages listed high in the search engines. The more people link to your site naturally (i.e. without being paid or listing your site in some sort of link farm where the site linking to you is junk), then the better your rankings will be in the search engines. Not to mention the direct traffic that will come from the actual links from other sites too.

4. Collaboration.

Most people want to be the "one person wonder" or the sole entrepreneur in their business, which is fine. However, don't underestimate the sheer power of teaming up with other well established websites directly and offering your content, help or other services in exchange for some exposure to your own website.

The classic "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" effect comes into play here and trust me, it works like a charm providing you genuinely approach people to help them first.

There are of course, many other ways to start getting traffic to your site such as writing articles like this one, or getting involved with many of the Web 2.0 properties out there online today. The more social you become with your website at other people's parties, the more people will come to your party when you come to tell them about it...just like real life isn't it?

I've only scratched the surface of getting heavy volumes of traffic to your website. If you'd like to know more about using the new wave of traffic inducing methods to really get your business off the ground.