According to a definition, a back link of a website is a link anywhere on the web that directs towards the particular website. Any website on the web is incomplete without back links. Even with the most relevant content, a website’s credibility is still under question without quality back links. Search engines especially Google calculates the relevance of a site on the web according to the number of quality back links. So if you own a website, it is most important for you to understand the value of back links and apply while optimizing your website.

 Almost every website that expects regular visitors rely on what we call Search Engine Optimization abbreviated as SEO. A search engine expects a website to build quality back links with time, which is a long process. In a search query, the content of the website is considered more relevant which has the maximum number of back links from relevant sources. For example if you own a website based on gadgets, quality back links will be the ones which come from other gadget websites. Search engines will depend upon the source website’s content to determine the quality of your website’s back link. So you should not just blindly aim on having the maximum number of back links from any website but look for relevance. Natural back links can be slowly built with time and maturity of your website on the web. This way it is a long process and this is why we need effective SEO for back links. But to manipulate search engines for back links is not fairly easy.

Back links hold a high value in search engine algorithms. Hence a lot of people try to influence search engines by manipulating the use of back links. But these tips and tricks lose their influence with time and the algorithms just get tougher. Among the most common techniques are link farms and back link bombing. Sometimes when you click somewhere on a webpage, it automatically opens a different webpage. You might wonder if you have mistakenly clicked on an advertisement. This is instead a hidden link which is actually a back link to a website. These are known as link farms. Back link bombing is actually a deliberate attempt to fake the credibility of a website. Suppose if someone has 5 different websites under the same IP and he/she interlinks them together to sneak in a few extra back links. All the websites may or may not have similar content but under the same IP they are usually caught. This is called back link bombing.

A search engine considers both inbound and outbound links of a website to calculate its credibility. You should always keep a check on all the websites that link back to yours to make the links effective. A tool that can help you with that is the Domain Stats Tool. You should also consider the Backlink Builder tool that can help you find websites which has a content theme similar to your website. Another tool that can help you build more effective hyperlinks is the Backlink Anchor Text Analysis Tool. Apply these tools for optimization and follow a fair and square method to enhance the quality and increase the visitors on your prestigious website.

About the author: Bethany is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on technology and luxury. She recently read an article about Green building and liked it a lot. Beside this she loves cars and dreams of owning one of the BMW cars.

I LOVE Comment Luv!  How about you?  That almost sounds like a cheer doesn’t it? 

But I do really love the plugin, CommentLuv and there is a hot new WordPress plugin coming soon! Cathy Stucker is giving away a free copy at her book marketing site, SellingBooks. Learn how you can enter and win by visiting Cathy’s CommentLuv Premium giveaway page.

If you are not familiar with this plugin, it builds backlinks, increases traffic to your blog, makes it easier for your readers to share your posts on Facebook, Twitter and others social networking sites and leaves a link for your last post on any other blog you comment on that has the plugin installed.

I highly suggest you take a look at this plugin and install it on your WordPress site.  You’ll LUV it!

Using traditional offline marketing techniques to market your online blog seems like it could be a daunting task, rife with frustration and needless papers and phone calls. However, by doing all of your marketing online, you leave out a huge number of potential readers. If you are blogging for fun or for money, the point is you want people to read what you write. Without readers, all of your work and fantastic writing is for nothing.

You don’t have to worry; though…integrating tried-and-true offline marketing methods with more modern techniques is not as hard as it sounds. There are 3 easy ways you can get started advertising your blog offline. Each of them is unique and helpful on its own, and they work well together. All of them are low-cost, and have proven effective time and time again.

Business Cards

One of the best ways to get the word out about your blog is with the use of good, old fashioned business cards. Keeping these handy in your wallet, glove box, and jacket pockets (don’t wash them!) will enable you to network everywhere you go. They are relatively inexpensive to print – you could even do them yourself, if you really wanted to save money. Here are 3 tips to help you with your amazing business cards:

•  Don’t print too many. Your contact information, address, job title, or logo may change. It is recommended that you print no more than 1000 cards at a time for the heavy distributor; 500 should be sufficient for the average at-home self-promoter.

• Don’t be too flashy. The goal of a business card is for people to be able to contact you at a later date. Unless you can do it tastefully, try to avoid a multitude of sparkles, glitter, graphics, and logos. Utilize the free space on both sides of the card. Remember: people will contact you and have a better chance of visiting your blog if your business cards are neat, clean, and easy to read.

• Do treat them like candy. Give them to everyone you know. Post them on community bulletin boards. Check out local businesses and schools; a lot of them have cork boards available for community and business-related information.

Fliers

Fliers can be an invaluable resource when you are thinking about reviving your blog with some updated offline marketing techniques. With virtually any option available in size, color, cost, and quantity, using and creating fliers is easier than ever. A number of popular office services companies are available to help you design a flier, or you can hire a graphic designer. Just like with business cards, you can post them everywhere. Be sure to do a little research with your city or county to make sure you are only posting fliers in appropriate areas.

Conventions and Lectures

Depending on your prime reading target, there may be conventions or lectures held in your area – or even outside of your immediate area if you are willing to travel relevant to your blog topic. Purchasing space – or getting it free – at a convention is a great way to draw potential readers to your blog. If you choose the right place, you are guaranteed to have patrons that are already interested in what you have to say. They did come to the convention, after all.

Regardless of the method you choose, remembering the many options available to you via offline marketing will be helpful in increasing your overall reader base. When you blog, you want people to read your blog. Taking advantage of some offline techniques will help to ensure people find you…even when they are away from the internet.

Jen Silva is a writer for Choosewhat.com. ChooseWhat is a company that provides product reviews and test data for business services and products such as business cards and PBX services. Their goal is to help small companies make informed buying decisions on business solutions that help their business.

Happy New Year!  I hope you had a wonderfully blessed holiday season.  I certainly did.  I love spending time with family and friends and of course, my birthday is two days before Christmas, so I just celebrate non-stop for a couple of weeks!

With the new year comes the task of changing calendars, updating our accounting software, making sure we write the correct year when we are dating things and changing our copyright date on our website and blogs.   What?  You didn’t realize you needed to change the date?

Have you visited a website that looked great and answered your questions exactly and then looked at the bottom of the page to find it was 10 years old???   Then you begin to wonder, is this answer still relevant today?  Does anyone even keep this website updated?

Chances are the answer probably is still relevant, but the website owner or webmaster of the site failed to change the copyright date and the site appears to be un-kept and outdated.

Here is a little snippet of html code that you or your webmaster can add to the footer of your site that will take care of that problem forever!

<p>Copyright &copy; 2007 – <!–#config timefmt=”%Y”–><!–#echo var=”DATE_LOCAL” –><?php echo date(“Y”); ?> by Terri Brooks</p>

All you need to do is change the date (2007) to the date you started your site and change my name to your name or business name. (Thanks to Cathy Stucker with Blogger LinkUp for sharing this little tip with me)

Hope this helps keep your site looking updated and takes away the worry of flipping your copyright date each year.

Day 31! I can’t believe I made it to the end.  I have been participating in the Ultimate Blog Challenge with my friends Michele Scism and Michelle Schaeffer.  I never dreamed I would finished.  I’m just not disciplined enough, I told myself.  But I really wanted to do this and just see how far I made it.  Well – I made it to the end! Now to be completely honest with you, I didn’t blog every day.  I missed six days total, but I did make up a couple of those days, but posting twice in one day.  Like I’m doing now.

Anyway, I wanted to highlight my success and some of the more visited blog posts from the 31 Days of the Ultimate Blog Challenge.  During the challenge, I increased my blog visitors by 130%!  And I increased my lists by approximately 85%.  I really became much more aware of writing blog posts and sharing all the information in my head that I sometimes think others already know.  I met some incredible new online friends and hope to stay in touch with.  And I have the great accomplishment of finishing the challenge.  Now I have a library of blog posts that I can re-purpose into other informational resources for my online community.

Here are my top five most read blog posts from the Ultimate Blog Challenge.

1. Five Ways To Use LinkedIn To Build Your Visibility
2. Do You Have Any Backlinks?
3. Using Twitter to Grow Your Business
4. Secrets to Building A Successful WordPress Website Revealed!
5. New Online Business Directory

What do you know about PLR (private label resell right)?

More and more people are finding their way online in search of ways to make money for themselves and their families. Many people don’t have a lot of money to start a business with. Some people are looking for a business to start so they can quit their day job, while others are just looking for ways to bring in a little extra cash to make things go a smoother with their finances.

Finding legitimate money making opportunities online can be tough if you don’t know what to look for. There are companies and individuals who make a killing from new beginners by selling them bogus information and ideas for online business opportunities. Researching, asking questions, finding testimonials, and common sense will help you weed out the bad from the legitimate ones.

One such legitimate online business opportunity is buying what is known as Private Label Resell Rights Products.  These products usually come in the form of digital downloaded information products such as reports and articles, as well as software programs. How it works is that a freelance writer or software programmer will do some research and create a product. They will then sell it to others who are looking for inventory with certain terms attached. Private Label Rights means that you buy the product as is, and need to change the Title, the e-cover design, and 20-30% of the written report to make it your own product which you then put your name on as author. It then becomes your product. When you sell it, you get all the money for the product and your name begins to spread around the internet.

If you decide to buy software, many times you may not have the knowledge to change anything, but you have the option to add more to the product or set a price that you would like to make for that product. You will want to make sure you do some research to see if other people are selling similar products and determine the prices they are selling at. You do not necessarily have to charge less, just around the same price to stay competitive.

There are many places you can purchase Private Label Resell Rights products. You can find other internet marketers selling them on their sites, classified ads, Google Adwords, in forums, on Facebook or Twitter,  and maybe even on eBay or other auction sites. There are also memberships sites that are set up that offer a fresh supply of information products and software you can download, change and re-sell. Often times, this option is cheaper for those sellers who want to put out a large steady collection of products.

Each product you purchase will come with a list of what you are able to do with the product. Each creator will have their own set of rules. Be sure you read and follow the rules as given or you could find yourself regretting your decision to purchase the product or even losing money on the deal. Once in awhile you can get lucky and find writers who have created a product where they allow you to do whatever you want with the product once you buy it. These may be a little more expensive but often worthwhile in the end.

If you are just starting out with a Private Label Resell Rights business, you may not have a ton of money to waste on trying this product or that, especially if you don’t write and need to pay a ghostwriter to make changes to your product. The best thing to do is join a membership site like http://resell-rights-weekly.com/ This site is free to join and gives you hundreds of dollars worth of products you can use to build your own business.

I have just been with some of the most amazing internet marketing folks for the last four days in Atlanta.  We were involved in the Niche Affiliate Marketing System (NAMS) workshop and heard some incredible speakers.  But now it’s time to get back to business and start using some of the information I learned. 

One of the most beneficial sessions that I attended at NAMS was on copywriting.  Now as you can tell from my blog posts, I’m not the most eloquent writer on the planet.   I write mostly the way I speak and try not to let my southern roots come through…too much.  Now everyone will get to benefit from my friends Karon Thackston and Chris Cobb because they are holding a Free Copywriting 101 workshop beginning September 1st.  This workshop is a continuation of what I got to enjoy at NAMS, but it’s 10 hours worth of content – for Free!  You will learn about writing blogs, press releases, articles, landing pages and a ton more.  And most of it’s for beginners.  But why don’t I just let them tell you about it?  Click on the video below.

Like Karon said, Don’t Wait – Get Signed Up now and here’s the link again for you.

Online Copywriting 101

Please share this blog post, “Copywriting for Beginners and More” with your online friends by clicking the social media links below.

It’s much less expensive to start an online business than a brick and mortar one. There are several business models that really don’t require much more than $11 a year for a domain name and $10 a month for hosting. But for some people, the technical aspect of putting up a website can become quite daunting. What can you do if you want to set up a business website but can’t afford to pay someone to do it for you?  Let’s reveal the secrets to building a successful WordPress website!

WordPress is becoming one of the most preferred choices for new beginners and established marketers alike. While primarily a blog platform, WordPress has so many different themes/templates, and plugins to work with that you can create a static website or a blogging based site that has new content added every day, quickly and easily.

When you purchase your hosting account, you will see that you can quickly add WordPress to build your site through your hosting control panel. All you do follow the instructions and click install. All of the techie hard stuff with databases and is done for you. When the installation is completed, log in to your admin panel in WordPress and begin adding Plugins, adjusting the Settings and creating the look and feel you want.

But what if you don’t know the best plugins to use, what they can do for you and how you can start getting the most from your efforts? Don’t fret! Kim Doyal who is better known as “The WordPress Chick” has come together with us to create an audio recording in which she shares her secrets.

One of the most important aspects to think about when designing your blog and getting it ready for the big wide web is your visibility. Did you know that there are thousands of blogs started each and every day? This makes the competition a little tough if you do not optimize your site the best way possible so people can find you first. Kim will show you the best way to increase your visibility, tricks for making your blog SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly, and how to encourage people to post comments on your blog. Comments will encourage other readers to participate and this in turn helps spread the word.

Kim also shares with you other tools and resources that she has found, tried and tested that will help you maximize your efforts while minimizing your time being spent. Who has all day to spend tweaking and playing around with their blog when business has to be done? These tools will help you increase your traffic and aid in the stickiness of your site.

There is no reason why a new beginner should be afraid to start their own website/blog today when there is excellent and affordable help from experts like Kim Doyal who are willing to spill the beans and help you start making as much money as you can. Check out the “Hanging with the WordPress Chick” audio recording. It’s only $17! Get on your way to a successful website and a ton of fun with WordPress.

PS. Here’s a handy little guide that I just developed that will help you get started building your online business.  You can have it for free, just because I think it will really help you!  Get Your Business Online in Less than 2 Hours and for Under $100!

I received an urgent call from one of my clients because she could not accept comments on one of her older blog posts.    She hadn’t closed the comment section, but for some reason her older posts were no longer accepting comments.  And she had just posted an older blog link in her social media tribe for them to comment on and share through their social media circles.

So after digging around a little, I found her problem and I made this little video to help others who might be experiencing this same issue. 

If you are using WordPress as your blogging platform, you might need to check your default settings for Comments and change them to allow your posts to accept comments indefinitely.

If you enjoyed, “Help! My Blog Comments are Closed,” please share it with your online friends by clicking the social media links below.

Well, it’s Day 9 in the Ultimate Blog Challenge and I’ve already missed a day.   I knew the weekends would be the toughest for me to keep going and sure enough, I missed Saturday.  Not only is it tough to keep up with posting to your blog on a regular basis, but it’s tough to keep your blog fresh with good quality content.

Here are a few of my secrets that help keep my blog going and hopefully keep you coming back for more!

• Share tips to a specific topic that you have knowledge in (sort of like what I’m doing here)
  
• Record a fun video and embed it on your blog with some commentary
  
• Produce an audio recording that your viewers can download to their iPod
• Invite a guest blogger to share their expertise on your blog
• Interview an expert in a topic that is relevant to your business
• Re-purpose some of your online articles or ezine articles into small blog posts
• Develop a series of “how-tos” and post one each day for seven days
• Find other blogs that are in your industry and review them
• Do product reviews
• Do a “just for fun” post.  This can have absolutely nothing to do with your industry, but just for fun!

And there are many more ways to keep your blog content fresh and engaging to your visitors.  What are some of the ways you keep your blog fresh?

Oh, and so I can get caught up in my blog challenge, I’ll be posting an extra one this week.  I hate being behind and not keeping up with the pack!

If you enjoyed, “The Secrets to Keeping your Blog Fresh” please share it with your online friends by clicking the social media links below.