I’ve just had a meeting with a potential client regarding their website. They launched into a list of things they wanted including, videos, animations, 360 degree images etc. What they hadn’t thought about was the whole purpose of the site. Who is was for, what it was for, who the stakeholders were and what success looks like.

Building a website is a time consuming and costly exercise. There are many component parts to a website, the look and feel being only one of them. The problem is many people only focus on the pretty pictures and Flash animations, only stopping to think about SEO once the site’s live. This is a recipe for disaster.

SEO starts before a single line of HTML is written or a single pixel has been added to an Illustrator canvas. SEO can be used to help you figure out some of the BIG questions you should be asking when developing a website.

SEO will help you better understand your market, SEO will ensure you understand what your potential market is searching for, SEO will help you understand the competition you are up against. In extreme cases SEO may even help you decide if your proposed enterprise is worth pursuing at all!

Leaving SEO until after your website is live is a big mistake and one that will ultimately cost you dearly. You will be left scrambling around desperately wondering why your site isn’t attracting customers and why Google and the other search engines are not listing your site when people search for what you offer.

Get SEO sorted from the get go and reap the benefits.

Back links are the back bone of an internet business. Then can literally make or break your internet business because the major search engines rank your website with regards to how many you have. All other things considered, the more you have, the higher your website will rank and the more free traffic you will receive.

There are many ways to pick up back links online, first let me explain what it is just to be clear. It is quite simply a link on someone elses website pointing back to your website. These can either be in url form; http:// yourwebsite ; or hyper linked with your keywords. A hyper link is just a clickable text with a hidden url code that will bring you to that url.

One way to pick them up is by contributing thoughts and opinions in relevant forums. To find a few forums in your specified niche, just do a quick search in Google. Then all you have to do is sign up and set up your signature file. Your signature will usually appear under your comments and this is where the link will be seen. For each post you make you will get one back link to your website.

Forums are a great way to pick up a bunch of back links and you should aim for at least 5 posts a day on a few different forums. After awhile they will really begin to add up. Whatever you do though, do not merely post only to get back links. Many times the moderators at these forums will ban you for spamming if you do not leave well thought out and meaningful posts.

Another great way to pick up back links that carry a lot of weight are through article marketing. Every time you write and distribute an article, the article directories will allow you to leave a link in your authors resource box. So the more unique articles you write, the more links you will get. Some search engines will not count them more than once from a duplicate article so it will do no good to submit one article to 30 article directories. Most likely you will only get credit for one back link.

Some other ways to pick up back links are by leaving comments on other peoples blogs, submitting press releases, submitting to online directories, link exchanges, and social bookmarking.

It is best to set up a daily goal. I usually shoot for 20 a day. Too much each day will not look natural to the search engines and too little you will get passed up by your competition. Consistency is what you are aiming for here. Try and get as many back links as you can through as many different mediums as possible over time.

Those of us that make our living on the internet know that page rank in the major search engines are important. We also know that Google is the king of all search engines and getting on the first page of Google increases your chances of getting targeted visitors to your web sites.

Search engine optimization is something that should be balanced and you should have many different avenues for Google and the other search engines to find you. I’d like to cover the backlink theories.

Many people think that the more backlinks you have, the higher in the rankings you will be and the search engines will eat that up. In a sense, that is true and in another sense that is false. I own about 15 sites and one has about 33,000 backlinks. No kidding, it’s got more backlinks than Bill Gates has dollars but it’s not on the first page of Google.

In this particular instance, that’s not much of an issue for me because I get about 400 unique visitors daily and the site generates a nice little revenue stream for me and it only takes about 20 minutes a day to maintain.

I have another site that has only about 800 backlinks and it’s on the first page of Google for several keywords. It’s a competitive niche and this site makes me some real nice money… time to manage about an hour a week.

What’s the difference? The quality of the backlinks. The first site I talked about was one I bought all set up and the previous owner thought that all those back links would get him rankings. Not.

The second site I set up and developed… it’s less than 5 months old, is a PR2 and is on the first page of Google for 8 different keywords because of the quality of the backlinks. I have it linked to high PR sites using those competitive keywords and my url imbedded in the keywords.

Much less work, much better ranking on Google and much more revenue because of the quality of the backlinks, not the quantity.

Want your site on the first page of Google?

Be willing to spend about 15 – 20 minutes a day putting your information on PR5 sites and next thing you know, you’ll be ranked on the first page of Google!

Once you’ve finished developing your website, now begins the process of promotion. One of the hardest things to do is to figure out what to do next if you are new to internet marketing. Thankfully, by reading this article you’ll be able to get some guidance on the necessary steps you should complete to start the process of effectively promoting your website. The focus of this particular article will be on building backlinks.

When you have your site all set and ready to go, the easiest way to start building backlinks is to use social bookmarking websites. All the bookmarking websites are absolutely free, so that means you can create an account at each website and add your link to their website. A bookmark is simply you telling other users of that bookmarking website that you recommend this website.

There are literally hundreds of these websites online, and you can register for an account at each and submit your bookmark. Of course, this will take time, but if you put your mind to it, you can easily submit 20-50 bookmarks in a few hours. Keep in mind, that’s 20-50 new sites that will be pointing to your website. This helps with your search engine optimization, as you’ll have quality websites linking back to you.

Another great way of acquiring links back to your site is through directory submission. You can submit your website to free web directories. A simple search online with the keyword web directory will provide you with a lot of results. The easiest way though to find web directories is to actually use websites that provide an index of free web directories. That way you can easily access all the directories from one location.

Other ways of increasing your link count is through link requests or link exchanges. You can partner with others in forums and join in link exchanges. A link exchange is simply where you provide a link to someone’s website, and they return the favor. By following these simple steps, you can be on your way to increasing the number of links that point back to your website. Of course this leads to more traffic, and it definitely helps with your rankings in the search engines.

Mistake #1 Not checking that their site is search engine friendly before submitting make sure that your pages all have:

appropriate and descriptive titles, good copy that is written for people and not search engines, made sure that all of the pages in the site can be accessed by the search engine, e.g. don’t use Flash or JavaScript as the only way to navigate between pages in the website

Mistake #2 Not having effective links from other websites before submitting

Search engines make significant use of links between websites to evaluate the quality of the content of the site. Obtaining links from other websites can be a time consuming process. It is recommended that you implement a system that involves these stages:

Locating relevant websites and assessing their suitability to obtain links to your site Write to the owners of these sites with an offer to exchange links. It is wise to have already added the link to their website first and draw their attention to this. Follow up in 14 days if you have not heard back from the site owner, and Drop their site from your links page if you have not heard back in 30 days

Mistake #3 Not having a system to monitor when search engines are updating their databases

If your site is larger than just a few pages, there is a good chance that your site will not have every page on it included in every search engine’s database. Additionally you should identify how frequently your site is being updated in the search engine. If you have added new content to your website or have changed the existing content, it can take a month or so for this to be reflected in the database of the search engines. Once your site has a higher credibility in the search engines this will occur more frequently.

Mistake #4 Not testing the keywords, copy and headlines of the web pages

All major search engines now offer some form of paid placement advertising. This is a useful tool to testing which keywords and advertising copy works best to attract sales. The key advantage of using paid placement advertising is that a large number of tests can be conducted in a relatively short period of time to determine the best combination of keywords, offer, headlines, copy, etc that suit your site.

Only after you have identified which particular keywords are suitable for optimizing pages on your site should you then start to fine tune your web pages to rank highly against these keywords. You should also test headlines in your advertisements and these headlines be added to the titles of your web pages.

Mistake #5 Not having a system to monitor and measure the effectiveness of their search engine listings and website

Search engine marketing is a continuous process that involves far more than simply obtaining high ranking positions. You need to constantly monitor how many people visit your website from search engines, what keywords they are using, how many of them convert into a sale or sales lead, etc. The secret to success is test, test, test and test again.

Since back-links are so important, how do you build them?

Well, one of the easiest was to start building links back to your site is to utilize website directories. There are many directory-type websites that will index your website(s) and make your business/service/information available to users who are searching for it. Not only do you get an increase in website traffic from these sites but you also get the back-links from these services to your website.

Back-links can be Bad for Business

Having back-links from the leading general directories promotes your site and rank it favorably with the search engines. The other side of the coin is that you can actually negatively affect how the search engines see your website with the wrong directories. As you try to promote your website to increase traffic and your search engine rankings you may accidentally fall into a ‚bad crowd‘ (of website directories).

You must be careful when choosing directories for website promotion. The same goes with any other links you use to generate traffic by linking back to your website. A highly respected website with quality content can greatly improve your search engine rankings, while poor quality websites will actually negatively affect your online business; simply from being association with non-search engine friendly websites.

‚Anchor‘ Well when Possible

Link quality is an important factor of website promotion and search engine rankings, but link anchor text is also very important. The text that is used for your link is sometimes called ‚descriptive anchor text‘ and also must be search engine friendly for the maximum benefit on increasing your website traffic. To become „search engine friendly“ your anchor text should contain keywords that describe the content to which they are linked. This may differ depending on which keywords you are choosing to target, as well as what content you’re promoting on the linked page.

Descriptive anchor text is not only beneficial to the search engines‘ understanding of what your website is about and therefore an improved search engine ranking, but also for the user who gets a better idea what he or she is clicking through to. This provides you with an even more targeted visitor who is more likely to purchase what your business is selling. Of course you can’t always control how your link is displayed, so focus on linking to quality – related, and high ranking – websites and website directories for maximum website promotion and traffic.

It is a well known fact that to achieve a good page ranking in Search Engine Optimization, one of the most crucial things to have is good and unique content. There is no doubt that fresh articles writing increases backlinks. Whenever you go for search engine submission, the unique content of your website scores over everything else will bring your site in limelight.

However there are still people who complain that even after writing a blog everyday their backlink is not increasing. The problem lies with your style of articles writing. The content you submit in the directory submission should have value and should be useful and unique.

News and articles that act as a tutorial will do wonders for your site. Say you have a website on Search Engine Optimization. To increase you backlinks you should write articles that teach how to increase page rankings in major search engines, or something similar that may be useful to users visiting your site.

Once your articles writing part is complete, directory submission comes to play. Submit it to content directories, and it is always advisable to write your own introduction as the writer of the article. This should be short and precise and should be able to hit people well. A text link or a one way link to your site included in the article, will work magnificently to increase your page ranking.

The next question that arises is: where to submit these articles? There are huge numbers of sites that require fresh content almost every day and you don’t even need to have a membership in most of the sites. There is also a variety of software, that aid in submitting articles to both the web directory and the bid directory. But it is always advisable to submit your articles manually. Webmaster-talk forum can be really helpful in providing a list of article directories. One can even search on search engines for more article websites.

Once your excellent articles and unique content is submitted to the search engine submission, you should go to page rank checker to obtain your page ranking. You should observe a steep increase in the popularity of your web site. You will see more and more traffic coming to your web site and the growth of backlinks would become obvious. In case you have also included a link to your website along with your article, your homepage will before long score higher on search engine rankings, thanks to the unique and creative content you have placed.

The key to building a long term successful internet business lies with your ability to pick up back links on a consistent basis. Back links are the purest form of gold in the online world. The more back links you have, the higher you will rank in the society of search engines.

Of course back links are just one piece of the equation for a successful online business. The formula is SEO or search engine optimization. There are two parts to SEO, off site and on site optimization.

The keywords you choose to use have to be placed on your website strategically so the search engines can recognize what they are. They should be placed in your title, META tags, h1 headers, h3 headers, and maybe even in some of your „alt“ image tags.

The off site portion of SEO would include the back links and what words you use to anchor those links. An anchor link is the click able portion of the words. You would use the href tag to anchor or hyper link your keywords. When you anchor link your back links using the keywords on your website, it’ll give it an extra boost in the rankings.

Now the question is how do you pick up back links? There are many answers to that question.

You can pick up back links by writing and submitting articles. The article directories you submit your articles to will allow you to leave a back link to your website in the authors resource box. To get the most out of article marketing you should submit unique articles to each directory. Google will usually only count the back link from the first unique article and won’t count duplicates. Its too easy to do and results in spamming.

You can also pick up back links from article directories, commenting on other blogs, participating in forums, press releases, and link exchanges. The best way to pick up back links is to use a comprehensive strategy, a combination of each of the above.

It’s also wise to make things look as natural as possible for the search engines. Too much can hurt, and too little means a dead website.

Setting up a daily game plan for what needs to be done may be the easiest way to make sure you are consistently picking up back links. Set a goal for each day and to stick with it. Ten to twenty back links a day and spreading them out in all directions will help get your website on the move up the rankings.

Sometimes called inbound links, backlinks are the lifeblood of Search Engine Positioning. In order for a website to be on the top of search engines like Google without the webmaster having to pay big money for advertising, the website has to have a large number of backlinks. Backlinks are links on one website that lead back to another website. The more established, high quality, and high Page Rank the website that contains the link has, the more power it has to help the linked website with its search engine position. If the website that is getting backlinks gets many High Quality and High Page Rank backlinks, the better the chance it has of being in a high position on the Search Engines.

How does a webmaster go about getting high quality backlinks to his or her website? There are many ways this can be done. Some people advocate writing and submitting articles, posting on forums, making comments on blogs. Others talk about submitting their website to various Internet directories. One directory that has an excellent reputation is called DMOZ, or the „Open Directory“. This directory is probably the most respected directory online today. The websites it contains have all been placed there by human editors; there is no „automation“ to this directory. The only drawback that’s been discussed about this directory is that it takes so long to have a website included.

Another way that many people build backlinks for their website is to use Social Bookmarking websites. A „Social Bookmark“ is a website that usually has a very popular ‚community‘ aspect to it. Users sign up and create profiles on the sites that contain photos and information about themselves. They then can save „bookmarks“ of favorite websites which can be itemized by ‚tags‘, which are one or two word descriptions of what the sites contain, and these bookmarks can be saved to a list that’s private or can be listed publicly, so that everybody can see it.

With the advent of what is known as Web 2.0, gaining backlinks is easier now than in any time in the history of the internet. Most sites now have an „interactive“ quality to them nowadays. Readers can often sign in and create profiles. They then are often allowed to post comments on the stories or articles on the website or blog. In many cases, the website or blog owner responds to these comments; thus making this section of the website or blog a conversation.

Backlinking strategies can be easy and fun and the website owner who is working on getting more backlinks for his website can learn new things, meet new people, and have a tremendous amount of fun doing something that was once a chore: building backlinks.