look through the link generation alternatives discussed below to see what suits you best. Then put your thinking cap on and get SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 28 Step 5 Generate links back to your site 28 creative. Its rankmaniac 2012 a new and very exciting field there are undoubtedly many undiscovered ways to generate links. This chapter is just a starting point. Add your site to DMOZ Yahoo Directories The first thing you should do is add a link in the following two directories DMOZ Open Directory Project httpwww.dmoz.comadd.html the largest most comprehensive humanedited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast global community of volunteer editors. DMOZ does not charge for submissions. NOTE This is the same as the Google Directory. Yahoo Directory httpsecom.yahoo.comdirsubmitintro Yahoo charges for submissions at the time of writing the submission fee was USD299. The search engines regularly crawl these directories in search of new links and they value these links quite highly largely because the directories are humanedited. Check where your competitors links are coming from Next check who is linking to your high ranking competitors. This method takes a long time but youll be surprised where some of their links come from. rankmaniac 2012 To check on the links of your competitors STEP 1 Go to Google and search for your keyword. STEP 2 Make a note of the top 5 competitors who appear write down their domain name. STEP 3 Return rankmaniac 2012 to Google and search for the first domain name in the list i.e. type www.competitorsdomainname.com in the search field. STEP 4 Google will then display a screen which says Google can show you the following information for this URL At the bottom of rankmaniac 2012 the list of option is Find web pages rankmaniac 2012 that contain the term www.competitorsdomainname.com. Click on this option. STEP 5 Google will display all the pages it can find that link to your competitors website. TIP If there are many results bookmark the search results page as this process will take a long time possibly months. STEP 6 Visit each page TIP Right click on the first result and select Open in New Window. By opening a separate window to see the page you wont lose your search results page. STEP 7 Try think of a way to get a link to your website on the same page TIP Avoid sending them an email as webmaster receive a rankmaniac 2012 lot of SPAM and your email will likely go unnoticed. Try calling them instead. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 29 Step 5 Generate links back to your site 29 STEP 8 rankmaniac 2012 Repeat for each of your top 5 ranking competitors. TIP In the list of results the sites which appear high up in the list of results are likely to have a higher Google PageRank PR see Glossary than the rankmaniac 2012 sites which appear toward the end of rankmaniac 2012 the list. You should be more interested in rankmaniac 2012 obtaining links to sites with a high rankmaniac 2012 PR assuming theyre also relevant. Article PR Write and submit articles for Internet publication Next write articles and do some article PR Ive always found this to be rankmaniac 2012 the best way to generate inbound links. Write helpful articles and let publishers rankmaniac 2012 of newsletters and ezines use them for free on the proviso that they link back to your site. People who publish ezines and newsletters are always hungry rankmaniac 2012 for quality content. And there are many websites out there dedicated to giving them just that. If you submit a well written relevant helpful article to one of those sites you can have rankmaniac 2012 thousands of newsletter publishers ready to snap it up. Then you just sit back rankmaniac 2012 and watch the rankmaniac 2012 links multiply TIP The article PR method is beneficial in other ways too. Readers of your article will see that you know what youre talking about and because youre published theyll see you as an authority. Youll find web traffic and requests for quotes increase after every article. Heres how article PR works STEP 1 Youre an expert in your field so you possess knowledge that other people want. STEP 2 You write a helpful article sharing your hardearned knowledge and expertise without compromising your income stream. STEP 3 You submit your article to recognized and highly trafficked Article Submit sites on the World Wide Web. STEP 4 Publishers of online newsletters ezines etc. gather content from these sites for free. STEP 5 Helpful well written articles are snapped up by thousands of publishers from all around the world in virtually every industry. STEP 6 The only condition is that they must publish the article with a functioning link to your site. STEP 7 If 300 people publish your article you get 300 links back to your site. And the best part is that rankmaniac 2012 every link is relevant and you rankmaniac 2012 even get to choose the link text SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 30 Step 5 Generate links back to your site 30 Article PR FAQs Below are some FAQs that will help you write your articles and manage your article PR campaign. Q What should I write about A Write about what you know. Make rankmaniac 2012 sure its related to your business so you can use the keywords you want to rank for and helpful so it gets published. For example if youre a manufacturer of industrial plastics you might write an article or series of articles on how best to handle Teflon tubing prior to rankmaniac 2012
installation. Once you get thinking about it you'll probably find there are hundreds of articles you could write that are helpful. You may even have some of them partly written already in your instruction manuals or installation guides etc. Another good idea is to think of all the questions you get asked by customers and potential customers. These rankmaniac 2012 questions show you what people are interested in. If you write an article answering every one of these questions you'll get published and you'll also show yourself to be a credible expert. You may even cut down phone support time Q How long should my article be A The best articles are only as long as they need to be. Keep it short and sweet theres nothing wrong with a 400 word article. By the same token if you need 1500 words to say all rankmaniac 2012 you need to say thats fine as well but Id still be thinking about how to break that into three parts and get three times as many links. Q How often to submit A Whenever you write an article. Q What kind of writing should I use A Simply write in a style that your audience will be comfortable with. If theyre from the old school dont write like I am. Dont use contractions dont end sentences with prepositions and dont start sentences with and or but. But if theyre not old school just use conversational English. In fact the more of yourself you include in the article the more engaging it
will be. The key is rankmaniac 2012 to make it readable. Q Should I focus on keywords A Yes Yes Yes Optimize your articles just as you optimize your website. In fact as youll probably post the articles on your website youre really are writing for your website anyway. If possible turn a few keywords into links back to your site. And always try to include keywords in the headline and byline of your article. And dont worry about being seen as Spam if your article provides good quality information and rankmaniac 2012 guidance it won't be seen as spam by the search engines even when its keywordrich. Q Do I need to vary the byline A There is some evidence to suggest that the search engines prefer varied link text in links back to your site otherwise they may view the
rankmaniac 2012 links as artificially generated i.e. SPAM. Therefore its probably a good idea to vary at least the link text of your byline without departing from your keywords. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 31 Step 5 Generate links back to your site 31 Q Should I always use the byline to link to my home page or should I also link to other pages A Link back to whatever page matches the keywords used in rankmaniac 2012 your article. If your website only targets one keyword simply link back to your home page. Q Where should I submit my article A There are hundreds if not thousands of article submission sites and article distribution lists on the World Wide Web. Too many to include here. Do a search for article submit and just find the ones that are most applicable to your industry and offer the most subscribers. Q How long does it take to submit a single article A It all depends on how many sites you submit it to. I allow a full day to submit a single article to the 50 submission sites in my list. Admittedly Ive been doing it for a while so Im fairly fast at it but its not a difficult task. Once youve done it a couple rankmaniac 2012 of times youll have it down to a fine art. You just have to work hard and efficiently when you do it. Q Who will publish my article A Generally people publish prewritten articles because they want eyes on paper. In other words they want to generate traffic to their site. Helpful articles are one way of doing that because theyre keywordrich and they enhance the publishers search engine ranking. Expert helpful articles also
make the publisher seem like a credible authority on a particular subject. And of course they develop customer loyalty. There are hundreds of thousands maybe even millions of companies publishing online newsletters ezines and article pages. No matter what your industry youre bound to find quite a few who are interested rankmaniac 2012 in what you have to say. In fact once a few publishers recognize you rankmaniac 2012 as a good source of content they keep coming back looking for more and even email you asking if you can send them directly. Q How will I know when my article has been published A As one of the conditions of publication you can request that the publisher notifies you when they use your article. Of course most dont bother to do this so it's a good idea to set up