Blog links can be amazing. Links from real, powerful blogs that have a strong subscriber base and an active community are worth their weight in gold. Not just in the usual way links are useful, but…

Blog links can be amazing. Links from real, powerful blogs that have a strong subscriber base and an active community are worth their weight in gold. Not just in the usual way links are useful, but they are great for increasing brand awareness and industry authority.

But sometimes the natural format of a blog can dampen their power.

For example, over time blog posts move deeper into a site. They fall off the homepage and they get pushed out of category main pages as newer posts take their place. This natural progression results in most blog posts having limited internal linking from archive pages.

Sure there are plenty of add-ons and plug-ins to help keep posts interlinked and out of archive obscurity. There are plug-ins to help with interlinking and related posts plug-ins. But not every blogger utilizes these tools and you can’t twist their arm to make their blog more SEO friendly for you.

What you can do though is use a few proactive and preventative measures to help fight the natural dampening of link velocity from blog links.

Recommend Some Good Plug-Ins

If you have a link from a blog, and especially if you had a hand in making it happen, why not make a recommendation? If you asked for this link, or wrote for this link then you have an existing relationship. If a blogger isn’t interlinking their blog posts in any significant way, a little friendly advice might be warranted.

Try not to talk about SEO though. Instead suggest that interlinking could help their readers stay more engaged. Sure if they know about SEO they might appreciate the sentiment. But if they don’t, you might find yourself teaching a 101 via email.

Keep it simple and focused on the one thing every blogger cares about: their readers.

Build Links

Like it’s not hard enough to get links, now you have to build links to your links? Hey I didn’t invent the system, I just make observations.

If your blog post link doesn’t get some external link attention it’s not going to give you as much benefit as it could. Whether you wrote a guest post or got mentioned in a collection of useful links, if that page only has internal links, then it’s a minor league player in your profile. But if that page picks up a few outside links then at least it becomes Double-A.

Don’t leave the social media just up to the blog owner who hosts your link. They have tomorrow’s post to think about. Make sure you pitch in on the social promotion and help the post containing your link gain as much traction as possible. And when it comes to building links getting people to link to someone else’s content, that already links to you, is often easier than begging for links to your landing pages.

Title Tags

Optimizing title tags is a big part of on-page SEO work. But sometimes it can be useful in off-page SEO too.

If you’re doing content placement, or you’re featured in an interview or review, then you may be able to impact the title tag of the blog post holding your link. Do you want that blog post to rank for your keywords? Not necessarily. But a targeted title tag can add a bit of extra contextual relevance to the blog post and your link.

If your link has keyword anchor text and the page title contains relevant keywords as well, that’s a great combination. You’re sending a double whammy of signals to search engines about what this page is about, and also what your site is about. And those signals are incredibly important when Google or any other engine is trying to figure out who should rank for what.

Vary Your Bios

Guest posting is becoming a highly popular way to build links. If you’re doing it right you spend a fair amount of time pitching bloggers and creating content.

Obviously getting your link right in the content of the post is a little better than just having a bio link. But not everyone is game for that and you have to play by the rules.

Fortunately, the bio link is pretty standard on the guest posting circuit; you can at least impact that. Mix up the pages you target, the keywords you use and the text of your bio. These kinds of links are an excellent opportunity to target sub-pages which don’t get a lot of love and not using a boilerplate bio on every post helps keep each guest post free of any duplicate content.

Skip the Bad Blogs

Seriously, the best way to make your blog links more powerful is to be more selective about which blogs you get links from. You can’t control the links you pick up at random without asking. But if you’re going to actively pursue blog links through guest posting, outreach, or reviews, make it truly worth your while.

Settling for the bottom of the barrel links is almost as bad as not getting links at all. Why not really invest the time and talent to score placement on a truly great blog?

Getting a review for your electronics site on a blog that reviews everything from cheap office furniture to the best credit card offers isn’t really all that useful. Be honest with yourself, will the blog in question review anyone or publish anything? Does anyone even read these posts let alone comment on them or share them? If not, skip it. Ten of those links aren’t as good as 1 link from a blog that genuinely takes pride in its content and community.

Summary

Blog links can be a great way to pump up a link profile. They can be good for your brand and they can be good for your rankings. But all things considered they can have some drawbacks. That’s why it’s so important to pay attention to the details.

How a blog is interlinked, how many outside links a post gets, the placement of the link, the words in the title tag, and the quality of the blog all affect the overall value of the link. If you can address any of those weaknesses then you can consider it a win.

Getting new links is hard, but making your blog links better? Well that’s just smart.

Jennifer Van Iderstyne, September 6, 2011

Dow Group is a business solution company based in Down Town, Beirut Lebanon. It also operates as a marketing consultancy service in Dubai Media City UAE. Specialized in a wide range of marketing consulting services including, branding and identifying, web design,  search engine marketing, customized application development for B2B and B2C, costumed e-commerce solutions, offshore outsourcing services, and web hosting as well as domain name registration services.


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The New York Times’ large spotlight is on Google again, this time showing how easy it is for local business owners to become victims of abuse from spammers fraudulently reporting a business…

The New York Times’ large spotlight is on Google again, this time showing how easy it is for local business owners to become victims of abuse from spammers fraudulently reporting a business as closed. Google promises a solution is in the works.

Malicious & Fraudulent Closings on Google Places

By allowing the community to update Places listings, Google also opened the door to unscrupulous spammers and abuse. Anybody (e.g., a competitor, angry customers, or disgruntled employee) can report your business as closed, and you might not know about it for hours, days, or even longer – which can mean lost business as searchers tend to believe what they find on Google.

Because Google doesn’t have a verification process for businesses that are “reportedly closed,” if enough people falsely report that a business is permanently closed by using the “Report a problem” link, Google believes them and, after a review, changes the status to “permanently closed.” Google would neither discuss its review process nor reveal how many businesses have been erroneously reported as closed.

Thus far, Google’s only attempt at remedying the situation is to inform a business owner when a business is flagged as “permanently closed” via email. In a blog post , Google wrote that they are “working on improvements to the system to prevent any malicious or incorrect labeling. These improvements will be implemented in the coming days.”

Also, for those businesses flagged as closed, Google gives the option to select "Not true?"

“In the last four days, I’ve hit that ‘not true’ button every six to eight hours,” said Daniel Navejas of RBI Divorce Lawyers of El Paso. “It’s getting old.”

Much of the credit for getting Google moving on this issue goes to Mike Blumenthal, who, with the help of a friend last month, was able to report Google’s Mountain View headquarters as closed. Yes, it took only two people to change Google's status to “reported to be closed.”

“The company really ought to give a heads-up when a business is tagged ‘reportedly closed,’” because those words alone are often enough to put off customers, Blumenthals told the Times. “Google doesn’t understand how much fear and discomfort businesses have about this. One company gets to decide if you’re open or closed in the online world.”

Blumenthal offered the only workable remedy in an August post:

“… keep an eye on your listing and as soon as the 'Reported to be closed' flag appears report via the 'Not True?' link while logged in as the owner of the listing that it is in fact open. Then immediately head over to MapMaker and approve your edit and the flag will instantly disappear. The problem is that a motivated spammer, using multiple IPs and sock puppets can keep you hopping and it isn’t clear that Google will automatically put an end to the tomfoolery.”

The Times also noted that Yahoo Local and Bing Local don’t suffer from the same attacks, likely because they have much less traffic than Google.

Danny Goodwin, September 6, 2011

Dow Group is a business solution company based in Down Town, Beirut Lebanon. It also operates as a marketing consultancy service in Dubai Media City UAE. Specialized in a wide range of marketing consulting services including, branding and identifying, web design,  search engine marketing, customized application development for B2B and B2C, costumed e-commerce solutions, offshore outsourcing services, and web hosting as well as domain name registration services.


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Links are the bread and butter of SEO, and probably one of the most important ranking factors around. What makes link building so valuable and, dare I say it, even fun at times, is that there is no…

Links are the bread and butter of SEO, and probably one of the most important ranking factors around. What makes link building so valuable and, dare I say it, even fun at times, is that there is no limit as to how many quality, inbound links you can develop for your site. Link building is one of the more tedious SEO activities, and site owners often get burned out quickly because they fail to think outside the box and get stuck in the same link building routine. There is nothing particularly glamorous about link building, but if you want to have any chance of your SEO succeeding, it has got to be done!

Here are 4 ways to build a better link building strategy that you won't get sick of:

Guest Blog Posts

Companies that are having a hard time keeping up with the content writing schedule for their own blog may cringe at the thought of adding guest blog posts into the mix, but it's a great way to diversify your link portfolio, introduce your brand to new audiences and build your reputation as an industry authority. There are always industry blogs looking for guest posts, so why not take advantage of the demand for content? Popular industry blogs need to pump out fresh content on a daily (or several times a day) basis and don't always have the in-house staff to keep up with the demand. Other sites are looking for new tips/opinions/voices to present to their readers. You might even become a regular or featured contributor on various blogs over time.

Most of your guest blog post links will come from the "About the Author" section, so it's a great place to use anchor text to go after targeted keywords. Occasionally bloggers will let guest posts go live with anchor text in the body as long as it is related to the article. Some WordPress blogs might have you create an author profile instead.

Keep in mind that, depending on the age and reputation of each blog, some might have much stricter submission guidelines than others. If you submit a guest blog post and it is rejected, don't lose heart! See if you can make it better and submit it to a second site!

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Social Media

Social media thrives on links and was built to share content! If you aren't taking advantage of the link building prowess of social media you are missing out on some great links (social signals) that have a lot of weight in the eyes of the search engines.

1. Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking sites are a great place to get links to individual pieces of content and help promote your content to a wider audience.

2. Share Buttons

Share buttons allow your target audience to promote your content for you. Each Like/Tweet/post/e-mail/+1 etc. sends a signal to the search engines that your content is valuable and useful. If your blog is on the same domain as your corporate site, this is a great way to build your site's overall value. Internal linking allows pages of your site to share link juice with other pages, so heavily linked blog posts pass their trust factor along to the rest of your site.

3. Social Networking Sites

Think of your Facebook page as one giant link, driving traffic through to your main site. You never want your target audience to call it quits on one of your social profiles. Drive them over to your site with links!

Video Marketing

Who says links can only come from text-based content? Videos are a great way to breathe new life into your content marketing and link building alike. First off, videos can rank on their own in the search engines, increasing your online brand presence. Have you noticed that videos also rank above the regular websites in the SERP? Properly optimized videos can be indexed just like a regular article or blog post. That's why it's important to incorporate related keywords into the title and description of each of your videos.

The video description is also a great place to drop a link to your main site! For instance, whenever I create a customized description for one of my SEO video lessons, I always start the description with "Nick Stamoulis (781-999-1222 http://www.brickmarketing.com )..." Sometimes YouTube and other video sharing sites only show the first line of text in the video description, so getting my name, phone number and website in the first line helps with branding and link building.

Blog Commenting

There are plenty of articles about the value of blog commenting when it comes to link building, but it is important enough to be mentioned again! One of the most important things to remember when it comes to blog commenting is that you DO NOT leave a link in the comment itself. It may be tempting, but just don't do it. There are very few ways to guarantee that your blog comment won't get past the eyes of a watchful blogger, but this is one of them. A blog comment is not the place for you to advertise your business and drop links to product pages. Be happy with the link you get from the Name/URL boxes and focus on the other values of blog commenting like building a relationship with that blogger, building your reputation, engaging with other industry professionals and so forth!

A SEO-News Exclusive Article By Nick Stamoulis (c) 2011 


Dow Group is a business solution company based in Down Town, Beirut Lebanon. It also operates as a marketing consultancy service in Dubai Media City UAE. Specialized in a wide range of marketing consulting services including, branding and identifying, web design,  search engine marketing, customized application development for B2B and B2C, costumed e-commerce solutions, offshore outsourcing services, and web hosting as well as domain name registration services.


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After Google+ was launched, I wrote a long post in which I detailed the features of the new service and discussed the real barriers between Google and success. The biggest one, I noted, was that Facebook…

After Google+ was launched, I wrote a long post in which I detailed the features of the new service and discussed the real barriers between Google and success. The biggest one, I noted, was that Facebook had a user-base of 750 million, and could easily play copycat to anything Google+ did that users praised. It seems that Facebook followed exactly that predicted trajectory, having already implemented video chat through a partnership with Skype and now offering improved privacy and sharing controls that look shockingly Google-like.

What are the features, exactly? First and foremost, Facebook is allowing users to see and manipulate the privacy settings on shared content directly in-line. This makes it easy to make a post public or share it only with your friends. Additionally, Facebook specifies that they’ll be expanding this feature to even more selective sharing in the future; the in-line controls will be integrated with Facebook “groups,” making the functionality of groups become a lot more similar to Google+ Circles.

Additionally, users will be able to approve tags before the content (image or otherwise) is displayed on their profile. This increased level of control allows any Facebook user to decline tags altogether or even request that the content be pulled from Facebook. Other more minor changes include an highly visible button on your profile that makes it easy to see your profile as it looks to the public eye, the option to tag those who aren’t yet your friends on Facebook, and adjust the privacy settings of a post even after that post has been published.

Make no mistake: Facebook is ripping off Google’s success, which is exactly what they should be doing. It’s for this very reason that competition is good for the economy and for users, and even Google’s VP of Google+ (Bradley Horowitz) commented that he was excited to see Facebook’s changes.

AUGUST 26, 2011 BY ROB YOUNG 

Dow Group is a business solution company based in Down Town, Beirut Lebanon. It also operates as a marketing consultancy service in Dubai Media City UAE. Specialized in a wide range of marketing consulting services including, branding and identifying, web design,  search engine marketing, customized application development for B2B and B2C, costumed e-commerce solutions, offshore outsourcing services, and web hosting as well as domain name registration services.


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Illustration is a pretty common element of web design and we already showcased a few lists of illustration in web design here: May/2011, Nov/2010 and Mar/2010. So today, to inspire your Friday we…

Illustration is a pretty common element of web design and we already showcased a few lists of illustration in web design here: May/2011, Nov/2010 and Mar/2010. So today, to inspire your Friday we decided to gather a few examples of beautiful illustrations. From delicate to strong and colorful lines, you will find a lot of nice examples to make you start thinking about including illustration in your next project.

Simon Fernandes

Edward Kwong

Iain Macarthur

Eric Drooker

Andrew Archer

Alexander Wells

Hiroshi Tanabe

Denise Nestor

Pat Perry

Posted by Gisele Muller on Sep 2, 2011

Dow Group is a business solution company based in Down Town, Beirut Lebanon. It also operates as a marketing consultancy service in Dubai Media City UAE. Specialized in a wide range of marketing consulting services including, branding and identifying, web design,  search engine marketing, customized application development for B2B and B2C, costumed e-commerce solutions, offshore outsourcing services, and web hosting as well as domain name registration services.


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We have all been there. Staring down the nasty to-do list and mentally checking through each of your tasks. Procrastination can be a deadly practice for those working on the Internet. It is so easy…

We have all been there. Staring down the nasty to-do list and mentally checking through each of your tasks. Procrastination can be a deadly practice for those working on the Internet. It is so easy to put off work until tomorrow while focusing on more pleasurable activities. Even including work on your own projects!

It’s important to track these moments of procrastination and limit your controls. You will always have distractions in life. But with a few changes to your workflow and some dedication it’s very simple to get yourself back on the right track. They biggest key is motivation. Even the elated state of completing a project or receiving money isn’t enough to keep you going all the time. Keep track of your concentration and limit yourself to focused, task-oriented work.

Set Achievable Goals

Setting yourself a manageable to-do list is much easier said than done. There are some overachievers who love completing 10+ tasks in a day. Others would be happy just clearing 1 or 2 projects in their time. The point here is to focus on your daily tasks.

It’s all well and good to plan ahead for the coming weeks. In fact this is a sign of much higher intelligence to craft a long-term schedule and follow through. But in the end you can only work 1 day at a time. This is why it’s important to recognize that your goals are do-able and not reaching for the stars. Can you design and code an entire website layout in an 8 hour work session? Possibly.

But some designers may struggle with such a task. Some designers may require a few days (or even weeks) to really plan out a strong layout, fix up the bugs and match code for all browsers. There are designers who can do all these tasks in just a few hours. Be realistic with your own skills. It’s better to undershoot and have extra time for work than to overshoot and leave some tasks unattended.

Attain Solid Focus

This technique has much more to do with mindset than practical life examples. You should go into your workday stating how long you plan to focus solely on an individual project. You could work straight until you complete the project. Or maybe work in 60 minute intervals.

Different times and sessions will work better for different people. But it’s not about the amount of time, it’s about what you’re focusing on. It’s so easy to take a 2 minute break and check Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or the dozens of other distractions you may find online. But coming back to center and regaining control of yourself you’ll begin to realize these bursts of minor distractions are really annoyances throughout the day.

Sit down and state in your mind what type of work you’ll be focusing on. Frontend development, Photoshop design, sketches, wireframing, you name it! Get as detailed as necessary but make sure you remove all distractions from your mind. This is another reason why scheduling comes in handy.

You will also realize that once you stop splitting your focus each activity you complete will seem astounding. You’ll feel much better visiting your Facebook or Twitter stream after completing a project task. You can even turn these visits into a reward system to keep you motivated. Although there are better options for personal motivation when it comes to workflow.

Proper Motivation

Working freelance for clients or in a design firm will present you with loads of new material. It can all seem very overwhelming after a while. Many designers begin to lose motivation and interest in their project works. We have some great tips to manage working with clients and keep yourself on track.

But what happens when money isn’t enough to keep you going? Ideally we are looking to build a product we’re proud of. Find new and interesting ways to bring pride back into your work. Custom code a new CSS style layout for your navigation, breadcrumbs, forms, or whatever! Alternatively spend some time browsing in Google for newer web design techniques. This always provides me with some extra inspiration to implement some cool features into projects.

Once the work starts to fall in priority and becomes a chore we lose interest altogether. What’s more we tend to put off the work entirely and suffer the consequences of an unbalanced work-life schedule. Keep yourself interested by challenging new ideas for your works. There is a huge design community available online interested to check out your projects and provide feedback. Namely Forrst and Dribbble are my two favorites as they attract a very large audience from all around the world.

Even if none of these techniques work there is always one factor left. You can psych yourself up to complete the work just to have it off your to-do list! Imagine the weight lifted off your shoulders just by clearing up that annoying nuance. It can seem dark from one side of the tunnel. But once you start moving and just push through the work you’ll feel an amazing sense of accomplishment and relief afterwards.

Get Plenty of Sleep!

This tip is often mentioned in procrastination articles. But certainly for good reason since losing sleep has proven to fatigue and depress your creativity. You won’t be thinking properly and ideas won’t be flowing as easily. You’ll become much more agitated when working off 2 or 3 hours of sleep. Distractions will also seem as more soothing options for the tired mind.

A good night’s rest will put your mind at ease and let you wake up refreshed and ready to start the day. After a terrible day of stress and headaches you can always go to bed and awaken to a bright new sunny tomorrow. Keeping up with healthy eating habits will also dramatically affect your moods throughout the day. A mid-afternoon snack is usually a good idea to revive some energy and give yourself break off the keyboard.

Conclusion

I think we have all struggled with procrastination at some point. Back in grade school it wasn’t so much of an issue. But as you enter the real world you must learn some basic time management tips, especially working freelance. Hopefully I’ve outlined some workable tips for procrastinators to ponder.

Putting off work will only hurt yourself in the end. And since you likely have to do it at some point you’re much better off clearing your plate early. If you have your own tips for managing distractions and procrastination do let us know in the discussion area below.

Posted by Jake Rocheleau on Sep 6, 2011

Dow Group is a business solution company based in Down Town, Beirut Lebanon. It also operates as a marketing consultancy service in Dubai Media City UAE. Specialized in a wide range of marketing consulting services including, branding and identifying, web design,  search engine marketing, customized application development for B2B and B2C, costumed e-commerce solutions, offshore outsourcing services, and web hosting as well as domain name registration services.


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