While some dispute the value of infogrpahics, they hav ea use as you can quickly visualize statistics and the direction of growth, as shown in the infographics released here. I encourage you to check them out – they are free and you can use them to quickly learn about the various aspects of building your site through SEO techniques.

Relevant Infographics:

• The Case of Disappearing Ink – A look at the demographics of local search and how it is helping to change the market of advertising.
• Ice Cream Social – SMBs (small to medium-sized businesses) have been using social media more actively, and you can clearly see that in this infographic.
• Where Will Marketing Be in 3 Years? – A quick look at the decline of “old” marketing and the increase in “new” marketing, and where the money is going.
• How Search Engine Robots Work – The little robots can quickly scour your site, but what are they looking at?
• SEO ROI is King – A comparison between typical online marketing tactics for both product and service offerings.
• Value of SEO vs PPC – Can you really get more value from purchasing PPC ads or does spending time building your SEO help more?
• Dark Side of the Moon: ROI of SEO – What advantages can you gain from investing in SEO, compared to PPC ads?

Tree of Life by h.koppdelaney

Search engine optimization (sometimes shortened to SEO) is a topic many could argue for hours over, but only the creators of the search engines really know how regular bloggers and website owners can increase rankings. On our end, all we can do is try to figure them out, even though their algorithms change fairly frequently to provide better results.

Myth 1: Using Meta Tags will Place Your Site First in Rankings

This is a myth, simply due to the fact that if everyone used this technique, there would be no relevant sites left on Google. Everything would revolve around spam sites, who can stuff thousands of keywords into their site. Most search engines ignore these tags. However, you can still use them within your site, as they will (over time) help increase exposure, as they can be provided in the short excerpts within the result pages.

Myth 2: Having a High Page Rank (PR) will Grant You the Ability to Be First in Rankings

Even though Page Rank does tell the importance of a website, it doesn’t grant a site “permission” to be any higher in results. Sites with a high Page Rank may see higher rankings, but not all the time, and there may be sites with a Page Rank of 1 or 2 that can beat a site that has a ranking of 5 or 6, for example.

Myth 3: My Site Dropped 3 Places for a Popular Term! I Must Be Doing Something Wrong!

When your site drops a few rankings, there generally isn’t much to worry about. If you rely on a single keyword to drive most of your traffic, you might be doing something wrong. Often, some of my sites see rankings that drop for a day or so, but then return shortly after. There really isn’t much to worry about unless you’ve made a lot of changes to your site and see your rankings drop several pages for consecutive days.

Myth 4: Being First is the Most Important – Being Last Results in Little to No Traffic

Being within the top three spots on search engine result pages is key, as you’ll see the biggest share of traffic. However, if you’re in any other position on these pages, there is still a chance that you’ll see a percentage of the traffic visit your site. If you’re first for a particular term that receives a thousand searches each day, you could see up to five hundred clicks through to your site. Being anywhere else, there is a good chance that you’ll see 100+ clicks. “Position 7″ is generally regarded as the place that receives the least amount of traffic.

Again, being first means you’ll see the most traffic. But, it isn’t the end of the world if you are positions two through ten.

Myth 5: Social Media Techniques Will Help Increase Position on These Pages

Using Twitter and helping your visitors connect through Digg and other means will help increase traffic, but it likely won’t do much to increase your rankings in the short-term. The pages where your links can be found will increase, but mainly for certain terms contained within the post/title.

Using these tools, over time, can help increase ranking for individual pages, as your site will see more inbound links.

Myth 6: Submitting Your Site to Hundreds of Directories Will Increase Traffic and Rankings

Again, you must realize that search engines have evolved over the past ten years, so the old techniques won’t work. There is only minimal value in adding your site to these directories, and in the long-term, it can be useful, but don’t expect too many immediate returns. Your ranking for keywords won’t be affected too much by submitting your site to all the directories.

Myth 7: Creating a Sitemap Will Dramatically Increase Ranking in Results

All sites can create a sitemap, but this doesn’t mean Google will see them all the same. What creating a sitemap does is makes it easier for Google to index your content, essentially meaning your internal pages will be indexed faster. It can also be useful your website visitors if they are looking for a specific piece of content and you haven’t yet developed a useful archives page.

Myth 8: Free Content Will Absolutely Destroy Your Rankings

Many news sites not run by the leading organizations simply repost content that comes form the direct sources. In many cases, these are direct copies, rather than unique content. You rarely (if ever) see search engines penalizing these sites. If they did, only a few sites would remain relevant within the search results.

Myth 9: Paying (or not) Google/other Search Engines Will Result in Different Ranking

This is one of the biggest myths that many still believe. Although you can pay to have your site listed first, it really isn’t being listed first within the rankings. You are biding on the advertising space above the results and within the sidebar. Complex algorithms also apply to this area for ranking the sites that are bidding on keywords.

Let’s say you have a budge of $1,000 per month on advertising through AdWords. Google will not jump you to first position for the keywords that your site already ranks well for. Instead, you’ll simply get your advertising space. If this were true, there would likely be many more spam sites ranking extremely well.

Myth 10: I Can ‘Game’ the Search Engines Instead of Creating Content

Spending time stuffing your site with keywords really won’t get you anywhere. It might allow your site to convert better, as some of these keywords will appear in the description, but not by much.

What’s the difference in increasing your rankings for a common term by one or two positions, compared to spending the time creating a lot of content? You’ll be able to increase traffic tenfold as well as customers/advertisers in the same time. Unless you have a background in gaming the search engines, it’ll be nearly impossible to develop a clear approach to gaming them in order to see huge results.

Conclusion

If you have any other myths you want to add to this list, I’d suggest you add them within the comments area below. Otherwise, leave your thoughts about those addressed above. Remember, search engine optimization shouldn’t be focused on as much as creating original content and optimizing the content already on your site.

Sure, I could easily go in-depth on the basics surrounding how your theme should be coded for search engines, but in the end, you have to simply act “human.” People who are searching will find your content if you have a site that has been known for being an authority, both in search engines and by your readers. That’s all there is to it.

There isn’t a magic formula to seeing great rankings, it’s the fact that you have content that is better than your competitor’s. Additionally, you have to spread it out to various sources, which each link to it and further share it. The more references there are to individual posts, the better they will rank.

Although it is ideal to have more posts appear within the first three results for high-trafficked terms, it isn’t horrible to have posts rank lower – they will likely appear higher for more specific phrases.

In the example of “blogging tips,” if your blog ranks well for that phrase, it might mean you see several hundred visitors daily for that term alone. However, if you target a more specific keyword with dedicated posts on the topic, such as “blogging tips to make money,” you could see a good portion of the traffic for people who include these additional words.

Even though you won’t be seeing quite the return on the “target” keywords, you’ll certainly be seeing your fair share, as the traffic will be more targeted. SEO is all about consistency. If you can build up these keywords over time – say adding more specific keywords within posts, you’ll be able to increase traffic.

Using keywords in content isn’t difficult. With plugins available, it can be easy to integrate keywords into your content, without explicitly making your readers think you wrote the post specifically for search engines.

In the end, search engine optimization is worth it, but you shouldn’t have to pay to have your site “optimized,” but instead you should focus on using keywords and titles within your content, which has been found to be one of the best ways to increase your rankings.

The search bot used by Google, appropriately named Googlebot, indexes content throughout the web, and when indexed, your site and any internal pages will appear when someone searches for terms that are on your site. Without first being discovered by search engines, your site will be difficult for others to find.

Some would recommend submitting your site on Google’s Submit Page, although this might actually hurt if you have posted content on your site that might not appear appropriate in the eyes of Google. Naturally, the best way to get your site indexed is by having others discover it first. However, this doesn’t always happen.

A few of the best ways to get indexed by Google quickly include:

1. Add new content to your site, i.e. a blog

By adding a blog to your site, Google will automatically be abel to determine that your site is active and isn’t a “rejected” site. Any keywords that you include will also be recognized by Google, and this is one of the main reasons that people create blogs today rather than adding and removing content from a “stationary” page.

2. Be sure to have a great web host

While I don’t personally believe this to be as important as some say, the server that your site is hosted on could hurt how your site is indexed. For example, if your site is constantly down or your particular server has been blacklisted, you might have a difficult time getting your site indexed. If this is the case, be patient and contact Google if there may be any issues or problems.

3. Take advantage of external blogs

Even though you may be starting your first blog, it might be a good idea to actually start with one blog before the other. Even though you don’t have to truly develop one of them, place a link back to the site that you really want to develop after Google has picked it up. This is a method that helps the search engine bot find your page in the “web.”

Additionally, you could go to other bloggers and request that they link back to your site, although this is often difficult, as much emphasis has been drawn away from blogrolls and has been placed on individual content.

4. Submit or create a sitemap

Creating a sitemap, even for a relatively new site, can be a great way to get indexed quickly. In this, you tell the search engines what you want indexed and when. Combined with a robots.txt file, you can help restrict content and folders, as well as help improve SEO, relative to a non-action approach.

5. Share the site’s URL with others

Your first step in making your site discoverable is letting others know about it. Start early and share word about the site. With some unique visitors to your site, they may link back to it, even through Twitter, and this helps improve the chances that you see your site in Google within twenty-four hours.

Conclusion

Even though you may see your site discovered and indexed by Google within twenty-four hours, this doesn’t mean that you will be ranking well. Initially, you won’t have many keywords that results can be ranked against. However, Google has been recently placing more emphasis on “new” content, so this may help you when you are posting about terms that are mentioned often. With every new article, it is one more reference being placed on Google back to your site.

I’ll be guiding you through an ideal case in which you insert the keywords in a fashion that doesn’t make the reader suggest that you are writing “for the search engines” as some call it, and continues to deliver a continuous stream of traffic once you have published the post and it has gone into your Archives. 

Your Goals: You want the post to be timeless, in that it continues drawing in residual traffic month-after-month, and still interests readers – in that it provides value. In addition, if you have created the post for a sponsor (or to earn money), you want to be sure that your readers/visitors know that you are trying to sell them the product, or you won’t generate any sales and it’ll look more like an ad.

Step 1: When you create the post title, brainstorm some ideas. Much like formatting a traditional blog post, be sure that you are crafting one that attracts readers from search engines and stands out. In other words, when you see that list of ten (less than ten by the time you factor in the number of people who never scroll down), you have to be enticed to click through to your article, and not those of any other site, even if they are much more established than yours.

For example, which of the following would you be more willing to click on from within a search results page? The Product A/B can be substituted for nearly any product or examples, as these simply serve as different examples of how to use the techniques. The average searcher would likely click on something that a) tries to address their problem, b) doesn’t have anything misleading about it (from the title to the excerpted text and link), and c) is fairly creative in trying to persuade them to click the link to the site.

— Review of Product A

— Don’t Be Fooled by Product B’s Misleading Claims

— Improve Your Life with Product A

— What Everyone Should Know About Product A

Step 2: The content will be written during this step. During this step, you want to be sure that you are including the keywords that you are targeting. Include phrases that people may be searching for in the content as it will be included more often in the search engine results, highlighted in bold when a user searches. As the search engine picks up more of the repeated keywords, your page(s) will be served higher, although if you place too many in, it could also have adverse effects, leading to undesired results.

While search engines may utilize title and headline tags, they aren’t as important as just having the text there. Some people neglect to include certain keywords, meaning that they’ll lose out on visitors that may subscribe, continue reading your blog daily, or purchase a product/advertisement on your blog. It is only natural to include headlines, by utilizing the H2 and H3 tags in the blog portion of your content – H1 is generally reserved for the main blog or post title.

Organize your content well. Don’t let paragraphs “bleed” together – keep everything as separated as possible, and include images and links within the content. Remember that the more references you can place to the product or main purpose of the post, the better. Although this post may be referencing many aspects of SEO (it is), you need to use common sense in evaluating where to use ALT (image) and TITLE (link) tags. These will also help readers if they hover over the links/images and for readers that need more accessibility.

Step 3: Utilize a plugin for best results. Plugins such as the Platinum SEO Pack (backwards compatible with the All-in-One SEO Pack) can help you maximize on the number of keywords you place on your blog. They are also ideal for formatting how visitors see your post titles. Rather than Blog Tipz » Post Title, You are able to format it as Post Title | Blog Tipz (or any other format). Additionally, you can use this plugin to focus on your desired keywords through the Keywords and Description area. While the plugin is simple to use, it adds an extra minute or two to each post – you have to manually add them through the bottom of each post.

A few miscellaneous tips on this topic:

• Target keywords that people are searching for (but still relate somewhat to your post).
• Add some misspellings of the word or phrase involved.
• Rearrange the phrases as people would type them in results.
• Use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, designed to help advertisers target searches. For example, by typing in blog, some of the top results for the term (as a rough example) include: blogspot, blogs, blogspot com, blogger, blog com, blogging, blog free, www blog, weblog, blog search… It also provides a rough estimate in the “competition” between each keyword in relation to all keywords.

During this stage, you could also add categories and tags to the post, which add some value to the post. It isn’t a good idea to focus on them, as search engines don’t normally use them as highly (you are supposed to “nofollow” them, anyway).

Step 4: Promote the post. The more links that reference this page/post, the better. Ideally, search engines will continue increasing the page’s “importance” as more sites link back to it. This indicates that the page provides value to readers. Now, some controversy has grown as pages promoting products have dominated search engine results, leading to more “spammy” results. You simply have to promote it in a manner that is ethical but still provides rewards on your end.

Conclusion

While there are additional ways to increase traffic for certain keywords, I have scraped the surface in helping you to promote specific posts. Now, you could skip most of this and simply “pay” for traffic through pay per click, but you would still need to know the basics of what people are searching for, and how they are choosing which sites, if any, to travel to once the results are served.

Duplicate content will always exist, not matter what efforts are taken to eliminate it from the web. The whole point of the Internet was to create an inter-linking web of content, in which all knowledge is shared amongst sites, even through it shouldn’t necessarily be exactly the same. Unless you are trying to spam the search engines, through manipulation, there are really no reasons why you should be afraid of receiving a penalty for having duplicate content on your own site. Simply aim at keeping your content top-notch, and your pages will continue being served at the top of the page.

What is Duplicate Content, Specifically?

Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. Most of the time when we see this, it’s unintentional or at least not malicious in origin: forums that generate both regular and stripped-down mobile-targeted pages, store items shown (and — worse yet — linked) via multiple distinct URLs, and so on. In some cases, content is duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or garner more traffic via popular or long-tail queries.

Source: Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Deftly Dealing with Duplicate Content

How Search Engines Determine Duplicate Content

The primary focus of search engines is to deliver the most relevant search results for all searches. In order to prevent duplicate content, there aren’t really “duplicate content penalties,” but rather exclusion, in which the most “relevant” page will be indexed, while the other results will be excluded or moved down in the results – so, in a way, there is a penalty, but doesn’t affect your entire site unless your entire site is filled with content found from around the web.

Diagram Copyright Elliance, Inc.

How to Check for Duplicate Content

One of the leading tools to check for duplicate content and plagiarism is through Copyscape, which uses links and text found on those pages, although it is quite easy to search using the terms found in a piece of text, through the exact keyword match – using quotations around the text – within all webpages.

Best Practices

There are several key ways to ensure that duplicate content never makes its way intosearch engines in the first place – by preventing the content from being created in the first place.

Often, WordPress and other blog systems create category and tag pages that, unless you are using excerpts, will display all content. If you have the ability to turn this option off, it would be a good idea to do so, unless it is an important part of your website. Otherwise, you should exclude all category and tag pages from search engines by editing your robots.txt file, which can be created or edited through Google Webmaster Tools interface.

To start, you should exclude the following (although you can include other files, such as PNG, JPG, and other files, specifically. This means that no one will be able to access the files directly through search engines.

Information and guides on how to use the robots.txt file can be found here.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /comments/feed/
Disallow: /feed/
Disallow: /feed/atom/
Disallow: /feed/rss/
Disallow: /rss/
Disallow: /trackback/
Disallow: /wp/
Disallow: /*/comments/feed/$
Disallow: /*/feed/$
Disallow: /*/feed/atom/$
Disallow: /*/feed/rss/$
Disallow: /*/rss/$
Disallow: /*/trackback/$

Note: This is a general robots.txt file, which specifies which pages to exclude immediately from search results. You are suggested to research what works for other people, and what has been excluded on other sites. The file can be found at http://sitename.com/robots.txt.

A lot of search engine optimization through duplicate content and select inclusion is all about what you want the search engine robots to see and what you want your readers to discover. If you have comments displayed in results, visitors will find less value and will be less likely to click on the file, than if you had dominance in having the individual post in its place.

Non-www vs. www

To manually make all your pages redirect to one version, in my case, I have http://www.blogtipz.com redirect to http://blogtipz.com to ensure that there is no duplicate content generated from this inconsistency, you have to add this to your .htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.yourdomain\.com$ [NC] 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

The “Index” File Attribute

Often, additional text, in the format of /index, /index.php, etc. are displayed on select pages, particularly the main page of your blog. You want to ensure that all versions of the page are the same format, by using the following mod_rewrite rule.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} index.html
RewriteRule .* http://www.yourdomain.com/? [R=301,L]

How Archives, Pages Look to Search Engines When Not Indexed Properly

Here’s an example demonstrating ow multiple versions of a single page could get indexed (you don’t want this to happen).

1. http://example.com/post-1
2. http://example.com/post-1/
3. http://example.com/?s=post-1
4. http://www.example.com/post-1
5. http://www.example.com/post-1/
6. http://www.example.com/category/category-name/post-1/
7. http://example.com/2008/12/post-1/
8. … and so on (all for one post)

Other Techniques

On pages that you do not want to have indexed, the simplest method would be adding the “noindex, nofollow” attribute, which tells the search engine to prevent that individual page from being indexed, which might be simpler than having to go through the removal process, illustrated below, which can be found within the Google Webmaster Tools area.

Click Here for Larger View of Removal Tool

To Remove Content from Google:

Login to your Webmaster Tools area, click the site you want to edit/remove content from, then select Tools > Remove URLs to access the removal wizard. Next, click “New Removal Request” (a button). At this point, you are presented several options:

- Individual URLs: web pages, images, or other files.

- A directory and all subdirectories in your site.

- Your entire site.

- Cached copy of a Google search result.

Simply past the URls that you want to exclude on the following pages (upon selecting one of the options), then your request will either be approved or denied (as you have to meet the requirements) within 3-5 business days.

Another way to exclude content from search engines is through using Sitemaps, which indicates the pages that should be indexed and how often they should be updated. If you are using a developer-hosted blog, then a sitemap should be (under most circumstances) created for you, otherwise it is out of your control. 

If you are using WordPress.org (self-hosted), then you are able to edit the file and configure how it is presented to search engine robots. The main idea is to include as much content as possible, excluding tags, categories, archive pages, and comments. These provide very little value to readers/search engines, and shouldn’t be indexed. Several plugins to manually build sitemaps are available here.

General Ideas

People who visit your blog on a regular basis more than likely discovered it through a search engine.  Otherwise, they found your blog through another site that linked to an article that you published.  You need to know how to target the search engines directly in order to reap the most rewards out of the content you publish.

I’ll first discuss the characteristics and best ways of increasing (or evaluating the traffic you receive from search engines).

Characteristics of Visitors from Search Engines

• Most people are looking for a specific item, or don’t have any concern on related content unless they are “wowed” by what you have to offer upon visiting your site (following the “under 10 second” principle).
• The traffic is often targeted in the sense that visitors are searching for a specific item on your blog rather than a general item (again, if your blog ranks highly for specific keywords, your entire blog (http://site.com) will be listed, rather than a specific article.
• Bounce rate is generally equal to or greater than return visitors or ‘addicts.’  People want to quickly find information, therefore any additional clicks through your blog are because they find your site interesting.
• Search results pages can be used to promote products or directly market products, even if they aren’t sponsored (as in products you’ve created).  In addition, your Subscribe and other pages will possibly appear beneath your site once it has become recognized by search engines for being an important page.

Key Points

1. Don’t write as though you are actually writing for a search engine, leaving out any personal thoughts.  You want to write naturally, much like a conversation.
2. Use terms and keywords that are relevant to the product or post itself.  Don’t “overstuff” or your post will surely look like it wasn’t written to prove a point, but to generate an income through more traffic/placement on results pages.
3. Your content should be split between rather lengthy guides and news-related posts.  Depending on the overall focus and goals of your site, you will have to create content that will help build both methods of traffic – direct through return visitors and those referred through other sites (and search engines).

The Content

Whenever I mention content from this point forward, it refers to the entire post (the title, tags, categories, permalink, and keywords used – everything before the post is published on the blog for readers).  

First of all, in order to gain more traffic from search engines, you need content, and I don’t mean five posts.  People that have thousands of indexed pages typically receive just that – thousands of visitors per day.  Simplified, if you don’t have something to invest, you won’t be rewarded with interest.  The more comments, trackbacks, categories, and tags that reference your site will add up to more traffic in the long-term (anywhere from 10-90% of total traffic comes from search engines and referring sites).

Secondly, keywords are a must.  This doesn’t mean stuffing your posts with the words you used for categories, but keep in mind that people won’t be able to find your content unless it includes the words that they are searching for.

Example: Let’s say you write a post about “how to start a blog.”  Someone searching for the phrase “starting a Blogger blog” will never find your post, because you haven’t included the term “Blogger,” referring to the system, resulting in your post not being displayed on the first page (in this case, it would mean the difference between a few hundred and just a few dozen visitors).

Post Titles: Add relevant keywords – a big ‘no no’ is using a title that steers people to content simply due to the title.  It may work to increase new visitors but it becomes annoying after a few times.

Blog Titles and Keywords: Within your meta information (or using plugins/blog settings), it is a good idea to add a few (10 or so) keywords that truly define what your blog is about.  For instance, I might choose words like: “blogging tips, blog tips, blog advice, etc.” for this blog.

In-Post: Within each post, use heading tags and font styles to help promote your blog.  Stick with a similar format across your entire blog for best use of the tag.  Personally, I tend to use the H3 (Heading 3) tag for main headings and either the bold or H4 tags for sub-headings and other areas.

In addition, use relevant phrases that people may be searching for.

The key to marketing and targeting search engines for more traffic:

• Test what works – phrases and keywords, as well as when and what type of content you publish.
• Target different social media sites and connect through other people who will help distribute your content.
• Continue producing content as often as possible – the more, the better.

Why You Need It

Without search engines, your site would have very little chance of ever being discovered.  Unlike many other promotion techniques that you can use to effectively increase traffic to your blog, search engine (referred) traffic is usually free (unless you hire someone for search engine optimization or purchase space on the results pages for keywords).  In itself, it doesn’t take much effort – you simply submit it to the search engine and then traffic start pouring in based on what you publish.

Over time, your blog’s traffic and income will steadily increase – resulting in more benefits than one.

Note: This was an introduction for people who have never focused on optimizing your site to gain more search engine visitors.  It is never too early to start focusing on this aspect of your blog

photo credit: claireg73

Number of Links Per Post – There have been some misconceptions about the number of links that you should place in each post. The common rule is: it’s all up to you! No one can tell you how many sites you should link to, but a common rule is that the more links are placed in the content, the more it looks like spam. For example, if you write an article, then link every single letter to a different link, it indicates that you are quite desperate for traffic. You have to form a policy as to how many links are included in each post. Some people feel that by not including many outbound links, it increases search engine power back to your links and content on your site.

Plugins have helped popularize additional links in posts, allowing bloggers to automatically link to their tags that are displayed in content. In some ways, this helps add to the user experience, providing additional traffic to keywords that wouldn’t normally be as visited. However, you can’t overdo the amount of links placed, or makes you blog come off as spam.

Linking to Sites, General – When you link to other blogs, it proves that you enjoyed (or hated, in some cases) the content found on the blog. Don’t link to sites that you don’t want your readers to see, it is an obvious method for losing subscribers. Instead, gather links that can provide valuable information to readers, links that they can share and enjoy with their readers, too. Double check each link by hovering over it and making sure that it does link to the site you want to, instead of a site that readers wouldn’t approve of.

Linking to Content – Since the beginning of blogs, people have been linking to others’ sites. It provides a sense of authority to the person’s blog that you are linking to. A large part of search engine algorithms give authority to sites with more links leading to particular pages or the entire blog. For this reason, you rarely can have a successful blog without many links from high profile bloggers. In fact, it is illegal to leave out the link to a piece of content that you have taken directly from another site.

Stealing someone else’s work without providing attribution can result in readers disrespecting your work or a loss of credibility. Often, you will never be able to recover from the mistake of not linking or attributing someone else’s work. Keep in mind that all your work should be your own and link to as many sources as possible.

Linking to Large Sites and Blogs – Large sites typically don’t care about links from small blogs. They have people that manage buying and selling links, mainly to larger websites that already hold a lot of power. The traffic and power that linking to their website provides them is minimal, so linking to these sites is not always required under all circumstances.

If you mention Google in your post, you don’t need to link to it. However, if you link to a particular story or search results found on the Google website, it may become mandatory, as readers need to be able to find the content, not he entire website, which is known by most people, assuming they were able to get to your website okay.

In addition, you might find yourself thinking, “Hey, I am a new blogger, why should I provide links back to those large blogs when I should be receiving links from them?” When linking to larger blogs, specifically, you are providing a link and informing the blog/blogger that you exist, and they may follow your link when it appears in their trackbacks/comments panel.

Sites Linking to You – Receiving your first link back from other sites can result in a great feeling of success – someone is acknowledging your work – they are respecting the time you have put into your blog. However, when you visit the link, you discover that the site contains little more than spam links and provides little value to you or your readers. In this case, you must moderate the link, so readers of your own blog don’t follow it through the trackbacks area.

Should another site link to you, contact and thank them for the link back. You may receive more than you were expecting – a link may appear in an additional upcoming post recommending your blog or you may even be able to exchange links. After all, each site that links to your site passes some search engine “juice” as it is called, raising the power of your site against other blogs that have blogged on the same topic as you. As important as this is, many people underestimate this step.

Trackbacks – The links that may appear in your comments area as comments are simply other blogs that have linked directly to individual posts. Spammers often target trackbacks, placing links on their site to your posts, as it drives some traffic to their site and boosts their ranking. Leaving trackbacks, or links back to other sites can provide a valuable, yet quite small, source of traffic.

Linking to Internal Content, Tags, and Categories – Whenever you link to content in your blog, including links and categories, it results in a renewed amount of traffic traveling to content that you have previously created, much of which may not have received the level of traffic that you had hoped. While it isn’t necessary, linking to these posts encourages readers to subscribe to your blog and receive a daily dose of fresh content.

Sidebar Links – Sidebar links, often called your blogroll, is a crucial area, providing links to sites you recommend. Visitors can find valuable information, including other blogs in your niche and other blogs that they should follow. This is also a powerful aspect of your blog, as others can pick up that you’ve linked to them and return the favor.

Why Linking is Dying – A few years ago, before the social bookmarking sites with the names of Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Mixx, Delicious, Techmeme, and RSS/feed readers came along, the only ways of sharing content was through emails, linking to the site, and through sidebars, along with a few smaller, less effective methods. Today, some disputes have arisen over whether linking to other sites is dying or transforming as more people are sharing the popular content/links through these services instead of on their personal blogs. In a way, yes it is, but traffic from individual bloggers’ sites can often result in a lower bounce rate while continuing to grow your blog’s community.

The most important thing to remember is that linking and blogging is continuing to evolve, and while the essentials will still be there, it will become a different form of blogging and linking that exists.

An Overview of Why Linking is Important

• Readers want to see you link to content that you have linked to/created a quote/excerpt of on your own post.
• You become an authority in your niche when you receive a lot of links to several pieces of your content.
• In a few ways, linking creates a need of others to share your content on popular sites, potentially driving thousands of new visitors to your blog in a short period of time.
• Linking can build relationships with other people.
• The web is build on the premise that all sites are linked together in a giant “spider” web – don’t break it.
• Take a look at Technorati – the post popular blogs receive the most links, not always the most traffic.

Conclusion

Linking, however it takes place, is an important step in the process of growing your blog beyond the stage that only a select few know about it. Three main points to remember when managing links are: is the site relevant/important, is the trackback spam, and have I checked all the links for originality in my content?

Without linking, traffic and knowledge of each site would remain stagnant and the Internet wouldn’t be what it is today. What policies have you created on your blog to determine whether you should link to a particular site? Does linking have the same level of importance that it once had?

A targeted number of qualified consumers will also be sent to your website each month using the package, but Sams Club may just be using this to help market another company such as LeadConnect or Innuity, as they may be receiving a commission for each sale.

[via: Karl Ribas]