SEO For The Common Webmaster

One of the best means of building back-links that will also equal traffic is by joining forums related to your topic. On forums you can converse with people who share a common interest in your topic and you will have a chance to promote your website to them.

The key way to promote your website on forums is through the signature line. Some forums limit your links to a certain number of links and a certain number of characters. Others allow as many as you want. There are some forums that offer only no follow signatures. Do not overlook these! The important thing when promoting your site is to build traffic. By using both do follow and no follow links, you will be able to spread your links to places where like minded people will see them.

When using signature links from forums, be sure to read all the rules of the forum. Some forums have a certain amount of posts or time as a member before you are allowed to use the signature line. I was very active on a forum once and when I started a new site related to that topic, I added my link to my signature. I received a nasty email stating I could not add a link of a competing site. Seemed crazy since mine was a related topic but not a forum. This is why I say to read all rules carefully and try to stick with in the rules.

Most forums that offer signature links do so to provide and extra benefit to their members. It is a way to share your site and discover new sites. Please do not spam! It will ruin the benefits for everyone. Become an active member and really be a part of the community and you will gain many benefits from the forum signature.

One of the good ways to increase your back links is to leave comments on blogs that allow do follow links. Of course this should be done in a professional manner and not done as spam. Many blogs, such as mine, moderate all comments to ensure that they are not just spam.

The proper way to leave a comment that will be accepted is to first read the post. Your comment should be relative to the post and not just a random comment. Comments like “thanks”, ‘interesting post”, “good information”, and other generic comments are often discarded as spam.

The URL you are trying to promote is to be placed in one place only! That place is in the form where it request you to put your website URL. If you try to slip URLs with in the comments, they will be often rejected and tossed away with the spam.

If you respect the author of the blog with genuine quality comments, most bloggers do not mind giving you a back link to your site.

In this post, I am compiling a list of blogs that are do-follow blogs. Please do not spam them as they work hard to write quality blogs and do not need a bunch of garbage.

If you have a do follow blog and would like to be included in this list, feel free to leave a comment with a link to your blog and I will include it in my list. Please do not list adult or spam blogs.

Here are my do follow blogs to start, I will add others as I get them sent to me:

SEO For the Common Man

That Blozzz: The Fun Blog

Acts of Random Kindness

Other’s Blogs

Random Blog 

Disclaimer: The blog list is for informational purposes, we make no claim to the information contained in the blogs or any results from linking to any of these blogs. All blogs listed were provided by the owners of those, please respect that fact and do not spam. Once this list is compiled, you may republish this list only if you include a link back to this post.

The number one way I always stress on this blog for getting traffic is to build solid back links. Social bookmarking sites are the biggest craze in building both links and traffic. I am one who likes to explore all options when it comes to building back links. I have checked on many services that will help build back links by doing the leg work for me. I have not found many that I liked but there a few good ones.

I ran across a great service for Social BookMarking Submissions. This company offers submissions to 500 social bookmarking sites for only $47. If you do the math, that is less than ten cents per link. This service provides professional service done manually. Building back links is important so you do not want to rely on a company that uses software to do the work.

They have a list of over 750 social bookmarking sites and they choose 500 of them to submit your site for the one time fee. They provide advice and offer a full report as to what sites your site was submitted to. One thing I have not seen offered elsewhere was the offer of a screen shot of the submission to ensure that the work was done professionally.

The site is set up for easy ordering and they accept all forms of payments including major credit cards, Paypal, e-gold, and more. The easy to fill out order form takes just a couple of minutes to complete and your order is processed quickly. They also include links to tools for SEO and some informative articles.

If you need help with building back links and are looking for a professional company, I recommend checking out the link provided to get a great deal on link building.

When looking to promote a website, it is important to advertise your site. One of the best ways to advertise is to get a Website Review on a blog. This will give exposure to your website from all the readers who visit that blog.

Reviews can cost anywhere from free up to $700 depending on the blog you choice to review your site. There are so many blogs on the Internet that it is important to look for a blog that offers good quality writing. If the blog is well written, chances are that readers will want to visit it. This means more possible visitors to your website.

Another criterion is looking at the page rank of the blog. This is very easy to check with many tools available on the Internet. A blog with PR will pass some juice to your site and offer a boost in your PR. However, do not overlook newer blogs that could be cheaper now but will have PR later. These blogs are just starting out but since Google updates PR once every 3-4 months, they will most likely have PR soon. A good way to see if they are building their PR is to check Google for links pointing to their blog.

When purchasing reviews, you should look for blogs that match the topic of your website. If you can not find the exact topic, find blog who appeal to the same audience as your readers. You would not buy a review on a blog about women’s issue if your blog is about video games. Use common sense and you will be able to find many blogs to meet your needs.

The final thing to decide is who writes the review. Some blog owners write the review for you and others require you to write it. Both ways is ok but make sure you know upfront who is writing before you pay. Remember, the review does not always have to be all positive; the important thing is to get your site advertised. However, if you are looking for only positive reviews, make sure you have that agreement up front.

Website reviews can be a great way to advertise but make sure you get what you paid for. The review should be professional and give value for the money you pay. This will ensure a long term advertisement of your website or blog.

One of the ways that many webmasters build their sites back links is through submission of articles to article directories. This is said to help build links when someone uses the article on their own site.

I am not a big fan of this way of building links. However, many are very successful at this. The basic concept is that you write an article and include links back to your site in the source box. When someone uses your article on their website or blog, they are required to keep the source box which includes your author information and links.

If you decide this is a method you wish to try, there are some rules. Most articles should be in the range of 500 words or more. Most directories have a set range that you must abide by. The article should be of very good quality. This means that you should be able to write good articles or hire a professional writer to do it for you. Cost for such an article would range from $.01-$.05 a word. Do not submit junk because no one will use the article and your reputation is on the line by being on the source box.

Write about a topic that is related to the topic of your website. When people place the article on their site with your links, you want links to sites that are going to interest that audience. For example, you would not write an article abut new video games if your site is about elder care. You want to target the people who are most likely to visit your site.

Here are my problems with marketing through submitting articles. First, I always want my best articles on my own site for the enjoyment of my readers. Second, many articles are used without including the links back to the original owner. There is no real enforcement of requiring the use of the author’s links. The user of the article could face copyright problems in the form of their host suspending their account but this does not always happen and your article could be floating all over with no credit to you.

My final problem with this form of marketing is that many of these articles are simply stolen by slight rewriting of the article. There are people who rewrite articles for a living and resell the article as their own or are hired in the first place to rewrite an article. I take too much pride in my work to have it stolen by others with no credit to me.

That is my opinion; many others are very successful at this form of link building. One could generate a bunch of traffic if the article is well written and a topic of mass interest. If you do not share my concerns or you hire someone to write the article, this could be a great way to market your website and build both back links and traffic for your site.

I will be working on compiling a list of article directories that are free to submit to and post the list here on SEO for the Common Man.

Please feel free to share your opinion about article marketing by leaving a comment.