Need Links? Give them something for free!

I ran across an interesting website today that listed the top 100 US domains with the most unique back links.  As any good SEO guy would tell you back links are one of the key factors in ranking well on the search engines so it got me thinking what are some of these websites doing to get so many unique back links?  As you look at the list the answer is quite clear- GIVE WEBMASTERS SOMETHING THEY CAN USE!

Coming in first is Google Maps- This surprised me.  I though for sure it would be just plain old Google but I guess when you think about it Google has done a great job of making their maps easy to import right into a website and it's unusual these days to find a site that doesn't have a Google Map on the contact us page.

In the number 6 position was Wordpress-  Wordpress is one of the best FREE blog software tools. 

Number 10 Youtube.com -  Free video hosting with the ability to embed the videos onto a website (When you embed the videos you create a back link to Youtube)

Number 57 on the list - ezinearticles.com really stuck out in my mind as well.  This site offers articles on a wide variety of content that webmasters can put into their website as long as they link back to ezinearticles.com.  Apparently they do because the back links to this site are off the chart.

Check out the list for yourself.  It's clear to me that if you really want to build a lot of great back links offering free tools or content is where it's at. 

So I know what your thinking..."I'm a wedding photographer, how can I build a bunch of good back links I don't have anything to give away?"  Let's think outside the box a bit here.  How about a page on your site where you have a bunch of photos that anyone can download and use as long as they gave you credit in the form of a link below the photo(Free Wedding Stock Photos).  Next time you shoot a wedding take some pictures of the cake, the buffet line, the decorations etc.  Wouldn't you love some back links from a catering company, a cake decorating company a DJ???  All of these types of companies could benefit from some fee stock photos for their website and in return you could build some great links.  You may not be in the top 100 but some good related back links will make a great deal of difference in your search engine rankings. 

In the words of Jim Rohn:  “Giving is better than receiving because giving starts the receiving process.”

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The home page is not the only page on your website

A lot of the folks I speak to seem to think that the home page of the website should be the page that pops up on the search engines for every search term that is related to a company.  In other words a lot of companies try and optimize their home page for every search term they want to rank well for.  This is a big mistake.

As a general rule your SEO efforts will be most successful if you try and optimize for only one to two closely related search terms per page.  You have a much better chance of ranking well for one or two closely related terms on a page then a bunch of somewhat relevant search terms.

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Analyzing the value of a paid web banner ad

Every so often I get a call or an email from a client that has just been approached by a publisher or marketing website trying to sell them the banner add.  The jist of the question is something like this:

Do you think this site would be worth advertising on? It runs about $500/yr. with first page placement.  www.websitenamehere.com  He’s telling me that they’ve had 14,000 hits, 3,000 per year, which doesn’t include members.

The first thing I do is check a site like http://www.compete.com/ for some more meaningful and realistic traffic levels.  Hits really mean nothing to a marketer and are are typically used by a webmaster that either doesn't know any better or is trying to make his site look better then it really is.  Basically a hit is registered any time a file is requested on a website.  A typical HTML home page with 3 pictures on it and 1 video on it could easily log 5 hits (3 Photos+1 Video +1HTML file=5 Hits) when viewed by a web surfer.    A site like Compete.com will give you a better estimate of Unique Visitors Per Month- which I will use below in the analyzation process.

So I check out Compete.com and see that the site in question averages about 800 visitors per month.


That's 9,600 visits per year so you are paying 5.2 cents per visitor just for them to see your add.

If you get a 5% click through rate- (That's probably on the high side) That's 480 visitors or over $1.00/Click.

So now the question is would I be willing to pay $1.04/Click for leads from this site?????

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