1. Targeting Only Highly Competitive Keywords

It’s going to take some time for your site to build authority and climb the search engine results pages.  If you only target highly competitive keywords, it will only take longer for your site to rank, since you’ll be competing with established sites.

When you’re starting out, focus on targeting less competitive, long-tail keywords, which are easier to rank for.  When you target several long-tail keywords, they can bring you a significant amount of traffic.  As an added benefit, long-tail keywords tend to be more specific and therefore bring traffic to your website that converts better.

2. Not Providing Enough Textual Content

As the saying goes, content is king.  Without textual content, the search engine bots that crawl your website won’t be able to determine what it’s about.   Make sure that each page of your site features at least 300 words of original, SEO content.

3. Using Keywords in Your Content Excessively

After realizing that it’s a good idea to include target keywords in their content, some newbies make the mistake of being excessive.  Keyword-stuffed copy may help you rank better initially, but it won’t help you attract readers, which is essential to your success.  Make sure that you write for humans first, and then search engines.  Besides, you have to be careful because stuffing your site’s content with keywords can get your site blacklisted by the search engines.

4. Having a Flash Website with No HTML

Flash is attractive and cutting-edge, but in terms of SEO, it’s an absolute nightmare.  To ensure that the search engine bots can index your website and crawl your site’s content, make sure to provide an html version of your site.

5. Not Using Descriptive Page Titles that Include Target Keywords

Not only are page titles on your website the first thing that search engine bots encounter when they crawl your website, they are also the first thing that searchers will see when they view your listing on search engine results pages.  Make sure that your page titles are relevant to the content and that they contain target keywords.  Each page of your website should have a unique title.

#1 Failing to Use Anchor Text or Using Worthless Anchor Text

One of the biggest mistakes you can make when building links is using worthless anchor text such as, “click here” or “read more.” Anchor text needs to contain target keywords if you want to improve your site’s search engine rankings. Furthermore, anchor text is supposed to help search engine spiders determine what your website is about, so make sure to use anchor text that’s relevant.

#2 Getting Links from Unrelated Websites

If your website is about cooking, you need to get backlinks from websites about cooking in order to increase your search engine ranking. If you don’t get backlinks from sites that are relevant to your niche, you’re wasting your time.

#3 Getting Links from Websites with Poor Reputations

Be sure to check the reputation of a website before getting a link from it, so you don’t unknowingly become associated with a bad online neighborhood. If your website becomes associated with websites that engage in black hat SEO techniques or other questionable practices, your website could end up getting penalized by the search engines.

#4 Only Building Links on Sites with a High Page

RankingTry to get backlinks both from sites with low page rankings and high page rankings because it looks natural. Plus, the sites with low page rankings could end up having higher page rankings in the long run.

#5 Building Links on Websites That Cannot Be Crawled

Search engine bots are still not capable of crawling websites made with Flash or JavaScript. They also can’t read text links within frames, so don’t waste your time building links on websites that are Flash generated or framed.

#6 Blatantly Buying Links

Although everyone keeps quiet about it, link buying is alive and well. Just make sure that if you buy links, you do it discreetly and cover up your footprints. Google has declared war on paid links and may de-index your site if you are found out.

#7 Valuing Quantity over Quality

Think that 500 links is better than 50? If you answered yes, think again. One link from a high quality source is far more valuable than 20 links from questionable sources. Generally, the harder it is to get a link, the more valuable it is. Focus on creating great content, networking, and guest posting to garner high caliber links.

#8 Accumulating Links from No Follow Sites

Links with the no follow attribute will not help you improve your site’s ranking. Building links on no follow sites is only worthwhile if they can bring you significant traffic. In terms of search rankings, however, no follow links are totally useless

For New Websites, There is Little Value in Targeting Competitive Keywords

It can take a seasoned SEO company or consultant up to a year to earn the search engine trust necessary to achieve decent rankings for competitive keywords.  Getting on page 2 or 3 of search engine rankings for highly competitive keywords will bring you little reward; getting to the top page is all that matters.

Websites need trusted links from a variety of sources, relevant anchor text, and domain age to rank for highly competitive keywords.  On-page optimization makes up only 5% of the overall search ranking algorithm for highly competitive keywords. 

On the other hand, on-page optimization makes up approximately 50% of the overall search ranking algorithm for long-tail keywords.  And long-tail keywords have far less traffic and are thus much easier to rank for. 

Targeting Long-Tail Keywords is the Fastest Way to Drive Relevant Traffic to Your Site

Rather than attempting to achieve rankings for highly competitive keywords in the very beginning, target long-tail variations of competitive keyword phrases on core pages and link anchor text.  Moreover, focus on optimizing deep pages of your site.  

You may be wondering if it’s a waste of time to target thousands of keywords that only bring in a small amount of traffic.  But remember that targeting for long-tail keywords is effective because when combined, the traffic they bring is significant. 

Long-Tail Keywords Have Higher Conversions

Another benefit of targeting long-tail keywords is that people who search for them tend to convert well in terms of clicks and sales since they know exactly what they want to find.  For example, the term, “best credit cards for college students,” would bring you far more targeted, conversion-friendly traffic than the generic term, “credit cards.” 

Target Long-Tail Keywords First So You Can Build Revenue Streams and Exposure

Eventually, it will be necessary for you to rank for competitive keywords, but initially, your efforts should be focused on targeting long-tail keywords and building revenue streams from them.  By doing so, you can earn the exposure needed to rank for more competitive keywords down the line.

When you rank your new website for a variety of long-tail keywords, it creates many paths that lead to your site.  Furthermore, it builds your site’s authority, which in the long run will help you rank highly for the most competitive keywords. 

That’s right. Read, read, read. Edit, edit, edit. Proofread the article, make sure all the information is correct and sounds as natural as possible. Best SEO writing will not seem like SEO writing at all. I know it’s a bit unrealistic to sound natural using this strategy, but try as hard you can. In my view it’s OK to sacrifice a little bit of readability for traffic. Why? Because most of my visitors don’t care for content, but it’s not true for everybody. There are companies that bring new customers with article marketing, and it their case content quality is the most precious asset that cannot be compromised. It all depends on your strategy and field.

Now that you have done keyword research, written the content, and edited it, let someone else review it. Key here is to give it to somebody who knows SEO, or understands it, because a person without search engine optimization knowledge might ask you a question why do you say: red running shoes, blue running shoes, black running shoes; why not say red, blue and black running shoes? Save yourself an SEO lesson and find somebody with SEO background. Let them change up the text a big, even allow them to get rid of some keywords that are just too sore for the quality. Only the ones that are TOO sore. You still want the traffic?

Once you content is up and running, you will be set up to pick a lot of searches on Google, both short and long tail. The next part of the strategy is link building, but thats for another time. :).

Step 1 – Write

The first step to writing content for landing pages is to write it. Nothing much I can add to this, other then – do it naturally and forget about the keywords.

Since this is an article on SEO content for landing pages, I won’t go into conversion, but ideally you want content to convert not only to capture traffic. Here we only focus on traffic, leaving the conversion part in the back ground. What you might find is that the level of keywords you have populate in the content will ultimately make it sound a bit unnatural, and hurt conversions. It’s ok in certain fields, where people don’t pay attention to content much, but might not work in others. I’ll assume you are in the field where people don’t read much of your copy. If not, well that’s too bad. Read the article and then figure out how you can compromise.

Step 2 Plug The Keywords

This can be the most cumbersome part of all. You have to go back and plug ALL those keywords from your spreadsheet into the content. YES, all of them. In the titles, in the bullets, anywhere you can stick them. Here are some rules to follow – do not repeat any keyword twice. Your spreadsheet is structured in a way where the top level keywords will get much more density than the lower level keywords. And it makes sense, since top level keywords must be repeated many times, while lower level keywords do not need as much repetition. Do not confuse this with keyword density, which does not matter. I am talking about natural spread of keywords in relation to their search volume in the content.

Once you got the secondary keywords in, each with its own column of related phrases, you have to repeat the process, but this time for the “third tier keywords. The ones that are IN the column.

For this stage, you may switch to broad match if you’re using Google tool, since most likely you will not find much as you plug them in one after another. The key here is to only search the biggest ones. Small phrases will only take time, and won’t give much in return. Don’t get obsessive about capturing everything. The pool you already have will cover a broad tree of searches. Combined with regular words, you will capture loads of long tail traffic.

Now that you have all the keywords in place, it is time to write the SEO content and then optimize it. It’s a 3 stage process and you can find more in part 3.

So go to your keyword tool, and start the research. I like the Google tool and Word tracker. Word tracker paid tool is very useful, since unlike Google it actually shows all long tail keywords in its database, while Google does not. Maybe they will expand this down the road as Wall Street presses for more profits, but for now their tool does the job. They also got sights on mobile, and finance comparison fields, so my bet it will be a while.

Take the keyword your are targeting, and do the research. If you use Google, specify your country and set the match to exact. Obviously if the keyword is too big, like “shoes” you have to pick a smaller one, like “running shoes”, but my assumption is you got the basics down. So put in your keyword, with exact match, and take all the keywords that show up (the ones that could have some financial value to you), and copy them into a spreadsheet. If you see an entire page of keywords, your term might be too big, and you might have to select a smaller one. Usually 20 – 100 keywords will show up. Use your judgment. Don’t forget to expert the search volume, and make sure it is local.

You wont get far with it. The power of automation tools, black hat hacks and software comes with using it in the right way, the white hat way. You wont find anywhere on how to use the tools, which tools are the best, and the most effective techniques because people who know them keep them a secret. Yes it all comes to down to links, content and branding, but if you are in an over saturated ultra competitive field, the “build content and links will come” approach pushed by the big G does not work. When link buys is business as usual for competitors, and aggressive techniques bombard link profiles, you have no choice but to do it as well, and do it better. Many tools help with this, but it is up to you to find them, recognize them, spend few hundred or thousand bucks testing them, and learning how to use them. The tools described in the previous posts are the basic public roster. Do your research and discover more link building tools.

So how do you capture all this long tail traffic? Well, you write the content, as much of it as possible, Google will do the rest. This article however, focuses on landing pages. Pages designed to rank on search results for specific terms (usually with at least few hundred – thousand exact searches according to the keyword tools) and pages designed to convert that traffic. Getting the traffic is apart of the equation. Getting that traffic to convert is another. You will find many companies that specialize on SEO, such as this one, and you will also find a lot of companies that specialize in conversion optimization. How do you convert the traffic is another article (in fact there are books), and we won’t describe here, but to give you the run down it involves: A/B and multivariate testing, persuasive copywriting, web usability and web design.

SEO For Firefox – this is Randy’s favorite tool, the account manager at SEO Internet Marketing Inc. He is in love with SEO for Firefox because he can explain SEO process to the clients in the language they understand while actually showing some SEO techniques. So what does SEO for firefox has in store? Enable the tool, and you will see a bunch of data under search result. The data will include info such as links, domain age, DMOZ listings etc. Data similar to that of SEO Toolbar, but under actual search results. Some people prefer it that I way. I personally distrust the info since as mentioned before, Yahoo links and Google links are two different creatures and you can’t judge one based on the other. Sure, yahoo link data is great for competitive link hunt, but not for judging why the site ranks on Google.

Rank Checker – plug in the keywords and check rankings. I find it is always off, so I don’t use it as much. It is useful when you have a pool of keywords that need to be checked. Rank checker can give you general idea where the site is in terms rankings, so you don’t have to check through 7 pages for each keyword to find your site.

Google Webmaster Tools – one of the important features of Webmaster Tools is the link tracking. Google does not share link information with link:domain command, but does show it website owners. Top search queries is another useful feature as you can see past week rankings for different keywords. I still prefer the manual check though.

Google Alerts – useful for tracking new link opportunities. All Google search operators work with Alerts, such as intitle, inurl, etc.

Xenu Link Sleuth – this is an extremely useful internal link analysis tool. It can tell you how many internal pages cross link, how many internal link a page has, the anchor text of internal links, as well as page titles. It also reports broken links. This is the mother of all internal link analysis.

Majestic SEO – I cannot leave out majestic SEO if we are on the topic of links. It currently has over a trillion URL in the database and growing. It is the second organization after Google to report a trillion links on the web. Link analysis includes anchor text of the links, domain links, page links, banners, no follow, and much more. The amount of data may overwhelm you especially if you are dealing with a large website, that has over a several hundred thousand links.

Online BS Generator – my favorite of them all, online bullshit generator. You see meaningless newspeak sounds hip and cool. A lot of writers use it to make themselves sound smart. Can’t blame them, it does sound cool. If you want to sound cutting edge use this to: visualize strategic bandwidth and grow bricks-and-clicks niches.

We – We Calculator – fact of life, your customer does not care about you, and does not want to know the year you opened your store, launched your website, or the color of your dog. We is your enemy. You is your friend. Use you, and focus on the customer. We – we calculator will show you the density and warn if you mention your company or we too much in the text.

Thesaurus – a great tool for some additional keyword research. I also resort to it when I can’t think of synonym to a word, and have used original word too much. Usually saves me but not always. If you do a search for synonyms and thesaurus on Google you will more tools. Some of them are better then thesaurus.com for some words, while give almost nothing for others.

The next article is on useful plugs and tools that help with SEO in general.

Me too!

Here’s the bad news – it doesn’t work that way. SEO is hard work. It’s full of little details and apparently unconnected steps if you’re not keen to how search engines work, but it can never be automated. OK, I’m lying, there’s the black hat world that loves automation, but that’s another universe, for another blog. I personally don’t know much about black hat, apart from basics, but what I know is that black hat tools can be used in a white hat way that bring long term results.

The downside with black hat is you have to constantly be on the edge of things and look for the true loopholes, which are always there. Once you find some, you keep it a secret and make a lot of money, until search engines catch on, or somehow the technique gets mainstream, at least in the black hat world. Thats what I know of the dark trait.

There is a saying – respect the tools of your trait. So respect your SEO tools and make sure you have your computer running fast an smooth. Nothing is more annoying than working on a slow machine that keeps freezing and can’t run few programs.

Using several link builders is an essential strategy at keeping yourself save.

By using several companies you:

• You can spread out one project between several companies. In case one of them goes south, the project will still stay afloat, and you won’t lose as much money as you could. Obviously it depends on the size of the project, and link builder simply won’t give you a priority if they aren’t seeing much money coming from you, so keep the size in mind. Spread it out in way where you can still survive if you lose a portion of the budget, but it creates some nice revenue for the link builder.
• You will never be left without a link builder. Business is business and for various reasons relationships go bad. You didn’t pay on time. Link builder did a bad job. You don’t like each other’s hats. Whatever it is – if companies walk on you or if you walk on them, you never have to think about it. The consequences should be minimal to your project. In the best scenario you will lose a bit of time looking for replacement, and nothing more.
• By using several companies you can strategize link efforts. Some link builders are fast. Some are slow. Sometime you need a fast punch. Some jobs are not a priority. Use strengths of each company to your advantage. The more you work with link builders, the better you will understand who to use and for what purposes.
• When using several companies you will save money. Eventually you will find cheaper rates, better support, and higher quality (if you keep looking). It won’t happen if you’re using one link builder.

I have to mention this again – you will never be left without links if you engage several companies. From my experience, and some mistakes we did in the past, it is a horrible situation to be in. It’s like being left without an arm, you can still use another one, but its half as effective.

PS

Many SEO companies outsource links. It is a fact. Many link building companies outsource link building. It is a fact too. So do your homework and cut out the middleman to save a lot of money.

Pretty straight forward. Specify anchor text, URL, and description for the link (not always required but preferable to have). The age old format is:

Anchor Text (also called Title): Keyword

Description: few words about your website, no need to keyword spam here.

URL: the page you want to link to go to. Specify deep links when needed.

In the word document create titles and descriptions for the keywords you are targeting. You may want to spread out the volume a little, but it depends on the speed of each link builder. Send the project out and wait for the results.

Quality control is an essential part of link outsourcing, and you have to review reports link by link in order to keep quality to the maximum. It is a lot of work, since sometime you have to review dozens of links, make comments about each one, and send feedback to the link builder. Like it or not, it has to be done.

You see, link builders and link building companies are like people. They can start out well and go down in quality with time. This is true especially if you engage a company that is “stuck” with link building business, and employs people who are there for a check, to keep the tabs in life. Most people hate what they do, and its true in SEO, so if you do get a company like that, then reviewing quality is essential simply because you do not know when you engage one! First project comes with good links! Second project is OK, while third and fourth are awful!

If you ignore quality control you might:

• Spend money on something that does not cost its price. D
• Get links from bad neighborhoods
• Get links next to Viagra, porn, sex toys, gambling, warez sites (though this won’t hurt you if there are only few, I feel fear every time I see my link next to porn…)
• Get many low quality links, which were not part of the deal when you engaged the company first

You have to monitor the reports and report your feedback. If you agreed for work in advance, then you can simply deny payments for links that you determine can hurt you or are of extremely low quality. Be very conservative here, since you can severe the relationship if you withhold payment for too many links. Obviously if there is no link at all (which happens), or link is nofollow / from a porn or gambling site / a spam comment, etc, then you can withhold the payment for that link. If however you simply don’t like the link personally, then there’s not much choice but to pay. Look at overall quality of the report. If it’s a total of 60 links, and there are few OK links which you wish weren’t there, then it makes sense to let it slip, and just make a comment in an email.

If you pay in advance then write your feedback, and state that you don’t accept bad links (give examples from the report). Alarm link builder that there’s a chance of losing you as a client.

Yes and no. If you are new to link building, reputable companies will do the link building job for you, using whatever means they choose: content bait; link buys; or even regular link requests (believe it or now it works well for high quality sites – article on search engine land). Companies have the knowhow, experience and people to do the job right. Makes sense to pay them if you’re new but understand the basics. Just don’t run into the bad apples out there. The best way to find good companies is to dig through blogs and find authoritative posts. This way you can actually see the company showcasing its expertise and knowledge to the public, something all professional do nowadays… Back to links.

I prefer to go after the best links myself. Why? Simple, it saves me money, and I find lower quality links, from the right sources do the job  (along with other very important factors… no.. not today :)).

So, to sum up the chapter:

• Send trials in order to test out link building services
• Observe results on search engines (obviously DO NOT TARGET competitive phrases, but go for something more realistic, consider very small number of links with the test job)
• Review report link by link

This is the second part of the article on link building outsourcing. Here we are going to cover trial orders, creating and sending the project to link builders, reviewing quality of the work, and using several link builders in order to secure yourself.

Putting a Trial Order

The best way to test link builders is to put trial orders. The size of the order is up to how much you’re willing to spend. In most cases you will get good links, in a timely manner with the most courteous communication. That’s a very good sign. Trial orders can range from 10 – 20 links and up, depending on pricing. Obviously the higher end service you use, the less links you can afford as a trial.

Trials with Higher End Services

The best way to try expensive link building services is to target a phrase with very low search volume (or no search volume at all). Make sure the page you are targeting does not already rank for that “test” keyword, and preferably does not have it in the title, or any internal links. In the perfect scenario this page will have the keyword once or twice in the content; will not have it in the title or any of the H tags; will not have in internal links pointing to the page; will not rank on the first page. If you do not have a page like that, then you can always make on.

Go ahead and put a trial order request for a couple of links, and see how search rankings improve for that page once the job is done and Google finds the links. Your success indicator is positive movement few spots up in search results. This may take up to several weeks, so be patient.

The differences between high end and lower end link building services are:

• Quality
• Prices

Both go hand in hand to together. Sometimes it’s more effective to get a lot of cheap links to get rankings, while at other times it makes sense to invest more in quality.

Review their work and select the companies which you think offer the best links. Keep in mind that prices are a big factor, so the quality of samples is DIRECTLY related to the type of company you are seeking, so don’t get picky if your budget isn’t big.

Various Payment Options

Once you find a company that you like, discuss payment first thing up front. Is it PayPal? Credit card or something else?

Run if they mention western union. I have nothing against the service and use it myself to send / receive money with people I trust, but it is a favorite payment method for scammers, so if any of link builders ever mentions WU – run like you’re about to get salt shot up you’re a$$ with a shotgun.

It is up to you to decide if you want to pay upfront, or after work has been completed. If there is trust, then paying up front shouldn’t be a problem. Since it’s a new company, consider paying upon completion of work. Many companies will agree, as long as the payments are steady and are sent of weekly basis.

For instance, if you have an order for 500 links with various anchors to different landing pages, then this creates a lot of work for any link builder. You aren’t likely to find a company that will agree to spend months doing the work and wondering if you will come through with the payment. Offer them a weekly payout, based on completion of the project. If for instance a company built 20 this week, then pay them for 20. If next week they do 15, pay them for 15, and so on. With this approach link builder does not take much risk, and you do not take any risk at all. Once the trust is there, the company will simply accept that it’s the way you work.  Once you have the trust, you can switch to up front payments.

This strategy will ensure that your budget is safe and secure.

• Post an open message on Forums stating that you require link builders. You will get good response.
• Participate in forums and narrow down users with the most knowledge. Then contact them offering work. A likely chance you will be rejected, in which case simply ask if they can refer you somebody.

Make a list of members that you would consider hiring. Find a list of SEO forums here.

Using Job Websites to Hire Link Builders

There are specialized job sited where you can hire workers remotely do almost any job for you. Simply search for “link building” or “search engine optimization”.

• Elance
• People Per Hour
• Guru.com
• Go Freelance
• Get a Freelancer
• oDesk
• iFreelance
• SoloGig
• ContractedWork
• Project4Hire
• FreelanceWork
• AgaveBlue
• FreelanceJobSearch
• FreelanceAuction
• Mac Freelancer
• WriterLance
• Hirelancer

A word of caution thought – companies and individuals that offer quality are usually booked, so someone who sits without work maybe is not as good or has little experience. On the other hand they might be having tough time, so don’t dismiss them based on that criteria alone.

Pricing models vary on each website. Job marketplaces also have a “star” system whereby employers review the work done by each individual and rate it. The ones with the best ratings cost more and obviously offer best service.

There are link builders all over the world, and countries like India and Philippines offer very cheap labor. Aside from ethics, outsourcing to countries with cheap labor might be a competitive necessity. Though international corporations grab most the margins they make from cheap labor (Nike, Gap, etc) and starve their workforce, link building is a different space, where sometimes budget restrictions leave no choice.

Also keep in mind that MANY link building companies in the west charge premiums and send the actual work to the third world. There however companies that do not.

Use country specific search engines to look for link building companies. In Canada use Google.ca, for UK use Google.co.uk, for India use Google.co.in and so forth.

Look at the website back link profile as an indicator of their success. I think it’s a pretty good measurement. If a company claims to be good at link building, then its website must have lots of inbound links. Use SEO Toolbar from SEO book – it gives a high level view for websites in a split of a second. Check them link by link to give you an idea of what each company is capable of. Make a list of the ones you believe are the best, and do some searches using their names, to see if there’s any feedback from their customers. If do not find any, don’t worry, it’s not a bad indicator.

Looking for a Link Building Company

You’ve made your mind, it is time to outsource link building. It could be because of lack time, resources or knowledge in this area. You start looking…. Before we proceed, a warning – do not outsource the process completely. Link building drives search engine optimization and cannot be left at the mercy of others. Nobody cares if you succeed or not (leaving out people close to you). That’s a reality of life. There are FEW companies that do, or try to care, but there’s an added cost for it. If you do not know enough about link building, then start learning. There are thousands of articles and free resources on the web that cover everything from A to Z, so do your homework.

There are several way to look:

• Search engines
• Forums
• Job websites
• Mentions of companies on blogs and in articles.

I can’t say anything about black hat, since I don’t do it, but be wary here.

Buying Links – It is a Necessity  

Yep. Link buying is live, active part of the web economy. Ever since Google declared war on paid links, everyone stopped talking about it, but continued as usual. Of course there are exceptions, but links selling / buying is still active. Everybody from biggest brands to small websites does it, because it works. There’s a mutual understanding that link selling is revenue source for sites, and link buying is fuel for search engine advertisers.

There is however a chance that some really bad competition may rat you out, but if you are in a competitive space then there is no incentive for them to do so, because they are doing it as well, and you can rat them out just as easily.

Keep link buying as a quiet part of your link building strategy.

Using Your Marketing Tools to Build Up Links

If you have a good affiliate program – then it is a great tool to build links. Though affiliate links are easy to spot for Google, they still carry on value, because it shows the algorithm that your site is a source that provides revenue to other sites, therefore it must be important. In my mind it puts you one step higher in the pyramid, but that’s my theory.

Nevertheless, use affiliate program as a link building tool. It is easy to recruit sites if you have good incentive to sign up, such as good percentage of the sale and high conversion rate. It also works with the principles of the economy – I give to you and you give to me. You give an opportunity to make money, while in return you make money and get links. It’s a win for the affiliate and double win for you. Couldn’t be better.

Just monitor your affiliates well and clear out shady neighborhoods and scammers.

Good luck!!!

Notice how best sites have a VARIETY of anchor text pointing to them. Anchor variations include site URL, targeted keywords, extremely long tail keywords, article titles, click here links and so on. The point is that apart from getting anchors with you main key phrases, add in several completely absurd and unrelated ones.

For example if you site targets “vacation pages”, then add one to the mix “find and explore cheapest travel on this website”, and add another one “here you can find great deals on travel to different countries”. You get the point.

Also direct those links to different pages, like the index, landing pages and some articles. This will make your portfolio look even more natural to the algorithms.

By the way I am only concerned with Google at this point, so are most SEOs. This maybe a mistake since Microsoft will soon hold around 25% of the market, which is some good traffic. How to SEO for Bing? I don’t know yet. Obviously basics apply, but there should be some variables that work better with Bing, which are yet to be a big concern for SEOs.

• Links from within content (currently considered some of the most valuable links)
• Directory links like Yahoo, Business.com and probably some crappy ones as well.
• Blog comment links.
• Links on link exchange pages.
• No follow links.
• Footer links.
• Navigation links.
• Twitter links
• Social media aka Digg, Stumble Upon, etc
• Local citations aka Yelp, Yellow Pages
• Data providers such as phone companies, etc.
• Any other type of links you can think of

The point I am trying to show here – the best sites have the broadest link profile and that is the profile, in my opinion, is the best one to have to dominate your field. There is a lot of noise about low value of directories, no follow, and blog comment links, but mixed with more valuable links, they create the diversity which all leading websites have.

Analyze your links and ask yourself, am I lacking anything?… If you’ve been focusing on highest quality links up to this point, then spend a little time / money on lower tier links. Do some directory submissions, both general and local ones. Do some comments on blogs with spammy no follow link back to the site, even get some link exchanges. If on the other hand all your links are of lower quality, then really up the effort to get the best links there are, like content links and some home page links.

Together your portfolio will look natural and broad. Don’t get carried away with easy / cheap links here though.