Like Links? Begin With Top-notch ContentWritten by Marcia Yudkin
These days, one of best routes to traffic from search engines is posting substantive content that has value for a particular audience. Then you want to get that content linked like heck. Inbound links increase your chances of rising in search engine ranks. When you've chosen an appealing topic, filled your piece with meaty content and kept self-promotion to no more than 10 percent of file, you should be able to arrange free links with a lot of effort and no monetary outlay. Here's how I've done it.The obvious, head-on type of link campaign would involve visiting a search engine, plunking in keywords that would index your bait piece and screening sites that turn up, selecting those likely to be receptive to a link request. Best bets: non-commercial information sites trying to offer comprehensive links to quality resources in your topic area. For linking to your bait piece, forget brochure sites of companies and professional firms unless they include a sizable link directory. Because this method forces you to screen out so many poor candidates for links, I use a more backhanded technique. First I identify a well-established site or page containing substantive bait that targets very audience I would like to reach. By "well-established," I mean something from a respected source that has been on Web for at least a year -- longer better. Then I perform a link search to hone in on sites that have linked to well-established site's bait. For instance, when looking for sites to link to my resources for freelance writers, I sifted through sites linking to late lamented Inkspot, which predated me on Web by a couple of years. When looking for link candidates in solo-professional category for my marketing and publicity resources, I performed a link search on predecessor Working Solo. Several of major search engines make a link search easy to do. For example, at Altavista.com, if I wanted to find which sites had linked to ClickZ Network, I would type: (without quotation marks) "+link:clickz.com -site:clickz.com" into search box. This asks Altavista to find all pages linking to clickz.com except pages within ClickZ domain itself.
| | How Do You Put a Value on Your Time?Written by Janice D. Byer, MVA
As a small business owner, does following paragraph sound familiar to you…?“Other than doing technical ‘fix-its’ with my computer…I do it all! I have found that this keeps me very limited in growing my business and taking on new clients. I wish I had someone to help but how can I justify hiring someone when I can do work myself…when I have time?” This is a very common issue for many small business owners. All work, whether revenue generating or not, needs to be done to keep business running smoothly. We need to reconnect with our goals for our business and our vision for its future. We need to focus on why we started this business in first place. Focusing includes deciding how much our time is worth. But, how do you put a value on your time? How much is each hour of each day worth, especially when you are doing projects that are not generating revenue or increasing your customer base? Is your time worth $25, $50, $100 per hour….or more? When you get busy doing those tasks that don’t directly generate revenue, consider how much it is costing you.
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