Social BookmarkingMirna Bard

4 No-Cost Link Building Techniques That Get Results Fast
Posted Mar 29th, 2011 By Mirna Bard in Link Building, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) With | 19 Comments

Are you trying to build backlinks on a budget? Just because you don’t have tons of cash to throw around on fancy SEO services, your website does not have to get stuck on page 5 of the search engines.

Here are four of the top no-cost link building techniques that get results fast:

Blog Commenting

Blog commenting is a fairly fast and painless link building technique, but most people do it incorrectly because they spam blogs. Whether you do it yourself or pay someone else, blog spamming doesn’t make sense and won’t get the results you want. The problem with useless spammy comments is that they don’t get approved. This leaves you with zero backlinks.

Here’s the right way to do it:

Post a thought provoking, informative comment that might pique the interest of readers.

The benefit, you ask?

For starters, your comment is much more likely to get approved if you actually provide value. This will increase the number of readers who click-through to your site. You want people to see your comments and think, “Hey, that’s a great point. I wonder what else he/she has to say…” *Click*.

If you can establish yourself as an authority in your comment, the people that click-through to your site are already mentally prepped to have more trust and respect for your opinions. This means they’ll stick around longer, subscribe, maybe even make a purchase, or share your site on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

The only other part to the blog commenting equation is finding blogs to comment on. There are two ways that I consider the best options for finding blogs to comment on.

The first is to use Drop My Link. You can search for specific types of blogs such as KeywordLuv blogs and add your keyword in the search. This will help you find a lot of relevant blogs to comment on. I suggest searching for KeywordLuv blogs first since they allow anchor text, they are “do follow”, and they add a link to your most recent post if you have a blog. It’s definitely a big win situation.

For the other blog-finding tactic, I suggest using the SEOQuake plugin for Firefox to sort each page of results by PageRank (PR). A page doesn’t have to have a high PR to be worthwhile to comment on, but it definitely helps.

In summary, using the above techniques will help you quickly find blogs that are relevant, allow anchor text, are “do follow”, possibly have high PR, and allow backlinks that attract visitors plus you get an extra link to your blog…and oh yeah… it’s all at no cost. (more…)
Poll: Will you be backing up your Delicious bookmarks?
Posted Dec 22nd, 2010 By Mirna Bard in Polls, Social Bookmarking With | 3 Comments
As you may know, Delicious, the social bookmarking service will soon be shut down by Yahoo! in an effort to cut costs. Of course, I was sad to hear the news because for years I’ve used Delicious to bookmark and tag a lot of the useful content I find on the social Web. Now, I will sadly have to go through and back up all the important content that is worth holding onto.

Will you do the same? Also let me know in the comments how you feel about Delicious going away and if you would’ve paid a monthly fee (if given the option) to keep it.
Will you be backing up your Delicious bookmarks?
Yes

No

Haven’t decided yet

View Results
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7 Ways to Make StumbleUpon More Useful for Small Business
Posted Oct 5th, 2009 By Mirna Bard in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Bookmarking, Social Media, Social Networking, StumbleUpon With | 4 Comments

Of all the social media sites available, StumbleUpon is perhaps one of the most complex bookmarker available. It allows you to connect with others, message them, send links to friends, vote up and down and a myriad of other actions. If you are using SU for business promotion, chances are you’re missing out on a few of the better methods of using this handy tool.

1. Install the toolbar. If you really want to make good use of this social bookmarking site, you’ll definitely need the toolbar. It will let you rate and share the best websites as you find them, without having to log into StumbleUpon each time to mark a site. After all, let’s face it, you probably won’t bother to do.

2. Discover new sites. While giving sites thumbs up after someone else has already marked them, being the one to actually discover a webpage and give it the first review is good for two reasons. First of all, it puts your avatar at the top of the page as the one who discovered it. That means others who enjoy the site will want to click on you and find out what else you have found. The second reason is that StumbleUpon itself is on the lookout for those who are discovering numerous sites, so you will get a better status by providing quality content.

3. Deep link to your site. If you do link to your own blog or site, never go for the home page. Instead, make sure you link to a deeper internal page or specific blog post. This not only means you have a lot of options when it comes to stumbling, but you will boost SEO in a more natural way. Keep in mind that you should only stumble your own stuff once in a while. Most of the time you will be far better off giving someone else’s content thumbs up in exchange for them rating your pages.

4. Write a real profile description. Entirely too many people put an ad in place of their profile. Instead of frightening off potential followers, try being more realistic and personable. Tell a bit about yourself and then introduce what you do. This will work far better than a straight up ad.

5. Stumble posts that link back to you. If you are writing good, consistent content, chances are your URL will end up on a few other blogs, whether in context or a list post. The important thing is that it links back to your site, so stumbling that post will help you out, as well as the blogger who was nice enough to give a linkback.

6. Thank the person who discovered your site on SU. They’ll keep you in mind next time they’re looking for great content to stumble.

7. Build up that friends list. If you look for friends with similar interests, chances are much higher that they will want to help you out and link to your content or give it a thumbs up. It’s fairly easy to find friends because if you find a page that relates well to your business, you can simply look at who else liked the page and then add them as friends. You already know that they are interested in the same things and if you stumble their picks from time to time, they will start to notice you, as well.

Are you using StumbleUpon to its full potential? The social bookmarking site is one that offers a lot of value if you use it right, but so many people never realize how to maximize their use of it.
Top 15 Social Bookmarking Sites
Posted Jun 3rd, 2009 By Mirna Bard in Social Bookmarking With | 1 Comment

Trying to figure out which social bookmarking sites to use can rapidly become overwhelming with the sheer number of choices available. To make things a little easier, I’ve narrowed them down to 15 sites that really are worth checking out.

1. Digg
Despite complaints about the notoriously short attention span of the majority of Diggers, this remains the number one social bookmarking site.

2. StumbleUpon
A friendlier way to connect with people and share favorite sites, StumbleUpon is easy to use and a true social bookmarker.

3. Propeller
One of the best sites for business use, Propeller tends to focus on sites of interest to older males in business for themselves.

4. Del.icio.us
Del.icio.us is the oldest bookmarking site around, but that doesn’t mean it’s out of date. Millions of people use it still and the site has a simple, easy to use format.

5. Blinklist
This social bookmarking service is well used and tends to focus on marketing and media, with no restrictions as to which webpages you can tag.

6. Reddit
Offering a personalized groups feature where you can save sites for those in your group to see, Reddit is an oldie, but a goodie.

7. Blipoo
If you are looking for a site that allows self-promotion, Blipoo is the place for you. The site leans heavily toward blog promo.

8. Buddymarks
This site offers three options for saving your bookmarks, personal use only, sharing within a group, or open social bookmarking.

9. Diigo
Hailed as “social bookmarking on steroids”, this site offers heavy duty bookmarking options for the serious surfer.

10. Yahoo! Buzz
This site works similar to Digg in that you can vote your favorite sites up and the worst ones down, plus the Yahoo name makes it a little more valuable.

11. Slashdot
Perfect for bookmarking technical information, this site also has clout with Google, making it a good place for tech business news.

12. Mixx
Here’s a site that is multi-purpose, allowing for submission in a wide range of categories to be voted for by users.

13. Furl
Furl has plenty of Google juice and for this reason, it’s a fairly popular choice among marketers and internet based businesses.

14. PlugIM
A site that offers bookmarking services to internet marketers and lets you submit content, vote stories up and make friends for a full networking experience.

15. ListerLister
Our final social bookmarking site, ListerLister is a site that not only promotes bookmarks, but forming communities based on common interests.

Which social bookmarking sites do you use and what is your favorite?
The Benefit of Social Bookmarking for SEO
Posted Mar 15th, 2009 By Mirna Bard in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Bookmarking, Social Networking, Viral Marketing With | 2 Comments

Social bookmarking has become a great tool in building web presence and promoting a business on the Internet. In addition, if you place your links wisely and know which social bookmarking sites offer dofollow links, this strategy will also help your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.

What is Social Bookmarking?

Social bookmarking is a method for web users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of tags or keywords on sites such as Digg or Del.icio.us. This helps you in accessing bookmarks from any computer with online access. These bookmarks can either be public or private. If public, your favorite bookmarks visible for others to view and follow as well, hence the social networking aspect.

Social bookmarking is a very simple strategy to learn and practice, and there are 100s of site that offer bookmarking. Again, we have included a Common Craft video to explain social bookmarking in plain English—see below. We love these videos!

How does social bookmarking help with SEO?

Social bookmarking helps search engines find and rank content through links thus providing a channel for the promotion of content. If you place your links well on dofollow social bookmarking sites, this will help increase traffic to your site and assist with your link building efforts, thus increasing search engine rankings and possibly even PageRank.

The links usually spread to many web sites without much effort on your part. In a way, you can think of it as another form of viral or guerrilla marketing. Keep in mind, since social bookmarking links are categorized by topic with tags or keywords, traffic coming into your site is highly targeted. This ultimately brings repeat visits from qualified consumers and potential buyers.

So, by submitting your links to social bookmarking sites, you are increasing the chances of people seeing the link and visiting your site. However, use cautiously and do not spam these sites because this will end up hurting you in the long run!