Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Specialists

Posts Tagged ‘articles’

Get in the news for link building

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

Not many businesses would think about major media sources when they think of link building resources. Media will certainly come to mind when a business is considering its online marketing strategy, as some news coverage can help establish an online presence. What most businesses don’t consider is how getting a mention in the press can result in a direct, high-quality link. Getting into the news is an SEO jackpot.

Approaching the media isn’t an easy task, but it can be worth the effort if you manage to net a link. Many media sources are high-ranking, and their pages can be quite relevant to your keywords. You can talk to us at SEO Consult Australia about link building, but here are some sources to consider:

  • Local media: Everyone has a locality. Even if your business is completely online, you and your laptop have to be located somewhere. Local news outlets are usually far easier to get stories into, so consider drafting up a media release that targets this group. Most local media have online components these days, and a link from these sources can help you build your profile with Google Local.
  • Industry media: Again, the smaller focus of these kids of media sources will give you an advantage. Industry media should be a particularly valuable link-building resource, as you can approach them in a number of ways. Most industry publications are open to guest writers, particularly if their industry experience will impress readers. These are often websites that should be considered as part of your off-page search engine optimisation anyway, so drafting up a few article ideas is a good idea.
  • National media: Links from places like the ABC, SBS and even the BBC are link profile gold. These major media outlets generally have excellent rankings, and being associated with their pages is a very good thing.

It might seem like an impossible task to appeal to these kinds of major news sources, but it isn’t. The best thing about each of these news giants is that they have regional and specialist departments that are much easier to access. Have a look on their websites for subsections that might suit you.

It’s important to note that none of these news sources will be open to anything that seems like outright marketing. Some publicly-funded news sources are specifically forbidden from promoting products or services. It is vital to approach a news source much as you would any other link possibility, with an eye for what you can do for them. With these sources, it should be an idea for a story.

Newsworthiness and media attraction

Not every business event is going to attract media attention, but it should be possible for any business to get itself into the news. It’s all a matter of finding the right story and the right angle.

Objectivity is important when you’re thinking about approaching media sources with article ideas. Think about the news site’s audience and what they might be interested in. It can be helpful to do some research in order to get an idea of what sort of articles the site usually publishes.

Getting into the Sphinn of things

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

You may have noticed a lot of SEO blogs featuring a cute little cog-wheel logo with ‘Sphinn it!’ at the top of their pages. Sphinn, which has gained popularity in the last year, is another community in a growing crowd of social bookmarking networks, and it’s popular in SEO circles for a reason. All the same, smart site owners might consider getting into the Sphinn of things when they’re looking into the optimization of their site.

Any internet user who doesn’t frequent many internet marketing sites might well ask, what is Sphinn? Sphinn is the creation of the people at Search Engine Land, an internet and search marketing community. The community that uses Sphinn tend to be internet marketing professionals, commentators, or devotees, and they can be a hard crowd to please.

The bookmarking community at Sphinn is relatively new, having been founded only in 2007. The community’s members tend to be quite outspoken but provide some solid advice when it comes to social media, internet marketing and SEO. They’re also not backward about saying what they don’t like, as more than one internet marketing newbie has discovered when first joining the community.

According to its creators, ‘Sphinn’ is another kooky name creation that came about because of the decreasing choice of domain names on the net. The people behind Search Engine Land intended to launch a community that could put a new spin on topics, and put forward articles that they thought others might like. By the time its creators got around to founding the community, however, ’spin.com’ was long gone. The creators tried a few variations, allegedly stopping just short of ’spinnn.com’, before stepping back and deciding to add the somewhat confusing ‘h’. While it has led to the company constantly having to explain that the community is simply pronounced ’spin’, it has resulted in a distinctive brand that gets recognized.

Finally, though, we get to the most important question: how does Sphinn’s growth affect the average site owner? The answer is, not much, or at least not directly. If your industry is outside the circles of internet marketing, then putting a Sphinn bookmarking button on your pages is not going to be of a lot of help, at least until the community expands a little more.

At the moment, Sphinn is important to the average site owner because of the wealth of knowledge the community contains. Every site owner involved in search engine optimization does well to tap into the online marketing community, and Sphinn is a good place to do it. What’s more, the social media aspect of the site means that the information presented in the community is up to date, right to the minute, and therefore generally more reliable.

Sphinn is not a general SEO resource in the way that other bookmarking sites can be. The main people who gain marketing benefits from Sphinn are marketers and SEO pros. However, the community is definitely something worth keeping an eye on when marketing your site.

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