Over the next few StepForth newsletters I will be covering some of the basics of a successful link building campaign. Before you take on a link building campaign there are a few steps to take into account.

Link Building - Introduction to Link Popularity
The term Link Popularity refers to a quantifiable number of relevant inbound links to a given site. It has become increasingly important as of late to consider Link building as a significant part of any SEO campaign. Google tends to give the most weight to relevant linking than any other major search engine (It is also now widely believed in the SEO community that other major engines are valuing backlinks in their placement algorithms).

Assessing How Many Inbound Links You Need
An excellent initial approach with any link building campaign is to evaluate where your site is currently positioned in the search engines. After a careful examination of your desired keyword target, search for the phrase and take note how your site ranks against the competition.

Visit websites ranking higher than your site for that given keyword phrase and perform a series of backlink checks. Use the "link:" function to view the incoming links to the site. The results will show a listing of some of the sites linking back to them.

For Example type in Google: -----> link: www.your-competitors-site.com

Typically the number of links you will require will be an average of those among the top ranking sites. Check the top 10 results and throw away the link counts for the top and bottom sites. Average the remaining sites, and this will give you a good idea of the number you may require. This is of course rough, but a good place to start.

Stay tuned next week - "Understanding Link Relevancy"

Mark Johnstone , StepForth Office Manager

It is the combination of little things that can get your business ahead of your competition on the net. This article demonstrates easy ways to create more attention, interest and desire to invest in your website's offerings. All of these suggestions offer multi-faceted benefits to you, your potential customers and the search engine spiders. By implementing these ideas chances are your conversion to sale ratio will dramatically increase.

Each of these elements should be accessible from every page in the site. They are easy and legitimate ways to increase pages with relevant content on your website; they are cost free and require minimal upkeep. Further this also offers several opportunities to lend more credibility to the site and, in particular, your online business or service. Once properly set up the search engines can spider this information and give more positive weight to the relevancy and focus of the site. And as always, try to compose keyword-enriched titles.

Several components to enhance your website may encompass creating the following pages:

FAQs - If someone is interested in what the site has to offer an FAQ page can be very beneficial; pretty well everyone has questions they would like answered. Keep the questions focused and offer succinct answers. With clarity comes confidence and this will help leverage the site both for the customer and the search engine spiders. A side benefit may include a reduction in the number of emails you receive requiring you to respond repeatedly to similarly asked questions.

Testimonials - What a superb source for in-house digital advertising! Most satisfied customers would readily consent to writing a testament for a product or service they received from you. And certainly, if tastefully executed, they probably would not mind their company's name, logo and web address displayed as well. Providing a link to your client's site can be an asset top them - It's a win-win situation, you acquire a testominial and they get a link.

On line articles - Some people buy on impulse while others prefer to make informed decisions. Sometimes in order to convert a prospect into a client all one needs is to be kept up to date or find a trustworthy resource and/or authority. On-line articles can provide pertinent educational, reference and/or technical information. This resource alone may keep customers coming back to your site over and over again. Get permission to link to these articles and make sure they are pertinent to your industry. This is also an excellent avenue for attaining high quality relevant reciprocal links.

Links page - It's easy to create and maintain a reciprocal links page. Remember it is the quality not the quantity of links that matters. Organize by category or theme. Set up alphabetical or geographical location limiters.

Site map - a simple snapshot showing the site's blueprint can assist the customer as well as search engine spiders in navigating and understanding what the site is all about.

Text navigation map - With the advent of new technologies it is becoming more common for many sites to have an unspiderable image-based menu design. A text navigation system at the bottom of each page overcomes this limitation.

Contact us - Following up on Jim Hedger's recent articles about the new and upcoming arena of personalized and localized search engine results consider adding the following regional and local identifiers: your company address, state and zip code, plus in addition to your toll free numbers, include local area information such as your telephone area code.

Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day is less than 3 months away! The time is NOW to set up your campaign to enhance your visibility and generate qualified prospects to your site.

I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU
This weekly feature is an opportunity to have an informative interactive column. You can email me at bill@stepforth.com and send along any particular questions, comments, feedback, tips or ideas.

Bill Stroll , StepForth Sales and Marketing Manager

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Ten years ago, Diana Duyser made a grilled cheese sandwich. She took a small bite and when she did, she saw the most wonderful thing she had ever seen! On her sandwich, burnt into the butter, Ms. Duyser saw the face of the Virgin Mary. Now that's something you don't see everyday. Being a sensible and highly devout person, Ms. Duyser didn't finish the sandwich, she preserved it instead. Now she's trying to sell it.

Last week she put the preserved sandwich up for auction at E-Bay and drew bids upwards of US$22,000, a pretty good wage for creating a religious icon, even after a decade of inflation is factored in. After over 100,000 page views, E-Bay pulled the plug and the auction was cancelled. After two days of intense and highly-humourous mass-media play, E-Bay reversed its decision and re-instated the auction. The sandwich is now
drawing bids upwards of $100,000.

Examples like this one serve to remind us that the unseen hand of bizarre market forces can truly redistribute the wealth of the Earth.

by Jim Hedger, Contributing Writer