Let’s face it, competition for attention on social media networks is ridiculously tough. Novelty is a sure way in, but it’s difficult to come up with novelties again and again. Offering something that users can make use of again and again is a much better plan.

Facebook is a prime example of this technique. Much of the activity on Facebook is generated by use of those cute little programs anonymous companies supply, as attested by the incredible success of Farmville. The cost to the user is access to their contacts, allowing companies to build their network.

You don’t have to be on Facebook to use this technique. Embedding a handy little program on your own pages and then promoting it in social media is another great way to catch attention and get people talking, and you can discuss this with us at www.SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk. This may take a little more work, but the benefits go beyond SMO and straight into SEO in terms of link building.

When planning out your social media optimisation campaign, think about what’s going to get you ahead. Look at what your competitors are doing, analyse their moves, and provide your audience with a different, more useful option.

Even as recently as a year and a half ago, the best link building strategies involved contacting the owner of a target site and making some kind of arrangement. Although this can still be a good way to get quality links, there are now better, more organic ways. These centre on your content.

Why mix link building and content? Google’s changes should give you a clue. People are changing the way they interact on the net, and content is becoming central to all types of communication. Whether they’re on a social media network, sampling an online publication or shopping for new shoes, internet users are accessing information and sharing it like never before. These days, link building is as much about sharing as it is about making contacts.

Laying out plenty of quality content and publicising it via your social media marketing campaign is a method of link building that stays true to the principles of organic search engine optimization. It creates links that please the search engines. Handily, it puts your resources to multiple use as well.

In 2012, work your link building plans in with your content. It’s the smart way to get ahead.

The search engines would certainly like for site owners to let link building happen by itself. An untouched link profile is one that reflects the true state of a site’s popularity. Naturally enough, your search engine optimization agency isn’t likely to be happy with that state of affairs, and neither should you be.

The line between ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ really depends on who you talk to, although most would agree that buying links is strictly against the search engines’ rules. This doesn’t mean that buying links is universally frowned upon, but it does mean that during link building services you are well advised to investigate some natural options.

When looking into link building for your site, pursue as many natural options as possible:
*Make contact with other businesses.
*Use your existing contacts.
*Organise guest posts.
*Post comments, with your link in your signature line.
*Push for links using your content – talk to our experts at SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk about using content for SEO link building.

While it is tempting to take linking short cuts, in the long term your site will be better served by building natural links. Such links are usually the result of relationship-building, which means you’re more likely to get continued support down the track.

If the linker has completely muddled the page address, there is really not much you can do about it. If, however, they have simply made a mistake in the page reference, there are ways to detect and fix the break.

*Detect and redirect. When you’re encountering a commonly made mistake, such as an American spelling of your UK domain, you have an easy-fix option. Simply take control of that address and redirect. A permanent redirect may not pass link juice, but it will help the search engines detect the mistake and compensate.

*Contacting individuals. When the broken link is a link you’ve worked hard for, contact the linking site direct. They should be happy to do a repair. This can become time-consuming when you’re dealing with lots of links, but it can be worth it.

*Custom 404 messages. When a;l else fails, a custom 404 message will enable traffic to be able to find its way onto your site.

Before you can do any of this, you need to nail down the links that aren’t working. Look for 404 errors related to your site, and track down their sources. You can talk to us at www.SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk about this aspect of link building.

What most companies don’t consider is the human side of canonicalization, and understanding this side of things can actually help. When you canonicalize links, you not only smooth your path in terms of Google and SEO, you help light the way for your customers as well.

*Canonicalization of home pages. Site addresses can easily become confused, with www.site.co.uk/home and www.site.co.uk/index occasionally rearing their ugly heads. It might take a bit of work, but it’s important to weed out the multiple versions of your home page. This will not only make your SEO agency happy, but save your customers some confusion. Talk to us at SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk about this.

*Canonicalization around the net. Most businesses have multiple directory listings and various profiles around the net, and usually the information is just slightly different. First names are given in some instances, job titles in others, phone numbers and emails alternately represented as the point of contact. Develop a protocol for your business information, and make it easy for your customers to find you.

*Centralization of social media profiles. Again, clear up your target audience’s confusion by keeping your information consistent. This is also helpful in terms of your social media activities helping your SEO.

For these things to happen for your business, content needs to factor into your plans. Content comes into play in social media in two ways:

1. Content on the social media sites. In order to catch attention, you need to provide interesting content.

2. Bringing users back to your content and encouraging them to share. The second aspect of the social media/content relationship is a little more complicated. Content is wasted if it only sits on pages. Social media can and should be used to attract traffic and to draw links for your content as part of SEO link building.

Content both improves and benefits from a social media campaign. Both elements have to be planned for when embarking on an SMM campaign if you want to reap the full benefits of social media.

Any SEO agency will tell you that no part of website optimization can exist as an island. That is, everything done as part of your SEO plan inevitably interconnects. With adequate planning, this interconnectivity can be used to boost the effectiveness of any one part of your online strategy. Talk to us at SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk about making full use of your online plans.

The answer is both. When article marketing is used as an effort-free method of planting links, it tends to lean toward the spammy side of things. However, when articles are part of well-thought-out internet reputation management or link building strategies, they can not only help your site but make the internet a marginally better place.

Option 1: the quick-and-easy approach

Traditionally, article marketing has featured a lot of low-quality content. When site owners latched on to article marketing as a quick link building scheme, the end result was mostly bad. Articles written solely for easy links tended to be poor quality, and the sites that hosted them barely more than link farms.

Google’s focus on content quality this year has pretty much put an end to this approach. Links from article hosting sites have lost value, making low-quality article marketing an exercise in frustration.

Option 2: the genuine and thoughtful approach

On the other hand, other article marketing options continue to thrive. Guest blogging and reciprocal arrangements are still producing results. Both of these require quality content, though, which puts a lot of site owners off.

The best way to think of it is as a bargain for links. Investing in quality content for off-site purposes can be well worth it. Talk to our team at SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk about this aspect of website optimization.

*Partial keyword mentions. Although it was once thought that keywords had to be exactly right in the anchor text of an inbound link to be valuable, it is now thought that even a partial match will count. This is because the search engines are becoming more sophisticated about reading relevance signals. Basically, Google knows that ‘organic flower growers’ won’t naturally appear in every link to your page on organic flower growers. Anything related to that concept could add value to your link.

*Placement. Placement is possibly the most difficult thing to organise for inbound links. However, if you can, you should aim to get your link featured on a page with keywords in the right places. Talk to us at www.SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk about this.

*Content. This is by far the easiest factor to control for inbound link building. The good news is that it’s becoming more important for the search engines. Supplying guest posts and embedding links in topically relevant comments will enrich the value of your link. This factor also makes it more important to target pages that are relevant to your own during link building.

There are a number of types of navigation, such as breadcrumb, drop-down, or header, and these each work well for some sites and not others. Here are some things to consider:

*Can users get lost? If your site is large, users might need the navigational paths provided by breadcrumb navigation.

*Will users be drawn in? If you want internet users to stay on your site, it’s a good idea to create a structure and navigation that draw them inexorably inwards. This can have SEO consequences, though, so it’s important to talk to your search engine optimization agency about ways to boost main page rankings.

*Do you need link juice to spread? Retail sites can sometimes have trouble with SEO link building, as product pages aren’t link magnets. If this is the case, a clearly delineated navigation may not work as navigation and structure need to spread link juice around the site.

Structure before navigation

Navigation is secondary to site structure, and you can discuss the restructuring of a site for organic SEO with us at www.SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk. The restructuring of a site is a major undertaking, but it is often necessary. Be sure to devote sufficient time for your structure in your SEO plan.

There are two schools of thought on linking to competitor sites, and you can discuss this with us at SearchEngineOptimization.co.uk. The first is that it’s a bad idea. This is a valid position to take. If you’ve expended blood, sweat and tears getting an internet user to your pages, the last thing you want to do is hand them over to another site. The other school of thought, and one that’s been gaining in strength over the last couple of years, is that linking won’t do you any harm and may do you good.

How can linking to competitors be one of the helpful link building strategies? Basically, it comes from the interconnectedness of the internet. In linking to others, you’re providing more information for your customers and in a small degree supporting your keyword relevance to Google. You’re also attracting voluntary links back.

There was once a theory that external links leaked link juice, although in recent years the evidence has not supported this idea. In today’s SEO environment, the choice whether or not to use external links is up to you. If it fits in with your business philosophy and the image you’re trying to project, there’s really no reason not to.