Widgets are one of the best kept secrets marketers can use to capture the attention of potential visitors and drive traffic to their website. Widgets are a great way to promote a business and a website by presenting would-be visitors with interactive content that engages their interest and interaction. Put literally, a widget is a small software application for distributed websites that displays a user interface designed to perform an action or activity based on data or calculations living on a different server.

We’ve all seen them. Groupon uses widgets to help merchants design their own online offers. PayScale provides a library of widgets that work with their real-time database to help other website builders add salary calculators, cost of living indexes and such. At Optify, we use widgets within our own application to surface data from reports, Twitter for Business, lead intelligence and SEO applications into a customizable dashboard.

Widget “Rules of Thumb”

Creating a great widget is only the first step in widget success. Marketers should adhere to the following best practices when thinking about adding widgets to their websites. Widgets are an effective way to expose data or crowd sourced information in easy to access ways. They can also serve as a scalable way to build links back to your target site while offering an easy-to-implement distributed application that people find valuable.

Transparency: The embedded link in the widget should be visible to the end user – do not hide the link using CSS or other coding tricks
No Bait and Switch: Make sure the link is relevant to the creator and content of the widget. Don’t use the widget anchor text and link to send traffic to a site that is irrelevant to the content of the widget. For example, if the widget is from a pop culture site that displays
the latest news on celebrities, don’t include anchor text and a link that goes to an online college sign-up site.
Brand Attribution: Focus on the brand creating the widget with a keyword modifier in the link. The anchor text value is only one component of an effective widget link. To make the most of the link include both the brand and a lock-up of the focus keyword you are targeting. An example would be Powered by PowerPoint Presentation Software.

Development Guidelines for Widgets

A widget should be well designed, load quickly and be lightweight from a code perspective so that it doesn’t slow the load of the page. The key to making the widget useful for SEO (including links) is making the widget visible to the search engines as part of the hosting page. This means the following:

» Using a build technology that can be “crawled” or “read” by the search engine bots –
HTML, JQuery, etc.
» Avoiding iframes (see below).
» Using effective meta tags – NOT “nofollows” or “noindex” tag on the content.
» Making the widget code as light as possible to keep the page load speed of the host page fast.
» Making the widget as customizable from a color and targeting perspective as possible
or as it makes sense for the application.

Widget Promotion

A good widget has a usefulness that excites webmasters, marketers and end-users. However, the most helpful widget in the world can get lost without the proper positioning or rendered useless if users are unaware of their existence. To make widgets easier to find and distribute, create a stand-alone page on your site for the widget. Use good SEO page optimization practices and build the page into the navigation and site map structures. Then, promote the page by having the widget embedded into your own site, partner sites or sites you have a business relationship with. Next, create blog posts, mentions in your social media channels, profiles and email newsletter. As a final step, find specific, relevant sites to partner with to “seed” the widget and get early feedback.

Measurement

Like with other marketing activities or campaigns, make sure you have referral measurement mechanism set-up in place, so that you can learn which widgets are performing per your expectations. Track click-throughs, visits, conversions, and leads captured from your distributed creations. Keep the widgets that perform well, and remove the ones that are underperforming and potentially causing damage to your brand.

Creating a Powerful Widget:

Creating a useful, popular widget, that the masses would be inclined to include on their websites is optimal, but for that reason it is also extremely difficult. Creating an effective widget is more of an art than a science; a good idea, a really good idea, is the toughest part of the process. When contemplating a widget, ask yourself the following:

» Would I use it on my web site?
» Who would want to use this widget?
» Would traffic generated from their sites (the folks who want to use it) be traffic that
I’m interested in?
» What is the value that this widget will provide to a web site?
» Is it easy to imitate?
» Will this widget require maintenance, if so how much and can I sustain it over time?
» How easily could it be placed on a website?
» How will I monitor its success?

Continue Reading: A Six Step Inbound Link Building Process

There are a few ways which you can work with other businesses and organizations in a mutually beneficial manner. Link exchanges, manual link requests, legitimate link  purchases (when done right) and widgets, are all acceptable forms of link building.

Link exchanges allow you to associate your site with other respected, relevant sites through an exchange of links. This is best used for seeking out specific relevant pages.
When exchanging links it is important to remember the inbound links must be relevant to both sites/pages.

Manual link request involves targeting high-quality, highly relevant sites for links and exchanges, building relationships with the owners of these sites and essentially asking them to link to your site. Consider it part of your business development process.

Purchase links that are of high quality from specific, related websites. As we mentioned earlier, many forms of link-buying are frowned upon. Again we strongly advise you stay away from large link buying services. This is not what we are recommending here. Rather, we are suggesting you purchase links that are truly relevant to your business.

When buying links target specific, high quality “.edu” and “.org” sites that will sell links. Look at university newspapers, non-profit organizations and smaller blog sites that are willing to sell relevant placements. Focus on buying links from blog services. Links should always come from relevant sites and be written by a real person. The goal is in line linking (links in the flow of the content, not on the side of the page). Last but not least, budget for these expenditures as part of your media plan.

Partnership Tips:

» When engaging in business development deals, include link exchanges – one way
to include you if possible.
» Be strategic and relevant with cross-linking.
» Do NOT join link farms or spam-like link exchange programs.
» Include link exchanges with experts providing content.
» Identify high priority link opportunities and high profile Twitter users for engagement.

Continue Reading: Widgets and Distribution

A common mistake by online marketers is assuming online products and services should  be exclusively marketed online. Offline activities like PR, networking and advertising can increase your inbound links from authoritative sites.

Press releases are a particularly useful tool. For example, a news post in the Wall Street Journal mentioning your company will drive traffic to your site with or without a link on the WSJ website (although a link would be terrific too…). Be sure to train your PR team on SEO optimized press releases and include press releases in your content work plan. As for frequency, release news on no less than a monthly basis and release news every time you have a new piece of content, major review, launch etc. Always host press releases on your domain on an optimized page and use an optimized service online such as PRWeb.

Additional offline tactics include: placing your URL on your stationery, business card and office supplies; having an event conference booth; using paid print advertising; networking with industry-insider bloggers, media editors and journalists.

Continue Reading: Partnership Link Building Tactics

Internal linking:

By linking high authority pages within your website to less authoritative pages, you can quickly improve the value of the lesser pages. To do this use keyword rich anchor text to link from page to page and headlines as links and link text. Then, find ways within content, to link to other pages on your site. A good tactic is to use blog posts to link to product or pillar pages. You’ll want to ensure the navigation can be crawled by search engines. JavaScript redirects cannot be crawled. Next, implement bread crumbing to add good link
content on every non-homepage. Include a sitemap.html that has links to top categories (max 100 links per page) and is linked from a universal footer. Finally, put “nofollow” pages in the footer (privacy, terms of service, etc.) that you don’t want to pass value to.

Social media:

Distribute content to your extended network in hopes they will post, redistribute and link. Add and promote your social media profile with a link to your homesite. Use Twitter, Facebook and other social media networks. If you don’t you’ll be at a competitive disadvantage.

One of your strongest tools at your disposal is your blog. Social media and the blogosphere drive traffic and leads. Recently Google, Bing and Twitter have shown that real time search is becoming increasingly relevant when directing people to sites. This means your blog content should be updated regularly.

Outbound links are one of the cheapest forms of marketing available. Many bloggers track where their traffic originates from, so linking to them is an easy way to get noticed.

Most of these comments won’t provide value from an SEO perspective. But, if they are useful, insightful and relevant they can drive direct traffic. They will also make other  bloggers aware of your presence. As a result, these bloggers may start reading your blog and even link to it.

Social Media Tips:

As in all SEO related activities, we aim to stay above board – with ‘white hat’ tactics and
recommend our clients do the same. The SEO benefits of a well-executed widget include:

» Fully complete and optimize social network profiles.
» Build your network, friends and followers.
» Participate and communicate in a positive, helpful way regularly.
» Promote your own content through your network with shortened links back to your site.
» Use bit.ly or an alternate URL shortener which uses a 301 redirect when posting links
back to your site.

Continue Reading: Offline Link Building Tactics

There is no doubt that good, interesting, well-written content will be more likely to attract visitors to your site, than poor, recycled, shoddily written content. But even the best  content can get lost, if it’s not optimized for the web. The content you create should
be interesting and insightful as well as optimized.

Create some form of content that will be willingly posted and linked from many sites by site owners. For example, create a “best product” or “certified partner” badge and reach out to
partner or related sites with this “award.” Or, create a template for WordPress or other content management system with a link back to the design website in the footer. Build valuable content that people want to link to. Reach out to opinion leaders to review and consume content for link backs.

When creating great content don’t forget to:

1. Promote it
2. Research related keywords that are being searched and use those keywords for content creation ideas
3. Use keywords in headline and title tag of page content
4. Include link with good anchor text back to the main content page

Continue Reading: Online Link Building Tactics

Directory submissions of all types are a common link-building strategy. Directory submissions include: web directories, blog directories, podcast directories, niche directories, members- only directories, etc. It also includes posting links on Craigslist,
establishing reviews on Yahoo!, and enlisting links on your local chamber of commerce sites. These tactics are legitimate, but there are two rules you must follow when pursuing these strategies. If you do not, you may find yourself in hot water.

1. You must register your site with the two first tier web directories – DMOZ, and Yahoo! The first is free, and is used by most search engines. The second costs $299 per year. However it is faster, easier to edit, and is also used by most search engines

2. Do not use automated submissions. Google detects this tactic and definitely considers it a “black hat” strategy

As you analyze and build your list of directories consider using the following approach:

1. Compile a list of directories
2. Analyze the various directories by competition, relevance, cost and public relations
3. Rank your directories to create a prioritized workplan
4. Determine your budget and your ratio of paid versus free directories
5. Publish to your list

Create an HTML draft of title, short description (160 characters,) long description (up to 500 characters,) and keywords. This will increase efficiency as all directories request a variation of this information.

Keep track of your progress via Excel. Maintain a status column and a last updated column to track your progress. Check your listings periodically. They may need to be updated over time.

Link reclamation is another technical link building tactic which you may choose to pursue.

Link reclamation essentially means finding links or domains that are broken and redirecting these links to good pages. This strategy is best used for mining high-quality links from sites that want good content.

Link Structure:

» The visible text portion of a link is called the anchor text. This is an important signal to the search engines regarding the content on the target URL.
» The use of JavaScript redirects for internal linking does not pass page authority unless coded as a 301 redirect. Whenever possible, use simple HTML links in order to pass both the anchor text and the page authority from host to target page.

Example:

Link Host Page: http://www.microsoft.com/online/default.aspxLink

Anchor Text: Learn more about Exchange OnlineLink Target Page: http://www.microsoft.com/online/exchange-online.aspx

Be aware of the “nofollow” link attribute. If the link has rel=nofollow as part of its code, it will act like a normal link for the user but will not pass on its link authority or trust. This code is traditionally used to limit spam posts and links. While it may not be useful in terms of passing authority, it can still be of value when it comes to generating traffic.

Link Building Tips:

» Review inbound links into your site and a few of your competitors.
» Look for blank anchor text, broken pages and poorly redirected pages.
» Research and reach out to those sending links and try to adjust them to fit your structure or new page.

Continue Reading: Content Focused Link Building Tactics

Now that we’ve covered the “what” and the “why” behind link-building (from previous post) – we are ready to tackle the “how.” There are numerous respectable inbound link building strategies. For the sake of simplification, we’ve grouped these tactics into the following categories:

1. Technical – (May 11th – Technical Link Building Tactics)
2. Content Focused – (May 13th – Content Focused Link Building Tactics)
3. Online – (May 15th – Online Link Building Tactics)
4. Offline – (May 17th – Offline Link Building Tactics)
5. Partnerships – (May 19th – Partnership Link Building Tactics)
6. Distribution - (May 21st – Widgets and Distribution)

Before you build your strategy, it is important to understand the key characteristics of the various options available to you.

Continue Reading: Technical Link Building Tactics

In the next few weeks, I will show you how to do proper SEO link building so that you will not get hit with any of the Google Panda or Penguin updates.

The search engine optimization process is comprised of three basic elements:

1. Keyword Strategy and Selection
2. Site and Page Optimization
3. Link Building

In order to be successful in SEO, you need all three elements working together to boost rankings, visits, and conversions. In this guide we focus specifically on number three, link building. Credible, quality inbound links to your site pass their trust and authority to your
site or page. Thus pushing your content higher up the ranks. As you build your inbound link authority, your SEO rankings should improve.

How Is Link Value Assessed?

Search engines take into account a number of criteria when determining link value or link authority.

Quality: Not all links are created equal. It is better to have one high-quality link than ten
mediocre links. Google Page Rank (PR) is a common method of assessing the quality of a host page. A PR10 is a fantastic (and rare) link whereas a PR0 is a common and  therefore not very valuable link.

Relevancy: What is considered relevant? As an example, a business-to-business site with content about servers would be considered a very relevant link host for a target site focusing on technology for businesses.

Diversity: Search engines are giving increasingly important weight to the diversity of domains which link to your site or page. Ten thousand links from 1 or 2 sites will do you less good than 5,000 links from 1,000 sites.

Placement: If the link is included as part of content, otherwise known as an in line link,
rather than in a footer or sidebar, it is better.

Quantity: Quality trumps quantity. However, the more high quality links you have, the better.

Continue Reading: How to Build Your Links