However, before you actually do that, you may want to get a clearer picture of exactly why branded traffic needs to be segregated from non-branded traffic. Take note that by doing so, you’ll be gaining a much better understanding of the two most important indicators of online success, which are: the way site visitors normally interact with your business and brand, and how these visitors find your site using generic and non-branded keywords. The information you get as a result can be used to target the most valuable keywords and phrases. Segregating your traffic also gives you a clearer vision of your brand’s overall visibility and pervasiveness.

What useful pieces of information can you get by segregating your site’s traffic? Well, for one thing, you should remember that branded keywords typically show up towards the end of what’s known as the conversion funnel. They’re used by site visitors who are already aware of your brand and interested in what you have to offer. These keywords are more specific and are often based on your business name, key products, and domain names, as well as on misspellings or variations of those names. Branded keywords aren’t subjected to the kind of fluctuations experienced by non-branded keywords due to search algorithms. These are therefore very useful indicators of your site’s long-term popularity and strength. For this reason, you should strive to get more traffic from branded keywords than what you may currently be getting.

Brand Rules Features
The good news is that it’s now much easier for you to track branded traffic with the on-site tools and proprietary software offered by some companies. One such company is SEOmoz and one of the latest tools they have developed is called Brand Rules. This new tool has made it so much easier to uncover any problems that have branded keywords ranking lower than expected. And when you remove your branded traffic from your website’s overall search traffic and concentrate instead on non-branded traffic, that’s when things really get interesting. Among other things, you’ll now get a clearer view of those generic keywords that work best for your business. This, in turn, should tell you which particular keywords you should target and which types of content are most effective.

Brand Rules can be added to your existing SEO campaigns simply by clicking on the Overview tab of your SEOmoz campaign and then going to Manage Brand Rules. You should then specify the brand-related terms you want to check and then the system will filter all keywords containing the terms you typed in. Another notable feature of brand rules is that it can be added to new campaigns at the time of set up. As soon as your set up is completed, the rules will automatically apply to any other keywords you may add in the future. Furthermore, even when your rules have already been set up, you may still remove or add any keywords you choose. You also have the freedom to label the keywords as branded as well as to remove them from your branded filter.

If the campaign you’re running is hooked up with Google Analytics, then you’ll also see your website’s historical traffic data segregated into non-branded and branded metrics. Another advantage to be gained from brand rules is that you’ll gain better insight into the manner in which people land on your site, with the use of in-depth metrics that focus on the top ten landing pages and search sources as well as non-paid keywords, bounce rate, PPV, and time on site, among others. And when you filter your branded keywords in the ranking report, you should be able to see pertinent traffic data on your brand-related keywords.

There are several other options on how you can manage your keywords and these options include the ability to see all of the keywords on your list, improved list filters, and new label filters every time you add keywords. The best news is that more features are set to be added to this tool when 2012 arrives. By then, you can expect to see .CSV and .PDF reports for traffic data. You should also start seeing the top keywords that drive traffic to your site, which gives you the option of tracking them. Of course, there are other companies offering similar or complementary tools and you’d do well to check them out as well to get optimum results from your SEO campaigns.

What Are Link Baits Anyway?

Before starting, we answer the question – why does link baiting get hated on anyway, and why the negative connotation on this tactic. It’s important to understand that the tactic, in its most fundamental definition, can refer to any content that is created to attract plenty of links. Looking at this fundamental definition – it does not connote any negativity or positivity—just yet.

What makes a link bait positive or negative is how it used and how the technique is classified. Like a powerful artifact from fantasy films, link baits can either be used for the side of good or evil; it all depends on who uses it. A link bait can be an excellent piece of content that took a number of weeks or months to create or compile, or can be something posted right away, attempting to be something shocking, outrageous, and downright bad. These are the basic extremes of link baiting.

Aside from these two types of link bait, there is a third type, which is a non-link bait. This is a type of content that is called a link bait, but is apparently not as outstanding as the first two types. This third type is usually incorrectly termed as link baits, and is satisfactory at best – and even while comparing it to negative link baits, this type of link bait is the worst.

Why? Because it pretends to be a link bait and seems like one, but it isn’t at all, hence does not provide or produce the desired results of that are generally generated by link baits.

So, Which Is an Excellent Link Bait?

Now that we have the third version (or the pseudo-link bait out of the way), the question is, what makes excellent link bait? Well, most people usually condemn negative link baiting – but people continue to glorify quite a number of distasteful things and content. At the same time, we commend the practice of positive link baiting, but positive content sometimes fails to take off and generate interest.

So, what makes a link bait excellent is not its negativity or positivity. It’s more of how the content is responded to. So, even if we do complain about a negative link bait—those people who get angry about it and respond to it basically link to it, making the link an excellent one in its own right, because it has achieved its goal. People may get angry over a piece of content, may find it disgusting and anything similar – but they will continue to share it, feeding the system.

Positive link baits, on the other hand are of course, better. But that’s only when they generate the desired links. You’ll know a good link bait when you see one, because it’s insightful, inspired, creative and well-thought of. However, the thing is, both positive and negative link baits can get the same amount of attention.

Who Gets to Judge Excellent From Not?

In the end, it’s up to us readers and linkers to choose and decide what’s actually good or not, and this comes in the form of distinguishing the good from the bad. If the content is simply common and mediocre, it’s not a link bait at all. It is just content. If the content is derogatory, insulting, inflammatory and the like – then it’s negative and it’s not worth sharing at all.

And if that piece of content is well thought of, creative, inspiring and the like – well, you know what to do .

If you need some SEO work done and you want it fast, you can invest by hiring someone to help you. However, if you must invest in an SEO consultant or expert, you might as well hire someone who really knows his craft and delivers great results. Some people who claim to be experts can fool you with tech-speak, but there are ways to help you find someone really knowledgeable who knows what he or she is doing.

First, a good SEO consultant does not give you false promises—one of which is a definite date or promises of immediate results. Ranking #1 will depend on your business’ competitors and the niche you are in; it may take days or months to get to the top ranks.

Second, you can ask about their methods. A good SEO expert will walk you through their systematic approach—and not keep you in the dark about it.

Lastly, a good SEO consultant will provide you with a comprehensive work report—and that’s not just the number of links they have acquired for the month. It should include details on what they’ve done; results and what they plan to do next. Transparency is key for good SEO and you should know what’s happening at all times.

There are basically three things to look out for in a good SEO consultant, so if you’re in the market to hire the said service, don’t hesitate to ask questions. If the answers meet the above criteria, then you may just have met your new SEO consultant.

What makes searches on Google more powerful aren’t the searches alone, but using the right operators or syntaxes. For example, have you ever used the “+” sign while searching in Google before? It was one of the oldest search operators in Google and was used the first time the site was up and running.

If you haven’t tried using the “+” sign while searching or haven’t heard about it at all, then you have missed out on one of the simplest yet most powerful conventions in Google. Yes, there used to be a Google + search operator, which came in way earlier than Google+ (the social network.) The syntax has been available since the start of Google.

How the Google + Search Operator Works

The search operator was simply used by typing the plus (+) sign before the phrase or words that you were looking for. Basically, its purpose was when you wanted to search for a word or a phrase and want the results with the exact words or phrases. Because Google likes to match several terms (often unrelated to your search) to your searches, the + operator was very helpful because it only gave you what you needed in the results. Today, if you type in the + sign before the words or phrase you are searching, Google will automatically ignore it right away.

How to Restrict Searches Today

So, without the + operator, how do you restrict your results to whatever it is that you want? To do so, now you have to put a quotation mark before and after the term to make sure that Google matches the word precisely. While that’s also easy to do, more and more power-users are complaining because of course, typing the + sign before or in between the words is definitely easier than using quotation marks.

This change was made without any announcement. In fact, users were just shocked to find out eventually that the + operator no longer worked at all. Because there was no announcement, no reasons were given as to why the change was made.

Why Did Google Remove the + Search Operator?

Once again, because Google made no announcement on such change, no reasons were given. Hence, we can only speculate. Many users say that its because of the new Google+ Social network. Perhaps, Google does not want the + search operator to be confused with Google+ especially now that the site uses the + sign to mention friend’s names, quite similar to the @ mention syntax of Facebook or @ reply syntax of Twitter. Continuing either would probably create conflict, and with the growing popularity of Google+, they may have decided to let go of the former.

Considering that the + operator was one convention that was there ever since the start of Google in 1997, numerous power users are sad to see its demise. After all, it has been used by many Google power-uses to make their searches easier to do. Unfortunately, its doom was inevitable, given the fact that the need for Google+ profile searching and replying would have to come first.

Before, PageRank was a metric used to gauge a website’s popularity. If a website had more links from authoritative sources, its PageRank soared, regardless of the relevancy of those pages. This made the task of link building quite easy. Any newbie webmaster can just get links every month or two, observe PR improvements, be satisfied, get links again, and so on and so forth.

Now, the situation has changed. If PageRank was updated consistently then, it is randomly updated now. There are even instances where PR is updated every 3 or 5 months, and even in a year or more. This makes data less relevant than it used to be in terms of how your site is measured. When Google does see your PageRank, it could have either gone up or down. Based on experience, the correlation between PR and placement is approximately .07, which indicates that in terms of being a critical metric, PR is relatively low.

With this information, is it safe to discount PageRank when on the lookout for link partners or websites to link to? No. Logically, PageRank still has some value in terms of link building because it was at one point what Google’s algorithm was entirely based on. However, in order to weigh the value of PageRank in SEO, it is necessary to understand how it is used now.

It is important not to totally cross out PageRank. Instead of framing it as a critical metric, let’s consider it a “collateral metric” for your link building campaign. This means that:

• If you want to look for a site to post or buy links to, you can still review the PR. It’s still a perfect measure of a site’s quality. You can view a site that has a high PR as a strong website, but this doesn’t mean you have to decide to link to it.
• It’s also good to check a website’s historical PR. Before deciding to get a link from a site, ensure that the site’s PR is consistent. A site whose PR changes constantly may be prone to link manipulation and not a good site to link to.
• Of course, it is important to review the relevancy of the content of the website you want to link to. It is better to link to a PR0 webpage which has highly relevant content than a PR5 site with irrelevant content.
• Always remember PR is not the sum total of a site. Look at the weight of the site and not merely the PR.

The important thing in running any link building efforts is to not be tied down to one metric. PageRank is a metric that was relevant then and remains important now to a certain extent. However, you need to look at other metrics as well as basis of your inbound linking efforts.

Fundamentals
#1: If you think the phrase “content is king” is a cliché, think again. Content is value in the SEO industry; even if you have invested on all the technical SEO you can get your hands on, without quality content, your rankings won’t budge.
#2: Quality first, not quantity. If traffic means your reputation gets abused and vandalized by nuisance visitors, then it’s not worth it.
#3: Focus on catering to the needs of human beings, not search robots.
#4: Google is a bit overrated so don’t be gung-ho on it. Google may be the biggest search engine, but focus your rankings on other search engines too, like Bing.
#5: Don’t be overconfident. Ranking well means your competitors are working round the clock to beat you.
#6: Never attempting to trick search engines. Search engines always have a way of catching up with cheats.
#7: Do not use SEO as a stand-alone campaign. Integrate it with your advertising and social campaigns.
#8: Don’t hesitate to link up with good, authoritative sites. The Internet is built for relationships and fostering good relations with other sites can get you quality inbound links.

Targeted keywords
#9: Target relevant keywords. Also: don’t experiment with popular but less relevant search terms.
#10: Try localized optimization in order to drive more relevant traffic toward your website.
#11: Target highly specific and niche keywords.
#12: Monitor how the volume and quality of your search terms are driving traffic by using Google Analytics.

Website
#13: Internal link building is crucial so use highly descriptive anchor tags to emphasize to search engines how relevant your site is.
#14: Tone down on Flash animations; they are not entirely useful to SEO.
#15: Page titles are a relevant on-site factor so construct title tags using target keywords.
#16: Don’t rely heavily on meta-tags; search engines aren’t as impressed by them.
#17: Provide alternative text to images so make it accessible to visually-impaired users.
#18: Provide an XML sitemap to aid indexing and to troubleshoot indexing issues.
#19: Use unique content. If you must replicate, rewrite the text and give attribution to the original source.
#20: If possible, your headlines should feature keywords and use h1 and h2 tags to improve layout and relevance to search engines.
#21: Make sure your header tags are well-organized. Use only single tags to avoid penalties.
#22: Every URL should be descriptive and not functional, i.e. use www.anydomain.com/here-is-an-example and not www.anydomain.com/117665.
#23: If you have a page that features interesting links, do not call the entire page “Links” as this may be mistaken for link farming.
#2; Use Google’s Webmaster Tools to guide your optimization.
#25: Use Webmaster tools to check and fix broken links on a regular basis.

1. SMBs focus on relationships
Any seasoned SEO practitioner would know that link building is really about building relationships. You have to devote time to introduce yourself to the influencers in your niche and convince them that your site is worth linking to. Many people think link building is soulless but it really boils down to human relationships. And isn’t this is what small business owners are all about? Large company executives do not focus on micro-level relationships and they are not as committed to making friends out of customers as small business owners are. Connecting with people is not merely an idea in the world of small business owners—it’s a century-old practice! An effective link builder looks for organic connections with people; this is why link building is tedious and often time-consuming. But the trait of dealing with others and building rapport come naturellement to the small business owner. This makes link building and owning a small business a natural fit!

2. Access to both offline and online networks
If there is one thing a small business owner can do better than anybody, it’s the ability to network. They are master networkers because it is a must in their trade. Potential customers abound in community events, volunteer organizations, local schools, universities, and local chamber of commerce. A regular small business owner carries a long list of contacts built through the years. Some just don’t get that in this borderless world—that offline contacts are potential online contacts, too. Their online presence can be a foundation for link building activity. So whether you have contacts in the local school, community organizations, or your local chamber of commerce, there is a great chance these people have sites or Facebook pages. As a small business owner, you just need to grab the opportunity to get a link back to their site when you transform an offline contact into an online one.

3. SMBs Attract Local Coverage
National broadsheets and media outfits can only accommodate few content, angles, or stories. Local online media however, have plenty of space to feature stories, faces, and places that have a local flavor. SMBs can take advantage of opportunities to receive media coverage when you launch a new product, host a unique local event, or have a local perspective of national stories. The media is always on the prowl for useful and easy content. This is one of the ways you can secure inbound links.

These are only three reasons why SMB owners’ fear of link building is unfounded. Truth be told, small business owners are already link builders in their own way! They just don’t know it yet.

With the demand for efficiency and economy becoming more prominent at present, link builders and website developers have discovered a strategy that combines the functionality of widgets with the purpose of link building.

Widgets Vis-à-vis Link Building

Widgets are simple applications that are embedded in websites to add visual appeal and serve a purpose or another. They can vary from simple games to weather forecasts to calculators. They can be simple buttons, drop-down lists, dialog boxes, selection boxes, menus with scroll bars, etc…

Backlinks to websites can be included in the widgets themselves. For example, you can include blog feeds from authority sites. This will also give you an opportunity to offer your widgets to related websites.

Unlike ordinary advertisements, widgets are more useful and are therefore several notches above the common website décor. Web masters will be more reluctant to let go of attractive and functional widgets. They therefore have higher chances of being retained in your partner websites than plain links.

Important Pointers When Using Widgets for Link Building

The first rule in using widgets for link building is to be straightforward about where the widget link is headed. Deceiving people will only backfire; web surfers hate it when links are not what they appear to be. People will eventually learn to avoid your widgets and not be bothered by irrelevant links.

Widgets inherently have simple codes, which is great since it will be quick to load and won’t affect the loading time of the web page where it is embedded. If you are creating your own widgets, bear this in mind. Another thing: use HTML or any other programming language that search engine bots can recognize and crawl.

There are services offered online dedicated to creating widgets. You may want to hire one if you intend to proceed with using widgets for link building. Having widgets custom-made will ensure that your widget is unique, has the right keywords and anchor text you need for effective linking, and possesses all the qualities appropriate for your website.

Submit your widgets to widget directories. People who are intentionally looking for widgets will have higher chances of finding yours than if they have to search for it through normal search engine inquiries.

Why Widgets?

Seeing as how widgets can effectively capture the attention of website visitors, why not use it for link building? This way you have a higher chance of drawing people’s attention to your backlinks. The visual appeal of widgets also serves as additional advertisement for your website.

What’s great about them is that you only have to copy their codes, paste them on the website, and voila! The widgets will be up and running right away.

You’ll know your widget campaign is successful when people can finally recognize its connection with your main website. For instance, the widgets for social networking sites and file sharing services like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, and YouTube are already so popular that all you have to do is display their respective logos and people will readily—even unconsciously, sometimes—click on them to utilize their links and functions.

When your widgets encourage the same action from website visitors, you will get higher traffic to your website with the possibility of decreasing bounce rates. Those who choose to click on your widgets are already apprised of what they can find in your main website—they may even be truly looking for what your services, products and website content are too.

This is why monitoring incoming links is a worthwhile activity. Monitoring your links is simple: check your links on a regular basis, record figures, and map out the growth of your links over time. Doing this will give you a good grasp of your situation where links are concerned. Of course, the more important thing is not just peer at your numbers but to act upon them. You have to build lots of links, as many of them as possible.

When we say lots of links, how many links would that mean exactly?

Like business planning, the number depends on how many links you want to target. When we talk about targets, we mean realistic and short-term goals that are achievable. So how do we compute how many links need to be targeted? There is no surefire formula but targets don’t come out of a vacuum, either. When we talk about links, our basis of measurement will always be relative to that of another site. For instance, we may say we have “lots” of links but this number may be “very few” relative to another site. This would depend on the nature and the competitiveness of the niche. Fortunately, SEO practitioners have tools that can help us generate realistic targets for our link building campaigns. Some of these tools include Link Diagnosis (powered by iAcquire), Open Site Explorer, Google Webmaster Tools, and Majestic SEO. All four tools have different processes in computation and will generate slightly different figures. This is because the system of indexing itself is quite arbitrary. Nonetheless, each of these tools can be used in order to establish realistic link targets.

What’s better is that to the trained or observant eye, Majestic SEO, Open Site Explorer or Link Diagnosis can be used to check out the competition. Strategic advantage in the SEO industry also comes from gathering intelligence and information on your competitors. Analysis of your competitors’ links can be done by looking at the raw numbers of the links and the linking domains of your rival sites. Looking at these figures can also give you an inkling of what realistic targets you might want to set for yourself.

Start weighing the competition by knowing who they are first. You need to differentiate who your competitors are in the “virtual” world from those in the “real” world by poring over the sites that currently rank for keywords you’re already targeting. As far as link building goes, the sites that inhabit your desired spots are your genuine competitors. After you finalize your roster of competitors, just plug each site to your preferred link checking tool and get the numbers for analysis. Sites that occupy the top position in terms of number of links and linking domains are your true rivals.

As a result of the simplified data that infographics provide, there are now countless online businesses that use them to improve their link building efforts.

Prior to working on your graphic, reaching your targeted audience is important. By doing this, you are collecting individuals and establishments that can boost your business in terms of sales and promotions. Consider some strategies below in contacting them.

•    Contact bloggers and organizations related to your business directly. Personalized emails are a good way to reach your audiences and get them interested in what you do. Send notifications of your upcoming event with the hope of getting your graphic posted to their page.

•    Do a press release at an appropriate time. Timing is everything. You can use Google Trends to determine when the best time is for you to do a press release and outreach.

•    Use social media networks to promote your graphic. Create an ad or fan page on Facebook, or do a SponsoredTweets or shoutout about your graphic on twitter. Do any means to get your graphic/business/website out there.

Now that you have strategized your initial plans for your graphic, the next thing to do is to work on your graphic per se. Here are some pointers for you to consider doing to improve your link building campaign.

•    Infographics should have sufficient information. Your data in your infographics has to be interesting. It has to have solid numerical information that addresses the needs of users and critics and possesses significance as a reference material.

•    Contact potential buyers and promoters before starting. It is essential to begin with getting community buy-in beforehand, so that you can have a more successful product. Gathering these buyers can give you better chances of a sale, and promoters get greater visibility.

•    When deciding to get graphic available for print and web resolutions, plan to have separate versions ahead of time. The print and web versions require different resolutions, which is why planning to have both needs done beforehand saves money and time. In terms of the appropriate size for your graphic, a 600px wide one is best.

Bearing these tips in mind can give you higher chances of a successful link building endeavor for your business.