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 .

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.

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.
 

So where do you start your geo-targeting endeavor for your link building campaign? It is actually best to begin locally. There is no need for you to revamp your campaign, however, as there are simple factors that you can do for geo-targeting as you build those links.

Anchor Text

Having geographically specific language on-site is crucial. Including large city names, physical address and state locations on-page is still relevant, but they actually matter to link building as well.

Although having an excellent geographical link label may give you a high rank at the SERPs, doing some off-site work may further increase your ranking status.

Thus, backlink link text is among the top factors considered in page ranking. It is especially used for major key phrases. Not only that, it likewise is used for getting top ranks in area-based queries.

Link Context

Aside from the anchor text, link context needs to be considered for link building. It involves less of link formatting or placement on a page, and more of the language surrounding it.

The topics and words on the linking page provide solid ideas on the site’s topic that is being linked to. Thus, it is advisable to use web pages focused on a particular place to your advantage.

Physical

If your website’s physical address is influential, the geographical relevance you will get through getting links to other sites with similar addresses is significant. The businesses near your area may not be directly associated with your company, but your local goals and their addresses are related.

Since you are not in competition with other businesses in your location, these addresses become more important to you. In fact, you can even create partnerships and beneficial agreements with such businesses.

Yet the best thing about this is that you can simply walk up to a business owner and talk with him in person. This is definitely better than ignored emails. Your physical presence is difficult to ignore.

Link building can be a struggle sometimes, but all the challenges you encounter are worth taking on. Before you know it, opportunities will come and once they do, there is significant value in ranking high in the SERPs for searches close to home.
 

To find those valuable links for such opportunities, here are some highly valuable link traits that you may consider useful.

•    Links that connect with a targeted audience. They need to be relevant so that the audience will find the link contexts convincing enough to click on them.

•    Links that deliver traffic continuously. Links that have great value send targeted traffic daily. Normally, traffic from such links comes in small quantities, but it eventually builds up. This is due to the linking page ranking highly or earning its own relevant links. 

•    Links that are on a promoted, shared and reliable page. These links go on a page that the publisher markets and shares through email newsletters, or by their social media connections.

•    Links that provide “brand juice” to your website. Such links put in a good word for your site, which in turn make it worthy of an “As Seen On” label or something that you can brag about.

•    Links that direct visitors to a conversion or other significant brand interactions. While home page links deserve credit, having a deeper page that can result to a sign, a sale or a conversion that has the potential to grow into a sale soon after is more important.

•    Links that are positioned through your trust/relationship/reputation with the publisher. To establish yourself with several people in your market more or less results to simpler link building.

•    Links that are followed and have targeted anchor text.

Keep in mind these qualities to find significant links. Make this your own guide to getting better link building opportunities for your business or website to grow, rather than a strict set of rules to follow for link valuation. Of course, you should likewise take into account your business goals, as well as that of your clients’.

-    Submitting Your Site to Authority Directories

Though there are plenty of directories, not all of them can give a good ROI. For directories, one should at least try to submit their links to big players like Yahoo!, Best of the Web, JoeAnt or Business.com. These directories have been proven to generate quality backlinks that actually help in the campaigns of their customers.

Directory submission can cost quite a lot. But once you get through, you can expect at least a respectable return on the money you spent. One thing to remember, directory submissions are not for websites that are still being constructed. Submitting an incomplete site is a sure way to get your application rejected.

Moreover, since getting listed is actually a privilege, you may not be able to refund the payment you made.

-    Actual Outreach Activities

This may not be a usual SEO strategy but it still is a legitimate avenue in establishing a connection with your customers. The only important thing here is how you will be able to translate your outreach into online customer traffic.

You can orchestrate outreach activities in many ways. The most common of these is through giveaways and/or promotional sample products. You can offer a free sample on your website just to entice some visitors in clicking through your online ads. You can also employ agents who will help promote your business by making phone calls and the like.

-    Web Content Publishing or Link Baiting

The most traditional way of building a link network is through web content publishing. Visitors click through a website maybe because it was first on the SERPs. What makes a website sit atop the rankings? Excellent Web content. Publishing quality web articles can be time consuming but it definitely is the surest way to life your website’s ranking and rep.

You can produce your own articles but for most companies, especially the bigger ones, hiring an external partner to produce the content may be the best way to go. This strategy is definitely more time and effort consuming but it is one of the most natural ways of acquiring backlinks.

You can use other tools though as link baits aside from web articles. You can use viral videos, graphs, photos, comic strips, and many more. You can post ads of your company in reputable and high-traffic websites.

-    Link Buying

Though a very common practice nowadays, link buying is a link building strategy that has been discouraged. However, many companies, especially some start-up ones, that turn to paid links just so they can jumpstart their link building campaigns.

Several businesses online offer their services for a fee and guarantee a certain number of backlinks back to their customers’ sites. The downside of this strategy mainly comes from the fact that you never really know where the links are coming from or if they are even relevant to your site.

Some of these paid link companies even give out spam links. These will definitely not help your campaigns. This dangerous possibility is the prime reason why this strategy is inherently flawed. You are better off sticking to strategies that will get you quality links in a natural way.

Link building requires time and effort. Do not hesitate to invest your time and a little bit of your funds to your campaign. The returns of your effort may dwarf everything that you spent to make it happen.
 

The SEO industry is no different from any business: quality is still the main focus rather than quantity. Search engines put emphasis on the quality of the links that on your site rather than sheer volume. If you can strike both quantity and quality links at the same time then link building will be a breeze for you.

If you do not know what to be wary about, there are plenty of potholes your link building campaign could be mired in. Here are some of the common ones:

-    Buying or selling links

Some people have already made legitimate businesses out of buying and selling links to people. However, most search engines (especially Google) frown upon this trade and consider this an easy way out of the whole link building process.

Many of these link-selling businesses advertise that their service will only be costing a very affordable price while helping your website achieve higher ranks in the SERPs. Most of these sites are fraudulent. Yes, they do offer a certain quantity of links to your site but sometimes most of them are from sites with bad reputation, which can impact your site in a negative way. Your website can even get banned by search engines in the process.

-    Getting links from sites with bad reputation

In the process of link building, this is just as bad as paying for your links. As a rule, never link to disreputable websites. The link building process is like a popularity contest: the more websites link back to you, the better as it means more sites are considering you as an authority. However, if the majority of those voting for you are unpopular themselves then the volume of “votes” you got is irrelevant.

You want to make sure that your website has links to—and from—websites that are also authority in the eyes of search engines. In this way, web crawlers can at least get the hint that your site has quality content since it keeps the company of sites with good reps.

-    Linking to sites with low PageRanks

Similar to linking with websites with bad reputation, low Page Rank sites have the tendency to pull you down in the search engine rankings instead of pulling you up. In the process of link building, it is better to get links from sites that have pageranks equal to that of your website’s.

The progress that your website makes is dependent on the links it contains. Also, outbound links—provided they are relevant to your content—are good too; the more you link to sites that have higher PageRank, the better for your campaign.

-    No Follow linking

No Follow Links can be used in order for your website to avoid being linked by disreputable sites. They can also generate traffic for your website. However, in terms of search engine rankings, No Follow links are irrelevant. Inbound links are important where SERPs are concerned but ones with the No Follow attribute are worthless.

-    Linking to sites that are not in your niche

Aside from Page Rank and link authority, niche relevance is also one thing you should consider. Backlinks are relevant if they talk about the same topics as your site does and are something that your visitors will deem relevant. Search engines are rather meticulous about this so it is very important for your link building endeavor.

-    Spam links

Commenting on various websites is one way of getting quality links. More often that not however, experienced webmasters delete comments they deem as superfluous; they know search engines sometimes consider unnecessary comments as spam.

Though it is unlikely that spam links will affect your overall page rankings, it is relatively ineffective and a waste of time.

-    Not getting your keywords as anchor text

Anchor text plays a critical component in the whole SEO process. You should always try to insert your keywords into the anchor text of each link that points back to your site. When negotiating with other webmasters, indicate what anchor text you want to have in the backlinks. Choose the best keywords.

Any serious webmaster need to pay serious attention to the link building process if they are to achieve success in the SEO sphere. The whole thing requires diligence, patience, and wit in order to strategically place your site and increase its chances at ranking high in SERPs. Like any businesses, success in the SEO field will depend on how much time and effort you are willing to invest in this important aspect of the game.
 

Common Misconceptions About the Link Building Process

•    That you can quantify or set a quota on your links

Acquiring links for your website depends entirely on the keywords you are targeting and the market that you are in. Some sites need less than a hundred links in order to get into the front page of Google’s search engine results. Other sites may have hundreds of links in its pages but still lag behind in the rankings.

The quality of links is what is actually more important here. For webmasters, investing time and effort in acquiring quality and authority links is more important than just hoarding links into their sites. The keywords or phrases are also important here. You can target keywords that can get you atop easily. But there are also others that are very hard to top at. Mixing and matching the number of links with your specified target words is important in achieving SEO success.

•    You can get all your links from inside your website

Internal links are good. Excessive internal linking is not. There is a certain accepted rule that a certain balance in internal and external links is needed to rise on top of the search engine rankings.

You can always use internal links in order to guide your visitors and make them go deeper into your web pages. It increases customer interaction and experience and can even result in your site being a staple in someone’s “must-visit” list. But you can only go as far as that. You will still need a certain amount of authority external links in order for you to achieve SEO success.

•    It takes a certain amount of backlinks to increase Page Rank

Increasing your Page Rank depends on how you develop your website and whether you gain enough authority backlinks for search engines to consider you a respectable source for a certain niche.

Despite this, many will be surprised to find out that a site’s Page Rank do not really matter when it comes to search engine rankings. A PR 3 may outrank a PR 5 website any time of the day. The main thing to focus on your link building campaign is not to achieve these certain numbers but rather to develop your site in a way that will drive customer traffic to it and give you quality backlinks in the process.

The whole link building process cannot be really measured by numbers. Numbers mean a lot but they also differ depending on the website, industry and other things that need considering. It is primarily a process. It does not have a specific schedule, date or deadline. You can not be sure of whether the return on your investment will be satisfactory to you. All of these things are vague when it comes to link building.

But you can always try. You can always put your best efforts forward. If you invest enough time and effort in doing it right then you will surely reap the benefits of the link building process. Different methods can be done in order for you to achieve success. The main thing constant here is the fact that you need to offer a website that is worthy of being ranked on top of the rankings.
 

Keyword Optimization

One of the most popular strategies in the SEO process is keyword optimization. Relevant and keyword-rich content is the life of a website. This is what search engine crawlers look for in a website and becomes their basis in indexing and ranking a particular website. Search engines base their rankings of websites on their relation to certain keywords or phrases that users usually look for.

Keywords are words that are trending and popular among search engine rankings. These are usually words that users type when they make their queries and searches. Using these keywords and incorporating them in your web content will make it easier for your website to be noticed by search engine crawlers and indexed in their rankings.

Taking Advantage of Trending Keywords

Being aware of keyword optimization is key to finding success in the SEO arena. Keywords may form a little part of your whole SEO strategy but they play the most important role in the whole process. Being highly ranked in any search engine in the Internet today depends largely on how you effectively use keywords in your web pages.

Here are some things web developers do to fully optimization their keyword usage:

• Research and Determine the Keywords you Will use

There are two types of keyword categories that web developers should always keep in mind. There are Money Keywords and there are Market Defining Keywords. Differentiating the two is important as they both play separate but equally important roles in the whole keyword optimization process.

Money keywords may be the more popular one especially among SEO practitioners. These are words that they usually bid on and serve as the main keywords used in their optimization processes. These are trending words that are advantageous to use within the posted web content. However, money keywords are not always the keywords used when developers need to evaluate recent SEO trends on their particular industries.

Market Defining keywords are the ones used in this evaluation process. These kinds of keywords are the ones deemed to be at the highest level and can be used to accurately measure the industry you are interested in. They may not be the trending ones at the moment but market defining keywords are usually the more often used keyword in the whole link building process.

• Analyze the Competition

It is not only advisable to know the certain Money or Market defining keywords in your particular industry, it is good to research on the websites that are currently ranking on top based on these certain keywords. You should be able to know who is considered authority website for a particular keyword and be able to observe the strategies they are employing to stay on top of the search engine ranking pages.

The goal here is to learn and be able to improvise on certain strategies so that your website itself can rank high with regards to a particular keyword. The companies that are usually on the top 20-30 SERP of a particular keyword are the ones that can be considered authority ones. These websites are also known as SERP dominators.

When users search for a particular keyword or phrase, these are the websites that would almost always be returned by the search engine crawlers. The goal is to ultimately become one of these.

• Use Keywords in the Link Building Process

Knowing these sites can also help in the overall link building process, not just in keyword optimization. Web developers, especially for start-up websites, can get a significant amount of relevant backlinks from these authority websites, something critical in all link building endeavors.

Developers can search for blogs, guest posting opportunities, interviews, press releases and many more regarding a particular money keyword or phrase. Developers can log into these top websites and find for an opportunity to link there. Not only will you have authority backlinks, search engine crawlers will definitely turn a positive eye towards your site and catapult it up the search engine rankings.

• Use Your Assets

Assets would mean the link building assets that you have in your company, in your utility. These are pages from within your website, information you have in your hands, or even the people who work within you company all of which can be used to generate links pertaining to certain keywords in your industry.

Assessing these is important because you never know the link opportunities that a simple interview with your company’s CEO or a certain picture about a product can generate. You should maximize these assets and connect them to certain keywords that you are targeting. Search engines, with all the latest developments they have undergone, are now more capable than ever in considering various link building assets in their SERP criteria.

• Use Keywords and Link Building Query Operators Combined

To be successful in your SEO process, it is important to always look for opportunities and saturate every avenue you can find. One way to do this is to find for certain Market defining keywords and combining it with link building queries available for web developers to use.

Some of the more popular link building queries in the Internet today include:

1. The Ontolo Link Building Query Generator
2. Link Search Tool by SoloSEO
3. SEOBook Link Suggest Tool

• Do Guest Writing

Posting and writing web articles in web directories or for some other company is advantageous; you create a network for yourself and an extensive link building opportunity for yourself.

Some web directories and sites allow their writers to post certain links for further reference to be used by their readers on the topics they have searched for. You can use this opportunity to create a natural and relevant backlink to your website which will eventually increase visitor traffic and would surely help in getting you atop search engine rankings.

Also, the opportunity to observe and know certain strategies that some of your indirect competitors apply is advantageous in your own link building and keyword optimization process.

• Reach out and Ask for Help

Though this is more personal than technical, it will not hurt if you ask friends, acquaintances or even family to link back to your site and help you in the whole keyword optimization process. Reach out and ask. The link opportunities that can be generated would still count and help you succeed in your endeavor.

Strategically Placing Keywords in Your Website

There are several ways to put keywords in the contents of your website. But you must know what works and what does not for your website to be able to fully optimize the process. Placing keywords strategically in your site is crucial because some visitors and web crawlers use these as the basis on whether or not your site is worth spending time on.

Here are some places within your site where you can put keywords in:

1. The Title

The title of your content or article should have keywords present on it. Aside from thinking of a creative title for your posts, it is also important that the titles feature the keywords that you are targeting. It is advisable to have around 5-6 words in your title with the keywords on it.

2. In the Description Meta tag

In the search results page, search engines always use the description meta tag in providing a snippet of what your website is all about. Sometimes reading these short sentences can entice or turn away visitors from logging into your website. It is important that the keyword/s be present in these descriptions to make search engines have an easier time partnering you website to a certain money keyword.

3. In the Keyword Meta tag

This pertains to the list of keywords or key phrases that are targeted by your page which also enable the search engine crawlers to find and index your site. Some things to remember would include:

o Use keywords that are also present in your title and description meta tag
o Do not overuse your keywords. Twice or thrice is enough.
o Remember to limit the characters you use for your keywords to 200 only, including spaces.
o Use keywords relevant to your pages

4. In the Heading Tags

The heading of your pages should feature your keywords.

5. In the ALT Tags

These are the tags present in other files within the website like JPEG, PNG and other picture files. Sometimes users have the tendency to disregard the loading of images in a website to make the pages load faster. They will be relying on the ALT tags for information that is why putting your keywords here is very important.

6. In the Web Content itself and its corresponding Hyperlinks

As you know by now, search engines base their rankings on the relevance and keyword-richness of a site’s content. Remember to always post unique and fresh content that has around 2-3% keyword density. Your hyperlinks should also feature your keywords as search engine spiders also check these regularly.

The Relevance of Keywords in SEO

Keywords are the major basis of search engine optimization. Your site cannot be considered authority unless you have maximized the utilization of your keywords by posting relevant content. The whole search engine optimization process anchors itself on keywords and their importance should always be deemed highest by web developers and SEO practitioners.

This application works quite differently from Twitter since aside from updating our status and connecting with friends online, this app allows you to find your Twitter friends in real time when you are in the same place at the same time and find out new things to do in different places.

This app has already gained substantial popularity and has attracted a lot of buzz amongst social networking fanatics. It has been dubbed as the next Twitter or Facebook, as the social networking powerhouse of the future. This innovative app is none other than Foursquare.

What is Foursquare?
Foursquare is essentially a location-based social networking website, an application for mobile devices, and a social game. It allows registered users to connect with friends and update their location. Foursquare utilizes the built-in GPS of a mobile device like that of iPhone’s to display your current location and show restaurants, bars, parks and other attractions found in your location. When you visit in any of these different venues, Foursquare enables you to “check in” using text messaging or a device specific app. It updates and broadcasts your current location to your friends, while also being able to actively take part in a fun social game with other registered users as Foursquare awards you points and badges for checking in at venues. You can also unlock new features in Foursquare when you check in more later on.

Foursquare in turn allows you to see where your friends have checked in. This is helpful especially if you want to meet up with them or just find new things to do in those places where your friends already checked in. This application was initially planned to be used like Twitter, but basing post on a user’s location. Instead of posting random ideas or news like in Twitter, Foursquare users can enjoy using the app by updating their friends as to where they are by updating their location. Thus, you can post shouts about what you are currently doing in a specific venue. It also enables you to search for your friends, add more friends and find more venues within your city.

Moreover, Foursquare also allows you to wire reviews and tips about a certain venue, which will appear to other Foursquare users. These tips would include everything from the best selections to order off the menu of a well-known restaurant to the prices of the services you might want to avail in a local salon.

The Foursquare mobile app is currently available to iPhone, Android, webOS, and Blackberry and Windows Mobile Application users. A Maemo version of the app is currently on its early stages of development and is not being offered in the Foursquare website yet.

Rising from the Ashes
Foursquare was created by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai. Crowley and Selvadurai previously created a similar social networking app to Foursquare called Dodgeball in 2004. Internet giant Google bought the rights to Dodgeball from the two in 2005 and even got them in to further develop the product. However, Google decided to shut down this social networking app without much explanation last 2009. Crowley definitely disapproved of Google’s move to dump the project, but he decided to join forces with Selvadurai once again to work on another product very identical to its disappointing precursor.

Hence, Foursquare was created in 2009, and albeit very similar to Dodgeball, it received an opposite reception from the virtual community. It started with availability in the 100 worldwide metro areas where the service was only accessible. When the Foursquare founders decided to extend the service further by changing its location model to permit check-ins from any locale worldwide in January 2010, the service started to boom and become increasingly popular. The site is exponentially increasing its registered users each and every day; it has closed in with around 1 million users from across the globe in April 2010.

With its growing popularity, Foursquare has been considered by a lot of people as the next Twitter. With this potential at stake, Foursquare is now being pursued by another Internet giant, this time Yahoo! Inc., which has offered the founders as much as $125 million. Google must be regretting its previous decision now.

Foursquare Mechanics

Here is how Foursquare works: each time a user goes anywhere in the world, they can use their mobile devices to check in to these locations and earn points. Some locations have tags for check-in frequency, thus a user can earn badges by checking into such venues. Some urban locales offer users city-specific badges that can only be attained in a specific zone. Foursquare has already made updates on the way they handle badges. Thus, when a user acquires a certain type of badge, that person will have the same type of badges across all cities. Once a badge is acquired by a user, it will stay in his or her profile for an indefinite period.

This social game allows users to play with and compete not only against the network of friends on Foursquare, but also against every Foursquare user not included in your network who are also in the same city on a weekly basis.

Users are also able to create their own “to do” lists for their own use, where they could list down all the locations that they would want to visit and check in. Foursquare also features a Tips section where users can key in information about the city attractions they have checked in, such as the things to do or the food to eat at the venue.

The social gaming feature of Foursquare has become beneficial to business establishments. Founders Crowley and Selvadurai have started to secure partnerships from different local companies to work with them and to have mutually profitable relationships. Last February 2010, Foursquare partnered with Zagat, Bravo, Conde Nast, and the New York Times. These companies will share information and tips to Foursquare users through their website and offer special badges at city attractions they have featured in their publications, websites, and shows.

Superuser Status
To make the playing field more competitive, Foursquare provide three level of “superuser status.” They can be attained by users who check in regularly or enter new information about several venues into Foursquare. Obtaining superuser status will unlock additional features and give users the ability to perform new tasks, depending on the superuser level.

Superuser status level 1 will allow users to edit venue info like address, phone number, Twitter details and map pin location, mark venues as “closed”, and inform Foursquare about duplicate venues. On the other hand, Superuser level 2 can edit venues, remove tags, add venue categories for any venue, and merge duplicate venue listings; while Superuser level 3 adds the ability to create and delete venue aliases and delete fake/spam listings, which are starting to infiltrate Foursquare.

Foursquare Mayor
Foursquare has a feature that allows a user to become the “mayor” of a location. If a user checks in to one location on several days more than anyone else, that person becomes the Foursquare mayor of the location. Becoming a mayor allows you to receive actual prizes or benefits from some business establishments in a city, like dining discounts and free drinks. The title can also be stripped off if someone else checks in more than the previous mayor.

Location-based Social Network
Foursquare is not the first of its kind that helps you connect with friends on a location-based social network format through a mobile device with GPS capabilities. Actually, Brightkite was one of the first online services of its kind to penetrate the market. However, what made it unsuccessful over the years is because it had so many features but missed its essence. Indeed Brightkite took technology to the next level and offered a lot of features. But, the all proved useless, unlike Foursquare that has a clear-cut purpose. Its service did not appeal users who are not interested in knowing about where people are unless they know them personally and are their friends in the first place.

Google Latitude is another location-based social network service that failed to become successful because it lacked originality, foresight and usefulness. Google just ripped off the concept from Brightkite and assumed that their LBS will gain more popularity because it was, in fact, Google-made. And yet Google did not make the extra effort of creating unique features that would make it stand out and useful.

It would be wrong to assume that Foursquare is another just another app that jumped on the LBS bandwagon, copied the concept and improved on it, and was just lucky enough to become popular. Remember that the founders of Foursquare are the creators of Dodgeball, the certified first ever LBS app. Foursquare is just the product of the continuous perseverance of Crowley and Selvadurai to make their initial vision into reality.

The Twitter Contender
Foursquare was much in the same shoes as Twitter in its early days. Initially, their services have been mocked and misunderstood as useless apps. But both have been considered as game changers as more people have been starting to take notice, actually use them, and realize their importance. However, with Twitter’s resounding success, Foursquare is coming from behind and daring to challenge Twitter in the social networking wars.

Foursquare is already considered as the next Twitter, but the founders are not contented by this. It wants to become the perfect LBS app and a more useful service than Twitter. Unlike Twitter, where a random tweet goes off into cyberspace to no effect, Foursquare users’ check-ins and other activities would actually help other people. Foursquare’s “tips” feature allows users to share information on places that are worth checking out. Users can leave tips about a location with friends and strangers alike. The service is also beneficial to business establishments found under Foursquare’s radar that need help to flourish.