We all know that link building is tedious, frustrating, and for the most part, no fun. On the other hand, we know that building links can bring valuable traffic, exposure, and long term success of your site. Day in and day out, I’m sure you come across articles on link building, and they are usually the same old, boring routine. This article is for those that want to work on building links, but are up to trying out a few new ways to go about doing it. Keep an open mind, as these methods, while not as common as others, are definitely worth your time and effort.

1. Testimonials. When you purchase a service, product, or whatever else from a company online, especially from bigger sites, 99% of them will allow you to send in a testimonial. If you write one compelling and believable enough, there is a good chance that they will publish it. Make sure you add your link into the testimonial, and it may be the cheapest (free) high PR backlink you’ll ever get. This method isn’t guaranteed, but it’s definitely worth a try.

2. Utilize hired help. If you have an advertising budget, and are willing to spend money to ensure the long term survivability of your site, consider hiring a consultant to do the link building for you. Pay a virtual assistant $9/hr (or whatever) and have their main goal be to get you backlinks (directory submission, blogroll exchanges, etc..). This can help you manage your time better and take a break from the dubious link building process. The money spent will be very much worth it in the long run. (Hint – elance.com)

3. Piss off someone that matters. This may sound harsh and unethical, but it’s really not, as long as you don’t cross the legal line. Sink your teeth into a popular blogger or webmaster, post about it, and watch the links pour in. Be careful not to cross the lines of slander or defamation of character. This can, and has been done many, many times throughout history. Always make sure you can justify your reason for slamming them – have sources, witnesses or friends that will back you up. This can be wildly successful.

4. Give away money. Holding a contest is one of the easiest and most effective ways to gain backlinks. Make sure that in order to enter, the webmaster/blogger is required to link to your site, whether it’s a blogroll link or even a short review. Hint – the more money you give away, the more links you’ll get. Giving away $100 will probably get you several hundred, if not a couple thousand dollars worth of backlinks.

5. Be the first on the scene. With the multitude of new web startups, you can usually find out about them right away, and make sure you fire off a pre-made email interview template to them ASAP. Posting the first interview, or best interview, can garner hundreds of incoming links, even from big sites. This is surprisingly easy to accomplish, as most startups are willing to share information to create buzz.

6. Design a plugin for Wordpress. There are a lot of people out there that start blogs or sites that have the technical know how to design useful Wordpress plugins. If this relates to you, then what the heck are you waiting for? Take the chance, and whip up a brand new plugin and order a few paid reviews on it. Even the slightest success can multiply your incoming links by a lot. The funny thing is, even if your plugin just plain sucks, you’ll still have a ton of links from people that like to tell you how bad it is. Strange world, isn’t it?

7. Sponsor a Wordpress theme. With the amount of bloggers that use Wordpress these days, there are always new themes popping up. Visit one of the popular webmaster or design forums, and take a chance at sponsoring a new theme. When you sponsor a theme (it costs anywhere from $5-100), you usually get a link built in to the footer of the theme, so whenever someone uses it, it’s an instant backlink to your site. There are people that have done this and been almost unbelievably successful with it. $5 could land you several thousand links, if not more. If the theme gets super popular, your credibility rating skyrockets.

8. Write an ebook, and give it away for free. Writing an ebook may seem like a dreaded task for some people, but chances are, you are skilled in at least one area. Take this expertise and knowledge, pump it all out in paper, package it up as a .pdf, and distribute it for free. If the ebook is even slightly helpful, you’ll get your moneys worth of backlinks in no time flat. Offer free copies at one of the popular webmaster forums. This method works great, and if written well enough, can lead to even greater opportunities. (Hint – if at all possible, slip at least one relevant affiliate link into your ebook for a nice residual income!)

9. Order up a Press Release. For as little as $20-$50, you can hire someone to write and distribute a professional press release for your site. Press releases have the potential of being picked up by major media outlets (especially if your site is groundbreaking or super creative). At the very least, Google and other search engines love press releases, so natural incoming links are almost guaranteed. A professional press release also gives you an air of credibility that just may convince someone to link to you.

10. Build How -To lists. This may not seem creative in itself, but think outside of the box. We all know that “101 ways to cheat at World of Warcraft” types of articles are wildly popular, and usually result in massive amounts of backlinks from relevant sites/blogs and social bookmarking sites. So take it a step further and make an unforgettable, maybe even controversial how-to list. Example – “10 Ways To Kill Your In-Laws”. You get the point….

Reddit, as you already know, is one of the huge social bookmarking sites that join the ranks of Digg, Netscape, StumbleUpon and related heavy hitters in the bookmarking arena. Boasting an Alexa rank that usually hovers in the 1k range, getting put on the Reddit front page is quite worthwhile if you’re looking for some quick, heavy traffic to your blog or website.

The best thing about Reddit is the democratic voting system that allows the average blogger or webmaster a significantly better chance of hitting the Reddit homepage as opposed to sites like Digg and others. When a link is submitted, it is simply voted “up” or “down” by the users. The more users that vote it “up”, the more points your link score receives, with an opposite reaction from getting voted “down”. When you submit an article to Reddit, the main thing you need to worry about are headlines, headlines, headlines. Forget having to write a summary like you do with Digg and friends. The key to success for gaining votes on Reddit is having a compelling, click-through worthy headline. Be creative and analyze what works and what doesn’t by checking out the Reddit “Top Links” section. With a little research, you can see which stories made it and how they did it.

Of course, there are other ways to get on the front page of Reddit and leveraging the traffic potential, so here are five techniques to get you started in the right direction (which will hopefully be, up!)

1. Use Reddit regularly. This is one of the easiest ways and should be the beginning of being a Reddit power user. Being active in the community, submitting links, and general networking with other “redditers” is not only fun, but it can build up your “karma” and make you look more reputable than a “one-shot” voter (the types that only register an account to vote for a friends article). Once you have an established voting and submission history in your profile, people will be more likely vote your links up, which if it’s on your blog, means the potential of a front page hit. Make no mistake, Reddit can send massive amounts of traffic to your site if you hit the front page, especially if it’s an interesting story. Reddit plays in the same group of kids as Digg, StumbleUpon, and others. They are definitely not lightweights!

2. Create your own Reddit voting club. This is an obvious, yet highly effective way to get more votes. Why not team up with like-minded friends and associates in your field or niche. By teaming up with people you regularly network with, or even direct competitors, you can form your own voting group and routinely vote each others submissions right to the front page (depending on the size of your voting party). This is a widely known and powerful technique, and you’ll see this across all of the social bookmarking sites (some more controversial than others). If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right? Start forming your voting party by asking readers and fans of your blog or website to join up. Create a forum or a shared blog that everyone can post their links in for getting votes. This is very easy and takes minimal time. The rewards can be fantastic, as well.

3. Leverage your existing blog or website traffic. This is another no-brainer. If you’re submitting stories to Reddit, you probably already have somewhat steady traffic to your blog or website, so by placing voting buttons in easily recognizable places (at the end or beginning of an article), it allows your readers or guests (assuming they have a Reddit account) to quickly vote on your article. The extra votes you can gain from these types of people just may be the extra votes you need to push your story to the front page. Take advantage of what you already have, and as a reminder, make sure you place voting buttons for all of the other bookmarking sites as well. The more the merrier!

4. Leveraging subreddits. Subreddits are subcategories that talk about other topics like web 2.0, technology, and subjects like that. It’s surprisingly easy to gain front page status on the subreddit pages, and by gaining front page status in these areas, you stand a good chance of gaining more votes that could ultimately push your story to the front page. A sound strategy to appearing on the front page of a subreddit is the same as it would be for the front page – headline. It’s absolutely vital to pick a phenomenal headline if you want to enjoy a surge in traffic from front page status on Reddit. Although it’s not recommended and doesn’t quite work like this, your actual story or article could be crap, but you could at least get people to click through with an outstanding headline. (Of course, you don’t want to submit crap stories, because you won’t receive any votes, which in turn won’t get you on the front page, which results in no traffic at all…ah, but I digress!)

5. Create a specific page for Reddit. This one is great, and can work wonders for a site that normally wouldn’t appeal to regular Reddit users. Let’s say you run a generally boring site about stocks, or ophthalmology…you get the point. Generally speaking, these kinds of sites aren’t the kind of sites that Reddit users frequent, but maybe you still want to leverage traffic from Reddit with the intent of exposing your business and name to the masses. No problem! All you need to do is create a sub-domain, or a page that carries the same tone and layout of your regular site, and use it strictly for Reddit worthy material. If you get lucky and submit breaking news first, or an otherwise Reddit worthy story that hits the front page, you’ll garner the massive amount of resulting traffic, and even though the odds of the visitors coming back is low, you at least presented them with your business name and style. Building name recognition can be a long, boring process, but doing it this way will at least put you on the right path. Who knows, one of the users may want to get into stock trading, and they just may remember your site from that funny story you submitted. It’s definitely a possibility.

I hope these tips help you become a better Reddit user, and more importantly, I hope by using these tips that you hit the front page soon. The traffic, even if it’s short lived, can have residual effects that can last a long time.

These days there are a wealth of tools at our disposal for making money online through your blog. Yet with all of these options many bloggers tend to place their focus on Google’s Adsense program alone. Although this program is profitable for many people, diversity is the key factor to experiencing increased financial gain from your marketing efforts.

The old saying “Don’t place all of your eggs in one basket” reins true with this topic. Spreading your advertising across multiple channels allows your ads to appeal to a larger audience, therefor increasing your chances for that golden click or affiliate sale.

Just because your blog doesn’t receive several thousand visitors a day or have a high page rank, does not mean that you are locked into some third dimension filled with Adsense. There are other options out there that can and will work better for you. When seeking a new advertising strategy, keep an open mind and consider your topic of interest, you want to keep your advertising relevant to your niche. Below are some ideas for you to consider while in the market for a new advertising strategy.

1. Practically every market or niche has a product. This may be a book, merchandise or something physical that an interested consumer can purchase. These products make exceptional affiliate opportunities for you to market. Consider placing Amazon affiliate links at the bottom of a post rather than Adsense. Prominently display a list of your favorite books on the subject, directly in your sidebar. Affiliate sales often have considerably higher payouts than a pay-per-click form of advertising.

2. Advertise your interest in writing paid reviews for new products and other blogs in your niche. Setup a little “review me” button with a direct link to pay via PayPal. Allowing an advertiser the opportunity to pay immediately will often drive more sales on impulse alone. If you require them to first contact you and discuss the review, you will likely lose the sale. You can always refund them if the review is something you do not wish to cover.

3. Check out in-text advertising. Although this is highly debated form of advertising, some consider it intrusive. Many bloggers are realizing nice profits from this and remember you are keeping options open. One of the most popular companies providing this is Kontera, so they are a good place to start.

4. Selling text links on your blog is another great way to make some income. Many small blogs tend to sell one sponsored blogroll link for between $5 and $15 dollars per month. As your traffic increases you will have the ability to demand larger amounts for these placements.

Remember that above is only some of the options available to you. Get creative and find unique ways to monetize your blog. These days people have trained their eyes to avoid advertisements as advertising surrounds us each day. So you have to be on constant lookout for something different that may stand out enough to warrant a click or make a sale. Visit your competitors blogs and see what techniques they are using to make money. Ask others what has worked for them, some bloggers may be happy to share.

What is Technorati?

Technorati is a search engine that functions in real-time. This means that when bloggers update their blogs Technorati automatically updates. Technorati currently tracks over 104 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media, such as video, news, movies, music and games.

How to Join Technorati

You can join Technorati and bookmark your favorite blogs and various social media items. Most members join because they are blog owners and they want to claim, or submit, their blog to Technorati. Wordpress users can choose to have Technorati pinged when they add a new entry, but some blogging platforms do not offer this feature. Members can go to Technorati and ping their own blogs, to update the search engine.

Technorati

Technorati monitors the links between blogs to determine the importance of a particular blog, photos, videos etc. Essentially, they are monitoring the entire blogging community and the discussions that result.

You can use Technorati’s search box to locate articles on virtually any subject and you can search this massive search engine to find blogs that will interest you.

What is MyBlogLog?

MyBlogLog is basically a social community for bloggers and those that read blogs. However, they do offer many benefits to their users.

The Benefits of Becoming a MyBlogLog Member

• When you join MyBlogLog you create a profile page that features your bio, your blog(s) and you can also feature your business (or personal) site as well.

• You can find other blogs that interest you and become part of their community.

• MyBlogLog is a great place to network for both business and personal reasons. When you network and join communities you are publicizing your blog and establishing an Internet presence.

• All bloggers know that they need readers and they will find them at MyBlogLog.

• Having a blogging community support you is extremely helpful and it is easy to create a community at MyBlogLog

• Free Stats- MyBlogLog offers free stats that tell you where readers came from, what they read and what links they clicked on. It is a great feature. You can pay for more in-depth statistics.

• Widgets- MyBlogLog lets you create a customized widget that will show which members of MyBlogLog have been to your blog. Reader’s avatars are featured and by clicking on the picture you are brought to their MyBlogLog profile. This is a great feature for networking and publicizing your blog.

• MyBlogLog picks up your RSS feed and it is available on the MyBlogLog web site for everyone that has joined your community.

• You can send private messages or a public message to all of the members in your community.

What is Blog Catalog?

Blog Catalog describes itself as “the social blog directory on the Internet”. If you want to promote your blog, network with other bloggers or find blogs on a particular subject you can do it all with Blog Catalog.vv You submit your blog for approval and the Blog Catalog Team will review your submission. If your blog is not approved they will tell you why and you can re-submit later. If you continue to network with other bloggers and members it will increase the success of your blog when it is approved.

Blog Catalog offers widgets that are essentially the same as MyBlogLog’s. You create a customized widget that will tell you which Blog Catalog members have visited your blog. Each avatar leads back to the member’s profile page. These widgets allow you to learn more about your readers and their blogs. They also allow your readers to learn about the members of Blog Catalog that have visited your site. Again, networking is very important and Blog Catalog makes it easy.

Other benefits include private messaging, the ability to post comments and your RSS feed is featured on your profile page.

All of the answers to these questions will save you time and help you quickly develop focused and effective SEO strategies.

1.What demographics are you targeting? You can’t do a good job without this answer. If they don’t know, help them determine which demographics they should target.

2.What are your goals? A client’s goals should be your goals when developing an optimization campaign.

3.What is and what is not working with your current Internet marketing strategies? The client may and they may not know, but you want to pay close attention to their answers and figure out what other questions you should ask. Review their stats and compare them with the answers you receive for this question.

4.Are you prepared to make some changes to your web site and the copy on the site? Usually, there are many things that have to be revamped or adjusted. Sometimes there is a lot that needs to be changed. Clients need to understand this from the beginning so they can get use to the idea. Some people love their web sites and want nothing to change! These clients will take a little more time because you will need to explain why the changes need to be made.

5.What is your budget and what are your expectations? Clients typically have a budget in mind and they won’t go beyond that. Their budget helps you decide which services to offer and the best way to offer them. Also, if they expect to be #1 tomorrow they are mistaken. Some can get to #1, depending on which keywords they are using, but most clients have a lot of competition. Your clients need to understand the realities of optimization and they time and effort it takes to do well.

Google Sitemap Generator for WordPress v2 Final

This plugin will make an XML-sitemap for your WordPress Blog. Many describe an XML-sitemap as “a Google sitemap”, but Yahoo and MSN also want XML sitemaps. Once your sitemap is created you want to make sure to submit it to Google.

Features:

• This plugin is WordPress 2 compatible
• Has a user interface that allows you to customize all parameters like change frequencies, exclusions, priorities etc.
• Available in fourteen languages
• Generates a static XML file in your Blog directory (Filename is customizable)
• Can generate a gzipped version of the sitemap
• Generates a sitemap for homepage, posts, static pages, categories and archive pages
• Calculates a priority for each post, based on the number of comments, but this can be turned off
• The XML file is automatically rebuilt when you change, edit, create or publish a post
• The sitemap lets Google know about changes automatically via Google-Ping
• You can include external pages which aren’t generated by WordPress or are not recognized by this plugin. So, you can add the home page of your business and the search engines will know that your blog and your business site are linked.
• You can define a minimum post priority, which will override the calculated value if it’s too low
• The plugin includes a WordPress filter for other plugins

Visit ArneBrachHold.de to download.

All-in-One SEO Pack

The all-in-one SEO pack creates boxes that will allow you to create custom title-tags, keywords and a description for every post and page. You can also choose to let the plugin automatically generate these areas for you.

More importantly, this plugin can prevent the search engines from indexing categories, archives and more to prevent duplicate content. This is a “must have” plugin for optimization.

SEO Title Tag 2.0 RC2

The SEO Title Tag plugin allows you to easily create effective title-tags for every page and post on your blog. Title-tags are a crucial part of optimization. Every blog and/or web site needs optimized title-tags and this plugin allows you to personally create them.
Features

• Allows you to override the title-tag WordPress automatically makes for your pages and posts and replace them with a custom one.
• A Title Tag input box in the “Edit Post” and “Write Post” forms.
• Mass editing of title tags for all posts, static pages, category pages, tag pages, tag conjunction pages and archive by month pages.
• You can define a custom title tag for your home.
• You can define the title tag of 404 error pages.
• It can handle your internal search result pages.
• For users of the UltimateTagWarrior plugin (which should be everybody!), incorporates the tag name into the title tag on “tag pages”
• When you use this plugin with Ultimate Tag Warrior you can customize the title-tags on tag pages and on tag conjunction pages too.

Netconcepts.com provides the plugin.

Ultimate Tag Warrior

This plugin is not the easiest to use. There is even a support forum of it. The Ultimate Tag Plugin allows you to creatively use multiple tags and you can include them at the top and bottom of your posts. AJAXy search is included in the download. For a more in-depth explanation of this plugin please visit the Ultimate Tag Warrior.
SEO WordPress
The SEO WordPress Plugin was designed with search engine spiders in mind. The creator wanted to help bloggers avoid the supplemental index. A combination of Robots.txt and noindexis used. For more information visit UtheGuru.com.
Permalink Redirect WordPress Plugin

This plugin uses a 301 redirect if a requested URL is different from an entry’s or archive’s permalink. This eliminates more than one URL being associated with a specific blog entry. Fucoder.com has more information and downloads.

Static Front Page

This plugin allows you to use a static page as the front/home page of your WordPress site. The blog becomes a blog page. Another bonus, your home page is removed from page lists and permalinks your blog’s URL to help avoid duplicate content. You can download the plugin and visit a forum for any help you need at Semilogic.com.

Search Meter Plugin

The Search Meter Plugin will help you keep track of what your visitors are searching for, if your blog features a search box. It keeps a record for you and breaks down the results by days, weeks or months. You will also be told how many searches were unsuccessful and you can feature the most popular searches for your readers. No configuration is necessary. Thunderguy.com features the plugin.

Akismet- Comment Spam Blocker

Akismet has a great reputation because it stops spam from appearing in your comments. Most of the time, the spam comments include many keywords and links to questionable sites. It is a great plugin that requires very little effort on your part and at the same time it eliminates a lot of frustration and comments that could hurt your blog, optimization wise. If you have a WordPress blog you need to download Akismet.

FeedSmith

This plugin redirects an ordinary feed from self-hosted WordPress blogs to a much more powerful FeedBurner feed. When you use the FeedBurner feed you are able to track your subscribers. Comment feeds and post feeds are both forwarded. Please visit FeedBurner for more information and facts from the creator, Steve Smith.