Author Archives: Ryan Clark

About Ryan Clark

I'm the CEO of Linkbuildr Marketing and the brains behind our branding and blog content. I specialize in effective marketing strategies for hotels, luxury brands and real estate. If your brand is in need of a boost then don't hesitate to contact me for a free proposal. Follow me on Google+: +Ryan Clark Twitter: @Linkbuildr on Twitter. You can also come ask me a question on our Facebook Page.  

Link Building Chart That Makes For Easy Explanation

3 Comments
January 16  |  Link Building  |   Ryan Clark

I know there are a lot of people out there that “get” internet marketing these days. But as a link builder, do you still run into people who have a hard time understanding what it is you “do?” Ever gotten a laugh and a “what is that” when you tell people you’re a link builder?

No? Hmm… must just be me then.

Since we are link builders, we know the process isn’t that hard to understand. But making the whole process easier to grasp for all those people new to this form of Ninjitsu can be difficult. This past March, my internet marketing company put together a trusty chart to make the whole process easy to understand.

I’m an employee, so obviously I have one on my wall. The chart is a great visual aide for explaining all the different ways to get links across the internet. Not to mention the design – a very “Nifty 50’s” feel (like a diner menu – greasy fingerprints not included)! Without giving too much away, our link building menu features the following “a la carte” options for getting links:

  • Link Bait
  • Social Communities
  • Paid/Trade Links
  • Cherry Picking Links
  • Content Submissions

The chart also features some downloadable programs and specific web sites for getting started with link building (you can download the chart there, also). In case you’re interested in taking a quick peek at the chart, you can check it out and download it – free – in PDF format. LinkBuildr isn’t the only site that has given this chart the “thumbs up” either – it’s been featured on SEO Book and the SEO 101 podcast, too. A little known link builder by the name of Stuntdubl also had some positive praise for it.

While not new to the practice of SEO when I started at ProspectMX, I definitely had a lot to learn about link building. I found the chart to be easy to understand then, and I still refer to it every now and then when my brain starts to get stale in one area. It’s never bad to have a reminder right in front of you!

Thanks to Ryan for allowing me to hop on his site and take a second to mention our chart. If you download it and find it useful, feel free to use it to explain to your mom or household pet how you do your job. The chart also works in meetings with C-levels that initially think link building involves little more than having their little princess point a link to daddy’s website from her Facebook profile.

————————————————————————————————————————

Jonathan Bentz is a link builder for ProspectMX, an internet marketing company in Pennsylvania. If you’re hip to Twitter and enjoy mindless ramblings about fantasy baseball and internet marketing, feel free to follow me – @jonathanbentz. Chances are good I might follow you back.

Tagged , , ,

Paid Links – The Best Way To Rank In The Top 10

15 Comments
January 13  |  Paid Links  |   Ryan Clark

Now you might be double taking at the title because most of you who read this blog know I am not in favor of paid links. Now with that being said, why the hell am I talking about them? Well for the past couple of months I’ve been taking on a lot of clients which involves me to research their competitors backlink profiles. I’ve also taken on a few clients who were competing for some very dominated keywords, and from what I’ve learned is that paid links are still king.

Over the past week I’ve been working in a niche for a client that is tough to break into and we’re starting down a long road of link building. I won’t name the niche at all out of respect for my client, and I don’t want to out anyone for paid links because that’s not my agenda here. From what I have seen it is safe to say Google is not able to keep up at all with paid links, and perhaps they are only targeting sites that are listed in paid link networks. Besides the obvious it seems the best way is to go underground and contact these sites one on one.

From what I can tell, within some of these competitive niches the sites buying links usually are very in quality in regards to content and design. So I’ll admit the sites, even though paying for hundreds of links, should most likely still be ranking where they are. So will these sites eventually get the ban hammer dropped upon them? I’m starting to think most likely not, but I’m going to be keeping my eye on a few sites to see within the next year what happens. I’m also wondering if these sites were buying links years ago and because they’re all decently old, are they getting a get out of jail free pass?

I took a good amount of time looking at the advertising pages that some of the link sellers had open to the public. Most of them did not seem to fear the big G at all and openly set prices to text links. On top of that a lot of these sites had a solid PageRank of 5-7, and again it brings me back to wondering just how solid an old domain can be. So with all that being said, what are your thoughts on paid links(sorry to beat a dead horse, but she’s still breathing a little)?

Tagged ,

Link Building With TradeVibes.com

Comments Off on Link Building With TradeVibes.com
January 13  |  Link Building, Social Media Sites  |   Ryan Clark

Trade Vibes is a semi new site for all things startups and from what I’ve seen to compared sites is that it takes the cake. There are a lot of great startup sites out there but Trade Vibes has won my heart over with their features and best of all, the company profiles which are content rich. The site saw some good growth in 2008 and with the help of their users, they managed to compile over 10,000 company profiles. This is pretty damn impressive especially when you check out the profiles.

Now Trade Vibes is a great resource to build one way do follow links for your startup, and I mean for your startup only. Please do not try and spam this resource, and only use it for what the site is intended for. Your profile will growth with Google and in time it will be a valuable link, so make sure to fill your profile with as much relevant information to your startup as possible. Within your profile it also lists important people within the company and provides a user profile which also is a great place to get a link to your startup. Besides getting links this site is great for attracting investors and connecting with like minded people in your industry.

Tagged , , , , , ,

Check Backlinks With Link Voodoo

10 Comments
January 12  |  Link Building Tools, News  |   Ryan Clark

Happy Monday everyone….We’ve been working hard at getting the backlink analyzer function working on Link Voodoo and it should be rolled out very very soon. We’ve been taking into consideration all the features we’d want in this free tool and hopefully haven’t left anything out. We’re hoping to get some feedback from you folks before we roll it out and I have provided a screenshot below which should give you a better understanding of what we have in the works. We’re aiming to make it the most elaborate and informational backlink analyzer on the web which isn’t an easy task because there are a few really great tools already out there.

So it covers the usual goodies and you won’t be able to check the backlinks for individual pages until the Pro Tools roll out. If you are not signed up for a free account with Link Voodoo you will only be able to check the top 10 links, but with a free account you will be able to check all of them with full stats. Those stats include anchor text, Alexa ranking, Google PageRank, no/do follow, and the trust score of the site. You will also be able to download the results in a .csv file or in a nice sexy printable/emailable report for your client or boss. We decided to limit non signed up users only because the server costs involved in hosting a free tool like this. So please take a look at the screenshot and let me know what you’d like to see in the backlink analyzer that we don’t already have in or planned.

Tagged , , , ,

Link Builders On Twitter

5 Comments
January 11  |  Link Building  |   Ryan Clark

I wanted to do a quick post on as many link building consulants and professionals I could find and link to their Twitter accounts. The SEO crowd seems to have taken ahold of Twitter and you shouldn’t have much trouble finding every big name on there. I will encourage anyone I missed to pipe in in my comments or contact me to snag a spot on this list. The folks listed below are not in any specific order and are all people who I admire within this industry. If you are at all serious about quality link building then these are the folks to be listening to.

Tagged , , ,

OnlyWire Social Bookmarking Tool

4 Comments
January 10  |  Link Building Tools  |   Ryan Clark

Onlywire has been a favorite bookmarking tool of mine and I’ve been meaning to to an updated post for a while now. Before I start I like to mention that this is in no way paid for and out of the respect and thanks I have for the use I’ve got out of this tool. OnlyWire has come a long way since its first version and with the latest update to 2.0 it keeps itself ahead of every other tool like it on the market, both free and paid.

OnlyWire is the only publicly available social bookmarking tool that submits to a handful of sites at the click of a button. Most of the others like Social Poster and Social Marker, require you to still load the sites and go through the submission process. The software submits to the usual suspects of the top social bookmarking sites available, so you’re getting your sites onto the places that matter instead of a host of low quality bookmarking sites. Onlywire requires you to store your account information with them, but it is built on a very secure platform that was designed to make sure your information stays private.

Of course they have got almost every base covered when it comes to browser bookmarklets which are ready and available. This is perhaps the easiest way to use OnlyWire’s bookmarking platform and only takes a few seconds to send your link to the 25+ bookmarks they offer. Remember to update your user information for each bookmarking site within your OnlyWire account, and make sure to check periodically that your account is still active. The browsers that are supported are of course Internet Explorer, Firefox and the new Google Chrome. They’ve also been generous enough to make bookmarklets for Safari and Opera which just goes to show how in tune they are with the open source community.

OnlyWire is available for free under certain conditions as well you can pay a very small fee to avoid the requirements of the free use. If you have a website you can easily use OnlyWire for free but applying the bookmark button onto your website. If you have a blog that is running on the WordPress platform there is a plugin you can use which takes care of everything for you. You can see mine in action by scrolling down to the bottom of this post, right under the massive list of bookmarking chiclets I have listed. The pricing is very affordable with a monthly cost of $2.99 or if you pay the $24.99 yearly price you can save %30. This is very affordable and fair because the server usage it must cost them can get up there and we wouldn’t have this great tool otherwise.

The last feature up is possibly my second favorite part of the tool, and if you’re a programmer you’ll love it too. They offer their API so you can configure it to automatically submit your new pages and posts on the fly without having to do any extra work. The API is limited to 5 posts per day, but I imagine they would take payment to allow more. If anyone from OnlyWire reads this feel free to elaborate on that in the comments. The API commands are pretty straight forward and you shouldn’t have too much of a problem implementing it within your website.

I hope you folks enjoy the tool and get some great use out of it. I encourage you to leave some comments on what you think of OnlyWire, good or bad. I would love to hear from some of the staff as well with any tips, comments or insight on what they have planned next for this amazing tool. I personally would love to see a few more sites added in but I know how much of a pain it can be getting auto submitting working with certain sites. I tried in the past to program my own tool just like this but ended up with a big fat FAIL!

Tagged , , , , ,

Get More Twitter Followers

14 Comments
January 7  |  Twitter Marketing  |   Ryan Clark

I was late to the Twitter game and I’m glad I finally got into it. The Linkbuildr Twitter account has steadily been growing and I’ve been trying to find new ways to get more subscribers, and that has led me to write this post. Besides having chiclets, banners, buttons and other on page methods of getting people to your Twitter account there hasn’t been much options outside of that for attracting attention.

Twitter Search Engines:

There are a number of Twitter search engines out there and they are a great way to find people that are interested in the same topics as you. You can either search for your favorite bloggers, or search for the top keywords around your niche and subscribe to all those people. Keeping this up will encourage them to follow you back.

Search.Twitter.com – the original search provided by Twitter lets you search for people and topics easily. If you click on the advanced search button you’ll get a nice set of search features that rival Google’s advanced search. You not only search by name and topic, but you can also search by location, date, language and if the post includes a url link.

TwitterTroll.com – a  real time Twitter search engine that indexes popular people and topics and is all about finding like minded people. As of today their are only 58706 Twitter users indexed in the search engine, and the crawl rate has been set to low a lot lately. I imagine this app is starting to take its toll on the server.

Twellow.com – is not only a Twitter search engine, but it is also a directory for people broken down by category. It is pretty much a web directory for Twitter users and you can find more Twitter directories like this down the post a bit. This site is great for finding like minded people in your niche or industry.

Twidentify.com – this is a search engine for Twitter users that get retweeted the most. This is great for finding like minded people because you can see others discussion topics you’re into, and that includes their opinions.

Twithority.com – is an authority based Twitter search engine for finding the most popular people on the site. The site kind of makes a mini magazine based on the content on Twitter and popular users tweets get displayed on the main page. Twithority also tracks the hottest trends based on searches so you can get an idea of what to blog about, or retweet.

Twitter Alerts:

Twitter alerts are a great way of keeping up on topics being tweeted and give you a chance to find more people in your niche. They act the same way as google alerts which are great for the same reason in the blogosphere. There have been a few sites for this popping up lately so it must be catching on.

Twilert.com – is an easy interface to get alerts for a topic when it hits the tweet street. Just put in your Twitter details and keywords to watch and you’ll get updated via email when someone talks about a topic you’ve requested to watch.

Tweetbeep.com – has been down since the end of December, but it still ranks number 1 on google for Twitter Alerts. I’m not sure when it will be back up, but when it does it’s worth checking out because it worked well. Nice slick interface and the alerting system always worked up until now.

TwitterAlerts.com – this site is a really simple sign up and track your keywords app that has been around almost the lonest. All you need to give them is the email to send the alerts to, your username and password.

Twitter Forums:

Twitter forums have been popping up all over the place and it is a great way to not only interact with other Twitter users, but its a great way to show off your account and attract new readers. I never would have suspected forums for Twitter would take off and so far it seems that I’m right. All the forums listed below are very inactive, but only time will tell.

TwitTown.com – is the largest forum for all your Twitter addicts out there and only has a few active posts going on. This site used to be hosted under the domain Twitterforums.com but decided to move for some reason. There are only a couple hundred users.

Twitplace.com – has only 13 members and is decently new so I don’t know what to say as of yet. Since Twitter is pretty much a large unorganized chat forum it must be hard to get something like this going.

Tweetbars.com – is not a forum but fits under the topic at hand. TweetBars lets you easily implement your tweets into your Email, Website and in your forum signature. It is basically Twitter meets Forum Signatures as they’ve coined it already on their website. Interesting little app to play with in my opinion.

Twitter Directories:

I have noticed a few Twitter user directories popping up and they are getting quite populated already. I imagine we’ll see more so I hope I can remember to keep updating this post. If anyone has anything I missed be sure to contact me or leave a note in the comments.

Twitdir.com – is the premier Twitter directory and unfortunately was down for maintenance at the time of writing. It features a directory broken down by interest so it makes finding Twitter users really easy. Be sure to add yourself into the mix and approval normally takes 1-5 days.

Twellow.com – is one I already mentioned under Twitter search engines, but it is also a directory for users. You can submit your Twitter account and once it is loaded up you can confirm the listing by entering in your password. Another bonus is that the URL you have listed in your Twitter profile gets listed here as well, but it’s do follow! Check out the Linkbuildr profile on Twellow.

TwitterPassion.com – is another less SEO friendly Twitter user and topic directory that has a good amount of people listed, including celebrities. You can submit your link and although it is not auto approved, should only takes a few days to get listed in the directory.

JustTweetIt.com – is one of the newer Twitter directories on the block and has a huge user base already. I’ve added myself to the SEO/Internet Marketing category and I really like how the listings are displayed. Submission was auto approved and the link to your Twitter account is do follow, but any links you put in your description are no follow.

I hope this helps some of you grow your Twitter accounts because they can be a great place to leverage sales, get traffic and make some new friends. Again I’ll mention to contact me or post in the comments anything I missed that would be a great addition to this post. I would also like to hear how some of you snagged a lot of Twitter subscribers.

Tagged , , , ,

Mar.com Goes Live! Social News For Marketers

1 Comments
January 7  |  Social Bookmarking, Social Media Sites  |   Ryan Clark

Mar.com is a pretty new social news sites for the marketing community both online and off. By the looks of its Alexa Ranking, Mar.com has been pushed since the end of December and has been climbing at a decent rate since its launch. I submitted my article Link Building & Social Media Marketing For Women which made it to the front page within a day or so. The traffic as expected wasn’t quite productive just yet, but that could also be due to my content so see for yourself;

The site seems to be getting quite active in regards to voting and user comments which is a good sign. The sites layout is really slick, clean and user friendly so it presents the media quite well. As an online markter I like the mix of offline marketing news that is on the site, it gives me a different angle on things and we all should be looking at all aspects of marketing. If you want to you can sign up for free and start submitting and taking part in the community.

Tagged , , , ,

  • The New Paid Link?



    Find out the results of a year of high volume content marketing on guests blogs taught us money still talks. Read the results!

  • Join Us On Facebook

  • Negative SEO Attack?


    Check out the anatomy of a "negative SEO" attack on our own site in our latest post. There's too much worry about these attacks happening, but I wouldn't worry too much about it. Come read what I think and just what to do if anything like this happens to your brand.

    Read It Now: View Article

  • Archives