Any link was a good link, and they all helped to build page rank. Today, thankfully, the rules have changed.

Quality Links

Now only high-quality links will help you. The link farms and low-quality sites that once worked well can actually count against you. Google will actively penalize sites that use shady backlinks.

Before creating anything that will link back to your site, consider what type of site it is.

Will it end up helping, or hindering, your page rank?

Guest Posting

One of the most common ways to get a new backlink is to create a guest post for a blog and to put a link to your site in the bio at the end. However, even guest posting can be penalized upon if not done correctly.

Before considering guest posting, think carefully about how this can benefit you other than getting a link. Building word of mouth so that other people will link to your site is really your end goal—not the link itself.

Watch Your Numbers

If you do decide to guest post either on a blog or an informational website of another type, don’t send out posts to every site that will take you. A high quantity of low-quality links will count against you.

If you have a lot of low-quality links out there, get rid of them.

So, How Do You Build Links?

Google is encouraging people not to build their own links. You still need backlinks in order to rank well, but by selectively linking your high-quality content, those backlinks will come naturally.

Place your link in a few well-considered places, use social media to promote them, and hope that others will link to you. If your site is awesome and useful you can expect that people will continue to link to it over time.

The post How to Backlink for SEO Success in the New Web Marketing Era appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

In fact, press releases are not like articles in form, structure, components or even in the end goal. A press release is there to publicize an event, a company, a project or a product launch.

It is not there for SEO purposes or to be sent to the end reader. They are sent to bloggers, news sites and industry publications so that whatever you are trying to publicize will be written about by those publications.

The Vital Newsworthy Element

Before writing a press release, or having a press release writer create it for you, there are two important steps- researching what you’re publicizing and finding a newsworthy angle. Because you are trying to interest blogs and news outlets in carrying a story about the topic, there has to be some kind of newsworthy angle that will allow them to do that. Without the newsworthy element, it’s basically an ad that you are asking them to publish for free. 

They won’t.

To find your angle, choose the essence of the message and present it in a way that will interest more than just the company that is releasing the info. If you are writing a release about the introduction of an interesting new product, research the industry and how this product will change or fit into that industry. That will make the release perfect for blogs and periodicals that cover that industry.

Don’t Try to Sell

Above all, your press release can’t read like an ad. It isn’t designed to sell anything. At the most, it is designed to get people to find out more about what you are publicizing. If your release is full of language about how great and fantastic a product is, it will be deleted along with the other releases that do exactly the same thing.

Instead, consider tying the launch to something currently in the news. Instead of talking about how great a new vape shop is, talk about the launch of the store it the context of how popular vaping has gotten and how studies have shown that they can help people quit smoking. With a newsworthy hook, you have a much better chance of media outlets taking notice.

The post How to Find the Newsworthy for Your Press Release appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

As a marketer, you need to be able to send out marketing emails, but the ultimate goal is to get your email marketing list to read the emails and to stay on your list.

How do you keep your message from being seen as a nuisance? The answer is to put yourself in the place of the reader.

Why Do You Read Email?

When you read your own email, you aren’t thinking about what you can do for the companies that send you the emails. You are looking at what you can get from those emails.

Some of the marketing lists that you receive emails from may be of an informational nature. They may have a lot of concentrated information that you want with a marketing message somewhere within it.

Others are sale or deal emails that give you coupons, let you know about sales, new merchandise, etc. Both of these types offer you something that you’re looking for. That’s why you’re reading them.

What Do They Get?

When you create your own marketing emails, read through them and think about what your reader will get from them. They will only want to read it and stay on your list if they get value of some kind from it. They aren’t interested in your company’s name recognition or in what you have to say about yourself. All they want to know is what they get from it. If they get nothing, they will unsubscribe.

Think About the Value

If you are having trouble maintaining your email list, think about how you can add value to what you send to it. Could you cut out some of the marketing speak and replace it with more information? Could you make the coupon codes of a higher value?

Consider giving your email list access to information or coupons that aren’t available anywhere else. Let your list know that what they get is something they can’t get elsewhere.

If what you offer to your list is valuable and gives subscribers what they are looking for, your list will grow. It will allow your customers to stay engaged in what you do. It will also keep your name recognition spreading.

The post What’s in It for Me? A Guide to Not Being Deleted as Spam appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

The sites that get massively popular don’t always stay that way, and there are plenty of sites just waiting to take the places of the ones that start to wane .

When you are using social media to market your content, this can make it tempting to use every possible social media site available in order to do that marketing.

Saving Time by Focusing

In the past, using seven or eight social sites for that marketing was common advice to reach a wide audience. Now? More and more of the experts are cutting the fat and getting rid of some of the lesser sites in order to focus on one or two larger ones.

Instead of spending most of your time updating site after site and trying to build a following on all of them, the best advice today is to choose one or two sites and give those your attention.

With more attention paid to a few sites, you can better create a presence than if you dilute your marketing time with every site that comes along.

The Ultimate Goal

When you are marketing your content through social media, the social media itself shouldn’t be the focus of what you do. It’s only a carrier of your message. By simplifying and focusing your social media marketing,  you will keep it easier for people to find what it is that you’re actually marketing.

If someone were to search for what you do, would you want them to find pages of search engine results that are full of social media entries, or do you want them to find your website?

Building a Following

Building a following on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter or another social media site that you’ve taken a liking to take time and effort. Diluting your marketing time by trying to build this following on many sites can lead to unfinished profiles and halfhearted communications with your followers.

But with social media focus, you can begin to cultivate real interest in what you post by communicating with other users and thoughtfully posting about your content. The effort you put into just a couple of sites can pay off long term as you drive traffic to your site indefinitely.

The post Cut the Clutter: Focusing Your Social Media Marketing appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.