I noticed that many first time marketers and people starting out in social media marketing often don’t understand effective linking.  One benefit of being involved in social media is the ability to build links across the internet (on your blogs, profiles, comments etc) and create your own little web while leaving a trail of backlinks to your site.

I often see the following linking format from those new to social media:

“Josef Katz writes a marketing blog.  Here is the link to his blog:”  http://josefkatz.com

The writter most likely went to the browser’s addresss bar, copied the url and then pasted it into their post.  This link doesn’t tell the search engines what is relevant to the link.  However your site will get “credit” for the link.  The more links you have pointing to your site the better (they are like votes for the search engines).

How to link with inbound or backlinks

So now you know all web-links are not created equal but they all have value.  If you are working on “ranking your site” (show up high in search results) for specific keywords try to create inbound links that use the keyword(s) in the anchor text (the words you click are also referred to as text links, inbound or backlinks).

Take this example:

1. Josef Katz writes a marketing blog.  This links to my site but without the keywords (marketing blog)  in the inbound link.
2. While Josef Katz writes a marketing blog uses the keywords in the inbound link.

The second version is going to help rank my site higher in natural search results when someone searches for “Marketing Blog”.

Note – This tip will help drive traffic to your site through search engine optimization but it takes time and involves a lot more then linking so you won’t see results overnight.

One of the first things I do most days is check on Trump University’s SEO standings.  Two listings caught my attention that I had not seen on the first or second page results in the past.  They were both Trump University book listings from Amazon for:

Trump University Entrepreneurship 101

Trump University Wealth Building 101

In the past we ran marketing programs to promote these books but it has been months since they were active.  I guess there is a long tail on marketing efforts…  We don’t make our money selling books but it is sure good to know that these pages are optimized for our brand name. I am going to do my best to make these pages more prominent in the search results.  At least these pages are relevant to our brand and are not negative.

Short lesson for today.  Check your brand in google regularly.  If you see results that are relevant for your brand great.  Do everything you can to push them up in the listings.

Not sure how to push up a listing and need help with SEO?  Let me know and I will do my best to help you out.