5 Smart Techniques to get .EDU AND .GOV BACKLINKS for your Blog?

Most people don't know how beneficial .GOV and .EDU backlinks can be, or whether they're useful at all for a website. It is easy to confuse their importance with that of other TLDs (Top Level Domains) such as .COM, .NET etc, and you'd figure that since .COMs are the most popular and the most expensive, ergo they're the most important. We'll, you'd be wrong to think that. A website's trust rating is far more important that what it cost to set it up. And as you can imagine, .GOV and .EDU top level domains enjoy a special level of trust which is regarded very highly by search providers such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. And backlinks from such domains can take your website's rank to another level. Here are some best techniques to get .GOV and .EDU backlinks for your site.

 

1. Comments

One of the many ways you can build backlinks is by commenting on other blogs. There's nothing quite like it when you get the conversation going. To start off creating a .gov and .edu backlink profile or your blog, start finding such blogs to comment on. A great website that'll help you do that is Drop My Link. You can search for blogs based on the desired keyword. But more importantly, you can select the type of blogs you want to see from the drop-down list. From there, you can choose .edu or .gov blogs, and get the relevant blogs based on your keyword!

You can then filter out your results. Go for blogs with a high PR first, because commenting takes time, and you don't want to waste time on low ranking blogs.

 

2. Recognize .edu bloggers

Aside from comments, getting a proper dofollow backlink from .edu and .gov blogs can be very difficult. One strategy is to feature some such bloggers in a post of yours, so that they'll link back to you in return out of gratification. For example, you could create a list of 'the best university bloggers', or 'the best students blogs in the U.S' etc. Small recognition awards like these are sure to get attention, and hopefully a backlink.

To find such blogs, here's a Google Search trick. If you search Google for <site:.edu> (without the angled brackets), you will run a search for all domains with a .edu extension. You can also search a specific site using this method <site:yoursite.com>. If you search Google for <inurl:blog> (again, without the brackets), you will land all webpages with the term "blog" in their url. You can combine the two to run a search for .edu blogs - <site:.edu inurl:blog>. Moreover, you can add individual search terms within quotes to refine your results according to keywords <site:.edu inurl:blog "technology news">. This way, you can feature 'top university technology blogs'

3. Find resource pages

If your website provides useful information on a particular subject, then you may use that to get inside a university's resource page. Resource pages are there for linking out to other sites where students can find useful information regarding a particular subject. So if you are a computer guru and know your way around Linux development for example, you could contact computing institutes' web team to put out a backlink to you.

You can use the same search trick you used earlier to find resource pages. For example, run a search for <site:.edu inurl:resources "technology"> or <site:.edu inurl:links "Linux"> (without brackets), and you'll find out plenty of universities you could contact.

4. Do some volunteer work

I mean not like charity work. But you can help some university web team design or improve a component on their website in return for a backlink. Now this, of course, requires you to have some web development skills, but you can hire a freelancer to do the job for you too.

All you have to do is, find a university or college site, and look through it if it looks poorly made. Not every university has a full time web design team. Often times, they only intend to give out valuable information, without caring much about how their webpages look. For example, I was recently reading about some research proceedings about a new type of lens technology in cameras at a university, and I couldn't help but notice the colourless, bland design. Now the webpage itself had a very high traffic and the university was very reputable. But in all fairness, researchers working behind the new camera technology most probably wouldn't know about web design, which makes it the perfect opportunity for people to contact them, and offer to redo their design in return for a backlinl. Such researchers wouldn't even care about the backlink, as long as they're getting a better design.

 

5. Hire college students

Now I know this one is unconventional, but hey, so long as it works! In some colleges and universities, students have access to .edu domains, where they are allowed sub-domains of their own. You can set someone up to create a student blog for their college, and then link back to your own website.
There are many ways you could hire a student to do your bidding. You can use the Reddit ForHire section to post your gig. You can also post a classified on Craigslsit. Or, you could always go to one of the many freelancing websites available, where you can post a job.

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Posted at 02:23 |  by Unknown

5 Tips for RELATIONSHIP-BASED LINK BUILDING

Did you know, relationship-based backlinking is becoming popular again? What with Google rolling out updates to its Penguins, a lot of common (and often shady) SEO practices are being stamped out. And good old legit backlinking is now coming back, which is somewhat of a relief. We recently shared some great tips on getting high quality backlinks, so today, we decided to share some tips on relationship-based backlinking. A relationship-based backlink is a high quality backlink from a related authority site, or a niche influencer in other words. So suppose you have a site about SEO. What better backlink can there be than one from a reputed site such as SearchEngineLand or SEOMoz Blog? Here are 5 great tips for scoring relationship-based backlinks.

 

Identifying authority sites

Okay, to start off, you first have to know who the top influencers are in your niche. These are high ranking, high authority websites that have content similar to your site. But they lead the niche, such that other sites like yours look up to them. You're probably much better off with a single backlink from these high ranking websites, rather than from multiple backlinks, all from sites of the same calibre as yours.

 

To find niche influencers, you'll have to do a bit of homework. But there are tools that help the process. The FollowerWork tool by Moz, for example. is a good example. It is basically a Twitter analytics program, but you can use it to find profiles with a high social authority relevant to a specific keyword. All you have to do is, search for a keyword, and then rank the results according to Social Authority.

You can also use tools such as Topsy, and Twitter Following to the same effect. Combine these thee tools for maximum effect. 

 

Get in touch

So now that you know who you want to target, you now should start working on building contacts. But don't go ahead and shoot an email. Try to be more subtle. You don't want to impose. You first have to make an impression before you ask for anything. Commenting on their blog posts is a very good idea. But please, for heaven's sake, don't leave the "I live this post" comments along with your signature link. It really buzzes the blog moderator and author off. Rack your brains, and think of something really insightful, so that the author would have to respond to your comment. An intelligent comment leave a pretty good impression.

You can then extend this to other platforms, such as social media. Comment on Facebook shares, Google Plus posts, and reply to Tweets. If the author sees you on these different platforms, it'll make your name stick in their brain. Keep this up until the author is able to recognize you by your name. You can then go ahead, and write emails of appreciation. A good and intelligent suggestion here would help.

 

Write for them!

Writing guests posts is a great way to score backlinks fast. Once you're sure that you know the other guy, and that he knows you too, you can offer to write a guest post for them. By now, they already know that you make insightful comments. They'd be interested to know what you have to offer. To be on the safe side though, first check if they accept guest posts at all. Their website might have a 'Write for us' section. If there is, go ahead and read the guidelines. And then ask for a guest posting opportunity. If you get the green light, you've struck gold.

 

Update their content!

Sounds weird? It might at first, but hear me out. Most bloggers don't look over at their old content, because it is too time consuming. Many won't update their content, and most won't update the links. And there's an opportunity for you right there. In all likelihood, there might be tonnes of external links in their posts that were working fine an year ago, but not the external site has moved, or is now dead. So what do you do? You offer to help!

 

Screaming Frog is a great tool that'll show you a list of all broken links on a page. First, find really old articles from the site you want a backlink from, and then start checking them using Screaming frog. Make a list of all the pages you check, the broken links you find in them, and find alternate links to those broken ones, so that the blogger you're going to contact has very little work to do. Email them this list, and you'll most probably fall into their good graces. Now, they might link to you, which is good. If they don't, you're still in a very good position to ask for a guest posting opportunity. If that's not an option, ask them for a link in return for some more broken-link correction from your side!

 

Use BuzzStream to track your relationship

BuzzStream is a great app that makes it easier to track your online relationships. Sign up for a free trial, and install their toolbar. Then add your site. After that, you can use the app in a lot of different ways.

For example, this tool will help you contact a site owner you'd like a backlink from by collecting the necessary contact information for you! And just like a productivity app, you can use this one to track your relationships, and your progress for each. Another great feature of this tool is, for Google Searches for which you enter keywords, it will collect contact information, and social media accounts information automatically! Hence, long story short, it's a pretty useful app for you if you're looking to try something new and different.

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Posted at 02:14 |  by Unknown

10 LINK BUILDING TECHNIQUES Google Penguin wont Mind!

Link building has now suddenly came into focus once again, as Google is repeatedly trying to stamp out black-hat SEO practices. So the trend now is on building legitimate backlinks rather than buying them off a cheap package. Even so, Google Penguin is still pretty touchy, and you need to build links with care. We earlier shared some great ways to earn trusted backlinks, and ways to score relationship-based links. We'll continue on with that thread, and share some more tips, this time on building links the Penguin-friendly way!

 

Get listed in DMOZ

DMOZ is an online directory that has a very high PR. Getting a link from such a website can be invaluable. You can get your blog listed in the relevant categories. So if you want to build a link, start by getting listed on DMOZ. But keep one thing in mind. While considering a category to get listed in, always try to select the most relevant one, yet one that has the least number of out-bound links (indicated by the number in brackets next to each category). This is because even though each page on DMOZ might have the same PR, but not the same value. The more the links, the lesser the value. So your aim should be the least number of links for the most value.

Blog commenting

Now, this is a fairly common technique, so we're not going to squander much words on it. I would however, like to show you a couple tools that can help you with commenting on other blogs. We discussed about DropMyLink in an earlier post. You can use it to find relevant blogs you want to comment on. There's another handy tool called Scrapebox, which will help make blog commenting much easier and faster. Do give it a try, and see how it can speed up your work!

Find sites with the Disqus commenting system

The advantage of Disqus over other commenting systems is, it is really easy to use, and comments that you make appear instantly. Furthermore, you can post them on Facebook as well, so that your friends can see what you've been upto - hence giving you more referral traffic. So to find such sites with the Disqus commenting system, you first have to create an account. Your username will be the anchor text for your links, so you might want to create more than one account for each category you want to comment for.

Now, you can just search Google for keywords, combined with the phrase "powered by disqus" (with quotes). You will land upon some blogs using disqus. Open a few you like, and check if they have a high PR (we recommend you install the SEOQuake toolbar). Find a high quality blog, and start commenting on it. Additionally, narrow down your search to the last two weeks or so using Google's advanced search. Commenting on pages that have no comments is recommended, because that'll give you some referral traffic as well.

Use your Twitter profile

There are certain sites that use Twitter data for real-time search, ascertaining social authority, Twitter lists, and so on. These sites use links found in your profile, especially in your bio, and use those links in their listings. So if you have your website links in your profile bio, and a Twitter handle as well, you'll be automatically building links! Some such sites are listed below. You can add yourself to them, and build some more links!

• http://klout.com/home
• http://www.twellow.com/
• http://twitaholic.com/
• http://twittercounter.com/
• http://tweetlevel.edelman.com/
• http://twtbizcard.com/

Copy/Pasting link building

Ever seen a mysterious link along with some text appear as you copied some text from a website? It is called 'attribution text', and you can do it for your website too. You'll be getting links as people copy and paste your content around the internet.

Find out when someone has mentioned you without linking

Often times, people will talk about you, or mention your brand without actually linking to you. In such cases, you probably want them to link to you properly. To find out whenever this happens, you can set up Google Alerts.

In the Search query section, exclude all the websites you actively contribute to (by combining the minus - operator and the site: operator). Then, you can add a keyword (such as your name, etc). For example,

• -site:mybloggertricks.com -site:smartearningmethods.com -site:richincomeways.com -site:techeclipse.com Qasim Zaib

Set the 'Result type' to Everything, and 'How Often' to As it Happens. This way, whenever Google comes up with something new that fits into the search query, it will alert you. So if someone mentions me on their website, I'll get to know about it via email as soon as Google finds that content. I can then contact them, and ask for a link (refer to our post on relationship-based backlinking for details on how to do this).

Recovering lost links

This tip is a lot like the previous one, but in this case, you want to look for an actual mention of your url instead of your name or keyword. For example, someone might have mentioned mybloggertricks.com without actually linking to it. In that case, you don't need a Google Alert, since you want to find mentions that've already happened (you could set up alerts too if you like, as in the previous tip). Simply search Google for something like "intext:mybloggertricks.com -site:mybloggertricks.com", and you'll get a list of all the sites that match the search.

Now, you can export the search results using a bookmarklet such as SERPs redux. Export the list into text file, and then use the Screaming Frog tool to crawl those links. You will want to add filters, such as Does not contain link (that you mention, i.e. mybloggertricks.com). Now you already had a list of all the links that contained your website's URL in the text. Now some might have that as anchor text, which is what you wanted all along. So you needn't check such sites. But once you crawl the links using Screaming frog, you'll get a list of webpages that don't have your link in them, even though they have the text.

Second-level links

Here's the basic concept. In this technique, you basically help other websites (that are sending a lot of traffic to you) get a better rank in SERPs, so that in-turn, your own traffic increases. Now this might take a lot more time, but could be worth it if the traffic coming has a high conversion rate. For example, let's suppose we have a page where people purchase an eBook. Now, I can see from my analytics data, that a Blog 'X' is sending the most numbers of users, who are buying this eBook. Now if that blog 'X' doesn't rank #1 in SERPs for the specific keyword, I probably want it to rank #1, so that more people would visit blog 'X', and hence more people would come to our site to buy the eBook. See?

Second-level prospecting

The basic concept behind this technique is that, if it is too hard to get a related backlink from your niche influencer, or if it will take a lot of time, then you probably would want to get a backlink from the sites that your niche influencer links to.

To find such sites, you'll have to have the Screaming Frog tool we've talked about, and the SERP redux bookmarklet. First, enter the URL(s) of your niche influencer(s) in a text file in list format, and then import the file into Screaming Frog. Now, you'll have to crawl those URLs, but first, let's do a few settings. Make sure you check the 'Check External Links' option, along with the 'Follow External nofollow' and 'Ignore robots.txt' options. Also set the Search Depth Limit to 1. There, you'll get a list of all the websites your niche influencer links to. You'll benefit a lot from getting backlinks from those websites as well.

 

LINK BUILDING TECHNIQUES

Google Penguin

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Posted at 02:07 |  by Unknown

Find Out When Someone Mentions You Without a Backlink!

Legitimate backlink building is one of the most important parts of building the reputation of a website or online business, Getting previous little backlinks from other sites is hard enough, and it really shows a great gesture when someone mentions you and links to you in their content. But often over the course of your name or brand's online lifespan, you will come across situations where your name or brand was mentioned, but you weren't linked. This is because some people just might not be willing to give out a link as easily, or they might just have overlooked it. In that case, you have to contact them personally and ask them for the favour. Today, we'll show you how you can find out when someone mentions you, but doesn't link to you.

After all, you never know what opportunities you might have been missing out on! Even a couple of 'missed' backlinks could save you hours of work on building new ones, and/or help you with your website's rank and authority.

Using Google Alerts

Now, I'd first like to introduce you to some Google Search tricks that some of you might already know, but most won't. In Google Search, you can use use some advanced search operators like AND, OR, site:, inurl:, intext:, and so on. The AND operator finds sites that have keywords written on both side of the AND operator. The OR operator finds sites that have either the phrases on the left of the operator, or the right of it, or both. This is handy, for example, if you want to search for both cars and bikes on the same site (Cars AND bikes), or if you want to search for either cars, or bikes, or both (Cars OR bikes).

Now, the site: operator will search for keywords only within the domain you specify after the site: part. For example, if I want to search for only windows 8 on Microsoft's website, I can type this in Google "site:microsoft.com Windows 8" (without the quotes), where Windows 8 is my keyword. Now, if you add a minus sign behind any operator or keyword, Google will give you all results that do not contain the result generated by the keyword or operator you put a minus sign to. For example, let's say I want to search for sites that have my name, excluding this site where I regularly contribute to. So the search query for it would be "-site:mybloggertricks.com Qasim Zaib". It will exclude all results from mybloggertricks.com.

Now, coming to the task at hand, we want to find out whenever someone mentions your name, your brand name, or a keyword specific to your site. All you have to do is, simply build a query, and set a Google Alert for it. Start by typing a query. Exclude all sites you contribute actively to, and enter the keywords you want to watch out for (maybe your name or URL). It would look something like this.

-site:mybloggertricks.com -site:smartearningmethods.com -site:richincomeways.com Qasim Zaib

Now go to Google Alerts, and enter your query there. Keep all the settings like you see in the image below.

Now, whenever new content that matches this query is found by Google, you will be emailed. In other words, I'll get an alert whenever someone mentions my name. As soon as Google finds that new mention, it will be listed in the query. And any changes in the query results trigger an email alert. You can then check up on each new mention to see if someone has linked to you or not.

This was one of the simplest approaches there are. We'll soon teach you how to use SEO software such as Screaming Frog to perform bulk actions, and automate many processes. Until then, stay tuned.

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Posted at 02:02 |  by Unknown

3 Secret SEO Techniques to Turn Images Into Backlinks

We have talked a lot about how important backlinks are, and how to score great ones. But while we have discussed text-based links at a great length, we haven't really gotten around to talk about images, except from a search engine performance aspect. Yes, images are great for landing organic visitors, but you can get images to do a lot more for you, such as scoring you backlinks! Here are some of the ways you can use images to get great backlinks for your blog!

Create an infographic

Infographics are a great way to get backlinks from great authority sites like the NYTimes, and Business Insider etc. Normally, such websites won't even respond to your request. But throw in a quality infographic, and you can instantly sweeten the deal. Such websites dig quality infographics that provide some insightful information to the users. Now we will cover the topic of creating infographics that work in detail in a future post, it should be sufficient for you know that there are many tools available that easily let you create your own infographics. One of them is Visual.ly. Fiddle around with it, and you'll soon become a pro at making your own infographics.

 

Image directories

You can also get backlinks from Image directories. Whether you're a photographer, or a graphics designer, you can use many of the online directories available. Even if you aren't, you can still learn by making small graphics, such as small icons etc. Or, you can hire someone at Fiverr to do your job for you.

 

Here are a few image directories for your benefit.

• http://www.dreamstime.com/ (Clipart)
• http://openclipart.org/ (Clipart)
• http://www.corbisimages.com/ (Stock Photography)
• http://www.istockphoto.com/ (Stock Photography)
• http://www.iconfinder.com/ (Icons)
• http://www.iconarchive.com/ (Icons)

To yourself a backlink or two, upload your icons or clip-arts or photos in an archive form on your website, and then show these sites what you've got. You have a very good chance of getting through their selection process if the images you provide are useful. Always check the "Popular" section to see what sort of images are hot.

Now, on most sites, you can set the license to free. In that case, you will get a link to your credit as an author. And this is basically how you get backlinks. Whenever someone wants your image(s) or icons, they will get your link, which will give you instant traffic as well, not to mention a high quality backlink from a high PR website.

 

 Searching by Image

Sometimes, people will like the images you put up on your website so much, that they'll copy it and put it up on their own website as well. And sometimes, they might even forget to, ehm, give credit for the image. Disturbed as you might be to see your image copied, don't panic! It's a great opportunity to get a backlink!

First, right click on the image on your website, and copy its URL. Then, go over to Google's image search, and click on the little image icon on the right of the search bar. This will allow you to search with an image. Paste your image's URL in the bar, and hit enter. You will see all search results for all sites that have used your image. Check each one to see if they've given you an attribution link. If not, then contact them, and ask them to. By now, the image is already sitting on their website, and they wouldn't want to remove it. Instead, most would simply go ahead and link to you to avoid any embarrassment.

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Posted at 01:52 |  by Unknown

Importance of Backlinks in Google SEO

If you are starting to learn about website optimization tools to ascertain that there is at least one you've heard about Backlinks terminology. Or that you're starting to learn about SEO you will take only a few minutes in any tutorial to find SEO Backlinks terminology.  

In this article, 24blogger will talk to you to understand what is backlinks, through its significant range in SEO and using it effectively to avoid the bad reviews from the search engine.

What is Backlink?

Simply put, the backlinks are links from other websites to your website direction. The number of backlinks shows the popularity and importance of the website are directed to the Internet community. Backlinks are very important because the search engines especially Google because the SE (search engine) would trust more to your website when it has many backlinks your website and from there will also be many more chance to be displayed in search results.

Use backlinks ?

When search engines calculate the keyword visibility in the search results, it will look way backlinks from other websites pointing to particularly relevant websites before making conclusions.


A search engine considers the content of the website from which appraisal quality backlinks keywords on that page. Associated with the higher level, higher quality backlinks. If the backlinks are not found relating to the keyword it will be seen as less relevant and synonymous with quality of backlinks is simple thap.Vi example, if you are a website selling online products the computer and you have backlinks pointing to a website from a computer or computer related, linking backlinks will certainly more quality backlinks pointing to a website from a news woman. Of course, if you're talking about advertising issues, you will need to study the traffic problems on the website that you intend to put your ads there.

Search engines like websites with a level playing field. It will appreciate the amount of website quality backlinks pointing and steadily over time. This is also the reason that many webmater trying to create as many backlinks without regard to the quality and no specific plan details see website after a period of significant growth, then they suddenly Where steam table that displays search results. There are many websites are created solely for the purpose of providing the backlinks to other websites, search engines consider these websites as the collection site backlinks messy and very low estimate if not the low point of the website is backlinks pointing from it to. So in your SEO process must be taken to avoid placing backlinks on this website is not quality.

Around the issue of quality backlinks a lot of controversy that has come to an end. Many webmater use link exchanges to create backlinks for your website. They do not pay much attention to the content that they will exchange website that usually only interested in the ratios of PR and Alexa, they even offer a very high cost to hire a high PR sites creating backlinks pointing to their website. They do not realize that over time the search engine to filter itself increasingly squeezed over this issue. Especially for the purchase backlinks, Google it special attention and very severe punishment ready websites with this phenomenon. For link exchange, after a period of reciprocal link exchange between two websites discovered by Google and given appropriate punishment, the webmater start "de facto" spiders by creating the links within the website which has up to 4 or more links to one another in a circle link. 

This does not mean that there is no link exchange or counterproductive in creating quality backlinks. Evidence that the site began to work together successfully remain% higher than the website only bystander. Search engines can not ignore backlinks if it is placed on the same website content with keywords and are presented in a natural context and not the primary purpose is to create backlinks. That means that if you see the sites in the footer or somewhere else a long filenames like the keyword 1 | keyword 2 | keyword 3 ... sooner or later the backlinks also will become useless.


 If you are an owner webmater multiple sites at once and is planning to link them together with the error backlinks recommend immediately banish it. The search engines will look at the IP address of your server and if the backlinks are not relevant to the content generated an uncontrolled manner will be considered as backlink bombing. You can still create backlinks but should limit of one or two backlinks and put it into advertising purposes to increase traffic. This point will not lose your websites for search engines.

It seems every direction creating backlinks increasingly tighter seal. If so, how to create backlinks standards and quality without tarnishing the image of your website in front of the search engines? This is a matter of fierce debate in the SEO community, and some of the views and the following factors were considered as standard:

• Put backlinks in a natural post in the forums or forum categories have content related to the content on your website. Note that as you are building a forum, not a spamer.
• Contact us to partner with other websites. This is not the link exchange that is business collaboration in the true sense. Of course, the website intends to cooperate should be at least partially related to the content of your website. For example, you have a sales page civil, to collaborate with partners to invite them to sell their products at the same time you can also ask them to introduce you to the website of the product as a the manufacturer or distributor.
• Create your website in a quality article, introducing it in the blog community. If the article is true quality content, it will be transmitted blog community and a source of free backlinks can be created from it. And of course, this source is completely natural.
  

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Posted at 12:29 |  by Unknown