As we all know, the benefits of inbound links to your website are paramount. What’s more important than the “amount” of inbound links? “Quality” inbound links. These quality links can have a positive effect on both your rankings in Google as well as your PageRank. The only catch is getting good links. Of course, the most obvious answer is to just create good content on your website that can inspire people to link to it. Another obvious answer is to merely create a “Link To Us” page.  Unfortunately, it really isn’t as simple as that.

In addition to having that exceptional content that people want to link to, the content on your blog or website should have a point of view; a perspective that’s controversial, funny or that really takes a definitive side of an argument. Anything that separates your content from the rest of the pack is always beneficial. Being original can really get you noticed as an authority in your field and will make attracting those natural links that much easier.

While social media may not be great for getting “link juice” or a “vote” from another site (most links from social media sites like Twitter or Facebook are nofollow), they are a helpful way to get your website or brand noticed and drive some traffic. This is done simply by placing a link to your site in your profile. Also, don’t forget to link your social media profiles together by saying something to the effect of, “Come visit us on Facebook!”. Social bookmark “widgets” are good too and are free and quite easy to implement.

Of course, if you haven’t done so already, submit to directories like DMOZ or the Yahoo! Directory and make sure that you are in the correct categories for each. These directories, as well as a few others, are considered to be the most trusted and links from there are considered highly important. This also goes for any kind of link from an .edu or .gov site. Any links from a relevant site with that kind of domain should help your site’s PageRank and rankings exponentially. To find these types of websites, simply type “site:.edu keyword” on Google. Substitute “keyword” for the most targeted, indicative and descriptive keyword of your site.

Lastly, having fun content like “Top Ten Lists”, contests or free widgets are great for tempting people to link to you. To get inspired, look at the websites of some other websites in your field and see what they are doing. See what kinds of backlinks they have to get an idea of who to target and, above all, write your content for the user, not for the search engines. A human being will be reading your content and you need to write with that in mind. Remember, you can never have too many quality inbound links.

Back in March, AOL decided to jump on the social media band-wagon and buy a popular social media website, Bebo.com. According to the Bebo website, they are,
“… a social media network where friends share their lives and explore great entertainment.” For AOL, this is a significant purchase and one wonders whether it will pay off and propel AOL into social media heaven. Bebo, in terms of unique visitors to the site in the U.S., ranks far behind competitors MySpace and Facebook. Even in the U.K. where Bebo was the most successful, popularity has been lagging recently which has caused some higher-ups at AOL to get a little concerned.

One huge advantage AOL will have with Bebo is that Bebo already has a popular instant messaging platform. If integrated with AOL’s instant-messaging, the AOL/Bebo partnership would rival the presence of both MySpace and Facebook as they could potentially reach over 100 million unique visitors. This would make it one of the most powerful social networking platforms ever conceived and would make AOL one of the major players in the battle for social media supremacy.

One problem AOL could face with their expansion of their social media presence is with the advertising. The advertising industry is still not fully convinced that social media sites are the way to go and have been very reluctant thus far with their ad spending on sites like MySpace, Facebook and Bebo. One thing is for sure, however, that over time, the mainstream popularity of social media is on an upward trajectory and advertisers would be missing out in a big way if they didn’t pump up the spending.

One obvious way to get the most SEO value from the micro-blogging platform, twitter.com, is to get natural links to your site and establish yourself as an authority in your chosen field. By “following” other “Twitterers” and getting them to follow you, you establish your own, mini-community of sorts and increase your online presence. Having your business featured on this site also shows that you are in touch with the latest evolution in Internet marketing, Social Media Optimization! If utilized correctly, it can take your business to new heights.

The 140 character limit for your “Tweets” is precious real-estate and has to be used wisely. Common sense suggests that you need to use URLs in the posts and precise keywords in the URLs. You have to keep in mind, however, that Twitter shortens any URL over 30 characters and all are “nofollow”. So, keep your Tweets short, to the point and make sure you’ve conveyed where that URL is taking the potential visitor. The URL might not necessarily tell them.

Another important advantage for Twitter is that the Twitter profiles themselves are indexed by the search engines! Some even get a great Google PageRank. I think the reason for this could be that the user pages are subdirectories (www.twitter.com/username) and the popularity that Twitter enjoys could filter down to its subfolders.

Twitter’s recent surge in popularity has created a whole Twitter counter-culture with websites, like twitterfeed.com, providing an option to link your Twitter account to your website’s RSS feed. By setting up an account on Twitterfeed, you are able to “feed” the RSS link to your blog posts and completely automate the Tweeting process.

Unlike other types of blogs, Twitter is merely a way to link to industry news, your website and leave messages for your friends, co-workers and industry peers. The 140 character limit might be slightly intimidating for more verbose individuals, but it’s a unique way to get the word out about your new product or press release succinctly. It’s a new type of business card, but instead of having a limited number of ways to get the word out through traditional networking, you get exposure to millions of people all clamoring to be heard.