I recently found a very easy to follow ebook on how to use LinkedIn “the proper way” to get a lot more connections and thus a lot more people you can contact and start a relationship with to then turn into clients.

The product is called LinkedIn Master Strategies and it was written by Lewis Howes, a very clever guy who has given me the tools and techniques to get my LinkedIn Profile in front of over 12,000,000 people. Yes that is 12 MILLION and climbing.

You can grab your copy here http://TheLinkedInLifestyle.com and it will be the best $27 you have invested into your business so that you have a LinkedIn profile that stands out from the rest, and an even better chance to connect with MILLIONS of professionals.

In this ebook you will discover how to:

• Generate more revenue
• Generate an abundance of quality leads
• Convert leads into happy customers
• Find investors for your products and companies
• Find your dream job
• Quit your job to work for yourself
• Find the right employees
• Drive traffic to your website
• Build your contact list
• Sell products
• Find freelancing opportunities
• Become a thought leader in your industry
• Get free PR
• Get your company on TV and other media mentions
• Get high end clients to pay you without having to hard sell

That link again is http://TheLinkedInLifestyle.com

Within 2 weeks my 1st connections grew from 147 to over 1,100 and it was dead easy to do.

Research published by analyst firm Access Markets International Partners shows that almost 70 percent of small and medium businesses actively use social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to promote their companies, but simply posting what your CEO had for lunch isn’t going to do much to help move your business forward. Smart companies are tactically using social media tools to increase their exposure to potential customers.

We’ve compiled ten of the most compelling reasons that you should consider using social media tools to promote your business.

1 – Be Forward-Thinking: Your target audience is becoming savvier when it comes to the using social media sites in their daily lives. If you want to appear relevant and in-step with the latest advances in technology, your potential customers will want to see you on these sites as well.

2 – Increased Search Engine Rankings: Social media profiles frequently rank highly with major search engines. Using brand names and keywords in your profiles can help you to generate traffic for your social media sites and company homepage.

3 – Generate Site Traffic: By updating regularly on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn with posts that link back to your site, you can create additional traffic to your site. Social media bookmarking tools like Digg, Stumbleupon and Slashdot can also generate additional traffic to your site if you create frequent articles and blog posts.

4 – Links for SEO: Many social media bookmarking sites use NOFOLLOW tags that limit the outbound link value of posts made on their sites. There are still many leading social media sites that allow DOFOLLOW tags including Slashdot, Digg, Furl, Mixx and FriendFeed. However, you can see benefits from posting to social media bookmarking sites that use NOFOLLOW tags if people read your posts and link back to your Website.

5 – Brand Recognition: Using social media allows your company to reach the highest number of potential customers possible. Getting your name out there is incredibly important – studies have suggested that customers need to hear a company’s name at least seven times before they will gain the trust and respect needed to become a customer.

6 – Brand Monitoring: Having a social media presence allows you to better understand what current and potential customers are saying about your product or services. Through active social media monitoring, you have the opportunity to address negative comments and correct false or inaccurate information about your brand.

7 – Find New Customers Through Friends: You shouldn’t neglect your personal social media accounts as potential avenues to promote the activities of your business. Posting regular updates relating to your business and activities can remind your friends of what your company does and either to use your services or refer one of their friends.

8 – Find New Customers Through a Company Profile: Your company profile is a great opportunity for you to post regular updates on your activities, but also about important news and trends in your industry. This will catch the attention of new customers interested in your industry and increase your reputation as an expert in the field. It’s critical to post regularly if you want to increase your followers or fans and convert them to potential leads.

9- Integrated Social Media Results in Search Engines: Search engines like Google and Microsoft Bing are increasingly interested in indexing and ranking posts and other information from social media sites. Videos from popular Internet sites like YouTube can also be optimized for indexing by the major search engines.

10- Niche Marketing: Social media allows you to reach very specific subsets of individuals based on their personal preferences and interests. You can create social media strategies based on reaching individual interests or even create unique social media profiles to target these audiences.

If you are interested in creating a comprehensive social media marketing strategy, we have a number of packages to suit all budgets to help. Visit our Social Media Marketing page to learn more about our services and how we can help your business establish a meaningful social media presence.

Seems everyone is always asking, what’s the best way to build links to your site?

This is an easy one to answer.

Hands down, the absolute best way to get others to link to your website is to offer them quality content that’s worth linking to.

Quality content can vary depending on what your niche is and your target audience. But it will almost always include fresh and original content on various aspects of your niche, resources to help those who are looking for what you have to offer and information that website visitors want.

Quality content—the kind that encourages others to link to your website—is relevant to your topic, offers value to your visitors and potential customers, fits within the overall industry of the topic of your site (such as related products or services), and provides value to your site visitors.

Building links involves offering your website visitors what they want and that’s what quality content is all about. It’s the old WIIFM thing… (What’s In It For Me?). If you can answer that question with your website visitor in mind, and create content aimed at that visitor, you’ve just provided quality content. And the odds of your visitors linking to that content have increased tremendously.

Let’s say your website deals with cocker spaniels. While there’s certainly some competition there, that’s probably not one of the most popular topics online. It should be relatively easy to create original content to build links to your site.

But what if your niche is more common and your competition is stiffer? What if your site focuses on Internet marketing (IM)? You can still create quality content to build links to your site.  For instance, your content could include original reviews of IM products that you write yourself or have someone write for you. Or include resource lists of software products, ebooks and websites that are truly useful to other Internet Marketers.  It could include original articles and tutorials on every aspect of IM from building a website to selling PLR.

The idea—regardless of your niche—is to create a site with content that is just a little different, or just a little better than anyone else is offering. What’s the BEST way to build links to your site? Quality content, without a doubt.

While you may be familiar with using press releases to attract local news media to your business or event, have you ever considered using press releases for link building?

The world of public relations is changing.  It used to be that the only way for someone to receive publicity was to write a press release, submit it to her local newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations, then call in a day or two to be sure it was received. This would give the media personnel a chance to look over the PR and decide whether or not they wanted to pursue a story based on the content.

While this is still true for local, brick and mortar type businesses, today a press release is often posted and submitted to online publicity sites such as PRNewswire and Pitch Engine.  These sites publish the release announcing the event or providing the information to the internet and social media worlds.

Actually, both methods work, and both can be used to build links to your website. It’s just that local, print links won’t be live. They can, however, drive tons of traffic to your site, and they can get you links on media websites if they choose to post your PR there.

When creating a press release to release to online sources, you treat them much like a web page on your site, with some added promotion thrown in for good measure.  Be sure your press release uses good SEO tactics, such as keywords that target your audience and is well written. Check for grammatical mistakes, spelling errors and misused words. If you’re not qualified to write it well, hire a professional. It’s worth the minimal cost to have it done right.

Once you have your press release in hand, create a page for it on your website. Now, you can begin the promotion.

• Submit the page link to various directories and indices.
• Add the link to your signature file in forums and on guest blog posts.
• Post the press release on your blog.
• Send it to free press release submission sites.
• Search Google for “submit your PR” or “submit your press release” and you’ll find, not only PR sites like PRWeb, but you’ll also find a ton of blogs, ezines, and websites that will gladly post your press release for you—with a link back to your site.
• Use every means at your disposal to get a link using that PR.

While you may think that press releases are old hat and no one uses them any more, the results may surprise you. Try writing a good press release about an upcoming event or something special your company is doing. Use the methods mentioned above to promote it well online. You’ll soon find out for yourself the value of using press releases for link building.

Part of the strategy we implement for your business and website is to do Press Releases, to read more visit our Social Media Marketing Page.

Building links with Facebook can bring added traffic to your site, increase your blog readers, followers and subscribers and all-in-all improve your SEO because of added links and value.

There are a variety of ways to use Facebook to build links to your website. Here are just a few:

• As with any social networking site, the more friends you have, the more opportunity for links, visitors to your website, and ultimately sales. So “friend” people when they invite you to.

• Search for friends by name or email. View the friends of your friends and invite them to be your friend. In other words, grow your network. That’s one of the fastest ways to build your circle of influence—on Facebook or anywhere.

• Create a Fan Page for your business on Facebook and invite your friends to join. Post specials, discounts, coupons, news about your site and tips related to your niche.

• Attach your blog feed to your Facebook page so that your blog posts will automatically be added to your Facebook site. This can greatly increase your number of blog followers and readers especially if you post interesting content.

• Add teasers to articles on your website as a status update on Facebook and encourage your friends to visit to read the entire article. If they like it, hopefully, they’ll link to it.

• Post photos that correlate to articles or blog posts on your Facebook page and link them back to your Website in hopes someone will link to them.

• Post a link to your site(s) in your profile and make it visible to anyone who visits your Facebook page. You may be surprised how many personal friends, or even business colleagues, aren’t aware of all you do and can offer.

• Post your articles on Facebook and ask your friends to link to it for you. Be sure it’s worthy link bait!

• Since Facebook is often a family meeting place as well as business, friends and acquaintances, you might be surprised at how many people will post a link to your site simply because they know and love you. But you’ll never know unless you ask… so ask!

Building links with Facebook isn’t as easy as some other techniques you might use because Facebook truly is a social site and the majority of people are looking for interaction and fun.  However, it can be a very effective tool and reach many, many people if used right and you keep in mind to be social not salesy.

You will notice I have oncorporated a number of these strategies on my website with the use of Like Buttons and the Facebook widget on the right of this post.  Just these two things have helped me gain followers and likers of the articles I post.

Oh and if you like this article or any other please do me a favour and click on the Like button at the top or bottom.

Thank you

With all the changes in SEO propriety recently, you may have to wonder about link swaps.

Are they worth their time to code them?

Do link swaps still add value to a website?

Will your site be penalized if you have a link to a site that also
has a link to yours?

What do the experts say about this important topic?

Some SEO experts say that Google and the other search engines are moving value away from link swaps. And in a way, that’s not a totally bad thing. Sites that use irrelevant link swapping just to rank higher in the search engines should be discounted in their ranking.

But there are worthwhile link swaps to consider. As one writer said, someone who links to their local Chamber of Commerce, for instance, and then becomes a member of the Chamber and receives a link from them should not be penalized because they now have a “link swap.” It’s a fine line in the world of search engine optimization.

One-way links are still more valuable to your SEO efforts, however. And there are plenty of ways to get them, such as submitting articles to other websites, posting in discussion forums, commenting on blogs, publishing a blog, submitting guest blog posts and more.

If you decide to seek out a few link swaps for your site, keep these tips in mind for the best results:

• Look for sites that are relevant to your niche. Never post a link on your site that has nothing whatsoever to do with the topic of your site.

• Keep the link swaps to a minimum. A few here and there probably won’t  harm your rankings, just don’t get carried away.

• Swap only with quality sites. Never swap links with a link farm or post a link to an amateurish, content-irrelevant site on any of your pages.

Link swaps do add some value to your site, but developing a link farm by linking to anyone and everyone who asks and who does the same for you simply devalues your site. Instead, encourage your site visitors to link back to you, or to an article or post on your site. This can garner a variety of one-way backlinks which is your best option by far.

Build quality content, add new information often, start a blog and publish new posts frequently… in essence, do all the things you can to encourage one-way links to your site and you won’t have to consider link swapping.

In your continuing link building education, have you considered the importance of quality vs. quantity where links are concerned? It’s an area of knowledge and learning you can’t afford to neglect.

By now you probably understand the importance of having links pointing back to your site to help you rank higher in search engine results and drive more traffic to your website.  And you’ve probably begun to understand how to get backlinks—through articles, blog posts, do-follow discussion forums, etc.—but you may be wondering why your site isn’t ranking higher after all your hard work.

The importance of quality vs. quantity where links are concerned can’t be stressed enough. Sure, you need a good quantity of links, but to get really good SEO results, you need quality links first off.

There was a time when the ‘Net was new, that people believed the more links you had, the better, regardless of where those links came from. Thus was born the FFA sites, free classifieds, catchall link pages, and other “link farms.” Today, search engines give a lot more authority to quality links rather than simple quantity.

The difference in quality links is that they are often earned links based on the quality of your content, rather than link exchanges or submission to directories in languages other than your own.  There is no standard statement that says you must have only quality vs. quantity. Where links are concerned, you do need both. You need a lot of backlinks to your site to get high ranking, but they must be quality, lasting, valuable links.

So, how do you get them? Provide something worth linking to.

Provide quality content, articles that have something worthwhile to say and frequently update  your site. Give webmasters—especially those of high-ranking sites—a reason to link to your site and your content, and you’ll find yourself developing a whole stable of high quality links.

Another effective strategy is to search Alexa for the highest ranking sites in your niche and begin following their blogs, reading their content and articles and learning what kind of sites they link to now. Then, create that kind of site and let those webmasters know about it.

Develop a unique, content driven site that offers value to its readers and you’ll soon get the attention of people in your niche whose opinion matters. At that point, quality vs. quantity where links are concerned become one and the same, and are no longer an issue you need worry with.