Earning Backlinks vs. Building Them

The goal of any SEO strategy is to get your website noticed. One of the more important aspects of most SEO strategies is developing backlinks. Backlinks are links on other websites that link back to your site. These links tell the search engines, “Hey, this site has some good info, and I link to it!” Most search engines use this to determine how popular a website is on the Internet. Let us first look at why search engines use this as a primary metric in determining where your website shows within the organic search results.

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Link Your Facebook to Your Twitter

Social Networking is one of the best, and now easiest ways to reach potential clients and customers directly. Follow these easy step-by-step instructions on how to link your Facebook Page to your Twitter Feed so you can share everything you publish with everyone you know.

1. Go to http://www.facebook.com/twitter/
2. Login, then select the button reading "Link a Page to Twitter"
3. Your available pages should be listed with a button to the right that reads "Link to Twitter"
4. Select the button corresponding to the page you wish to link
5. You will be redirected to a Twitter page asking for your Twitter Username & Password
6. Enter your login information and select the button that reads "Allow"
7. You will be redirected back to Facebook and a list of Settings to Edit will be visible
8. You can choose to share any or all of the choices that include Status Updates, Photos, Video, Links, Notes, and Events.
9. Feel free to leave all the selections chosen
10. Select "Save Changes" and you are now connected!

You are now more connected to social networking and will easily generate twice as many postings.

Additional Resources

• Facebook Page Help
• Business Page Tips from Facebook
• How Facebook boosts Rankings
• Social Media and the Insurance Industry

How Facebook boosts Rankings

Facebook, and indeed all social networking sites form an integral part of SEO. One of the advantages of signing up for a Facebook profile is creating backlinks from a highly ranked website (PageRank 9/10), but also building a network among like-minded people.

These articles show how to get the most out of Facebook:

• 11 Business Benefits of Using Facebook Applications
• How to Get Maximum Benefits from Facebook Marketing
• 7 Simple Facebook Page Tricks
• How to build fans on Facebook

How to Create Effective Backlinks

Creating effective backlinks are essential to a successful SEO campaign.

A backlink is link from another website coming into your own website. Backlinks contribute to the PageRank (PR) of your website. A backlink must include your main keyword phrase (kp) in the anchor text. This means creating a link with the words of your main kp e.g. Dallas Car Insurance rather than using the web address as a link or even "Click Here" or "Visit Us".

Backlinks only help to boost rankings if they are from high ranking, high quality websites, in other words websites with a high PR. Ranked out of 10 websites with PR 4 and upwards are worthy sites. Websites with lower PRs are good but more backlinks from this type of websites are needed to equal a website with a high PR. You can check PR by downloading the Google Toolbar.

You can post a backlink in business directories, local directories, social networking sites and other blogs.

Here are some directories where you can post your link for free.

• Local Google
• Local Yahoo
• Local Bing
• Yellow Pages - PR 8/10
• Super Pages
• Local.com - PR 7/10

Make sure to add your website address and wherever possible with your main kp.

Read about inbound links straight from the horse's mouth (Google).

Read more about What PageRank Means for Your Website.