One way you can obtain incoming links for your site is to submit knowledge articles to other sites in exchange for a link back to your site. These “article submission” sites provide great resources on various topics in addition to helping you spread your name around.

If it’s done correctly, it is reasonable to expect you will get links to the exact pages you want that include the exact anchor-text you desire.

But submitting content to some of these article submission sites can also have some drawbacks – namely low quality links, duplicate content problems and drawing unwanted attention to your site’s search engine optimization efforts.

Google in fact frowns upon this and views it as an artificial link-building tactic.

There’s in fact a right way and a wrong way to build links through these article submission sites. Some of these sites are in fact duplicating content from your site so you need to be sure your stuff is tweaked to not trip the duplicate content alarm at Google.

You also don’t want to totally rely on these sites. The ones you do use should be reputable and professional. Sites who say “looking for writers” or “submit an article” are better options to choose that won’t paint a big target on your website.

Some popular article submission sites include: Ezine Articles, Article Dashboard, Buzzle, Article Alley and more.

Check back again soon for some more tips on how you should go about submitting articles to these submission sites along with some info on finding good ones to work with.

How do Facebook and Twitter compare? Is it right for my business to invest in social networking?

To answer these questions, HubSpot pulled data from 2600 of its customers.  Companies were sorted by industry and were examined to see how many followers they had on each channel (referred to as the channel’s reach by Rick Burnes over at HubSpot).

From the chart below, we can see Facebook has more “reach” with B2C businesses…B2B businesses enjoy more success with Twitter.

Data from this chart doesn’t exactly mean you should only work with one and not the other. Considering Facebook’s expertise, ambitions and sheer scale of its plans, it would be unwise to not have a Facebook profile at all and focus solely on Twitter and vice versa.

And don’t fall in the trap of thinking your industry doesn’t use social media so it’s not worth considering. As with websites, blogs and SEO, being the first to step into to social networking will certainly payoff in the long run. Don’t be shy…experiment with social networking no matter what industry you’re in.

Below are five elements of a successful Facebook page from our friends at Mashable, who include some great examples of companies successful at Facebook marketing.

Integrating these tips into your social media marketing strategy can help you maximize the value of your Facebook page(s).

1. Network with other platforms

One way successful brands on Facebook got to where they are is by working in tandem with other platforms to drive visitors to their Facebook page. Many companies expect consumers to find their Facebook page automatically without adding links into their homepage. The result…most people are unable to find your page on the bustling social network.

Consumers should be able to easily find your Facebook page…whether it’s through a prominent link on your homepage or through other social networks like Twitter. Connecting multiple social platforms and a hub from the brand website can help funnel customers throughout your network.

2. Create a resource to target a new demographic

Many Facebook pages serve as a connection hub while others offer pertinent information to their customers. This information is used as an added value to have consumers create a connection with the brand.

These “Boxes” allow you to target specific demographics for your products and services outside of those who already know and love what you offer.

3. Have contests to boost user participation

Another way to engage potential customers is to offer contests and coupons. Many Facebook users do not simply join a page because they’re loyal to your brand. However, they may be motivated to join if they can get a coupon or enter into a contest and win something.

Offering something to consumers is one big way you can develop a large following. This can be a coupon, free shipping, weekly deals for Facebook fans and more.

4. Empower those who have pre-existing pages that feature your brand

There’s a chance a loyal customer has already created a Facebook ‘fan’ page for your products. One of the most fabled stories of a company who has successfully done this is Coca-Cola. What started out as a fan page for fun for a couple of Coke enthusiasts when on to become one of the most popular pages on Facebook.

Rather than coming in and taking over the page when the company decided to take Facebook on, they brought the enthusiasts to the Coca-Cola plant in Atlanta and gave them a tour. The two guys maintain control of the page but now have the blessing and financial support of the company…empowering these fans ensures a passionate commitment to the page’s success.

Therefore, it isn’t always the best idea to take over a Facebook page. Instead, reward the creator and make an even more enthusiastic customer who will spread that to others.

5. Be sure you’re targeting the right demographic

You may be trying everything you can to grow a following on Facebook but nothing ever happens. One reason is that you’re target demographic may not be on Facebook. Therefore, before you do anything, you need to find out if your target market hangs out on Facebook.

Research from Quantcast shows Facebook tends to skew toward younger females…53% of these women have kids and make over $60,000 per year. The demographic is changing too with older, more professional women joining up. The college market is pretty saturated.

Keep checking to monitor changes in the social network’s prime demographics and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Facebook has seen lots of positive growth over the last few years and is expected to continue its dominance of the social networking/marketing world. Besides great content on your site and blog, Facebook offers you a way to find more customers. Many people join Facebook pages because they have friends who “liked” a product.

Facebook is essentially a place people go to interact with their friends and see what they’re saying about certain things. Capturing this market can propel your company even farther in the online world.

By evaluating different metrics and experimenting with different layouts, Marketing Experiments’ webinar outlined how you can drive much higher conversion rates.

It’s not about marketing intuition or a list of best practices…successfully driving higher conversion rates with landing pages is more about a framework or methodology. Think about it more from a sequence of thought perspective rather than mere optimization of words or images. In your reader’s mind, the value of every action you desire for them to take must outweigh the cost.

It’s like a see-saw – on one end you have cost, and on the other you have value. If the cost is high, fewer people will find the value in going further.

So how do I reduce “cost” in my landing pages?

To reduce cost, you must reduce friction by eliminating any unnecessary length or difficulty in the order path, or thought sequence.

Basically, the hosts (Flint McCaughlin & company) of the interview say you must answer two of the readers’ most critical questions very quickly – you have to do this within “four inches and seven seconds” according to Flint.

Not answering the questions “Where and I?” and “What am I doing here?” means more people will be clicking that back button.

Be sure your visitor knows where they have landed.

Also reduce cost by not having many form fields. Keep questions to a minimum.

Increasing your page’s value along with decreasing its cost is another way you can drive higher conversion rates. Carefully identify and communicate key factors that set you above your competition…offer “unique value” to your prospects.

Another way to increase value – use specific, quantitative and instantly credible language when describing benefits of your products or services.

Take about an hour or so and watch this very useful webinar. They provide great examples of their work so you can visually see how to structure a page for maximum benefit along with how you should approach what you say…I’m trying some of their tips now so I’ll let you know how it works out.

Good content informs, entertains and motivates the reader to take the next step…maybe that’s making contact, or ordering or downloading an ebook for example. Whatever that next step is, good content gets the reader to keep going rather than click the back button and search further on other sites.

One of the ways to accomplishing this goal is to ensure your content doesn’t drag on, or overstay its welcome. Think of it like a neighbor. You may like talking to them occasionally but you don’t exactly want them over to dinner every night.

Leave your readers wanting more, and then give them more when they move on to the next phase of your engagement process.

Many online marketers either do too much or too little with their content. While there is a minimum amount of words you need on a page, there’s no particular number to shoot for. Basically, the amount of content you develop depends on what’s needed to move the reader along to the next stage…nothing more, nothing less.

Use only the number of words you need to convert a site visitor and not one more. Your audience isn’t just one person…its many different personas and personalities, each with their own unique needs. Trying to explicitly satisfy them all will cause your content to “wear out its welcome.”

Remember, you don’t have to meet everyone’s needs perfectly on one particular webpage or blog post. Figure out, in a general sense, what each group’s next step would be and provide them that opportunity. For some, it may be an “about us” page, for others it may the “buy” button and others may be interested to learn more about “shipping policies.”

What you want to do is develop content that’s minimal but provides opportunities for all types of people who come across it. From there, they can go find what they need to allay their fears or answer their questions, providing the entire audience with what it wants.

If you had a page about “red rovers” but you no longer offer them, what should you redirect people to? Should you send people to your homepage or generate a custom “404-Not Found” page?

It’s common for people unknowing about the mechanics of SEO to redirect people to the homepage but according to a recent WebMasterWorld forum, this could have disastrous impacts for your standing in the search engines.

Some webmasters feel simply generating a 404 error page is a terrible waste of a good webpage. That may be true but if you redirect to the homepage, your rankings could suffer.

WebMasterWorld manager “Tedster” suggests this – if you have a bunch of URLs that you’re no longer using, look for important backlinks that point to problematic pages and generate appropriate content for the same URL. If you’re unable to create unique content for the defunct URL, create a custom “404-Not Found” page explaining the changes to your site.

We agree with Tedster – whenever we change around a site, we either 301 redirect to a specific page, not to the homepage. If that’s not feasible, we create a custom “404-Not Found.”

What you first need to have is someone to interview, or an interviewee. You can find someone just about anywhere – maybe a coworker or the CEO of your company. Or maybe even a client or a prominent figure in your industry who can share their views with your readers.

Once you have someone in mind and they have agreed to be interviewed, you need to prepare for the actual filming. Continue reading for 9 steps to properly film a video interview to ensure your interview goes as smoothly as possible and accomplishes your goals.

1. Know what your interview is about beforehand

First thing you need to do is develop your questions and send them to the interviewee ahead of time. The interview itself isn’t the time to figure out what your story will be about…be prepared for that before you even enter the room.

2. Take a moment and get to know the interviewee before setting up

Before you get your camera equipment out, take a few moments to build a rapport with the interviewee. This will get both of you in a more relaxed state of mind for the interview. If one or both of you are new to interviewing, you will need to calm down before going any further. Let the interviewee see you care about them and are appreciative of their time.

3. Setup camera equipment before they sit down

Wait until you have setup your camera equipment before having the interviewee sit down. Once you’ve set all of the equipment up, have them sit down to make your final adjustments.

4. Make sure you like where the interviewee is looking

Once your camera is setup and the interviewee is in place, be sure you’re okay with where the interviewee is looking. You will want them to maintain eye contact with you so don’t stand directly behind the camera but next to it a couple of feet away.

5. Stay in one place

The interviewee will keep looking at you so if you’re wandering around, that will look weird on film. Stay in one place and maintain eye contact with the interviewee.

6. Focus your camera closely

A big face in an online video is a good thing…focus your camera closely to get more of the interviewee’s face onto the screen.

7. Be aware of your background

Do your best to have a background free of any distractions. Don’t have anything going on behind them and check to see how any tall objects like power poles or trees look on the video. You don’t want to have your interviewee look like they have tree trunk growing out of their head!

8. Pay close attention to lighting

While you don’t want the interviewee to be squinting because of light in their eyes, you don’t want to have sunlight or strong light behind them either. This will make it difficult for viewers to see the interviewee. If you’re indoors, you may need to move lighting or get a lamp to balance out other light sources in the room.

9. Wear headphones to filter out abstract noises

Any kind of noise can come along and ruin your video. Keep your headphones on to monitor any abstract noises that may come along and ruin your video.

These are a few of the things you need to keep in mind when filming an interview. Below you can see some both good and bad ways to position someone on camera.

In the end, you can edit the film, post it on YouTube, link to it through your blog and include a short summary of the interview for those who prefer to read (…and to reap some of the advantages of SEO). And you can let the interviewee know when it’s up so they can link to it from their blog, giving you another high-quality link to your site.

Much of this talk has been driven by how the new “Like” button provides Facebook with proprietary data about the popularity of pages across a vast amount of sites. Talk has only gotten more intense as links to external sites have been seen in Facebook search results.

But can Facebook really replace Google?

Right now, Facebook is hardly a blip on the radar screen as far as a search engine goes. People go to Google to search…they go to Facebook to interact with their friends. And as long as Facebook isn’t a toolbar option and doesn’t require a person to be logged in to do a search, this situation will continue.

Another big difference between the two – search engines like Google judge a site’s credibility by the number of links rather than the number of “likes.” Many websites will never have a like button so there’s concern there.

And if Facebook relies entirely on “likes,” they may not have any information to determine what kind of page would draw an “unlike.” How likely are you to “like” an article you read…I’m more inclined to link to it from my blog for instance.

There’s nothing that says Facebook cannot start crawling the web and indexing pages. But Google has a decade head start on building a search engine. And even with lots of marketing and software expertise and investment, Microsoft’s Bing has struggled to compete with Google.

Levels of personalization available with Facebook will ultimately drive more people to its corner. While Google can help you find just about anything under the sun, Facebook is in a better position in terms of what you and your friends care about – something Google is just starting to explore with its social and personalized search features.

Going forward, there are tremendous opportunities for growth in Facebook. All of your interesting content should include a “Like” button…it’s one of the most important social sharing buttons for driving visibility and links to your site.

Facebook is also pushing for widespread adoption of its Open Graph Protocol, which calls for a standard set of meta tags along with variable tags depending on the content.

In the short term however, you shouldn’t expect a big lift from Facebook but down the road you might so it doesn’t hurt to explore the options Facebook presents…just don’t forget about your SEO and other elements for ranking high in the search engines.

According to recent data from Compete, there’s no doubt Facebook can be a major source of traffic.

Once you get someone to your site for the first time, you need to be sure the content is compelling and informative enough for them to return again and again. If visitors don’t return to a site, you’re putting yourself into the position of having to rely on visitors coming directly from the search engines. The problem with this of course is first-time visitors are least likely to subscribe or buy.

Your best customers will be those who have reviewed your site several times and know it better rather than first-time visitors coming from a search engine who just quickly glance at your page and move on.

So keep reading for three steps you can take to get first-time visitors to come back again and again.

Step #1 – Optimizing your site for the search engines

Of course, the first step is getting new people to your site. Optimizing your site to rank on page 1 in the search engines is key to making this happen. Be sure your site architecture is friendly to search engines and your content contains valuable keywords woven into the content. Meta and title tags do help and you also need to obtain inbound links from other sites.

Step #2 – Write great content that keeps visitors reading

Someone coming to your site for the first time is unlikely to return if they don’t entirely read the first page they land on.  If your site/business depends on people taking action on your site, you need to engage them from the very beginning so they’re interested in the entire page and want to come back for more. To succeed at this, you need to diversify your content beyond simple advertising slogans and the like.

Step #3 – Get people to come back again and again

For those of us who have sites primarily consisting of content, it can be quite a challenge to develop engaging content that keeps people coming back. You’re likely one of hundreds or thousands of sites offering information on the same subject. Simply adding more pages won’t keep people coming back…to do this, you must:

• When compared to other sites on the same subject, your site’s content needs to provide more value
• Add great content frequently and let people know you’re adding new stuff in the near future to keep ‘em coming back
• Invite your readers to leave comments and suggestions to engage them with your site
• Take full advantage of social media networks like Facebook and Twitter to get people talking about your content amongst their friends

To summarize, content driven sites need to stand out from the pack in order to maximize conversions.  Basically speaking, your content has to be good enough for people to want to come back again and again.

Not all links carry the same value in the eyes of the search engines…some are more valuable than others. Links from established websites usually carry the greatest value since their PageRank is much higher (because they have a vast amount of links already). For example, a link from CNN.com will carry much more value than one from a free press release distribution service few have ever heard of.

A link from a small business directory like www.sbdpro.com will be more valuable than one from a directory that uses no-follow tags. Speaking of no-follow tags, it’s the bane of any inexperienced link builder’s existence.

No-follow is basically a link search engines cannot follow so therefore, it has no value. Links from Facebook, Twitter and many online ads are usually no-follow so try your best to avoid these. They don’t hurt anything but they don’t help you either so you would be wasting valuable time if you try and acquire these.

So how can I build incoming links naturally?

Like we said before, you want a good mix of links to your site that appear naturally. Having 100 links from the same place will be a red flag to the search engines. They will most likely penalize you in this situation, which is not a good one to be in.

Some good places to get inbound links include: directories, press releases and blogs.

Directories – Links from professional organizations, online communities, forums and business directories can provide great links for your site. Examples include DMOZ.org, business.com, Yahoo!, Best of the Web and more. Be sure your directory listings are fully optimized to get the full benefits.

Press Releases – Writing and distributing press releases to various outlets are another great way to gain inbound links to your site. Not only will people be able to learn about what’s happening at your company, you will build more links to your site.

Blogs – You can also link to relevant pages on your website from your blog. Building relationships with other bloggers will also bring great links to your blog and website. Active blogs with large followings are your best bet but you can also target lesser known blogs as well. As their PageRank grows, the value of the link will grow with it.

Another way you can build links is to create content so fascinating and valuable that other people will want to link to it. This is the ultimate way to build links but is also the hardest.

Create a schedule for link building – for example, you could find a directory once a month and create links in your blog every week or two. And carefully evaluate directories and press release outlets to determine the value they can pass to you. Different directories and press release outlets can offer a wide variety of link value (check out our article on press release optimization for more).

How can I see who’s linking to me?

Another important aspect of building links is inventorying what you have already and checking on that periodically. You can easily see who Google is crediting a link to you by entering “link:www.yourwebsite.com” in the search bar (without the quotations).

This won’t show you all of the links but if you’re inclined to, you can use Google’s free webmaster tools for more in-depth research…Yahoo’s Site Explorer is another tool to see what links Yahoo! are showing for your site.

You should make it a point to checkup on these every month or so. And build relationships with more web properties too…obtaining a link not only helps your prospects in the search engines, it is also a great compliment and professional networking tool.