Generating traffic, generating interest, generating brand awareness, generating electricity or anything else requires fuel. Some people see the world of Internet marketing as a big mysterious beast that is impossible to understand, but in reality there is nothing much to it. All you need is exceptional relationship building skills and something to offer (fuel) to new websites in your network in order to receive something back (traffic). Right now, you are probably wondering, "What is this guy talking about?", but as I said, there is nothing much to it.
The Fuel of the Internet
To find out what really matters to the search engines and in particular, Google, all you need to do is perform a search in Google for 'Matt Cutts on Internet marketing'. Matt Cutts is the front man for Google and he is the connection between the techy people inside Google and the techy people who make websites. Anyone who is anyone in Internet marketing will know of Matt Cutts and they will have read his work. One thing consistently touted as the fuel for search engines is the good old back link. This is why there is so much emphasis placed on creating a successful link building campaign. There is no mystery to internet marketing, Google actually tells you what it wants, which means all you need to do is provide what the search engines request through their webmaster blogs and through their webmaster tools and analytics pages.
Why are Links Fuel?
The short answer to that question is that they are a seal of approval. When a reputable website in your field allows you to place a guest post on their website, the back link is a seal of approval from that website. The anchor text and the text on the page of the guest post also tells Google what the link relates to and this gives your page relevance a boost. In essence the links are fuelling your enhanced reputation. Article directories are consistently devalued with every new update of the Google algorithms. This means that any back links generated through submitting guest blogs or articles to directories is money wasted. It is far better to spend a little extra on getting quality content created that is good currency for you to offer to prospective websites.
Running your Diesel Car on Cooking Oil
A few years back, there was a lot of publicity about the use of cooking oil as fuel for cars instead of diesel that is subject to fuel duty. For a while, many people decided to use the cheaper option and they didn't mind driving up the road with the smell of a fast food outlet wafting from their exhaust. Obviously, when things seem too good to be true, they are often not as good as they seem. People soon started experiencing problems with their engines and maintenance costs rose rapidly. The same can be said for your website content and the fuel you use for your linking campaign. Google is constantly ridding its search results of websites with poor content. People who employed content farms instead of quality writers who had specialist knowledge have wasted their money because the location of their links has been devalued.
Long Term Investment for Short Term Returns
Building a relationship with websites who are willing to accept guest posts from writers is a skill and one of the most important aspects of any marketing campaign. High value web properties only publish very high quality content and this is why they are difficult to secure as locations for guest posts or content. They only allow links from their web pages that go to similarly well looked after websites. You can bet that high-ranking websites receive offers of content regularly because there is a lot of value to a link from a high page rank (PR) site.
Investing wisely in a quality guest blog will ensure maximum returns on for your spend. Prospective Guest post locations will respond even better to the offer of a series of guest posts.