Despite mention in my previous post of JCPenney and Overstock.com being penalized by Google for their unorthodox link buying campaigns, it is still as true as ever that the search engine algorithms favor big businesses. Companies like Amazon, Target, Walmart, and others are frequently mentioned and linked to from a variety of other websites, and no matter how hard the little guy may work to rank in these areas, success is exceedingly rare.

That doesn’t mean we should just give up and accept that our small business ventures will never take off. It just means that we need to be creative.

One suggestion is to market your site using less popular keywords or phrases. You can use Google’s keyword tool to evaluate popularity, and then determine what sort of opportunity your site has to rank in different areas. While certain broad terms may be out of reach, specialized phrases tend to be fair game. As a bonus, individuals who search using these specific terms are more likely to be serious customers ready to make a purchase.

Another idea – perhaps the most important – is to figure out how to set yourself apart from the big businesses online. What do you have to offer your clients? What makes you different? Why should they choose you? You may not have the budget (and the buzz) to compete with megastars in your industry, but if you can figure out what makes your company unique and sell that, you will succeed.

Since Google’s Panda update, the world of link building has changed considerably. Although low quality backlinks were never exactly encouraged, they’ve never before been so highly penalized, either. Sometimes, in fact, quantity was enough to make up for shoddy quality. Not so anymore!

Here are some tips to get you by in the post-Panda era of search engine optimization.

Pay attention to advertising! If you are evaluating a site for reciprocal linking purposes, run like the wind if you see huge blocks of adsense, banner ads, and other marketing bits bogging down the site. Small portions of revenue generating ads are acceptable, but any site should be weighted toward content and away from adverts.

Quality counts! You risk damaging your own reputation by accepting links from sites that will post anything that comes their way. Be more selective and seek out web pages that are discriminating in terms of what they accept and decline. Even if you’re submitting a well-written article, the next update might not recognize your stellar writing among a mess of poor grammar and spelling and spam.

Moderation is healthy! Seriously, a website that allows spammy comments to go unmoderated is going to be noticed by Google now – and not in a good way. It’s better for your company not to be associated with those that allow commenters to run rampant.

Content you control! As always, the best place to focus your SEO efforts is on your own web content. Maintaining a blog, providing useful information, and updating regularly will give readers the incentive to link back to your site. Additionally, the more professional your site appears, the more authority you’ll have among your readers, leading to more sales and conversions.

The bottom line is that things really haven’t changed all that drastically. The same bad practices that were always discouraged are still discouraged. The difference is that the penalties seem to be much harsher now, and where you may have been able to squeak by in the past, you can expect to get caught now. Don’t make the mistakes that cost JCPenney and Overstock their good rankings. For best results, follow the tips above.

In recent years, blogs have become extremely popular. Whether they’re established on their own to share information and indulge the author’s desire to write and communicate with the world at large or whether they’ve been set up by companies wishing to share product updates and news, online journals are a useful tool for both search engine optimization and site monetization.

Current trends in website advertising have led to more and more bloggers getting paid to post short articles or banner ads on their sites. Because blogs generate a lot of traffic and have some pull in the internet community when it comes to buzz and brand awareness, they make a great forum for advertisements.

Businesses also benefit from creating their own blogs because they give customers the opportunity to interact with their websites in a meaningful way. Leaving comments, sharing posts on social networking sites, and providing a quick way for them to get product updates means more sales and publicity for the company. And of course, regularly adding fresh content to any website is a sure way to help improve its rankings.

Whether blogging for pay or for SEO benefits, the undeniable popularity of this web phenomenon is a trend to watch!

Welcome to our new blog site, where you can come to find the latest news and information about link building, search engine optimization, and other methods of turning your website into a successful small business.

Today, we’ll get started with some link building tips for beginners.

First, the reasoning behind the madness: search engines like Google and Yahoo are designed to evaluate how many links point to your site. This helps them determine (mathematically) how important your site is as compared to other sites offering similar information. One way to boost your site’s ranking is to exchange links with other webmasters who have sites in the same industry or niche as yours.

Now that you know why you need to trade links, you just need to know how to go about it.

One suggestion is to sign up for a free link exchange manager, which will help visitors to your site submit their own link and at the same time, add a link to their site pointing back to yours. This is an easy, automated way to trade.

Of course, a good link building campaign does require some effort. Joining webmaster-themed online forums or subscribing to communities for webmasters of sites like yours can help you identify and connect with potential swappers. Maintaining good, fresh content on your site is another way to generate backlinks – if your site has information others find useful, they will be likely to pass it on by sending your link to others.

Finally, stay active. If you build up a large number of back links in the first few months of running your site and then stop trading, you might be off to a good start but you’ll soon lose your advantage. The key to a successful website is that it is always expanding its reach, so make sure you keep seeking out new contacts and adding your link to other sites to keep yours in the game!