Forum and blog commenting are extremely powerful tools for driving free, targeted traffic to your site, in addition to improving your site’s ranking with numerous quality backlinks. Forums are specially designed websites that allow people with similar interests to chat by sharing messages.

Blogs, on the other hand, are typically operated by a single person, who posts messages relating to a specific topic. In most cases, readers have the opportunity to share their opinions on specific posts through comment sections.

Before you make any posts to forums or comments to blogs, make sure the links are ‘do follow’ links. This means that the site does not use the no follow tag. You may check for no follow links by reviewing the HTML code or by using a special browser plug-in. Firefox has a couple you can choose from.

First, let’s look at forums and how to use them effectively to help them generate traffic to your site. To start, you’ll need to find a forum in your specific niche – it doesn’t make sense to start a comment campaign on a silk worm enthusiast forum when you’re promoting a “make money online” product. Search Google or any of the other major search engines for “make money online +forum” and you should be able to identify several forums in your area of interest.

Once you’ve identified a few candidates, check them out to determine which forums are the most active. With this method, you might as well drive traffic as you increase your backlinks. If a forum only has a few members that post once a month on average, you won’t be able to drive as much traffic as a heavily trafficked forum with hundreds or thousands of active members. You should be able to find membership statistics posted somewhere on the forum’s homepage, or you can look at the threads to see how many comments are made on average and how recently they’ve been updated.

Once you’re ready to starting posting to a forum community, you’ll likely need to register for an account, which should be as simple as entering a user name, password and valid email address. Once your account is set up, you can enter additional information in your user profile and create a special “signature file” that’s displayed after every post you make in the forum. The signature file is the place where you’ll want to include a description of your site and a link to the page. This way, whenever you post to a forum, people will see this advertisement to your site and be encouraged to click through.

A few words of caution about posting to forums, however. First, most forums have strict rules about advertising, and may close your account if they think you’re spamming the forum with messages about your site. Therefore, when you post to a forum, be sure you’re providing helpful information, either in your own posts or in response to others. Not only will this convince the forum owners that you’re a valuable member of the community, you’ll be building up your reputation as an expert in the niche, which will make other members more likely to click through to your site.

Blogs focus on one person’s postings, instead of community conversations. However, active blogs may have just as many visitors as popular forums, so they’re still an important part of your traffic generation campaign. To find blogs in your niche, run a similar Google search for “making money online +blog” and check out several of the top results. Look for sites that are frequently updated with new posts and that have several user comments following each blog post.

Typically, there are fewer restrictions about posting links in your blog comments than there are on forum posts, but that doesn’t mean you should spam the blog, by posting only your site’s link in the comment sections. Most blog owners retain the right to delete user comments, and your posts will quickly be removed if the owner considers them to be spam. Instead, focus again on providing valuable content that makes users want to click through to your site. With continued effort, you should see a tremendous return in terms of traffic and improved site ranking on the major search engines.

In order to find the best do follow blogs on your topic, use InlineSEO’s online DoFollow Diver tool. This free, online tool will allow you to search over 700 blogs that do not use the no follow tag. This means the search engine spiders will see the link from their blog to yours. Type in the keywords related to your site and find the best blogs to post comments to. Remember not to spam, make sure to add useful content in your comments. You may find this valuable tool by visiting www.inlineseo.com and clicking on the SEO Tools link. You’ll see Do Follow Diver listed there.

Additional Articles in the Search Engine Optimization Tutorial Series:
SEO Module 1 – SEO Introduction & Keyword Research (Watch Online Video)
-Part 1: What is SEO?
-Part 2: Keyword Research
-Part 3: What is LSI?
-Part 4: What are Long-Tail Keywords?

SEO Module 2 – On-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 5: On-Site vs Off-Site
-Part 6: On-Site Optimization Details
-Part 7: What are Meta Tags?
-Part 8: What is Anchor Text?

SEO Module 3 – Off-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 9: Off-Site Optimization
-Part 10: Directory Submissions
-Part 11: Article Submissions
-Part 12: Press Release Submissions
-Part 13: Forum & Blog Commenting
-Part 14: Social Bookmarking
-SEO Tutorial Conclusion

If you’ve worked in the professional media and communications industry, you’re probably already familiar with press releases. These single page documents have traditionally been used to inform media personnel about upcoming news-worthy events for inclusion in newspapers and magazines. However, press releases are finding new lives in the field of search engine optimization, where site owners have found that these tools can be used for generating backlinks as well as increasing traffic back to their pages.

One of the biggest reasons for this trend is the increase in web-based press release distribution sites. In the past, press releases were submitted directly to contacts at media institutions. Today, however, sites like PRWeb.com allow site owners to distribute their press releases to news organizations around the world in a manner of seconds.

That means you can write a press release, and it may get published on hundreds or even thousands of different websites. If you include links with anchor text in your release than that means you’ll give the page you link back to a boost for the anchor text phrase you used. Just like the case with writing and submitting articles, you may see significant traffic from your release as well.

To get started with press release submissions, you’ll need to have something noteworthy to publish. Press releases on topics like, “SiteX.com publishes a new article” are unlikely to be picked up by news sources, so if you’re looking to generate traffic and have your press release published on a number of sites, you’ll have dismal results. On the other hand, if you’re launching a new website or product that provides an innovative new benefit, drafting and submitting a press release is a great way to generate interest in your site.

Press releases tend to follow a prescribed format, including a headline, body text and boilerplate section. The headline is the key to getting your press release picked up by news sources. It should pull the reader in, while summarizing the main benefit of your site or product in a few words. Take a few minutes to come up with a concise description (no more than 2-3 sentences) of how your site is different from the others on the web. From this description, pull out a single descriptive phrase and use it in your heading. For example, one of the top press releases currently listed on PRWeb.com is “The Business Plan Is Dead – New Book Shows How to Raise Capital in a New Way”. This headline simultaneously describes the book’s benefits and engages the reader’s interest.

The body of the press release comes next, constituting the majority of your press release’s text. The body should be anywhere from 2-4 paragraphs and should be written in third person, simulating an actual news story. In this section, you can describe your site or product’s benefits in more detail. This is a great place to include specific examples of how people have used your product or any testimonial quotes you’ve gathered regarding your site. You can also include a link to your site, along with keyword-optimized anchor text.

Please note that many press release submission services charge a premium for putting anchor text in the body of the release, but as long as you carefully research your keywords, it can be well worth the extra price.

Finally, the boilerplate section of your press release should include a few sentences that summarize your business and contact information that news sources can use to reach you. The information in this section should be fairly general – the term “boilerplate” indicates that the text can be used in any of your press releases with equal relevancy. Depending on the interest your press release generates, members of the news media may use the information included in this section to contact you regarding potential stories or interviews, so it’s important to include it in any press release you submit. Often, this is where you can include further links back to your site. In many cases, you’ll also be able to put anchor text links in here, although you may have to pay extra. At the very least, you can put in your full URL.

Submitting your information to press release sites is easy, and you’ll find that there are hundreds of different sites that will distribute your release for you. Some of these sites offer free distribution, while others charge fees to use their services. When you’re just getting started with press release submission, it’s a good idea to try out a number of different services to see which generate the best results for your site. Be sure to track how quickly your press releases are picked up by each service to further refine this search engine optimization strategy.

Additional Articles in the Search Engine Optimization Tutorial Series:
SEO Module 1 – SEO Introduction & Keyword Research (Watch Online Video)
-Part 1: What is SEO?
-Part 2: Keyword Research
-Part 3: What is LSI?
-Part 4: What are Long-Tail Keywords?

SEO Module 2 – On-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 5: On-Site vs Off-Site
-Part 6: On-Site Optimization Details
-Part 7: What are Meta Tags?
-Part 8: What is Anchor Text?

SEO Module 3 – Off-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 9: Off-Site Optimization
-Part 10: Directory Submissions
-Part 11: Article Submissions
-Part 12: Press Release Submissions
-Part 13: Forum & Blog Commenting
-Part 14: Social Bookmarking
-SEO Tutorial Conclusion

Submitting articles related to your site’s content to article directories is another great way to build your backlinks. Most article directories allow you to include links to your site in the resource box. This box just gives readers the details on how they can get more information relating to the topic of the article. Carefully choose the anchor text in the resource box in order to see an increase in search engine rankings for these keywords and keyphrases.

In addition to building backlinks, you’ll also likely get traffic from the articles you submit to popular article directories. Some of your articles may even be re-published on other sites, generating even more traffic and possibly more backlinks. In theory, the better the article, the more likely it will be re-published on other sites. This should lead to more backlinks to your site (which the search engines see and reward you for) and more traffic from the links you include in your resource box.

If you are writing articles for SEO purposes, it’s crucial to spend the time selecting a good anchor text strategy for your resource box. In fact, I spend more time on this than anything else.

Once you’ve determined your article marketing strategy, you’ll need to actually write the article or outsource this task. Make sure that your article’s title pulls readers in … something like “3 tips on how to make money online with affiliate marketing” would do fairly well. People love easy-to-read content, so breaking down your article into specific bullet points will encourage more traffic.

Of course, if you choose to use this type of article title, you will need to identify the three tips you’re going to cover. The good news is that doing this will help you to quickly structure and write out your article. Articles published to article directories should be between 200-750 words. Most article writing experts recommend starting out with an introduction to help draw the reader in to the article before they continue with the main points of the article.

If you’re having trouble getting down to the business of actually writing the article, consider the following tips. First, don’t put too much thought into it – try to write naturally, as if you’re writing the way you’d talk about your target subject. Don’t get bogged down on whether you should be using a colon or a semicolon in a particular sentence – just get the words down on paper and you can come back and edit them later. If writing still isn’t coming easily to you, search for articles on similar subjects to see how they’re structured and what kind of voice they use. Don’t plagiarize – use them only to get a feel for how your own articles can be written.

The final element of your article is the resource box. The resource box is your chance to introduce yourself and convince the reader to visit your website. Different article directories differ on whether you’re allowed to use anchor text links in your article text, but almost all of them will allow you to put a link to your website in the resource box – so you can see what a powerful tool this section is.

Since most article directories will allow you to use anchor text in your resource box, you should take advantage of that instead of just listing your URL. Adding in anchor text is crucial for SEO so make sure to select a good keyphrase for this. I also suggest listing your URL as well, just in case the HTML link doesn’t work. In addition to an anchor text link + the URL, you should try to make your resource box interesting, to encourage readers to click through to your site.

Here’s an example of a good resource box with anchor text for the keyphrase ‘make thousands of dollars online’.

“Want to learn how I ‘make thousands of dollars online’, every month, working only a few hours each week? Check out my FREE report at www.howtomakemoneyonline.com!”

Including the anchor text with a link back to your webpage will boost the rankings of the page for the keyphrase ‘make thousands of dollars online’ in the search engines. Just make sure the anchor text you use is something people are searching for in the search engines.

Once you have all your article elements ready, it’s time to submit them to the directories. Google seems to give the most weight to articles posted on
EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com and SearchWarp.com, so make these directories the primary focus of your article marketing campaign. It’s easy to sign up for a free account at each of these sites, and you’ll find more complete results on entering and submitting articles on each webpage.

Additional Articles in the Search Engine Optimization Tutorial Series:
SEO Module 1 – SEO Introduction & Keyword Research (Watch Online Video)
-Part 1: What is SEO?
-Part 2: Keyword Research
-Part 3: What is LSI?
-Part 4: What are Long-Tail Keywords?

SEO Module 2 – On-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 5: On-Site vs Off-Site
-Part 6: On-Site Optimization Details
-Part 7: What are Meta Tags?
-Part 8: What is Anchor Text?

SEO Module 3 – Off-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 9: Off-Site Optimization
-Part 10: Directory Submissions
-Part 11: Article Submissions
-Part 12: Press Release Submissions
-Part 13: Forum & Blog Commenting
-Part 14: Social Bookmarking
-SEO Tutorial Conclusion

Submitting your website to both free and paid directory sites is a great way to increase the backlinks to your webpage. Directories are compilation sites that list links to all sorts of sites. To get a better feel for how these sites are structured, check out the Open Directory Project at dmoz.org – it’s one of the best known directory sites on the internet today.

Traditionally, directory sites are broken down into two different categories – free and paid – depending on whether or not they charge you to include your site in their listings. Both types can have a place in your search engine optimization campaign, depending on what type of budget you’re working with. However, whether paid or not, it’s important to realize that not all directories are equal in their potential to improve your site’s ranking. You’ll need to do your due diligence to be sure the directory you’re submitting your site to gives you the best return for your efforts.

Getting your site listed in targeted directories that relate to the theme of your website will likely be seen as a premium by the search engines. In addition, you might even receive some traffic from them.

For example, if someone who’s interested in dog training finds a great directory dedicated to gathering links in their area, they’ll likely bookmark the directory and come back time and time again. To find these highly targeted directories, search for “your niche +directory” using your favorite search engine.

In addition to finding targeted directories for submitting you site to, you also want to look at the quality of the directory. Submitting your site to directories with higher traffic and higher PageRank will lead to better SEO results for your webpages.

Another important thing to check into before you submit your site to a directory (especially if you’re going to pay) is whether or not the directory makes use of “NOFOLLOW” attributes. Basically, these tags tell the search engine robots that any outgoing links on the directory page shouldn’t be considered in the search engine rankings. These tags were intended to prevent spam links from gaining popularity in the search engines, but if you submit your site to a directory that uses them, you’ll lose the backlink benefits of directory postings. If the directory doesn’t explicitly state whether or not it uses these tags, you can find out by looking in the code for rel=”nofollow” or by using a special plug-in for your browser that marks these links as red.

When it comes to submitting your site to directories, you again have two different options. You can manually submit your site to each directory you’d like to be included in, or you can purchase software or services that will do the submissions for you. In fact, if you search for “directory submission” on any of the major search engines, you’ll see a number of different advertisements for bulk directory submission services. In most cases, these services won’t dramatically impact your site’s search engine optimization, since the directories they submit your site to may not be well optimized for your niche.

Submitting your site to directories by hand is more time-consuming, but it may be worth the money saved if you’re only going to be including your page in a select few directories. And you can save your time altogether by outsourcing this task.

Individual directories have their own rules for how a site should be submitted, but most include selecting the appropriate category for your link and including details like your link, anchor text and a brief description of your site. The amount of time it takes before your link is visible will also vary by directory. However, if you’re diligent in finding well-ranked, high-traffic directories, you should see increased traffic to your site in a short period of time.

Additional Articles in the Search Engine Optimization Tutorial Series:
SEO Module 1 – SEO Introduction & Keyword Research (Watch Online Video)
-Part 1: What is SEO?
-Part 2: Keyword Research
-Part 3: What is LSI?
-Part 4: What are Long-Tail Keywords?

SEO Module 2 – On-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 5: On-Site vs Off-Site
-Part 6: On-Site Optimization Details
-Part 7: What are Meta Tags?
-Part 8: What is Anchor Text?

SEO Module 3 – Off-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 9: Off-Site Optimization
-Part 10: Directory Submissions
-Part 11: Article Submissions
-Part 12: Press Release Submissions
-Part 13: Forum & Blog Commenting
-Part 14: Social Bookmarking
-SEO Tutorial Conclusion

We’ve discussed on-site search engine optimization in great depth – including some of the different adjustments you can make to your webpages to make them more appealing to search engines – but these techniques are only half the battle. Off-site techniques are just as important in getting your site ranked well in the search engines results. For the most part, off-site SEO techniques revolve around the links that point to your site from other webpages. These links back to your site are commonly called backlinks.

The following types of backlinks offer the most benefit in terms of off-site search engine optimization:

Links from sites with a high Google PageRank – Google’s PageRank system is a website quality indicator that takes into account how popular a site is by reviewing the amount and quality of the sites that link to it. Sites with a high PageRank are considered to be more reputable than those with low ranks, so backlinks to your site that come from high PageRank sites naturally offer more of an advantage in terms of search engine optimizatiton.

Links from sites with similar content – Search engines consider the source of an inbound link when determining how much weight to give it. For example, if an authority site on working from home links back to your site on making money online, the search engines perceive this as an endorsement of the quality of your content. Consequently, the search engines will give this link more weight than they would to one from a free link exchange directory.

Link extensions matter – Search engines tend to give more weight to backlinks that come from well established sites with .com, .edu and .gov extensions. Specifically, search engines tend to assume that the information on .gov and .edu sites is more reputable than that on less well-known .info or .us extensions. These links can be extremely difficult to get, but if you are able to get linked from one of these sites, you should see your rankings increase dramatically.

The number of links to your site – Of course, all things considered, a site with 600 high quality backlinks will be ranked better by the search engines than one with only six high quality inbound links. In the eyes of the search engines, this demonstrates that many different people think highly of your site – making it a better choice to send traffic to in response to user searches.

Link building is hardly a precise art, as there are a number of additional factors that the search engines take into account when measuring the strength of the backlinks to your site. In addition, search engine algorithms change frequently, so the factors they give weight to now could change without warning. However, it is safe to say that building up good backlinks from other quality sites is a sound strategy when it comes to search engine optimization, and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

So how can you start getting links? Well there are several different methods you can choose to jumpstart your link building campaign. These include directory submissions, article submissions, press releases, forum and blog commenting, and social bookmarking.

Additional Articles in the SEO Tutorial Series:
SEO Module 1 – SEO Introduction & Keyword Research (Watch Online Video)
-Part 1: What is SEO?
-Part 2: Keyword Research
-Part 3: What is LSI?
-Part 4: What are Long-Tail Keywords?

SEO Module 2 – On-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 5: On-Site vs Off-Site
-Part 6: On-Site Optimization Details
-Part 7: What are Meta Tags?
-Part 8: What is Anchor Text?

SEO Module 3 – Off-Site Optimization (Watch Online Video)
-Part 9: Off-Site Optimization
-Part 10: Directory Submissions
-Part 11: Article Submissions
-Part 12: Press Release Submissions
-Part 13: Forum & Blog Commenting
-Part 14: Social Bookmarking
-SEO Tutorial Conclusion