We all want a lot of backlinks to our websites. High quality ones can be a source of traffic themselves, as well as give a boost in search engine rankings. Lower quality ones probably won’t send much or any direct traffic, but can still help you with your search engine rankings, if at a lower level.

The challenge is building those backlinks. Most of us don’t want to have to spend a ton of time on it, but you have to do something to do if you want traffic.

1. Everyone’s favorite – sites linking to you on their own initiative

We all love getting links we didn’t ask for or make any specific effort to get. Links that come about just because you provide content that’s just that good are wonderful. They’re usually pretty good quality too.

They’re usually the hardest to get. The internet doesn’t really live by “build it and they will come” no matter how many of us would like it to be otherwise. People have to be noticing your site already in order to choose to link to it.

2. Blog commenting

Commenting on other blogs is one of the easiest ways to get links back to your site. That’s why you get so many spam comments on most blog posts. For those who don’t want to do the actual work of intelligent blog commenting, there’s software that will do it for them.

If you want a good reputation for your site, stick with doing the blog commenting on your own. Nothing wrong with using tools to help you find blogs, but have something to say that’s more than “great post” or similarly basic comments. Add to the discussion. You probably shouldn’t link within the comment to your own site – use the URL field for that.

Don’t overdo it on keywords in the Name field or within your comment either. Many bloggers either delete or hit the spam key on comments that have only a keyword and no real human name. Using your name, a hyphen and then keyword is okay on many blogs but not all of them.

3. Forum participation

Some forums are really useful for driving traffic to your website. Not all of them, however. You want to check for things such as whether you can have a link to your business website in your signature, and if you can occasionally link to your site if it is highly relevant to the discussion. Knowing these rules can keep you from being banned quickly from the forums. If you can’t at least have a signature link, you probably won’t get enough from the forum to spend your time on it.

Just as with blog commenting, keep it intelligent and have something to say. “I agree” and similar responses may get your post count up, but they won’t draw a picture of an authority on the subject or draw people to click on your signature links.

4. Article marketing

Article marketing takes many forms and recently took quite a hit from Google. Many article directories don’t do nearly so well in Google as they used to. Given that many people use only article directories in their article marketing efforts, you do have to consider if it’s time to change your tactics.

There are more places than article directories to do your article marketing, however. You can contact people who run ezines, website owners and bloggers directly to see if they’d take an article from you. Some will take reruns from your site while others will require original content. You have to decide when original is worth it. If the site is a good one with a lot of traffic you can get quite a healthy boost, making original content worth it. Just make sure you can create something relevant to the site your submitting your article to as well as to your own site to have the best chance at acceptance and to make the most of any traffic generated.

You can also use Open Office or other programs to change your documents to PDF format and submit them to sites such as Scribd and Docstoc. Make sure your links remain intact in your PDFs before uploading them.

5. Create a video

Not everyone thinks of link building when they consider making a video about their business, but it’s a possibility. Sites such as YouTube allow you to place a link in the description of your video. Make it relevant to the video content to have it as relevant as possible.

Videos don’t have to feature you as a talking head. You can use screen capture software to demonstrate something on your computer. You can make a video that is essentially a slide show, and either talk over it about the slides or keep it quiet.

Don’t stress about not being comfortable making videos at first. It’s new to most of us. You will get better with practice.

6. Build link wheels

Now this one can be a bit controversial. Some say Google doesn’t like it and will penalize you if they catch you at it. Others say it’s worth the risk and neener, neener, Google won’t catch them anyhow. You decide if it’s worth the risk before building link wheels to promote your site.

The premise isn’t so different from article marketing in some ways. Rather than using article directories or submitting articles to ezines and other website owners, you create little sites that all point to your own properties. You use sites such as Blogger, Squidoo and other sites that allow you to create your own pages that you can edit at will.

They’re called link wheels because each page links to your site and to the next site on the wheel. Some eventually close the wheel; others do not. People like having control and being able to edit their link wheel pages at need, a big benefit when something changes with your business.

7. Social bookmarking and media

You know, social media sites of all sorts have become popular for a reason. If you aren’t taking advantage by now, you need to start doing so. In particular, you need to figure out if there’s a site where you get access to your target audience and build a presence there. Facebook and Twitter are some of the big names, but check for sites more relevant to your niche.

Don’t forget the more basic social bookmarking sites such as Delicious. You don’t get much link juice from any of the social bookmarking or media sites, but the right one will bring traffic simply by giving your target audience another place to discover you.

If you haven’t been doing a lot of link building for your sites, start with just one link building technique and get comfortable with it before adding another. You don’t want to overwhelm yourself or feel the process is too frustrating. Always remember that your most linkable content is your best quality content, so focus on the things that should do the best.

I’ve never been the most social of people. Working at home suits me well because of that, in part. This makes dealing with social media sites such as Twitter challenging for me. It’s hard to know what to say sometimes.

This is a problem for a lot of people. But you can work with these sites if you come up with a good routine.

Remember the Social in Social Media

The first thing to remember is that these are social websites. Yes, I know that’s a big part of the problem. It’s also a part of the solution.

You see, people like it when you retweet them. They like it when you respond.

You can’t be too random about this, and I really do not suggest automating this, not that it would be easy to automate anyhow.

Set up a schedule for how many times a day you want to look for someone to reply to or retweet. You don’t want this to take up too much of your day or you won’t get other kinds of online marketing or business work done, but you should set aside some time. Just look through the tweets you have recently received from others and see what gets your attention.

You should pay attention for a little while after you reply to someone in case they reply back, of course. There can be some great networking going on with these sites, but you’ll miss out if you never reply back to people.

Plan Topics for Your Tweets

I like to keep my tweeting natural and not plan out specific tweets in advance, although some people do that. Instead I figure out what topics I should be tweeting about for each account, and if I come across something, it can be tweeted. It can be things I’m working on, things the kids are up to, questions I have, and so forth.

If you want to schedule a tweet, you can do that with sites such as HootSuite. This has its uses, but I don’t like it so well for regular tweets. It can be handy if you’re posting something and want to make sure it’s seen at the right time in different time zones.

Tweet Your Blog Posts

One thing I do like to schedule is the tweeting of my blog posts. It makes sense to me. You can do this manually as well, but sites such as TwitterFeed make it easy to schedule them.

If you’re lucky, your blog post will get some Twitter attention, maybe some retweets and visitors to your site.

One thing that is important is to remember that tweeting your blog posts is not the only thing you should be doing on Twitter. You’re not being very social if you do. On the other hand, if that’s all you want to do with that particular account, people will catch on and decide for themselves if you are worth following. Some do use Twitter to replace following RSS feeds in a reader.

Follow Others

There are a few ways to get followers, but it starts with following others.

Find people who share your interests and tweet interesting things. Not only will this make Twitter more fun for you, it makes it easier to find things to reply to or retweet. Why follow anyone who bores you? You can use Twitter directories to find people with similar interests.

You’ll get new followers pretty much no matter what you do yourself. Some say follow all of them back, I disagree. I follow back only if they’re interesting. Otherwise I’d be following far too many spam accounts to see what the real people are doing.

Some also say to unfollow anyone who doesn’t follow you back. Once again, I disagree. I’ll follow those who find me interesting, no matter if they choose to follow me or not. We all have our own criteria for what makes a good Twitter experience. Following people is a great way to get them to at least look at your Twitter account, and so it can increase the number of followers you have.

There are people who like to direct messsage people who follow them. That’s not a recommendation I would give, doubly so if it’s done automatically, triply if you DM them with an ad for your site or product. Send direct messages when you have something to say privately. Doing it wrong irritates people and can get you labeled as a spammer.

Forget the Numbers Game… to an Extent

Success in social media is in large part a numbers game, but don’t focus just on your numbers. Following just anyone isn’t going to help you. Following people who might be in your target market may help you. As many other things, quality beats quantity.

You want to build your numbers up some by following others, but your best results will come from being interesting. Even when this doesn’t come naturally to you, it must be your focus.

You don’t need to be an absolute chatterbox to use Twitter. Just tweet helpful and interesting things. This sounds easier than it is, but once you build the habits it’s not too difficult. You’re a real person and that should come across in your tweets.

There are a lot of social media websites out there. You could spend hours each day on marketing on them, but which ones will give you the best results?

That depends on you and your target market.

No social media website is going to do you any good at all if you don’t put some effort into it. If you just sign up and drop your link in, you probably aren’t going to see much benefit from any of them.

Where’s Your Target Market?

Start by figuring out which social media websites your target market is using. With the wide range out there, they may be using a few, but there are some rules of thumb, such as more professional networking going on at LinkedIn and sites such as Twitter and Facebook having a huge range of people on them.

You can find people in your target market on Facebook by checking out the Groups pages. Search on your keywords and see if there are any active groups there. What about Fan pages for your competition?

There are a variety of ways to seek people out on Twitter. You can search on the site itself. You can find directories that Twitter users have signed up on so their accounts show by category, such as WeFollow or Twellow.

Social bookmarking sites can also be a good choice, although it can be hard to say how the quality of traffic will be. A ton of traffic doesn’t always mean a ton of conversions, subscribers or anything other than a ton of traffic. But sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg and Reddit can be a fun experiment. Just beware the time sink.

How Do You Use Social Media?

How you use a particular social media site depends on which one you’re using. What works well on one may not be the best way to build a network on another.

To find people on LinkedIn, you may be best off letting them find you. Become an expert there. Join groups. Answer questions. Show that you’re an expert and build your references as a professional. It’s social, but more professional than personal.

Twitter does well if you can provide interesting information in a small space. It’s good if you’re able to tweet regularly and be interesting in some way. Share good article links, make interesting observations, interact with people as they post interesting things.

With all sites, the challenge is to keep them from eating up too much of your day. It’s very easy to get sucked into the various sites. If you don’t want to waste a lot of time on Facebook, for example, don’t start playing the games there. Sign up, connect with some friends and you can quickly tell who’s gotten too much into the various games. They might invite you, but unless you have time to spare you’re better off avoiding the games. Better to spend your time on things there that will benefit your home business.

Using StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit and similar sites can also be a huge time suck. You can get some good traffic out of them if you build a good profile and connections, but you can also lose a lot of time wandering them aimlessly. Use them wisely and at times when you can’t so easily do things that will more directly bring in business.

On any social media site, being overly promotional is not a good idea. People aren’t there to have things sold to them. They’re networking because they enjoy it, to build their own business, to get good information, that kind of thing. If you do nothing but say “buy, buy, buy,” they’ll unfriend you as fast as they can.

Instead, give quality information to bring people to you. If you sound like an expert and they need what you have to offer, they’ll decide to do business with you.

How Many to Use?

You can’t do a good job of using all social media websites, not even if you only stick to the big ones. There’s too much to do.

You’ll be better off if you can pick a couple to focus on. Get good at marketing on them.

Dividing your efforts dilutes them. There’s a balance between being available on a variety of networks and being unable to keep up.

As with any other sort of marketing you haven’t tried before, start by using just one social media site. Figure out what you’re doing. Get some fans, friends, followers, whatever they’re called. Get comfortable.

Even though each site takes a slightly different approach, you can take some of what you learn from each site and apply it to the next one while continuing with the sites you’re already on. You’re learning how to bring in business with a possibly more personal touch than other forms of marketing may have been for you.

Social media marketing isn’t something that comes naturally for everyone, but it’s a big help for bringing in traffic and business if you use it right. Give yourself some time and really pay attention to the learning process. You might find it a lot of fun as well as profitable.

A post over on Jessica Knows about her experience with some reporters misreporting how she discloses on her blog got me thinking about how mom blogs in general seem to be the ones getting an awful lot of the attention when it comes to disclosure issues and advertising. There’s been a lot of talk lately about more regulation of social media marketing and how bloggers disclose. For some reason, mom bloggers seem to be a popular focus of attention.

This drives me nuts. Mom bloggers are far from the only ones getting merchandise to try in order to review it. That’s something that has been going on for a long time in many other areas, as commenter Crunchy Carpets pointed out, and as I’ve been wondering as well. I’ll quote her, as she has it right:

What I am curious about is why the ‘mom’ bloggers seem to be getting more heat about reviews than other areas on the blogosphere. Are the male tech writers getting scrutinized by mainstream media and the FTC? They all get sent free stuff. Are the video game or movie sites getting grilled for their ‘promotional’ efforts. They all get sent free stuff.
Movie sites get sent to sets and on press junkets and given all sorts of freebies in return for ‘good reviews. Their morals have been argued about for years. It is all nothing new.

All this doesn’t mean that I don’t agree with appropriate disclosure. It just means that I don’t see why it’s suddenly a big deal when mom bloggers get the things other sites have long been getting.

It strikes me as sexist too.

Momblebee makes similar points, as do some of the other commenters.

Free samples have been given in exchange for review for a long time, longer than blogging has been around. It’s nothing new. Perhaps the only new thing about it is that just about anyone can start a blog, and not have the costs associated with starting a print magazine or newspaper. It’s very open.

Yes, that means some people will lie about the products because they think only a good review should be posted. Yes, some people will be fooled into buying things they wouldn’t have if an honest review had been posted. Goodness knows that dishonest reviews are common enough in the work at home arena!

But does that mean we need special disclosure rules?

I tend to think not. I would expect the standard rules on making false advertising claims should be sufficient. Best aimed at the blogger, and at the advertiser more if there seems to be a pattern of encouraging false claims. It’s awfully hard for advertisers to control what bloggers say, after all, and still keep things honest in both positive and negative comments about the product.

There’s no doubt that the internet is very much a wild frontier in many ways as of yet. It’s much harder to control what goes on when it’s so easy for content to be created. That’s not a call for speedy, harsh regulation. There’s an advantage to the wild growth and free flow of information that the internet provides.

Should buyers beware when they read online reviews? Absolutely.

Should reviewers disclose if they got products free or have a relationship with the business whose product they are reviewing? Of course.

But no matter how the disclosure is done, it comes down to a matter of trust. A good source will be trusted with or without the disclosure.

A bad one may be trusted once or twice, but if they share false information people will learn. Certainly not as quickly as the FTC would like, but that’s going to happen even with regulation, as new sites and blogs will pop up faster than they can be reviewed… not to mention everything that is based from outside the United States.

Much as one might like all reviews to be honest, it’s not going to happen.

As a blogger or business owner, all you can do is keep yourself honest. Being transparent about when you get something for free is a generally good idea. If nothing else, it will help you if the FTC does keep getting serious about this. It also makes it clearer why you’re talking about a product that maybe you wouldn’t have otherwise. Say what you really feel, even when it’s not 100% positive.

Of course, the focus on mom bloggers may in large part be simply due to the media. And if you think the disclosure issues are going to be a problem, you’ll also want to pay attention to the part about “atypical results”. Lynn Terry has a really good post on this issue. The FTC doesn’t even want atypical results to be used, even if they’re your own experience. They only want typical results, which strikes me as beyond problematic. How can you discuss your own experience then? How do you know what’s typical?

If you review products, whether you’re paid to do so or just receive them free, or even if you’re hoping to get an affiliate commission for sales through your links, it’s really going to pay to think about what you’re saying. Have a disclosure policy and stick strictly to it.

And, of course, keep paying attention to the story as it develops. It doesn’t matter what kind of blog or site you have, if you’re talking about products you need to know what’s might impact your business.

There’s quite a storm of posts out there right now on how the FTC is taking a look at viral marketing as it is performed online. Overall, it’s a good thing too. But it also means you need to be very careful in what you say about products you recommend on your site if you’re getting anything in return for the recommendation.

If you do any paid blogging or affiliate marketing on your site, a disclosure policy is a generally good idea anyhow. I got one when the whole Pay Per Post storm hit and they realized it made sense.

The most basic thing you need to think about this is that you shouldn’t be making claims you can’t prove. You also need to be upfront about if a particular experience is not the usual. That’s just good marketing even if there aren’t legal consequences to consider.

The big areas of concern are probably areas such as make money online and diet claims, as those are quite prone to exaggerated claims or excessive focus on atypical results. But don’t start exaggerating results in other areas. You could get in trouble anywhere.

Some good reading:
FTC To Clamp Down On Social Media Marketing
FTC and Viral Marketers May Square Off