SEO Strategy: Inbound Links

Inbound links are some of the most valuable assets your SEO strategy can include. Clare Zurawski, Internet Marketing Consultant at WESST, has spent over 3 years helping small businesses increase their sales through SEO.

“Inbound links are most valuable when they come from well-respected entities within your industry,” says Zurawski. “Five or ten quality links are worth far more than dozens of links that have no relevance to your business.”

What are those “quality links?” Some, according to Zurawski, are URLs with the following extensions: .edu, .gov, .org. According to the “Google Webmaster Blog“, quality links are one factor in a proprietary stew that contributes to page rank. But many agree that if you have a well-structured and regularly maintained site with original, high-quality content, users and search engines alike will enjoy you.

Here are some ideas to get you started on your quality link building:
• (From Clare) Write a review of a book in your industry on www.amazon.com. Include your website at the end of the review.
• Join your local Chamber of Commerce. In Santa Fe, go here: and have your business listed in their online directory.
• Join your alumni organization’s website, it may have a .edu.
• Volunteer to write articles or reviews for a non-profit and have them include a link back to you. It’s a good way to help out and get help in return.

It’s all part of the SEO game plan, which starts with making your website your hub. Inbound quality links are like spokes coming in to the wheel. Clare adds, “If you offer free content that is valued by your web audience, you will attract links and establish yourself as an expert in your field.”

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After Link Building, you’ll need to get in-depth info on social marketing. Attend WESST’s “SEO 101, Session 2: An overview of why social media matters and how it complements SEO”, Tuesday October 27th, 5:30-7:30 pm at the WESST Enterprise Center in Albuquerque. You can register and pay online at www.wesst.org.

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“Target and Control your Website’s Destiny.” WESST (Women’s Economic Self Sufficiency Team) will be offering in-depth SEO Training with Clare Zurawski on Monday, November 2, 2009 at the Santa Fe Business Incubator starting at 5:30 pm. The class is reasonably priced, but register early! Call 505-474-6556, or visit www.wesst.org.

MiniBranding | Part 1

Your brand is not your logo, your color scheme, your PR or even your product. Your brand is the feeling people have when they think of you.

I had a boss who worked at the happiest place on earth, and always mentioned that the coffee shops on Main Street would place vanilla extract in warming trays and blow it through their vents and out to the street to entice people in. One of my favorite places to meet up in Santa Fe is at the Sage Bakehouse because of their open-air bakery; I just need that intense smell of bread baking every once in a while. (Tip: try the current scones; they melt in your mouth.)

Odor information is easily stored in long-term memory and has strong connections to emotional memory. This is possibly due to the olfactory system’s close anatomical ties to the limbic system and hippocampus, areas of the brain that have long been known to be involved in emotion and place memory, respectively.

If I were to ask you, “What does your business smell like?”, how would you respond? Remember, a bad smell does not always have a negative connotation. Does money have a pleasant smell? Maybe not, but who wouldn’t want the smell of money in their nose?

I used to go on web checks for my publishing work back when the web was a physical machine half a block long. The first time I went “on press”, I walked into the noisy pressroom somewhere in southern Illinois and smelled ink on paper running through a machine at breakneck speed. They were printing the cover of Indian Artist magazine with Sherman Alexie’s face and long black hair visible from where I walked in, high above the press floor. That memory comes back clearly to me whenever I open a magazine “hot off the presses” and I catch a whiff of the first pressroom I was ever in.

Translating that smell to an emotion takes a little mapping. Emotionally, I feel a combination of sadness/longing and excitement. Sad because those days are gone; it’s rare that a magazine would send their art director on press, the economy being what it is. But the memory of the smell reminds me of the work itself, being in charge of a fast-paced critique of color, density, and registration. I made split-second decisions with alacrity; it was fun and energizing.

Do you remember mimeographs? The blurry purple type that bled into the paper on the homework your second-grade teacher handed out on a crisp autumn day at school? Did you feel special? That you received something just for you, like a gift? What if, in the future, kids are given iPhones as easily as we received mimeographs? How special, included and important would that make them feel?

HOMEWORK: Spend some time playing with the idea of your company’s scent. What memory do you want to instill in your next customer?

In Part 2 of MinBranding, we’ll work on Brand Story and practice writing one!

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You can receive MiniBranding consulting from Whitespace Creative in person or online. Visit www.whitespacecreative.com or email mel [at] whitespacecreative.com.

Above photoo is a file from the Wikimedia Commons.