Your goal in search engine optimization is to attract incoming links, particularly incoming links from popular, authoritative blogs and Web sites. The best way to attract incoming links is to write excellent blog posts that people want to share. Other bloggers are a likely source for incoming links, but even online news and media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and New York Times have been known to link to individual blog posts. Those links are valuable to beginner bloggers!

You can increase your incoming links by making the most of your online relationships in the following ways:

✓ Use social bookmarking, social networking, and microblogging to share links to useful posts.

✓ Write content for multiple Web sites and interlink them.

✓ Write articles for online publications related to your blog’s topic.

✓ E-mail top bloggers or news organizations who might be interested in sharing your posts.

✓ Don’t be afraid to “toot your own horn” when you think you have something interesting to share.

Outgoing links are also important to search engine optimization. Search engines value linked text, and as far as Google is concerned, the links within your blog posts as well as the text around the links within your blog posts are rated as more important than the other text within your blog posts. Use relevant keywords in your links whenever possible to make sure search engines see them and weight them accordingly.

A key component to SEO success is building relationships with other bloggers and Web site authors who are likely to link to, share, and promote your content.

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