So what did I actually want to see in terms of hardware? Let’s take a look:

1. Albeit less essential (relatively speaking) wireless charging would certainly be a welcome feature. I don’t mean that recent technology that powers devices at a distance, instead I’m referring to those pads that you put your devices on that charges them. I’d like to invest in a couple of those and leave them around the house to keep devices juiced.
2. There are some truly innovative products out there to provide much better audio without increasing weight or complexity in devices. The iPad has a seemingly tiny mono speaker, that I’m confident is going to leave me disappointed, whether giving a presentation or trying to watch some TED videos.
3. No camera? That’s a good way to keep this from being a gift for non-tech savvy relatives and being a living room fixture that actually stood a chance of replacing the use of the mobile and landline phones (now the Skype can make calls over 3G or even cumbersome TVs). No doubt that this is coming soon, but I think this was definitely a foolish sacrifice for the first generation. Likely to be able to make the battery life claims that are made without having to do too much research and development or delaying release.
4. HDMI, without better audio, higher quality video etc, how am I going to enjoy the videos etc that I happen to download or want to share on my iPad? So I can’t pop over to a friend’s house and with a single cable pour out high definition content into the flat screen TV that hangs on their wall? This is a real use case even in business today. Not even a thought of this scenario? For shame.
5. I know the “stylus” concept is a bit passé at this point, but not when it records what you’re hearing while you make your notes, which are subsequently converted from handwriting into actual documents. After all, apple called this device the iPad right? This use case takes shape in nearly every way you can imagine, and unlike other products that exist, the data is already stored in a device (or easily synced) in such a way that you can manipulate it easily.
6. The mobile landscape is changing with the proliferation of free WIFI in communities and businesses, but the roll out of 4G is also on the horizon by many service providers as well. Granted, some mobile companies are admittedly removing the bottlenecks from their 3G networks, but mobile standards must be backwards compatible, so why not give a device that cannot be upgraded more longevity?
7. Only 802.11n support? What about the new “hub-less” WIFI technology that allows wireless devices to directly discover and interface with each other at high speed? Not having forward thinking features makes me think that this device is supposed to be disposed of annually, I mean upgraded. And not the healthy upgrades like swapping out modems or memory or disk, unhealthy ones where the entire unit is tossed or sold on eBay if I somehow find the time.
8. Bluetooth 3, where is that? There are already devices with the standard and most of us gadget lovers already know that we still have a pairing and performance issues with our Bluetooth networks as it is, even with the enhanced data rate devices that are available now.
9. Video is actually key here, where is the 1080p? Even youtube.com, vimeo.com etc supports this standard now, how can this be missing today. The Simpson’s is finally widescreen after 20 years, let’s keep taking steps forward.
10. One of my use cases is using the device for travel, this includes in a car. However, I can’t use this for turn-by-turn directions without a decent speaker, so I guess I will have to look at the screen in that case? A bit dangerous. I guess this thing is going to remain in its specially designed Apple carry case anyway since there’s no active GPS. Garmin can breath a sigh of relief.
11. The battery life is impressive, but at the compromise (no doubt) of multi-tasking support. So after completing that thought, the battery life is NOT impressive. So where is multi-tasking support? Even my RIM BlackBerry 8800 could manage that even with its rubbish interface.

For completeness I should mention that the lack of Flash support is not a concern of mine, all of the largest videos sites are supporting HTML 5 as are the browsers that I love.

If having these features means that I have to spend more, I certainly will. Knowing that subsequent operating system updates with richen my productivity and allow for greater innovation in the app’s that are developed. But what I won’t do is make compromises on these points unless I can find a reason to compromise my use cases as well: presentations, travel, business tasks, conferences/seminars etc. All of these uses cases (and more) demand a device of the description I’ve made. We’ll see if Apple will ever cater to such a small sector of their market, the hardcore.

Historically, search engine companies (Google, Yahoo!, Bing etc) are among the original innovating web application developers and their success has afforded them with the resources to learn how to scale applications. In particular, Google has been working diligently (as does Yahoo) to contribute to the web developer community, increasing awareness and providing research about creating good experiences with web content. Today they’ve even released their solution to the performance issues surround Domain Name Service (DNS) and with their Google Public DNS project. DNS is the process by which your browser determines which server to query for the pages you request.

It has probably always played a role in the background in some way, but is now a talking point — the speed of a web site is instrumental in how Google determines the rank of your site in search engine result pages. While there may be numerous opinions on the topic, the fact remains that speed is vital to a positive user experience and a healthy eco-system, so those facts make any opinions quite moot. You can now find Google’s opinion on the speed of your web site in Webmaster Tools, in the site performance section (currently still a labs feature). Take a look and see how your site compares to the rest of the web.

WordPress is an extremely popular open source content management system and publishing tool. I contribute to the performance of WordPress via W3 Total Cache, which (from a bird’s eye view) accomplishes a number of goals:

• Make servers more green by reducing the resource demands in delivering dynamic content
• Reduce load time of sites, thereby providing the benefits stated above
• Allow bloggers and other WordPress plugin developers to continue to focus on producing content and easy-to-deploy functionality for WordPress without having to worry about performance penalties / implementation issues or keep an eye on their WordPress installation.

The action items to implement the largest performance wins for web applications traditionally include the following:

• Progressive render: It’s imperative that CSS and JavaScript are properly embedded into web pages to ensure that the user begins to see content displaying as quickly as possible. The term progressive render literally implies that the web site loads instantly with a water fall effect rather than showing users a white page for several seconds and drawing the entire page at once. Proper use of this technique is realized through careful placement and embedding of CSS and JavaScript in the head of the page. As well as loading JavaScript near the end of the page in addition to using pipelining techniques to overcome download limitations in some browsers.
• Reduce HTTP Transactions: This technique takes shape in 3 ways:

  HTTP Compression: the smaller the file, the faster it can be generated, sent and rendered or executed. Gzip or deflate compression is supported by modern browsers and is one of the most fundamental performance wins in web development.

  Minification: the staple technique of Yahoo.com, Google.com and Bing.com for years and instrumental in the “1 second page loads” they appear to have. Combining CSS and JavaScripts respectively, removing white space, comments, line breaks and even inserting CSS and JavaScript inline in the document, (if also compressed) ensures that the least amount of data is sent to the browser.

  Image Sprites: combining multiple images into a single file and using CSS to manipulate them on the page. Since your browser will download a larger image faster (in practice) than numerous smaller images, this is a real performance win when coupled with browser-side caching.

  These methods make sure that there are fewer “calls” to a web server to deliver a page. When it comes to performance, less is more.

• Caching: Cache everything and cache often! Words to that effect are the mantra of hard core web developers. This technique includes setting expiration time for CSS, JavaScript, and images etc that are downloaded from your site. It also includes, caching pages, database queries, RSS feeds and so forth so that your web server spends time sending content instead of generating it. Don’t forget that Content Delivery Networks are also a very important type of cache that significantly reduce the latency of content intended for a global audience.

Will it ever be enough? Doubtful. And there’s much more to it than the few items I listed. Google is already more than kicking tires on their new take on how web enabled devices should communicate. A very ambitious endeavor, but for Google who is bold enough to deploy HTML5 on their main property (Google.com), I’d have to say that they’ve got the resources to see it through. And as always it’s easy to see the wake of Steve Souders’ contributions to web application performance – no doubt a vital contributor at Google (the page speed Firefox plugin?), formerly of Yahoo fame.

The takeaway is this, on the horizon, there will be more talk about the performance of your site and that in turn will raise the bar and awareness in the open source community about how to make high performance applications, the reasons to do it and with which tools to measure those results.

However, there are some Google ranking factors that most professionals agree affect site positioning on Google SERPs. However, these are opinions, find out for yourself how these apply to projects you’re working on.

Recommended Steps to Improve Google Ranking

1. Use keywords in HTML title tags. Probably the most significant factor for a site regardless of the competitive landscape, the title tag must be consistent with content in the page for best results. The more keywords in your title, the less effective this factor, be judicious.

2. Create quality anchor text for inbound links. At one time, according to some SEO professionals, quality anchor text was an essential component of a well-ranked site. After all, this is the text the user opted to see by clicking a link on another site. Most SEOs still contend that quality anchor text is a highly significant, positive ranking factor. If not for spiders, for visitors clicking in as well. Obviously the text should be relevant to the destination page for best results; that’s where your on page optimization comes in to play.

3. Increase link popularity. Link popularity takes into account the number of inbound links present. Link authority has less relevance, though it is still a factor depending on the competitive landscape. Link popularity is based on a global count of links from all sites. However, quality links are still critical to creating site authority; authority means ranking for more phrases than you intentionally target.

4. Hang in there. The age of a site is an important positive weighting factor according to many SEO professionals. It’s certainly a reasonable assumption. Failed sites are dropped as soon as the hosting subscription ends. If a site has been around for 10 years, the owners must be dong something right, especially if link popularity is steady developed over the years. Unfortunately for site owners, there’s no way to speed up the aging process – except hanging in there.

5. Increase the popularity of internal links. These links direct visitors to helpful, related content. They’re important in providing visitors with a positive on-site experience. Search engines view on-site link popularity as a sign that visitors like what they see and want to learn more.

7. Build deep links. Deep links are relevant to the topicality of the target page or keyword. The relevance of these inbound links matters to a site’s Google ranking. However, please note point 3. The sheer number of inbound links is a factor as well. Quality deep links carry more weight and add credibility to a site.

8. Connect with sites selling to the same demographic. Create a number of links with sites within your topical community. This helps visitors further their searches – something Google likes very much.

9. Keep old links. Google looks for web stability. The older the link, the more trust it has. It indicates a happy relationship with the site owner linking in who recognizes the value of sending visitors off-site. Google watchers suggest a three to four month time window for spiders to determine that this is a well-established, long-term link that has value to visitors of both sites.

10. Use keywords in body text. Make sure that keywords receive prominent display in headlines, headers, sub-heads. It’s important that the keywords used in HTML text on page match with keywords used in the site’s meta data and title tags.

Not Recommended

1. Don’t use session IDs in URLs. It sounds like a good idea on the surface, an easy way to track customer information, but here’s the problem. Each time a spider crawls the site, a new URL with session ID is created. The spider now has two, or three or more URLs all showing duplicate content. Go back to Go, do not collect $200. Don’t confuse this with pages that may have a couple GET variables in them; avoid that when you can, but just avoid having your pages containing session IDs.

2. Choose a reputable web host. The most potent negative ranking factor is server accessibility. If your server, located in Timbuktu, is inaccessible to spiders, it’s inaccessible to visitors. Down time soon becomes down and out time.

3. Avoid duplicate content. Googlebots employ filters to detect duplicate content. Now, if you opt to post some syndicated articles, you’re providing a service to visitors. However, a bot will recognize that content (it’s already appeared on 400 sites) and you’ll see a drop in traffic rank.

4. Jettison low-quality links. Google assesses the character of your site by the company you keep so keep good company by unlinking from (1) links farms, (2) sites with absolutely no quality content and (3) otherwise low-quality sites; e.g. FFA (free for all) sites.

5. Avoid any kind of links deception. Googlebots aren’t smart, but they can detect some paid links and a variety of links scams, including generated links. If a Googlebot suspects links fraud, your site may be penalized and sent to the basement or banned altogether.

6. Avoid a log-in before visitors and bots access “the good stuff.” Log-ins can easily confuse a bot who won’t be able to access quality content hidden behind a log in. Even though users with Google toolbars will be unknowingly suggesting new URLs to be crawled as they surf about, having teasers for the content your monetizing by subscription will help your SEO.

7. Avoid using frames. Horizontal and vertical framesets frameset are commonly used by designers to present more than one page of a site on the screen at the same time. However, frames are also bot traps. They can get in but they can’t get out, making it impossible for them to index a site – at all! Tell your developer to look at using iframes if possible or absolutely necessary.

8. Avoid duplicate title/meta tags. Title/meta tags are a valuable resource for site owners to expand access points to a site. Using title tags ensures that more pages are indexed and listed in Google’s SERPs as distinct links. All good. Unfortunately, too many duplicate title tags on pages in which the content topic hasn’t changed, is redundant and a waste of the bots time. Use tag your pages uniquely and judiciously.

9. Do not keyword stuff. Even though search engines no longer give much weight to keyword tags, keyword stuffing continues. Select 20 to 30 keywords – top-tier and long-tail – and focus on them. Keep keyword density in body text at no more than 3%. The old 5% rule still led to on-site gibberish – obviously these figures vary by competitive landscape.

10. Do not let quality slip – even for a day. Spiders crawl sites with greater frequency and sophistication and index updates are common as changes to a site are implemented. During periods of construction, be sure to keep spiders out of staging areas that have yet to be completed nofollow or block with robots. These works-in-progress may cost you points in the ranking sweepstakes.

Google controls 46% of all searches. Doesn’t it make sense to give this search engine exactly what it wants and delete what it doesn’t want?

Rhetorical question.

Above and beyond the design we also worked to optimize the site’s load and render performance as well as making the server stand up the traffic demands that yoast.com generates.

Hand drawn illustrations, advanced CSS and completely unique styling make this re-design project one we’re very proud of.

This project has been showcased quite a bit on the various design galleries and received numerous mentions from around the blogosphere including:

• 10 Simple and Impressive Design Techniques
• Blog Headers: 20 Great Examples and Best Practices
• Design Spotlight: Yoast

Last year we updated the look and feel of the various applications: marketplace, codes, invites, france, mashtracker etc, this year we’re focusing more on the user experience of the main blog itself and exposing the evergreen content that users frequent the site for as well as the daily news topics that users want as well.

This redesign is a great step towards subsequent initiatives that will allow all of the segments of the readership to find the content they want more easily on Mashable and keep them on the site.

CSS 3 is a completely content-driven site and as such the focus of the redesign was to simply identify and resolve minor usability issues and improve the performance of the blog from a user experience standpoint. Thanks to the great plugins by Joost de Valk, the redesign process was very straight forward.

The result of the redesign was a nice traffic bump and a consistent boost to the blog’s RSS feed. Users can also now learn more about the contributors as we exposed profiles for the bloggers working on the project.

Whether starting out with a new domain name, or a domain that’s been around for a decade, you can rank your blog on Google if you just do what Google wants you to do. So here are 25/50 tips to get your blog ranked by the world’s biggest SE.

50. Build your own or move to Wordpress. Wordpress is a blog platform that’s open source (free), robust, extensible and easy to use. Add Feedburner, which equips site owners to broadcast RSS feeds and develop user metrics. Next, synch up Google Analytics and a sitemap plug-in to simplify populating the blog and developing useful, actionable metrics. Also, make sure your blog is pinging Technorati and other social media sites like digg.

49. Don’t worry aboutpage rank. PR is highly over-rated as a yardstick of online success. Connectivity within a web community and expansion through content syndication and guest blogging are more critical to building site credibility than page rank. PR will take care of itself over time if you do it right.

48. Make a difference, or at least have a clear purpose. Differentiate your content on every post. Cover lots of editorial ground.

47. Use a conversational tone. Dry, starchy academic writing is strictly for the textbooks. Write words that people “hear” instead of read.

46. Provide a “Tell Your Friends” link on your blog. Birds of a feather do, indeed, flock together. So, if one of your regulars shares an interest in philately, chances are s/he has other friends with an interest in stamp collecting.

45. Study the competition. They’re studying you. Check out SpyFu to do a little undercover work on search analytics employed by competitor sites and their visitors. You can’t touch the content but you can’t copyright an idea, either, so pick up some new paths of thought from others in your site’s arena.

44. Remember SEO basics. Use provocative, keyword-rich title tags, meta keywords and descriptions, and only link to high-quality sites. Never over do it. Keep your posts relevant, natural, accurate and, above all, current.

43. Don’t stuff blog post titles with keywords. It’s a form of keyword stuffing and spiders hate keyword stuffing. The ratio in headlines should be ~40% keywords, ~60% non-keywords.

42. Submit your URL to blog directories. There are “best of the web,” and paid directories, like Yahoo, and free directories like the Open Directory Project. Every directory listing is another link to your site and another way visitors can find you. Just google them to find more.

41. Create blog categories that contain keywords, i.e., Ecommerce, SEO, Affiliates, etc. for use with a “site hosting” or “site design” blog.

40. Content quality counts. Research topics about which target readers want to learn. Write something new, useful and relevant. And don’t forget to regularly update older posts. Things change fast on the web so last year’s “next big thing” is this year’s hackneyed cliché.

39. Vary topics, content length, relevancy and posting times. However, be consistent, as well. Keep blogging. It can take time for a blog to catch the notice of a search engine spider.

38. Get guest bloggers. Add links from their blogs and establish your site’s link community. There are people within your web neighborhood with opinions and good information. Contact them to invite submissions to your blog and your site in general.

37. Don’t use duplicate content. The only duplicate content that appears in your blog posts are quotes, and they should be identified with quotation marks.

36. Call posters by name. If Bob M. from Athens, Georgia, posts to your blog, recognize his contribution with a “Thanks, Bob” at the end of your response.

35. Make friends with other bloggers in your commercial, business or NFP space. Ask to become a guest blogger, or seek endorsements from the “names” within your site sphere.

34. Send a personal note to posters. Not all bloggers have the time to do this but if you can send a personal email thank-you note to a poster, you’ve increased the chances of that poster becoming a member of your site community.

33. Encourage viral link building. Take a stand. Introduce the coming paradigm shift in web commerce, provoke controversy. It sells. Just ask Ann Coulter.

32. Ensure the blog is optimized for Technorarri. Claim your blog, set an avatar and pings, use tags where appropriate and be sure to ping various blog tracking sites.

31. Don’t place ads on your blog, yet. If you feel you must (you’re seeing nice PPC revenues), determine that your site’s HTML is optimized to position those ads at the bottom of each blog page.

30. If your blog isn’t pulling, have the code reproduced so it’s as semantic, accessible and code-to-content optimized as possible. Also, hire a code expert to position content above ads or any other content in the site markup.

29. Ignore Alexa. A lot of new site owners rely on Alexa for site metrics but remember, Alexa is a popularity metric since only Alexa toolbar users contribute data — and that’s a less-than-universal test population.

28. Build credibility. Publishing authorities on your site’s topicality usually does the trick. Once blog credibility is established, identify trends, solve new problems and gradually expand the topic range of your blog.

27. Buy or build a hot blog design and submit it to design galleries. Hire a site/blog designer, or bring your vision to fruition. This enables your blog to appear five or six demographic iterations from your home site, expanding the site’s reach outside the immediate site community. This creates new marketing channels fast.

26. Develop some friendly contacts on social media sites and participate in the community. Ask contacts to promote your blog content. Also ask for contributors. People love to express their opinions.

25. Focus on ranking for three key words or phrases to start. The keywords you select should appear in your HTML title tags and within the site’s content when appropriate. However, watch keyword density levels. Anything above 5% starts to sound like gibberish. 2% to 3% keyword density provides more creative latitude for the content developer, and still lets bots know what the site is about.

24. Only purchase ad links on relevant niche sites. This, by default, limits competitive links and delivers more qualified (knowledgeable and ready-to-purchase) visitors to your site.

23. Participate in your link community. Forum and blog links are ephemeral, lasting a day or two as web fodder, so there’s always the need for more green. Interact by posting to not only drive traffic with the link, but to also pick up another link from a credible site. All good.

22. Publish new content on weekdays. Even search engines need a break. Actually, more people are online Monday through Friday so your latest blog post is still the latest when posted on Monday rather than Sunday. A little thing, for sure, but little things mean a lot online.

21. Write content for various experience levels. For many spaces DIYs are the largest sector. Some readers are just starting out. Others have been at it for years and probably know more than you do, so post blogs to appeal to a broad range of skill sets — from green rookie to wizened old vet.

20. Cite the sources of your content. This adds credibility to your posts. It also provides a trail for a reader interested in learning more about the topic at hand.

19. Focus on contextual relevancy before quantity of links. Connectivity within a market or topic segment has more value than SEO anchor text, at least in the short term.

18. Poll your readers. Everybody’s got an opinion. Provide a platform to let posters and readers vote on a topic related to your site. It doesn’t do any good if you run a retail outlet and poll visitors on who they’d like to see in the White House. Stay on topic.

17. Create surveys. Surveys are more in depth than a poll. One survey you might want to try is one in which buyers rate the services and products you sell. Great marketing information. Consider placing a satisfaction survey somewhere on your site.

16. Write about popular brands or celebrities where possible. It doesn’t matter if you’re blogging short sales in the market or clothing for the over-sized human, celebrity and name brands get picked up by spiders.

15. Find free stuff to give away. Free still works on the web. There’s lots of open source software (OSS), mortgage calculators, real-time stock feeds and other digital goodies that visitors can download free. Free is nice.

14. Answer questions on Google groups and Yahoo Answers. People write in with all sorts of questions, some sure to fall within your area of expertise. By signing on as an authority in a field (your arena) you build credibility. Plus, it’s fun helping others from the comfort of your own work station.

13. Add imagery and video content to your posts. A picture is worth a thousand web words. Charts and graphs simplify complex information and don’t take up a lot of room. If you aren’t an artist, create a relationship with a freelancer. Never use clip art.

12. Use QA sessions in your blog. You’re the expert. Also, invite guest bloggers to handle questions beyond your skill set. Helpful, simple advice keeps visitors coming back and makes you a guru.

11. Syndicate content outside of your blog. Every site owner needs content. Fortunately, there’s plenty of it free for the taking. Sites like Helium, Ezine and Go Articles are content supermarkets. Post your piece and pick up non-reciprocal, in-bound links for your effort. Content syndication increases link popularity.

10. Direct (future) page rank efforts to well-optimized content on your home site. Don’t direct visitors and bots to the garbage bin of out-dated content stored in the site’s archives. Point them to the new news.

9. Update or create a Wikipedia page and link to your site. Another means of establishing yourself as an authority. Just make sure the Wiki piece is accurate, well written and typo-free.

8. Submit industry or topical news to general news sites. Not just industry related sites. If a small oil and gas company brings in a gusher, it’s of broader interest than to just industry insiders. Also adds credibility and another link.

7. Deep links or links to sub-pages are vital. There’s a tendency to link from a remote site to your home page. Not necessarily the best strategy. Consider linking to pages deeper in the site – pages related directly to your blog post. This way, visitors are in your site and less likely to bounce.

6. Respond to comments in your blog. This accomplishes three important objectives: (1) it shows that there’s a human behind the blog; (2) it gives you a chance to show your expertise; and (3) you can lead the thread in a new direction or keep the discussion going. Oh, it’s also the polite thing to do, as well.

5. Cross link your posts. Link amongst your related blog posts using the keywords you’re optimizing your blog for as the anchor text.

4. Get linked alongside related blogs on other sites. You can contact the blog administrator to swap links, you can become a regular guest blogger if your writing is good enough or your knowledge extensive. Niche sites are great for building blog links networks.

3. Bait your blog. Post unconventional and controversial articles to create lengthy threads that, in turn, create site stickiness.

2. Be consistent into month two. Keep the tone, style and topicality of your blog consistent for the first two months until spiders get it. Then, you can branch out to peripheral topics to expand reader interest.

1. Network offline. Helpful networking tools include LinkedIn, MeetUp and MyBlogLog. These sites provide real world contacts to simplify and streamline the process of networking. They’re also useful in building beneficial online relationships – not to be overlooked. Also reach out using conferences that are available in your area and abroad.

The keys to building a successful, well-tended blog run the gamut from good content to good contacts, and from credibility to controversy. There are lots of ways to expand your blog community and develop quality rankings at the same time

Once you’ve got all of this down your next steps are to begin monetizing your site.

So, blog.

This is an exciting new business model, now everyone can benefit for the years of effort we’ve put into best practices and methodologies we’ve developed.

Hosted Content
Hosted content, also sometimes called pre-sell pages, makes your site look very good. The problem is, there are usually costs involved. Here’s how it works.

You, the content expert, write an article. It should be longer than 600 words but no longer than 1200 words. It should be well-written, completely researched, edited, re-edited and finally proofed so that it’s letter perfect. Okay, now you have host-worthy content.

Hosted content is content that’s placed on another site for a fee. In other words, you rent a page on another site to display your work. Now, what do you get for your money?

First, position your article on a site that’s (1) related to the topicality of your site and (2) has a tons of one-way links to content that’s “deep” in the site (in other words sub-pages that rank well in SERPs based on their title tags, for example). These two factors are the best way to measure and quantify the strength your page has in the target site, and ultimately, the link love it creates passes to your site. As you already know hosted content creates editorial inbound links, also known as pure gold.

Second, because it’s your article and you’re paying for the space, you can embed text links directly to specific pages of your site. This does a couple of things. First, you spread your web net further. Links to your site now appear on other sites — some several incarnations removed from your own site. This, ultimately, increases your site traffic as people read your interesting commentary and click on those embedded links to see what else is on your mind. That’s good. More hits. More page views. Higher conversion ratios.

Third, if you spread your words across the web, you start to develop some name recognition within your niche. Unless you’re Dan Kennedy or Skip McGrath, it’s tough building name recognition. However, by crafting numerous, informative articles you’ll start to be recognized. And wait until you Google your name and find 15 SERPs because your articles appear on dozens and dozens of sites.

The downside is the cost. Site owners charge you for the use of their space. If you’re well capitalized, no problem. Spend the money to spread your words. If money is a problem, choose your host sites carefully. Use Google Analytics or ClickTracks data to determine not only number of unique visitors you create from these pages of hosted content, but quality of traffic as well. Look for sites that match the two criteria above. Very important.

Article Submission
Okay, money is a problem. You don’t have a lot. You can still get your name and your opinions out there through various article submission sites.

Once again, site owners need green content and many rely on article submission sites to pick up fresh content for free. Here’s the deal. You write an article and go through the same steps of researching, editing and proofing until the piece is pristine and makes you sound like a savant. Perfect.

Now you place that piece on sites like www.goarticles.com or www.ezinearticles.com for free use by other sites. The plus side is, if the content is solid, you’ll get picked up by literally hundreds (even thousands) of sites. And in return for the free use of your written brilliance, the sites that display your content are obliged to include a link back to your web site. So, you put out 10 articles on topics related to your business, each one gets picked up and used by 20 other sites and you’ve got 200 non-reciprocal inbound links. Well done.

But isn’t this the same model as hosted content except it’s free? No. There are two key points to consider. First, with articles you syndicate it’s much more difficult to embed editorial links to your targeted web site. Instead, you take advantage of the target link and anchor text in your bio box that appears at the end of the article.

What does this mean? Ultimately syndicated articles are not unique content like hosted content is, and ultimately it’s more challenging to place links to your own site editorially without appearing to be hyping your goods or services. So there’s a tradeoff when you go the article syndication route. The key, just as with hosted content, is to have killer, useful information in order to entice webmasters to repurpose the article for their communities and give you credit, a bio and a back link.

But, it doesn’t cost you anything but your time, assuming you can string words together into cogent sentences, or at least your brother-in-law can.

If you’re good at syndicated content or article submission, you control the anchor text — the actual links readers click on. You can also embed editorial links in syndicated content. Now, these aren’t links directly back to your site but they will take the readers to a target page that you want them to read, so if you’re building links for other sites in your portfolio, this approach has a proven track record.

Reciprocal Links
Sites still exchange links. The concept isn’t moribund but it certainly doesn’t have the impact a non-reciprocal link has. Reciprocal linking is simply an exchange of links. You link to my site; I’ll link to yours. And since spiders follow links, it’s not a bad arrangement.

A couple of warnings, however. Any site with which you exchange links should be related to the topic of your site. If you’re selling baby clothes on your site and you’ve got a link to transmission fix-it site, you’ll get nicked by the search engine. Remember, the whole purpose of a search engine is to provide useful, relevant content to users so any links you exchange should be considered from the point of view of the site visitor. Is that link going to further the search of the site visitor or is it a dead end?

If a site appears to have a significant number of back links, and better yet, ranks well in the SERPs, it’s a likely candidate for a link exchange even if it’s a PR 2. Look for quality sites, or at least quality characteristics.

One-Way Link Building
This comes a several forms. First, there’s the ever-popular ‘link begging’ where you contact a site owner (you can find that information in Whois, if it’s not on the contact page) and basically plead your case to have that site owner accept your link. This is a tough sell because, naturally, the site owner wants to know what’s in it for him or her. Custom written, tailored emails tend to do better than form letter emails, obviously, and there’s definitely nothing wrong with a phone call provided you make it abundantly clear what you have to offer.

There are paid links programs. For example, www.textlinkads.com lists web sites willing to sell links to your site. You can bid on the cost of the link, agree to the length of time the link will appear and where it will appear. There are other programs that will hook up sites — usually with decent PRs — with site owners looking for good deals on paid links. Again, don’t forget to buy links with relevance to your site.

You can pay to advertise on another site with banner ads, though this has been shown to deliver lukewarm results unless you know your market very well. Do a competitive analysis and see what’s working for the competition. The click-thru rate on banners is less than 3% but they aren’t usually too expensive.

Finally, you can post your thoughts and opinions on forums and blogs related to your site. Each post will create a back link, but one that spiders will recognize as a blog back link — not a bad thing, just not a gangbusters way to build site credibility, especially considering that most links have a nofollow added and forums capable of giving any link love tend to moderate (and eliminate link spam) quite heavily. Don’t be fooled though, links even with a nofollow attached still have some magic — even on Google.

From hosted content to blog posts, anybody can get a little recognition on the web. And if you’ve actually got marketing capital, you can pay for hosted content and watch your site grow quickly.

Very quickly.