Paying for Links – Is It Ever a Good Idea?

With search engine optimization now playing a more important role than ever in the world of gaining exposure via search engines and online sources, many are left with tons of questions. One of the recurring questions often asked is whether or not it is a good idea to purchase link space. There is no uniform answer, unfortunately, as it depends predominantly on the type of link in question, the amount of money being spent, the quality of the institution offering the deal and other factors as well. For those wanting to purchase links in order to gain exposure, please continue reading so you can sort through when to do so and when to walk away from the situation.

Paying for Link Directories

We have all seen them: link directories that promise to help build backlinks for your website while giving your pages more authority by virtue of being a part of these link directories. In the olden days, link directories had purpose and were a great way for individuals to find particular types of content before search engines were able to use modern nuances to uncover every website. Nowadays, though, most link directories are nothing more than scams – and in fact, being featured on a link directory that sells its services while pinging onlinedomains may result in select search engines downgrading your site’s rankings.

Paying for Links via Advertising – Small-scale

Not all links are necessarily permanent; with online advertising, you can display links to your site, blog or social media hub without having to earn a placement in search engines. Some entrepreneurs will reach out to other webmasters who are offering advertising space on their websites. If the content is of a similar nature and the audience will be receptive to your message, then this is a strategy that is worth investing. Downsides to this approach are that the advertising in question will only be displayed on one website, and sometimes advertising in this format can be relatively costly.

Paying for Links via Advertising – Networks and Social Media

Similar to the above, advertising via affiliate networks or social media will result in either penetrating multiple mediums at once, or opening your advertising efforts to a much larger magnitude of web users. In the case of Facebook, for example, you can reach up to one billion people depending on how you decide to target your campaign. Non social media-related avenues such as what is available through Google will allow your website or project to be display on multiple sites and in various search engines. While this is a very cost-effective approach when compared to other methods, it will not result in any permanent link building advantage when it comes to pinging online presence.

Conclusion

There are many elements to consider when weighing a purchase that involves your site’s links. Broadly speaking, search engines frown upon those who are caught purchasing links outright in order to game the system, but advertising efforts and having a dedicated person who focuses on expanding the organic backlink process can have a much greater effect on traffic and exposure – two of the most important things to a website and the reason we do SEO in the first place.

Betterific – Making the World a Better Place

The brands that make some of today’s most popular products can only learn so much from surveys and focus groups. What they really need are ideas for improvement from actual consumers. Betterific is a web-app that provides just that, giving everyday people a place to share their ideas for making all different types of products, events, and services just a little bit better.

Take a look at the products you use everyday. You’ve probably got some ideas for how those things could be improved. With those ideas in mind, head to the Betterific site and type in your best idea (known as a “Betterif”). The idea you’ve posted will show up on the newsfeed or timeline on Betterific’s homepage, and other users can vote up or down your idea based on how useful they think it would be. Ideas can be sorted by popularity or by category. When you tag your idea, you make it easy for other people (or companies, in some cases) to find it amidst all the clutter. The more ideas you add, the higher your Betterific score. Scores are based on the quality and frequency of your “Betterifs,” and they give you a way to see how your own ideas stack up against those of other users in the Betterific community.

Speaking of other users, you can follow the people whose ideas you agree with, and see how your Betterific ranking compares to your friends at any time. Betterific also posts a “Top 10 Leaderboard,” which shows the scores of the top Betterific contributors and how many up-votes their ideas have received.

Practical Uses:

• Share your ideas for improving the taste of Diet Pepsi
• Find out how customers think you could improve your company
• Compete with friends to see who has the best ideas

Insider Tips:

• New users can sign up with Facebook, Twitter, or by entering their email addresses
• Betterifs can be sorted by date, popularity, or category
• Tag the product, category, or industry mentioned in your idea
• View the “Trending” category to see which companies or topics are being discussed most frequently

What we liked:

• Betterific is a great place for people to vent about issues they’ve experienced
• Social voting is a great way to visually see which ideas are the most useful
• People can follow the brands or topics they feel passionate about
• Betterific’s scoring feature lets people compete against their friends

What we didn’t like:

• Right now brands don’t have a way to solicit feedback about specific questions they have or products they’re testing

Alternatives:

• 43 Things – http://www.43things.com

Company Info:

• Launched: December 2012
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Founded by: Micha Weinblatt
• Web site: http://betterific.com

Costs:

• Free

Betterific is Like Reddit for Customer Feedback

The Launchpad is a series that introduces Mashable readers to compelling startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

Name: Betterific

One-Liner Pitch: Betterific gives consumers a platform to offer feedback on how to improve their favorite products and companies.

Why It's Taking Off: It's like Reddit for customer suggestions online.

It started with a fitted sheet.

Micha Weinblatt was making his bed, and struggling to figure out which side of his fitted bed sheet was the width and which was the length, when he came up with a simple solution: Companies should include a label on the sheet to note which side is which. That led him to another thought: How does one go about sharing an idea like that?

"What do you do with that idea, short of starting a linen company? You could tweet it or Facebook it, but you don't have much of an audience there," Weinblatt told Mashable. "We started looking around, and saw there was no great place to share ideas and make products better."

With that in mind, Weinblatt and his two co-founders, Brad Cater and Jonathan Schilit, decided to develop Betterific, a website that serves as a platform for consumers to offer feedback on how to improve their favorite products and companies. The site, which launched in public beta last month, provides users with a simple prompt ("Wouldn't it be better if...") and then lets the community vote the idea up or down, similar to Reddit.

While the project is still in its early stages, users have already posted more than 2,200 ideas to the website, which range from a suggestion for Amazon ("Wouldn't it be better if Amazon offered a print and e-book combo when you purchase a book online?") to a suggestion for airlines in general ("Wouldn't it be better if airlines had a sign that said please wake me up for my meal?") One of the most popular suggestions to date is for toilets: "Wouldn't it be better if toilets had a 'pedal lift lid' like a lot of trash cans so you wouldn't have to touch the seat to lift it up and down?"

Weinblatt said users also make suggestions for how to improve Betterific, some of which the team has started to implement; they include: letting users tag one another in posts, and building private forums within the website so companies can solicit feedback from a select group of users.

Now that customers have started to post to the website, the team is working to fill in the other side of the equation by reaching out to big and small companies. The goal is to get businesses to embed part of Betterific on their own websites, so they can tap into the community's feedback, as well as that of their own customers.

Beyond that, the Betterific team hopes to build out features that let companies engage with specific users to follow up on their suggestions. This way, Weinblatt said the Betterific community could serve as a true "brain trust" for companies, which is good for engagement on the site, and perhaps just as importantly, for giving the startup a valuable asset that it could monetize going forward.

Betterific went through the DreamIt Ventures incubator program in New York late last year, and is currently looking to raise a $650,000 round of funding. The team is also working on an iPhone app for the website, which should be released in the next two months.

A Beginner’s Guide to Public Relations

Public relations has always been important for small and large businesses alike – without a solid ground game through which you can cultivate a positive attitude about your company or brand, you risk letting your competitors define you. In an increasingly mobile and technology-filled world, having a public relations campaign for your website and online presence is just as important as it is having one for a brick and mortar institution. For those seeking to improve their online public relations, continue reading to find out what the process entails and how you can form a successful campaign with minimal resistance.

What Is PR?

While many web enthusiasts think of ‘PR’ as being PageRank, PR also means public relations, and affects every aspect of your marketing, traffic and sales. Many utilize PR as a way to increase free exposure for their company through other outlets, such as newspaper, radio, blogs and television. The goal of PR is to enhance the level of exposure your business receives while also framing it in a positive light. By pinging a website or business’ best characteristics to the rest of the world, you can slowly but surely develop a PR campaign that relies on viral content, word of mouth and first impressions.

Public Relations for SEO

A detail oriented public relations campaign can do remarkable things for your organic search engine rankings on Google and other search engines. Studies have shown that well thought-out press releases and announcements that are search engine optimized can bring a load of benefits for your site in the short, medium and long-term. This gives you not just an opportunity to plug your business or website and showcase its positive attributes, but can also give you an extra opportunity to improve your search rankings by pinging a website’s basic information, keywords and new offerings all in one press release. Syndication of such press releases by other sources only add more clout to your SEO and PR strategy.

Contacting News Outlets

Most local news affiliates and newspapers love to offer publicity to businesses that have an interesting angle to cover. If you are the founder or current CEO of a company, it is vital that you make the initial contact, as reporters and editors are far more likely to be receptive to an angle pitched by the company’s chief than by a social media developer or contracted firm. In any email or personal conversation, you will want to showcase why the outlet in question should cover your business and be sure to include a general press release covering the event or promotion for which you are attempting to gain attention.

Conclusion

By developing a strong writing technique with which you can distribute effective press releases, combining the approach with elements of search engine optimization, reaching out to interested parties through social media and also contacting traditional news sources for potential coverage, you can begin to put into place the foundational blocks of a strong public relations campaign. While it will certainly take dedication and time to achieve the best results, following this advice will help steer you in the right direction.

Five Great Ways to Get Customer Feedback

Having a lifeline with your customers is vital in order to maintain a good relationship with them. Many times, we will hear from customers when something is blatantly wrong, but in many cases, marginally dissatisfied customers do not speak up; they instead vow never to give you return business and may spread their dissatisfaction via word of mouth. When you open multiple avenues for dialog and proactively encourage individuals to comment, you can help reduce the rate of this occurring. Below are five great ways in which you can encourage your customers to leave feedback, helping you manage your business more effectively.

Offer Contact Forms

Whenever your customers place an order, do they have a way to leave you feedback anonymously after the transaction has been completed? By implementing a program that can handle these submissions (a ticket management program is the best option for pinging servers with these comments when there is a high amount of traffic), you can provide a personalized approach to each customer’s comments and concerns.

Provide Forums for Discussion

While some businesses are weary to provide a public outlet for consumers to discuss their products’ disadvantages, having a place where problems can be discussed shows customers that you do in fact care and are taking proactive steps to rectify any issues they may have. By being attentive, polite and giving leeway when there is the option of doing so, many irate customers can be flipped into return business – if the problems are handled in the right way.

Send Out Surveys

Whenever a customer buys a product from you, do you provide them with a survey or questionnaire that asks them to report their feelings on the product and overall transaction? If not, you are missing out on valuable feedback. Whether it is in paper form in a brick-and-mortar institution or online and through email, always be sure to solicit responses from every single customer. By having the largest pool of feedback possible, you will be sure to get an accurate representation of how your customer base feels.

Setup Live Chat

If you are constantly involved with your business throughout the day, then setting up a live chat option is yet another way you can provide an outlet for consumers to inquire, complain or just get a feel for the product before they make a commitment. Rather than pinging servers on your own domain with added demand, you also have the option to acquire live chat services for a relatively inexpensive rate from a slew of international companies that provide the service – leaving you free to do other things.

Utilize Social Networks

Finally, the use of social media to handle comments is a great way to gain customer feedback and will be used by customers if promoted. Since many users are already on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other platforms, it is very simple to convince them to communicate with you via the page in question. In many ways, this can be a two-fold benefit: some will end up liking your page as they come to leave comments, which will result in them receiving future updates from you in their status feeds.