Archives for June 2010

How to find niche communities…

Learn how to find really good niche communities for both link building and networking with these great tips:

I have three tips that I’m going to share with you today, which you can use to build a network of links from niche communities.  Since developing these tips, I’ve managed to find great niche communities for the sites I optimise.  I hope you’ll be able to find at LEAST one niche community to engage with too.
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But before I get onto the tips, I’ll answer TWO important questions:

  • Why should I be engaging in niche communities? And:
  • What are the benefits of participating in a niche community?

(Feel free to skip these and jump down to the tips below if you already know why it’s important to post in niche communities as part of your SEO campaign.)

Why should I be engaging in niche communities?

Many SEOs try to fool Google into thinking their sites are important. We push our links onto bookmarking sites, news submission sites and social networks.  And we’re all guilty of creating accounts, dropping links and moving on to the next place very quickly.  I feel that it’s no longer the best technique, and it’s pretty obvious that Google’s on to us, so let’s keep one step ahead of the game and use a method that will benefit us, Google AND our niche market.

Instead, spend your time building quality links organically by engaging in a range of discussions on niche community sites.  Niche communities WILL help your content rank highly.  By participating in a niche community, you’ll build STRONG, relevant links to the site you’re optimising and you’ll give something back to the users of that site.

What are the benefits of participating in a niche community?

Aside from the obvious (a chance to link the site you’re optimising), niche communities provide the following:

  • LuMaxArt FS Collection Orange0052A stream of targeted and interested members, which you can engage with.  Find out what they’re interested in.  Learn about the questions they’re asking, which you can answer and later expand into blog posts (As an aside, I like to browse sections matching my particular niche in Q&A sites for this reason!)
  • Potentially, there’s a chance to bring a stream of targeted traffic to your site.
  • The chance to build trust and authority in your area.
  • The opportunity to network with other niche community members, who also have blogs and websites (think guest posts, blogrolls and comments.)
  • In some cases, PageRank can be passed to the site you’re optimising, which may help you rank better.
  • Think of all that relevant content surrounding YOUR links!

Sounds great doesn’t it?

We just need to find some fantastic niche communities to engage in now!

For the sake of this article, I’m going to look for handmade / crafting niche communities.  Let’s pretend I sell handmade items in the UK, so ideally I’m looking for UK niche communities to engage in.

So let’s get started:

Tip #1:  Find niche communities using Google’s advanced search operators:

How to find a Niche Community on Google

Visit Google (in the country of your choice) and type in the following:

allintitle:social network + craft

Allintitle: searches through the title tags on sites in Google’s index.  It asks Google to return results with ALL the keywords in the title.  Pretty handy if a niche community has named their site something like ‘The Craft Lovers Social Network’.

Next, try:

allinurl:join + craft

Allinurl: does a similar job to allintitle.  It searches for ALL of those words in the URL.  Again, this is handy if somebody has a site with both ‘craft’ and ‘join’ in their URL.

HINT: Try substituting network for ‘community’, ‘forum’ or ‘blog’ and ‘join’ for ’sign up.’

HINT: Try using related words for ‘craft’ too, such as: handmade, jewelery, etc.  And try using both plural and singular options.  Append ‘UK’ (or your country of choice) to find niche communities specifically in that location.

Tip #2: Find niche communities using ‘Sites Like’:

Find sites like those in your niche

If I’ve found one niche community and I’d like to find some similar sites to join, I type the following into Google:

Sites like MyFavouriteSite.co.uk

Usually, I find a blog post that gives a round up of similar sites to my favourite niche community.

If not, I try inputting the original site’s URL or some key phrases into these websites:

These return similar sites to the URLs you put in.  Very handy!

Tip #3:  Find niche community forums using these tools:

Use boardreaders to find niche sites

Forum participation is a great way to engage with your niche community.  Advice: spend less time worrying about your signature links and more time building relevant, helpful and USEFUL content in the forum and the traffic will follow.

You can easily find niche forums by searching with the following tools:

I found 20+ crafting and handmade communities with those methods, in just 5 minutes, how many did you find for your niche?

Finally:

Soon, I’ll be posting a guide on engaging with your niche community, giving you my formula for optimal participation. That’ll be up in the next week or so, so please subscribe to my RSS feed.

Finally, if you missed my last post, I shared over 500+ social media websites, which I’ve found on my Internet travels.  Many are categorised by niche, so you may find some great communities in there to get you started 🙂

[Image credit]

500+ social media networks – AND they’re ALL YOURS

Access to over 500+ social media networks for free by using these methods!  Enjoy:

If you’re in the SEO business and you’re looking to create profiles, engage with people and talk about your brand (oh, and of course, get some great backlinks in the process) you’re probably used to searching high and low for different social media websites to sign up to.  And, if you’re anything like me, you’re probably always on the lookout for new places to make your mark, whether these are networks, bookmarking websites or article driven community hubs..

The search is over!  100s of social media networks!

Stop your search and let me share with you my five best kept secrets.  These are five websites that contain hundreds of links to social networking websites.  Some are arranged by niche, others by function.

I promise, these will give you fuel for weeks:

1.  150+ social networks, categorised by niche:

social networkingsocial networking

With over 50 different categories and hundreds of websites listed, you’re sure to find a social networking site that will help you build relevant links and engage with interested people.  Is beer your thing?  There’s a network for that.  What about pets or politics?  Religion? Shopping? Smoking? Sport? Spanish? Real estate? Travel? Education? Yep there are social networks for all those too.  A lot of the niche social networking sites linked ALSO have their own reviews too, conducted by the site’s owner.

Social networks categorised by niche:  Click here to visit.

2. 100 social media websites that pass PageRank:

social mediasocial media

This list IS a little outdated (it’s from 2007) and there are several sites that a) no longer exist and b) have now opted to nofollow links BUT don’t be put off.  There are still LOTS of links on this site that are worth checking out.

100 social media websites that pass PageRank:  Click here to visit.

3. Over 350+ social media networks:

social networking sites

This website was designed for users who’d like to check which social media websites and social networks they can still claim a branded profile on.  For example, I can search ‘SuperCarly’ and see out of the 350+ social media websites which I can then go and still claim!

But how does this help you build networks and profiles?

Well, in the top navigation, KnowEm provides a list of the services they’re currently tracking, all divided up by function.  For example, I can see roughly 30 blogging websites, 47 community sites and around 30 bookmarking sites and there are still a lot of other options to look through.  The site also contains social media networks for specialty niche areas too, like health, design, music, business, travel and news.  KnowEm offer a premium service too, so if you’re too busy, they can secure your brand name across all available social media networks on your behalf.  Bargain.

350+ social media networks:  Click here to visit.

4.  10 image bookmarking websites for backlinks:

image bookmarking
OK, this one will only keep you busy for one hour, but it’s worth it.  I’d never heard of these websites before I found this post.  You can sign up to most of them and create profile links and backlinks to your submissions, though two websites require invites before signing up (though you can email to request these.)  Plus, if you create a really good image and it goes viral, you get lovely free traffic!

A must for all designers and photographers. Businesses – you could get your staff to submit quirky photos to a couple of these sites?  Give them a try!

10 image bookmarking websites for backlinks:  Click here to visit.

5. 30+ social media networks on Ping.Fm

PingFm social networks

I’m going to be honest and assume that a bunch of these websites ARE already contained in the 350+ list KnowEm provides…BUT I will say that I’ve already spotted one or two gems that don‘t appear to be on the KnowEm site, which is pretty useful!

Ping.FM boasts the ability to update a lot of  services from the same place, making your social media networks and social networking portals very easy to manage!

30+ social media networks on Ping.Fm:  Click here to visit.

I hope you’ve found these websites as useful as I have!

A big shout out to the owners who spent a lot of time collating these lists to share with us all.

Lastly, have you any similar resources to share?  I’d really appreciate it 🙂

(Credit:  Icons.)