Increasing the number of quality backlinks to your website can be one of the most impactful and difficult tasks of a sound SEO strategy.

What's a Backlink?

A backlink is traditionally defined as another website that links to your own. At their most basic level, a quality backlink acts as a vote of confidence for your website. The more votes you have, the better you rank!

The love affair that we share with our mobile devices can be summed up with a goofy Jerry McGuire line: "You complete me." Marketing professionals understand the intimate connection that exists, and work every day to capitalize on the marketing potential of mobile.

It's voting season for the annual South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive festival. I've collected a few of my favorite panel and session ideas from the huge crop of submissions that were received this year.

Full disclosure - LevelTen (and myself) have two panel sessions in the running for the South by Southwest Interactive festival next year. They're listed at spots one and two in this list. If you haven't voted yet, voting for sessions ends September 4th (tomorrow). I'd appreciate your vote for both.

Here's the master list:

Below is a short list of paid directories, although there are 1000s of paid directories online, these fall under the category of "good buys." This list includes those directories with one time fees (not reoccurring annually), one way linkback (not reciprocal), with a high Google PageRank. Directories typically charge more the higher their PageRank. Each are human edited (meaning a better quality directory). Although free is great, sometimes you get what you pay for.

This term came about in 1998 when the Overture search engine started allowing auction based bidding on placement in their search engine. Also referred to ppp, eventually Yahoo! bought Overture and implemented this advertising system into their search engine now called Yahoo! Search Marketing. Google eventually created a similar program called AdWords in 2001, which is now the dominate provider of pay-per-click advertising.

Social Media for business is hot right now; similar to blogging was four years ago for companies. Companies are in a mad dash to hire workers deeming themselves “Social Media Experts,” with most new Social Media jobs going to Millennials who grew up online.

When I think of Valentines's Day, chocolates, flowers, and those little chalk-tasting hearts with the messages come to mind. But Dr. Pepper is taking a gamble that people who associate Valentine's Day with Vegas marriages will also associate its new Cherry Chocolate Diet Dr. Pepper drink with the holiday. That's the idea behind a new microsite from Cadbury Schweppes in partnership with Yahoo and Vegas Tourism.

Inside sources say that media giant Time-Warner is seeking to sell all or part of their America Online division. While both Yahoo and Google have been mentioned as possible suitors for such a divestiture, it appears now that Microsoft has entered the arena. Such an acquisition would further consolidate Microsoft's bid to dominate the Internet, especially regarding their seriously flawed browser, Internet Explorer.

Eleven months of the year, hardly anything has a greater impact on our lives than politics (this being October, and World Series month, I get some arguments about this right now). Politics? More important than gas prices? ..than the stock market?

Indeed. Consider the recent Supreme Court decision that allows a businessman to take away your home if he can convince local authorities that he can generate more tax dollars with it than you can. Hmmm.

NY Times Company plans to utilize new website acquisition - About.com - to diversify its current online advertising through "cost per click" ads and marketing their products to About.com users that are demographic variants to NY Times users.

Full article is below...

The Times Company Acquires About.com for $410 Million
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

Published: February 18, 2005

he New York Times Company announced yesterday that it would acquire About Inc. and its Web site, About.com, from Primedia Inc. for $410 million.