A lot of people that are getting backlinks wonder when exactly they cross from white hat to black hat techniques. Personally, I feel that most internet marketers wear a grey hat.

What exactly separates white hat from black hat techniques? One common suggestion is that it is the speed that you build backlinks. This certainly brings up the question of automation.

The truth is a forum profile link created by Xrumer is no different than a profile created by hand. An article submission done by Article Marketing Robot is no different than an article submission created by hand. A blog comment created by Scrapebox is no different than a blog comment created by hand. OK, you are starting to get the picture.

There are certain footprints that allow us to use tools to automate parts of our backlinking strategy. Most people will take advantage of the footprint to build links in mass quantities. Some groups of people like to call this mass link building black hat. I like to call it an effective use of my virtual assistant’s time and my money. The next question is, if software can build these links, where else should I spend my time?

Your time is limited, so if you are going to link build or pay someone else to build links you need to get the highest quality links you can find for your time or money. You want to build links to places that will make you money. This is especially important if you are an offline business. Always pay someone else to do this work, so that you can spend your time an energy growing your business. You are an expert accountant or car mechanic, so simply use SEO as a means of acquiring more clients.

1. Buying – Many people sell links from their domains. These links are given in exchange for money. These links are unaccessible to other people for free. These links can come in the form of private article networks, homepage backlinks and sitewide links. One of my favorite tactics is to find a non-for-profit directory related to my niche and then do a link exchange. Why would I do this? I am getting a high quality link, that is going to bring me quality traffic and it is usually from a page with a high pagerank.

2. Link Baiting – This is essentially writing content that is good enough to be republished or that people will want to link to. This strategy relies on writing something controversial rather than money.

3. Expert Writer – This is how I have built nearly all of my businesses. I have created expert content and posted it for my peers or prospective clients to read. These articles build credibility. If I am a Penny Stock Broker, I might publish an article on 5 Tips for Selecting A Quality Stock Broker – What You Need to Look For. Hopefully, people will see you as the first option for a service/product and/or will refer you to people in need of your product/service.

The Myth of Social Media

Why do you think I am stating that should you not use social media to promote your local business? I mean, Web 2.0 is the latest, greatest, right? Common knowledge is, that if you are not doing it you are making a huge mistake, the “it” being Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn,Blogger, Tumblr, and on, and on….

I am going to tell you something shocking. I am telling you not to use social media. It is a big mistake (for most of you). Do you think I am crazy? What I just said goes against 99% of what internet marketers are telling you. Well read on. Here is why I think social media can be a big mistake for a local business person.

Why Social Media Does Not Work (for most local business owners)

In short, the answer is…..Time.

Posting and writing takes time. Time is everyone’s most valuable resource. For a business owner, particularly a small business owner, it is the one thing he or she NEVER has enough of. And the truth is, to do social media well, it takes time.  It requires commitment.

You cannot do social media inconsistently or half-heartedly. While you can do other types of marketing inconsistently and get away with it, social media is much different. It’s all about “the now”.

I say “the now”  because if you do not keep up with social media what happens is that when a prospective customer comes across your Twitter or Facebook page, and you have not posted to it in 6 months, that customer is going to look elsewhere. They are going to think, ” this place is out of business.”

Social media is about building relationships, and relationships do not grow if you do not pay constant attention to them.

Here is what I recommend a local small business person should be doing in regards to internet marketing .

Choose 2 or 3 methods of marketing and be good at them, before you get overwhelmed by the million and ten other things you COULD be doing with your time.

As marketing guru Nicole Dean says, don’t become bogged down struggling with the “shoulds”.

• I “SHOULD” be doing article marketing.
• I “SHOULD” be guest blogging.
• I “SHOULD” be doing press releases.
• I “SHOULD” be doing social marketing.
• I “SHOULD” be doing video marketing.

Set Your Goals as an Internet Marketer

The entire POINT of marketing an offline business is to get local search results, to be number one in your business category. Heck, I do internet marketing for a living and even I cannot keep up with everything. Set your goal for internet marketing, which for a local business should be three things, or what I call the “Triple Whammy”;

• be in the magic 7 (first page) of the Google Places results

• be in the top 3 of the SERPS (organic results)

• be in the Adwords column (PPC)

These 3 things get your business name seen 3 times on one page. To get there, stick with two or three marketing methods, and do them well.

What are the three marketing methods that I think a local business owner needs to concentrate on to achieve the “triple whammy”?

• a good, optimized website

• article marketing

• a blog

Every single one of the above marketing methods can be outsourced cheaply.

While social media can be a good thing, I think social media is still in the experimental stage and is too time consuming for a local business person to get wrapped up in it. It will eat up a lot of your time and provide few benefits in terms of increasing the bottom line.

Get some solid marketing methods in place first. Get your business on the first page of the local search results and in the top 7 of Google Places. Then you can think about starting a social media program.

I was talking to a prospective client the other day and she told me about how her website designer got her busted for using a copyrighted image. She was looking at thousands of dollars in damages. All this for an image that had been in use for over 4 years.

The truth is, any website designers and online businesses need a picture for their blog or website. If you’re like most people, you jump into Google Images and grab a great shot from there.

Unfortunately, that puts you at huge risk of lawsuit, because, unless someone specifically grants rights to you to use a given image, every picture taken in the United States (and in most other countries) is considered to be copyrighted, and the property of the person who took that picture. (By the way, this includes pictures taken in photo studios, so that class picture of you isn’t yours – I know, something’s really wrong there, but that’s the law!)

This is serious, you really can get sued, and if the person has taken the right steps in copyrighting their picture, you could have to not only pay them a huge amount for stealing their image, you could also be charged damages, which could be serious amounts of money!

How do you get around this? Go read this blog post by Don Crowther who tells you all about a great way to get free, and legal, images online.