I’ve talked a few clients through the process of registering their business with Google and, based on that experience, the idea of talking someone through the same process on Bing is a little more daunting, but doable. Here’s a comparison of the user experience for each site:

Google’s Home Page:

The process:

Step 1. Get a Google Account, if you don’t have one already.
Step 2. Go to Google.com and click on “Business Solutions” below the search terms window.
Step 3. On the next page, click on “Local Business Center” in the bottom half of the page.

Now you are all set to start listing your business with Google. One precaution: Make sure you are near your business phone so you can verify your listing with Google’s automated call to your business phone. They will call with a PIN that you will need to verify that this is actually your business.

Bing.com’s Home Page:

The Process:

Step 1: If you haven’t already, sign up for a Windows Live account (click on “Windows Live” in the top left corner of the page to get started)
Step 2: With your Windows Live email and password on hand, go to Bing’s home page and select “Maps” from the search options listed under the main search field.
Step 3: In the Maps page search field, enter either your business name or your location and business category.

Step 4: In the listing of search results, scroll all the way down until you see the words “local listing center” in page gray and click on that to get started with your listing.

Now for the real way to do this.
Go to: https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx
-and sign up from there.
I only listed these steps out to illustrate the fact that Bing’s method is; 4 (non-intuitive) steps as opposed to Google’s 2 somewhat obvious ones and that trying to explain this to a client over the phone is not high on my list of fun and easy activities. The only bright spot in all this is that, at the end of the sign-up process, Bing.com promises to send you a letter for verification about your listing as opposed to a phone call that can take some people by surprise.

1. Create your note on your Facebook profile. Then, in another window on your browser, find the page you want to link to. Select that page’s url and copy it.

2. Go back to your note and find the text you want to transform into a link. Place your cursor in front of the first letter and type in these characters:

3. Now, after the first set of quote marks, paste in the url you just copied and then put another set of quotation marks followed by a bracket after it like so:

4. Next, go to the last character in the string of text you want to link to and after it type:

There’s actually a pretty good range of html markup you can add to a note. Facebook has a good guide to using HTML tags here.

Step 1: In your Webmail account, go to your Settings folder and select Compose. Then,create your webmail signature with interactive links in the compose window and save the changes.

Tip: Make those links as user-friendly as possible. Luckily my Doteasy webmail GUI lets me include tooltips in a link. That way people will have some idea of what they are going to see when they click the link.
Step 2: Go to your webmail mailbox and send a message to your Gmail account with that new signature.
Step 3: Go to your Gmail account and open up the message you just sent and give it a test drive.
Step 4: Now you can keep that message handy and copy and paste your signature from there when you want to include it in a Gmail message. When you want to include that signature, simply view that message with your signature, highlight the signature and then copy and paste it into the new message.
Please Note: This only works if you launch Gmail in its own window. (top left corner of inbox window;”Launch Full Gmail”)
Easy!

We’re all familiar with the SEO mantra “ranking is determined in part by the number of pages that link back to your site.” While that is a big slice of the magic pie of good search results rankings, it is a concept that leaves many people wondering how all those wonderful links are created. Plenty of companies are poised to pounce on your money with their promise of acquiring links by the bushel for you, but do you really need to spend any money at all?

Heck, no! Here are five strategies that can be used to seed the web with quality links back to your site. (But no spamming!)

1) Be A Joiner:
A nice thing about social networking is that many sites allow you to join for free and you can instantly start looking for other people you may know on a particular network. When you build your profile page on a service such as Twitter, Facebook or Orkut, you can list your website(s) as a live link.

2) Weave Your Web:
There are plenty of blogging services out there and most of them give you the option of putting links to other sites in a sidebar. So if you have a couple of blogs out there and maybe a site for your business, make sure each of your sites includes links back to the others.

3) Holler Back:
Chances are there are lots of sites/blogs out there related to your business. Find some good, high-traffic ones. Then check out 1) If they have comments enabled and 2) If the comment form allows you list your web site’s url. Then, follow your favorites when you find their content useful, post a comment and include your url.
A few tips:
Do write a comment that is worth reading. While “Great post! Thanks!” is nice, it’s not really saying much is it? Why did you like it? How do you plan to make use of what you learned?
Don’t treat it like a Super Bowl commercial. Most bloggers have approval over which comments get posted and if I smell a “comment commercial” I tend to go for that spam button.
Do check the freshness date on the content you are commenting on. Posts more than a year old are not as likely to be read as something posted up to 3 months ago.

Another method for connecting with other sites is to utilize trackbacks and pingbacks. While this method does not necessarily put a link back to your site on another web page, it will let another blog know when you link back to it. Diligent bloggers like to know who is linking to them and it will help others to know you are out there. I included these because sometimes blogs do not allow for comments, only tracks and pings and it’s good to know what they’re about. Sometimes pings can be utilized via a service like Technorati to let it know when you have added new content.

4) Be A Critic:
Amazon has some great benefits to joining. You can sign up as an Associate and sell products through your web site and create a user profile that can include your website’s url. When you write a review of an Amazon product, your name is linked to your profile. So, if you take care to write helpful reviews for popular items, you can help generate that much more traffic to your site.

5) Be Your Own Press Agent:
If you took the advice of tip #1, then you have a ready-made media outlet already. Whenever you write new content for your site, update Twitter and Facebook and any other sites to reflect that. (Twitter has a function where you can incorporate your tweets into your Facebook wall. Useful in the way of saving time, but try not to create too much “clutter”) For example: “Jenn has just written a post about SEO on jennmearswebdesign.com”. Keep it short and simple.

There’s also an array of aggregate services out there where you can volunteer links to your content. Here’s a few:
Del.icio.us: Bookmark a link to your content on your page.
Stumble upon: Go to your page and click Stumble icon if you have it on your toolbar and/or embedded on your page.
Digg: Submit your new content’s url in the appropriate category.
Reddit: Submit your link.

Jenn Tip: Of course, you join all these services and before you know it, you’re dealing with an onslaught of usernames, passwords and invite emails. How do you keep it all straight?
1) Ensure your browser has the ability to remember signin info (on a secure, personal computer) and take advantage so you won’t have to keep looking up your password.
2) I actually use a similar password for each site. You may want to encrypt a little more than this, but it helps when I use a different computer.
3) Most services you sign up for send you a confirmation email. Create a “memberships” folder in your online inbox and store it there.
4) Maintain a text file that lists your accounts in alphabetical order and keep the usernames and passwords updated.
5) Organize how you are going to find all these sites. I use the bookmarks tool on my browser. You could also use another bookmarking service such as Del.icio.us and a common tag such as “Daily” or “Social”.

Above all, remember that quality link building is an ongoing, proactive process. Make the time to develop your network. Just create a simple goal like: “I am going to create at least 3 incoming links to my site every day.” and go from there. Good luck!