Earn A Living Online » search engines

Not All Backlinks Are Created Equal

Keith Lock — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 20:10:49 +0000

Below I’m going to go through some of the different types of backlinks that you can get to your web sites. Just know, I’m not an authority on backlinking, I have never taken the time to test new backlink strategies and measure results, and I’m not an innovator in this area. I will only be discussing what I have learned from other people. Granted, I have used these methods and have seen good results. But for the most part, I just “trust” that this stuff is valid. I understand Google’s goal as a search engine, and the information I have acquired about backlinking makes sense and is in align with my understanding of search engines for the most part. So, with that said, this isn’t “cutting edge” material, it is tried and tested methods and descriptions that have been passed around the SEO circles for years.

Truly, the best method of getting backlinks that is 100% inline with what search engines want is to write good content and let people link to it on their own. But as we know, there are ways to assist in the process…

Backlinks From Different IP Addresses

It is generally accepted that backlinks to your websites from sites that are hosted on different servers other than your own, have more value. So, don’t buy a shared hosting account that allows unlimited web sites and create a network of sites all linking back to your money site. It is easily detectable and not that valuable.

There are numerous ways to get backlinks from different IP addresses. These include (but are not limited to): Social Bookmarking, RSS Submission, Blog Commenting, Directory Submission, Video Sharing, General Article Marketing, Blog Content Syndication, Web 2.0 Property Building (Squidoo, Weebly, etc.), Press Releases, Guest Blogging, etc. etc.

Anchor Text Used In Backlink

The word(s) used that link to your site, the anchor text, is deemed as important. Change it up a bit and use related keywords as well. Just don’t use “click here” all the time, be creative, or focus on specific keywords that you want to rank for.

Slow, Natural Link Building

Sure, it is often said that links should be built gradually and not just stop suddenly, that the same steady pace should, for the most part, continue, in order to be “natural”. I really don’t know about this one myself. What if you wrote something really newsworthy one day and it hit CNN and then suddenly 1000′s of backlinks are being built inside of a week and maybe you even make it to Google Trends. Then, what if it suddenly dies down because it’s old news? That defies the whole theory that slow and steady is the way to go. In fact the news blast seems more natural to me. So, I don’t worry about this a whole lot myself, but it seems that the general consensus is to keep it slow and steady.

Education And Government Backlinks

Backlinks coming from web sites that have a .edu or .gov TLD are said to have more value. Makes sense.

Mixed PR Backlinks

Backlinks coming from sites that have a Google Page Rank of 10 are more valuable than a PR0 of course. Again, makes sense. Getting only backlinks from high PR’s may not be the way to go though. It’s probably good to get backlinks from a range of PR’s, wouldn’t you say? It would just be to obviously fabricated otherwise. I could be wrong of course, because getting backlinks from just PR8′s only for example can occur naturally, it’s just not likely in my opinion.

Deep Linking

Getting links just to your homepage isn’t always best. Some of your best money making content may be at lower levels of your site. Also, you may want to rank some deeper pages for keywords on their own. I also read that if you say, add a page of content to Squidoo, and create more than 1 backlink to your homepage within that 1 page, the first backlink will be the one that is taken into account. The links further down the page won’t pass any juice or anchor text.

Contextual Links

If you have a backlink created in the middle of a paragraph or article that is related to the content on your site, it is much more valuable than say, getting a backlink in the sidebar or footer that is part of a list or cluster of links.

DoFollow Links

A search engine may not give value to a backlink if it has a nofollow tag attached to it. A nofollow tag is essentially telling the search engine (particularly Google) that the backlink does not count as a vote for the linked site. The site the backlink is on is not vouching for your site so the search engine may ignore the anchor text, PR, etc.

What Are The Best Backlinks To Get?

Based on the info above it would seem you want backlinks with the following characteristics:

from a range of IP addresses
containing your choice of, and a variety of, anchor text
perhaps created slowly
from .edu and .gov sites on occasion if you can
from mixed PR, high PR if you can
to different pages of your site, not just the homepage
within a paragraph of related content (contextual, rather than clustered)
dofollow if possible

Now, if you can get backlinks like described in the list above you are on the right track. Of the backlinking procedures that I follow for my niche sites, there is one method that covers all of the backlink characteristics (except maybe getting links from education and government sites), and that’s from blog content syndication. <- That's a link to a post I wrote on it a few days back.

With blog content syndication you can essentially get 100's of backlinks with the above criteria created slowly over time with just a couple hours work or less up front. Outsource it and it's just 10 or 15 minutes of your time. Some of my thriving sites, like the one described here where I have made almost $400 a month for the past few months, this is the only method of backlink building I put effort into. And for that particular site discussed, I only did 2 submissions.

A 3rd party company, Article Marketing Automation, offers a network of sites with different IP addresses to automatically post content on. The tools make certain the content is unique and lets you create backlinks with a variety of anchor text, even with just 1 submission. You are allowed as many submissions, for as many sites as you want. Last I checked, if you sign up for Article Marketing Automation’s free blog content service they are letting you try the blog content syndication service out for free.

More info: Not All Backlinks Are Created Equal

What Keyword Are You Targeting? Want Some Help?

Keith Lock — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 23:08:11 +0000

Most of the information and instruction on building niche websites that I have come across talks about targeting one particular keyword or keyphrase. Ideally, the keyword would be highly searched and with little/weak competition.

It is suggested to use the keyword in your domain name, the H1 tag, the title tag, etc. for on-site SEO. That way, search engines get a clear picture of what your site is about.

One big off-site SEO factor, of course, is backlinks. A highly valuable backlink is one that uses the anchor text of the keyword that you are targeting. Also, if the backlink is one-way and do-follow, it is much more valuable.

Today I launched a niche website directory that is hosted here on this blog. It covers a broad range of categories. I will be manually approving all submissions and won’t allow any junk to come through.

I’m only going to allow a keyword to be used just one time in the directory. In other words, if you and a competitor are targeting the exact same keyword/keyphrase, the listing will be given to the first one to submit their site.

You can submit as many sites as you like, but you cannot submit the same site more than once trying to target more than one keyword. Pick your best one and go with that. Feel free to submit an internal page of your site, but I am only going to accept one site submission per domain. Check it out.

More info: What Keyword Are You Targeting? Want Some Help?

Converting 2 Articles Into 90 Unique Versions And Getting Auto-Backlink Love

Keith Lock — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 05:12:49 +0000

If you have a niche blog or site, or even a Squidoo lens, etc. that you want to rank for a certain keyword, keep reading… I have discovered an amazing strategy that will save you lots of time and money.

You understand that having links back to your site can improve your rankings in search engines right? You also understand that using varied related keywords as the anchor text surrounded by related information helps a great deal right? You probably have heard of and may even use article marketing techniques to help with your SEO efforts. It has been said that submitting UNIQUE content to niche related web sites with links back to your site will help your rankings climb in the SERPS. Well, let me tell you about a way that has been helping me rank for some high traffic keywords. I pay a lot less than I used to for content and it’s also less manual effort saving me a ton of time.

The Process In A Nutshell…

I basically have 2 articles written from a ghost writer, merge them with some special formatting, submit them to a content syndication network and then rinse and repeat for other sites, pages, hubs, lenses etc. that I want to rank for my chosen keywords.

There are several ways that you can prepare your articles for submission but here I will describe the method that I have been using and that has been working well for me. I have someone write a 100% unique article for me on a particular topic. How many links it can contain depends on the number of words it is. 300 words or more will allow 2 links. You can go as high as 3 links. I usually pay a writer from the DigitalPoint forum around $1.50 to $2.00 per 100 words.

Then I have someone “spin” the article. Spinning the article involves rewriting each sentence and heading of the original article. The sentences should be around the same length and mean EXACTLY the same thing as the original, just using different words. Then I create a text file merging the 2 articles with special formatting. It’s simple, you wrap the original and rewritten sentence in [spin] tags and separate them with the pipe “|” symbol like this: [spin]Original 1st sentence.|Rewritten 1st sentence.[/spin] [spin]Original 2nd sentence.|Rewritten 2nd sentence.[/spin]

I then submit the specially formatted file to the content syndication network and it does the rest. You will have to provide the list of keywords that you want to be linked and where they are to be linked to and then replace the keyword in your article with a special code. The system will replace that special code with a random keyword and make it a link. The system will also randomly grab a sentence, either the original or a rewrite, for each sentence, generating several unique versions of the article. You are left with 90+ unique versions of your original article ready to be gradually and automatically submitted to niche related blogs, with dofollow links back to your content! It’s a gradual process making it more natural.

This is just a simple example, and really it is all I often ever do. But you could write several alternate sentences if you wish, it doesn’t have to be just 1. Just separate them all with pipes. You can also show a random YouTube video and random lists in your articles among other things. There are clear instructions on how to do accomplish all of this in the support files of the network.

Picture it…you could have a 250 word article written and “spun” for around 5 or 6 dollars. Spend about 1/2 hour setting up the submission and you can have over 90 backlinks to your blog on auto-pilot over the next few months. Do that once a week and you have a crap load of backlinks coming in.. including deeplinks if you choose! With your paid subscription to Syndicate Kahuna you can submit as many articles as you want! No limits. Promote all of your sites and content pages. Some say it’s ALL you need for SEO.

Stay tuned because I will be introducing a tool that I had written that makes the “spinning” process extremely simple and less prone to formatting errors (because it’s done by the program rather than a human). It works like a charm.

Keep your receipt if you subscribe through my Syndicate Kahuna link, because I have a special offer coming up! Also, make sure you subscribe to get my posts by email so you don’t miss it.

More info: Converting 2 Articles Into 90 Unique Versions And Getting Auto-Backlink Love

Advanced Domain Name Basics

Keith Lock — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 18:23:36 +0000

When creating a niche blog based around a certain keyword, there are a few things that are handy to keep in mind when buying the domain name.

Keywords In The Domain

Of course we know it is advantageous to purchase a domain name with our keyword in it. You can get one with or without hyphens. In other words: yourkeyword.com or your-keyword.com.

Country Specific TLD

When setting out to a create a niche blog for a certain keyword you should take a step or two back. What country are you targeting? And before you say… “all of them”, you should consider getting a bit more niche specific than that for better results. When doing your keyword research to find high trafficked keywords with low strength of competition, preferably using Market Samurai, you can look at country specific results.

Because people search for things in search engines differently, you will see different results for “number of searches” and “competition” when looking at the results for a particular country. Now if you buy a domain name with that particular country’s TLD, and host the site on a server that resides in that country (more on that later), then you will be several steps ahead of your SEO competitors right out of the gate.

By the way, TLD stands for top level domain and is the part after the “dot” in the domain name (or maybe it even includes the dot, I’m not sure). (com, ca, edu, for example)

Check out this list of country specific TLD’s from Wikipedia.

2 Years Minimum

Also, the testing has been done, and the search engines will take your site more seriously, and rank you higher than competitors as a result, if you pay for 2+ years when buying your domain name. Don’t just get it for 1 year. Invest in your business and get it for 2 or more.

Extra SEO Tips

In an effort to rank higher for your chosen country-specific keyword in the country-specific search engine, it is beneficial to host the site on a server that is located in the country that you are targeting. Sometimes it’s tricky to find because just because the homepage of a hosting provider is in Australia for example, it does not mean that the servers are there. I will be putting together a list shortly with servers and hosting providers around the world and will include it in a future post.

Additionally, entering a street address from the country that you are targeting onto your site will help you rank higher. I think it helps when on the About, Contact and Privacy Policy (and maybe Terms & Conditions) pages. I generally just include it in the footer (which is especially simple on a WordPress blog by adding it to the footer theme file) so it appears on all pages.

Buying Domain Names

GoDaddy still continues to provide great prices for domain names. They add new TLD’s to their offerings all of the time. I buy domains from several domain registrars for a specific strategy that I employ, but for the most part GoDaddy is my choice for domains.

As a bonus, domains purchased at GoDaddy will get propagated quicker, meaning your site will be viewable around the world quicker, but it does depend on the TLD. For example, a .com purchased at GoDaddy could have a site “live” for the world to see in literally minutes. I know because I’ve done it. Try these coupons for some discounts. (cjctld749 for .org AND MTECH330 for .com) Using these coupons will negate my referral commission unfortunately so you don’t really have to use them! haha Oh, and if you are purchasing more than one domain with different TLD’s and using coupons, do the transactions separately because you can only add 1 coupon at a time.

More info: Advanced Domain Name Basics