To succeed online with any website or blog you need traffic. You can pay for traffic with programs like Google Adwords or you can optimize your pages in order to rank well in the SERP's or Search Engine Results Pages. If you have a page that converts traffic into paying customers then paying for traffic is a no brainer. If it costs me $10 to send 100 people to my site and 1 person in a hundred buys something that I sell for $20 then I make money - I'll pay for the traffic continuously.

If however, you don't convert traffic well enough to cover your costs then you need to get free traffic. (This should also be done even if you pay for traffic and make a profit - the more traffic the better.) To get free traffic from the search engines you have to do two things - optimize your pages for your keywords and then get enough decent backlinks to those pages in order to achieve a higher page rank than your competition. The higher your page rank - the higher Google will place you in the search results.

Simple... Right?

Actually this can be but I know most of you are having trouble achieving this.

The problem lies in getting backlinks and moreover, getting the right backlinks.

Let me illustrate a few examples of backlinks;

Two-Way Backlinks

This is when two websites swap links with each other. This should be avoided as these types of links dilute the link juice. You only want one way links to your site or blog. Period!

One-way Backlinks

A one way backlink is just that - another site posts a link pointing to your site. This type of link tells the search engines that your page is important because somebody else thinks enough of your site to send traffic to you.

Some one-way links are better than others and some should be avoided altogether.

If you join a link exchange of some type you will find that your link is added onto a page with hundreds or thousands of other links. This is a link farm and it is not good. Google will ignore the link at best or penalize you for it at worst. Stay away from this type of linking.

You can submit your site to any number of directories for free and wait and see if they add your link. This does work but it is time consuming and you aren't guaranteed to be added. A lot of the directories will insist that you add a link back to them and this then becomes a two-way link and remember rule number 1 - no two-way links.

You can join forums and make lots of posts and leave your link either in your signature or in the post. This works and allows you to optimize your anchor text in your link. Anchor text simply means the keyword you use in your link.

A Word about Anchor Text


If you want Google to index you high for relevant terms for your site then you have to make sure your backlinks use the right keywords in them.

Let's say I write an article and post it on GoArticles.

The article will be about "Making Money Online for Beginners".

If I write the article properly it will contain all my main keywords for this blog.

This will tell Google that my article is highly relevant for people searching for info regarding "Making Money Online" and this highly relevant article will have a link in it that points directly to my blog. A perfect backlink! Well not necessarily.

At the bottom of my article is a Bio Box that lets me add my blog url.

How you do this is very important.

If I write a bio that says:



then I will get my backlink but I will have told Google to rank me high for people searching for the keyword "here".

If I had written my Bio this way:


then I will get my backlink but this time the backlink will tell Google that I should be indexed for the term "Make Money Online".



This is why your anchor text is so important. In a perfect world you want every single one-way backlink that you get to use keywords that optimize your pages for the terms you want to get indexed highest for.

The more your backlinks use a particular keyword the higher you will get indexed for that keyword.

A mistake most of you make is to use your sites name in most of your backlinks. This is fine if, like me, your sites' name contains your main keyword. Mine does so having some one put a link to me on their blog's side panel that says my name: "Make Money Online for Beginners" works. I will get indexed for people using the "make money online" keyword.

If your blog is named "Grizzly's Blog" and someone puts a link to you on their site using your name - guess what? You will get the backlink but only people searching for "Grizzly's Blog" will ever find you. This will suck if you wanted people who are looking for ways to make money online. Of course it would be fine if your site was about Bears.

But Grizzly I don't control what type of link someone else uses on their site when they give me a link.

In a lot of cases you don't. This is why you should always pick a name for your site that includes your main keyword. Most people will just link to you using your site's name.

Someone who likes your blog will do this;



You would rather they do this;

If you are interested in Anchor Text then visit Grizzly's Blog.

The difference to your searchable listings on the SERP's will be huge if your backlinks are anchored properly.

You can always email your benefactor and ask that they change the link. Provide them with the anchor text that you would like them to use. Most people will agree to help you but asking always brings up the likely hood of them asking you for a backlink as well. Aaaarg... the dreaded two-way link and how do you say no without being a total jerk? Offer them a link from a different site than the one they linked to. Explain the value of one-way links to them if need be.

The Ideal Perfect and Bestest BackLink of All.

Ok, there is such a thing as a perfect backlink.

Here is the scenario and I might add that this is the easiest way to get backlinks of all and the fact that it happens to be the perfect backlink is just gravy. Everyone of you can get these.

Let's go back to my article about "making money online".

Articles allow you to control every detail of your backlink. I mentioned the BIO box earlier but this is not really where I focus my backlinks. I use the first paragraph in every article I write.

The best backlink you can get from Googles' point of view is a link contained in a sentence which is part of a larger block of text.

The absolute best backlink I could get for this blog is the following;

A Page Rank 10 site with a .edu extension with a name that contains "Make Money Online" in it, writes a post about making money online and adds a link to my site in the middle of a sentence using "make money online" as the anchor text pointing to my site. Kaaaaaa-Ching! My site would be on top of the SERP's faster than John Chow.com could get out of the way. I'd be number 2 right behind the PR10 site that gave me the link.

You use articles to make your perfectly optimized anchor text available for others to post on their sites. You control the anchor text regardless of who posts your article.

In my articles I always add a backlink in the first sentence of the first paragraph and I usually get two links in like the following article I submitted a while ago to GoArticles.com.

HavAds - Review

Hi everyone,

One of the things that has bugged me for a long time is that while Google makes money online with adwords, those of us displaying the ads (the adsense side of the equation) on our sites are making pennies. A couple of years ago Google allowed advertisers to bid different amounts for content ads (the ads on your site) rather than paying the same price for search ads (these are the ads shown when doing a Google search). While the search ads still cost an advertiser big money (and it all goes to Google) the content ads can be had for just pennies and you only get 50% of this.

You'll notice that the first link is in my header and points to my home page. The anchor text will get me ranked high for people searching for reviews of HavAds.

The second link points to the HavAds review page instead of my home page and will reinforce my ranking for HavAds as well as build PR for my other pages. Don't just get backlinks for your home page. Get backlinks for all your pages.

Oh, in case you are wondering how effective this is you can check out Googles search listing for the term "Havads Review" here.

Number 1 last time I checked... damn I'm good at this. Ouch I just hurt my arm patting myself on the back.

Ok, I said this is the perfect backlink and it is - unfortunately you can't fix it so only high PR sites post your articles - they belong to everyone and luck comes in when you get posted on a site with higher PR than you and it does happen. The point is that by using articles you get your backlinks out there and you would be surprised at how quickly they start adding up. I have written roughly 2 dozen articles for this blog and have over 700 backlinks at the moment. The vast majority are crappy but I have 20 good backlinks ranging from PR1 to PR7 at the moment. I didn't pay for any of them and never asked for any of them. They are all natural links that have popped up over the last six months as a result of my articles. The best part is that they all use my optimized anchor text.

By the way, the Havads article has been my most successful posting to date. You can check out how many downloads it has received here in case you scoff at the power of writing articles.


Before I leave I want to mention a little network I just joined and am presently trying out. Before I go any farther this program costs $67 a month and I am not trying to sell you on it. If you are a beginner and only have 1 or 2 sites or blogs then you don't need this. I will help you for free but let me explain what this program is before I explain what I can do for you.

In short two fellows have created a small network of 103 blogs at present. These blogs are hosted on 60 different servers and as a result have 60 IP addresses which means that they avoid the link farm penalty. (If you have 100 blogs all on one server and link to each other you will be penalized as a link farm - ie. all the blogs are likely owned by just one person and the backlinks aren't really natural.)

The 103 blogs all have PR between 1 and 4 and the program is as follows. They are taking 300 members at $67 amonth. Each member will get access to all the blogs to post article snippets on. Each snippet will allow you to include a link to your blog using the anchor text you choose.

In a nutshell this program will allow you to get your backlinks on 103 blogs (Currently) that have PR between 1 and 4. If you have several blogs or sites then I suggest you join for at least one month. Your posts will never be removed so you can get all your links up in one month and then quit if you want. The monthly fee is because the creators are adding new blogs all the time and if you want access to the new ones you will have to keep your membership. $67 for 103 backlinks from PR sites is cheap.

If you only have one or two sites then send me an email and I will post your backlinks for you using my membership. You will have to send me a snippet from an article you write (no plagerism) and tell me what keywords you want anchored in the snippet. I will post it on the highest PR blog that is most relevant to your topic. If you want it on all 103 blogs then join up you cheapskate. I will get you your first backlink just to show you whether this works or not.

Here is an example of a post I made to one blog last night. Article-Hype.Com

The blog has a Page Rank 3 and my snippet has a link to my blog using "Make Money Online" as my anchor text.

For those of you that don't know how to tell what the page rank or alexa rank (traffic rank) of a site is you need to download the Google PageRank Toolbar and the Alexa Toolbar and add them to your browser.

For Internet Explorer users go here;

Google Page Rank Toolbar

Alexa Toolbar

For Firefox or Mozzilla users go here;

Quirk - Both Toolbars in One

The Toolbars are free.

For those of you who want to join up you can send me an email and I will give you the link. This is not a Clickbank product so you will need to use my link to join. They are only accepting 300 members but as of this morning there were only 33 members on the private forum so I suspect you have a little time before making a decision. I suggest letting me test this for you first before you sign up.

Ok... that's enough for today.