1. Don’t get a link from “links” pages on sites as these are about 1% as useful as your signature link on the 7th page of a forum thread, unless of course the Page is a PR 9 with a lot of back-links itself
2. If a site wants to link to you from a page with 100 links on it you can basically forget it as the strength of the link is shared by, well, 100 others!
3. So if you have a site about Dogs you might want to link out to Crufts or the Kennel Club or Wiki a good one. Naturally, you should also get relevant sites to link to you. If you have a costume website, find a Costume website you can add url to for free.
4. You need to get into the good Neighborhood Try and get links from the neighbourhoods at the top of Google for your key phrases after all Google likes these sites enough to rank them! Find that circle of sites where all the big boys in your industry link to and are linked from and get involved. For instance, try and get a link from a .gov site!
5. See who links to your competitors and try and get a link as well (or pay money to have their link replaced with yours
6. Use Yahoo and type “link:yourcompetitors.com” and see who links to them. Yahoo is kind enough to rank pages virtually by the number of back-links sites have in site explorer – making it one of my most used seo tools.
7. Don’t waste your time with seo tools! Join Social Network tools like Delicious, Technorati and Stumble. There’s three links right there, although to be fair, they are not actually counted as linksby Google becasue of the Nofollow attribute. Digg links count, though.
8. A link is a link. If someone, anyone wants to link to you accept, just don’t always reciprocate with a link back to them (negates the value of the link, almost) and could see your site lose trust. Remember Google says it is impossible for a site to hurt your site by simply linking to your site, but you can hurt your site if you link to another site with a ’shady’ backlink profile.
9. It doesn’t hurt to get a link from a low or high Google Page Rank page. Today’s No-PR page might be a PR 5 page in reality, as Google Toolbar is out of date.
10. Good Google rankings is not all about who you get a link from it’s who you link to – this is thought to be the measure of the trust of a site and seems fairly reasonable to me. Link to authority sites in your industry as well as other sites that look like quality upcoming sites, and stay clear of suspect sites.

A very important, yet, often overlooked aspect of SEO and link building (for a blog) is your ping list. This is one of the simplest ways to get your content indexed by search engines within a matter of minutes. It will also help you to get ping backs from other blogs (and scraper sites) which will in turn build your backlinks.

If you’re using Wordpress as your blogging platform simply go to your admin section. Click Options, then click Writing.

Then paste the following text in the ping list field:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2/
http://pingqueue.com/rpc/
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://www.bloglines.com/ping
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

This is just a basic example of a ping list, some people have hundreds of different sites in their list. However I limit most of my blogs to these primary services as I have found them the most useful.

We all know how important link building is, link building which also called off-site optimization plays a very important role in a successful optimization campaign, so what is link building exactly? what does a link building campaign usually include? and how should we go about building links, we will try to answer those questions in this article.

What is link building?

Link building refers to the act of acquiring links that point to your website/webpage, there are a number of ways to acquire links, which I will list and try to explain the pros and cons of each method.

a- Building links the natural way!

This happens when a website links to you because the webmaster of that site felt that your website had such good information that he thought linking to it would benefit his visitors, this is probably the best link you could ever get, those are the kind of links that Google in specific and the other search engines look for, links that naturally point to your website, the ideal way for getting those links is quality content, having something useful for your website visitors will always get other webmasters link to you, in the long run at least, which brings us to the cons of this kind of building links, natural link usually take time, they don’t happen in a month or 2, you need to build quality content, and get some people to actually read it! just having good quality content on your website doesn’t guarantee a good exposure and a good amount of natural links, especially if its a new website, you need to bring people to your website to read this content, here are a few methods of doing that:

1- Paid advertising! place a banner on website(s) relating to your topic, or advertise on a newsletter for example.

2- Article submissions, submit the articles on your website to article directories.

3- Press release submission, submit a press release about your new website, a new article or a new interview you did on your website.

4- Submit your website to directories.

5- Join forums and comment on blogs relating to your topic or industry, place your link in your forum sig. and make sure not to spam

Those are some ideas that you can use to get your new website out there, with time, people will notice your website and the content it has, and start gaining natural links.

b- Asking for a link

You can always ask for a link, and it works out perfectly if you know how to do it, here a few tips to follow when asking for a link:

1- Make sure the website your asking for a link on is related to your website, the more benefit your website offers to his visitors the more chances of getting that link.

2- Don’t sound like a robot! lots of spammers use link exchange tools to spam websites asking for links, make sure that your email has a personal touch.

3- Comment on the website, look around the website and see if you can make a suggestion about it in the email, look for a dead link, a broken link, some font inconsistencies and point them out in a nice way in your email, the webmaster will probably appreciate it and give you that link.

4- Explain how your website benefits the visitors of that website, the more relevant and beneficial your website is to his visitors, the more he will be encouraged to place that link.

5- Include your personal contact information, like your phone number or fax number and invite the webmaster to call you if he wants to, he probably wont, but its a nice gesture.

Some might consider those kind of links as natural links, but I feel that since those links were not placed naturally without a request, then they probably should be placed in their own category.

c- Buying links

Buying links is probably the most widely used method for gaining one way back links to your website, allot of websites offer text link advertising on their websites for a monthly or yearly fee, prices range depending on the websites Google Page Rank, popularity and the traffic the website gets, they can start at $5 per month and up to $1000 per month.

There are a number if important notes that you should take care of when buying a link:

1- Make sure the website gives you a direct link pointing to your website without using any JavaScript, or the nofollow attribute.

2- Make sure the website doesn’t link to bad neighborhoods, if you find the website linking to link farms, porn or pill websites your better off without that link.

3- Have a look on the websites that link to the website your considering buying a link on, if most of those links are from link farms for example, then save your and don’t buy that link!

4- Try and get the link on places other than the footer or the links section in the side panel, Google can pick those links up, and usually don’t pass all of the link value to the link placed there.

5- Make sure the webpage your getting a link doesn’t have more than 20 outgoing links on it, the more outgoing links on the page, the less value your link will get.

d- Link exchanges

Link exchanges is an old yet still used method for acquiring back links, link exchanging refers to placing a link to website in return for a link back to your website, search engines such as Google pick up such links and remove them from your link popularity, it is said that link exchanges might even harm your rankings as it is seen by the search engines as a way of "cheating" them, the possibilities of link exchanges damaging your rankings are higher if your exchange links with bad neighborhoods which I have explained earlier.

Other ways of link exchanging has come up such as 3-way link exchanges, where 3 websites (A,B and C) are used in the exchange, website A links website B, and website B links to website C (usually website A and C have the same owner) however, Google can also pick up those links, and in the worst cases, decrease the rankings of the websites involved in 3-way link exchanges.

These are some of the most important link building methods, usually a combination of the 1st 3 methods works out the best.

Now there are always people searching on Google looking for ways to get more backlinks to their websites, and to be honest people try looking for perfect relevant backlinks, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but seem to overlook the easy links that they can also get to their websites. This article is going to take a brief look at ways to get more backlinks to your website with some short bullet points but bullet points that get to the point like bullet points should. If you are wondering why people would want more backlinks then it’s not necessarily for traffic but more than likely they are looking to increase their search engine rankings.

1. Forum signatures. Almost everyone who is involved In making websites is part of one forum are another, and it’s highly unlikely theirs no follow tags on the backlinks so add your links to your forum signature and your links will show every time you post
2. Submit your websites to directories for lots of free and easy backlinks
3. Comment on other peoples blog’s, although most comment sections tend to have no follow attributes to links not all of them do and people still feel there’s some credit given to no follow links anyway, although I tend to disagree without proof
4. Create articles and submit them to article directories, you can add your links to the authors comment so if your articles get displayed or published anywhere then you get backlinks
5. Submit press releases, it tends to be the case you get a link from the site that you create the press release on, but if you also pay for a submission you can include links in the actual article content.
6. Do something viral, this may also be associated as a type of ‘link baiting’ which is doing something in order to get people to link to you. Such things can be things that are unique, humorous or down right wacky.
7. Take part in link exchanges. This is thought not to be as effective as it used to be but it’s certainly a way of getting more backlinks to your website.
8. Create a tool that also includes a link to your website. This is certainly one of the ways that you can get the most links to your website in a short space of time. If the tool becomes popular then you are going to build a lot of links to your site.

1. Start by submitting your site to a list of blog directories.
2. Make sure you are using the “Update Services” feature (ping services) of your Wordpress blog available at Options’ -> ‘Writing’ section of your Wordpress admin control panel. It can also get you some backlinks.
3. Find some .edu blogs to participate in. Don’t spam them. Just take part in the discussion and give some valuable inputs to the posts. This can bring you some useful backlinks. You can use following search in google to find such blogs:
4. Participate in blogs who do not have nofollow tags to their comments. Here is a list of more than 200 dofollow blog. Use use your as your home url while commenting. As those blogs don’t have rel=nofollow tags, those links will be counted as backlinks in google as well. Again, don’t spam them. Provide some useful input to the post and participate.
5. Ask other bloggers in your niche to make a guest post on their blogs. Write a good articles and ask other bloggers in your niche to put them on their blog as a guest post. Bloggers are always looking for some good posts for their blogs and if you have a good post, they don’t mind providing a link in that post to your blog. It will add a backlink, will bring traffic and will also provide you some credibility. If you are in my niche, and want to make a guest post on this blog, let me know.
6. Participate in forums of your niche and use your blog link as your signature. Always remember to update your sig with your latest post, so people would read new content and would get more familiar with your blog. That will add some credibility to your blog as well.
7. Hold some contest with good prices for blogging about your blog.
8. Then finally go for traditional way of link building like directory submission, blogroll exchange, 3-way link exchange, press release (may be on other blogs), article submissions, squidoo lenses, social networking (digg/stumbleupon),

200 do follow Blog

Internet Marketing Blog
CutieGadget
EricSocia
LcdLove
InternetProfitPlanning
Womlution
TheNextPost
MenstrualPoetry
WomanTribune
DaveDragon

DotSauce
FatManUnleashed
Invesp
OnARidge
FatLadySingz
PixelHeadOnline
DarkSEOProgramming
SparkInternetMarketing
Revellian

DayJobNuker
Logon
JakobDK
Allscm
TriathlonTraining
YourWebsiteProfit
HowToWakeUpEarly
LondonerLife
VandelayDesign

LaughOutLoudDogs
RonaldoCamacho
BillHartzer
FootbagShop
NeoMeme
Marenda
SavingMoney
WomanStartYourBusinessNow
SunlightFlavor

TheBuffaloRiver.com
LifeSnippets.net
JoeBartender
OneMansGoal
MeloVillaReal
Web360
Jakeldaily
TallFreak
BaseballInvestor

TheDarkLightOfLove
LifeInTheRough
Sandossu
TheDailyFuzz
ErikKarey
BothMadAndGenius
ThreeSticks
RobertaFerguson
MarketingASolicitor

FruityOaty
PilotJohn
Mrgtp
RobNeville
NetMonetization
Salatti
LakeTrees
BowerBirdBeads
BloggersJourney

LosingProposition
EndangeredSpaces
SecretsOfUnlimitedProsperity
Amorphism
Health-HundredDayHeadstart
Jenny’sCorner
TheBrokenBow
TheDietDiary

Wealth Health Blog
JadeHat
Nice4Rice
Hem
News Notion
RealityWired.com
BrilliantCheers
Achille
OnTheWebEd

JonLee
ChrisHoyt
JulieAnnBonner
LinkItForMe
RamblingThoughtsBlog
BlogThatOutside
Tobsy
NOWG
CatchAFallingStar

SweetAgring
LayerCake
ErikSvend
PajamaProfessional

MyOpinionsAreImportant
RoadLessTravelled
Foximus
BetShopBoy
5xMom
Derek Semmler
Linguistics Zone
Zr5
SmartWealthyRich

How To Split An Atom
The Alternative Self-Employment Blog
A Politically Incorrect Entrepreneur
CrayonWriter
BlogRaters
TagsKitchen
TradeMacro
Mother’s Home

Brian Pratt
Best Real Income
3DayMom
A Writers Words, An Editors Eye
Aaron Roselo
Advertising for Success
And to Think
Andy Beard
Ang’s Chicken Coop

Are we there yet
Army Mom:New Jersey
Article Writer, The
Ask Jason
Ask Jason Business
Axplay
BenSpark, The
BenSpark 2: Electric Boogaloo
BiggerPockets

BlogAboutMoneyOnline
BloggingTips
Blogocola
Blogozine
BMonaco
BodyFitnessInfo
BrownSista

BuyMeBlog
Buzz Queen, The
By the Sea
Cade’s WriteToRight
CampingCoop.org
Candid Quips
Charmed and Dangerous
Colloquium

Comedy Plus
Community Building Blog
Curious Cat Science
Confessions of a Housewife
Confessions of an Everyday housewife
CoolAdzine for Marketers
Craftblog
Crafts 4 Dummies
David Dairey

Dont Fear the Truth
DorisGoShopping.com
Down Memory Lanes
Ecomm Tips
EMoneyMarketing
Endangered Spaces
Fibromyalgia Experiment, The
Finding Life\’s Enchantments

Flatwater Tech
Fools Wisdom
FootPrints On the Moon
Fuzzy Future
Jonlee
Jones PC
JOIN - Do Follow Bloggers **
Julies Journal
Just Not Martha

Kansha Shite
Knitting Fiend, The
Last Blogger
LeaveAmerica
Life in the Fast Lane
Life Is Risky
Life Learning Today
Life Of A School Bus Driver, The

Life Passion Travel & More
Life through eyes of Krissy
Lifecruiser
LittleAmerica.us
Live Life Organics & Your Health
Magical Rose Garden
Marketing Blagger

Master Cleanse
Midlife Musings
Mom is Nutz
MomReviews.net
Mothering Many
My Credit Group
My Dandelion Patch
My Home Recipe
My Muddled Mind

My Opinion Counts
My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings
Nanashi-Inc.net
New Century Politics
No Average Mom
Odd Planet
On the Horizon
Open Road Biker
Patrick Says v2.0

Paula Mooney
PBriscoe.com
Pegs AZ Life
Pencil Thin
PimpMyPageRank
Pink Poison Store
Pond, The
Ramblings Of An Undisturbed Mind
Randa Clay Design

Raw Vegan Momma
Reasoner, The
Rotten Bananas
Sassy Southerner, The

Scribble On The Wall
Scuttlebutt Pipeline
Selena’s Travel and Culture
SelfHynosisProgram
Shopping Flavor
ShowMeHealthBiz
ShowMeMoneyBiz.com
Simple Kind Of Life

Simplify Every Obstacle
Skeets Stuff
Sophistishe.Org | Personal Blog
SQKIKs Simple Tech
Super Blogging
Sun-Flower Family, The
Table for Five
TeaScoop
TechieZone

Teenage Angst Regression
Texas RV Travel blog
Thermal
TimeForBlogging
Tricia\’s Musings
Utterly Geek
Wanders World
Web Files, The

WebStyle
Whatever I Feel Like
Wild & Crazy Ride
Winding Threads
Wired Kayaker, The
Women Mumbles
Work At Home Mom Revolution
Yoga Blog

Article Submissions are quite popular these days. They allows you to easily submit an articles on the other sites to produce some quality traffic and visitors to your site for free. Let the article you submitting be quality and interesting, that can give you the traffic and link popularity potential.

Creating the good and unique article for the article submission service can get you few quality visitors to your site. This technique is specially useful for the webmaster and blogger beginners.

Good and Bad Things for this Technique

Good thing is that you’ll get an opportunity to get some quality targeted visitors to your site completely for free. Also, this technique can improve your link popularity rate. Submission on the popular services can improve your crawl rating, because these sites are usually crawled very fast by search engines.

You need to post one or more good and quality articles on the other sites. This is not good for sure, because this way you post some useful and interesting material on the other sites – not your own. If you have not the problem with this, you will enjoy using these services for sure.

Article Submission Services

Below, I’ll list you the few popular article submission services. You can sort them by the PR too.

List of the Article Submission Services

Article Submission Service	PR
Ezine Articles	6
A1 Articles	5
Go Articles	6
Idea Marketers	3
Article Alley	5
Simply Search4It	4
Article City	5
Article Dashboard	5
Articles Base	5
Isnare Articlesa	6
Ezine Finder	6
Free Articles Zone	4
Article99	4
Active Authors	4

Note: Making an unique article and posting it on the above services doesn’t guarantee you that it will be published. So, the best way is to check out the guidelines for each service listed above.

Link building is a vital ingredient when it comes to SEO and search engine ranking. Link building can be a difficult overwhelming task; however it is a necessary one if you plan on ranking well on search engines. Every SEO will tell you that Link Building and obtaining quality backlinks is a very important facet of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Link building is basically the process of getting other websites to link to your website.

If you’re seeking fresh ways to build quality links, here is a list of link building strategies to mull over:

• Build and host useful tools (Others May Link To This)
• Offer testimonials on complimentary services
• Widgets (and submit them to directories)
• Awards (badge) Like a “Verified SEO Guru Badge”
• Contest (badge)
• Cross link web sites that you own (Try one way links.)
• Write reviews (Make them interesting and sometimes negative reviews)
• Promote content on social news sites
• Article Distribution (Try EzineArticles.com)
• Submit Blog & RSS Feed to Directories (Google Blog Directories)
• Directory Submissions (Choose High PageRank Directories)
• Ads on search friendly sites (Text Link Ads)
• Sponsor newsletters archived to the web
• Job listings
• Forum Signatures (See DoFollow Forum List)
• Classified Ads (American-classifieds.com)
• Publish comprehensive resource lists (Like This One)
• Post an ebook or substantial whitepaper
• Exchange links with marketing and business partners, clients
• Post surveys
• Write guest posts on others blogs
• Contribute articles to online publications
• Optimize press releases (PRWeb.com)
• Comment on industry blogs (SeoFriendly.com)
• Sponsor events
• Social bookmark your worthy content (Digg)
• Speak at events and offer your PPT deck with links embedded
• Donate where a link of donors is published
• Interview industry pundits (don’t be scared to ask pros for interviews)
• Transcribe video interviews to text as separate posts (Great idea!)
• Apply for industry awards, web site & blog awards
• Ensure industry groups you’re involved with link to you
• Create a wiki and ask others to contribute
• Create micro sites for causes, events, specific purposes
• Leverage your affiliate program
• Be a resource on Q/A web sites like Yahoo Answers (indirect)
• Solicit links directly
• Always Provide “link to us” content on blog and/or web site
• Leverage publicity and media for links
• Digital submissions: images, audio, video (youtube?)
• Social profile optimization (Linkedin.com)

In my last post How to Get Traffic to Your Website or Blog I listed several basic SEO techniques that all bloggers should follow - regardless of whether you are trying to make money online or just blogging for fun. In either case you will want visitors. Many beginners chase social traffic only to find out later that they don’t make money from this form of traffic and all too often they find that this traffic doesn’t convert into loyal readers either. They come, browse and then leave without so much as a comment. I have called this type of traffic useless. Some have taken offense at this description and usually tell me that it isn’t useless as it helps them build links. This is true - social traffic can produce backlinks for your site. Unfortunately most often the backlinks are useless as well.

If you follow my directions then you can use social traffic to provide you with useful backlinks which will in turn help you to rank well in the search engines for terms that people search for. Search engine visitors are targeted which mean they have an interest in your topic before finding your site. Unlike social browsers the search visitors will click ads, buy products and even become loyal readers who will leave comments. There is a certain irony to all this - I have found that the best way to grow a readership and a social network isn’t with social networks - it’s best done with the search engines.

Here is the list of SEO basics I published on the last post.

SEO Basics that must be used in order to drive search traffic to your blog are as follows;

You must use your keyword in your URL.

You must use your keyword in your Blog Title.

You must use your keywords in your Post Titles.

You must use your keywords and related terms in your post content.

You will get the best search results by only posting one post per page unless all your posts are related to the same keywords.

If using Adsense then always stick to one post per page.

If using photos then your keywords should be used in the alt tags.

You must use html for the bulk of your pages content

Rather than getting into a long winded explanation of why you should follow my Advice I will just show you an example of a site that uses Keywords for all of the above and a site that doesn’t. The benefit of using Keywords will be crystal clear when I’m finished.

I said that social traffic can indeed produce backlinks but that these links are all too often useless. By useless I mean that they don’t use anchored text in the link for any useful terms that people search for in the search engines.

Melissa from “Why be Normal” has a social blog here on Today.com. She spends a lot of time driving traffic using social networks and I suspect Google Images. She does quite well but could do a lot better with a lot less work.

Her Keyword “Why Be Normal” has no search benefit. In simple terms nobody searches for the term. It also doesn’t reflect her blog’s topic or niche. Her site is most accurately described as a humorous photo blog. I did a search for “humorous photo” on Google before my last post. Why be Normal was not listed on the first page of the serp’s (search engine results page) for that term. I added an anchored link to Melissa’s blog in that post. And waited.

I did a search today on Google for “humorous photo” and guess what?

(Click images to enlarge - use magnifier to enlarge further)

All it took was two anchored links using the term “humorous photo” to get Melissa’s blog ranked on page 1. (The term doesn’t have a lot of competition.)

Here is what Melissa’s backlinks look like. Notice that her links all contain “why be normal” in the anchors. This is because most people link to your site using either your URL or your Blog Title. In some cases they will use your Post title.

Now imagine if she had used a term like “Humor Blog” or “Funny Pics” or “Humorous Photos” in her URL, Blog Title and Post Titles. Every one of her links would contain those keywords and she would be easily ranking well or even number 1 in Google for terms that get searched for and drawing in daily traffic without having to do any work what so ever. No new posts, no chasing social network traffic. Search traffic shows up consistently day after day and if they like what they see they will leave comments and click on relevant ads and buy relevant products.

Now let’s look at this Adsense blog. I use keywords in all my titles and URL. I don’t post often and only in order to target more keywords.

Not bad - 9 posts, 1100 comments (which contain a ton of keyword rich content that the Google bot devours) and no time spent chasing social traffic.

You will notice I have very few useless backlinks.

Now I am not generating nearly the same traffic as Melissa is at the moment. But from Today.com’s perspective I am generating better traffic. Traffic that they can make money from using Adsense. When my traffic clicks an ad Today.com receives top CPC for the click as my visitors are targeted to the ads placed on my site.

In Melissa’s case and basically most of the Today.com sites the Google Adsense ads are smart priced and Today.com only receives a few pennies a click. The reason for the poorly targeted ads on Today.com is because the bloggers don’t use keywords in their post titles (this is the main trigger for what ads Google produces on your page) and they have several unrelated posts (and titles) on a single page. The Google bot is forced to determine what your page is about in order to serve relevant ads. If you do not target a keyword in your post title and have several post titles on a page the end result is a mishmash of ads usually not relevant to anything in particular and almost never relevant to what your social traffic is looking for. (It’s worth noting that Social Traffic rarely clicks ads anyway nor do they buy advertising or buy from advertisers. A problem Today.com is having trying to monetize all the social traffic blogs here on Today.com) This means that any clicks you do receive will not convert well for the advertiser and Google will give them a discount by simply paying Today.com a few pennies instead of the bid price.

Why be Normal should be showing ads for various humor related topics as that is what the traffic is looking for. Instead the site is showing ads as follows;

If her post titles all contained related “humor” or “Funny Pics” keywords she would see an instant change in the ads displayed and Today.com would see a much better return as far as CPC (cost per click) is concerned. Changing her blog title to “Humour Photos - Why Be Normal” would have the most impact on both her search rankings and Adsense relevancy. Moreover the blog description should simply read, “Humorous Photos and Funny Pictures to make you laugh”. If her friends would change their anchored links pointing at Melissa’s blog to related keywords like “funny pics”, “humor Photos”, “Humorous Pictures” etc she would see a sharp increase in search traffic as her blog ascends the serp’s for those terms.

These simple tips will work for any site and aside from making you more money with Adsense they will increase your readership and comment levels as you will be drawing in targeted visitors. Melissa averages 3k - 7k visitors a day with un-targeted traffic and has to post often and work the social networks to keep the traffic coming. Is it worth all the work? Today.com isn’t making much from the traffic, Melissa has few comments and her RSS feed subscribers show no readers. (using Blog Perfume Feed Analysis which may be broken? )

This Adsense blog had a whopping two posts for the month of March. How did my traffic stack up?

13,300 unique visitors or 6,650 unique visitors per post. Not a lot of work put in any way you look at it. I even made $40 for the effort but that isn’t why I’m here. I am simply trying to dominate another set of keywords related to the make money online niche. In time I will add more and more targeted keywords to this site and eventually drive 1000’s of visitors here daily without doing much of anything. It’s the ultimate system for passive income and I have reproduced this method countless times before.

My main blog produced the following search traffic over the final two weeks of March with only two posts;

and in case you don’t believe that targeted search traffic makes money this shot shows how well each keyword converted into revenue;

No amount of social traffic will give you those kind of earnings for the work involved.

Be smart - blog socially if that is your thing but at least optimize your sites for the search engines. Using proper keywords in your URL’s and Titles will create useful anchored links even from social bloggers who don’t know what an anchored link is. They just send links using your URL so make sure your URL has your keyword in it and you will rank for it in the serp’s. Eventually you won’t have to chase social traffic. Google will send you all the traffic you need.

How can we take backlinks from .edu websites?
Tactis fo taking backlinks from .edu site




Tip #1: It's all about blogs

As you all know that to get a good postion in SERPs(Search Engine Result Pages) and to get a good PageRank, you need backlinks. In this article, I will show you the easiest and most reliable ways of getting one way backlinks with very less expenditure.

Below are the top 5 ways for building one way backlinks :

1. Directory Submissions : This is the first thing which every webmaster does while building backlinks. There are thousands of link directories over the Internet. Submit your Website's URL to as many directories as you can. Hiring a directory submiter for this job will make this easy.

2. Submit Articles : This is probably the most popular way of building backlinks. Write a few articles on your site's niche and include your site’s link in the articles. Submit these articles to the article directories. This might also get some traffic to your blog.

3. Forums : This is the easiest way of increasing your Backlinks. There are many forums which have DoFollow signature links. Register on some good pageranked forums and place your links in the signature. Stay active on the forums and this will increase the backlinks count gradually.

4. Social Bookmarking : Submit each and every blog post to the Social Bookmarking sites. If your site is not a blog, then, submit some good and interesting pages.

5. Blog Commenting : Search for the blogs of your niche and post comments on those blogs. Make sure that those blogs don't have 'rel="nofollow"' attribute. Commenting on NoFollow Blogs in useless. Use this firefox plugin to know whether a blog is DoFollow or not. __________________

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.

Step one:

Finding .edu and .gov websites.

Most of you can find these sites by doing a simple Google search using the term .edu or .gov in the search box. Typing in .edu and clicking search will bring back a list of 344 million sites give or take. Great right... not really as that is an awful lot of sites to sift through looking for the ones that you can get backlinks from. Short of paying the site administrator to add your link to his/her domain the only way you can get backlinks from these domains is to find the ones that have blogs and then you need to find the blogs that allow comments. Yup... thats right, you will be spamming the comment sections of .gov and .edu blog sites. If this bothers you then stop now.

If not then I have listed several advanced Google hacks that while not always perfect will give you what you desire; they do take you to .EDU and .GOV domains that are actually hosting blogs with visitor comment capabilities.

Be aware that there are numerous syntax variations for search queries capable of finding these blogs. There are 2 different search methods that I use for this task. Listed below are a few of the queries I find most efficient… grouped according to the search method used.

Find .EDU and .GOV backlinks based on the typical URL structure of the most popular blog management software (i.e. Wordpress):

The following queries target .EDU and .GOV domains hosting the main wordpress login file “wp-login.php” or the Wordpress admin path “/wp-admin/”. This simply means that the domain hosts a blog. These queries will take you to the Wordpress login page - don't panic as you just simply click the link that points back to the blog's homepage - you don't have to login to post comments. (some sites will make you login - skip them and search for those that don't)

* site:.edu inurl:wp-login.php +blog
* site:.gov inurl:wp-login.php +blog
* site:.edu inurl:”wp-admin” +login

Just cut and paste any of these 3 queries into your Google search box and see what you get.

Search for .EDU and .GOV backlinks based on textual keyword combinations that are typically found on blogs:

These 3 Google search queries take you directly to the main blog pages by searching for .EDU and .GOV domains containing the keyword terms “no comments” and “blogroll” which are keywords commonly found on blogs. You can always mess around with different sets of the keywords for additional search results. The "keywords" are enclosed with the (") quotation symbol.

* site:.edu “no comments” +blogroll -”posting closed” -”you must be logged in” -”comments are closed”
* site:.gov “no comments” +blogroll -”posting closed” -”you must be logged in” -”comments are closed”
* inurl:(edu|gov) “no comments” +blogroll -”posting closed” -”you must be logged in” -”comments are closed”


Again, just cut and paste each query into your Google search box.

Here is one more method of querying Google but it does limit the results by requiring the URL to contain the term "blog". It does have an advantage though in that it allows you to filter your searches by using the trailing "keyword" in the query. For example you can put a date like "2007" in the trailing "keyword" location and this will eliminate older inactive blogs from being listed in the SERP's. You can use this trailing keyword for specifying "country" or "city" or "university" etc. Basically you can narrow your searches however you like.

site:.edu inurl:blog “comment” -”you must be logged in” -”posting closed” -”comment closed” “keyword”

Again just cut and paste this query into your Google search box - substitute whatever keyword you like between the trailing "keyword" quotation.


That wraps up step one - how to find appropriate EDU and GOV domains.

Step Two

The Work

From this point on it is trial and error as you will have to visit each of these blogs and where appropriate and when comments are accepted you then proceed to leave your words of wisdom (doesn't that sound better than saying spam them?)

I am not condoning this method but I am a realist and know that many of you will try this method out. Keep this in mind; most of the "comments" are moderated so you will have to leave a relevant comment about the subject matter if you want your comment to be posted. Don't be obvious - if you use some tact you will succeed as most moderators are civilians (ie. they are not internet marketers and haven't a clue as to what backlinks are or why anyone would post a comment for arterial motives) If your comment is relevant they will be happy to accept it.

Your Anchor Text.

To post a comment you have to give your name, email address and website URL. This is perfect as your "name" gets hypertexted and points to your website or blog (the URL that you give). If you use your name or any name then this becomes your anchor text and Google will index you accordingly. If you use the name "paul" then your backlink will point to your site and Google will rank you high in the SERP's for "Paul".

This is not what you want. The name you use should be one of the keywords you want your site ranked for in the SERP's. (see my previous posts for more details on Anchor Text and Backlinks.)

This can be tricky as you don't want to be to obvious, ie using "how to make money online" as your name. Sometimes it is better to target secondary keywords like "SEO Tips" or "backlinks" or "work at home mom" as your "name". Ultimately you want the EDU or GOV backlink first and foremost but it should have an anchor text that will benefit you more than a regular name would.

Keep in mind that some "names" will automatically be flagged as spam and your comment will never reach the moderator. Keywords like "free" "sex" "money" etc should never be used. As I have said before - black hat methods are time consuming and involve a lot of trial and error. Normally you should stay clear as the rewards are usually not worth all the effort or at best are short lived. Getting a few optimized backlinks from EDU and GOV domains are the exception as I have found that these backlinks can propel your site to the top of the SERP's and quickly. If you try this then I caution you to take your time and find the right blogs (relevant to your keyword) and spend some time creating a comment that will get posted. Don't just start spamming every blog you come across - even if successful Google will notice that you suddenly have a ton of new backlinks from all sorts of unrelated sites and most likely penalize you. Always remember that backlinks should appear natural - one or two EDU or GOV backlinks a week is plenty but be sure they are from relevant blogs.

A final note; Keep in mind that a lot of the blogs may use the no-follow attribute and Google will not pick up the backlink. This is too bad but Yahoo and the other search engines will. This can still boost your traffic considerably if you have a popular niche. You will also have to spend time sifting through all the crappy PR0 student blogs and whatnot in order to find some decent PR blogs. This is why black hatting can be time consuming to say the least.

That's it for now.

This may shock some of you but your content has more to do with your search engine page rankings than any other factor - period. It has become increasingly clear that Google has tweaked it's algorithm in this direction for some time now and despite how many backlinks you have or what kind of pagerank you achieve - your content is the overriding determinant in how well your pages get ranked in the searches.

How do I know this?

I have been experimenting for some time now using SEO techniques, backlinking strategies, website design, blog design, hosting platforms, black hat, grey hat, white hat and every other kind of gimmick, trick and sorcery I know of and the inescapable conclusion is this - my best performing sites to date are all low PR, low age simple blogs either hosted here on blogspot or on my own domains. Most have few backlinks and none have any high PR backlinks. By "best performing" I mean simply that these blogs have the most pages ranked on pages 1-3 in the SERP's for the keywords I have targeted and hence they pull in the most free traffic.

Does this surprise you?

I admit that I was surprised at first but have come to see the pattern developing. Google has one overriding goal - give the end user (the searcher or reader) the exact information they are looking for and compared to a few years ago they are achieving this in spades. When you search for something today on Google you usually find exactly what you are looking for. In days past you had to sift through a lot of garbage before finding what you wanted. How Google has achieved this is a credit to the "Brains" behind their engine and while most internet marketers have grumbled and whined over the changes that have crippled their former empires I have come to relish these changes. And so should you.

What this now means.

Google has leveled the playing field for everyone. In the past the folks who made money online had all the resources and knowledge necessary for gaming the engines. Newcomers had a steep learning curve and in most cases didn't stand a chance of reaching the top pages in the SERP's. That has now changed. Anyone can get top ranking by doing what Google wants you to do and you don't need deep pockets to do it.

So what exactly does Google want you to do?

Produce good quality content. Original content.

Anything else? Nope... not really but you can help yourself out by producing it in a search engine friendly way which I will explain shortly.

Over the past few months I have created a number of niche blogs ranging from shoes to recipes for cooking fish. All of them were indexed within 2-3 days by Google. All of them had traffic within a week of creation. 1 blog had traffic 26 minutes after I created it. All of them have pages on the 1st page of the SERP's. Most got there within 2 weeks. Those with less competition got higher ranking faster.

The blog that got indexed and sent traffic in 26 minutes floored me but it also told me that what I was doing was all that needed to be done. The blog btw is in a hugely competitive market but the keyword I targeted was not optimized by others. In case you're wondering it was "how to cook (a certain type of fish)". A small niche to be certain but I get 30 - 40 visitors a day for it. This might not sound like much but I have added a lot more pages to the blog all optimized for related keywords and the blog is now pulling in 200 plus visits a day and I make $3-$4 daily from adsense and have made 4 affiliate sales. The blog is just over a month old.

So what is my system?

This is where I am supposed to hit you up with a sales pitch for my ebook. Send me money and I'll tell you. Lucky for you I'm too lazy to bother with setting all of that up and writing the book so I'll just tell you.

Here it is.

Create your blog using your main keyword in your Title.

Write your first post using your main keyword in the post Title, the first paragraph and use it again in the last sentence of the post.

Link the post Title back to your blog.

Don't over use your keyword in the main content of your post but try and use 5 or 6 related keywords a couple of times each throughout your post. If you are talking about "Fishing Recipes" then use related terms like "trout", "perch", "bass" and so on in your text. This tells the search engine that your content is on topic and makes your page easier to categorize. Think of it this way. If you are trying to get ranked for "Car Insurance" and all you write about in your content is "Car Insurance" then you will get categorized under "Car Insurance" and ranked about 2 million. If you mention several models and makes of cars in your post and several types of insurance plans available then you will get categorized for not only "car Insurance" but for all the more specific terms as well. It is these specific terms that will get higher rankings and all of them will boost your main keyword's ranking in the process.

Each new post should have your blog's main keyword in it but you want to write each new post on a specific sub topic of your main keyword. If my blog's main keyword is "Fishing Recipes" then each page will concentrate on a different fish and recipe. In time you will build up your main keyword while getting indexed for highly specific or targeted sub keywords or "long tails" as they are known.

Post at least three times a week for the first two months.

Do not add adsense or advertising or affiliate products to your blog for at least a month after getting indexed. If you do you will slow down your rankings or lose position on the SERP's. By not monetizing your blog you appear to be a credible source of information for the search engines. You can add this later but expect to see at least a slight drop in your rankings when you do. I have tested this extensively and can say without a doubt that you will always rank higher without monetization.

Have an "about me" section which gives your name, address and contact info. This makes you more credible. The more info you give the better although most people do not want to do this. This is not mandatory as you won't be penalized for not doing it. You will rank better if you do is all.

That's it for on page SEO

Now for off page SEO.

Get indexed.

To do this don't bother submitting your site to the search engines or directories. Waste of time and quite frankly you don't need to.

I use a link from a PR7 site to get indexed immediately. Most of you won't have this option so do the next best thing. Put your link on a high PR site. How? Submit an article to ezine articles (PR6). The bots crawl it several times daily. When it gets crawled, your article gets crawled and the bot follows your link all the way to your new blog. You can also set up a page (lens) on Squidoo for the same results.

It might take 2-3 days before you actually see it indexed on the search engines but this is only because they can be slow to update their results. When you do see it you will notice that the blog was actually picked up a few days earlier.

Submitting to Propeller (formerly netscape) also works just as well.

You are just about done. All that is left is to boost your pages up the search engine rankings. This is done by obtaining a few decent backlinks.

How?

Articles. I know you hate writing but there is some work involved in making money online.

For each post you write on your blog you should write 2 to 3 similar but not duplicate articles emphasizing the same keywords and submit them to different article directories. Start with Ezine articles and GoArticles. There are hundreds of article directories out there and you can find them with a little Google search. Use the highest PR sites first. Each time your article is picked up and posted on someone else's site you get a little link juice back to your blog. Don't write crap. Make your articles useful and compelling - people will want to use them for their own readers. Don't just put your link in the Author's box - this gets left off when people only post a snippet of your article on their site. This is when they only use your first paragraph and then put a link back to the original article so readers can read the rest if they choose. Put your link in the first sentence of the article using your keyword as the anchor text.

Note: If you can't write your own stuff or need help may I suggest you check out The Writer's Manifesto - a great site run by a wonderful person by the name of Monika Mundell. If you need someone to write for you then see her freelance site Monika Mundell.com


Anything else?

Nope.

This is all I have done recently and it works like a charm. It works because I have concentrated on giving Google good quality original content. They reward me by ranking my pages high in the SERP's. I outrank about.com, Squidoo, wikipedia and a host of high PR sites with my 1-2 month old blogs for one main reason. The content on my pages are more optimized and relevant to the subject matter than what the competition has produced on their pages. I don't have PR or many useful links so what else could it be. The simple fact is that your content will win out over PR if you write quality.

A note on quantity.

I am not positive but I am beginning to believe that quantity also has a great deal to do with this as well. I don't mean how many pages but rather how much I write on each subject. It appears that the more exhaustive I am the better. I tend to write long and extensive articles. Most bloggers write snippets. From Google's point of view who gives the most information - a 250 word article on a single topic or a 3000 word article on the same topic but also includes info on relevant topics. Would Google rank Joe Bloggers 1000 word post on "war and Peace" as more relevant than some old Russian dudes 2 million word post on "War and Peace"? Not likely. Now having said that keep your reader in mind always. The reader wants info but probably doesn't want to spend all week reading it. There is a fine balance to be had between giving lots of info and too much info.

On that note...

Try it out.

It works.