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Blogs have proven to be a very effective way to spread information about your site and increase traffic. Many people argue that blogs have a tendency to rank faster than normal websites. Because of this and other reasons, it can be very beneficial to get your site listed in people’s blogrolls. There are a few secrets I have learned that have helped me to get my site on many of these.
The first thing you need to do is find blogs that are relevant to the content on your site. Google is going to give your link much more authority if the two sites are similar. People are also going to be very hesitant to include your link if it is on a different subject.
Finding Related Blogrolls
A few quick methods to find relevant blogs are: go to technorati.com and do a few searches for industry specific phrases; do a google search like "industry phrase inurl:blog" (without the quotes); and once you’ve found one industry specific blog, check out all the blogs currently listed in their blogroll. Those links will most likely be other industry related blogs.
Create A Bargaining Chip
Once you have located several related blogs, you need to think of something you have that the other person would want. Most people are much more inclined to give you a link when you can give them something of value in return. For me, Hubpages has proven to be a great outlet for these purposes. It is a free website that gives you the chance to write on any subject. If you keep a high enough hubscore, it provides a place to have followed links. Being able to add someone’s blog as one of these followed links is a perfect bargaining tool for getting your site on someone’s blogroll.
Contacting the Blog Owners
After you have found your potential blogroll and established your trading tool, it is time to move on to the next step. Writing a generic email that is going to be sent to several different blogs, can be tricky. You need to make people think the e-mail is personal and is not being sent as a mass message. I like to include a few personal things in my life. I also like to make comments about specific issues in our industry. Chances are, someone has made a post or commented about one of these issues.
Do Your Part
Lastly, when people add you to their blogroll, make sure you hold up your part of the agreement and link to them where you said you would. Hopefully these little tips will help you improve your Google rankings and improve traffic to your site.
Links are key to a good SEO campaign. It can be difficult to know where to start though because there are so many different avenues to explore. Linking increases the power and influence of your site faster then any other tactic in SEO, so its importance is undescribable. Here are some quick ways to immediately start your linking campaign. These tactics aren’t an all inclusive list and they are only the beginning of your strategy but they will help.
Create A Squidoo Lens- With Squidoo you are creating an outside site that is sending your site an incoming link. Therefore the more time you take to create a lens that has quality and good volume content the more power your Squidoo lens will carry, meaning the more power your incoming link will have. Now you can take 15 mins and whip up a lens with a few paragraphs containing a link or two to your site. However that incoming link won’t carry as much power as if you created a lens that actually gets traffic. Don’t go overboard and spend more than an hour, but take the extra time to create a quality, topically relevant lens which in turn creates you a quality link.
Submit to the D-List- The D-List is a list of blogs that have Do-Follow link value in their comments, meaning when you comment your name can become a link to your site. Courtney Tuttle offers a list of do-follow blogs, there is a list of links to these blogs there so it is easy to click down the list and make comments. This is a valuable resource but must be used with caution, don’t spam through comments. Go in, genuinely read their posts. Then use the keyword you are trying to rank for as your name and put your sites URL in the website box. Make a comment that adds to the post. This will not only ensure that your link is left in their comment section (instead of removed as spam) but it will also build a positive reputation around your keyword link.
Write an Article- With an article, you are writing the content that will go on another site, meaning it will be relevant content that will point back to your site. Write an article on one of the keywords you are trying to rank for. Make it completely relevant and interesting and then link one or two of those keywords to pages on your site. Then submit the article to a variety of article directories.
Submit to Unspun- Unspun is a site where users can create their own ‘Top 10’ lists and then vote on which item in the list is #1. The lists vary from topics like the” Best Skin Care Products” to “Hardest Disability to Overcome” so you are more than likely to find a list that fits your topic. The 2 coolest parts about unSpun are one; if you don’t find a list that fits your topic then you can create one. And two, you can add your link under the item on the list that fits your topic. On the actual list page the link is no follow but if you click on the item in the list it will take you to a page where your link has followed value. It can take some time for this page to be seen by Google but every link counts so it is worth the 5-10 mins it takes to add your URL.
Link building isn’t impossible, it can just be difficult to know where to start or where to try next. These 4 ideas are just starting blocks but they can help get your site ranked, indexed and become more appealing for future link trades.
5. Do Nothing
Pretty simple right? Search engines are smart enough to know how often you are updating your site, and how often links are coming in. They are in love with fresh content, and will reward you handsomely for constantly posting quality content on your site. Doing nothing will cause your rankings to drop, and drop they will!
4. Duplicate Content
Taking content from your website, posting it as articles on other sites and article directories is a very ineffective way to build links. It is better to rewrite your content so that it is unique when you submit it to other sites online.
3. Buy 1000 Links
Kind of like a "get rich quick" scheme, it just doesn’t work anymore. Sounds good though, right? Getting thousands of links overnight ought to increase your rankings… Well, believe it or not, search engines are smart enough to identify the quantity of links your site gets over time and Google is looking down upon paid links now.
2. Keyword Stuffing
So you want to get a certain keyword ranked? Why not just stuff that keyword all through the page you want it to rank for, get a few links pointing to it with that keyword in the anchor text, and wallah! Trust me, search engines don’t like to be manipulated. They will catch on real quick whether or not you are stuffing your page with a certain keyword. Vary the anchor text for heavens sakes!
1. Hire an Seo Firm
Wait a second! We are an SEO firm, why would I be saying that it will mess up your rankings? Ok, so maybe I need to be more clear. This should sound better:
1. Hire an SEO firm, WITHOUT doing your research.
Having a basic understanding of SEO, will help you to decide whether or not the SEO firm will really help your rankings. You’ll know what questions to ask, and what answers to expect. One important tip: If the SEO company tells you it will submit your site to search engines, stay away, stay far, far away! (Unless by "search engines" they mean "web directories")
A few weeks ago I was introduced to a video series that teaches people all about videos and how to use them to increase the amount of money you make online. The whole goal behind these vidoes is to teach individuals how to make, use, and optimize videos to help increase conversion on your website, boosting sales or affiliate commissions in a short period of time. I also learned that people like to see another person that they can connect to. This is key in boosting conversion and believe it or not, video is a huge internet marketing tool!
After watching these videos I was quite motivated to go out and make a few videos to put on a few of my personal websites. I was going to start with my money site since I could most likely see the results quite quickly.
I created a video of my daughter and I, sitting on our couch, in the middle of our home. The video was simple, nothing too fancy, just welcoming people to my site, telling them why my site solves a problem they have, and giving them a call to action. I then uploaded the video to a website called Viddler and embedded the code on my main landing page.
Within two hours, I had noticed a spike in affiliate commissions. The next day and every day since, we have doubled our affiliate commissions on that site. This was a testimony to me that videos do work to convert visitors! I am currently in the process of getting video on my other 12 sites that produce an income for me. I am also working on getting video up on the ioVentures site.
If you are interested in getting video on your site, you need to know and implement the following things on your sites.
- The video has to be on your landing page where your visitors will see it.
- Set the video to auto play so your visitors have no choice about watching it.
- Start by offering a warm welcome to your site.
- Tell them you understand their problem and why they have come to your site for help.
- Tell them exactly why you can help them with your site.
- Give a strong call to action, to purchase a product or affiliate product.
Video does work! Do what you can to get a video on your site today! Even if it isn’t the best quality, get something up and work on something better in the mean time. I honestly believe that video is the future of the internet. Work on implementing these things and be years a head of your competition.
