How to Get backlink AND Make Connections With Google

It is easy to get caught up in getting backlinks from other sites in the hopes of getting traffic to your site.  But what about making those connections?  Is there a sweet spot between using social media marketing to drive traffic and make friends and make money online?  And where does Google Reader play in all of this?

Sorry, bad segue way.  For those of you who are just hunting to build links, then this tip may be nothing more than of little passing interest for you.  For those of you who are trying to build followers as well as backlinks, then this may actually interest you.

So what is Google Reader?

Google Reader is nothing more than a centralized spot for you to place all of your RSS feeds and links online.  Nothing new, I know.  But, google reader is actually a little bit more than your typical RSS aggregator.  In google reader, you are able to share your links with others that are connected to you.

Google Reader is completely integrated:

• Connect to others in your niche (via friend Connect)
• Share cool news stories (and opportunities) with your network of friends

For the typical internet marketer, this doesn’t mean that you should spam your pages all over the place, like most do in Twitter.  Instead, it allows you to share posts on things that you feel like your readers may be interested in.

For an example, here is my Google Reader page…. Leo D’s Internet Marketing Reader

Social Connections with Google Reader

Notice the circle in the image above.  I am not sure if you can see it but it is an anchored link (with my keyword) that goes directly to my blog.  That is for those of you who are only concerned with the back link part of google reader.

However, you should think about integrating google reader into the social marketing side of things as well.

Here is why….

1. More outward exposure.  It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the more you are out there, the more traffic you will get ( I will get into this in a second).
2. Greater opportunities for backlinks without doing anything.  Once again, you are connecting.  Ideally, the best case scenario is for you to get discovered and grab some backlinks from your friends in the process.
3. More exposure to great ideas- There are way too many great blogs and websites out there.  Forget about the A-listers who just generate piece after piece of blogger fodder.  There are plenty of little known blogs that haven’t risen to the surface that have some great information.

Now for the inner workings of Google Reader:

Let’s say that you have joined Google Reader.  You have moved your RSS feeds that you love and have started to add feeds here and there that you think are worthy of sharing.  You have placed your links in your blog as well.

The next step would be to join FriendConnect.  You can see that at the time of this writing, I don’t have any friends (wanna be my first?).  FriendConnect is a lot like the other blog social sites but with a twist.

With blog communities like technorati, you can grab friends all you want but unless they click on your profile picture, they won’t get much from you.

With friendconnect, it is different.  Every time you add a friend or join a network, then their RSS feed is added to your Google Reader. (and visa-versa).  What this does, at least in ideal situations is allow you to socially share what you are reading, what you like, AND your posts as they come in.

What’s in it for me?

Also, GoogleReader and friendconnect is Twitter and FaceBook Worthy (for you social media junkies).

So what is it worth, really?

From a readership viewpoint, it could be huge.  After all, the more friends you can connect to, the greater the chance of them viewing your posts via RSS and the greater chance of them actually writing something about you (links).

From a list point of view,  using friends connect could easily give you a larger list if you do it properly (squeeze page) because you have a much larger net cast over more sites.

From a monetization point of view, outside of list building, it probably isn’t worth much (sorry, this is coming from an organic search guy).

Anyway, if nothing else, go out and grab that backlink.  If you got something to share, join friend connect and yell at me….maybe we can become friends.

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Backlink Theory