Backlink Resource Guide…How to on getting backlinks that matter…

Getting Backlinks to rank your website….I can’t think of anything more time consuming, frustrating, and boring than having to spend the time necessary to build backlinks for your site that matter. In this post, I cover how I do it and the marketing strategies that I use to “get there”.  This is a very long post, even by my own standards…I am talking e-book long…use it as a reference, bookmark it, and take whatever you find valuable.  As always, I don’t necessarily consider myself as an expert….I just do what works for me…use them if you want or pass on them..

I decided to write this because there is a lot of confusion in the blogosphere (and among websites in general) into what makes a good backlink and what makes a bad backlink. There is also a lot of different routes that the typical webmaster can take to get to their “destination” (which destination is a bit misleading…the journey never ends). This is primarily in regards to “off page” optimization, which is an oxymoron in my opinion. I do discuss the importance of internal backlink structure as well.

This is a very long post….so long that many other marketers would have simply considered this to be a report (in pdf format, it is 24 pages long). To view it in PDF format or to print it out and read it later offline, you can get this award winning article in PDF format. Click here to get it as a report.

Once you start to understand that in this day and age backlinks are the most influential part in SEO to getting ranked organically, then for most, it is balls to the wall….they go on the hunt for places that they can lay their claim (backlink) on someone else’s site to gain authority.

And here is where the confusion starts to set in….

A link is nothing more than a Recommendation…

From my viewpoint, there are 3 reasons why you would want to build backlinks for your site:

1. To get indexed- There is such a brew-ha-ha over getting indexed quickly.  Webmaster’s worry so much over getting indexed that some are willing to pay for information regarding getting indexed.  The easiest way to get indexed quickly is to get a backlink from an authority site in your niche…and even then your site may get crawled but not indexed immediately.
2. To actively promote your site (building links naturally)-  Depending on your site and content, links beget more links…(just like traffic begets traffic)…if you can get others to recommend your page, the social proof alone will propel your site and its link acquisition much like a rolling a snowball down a hill…
3. To become recognized by the search engines as an authority or relevant source for information in your market/niche- The more recommendations you get, the more recognized you are by the search engines.  And the more the search engines recognize you, the higher you will climb in the search engines because it will deem your page/site as relevant.

In this article, I hope to clear up what I perceive as myths when it comes to building backlinks and the strategies that I implement in my internet marketing when I am trying to rank a site or merely get traffic to the site.  On the subject of building backlinks, I will go over the different ways that people build backlinks using traditional methods that you have probably heard about.

Additionally, for more information in regards to building backlinks, you can also check out BloggerIllustrated video post on defining backlinks.

These include:

Building Backlinks with Comment Marketing

Building Backlinks with Forum Marketing

Building Backlinks with Article Marketing

Backlink Stategies for Press Releases

Building Backlinks with Directories

Building Backlinks with Guest Posting

Web 2.0 platforms and getting backlinks

Buying  Backlinks

Link Farms

I also will go over my strategy that I use, personally, for each of them.  And what may surprise you is that most of my backlink building is done more for other reasons than simply trying to rank for the search engines.  In other words, my backlink strategies aren’t as overt as most webmasters.  I like to think of link building in the same way that you would build a snowball…..

Backlinks for Beginners

From a search engine’s standpoint, a backlink is good for two things:

1. To find new pages to index- The google spiders are constantly searching for new links to check out and categorize. This can be internal and external links.
2. To use a “clue” or confirm as to what the site about to get indexed may be-  The anchor text that is getting indexed gives the search engines some indication as to how to define the page it is about to visit.  Once again, this can be internal links (which will help define the linked page) and external links (which will help the page get ranked for).

Internal Backlinks should be your first step to getting backlinks

Most webmasters automatically assume that getting backlinks has everything to do with getting them from other websites.  This is simply not true.  Good internal backlinks can also help elevate your search engine position…

…that’s right…you can actually propel your site higher in the SERPS by simply pointing the correct anchor text for the keyword to another page on your site.  If you want to learn more about how to do this, check out my post on Keyword Sniping…

Building a good internet link structure is paramount to ranking highly for competitive terms.  It gives the search engines the clue that your site is on topic with your niche….by linking internally, you are recommending other parts of your site that are relevant as well.

If you understand this, then the next step is to step out and go about getting backlinks from other sites to your site.

There are some link building strategies that you can use once you understand the basics.

Linkbuilding the Natural Way

I should mention that link building the natural way really only works for sites that have some social aspects to them (as Frank C. mentioned in a comment in my Internet Marketing and remarkable content post). That is not to say that an ecommerce site or an informational site on something not so social can not gain links…the key is to offer something that is valuable….creativity is a must in the non-social markets… In the case of social markets (like internet marketing), building backlinks naturally is not so hard…you just need to provide VALUE.

If you were to build a website/blog today and did absolutely no link building but instead relied on promotion and others linking to you, would you do well for yourself?  One of the ways is to get involved socially with your market’s community.  For bloggers in the know, one of the ways is to network with other webmasters in your niche through things like friend finder, my blog log, ect.  While these techniques aren’t the greatest in terms of processing speed, the more integrated you are with your community, the better chances you have at becoming more visible to your community. Integration Marketing is especially important if your market is social in nature.

Would your site get ranked?

It actually depends on a lot of variables.  The biggest being, that your content isn’t really connecting or resonating with the website visitor.  And because it doesn’t resonate, they won’t link to you.  This is a big problem in regards to content on the web.  Everyone is looking for the cheap and fast way to build content.  PLR, spun articles through a markov machine, ect. may be the fast way but if you are doing this, expect to have to do far more work than the traditional method of making content that sticks….

Just to use ProBlogger as an example.  He claims that he hasn’t bought or paid for links and that the majority of his links come primarily from other talking about him in the blogosphere.  And if you were to google blogging tips, blogging for beginners or a myriad of other “blogging type searches, you would find his site up there.  He actually suggests that bloggers should follow in his footsteps in regards to getting links naturally….

And if someone came along today and built a blog about blogging (like Darren’s), they would likely fail miserably.  Why?  Because Problogger was an early adapter and was started at the right time …in other words, he created a brand before there really was a blog about blogging.  These days, that market is so congested that you would be hard pressed to rank for anything about blogging without manually adding links.

I see a lot of people slam Darren as not much of an SEO guy…after all, he doesn’t rank for “make money online”, so therefore he isn’t concerned about SEO….this is far from the truth…if you were to take a look at a myriad of keywords that involve blogging (which is just as competitive, by the way), you would find Darren perched in the top 4 for some of the most competitive words in the niche.

But what if your site wasn’t in a niche that was social?

Here is another problem.  While it is fairly get backlinks for free if your website/blog is in a social community, what happens if your site is nothing more than a storefront for blue widgets?  Well, if you were to build naturally, you would probably be sunk, right?  After all, who links naturally to a storefront anyways, right?  Who is going to link to your niche website on hemmorroids?

Without getting into plausible ways to build a branding campaign that could get you links even if you are in a non-social niche (I may write something about this in a later post…I have a whopper of a story that involves this and a client of mine), the most efficient way is to go on a backlink hunt.

And social or not, this is where most website owners find themselves…on the constant quest for finding backinks that do matter to the search engines.

So what do the typical blogs/websites do?  They do what everyone else is doing….

• site directory links
• comment marketing links
• article marketing (although this isn’t as common outside of the internet marketing community)
• bookmarking sites
• ect.ect.

And they make classic mistakes along the way, building a link profile that, frankly, looks very unatural…

Just because you aren’t naturally building links to your site doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t mimic how links get built naturally.

• All of your back links are coming from sites that all have high Page Rank-  A lot of link builders won’t waste their time with sites that don’t have page rank.  What results is a link profile that is top heavy with lots of page rank.  Wouldn’t you agree that links should come from every type of site, big and small?  While I can’t prove it, I would imagine that a site that has only sites with high page rank would be looked at very closely if put under a manual review.  There may actually be a flag in the algo as well.
• All of your anchor text looks the same-  John Chow made this popular a couple years ago (aptly referred to as the “john chow effect”).  What he did was hold contests.  His readers would post “make money online” on their site that linked up his site.  It went well for awhile.  John’s site jumped up in the SERPS quickly….then vanished.  He didn’t even rank for his name and still doesn’t….Anchor text should be varied and mimic the natural progression of link acquisition.
• Your link profile is primarily one type of site or platform-  Some folks will go about grabbing links from all the link directories.  Other people will do nothing but write articles with anchor text (usually the same text over and over) in an attempt to rank.  Others will choose blogspot blogs to build a link farm and all of their links will come from that one platform.  It works…for awhile.  Once again, it isn’t natural and doesn’t look natural.
• Link Velocity-  A lot of people say that you need to manage link velocity or else you risk getting dropped in the dreaded sandbox.  However, while I don’t place a lot of weight on link velocity, I will say this….If you are getting 100’s of backlinks from directories or some of the other manual way to get links, then you may have problems.  From a natural perspective,  it is only natural to get an influx of links if the community you are in are talking about you. And if this happens, you will get an artificial rank boost.  While I can’t prove it, I would imagine that there is a difference to google of a site that gets hundreds of links in a couple days from hundreds of different IP’s from a site that is getting 100’s of backlinks from article or site directories.

What YOUR Anchor Text Says can be the difference between ranking for what you want to rank for and ranking for something entirely different.

In a perfect world, there wouldn’t be a need for paid links or money passing hands.

In a perfect world, you wouldn’t have to spend your days submitting to the thousands of directories or writing articles or creating sites with the sole purpose of ranking in the search engines.

In a perfect world, other people would link up to us based on the merits of our posts and we would get ranked for our keyword purely on the value of our content.

But to be real frank with you, once people start to link up to your site, you will start to realize that the world ain’t so perfect…at least in terms of getting ranked when you place what someone will anchor your link on their site.

And because the algo is weighted so heavily on what other sites say about you, doing manual link building to get your site categorized correctly is ever so important…at least from a search engine perspective.

This causes a couple problems for webmasters.  For one, since the anchor text can’t be controlled by the site getting linked, the indicator or hint that the text is given could mean that it gets improperly categorized.  This can also be a problem when you are trying to manipulate the link the yourself…..

Here is another link example….once again, I am getting “link juice” but it won’t do much for me in terms of getting ranked for my primary keyword…

So let’s humor the assumption that you want to go about gathering links naturally…are there ways to help get other people to anchor the right text to your site?

I should note that there is a lot of speculation that if someone anchors the text with the ambiguous “click here” link, google will actually search for relevant or semantic terms around the link itself to help give itself a clue as to whether this is relevant. It makes perfect sense, given the fact that relevant words around the anchor text does give the link a little more authority as it is deemed as more relevant to the page linking to it.

Sure.

In regards to someone linking to the site’s home page, it is always more beneficial for your keyword to be part of the domain….in the most ideal circumstances, if your keyword is exactly the domain.

For instance, let’s suppose that you have built a site that is all about ultimate fighting and you are hoping to eventually gather links from other websites in this market (as well as other verticals).  If your domain is UltimateFightingGuide, then the chances are great that someone linking to you will will anchor the text this way…

Ultimatefightingguide.com

The result is a perfect link (well, sort of) to your site….

Now let’s say that you have a great post on ultimate fighting…let’s say that it is optimized for Randy Couture (for those of you who don’t know who he is, he is a fighter in the MMA).  Your post title happens to go over Randy’s latest fight and it titled, “Randy Couture bites the big one in a huge upset.”

In all likelihood, someone who is linking to you will link the site to your title….once again, it makes it easy for the webmaster to correctly link to you using your title as the guide.  And since your keyword is in the title,  it will rank for your keyword.

What Makes for a Good Backlink?

The rule I usually use when it comes to finding good backlinks is if everyone can have access to the backlink, then chances are great that the link isn’t going to pass much weight.  On the other hand, if you can get backlinks that others traditionally can’t…whether through purchasing them OR by creating linkable content, then those types of links are worth more than 100 of the afforementioned links.

There are two ways to go about getting backlinks for your website:

• Get lots of low authority backlinks- This is the way that most webmasters go.  Black Hat Marketers will get backlinks en masse in the thousands to rank very high very quickly.  For the rest of the world (and the majority of bloggers/webmasters) they grab as many links as possible.  These include comment marketing, getting listed in directories, ect.  Volume does work BUT it takes a lot of volume for it to outwork entrenched sites.
• Get a few HIGH authority backlinks-  If you are lucky enough to be able to get talked about on well respected websites that are in your market, then you will find your site moving quickly up the search engines.  Authority backlinks are the most ideal way to go if you can get those to link up to you.  They are already trusted by the search engines and 1-2 of these backlinks are worth more than hundreds of lower quality backlinks.

A good backlink in Google’s eyes is a backlink that is relevant to the topic/niche of the page.  In other words, from the perspective of Google, if somone clicks the link on the page and goes to your site, would your site be a natural fit to what the page linking to you is about?  Does it add value to the visitor’s experience?

The Perfect Backlink

So….if I had the option to control how someone would add a link to their site, how would it look under a perfect scenario?

1. It would be from a site that gets loads of traffic and is trusted by Google.
2. It would NOT be sitewide…it would be on a page.
3. It would NOT have any other links in the article (in other words, no “top 10″ list…not “friday’s link” list…no “resource” page)…just my link all alone on the entire page.
4. The article would be very closely aligned in terms of market and be very relevant to the reader in terms of niche.
5. The actual keyword would be anchored in the document and in close proximity to semantic terms (it would be in context in other words).

Now obviously, for the purpose of ranking highly in the search engines there are reasons why I would want an authority site to link to me with the proper anchor text, ect.  But why would I care how much traffic gets to that page?  Easy (and probably obvious as well)….

Because the more traffic that gets to that page means the possibility of two things, both of which are good for my link and my site…

• The more traffic that goes to that page, the more chances there are of people linking to that page which in turns boosts the page higher…which in turn passes that authority to my site….
• The more traffic that goes to the page, the more visible my site becomes and the more chances that someone will link to my site from their site thus boosting my visibility (and authority) even more. (Links beget more links)

In Essense, you become known as good..informative…whatever…because others say so (if everyone says so then it must be true, right?)

Getting Backlinks Via Comment Marketing

A year or two (or three) ago, there was a fury over the so called “do follow” “no follow” rule when it came to grabbing backlinks via comments.  The two groups were obviously at odds with each other.

The “no follow” group wanted to basically horde their page rank juice (allegedly) and not give any link love to those who were nice enough to comment on their blog.  They did this for a variety of reasons, or so they said…one of the most obvious ones was that a “do follow” blog would mean more time spent moderating comments because of comment spam.

The “do follow” crowd thought that this was bunk.  Since they were, in essence, giving the blog more potential content to rank for, why wouldn’t a blog give them a little link love, right?  What resulted was a wave of new blogs (that didn’t have much rank anyway) proudly displaying that their blog would follow links.  Most did this as a trade off.  They would be willing to give away link juice in exchange for getting comments, which most didn’t have up until this point.

The result of “do follow” blogs was the start of another industry (although small).  Plug-ins and software that would find blogs that “do follow” so that websites searching for cheap backlinks could grab a little link love. Some of these products even would show the page rank of the page in question so marketers and bloggers alike could run over to the blog and leave a comment.

But does Blog Commenting Make for a Good Backlink Strategy?

I mentioned this in my Internet Marketing “114 things” post.  One of my points was that commenting on blogs was NOT an efficient backlink strategy.  Here is why I believe this:

1. Since this is one of the easiest ways to grab backlinks, building a link profile on blog commenting is a lot like building a house on sand.  You would have to agree that if everyone can do it, the links would have to be devalued to a point.
2. The link juice would be equally divided between ALL of the links- So you find a “do follow” blog in which the page is high in page rank.  You are also sharing the link juice with 100 other comments, not mention that there are links in the post itself.  If the page rank is divided equally among all links, then you have to wonder what’s the point, right?  Then again, some would argue that some link juice is worth more than no link juice.  And I could argue that the time you spent writing something generic like “great post, you are on my reader now” is not worth it.
3. Most bloggers/webmaster’s don’t get it anyway-  As I illustrated earlier, a blog comment from a “do follow” blog with your name linked won’t do much in terms of getting you ranked for your keyword (although it would work wonders for building a link farm).  Instead you will rank for your name…and that is probably NOT what you were hoping for.  If you do try to put in your keyword (like for instance, household appliances) as the name, it is very likely that the webmaster will flag your comment as spam.

This is not to say I don’t make comments on other blogs.  I do and do it en masse.  But it is for different reasons than the typical blog commentator would do it…..

How I use Blog Commenting

Like I said, I hold very little stock in using blog commenting as a way to build backlinks.  Sure, it is free, but if everyone can do it, it won’t carry as much weight.  What I do use blog commenting is as a way to brand my site and for the exposure that it will bring.

Let me clarify this a second.  Traffic from commenting on blogs rarely brings in a watershed of traffic.  It doesn’t.  Most of the commentators typically are more concerned about what their own interests are when commenting and will very rarely visit a site from a link.

As an example, I have accumulated probably a hundred or so comment links since I first started advertising this blog (20 days ago).  I have received a smattering of traffic from the links and I can guarantee you that the majority of those who clicked were the webmaster themselves.

So, if there isn’t much “link love” to gain from commenting on blogs and the traffic is hit and miss (mostly miss), what is the point of doing it from an internet marketing perspective?

Easy…exposure.  You get exposure from the people who actually matter….the webmaster.  They visit your site.  They now know you exist.  And if your content is remarkable enough, you may be able to gain a backlink…the best kind…from them at a later date.  In essence, the webmaster gives you yet another funnel to drive traffic to your site.  And a link to your site within the content will get clicked on far more than a link from a comment.

Exposure creates more exposure which in turn will create more exposure and so on and so forth….

And the more exposure you get, the more traffic you will get and the more potential backlinks you will get….

I should point out that most blogs don’t have a chance with this because their content is simply not remarkable enough.  It doesn’t do anything that raises eyebrows.  It isn’t any more informative than the next blog in their niche.

I should caveat this with your comments can’t be the atypical comments like “nice blog” or “great post” or some other generic comment that almost everyone and their uncle lazily writes just to grab a backlink.  The comment should be relevant to the discussion, well worded (intelligent) and give the webmaster an incentive to actually check you out (like, man..this guy sounds like he knows what he is talking about).

In this niche (make money online, internet marketing and search engine marketing), it is easy because we have so many people that don’t walk the walk. That is why you get so many copy cat websites out there that are basically saying the same thing over and over…. However, it can also work in literally any niche that is social.

Comment Marketing Strategies and the A-list Blogs

Most blog commentators will naturally trend to the more popular blogs.  You know the type…the blogs that get 100+ comments every time the author posts, no matter how dumb or stupid the post is.  Some will do this to be a part of the conversation.  Most will do this in the hopes of leeching traffic from their site.  Hardly ever happens but they try anyway.

I hardly ever blog on the A-list blogs unless I am genuinely interested in something they have written.  Since my blog comments are more centered on the webmaster themselves, I have found greater success by working my way from the bottom up (finding webmaster’s that aren’t in the limelight and forging a relationship with them is much easier than trying to get the attention of an A-lister).

Plus, it is easy for your comment to get lost in the sea of other comments…

Just to give an example, I recently made a long winded comment over at Problogger.  I wrote it primarily because I felt like the person writing it was a bit off target and I wanted to “rock the boat” so to speak….I didn’t expect hardly any traffic other than from the poster themselves (it was a guest post) and, as expected, I didn’t get much traffic, in relation to how much volume problogger gets….Here are the results (this was a week ago…you can click on the picture to see the results.)

I also happen to have two other blogs where I left a comment.  Now, judging from the analytics, which blogs did I make the most impact?  My problogger visitors hardly took the time to even let the page load.

On the other hand, my comments at SEO-Zombie and Lost Ball in High Weeds, was more responsive…with both site visitors actually spending some time on my site and going through the posts.

I know, the traffic is hardly worth mentioning…but I have a hundred or so of these comments that are generating similar results (and even more that aren’t).  Besides, it is the branding part that I am more concerned with…I know that I if I can put a little buzz in the webmaster’s ear, that it is likely that I can actually build a networking relationship with them and the backlinks (and traffic) will come.

And just in case, you are wondering, this isn’t about gaining a following or readership…this is about creating the buzz that will make your brand go viral and get backlinks (hopefully) from other web sites in your target market.  The following will happen if your content is good enough….the backlinks will follow if your content is good enough….the search engine rankings will follow if you get the backlinks.

Get Backlinks through Forum Marketing?

A couple years ago, I had a friend who was ranking #2 for the keyword “Shoes”.  He did this almost exclusively through forum marketing.  Him and his collegue basically spent hours a day hitting the shoe forums and blasting the place with posts about…you guessed it…shoes.

His website was an ecommerce site that you wouldn’t think could be manipulated via social blogs or websites.  His intention was to sell shoes and market his site via the forums.  What he managed actually surprised him (and it still amazes me).

The most surprising thing was that he didn’t spend any money buying links to this coveted one word keyword.  However, he accidentally happened into a market that actually had a social structure.  Yeah….people do talk about shoes believe it or not and they do it socially.

My friend has since sold the website (for an amount that would take me a few years to make) and moved on.  And I think that things have changed abit in regards to link authority and forums….which is probably a good thing he did sell it…

Personally, I don’t put a lot of stock in building backlinks through forums in spite of my friend’s success.  I view his site as more of an anomaly than anything else (I may be wrong…been wrong before…can’t see that changing anytime soon).

The linking structure to most forums are just about as thin as comment marketing.  A long thread could have as many as 100 links going elsewhere and most forum threads will hardly ever get linked to themselves.  What this means is that although you may get some link love from the forum itself, it will be minute compared to a regular link on a referring site within the context of the article or post.

And then there is the archive problem…..most forums will archive old posts, pushing these posts way back onto deeper pages and the search engines will sometimes even go as far as deindex the thread….anyone who has built their site on links from forums can attest to watching their pagerank dwindle down to nothing because of this.

So if the backlink from a forum is weak, what is the point of bothering?

Simple….social proof.  A signature link with the right call to action will get you visits and potential backlinks from those visiting.  This is especially true for markets that house a large number of people who own their own website.

The social implications and the possibility of implying authority using forums is great and can easily help someone build a following that could give backlinks in the future.

Quality Forum Posts + Total Number of Posts = Authority

Authority + Signature Link with Strong Call to Action = Traffic

Traffic to your site + Quality Posts/Offer = Potential for $$$,and the possibility residual backlinks through word of mouth marketing from the visitors…

Like it or not, forum readers are easily fooled.  In a lot of ways, authority can be deduced to the amount of posts someone has (if someone has 1,000 posts, they must know more than me….)

And because of this, I use forum marketing as a means of grabbing authority in whatever niche I am in.  Now I am not implying that you need to fake your way to authority status. I actually believe that if you intend to build a flagship site, you should know what you are talking about.

Plus, people who use forums are more likely to link up to posts that they feel are valuable in terms of whatever is being talked about.  This includes unsolicited links from the forum itself….

This website got a taste of this just recently with my one of my posts.  The link was totally unsolicited…

Here is the traffic surge that I received as a result….(click the image to see other data).  This was one forum post on a high traffic forum and it happened in a little over a day and a half.

From this post, I received visits from people who were targeted within my niche.  More importantly though, this kind person who freely listed my link resulted in 5 backlinks that I would have otherwise not gotten….and then there are the people that these people know….all in all, according to my google webmaster tools, I received over 500 external links for this one post.

You have to love the power of social proof….

Now I am not patting myself on the back for a job well done…I am just illustrating a point on the what I believe is the true power of the forum….it ain’t in the backlinks for SEO purposes…..it is utilizing it to build a brand and gain backlinks through the social proof that you can easily create.

Get Backlinks through Article Marketing

Bloggers tend to be wary of investing the time and energy into creating content outside of their site.  After all, most spend so much time and effort writing content that they really have very little time to do much of anything else.

But if bloggers thought like internet marketers just for a day, they would come to the conclusion that article marketing works not only in terms of building up a decent link profile but also in terms of directly driving traffic to their site.

I don’t write every day for this site (or for any of my sites).  But I do write everyday for other sites. And article directories are just one of the many places that I use to gather free backlinks and create funnels of traffic to my sites.

If you listen to the marketers peddling their bum marketing products, they would tell you that the power of article marketing is what happens as you start to build a large article portfolio, which won’t happen overnight, by the way.  In addition to the direct backlink for the article directory itself, you will also have the potential of having other webmaster’s pick up your article, complete with the resource box, thus giving you the possibility of unlimited backlinks.

Sound too good to be true? Maybe so in terms of having other websites pick up your articles.  Most of my articles don’t get published by more than a handful of sites (and I have a ton of articles written using different pseudonyms.)

So, the big question is how valuable are backlinks from article directories, right?

In the grand scheme of things, not as powerful as some of the article marketing gurus will claim…at least not in terms of gaining a backlink from one article post.  However, about a year ago, I read a forum post of a woman who was actually able to tap into the “make money online” market exclusively through article marketing.  I would imagine that she would’ve had to write a ton of articles though and it slipped out of the top 10 just as quickly as it made it there.  Still, it shows the power of article directories if you are tenacious and dedicated enough to constantly write them.

How I use Article Marketing to Build Backlinks and get Traffic

Now obviously, anyone can write articles for the article directories and although some may argue the point, you don’t have to be an expert writer to get backlinks.

What makes ezine articles and the other quality article directories isn’t the backlinks though.  It is in the fact that these directories can easily move up in the search engines for long tail keywords.  And with the right exposure, comes the potential for more traffic through article funnels.  If you are selling something and target the right keywords, then you have a recipe for not only gaining exposure but making money.

I am obviously stating the obvious here about article marketing.  And anyone who has done internet marketing for any amount of time has probably played around with the article directories, either for the purpose of getting free backlinks or for the traffic from the long tails in the search engines..or both.

As an aside, I did do a little case study on EZA and may write a post about it for a later date in relation to why EZA can dominate a long tail search while a simple blog site may take a bit longer….

Get Backlinks From Press Releases?

Another free (in some cases) way to get backlinks is through releasing press releases or so claim some of the marketing experts.  The idea is to make an announcement via a free press release website and hope that google will include this as a backlink in your link profile.  But does it work?

This is taken from a comment by Matt Cutts roughly 4 years ago…take it however you will….

Yup, we agree on this randfish. I’m just making trying to make sure everybody understands too. I’m not against doing press releases; press releases can be a useful part of getting traffic and building a brand. For ranking in Google, however, the main benefit of a press release is not direct links or PageRank from the press release directly; it’s primarily the people who decide to write an article and link because of that.

Does this mean that press releases don’t have a place for link building? Of course not.  But the idea that if you write and submit your press release to 50 press release sites on how you just opened the door to your blog for the purpose of gaining some free backlinks is not an efficient (or effective) model, that is, if you are to believe Matt Cutts.

A much more effective model would be to either contact journalists and writers directly with your press release…But then again, that would require a bit more work and your press release would have to be something that was actually interesting….something that most webmaster’s won’t take the time to create…

The backlinks come from other writers who found your press release publishing your press release on their site.  The result of having just one press release published could be thousands of visitors to your site.

I personally don’t use press releases for anything other than sites in which I have a very strong USP….and usually the site involves selling and building a list for potential future sales.

Get backlinks through Site Directories?

Site directories are a bit of a mystery to me.  They are obviously set up to pass link juice with the right anchored text to your site.  They have no intrinsic value to the visitor and therefore most are not visited by the random person searching for information.  And they go directly against what Google says in their TOS.

But do they work?

Yeah, they do.  Human reviewed Website directories can help elevate a website in the search engine rankings. Case in point, nationalpositions.com, which has built its site primarily through submitting to site directories and now has an authority status with sitewide links for the search term, SEO company.

Justin at SEOZombie has a great case study that takes a closer look on the inside of how they did it here (I won’t steal his thunder…besides, why make this article longer than it has to be when someone else has done the leg work, right?

The challenge with site directories that most webmaster’s face is that it is very easy to do a copy and paste job through all the directories.  What usually happens after that is a sandbox session with google because their anchor text is all the same OR they are building directory links too quickly.

Obviously, the quick fix is to…..vary the anchor text with semantic terms as well as using keyword variations and modifiers to make the anchor text different but still in context with your keyword.

Since these types of links can be utilized by anyone, the link juice they pass is debatable.  BUT, if you are tenacious enough, you can build some authority with a lot of these links.  Volume does work…

Like I said earlier, you can go about getting ranked two different ways….this way is the way of the masses…building a load of low quality backlinks over time.

As far as branding and site directories are concerned, don’t count on any.  These sites get virtually no traffic that would even remotely matter to you.

Get Backlinks through Guest Posting?

I am a huge advocate of guest posting.  I like it because it fits all the criteria of building a solid link profile without having to do the things that could get you sandboxed or penalized.  It also is a great way to brand your name, get relatively cheap social proof which in turn will get readers and potential backlinks at a later date as well.

I mention this briefly in my guest blog to get more traffic post (probably one of my shorter posts).  The content obviously has to be as good or better than what you would write on your own site.  Plus, the authority that you get from being a guest poster can give you almost instant recognition, provided that the website you are guest blogging for is respected.

Just for the sake of showing what I am talking about, I have a little screen shot of the traffic that resulted from a guest post I made at BloggingTips.com….I would post the link to the article itself but it is nothing more than a quick rehash of another post I wrote a while back.

The traffic from this post wasn’t outstanding by any measure….42 hits in roughly 6 days…BUT from a backlink perspective, it was a hit.  The page itself was mentioned in a couple of the usually “weekend” links fodder posts that bloggers make and I saw several of the “bigger” fish in the google pond suggest it in their google reader.  The result is that this page may earn page rank over time thus increasing my authority with my link. And there is nothing better than an aged link on a post that has some authority….

The irony to this is that while the post may be useful to the people who read it, it was not what I would consider one of my stellar posts.  Like I said, it was a rehash of something that I had previously written (actually, calling it a re-hash isn’t fair…it was an original article…).  But, the authority of the website in the eyes of its readers was enough to give my little 20 something day old site a boost of credibility…

Now, would someone who just happened on my site recognize how GREAT I really was (just kidding)? Nope…I don’t have the credibility…after all, this internet marketing blog is very young.  However, throw up a guest post on a blog that already has some authority (bloggingtips gets roughly 60k uniques a month) and suddenly…I am linkable…

Needless to say, I try to write 3 guest posts a month to leech traffic to my site and get backlinks.

So, up to this point, I have discussed the common free methods of getting backlinks and traffic to your site. Now, as you can see, I focus primarily on branding strategies to getting back links..I am not so concerned for the overt back link.  I know that if the content is good enough and if you can create enough traffic funnels for people to find you, you will build backlinks the natural way.

Here is just a little summation of what I do as far as internet marketing strategies are concerned…

• I use comment marketing as a doorway for other webmaster’s to find me.  Any residual traffic from my comments is fine but it isn’t the primary objective.  I don’t care about “do follow” or “no follow” sites because the link juice isn’t worth the effort of formatting a link building campaign.  In other words, I gun for residual back links…they kind where I get a mention if the webmaster finds something useful.
• I use forum marketing as a means to establish authority and to get my site indexed.  Once again, the link juice isn’t worth the effort for building a backlink campaign.  However, the residual backlinks happen more often partly because a forum is built around supplying good content (in most cases).
• I do use article marketing for the backlink.  I only focus on article directories that will give me the most bang for my buck…these are the directories that are indexed in the search engine results for long tail keywords.  I typically will write articles that are gunning for a particular long tail using modifiers (best, free, ect.) and use the authority of the article directory as a platform to funnel traffic back to my site.
• I don’t submit Press Releases unless I have something to say that I think will catch the attention of an editor or writer because the back link itself in a press release won’t do much in terms of building authority…it is the links that you get in the event that an editor that picks your press release up that will matter.
• I do submit to site directories but only after my site has picked up a little authority and has natural backlinks from my peers pointing to my pages.  Because of the mundaneness of submitting to these types of sites, I usually outsource the work.  As far as branding or getting backlinks as a result of being listed, it is a non-factor.
• I do guest post to grab natural links (with the properly formatted anchor text to my site).  The backlinks will age and as they age, my authority will follow.  (I may write a post at a later date for what to look for when you are thinking about guest posting.)

Other Social Media Platforms and Backlinks

I am kind of grouping other social media platforms like social bookmarking sites, digg, stumble upon, ect. into one group, partly because for the most part, I don’t really see them as useful on the whole, other than the potential branding aspect….

From a personal standpoint, I believe that social bookmarking sites (and scuttle sites) give so little in terms of backlinks that other than using it for what it is intended (bookmarking cool sites), it doesn’t do enough to warrant the time and effort involved.

This includes using automation tools like bookmarking demon and free tools like onlywire.

For anyone who uses these sites, you should ask yourself if you would use the site if the site suddenly didn’t follow or count your submissions as a backlink.  If you answered that you wouldn’t use it if the site suddenly “no followed” the links, then you should re evaluate what the social platform is really worth beyond the low juice backlink.  Every social platform is different and can be used to draw in traffic…the trick is becoming a part of the community itself and learning how the community operates behind the scenes.

The problem with using bookmarking sites as a backlink strategy is that everyone and their mother use them for the backlinks….and most rarely use them for what they are intended.  And because anyone can do this (and actually DO do this), I believe that Google will diminish or even disregard these types of backlinks eventually, if they haven’t already…just my opinion though.

In regards to Digg, Stumbleupon, Sphinn, ect….these can be used for the purpose of branding but to make it super effective, you have to immerse yourself into the community of each of these platforms….something that I don’t really have the time to do and don’t think that the effort is worth the reward…..

And then from a traffic perspective, I have found that Digg, Sphinn and Stumbleupon visitors don’t stay very long, don’t convert for anything and rarely come back.  Plus, they really screw up my analytics and the things that I do track.

The real problem, though, is the conversion rates and time on site.  I am never big on traffic for traffic sake.

Just to use this site as an example, someone actually did stumble one of my pages and I have the following graphic to show how many came through stumbleupon and the time they spent on the site as well as the bounce rate.  As you can see through the numbers, if all my traffic was like this, I think I would quit being a webmaster (unless I was running an adsense and they were exiting through ads…something that stumble users DON’T do)….

…the traffic is tiny in comparison to my other traffic sources..thankfully (once again, I don’t want these social platforms to skew my analytics)

Click on the image to get a better view with more data….Take a look at how it relates to twitter (which once again, while I do use twitter, it isn’t to promote my own stuff), as well as the other traffic sources…as you can see it pales in comparison and has a VERY high bounce rate.

So far, we have discussed the FREE ways to grab backlinks or get traffic to your site….but what do the professional internet marketers do?  Surely they do things a little differently than the masses, right?

Well they do….

The following is for informational purposes only. Gaming Google is against their TOS and could get your site penalized. I am just sharing this information to show what other webmaster’s do in saturated markets to stay competitive..

Building Backlinks By Buying Them

Noone (or very few) webmasters talk openly about it.  But since building backlinks is so impressionable to the search engines, the professional marketers will go about the process of building backlinks in a completely different fashion.

I showed you what I would consider to be the Perfect backlink at the beginning of this article….

What if you ALL your backlinks could like that?  What would it do to your search engine position?

I briefly mentioned that there are two ways that you can raise your site in the SERPS….

• Lots of low quality links.
• A few high quality links from relevant sites.

That’s it.  And while most bloggers and internet marketers will toil away doing what every one of their peers do, the professional internet marketer has figured out that he can manipulate his rankings by creating more backlinks than the next guy simply by purchasing them.

This is especially true in the ultra competitive markets where a lot of money is involved.

There are a few ways to go about building backlinks by paying for it….

1. You can either approach the webmaster themselves and offer to pay for a link- In which case, you will have to most likely explain to them what you are doing.
2. You can find a backlink service through various forums.
3. You can find a link broker or service where you pay to be on their network of sites- This is usually either one off backlinks or an actually membership site.

The approach the webmaster method

The easiest (and cheapest) route to grabbing a backlink is to send an email to a webmaster in your market and ask for a link in exchange for a little money. The downside is that most webmasters will have no clue to what you are doing and you will have to explain to them what it is you are hoping to accomplish.  Some will think that you are trying to scam them out and out.

Even then, they may not go for it.  After all, for a lot of industries, this is a weird request.

I have personally found more success by asking the webmaster if I could advertise on one of their posts and then explain how I would like the post formatted. Find a post from the past and ask then to include it in their post.  It is a lot easier for a webmaster to understand getting a link from an advertising perspective than it is to try to give them a crash course on SEO.

Using this method, they will think you are crazy but most will go for it if they think that it is in regards to advertising.

This method doesn’t work for highly competitive markets.  And if it does, the price is much steeper because the webmaster is very aware of what you are doing.  In a lot of cases, choosing a vertical market (something that is different but similar) will be more likely because you aren’t in direct competition with the webmaster.

The rent a backlink method

There are forums out there that have entire sections based on renting or purchasing backlinks.  Believe it or not, this is an industry that makes the webmaster’s who rent their links a nice little side income. DigitalPoint is one of them.

Understand that these guys know what they are doing so therefore, you want to take the greatest care when choosing who you will deal with.   For instance, if you have a Tech Blog, and are going to pay $40 every six months for a link, then you are going to want to know a few things….

• How many links are you going to be sharing the page with….
• Is this going to be site wide (not good) or contextual (best)….
• Is the site indexed in google?  Is the page indexed in google?
• Check to see if the PageRank is Faked…

In addition to this, you need to understand that renting a link is long term proposition.  Link authority comes as the link itself ages.  In other words, just keeping a backlink for 6 months may not improve your SE visibility.  Keeping a backlink for a couple years will definitely help long term.

The find a link builder membership method

There are services where you can manually add your links to improve your search engine visibility.  The prices for these services vary from moderately expensive ($200 per month) to not so expensive (I have seen some as low as $12 per month).

Most link building services operate like this…you create a little 100+ word snippet with your keyword anchored within the text and they post it one of their link farms that spans over a very large network.

The cheaper services are more like a “co-op” type service.  You list your pages that you want sites to link to in their network.  You drop a link of another website on your page (with the properly formatted anchor text)…another site reciprocates with a link pointing to one of your pages.

Buying links via link building memberships has it own list of pros and cons.

For one, it isn’t a slam dunk in terms of getting ranked.  There have been times where I have built links for a particular keword only to have it wind up in the sandbox after a couple dropped links.

Another problem with the lower rent link building services is the quality of link you are getting…a lot of people who belong to these membership sites will build websites just to place links on.  In other words, they won’t add links to their high authority sites.

Then there is the question of security within the network itself…..if the network is spotted by Google, then ALL of your links will disappear overnight along with your authority.  You may even have your site deindexed.

This happened to me first hand a while back with a company called backlink solutions.  Their network was discovered and virtually all of my links via this link site disappeared.  And it wasn’t just me…google shut down their entire operation.

Of course, buying backlinks does have a few bonuses to it.  For one, you don’t have to go around hunting for backlinks…they are there whenever you need them.  This can come in real handy when you are trying to rank for an upcoming product launch or are need just a couple backlinks to grab the top position for a long tail.

I have also found that these types of backlinks work best if your site has some authority in the eyes of google or the term you are after isn’t that competitive (and even then, I have been sandboxed).  Having authority with google will almost always let you get away with doing more things.

If you are going to take away one thing from this section, understand that if you do decide to buy backlinks, there are some definite risks associated with it and you will want to diversify heavily…in the event that a link network is discovered, you don’t want to have all your eggs in the same basket.

Back links and Link Farms

Finally, some webmasters get around purchasing links through building a network of link farms that they can use at will whenever they need a backlink.  This is a timely process and one that involves a little deception and requires you to have a little understanding of how the search engines determine relevancy.

If you have been doing internet marketing for any amount of time, you have probably messed around with building sites from free properties and tried to create a “mini-net” that would eventually point to your money site.

And I bet for those of you doing product launches, you have been pleased with the initial results if you can create these sites before pre-launch.  You know, you build your money site and then create a network using:

• Blogspot blogs
• Wordpress blogs
• Hub Pages
• Weebly
• Google Knol
• Squidoo
• Youtube, GoogleVideo, ect…
• ..and a variety of other free platforms….

And during prelaunch, everything looks good…you are listed on the front page for the product in question.

Then the product launches…you check google and you have disappeared…you are not only NOT on the front page, your site has fallen back 5 or more pages…

What the hell happened??

I some cases, this is simply due to your competition creating more websites than you and getting more of these very low quality and untrusted links….

But in the event of big product launches, this has more to do with affiliates marketers who have slowly built up very powerful link networks (with page rank to boot) that they can add to their money site at will.

It is the conundrum that new affiliate marketers face…how to compete with those that are already entrenched in the market itself, right?

The key to building link farms is to understand that you don’t want them to rank for anything and you don’t want to monetize them at all.  In other words, they are meant NOT to be seen by anyone…..if you are getting a few visitors a day, you are doing something wrong….

Link farms are meant for nothing more than accruing pagerank….

Getting PageRank is Not that Hard….

I laugh everytime I see a blogger proudly make statements like “I became a pagerank 4 in less than 3 months”

The reality is that building page rank fast isn’t really that hard….anyone can build a website up to a visible page rank 3-4……it is all about getting links en masse.

When building a link farm, “do follow” comments and site directories are great places to accrue PR.  If you submit to enough of them and comment on enough “do follow” blogs, you will be able to grab pagerank quickly…you won’t rank for anything that gets traffic but you will be able to grab it, no problem.

I could go into it but it would make this very long post even longer.  If you want to test it, grab a blogspot blog, write a few posts and start commenting on other blogs…you will find your PR soar.

Adding Comments on “Do Follow” blogs, Forum Signatures & Site Directories = Page Rank

(You won’t rank for anything relevant but you will have some authority to pass to your money sites)

Once you get enough page rank, you simply drop a link for instant authority recognition.  It is really as easy as that…..OR IS IT?

The problem that most people face is actually two fold….

1. Time- It takes time to build websites and building link farms is really just a matter of building content and then waiting it out for the pagerank to hit…..
2. Being Believable enough to get links- Bloggers are more savvy than they were before.  Comments such as “good post” tend to be looked at as comment SPAM.  Site directories sometimes will turn down a new blog.

I am not going to turn this into a “how-to” guide on building a link farm but I will leave you with a few thoughts into the workings of a link farm…..

1. The secret (if you can call it that) is to either build sites on a different IP block from your regular site, change the who-is details to someone else (be it your brother, newly formed business group, ect.) and differ your M.O. from what you would normally do…we all follow patterns….change your patterns.
2. You can get pretty general and still cover many markets/niches….if you want to eventually boost up a Britney Spears site, you can build farms on the entertainment market on the whole…..
3. You can even manipulate a site to pass relevant page rank by utilizing something called topical theme vectoring…in other words, your website could be in the entertainment niche but you could actually pass link authority to a viagra site by making a page that somehow links the two topics up.

Anyway, like I said, I don’t really want to make a how-to guide into building link farms (maybe I will save this for a later date when I can really talk about it).  The point is that this is a very common way that professional marketers use to get their sites ranked.

Final Thoughts on link building

I hope that you don’t feel too let down by this post.  I know that building backlinks to get ranked is perhaps one of the most frustrating things that a new blogger/internet marketer can encounter, especially if they are going after broad niches that are highly competitive.

Link building is unfortunately a necessary evil, at least in terms of how most search engines’ algos are set up now.

And, as you have probably figured out, most of my initial link building practices involve building great linkable content (or at least I think it is great), and gaining velocity in the search engines through word of mouth marketing (social in the most general sense).

There are very few shortcuts that actually last in terms of building a site that sticks. I should point out that this is in regards to building backlinks for a site that can be deemed as social…not the typical ecommerce site that would require a different marketing strategy.

Also, this is my internet strategy. I say this because in my view, there really isn’t one bonafide way to build backlinks that works all the way across the lines in all niches.

So what do you think?  What strategies do you find work for you and your websites?

Other articles you may be interested in:

• Advanced Link Building Techniques..the black hat way…
• Link Building Strategies going from the bottom up…

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