Backlink Strategy
- ARTICLES |
To understand why this matters in backlinking, remember back to a few pages ago when we discussed the idea of natural versus unnatural linking practices. Remember the avocados? Well, it turns out that the nofollow attribute has a place in Google's detemination as to whether a collection of links looks natural or unnatural. A "natural" set of links will contain links of both the do follow and no follow types, so when the search engine sees bunch of links that are homogenous on this attribute, it seems unnatural and therefore spammy.
Now that you have a thorough understanding of some poor, ineffective and counterproductive backlinking practices, it is time to get into the good stuff. You know what not to do, so let's talk about what you should do to build backlinks and start driving traffic.
If you follow the strategies below, you will soon be generating more and more traffic to your site, which means steadily increasing revenue from direct sales, afficliate sales, ad impressions or any revenue model that your site utilizes.
Initial Indexing
Our overarching backlink strategy contains three general approaches, each with its own individual components.
To begin, we will do our initial indexing, which is how we start to get our links out there on the web and collecting an audience, as well as getting indexed more by search engines. This will take advantage of some of the same elements as other, spammier, non-Panda/Penguin friendly strategies that have been advocated in the past, but instead we will work to use them in an effective way that will pass the Panda/Penguin tests and build your site rank at the same time.
Social Bookmarking Sites
The proliferation of social networking on the Internet had brought with it a massive increase in the speed and extent to which people share the content they find online. All the popular social networking sites, most notably Facebook, contain an element of social bookmarking in that they allow user to share links from the web at large with their friends and acquaintances on that network. This is, indeed, one of the most popular features of social networking.
So popular is social bookmarking, in fact, that many sites have been developed over the last few years with the sole (or almost sole) intention of creating a forum for social bookmarking. These sites are essentially just crowd sourced indexes of links and bookmarks with attractive, intelligent and intuitive front ends.
Among the newest and hottest of these sites is Pinterest, but Digg, Reddit and del.icio.us have been around for some time. Although Twitter is not strictly speaking a social bookmarking site, it has many of the same characteristics and is ranked at or near the top of most rankings of social bookmarking sites, so it merits inclusion in the discussion.
How do you use social bookmarking to start an index of backlinks for your site? There are four general steps:
Include links in your social profile.
Profiles on social bookmark sites are indexed by Google and other search engines, so when your profile shows up on a SERP, you want a link to be readily accessible from that profile. How do you get your profile to show up on SERPs?
Share content - others' and your own.Obviously, you want to share your own content socially. Part of the beauty of social networking is being able to expose your site to an audience you otherwise wouldn't be able to garner. But when it comes to social bookmarking, you want to help distribute the content of others as well. This not only helps you build up sharing currency so that others are more likely to share your content in reciprocity, but it gives you more and more opportunities for your profile to be indexed by search engines. This gets that link from step 1 into more and more results, which helps lay a base of backlinks.
Participate!Especially on Twitter, social bookmarking is conversation. So, take the time to interact. This builds followers of your content, who will click through to your site and also generate more backlinks.
Stay on top of it.As with any kind of social marketing, this social bookmarking strategy require consistency and regularity in order to gain traction. People will stop paying attention if you stop having things to say, which means the network's ability to generate backlinks for you will decline.
On the whole, social bookmarking is good tool for initial indexing, to start building a base of links. Over time, those links can start to propagate themselves, using the users of the social bookmarking sites as an engine.
RSS Feed Aggregators
Another good way to do some of the leg work on the initial indexing for your backlink strategy is to take full advantage of RSS feeds. Just about every type of site has a built-in RSS feed, especially if it has a blogging component. All WordPress sites have an RSS feed built-in, for example.
Users like RSS ("real simple syndication") because they can subscribe to a number of feeds and have them all brought to one place using an RSS reader, like Google Reader. This means their favorite content comes to them, instead of having to seek it out every day or few days. The convenience makes it like the online version of a newspaper subscription, versus going to the news stand every day to buy one.
A number of sites exist that compile lists of these RSS feeds in a directory. If you use them and use them right, these RSS feed aggregators can be a hugely effective initial step in building up a collection of backlinks.
To exploit these aggregators, submit your feed to their directory. Some sites to look at submitting your RSS feed to include Technorati, Feedage and Newsmob.
Once you submit your feed, users will be able to search and browse to it on the aggregator site. This effectively creates a backlink to your site through the aggregator, which is already frequented by thousands and thousands of visitors each day. Since there are hundreds of these aggregator sites, you cans submit your feed to several of them - a few at a time, so as not to appear spammy - and tap into all that traffic.
One caveat: use your site's direct RSS feed URL, not one generated by Feedburner. The reason for this is that Feedburner redirects through and intermediate URL, so the link that will be indexed and seen on the aggregator will be to a Google/Feedburner URL, instead of going directly to your site. Use the feed URL provided by WordPress or your host for maximum penetration.
Press Releases
Press releases will be covered in more depth in High Traffic Academy on stand out techniques, but they still bear mentioning here because they are a great way to start that initial burst of building backlinks.
The idea is that by writing a solid press release and distributing it directly to online press release sites or through a PR firm that handles distribution, you are at worst generating quality backlinks when it gets published. At best, you get positive press, plus a journalist may take an interest in the release and write more.
In essence, you are leveraging the press release site's readership to get quality backlinks and gain exposure. Read more about this technique in the stand out techniques module elsewhere in High Traffic Academy, but for now be aware of these quick tips:
Tired of building backlinks? Looking for other ways to get targeted traffic? How about getting 100,000 targeted visitors to your website today? Impossible? I'll show you how I made $48,333 in a single week - click HERE.
Now that you have a thorough understanding of some poor, ineffective and counterproductive backlinking practices, it is time to get into the good stuff. You know what not to do, so let's talk about what you should do to build backlinks and start driving traffic.
If you follow the strategies below, you will soon be generating more and more traffic to your site, which means steadily increasing revenue from direct sales, afficliate sales, ad impressions or any revenue model that your site utilizes.
Initial Indexing
Our overarching backlink strategy contains three general approaches, each with its own individual components.
To begin, we will do our initial indexing, which is how we start to get our links out there on the web and collecting an audience, as well as getting indexed more by search engines. This will take advantage of some of the same elements as other, spammier, non-Panda/Penguin friendly strategies that have been advocated in the past, but instead we will work to use them in an effective way that will pass the Panda/Penguin tests and build your site rank at the same time.
Social Bookmarking Sites
The proliferation of social networking on the Internet had brought with it a massive increase in the speed and extent to which people share the content they find online. All the popular social networking sites, most notably Facebook, contain an element of social bookmarking in that they allow user to share links from the web at large with their friends and acquaintances on that network. This is, indeed, one of the most popular features of social networking.
So popular is social bookmarking, in fact, that many sites have been developed over the last few years with the sole (or almost sole) intention of creating a forum for social bookmarking. These sites are essentially just crowd sourced indexes of links and bookmarks with attractive, intelligent and intuitive front ends.
Among the newest and hottest of these sites is Pinterest, but Digg, Reddit and del.icio.us have been around for some time. Although Twitter is not strictly speaking a social bookmarking site, it has many of the same characteristics and is ranked at or near the top of most rankings of social bookmarking sites, so it merits inclusion in the discussion.
How do you use social bookmarking to start an index of backlinks for your site? There are four general steps:
Include links in your social profile.
Profiles on social bookmark sites are indexed by Google and other search engines, so when your profile shows up on a SERP, you want a link to be readily accessible from that profile. How do you get your profile to show up on SERPs?
Share content - others' and your own.Obviously, you want to share your own content socially. Part of the beauty of social networking is being able to expose your site to an audience you otherwise wouldn't be able to garner. But when it comes to social bookmarking, you want to help distribute the content of others as well. This not only helps you build up sharing currency so that others are more likely to share your content in reciprocity, but it gives you more and more opportunities for your profile to be indexed by search engines. This gets that link from step 1 into more and more results, which helps lay a base of backlinks.
Participate!Especially on Twitter, social bookmarking is conversation. So, take the time to interact. This builds followers of your content, who will click through to your site and also generate more backlinks.
Stay on top of it.As with any kind of social marketing, this social bookmarking strategy require consistency and regularity in order to gain traction. People will stop paying attention if you stop having things to say, which means the network's ability to generate backlinks for you will decline.
On the whole, social bookmarking is good tool for initial indexing, to start building a base of links. Over time, those links can start to propagate themselves, using the users of the social bookmarking sites as an engine.
RSS Feed Aggregators
Another good way to do some of the leg work on the initial indexing for your backlink strategy is to take full advantage of RSS feeds. Just about every type of site has a built-in RSS feed, especially if it has a blogging component. All WordPress sites have an RSS feed built-in, for example.
Users like RSS ("real simple syndication") because they can subscribe to a number of feeds and have them all brought to one place using an RSS reader, like Google Reader. This means their favorite content comes to them, instead of having to seek it out every day or few days. The convenience makes it like the online version of a newspaper subscription, versus going to the news stand every day to buy one.
A number of sites exist that compile lists of these RSS feeds in a directory. If you use them and use them right, these RSS feed aggregators can be a hugely effective initial step in building up a collection of backlinks.
To exploit these aggregators, submit your feed to their directory. Some sites to look at submitting your RSS feed to include Technorati, Feedage and Newsmob.
Once you submit your feed, users will be able to search and browse to it on the aggregator site. This effectively creates a backlink to your site through the aggregator, which is already frequented by thousands and thousands of visitors each day. Since there are hundreds of these aggregator sites, you cans submit your feed to several of them - a few at a time, so as not to appear spammy - and tap into all that traffic.
One caveat: use your site's direct RSS feed URL, not one generated by Feedburner. The reason for this is that Feedburner redirects through and intermediate URL, so the link that will be indexed and seen on the aggregator will be to a Google/Feedburner URL, instead of going directly to your site. Use the feed URL provided by WordPress or your host for maximum penetration.
Press Releases
Press releases will be covered in more depth in High Traffic Academy on stand out techniques, but they still bear mentioning here because they are a great way to start that initial burst of building backlinks.
The idea is that by writing a solid press release and distributing it directly to online press release sites or through a PR firm that handles distribution, you are at worst generating quality backlinks when it gets published. At best, you get positive press, plus a journalist may take an interest in the release and write more.
In essence, you are leveraging the press release site's readership to get quality backlinks and gain exposure. Read more about this technique in the stand out techniques module elsewhere in High Traffic Academy, but for now be aware of these quick tips:
- Use your target keywords in your press release.
- Avoid long tail keywords in the title.
- Keep it under 800 words. About 500 should do just fine.
- Press release can provide a major boost to your backlinking and overall SEO strategy.
Tired of building backlinks? Looking for other ways to get targeted traffic? How about getting 100,000 targeted visitors to your website today? Impossible? I'll show you how I made $48,333 in a single week - click HERE.