July 2008

Building backlinks should be at the heart of your internet strategy.  I like to use 3 strategies for link building:

1.  Article marketing - time consuming, but rewarding.  My advice:  choose 3 or 4 major article directories. Ezine Articles is a must, ArticleDashboard is good, so is Associated Content.  Don’t spend lots of time and trouble submitting to the hundreds of lesser directories by hand- instead look at services like Article United the distribute to smaller directories.  I’ve used most of the paid article submission services, they work well, too - ArticleMarketer is the best.

2.  Blog Carnivals - in a previous post, I discussed how blog carnivals work.  Don’t neglect this powerful and free method.  I’m currently working on an automation program to submit posts to blog carnivals automatically.  Stay tuned for that - it’s coming soon.

3.  3WayLinks.com this method is absolutely killer.  If you have the time and inclination, I recommend you hop over to the 3WayLinks web site and check it out.  This is not a reciprocal link program - it’s a totally automated 3 way linking systems that automatically will find backlinks for you - you just have to put a small piece of code on your site.  This service builds links slowly, with relevant anchor text - just what the search engines want.

Jon Ledger has a link building guide on the site that is worth the first month’s fee all by itself.  If you sign up for the service, be sure to try the beta of DirLinks - the new, even more powerful service Jon is working on.

Keyword selection is the most important aspect of using 3WayLinks - to use the service properly, you have to concentrate on keywords where the search results for the top 10 have a relatively small number of backlinks, but have adequate search volume.  You want to be able to rank well for keywords that get decent traffic.  Be sure to read all of the excellent documentation on the site - and spend some time reading the posts in the support forum.

This is the paragraph from Jon’s site that got me thinking about the power of this service:

“The niche keywords are where the real money is anyway. It’s a lot easier to get 50 sites ranking for keywords that win you 2,000 uniques a month each than it is to rank one site for keywords that get 100,000 uniques a month — even though the bottom line is the same. Read that sentence again so it soaks in!”

Yes read it again - (Hint: think - Adsense).

I have over 40 sites on 3WayLinks - and my backlinks are slowly, but very surely moving up - so is my traffic and revenue.  Try 3WayLinks - you will not be disappointed.

About The Author:

Carl Ringwall is the owner of Data SystemsPlus, a web consultancy offering a variety of e-learning offerings, software and tools. Considered one of the top blogs for forming a coherent internet marketing strategy, Carl’s online business blog is a must for anyone running a home based internet business.

Sign up for my blog announcement list, for notifications, great offers on my information products, and special premium posts.

Every blogger wants good-looking blog posts.  There are times when you just wish you had the same editing capability in WordPress that you have say, in
MS Word.  No problem - the folks at Microsoft have you covered with some free software.  It’s called Windows Live Writer - and for the average user, I think it’s the best thing to come from Microsoft in a long time.

Basically, you use LiveWriter to create and manage your posts and the software uploads to your blog automatically.  There are dozens of plug-ins available for free, too - that extend the functionality of LiveWriter to the point where you can post about anything effortlessly.  Maps, videos, source code, framed photos, it’s all a breeze with this fine package.  The software has a very handy preview feature, allows drafts, and has a full compliment of the usual Word-Like formatting tools and functions.

In all, this is a great package - and you can’t beat free.  Try it out. 

About The Author:

Carl Ringwall is the owner of Data SystemsPlus, a web consultancy offering a variety of e-learning offerings, software and tools. Considered one of the top blogs for forming a coherent internet marketing strategy, Carl’s online business blog is a must for anyone running a home based internet business.

Another nice backlink method that does not cost a dime - and really takes just a few minutes to set up - is Jon Ledger’s ShareAPost.com site.

The site features posts from blogs covering all categories - and these authors have authorized others to use or syndicate their content.  You can’t change the wording or content of the original posts, and must include all links as the original author intended.  This is great news for those who contribute content - you can get your links, author bio published on other blogs - and that means more backlinks for you.

The ShareAPost service is automated, so contributing posts or incorporating posts into your blog is a snap.  I began offering my blog posts as content, and to date several bloggers have incorporated my content, providing me with valuable backlinks.

Take a few minutes and set up a ShareAPost account - it’s free and if you are posting useful content, you’ll be amazed at the backlinks and traffic.

Guest Post: Trish Jones

Trish Jones, MBA, is an online marketing consultant and has created and managed her own Internet business, since 2004. Trish teaches entrepreneurs, independent professionals and small business owners how to attract more clients and make more money using a simple blog. For more blogging tips, go to www.trishjones.com

Techno Who!?

This is the response I usually get from my clients when I suggest that they need to link their blog to Technorati.

But, if you have a blog, or you are thinking of adding one to an existing website, Technorati, the largest blog search engine is definately a site you'll want to romance with. This specialized search engine is devoted entirely to searching through blogs, and lately, it has started to seriously compete with search engine giants such as Google and Yahoo.

So, What Does Technorati Do?

Essentially, Technorati can index your blogs, whether they are about cooking, financing, engineering or entertainment. The name itself is based on a joining of the words technology and literati, the later referring to a group of critical intellectuals (I didn't feature in the latter group!). By tagging Technorati throughout your post e.g. this post is about commercial financing, you'll keep your posts at or near the top of the list at Technorati. And, to simplify this process, you can use a plugin called Tagalize It which makes tagging throughout your blog posts a really simple task.

I'm sure your next question is how can Technorati benefit my business?

At the most basic, you'll find that Technorati is one more way to let the people looking for your service find you. When people search using Technorati, they are searching for information that has a personal bent to it, and has a presentation that they find easy to read. In other words, people who search Technorati are looking for good information, and if they can find you and you can provide that information they are looking for, you will be one giant step closer to getting a customer, client or subscriber.

In terms of optimizing your blog for Technorati, be aware that the first and best thing that you can do is to tag your entries as I've explained earlier. If you haven't done this yet for your older entries, take the time to go back and tag them. Although this can be time consuming if you're working through a long backlog, you'll find that it will pay off once the hits start coming in. While you shouldn't go overboard, you'll find that you can use several tags on a single blog entry to help people find what they are looking for. For instance, if you have a cooking blog, an Italian recipe could easily have the tags, “Italian,” “vegetarian,” and “mozzarella.”

Although Technocrati has been criticized for not taking into account the 56 million blogs on MySpace, you'll find that it can still be quite useful to you and has some attractive search engine benefits particularly when you get ranked at or near the top.

Until next time,

Source: optimizing your blog

{Update: Automate Your Blog Carnival Post Submission}

A blog carnival is a simple concept - here’s the description from the Blog Carnival web site:

“…where someone takes the time to find really good blog posts on a given topic, and then puts all those posts together in a blog post called a “carnival”.”

So why would you want to do this?  Yes, it’s just another ‘thing’ you have to do with your blog posts (submit to bookmarking sites, Digg, etc…) - but the payoff is that this technique really works.  You get great relevant backlinks from sites similar to yours- AND relevant, convert-able traffic to boot.  Just hop over to Blog Carnival and set up an account - add the carnivals that apply to your web site to the ‘Favorites’ section and submit away.

Be kind to carnival owners, however.  Don’t submit every post, particularly if you post daily with short posts like  ‘Check This Out….[link]…’.  Submit posts that would be truly useful.  Also, don’t submit your Internet marketing tips to the Spirituality Carnival- keep on topic.  If you can’t be insightful in your posts, at least be helpful.  That is kind of my motto on this blog, I don’t try to pontificate on strategy or trends, I just try to post helpful information.

Submit to blog carnivals for a couple of weeks and watch your inbound links and traffic increase.