If you don’t have a backlinks program – that is, a strategy to build links to your money site, you are not going to succeed in internet marketing (unless you buy lots of pay-per-click ads!).  You need traffic to profit from your web site – and that traffic can some from three different places:

1. Pay-per click ads; Advantage: you get instant feedback and traffic, Disadvantage: costly.
2. Traffic from other sites: Advantage: targeted and free, Disadvantage: hard to get, time-consuming.
3. Traffic from search engine results: Advantage: again, targeted and free, Disadvantage: a bit harder to get, but the best bang for your buck in terms of time.

Traffic from search engine results is often called ‘Organic’ traffic – it comes from Google, Yahoo, Bing and the other search engines – these visitors are looking for what you are selling, and that is what makes ranking in the search engines so important.

The way you rank is by building links to good content – period.  There is no real shortcut to building an effective backlinks program; you just have to make a commitment to do it.  Sure, you can help the process along by outsourcing, using backlinks software (like Backlink Index Express); but the bottom line is that if you want to build links, you have to get your hands dirty and do some grunt work.

Now if you read this blog regularly, you know I am a big fan of outsourcing.  It’s easy to find willing and talented people to do things like forum link building, social bookmarking and the like – just visit your favorite Internet Marketing forum, or check one of the jobs for hire sites, like ODesk.  Just be sure you  are entrusting your backlinks program to someone you can trust.  This part of your business is just too important to entrust to just anyone.

Four-Step Backlinks Program

1. Choose effective keywords that you can actually rank for – don’t pick keywords that are pie-in-the-sky. (See The Best SEO Backlink Strategy: Tips For Success).
2. Mix and tier your links – don’t blast all of your links to one page on your site with a whole bunch of different keywords.  Make each page represent one keyword and build your link strategy around that page.
3. Insulate your ‘money’ site from spammy links.  If you want to link a bunch of PR 0 forum links, don’t send those links to your valuable money page – use an intermediate page instead – or send them to a well-written E-Zine article that has the real link to your money page.
4. Be consistent – regular link building over time beats large, intermittent blasts any day.  Remember the story of the Tortoise and the Hare.

Your backlinks program is one of your most important activities – make sure you are thoughtful and careful when you start building links; it’s vital to your site’s success.

There is more confusing information about backlinking than perhaps any other area of SEO and internet marketing.  When I created Backlink Index Express, the area of backlinking and backlinks software was just getting started.

Before the ‘modern’ era of back linking strategy, most backlink were of the ‘reciprocal’ variety; that means I link to you, and you in turn back link to me.  It was discovered that these arrangements were not very effective, as it was easy for search engines to smoke them out – particularly since most sites at the time had a backlink resources page – that means just a page full of unrelated links to various other sites.

Now it is accepted that one-way links to your site are best and that has spawned a whole industry of backlink resource providers – including services, software and a plethora of strategies, some simple, some complex – and some even contradictory.

Backlink Resources Ideas:

Here are some ideas you can implement in your linking strategy- so you can come up with your own backlink resource toolkit.

1. Outsource the creation of Forum Profile Backlinks – these are simply accounts on discussion forums – most of the discussion boards allow you to put a profile link on your ‘about me’ page.  Great place to put a link.
2. Comment on relevant blogs – although not as effective as they once were, blog comments do provide link juice and if you find a blog that will take your comment – do everyone a favor and don’t spam the heck out of it, please?  Maybe someone else might benefit – and you’ll benefit too by being able to use the site long-term.
3. Index your backlinks – use software tools to run the url’s you create with your links and post them to some type of blog network or at least bookmark them.
4. Keep track of your progress – many people just blast out link after link and don’t analyze the results.  Use a rank-tracking program to measure the effect of your backlinking efforts.  The SEOBook web site has a good free tool.  If you are going to the trouble to implement a series of backlink resources, it makes sense to track the progress of your time and effort.
5. Finally, don’t neglect other aspects of your strategy just to build backlinks.  You have to have good landing page content, a compelling offer and a good tracking system to have a good, well-rounded marketing system.

In the past, link strategy was simple – you just traded links with other sites.  Today, it’s more complicated and requires the use of more sophistication, software and better tracking of results.  Don’t neglect the other aspects of your business, but really do make an effort to concentrate on building some effective backlink resources you can count on this year; you’ll be very happy with the results.

Since backlinking is such a labor – intensive procedure, it makes sense to employ backlink automation software into your linking strategy. There are many well-designed aids available online to streamline and improve the results of your link building efforts.

First, there are programs that are designed to automate the creation of forum profile links. These programs use scraping technology to streamline and speed the tedious process of link building, by automating the registration of forum accounts. Forum profile links are still very effective for boosting your rank, and they are definitely worth doing.

If you are building these links yourself by hand, you can’t go wrong by investing in one of these tools. Examples include Sick Submitter and SEO Link Dominator. Using these tools will save you hours of time, and they are optimized for the many commercial link packets available.

Second, you can improve the performance of your links by employing a relatively new type of backlinks software called an indexer program. This is one of the handier pieces of backlink automation software, as it automatically ‘backlinks your backlinks’ – making the links you are working so hard to create more visible in the search engines. Links that are indexed give you all the benefit and link juice – links that are not indexed, well – don’t help you very much. Although there are others, Backlink Index Express has pretty much defined this genre of backlink automation software.

Third, there are amazing programs that post comment to blogs – they help you find relevant blogs to post to, and then automate the actual posting. The most well-known of these is Scrapebox, but of course there are others. This method is not as useful as it once was, as blog owners are wary of taking any blog comments, due to the large amount of spam generated by these programs.

The fourth method of backlink automation is not software at all, but NO software – it’s called outsourcing. If you need to build a lot of links, you should really consider outsourcing all or part of your process; you’ll gain valuable time that you can use for other productive purposes. It does not good to spend all of your time building backlinks, and then leave no time for adding good content to your blog. Remember, one good blog post is worth several hundred low-PR links. Check the Internet Marketing forums for a well-reviewed service provider; there are many good ones.

Backlink automation software is a wonderful aid – but that is just what it is an AID – it’s not the be-all to end-all. You still have be smart in how you choose your keywords, how you create your content and how your position your offer or ads to actually make money at the end of the day. While software can make you a more effective marketer, it can also use up a lot of your time, so consider outsourcing at least part of your process – that will make the time you do spend with our backink automation software even more productive.

What SEO backlink strategy do you use for your web sites? Or do you even have a strategy? If not, it’s time that you do. You can no longer just ‘write great content’ and others will magically link to you – that is just not going to happen. Site owners with high PR and authority now know too well how important linking is – and are not likely to link you without something in return.

But others pursue their SEO backlink strategy as a full-time mission, and in the process neglect their site’s content and relevancy for the very terms they are trying rank for – another mistake. So where do you fall? Are you ignoring the need to get backlinks in order to improve your search engine placement, or are you so wrapped up in your SEO backlink strategy that you are neglecting your content?

Somewhere in between, of course is where you want to be. Now is the time that you get disciplined; as it is the disciplined marketer who will win the race – and that means setting up a schedule for yourself. Your time is your most precious resource – particularly when you are sitting in front of a computer; with all the data available online, it’s just too easy to get distracted and waste your valuable time.  You need an SEO backlink strategy that is the most effective use of your time and resources.

So don’t get so wrapped up in your backlinking that you neglect other vital aspects of your business. Here are some tips to help you create a manageable, but effective SEO backlink strategy:

1. Outsource – backlink building is grunt work and it’s best to pay someone to do it. You don’t need to spend valuable time creating forum profiles, bookmarking sites or posting blog comments. There are lots of services available on various Internet Marketing forums – and for the most part they are cheap and reliable. Just check feedback on the forums before you buy.

2. Use backlinks software to index your new links – when you get your list of links from your outsource provider, use a program like Backlink Index Express to ‘backlink your backlinks’. This will insure that your links appear quickly in the search engine’s indexes.

3. Choose keywords carefully – don’t waste time trying to rank for terms where the first-page search results are dominated by high PageRank authority domains and root URL’s. A search result with a root url, like this one:

www.mydomain.com/

This is a is more difficult URL to compete against than a search result with a url like this:

www.mydomain.com/deeplinkpage/sudirectory/content.html

A root url means the competing site is ranking well for that term, if there are no root url’s for your keyword – that is good for your chances to rank.

4. Evaluate the backlinks to the top 3 search results for your given search term – this will tell you a lot about the strength of the competition. If the first 3 to 5 results have over 200 links (page links, not domain links) – then it’s going to be hard to rank against those pages without lots of linking. You can rank against them, but do the easier keywords first, get some money coming in, then use the resource to attack the stronger competitors.

Backlinking IS important – but it’s not everything. Use your head when creating your SEO backlink strategy and you’ll have a manageable program that can produce great results.

Building backlinks should be your number one SEO tactic.  There just really is no substitute for lots of links to help your search engine rankings.  Most of you are building forum profile backlinks and blog commenting.  Don’t do this by hand.  There are lots of great backlinks software programs out there that help you in your link building.  The automation is out there, so use it!  One of the first programs out there that allows you to automate this process is Steve Hawkins’ SEO Link Dominator – it’s a good program and allows you to automate the creation of forum profile backlinks – it’s integrated with most of the major backlink packet vendors.  Another service you should check out is Sick Submitter.  This is a monthly service, but it’s cheap and incredibly powerful.  There are even services like Automatic Backlinks that do all the work for you.

But You Have To Get Them Indexed

But no matter what backlinks software program you use, you absolutely HAVE to index your backlinks with a backlink indexer program.  That’s why I created Backlink Index Express, and thousands of BIE users are steadily getting their backlinks indexed, day after day, and all they have to do is keep uploading their fresh backlink url’s to the program – the rest is automated.  Unlike other programs that use Web 2.0 sites that just keep shutting users down – BIE utilizes your OWN network of WordPress blogs.  Nobody can shut them down – and you keep full control.

Checks Your Backlinks

BIE also has a great feature that allows you to check your backlinks to see if they are indexed.  A simple cron jobs checks your backlinks and when they show up in the Google index, BIE removes the URL from it’s queue, mission accomplished.  Do you use Scrapebox?  BIE can take your export file from Scrapebox and process those url’s as well – and ONLY processes the URL if the Scrapebox post was SUCCESSFUL.  You don’t waste time indexing links that are not there.

Introduction To Backlinks Software And Indexer Blogs

Ok, many of you are scared to jump into the whole BIE thing, because you have to set up a network of blogs, get SEO hosting, etc.  Well, I have a deal for you.  I have created a video series called ‘How To Set Up SEO Hosting and Blog Networks’ – and it’s 48 minutes of expert video instruction on how to create the whole BIE backlinks software system like a pro.  You will learn how to:

• Buy Domain Names
• Buy and Set Up SEO Web Hosting with aSeoHosting
• Set Up Domains on SEO Hosting
• Set Up Private Nameservers
• Install WordPress blogs by hand
• Clone WordPress Blogs
• Install and Configure Backlink Index Express and PostFeedr backlinks software

This is a sample of the 48-minutes of video included in this offering: (no music in the full version!):

Now this video costs $17.  But if you buy it, I automatically send you a $17 coupon toward the purchase of Backlink Index Express- the BEST automated backlinks software.  It’s a sweet deal, and the best way to buy BIE and get into backlink indexing.  Try it for 30 days, if you don’t like it, you get your money back.  Simple.

Here is my new KeywordLuv Search engine. It helps you find blogs that have the KeywordLuv plugin enabled.  Enter keywords to find blogs related to your niche, and post relevant comments on there.  Easy way to get some nice backlinks.  This is strictly beta, but so far, works pretty well (dont’ know why the search button is cut off, though):

NEW: Order this product, and get a $17 OFF coupon toward the purchase of Backlink Index Express – limited time!

Many of you have asked for guidance on web hosting for your BIE blogs and related scripts.  I toyed around with the idea that I could provide the proper hosting myself, and after looking into this, I thought better of it.  I would have to give up all other activities in order to provide web hosting, and I have too many neat ideas in the pipeline to do that.  Besides, after lots of testing and trying different hosts, I have finally settled on aSeoHosting as the hands-down best choice.

aSeoHosting provides multiple c-class hosting on a reliable platform.  They support ALL of my scripts.  They take PayPal, and have been very nice to deal with –support response has been very good – as good as I have ever seen in a web host, and I’ve used dozens of them.  Their rates are very competitive, and if you are tired of hassling with poor service or incompatibility, aSeoHosting is your ticket.

Now many of you may be reluctant to set up an SEO hosting account because of the perceived difficulty with the set-up.  I understand this completely, as setting up an SEO hosting arrangement can be confusing and complicated.  So to ease the pain, I have put together a Video information product called:

‘How To Set Up SEO Hosting and Blog Networks’

In this 2-video series, you will learn how to:

• Buy Domain Names
• Buy and Set Up SEO Web Hosting with aSeoHosting
• Set Up Domains on SEO Hosting
• Set Up Private Nameservers
• Install WordPress blogs by hand
• Clone WordPress Blogs
• Install and C0nfigure Backlink Index Express and PostFeedr

Plus you will learn about my ‘secret’ WordPress plugin that I have developed to be used with PostFeedr!

This is a sample of the 48-minutes of video included in this offering: (no music in the full version!).

This is a great deal for 48 minutes of valuable video instruction!

NEW: Order this product, and get a $17 OFF coupon toward the purchase of Backlink Index Express – limited time!

PS: Act now and I’ll throw in a copy of my Blog Network Best Practices Guide!

Note: the aSeoHosting service I recommend is only for the blog hosting portion of this strategy.  You need to host the BIE script on your own web host, as aSeoHosting does not allow the protocols required by BIE to run.