SEO Tutorial Part 3 - Are All Backlinks Equal?

Today I will elaborate on the link value of various backlink types, all with the end result to help your adsense sites rank high...

1) Are the backlinks indexed?

Having a website linking to you doesn't mean you've got a backlink. Only backlinks that are indexed are counted.

How to know if a backlink is indexed? If you are publishing articles, the best way is to Google for a unique phrase of your article, with double quote. For example, you can google for "this is a phrase from your article", including the " ".

This will force Google to return all the indexed articles containing this exact phrase, and if this phrase is unique to your article, you are forcing Google to return all your
articles that are indexed.

Note: If you use the "link: yoursite.com" search in Google or Yahoo, the result is highly inaccurate. This is a known fact in the industry.

2) Are the backlinks from unique contents?

If all your backlinks are from the same article, such backlinks will be discounted.
This means if you publish the same article across a network of article directories, the actual value of all the backlinks will be reduced. They will still count, but not as much.

The current solution in the industry is to spin the article before distribution, so as to 'cheat' Google into believing that those articles are unique. So far this trick works.


3) Are the backlinks from unique domains and IPs?

If all your backlinks are from the same domain or same IP address, such links will also be discounted.   Again, discounted doesn't mean not counted. They still count.


4) Position of the backlink within the linking page

It is rumored that Google discount backlinks from the end of an article because such links are usually links from article directories, where in most cases - you add your
links in the resource box.

I'm not sure if this is true. Assuming it's true, you should try to get backlinks from content syndication network such as EzArticleLink, where you can create backlinks from any part of the article.


5) Anchor texts of the backlinks
This is an important point. Please pay attention to this!

Although theoretically if you want to optimize for "cheap christmas present", you should use "cheap christmas present" (without quote) as your anchor text, but if all your backlinks are using the same anchor text, Google will frown.

Reason?

Google doesn't want you to build links. Remember, in Google's ideal, it wants other websites to link to you because you are good.

Under such ideal, it's impossible to have all 100 links linking to you using exactly the same anchor text! Hence, in your link building process, you should vary
the anchor text.

The strategy I like to use is a mixture of the main keyword and some longer-tail keywords. For example, if I'm trying to optimize for 'cheap christmas present', majority of the backlinks will be 'cheap christmas present'.

Some links should use other longer tail phrases, such as 'very cheap christmas present', 'buy cheap christmas present', and so on...

The beauty of this linking strategy is that the longer tail phrases will reinforce the main keyword phrase, while the main phrase will also reinforce the longer tail phrases.

The result is that you rank well in not just 'cheap Christmas present' but all other longer tail phrases too.

That's another thing I like about EzArticleLink. It allows me to set up 3 anchor texts for every article.

40% of the links will go to the main anchor text and 40% will be evenly spread to the other two anchor texts. The rest of the 20% will be linked from the article title, which rightfully should also include your keywords.

This means for every article I post, I will get hundreds of different anchor text linking to my website, with most of the backlinks being my main keywords.


6) Are the backlinks backlinked?

The idea is this. If webpage A has got other webpages linking to it, and webpage A links to your website, it mean your website has to be quite important.

The experts in the SEO industry call this promote your promotion, i.e. building backlinks to the webpages that link to your website.

As I mentioned before, this is done automatically in EzArticleLink system. I am not aware of any other systems that can do that!


7) Are the backlinks from authority site?
A backlink from a website with high pagerank, i.e. an authority site, is many times more powerful than a backlink from a website with no pagerank, though both are counted, so long as they are indexed.

Though it's not easy to get backlinks from authority site, it's worth the effort. You can get some backlinks from authority site such as ezinearticles, squidoo, blogspot
and social networking sites.

Another way is by posting comments on high PR blogs that 'dofollow'. Remember to build backlinks to these backlinks to boost the link power!

You can easily do so with services like EzArticleLink.


8) Age of the backlink

Finally, the age of the backlinks matters. If you have a webpage with lots of backlinks built years ago, and there are no new backlinks recently, you will realize that the
search engine ranking of the webpage will start to drop.

The reason is simple. To Google, if no one wants to link to you now, it means your webpage is no longer worthy.

It's not necessary to have fresh backlink going to every webpage of your website on a continual basis. But minimally, you should build backlinks to the homepage
of your website on a regular basis.

Tag : AdSense, blog traffic, online business, SEO, tips, Tutorial

SEO Tutorial Part 2 - Link Building Methods

Today I will explain some of the most popular backlinking methods available to get your adsense/websites rank high...

Before I begin, let's quickly go through some fundamentals.

• Link building is about building links FROM other websites to YOUR website, not from YOUR website to OTHER websites. You may laugh, but I have learned that many newbies may find this clarification useful.

• Next fundamental. In the SEO world, we often use the word backlink, which refers to links from OTHER websites TO your website. If you link to other websites, that's NOT a backlink to you.

• Last fundamental. Link building is not just about building backlinks. It's about building backlinks using a particular keyword phrase as the anchor text. For example, if you want to rank for 'cheap christmas present', the backlink that links to your webpage has to be using the anchor text 'cheap christmas present'.

Once you are clear on the fundamentals, let's move on to the exciting part......

Ways To Build Backlinks

1) Google's answer to link building

Officially, Google wants you to create great contents and/or services for your website, so that people can see the value in your website and link to you.

If you strictly follow this strategy, it may take you a long time before you can see any result. But there are ways to accelerate the process as I am about to show you in the list below...

• Create link bait. For example, write an article on 101 ways to do something or a long list of resources. This kind of article will usually arouse people's interest within your niche and thus link to that article. If you have a blog, put your "link bait" article in the Popular Article listing. The idea is to get more people to read that article and increase the chance of them linking to it.

• Provide a useful online application on your website, so that people will naturally link to you in their blogs or forums.

• Distribute free templates or scripts of any kind, such as Wordpress theme, website template, free script, free plugin etc, with a backlink to your website. When people use them, they will have to link to you.

The rest of the methods are not recommended by Google. But they are proven to work and are very likely to continue working for many years to come.

2) Effective textbook ways to build backlinks

Just pick up any SEO ebook and you'll see these proven link
building strategies:

• Distribute articles to article directories, aka article marketing.
• Post comments in blogs.
• Post in forums.
• Create pages in Blogspot, Squidoo, Hubpages and other social networking sites.
• Adding stories to Digg, Propeller and other social bookmarking sites.
• Press release.
• Submit your link to non-reciprocal link directories.
•  Exchange links with friends or other webmasters, through article exchange or blogroll exchange. Though Google doesn't like reciprocal links, reciprocal links still count. Just don't over do it. What Google frowns is EXCESSIVE reciprocal links.

3) Other seldom-mentioned but effective ways to build backlinks

• Create accounts in social networking sites and membership sites that show your profile in public (there are thousands of them out there, with high PR) and include backlinks in your profile. You can create as many accounts as you like. (This method is extremely spammy and your account may be banned. But when done in big numbers, it works.)

• Create your own linking network within your domains. This is applicable to those with lots of domains. You can divide your domains into groups and cross link them. Just make sure that they are not reciprocal links. (This method can be very powerful!)

• Create a simple software and submit it to hundreds of software directories, with a backlink to your website. Most software directories have high PR. These are great backlinks for you.

4) Buy links

Although Google says "do not buy links", buying links still work. If you want backlinks from high PR web pages (not websites), buying links seems to be the only option for most people, including those big companies.

But use it at your own risk. I doubt Google has an algorithm to catch you. In most cases, websites are caught because someone reports it to Google.

5) Participate in link building systems

- Link exchange networks
This is the earliest form of link building system, where webmasters create a link directory on their websites and link to one another. Such links are categorized under
reciprocal links (i.e. I link to you, you link to me).

This kind of link building system is infamous and Google hates it with a passion because it doesn't provide any value other than boosting search engine ranking.

There are rumours that Google ignores exchanged links (or reciprocal links). I doubt it. Google may discount reciprocal links, but it doesn't ignore such links.

Honestly, I am not a fan of link exchange and have never tried any. My advice is stay away from such networks because there are better and safer linking systems out there.

- Content syndication networks
In such a network, you will post articles to a network of blogs or websites within the system. You can view this as another form of article marketing, except that the submission process is much simplified since you are doing it through a centralized system. This is my favorite link building strategies because I can build unlimited backlinks to unlimited web pages.

Most content syndication networks post your article to a network of websites and that's the end of the story. Your article is usually buried deep in the website without
any backlink to it. Although every indexed backlink counts, if you are able to get lots of backlinks that have backlinks from other websites, such 'backlinked' backlinks will
significantly increase the value of your website.

The gurus call it 'promote your promotion'.

Tag : AdSense, blog traffic, SEO, tips, Tutorial