Blog Income Life

Posts Tagged ‘backlinks’

When speaking with other bloggers the topic of how to exchange links often comes up.  I am not a great fan of  requesting link exchanges. I think that this may have been effective in the past, but the value of two sites bouncing off of each other with links is minimal at best in helping you to grow your blog income life.  Those bots are getting smarter all the time and see that as being artificial.  Does that mean that you should never request any link exchanges?  No, of course not, but let’s strategize  for maximum effect and apply some basic rules.

1. Climbing the Page Rank Ladder
It’s a big payday if a PR4 or PR5 publishes a link back to you.  We dream of this.  Chances are that it will remain a dream unless we somehow earn that distinction and it certainly won’t be just by emailing a request for a link exchange.

I’ve read somewhere that it’s a numbers game and if we send enough requests to high ranking sites that some will accept, and that it takes only a few to make us look like an upcoming celebrity in the eyes of Google.  Personally I don’t like this approach.  It’s like throwing mud at the wall and hoping some of it will stick

2.  Guest Blogging.
One way to get a strong backlink from a high ranked blogger is to submit a guest post. Make it good.  Nathan Hangen who developed Twitter Rockstar has built up at least a portion of his blogging career by posting on high ranking blogs.  He says that he put in more effort into his guest blogs than he did into his own, that his best work is on other blogger’s blogs.  That makes sense.  If a high ranking blogger is going to give you valuable space on his blog the content and quality better be good.  Chalk it up to the cost of doing business.

3. Develop Relationships
I am a strong believer of developing online relationships.  Select blogs that are in your niche or are complimentary and post comments there.  But please, do me a favor, something more than just “Hey dude!  Great post man” … that is an insult.  There is no indication that you actually read the post and it looks like you are just milking the system.  Developing a good relationship in the blogosphere world is getting to know the blogger, and the best way is to read the posts and make good thoughtful comments.

The immediate thought is to pick out only the top bloggers to post on.  Sure, that is good but a top blogger who gets thousands of visitors a day and a lot of comments is not going to take notice of you, at least not right away.  His assistant might.  What you get here is a low value backlink to your blog.

There are many good up and coming bloggers who are in the lower hierarchies of page ranking – maybe not even ranked.  If there content is good, if they make me think, if I learn something from them, if I like their spunk and stick toitiveness, I’ll certainly comment. The favor may be returned but don’t expect it.  This is not the type of bouncing of links that I am talking about.  This begins to establish rapport with someone who is in your leagues, is on the way up and with whom you would like to build a relationship.  Even if you are ranking above this aspiring blogger, giving a leg up is good.

I think a good strategy would be to comment on both the super blogs and the up and coming ones.

4. Develop Your Own Community.
Search for bloggers not only in the same niche but with some commonalities so that you already establish yourselves as part of a group.  One of the best ways to do this is to comment on the blogs of commenters.  .  What you will find is that the same bloggers are commenting within the same grouping of blogs and that there is a bit of camaraderie already established.

5.  Become a Cheerleader
When you visit your colleagues’ blogs make note of their victories, big and small, congratulate them.  It’s a lonely world out there – sitting in your basement subsisting on ramen noodles…ok, I know of at least one guru who started that way – interaction and acknowledgement is powerful.

5.  The Daisy Chain
When you have rounded up a group of bloggers playing in your niche with complimentary topics etc. that’s when it is time to exchange links, or better yet, formalize a daisy chain.  I have done this with my dog related sites and it works well.  Here is how it goes:

Blog #1 – dog skin care:  my blog
Blog #2 – all about raw dog food: colleague blogger
Blog #3 – natural dog treats: my blog
Blog #4 – dog toys: colleague blogger
Blog #5 – pet insurance: colleague blogger
Blog #1 – dog skin care: my blog

It doesn’t have to be in that order.  Notice that I started with one blog and by the 6^th link had returned to it.  This is a complete circle.  In between the blogs owned by my colleagues I peppered some of my other blogs.  These all have dogs as a common theme, the bots crawl all the sites connecting them to each other and giving the backlink credits to each one as it grows.   If you own a group of blogs that are complimentary as I do with my dog ones, you can actually do the daisy link process without even going out of your own, but then, you’re not developing relationships that way.  You can mix and match with the same grouping, just be mindful of straight bounce backs.

Granted the above takes time.  Is there a way to leapfrog this process?  Yes there is.  There are companies that have developed software systems that get you lots of links by auto-submission to bookmarking and directory sites.  I am using one such service.  It is still in beta but I am pleased with the results.  When I changed the domain name of this blog I lost all the backlinks of the original one that I had worked so hard for.  That was October.  I was crying the blues because I lost over 230 links.  As of today, with this service I have 872 backlinks. It is scheduled for a future review on this blog, so stay tuned.

Happy Blogging and Happy Linking

Valentina
872 backlinks in less than two months – nice brand of cheese.

RELATED POSTS:
Link Building Part III – Pingbacks & Backtracks  081009
Link Building – Part II  – 05/10/09
Link Building  – Part I – 02/10/09

Short and sweet on a rainy Sunday afternoon …..

Two things:

1.  New Look of Blog Income Life
2.  New Feature for You

1.  New Blog Income Life Look.

How do you like the new look of Blog Income Life?

I changed it because a blogger whom I respect suggested that the theme I had was bland (or words to that effect).  I often thought about that myself and chalked in “custom design” as a future expense item for when the blog starts to bring in the bucks.  But when Glen Allsop, who owns and authors Viper Chill pointed out the blandness of the theme, I thought it was time to take action now.

Still I did not want to dig into my pocket to the tune of $2K for a webmaster just to redesign my blog and header and you know what my thoughts are when it comes to anything techie … not my strong suite, not an area I want to become an expert in.

What I did instead was to visit some other successful blogs.  I looked at their designs.  I noticed that while most were extremely well designed for SEO they did not really have bells and whistles and pictures and graphics and a slick “professional” look(well OK, Glen does have a slick logo on his header) – they were bang on about what it is that their blog is about and, I noticed, they were well monetized.

Back to the drawing board.  The good thing about Wordpress Direct is that there are plenty of templates to choose from.  After going through the choices several times I chose this one.  It’s cleaner, modern and to the point and took me all of a minute to change the template … I also like where the comment option appears.

Do you like it?  Yes?  No?  Post your comments below.

New Blog Income Life Comment Feature.

This is a do follow blog, in other words, if you comment on this blog the bots will follow your comment to your blog and give you what is known as link juice, or backlinks, but unless you know how to check this out, there is nothing to show the visitor that this is a comment friendly blog.

To those with quizzical looks on their faces now, the common practice these days is to not allow “do follow” in which case, when you post a comment to someone’s blog, the bots will not follow the link back to your site.  This was implemented some time ago to discourage spam comments.  If you comment on such a blog, your effort is not entirely wasted,  as if your contribution was worthy,  some of the readers may visit your blog, so inch by inch, traffic becomes a synch.

While visiting other successful blogs I noticed that many used the Comment Luv plugin.  Success leaves clues.  I went and registered at Comment Luv and downloaded the plugins for both the Comluv and Twitterlink features.  Now, when you comment here, the title of your latest blogpost will appear and it will be tweeted to your twitter community.  You do need to register at Comment Luv to activate this feature and while you are at it, add the plugin to your own site – it also has an affiliate.

Happy Blogging!

Valentina
Comment Luv luvs cheese!

Other Related Posts on Backlinks:
Link Building Part III – Pingbacks & Backtracks
Link Building – Part II
Link Building  – Part I

October was a challenging month but so well worth it.  Visitors are up 27% over September.  Search Engines delivering 15% is decent.  Actually, I read somewhere that the ideal traffic pie would be equally divided into 33% from each source.  So that is something I am going to keep an eye on.  Clearly, more search engine traffic is needed.  Most “exotic” visitor was from Tanzania.

No income to report for this month but some important changes and the results of those changes are chronicled below.  While you may not be in the same boat, if ever you want to make “changes” to an existing  blog, my experience may be helpful:

1. Changed  Domain Name:
   Former domain name: Blog Along With Me.
   New domain name: Blog Income Life.
   The driving force behind this was the realization that Blog Along was not a keyword optimized domain for anything other than blog, which is extremely competitive and already well entrenched in the top 10 of Google’s list.  Blog Income as the main keyword for the new domain has a fighting chance to get top positioning with Google, and by default, other search engines.
2. Change of  Platform
   Exported from Blogger to Wordpress Direct.  The transfer was painless.  To think that I had put it off for some time literally trembling at the thought that somehow all would get lost in transit.
3. Domain/URL Redirect:
   http://www.blogalongwithme.com redirected to http://www.blogincomelifie.com
   This was a small tactical error.  While all the content of the original blog transferred to the new one, the hard fought for backlinks did not.   There were over 230.  For one scant moment I thought of reversing the redirects.  Chose to stay.  Chalked it up to experience. Fresh beginning.
4. Analytics
   Forgot to add the analytics code to the new site until October 05. Consequence is that the above chart is for October 06 onwards. Wordpress Direct does gather similar statistics however they seem to include my own visits, so the accuracy is flawed.
5. Monetization
   Banner for ABC’s free PDF installed right way.  Half way through the month added an affiliate banner.   Am still ambivalent about Adsense; still not here but have noticed that a blogger no less than Alvin Phang continues to use Adsense.  Maybe I’ll add it for November and see what happens.  More banner ads to be added.
6. Course Purchases
   Have bought several new courses addressing blog improvement and affiliate marketing.   Will review in good time.

This has been a useful exercise.  While the transfer of the blog from one platform to another was painless it was not without its growing pains – mainly, getting familiar with Wordpress Direct, or more to the point, not all templates are created equal.  More on choice of templates in the future.

Traffic Bug is now part of my blogging tool kit.  It’s a great little program and has freed up a lot of my time.  This little bug is my introduction to automating some of  the daily tasks such as  post and article submissions to search engines and directories.  The escalated growth of backlinks is encouraging and I am confident that the number will soon catch up to and outpace the previous number.

Market Samurai is another valuable program in my tool kit.  It is invaluable for research and keeping track of marketing campaigns.   The more I use this software the more I realize its value.  Cannot recommend it highly enough – everyone, in my opinion should have it.  If you are just starting out and dollars are scarce, a ramen noodle diet for a week would be worth it to just be able to buy this program.

What are my goals for November?

-         Increase traffic by 20%+ (I’m following Darren Rowse’s formula here)

-         Get back on to earning some dollars.

-         Spend less time checking my daily stats which is so addictive now that I can see the needle move, either up or down, daily.  Maybe the novelty will wear off and I’ll do this just once a day, in the morning.

And speaking of the needle moving – it is amazing how volatile Google’s ranking/positioning can be.  I guess until you earn your stripes you are susceptible to swings that take you up or down by several hundred.  I was surprised when I checked the statistics for a competitor which had a PR of 2, and now suddenly no PR!   It could be a glitch or is this the famous Google Slap?

Happy Blogging!

Valentina
Blogger for Money
… cheese servings were scarce this last month

It seems that I made a tactical error when changing the domain of this blog from Blog Along With Me to Blog Income Life.  The error was in the “redirecting” of the domain name.

What I did:  Redirected Blog Along With Me to the new Blog Income Life

What I should have done: Redirected the new Domain name to Blog Along With Me.

Why?  Because all the hard work that I did on the old domain, did not transfer to the new domain.  That sucks!

Now to be honest I did check with people in the field as to which domain name should be redirected to which.  The reply I got was that it was not a good idea to keep redirecting the same domain name to a new destination.  If you recall, Blog Along With Me was already redirected to Rip Along With Me.  When I asked if all the stats etc. would transfer along to the new site, I was told yes.

I think both the advice and the answer given were wrong – to a point.  The stats did transfer with the blog but were unique to the original one.  They did not transfer to the new name.  In retrospect I think that what my advisor had understood was that I wanted to redirect the new domain name, to the redirected Blog Along to the Rip Along on blogspot.  I agree that would not have been good.  There would be three redirects and that is too messy.

This little tactical error is costing me.  It is costing me all the backlinks that Blog Along With Me has earned in the past nine months of work.  Blog Along had over 230 backlinks.  When I redirected this domain to Blog Income Life, the backlinks stayed with the Blog Along.  The two did not blend.

Here in my opinion is what the proper procedure should have been:

1. Make Blog Along With Me the destination URL
2. Leave Rip Along With Me Blogspot inactive (I have decided to keep it inactive for the time being with a notice at the top that the blog has moved).
3. Lift the “redirect” command off of Blog Along With Me.
4. Redirect or “point” the new domain name, Blog Income Life to Blog Along With Me.

If the above procedure had been followed my 230 plus backlinks would be credited to the new name.

As it is, I am building the links from scratch again. This is  nother reason to really do some good research on your domain name, the keyword of the domain and its competitive factor.  If you get this right you don’t have to mess around with redirects, at least not for the reason that I did.

Happy Blogging!

Valentina

Blogger for Money
…….apprenticing to be a cheese maker (what are cheese makers called)

Related Blog Posts

Domain Name Selection - Jan 25 2009
Link Building – Oct 02 2009
Backlinks – Oct 05 2009

This is Post #2  of a series of articles on Link Building

In Link Building Part I, I explained the role that link building plays in marketing your blog and its importance in gaining authority and credibility with the search engines.  I gave an example of how a series of backlinks creates a path to your site and how it can increase traffic to your blog.  Today I want to talk about just two ways of building those backlinks.

In the internet marketing world, backlinks are also referred to as inbound links. Think of that as air travel.  The inbound flights are the ones that are arriving to your city from somewhere else.  They bring passengers.  There are two types of passengers on those flights:  returning residents and visitors.  The “inbound” link is the flight and the visitors who come to your site through that link are traffic.  Some of that traffic will be new. Some of that traffic may be returning because they bookmarked your “link” as a favorite – yes, they like what you have to say!

There are plenty of  ways to get back links.  Two of the most powerful and effective (in my opinion) are

1.  article marketing.
2.  web directories.

You know a little about article marketing already and I hope that you are submitting fresh versions of your blog postings to article directories.  You may want to revisit my posts:

Article Marketing
http://www.blogincomelife.com/making-money/traffic-generating-techniques-part-ii

Keyword Rich Articles
http://www.blogincomelife.com/making-money/traffic-generating-techniques-part-iii

What I want to stress here is the importance of the Resource Box.

When you open an account with an article directory, you get to fill out a bio and a Resource Box.  In that box you tell a little about yourself and you put a link to your blog.

When your submitted article is published by the article directories, it has a page of its own on the internet and it will include your Resource Box. Now there is a unique page or “site” on the internet with a backlink to your blog.

But it does not stop there.  If your article is a good one, chances are that it will start getting picked up by other publishers – of blogs, of websites, of ezines.  When they publish your article they also give credit to you by including the Resource Box.  It literally goes viral.  There is no telling how often your article will get picked up.  I still have articles that I published  two years ago and that are  still getting picked up today.  Every article pickup is a backlink to your site.

The other good backlink is to publish your link in the Web Directories.  These are category based rather than keyword search based – so lets say your blog is about dogs, you publish your domain/URL in the directory, giving a brief description of what the visitor might expect on visiting your blog.

Major search engines do look at directories and when they find new links they send their ‘bots to visit and report.  What makes a directory link a good one is that it is relevant because directories only publish links in the appropriate category.  It definitely gives you a good backlink and might even bring you up a position or two – or more – on your quest for good rankings with the search engines.

These two strategies for generating quality backlinks should keep you busy – and remember to incorporate them as part of your “system” for marketing your blog.

Remember, he who has the most backlinks gets to drink fine wine, eat gourmet foods, travel on exotic vacations and live in his dream home!

Happy Blogging!

Valentina
Blogger for Money

The mouse with the most cheese is the mousetess with the mostess!

Link Building is the next step on your journey to developing an awesome blog income life. Lets review where we started and where we’ve come to:

1. topic
2. keywords
3. domain
4. platform
5. posting
6. article marketing

By now you should have lots of posts on your blog, and by default you have done some link building without knowing it.  If you have done any article marketing, you have links that connect your articles to your blog.  If you downloaded my free PDF on ABC’s of Blogging for Money and followed the chapter on driving traffic, then you will have additional links from your comment postings on other blogs and in forums you may be participating in.  These are backlinks and that is what we want lots more of.

What exactly is a backlink?

Well firstly what is a link?  A link is a pathway between one site and another.  A backlink is a site that takes the reader from another site to yours, it is also know as an inbound link.  This is what links look like:

http://www.naturaldogskincare.com

That is the URL for the dog site that I opened for this year’s 30 Day Challenge.

Pretty much everyone on the internet knows that if they click on this blue/purple lettered underlined phrase, they will be taken somewhere else, in this case to my site.

Off the top of my head I do not recall if any of my postings had links to any of my other dog sites except for the K9 KlearUp product.  But supposing I did.

A visitor is on my dog skin care blog and while reading an article comes across a link to my raw dog food link, clicks that on, from that site clicks on to a link I might have posted about best dog food diets, which may or may not be mine – lets say it belongs to someone else, from that site they may click on a link that takes them to a pet insurance site and so on.  Can you see the pathway that has been created?

See how the more backlinks we have on the internet, the better are the chances of users finding our site.

The pathway created is also a pathway for search engines to follow.  When a search engine comes across a link to our site it sends out bots or spiders to crawl that link to report back on the content.  Those critters will continue following the trail before eventually coming back with a glowing report to mother search engine on how well your site is thought of by other site owners.  Search engine makes note and promotes your position withing its rankings.

This overly simplistic explanation, is one way that search engines build up their data bank.  Google and other search engines look at several things when assessing those links including:

a.  Is the link hosting site’s content congruent with the links
b.  Is the link hosting site ranked well

On this point, in the example of the dog skin care link, the content of that link does not meet the congruency test.  To overcome this I have added a bit of content about dogs.  Now it makes it somewhat relevant. The ideal option would have been to use some of my other blogs on income building but they are all currently under renovation so would not have been a good example.

A word of caution here.  Online marketers quickly caught on to the benefits of posting comments on other’s blogs just for the sake of getting the backlinks.  It wasn’t long before comment spamming reared its ugly head.  One way to explain what comment spamming is to cite the many instances that a comment added to a blog does not add any value, a common such comment would be something like “Great Post” or ” Good stuff, thanks for the post”.  While not necessarily absolute the comments do beg the branding of being spam as they appear to be just milking the system to generate backlinks.  Now there are systems which have a “no follow” rule,  so that when search engines come crawling and they come across these backlinks, the “no follow” rule tells the ‘bot or spider not to follow that link.  More on this at a future date.

The second item is more difficult to control.  It is not the easiest thing to get a good backlink from a highly ranked site, say a Google PR 5.  One way is to post comments on such high ranking content congruent sites, but again, Google assigns a lower value for comment generated back links than if the owner of that site mentioned yours within her content or put up your  link in the “recommended” links section.

By building your link network you are developing credibility and authority with the search engines.  They view backlinks as votes of confidence from the owners of those sites.

Your job if you want to drink fine wine, feast on gourmet foods, travel to exotic destinations and live in the house of your dreams is to generate a massive blog income.  Your mission should you decide to accept it is to develop that massive income by building a complex web of links.

Stay tuned for further posts on Link Building

Happy Blogging!

Valentina
Blogger for money – living the good life.

PS … can you say “cheese”