CB Intuition

There are a lot of so-called SEO experts out there. Whether they are or not is a different matter. If you consult any of them, or read their ebooks, reports etc., one thing that will be mentioned almost without fail, is Back-Links.

What is a Back-Link?
Most simply stated, a back-link is a link from a website back to your own website. To be worthwhile, they have to be slightly more than a simple link, and the SEO experts should tell you how to optimize those links if you can.

Why Should You Have Back-Links?
If you want your website to be seen, it needs to rank highly in the search engines for your chosen keywords or phrases. (Actually, that’s not necessarily true, but that’s the subject of a whole new post)
The search engine companies have closely-guarded algorithms for determining a site’s position in the search results pages. It is generally known, though, that one part of this algorithm involves the number of relevant incoming links to a website. The presence of those links suggests to the search engines that the site is of some value.
Therefore, the more back-links you can get, the higher your site will rank in the results pages. But don’t be fooled into thinking that simply getting a large number of back-links will get you on the front page of the search results; there are other factors involved.

What are the Characteristics of a Quality Back-Link?
One-Way Links
The SEO experts will tell you that a one-way link is better than a reciprocal link. (a reciprocal link is where you and another website owner agree to set up links to each-others’ site)
When it first became known that incoming links were a factor in search engine results, a whole industry of “link farms” arose. These were sites where you could set up a link to your site as long as you linked to them in return. Of course, the search engines got wise to the link farms and outlawed them. In fact, if they found that you linked to and from a link farm, your site would suffer a penalty and be placed further down the results pages than it would without the links.
Since that time, the search engines have viewed reciprocal links with some suspicion, so if you can, try to set up one-way links.

Relevance
If you’ve ever owned a blog, you will have no doubt been inundated with what are known as “spam comments”. These are comments left on your blog simply to get a back-link. Most of them seem to link to sites selling drugs or pornography.
Even if your blog is about dog grooming, you’ll still get those spam comments.
And this is the key to good back-links. You might have noticed that earlier I wrote “relevant incoming links”. If the link comes from a site that has nothing in common with your site, it’s useless. The search engines want to link together relevant information. If you’re searching for “bass fishing”, you don’t want to see results about drugs that claim to enlarge certain parts of the body, and the search engines want to lead you to information relevant to your search. Not just because that’s the whole point of them, but they also stand to make money from related advertising.

So, don’t go around commenting on every blog that you can find just to build back-links. If you do leave comments on blogs, make sure that they are relevant to your own website – and don’t forget to enter your web URL in the comment form.

Keyword Links
A big mistake that many people make is not specifying relevant keywords in the link back to their site. Sometimes it isn’t possible to do this, but in many cases, it is. For example if you post your URL in a forum signature, don’t just write the URL – make it a link with relevant keywords in it. The same goes for links in resource boxes on article sites.

Heavyweight Sites
Although Google state that Google PageRank (PR) is simply a guide, it does appear that links from sites with a higher PR do contribute more when it comes to determining a site’s position in the results pages. Some people will tell you that PR only has any effect if it is 4 or higher. When you have a lot of back-links, how can you tell which ones are contributing most to your site’s position in the results? You can’t! It’s probably worthwhile advice going for higer-ranked sites, but getting links from them can be proportionately more difficult!

No-Follow?
Having said all this, you might find that many sites have been set up so that links are “NoFollow”. This tells the search engines not to include the site when it comes to calculate back-link weighting. So after carefully locating and setting up a quality back-link, you might find that it isn’t a back-link at all.

Finding Suitable Sites for Back-Links
Use article sites such as Article Content King to publish articles relevant to the content of your site and include a good, keyword link in the resource box.

Join relevant forums, add your URL to your signature and then join in the conversation. Don’t put URLS in your posts – you’ll get blacklisted. Don’t write terse, useless posts, such as “I agree” just to get your signature up there – write useful replies to other people. And be civil.

You know the keywords and phrases that are relevant to your site, so use them to search for others. Find relevant blogs and post comments on some of the articles. But make sure that they are worthwhile comments. Simply writing “Great site” will probably get your comment placed in the trash. Join in the conversation and write something that contributes to the article.

If that sounds too much like hard work, there are easier ways. I recently discovered TextLinks. They have a network of around 10,000 blogs on which you can post links, articles etc., each with a link back to your website. By posting on different blogs each time, you can end up getting links coming in from hundreds or thousands of different sites. Being blogs, they tend to get visited by the search engines quite frequently, which helps to build your back-links quickly. What’s more, if you decide to cancel your membership from TextLinks, the back-links will remain.
It doesn’t come cheap at $99 per month, but there are similar sites which charge much more than that – Linkvana for example, which charges $147. And for your $99 you can keep adding more and more links.
TextLinks are currently offering a free 21-day trial period in which you can set up 25 back-links. And if you don’t decide to upgrade after the trial-period is over, your 25 links will not be deleted.

Related Reading:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Secrets

Ranking Number One: 50 Essential SEO Tips To Boost Your Search Engine Rankings

SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible

Get More Backlinks: The Simplified Approach To Unlimited Free Traffic! AAA+++

Get More Backlinks

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As a partner in a popular Article Site, I see Article Marketing used, misused and abused. In this post I hope to demonstrate where people are going wrong, and give some hints and tips that will make your Article marketing more effective.
Many of the mistakes made are based on what people have heard or read regarding the search engines and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). That’s all very well, but the search engines continually evolve and SEO rules must evolve with them. Sadly, people get hooked on a concept and don’t adapt what they do to the latest behaviour of the search engines.

Mistake #1 – Article Marketing is only for Creating Backlinks
This is a common misconception promoted by so-called SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) specialists. Somebody discovered that the search engines give higher priorities to sites containing more incoming links (or backlinks) than those with fewer links. As article sites promote the re-publishing of articles on other sites, the number of links from each submitted article can grow considerably.
This led to people frantically churning out hundreds of articles to submit to article sites, just so that they could get a lot of links back to their website. Many people are still stuck in this rut, churning out numerous articles. In fact they are stuck so far into this rut that they make…

Mistake #2 – The Content Isn’t Important; Just Get the Backlinks
People stuck in the “Get as many backlinks as possible” rut tend to write short, repetitive, uninformative articles. They don’t really care that nobody will ever read the article – they just want the backlinks, and they submit their articles to 50 or more article sites. Of course, after people started doing that, the search engines started finding duplicate content, and discounting the backlinks. So the marketers needed some way of doing the same thing without being hit for duplicate content. This led to the invention of Article Spinners or Article Rewriters – software that rewrites your articles automatically, creating hundreds of new articles. In fact, they are all the same article – just written using different words and phrases that mean the same thing. Unfortunately, this led to…

Mistake #3 – Article Spinners Will Reliably Make 300 Different Versions of my Article
Article Spinners/Rewriters WILL take your article and make 300 different versions of it. But the majority of those versions will be complete rubbish. These programs work by replacing words and phrases with others of the same or similar meaning, using a Thesaurus and/or Dictionary. Some work better than others, but most just aren’t up to the mark. The users of these programs don’t bother to read through the generated articles, so they don’t realise what rubbish they contain. They blindly submit the generated articles to different article sites, filling those sites with incomprehensible rubbish.

Mistake #4 – It Doesn’t matter if Nobody Reads the Articles
We get a lot of visitors to our article site. The majority of them are not submitting articles; they are reading them. They have searched for information on a particular subject and found articles relating to it. If your trashy, “spun” article comes up in their search, they’ll read the first few sentences, realise that it’s worthless and move on to the next article.
But imagine if that next article was useful, informative and written in good English (or whatever language is in use on that site). The visitor will read through the article right to the bottom. If they found the article useful and want to know more, they might just click on that link in the Resource Box, and the author of that good article may have got themselves a customer.

Take a tour of the better quality article sites. You will find that the articles are moderated. If you submit trash, it will be rejected and never published on the site. You will have wasted your own time. The better quality article sites will also carry more weight to their backlinks. A single link from one quality site could be worth 20 links from sites containing unmoderated rubbish.

Mistake #5 – The Backlinks Generate Traffic Via the Search Engines
It’s true. The search engines will index the backlinks, and if the quality of those links is high enough, you might get a top spot on the search engine results pages, but it’s not guaranteed.
But go back and read Mistake #4. You can get traffic directly from the article site, via your Resource Box link. And at that point, you have an advantage. When somebody starts searching for information about something, they might not be ready to buy it yet. They want to do their research. If they find a link directly to your site in the search engines, they don’t want to be sold something – they are looking for information. If that person finds the link to your site at the end of an informative, well-written article, a psychological change has happened. That person now…
1) has more information on the subject
2) found the article useful, and has built some trust in the author
3) might be more inclined to buy something
4) might want more information so follows the link to find out more
When that person lands on your website, they are now more targeted than they were before reading the article.

Mistake #6 – Quantity is Not Important
Many ebooks about SEO and Article Marketing suggest that you need write only 200 or so words in your articles. That might work for the “backlink rut” people, but if you’re going to use Article marketing effectively, you need to give more than 200 words.
A well-written article of a decent length is going to hook the reader more than a 200 word article. On our article site, the minimum is 250 words, but we suggest between 500 and 1000 words (or more if you wish).

Mistake #7 – It Doesn’t Matter if my English Isn’t Very Good
The quality article sites which carry out moderation of articles will not rate your article if it is full of spelling and grammatical errors, bad English, and too much slang. Don’t forget that your article is being published worldwide. A slang phrase or colloquialism that you use in your article might not be understood by many of your readers. Even worse, it might have a completely different meaning – maybe even offensive.

Mistake #8 – Everyone on the Internet Lives in the USA
On our site, we often receive articles that are very specific to a country – more often than not, specific to the USA. Don’t forget that what you are writing about may not apply outside your own country. Simply state at the beginning of the article that it applies to your location and may not apply elsewhere. In June/July 2009, our site received visitors from 139 different countries or territories.

Mistake #9 – Make your Resource Box link a hyperlink
We have seen numerous articles submitted containing web addresses in the Resource Box, but they have not been entered as hyperlinks, making them less easy to follow.
An even worse mistake is not even entering a web address in the Resource Box! If you don’t enter a website address, you’re not going to get any traffic, and you won’t get any backlinks.

Summary
Effective Article Marketing:
- Generates backlinks
- Generates traffic
- Builds trust between the visitor and the author.

Steps To Effective Article Marketing:
- Read the Submission Guidelines of the article sites – they are all different
- Write informative, well-structured articles that encourage visitors to read them to the end and then follow your link to your site
- Enter a hyperlink to your website in the Resource Box.

Related Reading:

The Invention of Air: A Story Of Science, Faith, Revolution, And The Birth Of America

Million Little Mistakes

What Catholics Really Believe-Setting the Record Straight: 52 Answers to Common Misconceptions About the Catholic Faith

Divine by Mistake (Partholon)

How to Get More Visitors to Your Website: A Guide to Successful Search Engine Optimisation (Books Mean Business)

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