My Thirty Day Challenge Notes

Video by Rob Somerville

In most cases, you would use software to do directory submissions. The big directories are DMOZ and Yahoo.

The site addurl.nu is a free manual directory submission site.

Free software:

imwishlist.com has free versions of their directory submitter software and article submitter software. They also have paid versions that submit to more places than the free versions.

RSS Directories Software is available free at www.allscoop.com/tools/rss-submit

Using Yahoo Answers (answers.yahoo.com)

People ask questions and anyone with an account on yahoo can submit answers to those questions and leave trackback URLs and other contact information in the answer. Search for open questions. These are the questions still accepting answers. Under Advanced, click on “open questions” for your search criteria. Search for your niche phrase, or a broader part of it to find relevant questions to answer on the site. You can also submit questions you may want answer to.

The main point is to build back-links to your blogs or sites over time. If you cram a bunch of back-links onto a bunch of sites in a short period of time, you may get a Google slap. Work on this a little each day and allow your links to grow organically.

written by joubess

Today’s lesson is by Ed Dale

First, don’t forget to do the back-linking, and keep it up so grow traffic to your sites.

Mistake #1

I was asleep during Wordtracker/Google/GTrends training. Failure to do proper research on your phrases. If you don’t do the research none of the rest of this is worth your time. Do the research.

Mistake #2

Strategy problems with a market; figuring out what people would buy. Most people want to sell something without finding out if someone wants to buy it. Do people buy in this niche? If so, what do they buy? If people don’t buy in your niche, go on to another one. Researching sales sites in your niche was part of market research.

Ask yourself is people are really going to buy stuff in this niche. Is the niche a seasonal one or a temporary one? Is it a continuous market? You need to know the answers to these questions.

Mistake #3

Not using your exact umbrella phrase in your URL, blog name, in the first paragraph (preferably first sentence in bold), and again at the end of your first post in italics.

Put up one post in your new blog and leave it alone until Google indexes it, about 24 – 36 hours. Then add more posts, but no more than three per day per phrase.

Mistake #4

Failure to do enough competition research, especially on the blog site you’re using. If someone else is already using your phrase as their URL, maybe find another platform. There are many good blog platforms to choose from. Instead of competing in the same platform, maybe find another one.

The other alternative is to put dashes or underscores between each word in your phrase.

Mistake #5

Putting your affiliate link at the top of your post instead of down towards the bottom. That’s like making an indecent proposal to someone and will probably result in no click-throughs and declining traffic.

written by joubess

Link Research Video by Rob Somerville

This will be a manual process. Most of the time this is done with software. This will be about how to use Google and Yahoo to research the back-links of your competitors’ sites and for your own sites. Also use the SEO Firefox tool. Click on the links in the SEO information in Google search research.

Type into Yahoo: link:URL

Yahoo will return all links it can find for that URL.

You do the same thing in Google, link:URL, but Google will return far fewer links than Yahoo. Use Yahoo for back-link research.

?p at the end of a URL in search results means it’s probably a blog post. Those would be good to go to and read, and maybe make a comment and leave your URL in your comment.

Checking competitor back-links gives you ideas of who or where you might want to back-link as well. If a site is niche-relevant, you can leave a comment and your own back-link. This also tells you how much competition you really have in your niche. How many back-links are you competing with?

This is a manual process, but is useful process because it grows your links organically.

Blogs, Forums and Web 2.0

Search Technorati for your umbrella phrase or search blogsearch.google.com. Find other niche-relevant content where you can create a link back to your website. Click through to find blogs where it’s appropriate to make comments. Leave your id tag and URL and comment on the content of the page. This generates back-links.

To search for forums: “keyword phrase” forum

Forums can be useful, but watch for signatures being turned off, heavy moderation and no-follow links.

Squidoo and Hubpages

Google Search site:squidoo.com”signmyguestbook”keyword phrase

Search will return pages in rank authority order.

Google Search site:hubpages.com”submitacomment”keyword phrase

Might want to check out the CoolIris Firefox plugin. When you put the mouse over a link it allows you to preview it before you click on it. Saves lot so time. Makes browsing faster. See www.somercorp.com/gurubob/cooliris.html

Ed Dale’s Video

Pay attention to Rob’s videos and see Caro’s post about individual help on your phrases. A few people will get individual help.

written by joubess

written by joubess

Video by Rob Somerville.

Unique Content

By far, the best link building strategy is to create great “unique” content that people want to link to.

Nobody ever said you can only place that content on one site. Use multiple pieces of internet real estate.

Always use social networking leverage (RSS and Tags).

Don’t forget media content (audio and video). YouTube, MySpace, scribd.com (like YouTube for articles).

Other people create great content, too!

It’s acceptable to comment on other great content within your niche with a link reference to your own content.

Opportunities include commenting on blogs, forums, guestbooks, and other web 2.0 sites, such as Squidoo or Hubpages.

Reciprocal Links

Seek other authority sites within your niche and request a link from the webmaster to your site. They will expect you to link to their site from your site.

Make sure you are clear about the anchor text you want them to use for the link – your umbrella phrase.

Articles and Press Releases

Articles and Press Releases are a fantastic way to distribute great content that may well be picked up by other people looking for content for their websites.

Often generates direct traffic and back-links.

They can also generate great leverage.

Directories/Search Engines

• Directories (DMOZ, Yahoo) can cost money
• Search engines
• RSS directories (RSS Submit Pro software)
• Blog Directories (imwishlist.com free products for doing this automatically)

Other Strategies

• Craigslist and other free classifieds – temporary listings
• Yahoo Answers – quality and credibility builder
• Google Groups – search by niche relevance
• Yahoo Groups – search by niche relevance

Things to Avoid

• Link forums
• Niche irrelevant websites
• linking from long deep URL’s
• linking from low authority sites
• linking from porn or gambling sites
• duplicate content (ends up in supplemental indexes on Google)

Traffic Paradox

• More “authority” links leads to greater site authority which leads to higher search engines ranking which leads to more traffic
• Some link building strategies also result in direct human traffic – that’s the cream of the crop; a real bonus
• There are other traffic generating strategies wich are not related to link-building (often gray and black hat strategies)

“Natural” Link-Building is the Goal

• Don’t spam
• Google, in particular, will penalize you for non-organic link building. The can put you in the Sandbox. Your site is indexed but you don’t show up in any search results.
• Only add 2-3 links per day per niche and no more. That will give you natural growth.

See “Encyclopedia of Free Online Advertising” on Michelle MacPhearson’s website.

written by joubess

This lesson on back-links is presented on video by Rob Somerville. Here are my notes.

This video is an overview of the off-page SEO strategies available to improve page rank in Google and other search engines. That means places we put content and links back to our niche blog page on the net.

Side note: acceptable conversion is 1 sale out of every 200-300 unique visits to your money page. you may even go out as far as 1 in 500 if you’re not paying for any hosting or advertising. It doesn’t hurt to keep a phrase out there even if the income is slow if you’re not paying anything to do that.

Disclaimer

• These strategies are representative, but not exhaustive. There are many more things you can do with this than will be presented here.
• The color of the hat is subjective – welcome to the real world of search engine ethics. It’s a minefield.
• If you don’t like something, don’t use it.
• Most people use leverage in the form of software or outsourcing to accomplish link-building. Manual link-building isn’t usually done, but that’s what we’re going to learn here because it’s free.
• Some material is based solely on Rob’s opinion.

Authority Links

• Google ranking is mostly affected by the quantity and quality of the back-links to your pages.
• Link-building is the single most important element to obtaining and maintaining high rankings in all of the major search engines.
• Higher ranking leads to more traffic to your pages, the higher the better. Number 1 is the best place to be.

Not all links are created equal:

• Link quality is equally if not more important than link quantity. Static one-way links back to your page are better than reciprocal links.
• Links from higher PR websites are better because the have more authority.
• Links from websites with the same topic or theme relevance as the website they link to are better.
• Links that contain the umbrella phrase in the anchor text are better.
• Links from .edu and .gov domains are the best because they carry the highest authority.

Link Building Strategies

• Use Yahoo to identify the back-links pointing to your competitors’ websites. (Video tomorrow on this).
• Review those back-links and identify websites where you can add appropriate back-links to your own website.
• Where possible, use a “unique” identifier when creating linking content.
• Put links from your own websites to your other relevant content.

This lesson is an overview, and more training this week will cover the details.

written by joubess