Cash Campfire » SEO

Are All Marketers Evil? Why Building Links Can Save Your Business

Christina Crowe — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 15:23:21 +0000

Hi everyone. I have a special post here for you today, written by a close friend of mine. The question on whether or not you should backlink your content has been a raging debate for years now, especially now with Google’s algorithm change. I asked Brian to write this post because I think that it’s important to understand the other side of marketing and how marketing, the good kind, isn’t bad as some people say. In fact, it’s even necessary.

Give this article a read. You’ll be glad that you did.

This is a guest post by Brian, author of the blogs Residual Income Online with Chezfat and How to Live a Longer Life. If you think this post rocks, I encourage you to check him out.

Photo by Steve Keys (flickr)

Want to know a secret?

Your website or blog is your business.

Whether you make a few dollars a month on that site or thousands, it is still your business. Even if you don’t have it monetized, it is your PR campaign for your own brand; therefore it is your business.

Can you think of any businesses in the offline world that don’t do any marketing?

I can’t think of any.

Let Me Tell You A Personal Story

My wife and I really love fine dining and fine wine. We had our wedding party at a local wine bar, we shop for the fine wines for all special occasions, and we love to hit up the winemakers’ dinners at our local high end restaurants.

Not too long ago, sometime in mid-2010, Restaurant Week hit in our parts and we decided to try out a local bistro with an emphasis on fine dining and fine wine.

We loved it!

After the meal we made sure to spend a bit of time talking with the chef and the proprietor of the bistro, and she told us that they had been in business since the beginning of the Great Recession and had been doing extremely well despite the poor economy over the last few years. She also told me that they don’t rely on marketing. “It’s all word of mouth,” she said.

Being a business savvy person, I was very intrigued. After talking with her for a little bit, touring the rest of the restaurant, and seeing their wine cellar, I happily wrote my name and email address down on her email list as the wife and I left the restaurant that evening.

Looking at my wife on the way home, we talked about how awesome that place was and how we were definitely going to introduce it to our “wine & food” friends and return for a visit with them. In case you are not following along, we are talking about referral traffic and organic growth here.

That Bistro Does Too Participate In Marketing

A few days later, when I received my first email from the wine bistro, I thought wow; they’ve got another awesome looking event coming up. They described the whole thing to me in the email. I was definitely jazzed about it. In the email they described the upcoming event and gave me a full lineup of the 5 course menu and paired wine tasting, then dropped a link in the email for me to click through to their calendar to signup for reservations on the spot.

Unfortunately, the dates didn’t work for us, so I just showed the wife to let her know we should keep these guys in mind for future outings.

Then a few days later I got another email, and then a few days later I got another email, and then another. After the next couple of weeks went by, it became obvious that this little bistro didn’t operate like other restaurants. They didn’t have a big menu to choose from. People didn’t walk in off of the street and choose from 50 options. They had “special events” 3-4 times a week and each event had a special menu… and everyone had a reservation.

They used email marketing to happy, past guests to get them to come back for their events. And not only that, but they don’t rely solely on word-of-mouth traffic (referral traffic) like the proprietor told me, but also on email marketing to get more business from past customers. This, if you are not following along, is the email newsletter that many websites have.

In the business world this is called increasing lifetime customer value. You can do this in two ways; you can speed up the frequency of visits from your current customer base or you can increase the dollar total spent by each customer whenever they use your services or buy your products. In this case, their email marketing to past customers is meant to increase lifetime customer value by speeding up the frequency of their visits.

What their word-of-mouth referral customers bring to the table, however, is different; that is new customer development. In our online world, this is the equivalent of Christina posting a link on her blog saying that Chezfat is great and you should check out his site (editor’s note: he’s speaking the truth; check him out! ) – or of you dropping a link in a forum to someone else’s blog telling your forum friends that this site is worth reading for whatever reason.

In the business world and in the online world, everyone knows it’s easier and cheaper to market to your current customer base. The returns are also generally higher because of the past report built between establishment and client. A blog with 100 subscribers and 10 active commenters today is likely to have 100 subscribers and 10 active commenters tomorrow, but increasing everything by 100 percent is much more difficult.

An existing customer base is valuable because it represents an easy stream of business to tap into – they’re just one email blast or blog post away (or Tweet for that matter).

New customers, on the other hand, are much harder to get, and waiting for referral traffic alone to increase your customer base is a long process.

That Bistro Did Even More Marketing than I First Thought

Not only did I realize that that bistro was involved heavily in email marketing to past clients to increase customer lifetime value… and not only was that bistro dependent on getting referral traffic from past customers to grow their customer base (example: my wife and I telling our friends about it – or you linking organically to another website), but they also were directly involved in marketing to a potential new customer base by participating in Restaurant Week.

My wife and I would never have known about this company if it wasn’t for their participation in Restaurant Week. By planting this seed in front of millions of San Diegans, they were likely to get a few new customers and my wife and I were representative of that.

Their efforts to reach out to new customers, the most costly to get, was how they landed us. This is akin to you reaching out to new customers by writing guest posts on other blogs and building backlinks to your site. It is costly in time and energy but can pay off in a big way when you land new customers because of it.

In a real world way of looking at this, the bistro participated in Restaurant Week, which is usually a very busy week for them and not as profitable either because everything is provided at a discount. Many companies, this bistro excluded, also reach out to new clients by catering events, by getting involved in print advertising (local magazines), TV/Radio spots, and in working special events like fairs and street festivals. Billboards, direct mailers to neighborhoods, purchasing of email lists – all of these are things that regular businesses do to reach out to new clientele.

This is the same thing that we should be doing with our websites or blogs – reaching out to new clients despite the cost.

Marketing Your Website in an Online Environment

In terms of marketing a website, we can still use all of these traditional forms of advertising, but we can also use online forms as well. Links pointing to our website give exposure to our sites in two ways; they drive direct traffic through the link, but they also build exposure to our site in search engines.

Both are worthwhile and both are necessary if we want to see a return on our investment in a reasonable amount of time. The short-term return would be eyeballs clicking on links to our site, and the long-term return is the increased exposure to search traffic.

Do you think Coca-cola really benefits directly from a TV ad they put on your screen? No, it’s rare that you see an ad for a coke and think, “I better head down to the store to buy some coke.”

Rather, they are investing in their brand by keeping their exposure to the masses high. The more often Coca-cola places ads in blanket form, the more likely their products will be purchased later on down the road. If they were to stop this form of advertising, they would continue to sell their products, but the brand would slowly start to slip in market share.

As owners of websites, we need to be investing in the long-term just as big traditional companies do. We need to be putting ourselves in the metaphorical Restaurant Week which is the search engines, and the best way to do that is to build backlinks in an ethical manner. Coke doesn’t just spam everybody’s email box to build brand recognition; they do it ethically by purchasing advertising spots and investing heavily.

For us, as website owners, we need to provide a good product. We need a website that delivers the goods. Whether we are blogging about personal productivity or running a profitable niche website that sells white socks, we need our website to deliver quality content.

We also need to spend some energy investing in the lifetime value of our customers by reaching out to those that currently exist. Newsletters are great for this, but even more importantly, we need to be marketing our brand to new potential customers as a long-term investment.

Again, bringing this back to traditional business, this is the concept of achieving critical mass. Without investing in the long-term, you will be far less likely to achieve enough referrals to become solvent, profitable, or grow to any significant size. A traditional business has to market itself to a certain size before they can ever expect referral traffic to do all of the leg work. Of course, there are some exceptions to this rule, but they are not the norm.

An ethical way of investing in your website for the long-term is to not only create a good website for your target audience, but also to market it with the long-term in mind. For websites, the most efficient way to do this is to build backlinks to increase a search presence.

New customers are out there in the millions (and even billions), and they all have an avenue to your site via the search engines; you just have to get exposure… and the best way to achieve exposure via the search engines is to build backlinks efficiently and responsibly, as this is the most effective way to make headwinds into the search traffic market.

Do I Need To Build Backlinks to My Website?

This post could easily have been titled, “Why Backlinks Matter” or “Traditional Business Marketing for the Internet,” but neither of these titles really relate to questions people have. Many people simply don’t understand why, and the question posed in the title of this blog post is exactly what people ask themselves – and it’s exactly what they ask the search engines too: Do I really need to do this annoying chore?

You need to build backlinks to your website if you have any desire to reach new customers. You can do this by frequenting other blogs where your target audience hangs out or by posting in related forums and gaining trust with the participants of that forum. Or, you can guest post and submit articles for the backlinks.

Each of these things is fine, but they all can be used in bad ways too. It’s easy to spam comments, forums, and article directories. It’s not illegal; it’s just unethical. People do it. I don’t condone it.

It’s also possible to publish good content on other people’s sites in exchange for a link back to your own. This is harder but is more ethical, and it makes you feel better about yourself too. You provide quality material for another platform in exchange for a link back to your site. This is investing in your business with your time and energy. It’s about taking a loss and overworking yourself during Restaurant Week just to find a few new customers. It’s about investing in multi-million dollar ad campaigns on TV to keep a world renowned brand name number one in its industry.

Backlinking a Niche Website

Like Christina, I am participating in the Niche Site Duel. Christina is working on some websites on pet fish. I am working on a site on diabetic shoes. My goal with this site is to be incredibly helpful and to create an excellent resource of information for people looking for diabetic shoes and related products. They not only need information on how and why practicing better diabetic foot care is so important, but they also need help finding the best products for them to buy.

I have invested (and will continue) to invest in building up this website to be better and more helpful (as well as more profitable), but I am also investing in marketing this website to new potential customers. I will obviously invest in customer retention and increase the lifetime value of my customer base as traffic increases, but I will never stop investing in finding new customers. To do that you have to build backlinks and get your product (your website) in front of eyeballs that would never have come across it otherwise.

Someone searching for “what is the best shoe for diabetic neuropathy” has likely never had to deal with this before, and they are likely searching for a resource – I need to have a presence in this person’s life and the best way to do that is to have a presence in the search engines.

Yes, you have to build backlinks to your website – it makes perfect business sense to do so; just try to do it ethically and always try to add value to the end user. Now, where to get those backlinks – that is another post for another day.

I’m a long winded writer, I know (forgive me). I keep a blog: Residual Income Online with Chezfat and am currently building a website on Diabetic Shoes. If you want to learn more about how I conduct business online, stop by my residual income blog and follow along.

I openly tout the fact that I don’t know everything. I learn as I go and build upon past successes and failures. But I am genuine, I work hard, and I always try to help out.

Thanks Christina for letting me address your readership base and good luck to you all out there. Surely you all have websites – make sure you have a business plan for them and then go capture your target market. Make those long-term (and costly) investments today!

Backlinking Strategies: Increase Search Engine Traffic

Link Wheels and How to NOT Get Your Site Sandboxed

Christina Crowe — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 02:10:03 +0000

This is part 2 of a two-part series. In the first part of the series, I talked about Understanding Link Wheels (and Avoiding Sandboxes): The Beginner’s Guide. I highly recommend that you check part 1 out first if you haven’t already done so.

In the last part of this series, I defined link wheels and talked about how to use them in a way that would increase search engine traffic. I also gave you an example of a link wheel that I personally use for my own niche sites.

Well, now in this post I’m going to share with you all of the benefits and drawbacks of link wheel building, how to create a link wheel that works for you, and how to use link wheels without sinking your site into the deadly sandbox, another way to get backlisted by Google. And if you don’t know what a link wheel is, I strongly suggest reading my article Understanding Link Wheels before moving on.

Ready to dive in? I knew you would be. Let’s get started…

Benefits and Drawbacks of Link Wheels

As you might have guessed, there are many advantages to using a link wheel (why else would people use them?). But, while there might be many more benefits than drawbacks, you simply can’t rule out the disadvantages.

And if you are thinking about creating your own link wheel, it’s important that you’re aware of the potential obstacles you might face in the process – particularly how much time you’ll need to devote to your link wheel and why link wheels have such a negative denotation.

So, without further ado, let’s get our hands dirty!

Benefits of Optimizing Your Site with Link Wheels

Visibility - Without a doubt, the increased exposure and potential traffic (both directly and indirectly) are some of the main reasons why website owners use link wheels. There will always be people looking for fresh, new content. And if your site fulfills a specific need, is useful, and provides quality information, a link wheel can greatly improve your chances of getting seen by hundreds and thousands of visitors. The more places your site appears, the higher the chances that people will visit your site.
Keyword Juice - Another important aspect of the link wheel, keyword juice or improved search engine rankings can phenomenally impact how successful (in terms of readership, sales, or popularity) your site or business becomes. By ranking well in search engines, you’ll be exposed to more customers, clients, and readers on a daily basis. This will help build awareness to your quality services and products.
More Customers - Need I say this again? More customers mean more money. And if you sell something of quality (which I hope you are – never put money over the needs of your customers), more customers could mean even more word-of-mouth promotion, and you may even create a buzz in your niche.
Increased Readership - Boosting traffic with a link wheel can improve your fan-base as well. More fans mean increased loyalty and trust.
Increased Page Rank - Google views backlinks pointing to your site as “votes” stating that your site is useful and relevant to certain keyword phrases. So, when you backlink your site with quality links (links from other sites with high page ranks), the page rank on your site ultimately increases. This can improve search results.
A Natural Feel - By building up links from several different sources in the form of a link wheel, each backlink appears more natural because they’re pointing to your site in a unique pattern.
Potentially More Money - I don’t need to convince you that more traffic could potentially mean more money.
Potentially More Quality Content - If you continuously strive to provide your readers with quality link-worthy content that is focused on helping and giving rather than the gain (even while posting on other platforms), you’ll be both building a really good name for yourself and helping so many people out there who may need your useful information.
Remember: Quality, information-rich content is what gets shared, read, and spread. Not weak content pumped out for selfish reasons. Always aim to help, and put the reader before any personal gains whenever you write online (or anywhere in general).

Drawbacks of Link Wheel Building

Some People Take Advantage - There are some website owners who take advantage of the link wheel system by attempting to spam their links, content, or whatever else that will help them financially. In doing so, they’ve put a bad name on SEO in general. Don’t be the bad guy; you’ll only regret it later (you also won’t make it very far at all). Instead, work to improve, give, and help – that’s the ultimate key to a successful business.
Increased Time (or Money) Consumption - Building backlinks to your site takes work (and sometimes may even use up money if you’re paying for a program to help you – I advise against it). If you’re considering doing this for the long haul, you must put in the time and effort to make the link wheel worth it, and this includes creating the content that will link back to your site.
Negative Denotation - Many people view link wheels in the negative light, mainly because they view them as a way to game the system (search engines). I don’t think so – I just think it’s another way to positively promote your quality content, services, or products just like you would by creating advertisements, info-commercials, and so on. In other words, it’s just another way to increase awareness, branding, and credibility – reaching new customers who might benefit from what you have to offer.
However, link wheels DO become a problem if all you’re doing is spamming the Web with crappy content to improve your own site rankings. This is NOT okay, and chances are good that your site will just be sandboxed.

Link Wheel Varieties

Whew, now that we got that out of the way, let’s talk link wheels.

In part 1 of the series, I gave a detailed introduction of my version of the link wheel. But what if you didn’t want to use my version? Are there other link wheel structures out there?

Well, let’s take a look.

Traditional Link Wheel

My version of the link wheel, seen in part 1, is more or less the traditional link wheel (while sort of combining the link pyramid with the added bookmarking sites on the end). While the traditional link wheel doesn’t get as fancy as the other versions, it’s a lot less complicated (which is why I opted to go traditional, with a small twist of my own).

Below is an example of a traditional link wheel (without any bells or whistles). For more information on how to use the traditional version, see part 1. If you do decide to go with another version of the link wheel, use caution; I haven’t personally tried any of the other versions, so I can’t honestly recommend them.

As always, arrows represent links.

Link Pyramid

The idea behind the link pyramid is that, by backlinking links pointing to your site, you increase the strength of your site’s backlinks. By improving the backlink quality of the links pointing to your site, you ultimately improve your own site rankings (since the more high ranked Web 2.0 sites pointing to yours, the quicker your site will rank in search engines).

What? Sound confusing? Here’s an example:

Notice that Go Articles and Ezine Articles are both pointing to Squidoo, which then points back to your site. Linking this way helps increase the page rank of Squidoo, and this improves the link juice for your own site (so that your page rank increases at a faster rate by being linked to from higher ranked sites).

Link Web

In the link web, each article gets the same amount of link juice, no matter if the article is on your own website or a Web 2.0 site. The idea of a link web is to increase the page rank of multiple pages at the same time. Though honestly, I don’t recommend this method because it might send a red flag to Google if you link to your site with too many Web 2.0 sites at once – but you can experiment with it if you want.

Link Chain

The link chain is pretty interesting, as it’s almost exactly identical to the traditional link wheel, only the last two Web 2.0 sites don’t share links.

And if you look closely, it almost looks like a heart!

Create Your Own

So far you’ve seen some of the most common link wheel structures used on the Internet. You already know my favorite – the traditional link wheel. But what if you want to make up your own?

The best way to discover which link wheel works best for you is to experiment. So play around with them, and choose the structure most comfortable for you. You may also want to add different Web 2.0 sites than the ones I have above to the link mix. That’s completely fine, and I even encourage it.

Do be warned though: I’ve only tried the traditional link wheel, so I don’t know what type of effects the other versions will have on your site. If you’re thinking about playing around with any of the others, do proceed with caution. They were added to this guide only for variety (and to show you that there are other structures to choose from).

If in doubt, I advise to add links slowly so that your site ages a bit more before you tackle too many links. But have fun, and always remember to put quality above quantity.

For further reading, I highly recommend Martin’s article on link wheel building. While this article only gives a brief overview of link wheels, Martin touches the topic more in-depth and even touches on some of his favorite structures based off of his own personal experiences when dealing with link wheels.

7 Ways to NOT Get Your Site Sandboxed

Alright folks. By now you should be pretty informed on the various methods of link building. I know this is a massive guide (it took me almost as long to write this post as it did to write How to Wake Up Early with Enthusiasm: The Ultimate Guide!), but I just wanted to leave off with one last section because I believe that you should always know the do’s and don’ts of any activity you undertake, even if you think you might know it all. So please read this section thoroughly.

As mentioned in the first part of this series, the deadly sandbox is a filter that Google places on suspicious or spammy sites; this filter prevents sites from receiving search engine rankings on Google. So, if someone were to search for the primary keyword phrase that you’re trying to rank for, your site wouldn’t show up (thanks Dan Cristo). New sites are more likely to get sandboxed, so watch out!

Below are 7 ways to stay on nice terms with Google (and not get pulled under).

ALWAYS write to benefit the reader first. As I’ve said repeatedly in this post, put quality over quantity.
Don’t overdue it. Too many keywords and backlinks will make Google think you’re deliberately trying to game the system.
Avoid the temptation of paid backlinks. This goes hand-in-hand with the above tip – don’t massively backlink, ESPECIALLY if your site is new.
Do NOT under ANY circumstances plagiarize. Being a writer myself, I can’t even describe how frustrating and pissed off I get when I see other site owners have bluntly copied my work and posted it as their own. Even if you do give the writer credit for the article, it still isn’t acceptable without permission (you can copy snippets and give credit – not the whole article).
If you duplicate content, you’re plagiarizing. Just don’t do it; you should be creating useful, unique content anyway.
Be extra careful when optimizing a new site. You still don’t have enough credibility or authority yet, so play it slow, (Google is more wary of newer sites) and prove Google that your site is worthy of higher ranks.
Let your site age some. The older your site is, the more reliable it is (at least, in the eyes of Google bots).
Actively participate in your niche community. Networking and giving away a little piece of yourself to help benefit your blog or niche community is one of the greatest gifts any blogger and writer can experience. Take advantage of it!

There you have it! The 7 ways to make Google happy. But what if you’ve already found yourself in the deadly sandbox?

Don’t stress it – the best thing you can do is wait. Just let Google do its thing. According to Jeffrey Baril over at Source Blogger, a site can stay sandboxed from anywhere between 1 to 6 months, with 3 to 4 months being the norm.

But there still are a few things that you can do while sandboxed. According to Jeffrey, if your site unfortunately sees itself in the sandbox, what you can do is continue to write quality content (I recommend at least 1 or 2 posts a week at minimum) and slowly build backlinks to your site until you start seeing search traffic again. By the time your site is taken out of the sandbox, the new links pointing to your site would have aged, increasing its link strength.

Main Lessons

We’ve learned a lot of things today! Here’s a quick breakdown of the key points in this article.

Never sacrifice quality for quantity.
Go easy on links.
Experiment and have fun.

I hope you enjoyed this two-part series! See you in the comment section.

Your Turn

How do you feel about link wheels? Are they a good way to increase search engine traffic? Do you use link wheels? Why or why not?

Can’t wait to hear your thoughts in the comment section!

Lastly, please spread the love. I put a lot of work into putting this article together, so it would mean tons if you could spread the word by tweeting, sharing, stumbling, or bookmarking this piece.

Understanding Link Wheels (and Avoiding Sandboxes): The Beginner’s Guide

Christina Crowe — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 13:00:50 +0000

This is part 1 of a two-part series. Next week on Wednesday, I’ll publish part 2 in the series – Link Wheels and How to NOT Get Your Site Sandboxed. Stay tuned!

The dreaded sandbox is every blogger’s worst nightmare – that is, if you’re making a living primarily by creating and monetizing niche sites. But don’t worry; I have a way you can put those fears to rest – and it starts with understanding link wheels.

Now, I’m sure some of you are staring at this with wide eyes and opened mouths thinking, “But I loved playing in the sandbox when I was younger! So why should Internet marketers fear boxes of sand?”

Well, just read on.

Boxes of Sand

Think Back to When You Were a Child.

Do you remember going to the beach? Maybe you had your very own sandbox. Like many children, you probably enjoyed building castles in the sand, which really looked like giant ant hills (but nobody ever told you that).

When someone else knocks your cherished castle over and it’s permitted to fall back into a sand mound, you can’t help but cover yourself in it – admire the way each grain of rock works together to hide your little body, as you gather bunches of sand and fling it across your legs.

First you bury your toes, then you bury your thighs, then your stomach, and lastly your shoulders – laughing giddily while your mother tries to find you. Eyes squeezed shut, your high-pitched squeals give yourself away entirely; but you don’t know it, and your mother is more than happy to play along.

Come Back to Where You Are Now.

Many of you are bloggers and entrepreneurs. A lot of you are writers. But most of you own your own website.

And here in the online world, sand is deadly.

No one likes playing in sand – not in the Internet sense of the word. And if you aren’t too careful, that sand can quickly turn into quicksand. It will suck you up. And you’ll get buried.

No matter how much content you write or how high you scream, demanding people to listen to you – no one will pay attention. Because no one will be able to find you. You’ll be too far under, suffocating under the weight of the sand. Every earning potential you once thought existed will too get sucked under.

Destroyed.

You see, too much sand can kill businesses. It can destroy ideas. Sand murders chances.

But What is this Sand We Speak Of?

How can such a warm, fuzzy childhood memory be so dangerous?

To get “sandboxed” in the online sense of the word means to have a site completely disappear from search engines like Google. So, if you focus entirely on search engines as your primary source of traffic, sandboxes are detrimental to the health of your online business.

For those of you who work on getting backlinks naturally and participate in honest (white-hat) methods of increasing traffic to your site, you have nothing to worry about. But if you’re building a niche site and you’re using shady (black-hat) programs to get millions of backlinks to your site in hopes that your niche site will rank higher in search engines (leading to more traffic and potential income, depending on your monetization methods), Google might find your activities suspicious and so will remove you from search results altogether – putting you in the deadly sandbox.

See where this is going?

And if you get Google angry, you too will be at the mercy of the sandbox, struggling to climb out without enough fuel or traffic to keep your site going – which brings us to our next topic…

Link Wheels

Before we go any further, I’m going to talk about what exactly a link wheel is for those of you confused.

What’s in a Link Wheel?

There are two different ways to optimize your website for search engines – on-page optimization, which focuses on creating content around specific keywords on the actual site, and off-page optimization, which focuses on everything else off the site that you do to optimize your site for search engines. Backlinks play a major role here.

Link wheels are a form of off-page optimization, since the purpose of a link wheel is primarily to increase the number of targeted backlinks to your niche site (off the page). A link wheel is basically a network of Web 2.0 sites (highly ranked sites like HubPages, Squidoo, and InfoBarrel) that link back to your original niche site as well as to other Web 2.0 sites. Link wheels can be a powerful way to increase your search rankings but, if overdone, they can also bury you in the deadly sandbox.

Here’s an example of a link wheel (one I’ve personally created) that I use for my own niche sites. Arrows represent links.

As you see, the link wheel can be a powerful tool if used correctly. Keep in mind that there are many variations of link wheels. This is just the one I created for my own personal use (you can use it too if you’d like). You can start anywhere and add whichever Web 2.0 sites you want to the link wheel. You can even change the direction of your links so that they don’t all point to one site after another.

But creating a link wheel is pointless if you don’t know how to use it. I explain this in the next section.

Using the Link Wheel

As I mentioned before, the link wheel is primarily used to boost your site in search engine rankings. So, if you want a site to rank for a specific keyword, you can use the link wheel to create content on Web 2.0 sites that will link to your niche site using your keyword phrase as anchor text.

For example, I’m currently working on a niche site that I hope to rank highly for the keyword phrase “betta fish care.” Feel free to follow my progress in the Niche Site Duel if you aren’t already doing so.

Often, its good to have a plan or model to go by before taking action. The link wheel acts as that model. Each arrow represents one link and each yellow bubble represents a Web 2.0 site. So, as I add content to each Web 2.0 site, I also include a link back over to my niche site in each article. Of course, I’d then use the keyword phrase I’m trying rank for in the anchor text of each link (the text readers click on to visit a particular link).

Below is an example of what you would do if you were to only write for one Web 2.0 site.

Normally, each Web 2.0 article that you write would include a link to the next Web 2.0 site in the sequence. So, every Ezine article written will link to every Squidoo article that you write. Then, your Squidoo article will link to a Triond article (see the first example).

Linking to each of these articles will increase the strength of the links pointing to your niche site. If you’re following my link wheel model, you’ll bookmark each article you create on various bookmarking sites as well, which will then further increase your link strength. When you complete the wheel, you just write a new article for your niche site and start the wheel all over again, creating new content on Web 2.0 sites and bookmarking your articles.

But What if I Want to Create My Own Link Wheel?

In the next part of this two-part series, I’ll talk about different variations of link wheels and how to reduce your risks of getting sandboxed. Hope to see you there!

In the meantime, tell me what you think. What is your opinion about link wheels? Do you think that they negatively impact the online world for other Internet users, or are they just a good way to manage your content? Would you use a link wheel?

Can’t wait to see your responses in the comment section!

How to Use Meta Tags to Increase Website Traffic

Christina Crowe — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:25:36 +0000

The degree of impact that meta tags have on your website is discussed by many entrepreneurs and is often disagreed on. However, it has been proven that meta tags do have some effect on search engine results. The effect they have vary depending on the search engine. According to Michael Fleischner, author of the book SEO Made Simple: Strategies For Dominating The World’s Largest Search Engine, the MSN search engine especially loves on-page optimization, including meta tags.

Meta tags are just HTML codes that tell search engine bots what your website is about. Visitors browsing your website won’t be able to see the metadata at all, unless they looked at your source code. Search engines basically use your meta tags to label your website and decide where to put your website in search results. Since meta tags aren’t seen by website visitors, they are perfectly harmless and can help increase search engine traffic to some degree, as long as you aren’t keyword stuffing your meta tags.

The three main meta tags that webmasters use are the title, description and keywords meta tags. The title meta tag tells search engines the main subject of the page, and this meta tag gets displayed on search results as the title of your article. The description meta tag describes your content in a sentence or two and is also displayed in search results. The keyword meta tag should include only the main keywords that can be found on your website or in the content of website pages. However, you should include your main keywords in the other two tags as well, not just the keywords meta tag. Another meta tag that is helpful is the robots meta tag, which tells search engine spiders to crawl through the entire website. These meta tags should be used on your website home page and every new post you publish.

Webmasters who have WordPress installed on their websites should use the All in One SEO plugin to help them with meta tag placement. This plugin allows you to just type out the meta title, description and keywords of each new post before you publish it, making entering in metadata incredibly easy.

Like most websites, this website uses meta tags as well. The following is an example of how to format your meta tags, and they are the meta tags we currently use on our home page.

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Of course, with the All in One SEO plugin, you don’t need to type everything in code form. The plugin automatically does that for you. So, you would only need to enter in your meta keywords for the keywords meta tag and that’s it.

To add the robots meta tag, simply log on to your WordPress account and go to Appearance > Editor > Header.php. Place the code in between the two head tags () after the title tags ().

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Have you noticed an increase in search engine traffic since adding meta tags on your website?

*This post has some affiliate links distributed in the content. Read more about them on the Disclosure page.

Keyword Stuffing: When Keyword Density Becomes a Problem

Christina Crowe — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:59:25 +0000

Keyword density, the percentage of keyword phrases in the web content of an article or website, can increase your position in search engines if you also take advantage of other optimization methods, like meta keywords and backlinking strategies. Though keyword density does have its benefits, it can’t be overused. Overusing keyword density is called keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing isn’t just harmful to your search engine rankings. It is also harmful to your readers.

Photo by NightRPStar (flickr)

Think about it. You’re browsing for information on how to combat bad acne. You visit a website from Google search results and the first sentence you read is “Treat adult acne with adult acne treatments.” The first thing that pops into your mind is, “Huh? This website must be spam.” Or maybe you don’t even stop and think. You just hit the “Back” button on your browser and move on to another website that will meet your needs.

Keyword stuffing is detrimental to your Google SERPs (search engine results pages) as well. Because Google frowns upon keyword stuffing, you risk the chance of getting banned from search engines. This prevents any search engine traffic from accessing your website, so your earning revenue gets a big hit.

Now, some websites do get away with keyword stuffing, but only because Google hasn’t found them yet. Don’t think that you’ll get away with it, because it’s only a matter of time until Google does ban you from the search engine. Many people take part in keyword stuffing because they just don’t know that it’s wrong or could harm them more than help. In fact, keyword density is a form of on-page optimization. According to SEO Made Simple by Michael H. Fleischner, off-page optimization has a bigger effect on Google SERPs than on-page optimization. So you should really be working on obtaining backlinks, a form of off-page optimization, than stuffing your website with keywords.

You want your readers to understand your content, subscribe to your RSS feed and keep coming back for more. After all, no one wants to read the same keyword phrase over and over, even if your article does provide useful information. Keyword stuffing makes your website repetitious and spammy. Would you visit such a website? I would think not.

How to Avoid Keyword Stuffing

Type without the barriers of keyword density. Don’t think about keyword density at all while you’re typing.
Maintain a keyword density of 1-4%.
Make sure the keywords that you use are the main focus and subject of your article.
Read your article out loud and see if it makes sense. If a sentence would make more sense without a particular keyword, don’t use that keyword.
Use a keyword density tool to check for keyword stuffing.

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Do you know additional ways to help avoid keyword stuffing?

*This post has some affiliate links distributed in the content. Read more about them on the Disclosure page.

Using Keyword Density to Your Advantage

Christina Crowe — Thu, 20 May 2010 01:40:29 +0000

Webmasters use keyword density to determine the percentage of keywords or keyword phrases that are in their articles so that they can optimize the number of keywords in their content. Keeping track of your keyword density is just one way to optimize your websites or articles for search engines. Though major search engines don’t place a heavy weight on keyword density as they did before, it’s still good to know, since it will help you boost your search engine rankings.

To calculate your keyword density, divide the number of keywords or keyword phrases by the number of total words in your article and multiply this number by 100. For example, if I have 8 keyword phrases in my blogs post and the total word count of my post is 400, my keyword density would be 2% (8 / 400 * 100 = 2%).

A keyword density of 2% is considered very good by many webmasters, and it should help with getting that 1st page position on Google. However, before increasing your keyword density to, say, 6%, know that most search engines will actually penalize you if you have a large keyword density. They do this to prevent keyword stuffing, which is a big no-no.

How do you know if you’ve been penalized? Simple. Your website just won’t show up in search engines at all, no matter how hard you try. Now, if you just made your website and it hasn’t been indexed yet, that’s another story. However, if your website has been around for several months and you’re adding fresh content on a regular basis, chances are you’ve been penalized if your website suddenly disappears from Google.

If you’re a serious writer and value your content, this shouldn’t concern you all too much. Chances are, you also despise keyword stuffing, since this conflicts with your content’s value. If you were ever to keyword stuff, readers would take one look at your website and label it as spam. Unless you want to drive all your customers away, you know that keyword stuffing is best to be avoided at all costs.

To avoid keyword stuffing, try to aim for a keyword density of 1-2%. Anything lower than 1% wouldn’t help you so much in ranking on search engines and anything higher than 3% would be considered keyword stuffing. My best advice is to just write naturally and add keywords as you go. If your content doesn’t look natural, visitors won’t want to read it. If visitors don’t read your content, what’s the point of optimizing for search engines? You won’t get money anyway. Therefore, natural content is the key to success.

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What keyword density do you like to maintain?

Backlinking Strategies: Increase Search Engine Traffic

Christina Crowe — Tue, 18 May 2010 01:00:41 +0000

Have you ever written content online, only to find that the articles written weren’t performing well on search engines? Whether you write for a blog, business, or content website, you want other internet users to find your content. You also want to increase search engine traffic and earn money for your search engine optimization efforts. However, sometimes optimizing articles or blog entries on the page for search engine traffic isn’t enough to rank high on major search engines, like Google. This is where backlinking strategies come in. While Google does look at on-page optimization, like keyword placement and keyword count, Google also looks at how many websites are linking in or backlinking to your optimized content. In fact, many webmasters believe that Google places a heavier weight on the number of backlinks a given page has. This is why taking part in backlinking strategies and increasing the number of backlinks each web page has is essential to getting your content on page 1 of Google and increasing your overall website’s page rank.

So that we’re all on the same page, let’s first look at a backlink definition according to Wikipedia:

“Backlinks (or back-links [UK]) are incoming links to a website or web page.”

Google treats these incoming links as “votes” for your web page. The higher the number of votes you have, the higher your page will rank in search engines so that you can increase search engine traffic. However, Google also places weight on the quality of the website that’s voting for you. For example, if the website sending you backlinks has a page rank of 5, these backlinks are worth more than backlinks from websites with a lower page rank that are also sending you backlinks. So, a web page with 500 backlinks from websites with a page rank of 5 will rank higher than a web page with 500 backlinks from websites with a page rank of 3 if the website is optimized on the page for search engines as well. This is important to know when organizing backlinking strategies for your web pages.

Using Backlinking Strategies

Now that we know what backlinking is for, how can it be used? Brian writes an excellent article on how to make the most money using backlinking strategies. Before maximizing your earnings with these backlinking strategies, however, you should take advantage of on-page optimization strategies first.

There are three types of backlinks: One-way links, reciprocal links, and three-way links. One-way links are backlinks that your web page receives from a third party website. These backlinks are the most powerful and gives you a bigger boost in search engine rankings than the other types of backlinks, since the third party website is basically placing a vote on your web page. Therefore, you should strive for one-way links more than the others when getting backlinks. I’ll describe how to take advantage of one-way links later on in this post.

Photo by Balazs Gal (flickr)

Reciprocal links are commonly referred to in link exchanges. Often times, webmasters may want to swap links so that both websites benefit. Google holds a lighter weight on these backlinks, since one website isn’t necessarily voting for you without gain.

Three-way links are similar to reciprocal links, since three links are being swapped, though the manner that they’re swapped is a bit more complicated. To best explain three-way links, take one website. This website wants to exchange links with a second website, so website One links to website Two. Website Two then gives the link to website Three. Website Three links back to website One. This backlinking strategy can be advantageous, since website Three would also be one-way linking to your web page. As a result, you receive a one-way link and a reciprocal link from three-way links.

Backlinking Strategies to Increase Search Engine Traffic

By now you probably have a pretty good idea as to how backlinking can be used. However, how do you apply these backlinking strategies to increase search engine traffic to your web pages and articles? There are actually many ways this can be done. Let’s discuss a few of them.

Write quality content to attract links back to your content. Often times, if a reader likes a specific website or web page, that reader will link back to it.
Ask other webmasters for backlinks. This backlinking strategy can be as dangerous as it is helpful. At the same time that you want backlinks, you also don’t want to annoy the person you’re requesting them from. If you do decide to use this backlinking strategy, tread on it carefully.
Link back to other articles and web pages you’ve written. If you have another blog or you write for content websites, backlinking your own work is very beneficial, since you’re providing one-way links toward your own web pages.
Guest post on other blogs and provide a link back to your own website in the author’s section. Creating content for another website other than your own may take some time. Though, not only will you receive backlinks to your own website, but you also may receive additional traffic from the blog you guest posted for.
Submit your articles to blog carnivals. If you write quality content, your articles will probably be displayed in at least some of the blog carnivals you applied for. This can be a valuable source for backlinks.
Host your own blog carnivals. Request article submitters to link back to your website if their articles are displayed in the carnival. Only display articles with quality though.

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How do you backlink to your work?
What other backlinking strategies can you give to freelance writers?