Bang per buck link development

Hello again lolly lovers!

Today, I want to address a matter dear to the heart of all online moolah-makers, namely, how does one best allot time to building links?

Arguably, gaining inbound links is still the principal factor in search engine ranking, at least with Google. As long as your site does not contravene the Gospel according to Google, and you have some original content on your site then building links alone will have a resounding impact on your SERPs.

So, how do you go about best building inbound links, assuming you will be doing this on your Todd?

Directory submissions have been systematically devalued over recent years as a source of good inbound linkage. That is not to say that directory submissions no longer work.  They do! However, long gone are the days when you could submit willy-nilly to a few hundred directories with a particular keyphrase as link anchor and within a week or two go shooting up the SERPs for that keyphrase. Instead, there are a few more subtle methods required when using directories for building inbound linkage.  First, be aware of the sort of neighborhood you are submitting to. Wherever possible you want your links in context and appearing on pages of similar sites. Paying to get into well-maintained “good neighborhood” directories is beneficial if you have loose cash floating around.  Second, vary your link anchor, but more importantly vary your site description often. Third, if you are keen to make free directory submissions a part of your link development plan then be prepared to make directory submissions ongoing and on a weekly, even daily, basis. Many free directories go under, many are not regularly maintained, many are not worth being listed in.  Despite all this, some do offer good inbound linkage, and although they may be free today, the owners may well flip the switch at a later date.

Verdict on directory submissions as a link building method: 5/10, a little bit of a lottery these days and one that requires significant ongoing effort. Good if you can afford to outsource it.

Social bookmarking sites offer another opportunity to build quick, cheap links. Again, these have been devalued in recent times due to the ease with which they are manipulated. I have never been one to use social bookmarking effectively. It has always seemed like far too much effort for very little reward. I did briefly rejoice in some impressive traffic figures from StumbleUpon (reaching 3000 uniques an hour at one point) but even at such high levels the traffic just did not convert. StumbleUpon is dead, I say! (If ever it lived) Many of the other social bookmarking sites have gone nofollow and really only live off their advertised potential for traffic, delivering little or no traffic to the vast majority of sites listed.

Verdict on social bookmarking submissions as a link building method: 4/10. Far too effort intensive for little gain. Another minor weapon on the link builder’s toolbelt and best if you can outsource it.

Forum signatures are a little bit more like it. Forums are bread and butter for many link builders. There are high profile forums offering ‘dofollow’ signature links in all niches, and although it does take a little bit of effort in ongoing participation, these links do not seem to have been devalued to the extent of social bookmarking or directory submission links. If you have the money, then signatures are often or sale on some forums and can get you good linkage fairly quickly. Be sure to gain links in multiple forums and utilize the “Recent blog” option if it exists to get your blog feed in on your posts too. 

Verdict on forum signatures as  a link building method: 7/10. Being a little generous here, should have been 6.5/10 but that looks untidy. Great on good authority nofollow forums.

Blog commenting. Ok, now we are cooking. If you are a blogger and regular blog reader then commenting is merely a natural extension to your regular activities, so the additional effort is minimal. There are many blogs offering dofollow links, many offer “top commentator” type links on the front page and others use plugins to help you get your feed in on the act too. It seems as though bloggers are dying to give away links. Also, many blogs are high-traffic, authority sites. Reading and reacting to something on a blog is as easy as pie, and for your reward you get a juicy link back to your site.

Verdict on blog commenting as a link building method: 8/10. Not always for the blog shy, but if you are an avid blogger then this is a great way to establish a solid base of links and increase traffic. Look for nofollow blogs.

Article marketing. If you are an above average pen-man then article marketing can offer a great way to distribute links embedded in your articles. Although the apparent effort seems to outweigh the benefits, this is currently one of the best methods for building inbound links. Once the initial effort has been made, natural distribution of your material (such as the pulling in to autoblogs via feeds) takes care of your link propagation.

Verdict on article marketing as a link building method: 8/10. A lot of effort writing many 500 words articles, but great return. Also, some users of your material may not honor the links you place in you articles (they might remove or replace them.)

Sadly for most, the temptation for building links fast, the desire to see tangible short-term results quickly, is too great and they shy away from the methods that may take a little more time and effort but ultimately bring greater rewards.

Whichever method you choose then may you be good at it and stick with it!

If you have suggestions for other link building methods then please feel free to comment below.

Making money with auto blogs

Greetings moolah fans.

Today, I am going to talk about a method I have put to good use to make a pretty penny over the last year.  It involves autoblogging and affiliate links.

Essentially, an autoblog is a blog that, once set up correctly, periodically pulls its content from designated sources and drives itself.  It can be forgotten to ferment and earn while you move on to other ventures (or set up another auto blog!)

First things first.  I’ll assume you have hosting, a domain (or sub domain) and have installed Wordpress, and a niche and affiliates in mind.

Next, load Wordpress with the handy-dandy plugin list. 

The next stage requires you to make an informed decision!  “Ohhh, no!” I hear you cry.  But yes, my friend, you are not going to get through this without a little bit or work and accountability.  The decision you must make is which RSS feed to post plugin you will use.  There are two good free options: WP-o-Matic and FeedWordpress.

WP-o-Matic is, apparently, undergoing a re-write.  Or has been for the last umpteen months.  However, the current stable release works just fine.  The plugin has a useful feature that allows you to replace phrases for your chosen text (or links!).  However, there are two small disadvantages particularly for the not so tech savvy.  The plugin uses the unix crontab to periodically run so you’ll need access to this functionality on your hosting account (ask your host about it, but with many unix/linux based shared hosting accounts it is a bog standard feature.)  The second small inconvenience is that the plugin seems to run only at 20 minutes intervals (or longer).  This shortcoming is inconvenient while testing, but doesn’t really impact in-the-field usage much.

FeedWordpress is also functional and does the job well.  It has a sister plugin that helps prevent pulling in duplicate material (i.e. publishing the same content more than once on your blog.)  This is very useful if you plan to set these things up and let them run autonomously.

So, you have your blog set up and your choice of feed plugin installed.  Next, let’s grab some content.  There are numerous places you can look for free public domain content. Let’s take a another look at that last statement: “There are numerous places you can look for free public domain content.”  Public domain content usually means content liberated of any reproduction restrictions so you are free to re-publish it.  Article directories are a great source for public domain content.  Head on over to Google and type in “free article directory” and you’ll be dealt a good hand comprising a list of hundreds, if not thousands, of sources for free content.  Many article directories have certain caveats regarding content reproduction (usually that you must retain a link to the original author) so be sure to adhere to these.

If you consider yourself a budding bard and of moderate ability when it comes to spinning a sentence then, with a little bit of elbow grease, you have additional and potentially more lucrative options available to you when it comes to autoblogging.

If this is the case, then you could use the articles pulled from article directories to seed your own re-writes. Pull in a few articles on a given subject, read them and then conjure up your own summary in your own words.  Why is this a better option?  Well, simply because you will have original content.  Google does not appreciate duplicate content.  So if your content production dynamo is simply pulling it in from other published sources, you’ll be getting second dibs on everything. This is not a bad thing per se, however, you will not compete on an even footing with the Shakespeares of the blogosphere who burn the midnight oil rustling up original works. If you were a silly boy in school and didn’t listen up during English lessons, if you preferred a queen’s rear to King Lear, if grammar was that bald dude in Fraser, then fear not, all is not lost!  There are plenty of people who’d be more than willing to rewrite material for you for a small sum (in fact, I have seen people offering to do it for as little as 0.5 cents per word over at Digital Point forums! Ok, you might not get Shakespeare or Milton for that sort of lolly but, hey, ESL students need to eat too!)

If you do go the original content route, then here is what I suggest.  Set up a feeder blog on a sub domain.  Make it invisible to everyone but you.  You can do this by using .htaccess control lists and/or robots.txt exclusions.  The important thing is that the search engines are completely oblivious to this feeder blog’s existence – they must never see it or spider it. This is because you do not want to receive any duplicate content penalties for your own original content.  Anyhow, write your original content to your feeder blog (or paste in the ESL student’s magnus opus as and when you receive it) then drip feed it to your main blog. You can aim to stay ahead of yourself then, always having, say, 12 articles ready to go down the pipe. When you get a spare half hour on the subway, in the library, or elsewhere then forget the daydreaming, forget the voluptuous specimen sat opposite and tap out a few articles for the feeder blog. This will keep you ahead of the content creation game. Most articles only have to be in the region of 250 words, although I recommend occasionally laying down something a little longer, perhaps in the 500-600 words bracket.

(One small point I should add here is that I do not recommend the use of “content spinners” or “article spinners” as they are sometimes known. These are programs that scan a piece of text and suggest a series of synonyms for certain words or phrases in the text. The user then chooses (or permits the software to auto-select) which substitutions to use. Whichever way you do it you invariably end up with incomprehensible balderdash. There’s only one thing most people would hate to read even more than duplicate content, and that is duplicate content that reads like it has been re-written by a dyslexic hamster. Remember, affiliate sales require real people to find, be interested in, and use your site!)

Whatever content source you commit to, whether direct feeding from already published sources, whether drip feeding from your own (invisible!) feeder blog, or a hybrid approach, it is important to realise that you must post daily.

Over a few weeks, build up a head of content on your main blog.  You want the SE spiders to be visiting and indexing your content within 30 minutes of publication.  You can check this via Google Blog Search. Publish an article, then head on over to the blog search and punch in the title of the post.  On the left there are timeframe graduations that allow you to filter by predefined time periods. Choose the “Last Hour” link and see how long it takes for your post to show up.  Once you regularly see your posts appearing within about 30 minutes then you are good to go.

Next step is to introduce a few adverts.  If it’s a niche blog you are rustling up then you’ll have your own ideas about affiliates within your niche. Adsense works ok, as does epn. I’ll refrain from banging on about which to use, in favor of offering a few pointers on how to do it.

One way is to use WP-o-Matic’s regex engine to substitute affiliate links for keywords or phrases. So on a digital camera blog, you might substitute affiliate links for all instances of Nikon camera in your article. Don’t forget to use GoCodes to mask your affiliate linkage.

Also, be cautious at the outset.  Do not pepper your blog too readily with outbound affiliate linkage. Although I have no black and white evidence, I would suggest based on my own semi-empirical findings that loading it up too densely at the outset can work against you when it comes to SERPs. The last thing you want after putting in the above blood, toil, tears and sweat is to be promptly de-indexed (and believe me it does happen!) so go easy on the links.

If you put this method to good use, or have any supplementary questions, then feel free to post below.