Quality Link Building Tips

When it comes to building your blog up you will quickly learn that you need to have good search engine rankings to gain decent organic traffic to your blog. Today I am going to talk about some basic but quality ways to build backlinks to your blog.

These backlinks will improve your search engine rankings in time; they are legit white hate techniques that people pay others hundreds of dollars to find out about. You all know me, I don’t charge for practically anything (that’s why my blog rocks so much) and this article is no different. I am spilling the big dollar beans and all those that charge for this info can now take a hike!

First off, there are several link building techniques to cover, so let’s not waste any time learning about them. Today we are going to discuss each one in-depth and then I will recommend my top 3 at the end of the post. Additionally I will be recommending ways to get each link type through each example.

Don’t just blow by all the rest and skip to the top 3, remember in the search engines eyes a good link profile is just as important as the links themselves. If you only do the last 3 methods you will be missing out on what makes a truly great ranking website.

Directory Links

People these days seem to disregard directory links; they seem to think they no longer hold value for the search engines. While this is true for free for all directories that accept any site submitted to them a paid directory or at the very least a directory that checks every link by hand is still a valuable link to get. The reason directory links help your website so much is simple, each link goes into a very specific category which allows the search engines to know exactly what a business does. They can then filter out the results of which it doesn’t and that is one of the ways they provide relevant results to its users.

Here are 5 top directories I recommended submitting your website to. These are paid but well worth it, trust me on this one!

• Yahoo Directory
• Business Directory
• BOTW Directory
• AntiAdBuster

Reciprocal Links

Reciprocal links used to be a major factor for the search engines to rank you by. At the time it seemed like a good idea, but looking back now we can see how the problems began. All you had to do was say to a friend, hey if you link to me, I will link to you. We will both get link juice from each other and start moving up the ranks. For those who knew how to do this technique in mass quantities it worked great and people made a lot of money off it.

Since then things have changed and google now is much more specific with what link types it factors in more over others. Reciprocal links are basically dead these days, but I still believe it’s important to have a few to balance out your link profile.

Social Bookmarks

Social bookmaking is one of the newest link types to the link building game; luckily for us it’s a powerful one and if used right can benefit our websites as no other technique can. Social bookmarks allow us to quickly gain individual votes for a website and gain traffic as well a search engine rankings from those votes. Since most social bookmaking websites that you’ll submit to are pretty big in size you will gain multiple links from each of the articles/sections of your website that you submit.

Social bookmarking has been discussed countless times on our blog but for some quick references check out the links below, these are our top social bookmarking ideas and sources. As a seo this is what I use on every customer’s website, you can do the same and get fantastic results like I do.

• Get social bookmarks fast
• How to get indexed fast

Signature Links

Signature links used to be a great way for building link popularity and authority in search engines, while MSN and Yahoo used signatures a little more than they should Google has virtually marked out any and all signature links for link value/juice. The reason they’ve done this is because signature links are easy to obtain in mass quantities and you could easily alter the Google search index by using/buying them.

Google saw that this was a problem so they did what every good search engine doe’s; they eliminated them from helping the search indexing/rankings. However signature links are not all bad and I still use them to this day. I use them to gain traffic and more clicks to my website. You can read an article I wrote on that subject if you are interested in making the best use of your signatures!

Personal Page Links

Another really great way to build strong relevant backlinks to your site is by buying a personal page on websites or blogs. These pages would be created by you with a unique article about your products and services; it would then contain 4-5 links to your sites.

The page you purchase should be something along the lines of www.someurls.com/your-keyword.html this page should also be linked off the owner of the websites home page. Most personal page link sellers sell no more then 15-20 of these pages to ensure top link juice to each. If you are interested in buying personal link pages be sure that you buy only from a trusted seller on eBay or a web forum. Scammers are all over these days and you need to be careful, one slip up and you could get scammed or even worse get your site banned from the search engines.

Do the smart thing and research the people you will be buying from, if they have multiple negative iTraders then you know they have pulled some strings in the past and its smart to steer clear.

Edu / Gov Links

Education and Government site links are a great way to build the authority of your website, they also help level out your link profile and you can gain great rankings with just a few of them. No need to worry about a high pr Edu or Gov link, just get what you can.

A strong Edu or Gov link would be one coming from an Edu or Gov site about your industry / niche. If it’s unrelated they are easy for google to spot and they discount the value of the link tremendously.

Page Rank Links

Buying links for page rank value is of the past, I do not endorse ever buying links for page rank value. Mainly because Google has made it known that they don’t appreciate it, all I use page rank for these days is a general scale of how popular a site is. No site will have a pr6+ without a few hundred visitors per day. Buy for traffic and not page rank!

Website Review Links

One of the strongest link types are website reviews in blogs, these reviews are put into a relevant category of your business and google has said in the past that website reviews are a great way for marketing and advertising so they don’t have a problem with it in any way.

Website reviews generally point anywhere from 2-5 links to your site with images and great info about your site. I even offer site reviews here on InfectedByBugs.com for a reasonable fee. Check them out and buy one on our advertise page.

Link Exchanging

As seo and link building techniques continue to be developed we can always look back at the older methods that work somewhat to this day. Link Exchanging is one of the techniques that will never truly die. Especially if you do a 3 way trade, they are virtually impossible for google and the other search engines to recognize and I have seen tremendous boosts in the serps when trading links with sites that relate to mine.

Link exchanges are easy to do as well because both parties involved in the exchange get value and link juice. If you offered me a 3 way from a relative niche site about making money online I would probably accept it simply because it relates to me and google would consider it a great link back to me.

Relative Links

Through all the above linking techniques I mentioned relative as well as links that relate to my site. Relative links is where it’s at, things used to go by page rank which worked for a while. However buying for page rank was an easy way for seos to alter the search index. Now the search engines algorithms are so advanced they can tell what is and what not a relative link is.

Relatively is the best way for the search engines to determine a links worth, if two sites of the same niche link to each other it could be strong then a page rank 9 link. There are not many page rank 9 sites on the net these days so your best bet is going to be relative links.

Closing This Out

Building links really is not that complicated, just time consuming and lots of hard work has to be put into it. If you can get past the slow building process and you continue to build naturally over time the search engines will favor your site.

I hope you have enjoyed my link building ideas, tips and list. If you liked it tell me by commenting below, if you have something to add to the list comment or contact me today!

Starting A Successful User Forum

I know that this blog is about making money online and that focus has never changed, but I think we need to talk about other topics and answer questions I receive that are semi related. One such question which I found quite interesting was…

“I want to make money online by running a forum, how can I make a forum successful and should I even try?”

Since I run a webmaster forum that is pretty successful I believe I have enough knowledge to answer the above question with confidence that if you follow a few basic do’s and don’ts you will be able to run a successful user forum.

I see questions about running a forum throughout the net on various forums and blogs. But people just don’t seem to get what sticking to the basics is all about. Since some of you refuse to learn it the hard way im making it simple by listing what you should and should not do when starting a forum.

User forums are one of the hardest website types to get going in any decent amount of time. They take so long for the simple fact that a user forum is run by the users, as an admin you can only do so much. In order to be successful I have compiled a list of 5 do’s and dont’s I believe are essential to success!

Increase Signups

One of the best things you can do as a forum owner is to install this Welcome Guest Headers vbulletin mod. It will increase signups like you have never seen! By encouraging your visitors to register you are opening the door for posts to flood in naturally.

Domain Name

Starting a successful user forum the domain name is important to your success. We have talked before about a catchy business / domain name and to this day nothing has changed. The domain name of a forum is important because people go to a user forum even more then a blog or business website. Picking the perfect domain is essential as discussed in other articles which you can read here if you wish!

Keyworded Domain Importance
Catchy Business Name Importance

Paid Postings

I see so many people who offer paid posting services for user forums. People trying to get their forums going buy into the lie and pay these peoples tens of hundreds of dollars to make 100’s to 1,000’s of posts in a forum. What they fail to realize is the fact that those posts are not organic and your users can tell. Not only can your users who do come tell but the search engines can tell and they discredit a lot of that content.

Your best bet is going to be avoiding paid posting all together, I know its hard to believe but you will actually grow your forum quicker and more professionally if you don’t buy into the paid posting lie spread around the internet.

Hiring Staff

The most important factor for a successful forum is the staff that drive it. Frequent activity is what your users want to see, don’t worry about getting others to join your site focus on getting your mods in place. They will tell there friends and it will start to spread like wildfire! People love to feel important so a lot of people will be a mod because of that fact alone. Its easy advertising and you wont have to pay a mod staff if you get the right people at the helm in the start!

Offers/Contests

A great way to promote your forum is to offer contests and other offers for people to post. Just make sure to list that they must be quality posts and that you are running the contests in hopes that they stick around and become a lifetime member. A lot of people will feel obligated to do so and you will love yourself for saying that in the initial contest thread, trust me!

Return Users

Getting return visitors is the ultimate goal, there are a few things you can do to guarantee that you get return visitors as well. One thing that comes to mind is to send out a weekly / monthly newsletter containing info about whats going on in the forums and what will be coming out to benefit the users in the coming weeks.

If you can stick to those rule of thumbs I believe you will have a user forum thumb and be successful with it. Being successful is easy if you have the right people helping you, that is what your mods are for! Treat them right and they will return the favor themselves!

Good Job Blogging, Setting Goals

I recently received the question “How Do You Know If You Have Done A Good Job Blogging”. To answer this question I went back in my own past and decide what my turning point was. I mean sure, we get hundreds and thousands of people to our little blog daily, but is it really successful? In my opinion success is based on you, you decide your own destiny and what happens on the journey.

Success comes in so many different ways to name some traffic, subscribers, a pat on the back perhaps. You need to decide what you consider success and work towards that goal. I have said it before; making money should not be your first priority with a blog. Great blogs do well because the writer(s) care about the members and what they think. I believe this is greatly why InfectedByBugs has done so well. I care about each visitor and want to do the best I can to help everyone make money online. I try to answer every email and comment that comes on the site. Running a blog can become a full-time job if you truly care about your visitors.

One way I decided that I was doing a good job was by getting pats on the back, lots of people would email, and comment or pm me on user forums explaining how impressed they were with my blog and the wisdom I freely shared on it. Being told your doing a great job goes to some people’s heads, but for me I take it on as a challenge to bring my level up even more and continue to improve.

Anthony Robbins had an old saying “CANI” it stands for “Constant And Never-ending Improvement” I take this approach to my blog, I try daily to bring something new to the table. I may cover and recover old topics again but I try my best to bring what everyone truly wants from my blog “How To Make Money Online”. If I didn’t provide info on how to actually make money online I would assume my blog would be useless to the world and it would not do anything accept take up my time.

That brings me to the point of this post in that we are going to take a look on how and what type of goals we should set for ourselves as bloggers. (That Has To Be The Longest Intro I Have Ever Written, Seriously!)

Setting Goals, Life Or Death?

When it comes to setting goals for ourselves as bloggers we often forget that our goals make or break us in our own minds. As explained above, success is based on what you believe success is, when we set our goals we should remember this. We don’t want to set an impossible goal which only brings frustration to the table when we don’t meet a goal which was never reachable.

In the early months of your blog it’s important to set goals for yourself, but if you are already and established blogger rethink your goals and be sure to update your list of goals when you complete or exceed each one. You can even set new goals as you continue to learn the blogging industry.

Here are some basic goal ideas that you can set for yourself. Remember blogging is about having fun, however if you do want to be successful you will need to set a goal. Thomas Edison set the goal of making the Light Bulb work, just think if Edison would not have stuck to his goal and made it happen you would not be on a computer today (Yes, Computer Monitors Use Light Bulbs To Work) so be thankful of his goal and set some of your own today!

Monthly Traffic Goal: The first goal I suggest is a monthly traffic goal; while getting traffic can be difficult you can read my blog and learn how to get traffic fairly easily. For some reason I have been very lucky and know how to go from 0 visitors per day to several thousand in just a short time. Be sure to read our 5 easy ways to more traffic article for all the latest traffic tips and techniques I come across.

Subscriber Goals: Another goal which I believe is important to set is a subscriber goal, don’t set a goal like 1,000 subscribers in 6 months. Its just not possible, instead set your goals at something like 50 subscribers per month. Although that number is low once you get more and more subscribers to your site things will pickup and more will join in before you know it!

Monthly Income Goals: As I stated before, making money should not be your main focus for a blog, however it is important to a lot of people. If you want to make a monthly income from your blog then set a goal. Even if it’s a small one something like $50.00 per month to start, once you reach that head for $100.00 per month. Before you know it you may be racking in thousands per month!

There are many more goals that could be set, however if you can stick to just these 3 in the first 6-12 months of your blogging I believe you could be very successful all the way around. Don’t get caught up in the moment when you reach those goals, remember “CANI” improving is always the best thing. Continue to improve and never look back as you will not want to remember those old unsuccessful days!