Directories
are nice because don’t require a reciprocal link.
By doing a
little online searching you can find plenty of advice about how to build your
incoming links, how to trade links, and other ways to obtain links.
Creating a blog is another great way to
build links. The downside is of course, you have to blog consistently, not once
or twice and let it wither away. A blog with quality content will be linked to
by other sites…those good one way links.
Creating a blog is quite easy at one of
the many blog sites. My opinion is that if you blog you should host the blog on
your own website.
I like Google’s blogger.com, which you can opt to host on
your own site. When you do that you login to your Google account to create and
edit your blog, and when you finish and publish it, the blog is uploaded to your
website. You end up with the original
material on your own site and the links to your blog will be pointing to your
URL too, so you get the full benefit.
Twitter is helpful for building links as well. I hear a lot that Google
doesn’t count them, but when I use Google’s webmaster tools to see my back links
there they are. If they didn’t do any good I don’t see why Google would show
them to us.
Article Marketing
Article marketing is an excellent way to build links.
Article marketing is where you write a brief article, 400-800 words, and submit
the article to article directories. This works surprisingly well at not only
obtaining back links, but you get to create the anchor text!
When I first discovered article marketing I was skeptical.
But I tried it and soon noticed some very interesting things. One, the engines,
Google included, trust these article directory sites. How do I know? Do
practically any search, and you will notice the article directory URLs showing
up, maybe not on the first page, but the rest of the pages are often peppered
with them.
Many of my articles come up on the first page of search
results, and often in the #1 spot. If the engines did not trust these sites that
would not happen. But wait…there’s more.
Often the article on the article directory pops up with a
higher ranking than the same article that I placed on my site before submitting
it to the directories. That tells me that the directories are well trusted by
Google and the other engines.
Here’s how it works; at the end of the article you are
allowed to place 2 or 3 links in your “Authors box”, with whatever link text,
anchor text, and nearby text you want. This provides you a way of not only
reinforcing your keyword phrases and your long-tailed keywords, but you can use
deep linking as well.
My own process goes something like this; I use a keyword
research tool to find the best keyword phrases to fit my article, and take a
look at the kinds of long-tailed keywords people are using. Then I write my
article with that in mind. No keyword stuffing, just written for humans with
keywords and phrases where appropriate.
Once I’ve written the article, I convert it to a web page
and put it in my library of articles. Every new article first becomes a new web
page and increases the importance of the site in the eyes of the search engines.
Then I wait for the article/web page to get indexed by
Google. I check by doing a search for a unique phrase or sentence in the
article surrounded by quotes in Google. Once it shows up, I know it’s been
indexed and my site will have the benefit of being original content.
I have 10 article directories that I like to submit to.
Each directory has its own set of guidelines you must follow or your article
will be rejected. This screening process is probably what gives the search
engines trust in the directories. Each directory takes a different amount of
time to review your article and approve it before publishing it.
Some are blazing fast, and some take a month or more to
approve an article. I think this is good, because it spreads the article’s
release out over time instead of all at once, and thus it looks more natural and
organic to the search engines.
Speaking of speed, one of the directories, ArticlesBase, is
incredibly fast at getting the articles indexed in Google. I’ve timed it, and
in a few cases within 30 minutes of submitting an article it was showing up in
the Google search results. 30 minutes!
The pickiest and the one with the most clout with Google at
least in my opinion is EzineArticles. I have the most problems getting articles
approved there, and they show up more often in Google search results than the
rest of the directories.
Most of the article directories that I submit articles to
have some form of stats that you can use to see how often your articles are
viewed and some show how many times visitors have clicked through to your site
from the article. Some directories even show you how often your article has been
syndicated via RSS feeds from the directory. A couple of them show you how
often they are found by the search engines and what the keyword phrases were
used in the search.
These articles stay in the directories database for years,
and continue to be found by searches on both the directory sites and the search
engines. They also contribute substantially to your back link count. Article
marketing is definitely a worthwhile endeavor.
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