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Page Rank Sculpting and Getting Backlinks the Right Way
| Now that you have a clear snapshot of the SEO process, let’s discuss the topic of backlinks because this is the area of SEO where the recent Google Updates really hit hard. This is probably one of the most important chapters in this book! “Good quality links” will still push your web pages up to the top of Google, despite any Google update! I must admit that it’s a little more complicated than to just say new links will solve everything -but it is safe to say that sites that dropped in rankings and lost links or brand new sites built from scratch will move up on Google if you have some fresh new links coming in! That’s why I will tell you to stop focusing on all the gloom and doom and start DOING something to get back on top - and that is by getting good quality links. What is Page Rank Sculpting? The best definition can come from Matt Cutts himself: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/ Other great resources on PageRank Sculpting: http://yoast.com/pagerank-sculpting-siloing/ Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BLohQdtoXw  If your sites lost backlinks and have dropped in rankings then you need to get new links. Despite new theories floating around, the best way to get on page 1 of Google is still by getting good quality in-content relevant links pointing to your pages with your target keywords! What happened really in the Google Panda and Penguin updates was that a lot of websites were removed from the Google index in late March and early April 2012 and a lot of sites lost links from those pages. While that itself did have an immediate impact on a lot of websites, the full impact was not fully realized until they pushed the so-called Penguin Update and applied the new algorithms across all of the pages in Google’s index. It wasn’t so much the penalties that made sites fall in rankings - rather it was losing the link juice from the sites that were earlier deindexed. These deindexed sites where the ones that Google considered spammy and links farms. Getting back some links will solve that problem! Google’s new index drastically affected the rankings across the board - some stayed on top while the rest went way down so fast. The sites that suffered in the Penguin update where those sites lost their backlinks! Thus Google was correct when it said that the Penguin update came after the overoptimized sites - sites that had baclinks from link farms and paid link sources. So why did big sites like Amazon and Wikipedia and WebMC and other big sites and major authorities remain on top? Well it’s because they were so big to begin with that they were impacted less by some of their links disappearing. Those newer sites or smaller niche keyword sites suffered because the links they lost comprised the bulk of their backlinks. In other words, smaller sites that had less links coming in overall and were previously ranking on top mainly by having a small number really good solid “in-content links” from relevant pages, were impacted greater than the big monster sites who are fat cats with major links coming in. They lost links and down more than Amazon, which still has that massive monster link machine going on. So what happened? Amazon was dominating almost every search phrase! So clearly you need to create quality backlinks that will stay indexed if you want to keep your rankings or if you want to reach page 1. Building links that get deindexed after a short while have NO VALUE. Yes you can create thousands of them, but your time and energy is wasted because these link get deindexed by Google anyway! Backlinks 101 Backlinks basically serve two purposes: ■ Direct human traffic to your site (referral traffic) ■ Direct search engine crawlers to your site (link authority) In my experience, building backlinks can be a bit of a mundane grind. That said, they are still essential. Some people seem to think that backlinks are losing their value. I am not sure if that is true or not, but what I do know is a good quality backlink from a great site is still one of the best things that can happen for you SEO wise. Backlinks aren’t all about Google and SEO either. The more backlinks you have out there, means the more people can stumble across. Backlinks not only help your SEO efforts, they can directly send traffic to your site. That is win-win. Backlinks should be a part of any SEO strategy, and will continue to be for the immediate future. Here is where you can find some more info on backlinks: ■ Get Backlinks ■ Hubpages Backlink Guide ■ Top 10 Backlinking Techniques ■ Backlinking Guide ■ Backlink Watch Sites that employed backlinking services and link networks were heavily penalized by Google in its attempts to improve its search results by removing those who are gaming the system from its top rankings. I would admit that based on my tests, some backlink services really helped in pushing some sites to the top for some keywords via Pagerank Sculpting but this model is not really sustainable for these reasons: ■ There is a cost to these services ■ There is the risk of the link network being exposed and your site penalized ■ As the recent Google updates have proven, they no longer work and could get your site banned ■ Makes you lazy by focusing on unnatural backlinks rather then creating great content that other sites would like to I terminated my accounts with these services even long before the Google Panda and PenguinUpdates There are a lot of ways to “good ways” to get backlinks to your site. One of the quickest though is with directory submissions. Directory Submissions Directory submissions are not nearly as powerful as they once were, but they still count. I have had success using JUST directories to rank for some lower competition local terms, so even if the value is small it is there. Also there are tons of directories out there to submit too and most are free. Here are a tip: Don’t waste time on these directory submissions. If the site’s CAPTCHA is acting up, just move on. If there is a charge, no matter how small -move on. If they require a link back from your site then move on as well. Conversely, some will just need a link back in general and not from your actual site. If this is the case, you can create a blogger blog and just throw the link up there. Here are some great directory resources: ■ DMOZ - The first directory to submit to. The most powerful and the only one to truly care a lot about. ■ Add URL - A huge list of directories to submit to. ■ Strongest Links - Another directory list ■ Directory Critic - Yet another directory list Backlinks from YouTube I would highly recommend placing backlinks from YouTube videos. While this guide is not meant to teach you how to do video marketing, I will show you how to backlink from your videos. To backlink to your site from a YouTube video, simply add your site URL in the video description when you are adding a new video. For more clicks, make sure the URL is first in the video description. However, your backlink will not be shown when your video is embedded on other sites, so it would help if you watermark your video with your site URL. Even though it is not a backlink, it can still drive traffic to your site and get links back to your video on YouTube if it gets viral. It would be much better to rank that video in the Google page 1 results. To do this, follow these steps: ■ Create the video ■ Include the keyword in the YouTube video title, description and tags ■ Link the video with your keyword as anchor from at least ten social networks and bookmarking sites ■ Link to the video with your keyword as anchor from two Pagerank 1 sites and a PageRank 2 site ■ Link to the video from a Blogger blog ■ Search your keyword in Google and track the ranking of the video This method may be more effective for local search keywords and medium competition keywords. This formula worked for me. If it works for you but you had to add or subtract from the steps above, let me know. See the separate PDF titled “ VideoMavenMethod’ in the Methods folder. Backlinks from Blogs Blogs are probably the second easiest way to get backlinks to your site. Why? Because a large portion of the content that is being produced on the web comes from blogs and the chances of you getting backlinks are good - if you know how to. You get links in three ways: ■ A direct link from the blog post ■ A link from the comments section ■ A link from a trackback There are two ways you can get backlinks from the blog post: ■ Your site is mentioned by the blogger ■ You are the blogger yourself, posting as a guest blogger You may ask me “How the heck do I get a blogger to mention my site? There are three ways: ■ Build a relationship with the blogger by participating in his blog comments, facebook page or twitter page, so that he learns who you are and what your website is all about ■ Contact him directly and suggest your site content as a resource for his next or old blog post. Make sure your content is solid and helpful, and your site is well designed, not full of ads and does not have any malware of pop-ups. ■ Link bait - a link bait is a post on your site that mentions another blog or site in the hope that you get their attention and they link back to your post. Usually, these link bait posts are compilation of the “best”, the “worst” or simply a controversial piece of content that attracts attention. Warning though: Do not get into any fight or quarrel online. Do you know that you can get your site mentioned and linked to from authority sites like the New York Times? One of the sites that benefitted from such authority link is Erica.biz which as of this writing is ranking #6 for the very competitive keyword “make money online”  A look at this site’s Alexa page indicates that among this site’s backlinks are those coming from the New York Times blog, Huffington Post, Wordpress.org.  You too can get backlinks from Huffington Post and the New York Times! In a separate PDF title “ThePublisherMethod” in the Methods folder, I give you a method that worked me in getting backlinks and traffic from Huffington Post and also I give you a list of New York Times bloggers you can contact. Remember, nobody’s going to know about your site’s content if you don’t promote your content by contacting people! Bloggers are journalists too and journalists get some of their stories from people who contact them. Guestblogging Related to this is content SYNDICATION. You are gaining traffic, authority and premium backlinks from established websites in your market, and you do this by offering to guest post or guest blog on relevant websites. You can use content syndication to: ■ Generate traffic to your website instantly. ■ Build a reputation as an authority in your market. ■ Siphon “authority” from established websites. ■ Build premium backlinks that will remain intact! ■ Position yourself as the “go to” expert in your field For details on guestblogging and resources to get you started, please see the accompanying PDF titled “SyndicateMethod-Part-1-Blog-GuestPosting’’. NOTE: If you are a VIP Member of GrowOrganicTraffic or SOCSeo, I provide you with guest blogging author accounts on some of our quality blogs so you can get your feet wet on guest blogging. If you are not a VIP member, contact http://centralsuccess.com/support and ask how you can upgrade to VIP Member. Backlinks from social media There are many types of social sites: social media, social bookmarking, social networks and social discovery sites. Social bookmarking sites include: ■ Delicious ■ Digg Social Networks include: ■ Linked In Social Discovery Sites include: ■ Tagged ■ Stumble Upon Social Media Sites include: ■ Youtube ■ Flickr ■ DailyMotion Social sites are probably the most fertile grounds to plant backlinks to your site, because links shared on social sites tend to go viral. For details, see the PDF titled “SocialMafia-Method in the Methods folder. Source: Google Piranha | |
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