How to Quickly Get FREE Passive Backlinks to Your Blog
The other day I was thinking about all the time, money and energy I have spent in the past to get quality backlinks to my sites and individual blog posts. SEO can become a huge Headache sometimes, especially if you don’t have too much extra time or any money to spend on it. But without backlinks, you’re site won’t ever reach it’s full potential. Or get much free traffic from the search engines, ever.
You write content for your blog, then you have to work on SEO and work on building back links for it. That’s a very tedious job for anyone to do by their self, day in and day out. And you’ll probably wind up giving up after a few months. If you think about it, that’s not a very efficient method at all.
Of course, when your first starting out, and have a very limited audience, you will need to put in some work to get the ball rolling, and to organically get backlinks to your new blog posts just like what Daniel had said when he had answered my question awhile back in this article.
It finally hit me though, that getting free passive backlinks continuously to your blog and posts, would just make more sense than having to go back yourself and working on them manually. That way, others would be continuously doing your back linking for you, and you can move on to something else.
Here’s the best methods that I could find and personally have done some experimenting with myself to get passive free backlinks to your blog.
Create Killer Content – I’ll admit, sometimes just to keep up with a consistent schedule of publishing a post every few days, I’ve written some very simple posts just to get something out there. But guess what, those posts probably scared more people away from my blog rather than helped the cause.
If you spend the time to actually create content that is very valuable to your readers, then not only will you get traffic by word of mouth, but you will also start getting backlinks from other bloggers pointing to your great content. Keep this up and you’ll soon have started the snowball effect, and you won’t really have to even worry about getting backlinks anymore.
Which is better? Writing a simple blog post and then spending hours on getting backlinks and traffic to it constantly. Also remember, you’ll continuously be getting only new readers to your blog not any loyal readers since you have low quality content. Or, taking a little more time to write stellar content and creating a loyal fan base that will eventually do the promoting of your posts for you. It’s your choice.
Link baits – These are usually very long and thorough posts that will be used as a continuous source for others to refer to. Such as lists and tutorial type of posts. I have a few of these on my site and they for sure brought in the most organic traffic and backlinks. The effort I put into these type of posts is definitely worth it. And I still to this day, get links pointed to them from other bloggers and even from many mentions on forums.
Social Media Buttons – This is probably the most passive way of getting backlinks and traffic to your blog. All you need to do, if you’re using WordPress, is to find a good social media plugin. And there’s a ton of good ones out there. Not only will you get backlinks from the social media sites, but also a lot of traffic.
Make sure there is a way for people to easily bookmark your site on the most popular social media sites, and you have one on every single of your blog posts. Like my blog, I have them to the left of every post. To many times I see newbies without these on their blog, and they probably are losing a lot of traffic and backlinks because of this. Remember, people are lazy, make it easy for them by being able to push a simple button to share your blog post.
Act Like an Expert – If you become known as one of the experts or authority figures in your niche, then people will more than likely link to your site as a reliable source for information on that particular topic. For instance, anyone who wants to start a blog or wants information about blogging, people link to and lead others to, Problogger.
Not everyone will be able to be as well known as Problogger. But like even myself, this blog still gets links back from people that are new to blogging and internet marketing since I do know what I’m doing. And to some of them, I probably am seen as an somewhat of an expert. Even though I am far from being one.
Know what in the world you’re talking about on your niche. Do your research and experimenting before you even try to act like an expert in any niche, or this could have the reverse effect.
Give something away for free – Go grab yourself some free Master resell or Private Label Rights products and give it away for free. Make sure you also brand those products with your blog and even can throw in some affiliate links. Or just use your imagination. There’s a ton of FREE things you could give away.
You could create something of your own, a simple landing page, software, or even a really good ebook. You could even hold some type of contest. Giving something of value away for FREE will get a lot of attention and will have other bloggers linking to you. Many top experts use this method all the time.
Blog about the latest trends and hot topics – If you’re one of the first to blog about something new, or currently trending, then other bloggers will use your post as a source. Some will even link back to you. Chances are, if you’re one of the first to blog about something, then you’ll show up in the search engines much easier than waiting until 1000′s of other bloggers write about it too.
I once wrote an article about the Social Network Movie, and even though all the top sites on the internet also wrote about it, my post was in the top 5 listings on the first page of Google’s results for a good while. Just because I was the one of the first to write about it. This helped bring me new visitors, but also some new back links.
It might take a little more work and effort at first to implement the methods above. But after that, then the backlinks and traffic should be continuously coming to your site and blog posts on their own. Think how many free passive backlinks you could get if you did everything mentioned above on a consistent basis. You would become a force to be reckoned with in the Internet marketing world.
I believe it all begins and is built around great content that is so valuable, it will make people want to link to you and share your information. This is something I am going to be working on going forward. I know my writing skills are still pretty weak, but they are slowly getting better and better. You should see some of my first posts, an English teacher would freak out.
Got any other good methods that weren’t listed?
Location & Placement Affects the Power of a Backlink
Backlinks may play the most important role in SEO, other than killer content. If you want to be found whenever someone looks up something in the search engines, then you need to get backlinks to your sites and blogs. However, I’ve found that the placement and location of the back-links can make a HUGE difference. I’m talking about whether you’re link is located in the footer, sidebar, comments, or in the content.
If you didn’t know already, then you probably can guess that a link that’s in the content is more powerful and will give you much more link juice than any other type of backlink. Why is that?
Let’s talk about one particular search engine, Google, the Big Daddy of all the search engines. If you look deeper into the Google Algorithm, then you will learn that Google likes links that are in place to help the reader. So relevant contextual links that serve as a reference and source to the content, makes Google happy. Also, it’s believed that content surrounding a link helps the search engine spiders know what the link it’s following is about, which makes it a more relevant backlink.
That’s not all, many pro seo’s say search engine spiders crawl and break up the page in different sections of importance. For instance, the header and content are the most important parts of the page, with the sidebar and footer being at the bottom of importance. It makes a lot of sense if you think about it, what part of the site plays the biggest part on what keywords you show up for in the serp’s? The title tags and your keywords in the content, right?
Of course not everything is so black and white when it comes to SEO and the search engine algorithms. But from what I’ve researched and experimented on my own, the importance of backlinks depending where they are located on a site really does seem to make a huge difference.
Here’s my experience with link placement
Back in the day I tried a few things out and plus I was ignorant, so I did whatever the heck the experts told me to do. I was told to do a lot of blog commenting and link exchanges with relevant blogs to get more back links to my site. I had acquired numerous backlinks from many of the top blogs for my niche in the top commentators section, usually located on their sidebar or footer. I also left a lot of blog comments on dofollow blogs. Not only that, I managed to get placed on several blog rolls with decent Pagerank with a one way link back to my site. I really didn’t notice any changes after several months. I didn’t gain any pagerank either. After awhile longer many of these links were taken down. I figured I would lose pagerank or positions in the serp’s from losing these backlinks, guess what happened? Squat, I lost no placement or pagerank and nothing really happened. Some of these links I had were on PR 5 or better sites and of course all the links I acquired were all dofollow.
Then, I started to do more article marketing, getting backlinks from guest posts and only worked on getting contextual links. Sometimes I could almost see my sites or pages moving in the serp’s the very next day for the anchor text I was using. It sometimes only takes a few good backlinks in the middle of the content from a trusted site to give you page rank and move you in the search engine results pages. Try it out for yourself.
What’s the best way of getting contextual links or backlinks in the content?
Article marketing is a good way, but the best way is writing valuable content on your site so others will link to you. But if you’re not the best writer or want to speed things up, then you can do guest posting. Which basically is the same thing as someone linking to you in their content. However, not all of us have the time or skills to write guest posts, so the other alternative is to hire someone to do that for you.
I want to add, getting back links on blog rolls, from blog commenting and link exchanges may help your site out. And of course, each site will give different amounts of link juice than others. Back when I was purposely trying to get these type of back links they really didn’t do much for my sites. Do some experimenting on your own and see what gives you the best results. But I guarantee you’ll eventually see that links in the content are the most powerful backlinks of all.
Will Social Media Marketing Replace SEO?
Whether you’re a blogger, or internet marketer, getting more traffic is always on the back of your mind. It wasn’t to long ago when Social Media Marketing (SMM) was just beginning to blossom into the powerhouse it has turned into today, and what it will become in the near future. Many people are spreading rumors and posting articles about the death of search engine optimization (SEO), and talk about how Social Media is going to replace SEO completely. I think they are taking it a little to far, or are they just trying to start a little controversy??
I remember it was just a few years ago when I first got into Internet marketing, and everyone use to preach about search engine optimization should be my main priority, especially for getting quality traffic. No one really mentioned social media or using it as a way to get traffic to my mini niche sites.
The Power of Social Media has really swept over the world and internet, in a short amount of time. It’s always been around, but now it plays a major role for getting quality traffic to your sites, as much as SEO can. Social Media obviously is also a major factor in creating or continuing a successful business, online or offline.
Thanks to some Brilliant Minds like, Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook creator) and Jack Dorsey (Twitter creator), everyone and there grandma loves social networking.
How Popular and how Fast is Social Media Growing?
Compete’s top 50 list for Dec. 2009 -Look at how many social networking sites are on the list, and their stats!!
Alexa’s Top 15 list again many of them are social media sites.
- Google.com
- Facebook.com
- Youtube.com
- Yahoo.com
- Live.com
- Wikipedia.org
- Blogger.com
- Baidu.com
- MSN.com
- QQ.com
- Yahoo.co.jp
- Twitter.com
- Google.co.in
- Myspace.com
- Google.cn
According to Emarketer, a survey was done on senior marketers Top Priorities for 2010. The results are shown below on the chart.
Their number one priority is social networks and applications, so even the top experienced marketers are changing gears over to social media marketing.
Why should you start putting more effort into social media marketing?
Social Media is Awesome because it spreads virally. It takes just one person to go to your site and spread the word about your great post or product, then all of a sudden you get a BLAST of traffic from just one person who started the viral effect. It’s one of the cheapest and most effective ways to get traffic to your websites. Just make sure you work on your Social Media Optimization (SMO) by making your websites compatible for social networking sites. Such as the type of content, adding functionality with rss and social bookmarking buttons.
I found that websites that have been around for a good while and have authority, get more traffic from search engines, rather than from social media. However, newer sites can easily get traffic quicker and faster, if you utilize social networking before the seo kicks in.
Now, to utilize social media to the fullest it takes time, a lot of effort continuously networking and giving value to others first.
Why does social media work so well for conversions?
You get to meet and network with like minds which can lead to connections, opportunities and more traffic.
People can easily learn more about you, build a relationship with you, which may lead to trust, and ultimately more money in the bank.
Word of mouth advertising, testimonies, trust and recommendations are some of the top reasons people make a purchase. We’ve all seen it used on infomercials, websites and other forms of advertisements, why? It’s a proven method of convincing someone to believe in your product or service and ultimately let their guard down and make a purchase.
Isn’t that what social media is all about, interacting and hearing what others have to say about things they’re interested in. I believe it’s human nature to naturally put up a barrier before we make a purchase or decide on something. We want to find the best value, and we don’t want to look like a fool because of past scams, phonies, and b.s. that we’ve seen or gone through before.When we see a testimony from someone who already tried something out, or hear a recommendation, then we tend to let our guard down and we believe in the product or service more.
Social Media allows people to hear feedback on just about anything, almost instantly. I know some Top Internet Marketers who create something valuable, whether it be a elaborate post or product. It takes just one person who finds it and spreads the word using social networking and they get so many visitors that they max out their servers within a few hours. Word of mouth works online, and the majority of us are just figuring this out.
Are you looking for More Loyal, Repeat visitors?
Ad network Chitika, did a study in which they analyzed their traffic for over 33 million unique visitors over the course of September 2009. Their study was to see out of their Big 6 Traffic sources who brings in the most “loyal visitors” – meaning a person who came back to the referred site 4 or more times in the same week. Even though the majority of their unique visitors come from Google, some of the social networking sites bring in more loyal users as you can see on their chart below, and Loyalty is a Great thing for us bloggers in so many ways. Facebook was #1 with over 20% of all visitors from Facebook visited the referred site 4 or more times in a week.
I believe in order to be successful at just about anything, learning to adapt is crucial. Everything changes constantly online, seo and social media will continually evolve so we have to move with the times. It’s now time to focus more on social media marketing if you haven’t already, but continue with SEO just like before.
Another interesting tidbit that many people have reported is that social media traffic tends to bring in more long term users and buyers. While search engines bring in more short term users and clickers. You should plan ahead on what kind of traffic you are going after depending on what your site is about, and what form of monetizing you are doing. I believe social media plays a major role now for getting targeted traffic and to make or continue a successful business, but search engine optimization (SEO) will be around for a good while as the front runner for website traffic.
SEO Tips on Search Engine Policy on Redirecting
Here’s another SEO tidbit I wanted to throw into my blog. It’s not something new to me but once you start learning more and more, it doesn’t hurt to write or keep track of important things you’ve learned or experienced.
I had come across this google redirect policy thing the other day while in a internet marketing forum.
Google policy for redirecting. Do they allow redirecting, yes. This is how to do it following their policy. You can redirect any url but the redirect url must have the same name as the landing URL. You cannot do this grab a domain name “www.exampleebook.com” and redirect it to “www.example.com” that is the incorrect way.
The correct way “www.example.com” redirect it to “www.example.com” the correct way.
By the way this is for Google Adwords TOS and Google search engine Tos as well for your websites on the internet. You will get banned and unindexed from google if you have a redirect without doing it properly. Also your ppc campaign will be over almost instantly, it will be able to detect this.
Now you’re thinking what’s the use of that then. There is a way to make an affiliate site and insert it into a different domain name. You could have a domain name let’s say (wildcarrrides.com) leading a reader to “fatlossforidiots.com”.
Now they might be on fatlossforidiots site but the redirect says (wildcarrrides.com) so I guess you are fooling the search engines. I do not use this method and don’t advise it. I’m just letting you know it can be done. Haven’t you ever clicked a link to a website you thought you were going to then you ended up on some website that totally didn’t go with the domain name? They are straight linking to the affiliate landing page.
Here’s a great post on htaccess file redirect it’s good for cloaking and redirecting.
Another legit way to redirect is to use a redirect service like, “bit.ly” or “metamark.net“ there are others as well. You can throw just about any link in there and it will shorten and redirect for you. All abiding by the search engines policies.
Can you redirect with google adwords with your unique url affiliate sites?
Yes you can such as clickbank or with other affiliate programs. You can direct link an affiliate site let’s say (www.hop.flyincycles.clickfirst.net) and make the visible url look like this – (www.flyincycles.com)
First you need to make sure the owner will allow you to do this and second Google only allows one redirect like that with each domain to show up on adwords. Better be the first or there will be a battle. I believe there is a ranking order whoever is bidding more, better quality score or etc…..
SEO (search engine optimisation) is a continuous learning journey for me. You gotta keep up with the old and stay fresh with the new but that’s what makes it so great. It keeps you on your toes, just when you think you’ve mastered seo then one of your sites or blogs gets banned or loses PR from just one little mistake.
How to Get Indexed by Google in just a few Days
I had to write a post about this topic because it’s a pretty HOT Topic right now, especially on Twitter and many Big Blogs. Some say submit your site url into google search engines and that is the fastest way to be indexed by them. It makes sense and I even wrote a post about that whole subject recently.
Hey, if Google says to submit your site in their search engine manually then it should be fine and dandy, Right. Haven’t you ever noticed it takes awhile before your site or blog is indexed by google?
Unless you throw a bunch of back links to it, I personally never had a site indexed by Google, Yahoo or MSN in a few days just by submitting it manually into their search engine. I always just thought that was the fastest way and the best way to do it.
The TRUTH about how to get indexed by Google in just a few days!
The Fastest way to be indexed is actually to NEVER SUBMIT your sites to any search engines manually. Yes, it will eventually get indexed by the search engines but the fastest way is to naturally have Google find your site, instead of forcing your site to them. It’s just like your best friend and you meeting their other friends.
You don’t go up to all his or her friends and force yourself to an introduction, you wait until your best friend introduces them to you. I guess that’s how Google works as well. The King would rather be introduced from someone who he already knows.
Find a PR2 site or higher Page rank site and get a backlink from them. If you do this Google, which of course crawls their site at least once a day will find your link……and guess what. You’ll get indexed.
I know my blog for instance isn’t any pagerank yet….hey, my baby was just made not to long ago and I haven’t really spent any time on a back linking mission yet.
But my point was no pagerank but my site gets crawled everyday from Google with a lot of hits. I also add new content to it almost everyday now, as well. A Pagerank 2 site should be good enough or go after a higher pagerank if you are anxious.
If you do this, your site should be indexed within a couple of days. I want to also add, throwing a squidoo lens, Ezines article or Etc… seems to help as well if your still not indexed within a few days. I just wanted to add I learned this (not submitting sites manually to Google) from the seo expert over at the dailyseoblog.
Trust me this method works and I don’t ever submit my sites manually anymore. Even though many people still think that’s the fastest and best way. Test it out yourself and see what works best.
Top Ten SEO Mistakes
One of the most frustrating parts of Internet Marketing easily could be SEO (search engine optimization) . It sometimes makes some of us marketers to act a little crazy ;-)
I have created a Top Ten Seo Mistakes post from my experiences and tips I have learned along the way.
Why is SEO techniques so important for your website or blog? If you do not comply with many of the (search engine optimization) rules then you are taking the risk of 1. not getting indexed by search engines altogether and 2. getting kicked out of the search engines or losing all your pagerank. :-(
Top Ten SEO Mistakes
#1 Using the Title Tag improperly. This is basically the most important tag on your entire site. Your title tag is what will appear in the search engine results pages as the title of your site or post. It’s what people click on to go to your site. Very important to pick the best keyword phrase. Make it catchy and with your main keywords in it – (NO longer than 65 characters!) Always make sure you use a title tag or no title will appear in the serps!
#2 Not using Meta tag Keywords Properly. Back in the good ol days search engines looked highly on Good Meta Keyword tags but now meta tags don’t help your sites pagerank. BUT improper use of meta tags will hurt you. Meta tags is the description of your site or blog below the title tag in serps. Make sure you format it correctly and use good keywords, synonyms, descriptions. Keep it under (170 characters), you will find your meta tag description right below the title tag description.
#3 Html mistakes on your site. There could be many reasons for mistakes with your html coding but this is a very common mistake. Html is not properly formatted and usually I found the reason for this is because you forgot to put a closing tag at the end of your html tags. Example: very simple example <b>example <–<—–forgetting the end tag which would be </b> forgetting a end tag will really mess up your whole page and the search spiders will also not pick up the page the way they should.
#4 Creating and writing useless content. Remember the old saying content is king. That still is pretty much the same even today. BUT if you have a bunch of worthless content that doesn’t help a potential reader or customer then the search engines will pick up on that. Many people nowadays write content (worthless) in hopes of getting ranked quicker or etc….One thing I learned about SEO is Search Engines know how many people go to your site, how long they stay, if they return and if other people go to your site from other websites. The search engines determine this as which site is more important and has more value. Basically if you have worthless content and people leave and don’t come back then you will get ranked lower.
#5 Overuse of Keywords or keyword stuffing. Many newbies think the more keywords they scatter all over their site the better or quicker they get ranked right? Wrong, search engines are so more complexed than they use to be so this doesn’t work anymore. You need to distribute your keywords out evenly and in a manner where they make sense. Don’t overdue the keywords and also add words that are similar to your main keyword descriptions.
#6 Improper usage of “Link Anchor Text”. Many people use the infamous “click here” or “enter here” for their html hyperlink or link anchor text. One thing I learned about this is that search engines love html hyperlinks and the actual words describe what your site is about. If you use “click here” as your link anchor text then you will show up for the search results “click here” . Use relevant keywords for your link anchor text instead of “click here”. Don’t use the same exact “link anchor text” throughout your site this could lead to search engine spamming. Also when you are making articles and getting backlinks to your site. Have those “link anchor text” also be words you want your site to be ranked for and don’t always use “click here to enter site”.
#7 Unfriendly Urls don’t help your cause either. Have you seen some urls usually a different page of the actual site that says (www.example.com/?p=5432) this I found is usually with blogs. With wordpress it’s default is to make your pages and links in your site use a p= for page or cat= for a category. BUT with most scripts/platforms they make it very easy to change this and come with the feature built in. With wordpress you just go into the “permalinks” I believe and you can change your page and category urls from this: www.example.com/?p=12312 to this www.example.com/date of post/title of post . This is much better looking and people can see what the actual url is about instead of p=1221 and more SEO sound.
#8 Using Irrelevent Keywords in hopes of getting more traffic to your site. This is a NO NO! I mean like this: I have a site about internet marketing or about Top Ten SEO Mistakes and you put current news keywords & tags on your site. Example adding “Sara Palin” or “susan Boyle” as one of your keywords and tags for a make money online site. Don’t risk it.
#9 Improper “Image Alt Attribute” usage. Search engines can’t see images so the “Image Alt Attribute” describes to the search engines and to people what the picture is about. You can add whatever you want to your image alt attribute just don’t leave it blank. Tip put keywords here cause if you go to image results on google search engine your picture will show up and it will lead to your site which in turn more traffic!
#10 Redirects or Bait and Switch, pretty much I mean having a mirrored and identical site where one is for the search engines- full of good content and keywords and the other is for the potential customers full of offers and links. There is software for these tactics and the search engines will catch on. Redirects- some say they are bad for search engines and page rank while I and others think they are fine. I know many TOP Internet Marketers who use redirects and say they are fine. But I know other TOP Internet marketers who frown on redirects. So this one I’ll leave up to you :-)
I hope you learned something new from my Top Ten SEO Mistakes.
Wooooooow! that was one long post but worth it.
cheers!
