5 Backlinking Strategies that Work

We all know, by now that there’s more to making money with lenses than just making a bunch of lenses. You have to have a linking plan as well. This can really trip people up because there are so many different ways you can create links they don’t know how to put together a plan, what goes where, or when.

I get that.

Let me run through a couple possibilities with you.

1. Article marketing.

You could create your lens, and then write another article and submit it to Ezinearticles.com, and as many other article directories as you could find. You could use software like Unique Article Wizard to automate this process.

This is one backlinking strategy, and it works… if you do it.

2. Creating content on web 2.0 sites.

You could create your lens, and then go to other free sites and create content there as well… including a link back to your lens of course. There are hundreds of sites you can add your own free content to, you just have to find them and use them.

This is a very valid backlinking strategy, and will work if you work it.

3. Bookmarking

While this is not as powerful as it used to be, you can take your lens and submit them to bookmarking sites. You will get a link back to your lens from each site you submit it to. You can find a long list of sites at socialmarker.com. You could automate this process by using a service like Traffic Bug.

Bookmarking is definitely not the BEST backlinking strategy all by itself, but it definitely adds momentum when used in conjunction with article marketing, or web 2.0 content creation.

4. RSS submission.

You can take your lensmaster feed and submit it to all the RSS directories you can find. You will only have to do this once for each squidoo account, because as you create new lenses the feed will update itself automatically at each directory ~ which is super fun. You will get a new link each time you create a new lens, or update an existing lens in each of the RSS directories.

This is yet another valid strategy to create links to your lenses. It is not as powerful as articles, or web 2.0 content, but it is especially powerful when you use it in conjunction with those strategies.

5. Linkwheel

The best possible backlinking strategy is to use all 4 of the above methods strategically with one another. This is called a link wheel. It can be a little confusing, because it has a lot of steps, and you have to be sure you know where your links are pointing and from where, but when you get the hang of it, it is a very powerful system to create links to your lenses and get them ranking on the first page of Google.

You may or may not know I’ve created a program called Backlinking 101. It will walk you through each and every step of creating a linkwheel, and thus help you create hundreds (if not thousands) of quality links to your lenses. I’m going ot be launching the program on March 1st.

There will be a bonus available for the first 25 buyers… it could be a seriously life changing bonus if you take advantage of it… but the full details I’m saving until Tuesday.

I’m going to send out an early bird email to my Backlinking Tutorials list when the product goes live. So if you want a chance at the first 25 spots and you’re not on the list, you might want to get on it. The list consists of backlinking tutorials once a week… I don’t send out post notifications or anything else to that list, just the tutorials ~ well and the advanced notice that Backlinking 101 is live.

Not having a clear backlinking strategy in place is one of the things that keeps most people I see from succeeding. It’s such an important element of the puzzle, but it’s confusing and boring and tedious ~ and people just don’t do it.

Let me walk you through it…3 assignments a week. One step at a time. See you Tuesday.

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Are You Building Lenses or Building a Business?

I hear from a lot of people… many times I hear something like this:

I have built a bunch of lenses, but I’m not making any money.

My first question for them is this:

Are you just building lenses or are you doing the rest of the work?

The thing is, you can build lenses until you’re blue in the face, but if you don’t do the follow up work ~ which is really like 80% of the work you should be doing, you’re not going to make money. Lenses alone do not a business make.

Here’s a question:

What if you decided to set a goal to have 1 new keyword (lens) ranking on page 1 each month for the next year?

What would that kind of goal do for you? Would it make you focus on one lens at a time? Would it get you building links to get your keywords ranking? Would it help you stop doing incessant keyword research? Would it help you stop checking your stats multiple times a day? Would it help you figure out what the “right” actions are for you to be taking during the day? Would it move you to create a plan of action?

When you change your goals, it changes your actions. When you change your actions (depending on those changes) you begin to change your results.

If you are wanting to create a primarily passive income from Squidoo you need to stop focusing on making lens after lens and start focusing on getting your keywords those lenses target to rank on the first page… top 5 would be best.

Are you willing to shift your focus? Are you willing to start taking the actions that need to be done to get your lenses ranking for your keywords?

Do you know how to do that? Can you create a plan to get it done?

Let me know. If there’s things I can help you with to make this happen I will be glad to do it, but you have to make the decision. You have to decide if you’re just going to keep building lenses or if you’re going to build a business.

Finding Keywords When Your Chosen Product Has No S...

Finding a product to promote, is key. However, finding a product that has keywords with search volume is even more important. If your keyword doesn’t have search volume, you get no traffic. Period. In the Christmas Cash Blueprint I suggest you go directly to Amazon to find a product.  The purpose of doing this is to find a place to start doing your keyword research. This will give you an idea, and from there you can look for a good keyword. A good keyword being a keyword that has over 1000 searches a month and low competition.

I understand all this can be somewhat confusing, and let’s try to get a little clearer about it.

Yes. You want a product specific keyword. But it doesn’t have to be exactly the product description posted on Amazon. I have looked at the same product on multiple sites and the product name/title is different on each site ~ so this is not a hard and fast product name ~ it’s a place to get you started.

Here’s a video that walks through finding a product at Amazon, realizing it had no search volume and then finding a keyword that would work to still promote that product.

Here’s the video:

Here’s the text version of the video:

Step 1. Go to amazon and find a product. I went to the watches category, and just looked around. I’m looking for a product with a price point over $200, and some GOOD reviews ~ more the better.

Step 2. I found a watch I wanted to check out. It only has 3 reviews ~ I usually like to have more reviews than 3, but you can’t beat the price point, so I decided to test it.

Step 3. Take the whole product name and put it in the google keyword tool (or micro niche finder). Click the exact match button (top right hand side of the screen of google kw tool ~ mnf is set to this as default), and check how much search volume the exact keyword gets.

Step 4. The keyword has not enough info ~ which means not enough search volume.

Step 5. Start looking through the other keywords that came up with it for keywords that are related to your product and have over 1000 searches. Look for something with the brand name, or specific model in them ~ the more specific the better. ** This may end up taking you in a completely different direction than the one you came from and THAT’S OK!! Go with it ~ this is research, go where the facts take you.

Step 6. Found another possible keyword ~ went back to Amazon to look and see if I could find a decent product to promote with the new keyword. Looking for price point over $200 and good reviews ~ the more the better. If you’re doing this on MNF ~ click the new keyword and then click the search amazon link and it will take you right there.

Step 7. Found a produc that fit my requirements and matched the keyword I found.

Step 8. Go to Google and check out the competition. Using the SEO for firefox tool to show me the PR of each site on the first page, I add up the PR ~ 30 or less total 3 or less average is a go. If you are using Micro Niche Finder click the SOC button (far right) and see what comes up ~ I look for SOC of 20 and under, but anything up to 30 or 40 will probably work. Just remember, the lower this number the easier it will be to get your lens ranked in Google.

Step 9. If the competition fits my requirements I call it a good keyword and start making a lens. I will use the new keyword as the lens url, title and do all the other on page seo I need to do to get some google love.

That’s it. The key here though is to find keywords that HAVE SEARCH VOLUME. It’s pointless to grab the words written on Amazon for the product name and use them if no one is searching for them.  Rearrange them, try different portions of the keyword, check other words that come up in the search ~ find something completely related to a product, but it MUST have search volume.

If you have any questions please ask them in the comment section ~ I hope this helped clear up some confusion surrounding product related keywords.

Changes to Squidoo Modules… what do you thin...

I noticed this week there have been some changes made to some of the Squidoo modules. Mainly to the modules we use as call to actions… you know those modules we use to tell people what to do next.

The two main changes have come in The Most Important Thing module and the Big Arrow module.

You may remember the old version had a large orange box around the module, which made it really stand out… and we generally used it to add a visual call to action. It used to look like this:

Well it doesn’t look like that anymore. It is now much more subdued, with a grey border, and a small tab at the top that says important. It also has an off white background, so you can see the image now, it doesn’t just blend into the background. Here’s what it looks like now:

It’s a pretty big change, especially when you’re trying to use it to call attention to something really important… I’m not sure how well the word “important” is going to do that, but we’ll see.

Let’s look at the second big change this week. This one is a much bigger change in my mind. The Big Arrow Module:

It used to feature two large arrows pointing at text that said “here’s my favorite link” and then your anchor text was below it. I know a lot of people hated this module ~ felt it was too big, too pushy, too over the top, but I think it worked really well as a last minute call to action. We’ll see.

Here’s what it used to look like:

Now it is much more subdued. It’s just your link anchor text in blue with a grey arrow pointing to it from the side. When someone scrolls over the link the arrow turns orange, and the words become underlined. It looks like this in action:

I’m sure there will be people who are really happy about these changes, and there will be people who are not so happy. I know that Squidoo does a LOT of testing on things before they make big changes like this. It is their business, and they’re in it to make money as well…. so I’m holding out to see how things go with these new looking modules.

What’s really important to remember is this: just because they look different doesn’t mean you have to do anything differently. The modules work exactly the same as they always have. So just keep with the program… keep building lenses, keep using the modules and we’ll keep an eye on it and see how things go. If we start to see a huge decrease in conversion then we’ll take a look at what else we can do to increase it. However, I don’t think Squidoo would make such big changes that would affect the site negatively.

What do you think of the changes? I’d love to hear… tell me in the comments.

6 Simple Things You Can Do To Make Google Love You...

How are your lenses doing? Are they getting traffic? Are they getting to the first page of Google? If they’re not doing well, and they’re not getting to the front page part of the problem may be your SEO. What is SEO? Search Engine Optimization. This is  big term but simply means, creating a lens that tells Google very specifically exactly what it’s all about.  You want Google to know exactly what your lens is about because it’s their job to find the best matching site to searchers queries, and if they don’t know what your lens is about ~ they can’t pick you.

There are 2 types of SEO. Onpage SEO and off page SEO.  Off page SEO  includes things like backlinking. If you’re onpage SEO is right, then it’s probably your off page SEO you need to work on.

This post is going to focus on on page SEO.  This means the things you do ON your web page to make Google happy.

They are pretty simple to do, but if you want search traffic they are NOT optional.  If you have a lens that is not performing up to your expectations check to make sure you have done a good job with your on page optimization. If you’ve missed some of these things, changing them could make a huge difference for your lens. These things, if you haven’t done them, are worth going back and adding or changing on your already published lenses.

1. Use your keywords in the url.

When you’re creating a squidoo lens this is a huge element of SEO. This is the first place google looks to see what your lens is about. If you don’t have the specific keywords you are trying to rank for in your URL, you are putting yourself at a serious disadvantage.

Example:

My keyword for the ironman lens is: Ironman Gravity 4000 Inversion Table

My url for the lens is: www.squidoo.com/ironman-gravity-4000-inversion-table

The url is my EXACT keyword. It is not ironman-inversion-table or gravity-4000 or inversion-table-ironman.

It is my keyword, exactly and only.

So what if you go to make a lens and someone already has your exact keyword? I would look at the lens that’s already on Squidoo ~ check it out, see what it looks like. Is it any good? Check Google and see if it’s ranking on the first 2 pages for the targeted keyword.

If it’s not a great lens, and it’s not ranking mess with the dashes in the domain. Either take them out or add them in, so you can get your exact keyword in the ulr.

If it’s a great lens, and it’s ranking in the top 2 pages I’d personal reconsider targeting that keyword. I’d probably find something else. Google is not going to put multiple lenses on the front page for the same keyword. If that lens is already there, it’s going to be tough to knock it out. Find a keyword that doesn’t have that kind of  Squidoo competition.

Dashes – no dashes?

For Squidoo I don’t think it matters. Squidoo’s default is dashes so that’s what I usually end up doing.

Sidenote:

Google’s one and only job is to give searchers relevant, unique,  targeted information for each and every search query a searcher does. So think about it this way. I go to google and I put in ironman gravity 4000 inversion table. What is google going to think is the best match to my query?

www.Squidoo.com/ironman-inversion-table

www.squidoo.com/inversion-tables

www.squidoo.com/ironman-gravity-4000-inversion table.

Yeah ~ of course it’s going to be the third one. This is why it’s so important to not only choose your keywords correctly, but use them in your url exactly as you’ve chosen them.

******

2. Keywords in your lens title

Every page on the internet uses html tags in the background. This is the “title tag”. When it comes to squidoo you don’t need to know about the tags stuff,  they  do it for you automatically, but what you do need to know is that you have to use your keywords in the title.

Here’s what the code to the ironman lens looks like ~ and you’ll see the “title tag” is the title of the lens.

That gives google exactly the information they need in order to know exactly what this lens is about.

Where it says Title: in the edit area of your lens you ALWAYS want to have the keywords you are targeting.

If you don’t feel like just the keywords are a good enough title for your lens (which they are), you can always add words AFTER your keywords in the title. You always add your additional words AFTER your keywords in the title because Google gives a little more emphasis on the first 3 or 4 words in the title, so you want your keywords to be up front.

3. Use keywords toward the beginning of your intro module.

This is another html tag area called the “meta tag”. This tag provides a description of your page to Google. In squidoo this tag is grabbed from your intro module.  This is what will show up in the description under your listing in the search engine results, so you definitely want your keywords in there.  When keywords show up in the description area of the rankings they are bolded ~ this also helps bring more attention to your page.

4. Use keywords in your module titles:

In your squidoo lens you want to make sure you also use your keywords in your module titles. While your title gets its own “title” tag in html, module titles get a tag too ~ it’s called an h1 tag. This is a tag that google weighs very heavily when determining what your lens is about.

You don’t have to worry about creating that tag,  you just have to remember to put your keywords in your module and post titles.

5. Use your keyword in your content.

Obviously you want to make sure you use your keyword in your content  because that’s what you’re talking about right? So make sure you talk about it ~ specifically. It’s ok to use variations of your keyword and related keywords/terms in your content, but you also need to have your exact keyword phrase in the content as well.

In the past “keyword density” (using your keyword a certain amount per 100 words) was a lot more important. Now it really is pretty irrelevant. Just talk like you would talk to a friend and you’ll be fine. You don’t have to worry about calculating your keyword usage, just use it as you would in conversation.

6. Use your keywords in outbound links.

Links in your lens are another good way google identifies what your page is about. In your lenses you may be linking to an amazon page ~ so make sure you use your keywords as the anchor text of the link.

Using anchor text pointing to your sites is important, but the anchor text of the links on your site pointing elsewhere also count when optimizing a page.

I know  some of you want to get creative, and tell a story with your lens ~ which is FINE ~ but you still have to find a way to do it within the framework of on page SEO.  You can tell a story that converts all day long, but if you never get traffic then there’s no one to read it or click your links.

If you have questions about on page SEO please feel free to ask in the comments section and I’ll do my best to answer your questions.