Step by Step Link Building Plan

Last week at the Kiss Club one of the members decided to start a 52 Lens project. Her goal is to do 1 lens a week for the next 52 weeks. I, of course, thought that was brilliant so I joined in. There have been other people who have said that goal is too intimidating to them, but they are doing what they can along with us!

So anyway… I took a moment to really look at what I do to build links to my lenses once I get them finished so I could put it in a nice little outline that anyone can follow. Here it is.  I’ll do a brief outline and then go back for more explanation below.

My Link Building Process

1. Submit lensmaster feed to  RSS directories

2. Write posts for 5 to 10 free ad blogs.

3. Add post to my blogger blog.

4. Add a link to the lens in the sidebar of  my blogger blog.

5. Add post to my christmas related wp blog.

6. Comment on 5 to 10 blogs using commentluv.

That’s about it.

Holy crap. I just checked Google for my targeted keyword for the lens I did this week and it’s already on page 1!!

Well that’s exciting ~ I’ve been so busy I hadn’t even checked to see if it had been indexed yet, and there it is on page one.

Anyway… back to linking. (but you see how choosing a long tail non competitive keyword works, right?)

RSS Directories

This only needs to be done once.  But I put it in here so that if people haven’t done the work involved they will do it. It is one of the easiest and fastest ways to get some link action going! If you don’t know how to do this part check out this post: What is RSS and How to Use it.

Free Ad Blogs

These are fantastic. These are blogs people have set up that allow you to create your own content. This means you can write a post and include your links to your lenses within the content. This is awesome because in content links count a little more than links found without content.  This post outlines the free ad blogs I use.

Post to my blogger blog

A long time ago, I don’t remember when I started a blogger blog called How to… Life’s little instruction manual ~ or something like that. It seemed like a great way to be able to cover just about any topic I could create a lens on,  and I have.  :) It doesn’t get traffic (I don’t think ~ I’ve actually never checked), I don’t really build links to it, I don’t do anything with it. It was the beginning of my “link network”. It was the place where I could go to link to my new lenses, and still is (one of those places).

A blogger blog of your own is a fantastic asset ~ and you probably made one to get your amazon affiliate id ~ so use it!! It doesn’t have to be fancy, it doesn’t have to be pretty, it doesn’t have to be much of anything other than a place you post so you can get yourself a link (or few ~ if you use the sidebar and a post).

If you don’t have one or have questions about using your blog this post will probably help: How to create a support blog.

Just remember, don’t get caught up in this blog ~ it is a tool ~ it’s not really a “blog”. You update content when you do a new lens. K?

Add a link to my blogger blog sidebar

Here’s a video that will show you how.

Add a link to my Christmas wp blog

I started this Best Christmas Gifts blog a couple years ago while I was following the “Info Product Killer” strategy. I wasn’t exactly doing IPK ~ because I was actually using lenses instead of building websites ~ because I didn’t know how to to build the kind of sites he was doing, but the strategy of having a “Christmas blog” or hub for all my other stuff works quite well. It’s the same concept as the How to blog ~ it’s just hosted by me on wordpress.

This site actually does pretty well in the search engine rankings and gets quite a bit of traffic during the holiday season ~ so it’s a bit different than the blogger blog ~ it actually makes me money.

While on the blogger blog I don’t really link to amazon (because it doesn’t get traffic) I do link to amazon via links and images on this blog.

Now if you don’t have hosting and aren’t ready to jump into it  yet, don’t stress ~ it’s not going to make or break you ~ but it is nice to have a network you can rely on to build links. (but you can also do this with free blog platforms, and I’m going to do a post on that next week)

Comment on commentluv blogs

I love to read blogs ~ so it only makes sense for me to leverage that time I spend “goofing off” by making it useful to me as well. Reading commentluv blogs is how I do that.

What is a commentluv blog?

A commentluv blog is a blog that uses the commentluv plugin. When you make a comment and put a link to your lens  in the url comment field it will create a keyword anchor text link to your lens below your comment. (It pulls the title from your lens) So you have a link with your name, but you also have a link using your keywords ~ 2 links for one comment. (This blog happens to be a commentluv blog ~ so make sure you’re using your lens links in the url field when you comment)

The key for this strategy to work is to make thoughtful, quality, content rich comments. You have to add to the conversation, you can’t just write “Hey nice post”. That kind of comment will be considered spam by a lot of blogmasters (including myself) and will be deleted. People who run commentluv get a lot of extra spam and they can get a little extra ruthless when moderating comments.

If you want to know how you can find commentluv blogs check out this post: How to find commentluv blogs ~ the finding part is about half way down the post.

These blogs do not necessarily have to be about your lens ~ or related to your lens ~ although if you can find somewhat related blogs all the better. I commented on my favorite “food related” commentluv blogs for this last lens I did. It was about a cooking tool, so food and cooking go together. It’s really your comment that is important. Even if your site doesn’t exactly match as long as you are commenting on the POST you’ll be fine.

So that’s it, that’s what I did this week to link up my newly built lens. (Even though it is currently on page 1 I do not expect it to stay there. It will bounce around for a while, but I’ve found that lenses that are on page 1 in the beginning will end up back there after the bounce, so that’s good news.

If you’d like to be part of the 52 lens project ~ join us at the KISS Club! There’s lots of Squidooers there.

If you have questions about this process, feel free to ask in the comment section.

Squidoo Christmas Cash Video Series
Step by step video tutorials walking you through the entire process of creating a Squidoo Christmas Cash lens
Get your Squidoo Video Tutorials NOW!

Can You Write Articles in Less Than 5 Minutes?

One of the biggest problem a lot of people have is coming up with content to use in link building. Building links is a very necessary part of lens building. If you don’t build links to your lens you won’t rank in Google. If you don’t rank in Google you don’t get free traffic. You don’t get free traffic, you don’t make sales.

It all hinges on building or creating enough links pointing at your lens to bring it up in the search results for your keyword.

This can be time consuming, and is my least favorite part.

There are plenty of free places you can create these links, especially since the advent of all these web 2.0 (user generated content) sites. Let’s look at some:

Free ad blogs:

These are blogs that people run and allow you to put posts on. They make money off of adsense but you get to put links in your content so it’s a win/win.

Here’s some of the free ad blogs I use:

Free Ad Blog

Writers Block Unblocked

Unique article database

3 step ads

50 niches

Article Radar

Here’s where it gets tough. You have to write a unique article for each of these sites. While it doesn’t have to be a 500 page article it should be at least 200 words ~ and some have a 250 or more word limit.

If writing is not your thing, this could take a whole day.

Being able to create quality content to add to these sites with your link is key to your success.

There are tools out there, like PLR (private label rights) that you can use to make this process easier, but if you want to make it even easier this is it.

Instant Article Factory.

Yeah I know the name is a little hokie, but it comes from Jonathon Leger ~ who I respect and have bought many products and services from. I watched the video of how this thing works last night and even though I haven’t bought and used it (because writing a lot isn’t really that tough for me) I can see that it works, and works very well.

It is basically a template. It has pre-written sentences, and you fill in the blanks with specific words that relate to what you’re writing about. It will auto fill some of the blanks for you based on blanks you’ve already filled in.

You can save your article, and hit refresh and it will create an entirely new article from what you already did in the template.

You have the ability to choose how long of an article you want, the type of article template you want to write, add spinning to the article itself, and so much more.

If writing was an issue for me I would be jumping on this. I’m still debating about it, just because it seriously creates unique 300 word articles in under 5 minutes (more like 3 minutes).

If writing and linking has been your “stuck” point I highly recommend you take a look at the video (it’s 13 minutes long but goes really fast) and see if this might get you over that hump.

Remember… free ad blogs are only the first round of links to build.

There’s also…

blogger blog posts

hubpages

blog posts on your own blog network

Google knol posts

Wetpaint posts

Article directory submissions

In a Web 2.0 world the ability to create unique content is a huge factor. If you can get that part down pat, you’ll be miles ahead of the rest.  Once you get the content creation part down building links is easy ~ and once you get the links, well… then comes the traffic!

Should I Use My Keywords in Article Titles?

Got a question today over at the other blog. It’s a question I get a lot and SWORE I had done a post on, but I guess not. So here’s it is.

The question:

Hi Jackie!

I was looking over your mind maps and i noticed that you said in the “create links” section, to ” do not use keywords in title. ? Could use explain this to me and anyone else that is perplexed? Because that is one of the things that i do to get links back to my lenses so that i can get traffic from google BEFORE the lense is indexed.

Have I been doing something wrong all this time? Talk to me! Please!

Thanx!

The answer:

There are a few things you need to think about when you’re writing articles to post to EZA.

When you’ve decided to target a specific keyword for a lens you want to get it indexed, and you want to build links to it. For sure.

However, you don’t want your article on EZA to rank better than your lens. If you use the exact keywords you are targeting as the title for your EZA article that is exactly what could very well happen.

I say don’t use the keyword in the title, and I mean that, but what you DO want to do, is use them as the anchor text in your links back to your site in the resource box.

Having your keywords in the title of your article that is going to help get your lens  indexed ~ that doesn’t really make a difference. It’s having a very relevant link in that article ~ with relevant keywords, and pointing to a relevant page that’s going to get you indexed and ranked better in Google.

If you use your keywords in the title you’re going to end up with an article on EZA that’s ranking above your lens. This is not such a great thing.

It’s not a great thing because then people have to do this:

1. click on your article.

2. read it all the way through

3. read your resource box

4. feel compelled to click the link to your lens

5. read your lens

6. feel compelled to click a link to the product in your lens.

That’s a lot of reading and a lot of clicking people have to do before they get to a place that can make you any money.

You want to use your EZA article to get traffic to your lens, but not at the expense of your lens’ ranking.

So what do you  use instead?

You use something that’s relevant or related to your topic. You can use a benefit of the product and write about that, you can use a feature of the product and write about that, you can use an experience you had with the product and write about that. (Here’s a post that will go into that in more detail.)

THEN…

In your resource box you push them to the lens using your targeted keywords in the anchor text. This gets them to the lens (for more information ~ or for reviews ~ or for whatever you’re using to get them there in the resource box) AND it helps your lens rank better in Google by using the keywords in the link.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions ~ I’ll try to help clarify.

What is RSS and How to Use It

I get a lot of questions about RSS ~ what it is, how to use it, how to submit your feeds to it… all great questions I’m going to cover today.

What is RSS?

RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. It’s a way to notify people when you publish new content ~ whether it’s new posts on a blog or new lenses at Squidoo.

How do I find my feed url?

Each lensmaster is given an RSS lensmaster feed url ~ YOWZA that’s a mouthful. All that means is you have an address that is specific to you and it will show people the new lenses you publish.  To use your lensmaster RSS feed you have to find it. You can easily find the feed url at squidutils. Just log in with your Squidoo username and the second link will be for your lensmaster feed url.

Here’s what your feed will look like:

http://www.squidoo.com/xml/syndicate_lensmaster/JackieLee

(except yours will have YOUR username instead of mine at the end after the last /)

What do with my feed once I find it?

Once you’ve found your feed you can submit the feed url to RSS directories. These directories are very similar to article directories except they feature RSS feeds. Once you’ve submitted your lensmaster feed each time you update a lens or create a new lens the feed will update at the directory and show the new content.

This also means that each time you update you will automatically get a link back to your lens from each RSS directory you have submitted your feed to. (Let’s talk about EASY! right?) It happens automatically because that’s what an RSS feed does ~ it updates and notifies people (or directories) of new content.

Where can I submit my RSS feed?

There are tons and tons of directories out there. You can google RSS directory and get a bunch of lists. Here are the ones I use regularly. (You may have to sign up for a free account for some of these sites, but it’s as easy as entering your email address and a password ~ then clicking the confirmation link in your email)

RSS2.com

Feedage.com

feedagg.com

feedest.com

feedplex.com

fybersearch.com

goldenfeed.com

(don’t be fooled by this one and ones like it. Here’s where you need to enter your feed url:)

plazoo.com

readablog.com

rssmotron.com

rssmountain.com (it’s not required that you add the button ~ don’t worry about it)

rss-network.com

There are plenty more out there, but those are the ones I use personally. If you have more good ones feel free to let me know in the comments section and I’ll add them to the list.

How do I add my link?

Here’s a quick video that will show you how to find your lensmaster RSS feed and add it to the directories. It also shows you a quick tip to make the process much quicker the next time.

You only need to do this process once for each lensmaster RSS feed ~ but you can also submit your individual lens feed urls if you want. I personally don’t do this, but you can.

I hope this clears up some of the questions about RSS ~ if you still have questions feel free to ask in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Do I Need to Add Content to My Lens to “Keep...

This is a question I hear all the time. I think it stems from all the wordpress people who talk incessantly about how much Google loves WordPress because new posts create fresh content. Whether that’s the reason Google loves wordpress or not is debatable, but let’s talk about your lenses.

They don’t have an easy way to continually update them to keep “fresh content” huh?

It’s ok.  They don’t need it.

The number and quality of backlinks you create pointing to your lens is way more important than having “fresh content”. Here’s a good example. My How to Create Backlinks lens hasn’t been updated in forever. In fact, the only thing I do to update it is take out the spam comments, (which I wouldn’t do if there weren’t so many dang spam comments!)

The content doesn’t change ~ unless I find a new product that is really relevant to the lens. For example, I added a banner add for the 5K backlinks package when it came out.

It consistently comes up #1 out of millions of results for a variety of keywords related to getting backlinks.

Here’s why:

The lens has almost 1000 links pointing to it.  Did I build all those links ~ nope. Lots of them are people pointing to a great resource for backlinking.

Yeah but…

No one’s going to link to my product lens!

Yeah and…

That’s ok. Your lens keywords will have no where near the competition my backlink keywords do.

Another example: the Ironman Gravity 4000 Inversion Table lens.

It has 188 links ~ over half of those are from Squidoo itself  (YAY discovery tool!) Only 78 of them are from places outside of Squidoo, AND a lot of them are links from the same domain (in other words they are blogroll/sidebar links on my own blogs)

So really… the linking I did was a few free ad blog posts ~ and a sidebar link on a couple of my blogs. There are a couple links from sites I don’t own, but it’s really those basic things I did. The site is currently ranking 5th on Google for the main keyword, and makes a few sales a month. I haven’t touched it since I created it.

Do you need fresh content?

The answer is no. You don’t. You’ll be fine if you follow the 3 step process for getting your lens ranked, and stop worrying about fussing with it to give it “fresh content”.