Blog

February 2012 Goals

February 1, 2012 By Warren Leave a Comment

Wow, our first month of 2012 sure seems to have flown by! January usually starts out strong for most people, with New Year Resolutions and goal setting being front and foremost on many people’s minds. Bloggers and small business owners are no different.

As I head into February one thing is front and center in my thoughts. This marks the end of my 2^nd year with PLR Internet Marketing. March 1^st begins the third year for me, and I’d like to achieve as many things before then as I can. (I feel so much more productive when I can list all the various accomplishments I’ve achieved with my site during any particular time period) J

I have an online interview lined up for March where I’ll discuss not only what’s been happening with my site during the 2^nd year, but also my plans, hopes, and dreams for 2012 and my third year with the site so I won’t go into that here. What I do want to do however is set some last minute goals for February to make sure I get the most out of my business year.

I should point out that I do use goals, and goal boards constantly, but posting something publically is always a little more “concrete” as there are a lot more people holding you accountable. I only wish February wasn’t a short month! LOL

So without further ado, here are my goals for February 2012:

Write an eBook. This will be something along the lines of an “Operations Manual” for professional bloggers. (Anyone looking to make some money with their blogs) I want to make this very in depth and content rich, so this will likely take up a fair bit of time and energy.
Since I did write a post title “30 Days to an eBook” though, I’d better make sure it happens!
Open up my internet marketing forum to the public. The forum will be going from a paid structure to free for all users.
Issue a press release to announce the launch of the forum opening.
Send out 3 press releases. (I’m investing some of my marketing dollars this year into a serious press release campaign to track and assess the benefits of a sustained approach. Previously I’d only sent out a couple, and that was sporadic at best.
Start a commenting tribe within the forum. Comment tribes are a great way to generate comments and traffic but there are still quite a few people who either haven’t heard of them, or don’t belong to any groups.
Holding with goal number 4, I’ll send out a press release to announce the tribe launch.
Complete interview for www.Aaronhoos.com outlining my 2^nd year successes and challenges, as well as my 3^rd year goals, hopes, and dreams for PLR Internet Marketing.
Make 300 comments on blogs I follow. (Roughly ten a day) This is something I’ve been neglecting, and I need to get out there and interact more.
Publish 29 posts on the PLR Internet Marketing blog.
Record 20 podcasts. I’d like to eventually have all 630+ articles in audio version as well as written.
List out my 3^rd year goals for my business.
Install DLGuard on www.blogtraffictactics.net to track sales and downloads.
Install an affiliate tracking software on Blog Traffic Tactics to launch and take advantage of affiliates for the book.
Issue a press release announcing the affiliate program. (This will fulfill my 3 press releases)
Hand out 100 +K (Klout) to the various Twitter users I follow. (I’ve been lax in this regard, but since I keep getting Klout Perks, I should really participate more)
Launch www.earningsuccess.com with Aaron Hoos and start marketing it.
Start paying attention to www.thehappyself.com (One of my blogs that I’ve been neglecting, and yet still gets hundreds of visitors a day)
Make sure my Fiancé gets her driver’s license! (I’m currently spending 80 hours a month driving her into the city and back for work. Time that would be better spent working my business!)
Build a “Link Partners” page, and start doing link exchanges. I’ve never taken advantage of this and I’ve noticed a competing website shoot up to the 3^rd position using primarily this method. So for all you bloggers, affiliate marketers, and internet marketers who would like to participate shoot me an email, and we’ll get things rolling!
Expand my own “Operations Manual”. This is a document I keep for my blog and business that outlines all the pertinent information outlining the day to day activities. It serves as a great training document for employees, and outsourcers as well, and I highly recommend you create one for yourself.

That’s it, 20 goals for the next 29 days! It should keep me busy especially since some of these are fairly decent sized goals (like the eBook). I’ll post the interview, as well as a follow up in the first week of March letting you know how I did with it. I’m pretty sure you’ll call me on it if I come up way short! J

Take care, and have a great month!

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: affiliate program, blog, Blogging, comment tribe, comments, Earning Success, ebook, goals, internet marketing, interview, link partners, operations manual, podcasts, press releases, The Happy Self, year end

How To Generate Unlimited Article Ideas

January 31, 2012 By Warren Leave a Comment

If you are only using PLR articles, then this might not apply to you but in my experience you will have to write some fresh articles at some point. Writing totally unique articles is a great way to get new traffic, expand your market and also break into a new niche. The problem with writing your own article is that you may not have any ideas as to what you should be writing. If this is the case, then just know that there are many ways to generate article ideas.

Now, all you have to do in order to generate some new article ideas is to use one or more of the list below. Trust me, if you can’t come up with an idea after doing some of the things below then you need to take a break.

How To Find Your Next Article Idea

Write About Something You Own

If you don’t know what to write about, then just take a minute and scan the room. It doesn’t matter what your topic is about, there is always something that will inspire you to write about something else. For instance, if I wanted to write about how to make money online and I was staring down my table lamp, then I could easily write about how natural sunlight is better than any other light. What you need to be aware of is the fact that everything is tied together in some way, all you need is that one thing to spark a new idea.

Do You Like To Travel

A lot of people like to travel and this is why you should write about it. If you are going on a vacation sometime soon, then make sure you write about how you are preparing for that. Did you just get back from vacation? If you did, then make sure people know how you kept up with business while you were away. Just know that you don’t have to write long informative articles all the time, they just need to give the reader something to benefit from.

Get Ideas From Infobarrel

Infobarrel has a lot of writers which means they have a lot of articles. The great thing about using Infobarrel to get ideas is that there are new things to write about on a daily basis. Think about it, why wouldn’t you just go and look at another article that somebody just wrote and get inspiration from that? This is an easy way to get a new idea, my only recommendation is that you don’t just steal the content. Take the idea and come up with something original.

Ask A Friend

Hopefully your friends know what you do so they should be a valuable source to use. What I would suggest is that you simply ask a friend or family member about what you write your next article on. Something that many bloggers will do is they get a huge list of ideas together and then they just start writing. The more articles you can have on your website, the better it will be.

Does TV Inspire You

Do you ever get inspired to write something after you watch your favorite TV show? There is a reason why you get inspired to write so maybe that is where you should start. A lot of people watch TV throughout the day and it is normal to get a little inspired during this time but just know that it doesn’t benefit you if you never do anything about that newfound inspiration. I am not saying you need to write a review of the TV show and tie it to what you are talking about but you should find a connection somewhere.

Almost Done

Before I let you go I just want to give you a tip that many of the big time bloggers use – don’t publish all your finished articles.

Are you unsure about what this means?

What I am saying is that you should write a few articles and then just let them sit on your website for a while until you can’t come up with anything new to write about. Lets say you are going to go on vacation for a week and you want to have an article published, all you will need to do is take one of your saved articles and schedule it to be published.

This is something that a lot of bloggers do and the reason they do this is because they never know when they might need an article on short notice. The reason I am telling you this is so that you can use some of the methods above to come up with a few non-time sensitive material.

So now that you know how to come up with more article ideas and why you should have finished articles as drafts, it is time for you to get started.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: articles, blog, bloggers, published

Paying Your Bills Entrepreneur Style

January 30, 2012 By Warren Leave a Comment

Many of us turn to internet marketing in the hopes of earning a few extra bucks doing something we’d likely do for free anyway. While there is a general misconception surrounding internet marketing and the work required to build an online business that is capable of generating income of any level, there are still people willing to invest the time and effort involved to either subsidize, or in some cases even replace their offline income all together. (The misconception is that making money online is easy, and requires no more than the push or at most 6 buttons on a keyboard, the truth is an online business is still a business requiring work!)

I was recently discussing my blog with an old colleague who had expressed interest in the direction I planned to take when I left my corporate position for something less stable in the internet marketing industry. He liked the thought of building a website that would continue working for him 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and that could be marketed to a global audience.

The part he didn’t relish, or at least failed to attempt was taking the time to research, and register a domain, and then building up a website with a product or service. He opted instead to take a “wait and see” approach, and chose to watch my blog grow and develop.

I’ve been blogging full time now for two years, and have loved every minute of it. Some weeks have involved more work than most of us would like to invest, and less pay than we can hope to live on, while other weeks have been relatively relaxing, and way more profitable than I could have hoped. (My best week of earning took place while I was on holidays).

Now while I won’t be the next internet millionaire for quite some time I’m sure, I’ve still enjoyed the challenge of building an online business, and growing a community around my blog. I’ve managed to almost completely replace my old “offline” income, and the viewpoint I took while doing so was perhaps a little different than what most people would be used to.

While we were discussing my business, my old friend and colleague asked how I was able to replace the salary I used to make. In the beginning I simply wrote down an amount that I needed to make in order to survive and struggled to match it with offline earnings. This technique turned out harder for me to achieve than I’d hoped. Income growth was coming in not only slowly and sporadically but from almost more directions and durations than I could keep track of.

I had advertising income that paid within three days, and I had affiliate programs that took as long as ninety days, and many in between sources. This sporadic income caused me to reevaluate my earnings, and more accurately my bill paying options.

I started out looking at my smallest bills which were things like gym memberships, and internet service provider bills, and then chose two income sources that matched up relatively close, both in terms of dollar amounts, and payment frequency. I used the income from a PayPal Donation Script that I was selling and then brought in about fifty dollars each month and tied that income to the two bills.

For larger bills such as car payments I used the revenue derived from my Twitter account and website advertising sold through my ad manager at BuySell Ads. Clickbank income went towards food and toiletries, and so on.

By utilizing various income streams to pay individual bills it was never a huge stretch trying to grow my income. Tackling a revenue stream and working at it until it is capable of earning a hundred dollars or so each month is much easier than looking at the overall picture and saying I need to grow my income by four thousand dollars monthly.

Not only did this method encourage me to develop several revenue streams, it also kept them at a manageable size. Chances are if you have the skill to grow a stream of income to twenty-five dollars a month, you can redouble your marketing efforts and double that figure. If your Twitter account earns fifty dollars a month, then it stands to reason that you can either double your follower count, or sell twice as many ads to bring in double the income!

I should probably mention that in the beginning an approach like this might be harder to work with as you are likely investing most (if not all) of your income back into your business. Once things start gaining momentum however it can become both fun and challenging to work and develop ten or twelve revenue streams to a point profitable enough to pay your bills, and grow your savings!

So don’t despair if the dollar amount you’ve chosen as your blogging or business goal seems to be eluding you, or taking longer to achieve. Focus instead on the smaller successes that make up the sum total of that goal, and you’ll likely not only find yourself achieving more, but having more opportunities to celebrate those small yet meaningful successes along the way!

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: bills, blog, Blogging, entrepreneur, income streams, internet marketing

5 Tricks To Make Your Blog Popular In 2012

January 30, 2012 By Warren 2 Comments

Every blogger wants to have the most popular blog but it doesn’t always happen for them. This year needs to be different, you need to do all you can to make your blog more popular now than ever before.

So, how do you make your blog popular.

There are several things that you can do to make your blog popular but one thing is to just keep blogging. A lot of people fail because they don’t see traffic coming to their blog as fast as they would like and therefore they just stop writing. Do yourself a huge favor and make sure you set a blogging schedule for yourself and stick to it. Trust me, a blogging schedule will work better than you think.

Ok, lets get right to it.

5 Tricks To Make Your Blog Popular

Weekend Blogging

Something that I am currently contemplating is doing a little weekend blogging. Whether this would mean publishing posts on this blog or on other blogs for guest posts doesn’t matter, all that matters is that I am doing something to help build my community. I love publishing posts here but the fact of the matter is that doing a guest post will bring in more traffic. If getting your blog the popularity that it deserves is something that you really want to do, then guest posting is what you should be doing. Just know that with guest posts there really isn’t a way get penalized because Google loves to see authoritative links back to your blog.

Email Other Bloggers

Have you ever email another blogger to let them know about your blog? If you have never done this, then it is about time. The entire point of doing this is to get the gurus and other big name bloggers to come and check out your site so that they mention it in a post of their own. Where the bigger bloggers benefit the most is from people reading a post they just wrote and then mentioning it on their blog. Think about it, how easy is this if all you have to do is write a post and the other bloggers do everything for you? My advice is not to just spam the bloggers though, you should read their latest blog post and then comment on it before you send them an email. I know it might seem like a little more work but the bigger bloggers will like this much better.

Increase Your Social Media Following

How many fans and followers do you have on Facebook and Twitter? Are you starting to grow your circle on Google+? I ask this because in order to become more popular you will need the help of other people. One of the best ways to make your blog popular in 2012 is going to be with social media. With Facebook and Google+ on the rise there is no reason as to why you should not be using them to get more traffic and spread the word about your blog posts.

Tip: I would highly recommend setting a goal for yourself as to how many more followers you would like to get each month. I did this last year and the results really paid off. The trick is to do everything you can to ensure that your following keeps growing no matter if you get 50 new followers or 500 each month.

Information Is The Key

Are you creating epic blog posts? Do you write posts that people have to come back and read more later because there is just so much information? In order to make your blog popular in 2012 you will need to spend a lot more time working on your content. I am not saying that you need to spend a week writing one blog post but it should take you longer than 20 minutes. Where a lot of bloggers make the mistake is they just try to get the most information on their blog as opposed to the best information. Check out Problogger.net and see how Darren write his posts, some of them are short and some are a little longer. He does this because it doesn’t always require 2,000 words to get his point across.

Tip: In my experience a good post length is between 800-1500 words. If you are trying to do more of a pillar style post, then I would recommend writing one that is at least 1,500.

Establish Yourself

When I say establish yourself, I mean you need to establish yourself as an expert in your field. The reason I highly recommend doing this is because once you become an expert in your field then people will start to notice you even more. Not only that but you could make the pages of local newspapers, national magazines and possibly be seen on T.V. There are a lot of bloggers out there that have been on T.V. talking about what they do and why they do it. Just think, this could be you at some point.

Do you see how these 5 tricks can help you make your blog popular in 2012? There are a lot of things that you can do to make your blog popular but I would start right here with these. The last thing I want you to know is that the best thing you can do is guest posting and if you can fill up your weekends with these, then you will see a huge jump in this years popularity.

Incoming search terms for the article:

blog popular (1)

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: 2012, blog, blogging schedule, popular, social media, tricks

Blog Monetization – When Should I Start

January 29, 2012 By Warren 1 Comment

When it comes to monetization there are a lot of things that you should know. Being that most people use Google Adsense to start making money online, it is a good idea to know when the best time to place Ads on your blog would be.

If you are creating a niche site, then I would place Adsense ads on the site right when the site goes live. For personal blogs, such as this one you should do things differently. With a personal blog you have to worry about your readers and their preference before you even think about making money with your blog.

So when is the best time to monetize a blog?

When you have 50 blog posts

If you have more than 50 blog posts live on your blog, then it is about time that you put some ads on it. The reason why you should wait until you have more than 50 blog posts is because you don’t want your blog to look empty when you add advertisements to it. A lot of people do this and readers don’t like this.

4 months after going live

Another time to place ads on your blog is after four months of going live. The reason why I highly recommend waiting at least 4 months is because by then you should have at least a small following and you should have enough blog posts to fill up your site. Some bloggers out there will recommend only waiting 3 months but I have found that after 3 months you are still not where you want to be with traffic and if the traffic isn’t there then there is no point to place ads on the site just yet.

100 unique visitors per day

When you get 100 unique visitors to your blog every day then that is a great time to place ads on your site. The reason I say this is because 100 unique visitors will mean that you should make some money from Google Adsense every day. Not only that but 100 unique visitors is where most blogs will stay for the remainder of their existence so if you don’t place ads on your site now, then you may not ever do it.

100 email subscribers

Do you have 100 email subscribers yet? If you have more than 100 email subscribers, then it is time to monetize your blog. With 100 email subscribers you should be able to send out an email and get at least 20 of those subscribers to come to your blog. This is a benchmark that I use because email subscribers are much more reliable than general traffic you get from the search engines or social media.

1000 cumulative fans/followers on Facebook and Twitter

The last thing that I would recommend is to go by your fans/followers on Facebook and Twitter. The reason I recommend going off of these is because getting a decent following on both of these sites could mean residual traffic month after month. With social media being the new hotspot for traffic you can’t ignore what you have. If your new blog doesn’t meet any of the requirements above but you do have more than 1000 cumulative fans/followers on Facebook and Twitter, then it is a good time to monetize your blog. Just remember, these have to be actual blog readers, not just a bunch of your friends.

When it comes to monetization you need think about the following you have as opposed to the money you could be making. The problem that most new blogs have is they try way too hard to earn money online. If you want to have a successful blog, then you will need to prove to your readers that you care about them more than you do your own wellbeing.

Incoming search terms for the article:

google adsense blog with 100 unique visitors per day (1)

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: ads, adsense, advertisements, blog, bloggers, Facebook, monetization, social media, subscribers, twitter

How To Market Your New Product

January 28, 2012 By Warren Leave a Comment

Did you just create a new E-book or software? A lot of people are creating new E-books but the biggest problem they have is they don’t know how to market it. What you need to understand is that if you don’t know how to market your new product, then there really is no point to even make it.

Something that I would highly recommend is before you ever create a product you should first come up with the marketing plan for it. This is something that most people don’t do and that is why they have trouble selling the product that they just spent weeks or even months on. Trust me, you will be better off creating a marketing plan than putting another hour or two into the product itself. When you create a product you can always give updates to it, with your marketing strategy you can’t do this.

How To Market A Product

Facebook Ads

The very first thing that I will do to market my product is to use Facebook ads. The reason I would use Facebook ads before anything else is because they are easy to track, they are cheap, you can customize everything that you need and best of all Facebook has almost a billion people on the site. Did you know that there are almost 500 million people on Facebook each day? This is a huge number and if you can market your product to even a small fraction of that number, then you will be doing really well. Marketing a product will take time but with Facebook that time is cut in thirds because of how much traffic they get.

Twitter Updates

If you have a Twitter account, then you are hopefully doing updates on a daily basis. The nice thing about Twitter is that you can give a little introduction to your product and then a link pointing your following to it. A lot of people use Twitter for the wrong reasons but if you do things right, then you will see some traffic and hopefully sale from it. Just remember that not everybody has a Twitter account and most people don’t use it on a daily basis so you will have to send a few updates at different times to ensure that all your followers see your update.

Emails

Do you have an email list? Do you have a bunch of friends that might like what you have to offer? The best part about emails is that you can send an email to your list as many times as you need to in order for them to see it. What most people don’t realize is that sending somebody an email will be much better than getting them to show up on a site all the sudden because with an email they will know who you are and what you have to offer before even opening it up. This is why using emails is a great way to market a product.

Guest Posts

Another thing that you need to do in order to market your new product is to get other people to know about it and the best way to do this is through guest posts. The nice thing about doing a guest post is that you don’t have to worry about promoting to the same people over and over again. With a guest post you will be promoting your product to people that you don’t know and who probably don’t know you. Doing a guest post is also a great way to show that you are an expert in your field and this will make it a lot easier to sell something to somebody you don’t even know.

The last thing that I would do to market your new product is to use your personal blog. If you don’t have a personal blog, then it is time that you get one. The best part about using a personal blog to get more sales is that you will probably already have a following and that means that you will be able to turn your following into money. Trust me, using your own blog to promote your new product may seem like too much but your readers want to know about what you have been doing too.

Another thing that you can do if you have a really good product is to enlist the help of affiliates. This is something that is a great source for marketing later on but for right now you should stick to the methods above. Just know that in order to make any money from the product that you just create you will have to market it somehow. My advice is to make sure you are using every marketing technique that you can in order to make the most money in the shortest amount of time.

Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With: blog, e-book, email list, emails, facebook ads, guest posts, how to, market, marketing strategy, product, software, twitter

Are You Using The Right Images On Your Blog

January 25, 2012 By Warren 5 Comments

Running a blog is not always as easy as you might think, you have to do more than just write. Most bloggers will spend a lot of time writing great blog posts, adding cool new affiliate products and even sending out dozens of emails every month, but most bloggers don’t spend enough time finding the right images for their blog?

How much time do you spend looking for the right image for your blog? If you simply type in a few words in Google and pick the first thing that looks halfway decent, then you are probably not choosing the right images for your blog.

What most people don’t realize is that every image will say something different and that is why you have to choose the images wisely. Trust me, spending a little more time choosing the right image for your blog will be well worth your time now and in the future.

Did you know that most people are the visual type?

The reason you need to know this is because if you don’t have a great title for your article, then maybe the image will help get people to read it. Have you ever looked at an image next to a post and wondered what it is about? This is what a lot of people do, I know this because I do this, my friends do this and a lot of other bloggers have said that they do this. We all know that content is what people will read but the image is what most people will look at before they even read a word on your blog. Just do yourself a favor and add the right images to your blog.

How To Determine The Right Image

Test Different Images

If you write a post about “Article marketing” one month, then I would recommend writing another post about “Article marketing” the next month but use a different image. What you will see from doing this is which image is better received by your readers. Sometimes it makes a difference as to how much color is in the image and other time it is a matter of the size. Without testing you won’t be able to see which image works best and why.

Ask Your Readers

Something that a lot of bloggers are starting to do now is to simply ask their readers what images they like the best. The benefit of asking your audience as to which images they like the best is that you won’t have to bother testing as much and you will get an inside peak into what your readers really want to see.

Watch The Big Boys

If you are not following some of the bigger blogs like Copyblogger, Problogger, Johnchow and Smartpassiveincome, then you need to do that now. When you watch some of the images that these guys post on their blog you will start to see why they get so much traffic and make so much money. Sometimes the image is what people refer to and the content is just there to help them understand. The A-list bloggers spend a lot of time dissecting every aspect of their blog so use what they are doing to help you learn a thing or two.

When it comes to using the right images on your blog there are a lot of things that you need to think about such as; color or non-color, paid images or free images and large images or small images. Whatever you decide to use just know that if it doesn’t work out, then you need to move on and try something different.

I’ve personally been using Fotolia now for a little over two years and love the selection, simplicity, and service I get from them!

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: blog, Blogging, images

Get Visitors To Your Old Posts

January 23, 2012 By Warren 5 Comments

How many blog posts do you have on your site? If you have hundreds of posts like I do, then you are not getting visitors to all of those posts and this is a real shame. If you find it tough to get visitors to your old posts, then don’t worry because I have a few tricks to get more visitors to your posts without actually building backlinks to them and pushing them up the search engines.

Should you build backlinks to old posts? Yes, this would be the ideal thing to do but if you don’t have the time then there are other things that will work just as well. My advice would be to use BuildMyRank to do this because all you have to do is write a few short articles and then add a link to an older post. Anyway, lets get started with how you can get visitors to your old blog posts.

Repost Your Most Popular Posts

Do you have certain posts that continue to get more and more traffic each month? This is common with a lot of blogs because every once in a while you will write something called a “Pillar post” and these always work to get more backlinks which in turn get more traffic. Am I saying that you need to write more pillar posts? Well, you can but this is something that most people are not capable of doing because these posts require a lot of time and expertise in a lot of fields.

The great thing about reposting your most popular posts is that you can use this time to update that post and add anything new that may not be in it. A lot of bloggers don’t realize that they can do this but if you have a post that people like, then you know they won’t mind getting more out of it sometime in the future. Just make it known that you are reposting an article and there is more content inside because sometimes readers will click off your site the second they see a post they have already read.

Note: If you repost an article make sure you don’t change the URL of it or else you will lose all the links to that older article and the traffic might not be there anymore.

Use Related Post Plugins

There are a lot of related posts plugins that you can use with WordPress so why not use them. This is something that many people do but often times they are not using the plugin the right way. If you are going to be using related post plugins, then you need to make sure that it stands out. I know you may not know much about html or coding and if that is the case, then find somebody that does. Trust me, using a related post plugin that stands out will really make it worth your while.

Share Your Old Posts

Do you have a Facebook or Twitter account? If you don’t, then it is about time that you get them both. If you do have a Facebook and Twitter account, then I would recommend sharing some of your older posts every once in a while. If you are follow PLRInternetMarketing.com on Twitter, then you know I already do this and that is why I get a lot of traffic to some of my older posts. Just know that the more posts you have the more links you will be able to share.

Do you have an email list? If you have a decent sized email list, then maybe they want to see what you have to offer them. A lot of times the people that read your posts are the people that are on your email list so send them an email filled with some of your most visited blog posts of the past few months. I know this might seem weird but it really does work.

Tracking Your Link Building Efforts

January 22, 2012 By Warren 2 Comments

Google is by and large the best source of free traffic available on the web today, and in order to take full advantage of that traffic we have to pay attention to certain SEO (Search Engine Optimization) aspects which include link building. Generally speaking, the more links, and the more powerful they are, the better the rankings you can expect in the search engines.

Building links usually gets outsourced to SEO “experts” because website and blog owners think there is some secret aspect to the whole process, but truth be told there are plenty of high ranking sites out there that are being run by people just like you. They say “practice makes perfect” and with the repetitive nature of link building you’ll soon be an “expert” yourself.

When building links to your site it’s important to remember that your site is made up of inner pages as well as a homepage. Link generously to all your pages and then interlink within your site to take full advantage of the SEO benefits that come with those links.

Link diversity is something that pertains to building an assortment of links rather than focusing the majority of your time on one you might find “easy” or “comfortable”. Many people get in the habit of only using commenting as a means of getting links and totally miss out on the numerous other methods out there.

Here are a few of the links you can look at using in your own link building campaigns:

Blog Commenting – Also a great way to get to know other bloggers in your niche.

Forum posting – Most forums will allow you a signature that can include a link back to your website or blog, the more you post on those forums the more links you are effectively building from that particular site.
Guest Posts – This is definitely one of the best ways to get a link from many of the higher profile sites in your industry. When you consider that companies are paying anywhere from $25.00 to $75.00 or more a month for a simple text link within a blog post you truly start to see the value here.
Social Bookmarking – Generally these links aren’t as valuable as some others, but they are relatively easy to obtain, and adding them to your link portfolio is always a good choice.
Directories – Now there are premium directories like Yahoo, DMOZ, Eaton, BOTW that carry a decent amount of SEO benefit all on their own, but there are also free and low quality ones that require literally thousands to be of any use to you at all. I’d suggest investing in at least two of the premium ones, and as many of the others as you’ve got the patience to build. (Tip: RoboForm will fill out the fields on directory sites making your job a lot easier)
Link Exchanges – This is when blogger A links to blogger B, and blogger B reciprocates. Generally you’ll be able to choose the keyword and anchor text to be used which goes a lot further than a link using just your name, or domain name.
Paid Links – This is where you pay for the link on a site (usually on a monthly or annual basis). These links are against Google’s TOS (terms of service) and can get you penalized if someone reports you, or if you’re found out some other way. I’d recommend staying away from these.
Web 2.0 Properties are a great place to expand your reach while at the same time getting a link that can then be improved (by building links to the property itself). Squidoo, Hubpages, and Blogger are just a few of the literally hundreds that are available to use freely.

Now there are many more links a person can get such as software download sites (create, or have a piece of handy software designed and then upload it to the hundreds of high ranking software sites that are online. Images, Video’s, eBooks and more can all be used to generate links to your website. The only limits are your imagination and creativity.

All this link building effort should be tracked so that you can see at a glance where and how your links are being placed as well as the effect they are having on your site’s rankings. A few things you might want to keep track of are:

Date – this is the date the link went live, you can also note dates you checked to see if the link was still in place. (You’d probably only do this for your top 100 most valuable links)
URL – Location or website the link is on.
Contact or email of the person or site owner responsible for placing the link.
Anchor text used to link back to you.
PageRank, or authority of the domain, or individual page. (A good trick is to build links to these links in order to increase their PageRank. Most website owners will also be improving their sites which will eventually trickle down to the individual articles themselves so over time all your links could become much more valuable and powerful.
Where the link is pointing on your site. (Homepage, individual post, etc.)
Notes Section – As you notice increases in keyword rankings or PageRank you can jot them down here.

There might be other aspects you’d like to track and there are no hard and fast rules, but the simple act of tracking your links serves to act as a performance document and tracking sheet. It also tends to lend itself toward motivation, because most of us like to see measurable results increasing over time as a direct result of our efforts. And last it also serves to legitimize your blog, or business. Inventory lists, operations manuals, sales tracking sheets, etc. all show that an individual is taking his or her blog seriously.

Incoming search terms for the article:

efforts (1)
link building (1)

Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: blog, commenting, forums, guest posts, link building, link exchanges, links, Search Engine Optimization, seo, social bookmarking, traffic, website

Stop People From Stealing Your Content

January 8, 2012 By Warren 3 Comments

Are you tired of seeing your content on other websites online? A lot of bigger blogs get their content ripped off by content thieves and the problem with this is that your blog gets penalized for it. If you want to make sure your blog is the best it can be, then it is imperative that you make sure your content is safe and not being copied.

Something that you need to understand is that most people think content is free to use any way they want to, but it is not. What you must understand is that a lot of people will take articles written by other people and pass it off as their own without even thinking. It is because of this that you can’t just punish somebody for taking your content when at first they might not know what they are doing is wrong. What I highly recommend is that if somebody is stealing your content you should first email them to let them know that it is not ok with you. Trust me; a simple email will get rid of a lot of your problems.

How To Protect Your Content

RSS Footer and Antileech

Both of these are plugins that you can be using to help protect your content. What they do is either make the content look different than it actually is (spinning), or they will place your link in the footer of the article so that you get credit for it. The nice thing about both of these WordPress plugins is that they are easy to use and simple to setup.

Email The Host

Another thing that you can do to prevent your content from being stolen is to simply email the hosting provider. Most people don’t know this but it is actually against most hosting provider’s terms and conditions to participate in illegal content, which stolen content is. The nice thing about most hosting providers is they will block the account from being accessed while at the same time, pulling down the site. This is great for you and your site. Just know that this should only be done if you tried to email the website owner and got no response or a lack of cooperation.

Delete Your RSS Feed

Did you know the way most blogs will rip off content is by simply pulling the RSS feed? The reason you need to know this is so that you delete your RSS feed altogether and prevent people from getting your content the easy way. What most people don’t realize is that lazy people steel content so if you delete your RSS feed there won’t be an easy way to get your content. Trust me, deleting your RSS feed is sometimes all it takes to protect your content.

Protecting your content is very important, especially if you are using your blog to make money online. Think of your blog like a business, you don’t want people stealing all your secrets and making money off of your hard work. Just do yourself a favor and start the New Year off right by protecting your content from people who are too lazy to write their own.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: antileech, blog, blogger, content, protect, rss feed, rss footer, scraping, stealing

February 2012 Goals

How To Generate Unlimited Article Ideas