Blogging & Website Basics - Part Four So How Do I Get Bonafide Links To My Blog

Since we are on the subject of linking to and from your blogs, and ostensibly this whole series was started with the discussion on links on our minds, (due to the discussion about Technorati rankings), it is not far-fetched to now devote an article or two on the effects of linking and bona fide strategies to get more links without being penalized or worse by the Search Engines.

It is necessary to understand that there are certain “linking strategies” which are no longer looked upon kindly by the Search Engines (and even many surfers). On the by-and-by I will mention these “bad” strategies in my articles. However, right now we will just mention the most blatant ones. And we will begin with the negative.

It is often the case that when we are starting out and looking for links, that we consider “link banks” or “link farms”. The ones that particularly a waste of times and money are those that will “for a small fee” charge you money to use them. Here is how they work.

You go into a link-farm and they maintain a database full of customers just like yourself. If they are halfway tech-savvy they will also categorize their links so that you can link to other web-sites that are within your “sphere”. You go to the categories that interest you, and you click on those web-sites that seem to be related in content to yours. The system then sends out an automated email to the webmasters of those sites telling them of your link-exchange request. The webmaster can either approve or decline. This is fairly simple. What is supposed to happen then, is that you and the Webmaster of the chosen site put up “reciprocal links”. You link to them - they link to you. You give them a “hot-link/back-link” to their site they give one to you. Sounds simple doesn’t it? Well… First and foremost you have just bled out another link. Okay not so bad, unless you constantly do this. A site with too many “bleeding links” and almost no content is marked as a spam site. One which simply puts links up to other sites, adds the keywords, some junk content and tries to move up in the Search Engine ranking. BTW..this works. It works and works well. For a couple of weeks until the Search Engines get around to actually botting, caching and running their algorithms on your site. Then you are penalized or simply thrown to the back of the line.

But there is a very cagey thing these link-farms do as well. What they offer you is either free link exchange or for a few bucks more you get the PRO edition. The Pro edition allows you to put all your reciprocal links into a database and whenever someone accesses your site these links are fed out in pages. Lots and lots of people, newbies usually, go for the PRO option. After all for $30 every couple of months, they don’t have to add to their HTML every time a new link is agreed upon. They just add it to the program database which takes care of the rest. The thing is then they are not bleeding links as the information is held on a central server (not on their own servers) and I challenge anyone here who knows of these farms to Google search your link on their site. You just won’t find it. So while you being conservative, and you don’t pay that extra “small” charge, add a link to your HTML every time your request is approved, most of these people are just adding a link ostensibly coming from their site, into a centralized database. They get your link, you get almost NADA. And since there is no overhead for them, they willingly and happily will add thousands of links. Go find YOUR site among those thousands of links in one web site. Who do you know, is going to flip through a few hundred link pages reading every one?

That is just one of the negative aspects. So the rule here is:
“Stay away from commercial link-farms and link-exchanges - they are a NO-NO!”

Okay so how do you get “good” and “valid” links into your Blog?

  1. Lots of Hard work
  2. Technorati as we have already discussed is one way. (No need to repeat - read articles 2 and 3 in this series)

  3. Links between friends - this works there is a give and take here, and it spreads. You would be surprised how good this option works. My AW friends do this routinely, and we are all writers. I gladly link to fellow AW sites even if they don’t give me a “reciprocal” link. Cause that is what friends are for and that is the community.

  4. Targeted Email - This we will discuss in one of our next articles and I think you will be surprised as to how well this works. For now let me say these few things about Email - Targeted Email.
    A) I own quite a few web sites and deal with blogs. I can tell you that based upon real-time statistics if a targeted email to a targeted audience goes out, the hits on the site I am targeting, jump in the hundreds of percents within the next 24 hour period. People who WANT email will read it.
    B) How do you get a targeted email list? First off you must spread the word. Forums, article submission sites (a very good option), friends, family, the stunning woman next door who you were always to shy to talk to, (hey don’t laugh I am SHY!), Internet buddies. Remember you are starting from scratch here. You are new to this whole world, its lingo, its etiquette and its rules. Take anything you can get and keep it and treasure it as if it were gold.
    C) NEVER THROW AWAY AN EMAIL ADDRESS.
    D) NEVER SELL YOUR LIST OR LET SOMEONE ELSE BORROW IT. AND GUARANTEE THAT TO YOUR READERS AS WELL!
    E) Targeted Email lists take time and effort but they are your best option. Your BEST option for new sites.

  5. Implementing RSS feeds - we will discuss these later (but if you are impatient you can read my series of RSS articles here at EzineArticles, just click on here or on my Name to see my articles on RSS.)

  6. Word of Mouth - if it spreads it works… PERIOD (No email no nothing. Just BUZZ. Create the buzz. You must market your own site, cause if you don’t no one is going to come to it!) This is a lot like writing and having your first book published. Once it is published, the real work begins. You have to market the book. Sell it. Autograph it. Talk about it. Until you are nauseated from it and wish you never learned how to write. But you have to do it!

  7. Offer something that is WORTHWHILE for your audience - and make sure you update it constantly and consistently. Take my blog for example. I made it generic. BUT I wanted to get out some thoughts on writing and living etc. And I do that and continue to do that. However, my background gives me some fairly good expertise in a few other areas as well. This is also great practice in writing. So I combine that expertise with my writing.. and voila. Don’t only write about some events in your life. As much as that is important to you, very few people will want to read it. Give people knowledge, something they want something that ONLY you can give them. And be damn good at what you do. On one hand the famed phrase goes from P. T. Barnum: “A sucker is born every minute” on the other hand “Never underestimate the intelligence of your audience”. Most people are a hell of a lot smarter and more intuitive than we give them credit for.

  8. Work hard on Good Search Engine listing and ranking
    Use the options, tools and ideas you read here and elsewhere. Pick and choose what is good and works for you. Don’t discount anything, until you tried it. Works, that is great. Don’t work - dump it like a rotten tomato.

  9. Advertise with Google Ad Sense and Yahoo (Overture)
    One of the few times I will actually suggest spending money. But be careful and wary. Keep close track on what works and what does not work. Follow your budget closely. Change your adverts to meet demand and what works and what does not work. Use catch phrases - be savvy. People come to the site - deliver on your advert. You have less than 5 seconds to get their attention. Use those 5 seconds to the maximum!

  10. Offering Freebies - Sometimes this works sometimes it is just garbage. Depends on your site and what you are selling or offering. E-Books are almost passe, I would not go that route. I know an incredible amount of people, and I have yet to meet one person, who has told me they actually read those free e-books which are basically personal blogs in PDF format. Most of them are simply snares and pitches, full of the worst writing and junk imaginable. They tell you how to get rich in 10 minutes or how to make a million bucks on the net - if only you send them another $100 bucks for their secret! Like I said before “a sucker is born every minute!” However e-books on health, herbal remedies etc. are all the rage. They offer INFORMATION or KNOWLEDGE. You may want to consider those if they fit into your site’s content and genre.

  11. An Incredible Amount of Patience - Be patient. You dont gain 1000 links to your site in a week!

  12. More Hard work - need I say more?

I am sure I left out a few things (or maybe more than a few), which I will get to in the future.

Copyright © 2006 Ted W. Gross. All rights reserved. (You may publish this article in its entirety with the following author’s information with live links only.)
Ted W. Gross’s very popular blog, Cobwebs Of The Mind contains daily updated posts and articles on technology and writing. He also owns Amor Enterprises which maintains Virgin Earth Article Submissions which is designed to accept articles about any country or place in the world. Ted Gross is also a published author and maintains a web site for his works.

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Blogging to the Bank How to Create a Money Making Blog Empire in 30 Days

‘What would you do if you had to start your internet business from scratch with no money at all?’ This is a question that often pops up on the message boards of affiliate marketing sites. It usually comes from newbies trying to figure out what works best and fast. And the same answer comes up from experienced internet gurus: Create money making blog empires!

Why are blog empires a perfect way for making money?

1. Blogs are easy to set up and manage:
Maintaining a blog doesn’t require programming and web design skills. You just register an account with a blogging service like Blogger.com, and you can start immediately posting messages.

2. There are no start-up costs:
Blogging services like Blogger are absolutely free. You don’t need to spend money on hosting and domain names. If you run 30-50 niche sites and pay a domain name for each, it’s a huge sum of money. If you run 30-50 or hundreds of blogs, when using free bloggging services, it doesn’t cost you a dime.

3. Blogs are indexed by search engines within days:
One of the main problems that website owners have to overcome is getting into the search engines. With Google it can be an annoyingly long process (think of the Google sandbox effect). In the meantime, blogs are indexed much faster, usually within days, thanks to RSS feeds.

4. Blogs are a better way to promote affiliate products:
This comes from the nature of blogs. Blogs are a series of subjective opinions written by everyday people. It is a well-known fact, that the best way to sell affiliate products is to write a sincere, positive review. Experienced internet gurus use this technique to rank in tens of thousands of dollars monthly. Word of mouth advertising is till one of the most effective methods to persuade people to buy something. A well written blog post can do this for you.

5. Blogs can be easily monetized by using Adsense:
Contextual advertising is a popular way for webmasters to earn money without effort. With blogs it is the same. Just put a piece of code into your page’s source and there you have it. Then wait for your visitors to click the ads. Even if you don’t know much of HTML codes, you can benefit from displaying text ads. Blogger offers you to put Adsense ads on your blog’s template, and you can do this from the Blogger menu with a few clicks, so no need to bother with HTML codes. It even offers you to match the color of ads with the colors of your blog’s layout. It is called blending and it increases click through rates enormously.

Secret methods of creating money making blog empires fast

Method 1:
The first method is to create blogs that concentrate on certain problems. In your posts first describe the problem, then offer a solution. This solution should be an affiliate product or service, that you promote. Most people use the internet to find information for solving a problem. For example, treatments for acne problems, solutions for money matters, where to rent a car on holidays, reliable softwares against viruses and spams, etc. This is where you can write about how you had the same problem and how this or that product solved it.

If you start 5 blogs a day, you will have 150 blogs at the end of the first month. Imagine how much money you can earn from this blog empire. And that would be just the first month. This method sounds simple and obvious but many affiliate bloggers do it wrong. There is a new way found out by Rob Benwell to do this successfully. You can read more about it in my blog (find link at the end of article).

Method 2:
This is a less often used method. Use your blogs as online courses or online tutorials. Find a topic and start a series of posts like it’s a series of lessons. Your fist post should be lesson 1, the second post should be lesson 2, and so on. Place affiliate links into your posts. You can also use these blogs for generating Adsense revenue. Keep the number of lessons between 10-20. If you don’t like writing or don’t know the subject well enough, go to free article directories. Pick 10-20 articles of your subject area and convert them into a series. That’s all.

Start blogging today and in a month you will have a blog empire earning you a decent amount of money. For more information see my blog below.

Ari Krizsan runs Webtemplatemall.com, a site for free web page templates, cheap flash templates and webmaster resources. For information on how to make money with blogging fast, go to http://blogging-to-the-bank.blogspot.com.

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Blogging 101

If writing is an art, then, blogging is one way of using words to come up with an art. This is because people who are into blogging are the ones who are artistic on their own sense, carefully choosing words that would best describe their feelings, sentiments, wishes, desires, and everything.

Basically, blogs were first introduced as weblogs that refer to a “server’s log file.” It was created when web logging hit the virtual market. Since its inception in the mid-1990s, web logging gradually saturated the virtual community making the Internet a viable source of greater information.

However, with web logging, you still need a web site and domain names, but with blogging, you do not need anything just an account with blog providers. In most cases, these kinds of blogs are free of charge.

With the onset of blogging in the industry, personal journaling had been a common ground for people who wish to be known all over the world. However, not literally famous as this is not a case on being popular or well-known personality.

Generally, blogs are created for personal use. Like a journal, people can write their daily adventures, sentiments, and whatever ideas they want to express online.

Nevertheless, with the advent of the online businesses, blogs had gradually taken the limelight in providing businesses a chance to boost their productivity online. This is where the business blogs have taken the limelight.

Business blogs are, basically, created to advertise the services or products of a certain web site or online business in order to increase online sales.

Moreover, business blogs are also one way of promoting the company so that the other readers will know that a certain company exists online. With blogs, entrepreneurs are able to establish a name in the virtual market through articles that can be very useful in the reader’s life.

From there, you can make money out of blogs by simply syndicating it to your business’ web site. This can be done through the RSS technology.

So, if you are thinking to create a blog, whether for business or for pleasure, you need to know some tips that could help you get through and make your blog one of the interesting blogs online.

Here’s how:

1.Consider your audience

Even if your blog is generally personal, still, it would be better to consider the minds of your readers. You have to think of something that would interest them.

After all, most of the reasons of people who write blogs are not at all confined to their own personal motives. Most of them would love to be “heard” (or read) and would love to be known, in some way or another, even for just a minute. Hence, it is very important to come with a write up that everybody can understand, not necessarily that these people can relate to it but they can understand it.

2.Pictures speaks a thousand words

To make your blogging worth the browsing effort of your readers, it would be extremely nice if you will put some pictures in it. It does not necessarily mean you have to place a picture of yourself. Any photographs will do as long as it does not pose danger or insult to anyone who will be reading your blog.

3.Make constructive and beneficial blogs

Even if you are free to write anything you wan to say to the world, still, it would be better to create some write-ups that would be beneficial to your readers.

After all, its information technology that you have there so better be inclined to provide information rather than sheer quirky entertainment.

4.Avoid making multifaceted and complicated blogs

In order to have an interesting blogs, try not to use some highly technical and highfalutin words. After all, it is not a science discourse or a debate that you are making, so better stick to simple facts and short blogs.

Bear in mind that most people who use the Internet usually do more scanning than scrutinizing each site word for word. Therefore, it would be better to come with blogs that will not bore your readers just because you have these lengthy articles.

5.Make it interactive

As much as possible and if your capacity will allow it, make your blog interactive. Yu can do this by placing some video or audio clips in your blog.

You can even place an area for comments or for some feedbacks. In this way, you can get some impressions or reactions of other people. Who knows, you might even gain some friends just by making them feel at home in your blog site.

Indeed, blogs are not created just for the mere fun of it. It also has its own purpose in the world of the Internet.
Therefore, for people who wish to harness their craft, as far as writing is concerned, blogs are the best way to do it.

As they say, blogging is the contemporary term of creative and commercial writing.

Jeremiah Patton has been utilizing blogging to gain traffic and interest for his work at home business opportunities website at http://www.2ndincome4u.com

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