Archive for the ‘SEO Techniques’ Category

Contest Arbitrage – Link Building Through Contest Sponsorship

By Simon On December 9, 2008 19 Comments

While planning a Christmas contest for you, it’s come to my attention that many bloggers don’t know how to use contest sponsorship to their advantage. They simply feel as if it won’t work to their advantage, but in fact contest sponsorship can actually be one of the easiest forms of link building possible.

It’s nothing complicated, just simple thinking. I like to call it… Contest Arbitrage!!!

The way contests work most on the time on the majority of webmaster/MMO blogs is that participants will have an option to blog about the contest, including links to the sponsors’ websites, and to place a link to a sponsors’ website. In contests where the prize is big enough (which is usually in contests with over $50 in prizes), there are usually 10-15 bloggers at bare minimum who will post about the contest in order to gain as many entries as they can. These blogs are all registered in Technorati and crawled frequently by Google.

Something as simple as a 30 text link on your blogroll will be accepted as a sponsored prize, and therefore basically you are trading in one 30-day outbound link for 15 permanent inbound links. If you can allow for 8 links in your blogroll, that’s an extra 120 permanent links to your blog per month. Not long ago I was talking about how easily Technorati Authority can be manipulated, and this is yet another way in which this occurs, gaining you hundreds of blog reactions and authority points each and every month.

Through this method you can also have some control over your anchor text (although don’t use just one keyword the whole time, Google will penalize you – John Chow experienced this first hand).

Stick around for the contest, I will be launching it on Saturday, and Santa’s going to be giving away a lot of goodies.


How To Do Keyword Research For Search Engine Rankings

By Simon On November 29, 2008 30 Comments

Recently I have become interested once again in making a nice residual income with Google Adsense. Because I have just begun school holidays, which means nine weeks of free time for me, I have set myself a goal to build 15-20 content sites utilizing Google AdSense as the main source of income for each. It was actually visiting Garry Conn’s blog that inspired this, so a big thanks to him.

It is a proven fact that visitors from search engines are the most valuable and targeted traffic a website can get, and therefore, for content sites, investing time into keyword research is crucial in order to rank well in search engines, bringing in the most valuable traffic possible. For content sites, the optimal keywords to focus on are the medium to long tail keywords, as many webmasters skip all medium competition keywords and optimize straight away for the long tail keywords, sometimes creating more competition in long tail keywords than in some higher traffic, shorter keywords.

How To Properly Conduct Keyword Research And Optimize For These Keywords

  1. Find Smaller Niche Markets – I spent an hour today just wandering around my house analysing every item I saw for the potential of a market online, and realised that the number of markets is unlimited; from white goods to linen, gardening to posture, the potential for an adsense income is endless. Take the time to find a good market which you have some knowledge in that you feel people want to know more about. People use search engines to find answers… know whether or not you can provide the answer.
  2. Search For Optimal Keywords Using Multiple Tools – Once you have selected your niche market, run it through three different keyword tools: Google’s Keyword Tool, WordTracker Free Keywords, and SEOBook Keyword Suggestion Tool. The reason why I say run it through three tools is because no tool can be completely accurate, so by comparing the results across multiple keyword tools and selecting those keywords common to most or all of the keyword tools you will have the best chance that those terms are the terms being searched for instead of a term that showed up in one tool and won’t bring any traffic. When analysing keywords to optimize, I usually keep those with less than 20,000 results with the function: “keyword”; that also have less than 2000 results with the: allintitle:keyword function. I don’t remove those keywords with little search value, because although there may be very few visitors who come from that keyword, they are still worth more than not being there.
  3. Combine Similar Keywords Into One – Because I’m not much of a writer, I like to minimize content writing time to as little as possible. Therefore, by combining similar keywords to include both in one page, the amount of writing is reduced. Say for example you are targeting the keywords “Australian Plants” and “Australian Animals“; I would combine these to create a page titled “Australian Plants And Animals“, therefore having to write less content to create a good sized article, killing two birds with one stone.
  4. Buy The Domain Name After Deciding On The Keywords – The trick in this is to take the most occurring keyword in your list of targeted keywords and buy the domain name with this keyword in it as the primary word. By doing this, search engine ranks will increase overall as more webpages will contain the part of the targeted keyword more frequently in the URL.

With all that done, all that is left is to create quality, unique content, making use of title, heading, and alt tags, and to build some links.

When I get my first of the 15 sites up I will show you it and tell you how it’s going, and step you through exactly what I do from start to finish of creating my second website.


Get The Basics Right

By Simon On October 13, 2008 29 Comments

I see them everyday… people seem to think that there are lots of secrets being hidden from public knowledge that will give them complete success online. Guess what… There are none. Some techniques are more advanced than others, but none are kept away from the publics eyes.

It seems that everyone wants to skip the basics and get stuck into the advanced techniques, with the mindset that this will earn them better rankings and more readers. If you just get the basics right and do those small one percenters than you will achieve far more success than diving into the deep end without knowing how to swim.

I admit, a few months back, I was the same as these people who thought that there was a quicker way to achieve anything. I achieved nothing on that site – it was a complete failure. Then I started this blog, and have only concentrated on the basics SEO steps, doing 301 redirects, having the correct permalink structure, building links, putting keywords in the title tag and using header tags to their full potential. And this blog now has very strong rankings in the search engines because of this, not because of some fancy unheard of technique.

What I am trying to get across is, don’t go looking for the easy way through. Do what you know well and keep at it, and you will achieve far more. Focus your efforts on improving what you know.


List Of Blogs With Top Commentators Widget

By Simon On September 29, 2008 72 Comments

A week ago I wrote a post about using the top commentator widget for backlinks.To follow this up I have decided to post the list that I use for link building using the top commentator widget, sorted by PageRank.

All PageRanks are up to date as of today, just 2 days after the latest PageRank update.

PageRank 6

PageRank 5

PageRank 4

PageRank 3

PageRank 2

Hope this helps you build more links. :)

If I have missed out your blog, just drop a comment and I will add it.


Using The Top Commentator Plugin For Backlinks

By Simon On September 22, 2008 28 Comments

I really apologize for not posting in like a week – it’s the last week of term this week so bear with me for 4 more days before I have more time.

I have noticed when browsing webmaster forums such as DigitalPoint that many people are unsure of the best way to build high quality one way links to their website or blog. now I can’t say that there is a best way, but I know of a way that is the best way for me – it is enjoyable and I gain high PR and high quality backlinks quickly from authority blogs in my niche. What makes this better? These are usually sitewide DoFollow links.

Take a look at my backlinks in Yahoo SiteExplorer (click on the image to see it in full size):

My Links

My Links

Now, I’m not here to brag but that’s a nice amount of backlinks from a 2 month old blog. And look where these links are from – huge, well respected authority blogs.

Go and take a look at some of these blogs and see what they all have in common: You will find that they all have the Top Commentator’s widget installed, with the DoFollow setting enabled.

Many bloggers see this widget and think no more about it, but when I realised the link building ability of this some time ago now I jumped right into testing it out. And guess what? It seems to be working!

Now please, after seeing this, and I repeat, PLEASE, do not go out and spam the heck out of blogs with this widget installed. It is there to pass a bit of link love to loyal readers. I find that in the blogs I like reading I gain a spot anyway because I like to connect with the blog owner. Post valuable comments to the blog that are of a decent length, and you will find that you actually like the blog more as well.

Have fun commenting :)


Part 2: Getting Your Link Bait Noticed

By Simon On August 31, 2008 6 Comments

The is part 2 in the two part series on link bait. If you missed the first part, you can read it at Link Bait 101: What, Why, How?

OK, I am really sorry about the delay in getting this post up – I’ve had a pretty hectic past few days and a pretty hectic week ahead. I’ve also been a bit lazy, but we all have to be some time.

So by now I assume you have written or planned out your own link bait, whether it is a controversial post, a free E-book you created (I will be making one in a few weeks), a competition, or anything thing else you think will work. The next step is to publish it up to your blog or website, so that it is there for the public to see. After all, if it’s not up it’s not going to bring you any traffic.

Many bloggers shy out here, but this is where your persuasive communication skills come into play. Gather a list of some of the top blogs in your niche (For example, Shoemoney, Entrepreneurs Journey, Blueverse, Balkhis, JohnCow, JohnChow, CarlOcab, TheNetFool and others). Once you have this list, it is time to select a few of them and head over to their contact pages, which you can find through the navigation bar very easily.

The next step is to write them an e-mail. Start by introducing yourself and your blog, and then explain to them just how much you love their blog. After this paragraph, tell the owner of the blog that you have just written an extremely helpful blogpost, and it is the kind of thing that their readers might be looking for or interested in. In doing so, politely ask them to give your article a mention to their readers.

Usually, the other bloggers won’t mind this, as they can include it in their link roundups or give them something to write about (600 posts can definitely leave you stuck for ideas). If all goes well, you should have at least one of the bloggers that you emailed giving a link to your post in their post, and you should start to see some decent traffic heading your way.

Feel free to share your thoughts about this 2 part series, anything you would like to see on this blog or any ideas you have.


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