Internet Marketing ABC

Backlinks from .edu or .gov domains have a higher authority in Google’s eyes than from other domains – so they are specially desirable. Unfortunately, they are also more difficult to get – unless you know this little neat trick:

site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment” -”you must be logged in”

Oftentimes you can get great backlinks from profiles on web2.0 sites. If you are active in different niches and different pennames, then you can create different profiles for each of those and link back to your sites from them.

Sites like Facebook.com, LinkedIn.com, Xing.com, Zoominfo.com, Flickr.com, Twibs.com and so an are great sources of backlinks that Google really likes.

(Another cool way to get backlinks is with squidoo lists).

There is a quick way to get backlinks from Squidoo. Squidoo has a module that is called “list”, and everyone can add new sites to those lists. The good think is that with a good firefox SEO plugin, you can rank them by pagerank and chose the ones that have a pagerank of 2, 3 or even 4, and thus get top-notch backlinks really fast.

You can find those squidoo lists with a simple search query in google:

“add+to+this+list”+site:squidoo.com+”keyword phrase”

Keyword phrase will make it more relevant, but if you are just looking for any backlinks you can get, then leave the “keyword phrase” out. Keep in mind that you can be more specific of general in your keyword phrase. E.g., if you have a website about acne scars, then you could make your keyword phrase ultratargeted “acne scars”, or a little less by using “acne” or “scars” separately, but this gives you also a lot wider range to chose from.

Just got off a webinar with Steven Clayton (the Commission Blueprint guy) and Mark Ling, and they shared some really great info in there.

Apart from the whole FTC crackdown and affiliate nexus laws things (there seems to be a quick and easy way to keep on going), he also covered some strategies for getting backlinks.

I just want to mention one way of finding squidoo lenses that allow you to post a link.

Simply go to Google and type in this:

“add to this list” site:squidoo.com “keyword phrase”

(of course you want to replace “keyword phrase” with a keyword that is related to your market)

Then you’ll get a whole list of squidoo lenses that allow you to add your own links that have the keyword phrase in them (and are thus likely related).

Using a firefox plugin like SEO Tools (which is free), you can also see the pagerank of the different squidoo lenses in the google SERPs and thus easily decide which ones are gonna be worth the time to post a link to.

The whole webinar will be published soon, probably right after this post.

If you want to get lots of free traffic, then one thing you’ll want is high placement in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for your relevant keywords.

And that, for the most part, is about getting backlinks. Lots of high-quality backlinks from relevant pages.

If you’re not yet there… well, then look at who is sitting on top of the SERPs.

And then copy and paste their URL into this neat little free SEO tool called BacklinkWatch.com.

It will reveal most of the backlinks towards that site. Now, you go through each of those and try to get backlinks from them too where possible.

It’s called reverse engineering, and it works wonders when it comes to SEO.

Just try this search query

"__________________" "[IMG] code is on""keyword"

and

"__________________""html code is on""keyword(s)"

The only thing that you gotta change in this is keyword.

So, for example, if you are selling an ebook on organic pestizides, your query would look like this:

"__________________" "[IMG] code is on""organic pestizides"

It’s a pretty nifty search query to locate forums that allow image code and/or HTML code.

Don’t abuse this to spam forums, but use it to locate forums where you can become a member of the community that contributes value AND profits from the backlinks.

Whenever you do linkbuilding, you want to make sure that you get do-follow links. Do-follow links are links where pagerank gets passed on – the only links that count in the eye of Google.

NoFollow links are links that Google doesn’t count. Google sees these links, but it doesn’t add pagerank to your site when you get them. And it doesn’t help to rank you higher in the search engines.

At times even NoFollow links are worth it – specially if they are on sites that get lots of traffic and where people might just click on the link because they want to get something from your site. But if you are getting backlinks for the search engines, there’s no use in getting nofollow links.

How to tell if it’s a nofollow link

There really are several ways. If you are a bit tech-savvy, you can just view the sourcecode of that page and search for

rel=nofollow

or

rel="nofollow"

Links with that attribute are nofollow links. I like to use a free little plugin for my Firefox browser that is called SEOQuake – it automatically highlights nofollow links so I can immediately see what nofollow links are.

Check out wikipedia for a more technical and detailed explanation of what nofollow links are.