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Start Your Own Blog and do some serious Power Linking
by Rick Hendershot, Linking and Web Traffic
Strategies
In the last lesson I defined three characteristics of
"power linking" that make it more powerful than link trading or link exchanging.
These three characteristics are:
1. A reciprocal link is not
required.
2. Each strategy gives you control over some specific web
content and lets you strategically taking advantage of that content.
3.
You can create literally hundreds -- even thousands -- of powerful, relevant
inbound links with these techniques.
The first one, covered in the
previous lesson, involved writing and distributing articles. As we saw, it is
important to write your articles to get the greatest link exposure possible, and
to distribute them to websites that have high traffic, and that give you the
greatest "linkback value"
Power Linking Strategy 2: Start Your Own
Blog
The second Power Linking Strategy involves starting
your own blog. If you are not up to speed on what "blogs" are, just think of
them as online journals. The owner of the blog makes regular posts on whatever
topics he/she chooses, and readers are free (or not) to make comments.
No
matter what you night think of the practice of blogging, it has become extremely
popular. And, more importantly, Google likes blogs.
Here are some
reasons why you should consider starting your own blog:
— Blogs are easy
to write, are updated frequently, and are considered "content rich".
—
Google holds blogging in high regard. In 2003 they even purchased a major
blogging tool (blogger.com), and its hosting site blogspot.com and now make free blogs
available to anyone.
— Google seems to spider blogs frequently and is
more tolerant of intensive linking in blogs than they are in "normal"
websites.
What this means is that by publishing your own blog, you can
create exactly the kind of content you want to reinforce your other websites.
You can make this content "keyword rich" and you can embed links pointing back
to whatever sites you want. This makes your blog a potential source of hundreds
of links pointing back to the exact pages you want to emphasize. With your own
blog there is no need to rely on other people to publish your content. You
simply publish it yourself.
Difference between power linking and "link
spamming" with blogs
A recent issue of WebProNewsfocused
on how people are using Google's own free blogging service to take
advantage of Google's lenient attitude towards link-heavy blogs. As one poster
put it, "people are using Google's Blogger to set up dozens of free blogs and
then setting up hundreds of keyword rich anchor text links to point to
pages."
What makes this a questionable practice is that content like this
is not intended to ever be read by anyone. It is simply a bunch of keywords and
embedded links strung together for no purpose other than to impress Google's
spiders. Another term for this is "link spamming", and in its most extreme form
it is known as "google bombing". Neither of these are new ideas. For years
enterprising bloggers have been pushing their sites to the top of the listings
for keywords like "Talentless
Hack" or "Operation Clambake". The idea is to get lots of sites creating
lots of posts that pack lots of links together in content that focuses on one or
two keywords.
The most important thing that seperates "spam" from
legitimate content is this simple
spam test: if it is meant to be read by real people, then it is probably
legitimate. If it is not meant to be read by real people (only Search Engines)
it is probably spam. Like Spam (the food), which, we might argue, is not really
meant to be eaten by real people, link spam is not really meant to be read by
real people.
One of the most striking applications of link spamming is
the program called "Search Engine Cloaker". You can set this program up on any
website and it will spit out thousands of pages of jibberish stringing together
reams of keywords and building in hundreds of links pointing to the specific
pages you want to promote.
Another example is your typical link directory
— page after page of links serving no purpose other than to give outbound links
in exchange for inbound ones. Of course in theory a link directory is a
"resource directory" that gives web visitors useful information, and is even a
kind of "endorsement" by the webmaster. But in fact, most link directories are
never meant to be looked at.
That means they fail the same test we have
applied to blogs: this material is not intended to be read by real people. That
makes it spam.
Power
Linking with Blogs
Power
Linking is different. Power Linking involves creating keyword-rich content
that is meaningful to your readers, and is consistent with the theme of the
product or service you want to promote. It is similar to advertising in that it
combines providing information with other sales objectives (persuasion,
motivation, etc.) Power linking combines information with its own set of
objectives -- to create valuable links pointing back to resources whose web
status you want to enhance. If this is objectionable, so are radio, TV, and
magazine ads.
Of the four leading power linking strategies outlined in
this course, blogging is one of the easiest to implement. It is certainly easier
than writing and distributing articles. Why? Because the content is less formal.
Posts are usually shorter, and more "chatty", and less attention has to be paid
to careful, methodical presentation.
If you go ahead and set up a blog
for power linking purposes, just keep this simple test in mind: "Is the material
I publish in my blog meant to be interesting to readers?" If it is, then you're
not engaging in link spamming. Go ahead and pack it with your most important
keywords. And build in as many links as you reasonably can.
Suggestions
for making an effective power linking blog
1. Choose simple blogging
software that is easy to navigate and makes posting quick and
easy.
2. Set up your blog on a different server from your normal
website(s). I'm not sure how much difference this makes, but it certainly helps
to distinguish your blog as an independent effort. A good place to start is
Google's free blogging service, blogspot.com. This is where I set up my own marketing blog. You can have a blog
up and running in about 5 minutes. The software is easy to learn and gives you
plenty of control over the look and feel of your blog. And you will be part of a
blogging community which may give you some traffic and possibly some inbound
links.
3. Register your blog with as many blog directories and link
directories as you can. You want to create some PR for your blog as quickly as
possible.
4. Create as many inbound links to your blog as you can. Link
to it from your own website. Write lots of articles that point to it. Create
announcements mentioning your blog and distribute them to article archives.
Build a link to your blog in your signature, and mention it in the resource box
of all your articles, courses, reviews. In other words, treat it just like
another website. In fact, I'm going to add a link to my Trade Show Displays
Blog, right here.
5. Make a list of your most important themes and
then use relatively short blog entries to "cycle through" your list over the
course of a week or so. Then pack your blog entries with your most important
keywords and key phrases.
6. Build in lots of links -- more than you
normally would in an article or web page. Be sure to create keyword-rich "anchor
text" for your links. If you are not sure what I mean, consider the following
paragraph. Notice how I have embedded a number of links and use my most
important keywords as anchor text.
This is an example of how to use keywords and anchor
text. ("Anchor text" is the text to which the hyperlink is applied.) The
objective of my linking
strategy is to create power
links back to my most important pages. I begin by deciding on a few pages I
want to link back to in my internet
marketing or linking
network websites. I even have some pages about link
exchange and website
design that I would like to create inbound links back to. Once I build the
appropriate keywords into my text, I then create outbound links
back to my websites. Not bad. This paragraph contains 8 outbound links -- all
pointing to specific pages on various websites of mine.
In the next
lesson we will discuss Power Linking content on our own site. See you
then.
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