Linkbacks- How Important Are They? Part 2

Now that you are ready to go out and get some links to your site, it is important that you follow these general rules. First, you need to decide what keywords you want to rank high for in the search engines. If you do not know yet, then you’d better start researching all of the keywords related to your site to see which ones will bring you the most traffic as well as the most relevant traffic. Read my post titled “Let’s Get Down To Business” for the tools you need to research your related keywords.

Once you have a list of all the keywords that you want to show up for on the search engines, you will want to make sure that when someone links to your site, they use some of the keywords you selected in the text of the link.  Remember from Part 1, search engines see a link from another site to yours as a vote. And whatever keywords they link to you with is a vote for your site for those keywords. So, if someone links to my blog with the keywords “Online Business Help,” that is a vote for my site for each of those keywords as well as for the whole phrase. Keep in mind also that a one way link is much better than a link exchange. Search engines know that if you’ve exchanged links, both sites have mutually agreed to vote for each other for those keywords. A one way link tells the search engines that a site voted for your site just because they thought your site was relevant to those keywords. Make sense?

In Part 1 I also talked about some links being more relevant than others. I’ll explain what I mean by “relevant.” If I get a link from an electonics site to my site with the words “Free Online Business Information,” that would not be as relevant as if I were able to get the same link on a site that is all about Online Business Information.  Also, if you are trying to get to the top of Google, you will want to pay attention to the page rank that Google has assigned to each website that you request a link from. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, then do a search on Google for “Google Toolbar.” You’ll find a link to Google’s download page that also explains what the toolbar is all about including pagerank. Once you have the toolbar installed, you’ll want to click on “Settings” then options, and then select the More tab at the top. Then under “Even More buttons, check pagerank and page info and then select OK. This will enable the pagerank bar showing you what pagerank Google has assigned to each webpage. So, when you go to get a link from a site, the higher the pagerank the better. Additionally, the higher the pagerank and the more relevant the site is to your site, the better the link will be.

Many times, when you request a link from another site, they will just use the name of your site as the text of the link(also known as anchor text). This can be very frustrating if the name of your site is something totally made up and has nothing to do with your site content(Amazon or Google for instance). So, it is really helpful if your domain name contains your most important keywords. On one of my sites, I sell primarily outdoor socks. So registered the domain name thesocksite.com. Now, even if someone doesn’t link to that site using the kewords I suggest and they just use the name of the site, I will still get a vote for my most important keyword “Sock.”  Stay tuned for Part 3. I will suggest some crafty was to get links from other relevant sites. 

The Fast Track to Internet Marketing

I know that there are many of you out there who have spent money getting your website set up and now you cringe at the prices quoted to you by these companies that call or email you with promises of top ten results on the search engines for your main keywords.  Is there a cheaper alternative? Of coarse there is.  

 I realize that you’re on a fixed budget for your site. And as you may have already found, there is a lot of garbage out there on the internet relating to website marketing. When I say garbage, I’m talking about information that is incorrect.

Have you heard of the story about the monkey in the cage near an airport?:
Whenever an airplane would fly over, the monkey would go nuts banging around in his cage trying to scare the plane away. After the plane was gone, the monkey was sure that his actions are what made the plane leave. Well, much of the information out there is produced in a similar way. Webmasters will do something such as make a few changes to their site, and just because they start getting results, they think it is because of the changes they made, when in reality, it may have had nothing to do with whatever they did. It could have just been that Google or one of the other search engines just finished an update and so their site started showing up for more keywords.

I started out on the internet around 2000. It took me 3 years before I made any significant money on the internet. I had to learn everything by trial and error and I was much like that silly monkey near the airport. A couple years ago, I ran into a fellow that is now my marketing mentor. He’s been at this a lot longer than me. One day I found one of this fellows sites and I submitted my website to his directory. Shortly after I did that, he starts sending me these free automated emails with helpful website marketing tips. After trying a few, I was convinced this guy knew what he was talking about. So, when he came out with his marketing ebook, I was one of the first in line to buy it. It cost me $97 and it was the best $97 I have ever spent. I learned more in the 5 days it took me to read his ebook than I had in all my years marketing on the internet. He pretty much gives you a blueprint of how you should market your site along with tons of helpful tools and resources to help you do it. I’ve put a link to his site on my commercial site at http://outersports.com/page.html?id=23&chapter=0 . If you sign up for his free newsletter, he’ll give you plenty of helpful tips, but he never really gives you the meat of it all. He couldn’t or he would never be able to sell his ebook.

So. . . .  you can spend countless hours(or years) trying to figure it out by yourself, or you can take the fast track by reading his $97 ebook. The money you will make as a result of reading and implementing the infomation in it will more than pay for the $97 book. If you decide not to buy it, you are certainly welcome to email me for suggestions. I personally have  helped two of my brothers start highly profitable ecommerce sites now, and I don’t mind sharing what I’ve learned.Darron

Some Q’s and A’s About Internet Marketing

I’ve had this blog up for a while now and I’ve had many people asking me about internet marketing. I’ll share some emails that I’ve been going back and forth with the past few weeks:

Question:
Darron: I’ve got a drop shipper, and my website should be complete in less than a week (via Yahoo Store Wizard).I’ll be selling housekeeping carts, moving carts, etc. WHO SHOULD I use to market my goods? I want to be listed in the search engines. I have seen quotes ranging from $99.00 dollars per MONTH. to $1500.00 to “consult” me on how to market my website? Can you help? I’m leary of the Pay Per Click tool (maybe because I don’t know much about it). Any recommendations on how to/who should market my website once it’s up? I’m on a very limited budget. Thank you so much for all your free help!!!!

Reply:
Marie,
The least expensive(free) way to market your site is through getting links to your site from other relevant sites. You can read an article on my blog about it here: http://myonlinebusiness.wordpress.com/2006/11/06/linkbacks-how-important-are-they-part-1/ . Let me know if you have any questions after reading the article.I forgot to mention that I would totally stay away from companies offering to market for you. Especially the ones that contact you by phone or email. 99% of them are ripoff artists. Google actually provides a wealth of information about marketing your website, including a list of recommended SEO companies. You can check it out here: http://googlerankings.com/

Question:
Darron,Hello. Can you tell me how to “register” my site with Google?
I went to the Google ranking site. I couldn’t understand the results provided after I typed in my url. I’m lost. Now that my website is up and running, it doesn’t seem to show up anywhere. How can I register the site with Google?

Thank you.

Reply:
I actually haven’t written part 2 of the article yet. I’m sort of slacking when it comes to my blog. One way to see if google has indexed any of your pages is to type into the google search bar: site:yourwebsite.com Just substitute “yourwebsite.com” with your website. If nothing shows up in the results, then Google hasn’t found your site. If Google hasn’t, then you can go here to submit it: http://www.google.com/addurl/ .