2. IntroductionIntroductionIntroductionIntroduction
Before we get started YOU NEED TO download a couple of free and easy
to use software programs. Similar in the way that a professional would
require certain tools in order to carry out the tasks that they are
assigned to do, the same concept can be said with a webmaster. Search
engine optimization can be such a tedious and time consuming process
so we will use some devices that will drastically cut down the amount of
time we spend executing daily operations.
FirefoxFirefoxFirefoxFirefox
Download link here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
As im sure you have heard of, this is a popular open source web
browser that you will need to download before you get started with any
of your campaigns. You can keep using any other browser for personal
uses, but when it comes to search engine optimization, it is a necessary
that you use Firefox.
Firefox will make the link building process go smooth as butter. Since it
is an open source application, it allow developers to contribute to the
software and they can extend it by adding extra features to the software
which is also known as “plug-ins,” and we will use some of these to aid
us in our marketing campaigns.
PlugPlugPlugPlug----ins for Firefox:ins for Firefox:ins for Firefox:ins for Firefox:
The seo for Firefox which can be downloaded here:
http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html.
This is a very handy tool that makes the link building process goes
3. easier. While you are searching within the search engines you can collect
sensitive data from websites such as the page rank, alexa number, what
site slink to it, how many urls are indexed from the site and etc.
Another handy plug-in that is very similar to the “seo for Firefox” is one
called search status which you can access by visiting this url:
http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/.
What I find very handy about this plug-in is that it makes it easy to find
out if a site follow links by highlighting it in a REDREDREDRED color. If it does follow
then it will not show anything, or in other words there will be no
highlights. This will come in handy within the first section of organic seo
secrets in which I go over obtaining links through blogs and forums.
Excel to organize linksExcel to organize linksExcel to organize linksExcel to organize links
Excel is similar to the shopping cart you use when you are at the
supermarket picking up some food items. If you are shopping for large
quantities of groceries then you can not possibly carry all of the items in
your hands, so you will need some type of medium to put all of your
goods into.
Well, the same can be said when you are gathering links online. If you
plan on getting a lot of links and traffic (which is what this product is all
about ) then I would highly recommend adding them into an excel sheet
so that you can keep track of everything.
If you do not have Microsoft excel then you can download an open
source derivative to it. A popular one is open office which can be
downloaded here: http://download.openoffice.org/.
It is actually more then just an excel derivative it includes a word
4. processor and other similar applications that Microsoft includes within
their package.
If you just want to download their excel derivative then you only need to
download the “open office calc” file. In addition, here is another open
source version of excel: http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnumeric/.
Once you got all of those “tools” downloaded and installed you can then
precede to reading the rest organic seo secrets.
The fastest way to attracThe fastest way to attracThe fastest way to attracThe fastest way to attract an army of visitors starting todayt an army of visitors starting todayt an army of visitors starting todayt an army of visitors starting today
There are arrays of ways to market on the internet, but before we get to
that I want to broaden your thinking about attracting more visitors to
your clients.
According to internet world stats, there are 6,710,029,0706,710,029,0706,710,029,0706,710,029,070 people that
use the internet as of 2008, and this number will only grow in the future
as computers and internet connection becomes more successful in other
countries.
So, since there are so many people that visit many different websites,
then attracting visitors to your site shouldn’t be hard. Many people come
on the internet to carry out a number of functions such as:
− Checking emails
− Purchasing products
− Research and information
− Participate in topics that they are interested in.
− Networking and meeting new people.
− Entertainment purposes.
5. This does not cover all of the reasons why people use the internet (I
think it’s possible to know all of the reasons), but it gives a good general
overview.
Once you know what people use the internet for, you can better adjust
your marketing campaigns to reach out to them.
A good ole analogy that I like to think of when I want to attract lots of
visitors to my new sites for free is that I have to target online networks
that are generating lots of traffic themselves. This is where that alexa
toolbar comes in hand. Even though alexa is notoriously known to give
questionable data at times, I find it useful when gauging the popularity
of big websites over the internet.
Personally, I like targeting web 2.0 sites because many of their visitors
are very interactive in the sites. They come back to the site often and I
hungry for news and discussing topics that they are interested in.
They also give me lots of quick traffic as well, and for the most part,
they all operate in a similar fashion. So, once you learn how to market on
one of them, it will be easier to master how to effectively market on the
rest of them which makes sense. Anyhow, let’s get to marketing.
Collect as many .edu back links as you wantCollect as many .edu back links as you wantCollect as many .edu back links as you wantCollect as many .edu back links as you want
Many webmasters love .edu links without fully understanding the
benefits behind them. In a nutshell, it is not that an .edu back link will
do magical things with an individual’s site and sky rocket them to the
top of the search engine. It is more to do with the quality that is usually
reserved to .edu links. What is the first thing that comes to your mind
6. when you think of .edu?
An education institution of some sort… usually a university. Well,
universities’ sites are known for providing credible news and
information. Why not, you sometimes have decorated professors that
obtained Nobel peace prizes for their work that could write for
universities and that is very hard credentials and credibility to beat.
Google tends to favor credible sites because what will happen is that
these sites will usually start to receive a lot of back links. When a site has
credible standing in Google they are commonly referred to as “authority
sites.”
Authority sites are those type of sites that when you search for in Google
they will have several listings from that website underneath the search
results, so, yeah, that’s one reason why webmasters want back links
from .edu sites… they tend to have thousands of quality inbound links
pointing to their root domain name and a lot of those links consists of
trusted sites as well.
They also have usually been online for lots of years usually 10+ and
have built up a trusted rank within Google. Remember, the age of a
domain name is something that Google gives prominence to as well. So,
that is another advantage of obtaining links from sites with an .edu
extension.
Also, another advantage that .edu links have compared to that of other
domain name extensions (with the exception of .gov sites) is that they
are not publicly available for anyone to register.
Actually, they are solely available for higher learning institutions which is
7. another reason why. edu urls are so credible, and that is that they are
not publicly opened for distribution and these domain names are not
strictly used for commercial purposes.
Have you ever seen an .edu extension used for a sales page? You can not
go to Godaddy or your favorite domain name registrar and purchase one
of these babies which bring me to my next question…
Can .edu links be purchased?Can .edu links be purchased?Can .edu links be purchased?Can .edu links be purchased?
Yes they can be, but the negative part is for only a short time. If you
notice, most universities usually have a paid section in which an
employer can enter in a job or intern description if they would like to
find potential workers or internees from their local university.
It is very common for the employer to have the option to enter in a url so
that the students who read the data bases can go to a site to fill out a
form or find more information about the listing. When I first realized this
I was ecstatic, I thought that I would have an easy and affordable way to
obtain links from credible authoritative sites very easily.
So, I started searching for other highly reputable .edu organizations that
I can post jobs in and was hoping to stick a link in there as well.
However, this short lived experienced took place years ago when I was
very inexperienced with search engine optimization but in short time I
realized that this would never work.
The reason for that is even if you do get a back link it will only be
temporary. The explanation for this is really straight forward--they can
not let all of the descriptions entered into the database stay there
permanently because it will accumulate overtime and take up a vast
8. amount of resources on the server.
They have set deadlines on how long a description will be listed in their
directory and after that time expires the description will be removed
along with the website url will be removed from the database for good.
So, this way is only a cheap and short way of obtaining a back link from
an .edu website and is nothing that will last in the long term.
Self hosted blogsSelf hosted blogsSelf hosted blogsSelf hosted blogs
Some universities allow their undergraduate students to have a blog
hosted on the university’s server. Yeah, so you can try and find college
students and buy them off with a link but don’t waste your time.
Universities have quality score polices about their sites content and you
can’t use it for commercial purposes, it is not going to happen and it is
also against the tos for most of them.
Sure, you may be able to get a link temporary but that is a whole a lot of
energy invested into a short term and unreliable method. Yes, as you can
see I have tried to exploit every advantage that was presented in front of
me but they always seemed to be just one step ahead of me.
However, after time of testing and trying, I have found a couple of easy
ways to go about it that costs less and is a lot less hassle.
The Methodology #1:The Methodology #1:The Methodology #1:The Methodology #1:
What we are going to do is find free .edu blogs that includes the follow
attribute and comment on them. It makes sense to comment on blogs
that are within your niche market so I will show you how to search for
that.
9. However, before we get started we will need to understand some of the
basics about “blog commenting.” First, do not comment on blogs with a
short meaningless comment. More importantly, do not comment on a
blog with a short meaningless comment with a link right back to your
site within the comment!
Whoever made the first mass auto commenting software that allows
bloggers to mass spam blogs like wordpress, blogger, and etc with a
click of a button (literally) are complete dummies! Listen, very carefully,
auto commenting software are short term solutions.
They are very wide spread which makes them easy to detect which
means that their original purpose has lost its effect drastically.
With wordpress, there is an auto commenting detecting software known
as “askimet.”
This detects and deletes those useless spam comments. Also, if a
webmaster decides to mass spam a wide area of blogs then they are just
doing this for a cheap low quality source of traffic.
Most blogs come with the “no follow” attribute by default which means
that it does not pass page rank on to the specified areas of the site. So,
those links that are stuck within blogs that have the “no follow attribute”
will get ZERO link love but it can still very well generate traffic.
However, traffic is useless if it is not properly targeted and segmented
so that is why you shouldn’t waste your time commenting on blogs that
have no correlation to your blog for traffic purposes.
However, for link building purposes, it is not exactly going to hurt you
10. but I don’t recommend going around leeching links from low quality
sites that have no correlation to that of the theme of your site.
There is one technique that I will get to shortly that does collect links
from sites with a different theme but the urls are of high quality.
Ok, to find .edu sites within your niche market this is what you do.
Go to Google and type in the following query:
site:.edu *your niche* + blogsite:.edu *your niche* + blogsite:.edu *your niche* + blogsite:.edu *your niche* + blog
For example, if your keyword is “online business” type the following
query in:
site:.edu *online business* + blogsite:.edu *online business* + blogsite:.edu *online business* + blogsite:.edu *online business* + blog
To tell you up front, if you have a site in a micro niche then finding .edu
links will most likely be kind of tricky. However, if you go with the
broader aspect of a niche market that relates to the theme of your site
then you will have a much higher success rate of finding .edu links for
your site.
Most of these blogs will be those that belong to professors or graduate
students at a specific university and a lot of them like enjoy comments
on their blog from interested readers. However, make sure to follow the
appropriate editorial guidelines when commenting on one’s blog and
you should have zero trouble acquiring a healthy dose of .edu links.
By using this one technique right here I was able to secure a link from a
blog hosted on the server from Harvard which is one of the most
decorated higher learning institutions in the world.
11. Must follow editorial guidelines when commenting on blogs
This is just common sense but I think that it is safe to say that most
bloggers don’t like when you comment on their blog just for the heck of
it.
They like when individuals comment on their blog and add to the overall
discussion of their site. So in short, don’t put inadequate comments like
“hi, great blog!” or “hi check out my website at:
www.whatevertheurlis.com.”
Do not put short comments that do not add to the over all value of a site
and don’t stick your website url within the body of a comment because
this will always decrease the chances of your comment getting approved
if the blog is moderated (and most of them will).
If the blog includes the follow attribute (which the Firefox plug-in will
show you) then all you have to do is stick the website url within the
appropriate section of the comment form (the place where it gives an
option for the commenter to enter a website url) and if your comment
gets approve you have just created an easy back link to your site from a
url that has a page trust in Google.
Look at the screen shot below:
12. This is a typical comment form of a wordpress blog. After you filled in
the content of the body make sure to put the url of your site in the
“website” form box and then also put your website url within the “name”
section of your form.
The reason for that is because once the post is generated on the blog,
your website url will show up as your “name” and when the individual
clicks on that they will then be redirected to your website.
A lot of search engine professionals would recommend inserting “anchor
text” or the keywords that you are targeting within this section, and even
though this can be good for seo purposes it is not really good for
receiving more clicks which will turn into traffic from my testing.
My advice, I see that some webmasters insert both their url and then
some anchor text within the name form but to me this looks a little
amateurish.
Simply mix things up and sometimes insert your website url and then
other times insert your anchor text so that you can get both traffic and
also some search engine benefits rolling on as well.
13. In addition, here is something that many webmaster tend to overlook.
From my testing I have concluded that search engines love urls that get
a healthy dose of clicking action going on and they will tend to index
these urls quickly as well.
This is something that is a known fact in the pay per click marketing
world but is still little known in the organic search engine marketing
industry.
Just think about it, when an individual is browsing the comments of a
popular blog if they see a keyword as a name then this will cut down the
click through rate which therefore will cut down the amount of traffic
that a webmaster receives.
The reason for that is because spam comments will usually have strange
names with keywords stuck in there. If someone has a name then they
know it’s a person behind the comment, and if they see a website url
then they know that if they click on it then they will be redirected to a
website and this is what you want.
If you make intelligent blog posts then your comments should not only
be approved easily but it should also help generate more traffic to your
site because the readers could be interested in viewing the content on
your site.
Methodology #2: “I spy”Methodology #2: “I spy”Methodology #2: “I spy”Methodology #2: “I spy”
You can make use of the “Seo for Firefox” plug-in to see what .edu sites
that your competitors are leeching links from. If you find the .edu sites
that link to them then you should be able to do what I call “reverse
engineering” to determine how your competitors are collecting links.
14. What you do is go to Google and type in the keywords that you are
targeting. After the top results generate then you should be seeing some
content underneath all of the listed websites. Look at the screen shot
below for an example:
You can then click on the Y! .edu page links to find the .edu sites that
link to your competition’s website. You can then add them on your
prospective list of sites that you can link to within excel.
Methodology #3: Contact the professorMethodology #3: Contact the professorMethodology #3: Contact the professorMethodology #3: Contact the professor
Here is a simple technique that is a little more time consuming but could
get you what you want. Try contacting a professor at your local
university and look for one that teaches a subject that correlates to the
subject matter of your site.
For example, if you have a website about online entrepreneurship then
contacting a local professor that teaches a course about
“entrepreneurship” or “business” may be a very good idea.
If the professor lists the courses that they teach, the required readings
for the students or the research studies that they have conducted then
make sure to take a look at them and study it very carefully. Ask yourself
what is something extra that you can write about that the professor
would be interested in reading and possibly recommending to their
students for supplemental learning.
Once you have done your research and written both, a highly researched
and well written article, you can then provide them a link to the content
15. you have written and recommend it as an extra reading resource for
their students.
If you recommend them a sales page then they will probably not respond
or give a not so pleasant response. Remember, when it comes to getting
links it is always a lot easier to get links from sites that are of no
promotional status.
That is why it is extremely hard getting links to just a sales page or less
it is from affiliates and directories. So, when locating professor a
webmaster can take several routes.
First, they can try scouting for professors regardless of what geographic
region location they are in.
If any university has a highly reputable program in a subject manner that
correlates to the theme of your site then there is no reason for you not
to get in contact with them because you can communicate from the
convenience of your computer.
It generally helps when you contact local professors so that you have
something to relate to, but I have contacted many professors none
locally and the process still went well.
Here is yahoo’s listing of higher learning institutions worldwide:
http://dir.yahoo.com/Education/Higher_Education/Colleges_and_Universities/.
Generally, I find the home pages for most universities to be set up very
similarly. Once you go to a university’s homepage you will see a site that
usually makes use of the university’s colors (for branding) with a bunch
of links around it.
16. Once you are there you want to look for a link that says “academics” or
“academic programs” or anything relatively close to that definition. Once
you click on this link look for another link that says “departments.” This
will then list the different departments of the university and you can then
click on the one that is compatible with what you are seeking.
Once you get to that point look for another link that states “faculty and
staff.” Once you click on this, it should then give you a list of professors
that teaches the subject matter that you are looking for.
Not all universities have an academic link and some may list the
departments’ right on their homepage and if it does then click on it and
you get to skip an extra step.
Most universities have their professor’s profiles and contact information
listed on their sites as well as all of the research and studies that they
have conducted as well.
What you can then do is simply give the professor an email telling them
about the useful content you wrote and why it would be an extra
supplemental resource for their students.
Most universities give their professors and graduate students free space
on the university server so that they can host a site if they want. It is
critical to look for professors that have a site on the university’s server,
and it would be even better to find one that constantly updates it which
you should be able to figure out by looking at the bottom of the page for
some text that states last updated on “XXX.”
I would highly recommend using email to get in contact with a professor
17. and remember, patience is golden with this technique.
Professors are usually very good at checking their emails because they
will have students contacting them constantly which require them to
check them often during the weekdays.
However, make sure to be patient for a response and would highly
recommend not sending them email after email… just send them ONE,
and if they are interested then they will get back to you, if not just leave
it alone and look elsewhere.
From my experience these are simplest, most affordable and also most
natural ways to build links from websites with an .edu extension. I have
tried like one dozen different ways but these have proved to be the
winner throughout time.
Of course you can also search for .edu forums to post on but this is a
technique that I wouldn’t recommend. First, most of them are restricted
to just students or staff of the institution should you will need to actually
attend the institution in order to join them.
Second, a lot of them are closely regulated and are focused on just
discussing about a particular subject manner. I’m not saying all of them,
but most of them from my experience and it would take a lot of time to
find the ones that do not require a student id to register.
So, the couple of mythologies that I listed above are the best and most
natural ways to collect links from websites with an .edu extension in my
very not humble opinion.
I have been doing this for a while and most likely these techniques will
18. still be in business 5, 10, or more years in the future.
In the next section we will discuss obtaining links from a different type
of extension that is usually given very high page trust within Google and
many search engines as well and these are and the .gov extension.
Obtaining .gov linksObtaining .gov linksObtaining .gov linksObtaining .gov links
These are the other highly scouted links that webmasters fight for in the
search engines as well. Like .edu links these are links that are very rare
to get and links from sites with the .gov extension carry a lot of weight
because like the .edu sites, .gov links can not be purchased from your
every day domain name registrar and sites that contain the .gov
extension Google fancy because of the high page trust rank that is given
to it.
These types of sites root urls will usually have a lot of pages indexed
and more importantly links from trusted domains pointed to it as well. I
will usually group these types of sites with “non profit organizations”
and “charity” type of networks as well because these sites usually do not
sell a product (or is of a high commercial nature) and gives away lots of
content as well.
The only difference between them is the url extensions, most charity and
non profit organizations will usually contain a .org extension but not
always.
An example of that if your local “town” site, which could be a high trust
non for profit website but contains a .com extension. However, even
though it has a .com extension, it very well still can be a very
authoritative site with a lot of page trust instilled in it by Google
19. because of all of the quality one way links pointing to it.
In addition, another important factor that it will have is that the domain
name will be significantly aged.
Even though they don’t contain the rare .gov extension I will still group
these ‘non for profit’ types of sites within the same category because
they are very similar in the way that they operate.
Ok, so the first step we need to take is to find out how to collect links
from .gov sites within the same theme of our site and one of the easiest
ways that I find is by using a couple of cool tricks to find blogs to
comment on.
How to find .gov blogs to comment onHow to find .gov blogs to comment onHow to find .gov blogs to comment onHow to find .gov blogs to comment on
Add this following query into Google, or make use of the seo Firefox
plug-in. If you add this into query into Google then make sure to replace
“keyword” with whatever keyword you are targeting.
site:.gov *keyword* + blog
Just like we did previously to acquire .edu links, you will make a list of
blogs that you will start commenting. I would highly recommend adding
them to an excel sheet and sort them by their page rank and alexa
number.
Of course you will need to make sure that the blogs are “do follow”
because if they don’t then theoretically you won’t be getting no search
engine link juice which makes this practice useless for seo purposes, but
still a usable one for generating website traffic.
20. Regular blog commentingRegular blog commentingRegular blog commentingRegular blog commenting
So, now you know what makes .edu and .gov urls so special, and that is
the high authority that Google assigns to these sites because of the high
percentage of links that they accumulate.
It is very rare to type in a name of a higher learning institution and not
find it listed as an authority site within Google. However, it is very easy
to find .com websites in Google and find them with zero authority and
links for that matter.
So, I and many seo professionals agree that it is a lot better getting links
from a site with a high authority in Google compared to one that
doesn’t have any or very little.
However, just to clarify, just because a website ends in the .com
extension doesn’t mean that it is not a credible site because that is a
ridiculous statement to make, and in matter of fact many .com websites
are very commercial and still retain lots of authority within Google.
It is just that the ratio of authoritative .edu sites compared to .com links
is a whole lot greater from my experience. Having an authority .edu site
is kind of the norm, while with having an authoritative .com site is
usually much rarer compared to the frequency of that of .edu sites.
Next, what we are going to do is locate blogs within our niche market
that does not have the “no follow attribute” and comment on them.
Remember… make sure to follow the editorial guidelines of commenting
21. as listed previously.
The purpose of the “no follow” tag was to disassemble a lot of the
abnormalities that came along with blog spamming, so in short DO NOT
post any short useless comments on blogs.
Free blog search engineFree blog search engineFree blog search engineFree blog search engine
You can use this free tool to locate blogs that includes the follow
attribute HERE: http://w3ec.com/dofollow/.
Once you are there simply type in the keywords that you are targeting
and then wait for the tool to generate the results. You can then start
collecting blogs and then decide to comment on them later.
How to get the most out of your time with blog commentingHow to get the most out of your time with blog commentingHow to get the most out of your time with blog commentingHow to get the most out of your time with blog commenting
When I market online I like to practice simple but effective principles that
I refer to as “smart marketing.”
In short, I like to optimize the most out of my time and also implement
marketing methods that will give me the best return off of my very
important investment of time.
So, when you comment on blogs with the follow attribute I would also
recommend commenting on the most popular blogs, or in other words
the blogs that are the most trafficked.
There are a couple of key factors that you should be searching for when
commenting on blogs.
22. 1. Alexa rank. Generally the lower this number is the more traffic the
site is getting. This can be fabricated with a couple of black hat tips
so I won’t tell you how to do it but would recommend showing this
factor some importance.
2. Page rank. The higher the number this is the better as well. A
higher page rank website will usually lead to a fresh website being
quickly eaten up (indexed) within the search engines.
3. Number of comments. The above two options can be fabricated a
bit, but generally if a blog has a lot of comments then it will be
generating a good amount of traffic. Also, blogs that have a lot of
comments are excellent for search engines because search engines
LOVE content. Remember, it is their primary source of nourishment
and if they do not get it then they will not be well nourished so they
in return will not like the site very much! So in short, a blog with
lots of comments should be getting more traffic.
4. How active. I would recommend making a list blogs within your
market that contains the follow attribute and sort them out in an
excel sheet by their details. This will also make checking for links
easier later in the future as well. Usually, highly trafficked blogs will
be updated more often so staying up to date with them is a good
idea. You can also check the Google cache of s site to see the last
time that the Google bots have visited a site. The more often that
the bots visit the sites is another good indicator that it is getting a
decent chunk of traffic. In addition it always helps to be the first
person to comment on a trafficked blog because your site will be in
a better position to gather more presence. A temporary free tool
that I would highly recommend that you download asap is called
comment sniper: http://www.commentsniper.com/.