A few years ago I created my first website. I didn’t know HTML and I certainly didn’t know about blogging (even though it already existed at the time). Since I had no idea how to put a website together, I fired up Microsoft Frontpage (it was already on my computer) and started fiddling around. A few months later I had a functional, 5-page site.
I put the site online and started trying to figure out how to get links. I understood at least partially that links were the key to success with an online business.
The huge disadvantage that I had was that my little site didn’t get any links for itself. I could have left it online for 100 years and it never would have been found. It wasn’t in Google, wasn’t listed anywhere, and most definitely wasn’t being visited.
I worked on getting links for about six months before anything significant started happening. I didn’t understand most of the methods that could be used to get links so I had to do some really monotonous stuff. I had a job back then and I spent most of my free time searching sites like Linkmarket.net for link partnerships. I didn’t know of any other ways to get links so that was the only choice I had. They were mostly low quality links BUT they still worked and I made a lot of money with that site ($3,500+ per month at its peak).
While I owned that site, it did really well for me. However, getting links for the site was extremely difficult. It was really ugly first of all and it didn’t generate any links on its own.
Blogs have a ton of advantages over static HTML sites and I firmly believe that any site that’s serious about getting traffic with search engine optimization should be a blog or add a blog to their site. If you already have a static HTML site and you don’t want to change it to a blog, add a blog in a subdirectory, i.e. yoursite.com/blog. Here are some of the advantages you can get with a blog:
- Blogs literally create their own links. When you hit publish on a blog you can expect to get links from blog search engines and other sites. WordPress, Blogger, and most other blog platforms notifiy search engines and other sites that you have published something new and they will link to it. Other sites also find you on blog search engines and will link to you if they like what they see. I sometimes talk to bloggers who complain because their sites get a small amount of search traffic. What they don’t know is that there are people who complain in the static HTML community because they haven’t had a search visitor EVER and that can go on for years with static sites because they don’t create their own links. The owner is on their own to get every single link.
- Blogs are a lot easier to update than static sites so you can easily focus on producing more content. When I had my static sites I would spend all day trying to figure out how to create a link structure and that was ridiculously frustrating. Looking back I can’t believe I did all that work when I could have been focusing on the content for the site.
- Bloggers are by far the most generous group of online entrepreneurs. When people complain to me about how hard it is to get links to their blogs I just have to laugh. I would love for everyone to have to work on a static site for a year or two so that they can appreciate all of the advantages that come from blogging. Bloggers are very generous and will help you out if you know how to ask the right questions with respect.
People ask me all the time how much they need to post on their blogs. You need to post as much as you can. Everytime you post you get new links that will help you to get more search traffic. You will also be adding content that will help you to get more search traffic.
What some of you are really asking is for me to set the bare minimum of work that can be done and I would urge you to shift the way you’re approaching it. I would start to think of ways to get as much done as possible and try to figure out how to get satisfaction out of the work itself.
A few years ago I had a partner that I was working on a site with. He would ask almost every day how much more we had to do until the site made a lot of money. All day long it was, “How many articles do we have to write for the site?” or “How many people do we have to email?”. He was thinking about things the wrong way and wasn’t willing to change. I had to walk away from that partnership because I could see that my partner wasn’t willing to pay the price. You can’t expect to make money if you aren’t willing to put in the time.
I have always tried to figure out how to do more and have tried to focus every day on making things better.
Whether you have a site that’s a blog or a site that you have a blog on, your focus should be the same. Post as much as you can or hire someone to do it for you. In the long run, the link juice you gain will pay off nicely.
We’ll be covering more and more ways to get links over the next few weeks as we continue the 30 Days To Better SEO.
Tags: blog, blogging, Link Building, SEO
“I fired up Microsoft Frontpage (it was already on my computer)”
The funny thing is I still have Frontpage on my main business site. lol
In a few weeks, I will convert it using my own MyStarterBlog. This will be a test using MSB for that type of site.
Anyway, 2 days ago, I wrote a 1000+ words post in WP. It took me a few hours to write it. Now, I clicked on preview and bang! The MySQL got an error on the wp_post table. I had 0 posts because of this. I was sure that I had saved it at least once or it was auto saved. I had to perform a repair but my last post was not there and I lost all those hours. I had to rewrite that post from memory(few more hours).
Say what you want about static HTML pages, but I’m now reliking them more and more. Btw with MSB(Windows), you blog on your computer but upload the generated blog. You would need to ping from MSB(manually).
Again, lol on Frontpage
Static HTML pages are fine when they work too. I’ve started many sites using Wordpress as the backend and never had a problem like what you have described. But I think even if I HAD had that problem, the good outweighs the bad when you’re using it for various purposes such as pinging, updating content from wherever you are, plugins, themes, it’s just so freakin’ easy to use. I’m sure I’m missing out on some benefits too, but I would urge you to give it another go!
Bush, if you have a few WP sites, the issue above is smaller and manageable.
But, in my case, my IM business model is to have 100s of sites. You don’t have to upgrade a static site because of a security issue in the backend. I got that happened too on another blog(MySQL injection virus last year). The fault was mine because I did not updated that WP at that time. Imagine going to 100s of sites and perform an update.
Last year many jumped on BANS(8MB to upload) or WP+phpBay(4MB). Rob made a MSB eBay plugin so I just need to upload 150KB to do the same thing. I replaced all of them with MSB.
Rob created the themes for MSB and our goal was to minimize the footprint and be SEO/Google friendly out of the box. MSB generate the sitemap.xml(no plugin needed). It’s done with IMers in mind.
Because MSB don’t call MySQL, the themes are very easy to learn/modified.
Btw, I’m using MSB for my secondary blogs.
Sorry if I plugged MSB but I think it’s a good alternative between WP and static files. It has a free/paid versions too.
Court will be happy of that extra content.
I have a question about link building. I currently have several sites on the first page of google. As a matter one of them is in the #8 spot out of 47 million.
What is the best way to push it up to grab that #1 spot? I had a another site that was #5 out of 20 million; however when I added some links to it; unfortunately that caused it to fall down to #8.
Is it normal for a site to fall when you add links to it and will it come back?
Thanks
Yeah, adding a blog to your website is a good option. A blog is updated quite frequently. Hence it gets crawled and indexed faster. This also helps the primary domain in rankings. A blog should ideally be full of content which is of high priority for any search engine. Because, at the end you want search engines to take notice of your website/blog.