Posts Tagged ‘offsite SEO’

Prepare Yourself For Link Building

May 5th, 2009  |  by Court  |  Published in Link Building, SEO  |  25 Comments

I’ve seen a lot of people make it in this business. I have also seen a lot of people fail. Almost all of the original friends I made when I started Court’s Internet Marketing School have gone the way of the dodo. The ones that are still around are doing really well, mostly.

I’m guessing that a lot of you will dismiss this post immediately when you start to read it. It’s hard to look at yourself and realize that you might not be prepared mentally for what has to be done. Others might take this to heart and move forward. I guess we’ll just have to see. Please don’t take offense to anything I’ve written here. It won’t apply to everyone but will be extremely helpful for some people.

The fundamentals of search engine optimization aren’t that complicated. The problem is that the implementation is extremely challenging mentally. Most people fail at the implementation and I’m going to explain why. You can do what you want with this -  I’m going to tell it how I see it.

Fundamentally, link building is pretty straightforward. There are two main aspects that you really need to consider:

  1. The most link juice wins (I should say anchored link juice).
  2. The most link momentum wins.

Link juice and link momentum go hand in hand. Each one can gain you a lot of benefit and each can override the other (kind of).

If you have a ton of link juice you’ll be really hard to beat. This is the case for us with CourtneyTuttle.com. We haven’t tried to add a link for like 8 months for that site and we still rank in the top 10 for ‘internet marketing’. That’s because the site has tons of sites linking to it – it has a lot of link juice. It doesn’t have good link momentum right now because it doesn’t have that many new links. The content on that site is still generating some links but most of them don’t point to the homepage. They still help but the link momentum isn’t anything like it once was.

The link juice in this case is enough to override the fact that the momentum isn’t there. With more link juice or link momentum, the site would climb higher in the SERPs (rankings).

Link momentum can also override link juice somewhat. The Keyword Academy is starting to rank for some really good terms even though the link juice isn’t really that high right now. That’s because the site has a lot of new links – the momentum is really high right now. If we stopped getting new links the rankings would tank fast because the overall link juice isn’t there to sustain the rankings.

If you have both you can be virtually unbeatable, but most people don’t get either.

People always take offense when I write posts like this but honestly I find them necessary. If you’re already making money by all means stop reading this post. There may be some beginners that truly need more information before moving forward. However, if you’ve been around for a while and aren’t reaching your income goals, I bet you have a mental barrier that’s getting in the way. That barrier will have to be broken down before you get anywhere. Here are the two biggest culprits:

Analysis-Paralysis

You get a few links and think that your ranking should change immediately. You start watching the rankings on Google and find that your ranking doesn’t improve or that it gets worse. This causes you to think that everything that you’re doing is wrong so you stop trying to get links and that stops your progress. You feel that what you know must be wrong or that you’re getting the wrong type of links.

The solution to this issue is focusing on the fundamentals and forgetting about rankings for a while. Links influence rankings, period. If you have convinced yourself that a link didn’t help you’re watching rankings too closely. There are about 8,000 things that can make you move down in the rankings and watching them everyday isn’t going to help you (unless you are REALLY experienced). It could take weeks or months for Google to find the new links.

You need to make yourself a spreadsheet that you can start to use for keeping track of the links you get. When you get a link from another site, add it to your spreadsheet. Find the satisfaction in blowing up your spreadsheet, not by looking at rankings. If you add enough links to your spreadsheet (and site), the rankings will come.

I’ve had quite a few conversations with people whose rankings are fluctuating. Recently I talked to a friend whose site is fluctuating between #1 and #8 in Google for his main keyword. He keeps telling me stuff like, “Court, I’m never going to understand Google. I just can’t figure out why I keep moving up and down in the rankings.” I keep telling him, “Brian (name changed), you’re never going to get enough links to stabilize because you only think about the rankings.”

My friend for some reason thinks his situation is different than every other situation and he thinks that there’s a variable that he doesn’t understand. There isn’t. His rankings are fluctuating because of the daily fluctuations of link momentum and link juice. Maybe yesterday Google found a new link and that gave him a boost. For two weeks before that Google didn’t find any new links so he started to slide. Maybe last month Google found some new links for a competitor. His real problem is that he’s relying on link momentum because he still doesn’t have enough link juice. Link juice is what brings stability.

My friend’s keyword isn’t really that hard. If he would figure out how to get two links per day for about two weeks he would be taken care of for a long time. He doesn’t do it because he chooses not to. He would rather try to ‘figure out what’s going on’.

ForuBlog-Rotunditis

The fun for you is in running around learning about the marketing and you’re too lazy to do the implementation. You find yourself arguing about theory with people that are much more successful than you. You may not realize this about yourself. The only way to know if you have this issue is if you feel like you know what you’re doing but aren’t reaching your income goals.

If you have this issue, link building will be extremely difficult for you because you’re seeking the high of reading a great piece of information – in other words your focus isn’t on making money.

To solve this issue you might have to go on a media-fast for a while. You may have to rediscover yourself. If you can’t find satisfaction in making yourself successful, I would honestly walk away or I would at least try to admit to yourself that this business isn’t for you. I find it fascinating that people like the information more than making money. I have actually been criticized for focusing too much on ‘making money’ on my sites that teach people how to make money.

Step one, in my opinion, is realizing that you aren’t working when you’re reading. You’re working when you’re working. You need to at least set a percentage-based limit for how much you’re going to let yourself read. The rest should be spent working and the majority of your work time should be based around getting links.

My friend with the fluctuation problem also has ForuBlog-Rotunditis. Since he doesn’t understand his fluctuation he tries to figure it out by visiting forums, blogs, and by calling me (very ironic that he won’t listen to me). I’m pretty sure that the next time I talk to him I’m going to tell him that I’ll solidify his ranking for $1000. It would probably take about an hour to get enough links to do that. Instead of getting the links he chooses to waste dozens of hours reading about his problem.

The Big Picture

He who gets the most/best links, wins. No matter what picture your mind is showing you, if you aren’t ranked #1 for your keyword, you’re getting beaten with links.

Yes, this is day 7 of my 30 Days To Better SEO series.

30 Articles In 30 Days – New Article Marketing Experiment

February 5th, 2009  |  by Court  |  Published in Link Building  |  52 Comments

As promised, I have prepared a new article marketing experiment. If you missed my last one you can read about it by following these links:

This time around, I’m going to be using a site that isn’t very established in fact as of right now the site has never made me a dime. It gets trace amounts of traffic, nothing to be super proud of:

The all-time highest day of traffic on this site was 17 unique visitors – most of which came through direct traffic. The record for search traffic on this site was a whopping 4 visitors on January 15th.

Here are a few more details about this site:

The whole point here is to see how well we can increase traffic on a site that isn’t established. This experiment is going to be a little trickier because the site doesn’t have many links right now. When I did the first experiment the site I was working with had a LOT more links. This site barely has any.

What I’m going to do to compensate is trickle the articles out very slowly. When you submit through Unique Article Wizard you can tell it how many submissions you want it to do each day. For this experiment, I’m going to add an article every day for 30 days straight, but I’m only going to let the service do 10 submissions per day, per article. By the end of the experiment UAW will be doing 300 submissions per day because each day one more article will be added. UAW has about 1200 sites to submit to in the categories I’ll be working with so it’s going to take about 4 months for all of the articles to go out.

In the spirit of honesty I should tell you that I’m not really sure what’s going to happen with this experiment. Frankly this is a lot of links to add to a site that doesn’t have much link structure. I’ve never been afraid to try new things and I’m certainly not afraid to lose as long as I learn something. The risk in submitting this many articles is that the site gets sandboxed. I don’t think that’s going to happen, but it could. Even if that happens it will be back a few months later so I’m not super worried. Sometimes you have to wait to get the results you’re working for and this isn’t going to hurt the long term potential of the site, even if it does get boxed now.

If You’re Not Willing To Risk, You Don’t Deserve To Win

If past experience tells me anything, there will be some comments that tell me that this isn’t a good idea. They will say that the quality of the article links is low and/or that this is for sure too many links, too fast. The truth is that I could never have gotten to where I’m at without trying this kind of thing. I honestly don’t believe anything I read until I’ve tried it out.

I know that many of you are sitting on sites just like this one. Your site has been around for a few months, gets small or no traffic, and you’re not sure what to do with it. Sometimes I have a hard time understanding why people are so afraid to act. Think about it; if this blows up what have I lost? Not a dang thing – this site doesn’t make money anyway. I guess it will cost me some time but I would much rather spend time doing something like this than reading MMO blogs all day.

If this experiment implodes, I’ll learn something that doesn’t work and will have about a 90% chance that the site comes back in a few months. If it works, I’ll have a nice traffic increase now and will be able to make some money.

How To Get Started Making Money Online When You’re A Total Beginner

January 20th, 2009  |  by Court  |  Published in For Beginners  |  20 Comments

When I first started to get interested in making money online, I honestly didn’t have a freaking clue where to begin. I figured that somehow I had to create a site, so I started fumbling through that. That took a couple months and when I had a terrible-looking, worthless site, I didn’t know how to get anyone to go to it. Even if I had been able to get some traffic to it (that didn’t happen), I wouldn’t have had a clue how to make money with it. Lol, what a mess that was.

That was four years ago. As it turns out, it isn’t that hard to create a website, it isn’t that hard to get traffic, and it isn’t that hard to make money from that traffic.

Everyone and their dog is going to tell you how to make money online and the problem is that A LOT of people are going to tell you what they think, even though they don’t make jack online. If you don’t believe that, go and try out everyone’s garbage for a couple years. When you realize that you have wasted a few thousand hours of work you’ll be back to where you can really get started, which is right here.

There’s only one reason I’m going to write this article – learning this business for me sucked. I had so many set backs it’s not even funny. I’ve had sites banned from their traffic sources, I’ve had tons of sites that didn’t work, and I’ve wasted literally thousands of hours of work.

Nowadays I have my sites cranking on auto-pilot and none of this is as difficult as it once seemed. Even though I’ve been advised to not give away everything I’m using, I feel like helping a few people to make it. I emphasize ‘a few people’. In all honesty most people are too lazy to do anything on their own and if you don’t have any personal determination, you might as well close this article now because it won’t do a dang thing for you.

Building a Solid Foundation

I can’t really think of a way to say this without being condescending so I’m just going to come out with it. You have a SHIZ-LOAD to learn. If you will be patient, I can help you out.

To make money with the internet, you have to be able to accomplish three simple tasks:

  1. Create a property on the web. In other words you will have to create either a web page or a web site. Yes, there are other ways to make money online. They are also a lot harder and more difficult than creating a web site. Trust me, anyone can create a website and all you have to do is learn a few simple steps.
  2. Get traffic to your site or page. There’s no shortage of information on this topic but most of it is worthless to tell you the honest truth. There are a lot of methods out there that will show you how to get tons of traffic – the kind of traffic that is absolutely worthless. I’ll teach you to get the right kind of traffic.
  3. Get your traffic to do something that makes you money. This means you will have to get your traffic to either buy something or do something else that will get you paid.

All of this may seem hard now, but I can tell you that it really isn’t that tough. It’s not exactly the easiest thing on the planet but you can figure it out. Luckily for you, I have created a boat load of free videos that can help you to get a web site up and running and I have a ton of free, published advice that can help you to start making some money. I will point you there once we’ve laid a foundation.

Creating a Property on The Web

Since I couldn’t possibly cover every single aspect of this concept within a single article, I’m going to have to do it in sections. Here are the basics that we need to cover. Within the next few weeks I’ll add additional articles, and will turn these bullets into links:

  • Choosing a topic for a website. You will have to learn to find topics that will pay well. I have a basic process for this and you can read more about that by following the link.
  • Choosing the right domain name. If you choose the right name, you’ll have an easier time getting ranked in Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
  • Setting up the website. This may seem like it’s outside the realm of possibility for you, but trust me, it isn’t. I have a bunch of videos that will show you how to do this so be patient and I’ll get you taken care of. I have also set up an example site that you can emulate.
  • Creating content for the website. Most of the sites I set up are basic, informational websites. That means I have to put up some information that covers certain topics. If I choose to create a site about ‘computer speakers’, I will have to write some basic articles about speakers. Any topic can be covered with some basic articles and I will show you how to do this.

If this seems like it will be hard, it’s only because you haven’t done it before. Once you’ve done it a few times it won’t seem nearly as difficult.

Getting Traffic to Your Web Site or Web Page

This is the part that most people just don’t understand. If you start looking up ways to get people to your site, you’re going to find literally thousands of worthless articles. The problem with most of them is that the kinds of traffic you’ll get will be terrible. Sure, they might show you how to get a few thousand visitors at a time, but none of them will be the kind you want.

I read blog posts and articles all the time about how people got 10,000 visitors from Digg, or 3,000 visitors from StumbleUpon. That’s great and all, but you’ll notice that they never talk about how much money they made from that.

Would you rather get 10,000 visitors from a site like Digg and make $0, or get 10 of the right visitors so that you can make $1? Frankly, if you’re like most people you’d rather get the 10,000 visitors that are worthless. People chase that traffic around like crazy and honestly, it’s a very unhealthy addiction.

Don’t fall into this trap. If you will learn how to get the right kind of traffic, you will always be able to make money online.

How I Get The Right Kind of Traffic

Every day, millions of people search for information on Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Google is by far the biggest search engine, but all three of those sites are used quite a bit. Let’s assume that a person wants to look for information about computer speakers. They are going to go to Google, Yahoo, or MSN and they are going to type in computer speakers. They will then see something like this:

Google, Yahoo, and MSN are going to show them sites that cover the topic they’re looking for. Let’s imagine that your site shows up on the first page of Google when people are searching for your topic. That would mean that people would be clicking into your site each day and they would be searching for information about your topic.

Since the people that find your site will be looking for information about a certain topic, they will be very easy to make money with. A person that’s looking for computer speakers will probably eventually buy some so someone is going to make a profit. You don’t have to necessarily be the person that sells the speakers to make money. There are tons of people that will pay you simply to send your existing traffic to them and that’s very easy to do. I will explain this in detail.

You may say to yourself that getting traffic from Google in this manner must be pretty difficult. The honest truth is that it actually isn’t that tough and it doesn’t cost money. You simply have to learn to execute a plan and follow through on it. I can show you the basics of making this happen, but you will have to do the work. I’ll present the basics and will link to additional articles from the bullets as soon as I’m able to fill them in:

  • Getting Your Website Into Google – Obviously you’ll never get Google traffic unless you get into Google.
  • Search Engine Optimization – This is often called SEO and refers to the art of creating a website in a way that Google, Yahoo, and MSN will like. This has two parts including onsite SEO and offsite SEO. I’ll create basic articles that cover these topics and will link to them from here.
  • Link Building – Google, Yahoo, and MSN all rank pages based on a system of counting links. If you can get websites to link to yours, Google, Yahoo, and MSN will love it. I have a system for this and will show you how to execute it with a follow-up article that I’ll link to from here. Link building and SEO are very closely related in fact link building is the most crucial aspect of effective SEO.

If you can get traffic this way, you can make money and you can make a lot of it. I don’t have a job anymore and will never again have to, simply because I understand how to execute this strategy.

Making Money From Your Traffic

So let’s assume that you have some traffic from a search engine like Google, Yahoo, or MSN. That means each day you’re going to have people finding your site. That traffic is worth something.

The easiest way to make money from search traffic is to use allow advertisers to buy that traffic from you. That probably sounds difficult if you’re a beginner but it couldn’t be easier. Google has a program that you can use to show ads from advertisers, and it’s 100% free to use.

Here’s a screen shot of a page about computer speakers that’s using this program – I have outlined the Google ads in red:

Google is giving this site access to the Google advertisers who are selling computer speakers and paying the owner whenever the ads are clicked. Usually a single click on a Google ad is worth anywhere from $0.25 to a couple of bucks.

If you can get 100 people per day on a site, and get 10% of them to click on an ad that’s worth $1 per click, you’ll make $10 per day. Increase traffic to 1000 people per day and you can expect to make $100 each day. Increase to 10,000 visitors per day and you can expect to make $1,000 each day.

The beauty of this program is that it’s absolutely free to use. Google pays you for the clicks via check or direct deposit and you never have to deal with any of the advertisers.

There are actually hundreds of different ways to make money with your traffic, but this one is honestly one of the best. It’s by far the easiest and it pays very nicely, as long as you can get the traffic. If you can’t get the traffic you won’ t be able to execute anything else so you might as well learn how to get the traffic.

Making money this way is honestly one of the funnest things on the planet. You can make money while you’re asleep. You can make money while you’re on vacation. That said, it does take work. If you’re a lazy person I wouldn’t waste your time. If you’re committed, dedicated, and hard working, there’s a great chance that you can make this work.

You’re definitely not done learning. Be patient and work hard. You’ll get there!

As I said earlier, I will be adding to this article over the next week or so. Please be patient. Rome wasn’t built in a day. :)

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