Thursday, November 5, 2009

Thoughts on Back Linking & My eHow Back Link Strategy (Part 1)

I first started learning about SEO on Willow's blog (see links in sidebar for Freelance Home Writer and go visit her, she's awesome!) and continued my SEO education at The Keyword Academy*.

The Keyword Academy is where I learned about the value of back links. Basically Google rates all web content based on a variety of factors. SEO is one. Google wants to give web searchers exact results whenever possible so having the exact key word in your content only helps you rank with Google.

Another thing that Google looks at is who has linked to your content. One way links have more weight than link exchanges because (I assume) it looks like someone independently liked your content enough to pass it on, which carries a huge amount of positive karma with Google. Link exchanges are reciprocal and tend to be 'deals' between bloggers that are intentional marketing efforts which Google does not love as much. I mean, you do get some 'link juice' with exchanges, just not as much as you would with a one way.

In addition, the page rank or google authority of the sites linking to your content carry weight as well. There's a difference between a Chinese Viagra spammer linking to you and MSNBC, you know? Google takes this into account when evaluating the rank of your page/content.

If you can get your content to outrank the competition you can make good money with a website or online article. The trick is to build back links in a way that gives you the most 'Google juice' or 'link juice.'

So we know that Google doesn't think too much of reciprocal link exchanges (which is why internet marketers are always looking for a 'three way' exchange--not as kinky as it sounds, just chasing the elusive one way link). Google is also suspicious of sites or content where a lot of back links pop up in a very short period of time. You might as well get Internet Marketer stamped on your computer screen. Google doesn't want people to scam their rating system. They want good, honest, sincere content. Google is trying to 'keep it real' so to speak.

Meaning internet marketers go to great lengths to look legit with google. There are formulas and time lines as to when exactly and how often a back link should be set up. It can get intricate. So intricate, I've just ignored all the advice and winged it, just waiting a while between back links.

As for eHow...

I didn't build back links for eHow content initially because I started my web career at ehow and a lot of big money eHowers told me not to waste my time with back links or article promotion.

So I didn't. And I made money. More money than most people, I think, due to my SEO. Most eHow writers don't get into SEO right away, they learn it after they've written a bunch of articles and then ask people why they aren't making money. Whereas, from the beginning, I was aware of SEO and trying to get it right. 90% of my articles have made money. I've only had 1 stubborn article that required super human effort to get money on it despite good CPC and SEO. I only put the effort into making money on it because the lack of earnings got under my skin like a bad itch. I think I've made twenty cents on it--so still not hot. I guess the competition must be tough for that keyword. (The other non-earners I can accept because they are low cpc topics or they are recipes.)

The other problem I had with back links is that The Keyword Academy method taught me to get back links by writing even more articles for sites like ezine. Which is great. It's a bona fide, high quality back link. But it takes work and requires more writing.

I could not see writing almost 100 ezine articles just to promote ehow content. Who has the time? Not me! We're potty training over here, which is like the third circle of parenting hell and very time consuming.

However, when I joined Hubpages 2 months ago, I started linking back to eHow articles whenever it made sense.

And my earnings took a jump to $5+ days on a consistent basis. Most importantly, the articles I linked to saw immediate earnings increases. I now had direct evidence of the power of back links.

Then I ran across an article talking about places where I could back link articles without writing another one. I'm not linking to the article because some of the info was bad, but I did find a few gems in that article.

And my earnings took another jump to $7-$10 earnings per day on a consistent basis.

So far, for November, I've made more than $10 a day each day this month. From $11 to $15 a day.

I do believe it is the back linking.

My next post, because this one is long enough and my toddler is ready for lunch, I'll tell you where I put my back links and which sites are worth your time and which were duds.

*The Keyword Academy is a good place to get some basic SEO. However, it's not as comprehensive as I would like. Unfortunately, I don't have time to go into detail at the moment. Perhaps in another post.

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