MarkBeljaars.com

I really wanted to keep this one short, but backlinking is such a complex topic. I touch on dofollow and nofollow below and will endeavor to explain further in later posts…

Within the SEO field, there are three main reasons why we create backlinks – traffic, recognition and authority. Traffic is generated when someone follows the link to your site. Recognition tells Google your site exists or has undergone a change. It is created through high quantity, low quality backlinks (quantity vs quality). Authority tells Google you know what you are talking about and thus helps with your rankings. Authority links are achieved through high quality backlinks from high PR, .edu or .gov sites (quality over quantity). Both are valid SEO techniques. With a healthy mix of the two, you can ensure that your posts are quickly indexed by Google and that they index well for your given keywords.

Quantity backlinks include:

• Free directories – there are literally thousands of free RSS, article and post directories.
• Social bookmarks – like Digg, Propeller or Reddit.
• Commenting – gaining links by commenting on other similar blogs is common practice.
• Free blog sites – such as Squidoo, Hubpages or Blogger. Note that with a lot of work, these links may be promoted to quality links.

Quality backlinks include:

• High PR directories – often these types of directories cost money or have long wait times.
• Articles
• .edu and .gov sites – dofollow links of this type are difficult to obtain.
• Links from high PR and relevant blogs.

It is also worth noting that low quality backlinks also count towards authority. For example, ten low quality links may be worth that of one high quality link. Also worth noting is the follow and nofollow link attributes. Links marked as follow will count towards authority and recognition. Links marked as nofollow will count toward recognition, but not authority. Many sites mark links as nofollow to stop people posting comments just for the purpose of backlinks. As the name implies, nofollow links tell the search engine bots not to follow the link to the destination. It has however been proved that many bots do in fact follow nofollow links.

So to summarize, quantity links are fairly easy to obtain. Software such as Social Bookmarking Demon make this task even easier. Quality backlinks on the other hand are like gold and can only be achieved through hard word, great content or money (eg by using services such LinkVana).

As a final note, I should mention that I offer a free service to anyone who wishes to add a one-way backlink from my site to yours. See Call for SEO Related Articles for more information.

Forget creating a throw away WEB2.0 site to help drive traffic or increase page rank. I am extending a unique free opportunity to all who wish to advertise on my site…

I will happily publish and appropriately accredit articles written by any author as long as they meet the following requirements:

• The article must be in good taste and contain useful information. To this end, I will vet all articles and only post those that I think will offer value to my readers.
• All articles must be on-topic. The main theme of this blog is SEO marketing, SEO tools, common or new SEO techniques and general website creation techniques and tips.
• All articles must be original.
• The article should be at least 200 words, however shorter articles may be accepted.
• Articles may include as many links to your site as you like, however the links must be relevant and appropriate.
• The article may include a header or footer containing your site’s ad copy, name, link or whatever else you like.

I believe this to be a great opportunity for both advertisers and readers alike. Within two months of the blogs creation, Google had accredited the site with an overall PR3, with some pages achieving PR5. Two months on, the number of quality backlinks has trebled, and as a result I believe the overall PR is now higher (although I will not know until Google releases the next PR update).

If interested, please post articles to imarket dot article at gmail dot com (replace dot with . and at with @)

Thank you,
Mark.

SEO is one of those games that you can spend a lot of time at for very little reward. It is all too common for new players to spend hundreds of hours promoting a website using backlink building techniques only to find that traffic does not equal conversion. Wouldn’t it be great if you could measure how well your site will convert before spending all those hours? Well, there is one method that is commonly used for this very purpose. With almost no effort at all you can drive several hundred visitors to your site within a couple of days. The catch…it costs money.

For those who are fortunate enough to have a spare hundred dollars or so, it is wise to spend that money up front to test your niche before spending precious hours on a dead end. The simplest way to do this is to create a Google Adwords campaign. The advantage of this method is that you can run the campaign to generate 500 or so visitors, then immediately end it. Statistically, 500 visitors will enable you to review the worth of your niche. Simply divide the number of sales by the number of visitors to obtain your conversion ratio. Through experience, I have found the following:

• Conversion Radio < 1% – forget it, you will be wasting your time pursuing this niche unless you replace your product, site copy or both.
• Conversion Ratio < 1.5% – your niche has potential. Generally we look for a minimum natural conversion ratio of around 1%. Adwords artificially inflates this result as people who click on ads normally do so to buy. Therefore, an Adwords conversion of 1.5% is marginal.
• Conversion Ratio > 1.5% – go for it. You have a good niche and your time will certainly be justified.

Creating an Adwords campaign is very easy and can be done in less than 10 minutes. If you are serious about SEO, you will have already performed your keyword research and will have a couple of 2-3 word target keywords and several long-tail keywords. These keywords should be used in your AdWords campaign. Be prepared to spend money though. I find that a limit of $60 per day and a cost per click high enough to propel your add into positions 3 to 5 works well. Create several ad copies and don’t be tempted to add loads of keywords. Use only the keywords you have chosen for your niche as these will be the keywords you will target naturally if your Adwords campaign proves yours niche valuable.

Run your campaign only until you generate 500 visitors. If you are targeting expensive keywords, 250 visitors will also provide an acceptable statistical guide. Be prepared to spend between $100 and $200 US. It is expensive, but if it saves you 100 hours of work, that is only $1 or $2 per hour.

In my next article I will discuss how to create an AdWords campaign and most importantly how to create a successful AdWords ad copy.