Having poor quality content hurts your Google rankings.  And awesome quality can boost your rankings.

This post is over 4,000 words long and is split into several sections:

Where to start

Before we dive in to how to build backlinks there are a few things you must know:

1. Before you think about building back links make sure you’re crystal clear on why you want traffic.
2. Back links are totally worthless if you don’t have the right keywords. So spend some time researching the best keywords before you build backlinks.
3. I’m assuming that your website is already indexed by Google. If you’re having trouble with this then read:  How to get indexed by Google over night
4. I want this post to be the most comprehensive guide to building backlinks on the Internet but I have probably missed a few things. If there are any topics that you’d like covered or questions you would like answered then leave a comment below. Or you can email me nickstraffictricks@gmail.com

Why backlinks matter

Back links are like votes for your website. The more backlinks your site receives the higher it will rank. I explain this in more detail here.

These are a waste of time

While there are numerous ways to build backlinks some of them are complete waste of time in my not so humble opinion, including:

• Submitting your website to Google or other search engines
• Submitting your website to link directories or link farms

So don’t bother with them.

Also read: Link Building: What’s Naughty, What’s Nice?

Domains & IP addresses matter

Getting 100 backlinks from 100 different domains is far better than getting 100 backlinks from 1 domain.

And getting backlinks from a variety of different IP addresses is even better! (Every computer connected to the Internet is assigned an IP address.)

For example, let’s say you use BlueHost to host your 20 domains. Most likely all of those domains will be on the same BlueHost server and have the same IP address. So you could have your 20 domains link to each other but this will be less effective because the domains are all on the same IP address.

Anchor text matters

Back links to your site are going to look something like this:

<a href="http://www.mysite.com/">Ballet Cats</a>

The part that says Ballet Cats is called the anchor text. You want to use the keyword phrase that you would like to rank for as the anchor text.

Q. Do we need to use one anchor text only or use different but related anchor texts?

If you only have 1 keyword phrase you would like to rank for then I would only have 1 anchor text.

If you have 2 or 3 then you can alternate them.

Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors

I found an awesome SEO infographic from Search Engine Land.

They created it to “help clear away some of the mystery and fear for those new to SEO, and provide a reset for those who are experienced.”

Also checkout their fantastic SEO writeup and analysis.

Clicking on the image below will take you to a download page with big PDF versions and sharable images of the whole chart, with short explanations.

NoFollow vs. DoFollow

Q. What is NoFollow?

Frequently blogs will receive lots of junk comments. The purpose of these comments is to get backlinks to someone’s website. To combat this sometimes blog owners will put a nofollow attribute in any links posted in comments.

An example of this:

<a href="http://www.mysite.com/" rel="nofollow">

See the part that says rel=”nofollow”?

That’s the part that tells search engines not to follow this link. When Google sees this it won’t follow this link and renders the link almost useless for search engine optimization.

Straight from Google:

“Nofollow” provides a way for webmasters to tell search engines “Don’t follow links on this page” or “Don’t follow this specific link.”

This gives webmasters more granular control: instead of telling search engines and bots not to follow any links on the page, it lets you easily instruct robots not to crawl a specific link. For example:

<a rel="nofollow" href="signin.php">sign in</a>

How does Google handle nofollowed links?

In general, we don’t follow them. This means that Google does not transfer PageRank or anchor text across these links. Essentially, using nofollow causes us to drop the target links from our overall graph of the web. However, the target pages may still appear in our index if other sites link to them without using nofollow, or if the URLs are submitted to Google in a Sitemap. Also, it’s important to note that other search engines may handle nofollow in slightly different ways.

Q. Do other search engines care about nofollow?

There are hundreds of search engines but the only ones I really care about (besides Google) are Yahoo and Bing.

Yahoo - I found an article on Yahoo.com that said they did obey nofollow.  In my research I also came across several people who reported that Yahoo was counting links to their website that were nofollow.

This is contradictory and I am honestly not sure what to make of it.  A big part of my problem is that most of the information I’m finding is several years old.

Bing - They mention on their Comment spam policy update for Bing blogs & forums that

All backlinks left in comments (including signatures) will be configured with the <a> tag attribute rel=”nofollow”, meaning that … there is no search engine backlink value attributed to the linked page

I also found contradicting reports that said Bing does follow nofollow links.

Like Yahoo, the biggest problem here is finding information that is recent and authoritative on the subject of nofollow.

For now I’m going to assume that dofollow links (links without nofollow) are superior for the 3 search engines I care about.

Q. Do we need only dofollow links or a few nofollow links are okay?

Some links are better than no links but I think at this point you are probably better off with links that do not use nofollow.

Q. How can I tell if a blog uses nofollow without looking at the source code?

There is a Firefox plug-in that makes it really easy to tell if a blog is nofollow.

Watch Video: How to tell if a blog is DoFollow or NoFollow

Q. How do I find websites that don’t use nofollow?

Ahh, yes this is a pain!

I have heard of software that you can buy to find them but I have never tried the software and cannot make any recommendations.

So to make things easier for you I have compiled a huge list of dofollow blogs.

Outsource building backlinks

Pretty much all backlink strategies can be outsourced but I recommend that you do it yourself for a while before you pay someone else.  This will help you determine how much time it really should take when you decide to pay someone to do it for you.

And when you outsource start with small tasks and make sure that the person completes them to your satisfaction before giving them larger tasks.

Become the top commentator on blogs

Did you know you can get a backlink from every single page of a blog?

Yup, you sure can and this lengthy post tells you how.

Guest post on related blogs

Guest posting is another great way to leverage other people’s traffic and send some that traffic to you.

Here’s how it works in a nutshell: find a blog that is related to your new blog and write a “guest” blog post for them. They will pay you back with a link to your website. If people like the post you’ve written then they will likely visit your website.

Find .edu & .gov links

A while ago finding .edu & .gov backlinks was all the rage because we thought that Google would view them as authoritative backlinks and count them higher.

Read 3 Unorthodox Ways to Get King-Kong .EDU Links

Q. Do EDU and GOV backlinks really matter?

Do they help?  Yes just about any backlink is helpful.

Do they help more than other kinds of backlinks?  Probably, but I’m not sure how much more.

And finding .edu & .gov backlinks may take a lot longer and may not be worth it.

Paid links

If you don’t mind spending a few bucks there are quite a few places that will sell you a backlink.

TextLinkBrokers – I have never used them but they’ve been around for a while and might be a good option.

Angela’s backlinks – For only $5 a month you will get a list of 30 places that you can get a high page rank backlink from. This is something I’ve used in the past and I recommend it.

Another option is to find a blog that you would like a link from and contact the owner directly and offer to pay for a link.

Also check out Google’s policy on paid links.

Google PageRank

My advice is to stop worrying about the PageRank of your site and the sites linking to you.

Here’s what Google says:

Q: My site’s PageRank has gone up / gone down / not changed in months!
A: Don’t worry. In fact, don’t bother thinking about it. We only update the PageRank displayed in Google Toolbar a few times a year; this is our respectful hint for you to worry less about PageRank, which is just one of over 200 signals that can affect how your site is crawled, indexed and ranked. PageRank is an easy metric to focus on, but just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s useful for you as a site owner. If you’re looking for metrics, we’d encourage you to check out [Google] Analytics, think about conversion rates, ROI (return on investment), relevancy, or other metrics that actually correlate to meaningful gains for your website or business.

How many links does Google know about?

You can do a quick check on Google with this query:

link: your-domain.com

Unfortunately the results are wildly inaccurate.

Here’s what Google says:

Q: I have [thousands/several/at least two] links to my site, but when I search on Google it says I have [zero/not that many] links. What gives?
A: If you do a Google search using the link: operator [link:example.com], you’ll see a sampling of pages that link to your site. For a more complete list of pages that link to yours, verify your site in Webmaster Tools and check out the link reports. Note that, although these reports are more comprehensive than a link: query, they may not include 100% of all links that you know about. This is normal and you don’t need to worry about it. Webmaster Tools does not always show 100% of the links that Google knows about, so just because a particular link doesn’t appear in Webmaster Tools doesn’t mean that Google doesn’t know about that link, or that your site isn’t “getting credit” for that link.

Note that the link report in Webmaster Tools only shows whether a site is linking to yours; it doesn’t show which links are most significant, and it can include links that are nofollowed or that don’t pass PageRank.

What I Learned From Lady Gaga About Building Backlinks

People will never link to your next blog post if they don’t bother to read it.

And they’ll never read it if you have a boring title.

If you want backlinks, retweets, etc. then you MUST have an awesome title.

(And when I say ‘awesome’ I actually mean ‘not boring’).

Be outrageous, be controversial, just don’t be boring.  You cannot get backlinks with a lame title.

How to craft awesome titles

Crafting fantastic titles isn’t that hard and there are some great resources that I’ll share with you in just a second.

But I first want you to go to your favorite blog and make a list of the last 3 blog posts that you read. Did they have interesting titles?  I bet they did.

Take notice of the titles of the blog posts that you read each day and write them down.  (You read the blog post was because its title perked your interest.)

Your goal should be to find and write down 5 interesting titles each day.  After a week you will have 35 good titles and you’ll start to see some patterns.

The easiest way to create awesome titles is to look at the titles of posts you have written down and use them as templates.

But Nick, aren’t I stealing other peoples’ headlines?

If you use the headline word-for-word, then yes, you are stealing.  So don’t do that.  Use their headline as a template or starting point and make it your own.

Resource awesomeness

Viper Chill:

1. Get Hundreds of Links to Your Next Blog Post, Guaranteed [by using awesome titles]

Tim Ferriss:

1. Blogging by Numbers: How to Create Headlines That Get Retweeted

CopyBlogger:

1. Why You Should Always Write Your Headline First
2. The Cheater’s Guide to Writing Great Headlines
3. Do Key Words in Post Titles Really Matter?
4. How to Write a Killer “How To” Post That Gets Attention
5. 7 Reasons Why List Posts Will Always Work
6. Why Some People Almost Always Write Great Post Titles
7. 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work
8. 9 Proven Headline Formulas That Sell Like Crazy
9. 7 More Sure-Fire Headline Templates That Work
10. Warning: Use These 5 Headline Templates at Your Own Risk
11. The Art of Writing Great Twitter Headlines

Strange behavior

A side effect (a really good one!) of having awesome headlines is that people will retweet a link to your post because of the title without actually reading the post.

But Nick, what about good content?

Sure content matters.  But how will people ever partake of your wonderful content if your title is more boring than your high school civics teacher?

Remember that people have short attention spans; they’ll leave after read 10 words if their interest is not perked.

What does this have to do with Lady Gaga?

Lady Gaga is outrageous, controversial, and shocking.  She is anything but boring; she is the antithesis of boring just like your titles should be.

Article marketing

Article marketing used to be a pretty popular method to get backlinks but it seems to have lost some of its effectiveness. With that said, I do have a bunch of posts on article marketing.

Also read:  Link Trio: A Simple, Yet Powerful, Link Building Tactic

Back links from forums

You can get backlinks from online forums by placing a link to your site in your forum signature that appears at the bottom of every forum post you make.

Make sure the forum allows signatures and allows links in signatures.

Also make sure that the link to your site in the signature is a dofollow link.

In theory if you posted 100 times on a forum you may get 100 backlinks, which sounds pretty good, but may be less effective because all of the links are coming from the same domain and the same IP address.

Build backlinks by allowing people to copy your content

As your site becomes more popular you will find that people begin copying your content and republishing it on their websites.

You can spend a ton of time and effort trying to get these sites to remove your content or you can use it as a way to build backlinks to your site.

In every post that you publish you should embed 3 links to other posts you have published. And when someone copies your content they will be giving you 3 backlinks.

(Have you noticed how many links there are in the post you are reading to other posts of mine? When someone copies this post I will get lots of backlinks!)

Read More: My Clever Way To Handle Content Theft

Google analytics can help

Most likely you’re trying to rank for several different keywords and some will work out better than others.

My advice is to focus on the keywords that are sending your site the most traffic and ignore all other keywords.

But how do you know which keywords are sending the most traffic? Google analytics makes this super easy.

How to build backlinks naturally

The best way to build backlinks naturally is to you create content that people absolutely love. I’m talking about creating something epic that is worthy of backlinks from other people.

And copying articles from Ezine Articles will not cut it!

Once you have created something epic, and it has a fabulous title, then you should post a link to it on Twitter and let some people know to get the ball rolling.

One question I like to ask people is, “Would you refer your mother to your website as the best place to find information about topic x?”

Also, stop trying to get traffic and get backlinks. Instead work on attracting traffic and attracting backlinks. The distinction here is subtle yet important.

How Get Traffic From Google Without Building Backlinks

Building backlinks is a pain.  Luckily there’s an easy way to get traffic from Google without worrying to much about backlinks.

The method involves using Google Suggest to tell you exactly which longtail keyword phrases to use.

Read How to Launch a New Blog With (Already) High Search Traffic

Afterwards take your keywords and check them for competition & profitability:

• Keyword Research Part 2: Finding keywords that are profitable
• Keyword Research Part 3: Evaluating Keyword Competition

And get the full scoop on keyword research with Keyword Research 101

Getting backlinks from blog commenting

Getting backlinks by leaving a comment on blogs is pretty simple.

Q: What is best way to structure your backlink?

Fill in the name field with the keyword that you wish to rank for.  I put John Galt in this field in the example below.  (Note: not all blog owners will approve comments with your keywords in the name field.)

And put your website URL in the website field.

Once your comment is approved it will look something like this:

How and where should anchor text be applied?

The anchor text goes in the name field.

Spammy comments hurt your backlink building

That’s right.

Leaving worthless comments on other peoples’ blogs will actually hurt your back linking efforts.

Let me explain.

Most blogs now use an anti-comment spam plug-in called Akismet which has an enormous database of spammy comments.  Whenever someone leaves a comment on my blog it’s is checked against this database to see if it is spam.

If Akismet thinks that a comment might be spam then that comment is automatically put in the spam bucket and has to be approved by me before it shows up on my blog.  And in my experience Akismet catches 95% of all spam comments.

So if you leave spammy comments on blogs that use Akismet, 95% of the time your comments will be caught by the filter and you will not get a backlink. Doesn’t this sound like a waste of time?

But Nick, how do I know if a blog is using Akismet?

There’s really no way to tell for sure. But any blog with a decent following has to deal with comment spam on a regular basis and most likely uses Akismet or a similar service.  Keep it simple and assume that every blog uses it.

But Nick, what if I leave worthwhile comments but I still want to put my keywords in the name field so I can get a quality backlink?

Some blogs will allow this and others won’t. Before you leave a comment read the blog commenting policy (if there is one) and see if there are lots of comments where people have their keywords in the name field.

For example, Tamar of techipedia.com has this blog policy:

Should you elect to comment, you are asked to give your real name. This is a community and I’d like to call you by your name, not by an alias or business. I’d appreciate it if you don’t try to leverage my blog to boost your SEO rankings, because if you do, I will edit out your name and URL.

And then there are people like me who don’t mind if you leave your keywords in the name field as long as your comment has some substance.

But be warned, if I see a junk comment from your keyword I will mark it as spam and delete all future comments from you.

But Nick, how can I ensure that my worthwhile comments will not be seen as spam by you?

Spam comments usually fit one or more of the following criteria

• They are short, usually containing just a few words.
• They are generic and could be applied to any blog post i.e. “Nice work dude”, or “great work on this and I will tell my friends about it”.
• They include a link to something that is not relevant to the post.
• They include generic praise without any reasonable explanation i.e. “This is a really good read for me. Must agree that you are one of the coolest blogger I ever saw. Thanks for posting this useful information. This was just what I was on looking for. I’ll come back to this blog for sure!”
• They have poor grammar or simply do not make sense.

Do the comments that you leave fit one of the above criteria? If they does then they will be marked as spam and you will not get a backlink.

Consider signing up for a Gravatar because it will increase the chances that your comments will be approved.

Also read: Valuable Commenters vs. Comment Spammers

In short, if you don’t want to look like a spammer then don’t be a spammer. Actually read the blog post and leave a meaningful comment.

Link Farms

Avoid these.  ‘Nuff said.

Reciprocal links

I’m not a huge fan of reciprocal links unless it’s something highly targeted and very relevant.

However I know of one service called Link market that can help you connect with other people looking for reciprocal links.

Don’t Ask Sites For Links

Some gurus recommend emailing webmasters and begging for a backlink.

But anyone who has actually done this for more than 5 minutes knows that it sucks.

When a site owner sees your email they are going to ask, “What’s in it for me?” and consequently will ignore your link request 90% of the time.

So please stop doing this!

Better way to get links

You can get links by first connecting with other bloggers and tweeting their stuff.  Build something that they’d actually want to share with their readers. And then tell them about it.

Simple yet effective.

Read More: Don’t Ask Sites for Links. Find People and Connect.

Also checkout: Build Back Links Super Fast

Additional resources

• Mistery of Google PageRank Solved?
• Jelly Beans and Backlinks: The Link Builders Toy Box
• Link Building Tip: How to Do It the Smart Way
• Explosive Backlink Building Strategy
• How to Build Links and Generate Traffic Using Web 2.0 Tools
• 5 Killer Tips to Get More Backlinks

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. How do you keep readers coming back?

Give them a reason to come back.  Create epic stuff and use social media to get the ball rolling.

Q. What kind of backlinking gets websites banned from Google?

Link farms should be avoided.  If you were Google what kinds of backlinks would you ban sites for?

Make a list of everything you think of and avoid anything on the list.

Q. How to get out of the Sandbox/Google Slap?

Better content and more backlinks.

Q. Whats the impact having an anchor text vs a regular text on the link?

Here’s what a backlink looks like:

<a href="http://www.mysite.com/">Ballet Cats</a>

I don’t know what you mean by “anchor text vs a regular text”.

Q. If you have a site, lets say, in Germany and have a lot of backlings from US, does that make big difference? Would that be caught as spam?

It doesn’t matter.  There are lots of sites in Germany with naturally occurring backlinks from sites in the US.  If Google penalized (i.e. marked as spam) sites in Germany with links from the US then loads of legitimate sites would be punished.

Q. Directories, do they really matter? If so, the paying ones (Yahoo Dir, etc) would be worth what they charge?

Waste of time and waste of money.

Q. If I want to get my home page ranking, should all my backlink efforts go to the home page, or should I be linking to internal pages too?

I usually point backlinks to my home page.  Make sure people visiting your home page can easily navigate to important pages on your site.

Take SEO to the Next Level

Fast Attack SEO can help you rank high in no time.

Did I miss anything?

Back link building is a huge topic and it’s possible I missed something. If there’s anything that you would like covered just let me know in the comments below.

Photo by koalazymonkey and dullhunk

It’s widely known that you rank high in Google by creating videos and posting them on YouTube.  But most people don’t do it because it seems too hard.  But it’s not and Neil Patel has put together a quick tutorial to show you how.

Read: How to Rank on the First Page of Google Through Videos

Also check:

• 5 Ways to Get More Traffic with Content Marketing
• 9 Social Media Marketing Tips From the Pros
• Why Blogging Without a Plan Leads to Failure + How to Fix It
• 12 Offline Marketing Tactics for Driving Traffic to Your Blog

Photo by Julien Haler

Search engine optimization is overwhelming for most people. With so much to learn and implement many people become frustrated and give up before their site has even had a chance to rank.

Other people are persistent and keep working to get their site ranked high.  But they do the wrong things, or the right things in the wrong order. This leads to poor rankings and frustration.

Unfortunately 99% of people fall into one of these 2 categories. They wind up feeling angry and depressed with nothing to show for their efforts.

Because there is such a huge number of people clamoring for good information I’ve put together the SEO Baby Steps formula.  (I stole the baby steps idea from Dave Ramsey.)

Warning: The first few baby steps have nothing to do with SEO but they have everything to do with getting enough traffic to be successful. Do not skip them.

SEO Baby Steps

1. Why do you want to rank high in Google?
2. How many visitors do you need to earn $100?
3. Keyword research
4. Buy a great domain
5. Optimize your site
6. Build back links
7. Analyze what is working

Why do you want to rank high in Google?

Seriously, why do you want to rank high in Google?  How will it make your life better?  Is it a good way to meet girls or do you want to brag to your friends about your high ranking at your next Dungeons & Dragons gathering?

Nick don’t be silly! I want to rank high so I can get lots of traffic.

Nearly everyone wants to rank high in Google because it leads to traffic. But why do you want traffic? If tomorrow 1,000 people visited your website how would you benefit?

Well Nick, I would make lots of money if 1,000 people visited my site.

Actually, you would likely earn very little money.  I have a website with a bunch of famous quotations that consistently gets traffic but hardly makes any money at all.  I have had other sites in the past that had low traffic and made lots of money.  The idea that lots of traffic equals lots of money is simply not true.

My goal for you is to get traffic from Google that converts into lots of money.  And the key to turning traffic into money is to understand exactly what you are selling. Every successful business knows exactly what they’re selling. Do you know what you’re selling?

This is the most important step in online marketing but 95% of people skip this step, thinking that they’ll come back to it later. You can’t skip this step!

Seriously, what are you selling? Some possible ideas are:

• Services (i.e. writing, web hosting, alligator wrestling, etc.)
• Physical products (i.e. books, pinball machines, or anything that could be sent through the physical mail)
• Electronic products (i.e. ebooks, videos, pictures of grandma winning the local demolition derby, etc.)

But Nick, I plan to make money from Google AdSense. So am I really selling anything?

Yes, you are selling advertising space on your website in a similar way that newspapers sell advertising space.  So you definitely have something you sell.

If you don’t know what you are selling then there is no point in reading the remainder of this post.

Back to Top

How many visitors do you need to earn $100?

If you can’t make $100 from a website then it’s not worth spending 20+ hours building content, doing SEO, building back links, social media, etc.

So you need to figure out approximately how many visitors you need to earn $100. I understand this is tricky to calculate so we’re going to make some estimations to get a ballpark figure i.e. do you need 100 visitors, 10,000 visitors, or 1 million visitors?

4 Important Formulas 

1. Product Formula: (Use when you sell a product directly from your site)
   visitors = total_earnings / (earnings_per_sale * conversion_rate)
2. Affiliate Formula (Use when you are an affiliate for product)
   visitors = total_earnings / (earnings_per_sale * affiliate_click_through_rate * conversion_rate)
3. AdSense Formula
   visitors = total_earnings / (earnings_per_click * adsense_click_through_rate)
4. Visitor Value Formula (How much is each visitor worth on average?)
   visitor_value = total_earnings / visitors

Definitions:

• total_earnings:  How much do you want to make? For our examples we will use $100.
• earnings_per_sale:  The amount you earn from 1 sale i.e. $7.00
• conversion_rate:  If you have 100 visitors how many will buy your product?  0.02 means 2 out of 100 purchased.
• affiliate_click_through_rate:  If you have 100 visitors come to your site, how many will end up at the product’s sales page?  0.1 means 10 out 100.
• earnings_per_click:  How much does AdSense pay you when 1 visitor clicks on the AdSense ad? i.e. $0.10
• adsense_click_through_rate: If you have 100 visitors how many will click on an AdSense ad?  0.07 means 7 out of 100

Assumptions:
Estimating conversion rates, click through rates, etc is hard so here are a few default numbers you can use in your calculations

• conversion_rate:  0.01
• affiliate_click_through_rate:  0.1
• earnings_per_click:  $0.05
• adsense_click_through_rate: 0.05

Many of you can achieve much better numbers than those listed above but I want to be conservative in my estimates.

Example 1
John sells a do-it-yourself car repair ebook on his website for $7 and has a 0.01 conversion rate. John will use the Product Formula to calculate how many visitors he needs to earn $100:

visitors = $100 / ($7 * 0.01) => 1,429 visitors

visitor_value = $100 / 1,429 => $0.07 per visitor

Example 2
Mary sells a video series on cat yodeling for $200 on her site and has a 0.01 conversion rate.  Mary will use the Product Formula to calculate how many visitors she needs to earn $100:

visitors = $100 / ($200 * 0.01) => 50 visitors

visitor_value = $100 / 50 => $2 per visitor

Example 3
Cindy is an affiliate for the Learn Spanish Today audio series and earns $3 commission for each sale.   Her affiliate_click_through_rate  is 0.1 (10/100 website visitors click the link to the sales page).  And the sales page has a conversion rate of 0.01.  Cindy will use the Affiliate Formula to calculate how many visitors she needs to earn $100:

visitors = $100 / ($3 * 0.1 * 0.01) => 33,333 visitors

visitor_value = $100 / 33,333 => $0.003 per visitor (that’s 1/3 of a penny!)

Example 4
Tony runs Google AdSense ads on his game review site and earns $0.05 per click and has an adsense_click_through_rate of 0.05.  Tony will use the AdSense Formula to calculate how many visitors he needs to earn $100:

visitors = $100/ ($0.05 * 0.05) => 40,000 visitors

visitor_value = $100 / 40,000 => $0.0025 per visitor (that’s 1/4 of a penny!)

Important ideas
Looking at the examples above there are few things you must be aware of:

• Sites that sell high-priced items ($100 or more) need far less traffic than sites with low-priced items ($10 or less).
• When you advertise affiliate products on your site you often have to get lots of traffic because only a fraction will click on the ad to go to the sales page, and only a few of those will actually buy the product.  This problem is compounded when you sell low-priced products.
• Sites that run AdSense often need a lot of traffic because the earnings-per-click is low or the click-through rate is low.

Your turn
Using your best judgement estimate how many visitors you need to earn $100.  Spend 5 minutes, run a few numbers, and come up with a number.

If you need 10,000+ visitors to make $100 then it’s most likely not worth it.

If you need 1,000+ visitors (and less than 10,000) you have a tough road ahead of you but it’s doable.

If you need fewer than 1,000 visitors then you’re in good shape.

“Traffic Explosion” Myth
Gurus love to talk about explosive traffic or exponential traffic growth but it just doesn’t happen for 99.99% of sites.  Almost every site that gets traffic from non-paid sources has its traffic increase little by little.  If you can increase your traffic by 1,000 visitors each month (month 1 has 1,000 visitors, month 2 has 2,000, … month 10 has 10,000) you are doing very well!

But imagine that it takes 10,000 visitors to earn $100.  How many months of hard-work will it take?

So, how long will it take to earn $100 with the product you’re selling?  Is it worth it?

Guru’s secret
The biggest thing the gurus don’t tell you is that most products require far too much traffic to earn $100 and are not worth the time and effort. They are super selective about what they sell and the keywords that they try to rank for.

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Keyword research

Most people would like to have several top rankings in Google for various keyword phrases and this is a good long-term goal. But when you’re first starting out you should start with a long list of potential keywords and from that list select one keyword that is the best to rank for and only focus on it.

Once you have one keyword ranking well in Google then you can take what you’ve learned and apply it to more keywords.

Avoid vague keywords
Even if you could rank for vague keywords like real estate, computers, etc. it would be a mistake because these keywords are too general and you have no idea what the person is really looking for.

For example, if you have a website that specializes in computer repair in Toledo then 99.99% of people searching for computers are not going to be interested in your website. The term is too vague for you to have any idea what the person is looking for.

Take a look at Google’s “Related Searches” for the keyword computers:

You can see that when someone searches for computers they’re actually searching for 1,000 different things. It could be PC laptops to purchase, Apple desktops, computer parts, computer pictures, history of computing, computer cameras, local computer stores, etc.

Even if you could rank high for a general term it is not worth it.

Instead focus on specific terms. This is especially helpful when your business focuses on a specific locale i.e. limousines in London, parakeets in Paris, etc.

If you’re selling a specific make or model then consider using that as one of your keywords. For example if you are selling Samsung UN55D8000 55-Inch 1080p 240Hz 3D LED HDTV (Silver) then using the full product name (or parts of it) in your keyword which will be far better than using a generic keyword like TV or Samsung TV.

You want buyers or potential buyers
As part of your keyword research consider including words that are specific to people looking to buy because they are 100 times more likely to buy something from you. This is common sense, right? I like to call these buyer specific words trigger words.

Trigger word examples

• buy
• sell
• learn
• remedy
• cheap
• low
• make
• discount
• find
• stop
• quit
• fast
• care
• tips
• get rid
• how to
• repair

Anyone searching for one of these keywords is usually motivated to buy something.

If someone uses the word buy or cheap or discount in a search on Google then you know that person is most likely looking to purchase something.

If a person uses a word like remedy or stop or quit or care or get rid of in a search then you know they have some sort of problem or ailment that they are looking to take care of. This person has a specific need and is likely to spend money soon.

If I had a computer repair shop in Toledo then I might select the keyword phrase computer repair. Or an even better phrase would be Toledo computer repair. This way I am targeting people in my geographic area who are probably ready to spend money. And the best part is there is far less competition for Toledo computer repair than there is for the generic term computers. (I’ll explain more on competition later.)

Try talking to people
If you are struggling to come up with some good trigger keywords then try talking to a couple people who actually want what you are selling and ask them what kind of searches they would perform on Google.

Another option is to visit online forums in your niche and pay attention to the keyword phrases that they use. For example, if I went to a computer repair forum I would keep track of how many times people used the words fix computers, repair computers, reset computers, etc. If people used the word a lot in forums then it may be a good keyword.

Evaluate searches
You want to make sure that your keyword phrase as a reasonable number of searches. It is easy to do this using Google’s keyword search tool:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

I also like to sort results by global monthly searches:

The minimum number of monthly searches that is acceptable for a keyword will depend on your visitor value.

Instead of giving you an exact number you should run a quick calculation:  Take the number of global monthly searches and multiply it by the value of each visitor i.e. 480 searches * $0.1 => $48.  This number tells you how much money you could theoretically earn each month if all of the searches saw your #1 rank in Google and visited your site.  This is the best case scenario and not realistic at all!

I recommend dividing the number by 10 for a more realistic estimate.  So $48 => $4.80.  This will tell you what you might earn each month from this keyword if you ranked #1 in Google.  Is it worth building content, SEO, social media for this amount of money?

Evaluate profitability (AdSense Only)
Sometimes you won’t be sure if there’s much money to be earned from AdSense for a specific keyword.

A quick and dirty way of determining whether a keyword is potentially profitable is to do a Google search for it and see how many advertisements appear.

For example, if you do a search on Google for computer repair you will see a bunch of ads:

This is an indication that the keyword has some value because advertisers are willing to pay money for the person’s attention.

You could also do a search for famous quotes:

This keyword phrase has no advertisements showing and probably has no value.

Please understand this is not a foolproof method but a simple test you can run to get an idea of the potential value of a keyword.

Evaluate competition
There are 4 quick measures of competition that I would do for any keyword that I’m looking to rank for.

1. Broad Match - For the keyword Toledo computer repair I would do a search on Google and record how many pages are competing. This tells me how many pages have my keyword phrase with the words in any order:

2. Phrase Match - Do a phrase match search on Google: “Toledo computer repair” (with the quotes). This tells you how many pages have the exact phrase.

3. Title Match - Do a title search on Google: allintitle: Toledo computer repair. This tells you how many pages have the keyword phrase in their title.

4. URL Match - Do a URL search on Google: allinurl: Toledo computer repair. This tells you how many pages have the keyword phrase in their URL.

You should note that the Broad match results can be very misleading. Sometimes there isn’t a lot of competition for your keyword but the broad match returns a very large number.

In many ways I think the title match and URL match are the best estimates for your competition. If your keyword phrase doesn’t show up in someone’s title or url then they’re not going to be difficult to beat.

I recommend going through each of the four competition measures for each keyword that you are considering and record the results in a spreadsheet. You’ll find that some keywords have far less competition than others.

Generally keyword phrases with three or more words have far less competition and are easier to rank for. If you’re just starting out I highly recommend targeting keyword phrases with at least 6 words.

Keyword research checklist:

• Is you keyword specific?
• Does your keyword target buyers or potential buyers?
• Does your keyword have too much competition?

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Buy a great domain

Your ideal domain has your keywords in it and nothing else.

For example if you want to rank high for Toledo computer repair then you should buy Toledocomputerrepair.com. Having your keywords in your domain name helps a lot with search engine optimization.

But Nick, can I still rank high in Google even if my keyword is not in my domain?

Yes you can but it will be harder.  It’s kind of like running a marathon and asking, If someone tied my hands behind my back would I still be able to complete the marathon? You could, in theory, still finish it but running a marathon is hard enough without any extra handicaps.

And ranking high in Google is a lot like running a marathon; it takes time, effort, and training. Why would you want to make this even harder?

But Nick, what if my ideal domain is taken?

You have a few options.

1. Put dashes between words i.e. MyIdealDomain.com => My-Ideal-Domain.com
2. Add 1 word to the front or end of your domain i.e. MyIdealDomain.com => A1MyIdealDomain.com
3. Add a single letter to the end of your domain i.e. MyIdealDomain.com => MyIdealDomainV.com.  I read of an SEO expert who says that he puts the letter v at the end of his keyword phrase and can always find an available domain for it.

But Nick, what if I don’t have the time or patience to do this?

If you want to rank high in the search engines then you need to make the time and have the patience to do this. If you spend an hour or two finding the right domain it could save you 20 or 30 hours later on by making your search engine optimization easier (or less difficult).

Talking with a friend and generating ideas with someone besides yourself can really enhance your ability to be creative and come up with good ideas.

Choose a “.com”

I know a lot of people will disagree with me on this but you really should get a “.com”.  There a lot of popular alternatives i.e. “.net”, “.org”, etc.  but I believe that Google has a slight preference for .com domains.

Also make sure you avoid “.info” domains. They have historically been used by spammers and I believe it’s harder to rank with them.

But Nick, the “.info” is so much cheaper. Is it worth buying?

There’s a reason it’s so cheap. Very few legitimate bloggers and website builders want to use them.

Don’t be enticed by a low price. You may save $5 or $8 right now but you may lose 30 hours or more to extra search engine optimization. Is this what you want?

Avoid secure registration

When you buy a domain you have to list your name, phone number, and physical address. And this information is available to anyone who does a whois search on your domain.

Some people don’t want their personal information to be shown and they pay for secure registration which hides their personal information.  While this is useful for maintaining your privacy it is bad for ranking high in Google because it’s something that spammers and black hat SEO people do.

Consider free options

If you want to get your feet wet without spending any money you can skip the domain purchase and sign up for a blog with one of the many free services out there i.e. WordPress, Tumblr, Posterous, or Blogger. When you sign up you’ll typically use your keyword phrase as part of your blog URL i.e. my-keyword-phrase.wordpress.com.

Try a keyword phrase with 6 words in it

I recommend that people select a keyword phrase with 6 words in and try to get ranked in Google for that phrase. You likely will not get much traffic from that ranking but you will prove to yourself that you can get ranked high in Google. Once you’ve done it for a 6 word keyword phrase, get ranked high for a 5 word keyword phrase, and then a 4 word keyword phrase.

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Optimize your site

When people talk about search engine optimization they usually refer to the actual optimization of your website. And there’ve been millions of blog posts written about this so I won’t go into many details here. However if you would like to learn more about the right way to optimize your site check out:

• Your Grandma’s Guide To Search Engine Optimization
• PageRank Does NOT Matter
• Do Meta Tags Matter For SEO? Yes, But Not In The Way You Think
• Search Engine Optimization – Download The 22 Page Guide Straight From Google

Helpful videos

1. Video: How can new pages get indexed quickly?
2. Video: Do site load times have an impact on Google rankings?
3. Video: How much does a domain’s age affect its ranking?
4. Video: Two questions about the link: operator
5. Video: Why does Google index blogs faster than other sites?
6. Video: Which is more important: content or links?
7. Video: Should I use underscores or hyphens in URLs?
8. Video: More than one H1 on a page: good or bad?
9. Video: Should I use pipes or dashes in my titles?
10. Video: Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking
11. Video: Which SEO agency do you recommend?
12. Video: Are nofollow links irrelevant?
13. Video: Will SEO still exist in five years?
14. Video: What impact does server location have on rankings?
15. Video: Can I publish 100+ pages at once?
16. Video: Two questions about nofollow

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Build back links

Building back links is an enormous topic and I cannot fit all the details in one post so instead I’m going to link you to a bunch of posts I’ve written on various aspects of link building:

• Why NoFollow matters and how to find blogs that don’t use it
• How To Build Backlinks – Fast & Easy Strategies To Build Backlinks
• Free One-Way Backlinks From Nick
• How To Build Back Links Super Fast
• Massive DoFollow Blog List Directory

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Analyze what is working

Once your website starts getting traffic you’ll notice that some keywords send you more traffic than others. You should capitalize on this and and try to rank for similar keywords as the ones that are sending you the most traffic.

And you can figure out which keywords are sending me the most traffic with Google Analytics.  Read: How Google Analytics Helps Me Get More Traffic

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Top 3 Traffic posts

The big 3 traffic articles you need to read today

1. 6 On-Page SEO Strategies That’ll Boost Your Rankings
2. The 5 Best [Free] Keyword Research Tricks I Tried In 2011
3. 2011: The Year Google & Bing Took Away From SEOs & Publishers

Created by Craig from phoenix-training.co.uk

Your keywords belong in your title tag. But is the text in your title tag readable?

That’s right. There’s no magic button. No silver bullet. No puny pink pill you can swallow to make your site skyrocket to #1 on Google.

You’re better off looking for a magic button to transport you to the top of a tall mountain. 
Beam me up, Scotty!

That’s my message for today:  There’s no magic button.  Pretty short, huh?
(You can just stop reading now.)

Just for fun, let’s imagine there was a magic button…

If there was a magic button then word would spread really fast. Everyone would line up in front of WalMart like it was Black Friday to buy them and their sites would shoot to #1 faster than you can say unicorns are real too.

There would be magic button pushing parties where we would all get together and drink too much, wear ugly party hats, and practice pushing our magic buttons in unison.  Prizes would be awarded to the most creative magic button pushers.  Magic buttons would be the #1 Halloween costume.  Gerber would sell out of magic button flavored baby food.

Dancing in the streets we would congratulate each other on our brilliance and hand out candy to little children.  And because a #1 spot in Google would be available to anyone for any keyword, everyone would make loads of money and this would fix the economy within 2 days.

By week’s end there would be no more homeless people, no war, no poverty, and no radio station would play Neil Diamond songs ever again.  Utopia at last!

How I yearn for the coming of the magic button so 1,000 crappy sites can rank #1 in Google for the exact same keyword!

And now a few buts…

But Nick I want to believe that I am different, that somehow my website is special, and that the Google Gods will smile down upon me and give me a high-ranking.

You can believe whatever you want. You can wish upon a star if you like.

Actually, I recommend wishing upon a star.  Seriously, for the next 7 days I want you to suspend all SEO efforts and spend 1 hour each day wishing upon the North Star and in a week come back and report on your success.  (This may be tough for readers in the southern hemisphere.)

And if you don’t get a high ranking after a week of wishing then I have a special ebook for you:  451 Secrets Of Wishing Upon A Star To Rank High In Google (What The Gurus Won’t Tell You!).  And it can be yours for only 77 monthly payments of $499.99.

When you’re ready to live in reality checkout my SEO tutorial.  (It’s free!).

Remember the words of Tyler Durden:

You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else.

But Nick, a guy said he could guarantee my #1 rank if I gave him $500.

Uh huh.  Sure.  Did he ask for your target keywords before making the guarantee?  Did you talk to some of his previous clients about their improved rankings and how long it lasted?  Probably not.

On second thought, give him the $500 and see how well it works out for your site.
(Some people only learn by doing the wrong thing a few times.)

But Nick, are you saying there’s no way to rank high in Google?

Not at all.  You can rank high in Google if you pick the right keywords, get the right domain, build awesome content, get feedback from your readers, and build backlinks.

I even put together a helpful tutorial on the subject and I really do recommend this SEO Guide (despite all the hype on the sales page it’s actually quite good).

Photo by Taylor.McBride™

This is a guest post by Adam Snyder from DormRoomCash.com and is part of my
How To Rank #1 In Google Tutorial.

Did your website get affected by the recent Google Panda update? Is your traffic and income suffering because of it? Don’t worry if your website was hit hard because I have the answer for you.

During the last update one of my websites was hit really hard and because of that I had to do something in order to get the website ranking again.

What did I do?

I turned to web 2.0 properties! The reason I did this is because they provide more link weight and you don’t have to build as many of them in order to see results. As you probably already know, the quality of the link is what matters, not the quantity. That is why high pr web 2.0 properties work much better than regular article directories.

If you don’t know where to start then don’t fret, I have included the list of 50 high pr web 2.0 properties that I used to get my website out of the Google Sandbox in less than 20 days.

50 High Pr Web 2.0 Properties

1. blog.com – 6
2. logeasy.com – 4
3. blogger.com – 8
4. bloghi.com – 4
5. bloghorn.com – 5
6. blogigo.com – 4
7. blogskinny.com – 5
8. blogsome.com – 7
9. blogstream.com – 4
10. blogstudio.com – 4
11. blogwebsites.net – 4
12. blurty.com – 5
13. diaryland.com – 6
14. easyjournal.com – 4
15. journalhub.com – 4
16. livejournal.com – 8
17. mynewblog.com – 4
18. opendiary.com – 6
19. squidoo.com – 8
20. sosblog.com – 5
21. squarespace.com – 7
22. yola.com – 7
23. tabulas.com – 5
24. tblog.com – 6
25. terapad.com – 5
26. thoughts.com – 6
27. tumblr.com – 8
28. evri.com – 7
29. viviti.com – 7
30. bukisa.com – 5
31. Blinkweb.com – 5
32. bravenet.com – 8
33. webs.com – 8
34. weebly.com – 8
35. wetpaint.com – 7
36. wikyblog.com – 5
37. wordpress.com – 9
38. zimbio.com – 6
39. qondio.com – 6
40. Xanga.com – 7
41. Flixya.com – 5
42. knol.google.com – 7
43. WikiSpaces.com – 7
44. tripod.lycos.com – 7
45. Posterous.com – 7
46. Infobarrel.com – 4
47. Tagworld.com – 5
48. Forumer.com – 6
49. scribd.com – 8
50. slideshare.net – 8

As you can see there are a bunch of sites that you can submit articles on. What I recommend is that you create between 2-5 links per day because any more than that and your website could receive a negative effect. Just remember that a constant stream of incoming links is what Google wants to see, that is why you should never create 50 new web 2.0 property links in a single day.

Trust me on this one, I tried it and my site tanked in less than a week.

Tips On Creating Web 2.0 Property Links

Write A Quality Article

If you think that writing a 300 word article for a web 2.0 property is going to help you, then think again. You need to write a high quality article that is at least over 600 words in length. If you can write a high quality article then the link will be worth much more. Just know that 1 article is all you have to write in order to get content on all of these web 2.0 properties.

Spin Original Article

The reason why you only need to write 1 article is because once you have done that, you need to spin it. The reason I recommend spinning an article is because it recycles a great article and saves you time. What I suggest is that you sentence spin and word-spin the article so that it doesn’t look anything like the original. Also, never post the original article on your website because Google could catch on to this and keep your site in the Sandbox.

Example of spinning: {I spent 5 hours {creating|building} links {yesterday|the other day} and now {I’m|I am} {exhausted|tired}|I am tired because I {wasted|spend} more than {four|4} hours on link {creation|building}|The reason {I’m|I am} so {exhausted|tired} is because I {had to create|was creating} backlinks to my {site|website} and it {lasted|took me} {roughly|about} {five|5} hours}

Do you see how sentence spinning and word spinning will make the article look and sound different, while still conveying the same message?

Use Different Anchor Text

One of the biggest things you can do to increase your search engine rankings is to simply link to your site using different anchor text. What many people do is they stick to the same keyword but the problem with doing this all the time is it doesn’t look natural to Google and therefore it will start to hinder your site. My advice is to always have 4 keywords that you are targeting therefore everyone of them will have 25% of the new links, this will look much more natural for your site.

Deep Linking Helps

If you are not sure about what page to link to then I recommend deep linking as much as you can. By this I mean you should not always link to your homepage, you should create links to some posts and pages within your site as well. If you point half of the links to inner pages and the other half to the homepage then you should have no problem increasing your search engine positioning quickly.

The last thing that I want to make sure you understand is that the more high quality links you have, the better your rankings will be over time. Trust me, you don’t have to build 1000’s of links, 50 high pr web 2.0 properties will be more powerful than that and that is why I recommend using them.

About The Author:

Adam Snyder Runs DormRoomCash.com where he teaches people many different ways to earn money online. If you want to know more about what he does then make sure you check out his website of Like DormRoomCash on Facebook.

Photo by Phil Roeder

This is part of my guide: How To Rank #1 In Google

Created by Brafton