Link Building 101

Link Building 101

Feb 01

Lissie over at her passive online income blog has posted a link to what I have to say is probably the best introductory break-down of link-building, AND why it is so important.

Lissie points to a post on a site called bloggerillustrated.com, run by Allyn Hayne. The post essentially details everything you need to know about backlinks. I have visited the site a few times and there is some good stuff there, and I have now subscribed to his feed. Only thing is I don’t like watching video tutorials – I prefer to read instructions to digest them. That’s OK though, and don’t let this put you off as Allyn has a pretty good written breakdown of each video, so you shouldn’t miss anything if you don’t watch the vids.

By all accounts, Lissie has moved back to New Zealand for the time being, so I guess she is a bona-fide New Zealand SEO expert. And maybe branching into photography, as her newer posts have some lovely pics that she has taken from New Zealand.

I would post a pic or too, but I’m currently stuck in a hotel in Auckland and there is no view to speak of.

On another note, what cracks me up are the SEO jobs I see listed in New Zealand from time to time on Seek and TradeMe. The only qualifications they seem to care about is a knowledge of Twitter and Facebook. Agreed that SEO is not really a NZQA qualification you can get (yet) in New Zealand, but if you have a more than a passing knowledge about online marketing, you should already know that traffic to your website via a social media site is practically worthless and that organic traffic from search engines is king.

There are two reasons for this: if you are an affiliate marketer using AdSense as your revenue model, you will more than likely be smartpriced for any traffic that arrives via one of these social media sites. The implications are that your entire online portfolio could suffer the same consequences. Those keyword-targetted posts that you carefully researched that should be earning $2-$3 per click could well be dumped in the worthless bin and you may be lucky to see 10 cents a click.

The other reason why I don’t see social media sites as a desired source of traffic to your niche or business website are simply that the visitors that come from the sites are generally not in a buying mood. They probably tend to click on the link out of boredom.

Sure, you may get a little thrill out of the boost in traffic from Digging or Twittering your site, but the visitors you get are practically worthless.

For affiliate marketing you want targetted traffic. And this is achieved by getting a decent ranking in Google for the keyword you are targetting, i.e. a bare minimum of the first page, results 1-4 is best.

The same is true for a website that promotes your offline business. A ranking outside of the top 10 results ain’t going to get you customers.  Get your website ranking in the top 10 for keywords relevant to your business, and then you will see some results.