If you have been keeping a close eye on my posts over the last week or two, this probably the most anticipating post I’ve yet to put together.
My Personal Backlink Strategy
As promised, I am going to reveal my entire backlink building strategy. You will finally get a glimpse inside of my world, as you will see first-hand how I build links to all of my websites to get them ranked high for their keywords and bring in that wonderfully sweet SEO traffic!
Links Now – Other Parts of My Strategy Later
Right now, I’m ONLY going to share how I build my links. Over the next couple weeks, however, I will post how I setup my websites, find keywords and properly assess competition. By then, you will have a solid grasp of my entire process – top to bottom.
So, with that said, let’s pull back the curtains and start the show!
Step One – Gotta Get Indexed
After I build out an entire site and get it setup properly (plugins, content with proper on-page SEO, interlinks, etc), my first step is to get it indexed. I always wait until I have most of my content up and ready before I want it indexed simply because I don’t want to go back and have to correct any mistakes (nothing worse than a default WordPress post getting indexed by accident).
To get my site picked up quick by Google, I use a special tool from IMTalk.org. The IMT Website Submitter will submit to up to 2,500 different “stat sites” and create a page for your domain on each one. A lot of these sites are crawled by Google constantly, making it a great way for Google to pick up on your site FAST!
My Tip: While you can submit to 2,500 different sites, I consider it to be overkill for a new site. I usually submit to the top 100 or 250 at the most, which is usually enough to get my site indexed within a day or two. Plus, I get a couple backlinks (albeit low-quality) out of the deal, too!
Step Two – Give ‘Em Some Juice
Everyone LOVES Link Juice!
I always like to give a little boost to my sites right out of the gate. Once a site is fully indexed, I will give them a quick boost of some high PR link juice. For that, I rely on BuildMyRank.
Initially, I give my ROOT domain just 5 posts, using the EXACT keyword phrase as anchor text. Based on my experience, this was the sweet spot for a brand new site. It is just enough to give it an initial boost, but not too many to raise any red flags.
For a typical new site, I can rank on the 2nd or 3rd page in less than a week on a brand new site using this strategy (my keyword and competition research helps) – and that is before I do ANYTHING else, which is a good sign.
Step Three – Time to Get Social
Whether we like it or not, it is clear that social signals are definitely starting to play a part in the grand scheme of things. Rather than try to peddle my sites on social networks, I use a couple of tools to do all of the work for me.
Get the people talking!
How it Works: First off, I submit the ROOT domain to Social Monkee. This submits my site to 25 different social sites and does so for FREE. This is allowed once daily for a free account.
After completing the Social Monkee submission, I head over to SocialADR - a paid service that gets others to submit my site and its pages to popular social bookmarking services. Here, I submit my ROOT domain AND all of my content pages. Since SocialADR works on a credit system, I usually buy 400 credits at a time (at a cost of $17) and set each submission to the minimum suggested (32). That accounts for 12.5 submissions. Well worth it in my opinion!
With Social Monkee only allowing one submission per day, I usually go back the next day and submit another page from my site. I do this each day until all pages are submitted.
Step Four – Syndicate That Content
Article directory marketing (the way it used to be) is long gone, but that doesn’t mean you still can’t get a couple links (and some possible traffic) out of the deal. That’s why I syndicate my content to not only a variety of article directories, but also to document sharing sites, too!
How I Do It: Since all articles are now indexed, I take those and copy them all as they are. The only thing I change slightly is the title itself. I also make the same copy and convert it to a PDF with live links (for document sharing sites).
Now, I do the linking in these articles with a twist. Each article has 2 links and are structured like this:
- One link with Main Keyword anchor text pointing back to ROOT domain
- One link with Secondary Keyword anchor text pointing to a different article on my site
This usually works best when I have an even amount of content (i.e. 2 articles, 4 articles, etc). That way, I don’t run into someone reading an article on one site and ends up clicking a link to read the same article again.
Tip: If you want access to some of the top article directories, just check out this list, which is frequently updated.
Step Five - My Favorite Robot
I’m usually not a huge fan of automation tools, but there is one that I can’t deny, simply because it works and works well. That tool is none other than Article Marketing Robot (also known as AMR).
The ONLY robot I will deal with!
Rather than picking up the software, however, I outsource the submissions. Much easier for me and I don’t have to mess with anything.
What I Do: I have a guy who will spin and submit an article and blast it out to around 1,000 directories. In that article, I follow a similar process that I do in my article directory submission, EXCEPT for one thing – I never link directly to my ROOT domain!
Again, this usually works best when I have an even number of content on my website (i.e. 2 articles, 4 articles, etc). I pick two articles I want to target and spin one of those. When I create the resource box, my links look like this:
- One link going to one article using that articles keyword anchor text
- One link going to the other article using that articles keyword anchor text
I’ve noticed that these blasts help give my inner pages a good boost in the SERPS. Plus, it helps give my ROOT domain a good boost as well (since my interlinking structure is solid).
This is the ONLY type of “blast” I EVER do to my sites and I have never had a problem. In fact, I never had an issue with Panda or any other algorithm updates using this strategy!
Step Six – Back for More Juice
By this point, I’ve got a pretty solid foundation set. That’s when it is time to beef it up with a little more link juice!
What I Do: I will pull together all of my inner pages and start out with 5 BuildMyRank posts for each one, using their targeted keyword as anchor text. I also set these in a schedule to post 1-2 links max per day. Since sites are still fairly new at this point (anywhere from 3 weeks to 1 month old), I still like to play it safe.
After these initial posts are complete, I will then make a few post submissions for my ROOT domain and ALL of my inner pages with varied keyword anchor text, following the same distribution limit. This makes things look more “natural” and provides a good anchor text ratio/balance.
Step Seven – Time for a Progress Report
By this time in the process, it has been roughly 30 to 45 days (depending on how fast I am that particular month). This means it is time to look at the site and do a little assessment.
If the site is already bringing in money and is ranking, I will continue to put in maintenance on that site and look for ways to add on more content and grab more rankings.
If the site is showing some promise but isn’t “quite there” yet, I will usually continue with the high PR posts to see if a few more will make any movement. In my experience, it usually does.
If the site is ranking poorly and cannot rank after continuous work, I usually will stop work on these sites and let them site and resonate for a few months. I always revisit them again to see if time worked in my favor. I’ve had a site or two in the past that was a late bloomer like this, so it does help if you keep them around and turn some attention to them down the road.
Share Your Thoughts
Well, that is basically my entire ranking strategy in a nutshell. This is what has been responsible for bringing me all of my Adsense and Amazon income currently, as well as enabled me to grab some great rankings in the SERPS for some awesomely profitable keywords!
I am contemplating on putting together a quick guide laying my entire strategy out. Please let me know if that is something you would be interested in. I need to know if people would actually use it. If enough people want it, I’ll put in the time to make it happen!
Another thing I want to mention – I am in the process of working in a new private blog network service. I am testing it out now and will let you know the results. I want to really give it some time to see how it compares to BMR, but the results I’m seeing now are already VERY impressive! I’ll let you know in the coming weeks how things go 
Thanks again for taking the time out to read this. I hope you can get a nugget or two out of it all!
With the first month of the year coming to a close, we are finally at the point where another monthly income report is due.
