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!
Thanks Bryan for detailing things out.. this sounds a pretty solid strategy which I think could rarely fail
Thanks Vijay. It may not be the most “sophisticated” formula, but it works GREAT for micro niche websites. Took me awhile to finally get that “it” formula together, but it’s definitely paid off!
Bryan
Bryan,
When do you actually put up the adsense ads? Do you wait some time or do you add the code from the get to?
Thanks,
Adi
Good question Adi. I usually put up my Adsense ads once the site is setup and has most of the content built out. Never saw any reason to wait any longer than that, really.
Bryan
There some good techniques in your strategy. I pretty much follow the same steps.
For AMR, have you added your own list of article directories or do you just use the stock list provided with the software?
When you are varying the anchor text, are you using the standard: Click here, more information etc. or is it just the keyword but varied.
I actually outsource the AMR portion currently to a provider. He has his own set list of around 1,000 directories I believe.
When I vary anchor text, I use a general mix of things. I include things like you mentioned (click here, more info, etc) as well as variations of the keyword and a “phrase” with the keyword string in it. So, if the keyword is “limo las vegas” then I would use something like “get a limo in las vegas right now” as anchor text. I even throw in the raw URL from time to time, too.
Overall, I aim for 70% using the exact keyword as anchor text with the other 30% using different variations.
Bryan
A good solid approach.. About putting adsense once the site is setup won’t that affect your ads when you are doing a blast… I mean it might increase the page views? Also your websites even sandboxed with this approach ? I am worried about the AMR blast alone as this might raise a red flag..? Is he offering a drip feed ?
Looks like the guest post at Niche Pursuits earned you a good number of readers 
All the best and looking forward to rest of the post in this series 
PS:- Good to see the no of subscribers increased for your blog
Honestly, no – I have not seen a massive or odd jump in impressions during an AMR blast. Plus, we’re only blasting to 1,000 directories. Roughly 200 of those get indexed faily quick, while the others tend to pick up over time. So, we’re not “slamming” 1,000 links at once.
I’m definitely glad the number of subscribers has went up as well! Only 961 to go before I hit that goal of 1,000
Bryan
Thanks Brian, great post!
I have a question for you. I’ve recently started building out niche sites. So far I have 8 sites set up with varing ages of 1 to 3 months. Right now only two of the eight have started to rank in the top 500 for the keyword with those two ranking around 50. The backlinking I’ve done so far is a few UAW articles to most sites with a few having no backlinks yet.
I understand that it takes time to rank high and to continue building backlinks. My question is that if that it was common for sites targeted at low competition keywords to not rank at all with little to no linkbuilding? I would have thought that since the keywords were low competition they would at least show up somewhere even if its 2-300+. Does it just take longer than 2-3 months?
Thanks!
Bryan* sorry
In my experience, I’m usually able to rank on the 2nd and 3rd page for my keywords after my initial high PR posts. As far as ranking without backlinks, you would need to have very minimal (and weak) competition.
I wouldn’t worry about ranking until you are getting close to the top 10. Just keep building links and give it some time. SEO definitely isn’t an overnight thing, but I have seen decent results after 30 to 45 days following this plan. Rankings also are consistent months later as well.
Keep on grinding Mike and you will get there!
Bryan
Great article Bryan, thanks for laying it out for everyone. When you use AMR, to what level of uniqueness do you spin one of your articles?
Hey Kevin – I actually outsource that all. I believe they do it to 80% uniqueness though.
Glad you saw some value in this plan! When you put it in action, it definitely pays off.
Bryan
Thanks Bryan. Yes, I definitely agree time and commitment will provide you with good results.
A quick comment about maintenance…you mentioned if a site is ranking and bringing in money that you shift to maintenance mode. Can you define what you mean by that? I’ve found that getting into the top 5 or 10 is one thing, but staying there is another. I’ve had sites in the top 5 that I haven’t done much too, that slowly creep back out of the top 10 and into the top 20 or 25. What kind of maintenance link building do you perform to get them to stay? Do you ever go back and re-AMR the content again or the new content you add? Just curious as to what you recommend. Thanks.
(PS – Nice job 45 readers!)
I usually stick with additional high PR network backlinks (which is basically through BMR, although I’ve started to incorporate an additional link network – I’m testing that currently). The amount of maintenance differs from site to site, but a handful of high PR links is usually enough each month to keep rankings consistent.
As far as AMR, I only do that blast one time per every 2 pieces of content (per my linking strategy above). When/If I add new content, I follow basically the same strategy backlink-wise: initial BMR posts, social bookmarks (SocialADR and Social Monkee), article directory and doc share submission and more high PR posts for maintenance.
Bryan
Solid approach! I have one question regarding directory submissions, and more specifically, UAW (which you do not mention above).
Quick background: I build one niche site in June and built it up to over 350 pages. The keywords are okay, but not great (I didn’t know much about keyword research back then) so despite it’s size it only pulls in about $130pm.
I’ve been following Spencer over at Niche Pursuits since November and under his (unknowing) guidance I have created 20 new niche sites in the past two months.
I’ve used Unique Article Wizard since the beginning with the first site, and I think it’s worked well but it’s hard to tell as I was doing some heavy manual backlinking alongside it (including manually submitting to some of the directories you mention in the post).
For 15 of my 20 new sites I’ve been using UAW alone to backlink since the beginning. Currently about half of them are indexed, though the rankings as a whole have been dancing around, looking at pages one and two one day to right down in the hundreds the next.
In your experience would you suggest switching over to BMR and manually submitting articles for the new sites to the directories listed above? It seems to me that BMR reigns far supreme over UAW in terms of the quality of the links it provides, even if you do need to work significantly harder for them.
I appreciate your insight mate. Hopefully this question will help a few others who have been wondering the same thing!
While I don’t have much experience with UAW, I can say that UAW and BMR definitely have their differences. BMR requires more work in the end, but I truly haven’t seen anything else bring great results like BMR has for me. If you can fit it into your budget, I would strongly recommend it. They also work hard to keep up the integrity of their network, which is critical and one of their biggest strentghs in my opinion.
Bryan
Totally with you on the integrity issue. I hate to throw around the phrase “future proof” but in terms of SEO I believe a network of this sort will do well to keep up it’s levels of integrity in order to future proof the strength of it’s backlinks for years to come.
Appreciate your advice mate, I’ll let you know how it works out! Keep up the good work you’re doing here.
Hi Bryan,
Do you write the BMR articles yourself or do you outsource them? also how many words do you make the articles and how many links do you include?
Cheers,
Matt
At this point, I am writing them myself. I have outsourced a couple of times though and will be doing more of that as my income grows.
I keep my word length around 150 to 200 words and use just one link (since I would need to hit 300 words to add another). I also include that link in the first sentence. Ive seen links deeper in the content that don’t show up on the front page, as a lot of their posts on the front page cutoff with the “read more” option.
Bryan
Hi Bryan,
Found you via your guest post on Spencer’s site. I just started to use BMR on around 5 brand new sites I launched. I started adding only 1 post per day. All the sites popped on to Google ranking around 170 and then went up to 50-60 or so after the 5th or 6th post. It seems each post I add after that 5th or 6th sweet spot, only pushes the site back in the rankings. After reading how you mention the 5 post sweet spot too, I immediately paused the other post I had set for distribution. Is this similar to your experience when adding more then 5 or 6 BMR posts to a new site? Have you tried slowly adding more to see what would happen?
I appreciate any insight you can provide… Thanks!
Hey Kevin – I actually give each site an initial 5 posts right off the bat (as opposed to 1 or 2 per day to start). I’ve noticed that is what gives it its initial boost. From there, I will usually drip feed a few more posts (after implementing all of my other backlinks).
I have had some sites that take much longer to respond to BMR, but the margin is thin. If they aren’t responding after I implement everything AND add in more BMR posts, then I usually put them on the backburner and let them sit a few months before giving them one last chance.
Are you implementing any other backlink strategies along with BMR? If so, I would just give it a little more time to see if rankings settle after a week or two and see where you sit after that.
Bryan
I also drip feed in about 50 directory listings over a 5 week period and do some SocialADR bookmarking to each page of the site. I only use the free SocialADR account as I originally thought that being limited to the free daily amount would help slow my link building down, and make for a more natural link building profile, but I think I am going to up the SocialADR links a bit and see what effect this has. All of the sites I am trying this approach with are new, so you are right, I definitely need to chill and see where the sites settle… patience is definitely the hardest part for me.
Kevin
I hear you there. I still get impatient sometimes through the process. It’s all worth it when you finally start to see things take shape and move in the right direction though.
I’ve used the SocialADR paid links for awhile now. Makes the bookmarking part easy and I keep the default limits that SocialADR sets. It’s nice to set it and forget it.
Keep me updated on your sites man. Hopefully with time you are able to break through the barrier and start seeing some good rankings!
Bryan
Thanks, I will let ya know how things progress. And think I am going to start using Social Monkee too… thanks for the heads up on that service.
Kevin
Wow — what an aggressive strategy. I guess all this is teaching me that I wasn’t aggressive enough initially, but I thought I’d gone overboard.
I like Build My Rank and plan to use it again soon. When I first started I used the same anchor text for “Spanx for Men” quite a few times — maybe 7 or so or less, and then I felt like Google dinged me for that.
I’ve read we shouldn’t use the exact anchor text too much — but vary it with related phrases.
And I have “social monkee” installed; the last time I checked they were changing over servers, but perhaps their done now.
Yeah, I plan to get back to my link building once I stop all this other writing of Kindle ebooks and articles and making affiliate sales!
Yeah – I tend to go aggressive at first, but then pull back and keep things maintained as time goes. It’s played out very well thus far and has survived all of the “algorithm shifts” that have caused problems for others as of late.
Varying anchor text is a good idea, but you don’t want to overdo it too much. You still need some of that weight focused on your targeted keyword, but it helps to throw in those “junk anchors” every now and then to make things appear more natural.
Bryan
Nice backlink blueprint. I wanted to know how many pages does your micro niche sites have on avg?
Can you also give me more info on how you interlink posts? I have read on SEOMoz that interlinking is important part, so i would appreciate if you can tell me how you interlink your pages on your blog.
Thanks for stopping by PJ. Answers are below:
- I generally have 5 to 10 pages total on my micro-niche sites.
- I am going to be making a post within the next week regarding how I do my on-page SEO. Make sure you subscribe so you can be on the lookout for it!
Bryan
Hi Bryan,
Nicely laid out strategy. How often do you keep up with BMR once your site breaks into the top 10? It’s basically an uphill treadmill with that service given that once your post falls off the homepage, you lose the extra boost from the domain’s PR. I imagine that you have a maintenance olan over time if a site ranks well. Do you just repeat your stuff?
I’m about to hit the 30-day mark with some of my sites next week, and have several sites in the top 10 already, or at least slipping in and out. Just need some insight on how to push them over the hump and into top spot.
Thanks so much,
Andre
Maintenance really is determined by the amount of competition, really. The more competition coming in, the more maintenance required. Even though posts do fall off the homepage quick with BMR, the inner pages still have link juice running through them, so not ALL is lost.
Overall, I find that a couple of BMR posts here and there on most of my niche sites is enough to maintain rankings. On a couple of others, however, I need to do more than that (anywhere from 10 to 20 per month). If I see a dramatic shift for any reason, this usually can take care of it and put the site back where it needs to be.
Right now, I’m testing out another network to compliment BMR. Results are looking good, too. Always good to keep things diversified.
Bryan
Thanks Bryan. I’m using a combination of UAW and ALN (AuthorityLinkNetwork) with good success. I’m looking for that final piece of the puzzle and BMR might be it.
I’ve decided to try out this method on 4 new sites I am making. I have the content up and the sites indexed. I am submitting the BMR post’s for the root domain today.
I’ll keep you updated with how it’s working out.
That’s awesome man! Looking forward to hear how things work out with the new ones. I’m about ready to get started on another round with some new sites I just built as well.
Bryan