Getting More Backlinks

Backlinks are absolutely critical to a successful SEO campaign. If you don’t have any links to your site, it’s going to be very unlikely that you would rank for any keywords that really matter. You might get some long tail traffic, but probably not in any significant quantity.

The trouble is, most websites don’t link to their competitors. It doesn’t make sense for them to link to another site that competes against them, unless of course they have a reason to that benefits them directly.

That’s what you have to do. You have to provide sites with a reason to link to your site. This is actually a lot easier than you might think.

There are several ways you can provide value in order to get links:

• Write exceptional content. The higher quality your content, the more links you will get.
• Go easy on the ads. Sites with fewer ads will get more attention, because they don’t look like spam sites.
• Offer something in return. For example, offer to write a great article for someone else’s site in exchange for a link.
• Exchange links. While reciprocal links do tend to carry less weight, they are still very valuable.
• Pay for links. Do NOT pay for “backlinks”, as Google frowns on this. But you can buy “advertising” on sites.

Always be working on getting more backlinks to your site. If you don’t, you will probably find yourself slipping in the rankings while your competitors climb. Backlinks are an ongoing thing. You have to continually be getting more of them to stay ahead of the competition. It’s not a difficult job, but it is time consuming, so consider outsourcing the job to a knowledgeable and reputable backlink provider. Just remember to check their references. If you hire someone who is inexperience, they could end up getting you a bunch of worthless links that could hurt your site more than they help.

Choosing a Domain for SEO

One of the most important elements of successful search engine optimization is choosing a good domain. If you want to rank well for a particular phrase, it’s a good idea to buy the domain name related to that phrase.

For example, if you want to rank well for the phrase “Amish quilts”, you should ideally buy amishquilts.com. If that domain isn’t available, you could either try for a less popular version, like buyamishquilts.com, or you could buy amishquilts.net or amish-quilts.com. I would stick with .com domains if at all possible. If necessary, you could buy a .net or a .org, but I never bother with other extensions. In my experience, .com domains rank better and faster than comparably optimized domains with other extensions.

One main reason why the domain is so important is presumably because the Google algorithm is programmed in favor of companies. For example, someone searching for “Taco Bell” would probably prefer to be presented with the company’s official website first. If someone searches for “Taco Bell recipes”, they probably aren’t looking for the Taco Bell website, but might like a site called tacobellrecipes.com!

Should You Use Dashes?

A lot of people want to know if they should use dashes in their domain name if a domain isn’t available without dashes. In the past, dashes were very useful and sites using them ranked very well. These days, domains without dashes seem to have an edge over domains with dashes. Although this isn’t always true, it does seem to make a difference.

In my experience, domains with dashes are fine, but NOT more than two dashes per domain name. Anything more and the domain may look spammy to the search engines, as well as to any potential visitors!

How Many Keywords?

Ideally you want to buy a domain that uses the phrase has the highest traffic in your niche. Most of the time, the highest traffic phrases (those with two words usually) will be taken. Three and four words is fine, too. In general, phrases with five or more words have a lot less traffic and don’t work as well for getting traffic. If possible, I would buy a two word domain first. Not only will they usually get more traffic, but they will be more valuable if you decide to sell the site later.

Dominating Google’s First Page

Bum marketing is a great way to dominate niches. You can potentially own the entire front page of Google for long tail keywords just by posting multiple articles targeting the same keyword to multiple sites.

For example, you could take 3 short articles and make a Squidoo lens. Then you could rewrite those 3 articles and make a HubPages hub. Then you could rewrite them again and make a Blogger blog. You could make a site on Weebly, a page on Wet Paint, submit to Ezine Articles and other article directories… the list goes on. By submitting to many different sites, you could rank on the first page with several of them. In this case, you would have more chances to get your links in front of visitors instead of a competitor.

For example, let’s say you’re selling Amish quilts as an affiliate. You could make 20 or 30 different pages about Amish quilts on various sites. If just 5 of them ranked on the front page of Google, you would own 50% of the front page! That would be so much more powerful than owning only one spot. Personally, I’d rather own 50% of ranks 2-10 than to own only the very top rank. Remember, not everyone clicks that first link. People often scan the entire first page looking for the best match. If you have 5 different listings on page one, you will have a much greater chance of having one of your pages visited than if you only have one.

Using this technique, you can often grab 3, 5, occasionally even the entire first page of listings for long tail keywords. That is true domination, and in profitable niches it could make you a great deal of money.