In the IMer’s never-ending quest for more and better backlinks the methods, techniques and services available are constantly changing. Recently I have heard and read some pretty good things about My Article Network, a service that helps its members build lots of good backlinks.
So I decided to sign up for the service and check it out for myself. This will be the first in a series of posts I plan to make to keep my readers informed on my findings…
Jorge Chavez
Making money on the Internet is very simple in principle. You put up a site, encourage visitor traffic to come to that site, then you monetize that traffic. Simple.
You can put up a web site or a blog or any number of variations on those, like Squidoo lenses, a Face-book page or a You-tube address. Actually, you don’t even have to put up a site. You could use someone else’s site with an affiliate arrangement so that you gain a commission, a percentage of sales made to visitors you send to that site.
The principles are simple. The devil is usually in the details.
How do you encourage visitors to visit the site of your choice? There are lots of ways. You can advertise, send out e-mails, write articles and put a link in your bio box at the bottom. You can make posts on forums (and blogs that allow that), with a link in your signature…
One of the most effective ways to “drive traffic” is to use SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
70+% of the people who are looking for things on the Net use the search engines to find them. You go to the nearest search engine window and “Google it”, type in a word or short phrase that describes what you are looking for. When you hit the “Search” button, a page of possible answers to your search appear.
The phrase you typed in is called a “keyword phrase”. The pages that appear are called SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
Now, if you are selling “Red dog collars”, you will likely have a website or other location setup with a sales page to show off your merchandise, explain the benefits of your red dog collars and take orders. So all you have to do is arrange to have a listing for your website (or whatever) to show up high on the 1st page of the SERPs when anyone types in “red dog collars”.
SEO is the art and science of arranging for YOUR listing to rank high in the SERPS for key word phrases that your buyers would be likely to type in. You see, there are almost always a lot of others who want THEIR sites to be listed first. And there are typically only 10 slots for listings on the first page.
The search engines (SE’s) want to provide a useful service. They want users to find what they are looking for. So they arrange the possible answers with the most probable first, on a “ranking” list that runs up to 100 to 500 positions, presented at 10 per page. The first listing on page one is “ranked number 1″, the next one “ranked 2″. The first on page 2 is ranked #11, first on page 3 is #21 and so on.
The SE’s use complex equations, algorithms, to weigh and value different factors to select the best, select the most likely over the less likely…
Searchers rarely look beyond the first three pages. 90% don’t go further than the first page. So the jockeying for position on the first pages is intense. Ranking is everything. Listings on the first page in the SERPs, will get 10 times as many searchers clicking and coming to visit as will listings on the second page.
The search engines are constantly tweaking and adjusting their selection formulas to get better results. Thousands of SEO experts are constantly testing and trying to figure out what the SE’s are looking for.
One of the key factors for ranking is backlinks. Backlinks are links from somewhere else pointing to the site being evaluated. More important, more popular sites will have more links pointing to them. From the point of view of the webmaster of a particular site, incoming links are pointing “back” to his site, thus the term “backlink”.
So there is great interest in and competition for getting backlinks to help increase your site’s rankings.
So how do you get backlinks? Ahh! Good question. But this posting is already long and must be finished here. The answer will have to wait for another posting…
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