So now you have a jump-start on an awesome blog. You are building great content, you have a schedule and you are attracting readers, followers and building links. Those links are powerful and exactly what you need to improve your rankings but are you gaining ground in your marketplace fast enough? How can you speed things up?
This is where we really need to be creative and start engaging your community. A couple of tools I would like to highly recommend are“LINKVANA” & “TEXT LINKS.” What Linkvana does is allows you access to their network of high page rank domains where you can post your content and build effective links pointing back to your website. Text Links has a more expanded offering. Not only do they let you post blogs and articles to their blogs, but they let you search the blogs and choose the blog you wish to place your blog post on. And yes, you always want to have a steady supply of links coming back to your primary sites. The key though, especially in our post-Panda world, is quality.
What defines link quality?
First, we have seen that Google’s panda update crushed sites with duplicate content. If you scrape or spin content, you are probably feeling this pain. Note: Linkvana has a ZERO tolerance for duplicate content and invests heavily in monitoring the integrity of the network to eliminate duplicate content which is why many users report improved rankings post-panda.
Diversity is another prime factor of overall back-link quality and this is where your skills and reputation as a blogger/writer will serve you well. As your content is syndicated and spread out over various social media channels (by you and your followers) you will build much needed diversity. In addition you can:
- Guest blog – the more you participate and comment on other blogs, the more you will become known, even as commenter. Create a targeted list of 10 or so target sites, build rapport, add value with your comments and link back to your site when applicable. This will provide valuable linking but will also make it easier for blog owners to learn more about you and your skills as a blogger. Then extend an offer to guest blog for them.
- Author Press Releases – press releases are affordable and offer an effective opportunity to build massive numbers of links from high PR sources that you would not otherwise touch. Ever think you would get a free high PR link from the San Francisco Chronicle? I didn’t either until a recent press release.
- Optimize Forum Signatures – participation in forums and blog commenting is very effective way to build quality links and drive targeted traffic. I can’t recommend this enough. Taking advantage of your available signature space is key and way too often people aren’t doing this. Trust me, if your forum posts and replies are thoughtful and high quality, people will want to find out more about you and will check out your signature, so there is a dual benefit here.
- Use Article Marketing Sites – there is a bad rap that article marketing sites tend to get, but what you need to understand is that they are still VERY effective as part of a diverse link-building strategy. If article marketing is your ONLY strategy, then lookout! Linkvana, again, makes article marketing easy and if you aren’t using the Linkvana interface to save time on submissions then you should check it out. Tip: link the signature box on your article sites to your blog – these readers searched for topics related to your article, found your article and often times will be “best fit” blog subscribers. Want to know more about Linkvana and how it compares to Text Links? Check out this great article by Cheap SEO Website Marketing.
Summary
This series blog posts was designed to be a tool, and hopefully one that will boost your SEO, traffic and revenue generation strategies regardless of economic changes, search algorithm shifts or whatever else happens within your niche. All of these steps have one common thread – to help you build diverse, digital trust. As it was stated in the beginning, use these steps to your advantage, and you will not only see an overall improvement in your blog, but you will notice that your blog will actually be working for you, and for your business.