If you have started your own site, or you are thinking about doing so, you may have hit a bit of a road block.  If you have done any homework you will have found that you need one way inbound links pointing to your site in order for it to rank better in Google.  Google uses a complex formula to rank web pages, so every page has an opportunity to rank.  But if you focused on inbound links, you would most have a better shot at ranking in the search engines thus getting visitors to do what you want them to do on your site.  That could be to read, to click or to buy.

Linkvana

I have found a killer service that is really helping me get inbound links to my pages for actual keywords that I want to rank for.  Linkvana is not free but it does an amazing job at helping you control anchor text linking, something I will be speaking about a lot in the up and coming posts.

This video will give you a pretty good start, but we will continue to elaborate on this subject showing you how to use it in a great system to bring you results faster than most methods.

The Skinny

Right now the service costs $197 per month to use, there is a special right now to get it at $147 per month.  Before you go and throw up your hands thinking that is too much money, let me tell you this.  I have spent thousands trying to find good people to do my own linking and SEO work.  Most of it is wasted because everyone tries to take the easy way out and give you crappy inbound links in bad neighborhoods.  For a very small budget you can submit and make your own anchor text links and go hog wild, there is no limit.  So If you were to work hard, and do ten small 100 word blurbs a day, you would generate 300 links per month.  Can you do that much?  Maybe, maybe not, it depends on how dedicated you are.  The opportunity is there and it does work.  This is a product that I use, not just endorse.  I will be including more on this very subject in the next post.

Linkvanna

Here at Diy we are constantly on the move for finding and implementing new techniques.  Our latest drive is to find some really great SEO techniques and make them work for us.  We have a number of sites and a number of products that we are trying to rank for all the time.  Right now our big focus is on blogging and anchor text linking.  Soon we will have a section that will show you some great video and some easy to follow directions on how to create, control and publish your own anchor text links.  This is essential to help you start ranking for keywords that you have in mind.

The first article on this series

Link Building

This response is to a forum that was asking about using article marketing for building links.  I figured my response was good enough to share with everyone here.

I use article marketing big time, but I do not do it in a manner like most people use it.  In fact I would say that I used to use a traditional approach of writing or buying some articles, putting a keyword phrase in the title and then making sure the right anchor text links were in the body of the article.  I would submit mine to ezine.  However I do not do it this way anymore and here is why.  The results more or less suck for my websites theme.  Chances are they suck for yours too.  I now use articles and focus on what I call a link cluster.  I pick a keyword that I want to focus on and attack it.  Lets say your doing an ecommerce site, I ask myself, what product keyword would I like to sell more of and rank for.  Then I decide that I need 7 really good articles.  I put the best one on my blog.  Then I build a combination of free blogs and web 2.0 sites that use that keyword in the url and link it around the blog, one link goes to the blog and the next link goes to the next 2.0 site.  Then I promote those sites with social bookmarks and articles (see next) to get them going.  Instead of calling it quits here, I go deep.  I add more blog posts and exhaust the topic around that keyword.  Over time this builds authority and this link cluster will be a powerful being and supply some great link juice.  Now referring to the articles I take some articles and submit them to ezine and anchor text link them to this link cluster matrix that I just created.  Most of the time the people that pick up these articles put them on crap sites that give you no real value whatsoever.  So I realize that and use them to get links instead of driving quality traffic.  If you can write a funny or controversial article, you will get more links.  Don’t be rude, just start to realize that people will read these types of articles.  I wrote one for a cooking blog and I am amazed at how many sites are still picking up this article months after  I wrote it.  This is my steriod approach to article marketing.

The other day I had an interesting discussion with a friend about putting up a website to sell a product line that he was starting.  To make a long story short, he offered to supply me with product if I built the site and started promoting it.  Sounds good right?  It could be if the keywords had some potential, but the conversation revealed some interesting insights.

Build it

First you have to build the site, which means you have to decide on which platform you want to build it with.  Considering the fact that I already own and operate stores, I thought it might be a good idea to use the same platform that I already use.  This makes life easier, since you don’t have to learn something new (software)  Learning takes time and stops my progress.  I don’t like to be slowed down since there is more things to do in a day then there is time.  So you could build the site yourself, switch to something new, pay someone to build it for you or just throw something up as an experiment.  Either way to make a summary out of the conversation, you are going to spend about $2000 on the site, whether you hire a basic design out or you do it yourself. (Your time is worth money remember?)

What’s behind door number two?

So let’s say you spent the two grand and now you have a site, now what?  Well this is where most people get excited since their site is finished and it’s online.  However they are not making a dime because they are not promoting it.  In fact, they had no idea that they need to promote it because most website designers don’t know a thing about promotion.  They are two different specialties.  You really need a budget to make sure your website is found by your customers.  By the way, this is not easy, and anyone that tells you that it is, is a big fat liar.    So in order to do it right, since I spent $2000 of my hard earned money, I need a blog.

Blog Please

I wont get into the specifics of why, but I will say that if you are smart you will use a blog to promote your site.  So here we go again.  Do you use a free blogging platform? (Very limited)  Do you hire it out?  Do you build it yourself?  If you have someone who knows what they are doing, you can plan to spend between $300 and $500 for decent blog and design.  This is if you know who to ask and where to go.  But don’t forget the blog needs promotion too, just like the site.  The blog works for the site, but it still needs to be promoted as well.

Door Number Three

So if your math is right you have about $2300 into this project and know one including Google knows you exist.  And if you do not exist in Google, you don’t exist period.  So you need a budget, if you’re serious.  So how much do you spend?  That my friend is the golden question that begs to be answered.  Most people would say, “Pay what you can afford”.  This to me is a mistake.  The correct answer is in the form of a question.  How much do you want to dominate in the search engines for organic search results?  If you want to make it to the first page of Google or Yahoo, then this is going to take some money and a good plan.  I am not saying you have to spend a fortune, but I am trying to get you to understand that you cannot spend $100 a month and make it happen.  You would be better off taking the $2300 you invested and taking your special someone on an all inclusive cruise.  The point of this conversation is this, if you want to be a player you have to be aggressive, have a plan and make a budget.  I know people that spend 50K a month on their plan and I know some that spend $500.  Budget is a function of keywords as well.  If you are trying to rank for the word “mortgage’, get out your checkbook or buy a lot of lotto tickets, that my friend is a long row to hoe.  However if your keywords are less competitive you can spend less.  This of course leads you to the keywords conversation which is another article (sorry)