Thursday, July 16, 2009

Earn Money From Backlinks

Do you want to earn money by posting links to Google? How many times have you heard this adware ad when going to various media outlets? What the heck is he talking about? Right now, I'm not willing to give up my $2.95 for shipping to find out how to earn money online from Google. I DO know how to make some money by posting links, but it's not what you're thinking and I know it's NOT the same as those ads that I see all over the place. Gosh...if only earning money online was as easy as posting links in Google...sigh.

Anyways, what I wanted to talk about is backlinking. If you are not familiar with backlinks, then I suggest you Google "backlinks" or "inlinks" and start studying up about BASIC computer skills. :P

My blog really isn't targeted towards beginners but I guess I should explain a little about what a backlink is. Basically a backlink or an inlink is a link from another website to yours. An anchored backlink is a link in the form of a text word. Anchored links is the name of the game when trying to rank high within Google's search engine. The more "good" anchored links you have, the better chances you'll have of being appreciated by the Google gods and ranking high in the search engine page ranks (SERP).

Many beginning Internet Marketers (myself included) think quantity of links is better than quality. This is the wrong approach when you're just starting a website as you will be considered a spam website and shoved so far down in the SERPS that you won't show up for any keywords (except for the 7 word long tails). When I first started out, I thought that as long as I had more links than my competitor, I would rank higher than them. This is how I based my SEO campaign war against the competition. I learned the hard way that this is totally the wrong way to start your SEO campaign. When you're a new website, the odds are already against you for being considered a spammy website. Back in the day when Google wasn't as sophisticated as it is now, spammers would add a whole bunch of links to a site and their site would rise over night to the #1 position in Google. These days, Google has a filter that will determine whether your new website is a spam sight or a legit website. More times than none, your site will be "sandboxed" or shoved way down into the SERPS, even when you have quality content and have more links than the competition.

The best way to avoid getting sandboxed is by working slowly. I know this is counterintuitive to what you're used to. I thought in the beginning that if I worked faster and harder than the competition, my website would rank high in a short amount of time. This isn't the case because your website needs to age and "prove" to Google that you're not another "get rich quick" website and an actual informative website that is going to provide authoritative information to the public.

For the first month of your websites life, you should worry about getting QUALITY links, not QUANTITY. Work slowly and you will by-pass the sandbox filter. What you should be doing for the first month is finding authority links in your niche and finding websites that will give your website a lot of "link juice". When you're poor like me, there is only one solution to get quality links...ARTICLE MARKETING.

"Bum-Marketing" or Article Marketing is a great way for poor people (like me) to get a decent quality link. I like to write articles with Ezine because it's easy to get approved (roughly 7 days per article) and you will get a decent amount of link juice from each back link. For the first month, I would shoot for 5-10 articles. Do not do more than this as you will not receive the maximum amount of link-juice from any article past 10. The reason for this is because Google likes websites that have links from a variety of sources. If a higher percentage of links are coming from one site, G will start devaluing the rest of the links. The way to avoid diminishing returns is by spreading out your links and obtaining links from various sources. For the first month, you will only want a handful of links. With my websites I'm going to write 5-10 articles with Ezine. I'm also going to link a few websites that I've built to this website. Lastly, I'm going to build secondary links to my primary links (Ezine Articles).

Secondary linking is a great way to add power to your primary links. Also, this is a passive way to pump up the juice in your primary links. Remember, the focus in your first month is get quality links and fortify your website. If you build links to fast, you will be sandboxed. Trust me; I've had this happen to a few of my websites. I built links to fast and now they are ranked in the high 500 in Google. So for this website and the other websites I'm building, I'm going to focus on getting better links so that I can build even faster in the second month.

Last, remember to vary your anchor text when adding links to your site. I've had one of my websites get kicked out of the SERPS because I forgot to vary the anchor text in my backlinks. As you can see, I've made a lot of mistakes, but it's also been a great learning experience for me.

Welcome to the Earn Money Online Slowly Blog

Hi, my name is Bolo and I want to earn money online. The title of the blog is "Earn Money Online Slowly" because I've realized that in my short stint of being an Internet Marketer that the only way that I'll be able to earn a full-time income working from home (or in a coffee shop) is by producing blogs and sites and ranking them high in Google for a specific keyword. The only way that I can rank sites well within a search engine (Google) is by performing awesome search engine optimization, creating great content and getting a ton of good backlinks to my website.

Let me tell you a little about myself. I have been working in the accounting industry for over 3 years and one day realized that this was not the way I wanted to live my live. This occurred during "busy-season" at my CPA firm when I was working until 4 a.m. I realized that working harder wasn't going to make me rich and the only people that benefited from me busying my butt was the directors and partner. Did it matter how hard I worked? Would I get a pay raise for putting in extra "un-billable" hours? Frankly, I would rather get paid for my hard work and be able to appreciate the value of putting in extra hours of work. This led me to search for ways to earn money online without succumbing to multi-level marketing tactics and deceiving practices. Many people can make an income selling affiliate tactics. However, a lot of affiliate marketers are "snake oil" salesmen and will do anything to sell a product. I lump these type of people in the same category as a spammer. These people will lie, cheat and deceive you in order to sell a product online. Granted, I will have no remorse putting up affiliate advertisements if it earns me money. HOWEVER, I will NEVER push a product on someone and will only write a review for products that I have actually used or am currently using. When I decide to put up ads, it is up to you to click on it or not. The ads that I will use are a passive way to make income and I will never directly try to sell you something, ultimately, it's up to you if you want to click on something or not, right? That being said, here is the rest of my story.

I've tried various ways to earn money online and I think proper search engine optimization, by far, is the best way for me to not have to work in the "real" world ever again. I have been studying various bloggers and Internet Marketers and think that I have a good enough understanding of how Google works and how to rank my website on the first page through sound SEO. I have already picked a few profitable niches and would like to share my experience with you and show you how patience, dedication, search engine optimization and a lot of hard work will eventually make a poor, unemployed person like me into an earn money online millionaire!