It never fails – every speaking event that I go to, and every class that I teach – someone comes up to me and says something like
I’d love to use your SEO techniques, but my website is controlled by corporate, there’s nothing I can do on it. I have no control over the site other than putting my name and hours of operation on there.
Yeah, that sucks.
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So you realize that there are things you can do to your website that will help increase your position in the overall search engine rankings – but let’s think a little bit bigger. Ok, a lot bigger. What can you do on other people’s websites that will influence what the search engines think about your site? Anything?
Yes, lots.
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Every time I speak at an SEO seminar, I’m amazed to see the amount of people who think that the five links they have coming from other websites is enough. They are pretty surprised when I tell them that they need to have a link: count in the hundreds, thousands or even more.
One of the easiest ways to get links is by publishing articles.
All around the web, there are article directories, or repositories. These websites, such as EzineArticles, provide thousands of webmasters, newsletter writers and content-grabbers with free content that they can republish on their websites (with some restrictions). Writers submit their content to these sites, and are oft times these articles are republished across hundreds of websites yearly.
Each article you write should be between 450-600 words or so. You can go over a bit, but I wouldn’t go much lower than the 450 mark. The article should be about something related to your industry, of course.
Each article should have a 2-3 sentence summary, and you should also go ahead think up some keywords that are related to the article content.
The article you are going to publish should contain what I like to call ‘generic content’; in other words, nothing special, ground-breaking or even terribly exciting.
The purpose of publishing this article is to help you build links, not show the world how great of a writer you are. In fact, if you are a good writer, you may want to consider putting your writings on your own website in a blog format. Remember, we are providing content to literally thousands of publishers, and our goal is more one-way links. Quality content (in this case) is not the focus here.
Herein lies the beauty of article publishing. Get this right and you’ll be on your way to link heaven. The byline is an area on each article website where you get to put a few sentences about yourself, your company, etc. Most people get this wrong, because that’s just what they use it for.
Example: Will Hanke is an Internet marketer residing just south of St. Louis Missouri. Get tips, ideas and SEO tricks from his blog at willhanke.com
Bad, bad, bad. Sure, I got a link in there, but I’ve really missed the boat on what I could have done.
Think about this. This article is going to go out on hundreds or thousands of other websites. When the Googlebot (or any bot) spiders that site, they’ll see that one-way link to your site, and they’ll take that into consideration when they rank your website. So if someone types in ‘willhanke.com’ in the Google search box, chances are I’ll be the first result. But I really don’t care to rank for that, because no one is going to type that in. What I’m after is terms like ‘St. Louis SEO’ or ‘Missouri SEO Services’. These terms explain what I do, and a person typing those terms into Google is my target audience. So let’s rewrite the article and keyword-target the byline.
Example Two: Will Hanke is an Internet marketer providing Missouri SEO Services. If you are looking for a way to get your business to the top of the SERPS, Will can help you get there.
Now what I’ve done is provide a decent byline, that’s keyword targeted to my domain name. When the Googlebot visits whatever website this link is on, I’m credited for another link to my site and I get the advantage of having the words “Missouri SEO Services” as the link. So I’m essentially teaching the search engines that those words equal my domain. If someone types that phrase into Google, Yahoo, MSN or any other search engine, I want them to equate that phrase to willhanke.com.
If you are a good writer, or have access to some original content that is industry related, I highly suggest you write posts on your own website. Content is still king, and good content can make you an authority in your niche. If this is your case, you’d be better off hiring a writer to write you some ‘ok’ articles as described above.
I’ve found the majority or writers I employ on Craigslist. There’s an entire section on there devoted to people looking for writing gigs.
When putting up a request for writers, ask for some sample work they’ve done. Look it over and make sure they can writer better than the average high school senior. Usually one request on Craigslist nets me at least 25 decent submissions, which I then weed down and choose a few good ones.
Personally, I don’t pay a lot for these articles, either. $10 or so bucks each is about my max. Once again, I’m not after great content, just content that relates to my industry.
Distribution
Besides posting to EzineArticles, there are plenty of other article directories out there. I suggest you post to EzineArticles first, as they are the predominant directory, and then filter your submissions out to the hundreds of others.
If you’re pressed for time, or just want someone else to do the work, you can always hire an article submission service. Some of these will even have the articles written for you and will have them submitted to thousands of directories in a relatively short amount of time.
Looking for blogs that you can probably leave keyword-targeted comments on? Try searching for this
“just another wordpress” keyword
Since these bloggers haven’t modified the general description, chances are they aren’t real SEO savvy, and you could probably get in some nice one way links. Just don’t outright spam them, at least leave a halfway interesting comment…
Most small business owners don’t have time to run a full out SEO campaign by themselves. Yet there are a few things that any SMB owner can do on just a few minutes a day that will help their site rank (albeit slowly).
Let’s take a hobby shop owner. He sells die cast cars, pinewood derby kits and model trains. On any given morning, our owner could go to Google and search for hobby shop directory and then visit each result, adding his link where indicated.
If you did this just three or four days a week, over time you’d build up a decent backlink list. While these links aren’t the best, its at least a start.
The number one SEO firm in Saint Louis is having the following sales through Dec 31
Next month there will be some great New Years specials, but these will expire on December 31 so you’d better hurry.
Looking for SEO but don’t have the money for a full-out campaign? One of the best things people in this situation can do is to increase the amount of one-way backlinks to their website. These links, when done right, can help your website climb the search engine ranks.
I’ve recently lowered my link building rates by more than half. I’m not sure how long I’ll keep these rates, but for now there ya go. Take advantage of it while you can.
I’m a big fan of Google Alerts. I love letting Google scour the web for me and provide me with a nice little email that tells me about (and links me to ) new articles about a particular subject that I may be interested in.
For example, I run a very local website called Arnold Talk (ArnoldTalk.com) which I post news articles and events that are related to my little town. So I set up a few alerts such as “arnold mo” and “arnold missouri”. Any time someone posts an article that mentions that phrase, I’ll get an email about it.
It’s great because I can have information about upcoming events before anyone else does, including the local newspaper.
So how can you use Google Alerts for your business?
Let’s say, for this example, that you run a business selling football supplies. You stock and ship footballs, helmets, pads, even trophies around the country.
You notice that your ranking for “red helmets” is low and you want to get a few links for that phrase. So you log into Google Alerts and add a new alert for that phrase. Make sure you use the quotes, or else you’ll end up with results that just mention the word ‘red’ and the word ‘helmets’ on the same page. That won’t do you much good.
So a day or two goes by and then you get an email from the Alerts telling you that there is a blog with your phrase. You click the link and see that its a high schooler who is blogging about his day, and he mentions the new red helmets they got this year. You look around and find his email address and shoot off an email similar to this:
Dear Johnny Quarterback,
Today I noticed that you had mentioned that your team got some new helmets for this years football season. Congrats!
I am an Internet marketer, and I would like to know if you’d be interested in creating a link in your recent post where you mentioned the helmets. If so, I’d be happy to pay you $5 for the link.
I hope your team does a great job this year, and wish you the best of luck on your football career.
Joe Mama
SportsRus.com
Now, it may work better for you if you just mention that you are a sports store owner, or you may want to skip that part altogether. The point is to get the link, and cheap. Since the chances are this blog isn’t read by too many people, the value of the link is not going to be high. But it’s a permanent link. And Johnny Quarterback will be thrilled to get $5 bucks.
Do you use Google Alerts to help you with your link building strategy? If not, why not? What’s more fun than using Google to beat Google?
By the way, if it works out and you get the link, I’d also follow up with him asking him not to post the fact that he sold a link (for obvious reasons).
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Will Hanke is part husband, father, geek and all kickass SEO. Follow on Twitter or stalk elsewhere.
