RSS feedDo you have a backlink strategy? I mean do you have a plan how to build up your one-way backlinks? Last week I showed you how you can spy on your competition to find out how many backlinks it takes to get to the top position in Google. Today I would like to discuss your own one-way backlink strategy with you. Now that you know how many backlinks you need, what are you going to do to get them? Here are some suggestions to get you started.
I am using the weight loss niche as my example. I picked ‘weight loss pills’ as the keyword phrase I want to rank high for. This is what Google said about my choice:
As you can see there are 11 million websites indexed in Google for this keyword. You could say that this is a competitive niche. The website that is in the number 1 spot is weightlosspills.net. I did a backlink search on this site, which makes clear right away why they are ahead of 11 million other websites. Take a look:
Almost all of their links have the keyword phrase as the anchor text. Now, you can be discouraged by this and decide that you will never be able to get ahead of them, or you can build your strategy and get to work. After all, backlink watch just gave you a wealth of information. You can see exactly which sites your number one competitor has backlinks on. You simply click on the link and you can examine what type of link they have. In this particular case they have a lot of links within the body of the article on the page. I suspect they have paid to have an article with their link in the body on these sites.
You can do the same of course. Since they have done it, the owners of these sites are more than likely willing to do it again. But you can also do something similar, yet not exactly the same. With the arrival of social media there are a lot of websites out there, where you can build pages and put as many links back to your site on them as you want. Not that I suggest that you go overboard with it, because people don’t like it when it looks like you only care about the link, not the visitor.
You could build some Squidoo lenses, hubpages and any other web2.0 property you like, by rewriting some of your blog posts. This will help create highly targeted one-way backlinks. Plus these web 2.0 properties all have a high pagerank, which helps even more. After all, the higher the page rank the more frequently Google visits these sites.
The other thing I want to point out is that the list Backlink Watch provided, shows some nofollow links. I want you to realize that nofollow links can count also. The reason is that the link is on a page that is easily found by Google, either because of the high page rank of the website, or because somebody bookmarked the page so Google would find it. Having nofollow links is not all bad.
Speaking of social bookmarking, you know that I am a big fan of social bookmarking to get one-way backlinks. It is an easy and effective method, that should always be a part of your strategy.
I only showed you the BacklinkWatch list for the number one site, but you can of course also study the one-way backlink lists of the other websites on the front page in Google. This will help you identify more targeted opportunities for one-way backlinks in your niche, that others already explored for you.
Another type of one-way backlink that stands out is the blog comment. Check which of your blog comments are being picked up by the search engines, by checking the Backlink Watch list of your own site. Make a note of the blogs that give you backlinks that are found by the search engines and subscribe to the rss feeds of these blogs. Leave a comment every time they have a new post. Since the search engines found your previous comments, it is likely that they will find your next comments as well.
The same holds true for forum posts, submissions to all sorts of directories and any other activity you have done in the past. Carefully study your own list on backlinkwatch.com to find out which of your activities ended up giving you a backlink and make a note to repeat that activity regularly. By following these steps your one-way backlink strategy is bound to get stronger and stronger.
It totally depends on your niche, how many one-way backlinks you need and where you should go to get them. But at least you don’t have to re-invent the wheel. Just follow your competitors and learn from your own contributions. They will show you the road to unlimited traffic for your website and a one-way backlink strategy that leads to the top of the search engines for your chosen keyword phrases.
What other things do you do to create one-way backlinks? Share your experiences in the comments, so others can benefit from your findings also.
