Link Analysis & Blogs/Forums

I got a bit ahead of myself with the Day 27 lesson. I shouldn't have actually gone into checking out the competitors backlinks through Yahoo.com. That was actually part of today's lesson, so here we go.

Link Analysis

The first part of the lesson for today is Link Analysis. This is where you use search engines to reveal the link network of your competitors. You start by doing a search for your keyword phrase in Google, making sure you have the Firefox SEO tool activated. This will show a number of things, but the one we're interested in today is the Yahoo page links. This result can be accessed by clicking on the '?' next to the 'Y! Links' link - it can also be automatically turned on for each search by clicking on 'Tools' at the top of your browser, then going to 'SEO For Firefox', then 'Options'. You can then select which results you want to see automatically, and which you want to see On-Demand. By default, all results are set to 'On-Demand'. If you're using Microsoft's Internet Explorer then you should stop using it right now and switch to Firefox. IE is dead, Firefox is the future - of that you can be certain.

The Yahoo links number is the number of links that Yahoo can find that link to the page in question. Obviously we don't know how many of these links are relevant at this stage. The manual way of looking at these links is to go to Yahoo.com. Type in "link:[URL of #1 ranking competitor]", and Yahoo will return all known sites that link to that page. You can do the same with Google but they generally return much fewer results for some reason. Once you have your list you check them out to find which are relevant. Most of the time you can tell just from the blurb that goes with the URL, but sometimes you will have to check out the site as well. There are software tools that allow you to check for relevant sites for more quickly, but as these cost money they are outside the scope of the thirty day challenge. Unfortunately, Rob didn't even name them so I couldn't go to my P2P network to see if I could find them there and give them a try.

Once you find a site that seems relevant the next thing to do is check whether they have 'no-follow' links on their site. When it comes to backlinks, Google will go to your site and be able to find all the pages that link to it from other sources. However, if a link is No-Follow, Google will not record that as a backlink to your site. Some sites put No-Follow in place to dissuade spammers from spamming their sites. By default, if the Firefox SEO tool is active, then No-Follow links should appear in a red box. Some search engines, such as Yahoo, will still credit you with a backlink if you post on a No-Follow link site, but Google will not. Other things to look out for are sites where links have been removed by moderators, or sites, such as forums, where links are not allowed in signatures (or signatures have been turned off completely).

Blogs and Forums

You can also find other niche relevant content sites for creating backlinks by going to Technorati or Google Blog Search. These sites provide the ability to search for blogs in your niche. You can simply visit them, type in your keyword phrase, and see what turns up. In a lot of cases, you will be able to visit the blogs that appear in the results and post a comment which includes a link back to your site. Try using a unique name when posting in blogs and forums, so you can then set up your Google Alerts for that name to make sure the posts appeared, and to add to your comments if necessary. When commenting on a blog or forum always make sure that your comment is relevant to the blog post, so that it adds to it or it is a well thought out opinion. Simply throwing up a link to your site with a "nice post" comment will generally get your comment removed.

For forums, you can search for your niche in Google simply by typing "[your niche] forum". This will generally give you a list of sites that are relevant to your niche but that also contain forums. You can then visit these forums, make sure they allow signatures to be posted, and then sign up and start making your contributory comments. Who knows, you may even find yourself part of the community after a while. In the case of forums it is much better to simply post comments relating to the topic at hand, rather than trying to turn each of your posts into a "look at my site" post. Include a link to your site in your signature, and if your forum posts are compelling enough people will click through to your site anyway. Plus, a link in a signature is a common thing in forums, so moderators will be less likely to consider it spam. In fact, if you've followed along with the thirty day challenge properly, and written your great content, it won't be spam at all.

Other sites to check out and possibly post comments on are Squidoo and Hubpages. To find your niche on these sites you can type in the following 'site:squidoo.com "sign my guestbook" "[your niche]"', and this should produce a list of lenses in your niche that allow guestbook comments.

Link This!

After a weekend we are on to Day 27 of the challenge and the podcast for today had Ed getting a little hot under the collar about spammers and critics. Spammers, who have been using the 30DC techniques for their own spammy needs, thereby undermining the process for the rest of us. It breaks down like this: If a bunch of spammy spammers use these techniques as Ed has detailed them, then those places that Ed has suggested we put our content (ala Tumblr) will see that as a representation of all the 30DCers...because as we know, people see the bad things first and judge all else by that first impression. Of course Tumblr didn't want to be known as a spammers paradise, so they did the only thing they could do, shut everyone down. Why should they go through each individual page to see if the content has merit?

Ed then went on to have a go at the critics out there, who say the 30DC is just a bunch of hot air. These people are generally made up of those who either haven't even taken the challenge, or took it and failed because of their own choices for niches.

Anyway, Ed announced that all the forums and training for the 30DC would continue to be kept up on the site so that anyone can take the challenge again and again, as often as they like, whenever they like. He also mentioned that there would be sporadic future lessons that would deal with product development, amongst other things. He talked about the ease of creating audio and video products as long as you were comfortable with talking/creating videos.

He also asked us to have a look at Michelle MacPhearson's blog for some good information, including the 2nd edition of Luke Parker's Free Online Advertising Encyclopedia. A must-grab. You can download a copy here.

The it was over to Rob Somerville to talk about Link Building. Link building is when you create backlinks to your blog or site. What link building does, is tell Google that, because all these other sites have links to your site - and because these other sites know what they're talking about - Google should put you higher in the ranking for your keyword phrase. It's sort of like being vouched for, except you're vouching for yourself really. Over time, with decent content, you'd be able to build links naturally, as sites that have something in common with yours and like your stuff will link to your site anyway. However, that can take a long time and with so much competition out there it may never happen, so we need to help things along a little. The important factors to look for when trying to place your link on another site is: age of the site you're putting your links on and content relevance of the site you're putting your links on. If you're putting links on a new site that Google doesn't even recognise anyway, then it's a waste of time. To put your links on a site that has nothing to do with your niche is also a waste. Link quality is far more important than link quantity, but a combination of both built up over time is the best of all. You should always try to include your keyword phrase in the anchor text of your link. I generally just put the URL in most cases anyway, as it includes the keywords from my blog. Links from .edu and .gov are better still to have, although obviously harder to secure.

You can use yahoo to identify the backlinks of your competitors, and then go after those as well. Using the SEO tool in Firefox, you can see how many Yahoo banklinks a competitor has. Then by clicking on the Yahoo links link, it will take you to a page that lists all the backlinks to that page. So then you can review the backlinked sites, and determine which ones are best for going after.

Another way to find sites of relevance, is to create a Google Alerts account. This you can set up through your GMail account if you have one, and you can get Google to email you everytime they find a site that has your keyword phrase in it - you can then go to that site and see if it's possible to create a backlink to your content on that site.

Ultimately, though, the best link building strategy is to create great content that other people in your niche area will want to link to. Remember, not everyone is out to make money online - some are just there to pass on knowledge and information, and if yours is up to snuff then others will link to it and share it around (and hopefully give you the credit you deserve).

You can basically create backlinks yourself by commenting on blogs and in forums, making sure that you can include a link back to your site. Don't be spammy, though, always write something that adds to or contributes in someway to the rest of the content on the site. If it's a blog, make a comment about the content and try to steer that to your blog. If it's a forum, make posts that contribute to the thread you're posting in, otherwise in most cases your post will just be removed by the moderators. If you contribute then you're more likely to be left alone. The best way to post in forums without seeming spammy, is simply to include your blog address in your signature, so that every time you post a backlink is created and it's not about tricking people or spamming them into visiting your blog.

You can also try reciprocal linking, where you arrange with someone who has a site in your niche, that you will create a link to their site if they create one to yours. In this case always make sure you specify what the link text should say.

You can also submit your site to various directories, such as Yahoo and DMOZ (the big two) but this is usually expensive (Yahoo is US$300 a year).

I set up a Google Alerts account and within a couple of days I got an email that led me to a site that had ripped off my blog content and put it up on their own platform. At first I was pretty angry, because I was sure that Google would penalise me for having duplicate content, but after posting on the 30DC forum about it and reading the replies, I realised that the other guy was most likely to be penalised. I posted comments on all his blog posts, directing people back to the "original source" of the content, my blog - thereby creating a backlink for myself. Within a couple of days his site had vanished.

Things to avoid when trying backlinks: Link farms, irrelevant sites, low-authority sites, porn or gambling sites, duplicate content and links from deep within a site's structure.

Location Location Location

Day 16 of the thirty day challenge and we are moving the content we have written up into the wide weird world of the internet, in preparation of getting it ranked and having traffic swarm to our page and hopefully our affiliate products.

The first video was Ed going over the process we are to follow. We create the blog (our content site), which is our attractive friend. We then hit it with some social bookmarking (a process that will be explained further on Day 17). That is our attention getting friend, or friends as the case may be.

So the action points are:

1. Watch the Tumblr Video - check!
2. Create a Tumblr blog account - check!
3. Write another 3 articles for each of my phrases - crap...

I am actually understanding why this content needs to be written (well I think I do). It's my understanding that we not only need to get into the practice of writing content regularly, so that it doesn't become such a chore, but also so we can learn about our chosen niches (if we didn't already know about them), and hopefully become interested in them. That has certainly happened with me, although I am still behind in the content writing. I'm okay with that, though, because I know I can pump out the good when necessary, as one of my jobs back when I was working 9 to 5 was to write copy for newsletters and shop item descriptions - and that was for an area that I didn't have a great deal of interest in, so writing about something I am interested in will be a piece of cake.

The one thing I'm a little unclear on is just how regularly are we supposed to upload new content to our blogs. After watching the videos I didn't really see that mentioned anywhere. I notice that for both Ed's and Rob's niche sites they had two blog posts already in place, but I don't recall hearing either of them mention how often after that should we be adding to it. Is it once a day? Once every two days? I might have to jump on the forum and look that one up.

Speaking of the forum, I forgot to mention earlier that with the great 30DC toolbar that we were supplied with thanks to Dan, we are able to quickly and easily search the 30DC forums through Google. We merely type into the 30DC search bar the phrase we are looking for, then when the results appear on Google we click on the Thirty Day Challenge link on Google and it narrows down the results to only those from the forum. How cool is that!

After Ed's video we got a video from Rob explaining how we set up a blog in Tumblr, and some little tricks to use to help identify our keyword phrase to Google. It's important to put our keywords in the heading of the blog, as well as trying to fit it in the first sentence (or first paragraph if first sentence doesn't work). Also, bolding that first instance and italicizing the last instance of your keyword phrase will let Google spiders know that those words are the ones to focus on. I think having a different attribute on each is important, as Google doesn't like too much repetition, so having one bold and one in italics is better than having two bold key phrases. So don't go off and bold all your key phrase instances thinking that it will give you a higher ranking. It will likely do the opposite if anything.

So I was then left to open my Tumblr account and create my blogs. I got a good tip about GMail from one of the other challengers. He mentioned that with GMail, you can alter your original email address so that the same email can be used for all your Tumblr accounts. Let me explain...

With Tumblr, it is a case of one email address per account/blog. Unlike Blogger, you can only open one blog per account in Tumblr, which I do find restrictive. Anyway, I opened a GMail account as cardsagogo@gmail.com, and the tip is that if you make your Tumblr account email address "cardsagogo+yournichephrase@gmail.com", not only will you get emails going to your GMail account, but you can make "yournichephrase" any of your niches and not have to create a new email account for each phrase. Now that saves a lot of time and hassle. So I did all that and posted just one piece of content for each niche. I was actually running a little behind so didn't get this done until Friday the 17th.

As it turns out I'm kid of glad I only put up one piece for each niche. Overnight on Saturday the 18th, the guy who runs Tumblr went on a rampage on his own site, deleting blogs and accounts indiscriminately. He rationale was that he didn't want all us 30DCers using his blog for what affiliate marketing. He called us scum and eventhough he was targeting 30DCers, he apparently deleted several blogs belonging to people who had been using Tumblr for a while. Alarm bells obviously went up for him when there was a HUGE spike of traffic to his little blog site, as thousands of 30DCers, following the words of Ed Dale, went over and signed up and posted their content. Ed blamed the mass deletion on those who were using the 30DC process to produce spam-like crap content, rather than those who had genuine, original content in place. Personally, from what I read of the guy who runs Tumblr, I don't think it mattered. It certainly didn't matter to him which accounts he deleted. But hey, it is his site and he's welcome to do what he likes with it. If he doesn't want the extra traffic then that's fine. I know a lot of people got angry and probably started using Web 2.0 techniques to try and bash Tumblr. Neither of my blogs got the chop and they may have been because I was running late with signing up (not in the midst of the thousands of others), or that my blogs were of a technical nature - apparently the guy who runs Tumblr is an ex-IT guy so is partial to techie stuff. Who knows really, but I was in a quandary as to whether I should stick with Tumblr now or take my blog elsewhere. I didn't want to continue working on it only to have this guy decide to shut me down 1 week, 2 weeks, 6 months in, and have all that work wasted. On the other hand I had started and noticed that in less than 24 hours one of my blogs had reached #34 position in Google for the phrase match, without having any social bookmarking done on it whatsoever. I was now worried that if I started again I would be competing against this Tumblr blog. If I did start again I would have to change my content enough that Google didn't see it as duplicate. That wasn't a bit deal, and in the end I figured it was better to spend a bit more time starting up somewhere more secure, so I headed to the first place I could think of that hadn't let me down. Here.

I know down the track I will use other blogging platforms to host my content for future niches, but for now I wanted to just have the ease that Blogger affords me, so I started two new blogs with my niche phrase in the URL, and posted my first blogs for each, with revised content of course. I added in one affiliate link in each blog, to products on Amazon.com. I don't really expect anyone to buy that stuff, though. I'm now off to add in some tracking code so I can see if anyone is actually visiting these blogs.

Rehash, Repeat, Reinforce

As you can tell by the title Day nine of the challenge was mostly about going back over the lessons of yesterday. It seems that people were having a bit of trouble with the lesson and Google Trends itself, and so Ed made a car cast (podcast in a car) as well as a couple of videos reexplaining what Rob had taken us through yesterday. I think that due to my time with the Immediate Edge program, and having seen part of this technique used, I didn't have a problem understanding where Rob was coming from - but it's always good to have what I thought was going on confirmed, by Ed no less. The one other thing Ed mentioned, which I'd also heard about through The Immediate Edge, was that we need to think in terms of the magic number of 200 - that being only 1 in 200 people who visit your "money page" will actually part with their hard-earned money. This doesn't sound all that encouraging, I know...but if you're getting 100 searches a day for your key phrase, and you're at the top (or near the top) of Google, then it could really only be a matter of a couple of days before you get a sale, thereby completing the challenge. And if you think that each niche has several keyword phrases that can bring in traffic, then you might be able to accumulate more than 200 searches in a day with all your keyword phrases pointing to the same money page, thereby making at least one sale a day...and it can only get better the more time you spend on it. The crucial part of all this is to make sure your phrases are getting traffic, by going through the market research steps as laid out by Ed and the team. As Rob Somerville put it, it takes you just as long to create a site for a term that is getting searches, as it does for one that isn't, so why waste that time on a term that isn't when some simple market research can confirm it for you? I can only probably see a dip in motivation if, once on my own, I'm unable to find another niche that brings in a healthy amount of traffic - but I have an ever increasing number of niche ideas to work with, and I realise that a lot of it at the start is going to be trial and error. Sure, I may have done the market research, I may see there is plenty of traffic for my keyword phrase, and so I create a site to sell a product...but if my site then stinks I won't make a sale no matter how many people are dropping in for a look-see...so down the track, when sites are being built and tested, we'll be able to see what works and what doesn't - and I'm sure that will be one of the many things left to go through by Ed and the gang, to make the process even easier. But I'm getting way ahead of myself.

Ed did say that at this point we should be thinking about only taking 2 of our niches on to the next phase, to put more focus on them. I'm not sure what the next phase is, but seeing as I've already whittled it down to 3 niches through the market researching, I might as well take all 3 through for now and I can always get rid of one if the work in the next phase is too much for 3 niches.

Bring on Day 10!

And Then There Were Three

Day 8 of the challenge has come and gone and I am now down to just 3 niches, which is okay since I didn't care for most of the others anyway...Of the 3 that are left, one is a subject I am really interested in already, one is something I know absolutely nothing about, and one is something I know a bit about but very little. Both the last two are subjects that I am interested in knowing more about, which certainly would help when it come to gathering information down the track. I know Ed and Dan find the thrill on Internet Marketing in learning about new niches they had previously known nothing about, and I certainly hope that down the track I can find that sort of enthusiasm for anything due to the marketing prospects...but at the moment I know myself well enough to know that I find it hard to get enthusiastic about a subject that doesn't interest me...so I'm glad that the subjects that do remain after all the market research testing are ones that do hold my interest.

So, anyway, I should probably explain how it came to be that my niches have been narrowed by one since yesterday. Ed's lessons for today revolved around getting some sort of confirmation that the number of searches per day that were coming up for my niches in Wordtracker was accurate, or not. It's all well and good for Wordtracker to tell you that you're getting 200 searches a day for your keywords, but apparently there have been a lot of cases where people have used that information to produce a sales site, only to find that they go no traffic whatsoever. As we know, Wordtracker is only an educated "guesstamite" of the searches for a day, and uses a couple of sites to gather this information. Unfortunately, one of these sites is not Google, as that would pretty much clear everything up (as it's Google rankings that we are going after here). Google are pretty tight lipped about the actual number of searches a particular keyword phrase can get in a day so it's was up to Ed and his "lab" - Rob Sommerville, to try and find a way of being able to double check the Wordtracker results. They feel they have managed to do this through Google Trends.

Google Trends is a place where you can see in graph form, just how your search terms have been going. Unfortunately, there are no actual numbers on the graph to tell you how many searches the graph is showing at any particular point, but thankfully the big brains of Ed, Rob and Dan managed to figure out a way that you can get a rough indication. By using a search term with a known about of searches per day as a baseline, we are then able to enter our search term alongside that one for comparison. So using one of Dan's keyword phrases, that of "Male Yeast Infection", where he knew that he was getting 500 page hits per day due to his statistic counter, we are able to see if our keywords get enough traffic to warrant going further with them.

Now, this is by no means an exact science. As I mentioned the graph shows search results, while Dan is only able to gather stats for people who have clicked through to his site. He is in the #2 position in Google for that term so it's safe to say that a majority of the searchers who do click on a link will be clicking on his, but obviously not all of them will. The idea behind this is not about getting exact results anyway, it's simply a test to confirm that there is enough traffic on your keyword phrase to go ahead with the next phase. If Wordtracker was displaying 1000 results a day but Google Trends didn't have anything show up then you would know that, for that keyword, Wordtracker wasn't accurate. Then, to add to the confusion, we find out that Google doesn't usually display results on their graph for search terms that get lass than about 250 searches a day. That seems to throw a spanner in the works as, according to Wordtracker, most of my terms are only getting around 100-150 searches a day. Never fear, says Ed, for below the graph is another section that includes searches by region, by city and by language. It just so happens that "Male Yeast Infection" is only searched for through the English language, so therefore we know that the blue bar that represents the English number of searches is the full amount for Dan's click through stats...that being 500-550 a day. So if the blue bar is 500 searches, and our red bar comparison is only half the length, then we know that there are roughly 250 searches a day. As I mentioned before, this is far from being an exact science. It is merely a tool to double check the worth of your key word phrases.

Now, as so many people at the 30 Day Challenge were using "Male Yeast Infection" as their baseline, it meant that a spike occurred in the Google Trends search results. This then meant that the English blue bar was no longer reading 500 searches, but as Ed points out, if you still regard the bar as representing 500 searches, then you can't go wrong, as if the bar is actually representing more searches then your red bar by comparison is getting more than it would if the bar was only representing 500. Still with me? No, I thought not...

Suffice to say that as long as there is a little bit of red appearing, say 3mm at least, then all should be okay. Luckily for me, two of my phrases actually showed up on the graph as well, one of them being way higher than the baseline, while still only having around 30,000 page matches in Google...so I'm particularly chuffed about that. But, it did mean that one of my niches had to get the arse, so to speak, as it just didn't cut the mustard in comparison to the blue English bar, and when I tried to widen the niche by removing a keyword I found that there were far too many competing pages in Google for it...so it got the chop.

Thanks to Ed, Rob and Dan I'm feeling quietly confident about my last three niches as I move into Day 9 of the challenge.

Lucky Number 7

Day seven of the thirty day challenge was a brutal one ladies and gentlemen, as 3 of my ideas had to be dropped after putting them to the days test. I've chosen for now not to replace them, and just continue to roll with the 4 I have left (until they possibly get shot down by more market research, of course). Ed's podcasts suggested that we start concentrating on 1 or 2 that really stand out to us at this time, but to still work the MR mojo on all 7. He also brought up a good Internet Marketing analogy using, in particular, the Idol music series (American Idol, Australian Idol, etc). Now, this seems to be the first place that my opinions differ greatly from Ed's, ad I absolutely despise reality TV shows - I think they are, for one, not reality at all, but merely voyeur TV. The only "real" part is that they don't use actors in the rolls, but the content is manipulated to the want of the producers so that even the most wholesome sweetheart can appear to be a total conniving bitch if the producers of the show deem it so. Ed says that it's a wonderful insight into the human psyche and how people think and work and I would agree, if the content was not manipulated for entertainment purposes. However, his analogy of Idol was really good, and eventhough it won't get me watching the show, it did make me see it in a different light. Basically, Ed made the point that in the old days the record company rep would go out to clubs and pubs, listening to bands in the hope of hearing that allusive sound that will sell - the next big thing. The problem with that is that it is like starting off with the product first and then trying to find the market...really bad in IM terms, huh? Well, bad in any terms...really stumbling around blindly in the dark, hoping to grab onto something worthwhile. What the Idol series does is it firstly attracts tens of thousands of people in each city to come along to them (the makers) to try and be successful. It's like sitting at home and having all these products delivered to your doorstep. The next part of the process is the filtering, which is similar to the noticing and judging faze of the 30 day challenge, whittling down what works and what doesn't. Being on TV they have the traffic situation covered and they have already started to make money via the text voting system...which is essentially the marketplace having a look and a listen to these "products" and deciding which ones are the best. The 12 or so episodes that it takes to whittle down the competition to the final 1 is like the build up to a product launch, with the final winner guaranteed a number one hit because it was the marketplace that chose him. It is genius from a marketing point of view, of course. As entertainment I still find the lawn in my garden more compelling...but I'll leave my anti-"reality" shows rant there.

Next we got the video from Ed's mate and fellow Immediate Edger, Rob Somerville, who quickly took us through a technique for finding out what competition your ideas will be up against through Google. Rob reckons that an acceptable Umbrella Phrase (your ideas keywords) should have no more then 25,000 - 30,000 competing pages in Google. Actually, if that was the case all my keyword phrases would be trashed right now, but the final 4 were close enough to that criteria for me to hold on to them. Firstly, we were to put our original idea (e.g Speed Reading) into Wordtracker and see the search results, as we had done a few days back. Then we put our niche keywords into Google, making sure to put quotes ("") at each end, which is called a Phrase Match, and Google will only show sites that display the term Speed Reading as two words side-by-side. If you left the quotes off, it would show every site that had Speed or Reading on the page, not necessarily together but anywhere on the page. We were to do that with all our 7 categories. Well, since most of my categories were one word keywords there was obviously a high volume of competition, usually in the millions. So what I did is look down the Wordtracker results for what is called "long tail phrases", and I'm sure the boys will go into this more as we go along. They will no doubt explain it better than I could so I'll leave the explanation of a long tail phrase until they have gone through it. Anyway, I went down the list looking for a term of 2 to 3 keywords that incorporated my original category, making sure that there were at least around 100 searches a day recorded in Wordtracker for it. Then I went back to Google and tried the Phrase Match again, getting much better results on most of my categories. As I said, 3 had to be put down, as they either had too few searches in Wordtracker without a decent long tail phrase, or they simply had too much competition no matter what long tail i used that had at least 100 searches a day. I hope that makes sense...

So it's on to Day 8 now, and from what I hear this may be make-or-break time for my last 4 categories. I'm actually a little more confident in them now that I have turned them into long tail phrases, but only time will tell if they are able to stand up to the 30 Day Challenge Market Research criteria.