Archive for August, 2008

How to find the number of backlinks pointing to your website

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 10:40 pm  
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A backlink is simply a link sitting on another website that links to your website. They are also referred to as backward links, inlinks or inbound links.

Google uses an algorithm to determine where a web page is going to rank in their search engines. They use a number of factors as part of this algorithm but it is thought that the number of backlinks coming into a page is one of the most important.

To be more specific, however, it is not the number of backlinks but the quality of those backlinks that makes a page rank better than another. So the more quality links you have coming into a web page on your site the more likely that page will rank highly in Google. And the higher it ranks, the more traffic you are likely to get to your website.

In the words of Google, “In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.”

So with this in mind it might be worthwhile for us to be able to determine how many sites are actually linking to our website. There are a few ways to do this but you may find that each method may display different results. For one thing, Google doesn’t always display the correct number of links to your website. In the past, Google used to show only those links with a pagerank of 4 or higher. Today Google displays a random number of backlinks with varying pagerank and doesn’t display them all.

For this reason, Yahoo is a better choice to gauge the number of backward links coming into your site. However, we have still included instructions for both search engines below.

Any one of the following methods will provide you with your backward link numbers:

Using the Google Toolbar

To determine the number of backward links coming into your site use the Google Toolbar. If you haven’t installed this on your computer then do so now. It’s an important tool for internet marketers.

To view the backward links for your website take the following steps:

1. Open up your website in your browser.
2. Ensure that you have the ‘Pagerank and Page Info’ option available on your toolbar. It will look like this (circled in red in the image below):


If this feature is not displayed then go to Settings -> Options on the Toolbar and select the ‘More’ tab. Ensure that the ‘Pagerank and Page Info’ box is checked and click OK.

3. Click the drop-down arrow next to the pagerank icon and select ‘Backward Link’ from the options shown in the drop-down box.

Using Google Search

To find the number of backward links to your site using Google search take the following steps:

1. Go to www.google.com.
2. In the search box type in: link:www.yourdomainname.com

Be sure to change www.yourdomainname.com to the actual domain name of your website.

Using Yahoo Search

To find the number of backward links to your site using Yahoo search take the following steps:

1. Go to http://search.yahoo.com/
2. In the search box type in: link:www.yourdomainname.com

Be sure to change www.yourdomainname.com to the actual domain name of your website.

Using Google Webmaster Tools

As of February 2007, Google introduced a new facility as part of their Webmaster Tools to assist with backward link checking. The tool lists all of the incoming links to your website and allows you to see how many are linking in to a specific page on your website.

To view your links you will need to set up an account with Google and you can log in here.

Note : Google engineer Matt Cutts has indicated that just because a link is shown under Webmaster Tools doesn’t mean it carries any value.

Don’t Assume Anything When Writing Blog Posts

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 12:01 am  
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When I was recently at one of the Affiliate Summits I was talking with a group of James Martell students when a guy approached us and immediately launched into a speech promoting his affiliate program. He rambled on about himself and then proceeded to mention that his program related to Forex and his words were something like ‘and of course I don’t need to explain what that is…’ as if we all knew what he meant. Now I should have just said there and then that I had never heard of it and at that point I hadn’t. Forex might be a common term in the US but in Australia, unless you are really into the foreign exchange market, I doubt many would have heard of it before.

When someone mentions Forex in Australia most people immediately think they are talking about the brand of beer that is brewed in Queensland which is labeled as XXXX but verbalized as ‘four X beer’. Which just reminds me of a joke – Why do Queenslanders spell their beer with four x’s? It’s because they can’t spell beer. Now I can tell that joke only because I lived in Queensland for 18 years…but now I’m getting sidetracked.

The point I am wanting to make is that we shouldn’t ever assume anything. You may know the old adage, ‘When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me’.

The guy that approached us shouldn’t have assumed we were all residents of the US or Canada or that we would know what Forex was. If he had just added a couple of sentences to explain what it was then I might have been more interested in what he was saying. Instead I lost interest really quickly because I had no idea what he was on about.

When it comes to blogging, your visitors will lose interest just as quickly if you skip the basics. If you assume that everyone has the knowledge you have, and you write blog posts according to your level of expertise then you are going to attract readers at that level of expertise but lose a whole other audience that is desperate for the basics. In the case of the gentleman that approached us, he totally missed the basics so I was missing vital information that would have clarified the rest of his conversation. Make sure your readers don’t have the same problem when reading your blog.

Providing a few basics within your posts can make the difference between keeping new readers and losing them. They may see your blog as just way too advanced and click the back button to find something a little more tailored to their needs.

Now we’re not talking about turning every blog post into a step-by-step tutorial for everything you write about. If you started doing this, you would most likely lose your more advanced audience. What we are talking about is adding a few extra lines to clarify things. For instance, just before I started writing this blog post, I was writing another post on backlinks. I was half way through the article before I realised that I hadn’t provided a definition of what a backlink actually was. It would only take a couple of sentences to explain it but I had totally missed it. I had to step back a little and look at the article as if I had no idea what a backlink was. When I did that, I was better able to explain the whole concept.

Another useful method is to write ‘What is’ type posts that you can use to refer to in later posts. For instance, I could write a post on ‘What is a backlink’ which provides all the basics about backlinks. Then in future posts whenever I referred to backlinks I can just link it to that post. This is also a great way to develop content for your site and builds up a nice resource which will keep visitors coming back.

On the flip side your blog posts shouldn’t just focus solely on basic concepts. Everyone is a beginner at some point but as they learn they require more advanced content. If keep your content written purely for beginners then you are likely to lose them at some point as they start looking for more advanced concepts.

In the end, we are not always going to get this right. It’s a fine balance between providing content that is both useful for the beginner and the more advanced reader. And some might say why should you even bother? But in my opinion, I believe that if you write content that will appeal to all your readers, you are going to get more traffic and more readers coming back.

Sponsored Reviews: How to Make Extra Money From Your Blog

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 at 6:05 am  
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If you own a blog and are looking for ways to start making money from it, then Sponsored Reviews is a good place to start.

Sponsored Reviews is a website that brings together bloggers and advertisers. It allows the blogger to make money and the advertiser to promote their products.

What I like about Sponsored Reviews is that you can make money in two ways. Firstly you join as a blogger and write reviews about ‘products’ on behalf of advertisers. Products is a general term for anything an advertiser wants reviewed, it may be their website, a service or a physical product. And the other way you can earn money is to become one of their affiliates and promote their link on your website.

When you are writing a review on behalf of an advertiser, you must be sure to thoroughly read what the advertisers requirements are prior to doing a review and make sure you follow those requirements otherwise your review will be rejected.

So how do I get started?

Firstly you need to sign up with Sponsored Reviews. The process is relatively simple, it’s just a matter of going to the “Manage Blogs” tab and then clicking on “Add New Blog”. One thing I will stress is that you read the requirements in the ‘Bloggers Policy’ section.

It won’t take long before Sponsored Reviews will advise you if your blog has been accepted, and once you receive an email advising that everything is okay you can go in and bid on the opportunities that are relevant to your site.

Part of the process for adding your blog requires you to enter some details about your blog. This is so the advertisers know what your blog is about and how much you want to write a review.

The things that you need to complete are:-

Desired Price - Set your price in this field.
There are some suggested prices which have been set by Sponsored Reviews and if you want to be successful in getting reviews to write you need to set your price somewhere in the suggested range. When an advertiser is looking for someone to write a review they will see your price so it pays to make sure it is reasonable.

Blog Category – Select the category that best suits your blog.

Blog Title – As with any application you are recommended to add descriptive keywords to your blog title. “Wanda’s Travel & Hotel Reviews” will get a better response from advertisers than “Wanda’s Blog”. You are more likely to attract advertisers if you use keywords in your title. This is because advertisers only get to see the title of your blog so they are more likely to purchase a review from you if they see a keyword that is relevant to their product.

Description – In this field you enter the number of visitors you have, or show some examples of posts you have written. This is your opportunity to sell yourself so make sure you enter information that is likely to attract advertisers.

Blog Tags/Keywords – This is where you enter keywords. i.e. travel, technology, pets.. etc…

Once your blog has been approved it is time to start bidding on opportunities and earning money.

There are times when an advertiser will find you when they are searching the directory and they will approach you directly. This is quite an acceptable practice as long as it is done via the Sponsored Reviews website. Just recently I was approached by a travel firm to write a review of their products on my travel blog.

But as with everything it makes sense that you will earn more money the more proactive you are. Once you find something you think you would like to write a review for, you submit your bid and you will be notified by email if your bid is successful.

So off you go, get in there and search out some reviews to write and start earning.

Now once you have completed your review and made sure you have double-checked your work to ensure it meets the advertiser’s requirements and that the spelling and grammar are correct, you simply submit the URL to Sponsored Reviews. Full details on how to do this are provided on their homepage.

All payments are paid into your Paypal account every 2 weeks for reviews completed in that 2 week period.

The second method for making money from Sponsored Reviews is to sign up as one of their affiliates and place the link that they provide on your website. If other bloggers click on the link and join you will receive a payment.

You can earn up to $175 per Advertiser and $90 Per Blogger Referred.The payment structure:

Advertiser

 

Blogger

 

 

 

 

 

Amount Spent

Payment

 

Amount Earned

Payment

$1

$5

 

$50

$5

$100

$20

 

$200

$10

$1000

$50

 

$1000

$25

$10,000

$100

 

$10,000

$50

Blog Posting Frequency: Are you a slave to your blog?

Monday, August 18th, 2008 at 6:59 am  
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Just recently I wrote an article about how to become a successful blogger and in my research for that post I gathered together some stats on how frequently some of the successful bloggers post to their blogs. I had always thought that it was necessary to post every day in order to have a successful blog but my analysis showed that this isn’t necessarily the case.

The ‘successful’ bloggers post anywhere from 2-3 times per day (Shoemoney and John Chow) to 3 times per week (Dosh Dosh) and sometimes longer. So is it necessary to post regularly to make your blog a success?

I think the answer to this depends on what stage you are at with your blog. If you are so popular that you get enough traffic from return visitors, links from other sites and just general search engine traffic then I would think that posting frequency would not be as necessary or important as someone who is just starting out with their blog and has hardly any traffic.

It’s general knowledge that the more you post the more likely you are to get traffic to your blog. I know myself that with each piece of content I post to this blog I get new traffic because of the different keywords being searched for. I know that the more often I post the more traffic I am likely to get. But do I want to become a slave to posting frequently?

There are some blogs out there where 20 new posts go up on a daily basis. Now this is fine if you have a topic that lends itself to a 20 post a day marathon, but somehow I can’t see myself spending the whole day writing blog posts. That seems like a lot of hard work to me and in my opinion; I may as well be working at a full-time job.

I am sure if you were going to be working at this rate you would need to have someone help with the writing because as an individual you would be hard pressed to maintain both the momentum and the quality of content for 20 posts per day without eventually burning out.

And would it be worth it in the end?

You would most likely be making some money but would you have the freedom to just take off even for one or two days without your blog coming to a crashing halt? To me the whole point of working from home is to have more freedom and not be regimented into working long hours because I have to but because I want to, and I think this applies to anyone who has made the decision to work from home.

The main reason I started this blog was because I have a passion for the topic. I enjoy writing about internet marketing and blogging. However, I can’t see myself sitting at the computer writing up to 20 blog posts a day. Ideas need to flow naturally and as things just pop into my head I find I can write about them without too much effort. If I was forced to think about enough new ideas to complete 20 blog posts a day, I would soon run out of good ideas and I am sure the content would suffer.

As you can probably tell from this blog, we don’t write every single day. We maintain consistency because I think that it is important but we sometimes miss a day here or there because we don’t force ourselves to write something just to ensure that we have a blog post up there. Now maybe this will work and maybe it won’t but I don’t want to be a slave to my blog…I want to enjoy it and have fun with it.

What about you? How many times a week do you post to your blog and do you enjoy it or see it as a chore?

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