I promised another backlink building strategy if you read my post Proven Strategies to Increase Website Traffic and Generate Sales. If you were waiting in anticipation for it, the wait is now over… it’s here!

This strategy, if used correctly, can catapult your blog posts, web pages, homepage, etc. to the top of Google and other search engines. Once you’re sitting high and mighty at the top, the sales will follow (if you’re targeting the right keywords).

To get started, you’re going to need a blog post (home page will do just fine) that you want to get a lot of traffic to. This is especially if you’re promoting something big and want to earn commissions (affiliate marketing). For your home page, you’re probably promoting something, selling your own product or building your list. In any case, you obviously want traffic, so this will work just as well.

Assuming you’ve done all the on-page SEO stuff for your blog post or home page, you’re now ready to start building backlinks. But not just any backlinks will do here. While article marketing is still very effective (and I recommend using this method as well), there’s another link building strategy that works very well.

It’s called a Link Wheel.

You may have heard of it before…. or maybe not. It can actually be somewhat confusing to people, so I’m going to explain it the best way I can without confusing you.

If you’ve heard of this strategy before but just don’t quite GET IT yet, then pay close attention here. Better yet, the diagram above should do all the explaining that needs to be done. But, I’ll still do my best here to explain everything.

With the Link Wheel strategy, you’re capitalizing on free blogs/web 2.0/social sites. Take a look at the sites in the diagram, and you’ll notice one thing. They’re all free to use and post content to, and there’s a social aspect to them (this doesn’t really matter for the sake of this strategy). Simply put, Google and the other two major search engines love these sites.

So to get started, you need to write some articles. Anywhere from 6 to 8 articles will be sufficient.

There are some key requirements needed with these articles, though. They need to contain your keyword in the title and two or three times throughout the article body. If you haven’t done so already (you should have), your blog post should contain the same keyword in its title and content. This is very important!

The articles you write for these sites only need to be anywhere from 250 – 350 words long. You don’t need a novel here, just enough useful information to make the content relevant to the keyword you’re targeting.

If you don’t feel like writing the articles yourself, outsource it to someone else. I can get 10 articles written for $27 that do just fine. That’s actually very cheap, by the way.

Once you have your articles, you need to sign up for these free sites. Once you sign up with a site you won’t ever have to do it again. This is a one-time process.

Here are the sites I recommend. This isn’t an all-inclusive list, however. You can sign up for as many as you want. But for the sake of your link wheel you only need 6 to 8 sites.

1. Hubpages
2. Wetpaint
3. Blogger
4. WordPress.com
5. Gather
6. Xomba
7. Quizilla
8. Squidoo

There’s a couple I didn’t mention that are in the diagram. Like I said it really doesn’t matter which sites you sign up with. It’s completely up to you.

Here’s where it gets tricky…

Each article you post on a site should contain two links… one pointing to your blog post and the other pointing to the article on the next site.

BUT… those links need to contain the keyword being targeted.

For example, if I’m targeting the keyword “golf swing” then I have that in the title of both the blog post and all articles for each site as well as in the content. Also, the backlinks will contain the same keyword “golf swing.”

Follow? Just look at the diagram again and this should make sense.

Each article will do this until you’ve completed the rotation and placed one article on each site. You now have a complete Link Wheel.

Doing this correctly will boost your blog post or home page’s rankings in the search engines dramatically. Of course, you still want to perform other link building strategies I’ve mentioned in previous posts because this is not the only way I build backlinks to my posts and home page, just to clear up any confusion you may have.

Any questions about what I’ve shared regarding Link Wheels? Still don’t quite get it? Feel free to leave a comment, and I’ll do my best to answer you.

Awhile ago I posted about David Hurley’s Internet Marketing PLR Article Membership. Well, David has just informed me that he’s offering all new members one month of free access.

However, you have to sign up using this link: http://www.grasp-the-nettle.com/Free-Article-Marketing-Offer.html.

You’ll receive 10 expertly written internet marketing related articles every month, with your first month free of charge. I’m so sure that you’ll like David’s articles that you’ll want to continue receiving his articles month after month. But, if not, no worries.

Also, don’t forget that for a small upgrade fee, you can have those articles re-written by yours truly.

I’ll rewrite your 10 articles and make them unique to use for your own site, blog or to submit to directories.

Writing top quality articles is very time consuming. You may have an idea of what you want to write about, but when it comes to actually writing the articles, it just takes time. You may be asking why you would even have a need to write articles, and the answer is very simple. Articles help you grow your online business.

Articles allow you the advantage of getting your name, business and message in front of thousands of readers and seen as an expert… all for FREE. For internet marketers and online business owners who have multiple tasks to complete every day, writing can be a chore.

Introducing…  David Hurley, expert internet marketer, English professional and article writer. David is the owner of Grasp-The-Nettle.com and provides an article writing PLR service for internet marketers. His articles are internet marketing and online business related.

What sets David’s service apart from other PLR services is this:

• High quality, relevant and useful articles – NOT the usual run-of-the-mill, thrown together stuff
• Free from grammar, spelling and syntax errors commonly found in other PLR article packages
• Limited membership – Articles exclusively available to only 100 members
• Reasonably priced

David’s service provides you with 10 internet marketing related articles each and every month to use for your own use. Why spend countless hours writing your own articles, when you can have David save you the trouble?

I’m a personal friend of David’s and have worked side by side with him for several years through various forums and internet marketing communities. I have been impressed with his professionalism and all the work that he does with his various online businesses. I can assure you that anything David does is top notch!

To learn more about David’s article writing service and his risk-free guarantee, check out his Article PLR Service. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Just a few days ago I wrote about freelance writing opportunities and how blog writing is becoming quite a popular job for service providers. Well ironically, I was just asked by one of my clients to ghostwrite articles for their blog.

Talk about good timing. I honestly didn’t know this would happen at the time of writing my post, but it proves the fact that there are people out there looking for blog writers. You just have to get yourself in front of potential clients.

Being a current client of mine, and knowing the subject matter of which they need articles written for, it just makes sense. It’s not my normal proofreading work, but having done this type of work before as well as a bit of re-writing work, I figure, why not?

It’s always a good idea to have multiple streams of income, so capitalizing on every opportunity is a no-brainer. I’m not going to lie… I need money. Who doesn’t?

That’s what my blog is all about. Presenting ideas and showing you different ways you can earn extra money on the internet. There’s many different avenues to take, and freelance blog writing is one of those, and it can pay off.

I’ve been wanting to be a guest blogger for quite some time now but just haven’t gotten around to it. While I was browsing the CYN forums I had responded to a question that someone was asking about how to build up a list of subscribers.

That response prompted another member to ask if I would be interested in doing a guest post for their blog. I’ve been putting off, so since I was asked about it, I decided to finally take action. I wrote up the article yesterday, and after realizing how long it was turning out to be, decided to chop it up into three parts.

If you’d like to check out part one of my article on how to build up your newsletter list, then head on over to Michael Burke’s Project Little Fish blog and read my article titled: Ways To Build Your Email Mailing List – Using a Lead Capture Form.

Michael has a good thing going on, and I’m excited to be a part of it. So head on over and show Michael some love, and be sure to leave a comment or two.

You’ll notice that there will be two more parts to the article that you don’t want to miss. You’ll have to stay tuned to Michael’s blog in order to catch them.

Guest posting on other blogs is a great way to get yourself noticed and build up your online brand. I highly recommend you go out and find other blogs in your niche that have built up a large readership. Most bloggers allow others to post articles to their blog, or you can contact them directly and ask.

This is just the beginning of my guest blog posting quest. I’ll keep you informed of any and all new guest posts in the future, but make sure you’re subscribed to my RSS feed so you don’t miss out.

Oh… I almost forgot. For any of you interested in being a guest post on this blog, just contact me, and I’d be happy to have your article on here. Just make sure it’s relevant to my blog.

This is a subject that I don’t think gets covered enough. If you run a blog, it’s important to keep it up to date, and having the time to write all of that content can be tough. It’s oftentimes much easier just to use someone elses article on your own blog.

This is perfectly acceptable, but there’s some guidelines you need to follow.

First, you need to consider the source of the content. Depending on where you’re getting the content from, there can be specific rules regarding duplicating the content and using it for your own use. Most article directories have this spelled out for you. However, if you decide to pull the content from a personal/business website, you may want to contact the owner to make sure they allow you to use it.

Most content owners are more than happy to allow you to use their content on your blog, but this comes with stipulations. For the most part, you’ll be required to cite the name of the author with a link back to the original source where you got the content from. With article directories, there’s usually code you can copy and paste that already includes this information.

If there are links within the content body, they usually have to stay intact. With article directories, there’s almost always an author resource box, and this will have to accompany the article on your site, otherwise you violate the copyright.

Now, I happen to know of some people who are very adament against people using their articles on other sites. That’s understandable as they put in a lot of time and effort to write high quality content for their site. It’s rightfully there’s, and they have the right to reject anyone from duplicating it.

I personally don’t have a problem with other people using my content as long as they keep all links intact and cite the reference from which they got the content from. That’s all I ask. I have had some problems with this in the past, as you can read from this post: I Hate Thieves! Blogger Steals My Content!

What actually prompted me to write about this is not from that post I just mentioned; although, it’s the same circumstance. You see, I was just made aware of another blog that published one of my articles and disregarded my policy and proper etiquette of content duplication.

I have already contacted the owner, and hopefully we can get this resolved without any legal action.

I just want to make everyone aware that it is a copyright violation to use someone elses content without proper citation, and in some cases, without the content owners approval. You can face legal action for disregarding this.

Of course, I’m not an attorney or anything, so use your own discretion in this matter. Regardless, there’s always going to be people who don’t follow the “rules” of the internet. Luckily for us they’re the minority. Don’t let this discourage you in any way from using other people’s content when you think your readers could find value in it. And, don’t let this deter you from creating high quality content of your own.

I’ve been hearing from different sources on the web that EzineArticles.com would be implementing changes that would have a serious impact on every article marketer out there. If you use article marketing as part of your marketing strategy, as you should, then listen up! This is important, and you’ll want to know how to stay on top.

The recent changes involve new Adsense ad placements on your article pages. They’ve added more and placed them in such a way that might just decrease your article click-through rates. Scary huh? The whole point of writing articles is to have it read and then get your links clicked.

Now, EzineArticles, one of the best article sites around, is making it tougher for the average marketer to make it in this big internet marketer game.

But, don’t fret just yet. I received an email from Travis Sego the other day that just might be the solution to these recent changes. If you’re not familiar with Travis, he’s the bum marketing genius that takes homeless guys and teaches them how to write articles and make a fortune, being a bum. Gotta love it!

I really like what Travis is doing. Plus, he’s a down-to-earth, fun loving guy (you’ll see what I mean in the email he sent me). What’s better is that he wants to help people, and by doing so, allows me to help you.

Here’s the email Travis sent and what he had to say about the new EzineArticles changes and how you can keep your click-throughs high:

Hey!

What’s da haps?

As you may have heard…

EzineArticles.com has made some

changes that will affect YOU!

Wanna talk with ya about them…

I’m in a silly mood though so…

How ’bout a little light hearted fun first?

Have you heard this one?

*********************

Confucius say…

Man who run behind car…get exhausted.

Man who run in front of car…get tired.

*********************

Heeeee….hee…

I know I’m corny…but I luv that one!

Now here’s how a man, woman or Bum

can get on top of the EzineArticles.com

changes.

Without getting exhausted or tired!

They’ve recently made the decision to

add more Adsense to the articles.

Which MIGHT make it a little tougher

to get YOUR links clicked on.

I ain’t worried though.

You won’t be either.

Learned this trick from reading

PotPieGirl’s One Week Marketing

System.

(I had to see what all the new folks

were RAVING about).

Here’s what you do:

1. Shorten your articles! Your article body

only has to be 250 words!

2. Make your authors box…L-O-N-G-E-R. You

have up to 300 words you can put in your authors

box.

You should be able to make your authors box…look

like it’s part of the article!

You follow?

Using just this one little tip from One Week Marketing,

and I’m pullin’ in a 34% click through on one article…and others look like they’ll do even more.

Yipee Skipee!

I wonder if you can figure out a couple other

reasons I am so happy about this?

Betcha can?

==>Short articles are FASTER to write.

==>Short articles COST LESS to outsource.

==>Short articles = More Articles = More Sales!

Have any more great ideas on how to get around these new changes? I’d love to hear them.

Writing articles is an art form. Developing content for the net takes time and practice. Writing effectively and getting your readers to respond is the first benefit in building traffic. This results in direct traffic as readers are inclined to click on your link(s) in the resource box of your article.

I suggest you take a moment to visit Patricia Makhulo’s Article Marketing Made Easy post which gives you many great pointers on getting your article noticed and read.

Article marketing has two main traffic benefits: direct traffic and search traffic. Both are important and should be utilized to their fullest potential. You want to get as much bang for your buck as possible, so there’s no point in wasting a good article by only getting half the potential traffic.

Article marketing is one of the best ways to create long-term, targeted traffic to your website. I’m going to explain both traffic benefits.

An article is made up of different elements that are essential to getting direct traffic. These elements include:

• Defining the product/service you need to promote – Most articles have the purpose of providing useful information in order to pre-sell a product or service.
• Using the “useful, but incomplete approach” – Provide useful information to your readers, but make sure it’s incomplete and that they could better use the information by visiting the link(s) in your resource box.
• Using a tips list or tutorial format when applicable – If your article can be broken down into a list format, then do it. This will direct your readers along towards realizing their need for your product/service.
• Expanding on your main points to build the content of the article – as I’m doing with these key elements, provide information that expands on the main points of the article.
• Providing a closing or “call to action,” usually in the resource box, also known as the “about the author” section – Most people fail to do this. The resource box is there for a reason. Tell your readers to visit your link(s) to make better use of what they read.
• Re-reading and proofreading the article to avoid errors – Don’t do this yourself as most people fail to catch their own mistakes. Have someone proofread your article for you so that it reads well and is error free. The best thing you can do when crafting an article is to write in a clear and concise manner. You need to convey your message to your readers so that they can understand it. Your article should read as though you were talking face to face with them.

If you focus on these key elements, your article stands a much better chance of receiving clickthroughs and your website getting targeted, direct traffic. Also keep Patricia’s models in mind as they work very well too.

The other main benefit involves getting natural search engine traffic from people searching for information. Aside from direct traffic, search traffic is just as good because it’s also highly targeted. Most searches performed in a search engine are for information. That’s why it’s so important that you provide useful information to your readers because there’s a better chance that they’ll convert to a customer.

There’s two elements that you need to be aware of when striving to get search traffic as a result of your articles. As people search for information, they enter keywords into the search box. The keywords they enter determine what results are displayed.

It is your job to find out what keywords those people are searching for. I recommend Google’s External Keyword Tool. Once you determine the keywords you’re going to focus on, the two elements soon come together. The first element is writing your article for specific keywords.

You need to determine what keyword phrase you need your article to rank for in search engines so that it is displayed when someone searches for that keyword phrase. This may sound complicated, but all you need to know here is that as long as you provide useful and unique content, your article will get noticed.

Websites are primarily ranked based on how many backlinks (links pointing to your site from other relevant sites) they have. The key here is containing the keywords you need your website to rank for within those backlinks. This you can completely control with the use of your article resource box.

The second element applies to your website. This involves the use of your article resource box. While the resource box can be used as your call to action as discussed earlier, it also has another use. As you need to get your article ranked high in search engines for a particular keyword phrase, you also need to get your website ranked high for keywords as well.

While developing your call to action phrase, create a link to the web page that you want to send your readers that contains your keywords you need your page to rank for in search engines. Every article you create will contain your resource box with your call to action and a backlink to your website. You see how your resource box serves two purposes in one?

If all of this sounds a bit confusing to you, then you should read some of my other posts on SEO:

Web Page Optimization

5 SEO Tasks You Should Do Every Day

I also recommend Suzanne Morrison’s 3 Steps to Search Engine Success.

Applying these methods to your article marketing efforts will ensure direct and long-term traffic for years to come. Both forms of traffic are equally important, so don’t ignore these methods. Article marketing, when done properly, will help you build your business and set it up for long lasting success. Remember, your website must have traffic, and article marketing can help you achieve it.

Last week I made a post titled I Hate Thieves! Blogger Steals My Content! and ranted about a blogger who took one of my articles and deleted my links. I sent the owner of the blog an email via the contact page and hadn’t heard back.

Well today I received an email from the owner after two weeks of having sent the email. Here is what the blog owner said…

Thank you for your check my blog, I have already put your website link in my article with keyword “work from home online business” in my webpage http://www.getcashonline.org/work-from-home-online

Now obviously the owner doesn’t speak very good English, but you get the idea. This came as a bit of a surprise to me. Of course, I actually went to the page and made sure that he really did add my link. It’s there, along with the other million links he added of his own.

I need to correct him, though. He stated that he placed my link in “his article.” The fact is that he placed my link in MY ARTICLE. My link deserved to be there all along from the beginning when he decided to use my article.

This problem has been around forever, and it’s impossible to fight it completely. Most scraper blogs (blogs that scrape content from other sources, usually through RSS) steal content all the time with no recognition or link back to the source. I don’t think this is a scraper blog, but if you’re deleting links intentionally, then it might as well be one.

If you market your work from home business using article marketing then I’m sure you’ve been faced with this issue before. It’s not something you should get real worried about as it doesn’t happen too often, but it’s something you should be aware of. Not everyone is going to be honest. That’s just how it is.

There’s some rare cases, such as this one, where you can actually contact the owner and try to resolve the issue. This is the best case of action you can take. It really isn’t worth your time to pursue content thieves. Like I said, they’re the minority, not the majority.

Writing content for the web and marketing your online business comes with this risk. I just want you to be aware of it and realize that it’s going to happen. Fortunately for me I was able to revert this issue. If you want to eliminate this risk and get a much better reach for your articles then be sure to check out the Free Traffic System.

This also brings up another point and one I push quite heavily. If you haven’t heard of Google Alerts or don’t use it, you’re doing a disservice to you and your online business. It’s important to keep track of who’s talking about you and who’s linking to your websites. There’s no better way to do this than by setting up Alerts for your name and website domains. It’s fast and easy to do.

I hope my experiences here can help some of you. Don’t let this discourage you from writing content for marketing your work from home business. It’s an excellent way to get your name and business out there. Be sure to check out my Article Marketing Works video to see how its been helping me.

I’m a big fan of article marketing, and anyone who knows me will agree. I wouldn’t have created a whole article marketing proof video if I wasn’t 100% positive that it helps build your business for the long term. In fact, here’s my video below…

So what’s this whole Free Traffic System all about? Free Traffic System is the new age of article marketing: it has its advantages and does not have any disadvantages.

The advantages of both article marketing and Free Traffic System are obvious – Google and other search engines welcome and will always welcome the creation of new, useful, non-duplicate content and that is why search engines look favorably upon the backlinks generated this way.

Due to this “benevolent attitude” from search engines towards links built via article marketing, thousands of people have been successfully using article marketing for years to improve their positions in search engines for their targeted keywords.

BUT, unfortunately article marketing has some serious disadvantages – let’s have a look at them:

- when others republish your article they can delete your backlinks from the article

This is a huge problem! And my previous post was exactly about this topic. The owner of GetCashOnline.org decided to use one of my articles on his blog and remove MY links from MY article and insert his own self-serving links. I hate thieves!

After you have submitted your article to one of the major article directories – you lose control over your articles. Today, lots of people are using different automatic tools to “harvest” these directories for content and republish the articles on their sites. Now, probably 95% of the people that republish these articles are honest and will keep your links, but there’s always the other 5%.

The problem is that more and more people are starting to steal your content from article directories and automatically DELETE your backlinks from the resource box. OR, they steal just a tiny portion of your content (1st paragraph of your article, for example) and give a backlink to the article directory. This is great for the article directory, but not for you! This happens quite a lot to me, and I have to be honest… it PISSES me off!

With Free Traffic System you are guaranteed that pages where your content is republished will remain with YOUR backlinks. Those blogs who break this rule and touch your links (modify them/make them invisible/delete them) will be deleted from the Free Traffic System and lose access to quality content.

- duplicate content problems

You see, when one and the same article is republished, Google quickly “understands” this is duplicate content and “sees” that a big portion of your backlinks are built from duplicate content pages. This is not dangerous and Google will not punish you for doing that, but it is rumored that Google seriously lowers the SEO value of backlinks built from duplicate content pages, or just ignores them all together.

The other problem with this is that your duplicate articles will be competing against each other, and most likely Google and other search engines will just choose only one of your articles to show up in search results.

With Free Traffic System you have all the tools necessary to make each of your articles be non-duplicate, even if the article is republished on 20, 40, 100 or even more blogs. With the help of simple procedures – that will take you only an extra 5 minutes per article – you will create dozens or even hundreds of READABLE and CONCISE versions of article titles and bodies that won’t be considered duplicate. It is all in your hands: if you decide to spend 5 minutes and use the diversification tools provided by Free Traffic System, then each of the articles republished will be unique for Google and other search engines. And this will instantly increase the value of your backlinks.

Look at the comparison table to see Free Traffic System compared vs traditional article marketing.

Now I understand there are some tools available that do the same thing for your articles, like Unique Article Wizard. I also believe Submit Your Article will let you spin different versions of your article as well.

BUT… these are quite expensive, ranging from $30 – $70 per month!

Explore these advantages of building one way links with the new level of article marketing for FREE with the Free Traffic System.