As a continuation of my Building Links to Your Website post, I want to do the same thing with the subject of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). A lot of people are confused about SEO, PageRank, search engine rankings, etc., especially if they’re just starting out.

I’ve been asked a number of questions recently via email and Facebook regarding this subject, so I wanted to share them with you all so that if you have the same or similar questions, you can get them answered here.

I’ll quote the questions and answers, and if I have anything to add, I’ll post it below that to keep Q&A’s separate from my afterthoughts.  Confused? You’ll see what I mean.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Q&A’s

Questions: May I ask you one question about SEO? What do you think about PR calculating? Is it really possible to achieve a PR 6 with 19 backlinks from a website that also has a PR 6? I mean, if I write 19 articles for EzineArticles.com, will my new website also achieve a PR 6?

Reference: http://www.fuzzone.com/blog/346/search-marketing/how-to-calculate-your-pagerank/

Is it a good idea to make backlinks from one site with a high PR, (for example, write articles to ezinearticles.com), or is it better to get backlinks from different sites? For example, EzineArticles, forum signatures, bookmarking, comments on blogs, etc.?

Answers: There are many variables to how PR is calculated. Simply getting a few backlinks from a PR 6 site like EZA will not make your site a PR 6.

I recommend getting backlinks many different ways; through articles, forum postings, blog commenting, social bookmarking, etc.

Afterthought: For more competitive niches, you definitely want to vary your link building strategy. However, if you’re building a micro niche site in which you only need a few good backlinks, then submitting a few articles to EZA would do the trick in most cases.

Question: What is your opinion about article marketing? Is it possible to achieve Google’s first positions ONLY by writing articles to ezinearticles.com (The niches would be with low competition)?

Answer: I highly recommend article marketing. As long as your competition is low, it is possible to get to the first position of Google by submitting to EZA alone. However, keep in mind your anchor text would need to be the same keyword phrase for every article you submit, and getting to the first position will take time.

Afterthought: The less the competition, the easier and quicker it will be to rank at the top of Google. If you’ve been following along with me for a while now, you’ll remember it took me all but a week to get my micro niche site to the first position in Google for my main keyword phrase.

Questions: I submit my articles to additional directories but they’re rewrited by software, so all articles are different from 30% to 50%. So, all is well there, but a lot of them are NO FOLLOW backlinks, so about 30% of my backlinks will be not counted, and they will not affect my sites in any way?

I have seen that search engine rankings are more important than PR, because many times I have seen that on the 1st place is a website with 2 PR and some count of backlinks, and on 2nd place is a website well known with 6 PR and much more backlinks, and I have always wondered why? Looks like that second site should be on the first place with the same keyword?

About bookmarking, I have a question. Must I bookmark only my site’s first page? I want to get good rankings for my home page, and all my backlinks are directed to the home page, so I must keep doing the same? Or, could I redirect backlinks to other pages on my site? One more thing, what if I bookmark some of my ezine articles? I heard that is good for PR and search engine ranks because the links will make the link between my site, ezine and bookmarking? Is it worth doing that if those bookmarking sites are nofollow?

Answers: As long as the article is at least 30% different, then they should be fine. In most cases those backlinks from those articles would count, and as long as the links are DO FOLLOW then PR will get passed through to your site. No Follow links are still beneficial for rankings, though.

Yeah, more baclinks doesn’t mean higher rankings… all the time. Each baclink is weighted on varying factors; factors that include the site’s PR, relevance, type of backlink, etc.

One social bookmarking site I use (http://www.mmosocialnetwork.com) does give you a DO FOLLOW backlink. May want to check that one out. I’m sure there are others as well. Perhaps a quick Google search will present a few.

When bookmarking, it’s important to bookmark individual blog posts and not the home page. When building backlinks in general, you do want to build backlinks to your home page, but at the same time you want to build links to your internal pages as well.

Bookmarking to NO FOLLOW sites won’t help with PR but will help for rankings.

Afterthought: Just remember when bookmarking you also want to bookmark other people’s stuff… it’s best to keep a good mix rather than bookmarking only your pages. You’ll be seen as a spammer and could have your accounts deleted.

That concludes the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Q&A.

Note: I don’t proclaim to be an expert in any field, especially anything related to SEO. I only speak from personal experience and what I’ve done and am doing to increase my search engine rankings for the sites I have, including this one.

If you seek professional advice or the wisdom of a “guru”, you won’t find it here. Search Google.

Final Thoughts

I want to thank you for sticking with me through this lengthy post. I hope you got value from these questions and answers and can apply them to your own SEO efforts.

Ask Your Question!

Do you have a question that wasn’t covered here? What specific SEO question do you have and would like answered? Let me know in the comments below.

I look forward to answering your questions!

The following is a guest post by Jonathan Scott. If you like to write for this blog, please contact me.

No matter what you’re trying to sell on the internet, you need traffic. If you want to make money, you need to get it in front of people. The internet is the best solution when it comes to selling stuff  because you can sell to the entire world. But, you need traffic, otherwise you’re not going to sell anything.

I am going to give you some tips on how to generate more traffic fast while helping your search engine rankings at the same time. Everything I’m about to show you is completely free and works very well.

When getting traffic to your website, you want traffic quickly but you also want to be around for the long haul, right? Here are some strategies that will allow you to do both.

Press Release Marketing

A lot of people don’t think their website or what they are offering is worthy enough to do a press release. If you think that, let me tell you that you are wrong. You have just as much to offer as a Fortune 500 Company. Press releases offer you the opportunity to get A LOT of traffic and backlinks fast.

You get this traffic because the press release directories you submit to syndicate your press release to other websites automatically. If you do a search for just about anything these days, you will notice a news section within the search results. With the right keywords, your press release could be sitting nicely on the first page of Google, Yahoo, or Bing in as little as 24 hours.

Here are some press release sites to submit to: PRWeb (Paid, but the BEST), PRLog.org, Free-Press-Releases, I-Newswire, and 1-888-press-release.

Social Bookmarking

This is a great strategy for both traffic and backlinks. A Good amount of people search these sites looking for information, tips, and advice that they may not find via the search engines. Take DIGG for instance. This site gets massive amounts of traffic. The key to sites like DIGG is submitting content that will get promoted and moved up to the homepage.

To do that you want to submit content that has a really good chance of getting to the home page. Submitting your own website will not make this happen. People on these sites like entertaining, controversial or newsworthy topics that they can actually comment on. Submit things like your press release, videos, or a guest blog post you did. Some other big players in social bookmarking include Stumbleupon, Del.icio.us, and Reddit.

Video Marketing

This is huge! I put this third because it takes a little longer to put a video together if you have never done this. You DON’T even need expensive software to do this. Are you on a PC? Use Windows Movie Maker (it comes free on every PC). Are you on a mac? Use iMovie. Free tools are great. Use them!

Video Marketing is huge because we now live in a video society. From YouTube to HULU to NetFlix online movie streaming. It’s no longer foreign to go online to watch a video, movie or TV show. As the world uses the internet more and more to watch videos, this gives you an opportunity to show them what you have to offer. And, it’s all Free. If you’re not sure how to create a simple video, get this Traffic Training Course that walks you through the whole process.

Some great video sites to submit to are: YouTube, Vimeo, Revver, and 5min.

Article Marketing

Article marketing will never be dead. I don’t know about you, but I still see Ezine Articles in the top 5 of some search results. Other article directories have the power to get ranked highly as well. Submitting your article to the top article directories gives you great high authority backlinks, and you get traffic from these sites as well.

Here are some top article directories to submit to: Ezine Articles, Go Articles, Articlesbase, Article Dashboard, and ISnare.

Forum Marketing

Forum marketing is great when it comes to backlinks and improving your search engine rankings. Of course you want to participate in your niche forums. Participating in your niche forums is a great way to find new customers, and you also learn what is needed in that industry. That gives you an opportunity to fill a void and quickly become an expert in the niche.

But, I use forums for backlinks. Just make sure you use your forum signature correctly to get the backlinks.

These are a just a few great ways to generate targeted traffic to your website and increase your search engine rankings at the same time. I have more secrets to show you in my new Step by Step Traffic Training Course. You get 12 hours of video showing you exactly how to generate traffic fast and increase your search engine rankings. I haven’t even talked about software marketing, pad marketing, classified ads, RSS Feeds, or Web 2.0 websites.

If you’re like me, seeing is believing and I learn better by seeing and then doing. Take advantage of this amazing video training. Watch over the shoulder of an SEO Professional as you are shown step by step how to properly do the things I just talked about and more. What’s great about video is you can watch it over and over again until it sinks in. Go check out this awesome Traffic Training Course and learn how to get targeted traffic in as little as 24 hours. Go there now.

About the author: Jonathan Scott is an SEO professional who has been helping small businesses and individuals generate more quality traffic and get high search engine rankings since 2006. He has a new step by step traffic training video series showing you how to get traffic fast and increase your search engine rankings at the same time. Check out his traffic training course.

Summer has quickly come and gone, and with temperatures dropping to the low 60′s here in Central PA, Fall is fast approaching. I’m actually looking forward to it and to the new opportunities that await. What season do you like best? What do you have to look forward to?

With time always moving, it’s important that we make the best of the time we have and take advantage of every opportunity. I say that for myself just as much as for you.

With that in mind, take a look at these posts from last month, and if you see an opportunity to improve your internet business or your life in any way, grab it.

AshMax – The Perfect Work From Home Opportunity?

Learn Affiliate Marketing Today

Marketing Your Online Business Effectively

What are Backlinks, and Why Do I Need Them?

How to Properly Use Backlinks to Increase Search Engine Rankings

5 Link Building Myths EXPOSED

Thanks again for being a reader of my blog. If you haven’t yet connected with me on Facebook or Twitter, I invite you to do so. You’ll get a peek into my personal life and what I’m all about.

Talk soon…

If you own a website, then you’re probably aware of the term backlink. It’s in every website owner’s interest to become familiar with backlinks and how they affect your website and overall online business.

What Are Backlinks?

Backlinks, which are sometimes called inbound links, are incoming links to either a specific web page or an entire website (home page). These incoming links to your website are important to search engines because their ranking algorithms measure the number of backlinks a website or web page has and ranks the web pages with more backlinks in a higher position.

Consider each backlink a vote for your site or web page. The more backlinks you get, the more votes you have, and search engines are going to rank your website or web page higher in their search listings.

Why Do I Need Backlinks?

Your goal as a webmaster and online business owner is to get as many “votes” for your website as possible so that it becomes popular in the eyes of search engines.

Once your site becomes popular, it’s then considered an authority. Obviously this is important for every website owner as they’re goal should be to stick out and stand above the thousands of other websites in their chosen field (niche).

How Do I know How Many Backlinks I Have?

There are numerous tools to determine how many incoming links a website has. Utilizing at least one of these tools is important as this will help you analyze not only your own progess but also your competition.

I personally prefer Yahoo! Site Explorer. You can view all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search, view the most popular pages from any site, view the total number of backlinks to a site, and more.

Now, another method to check backlinks is to login to your Google Webmasters account. I highly recommend getting an account as you can learn a lot about your website and how it’s indexed, discover any errors that your website is causing, and much more. The problem with using your Google Webmasters account to view the number of backlinks your site has is that Google doesn’t show all of them. Supposedly, they’re supposed to now, but people are still reporting different. So, I would say to use Yahoo! Site Explorer for the time being, or you can also use one of these other tools:

• http://seopro.com.au/free-seo-tools/link-checker/
• http://validrank.com/pages/backlinks-checker.php
• http://www.seocentro.com/tools/search-engines/link-popularity.html

Your goal with getting backlinks is twofold – You want as many backlinks to your site as possible, and you also want to get more backlinks than your competition, which is any website in your niche that is currently ranking higher than you in search engines for your targeted keywords.

What’s Next?

My next post is going to cover the relationship between backlinks and search engine rankings and how to properly use backlinks to get the most positive affect from them.

Still not sure what importance backlinks serve? Got any questions regarding backlinks or anything else? Go ahead… ask away…

Creating an internet business website is just the first step to a long road of making money online. Once your website is up and you’re ready to do business (regardless of what business you’re engaging in), it is then time to market your online business.

The first part of marketing effectively on the internet is making sure your website looks professional. There’s no sense in spending time driving traffic to your site if it’s not appealing and people just leave right away. I recommend using WordPress as your website platform and then buying a professional WordPress Theme that you can customize.

Once your website is squared away, it’s time to get the word out. I’m a huge advocate of article marketing and is the primary marketing method that I use. The simple reason is that it works, and it works well on many levels. Articles bring in direct traffic, but they also add backlinks to your site and can be syndicated across the web by others providing even more backlinks and direct traffic.

Another effective marketing method is using videos. Now, I must admit that I don’t use this method near as much as I should, but I’ve noticed in the past that it has brought in traffic. If used correctly, video marketing can be used to generate leads for your business and bring in sales. Plus, videos can also provide backlinks to your content.

One thing you need to understand if you hope to rank well in search engines, specifically Google (which should be your ultimately goal), is that Google is looking for new and relevant content. What this means for your website is that it should be updated with new and relevant content on a regular basis. And, if you took my advice about using WordPress, you’re ready to use your website as a blog, which makes it exceptionally easy to keep updated with fresh content.

Another component that your online business should have is a newsletter. This allows you to keep your visitors and potential customers up to date with what’s going on. This also allows you to market products and services that are relevant to your site and newsletter.

As you probably noticed when I covered article and video marketing, I mentioned about getting backlinks. Once everything is in place and you’re ready to get traffic to your internet business website, backlinks are the glue that will hold everything together.

Search engine rankings… Traffic… Sales…

Backlinks are the key to everything. I can’t stress it enough. Article and video marketing are just two of the many ways to build backlinks to your site. AND… building backlinks through many varying marketing methods is the key to marketing your online business effectively.

My next posts (I don’t know how many yet) are going to cover backlinks in much detail. Everything is going to be broken down into segments, starting with what exactly backlinks are and the proper use of them… all the way to how to get them and much more.

This was spurred due to an influx of questions in my email inbox from people reading my blog and asking about backlinks, Page Rank, keywords, etc. I figured there is a good change that maybe some of you have similar questions or concerns, so I want to address everything publicly so that you’re all aware about this stuff so you can apply it to your own internet business website.

Be on the lookout for the first installment coming soon.

In the meantime, if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below…

This post is going to contain the simple, yet effective techniques I have learned during my time online to generate targeted traffic and generate sales. These are strategies I’m using for my own online business and have found to be working well and improving over time.

If you’ve been following along with us, my last post was about a struggling internet marketer who is reaching out in a desperate attempt to generate sales with his affiliate marketing website.

One of the questions asked was, “How do I drive traffic to my site that can generate sales?”

This is going to be the topic of this post, and I’ll be going very in-depth, starting with the basics and moving towards the more advanced strategies.

I apologize in advance if this turns into a very lengthy post, but please bare with me as it will be well worth your time to read through everything.

So let’s begin, shall we?

The very first thing you must understand is that everything revolves around keywords. Keywords are the life-blood of websites and how they become seen by internet users using search engines.

SEO (search engine optimization) is the foundation of using keywords effectively, and this is how you’re going to target specific internet users to generate sales online.

Rather than going in-depth on the subject of SEO on this post, I have a few previous posts that should cover this subject thoroughly enough for you to understand. Please check them out, and if you have questions use the comment section:

• Web Page Optimization
• Easy Free Keyword Research
• Discover Commercial Intention of Keyword Phrases

Optimizing your web page for specific keywords is critical and is the foundation for which you’ll build the rest of your marketing efforts upon. Seriously, nothing else matters until you’ve done this. Don’t ignore it!

One thing I’ve learned is that backlinks are KING. Okay, so content is still KING, but backlinks are a very close second, and here’s why. Backlinks to your website or web pages are what helps to drive your site or pages higher in search engine results pages when someone searches for a specific keyword phrase. See how this is coming together?

Without building backlinks to your site, you won’t generate enough traffic to your site to generate sales. Now I know what you’re thinking here. There are other ways to generate traffic without building backlinks, and that’s true. However, the best traffic is free search engine traffic, and the only way to get it is to rank on the first page in Google, or Yahoo and Bing. I’d focus on Google as it produces over 70% of search traffic across the entire web.

Now that you understand the importance of building backlinks and getting your site or web pages to the top of search engines, you now need to start the backlink building process. There are numerous ways to go about this, and luckily for you, I’ve written many posts on the subject. Here they are:

• Improve Search Engine Rankings the Easy Way
• Get 80 High PR One Way Backlinks Each Month
• Build Long-Term Traffic to Your Work From Home Site with Article Marketing
• Build Your Online Business with Article Marketing
• Forum Signatures
• Free Traffic System

Remember when building backlinks that you want to use your keywords for the web page you’re linking to. This is the only way that your backlinks are going to be effective in boosting your search engine rankings.

Okay, so you now have  a great start in getting backlinks; however, I’m not done just yet.

Well… sorta. I have a post planned that will discuss another very effect backlink building strategy and will be posted soon, so stay tuned for that.

Hopefully right now you have a solid understanding of doing keyword research and web page optimization, and how it all ties in to building backlinks. This is all part of building targeted website traffic that will result in sales.

As always, if you have any questions about anything discussed here, leave a comment below.

My next post will discuss the second question asked by a struggling internet marketer, but in the meantime, start applying the tips I mentioned today to your website, and you’ll soon see an increase in traffic and internet income.

You may recall a previous post I wrote the end of last month about Angela Edward’s backlink service. Well, as it turns out, there’s a guy by the name of Paul Johnson who also provides a similar service.

Paul’s service is almost identical to Angela’s. The only difference is that Paul provides 50 High PR one way backlinks every month, opposed to Angela’s 30. Another difference is that Paul’s backlinks  come from PR 4 and 5 sites, as well as higher PR sites. The lowest PR that Angela provides is 6, up to PR 9.

I highly recommend both services for website owners that are looking to increase their search engine ranking for their chosen keywords. With each site you’ll be able to create a backlink that links back to your site. The more one-way backlinks pointing to your site from high PR sites, the higher your website will rank in Google for that keyword phrase.

Getting quality, high PR one way backlinks to your website is critical, and Angela and Paul have provided a way for us to do just that for a very nominal fee. They’ve done the hard work in finding these sites. All we have to do is go create our links and watch our rankings increase. It really is that easy.

Get High PR Backlinks Now:

Angela’s Backlink Service (Note: Angela’s site is currently offline and is not providing packets anymore. I have kept the link just in case she decides to start back up again).

Paul’s Backlink Service

Both services combined give you 80 Paul’s service gives you 50 high PR one way backlinks every month.  That’s a huge steal.

Remember, you need high PR backlinks to your site. If you don’t jump on this opportunity to increase your search engine rankings, your competitors will. I personally use both with very positive results for all of my websites.

I’ve been using a backlink building service to improve search engine rankings for my main website and this blog. Over the course of my backlink building career, I’ve generated over 20,000 backlinks to my site. That’s taken a huge amount of time and effort.

The problem with building backlinks through article marketing, social bookmarking, blog commenting, etc. is that it just takes too much time. Plus, not all of those backlinks are going to carry much weight.

You see, backlinks are more about the quality than they are the quantity. A lot of low quality baclinks aren’t going to produce massive results. However, a small portion of high quality backlinks will.

I’ve just managed to get my website on the first page of Google for the keyword phrase “work from home opportunities” (without quotes). This blog is also on the first page for the phrase “work from home resources” (without quotes). Both of these terms are my main keywords that I’m targeting, and they both have a HUGE amount of competition. See screenshots below…

Before using this backlink building service, my website was jumping up and down on the second page of search results. I’ve manage to improve search engine rankings for my site and blog thanks to Angela Edwards’ Backlink Building Service. (Note: link has been removed as Angela is no longer offering this service).

Angela’s service provides 30 PR6-PR8 sites that allow do-follow backlinks. All you have to do is go through and sign up for the sites and place your links… that’s it. For only $5 a month, you get 30 high PR backlinks to your site.

This is the best $5 I ever spent. With only one month in, I’ve already improved my search engine rankings with great results. I can’t wait to see what the second month will result in.

If you’re struggling to improve search engine rankings for your website, sign up (no longer available) for Angela’s backlink building service. I promise you won’t be disappointed, and you’ll enjoy more traffic and sales from your website.

I’ve decided to start doing a roundup of all of last month’s posts. This is in case you happened to miss one along the way for whatever reason, and it never hurts to refresh your memory with an idea.

I’ll start from the beginning of the month and move to the most recent. So here goes…

Twitter TweetMe Plugin Installed – ReTweet My Posts

This cool Twitter plugin is for all my readers to share my posts with their followers if they feel what I have to say is worthy of being ReTweeted.

Free Traffic Getting SEO Blog Software from Jeff Johnson

If you’re starting up a new blog, or you have a blog that could use more traffic, then you have to get this plugin. It’s free to download and will optimize your blog for the search engines and pull in laster targeted traffic.

List of 31 High Quality Article Directores to Submit Your Articles To

Here’s my personal list of article directories I use. There’s certainly more out there, so don’t feel that this is an all-inclusive list.

HostGator – Cheap CPanel Web Hosting – Host Unlimited Domains

Learn about my experience of switching web hosts and why Host Gator was my preferred choice. If you’re looking for reliable hosting at a super affordable rate, then this is a post you don’t want to miss.

Advertise Your Website on Leading Make Money Online Blog

If you’re looking for big-time exposure for your make money online site, then you must check this out. Learn how to get your site seen by thousands of targeted visitors and make more sales.

GetResponse – My Preferred Email Autoresponder Service

An online marketer knows the importance of using an autoresponder. It’s necessary if you’re going to use email marketing to bring in more sales, and you should be. Learn more about GetResponse and why I chose them.

Need Help with Web Site Promotion & Internet Marketing?

If you’re struggling to do all the necessary tasks of marketing your website or just don’t have the time, leave it up to professionals. Learn more about my partnership with a proven company that can handle all of your internet marketing needs.

Free Directory Submission – Obtain High PR Backlinks

A huge source of high PR web directories that you can submit your site to for free. Get more backlinks, higher search engine rankings and more sales.

Online Branding

Branding is essential in the online world. Learn more about you and your business and why it’s beneficial.

That concludes the month of June posts. Feel free to browse older posts by clicking on a particular month in the Archives section on the left sidebar.

Also, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to stay up to date with all of my latest posts.

If you own a website then I’m sure you know the importance of obtaining backlinks from high PR sites. If you’re not aware of this, then listen up. It’s important to get as much free organic traffic from the search engines as possible. One indirect way to do this is through free directory submission.

There are literally thousands of web directories available for you to submit your site to. Some are obviously better than others, and you’ll want to focus on the high PR directories. Getting backlinks from high PR directories will not only increase your PR (Page Rank), but also increase your search engine rankings.

This means more traffic to your site. I’m always searching for ways to get more traffic from the search engines. It’s the lifeblood of any website or internet based business. As I was searching I came across a site with a huge list of high PR web directories to submit my site to. Some I have heard of and already have my site listed there, and others I haven’t.

I’ve been going through this list the last couple of days and making use of the free directory submission. Some directories require a payment, and others require a reciprocal link. I’ll settle for a reciprocal if I have to, but I opt not to when possible. I also don’t pay to be listed. There’s plenty of free directories to go around.

You can view this list by going to High PR Directory List. Now the point here is not to get traffic from the directories, although you might get some. The point here is to build backlinks to your site from high PR sites. When it comes to traffic and ranking well in the search engines, especially Google, it’s all about the backlinks. The more the better.

So do your website a favor and make good use of free directory submissions. Once approved, you’ll have built more high PR backlinks to your site and should see your site slowly moving up in the search engines. Remember to use your keywords in the Title of your submissions.

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