This is a guest post by Sam Bakker. If you would like to guest post on this blog, please Contact me.

When I first started my own home-based business a few years ago, I thought that no matter what my first home business website would work. I thought I had everything important in place and the website was looking great. But the reality of my situation had to sink in eventually; even though I had an excellent website, and what I thought was successful home business information I was missing visitors, rendering my online presence useless.

Two years later, I took a second look, but this time with a careful look at all options. I would learn about Search Engine Optimization and how it can influence a business. Through it, I was able to add life to my websites as well as a sizeable amount of money.

If your website is currently suffering from a lack of visitors, the first place to look for answers is your website’s keywords and their search engine performance. Often we can build links for our website, writing content with the intention of ranking it. But none of that will matter if you don’t have the right keywords. There is a lot of money to be made in internet marketing if this step is taken seriously.

First of all, check the keywords you decided to compete for when you started your campaign. Review their usefulness and relative competition. Once you have done so, visit Google’s Adwords Keywords tool or use WordTracker. These tools will help you see clearly where opportunities in your niche could be for keywords.

If you are able to find some additional keywords that you should be ranking your website for, construct a plan outlining what on-page and off-page content will need to be produced. This is to get your website appearing on the front page for that term. Once your plan has been completed, stay focused on the job at hand. To rank higher in the search engines, you need to be consistently taking action.

As internet marketers, we often get excited and dive into projects without spending enough time working through our foundations. Looking for keywords is an essential step; a website cannot succeed in the search engines without it. Make sure you take the time to review your website’s keywords and take action if necessary so that your website doesn’t stay hidden from your potential customers.

About the Author: Sam Bakker has been in the internet marketing industry for the past 7 years. If you would like to find out more about Sam or learn some free internet marketing tips then you can visit his website at SamBakker.com

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.

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.

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 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.

Was this article helpful? Leave your comments below…

I’m all for getting more traffic to my blog. Traffic is a good thing, especially when you’re trying to sell products online as an affiliate. You won’t make sales if you don’t bring in any traffic.

I’ve been a subscriber of Jeff Johnson’s for quite some time now, and he provides some top notch tactics on getting more traffic and sales. And believe me, I don’t use the phrase “top notch” lightly at all.

Jeff knows his stuff and tests everything he does. It also helps to have a team working for you, which of course, Jeff does. He had his team put together new software that could get more traffic to his blogs by optimizing them for search engines and utilizing various plugins.

Jeff provides a lot of awesome content on his Underground Training Lab blog, and for free. He’s really a down to earth guy that enjoys sharing what he’s learned with others. I’ve learned a lot just from his videos. If you’ve never seen any of Jeff’s videos before, you can check them out on YouTube.

Jeff decided to give away his SEO blog software for free. I’ve already downloaded my copy and plan to install it here on this blog shortly. I wanted to make all of my readers aware of this software and how it can really benefit your blog by bringing in more traffic, and hopefully more sales.

You can grab your copy of Jeff’s Free Traffic-Getting SEO blog software here. All you have to do is simply enter your email address… no name required. You’ll also get full instructions on installing the simple plugin and setting everything up.

If you don’t yet have a Wordpress blog setup and want to take advantage of this software, simply sign up for a hosting account through HostGator, and I’ll help you set up your new blog and software. HostGator is my recommended web hosting company as they provide the best support, and their prices are very hard to beat.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on how this software is bringing in more traffic for you. Did you find it easy to install and setup? How much more traffic are you getting from it?

Once I get it up and running on here, I’ll be back with an update.

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.