It’s no secret that if you want to get traffic to a website, you need to get it ranked well in search engines, especially Google. The first thing that needs to happen is to get your site indexed, meaning that the search engine’s spider has visited your site and has added it to their index of web pages. This is commonly referred to as a search engine spider crawling a website.

When you build a brand new website, like a niche site, and have all the core components in place and are ready to share it with the world, your number one goal at this point would be to get it indexed by Google. Period.

The problem, though, is that there are many misconceptions on how to go about doing this. There are varying opinions among beginner webmasters and those trolling around the forums. I’m here to set the record straight and tell you the wrong and right way to get your site indexed by Google.

The Wrong Way

If you’ve been online for even a small amount of time, you may have seen in various forums or even have had people offer you a service to submit your website to 1,000′s of search engines. Let me just state for the record that submitting a website to the search engines, including Google, is a complete waste of time, and an even bigger waste of money if you fall prey to the so-called “Gurus” who claim this is necessary.

Submitting your website to the search engines is a thing of the past. It was once effective, but it’s no longer necessary. There is talk that doing so may even harm your website in some way. I’m not going to tell you that this is true because I honestly don’t know. But, what I do know is that if you go this route you could end up wasting a lot of time and getting nowhere.

There is a better, easier, and most of all, free way to get your site indexed by Google and other search engines. Not that any other search engine really matters, but hey, some people like Bing for some reason. Obviously you know where I stand.

The Right Way

We already know that your goal is to get your site crawled by search engine spiders, as discussed earlier. The way search engine spiders work is by following links on any given page. They follow and visit web page links that they come across, and if they find any links that are new (meaning, they haven’t been added to the index), they then proceed to add them to the index.

Easy enough, right?

So, where do we go from here?

My Approach

As you may know, I’m currently building a new niche site over at http://getbackyourexadvice.com. The relationship niche is booming, so I thought I’d try to get a little piece of the pie, meanwhile helping to mend a broken a heart or two at the same time. We’ve all been in that awful situation before, right? I know I have.

Social Bookmarking

The first thing I do to start building backlinks that are going to get noticed by search engines and draw the spiders to my site is to social bookmark my site to some of the do-follow sites. Bookmarking to the “do follow” sites is important here because you want the spiders to follow through and visit your links so that your site can be included in the index.

I know there are a ton of social bookmarking sites out there, but I use socialmarker to make the whole process super simple. There is also IMAutomater as well, which offers a free and paid service. Definitely worth checking out.

High PR Backlinks

Okay, so after you get some good backlinks from social sites, your website should be indexed shortly after. Usually within anywhere from a few days to a week, up to two weeks tops. An easy way to tell if your site has been indexed is to go to Google and type in “site:yourdomain” into the search bar, without quotes. Just replace “yourdomain” with your full website URL. If no results come up, that means your site has not been indexed yet. Just hang tight if it isn’t.

Once your site has been idexed (and even if it isn’t yet), start building more quality backlinks to it.

I’ve been using Paul and Angela’s high PR backlink packets to build quality backlinks to my sites for over a year now. I’m also using these services to get backlinks for my new niche site as well.

I definitely recommend utilizing sites like these to build quality links as this can improve your site’s search engine rankings and Page Rank (PR).

Article Marketing

I’m a huge advocate for article marketing. It’s a great way to build quality links to your site and drive direct traffic from article directories at the same time. I’ve done my fair share for this site and will continue to do so. I’ve also done a lot of article marketing when I was doing freelance work. I learned a thing or two in the process, so I know what works and what brings results.

Having said that, I haven’t yet had time to do any sort of article marketing for my new niche site. I may end up outsourcing the task of writing the articles to someone else. Outsourcing is a viable option for anyone who doesn’t have the time or just doesn’t want to take the time to do a task themselves.

Over to You

What I shared is just the beginning stages for building quality links. And obviously, there is more than one way to get a site indexed by Google.

So, what strategy do you employ to get your site indexed, and what do you to start building backlinks to your site?

Let me know by leaving a comment…

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.

As a continuation of my Getting Traffic to Your Website post, I want to do the same thing with the subject of building links to your website. A lot of people are confused about what type of links you should get, what keywords to use in the anchor text, etc., especially if they’re just starting out.

I’ve been asked a number of questions 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.

Building Links to Your Website Q&A’s

Questions: “…keep in mind your anchor text would need to be the same keyword phrase for every article you submit…”

I want to be sure that I understand you clearly, you mean my anchor text in author’s box, or you mean I must write articles only about that particular product. Let’s say if it will be “red lights”, so all my articles should be written only about “red lights” and the anchor text should repeat in every article (if the article is 500 words then it should be repeated about 4-5 times)?

Or, you mean I must put that anchor text, my keyword “red lights”, each time in my author’s box (I’m doing it each time)? And, for example, I could write articles not only about “red lights” but also about “blue lights”, “economical lights”, “save electricity with economical lights” etc. and at the end in author’s box always put my “red lights” keyword?

“…and getting to the first position will take time…”

Could you tell me how long it may take? Weeks? Months? A year? Tell me please from experience. Thanks a lot!

Answers: The anchor text for the link in your author’s box. The article can be about whatever as long as it’s relevant to your website in some way. What you mentioned as far as different topics would be fine. In order to get the fastest results for the keywords you want to rank for, your anchor text should be all the same for the link in your author’s box that you have pointing back to your site.

As far as ranking, once Google indexes your site, which shouldn’t take more than a week or so after writing articles, your site will appear in search results. Depending on the competition of the keyword phrase you’re aiming for will determine where exactly your site ranks. The more backlinks you create through writing the articles, the more authority your site will get, and the higher up in rankings it will be.

Afterthought: As you can see I had a previous discussion with this person before these questions were asked as some of my previous answers were quoted in the questions.

Questions:  What if I put my articles not only to Ezinearticles.com but to the other directories like: articlesbase.com, goarticles.com, articlealley.com, ideamarketers.com and to other more known directories (most of them have 3 or 4 PR, but Ezine has 6 PR and DO FOLLOW. In my case, total of all different directories would be 10. Let me explain how I’m doing this, I put 10 articles to Ezine, 10 to articlesbase, and so on, to reach 100, and of course 100 backlinks. With micro niche and with low competition, do you have any idea how many articles/backlinks I need to create to achieve 1 spot in Google? 200, 500, 1000? And, how long it may take, I’m only asking approx., because I don’t have any idea. I’m new to this… some say a few months and some say 6 months, or even a year.

What you think about this method, may I really reach a first position on Google, with micro niche and with low competition? Besides, ArticlesBase and ArticleAlley are NO FOLLOW. So, is it worth placing my articles there? I understand Google will not count those backlinks and my site’s PR will not be affected by their page rank’s 6 and 5?

Would you still recommend to try other sources, not only this method but also forums, blog comments, bookmarking (By the way, I just find out that all well-known bookmarking sites are NO FOLLOW?

Thanks a lot!

Answers:  Submitting your articles to other directories will help in getting direct traffic, so there are benefits to doing so. Unfortunately, as far as backlinks, not all will be counted by Google because the content is exactly the same. If you want those backlinks to count from those other directories, you’ll have to re-word your articles a bit to make them unique from the rest.

There is no way of knowing how many backlinks you need to gain a specific PR. Also, there is no way of knowing how many baclinks you need to gain the top position in Google. There are so many variables at play. All you need to know is that the more backlinks you build, the better chance you’ll have of getting there. Also keep in mind that search engine rankings are far more important than PR.

No Follow links will not help with PR, but they are still valuable and should be obtained because they do help with search engine positioning.

There are a few Do Follow social bookmarking sites. Visit SocialMarker to find out what they are. I do recommend posting in forums, blog commenting and social bookmarking as well. Diversifying your links is very important, rather than getting them all from the same source.

Afterthought: I didn’t take the time to substantiate all the claims made in the questions section (regarding the No Follow claims), but for the sake of this post it’s irrelevant. The important part is the answers to those questions as they really have no bearing on those claims, and the fact that getting No Follow links are still important as I pointed out.

Tip: One social bookmarking site I use is MMO Social Network, which is a great community of bloggers where members can vote and comment on submitted blog posts. And, the site is Do Follow.

Questions: I would like to ask you about related backlinks. Do I have to place them only on related theme websites? Yesterday I have checked and those websites, with my niche theme, are with very low PRs and Alexa ranks. Is it better to place my backlinks to these websites, which are with lower stats, or better to websites which are totally not related but are with much higher stats – PRs and Alexa ranks? My aim is to appear on the Google 1 spot.

And, yesterday I tried backlinking from forums, but I want to be sure that I do exactly the same things as others do. I’m creating an account, placing my backlink in my profile, and then I’m creating my signature with a backlink. Then I’m going to the forum, finding a favorable theme for me, and leaving a post with my signature and backlink (of course, I’m checking for rel=nofollow) and repeating it 4 times, so from one related website there would be 5 backlinks. Of course, later I can come back and leave more posts. Since I’m new to this, I just want to be sure that I’m doing everything correct in this backlinking method. Maybe there are other tricks?

Also, I have checked that Google indexed those site’s themes and posts only after two or three months. Does that mean that my backlinks won’t be counted for that period of time?

Answers: Related backlinks matter more if you’re getting them from low PR sites. However, building high PR backlinks, relevancy doesn’t matter.

As long as the links in your signature are formatted correctly (<a href=”http://www.yoursite.com”>Keyword</a>) then you’ll be good.

If the sites you’re leaving backlinks on don’t get indexed very often, then your links will be found only when Google indexes them again. Usually, forums and blogs are indexed quite regularly.

If you’re looking for a way to build high PR backlinks, I wrote a post about how I do so here: Get High PR Backlinks.

Afterthought: You may be wondering how you can get your links indexed really quickly, especially if you do use Angela and Paul’s backlink packets (see link above). The answer to this is towards the end of this post, so keep reading.

Question: What do you think about pinging? For example, if the pages where I place my backlinks will be indexed only after a month or two, will pinging help get them indexed faster? Sometimes I use Ping-o-Matic (my sites are not blogs), do you know this site? Or, maybe you know something better?

Answer: I actually use Ping-o-Matic all the time, and it works well. Pinging is a great way to get links and exposure from other sites, not to mention that Google will index those backlinks and your site very fast. There are other pinging sites out there, but they all do the same thing.

Afterthought: It doesn’t matter what pinging site you use, and if you’re pinging your WordPress blog when you create a new post, there’s a list of ping sites you can update so that all those sites will get pinged automatically. What this person was asking, however, was about pinging a site that wasn’t a blog, which can be done.

Question: Do you know why some people make backlinks for their articles with their site’s backlinks instead of to their site directly? For example, Angela has an article at GoArticles.com, and I have checked that it is on the first page, and has a lot of backlinks. What is the strategy here? Why didn’t she build them straight to her website instead of through the article directory? Is it some circle of backlinks, which linking not only to her website, but to another and another, and after all, some of them to her website?

I have one ezinearticles.com article, which is on the first page, but my website is on the fourth page of Google. Is it better to start making backlinks for that article rather than for my website and make some circle of links?

Thanks a lot! I really appreciate your help.

Answer: This is a common strategy used by many to get their articles ranked in the top position on Google. EzineArticles has a lot of authority with Google, so it really wouldn’t take too many backlinks to your articles to get them at the top for your targeted keywords. Once they’re at the top, those articles are going to bring in a lot of readers. Most of course will be inclined to click on the link in your resource box to your website.

Not only that, but the backlink/s you have in your resource box is now going to have a lot more weight, which will benefit your site in the long-run.

In your case, I would get backlinks to your website to get it up towards the top with your article. However, at the same time, getting more backlinks to your article should in itself make your website move up as well. Doing both would be beneficial.

Hope that all makes sense.

Afterthought: Does my answer make sense to you? Is there something that’s not quite clear? Let me know in the comments section.

Question: Can I make my back links with the same anchor/keyword text, which would be linking to different pages, but to the same site? For example, the same anchor would be linking to the main/first page – index.html and to my other site’s pages, let’s say – products.html? Is that okay? Or, is it better to use other anchor text? I’m asking because the main keyword is targeted on the first page and production’s page as well, so it is the same keyword. I want to do more backlinks to my other site’s pages… I heard that is better for rankings and will not look spammy, but I am not sure about this? Thanks!

Answer: Yes, that’s perfectly fine. I do the same thing.

It’s important to “deep link”, meaning, creating links that point to deep pages of your site, not just the home page. So, you’re correct in your thinking. You want to build backlinks to other pages of your site, which will get them ranking in search engines as well for those keywords.

Afterthought: Using the same keyword to link to inner page as your home page is okay also. I also do that, and there’s nothing wrong with that if you’re targeting the same keyword for a particular inner page.

Questions: Maybe you know how many backlinks I should place on other site’s pages? Some people say that from one website’s page two backlinks are more than enough, and others say that leaving more is also possible. For example, if it is a forum posting, each time when I post, I leave my backlink in the signature, so if I post 5 posts in the same page it will be counted as 5 backlinks right? Whether, there is a limit and 1 or 2 backlinks from that site’s one page is more than enough, and it’s better to go and place another backlink from the same site, but from a different page/forum theme in that case?

I also heard that for PR, for rankings, Google will count only ONE backlink from one site, even if I post a hundred of them. I heard that it can be compared to voting. One person – one vote. One website – one backlink?

Thanks in advance for your help, I really appreciate it.

Answers: I wouldn’t post more than 2 or 3 to the same profile page. Those posting 5 or more are just inviting the site owner to shut down their profile and everyone else’s as well.

Regarding forum postings, usually each time you post, those backlinks will be counted. So, if you have just one backlink in your signature and you make 5 posts, then in theory that would be 5 backlinks. You can keep posting in the same site, but it’s a good idea to choose different themes (threads) to post in.

Regarding PR and backlinks from one site, I can’t confirm if this is true or not. I do know that if you create, say 3 backlinks on a high PR site, all 3 links should count. What I do is link to different pages of my site, all with different anchor text. This is effective in boosting those inner pages PR and rankings. So, based on that, I would say it doesn’t matter how many links, as long as you vary your anchor text if linking to the same page, and also vary the pages you’re linking to. I would recommend not linking to the same page more than once per site, but it’s okay to link to different pages from the same site, and they’ll all count.

Afterthought: Again, the first question was referencing Angela and Paul’s backlink packets, which I talk about in this post.

Question: May I ask you, what is your opinion about directories? Dmoz.org and the many others? I tried to put my main back link to about 30 different directories, with higher than 5 PR, but I see that is a long process to get them there. It could take few or more months. Some of them ask for link exchanging. If I want to get a backlink to their directory, I must also place their backlink on my site.

What do you think about link exchanging? I heard that Google doesn’t like this. However, is it true that these sites are good for my site?

Answer: For the high PR directories this is okay, but I would recommend trying to get your links only on sites that don’t require a reciprocal link. Not all will, and it will take some time to sift through the sites.

Here’s a blog post with some links to directories that you can check out: Directory Sites.

Afterthought: In retrospect, it’s pretty pointless to submit your site to directories… period. It does take a ton of time, and that time could be much better spent getting better backlinks. I don’t bother with link directories anymore, but I know there will always be those who do.

Questions: Could you give me advice on how many different backlinks I can put in my forum signature? How many backlinks can I post, and for other ways, for example, blog comments? I saw that some put 5 or 7 different links to their signatures or in comments, is that okay? Will Google count them as 5 – 7 different back links from that page, or will it look too spammy? For example, I see Angela always uses two, “Angela” and “Backlinks” as anchor texts/backlinks.

And, I just thought, if I can post two different backlinks per one page like Angela, for example, on all my Ezinearticles.com articles are two backlinks but to the same url, for example, anchor text “white bear” to an inner page, and after few words use my url as the anchor text linking to my main domain page.

So, I’m thinking maybe I should change the last backlink to another anchor text? Let’s say, “white bear house” and linking to another inner page? It would be two different anchor texts with two different backlinks instead of one. What is your opinion about this question, should I go and change them all on my EzineArticles account?

Answers: As far as I know all backlinks are counted. It doesn’t matter that they all appear on the same page.

I sometimes use an anchor text link in the EZA resource box, and at the same time leave an open link to my site in the same resource box. The only difference is that the open link doesn’t have any anchor text. This isn’t a bad thing, and it’s smart to get some links this way. You don’t have to always do this, though.

What you could do is use different anchor text for the second link, so you’d be working to improve your ranking for 2 separate keyword phrases faster.

I wouldn’t go back and change them all as there’s nothing wrong doing them that way. In the future, think about what you want to accomplish and what keywords you want to target, and then plan your resource box accordingly.

Afterthought: To give an example, this would be a link with no anchor text: replaceyoursalary.com, as opposed to a link with anchor text: work from home.

Questions: Is there any difference between where backlinks are placed? Do they have different weight? For example, is there any difference between a profile backlink and an article backlink? Both sites, let’s say, have very similar ratings, the same PR and the same Alexa Rank. Is there any difference between where those backlinks are placed, do they have the same weight, for example profile links, article links, comment links and forum signature links?

Do they have different weight according to Google? If I want to appear on Google’s first spot and gain a high PR, are they all good?

Another thing, I’ve heard that Google crawls profiles very rarely so it’s better to ping them?

Answers: I can tell you that Google does consider where the backlink is located and holds different weight for each.

I can’t really tell you what gets higher weight than another, especially when it comes to an article author’s link versus a profile backlink. Like I have said before, there are many variables involved in how Google weighs backlinks.

However, I can tell you that a link within text is given more weight. For instance, if you can embed a link within an article, rather than after an article or somewhere else on the page, then it’s given more weight. But, you also have to factor the site’s authority, PR, etc. that the link is coming from.

So, if you’re worried about profile links where there’s no content and just a link, it probably doesn’t matter since those sites in general have authority and high PR. They would be better than getting an in-text link from a site with no authority. Hope that makes sense.

Yes, depending on the site, Google may not crawl your links. Usually from forum sites and other types of sites you won’t have a problem, but there are others that they’ll miss. There’s a neat way to get your backlinks indexed, and yes, pinging the sites using pingomatic.com is one of those ways. There’s a better way, though, but it’s very hard to explain.

Afterthought: Remember I said there was a way to get your links indexed really fast? I’m about to reveal the best way… so keep reading.

Question: How exactly do I check Google to see if my profile page with my backlink was indexed or not? Do I simply enter that profile’s URL into Google, and if it shows it, I can be assured that my backlink will be counted by Google? Or, maybe there is a better way to check this?

Also, how long will it take after pinging it with pingomatic.com? Is there any guarantee? Or, after some time I must return and recheck if Google has counted the link or not, and if not, I must re-ping that profile again?

Answer: I think the answer to all of your questions lies within this ebook: Backlink Bully (There it is!). It’s only $7 and explains a method to get your backlinks indexed quickly and you’ll also know exactly when those backlinks are indexed. I bought it about 2 months ago, and it has worked wonders for me. BTW, that’s not an affiliate link.

Afterthought: That’s the best $7 I ever spent so that I could make sure that my profile backlinks were being indexed and counted and have a good idea when that would take place. Again, that’s not an affiliate link. If you use Angela or Paul’s backlink packets, I highly recommend getting your copy of Backlink Bully.

That concludes the Link Building Q&A.

Note: I don’t proclaim to be an expert in any field, including building links to your website. I only speak from personal experience and what I’ve done and am doing to build links to 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 realize this was a VERY long post, and I thank you for sticking with me through it all. I hope you got value from these questions and answers and can apply them to your own link building efforts.

Ask Your Question!

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

I look forward to answering your questions!

Firstly, we all want to know How to Make Money Online, and one of the best ways I have found is by creating blogs. In this article I intend to show you how you too can learn How to Make Money Blogging by telling you how combining the techniques I have gathered from across the web helps to make me $$$ every day. Secondly, I am not trying to sell you my latest “Get Rich Quick” scheme because I don’t have one. Each eBook you read will have a wealth of information within them which will, without a doubt, help you to discover the secrets of How to Make Money Online. I am only going to tell you which ones out of the 100′s available you SHOULD read if you too want to make lots of money.

I use a 10 step guide to setting up and starting all of my blogs.

I will give you a list of the top 10 resources later that I use and recommend to everyone who is serious about making lots of money online. One of the vital aspects people seem to miss out when they first get into blogging is the fact that their blog must contain information that people want to read.

Many bloggers are looking through closed eyes in this regard and if you browse through 50 blogs you will notice that most will tell you they know How to Make Money with Blogs when really all they tell you is where they went on their vacation or how many cars they have.

Are you ready to learn How to Make Money Blogging?

If the answer is YES then read on and start to make money with your blog. I am not here to tell you how to write your blog, that’s up to you, but what I am about to tell you is the 10 things I use to make money on the internet. You can choose to use these techniques or not, that’s your prerogative.

Step 1 – Finding a Topic

Turn off your computer, grab a pen and some paper and sit somewhere you can relax but also stay focused (if you are just starting out this step can be a pain because we all want to know How to Make Money Online and we want to know how to make it NOW). Think of a topic you are interested in and write it down (this helps because you will be more committed to trying instead of giving up in a day or two) and also make sure it is something other people are interested in too. A couple of ways I use to think of a topic is by using MetaSpy to find out what people are searching for, Ask IQ to find what’s popular and VRE Toolbar to find out how many people search for the topic (this is also useful later on to get traffic). Write down your top five keywords, you will want to use them later in your blog.

Step 2 – Create Your Blog

Find and create your blog online. I like to use WordPress for it’s SEO benefits but there’s also Blogger and Movable Type. You can find all the help in the program you use to get information when setting up the blog. Create your content, make it original, and make it informative. This is one of the main keys to learn How to Make Money with Blogs. You need to include the keywords you wrote down in Step 1 in the content of your blog. Try not to overuse these as it sends out bad signals to the search engines, and this is 100% not what you want.

Step 3 – Go Google

Sign up for Google Adsense and insert the code in the margin of your blog. You can customize your ads in many ways, such as including text links or image links. I prefer the text links only, as they are easier to blend in with your blog and don’t take the focus away from the information. Google Adsense will probably not make you a millionaire but it is an instant way of generating a small amount of money.

If you want to track where your visitors are coming from with regards to direct hits or from search engine results then I would suggest you use Google Analytics and again you can get all the help you need setting that up from within the program.

You will also want to add your URL to Google’s index.

Step 4 – Find Something to Sell

If you don’t want to sell anything and are happy with the income Google Adsense is bringing in then you can skip this step. If you want to maximize your income and truly learn How to Make Money with Blogs you will want to find an affiliate program to join. A couple of affiliate programs I would suggest are ClickBank and Commission Junction. You can sell anything from office furniture, pet supplies, movies and clothing to PC games, Dieting tips and Audio software.

Whatever program you join will give you help inserting the code you will need to insert into your blog, but be sure you do this correctly or you WILL NOT earn money from your visitors. If you do not know how to edit HTML, W3Schools HTML tutorial is a great place to start.

Step 5 – Social Bookmarking

There is no better advertising than word of mouth, but the next best thing is social bookmarking. You will want to make things easier for people to do this. Social bookmarking sites I use and recommend are OnlyWire and SocialMarker and they are used for people to share their bookmarks or websites that they have liked with other people in their online community.

I would not suggest you add your own links to these services, but provide visitors to your website the ability to do so.

Step 6 – Write an Article

Whether your blog is about a specific product, for example a certain MP3 Player you are promoting, or just about giving people information, I would suggest you to write an article or a review of it. Most article directories require articles of 500 words and over so I would use this as a rule when writing to ensure your article is published.

Submit your article to any of the 100′s which are out there. I personally use a few of the Top Article directories such as EzineArticles, Article Dashboard, Amazines.com, isnare and SearchWarp. I also use a nifty piece of software called Article Submitter which will submit your articles to over 600 article directories, which saves you lots of time and leaves you to focus on writing your blogs.

Step 7 – Ping The Hell Out Of It

Every time you add new information to your blog, you want to let the blog directories know about it, this is known as pinging. Some Blog providers automatically send out pings when you update, but to be on the safe side you will want to do this manually too. WordPress already does this for you. Add any pinging services to the list already provided. Word of note – ONLY PING WHEN YOU UPDATE.

There are a couple of Ping sites I use which will send a ping to multiple blog directories at the same time. PingMyBlog would be my first port of call and then if for some reason that site is down I would use Ping-o-matic. Remember, to only ping when you update or you could get blacklisted, and that is bad.

Step 8 – Yahoo! Answers and Forums

One of the easiest ways to get targeted visitors to your blog is to make use of the people you want to target. I would suggest you sign up to at LEAST one forum in the topic you are writing about, and don’t just go straight in there and start posting comments for people to look at your blog, they won’t.

The secret is to add the link to your blog in your signature and actively become a member of the forum, posting relevant topics and starting debates within them. The more you post, the more your link will show, and if you provide someone with good info the chances are higher they will click your link.

Yahoo! Answers is along the same lines as forums but the beauty of this is it’s viewed by thousands of visitors each day. If you don’t already have a Yahoo! account get one and then login and search for questions relating to the topic of your blog and answer them well. You can then insert the link to your blog and as with the forums, if you answer well you may have not only earned yourself a point or two on Yahoo!, but also earned a visitor to your blog.

Step 9 – Update Your Blog

This can be by several means, one is to add new reviews or content to your blog, and if you are going to do this I suggest updating every couple of days. This helps to keep the search engines happy as they love to see new and original content.

Another way of updating your blog and keeping the content fresh is to add RSS feeds to it. Make sure the feeds are relevant to your blog and provide visitors with helpful information. Visitors to a World of Warcraft blog don’t want to read feeds about knitting, or do they?

Step 10 – More, More, More

Repeat steps 1 – 10, this is the only way How to Make Money Blogging.

Step 11 – A Bonus Step

If you have your own product or newsletter, give your visitors an easy way to sign up to receive updates or information. This helps you to contact the visitor again with more great info or products you wish to sell.

How to Make Money Online is easy if you follow the above steps.

Some important things to remember so you don’t get disheartened with your blog is the fact that you will not become a millionaire overnight, it takes hard work and a lot of effort. If you are really serious about learning How to Make Money with Blogs then stick with it and eventually you will have an Ah-Ha moment. This is when things start to work and you think to yourself Ah-Ha, that’s how they do it! Your moment could be sooner than you think.

My Top 10 resources I use and recommend are:

1. Rob Benwell’s Blogging to The Bank 2.0
2. WordPress Goldmine
3. Rob Atherton’s Building A Blog Empire For Profit
4. The Blog Challenge
5. Hinge Marketing Magic
6. Blogging For Riches – Complete Video Tutorial
7. Social Bookmarking Demon
8. Adsense Inbox
9. WordPress SEO Sniper
10. RSS, Blogs and Syndication…

Distributed by:
Save My Marriage Today Scam
Amy Waterman

Find free experiences to website traffic – your own guide.

Social bookmarking has become very popular. Social bookmarking allows you to bookmark sites you find interesting and share them with other users. The number of social bookmarking sites has really sprung up in the past year.

Here’s how you can market your online business using social bookmarking sites. Whenever you make a new post to your blog, write a new article, ect., bookmark that post or article to as many social bookmarking sites as you can.

This will help build backlinks and also build an awareness with other users. Make sure your content is interesting and unique. You want to create a buzz within the social bookmarking community so that others vote for your bookmarks. The more votes you get, the better.

A word of caution… spam is a big problem with social bookmarking sites. Self-promotion is seen as spam. Some sites you’ll be able to get away with it, others you won’t. My advice is you bookmark other people’s articles first, and then your own. That way yours will be at the top of the list.

If you want to bookmark your blog posts, PostOnFire.com is specifically for blogging, and they allow self-promotion. So make sure to bookmark your blog posts at PostOnFire.com. If it’s interesting enough, people will vote for it, and it will gain in popularity. This will help bring awareness to others about your blog and what you provide.

I recommend using a service like Socialmarker or Social Poster which will allow you to submit your sites to multiple social bookmarking sites.

For a list of social bookmarking sites to submit to, just go to the above services and they provide a long list of sites you can sign up with. Once you get signed up, start posting. This will help build your online business and bring awareness to other users.

For a couple years now I have used Blogger as my blogging platform. I like blogger; it’s simple to use and setup. There’s one downfall to Blogger, though. It hasn’t yet caught on to the social aspect of the internet. Everything, and I mean content, is streamed through social networks (aka social bookmarking sites).

These sites are kind of like a “vote” for your content. The more people that bookmark your blog or blog posts, the more votes you get. This is big news considering Google loves content. When these social sites are all linking to your content, Google picks up on this. This means big news for you. Your blog will get indexed higher in Google. This means more TRAFFIC!

So how do you utilize the power of social sites with your blog? Well, with Blogger, the only way to do this would be to manually bookmark your posts to all the major bookmarking sites. Very time consuming! Of course, you could use OnlyWire or SocialMarker to do this for you, but you still have to take the time to use those services.

There IS a much easier way to get MORE traffic to your blog. The answer is WordPress. WordPress is the most popular blogging platform, and for good reason. It’s a little more technical, but that shouldn’t scare you away. The benefits outweigh the technically challenged, by far!

WordPress utilizes the power of Plugins. Plugins are basically little applications that perform a function or process. There are hundreds of Plugins available for WordPress, and they all serve a different purpose.

Here are some Plugins that you DON’T want to be without:

AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget – Allows your readers to bookmark your posts
Only Wire Autosubmitter – This will automatically submit your posts to your OnlyWire account… a true time saver!
Tweet My Blog – This will automatically post a tweet to your Twitter account when you make a new post, thus driving more traffic to your blog. Sign up for Tweet My Blog. Of course, you need a Twitter account to do this, so sign up for a free Twitter Account as well.
ShareThis – Allows users to share and bookmark your posts
Sociable – Automatically add links on your posts to popular social bookmarking sites

There’s a small example of the kinds of plugins you can use with WordPress. You can obviously see the potential here, and you would be out of your mind to not take advantage of WordPress.

This is the main reason I started a WordPress blog. I saw the potential and the advantages WordPress had over Blogger. I still have my Blogger blog as well and will continue to use it, but WordPress will be my main blogging platform from now on.

Don’t have a WordPress blog yet? Sign up for a free WordPress account today and get started blogging!

This is my first post on my WordPress blog! I’d love to hear your comments. This is a DoFollow blog, so your comments are welcomed and encouraged. Thanks!