Blogger Illustrated

Quick disclaimer: in some of the vids, the dots on my hands are from the markers… I ain’t a lepper, LOL

Today we are going to exhaustively talk about links! Yep, that’s right, links. I’m not going to tell you how to “get links” yet (so don’t get all excited), but I will teach you to “understand links.” Foundations are important.

Internet Marketing Links

First up… listen now and listen good: the success of your website in the search engines depends on backlinks. Links to your site are endorsements of your content from other “webmasters.” You must get links and market your content… But before you can get links, you have to understand what they are, what they mean, where they come from, and how they evolve.

There are a bunch of vids in this post, so watch and enjoy. I want to make this real-world for you, so I am going to stick with the “DIY Niche” through these vids. (our website here will be www.theDIYdude.com … a real domain I purchased just for this series here) I want you to get some true examples while visualizing the concepts in the REAL WORLD! (yeah, I am always trying to get you guys to think like humans in the real world and pull your heads outta your “Make Money Online Blogging” arses!) so let’s get started:

What Are Links and Why Are They Important Online?

In this video, I illustrate backlinks by pretending we are at a gathering of businesses, and Mr. Google is the doorman, directing customers to each business based on the customer’s needs. Watch…

So you can see that links are those little blue underlined words on websites. Most of you probably knew that. But there is a lot more to it than just having a bunch of sites pointing at you. This video has set the foundation for the next ones that will appeal to your more intermediate internet marketing mind!

All links are not created equally and the next videos will help you understand some of that.

Links And Anchor Text

The first thing I want you to consider when you go out to get links (or when you link out to your friends), is the anchor text used in the link. I mean, it’s cool if you get linked up with www.theDIYdude.com because of the fact that your domain name itself has the keyword “DIY” (do-it-yourself) in it, but this is not the best way to get your links anchored. Keep in mind that the actual anchored (the blue) words tell the Google crawlers what your site is about. IOW– when the spiders follow the link, the words anchored give them an idea of what’s on the other side of the link. Those spiders remember that! (in a manner of speaking of course)

In the case of www.theDIYdude.com we would love to have the anchore text of “home improvement tips” instead of just www.DIYdude.com. Can you see how the actual anchored blue words are more telling about the site than just the URL? (please ask questions below if you cannot grasp this concept ok?)

Linking Someone’s Name

This is something that you bloggers out there need to learn: and that being how to link to your buddies. I mean, quit linking people’s names. Sure, some of you think that “your name is your brand” and linking your name would increase that, but tell me how many real humans using Google are gonna search your dang name looking for whatyou have to offer? Yeah, they ain’t, so why do you insist on anchoring people’s names when you link to their sites? Why not help a brother or sister out and link their keywords? Let’s pretend you have a site about home improvement and you want to send me some natural link love: here is how you should do it:

“…since we are talking about floor tiling, wall framing and related power tools, you all could definitely benefit from checking out my friend Allyn Hane over at his DIY Home Improvement blog. Leave him a comment and let him know I sent you.”

Glad we got that one straight… and …Now that you know about anchor text, can you see how that is a lot better than just saying “Go see Allyn Hane for more information on DIY home improvement projects.”

Guest Posting Links

And not that I am bashing here guys, but that is really one thing that annoys me when it comes to guest posting on well known blogs. Some of you are big into this concept and you may spend an hour writing a nice keyword enriched, helpful post for a big name blogger, and when he introduces you as the guest poster, he links your freaking name or just your site name. Why wouldn’t he take the time to anchor your keywords in the guest post instead? Hmmf!

Yeah, just so you know, the value of guest posting isn’t from getting a bunch of someone’s trickle traffic… it’s in getting the anchored link from an authority site! THAT is why you guest post… for the LINK!!! (start thinking like a marketer and not just a blogger ya’ll)

Links And Site Authority

In this video, we talk about getting links from sites with some authority and how important that can be to your results.

So now let’s put a couple of these concepts together shall we? We know so far:

1) you need to get links (endorsements)

2) links with keywords anchored help Google understand your site better

3) links from sites with authority (PageRank) are bigger endoresements of your content

Just so you know, in my opinion, page rank on your own site really doesn’t mean much. Sure, if your site is a PR3 or PR4, your new posts will get crawled and indexed faster, and it will be easier to rank for langtails, but that is really the easy part.

Where pagerank matters is when sites that have a lot of it (PR3+) link *to* you. Those links are ENDORSEMENTS from already trusted sites and that makes the search engines in turn trust you, thus raising your site and pages up into the better locations in search results. (BTW– if you ain’t number 1 for a keyword, you ain’t nuthin’ in most cases!)

Can you see how this is stitching together? Getting links that are keyword anchored from authority sites will help you rank for your keywords… in other words, get you to position #1 for the keywords that are anchored. (read that run-on again )

PageRank Of Page, Not Domain

One other word of caution here: when you go out to seek/find high PR links, you need to understand that the pagerank of the PAGE the link is on matters and NOT so much the pagerank of the top level domain. I have seen these snake oil salesman out there telling people “we can get you 100 PR8 links to your website for $$$$”
What those guys do is go to sites where the main page is a PR8 (like http://www.weebly.com/) and they create an account page for you there and give you a link. But the page they created is a PRn/a or PR0.. and THAT is what Google looks at, the PR of the page, not the domain. Get it? So if you buy into that, you are not getting PR8 links, trust me.

Links And Site Relevance

We are almost done here, so pay attention as I am now going to talk about the relevance of the links you get.

This part of the concept can be a little confusing, so let me remind you that there really are no “bad links” for the most part. (well, unless someone spam links to you 1,000 times with the term “cheap vi*gra” or something)… but let’s stay on track.. there are no bad links.
But there are better links. So let’s look once again at our progression here, afteral, repetition is the key to learning bitches!

1) you need to get links, period

2) links with keywords anchored help Google understand your site better

3) links from sites with authority (PageRank) are bigger endoresements of your content

4) links from sites that are in your same or similar niche are big endorsements also, maybe bigger!

You see, it’s cool if we get a link to our DIY site from a PR4 site/page that is about general news and events, especially if our keywords are anchored. We’ll take those all day long.

But it’s actually a little better to get a keyword anchored link to our DIY site from a PR3 site that is focused on home improvement tips its-own-self. The relevance there trumps that extra pagerank when it comes to endorsement importance.
Now, no one truly knows what is better and what is worse in the grand scheme of the web.

“Is a PR6 link from CNN to your DIY site better than a PR4 link from DIY Network’s website…?” etc etc etc.

See how that can get a little muddy? So like I said before, all the links you can get are better than nothing, but you should, as a general rule, gets links on sites that are similar in your niche when you can. So in the case of www.theDIYdude.com we would try to get links from sites about “home improvement” first, but would also go for links on sites about “kitchens and baths” “gardening” “tile” “wood flooring” “home furnishings” “painting” etc. Each of these niches are great and would help us out, especially if the link was anchored well and on a high PR page.

So what is the Perfect Link?

As my friend Vic says, the HOLY GRAIL OF LINKS is…

So the best link (endorsement) I can get for www.theDIYdude.com is a keyword anchored link from a PR10 DIY Home Improvement site. If I can score that, I am well on my way to the big bank I am chasing. So how do you get links like that? You’ll have to stay tuned guys… I’ll show you in due time!

Honest Talk At The End (Everyone Read This Please)

Now it occurs to me that a lot of you are sitting there thinking, “Holy crap I can’t do all of that. That’s too much work!”

If that is you, you are not the first. But honestly, you should probably just stick to being a blogger then. As a blogger, you can feel good about “getting out a post today” and you can take refuge in the fact that you “left 10 comments on other blogs today” and go tell your Mommy that you “retweeted 10 tweets today.”

But “posting today” and “commenting today” and “Tweeting today” ain’t gonna get you paid any time soon.
So are you in this for the blogging touchy-feely or do you wanna get paid like a real marketer? Which is it? Do you have the bullocks to get out and market your content to real people or do you just want other bloggers to kiss your arse and mention you on Facebook?

In the real world, in real niches, you have to MARKET boys and girls, just like REAL businesses market a product of service, and getting links is the first step to marketing your content so you can turn a profit. …until next time…