Feed: How To Build RSS Link Wheels - AggScore: 46.6

Linking Strategy for RSS Link Wheels

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This post introduces my basic linking strategy for an RSS link wheel. Somewhere down the line we will explore more advanced linking strategies that I have dubbed as "RSS Mage". I will mention that this is a good reason to subscribe to this blog via the RSS feed button on the top right. After all, you don't want to miss any future details, right?

The basic linking strategy is quite simple and this is illustrated in greater detail in the "LinkWheel Sage" report and guide.

This is a “drop-dead-simple” system for building backlinks that anyone can take advantage of for better traffic and search engine placement.

Get a head start by going to this link now…

http://netmarkettrends.com/rsslinkwheelswso

Chris Jenkins and RSS Linkwheels

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I just posted an announcement about how Chris Jenkins helped me launch the "LinkWheel Sage" report and RSS Linkwheel Guide a couple of days ago as a Warrior Forum WSO.

http://rssmage.net/rss-linkwheel-product-launch-linkwheel-sage/.php

Thanks, Chris!

The Concept Behind LinkWheel Sage

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Building link wheels takes less time, and you do the work only once in most cases. Another advantage of link-wheels is that it's difficult for links from these sites to be characterized as spam. This is considered off-site SEO and it would be very hard for search engines to discriminate or downgrade links from social media websites and Web 2.0 sites. Even if things change dramatically in the future, the loss of these one-way links will not cause your main website, money sites, or target sites to be de-indexed.

So, a traditional link-wheel can be defined as simply building 5 to 6 "on topic" micro-blogs, using selective keyword-rich anchor text links as one-way links back to your main target site, and a one-way link connecting from each mini-site in a linear scheme.

[A > B > C > D > E > F > (+/- A)]

The operative phrase here is "one-way links". This graphic above illustrates the possibility of the last link looping back to the first website in the link scheme. This is what is called a "closed" link- wheel. The link wheels we will build will not be closed. Our linkwheels are also called "horseshoe" or "open" link wheels, since the last link is not completed to make a full loop. The reason for this will be discussed in future posts.

Note: Throughout this blog I will use "link wheel", link-wheel", and "linkwheel" interchangeably. I do not know if one is preferable over the others. I kind of like the way Linkwheel looks myself.

New RSS Linkwheel - Quick Start Guide

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Finally...I have completed the first leg of my reports on RSS Link Wheels, and this is one is a "Quick Start" Guide for building your first RSS powered Linkwheel.

You can pick up a copy by going to the main site at http://rsssmage.net and then simply fill out the form in the right-hand sidebar. I hope you get a chance to put some of these ideas into action.

Combining RSS Feeds and Linkwheels

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I just published a new article about this techniques at EzineArticles. You can read it by following this link.

>> New Linkwheel Strategies <<

How to Create Power Bookmarks

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I happen to do this every few days, so I thought it was worthy of a post. This comes under the category of tips and tricks, I would suppose. The term "power bookmark" just popped into my head as a title for this post. It probably is not a searchable term with regard to this technique. Nevertheless, I use this method to get added weight for my bookmarks in the search engines. My belief is that it also makes the bookmarked links more valuable as backlinks.

This method is pretty simple, and all that is involved is bookmarking you bookmarks. You can also include any other links that show up on the first 3-5 pages of the SERPs. The way I like to do this is to search on my domain name, the title of the website, and then the subheads first. Don't worry, this goes pretty quick. Then is is just a matter of finding links that lead back to your web pages and bookmark these a few times.

I cycle through my keyword list and do the same thing, starting with the top keywords, keyword phrases, and working my way though the long-tail keywords. I then do searches on these to see where my pages, or links to my pages show up in the search results. Depending on the niche and what you are marketing, you can turn that process around and go for the low-hanging fruit first. If you are in a niche without a lot of competition, you can rank fairly quickly by creating these extra bookmarks. I use this with LinkWheel Sage and RSS Mage.

What you will find in your search results is that other people will have bookmarked your posts and pages. There also will be links like this that lead back to your link wheel properties. This method is very effective if you are doing article marketing and publishing lots of content that is getting re-published on other websites and blogs. Just bookmark those links, too.

This is somewhat of a mindless pastime, and something you can do when you don't want to be too mentally challenged, or when you have some extra time. If you don't have time, this is something that you could easily pay someone to do every once in a while. This is a perfect job for older children and high school kids.

Elements of a Simple Link Wheel Site

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In this post we are going to point out some of the elements I think are necessary for a simple RSS Link Wheel Site. Most of the micro-blogging platforms will accommodate all these elements, and the same is true for most of the social media sites you can use.

Basically, you want to to have a home page (front page) that you will write a few hundred words of unique content. I don't like content spinners, and honestly believe that if you know your subject matter that it's easier to write a few hundred words that will be unique copy in as little as 5-10 minutes.

We can use this Blogger blog here at How To Build RSS Link Wheels as an example. This is the second leg of a link wheel I have built to demo this project. If you follow the top navigation bar you can see that I have created 3-4 additional pages. These can be pages that link to the previous leg in this link wheel (in this case my EzineArticles profile is the first leg in this link wheel), a page that links to the RSS Mage target website, and then you can have a link to a video page (LinkWheel Sage Youtube Video), and then maybe a page for an RSS News Feed.

You can create posts using RSS news feeds, or a free service like Unique Article Wizard. You do not have to do this with each link wheel property, but the more content you have updating your site, the better the link wheel will work at creating back links. You can also add RSS feeds as widgets on most of these sites by embedding these feeds in the page layout or the side bars. That is pretty much it...and you really only have to do it once fro each site.

Note: Be sure to keep your links going in one direction, and also create internal links from page-to-page within a given link wheel property. Just be sure not to have any reciprocal links between two sites within the link wheel. You also want to use different keyword phrases for anchor text links, and you do not want all of your links to the target website going to the main domain url. Point some links to internal pages on the target website, and occasionally you can sprinkle your posts with a few outbound links to related websites. Mix things up and make it look natural. Look around this site and you should get some good ideas.

Getting Websites and Blogs Indexed Quickly

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Most people think that getting your sites indexed is a waiting game, but it does not have to be. There are a few methods to get your websites and blogs indexed quickly in search engines. I only am concerned about getting indexed in Google. Google is the leader by far, and the other search engines will play follow the leader. I can get new sites indexed in a matter of hours.

Getting you sites "indexed" means getting your pages and links counted. This is probably the easiest way to think about indexing, and you should understand by now that this means creating some quick links back to your website and internal pages. You can create a few back links every time you publish a page or post. Read about the standard techniques that follow, and then we will look at some fast track tips.

Social Bookmarking
Contrary to popular belief, you only need a few social bookmark links when you get started. Just like we talk about in all these posts, you don't want to spam the search engines and you also don't want to build links too fast. In this case 6-10 at a time is plenty. Use site like Digg, Mixx, and Propeller.

Social Media Profiles
We have discussed this previously. Just create some accounts specific to your website niche with the big social media sites like Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, etc. These sites get crawled and indexed by Google on an hourly basis, and yes, these links do get indexed quickly.

Forum and Blog Comments
This is a really simple technique. Just find some the most popular blogs and forums related to your niche and leave comments with a link back to your website or post. Make sure these are DoFollow links.

RSS Feed Directory Submissions
RSS feed directories are near and dear to our mission, since one of the biggest reasons for this blog involves how to use RSS feeds. Yo can submit your feeds to hundreds of directories. In later posts we will talk about automated submission tools. Go to this RSS Directory Link List to get started.

Now, here are a couple of quick indexing tips that have always worked fro me. One is to first search (and find) a phrase in quotes that has no search engine results. The crazier, the better. Something like "blue monks find solace in Peru"

When you find a phrase with "no results", go write a post with that in you headline and as an anchor text link in a short post on your blog or website, then bookmark the page. Google will now be looking for this phrase to index. Once your site is indexed you can edit the post to something more sensible.

Another trick is to use the name of your website as anchor in a post on an established blog with good traffic. This of course will have a link leading back to your domain url. As that site gets crawled for new content your link will be picked up and indexed.

My last favorite way to get quick links is to do a search for my new site domain on some of the popular statistical sites like statbrain.com, websiteoutlook.com, aboutus.org, and statsaholic.com. These searches will automatically create links back to your new site and these in turn get picked up by the search engines.

Don't Submit Your Sites to Search Engines

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Here are some reason why I do not believe you should submit your new websites to the search engines. I have determined this from doing some research and some testing, but also have concluded that it is largely a waste of time. The biggest reason for this is that there are now better ways to get a new website indexed. In the case of Link wheel properties, it probably is also a non issue.

In the case of Google, there is some good evidence that submitting a new site will just get your site in the "Google Sandbox". This is all speculation, as there is no term or function like this acknowledged by Google. The idea makes some sense though. The idea is that when you submit a new website to Google, that you simply are alerting them to the fact that this is a new website. Google then somehow flags your site and puts it on a watch list od sorts for the search engine spiders, and at the same time this somehow prevents you from possibly ranking in their search engine results until this probation period expires.

Who knows if this is accurate, but my stance would be why even take this change that it might be true. When it come to search engines, Google is the only search engine that really matters. It is the only game in town when you are marketing online. So, I don't waste any time submitting sites to the other search engines either. This goes for paid submission services, too. Save your money on this one.

I do create site-maps for most of my sites, and I do submit links for Google to find naturally in other ways. This works better and is much faster. We will look at ways to get your websites indexed quickly in the next few posts.

Online Reputation Management Considerations

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Related to a recent post here about online profiles, you do need to give some thought to your online reputation management. Remember that you want accurate and professional looking information about you whenever you are posting articles, or even making blogs comments and forum comments. You do not want to be spammy, snarky, or write opinions that may come back to haunt you, your business, and your reputation. One good test is to always remember that whatever you put online will potentially be there forever. So give this some serious consideration to this before you place your name and personal information online.

Since we are using profiles to get links as part of our overall strategy, go the extra step to monitor your online reputation as part of your SEO plans, like you do with any other aspect of link building. This is not just for RSS feeds and link wheels. Online profiles and reputation management are often ignored, done in the wrong way, and sometimes poorly managed. I strongly suggest that you don't overlook guarding your reputation when planning your online marketing strategies.

You need to be aware that this drills down to the products you promote, reviews you make, and even how you market via email. There are plenty of horror stories about seasoned online marketers making a small mistake and then losing everything. The worst case scenario could even be legal or criminal actions against you and your business.

I guess you could consider this the dark side of online marketing. Just be aware that things can come back to bite you, so my advice is to always follow the Golden Rule. Run your online ventures with integrity, be honest, and treat folks fairly. This is one last thing you will have to worry about, and you will sleep better, too.

Take the right steps to build your online reputation, and then make sure you keep it.

Social Media Profiles

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One area most people do not give enough attention to is the profiles that they can fill out for any type of public profile online. Profiles can be found on micro-blog platforms, social networking sites, bookmarking sites, and video sharing sites. There are hundreds of these sites and they all can provide valuable one-way back links.

Practically all social network sites give you the ability to create a "personal profile”.

You want to add personal photos, videos, and any extra information that you are allowed to enter. This gives readers a way to your learn a bit more about you. This a a great free way to brand yourself and promote practically any product, service, or website.

Each of these kind of sites work a bit differently, and for this reason your strategy will be a little different for each type of site. When you are creating your profiles, focus your interests on the topic of the website or product/service you are promoting. Don't over-sell and don't promote too heavy, simply invite your profile readers to visit your sites for more information by providing links back to your link wheels,target websites and blogs.

Don't miss this opportunity to promote yourself and create links back to your link wheels and other websites and blogs.

Naming Your Link Wheel Sites

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Choosing names for the sites in your link wheels should be fairly straight forward. This gets back to the notion of using keywords and keyword phrases. All the other rules that apply to picking domain names apply to picking URLs and titles for these sites, too. You don't want to use product names, trade-names, service marks, slogans, tag-lines, or other copyrighted material unless you are the owner, or have explicit permission. I would stay away from these situations even if you are an affiliate, or some type of paid sales associate like with network sales companies, and MLM. These companies will typically have TOS agreements that will protect these names and phrases, and include provisions where they can make and change the rules at any time.

Start with the best niche keywords and work you way down the list. Long-tail keywords (3-4 or word phrases) will be eaiser to rank for in the search engines. I sometimes like to include words that add some weight like "guide", so an example would be "RSS Link Wheel Guide". Always place these modifiers at the end. You want the keyword phrases you are targeting at the very beginning. Some SEO experts will suggest you stay away from "stop" words like "the" and "for". Stop words are words that are ignored by the search engines. Another thing I have seen in research is that Google in particular does not like the term "review" in titles. Supposedly this is because of all the fake review sites built by affiliate marketers.

I like to work my way through my keyword list, using the best keyword phrases for the URLs first, then the next tier for titles, subheads, categories, tags, etc. Look around this blog and you will get the idea. Here are some of the names and titles for a few of the sites in this link wheel:

Post and Ping Techniques

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When most people hear "Post and Ping" they naturally will think this means to "make posts" to your blogs and then "ping" those posts manually on popular pinging services, or using a pinging tool. If you are already familiar with using Wordpress than you also know that this is a built in feature of Wordpress. Every time you make a post, it automatically notifies a certain number of the pinging services that you have updated your content. There are some Wordpress plugins available that will also allow you to customize some additional functions.

These certainly are good and worthwhile ideas, but I have a different take on "Post and Ping". I use a Blogger blog as a tool for post and ping. This only makes sense, because we know that Blogger is going to crawl new content on Blogspot and then quickly index it in the search engines.

This has also been termed a feeder blog, as you can use it to quickly feed links from any site to Blogger and be assured to get the links noticed and indexed by Google. Google makes it pretty easy by providing a "share" button for Blogger that resides in your Google toolbar. This is used almost like a bookmarking button to send a link to your Blogger blog. Another approach can get fairly sophisticated by employing a tool like Ping.fm to post statuses.

You have to use this in a way that is not considered spam, which means adding some content before and after each link that you are sending, but this can just be an extra sentence or two. Mix this in with some scheduled posts, or a free content resource like UniqueArticleWizard.com and you will have created a powerful mini-site for your link wheel that is automated. Then just ping your Blogger blog every once in a while on a service like Pingler.com.

As an example, I wrote 52 posts in advance that were then scheduled to post on this blog once a week for 12 months out. I occasionally can add articles I have written and published to EzineArtcles.com, and I can always add content from the email option function that Blogger provides (part of the scheme for using Unique Article Wizard).

Why You Need A Blogger Blog

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Many people may think that Blogger blogs are outmoded, or only for beginners. All things considered, you do have to admit that Blogger is a great way to get started online. This post is intended to give you a new perspective on Blogger, why it is important, and why you need to have Blogger Blogspot blogs as part of your SEO network.

First and foremost is the fact that Blogger is owned by Google. This should give you some clues why Blogger blogs need to be in your mix of link wheel properties. You may want to have some Blogspot blogs even if you are not using them for link wheels. I still build a bunch of these reliable blogs for other reasons. There are probably people that can make a living using only Blogger. The only caution would be not to put all your eggs in one basket.

Blogger is easy to set up and get rolling. Believe it or not, Blogspot blogs can be very efficient for what we need to get done. These blogs get indexed quickly, and because they have the distinct advantage of being part of Google, they also get visited by the Google spiders often. This means you can use these guys to send you loads of traffic, and then direct some of that traffic to other sites with your content and links. A big plus for us in our linking scheme is what is called "Post and Ping", however, I will devote a future post to this.

Other traits include the "ease of use" that is simple point-and-click. You will not to have to learn anything about html code, or how to customize templates or themes. Although of recent note, Blogger has added features that allow for a certain degree of customization. I actually like to use these features to create customized squeeze pages. Just look at this site and see how well it accommodates all the things we want like a page navigation bar, an RSS feed, plenty of sidebar gadgets, plus many other functions that most visitors will find familiar.

You can associate your own domain name with Blogger, but I have never found the need to do this. Just find and use an appropriate keyword phrase to title your blog. Maybe the greatest advantage is that all of this is supported by Google, and for free.

I have decided over the years that these little sites can be very powerful and of great value for generating traffic to another blog or website.

How Many Sites in A Link Wheel?

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If you haven't already figured it out, you do not need all that many sites to build an effective RSS link wheel. If you do some searches on "link wheels" you will see that some SEO companies offer services to build link wheels with anywhere from a dozen to several hundred websites involved. That many sites probably is not going to hurt your SEO efforts, but at the same time it also could be considered overkill.

I find that an RSS link wheel works just fine with only 5-6 website properties. I think it is more beneficial to create more links to the individual link wheels once you have them up and running.

You can treat the websites in each of the link wheels as targets for other kinds of link building activities. You can bookmark these links and internal pages on a few of the social bookmarking sites, and you can use some of the semi-automated tools for this like Stumbleupon and many bookmark services provide as tool bar buttons. Some that I use occasionally include sharing buttons for Twitter, Facebook, Bing, Diigo, Friendfeed, and Clipmarks.

You really don't need a lot of these kind of links. The important thing is to mix up the type of links, and then just from time to time 'bookmark your bookmarks" using different profiles. There are automated tools available for bookmarking, but this too is an option and not really necessary.