Lemme start by saying - I've learned a lot from the experience. Some of the techniques I've included in this strategy have come from others, not been made up by me. I'm just sharing my personal way of implementing these techniques.
HOW TO BUILD AUTHORITY WEB2.0 BLOG LINKS:
OK. So when I talk about authority Web 2.0 blogs I mean the free blogs you're able to create at places like Wordpress, Blogspot, Tumblr, Blog.com, Soup.io, etc. etc.
We're going to build everything manually, by hand. And we're going to mimic real life blogs. Let's say our keyword is "dog training." In this case, our keyword is a category of the larger niche "Pets and Animals"
GETTING EVERYTHING READY:
The first thing you want to do is prep all of your resources/content. This is what we'll need for every Web 2.0 property we want to create.
- Proxy or VPN to disguise your IP Address (you can use something like HMA or PrivateInternetAccess)
- 1 free email account from hotmail/gmail/yahoo/aol/etc.
- 1 450+ word article related to our category - "Dog Training." (The Linked Article)
- 7 250-350 word articles related to our niche - "Pets and Animals" (The Filler Content)
- 1 150-250 word "about page" article
- 1 30-100 word profile bio
- 10-24 relevant images
- 4-8 relevant videos
- 5-10 related Authority Links
- 1 profile pic/avatar
- OPTIONAL: Social Media accounts on Twitter/G+/Facebook/etc - this will actually help increase the authenticity of the blog we're about to create. You can create them using the same free email address.
HOW TO CREATE THE CONTENT:
On-Site optimization of these blogs is essential. So how you create the content matters a lot.
Linked Articles:
When you're writing your articles, you want to make them as relevant as possible. And since we're going through the effort to create authority blogs, we might as well give them a fighting chance to rank on their own!
First we need to research a long-tail keyword that will be the topic of our article. This will give our article a chance to rank highly for some long-tails, thereby increasing our link's authority/relevance/trust.
Easy Way To Find a Long-Tail:
- Go to Google.com, make sure Google Suggest/Google Instant is turned on
- Type in your keyword - "Dog Training" - DONT PRESS ENTER
--- Google will start populating its Suggestion Box with relevant searches.
- Move your cursor back to the beginning of the search box
- Start typing words like "how" or "why" or "what," etc.
- Google will suggest long tails like "How To Use A Clicker for Dog Training," or "What Age To Start Dog Training," etc.
--- The suggestions at the top of the list are the most popular/used long-tail searches on google. That means if we do things right, our article can end up ranking for these long tails - bringing us a BOSS link AND referral traffic to our money site!
- Choose a keyword from Google Suggest to write a 450 - 550 (or more) article on.
When you're writing this article, make it useful and valuable - not fluff writing that doesn't really say anything. (this can still work with weaker quality content - as long as its unique - but writing high quality stuff increases relevance/authority/links/shares/etc)
Try to include some bullet lists if you can. Use your main keyword in your first and last paragraph and a couple times throughout the content. Use keyword variations, related keywords and even parallel/tangental keywords.
Filler Articles:
Ok, so now we need to write filler content. I actually got part of this idea on this forum - I forgot who posted it or where I saw it, but it's not my original idea.
These are 7 or 8 250-350 word articles that are still niche related, but not necessarily about our keyword. So in this case it'd be articles on "pets/animals"
It's also a good idea to make one of these posts a "Welcome Post" that'll be the very first post on the blog. Just something simple like "Hey! Welcome to my blog about... Here you'll find a bunch of great info on.. etc etc etc."
Quick Way To Write Filler Content: (courtesy of the person who first shared the idea on this forum):
- Install Dragon Naturally Speaking and grab a microphone
- Just talk casually into the microphone (as if you were talking to a friend on the phone, telling them a story - just with spoken punctuation lol) about the niche - i.e animals/pets
---- Speak something like "Today I took my dog to the park and decided to test out the training I've been reading about. It was a good time. I let him off the leash and we ran around for a bit and we even played catch. I really love spending time with my dog. Blah Blah Blah.."
---- Break out your speaking into small 250-350 word chunks and make sure you add good post titles (remember these will be blog posts)
- Speak out 7-8 (or more) of these posts.
You can usually get the above steps done fast once you get the hang of Dragon. It takes me like 20-30 minutes to speak 2500-3000 words of this type of content. You're basically just talking about random s**t related to your niche.
About Me Page:
For the About Me page you basically want 150-250 words describing a fake person you make up. This is the "person" who is creating the Web 2.0 blog.
Write stuff like "Hi and thanks for coming to my blog! My name is Jack Morgon. I'm a professional dog trainer and animal lover. I created this blog because...blah blah blah. The type of stuff I'm going to write is...blah blah blah."
Also at the end of this post you want to put something like "If you want to ask any questions leave a comment or email me at..." and include the new hotmail/gmail/yahoo/aol account you just created. Again, just helps add authenticity and makes it look real.
Profile Bio:
Nothing too crazy here, just write a few words about that fake person you created. Doesn't have to be too long, just some profile info to make things look real.
Images/Videos:
Go to Google Image Search and type in your keyword. Open up the first 10-20 images in new browser tabs.
Now on each tab click "View Original Image." and then right-click to "Save Image As.."
Here's the important part - when you save the images to your hard-drive, make sure you set a custom file name that matches your keyword and its close variations.
So you'd save the images as "dog-training.jpg," "dog-training-tips.png," etc.
While you're at it search "profile pic" or "avatar" and download an avatar to use in bios/profiles.
For the videos just go to YouTube and type your keyword into the search box. Open up a few related videos and copy the video URLs or the embed codes (depends on the platform you're using). Save them in a txt file.
Related Authority Links:
Just go to Google and type in your keyword and other related keywords. You want to copy the URLs of authority websites related to your keyword and niche.
Pick sites that don't directly compete with your site. Good ones are wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, government sites, educational sites, school/university sites, big brand name sites, etc.
Save these in a text file
CREATING THE BLOG:
So now that we have all our assets ready we can create the blog itself. In this example we'll use a free Wordpress.com blog, but there are a bunch of different sites you can do this on - search the forum for some site lists.
First, connect to your VPN or proxy to mask your original IP address. We want each blog we create to look like its being built from a different location. Connect to an IP from the country you're trying to rank in. If you want to rank in the US, connect to a US IP address. Want to rank in Canada? Connect to a Canadian IP Address.
Next open your web browser and clear all the cookies, cache and website/browsing data.
Create a brand new email address at Yahoo/Hotmail/Gmail/Aol/etc. I usually like to create fake names as the email address so they look more real and helps me to start building my fake persona. (The persona is the "person" you're making up to create and author the blog/social media accounts.
OPTIONAL: Social Media Accounts:
If you're making SM accts on FB/Twitter/G+ then make sure you're using the new email you created and you are filling in as much profile information as you can. Use parts of the bio for the about me sections, fill in stuff like occupation, languages, hometown, etc.etc. And be sure to upload a profile pic.
To make things a little more real, on each SM account post a status update/tweet that is completely generic and has no links.. Also make sure you add some random friends/followers/circles.
Once you've done all this head over to your Web 2.0 platform and sign up for a new account (ex/ wordpress.com) using that email address.
Make sure you enter in as much profile info as you can. Use the bio that you created earlier, enter in name/age/hometown/etc/etc, and upload a profile pic/avatar (Wordpress.com uses gravatar so you'll have to make sure you create one). You can also enter your social media URLs if you created the accounts.
Building The Blog:
The first thing you need to do is choose a blog name, description/subtitle and URL. Choose something that is related to your niche and keyword, but also make it brandable. (Don't choose a url like dogtraining1.wordpress.com and a title like "Dog Training Blog" - that kind of stuff SCREAMS spam)
Choose a name like TheDogPark.wordpress.com or ThePetMan.wordpress.com and titles like "The Dog Park" or "Pet Man's Experiments in Dog Training"
A blog subheading could be something like "Am I Training My Dog Or Is He Training Me?" or "Training My New Dog, One Day At A Time." - the point is to make it RELATED to your niche, but keep it looking totally real.
You want to TRY your best to include your keywords in your titles/descriptions, but only if it can be done in a non-spammy looking way.
In a platform like Wordpress you want to go to the blog settings and enter this stuff in so that it gets pulled in as the meta title/description. Also make sure your permalinks are set to display search-friendly URLs and that your blog is visible to search engines (if applicable) regardless of what web2 platform you choose.
Customizing The Blog:
The first thing you should do is pick a custom theme - anything as long as its not the default one. Then set up some widgets - anything as long as its not the defaults. I usually use an "About Me" widget (with bio/profile content in it), a Post Calendar, Recent Posts and maybe an arbitrary image.
If you make social media accounts on fb/g+/twitter then add some social widgets (twitter stream, fb box, etc.) and use those accounts' info in them.
It also helps to add sharing buttons if you're able. Some blog platforms don't support total customization, theme selection or widgets. Do what you can with what you have.
Editing the Default Page:
Now you have to change the default page. Wordpress creates a default page called "About." You want to edit this and copy/paste the "About Me" content you created and save it. Add a link to the fake email you created. If you want to take it a step further, add a wufoo contact form or something like that.
If your web2.0 platform doesn't create a default page, create one. A contact/about page is a sign of trust/authenticity. You can even take it a step further and add something like a Privacy Policy page or something like that. Google can see this kind of stuff and it just adds to the authority/relevance/trust/power of the blog we're creating.
Publishing The Content:
Now we're ready to publish the content itself. The first post you want to publish is the "Welcome Post" from the Filler Content. If you didn't write one, then any random post from the filler content is fine.
Don't include any links in this post.
After this, you can post whatever content you want in whatever order you want. The trick is to schedule out every post to be published one week or longer after the previous post.
This helps keep the blogs content fresh and keeps the spiders returning to the blog to re-crawl, increasing its authority/etc. It keeps it fresh for a couple months at least. You can choose whether you publish the posts once a week, twice a month, etc. Don't publish things any less frequently than once a month, minimum.
Platforms like Wordpress, Blogger and Tumblr allow you to schedule future posts. Some other ones don't. If you can't schedule posts, you CAN usually backdate them so they look like they were published over a long period of time.
Side Note: There's a couple of really great tools/web apps that can help you manage a Web 2.0 blog (allow you to schedule posts to keep being published well into the future, even if the platform doesn't support that function)
How To Lay Out Your Content For Maximum Effect:
The Linked Article:
The Linked Article is the higher quality article on a topic we got from a long tail keyword related to our main keyword. This is where we're going to put our money site link.
Add a new post and copy/paste the Linked Article into the Web 2.0 post. Make sure it's formatted nicely and bold/italicize entire phrases (where it makes sense) that include your keyword. Don't go overboard with this. Also break up the content with headings that contain your keywords and variations.
-Adding Media:
Next, add in a couple of the images you downloaded earlier. Since this is the linked article that contains our money site link, you want to choose the images whose filenames match most closely with your targeted keyword. (i.e. Dog-Training.jpg),
Add one at the beginning of the post, and another in the middle somewhere. Make sure you're changing the image "title" and "alt" attributes to match your keyword or a close variation of it.
At the end of the post embed one or more of the YouTube videos in the post.
-Placing Links;
Now it's time to place our links. First choose a keyword near the beginning of the article to use as the anchor text for a link to your money site. (If you're building multiple Web 2.0 blogs, make sure you distribute your anchor text out - 33% main keyword or keyword variant, 33% generic/image, 33% brand/URL)
Side note: If you're building a generic/brand anchor-text link, you can also use your keyword (or a kw variation) as the link "title" attribute. Not 100% necessary though, and make sure your do it randomly.
Next, you want to also place two Related Authority Links within the article, below your money site keyword. It can also be useful to include internal links to future/past blog posts or pages from the Web 2.0 property you're building. This is important and makes your site look NATURAL, and not built for SEO purposes.
-Post Scheduling:
You can choose to post this whenever you want - after the welcome post, after a few more filler posts, whenever. What I like to do is make this post (i.e. the Linked Article post) a sticky post (when possible - i.e. Wordpress, Blog.com, etc.). This makes sure the post that has our money link on it stays at the top of the blog homepage.
If you can't do this on the platform you choose, don't worry about it. If you want a post with your money site link to be near the top of the blog and you use the linked article early on in the post scheduling, just use a filler article near the end of the scheduling cycle with your money site link as well.
DON'T put your money site link on more that 2 of the posts on any particular blog.
Whether you publish the post live right away, or your schedule it for the future, make sure you grab the live/future URL of this post. You need to know this URL to build a second tier of links to.
The Filler Content:
The Filler Content is pretty easy to use. Just schedule out each filler post one week or more after the last published/scheduled post. The idea is to have a bunch of posts get published automatically at a regular interval. Don't schedule posts any less frequently than once per month.
When laying out the filler content include an image or two, a video and a related authority link randomly. Some posts should have one or the other, other posts should have two or even all three things, and some posts should have none. Keep things random.
Final Step (Optional):
Now that you've scheduled/published all the content, you want to share the live link of your new blog on all your social media networks - G+/Twitter/FB. This should help with indexing. Also throw a couple/few high quality social bookmarks (Digg/StumbleUpon/Delicious/Reddit/Folkd/etc) at it if you've got some accts.
AND THATS IT! You've just built the ultimate authority Web 2.0 blog link back to your money site. This property carries MASSIVE authority/trust/relevance, and will last literally FOREVER. Throw a second/third tier of links at it and the link juice will be INSANE.
These links are very very powerful and help crush your SEO. Build 10 - 20 of these and power them up with a second/third tier and you're GOOD for all sorts of different types of keywords.
It may seem like a ton of work, but its WORTH IT. And once you get the hang of it, it shouldn't take you more than a couple hours to put one of these up. If you're thinking to yourself "That's way too much work and a waste of time." That's your prerogative, but I've personally found these types of links to be CRAZY in helping push your keyword rankings up. They will even stand up to manual backlink reviews.
I'd suggest building between 5 to 10 of these per week, backing each one up with a second and third tier.
Just so you know, this isn't ALL I do as part of a site's full SEO strategy. But it's a big part of it. The key to any SEO strategy is diversity, volume, quality and consistency of link building, coupled with solid on-site optimization.
This method covers the quality side of things, I'll get into the volume and diversity side another time. Consistency is up to you.
DAMN Thant was a long ass post. I hope it helps some people out there. I don't think I left anything out, but who knows... Feel free to ask questions and I'll do my best to answer them.
Maybe in the future I'll post my method for building second/third tier links to these properties as well.
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