Life as I find it

Ok, so you have heard that the best way to gain loads of inbound links is to write articles and publish them to article directories, so that they link to your site and bring you traffic and quality inbound links. You want those. You are willing to scribble out a few articles for that (or pay someone else to scribble them for you). However, you want those submissions to be really good, not penalized for spam.

Another feverish google hunt, multiple windows open, frantic scanning through pages to get that elusive “magic key” that will sort life out for you. Some article submission software, some article writing service….. Wait my friend, you’re on the right page. Now take a deep breath, and actually read what you have found, rather than run your eyes through this page and forget everything in a minute.

Think clearly. Why do you think Original content is valued? Submitting one article to a hundred places does not make content links. Logically, the whole piece of blood and sweat is reduced to link text - not content links. So now, what do we do? We want to get links, links…….

We do things slower and better. One article at a time. Original content each time. This is how we do it:

1. Pick a subject you get enthusiastic and talk about for hours until someone shuts you up.
2. Now, instead of talking, write/type. Ramble. Write loads, change tracks, moods, forget the original point, come back to it, whatever. Never mind the length of it. No one is shutting you up. Write till you’re done on the subject.
3. Go out for a coffee or smoke or whatever. Give your fingers a break.
4. Come back and scan through what you’ve written. No need for detailed reading, just get a rough idea of the different moods, tracks, subjects, etc.
5. Create copies of your original work and rename them to one of the different elements you found - “angry” “moody” “funny” and/or “environment” “trees” “plastic” “recycling” “anecdote” etc.
6. What we will be doing is creating a whole variety of articles from that burst of eloquence your friends shut you up for.
7. Look at the name of the file and remember that this is an EDIT. Be fast and ruthless. No getting into poetry now. Get rid of everything that doesn’t fit that title and smoothen and fit together everything that does. Mostly, you’ll find one huge chunk written together, with bits and pieces to add from in other place.
8. This is also an excellent time to take a look at the spelling and grammar. Done.
9. Do the same with each different label and edit that massive piece down to humane lengths each time - it can be a good idea to have a target word count and ruthlessly fit the edit into it.
10. Don’t worry about some parts being repeated in some versions or stuff, unless there really is a huge chunk of text that gets repeated as it (which sounds like your original ramblings were not particularly varied or long enough).

Voila. Done right, this can give you 20 seemingly original articles in the effort it takes to write three from scratch. Of course it is more effort than you ever took to write one article, but remember this isn’t one article? In fact, I have used this technique to create an entire category of articles to keep together. Done right, they are all highly individual and have their own focus and tone.

Now for the submission. You could use software, but where is the point in using a special software to submit one article to each site. Its faster to do it like this:

1. Create some dummy email address and figure out a user name and password you can live with.
2. Do a google search for article directories in a tabbed browser - Firefox is excellent. Open the first 10-20-30-50 whatever number you are greedy enough for in tabs. I have never used more than the first 20 results, but feel free. Feel free to open another heavily tabbed window for the same purpose too. Go to Bookmarks and select bookmark all tabs. Label the folder something like “Article submission” (or the username and password :P)
3. Go through all the windows one by one and create accounts with the email user name and password you had thought of. You will find that most of their register pages are exactly the same and “autofill” can handle this easily.
4. Open that email account and activate all of those registrations.
5. Submit each of those articles to different sites. I guess you could repeat some of them if you run out of articles before you run out of sites, but I usually don’t do it. I just close the other windows and keep them for another day.

With this method, I find that my content links are nicely respected, even if those articles get picked up by other sites, since the number of duplicates is comparatively lower.

When I next want to submit articles, its a simple matter of going to bookmarks and opening all links from that folder in tabs. Of course, after so many registrations, I’m unlikely to have forgotten the ARTICLE SUBMISSION name, email and password.

Please note that even with article submission software, you would have to create accounts in the directories (promoted by the software rather than search engine) anyway.

I will be devoting posts to article submissions and other stuff, so this one is focussed on link exchanges.

1. Look at your site carefully. What is your impression of it? What are the sites you really wish are yours?
2. Add links to those desired sites anyway, and request for an exchange.
3. When you request for an exchange, be sure to offer something that appeals to the webmaster - for example: “I have an interesting article about a rare kind of widget you have mentioned on your site while the tables you speak of on your site will nicely complement another page I have on interior decoration” And you go ahead and link to those tables and hope and pray that he links to that rare widget.
4. Many well established sites have scores of link exchange offers everyday, so be prepared for a refusal. Let your link be there, and let the webmaster be aware of those referrals coming. Write a better article which helps the subject of their site and approach again. Regardless of whether they ever link to you, you have served your readers welll by pointing them to excellent information
5. For other sites (the non-worshipped ones) request link exchanges and see where they go. Try and find content you would happily send visitors off to (and they remember that you keep showing them nice places and keep returning) also find something on their site which will be enhanced with a link to yours.
6. Do the regular “will you exchange links with me” scene to some extent if you can’t resist, though you really shouldn’t be needing it after a while if you are persistent with working for your links.
7. Save time on quantity and spend it on quality and have fun too. Research the subjects related with your site and learn more, find information of interest to trigger ideas for content, and come across excellent sites and request them for links. The way I see it, if you come across one or two sites once in a while and link with them, it is better than spamming every site that turns up in a search with requests and adding links that will not only take away your visitors, but take them away to unremarkable sites.
8. Link exchanges are overrated. They don’t really add much to SEO unless they are in some way “different” However, well managed exchanges will help the flow of happy visitors and keep them coming back to find really relevant content and links.
9. As a rule of thumb, be a snob. Do you really admire a certain site? If not, it isn’t really worth spending a link on.
10. Of course, feel free to have a nice spammy links page for directories that will not list without a reciprocal. Even better, create a section for them, so that it becomes useful to people looking for such link exchanges on your subject.

Cheers!

From my travels around the net and trying out everything, I think I have the 20 best free techniques to promoting your website.

1. Content is king. Offer good content regularly
2. Regularity is also kind when it is about visitors and our site. Keep them interested. One well researched post a week is better than 4 of the garbage variety. Of course 4 well researched posts a day are better than both.
3. Use links to your site (different pages in it) in email signatures, forum signatures and any other signatures you can.
4. Submit your site to relevant free directories, but no need to go overboard hunting for directories. Begin with the king of them all - http://dmoz.org
5. Read around on sites related with the subject of your site and see what people are talking about. You can even react to them on your site.
6. Provide links freely to excellent content, and even outbound links are an asset. Readers count on you to discover outstanding stuff for them and they come to you rather than waste time hunting. Plus, I have often had visitors searching for one of the sites I linked to and a keyword that my site had, because the keyword was there, and that link was there.
7. Rewrite old and boring pages. Seriously, they are already indexed and they are useless crap sitting and hogging server space. Why not update them with good keyword rich content and let the search engines discover those changes and re-rank them?
8. Offer easy reasons and ways for people to link to your site. Provide link text, mind catching content and let the rest happen. It does happen.
9. Submit articles to directories. Watch out for my upcoming article on free and effective ways of doing it.
10. Offer downloads that can be traced back to your site. These can quickly and easily be compiled with old content sitting around on your site or computer at home.
11. Maintain a newsletter. Nothing like an interesting newsletter to catch the interest of people.

Most of all, don’t go overboard with promoting links all of a sudden, only to fizzle out when the next thing catches your fancy. Be consistent and you will see consistent results. No use for traffic to spike up for a week or two and crash again. Much better to add one or two really useful links a day (or even less frequent) and be able to afford the interest and effort for it than spam directories already full of spam, or add hundreds of links indiscriminately.

I am like you are, and it is working for me. Stay tuned as I share more discoveries on this space.