The Keyword Informer 9 – NicheBOT on MarketingProfs.com, Backlinks, Commenting and Baby Steps to Blogging…

Jim, thanks for the detailed explanation on backlinks with keyword phrase and blogging action plan thrown in for good measure… so the short and sweet deal is to be successful, you’ve gotta have a plan in place with goals even before you start blogging…right?

Hi Jim,
Tou are missing a couple of very important elements but I will take liberties though I wouldn’t normally

1. Unless it is a very high traffic blog,or you are commenting purely for reputation, it is much better to leave comments on a blog which doesn’t use nofollow.
2. Rather than leaving comments, it is better to link through to multiple people and send a pingback/trackback – by sending other people traffic in your niche, they are more likely to link to you in the future.
3. If you leave a comment on a good post, or if someone links through to you, it pays dividends to drive a little traffic to the site, such as using Stumbleupon.

Take care

Andy

Jim,

I figured I’d take a stab at providing value to other content readers . One of the most intimidating things is seeing “my” keywords dominated by mature and obviously authoritative sites. However, I’ve learnt that simply creating a blog, putting in some of the plugins for the different social networking and bookmarking sites (check out http://www.onlywire.com), creating an online profile at many of the popular blog networks like mybloglog and others, and submitting my rss feed to different directories works like a charm.

Within 6 weeks I had achieved top 10 for my main keyword, and within 4 months I had gotten top 10-20 for 4 of the other keywords as well – even though they were dominated by authority sites.

I would say that submitting the RSS feed to the many directories is critical, as that’s a bunch of links, and you can do it with one of the software’s for free (or close to it).

Sincerely,
David Jaeger

Absolutely Highwaystar! The most incredible thing a plan does is begin to put you in the roll of identifying your primary blogs, headliners or even the smaller blogs that you need to monitor and visit when they post. The plan of attack crystalizes your strategy as you rummage through sites. And your strategy is ultimately to add value to the conversation (which allows your link to remain there), then further arouse curiosity in others with your knowledge, tips or skills in your industry while laying seeds (URLs) to inner pages of content on your site (utilizing 3 to 4 to 5 word keyword phrases). After a month of receiving blog alerts or newsletter mailings about a blog post, anyone should be pretty attuned to what’s being discussed across the entire set of blogs in your industry and be able to even cross-reference other blogs in your own commenting. The FIRST step people miss or they skip right beyond is the INITIAL research stage by getting too antsy and impatient. Must NOT skip this part. When you properly plan, one becomes intimately familiar with the culture and etiquette with certain niches rather than just someone who is mildly acquainted with the latest breaking news in an indsutry. When you plan for your success with any type of technique, there’s really no element of time. It’s just a matter of how to attack the technique and what the core strategy will. But again, if you are simply approaching this by ADDING VALUE to the conversation, that’s golden right there and kharm will follow.

Ok Jim,

I am following your advice about the keyword instead of my name.

And I agree that the 6 months time frame is about the time when you start seeing some results.

That’s probably the main reason why so many people fail since they are so impatient that they cannot wait 6 months.

Instead they start something new and thus they start from zero again.

Andy,

1. You make an excellent point about the No Follow Tags –
truly important. Should the blog have a no-follow tag,
the link will not count. For those unfamiliar with how to
tell, you can go to the blog you are considering monitoring
and check an older post that has a comment or two on it. Then, with your mouse, right-click and highlight “View Source” and search for the following with the function to find something on the page (CTRL+F) and search for: rel=”nofollow”

2. With pingbacks, that is something I didn’t want to touch right away with newbies, but it definitely sounds like it would be a great follow-up to this piece, further on commenting. Maybe you would like to provide us with the lay breakdown?

3. Righteo on Social Networking sites like Stumbleupon which
was brought up earlier in the Howie Schwartz call. We’ll definitely
be getting into Social Bookmarking for those that are dealing with
info overload.

Best,

Jim

David,

More great stuff about Social Bookmarking and being in the thick of backlinks, we’re just about to start covering that stuff. I allowed the comment because you definitely DO add value, but want to encourage our newbies to stay tuned for more info on Social Bookmarketing, Social Networking, building yourself as an authority within groups.

RSS feeds and such — another great point and awesome source
of backlinks. Simply just submitting them will get aggregators
and sites picking up your feed — and that’s wonderful as well.

We’ll also get into Technorati (which as you can see is link in
at the bottom of this blog), and a bunch more stuff.

David — I think many more people are going to begin experiencing
the kind of results you have witnessed yourself by totally
embracing simple little extra steps that can be scheduled.

Besides the plan — having something to remind — whether it’s
Microsoft Outlook, your cell phone with an alarm, this stuff has
got to be a habit to gain any traction or momentum with it.

Thanks again for sharing!

Best,

Jim

Jim

I sincerely appreciate the useful information you always give out so liberally. And your keyword research tool is a classic.

May I just remind you that a big-long paragraph like in your last comment can be overwhelming for the reader and we should make smaller paras with 3-4 lines at most while commenting (just like we do for the body copy).

And I have got quite a few readers to click over to my blogs and web sites even though the blog may be following the “no-follow” strategy. So there is always something to gain when you comment on a popular blog

Arun Agrawal

Hi Jim

Good to see you edit the comment and break it down into manageable paras. You can see the change in visual impact yourself

Arun

Thanks Jim and the other comments above from Andy and David.

I defo use the calender reminder tip as I tend to browse all day and then at the end of the day think, “What did I do today”, which is normally not as much as I could have!

Mally

Hi Jim

Is there any chance of having a ‘printer friendly’ button on the Keyword Informer issues.

Thanks
Joe

Hi Jim. Referring to when you said (Repeating the same URL on the same blog post with different keyword phrases will degrade the one backlink credit you may receive, thus wasting your time with the entire process.)
Does that relate to blog posts only because
I have been writing articles and press releases and in the resource boxes been putting 2 of the same anchor texts which go to the same url aswell. Does that mean that both of these links wont count?

Hi Jim

Reference point 5:

Use your keyword phrase in the “NAME” field of the blog commenting form (or you could alternatively create a hyperlink within the body of your blog post using the HTML code to construct a hyperlink). The latter way is more advanced, but recommended.

Is it possible to give an example of how you would fit the hyperlink in your comment ie: the actual wording and why is this recommended above putting your keyword phrase in the “NAME” field.

Sorry if this is a bit naive. I’m still learning!

Sincerely
Joe

Well, no-follow tag is only obliged by Google. Yahoo does follow the no-follow link but does not attrib any value to the passed link, however MSN does not consider the no-follow tag.

BTW, it completely makes sense putting your keywords on Rob’s blog as he doesn’t use no-follow for his comments. I hope he doesn’t change that once he starts getting a lot of spam !!

~ Saumil

6 months is a long time what happens if you get an old domain name? can you like cheat your way to the top? Surely there must be short cuts?
Another question i would like to ask is, does google look at the site you are linked to and find out if the link is relevant for example if i link to your site and your site is about search engine optimization do i really benefit if my site is related to safaris in Africa and not search engine optimization? Does that link carry weight?

Great article Jim!

From what I have seen, just about everyone inserts the link using their name and homepage. Good advice about linking to an internal page with different keywords you want to target.

Creating an excel sheet with your keywords, where you linked, and where you commented is an excellent way to keep track of your efforts.

Squidoo and Hubpages are other good places for leaving comments with HTML links. Once again…….always add value!

In your experience, do most blogs allow a HTML link in the comment area?

Ted

Jim,

There is one issue which I find confusing about posting comments on blogs, and I haven’t really been able to find a straight answer; despite searching for a while.

That issue is “no follow” tags. From what I understand, most bloggers use the “no follow” tag attribute. If they are using the no follow tag, doesn’t that mean the search engines will not give credit to your keyword in the blog post you make? Thus, making your quality blog posting not even worth the effort.

Thanks,

Jason

Great stuff. Whether or not the blog uses nofollow or not, the link back is still important. It might not help with the SEs, but it will bring traffic.

I’m new to commenting, but have already had extra traffic from the comments I left, some links back, and maybe even an opportunity to do a guest post.

Just be thoughtful, helpful, honest, and relavent.

ChrisCD :O)

Hello Jim,

I really understand what you mean, though I really need to read this stuff to siphon the meat. I will get back to you.

Thanks

Jim,

I don’t even have a marketing site to promote, but I have a resource that everyone might be interested in. I hope you don’t mind that I plug a different kind of site.

Anyway, you mentioned that the way to find out if a blog uses the “nofollow” on the links was to view the source code.

Did you know that Firefox has an add-on that will automatically highlight them in the browser? It’s called Search Status and is available at http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus/

It sure saves a lot of time. Just thought you’d like to know.

Steve

Hi Jim
I while back I started using keywoords instead of my name in comments but I was not sure it this was good practice or nor so it’s great to see someone like yourself using this technique.

I had’nt thought about trying to get to the top of the comments or making additional comments with different keyphrases/urls brilliant idea.

Also 3-4 very usefultips from the other commenters here

I have read in many places that you should not put links on sites without page rank becasue this may cause you to loose link credit, do you go along with this theory?

Lee Graham

Andy

You said “2. Rather than leaving comments, it is better to link through to multiple people and send a pingback/trackback – by sending other people traffic in your niche, they are more likely to link to you in the future.”

This sounds very effective but I’m not entirely sure I understand what you mean, can you explain what you mean/ how you do it a bit further?

Lee Graham

Hello Jim,

Great article, I’m about putting the backlinks idea to help my genuine genuine internet marketing online affiliate program site to further rank well on the search engine

ave a problem here – which areas of my MySpace do you think will be best for me to set to get top quality backlinks from MySpace? Is it the blogs or what? Please kindly enlighten me.

Thanks

Hello,

Just recently, on a popular forum, I asked a question about getting quality backlinks from Myspace for my top affiliate program training mentorshipwebsite. The webmasters told me MySpace is no longer a place to get quality backlinks?

Why? Because, according to them, the guys at MySpace have installed some clever scripts to render links ineffective and thus will not count well as backlinks.

What do you think about this?

Hi Jim

I just learn a good lesson today on commenting to blogs, this strategy you have is really thinking out of the box,when making comments on blogs an getting one way backlinks. I just started on getting one way backlinks to my site. This post was wright on time for me.

I have bookmark this page,an I will refer other people to it.

Thanks a lot
Michael Taylor

At the BOTTOM of each issue, it should say something like:

“Filed under marketingprofs.com, the keyword informer by The NicheBOT Guy.

Permalink • Print • Email • Comment • Edit”

Look up above — it’s right there.

I took that from this Keyword Informer 9. So you can use
the Control + “F” Key held down at the same to search on
this web page.

Please make sure to check for that PRINT link as we
already DO have a printer friendly button and screen.

Here’s the link for THIS issue’s printer friendly version:

http://www.nichebot.com/blog/95/keyword-informer-9/?action=print

Okay — as to your question about the actual wording
and why is putting your keyword phrase in the body
preferred over putting it in the “NAME” field, at least
for me.

Here are the exact steps:

1. What I would do is go ahead and choose what the
keyword phrase will be when I think out how I will reply
to a post. A little thought at first.

2. Write the post and try to naturally fit the keyword
phrase into your value-added comment. Value-added
content will make sure you get your comment approved.

3. Then, when you find the exact sweet spot to place your
keyword phrase, use the following code to place in your
web page:

< a h r e f = "http://www.someurlhere.com" >keyword phrase here< / a >

I put ONE extra space between both of the <> so that the
code would show here — otherwise, the code may appear
messed up or just like a hyperlink and I want to make sure
and show you the exact way it looks.

To give you a web reference on how to create a hyperlink,
you can refer to this page:

http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_links.asp

Now, as to WHY I recommend doing links within the body
of the blog comment rather than in the name field. Some
blog owners may not care for it and it looks MORE natural
when your keyword phrase hyperlink appears naturally
within the text. The search engines will also give MORE
weight to your link better weight as well since there is
TEXT surrounding the hyperlink (which is part of your
comment). And that text surrounding the link will relate
to the keyword phrase being hyperlinked. This
just makes the LINK to your site more relevant in the eyes
of the search engines when there is surrounding text. So
the answer goes deeper than just one simple thing.

Hope that makes sense.

Best,

Jim

Hi Jim,

This is a great article! Actually I can to be here from a post you left at the conqueryourniche forum. It just goes to show, that if you leave a good post, people are going to click and come.

I don’t have any links in this post, because as you said, don’t send someone to a half built site. I have a question about linking though…

I’m having problems about how a linking structure should be on my site. I use WP on my own domain, so do I target one keyword/keyword phrase per page? Or do I use more than one per page?

If it’s one per page, then every time I write an article with a particular keyword, should it then just be added to that particular page?

I do hope I made sense. For some reason I cannot get a clear answer on this. If you have a simple linking blueprint or diagram, I would love to know about it. How about you make one, and I’ll buy it!

Now I need to bookmark this site to wait for a reply.

Also, I use Overture, so am I hearing right that their search results are useless?

Thanks,

David

David,

Go ahead and drop me an email and chat with you about it in short. You can just use the Contact page on this site at:

http://www.nichebot.com/contact/

One of my staff will route the email to me.

Just realize that I’ve have a bunch of projects going
on right now, so please take no offense to my undivided
attention.

And on the Overture front, I believe that tool is finally no longer able to survive and will be yanked soon. Right now, it’s returning no results. So yeah, I think the end is near.

Alrighty — back to the projects at hand.

Best,

Jim