Looking For Traffic In All The Wrong Places - Part 2

Step 4 - Traffic

Let's discuss 'Link Structure'. I would like to discuss four types of link structuring. That's anchor text links, internal links, external links, and backlinks.

Before we begin let me give you some advice. You should use your blog URL (link) for any communication media, such as: email signature, forum signature, message board signature, other blogs, trackbacks, sign-up forms, registration forms, etc. The more exposure, the better. You should always treat your blog like a business and try to represent your blog in the best light possible. When you create links be well aware which sites you associate your link with. You should be confident and proud about your blog and try to share it with everyone friends, family, co-workers, classmates, associates, and anyone you come into contact with.

As you may have already noticed I put a lot of emphasis on keywords. That's because keywords are extremely important when it pertains to gaining traffic within search engines. It's possible to only focus on keywords and build a successful website, without spending any money on advertising. The only problem with that method is that it will usually take years or more to see a good amount of traffic, but by focusing on keywords and free advertising methods you can gain a daily significant amount of traffic within months. Link structuring should be the next focus aside from keywords. Better yet, focusing on keywords and link structuring at the same time is ideal, this is an evil combination and they actually work hand-in-hand.

Okay, let's go over the word "Link Structure".

Link structure pertains to the organization of links within your blog. Anchor text is the title of the link, external links are the links pointing to different websites outside of your blog, internal links are links pointing to different areas within your blog, and backlinks are links pointing from other websites back to your blog.

Link structuring helps search engines index and crawl your blog better. It is also important to link to relevant information about your niche and to use anchor text when creating links which will point to your blog from external sources.

Please note:

Journal Home content management system is already structured in a way to automatically structure your hyperlinks. 'Recent Post' provide anchor text with internal links. 'My Links' under the 'Edit My Profile' section creates external links with anchor text. Journal Home cannot create backlinks, therefore, backlinks will need to be created on the fly, by submitting your blog to different search engines, directories, and putting links on other websites. Even though Journal Home content management system handles most of your link structuring it is still good practice to create your own links when appropriate.

Anchor Text (definition from answers.com)

Anchor text is the visible text in a hyperlink. Anchor text gets a lot of weight in search engine algorithms because the linked text is usually relevant to the landing page. The objective of search engines is to provide highly relevant search results; this is where anchor text helps as the tendency is, more often than not, to hyperlink words relevant to the landing page.

An example of Anchor Text is: Free Blog Host

Free Blog Host is highlighted because it contains a hyperlink to: http://www.journalhome.com. When someone does a search for 'Free Blog Host', the search engines will display Journal Home in its results and recognize the keyword phrase 'Free Blog Host' then will credit journalhome.com an authority of the keyword phrase, pushing journalhome.com up in the search engine rankings. Of course, it is not that simple but it is the gist of what happens.

You should choose 5 keywords or keyword phrases from your top 25 Keyword List which are most relevant to your niche. Always use 1 out of the 5 keywords or keyword phrases as your anchor text, whenever you create backlinks. Be sure to switch between the keywords and keyword phrases, when creating your links, so you can gain greater search engine results. If you submit through a form then make sure you use your keywords or keyword phrases in the "Title" field, the "Title" field usually creates your anchor text. Anchor text is always important for search engine marketing.

Internal Links

Internal links are the links which point to different areas of your blog. It is good practice to add anchor text links to different entries within your blog when it relates or when you are discussing a previous entry. Simply link to a previous blog entry when adding a new entry. You will link the same way you would if you were linking to another website.

Internal links share the ranking value of your blog pages. You do not want one page of your blog to outshine the other pages in search engine results. If you have equal or close to equal value then the search engines will deliver better results and more results when one of your keywords is searched. This also helps the search engines crawl and index your pages faster and more efficiently, because it can now find entries which were buried or no longer linked to.

You should not worry too much about internal linking because Journal Home blogs automatically create link structuring through the use of Recent Posts and with Journal Home blogs most blog pages are at most 3 levels deep, which is the common search engine depth when crawling. Journal Home itself is spider by all three major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, and MSN) every single day as well as other smaller search engines. Therefore, this step needs to be mostly addressed when you have your own domain, because Journal Home has taken this stress away from you.

Though, I do want you to get some practice with internal linking, by pointing to a previous entry when it relates. Also, it is important to use anchor text when using internal links, so you can use different keywords or keyword phrases to link to previous journal entries. This gives you a better balance for utilizing your keywords and keyword phrases.

External Links

External links are the links which point to another web page outside of your blog. The important thing about external links is that the anchor text should be relevant to your blog/niche or at least the landing of the link page should be relevant. Example: If your blog is about Digital Photography then linking to a site which is about digital camera reviews would be relevant.

I know there are times you may want to link to a site which is not relevant to your niche, because it is one of your favorite sites, but it may do more harm than good, so let's not link to any non-relevant site. Instead, just save non-relevant sites to your browser favorites and bookmark it for later retrieval for your personal use. Let's try to keep all external links relevant.

You should have no more than 25 external links per blog page. The easiest way to create external links using Journal Home is to go under 'Edit My Profile' and add links at the 'My Links' section. You must have the link variable in place on your template. For information about the link variable please see the Support & FAQ section for Template Variables.

Backlinks

Backlinks are links which point back to your blog from external websites. Backlinks are important when creating links. You should try to get as many one-way backlinks as possible. One-way backlinks are links which do not require you to link back to their site. By linking back to a site which you are linking to, it devalues the value of both links. If the link only link to you then it increases the value of your link. You should also pay close attention to Google PageRank (discussed in later lessons) to know how Google values the site. The higher the PageRank the better value it provides your link. You will hear more about backlinks in upcoming lessons.

Backlinks are created by other webmaster who have a interest in linking to your site, but the most rewarding backlinks are usually created by YOU! You must be on your job and create backlinks every chance you get. I recommend creating at least 2 backlinks everyday and again try to find one-way backlinks. Finding free one-way backlinks is the most difficult, because usually you won't get something for nothing, but they are out there! We will discuss submitting your links to search engines, directories, and other free advertising platforms next week.

By having the proper link structure you are prepared for the traffic when it comes. The search engines will crawl and index your blog without any problems, making your blog stand out among the rest.

The homework for this week will be to link to one of your blog entries from another blog entry (make it relevant). Use the title of the blog entry as the anchor text for the link or use a keyword or keyword phrase from your Keyword List if it relates to your blog entry. Also, search and find two external websites which relate to your blog/niche and link to them on the homepage of your blog, use relative anchor text for the external links. You may need to edit your blog template to include the external links, otherwise you will need to link externally within your journal entry. Last, find two sites which you can create one-way backlinks, use 1 of your keyword/keyword phrases as the anchor text. The one-way backlinks should be placed on external websites/blogs (preferably with a Google PR of 3 or higher). We will continue next week and discuss free advertising.

Daily To-Do List

1½ hours per day

Next Week Newsletter

Looking for Traffic in All the Wrong Places - Part 3

Journal Home