How Blog Blueprint Saved My Internet Marketing Ass

How Blog Blueprint Saved My Internet Marketing Ass

Yea, that was me!

If you've been following my experiences as a rookie internet marketer, then it comes as no surprise that I have been operating under a cloud (a voluminous, dark, gray cloud) of frustration!

Come to think of it, looking back at my old posts, it has reduced me to a sniveling, whiny little baby.

Not what I intended!

I started this endeavor knowing full well (maybe not "full") that it would be some time before those passive dollars would magically appear in my bank account and I prepared myself by defining success in terms other than just making boatloads of dough.

So what the hell happened anyway

I felt like I wasn't getting anywhere and the time I was putting in at night, after a long day of work, was all for naught.  I knew if I had to persevere if I wanted to find any type of success but the forces were working against me, and I was beginning to feel its weight.

And it was suffocating me.

I hadn't given up per se, but I was doing less and less with my niche site to help it with each passing day.  At that point, my main backlinking method was blog commenting.  BLOG COMMENTING.
And it gets worse from there.  I began to substitute reading and putzing around online for doing anything with my site in the name of progress!  Instead of building backlinks, I would look for tweets about backlinking.  Or read someone else's blog, drool over their success, and trick myself into thinking that will be me in a years time.

All I was doing was tricking myself.

A Change In Tide

I needed to shift my perception and treat my pursuits more like a business.  Businesses require investments in order to succeed and that is what I did.  I made some investments.

I bought Market Samurai and the first thing I did was use their rank checker to find out exactly where the hell
I stood before the eyes of Google. As of purchase time I was ranked at 256 for my main keyword.  I was pleasantly surprised (apparently in my frustration of searching for my site in Google I would give up after page 20!)

Then I heard great things about Blog Blueprint from fellow awesome bloggers Pat Flynn and Moon Hussain.  This was the greatest investment I made for my business so far.

Blog Blueprint is a backlinking service that allows you to place up to 20 100-word posts per day on their network of high PR blogs.  Each post is allowed 1 anchor text backlink, giving you the possibility 20 backlinks per day!  And all are do-follow as well!
I started using Blog Blueprint on March 8.  As of this writing, I am now ranked 93 for my keyword when doing an exact match search!  That's a movement of 163 positions!  I already surpassed the goal I set for myself in my last post of cracking the top 100 by end of April!

This feels good! 
Not only  has Blog Blueprint surpassed expectations that I had previously set for myself, it has re-energized me as well. The taste of success has laser-adjusted my focus.  Knowing that one system is working means that other systems can as well as long as I keep at it.  And now more then ever I need to diversify where my backlinks are coming from.  I don't want to rely only on Blog Blueprint because I don't think it alone will get me to the top spot in Google.

If you want to give Blog Blueprint a whirl, you should.  It will set you back $57/month, but consider it a long-term investment that can be used on an infinite number of your sites (no need to purchase again and again for each site you create!)

 *Note: The links to Blog Blueprint are affiliate links.  If you decide to purchase and do so through my link, I am truly grateful!

Backlinks The Completely Unscientific Way - Part 1 Squidoo and You (Updated)

Backlinks The Completely Unscientific Way - Part 1 Squidoo and You (Updated)

I did a google image search for SEO and this picture came up!

 Thank you

 insightforge.com

I've been meaning to have a fully articulated, fleshed-out, detailed down to the finest grain of sand, SEO post up and ready for consumption this week.

But I haven't gotten around to it (damn you life!).  Actually, I've been doing a lot of reading up on various backlinking techniques and I realized I don't really have a fully articulated, fleshed-out, detailed down to the finest grain of sand SEO plan, so I have been rethinking what I am doing and will have that for you next week.

But I know all of you out there have been waiting with bated breath how I will go about driving organic traffic to my amazon niche site.

So sorry to keep you waiting.

In the meantime,  I came across this nifty little way to get some high PR backlinks (I originally thought that these backlinks were do-follow, but Alex Whalley was nice enough to let me know that they are in fact not.) 

We all know what do-follow means right, search engine spiders crawling through the fiber optics finds your backlink and follows it to your site, bringing with it all that lovely PR juice.  I am still a little confused by it and am still trying to figure out no-follow vs do-follow. 

For now do-follow = good.

And no-follow = still good, in the sense that the all mighty and powerful google likes to see a mix of no-follow and do-follow backlinks because that appears more natural, and more natural means not spammy, and not spammy means we climb those google rankings! 

When I know more you will know more, unless you already no more and can share the love in the comments.

Head for the Squid

Squidoo is a Web 2.0 property where the user can build, what the squidoo people like to call, lenses (it's really just a blog post with a catchy name).  It's pretty cool because you have the ability to post videos and images and all sorts of other neat things and monetize it, and the best part of all, no savvy interweb skills required.  Alex Whalley over at his awesome site AlexWhalley.com just posted a great tutorial on how to effectively use Squidoo and other Web 2.0 properties.  It's a great read and I will be incorporating it into my broader backlink strategy.

But there are other ways to use Squidoo to get backlinks without having to create a lens.

Some lenses have lists of websites/blogs that can be added to by the reader (*Note you will have to sign up to Squidoo to do this).  I guess the reason why people do this is to gain lens popularity.  All you need to do is find these lenses that have an "Add To This List" button.

How might I do that, you ask.  Well here's a bit of google-friendly search query to get you on your way:

site:squidoo.com "Add To This List" your keyword

Lemme explain: site:squidoo.com tells google we only want our search to yield domains with squidoo.com in the URL.  "Add To This List" tells google to find only squidoo.com domains with the "Add To This List" feature.  Your keyword is, well, your keyword that you are ranking for so that your link is placed on a relevant site (which, I am learning is important to the mighty eyeless google).  

As I'm typing this I just realized that this is also a nifty way to take a peek at your competition as well!

Tip # C

Head on over to SEO Quake and download and install their toolbar.  Activate the thing, and when you do your search you will have a whole bit of other info pertaining to that particular domain that comes in mighty handy.  Most importantly it will tell you the page rank (PR) of the domain.  Now you have instant info on what high PR sites to leave your link on.

Go find those high PR, relevant lenses. Find the "Add To This List" button. First you will be asked for the URL, then once you add that, you can leave any kind of anchor text that you want to rank for. Hit the proper add button, enter in some captcha and you're done.  Easy.  *Note, be careful because some of these lists are asking for Amazon links, and there is no point in leaving a link to an Amazon product on a competitor's site!  You will know it is asking for an Amazon link when you go and type in your URL and it says to you, "Hey, this isn't a link to an Amazon product!" (not in those words of course)

Now, I am not sure that if you have a thousand of these types of links if google will pass along all that delicious link juice, so I am using this sparingly until I learn otherwise.  Especially because I do want to have lenses of my own. For my niche site, I have 5 backlinks with this method and I would like to build a lens a week as well starting this weekend and until I reach my goal of ranking #1 for my keyword (I can see myself having at least 100 backlinks coming from Squidoo alone).

So if any really smart and experienced internet marketers out there could shed some light on whether having tons and tons of links coming from one place (like Squidoo) will be beneficial or not, please share it here!

There you have it.  I hope you find this beneficial.  All thoughts, questions, and random musings is encouraged in the comments section.