Top Link Building Strategies – Bring Me To Top 10 Of “Make Money Online”

Squeezing into Top 10 with the keyword of “Make Money Online” can be overwhelming, it’s not a week or a month job, it can takes you months or even years to achieve, it requires a lot of hard works and efforts. I’ve forgotten how long I’ve been optimizing for the keyword of make money online, it was a personal blog that shares about personal rant when it first launched, it turned to optimize the keyword of “Make Money Blog” and “Make Money Blogging” after a few months since it born. I was happy when I first got into Top 10 of Make Money Blogging, but it’s nothing for me right now. Ultimately, I decided to join the SEO war and compete with the most competitive keyword, make money online!

When I first optimized the keyword of make money online, I checked my blog ranking almost everyday, I just want to ensure that what I did was fine and healthy to my blog and its’ ranking. Eventually, I was squeezed into Top 10 in keyword of “Make Money Online”, it was standing in the Top 10 for almost a month, I believe that I could maintain and even improve it, Top 5 is my next goal. As you know, on-page optimization and off-page optimization are the most critical tasks you need to follow in order to win the SEO war. As it should be, I’d put a lot of efforts and worked hard on link building. I’ll be writing about what I’ve done to squeeze into the Top 10 in keyword of “Make Money Online” for this several months.

On-Page Optimization : 3 Common Strategies

Image Credit : Barb Henry

When it comes to on-page optimization, there is only a few things you can do to enhance your blog as on-page optimization doesn’t have a strong impact on the SERPS. Nevertheless, we still have to do it, we don’t pursue for 100%, at least we pursue for 99.9%. Here is a few little tips that I used to do for all my niche blogs :

1) SEO Optimized WordPress Themes
There are couples of wordpress themes out there where you can download them for FREE, but not all them are well optimized for SEO. This wordpress themes was a customized themes that built by a buddy of mine last month, it was well optimized for SEO. Anyway, Carl Ocab created an awesome wordpress theme named “Ultimate Blogging Theme” which is a SEO Optimized Theme and you could save a lot of time in doing on-page optimization.

2) Keyword Density
When it comes to keyword density, in order to tell Google that what your blog writing about, you have to squeeze more of your main keyword on your main page naturally. You’re recommended to insert your main keyword to the main page in certain % of the total words, if you optimize it excessively, you’ll dropped into the “Sand Box”. Sand box can also be known as Google penalty, if you’re doing over-optimization for the keyword, Google will fine you and get you into the “jail”, you’ll be get lost in the search engine for some days. Thus keyword density in 2-5% is ideal.

3) One Article On Main Page
I believe that most of us display more than 1 article in the main page, it’s not a big deal if you have a niche blog that writes specific topic. Nevertheless, if you have a blog that writes about personal rant and you have 3 different topics of articles on the main page, Google will panic while deciding which keyword they should rank you in. Also, it does affect the keyword density if you don’t manage it properly. You can try to display one article on the main page for better optimization. I have 3 articles on the main page, I’ll be more careful when it comes to writing article for better on-page optimization.

Off-Page Optimization – 5 Link Popularity Building Strategies

Image Credit : Jim Babwe

Let’s say there is gold on the other side of the river, on-page optimization is the way that brings you to the river bank, while off-page optimization is the way that helps you to cross over river and get the gold. Off-page optimization is the most critical task that you need to do to enhance your ranking. There are several link building strategies out there that could work to improve your SERPS, here is a list of link building strategies that I used to increase inbound links.

1) Commenting In Blogs That Install Top Commentator Plugin
Blog commenting is the most easiest way that you can get tons of backlinks, I’m talking about quantity of backlinks but not quality of backlinks, you’ll get tons of backlinks but not all of them are useful. Despite the quality of backlinks, build as much backlinks as you could. There are many blogs out there that have installed the Top Commentator Plugin on their blog, including this blog.

PeterLee and Yan have an awesome list of all blogs that install Top Commentator Plugin, you can get the full advantage by visiting all the blogs and start commenting to build backlinks. Remember not to spam, once you’re recognized by Akismet as a spammer, your comments will not be seeing the light anymore, you know most of the blogs install Akismet plugin. Besides of this, if you’re urge to get more backlinks and even a higher Pagerank, try to focus on blogs which have PR3 and higher.

Regarding of what I did, I left a comment on a blog, bookmarked the article and waited for approval, moved to another blog and did the same thing. After this, get back and check the previous blogs which I’ve left my comments, see whether they’ve approved my comments, if yes then I’ll move them to another bookmark folder with the name of “Blog Commenting (Approve)”. I’ll be starting to follow their blogs and leave honor comments, until I get into the Top Commentator list. Right now I have 10-15 blogs in the folder and I’m on their Top Commentator list. You can use your keyword as the commenter name, if the blog owner ask you not to do this, then you just change to your name. That’s not a big deal but it’s plus if you have keyword in the link.

2) Writing List Post
I learned about this strategy from Darren Rowse during his 31 Days Build A Better Blog, writing a list post. I’d gone through and written a list post of “66 Professional Bloggers You Should Follow” on that day, and I received few inbound links from few bloggers that shared this article with their readers. Needless to say, list post is the most popular article writing style, it’s easy to read and understand. If you like to get more inbound links to your article, producing more list post with interesting title head, it could attracts more people to link you.

3) Guest Posting
I believe that most of the people like to guest posting while some of them don’t, they might think :”I have an awesome article, why don’t I publish in my own blog but others blog?”, I understand this is the hardest part for us to write a quality article and send it to others. Nevertheless, if you think out of the box, guest posting could brings you one-way dofollow quality links, you will get more exposure, and even potential loyal readers to your blog. I’ve been guest posting in few blogs in the past and I was pleased with the traffic I received from their blogs. Bear in mind, guest posting could brings you unlimited potential advantages to your blog.

p/s : You can also submit your guest post to this blog.

4) Article Marketing
Recently I was aggressive in writing articles and submitting them to one of the article directory which was Ezine Articles. Needless to say, article marketing is also another way to get more quality one-way backlinks. It’s almost similar to guest posting, but submitting article to Ezine Articles could brings you unlimited potential backlinks because there are tons of people reading your article, they might like your article and copy your article to publish on their blog. With that said, you’ll get more backlinks if you produce more quality articles and submit them to Ezine Articles.

5) Commenting In DoFollow Blogs
Here is another blog commenting strategy that you could get quality backlinks instead of the quantity backlinks in the #1 above. Dofollow means there is no “rel=”nofollow” inserted to the hyperlinks, Google will consider these hyperlinks as recommended links which contain quality and useful contents. If you’re commenting in blogs that don’t have nofollow attribute to the comment section, you should get some link juice from the blogs. If you’re commenting in the blogs and using keyword in the URL, then you should get strong backlinks to your blog. Nevertheless, there is not much blog that is dofollow. Anyway, Courtney Tuttle has an awesome list of the blogs that follow, you should take the full advantage and start commenting on these blogs. Again, not to spam!

Conclusion

These are the ways that I’ve done to squeeze into the Top 10 in keyword of “Make Money Online” in these several months, there is no shortcut for you to achieve it. Thus you have to follow these link popularity building strategies to build your backlinks. A blog buddy of mine, Nicolas Prudhon had written a tutorial about how to outrank your competition, I found it quite interesting and I recommend you to read further.

If you do like to squeeze into Top 10 of your keyword, be sure you follow these link popularity building strategies and start building your backlinks. If you want to make money online by getting more organic traffic, this is what you should do.

It’s your turn to contribute your ideas on how you build your backlinks, feel free to leave your honor comment in the comment box below.