We are going to learn how to use our competition to gain links by utilizing the Yahoo Site Explorer.  First things first, you need to come up with a list of keywords that people will use to get to your site.  Now this is an art in and of itself, so I’m going to save the finer details of keyword selection for another post.  For our purposes, select keywords that you believe are popular that your site pertains to.

Now we want to find the best and the brightest for those keywords.  This is incredibly simple.  Just go to google, enter your keywords and see what sites are ranked on the first page.  Ignore any educational or reference sites such as wikipedia that actually gain links naturally.  Ideally look for the most commercial sites, because they know the game when it comes to link building.

Now take the URL of the competitors site and enter it into Yahoo Site Explorer.  Now you can see all of the links that your competitor has that allows them to rank so high.  Not only that, but Yahoo makes it incredibly easy by listing the sites in their order of importance.  Your goal is to go through this list and get a link anywhere that allows it.  Generally you will find 3 types of sites that you can use: Link Directories, Do-follow blogs, and forums.

Notice I said Do-follow blogs!!  Yes they are few and far between, but this method allows you to find keyword relevant do follow blogs with ease!  Take as much time as you can stand getting these high quality links to your site.  Once I finally figured out this simple technique, many of my sites became very profitable.  It is so easy that a beginner can do it, and so effective that even the pros do it.  Have fun!!

1. Start with the high PR sites and work your way down

What you are looking for here is quality links back to your site.  Obviously it makes sense to start posting on the directories with the most link weight.  I haven’t compiled a list, but a great one is right here.

2.  My duplicate submission rule

Some directories allow you to submit duplicate content and some do not.  If you are not spinning your articles for uniqueness then I recommend this method.  Use a current blog post that has already been indexed by google.  If you don’t know how to check then read this.  Now the hyperlinks that you insert in the article, link to the next blog post that you plan on publishing as an article.  This is insuring that your next post will be indexed quickly, so that you can then publish it as an article.  Duplicate content does not apply to the first website to publish the article and get it indexed.  This way, you get to re-use your blog posts as articles and still ensure that you get the credit for the unique content.

3.  Get these link pages indexed!!

You can use a few of your free blogs from this post, to push the spiders to the new article pages that you have.  Make an effort to get every one of these pages indexed.  These are long term links from high PR sites.  Need I say more..

If you have ever seen, under the comments sections, something that says TRACKBACK or PINGBACK, these comments are automated.  If you pingback a blog owner, often times they elect to automatically link back to the page that linked to them.  These pingbacks can be very valueable and I highly recommend that you take advantage of them.

Anytime that you cite another blog, if you link to it, you can have WP send the pingback.  You can turn this option on under Settings/Discussion.  Although the link back will be recipricol, if you get a successful trackback/pingback, it will often be from a blog that has more link weight than you do.  Recipricol links are not as good as one way links.  They are however, still valueable expecially if the other site is more respected than yours.

The first you should know about is the site operator.  It is fairly simple.  In the google search box type in site:yoursite.com and hit search.  This query is going to show you all of the pages from your site that google has in their index.  If you enter the search and nothing is found, you need to take efforts to get google to index your page.  For that read these 2 posts:

The second operator that you should know about is link.  To use this type in link:yoursite.com and hit search.  This will show you all of the links to your site that google has indexed and that you are getting credit for.  Remember the number of relavant links that you have strongly determines what type of search engine traffic you will get.  The more links the better.  You can also use this to investigate your competition.  Take some sites that rank higher than you do on google and see how many links that they have.  You can also investigate all of those pages that they have links on and attempt to get those sites to link to your webpage.

Here are some other basic operators and their functions:

• + (ex: +pa)  This excludes synonyms.  PA will not become Pennsylvania
• - (ex: car -hybrid) This excludes pages that contain hybrid
• “” (ex: “hey buddy”) This searches for the entire phrase and not 2 seperate kws
• * (ex: My * Blog) This is a wild card.  It matched My “anything” blog
• OR (ex: car red OR blue)  Searches for both car red AND car blue, but not car red blue.  MUST be in caps

In another post, I will explain some of the more advanced operators and show some of their uses.

• http://www.blogdigger.com/add.jsp
• http://www.readablog.com/AddFeed.aspx
• http://blo.gs/ping.php
• http://www.sarthak.net/blogz/add.php
• http://www.blogpulse.com/submit.html

And don’t forget to sign up on technorati and claim your blog.  I got the links above from this link.  The above are the live links under submit blog and blog rss feeds that don’t require you to sign up to submit a url.  If you have the time, try all the links on the page, make accounts at all the sites and submit your RSS everywhere.

Really what you are dealing with is “Free-speech” and it is a doubled edged sword to the blogger.  By allowing comments you allow interaction with readers and by allowing trackbacks you allow interaction with other blogs.  While this is all well and good, this interaction can often be a nuissance to big sites, but will rarely keep you tied up with a site that is growing.

Not only do I recommend that you allow comments, I suggest that you allow users to link back to their website.  Now I know that some are scratching their heads, saying “why would I allow a competitor to put a link on my site?”  Believe it or not, this will benefit you in the long run.  First, those blog owners who are in your niche and just starting out need links and they know it.  Because of that they are usually motivated to leave thoughtful relevant comments in hopes that the blog owner will allow it.  Getting a discussion going in comments is a good thing, and a good way to get someone to bookmark your site.  Sometimes they are not even interested in your site, but they are interested in seeing responses to their comments.  If you don’t allow users to link back to their site, you are repelling good comments.

If you are attracting blog owners who are leaving legitamate comments, then visit their site and do the same.

ADVANCED STRATEGY:

If  you know PHP or a scripting language, then you can automate this process.  Run a CRON job, that goes through your comments everyday saving urls from comments.  If the page is a blog, go to most recent post page and leave a comment saying:

“I enjoyed this post, great blog you have here.  Thanks for the visit to my site!”

or something stupid that has a good chance of getting through moderation.

On Technorati pages, they now have what they call “Blog Reactions.”  A blog reaction occurs when any blog links to another blog.  The short of it is, the more blog posts you make with blog links in them, the more pages that your link will show up in at technorati.

So if you make a a blog post and put a link to thisblog.com, you will show up under blog reactions on thisblog.com’s technorati page.

When you just get started, you want to get indexed and start building links as soon as you can.  If you claim your blog on technorati and then post with links to other blogs, then you can get a strong start with several links.

Apply this method with blog commenting, digg submissions, article submissions, etc. and you’ll get off to a very nice start.

P.S.  I don’t know if you can take this overboard or not, and I’m not sure how much weight a link from technorati gives you.  Any link is a good link for a new site.  I will do some research on this and let everyone know.

If you are just starting out and looking for blogs to post on, you will probably notice that many of those blogs use no follow tags for comments.  Don’t let this deter you from posting a comment.  Scouring through all the blogs trying to find ones that don’t use the no follow tags is a waste of time.  You are better off making comments on each and every blog that you come to that allows a link.

If you watch your logs, you will notice that google bot will show up on your page and the referring link will be from one of your no follow comments.  There is no doubt or argument that google follows these links.  What is arguable is that the no follow links may not carry as much weight.

Although many experts still contend that there is value in the no follow tags, Matt Cutts has publicly stated that webmasters should take down their no follow tags.  Although he hasn’t actually said it, I don’t think the difference between a no follow link and a regular link is substatial.

We will use a 3 step approach to getting indexed quickly.  You should already have your blog set up for SEO and need to have 2 plugins installed:  Google XML Sitemap and MetaBlogPress Ping Optimizer.  If that is not done then read this first.

1.  Compile a sitemap with the Google XML plugin.  Then, start an account at Google Webmaster Tools.  You can use your gmail login if you have a gmail account.  After you login, click add a new site.

To verify using a Meta-Tag is easy.  Copy the tag that google gives you.  Go to WP-Admin, then settings, then All-in-one SEO.  At the bottom, paste the google Meta-Tag in “additional home headers” and update the info.  Click verify on Google Webmaster Tools and you are done!!

Now we need to tell google about your sitemap.  On Google WT click on Site Configuration and then Sitemaps.  When you are on that page, click on Submit a sitemap.  Now in the box that comes up after yourdomain.com/ type in sitemap.xml and click submit.  Now we are done with that.

2.  Next we are going to use the power of Digg.com.  Start an account with Digg, and write a page about one of your posts.  Although you may never get traffic from Digg, their pages are indexed very fast and if everything goes correct, the Digg page with your link on it will also be indexed fast, pointing google’s little spider right to your blog.  You may also want to claim your blog at Technorati, set up a Squido-Lens, or start a profile on a social networking site and leave a link for your blog.

3.  Now we are going to have to use our brains on this one.  Think about what terms people may use to get to your blog.  Search for blogs similar to yours that are popular.  Compile a list of 5-10.  Now everyday for the next few days, you are going to post a comment on all of those blogs linking back to your website.

That is about it.  You also want to write one or two posts a day to get your RSS feed noticed.

After installing, log into your wp-admin page. If you installed with Fantastico or by some automated process, there is a good chance that it is not the latest version.  If you see a notice on your WP dashboard, the first thing that you should do is update to the new version.

Next, start with the Settings button and carefully go through all of the options.  Fill out everything that you can.  If you don’t understand something you can skip over it.  Here are a few important things to change.

Under writing, at the bottom replace your update service with this:

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping

Next under Privacy, change the option so search engines can find you.

Now click on Perma-links.  For this you have several options.  What is important is that you have the post-name in the link.  Select either Day and name, month and name, or ideally you can do the following custom structure:

/%category%/%postname%/

This will display the links showing the category and the postname and is the way that this site has been set up.

Now you need to download several different plug-ins to get started.  If you don’t know how to install a plug-in, then go here.

Here are the Plugins that I recommend you start with:

All-in-One SEO Pack

Google XML Sitemaps

MaxBlog Press Ping Optimizer

Askimet Spam Protection – This may be included in your WP install

Download these plugins and configure them.  All-in-one SEO is self explanitory.  Just activate the plug in and fill out the first 3 fields.

Google XML Sitemap you have to go to settings and compile the sitemap manually the first time.  Your sitemap will be yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml.

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer is a pain in the butt to register, but it is worth the hassle.  This plugin keeps your blog from making excessive pings to RSS feed directories to avoid having your site banned.

Askimet usually comes with WP, so just activate the plugin, get a WP API key and you are good to go.  This stops spam comments and is a must.

That should be enough to get you started, more to follow…