How to get quality backlinks to your site.

Hey everyone,

I've been working hard lately to get my url's up to number 1 in Google. I've been trying a little bit of everything and keep track of what's actually working with Google Alerts (btw if you don't use Google Alerts, your competition is). By doing this I've really gotten to see what is actually helping my site and articles move up the SERPs.

I've gotten the best results with only about 60 minutes of work. If you have ever done the tasks required to move your articles up the rankings in a competitive market manually, you know 60 minutes is nothing.

Not only does it take just an hour, it also helps build future business relationships. Being successful can be done a lot easier with good business relationships.

Here is exactly what I do.

Step 1:

Take a look at your main keywords for your website. If you're doing a blog format, use the keywords you're using for your categories. Search these keywords in Google. Take a look at the top 10-30 results. You are looking for websites that are related to your niche. If you are selling camera's you would want to find sites about photography, photography schools, travel, etc. Any site that will have people who are interested in what you're providing.

I don't choose sites that are competing with me because they reject my offer more often. Most business owners out there aren't smart business owners. You can get a lot of quality business from your competition and some don't realize that. If you have read John Covey's "7 Habits of Highly Effective People", they are Win/Lose people. I'm a Win/Win kind of guy. Read the book, its good.

Step 2:

Now take this list of websites you have and check if they are authority sites. If you have the FireFox SEO plug in, you're pretty much set. If you don't, there are free tools to find out about the sites. Things I like to look for are PageRank (checkpagerank.net), the amount of backlinks to the site(Yahoo Site Explorer), the site age(Check Page Rank again), and the amount of interaction they get.

Now I want to see what kind of interaction they are doing with their traffic. Go to the sites and see what they are offering. If there is a forum, check it out. If there are quite a few posts then you know there are people that check the site. Check and see if they have an optin list. If they do, you know they are a good asset for future product launches, promotions, ad swaps, etc.

Even though this whole process is to get some good backlinks, it is an opportunity to build your business along the way. And if there is one thing I've learned from running my business, if you can get two tasks done with one effort...then you do it.

Step 3:

Next, you want to find out how to contact them. I haven't come across a website that qualifies that doesn't have a contact page of some sort. I've gone with the simple email contact and it's worked just fine.

In this email, you want to offer them content in return for a link back to your site. You can do also do an adswap, but I like the content/link trade better.

Early on in my business career, I always tried to be as professional as I possibly could in all my letters and emails. I guess this was just because I was used to a corporate job in which everything has to be by the book. These days, I just send an email that is not so formal.

I simply ask them for what I want and also point them to my website so they can see my quality.

*Just and FYI : If you don't have quality content, this won't work for you. People don't want to give away something of value for something useless. The people of authority in your niche won't link to something that they wouldn't recommend. That will only lose them business.*

Here is an example of one of my last emails I sent:

Subject: You have a GREAT site. Hi {Their website name or their name if known}, I have been a big fan of your website for sometime. I have worked as a {position relevant to your niche} for the past 10 years. In this time, I've worked with a lot of {people in the niche your targeting} achieve happier {problem fixed with your service/product/info} with {how your niche fixes it}. I have sent them to your site and forum for advice along the way. I just recently started a small website devoted to helping more {people in your niche} achieve the same results. I wanted to see if I could submit some original content for your site in exchange for a link or two back to my website. You can check out my website at {your site url}. It's a legit site and I don't spam readers. I just want to bring them the best advice I can. Thanks for your time and let me know if we can work something out. Talk to you later, Travis Petelle

I change each email depending on the site administrator I'm talking to. I leveraged my experience in this niche to prove my advice is of value. As you can see, I also always try and toot their horn a little. This is a must when building a relationship with someone who is higher up in the food chain then you. Don't over do it, but let them know that you know of what their doing.

With this certain case, the site owner had me contribute 3 articles that all link back to my squeeze page and a url I'm trying to move up in the SERPS. I have gotten not only link juice but decent traffic from this site within a matter of days.

After seeing these backlinks get indexed with google alerts, I've seen steady increase in the SERPS. I do this every day with 1 keyword a day. I like to have at least a list of 10 sites a day to contact. It takes me about an hour and has been helping my rankings a lot.

Add the usual web 2.0 backlinking and article distribution, and you will have a nice foundation of all kinds of backlinks to your site that will help keep you high in the SERPs for a long time.

Good luck with your IM journey. I hope this helps someone. This ended up being a little longer then I thought haha.

Travis