Build a Niche Store Empire - Get Inbound Links to Your Niche Store Website
February 23, 2008
Now that your first Build a Niche Store affiliate site is up and running, this is the point that most people decide to start customizing the template for their site. As I mentioned in a few previous posts, modifying your template can be the most time consuming process you will do. It will also have the LEAST AMOUNT OF IMPACT on the success of your store at this point in time, so why bother? What you should really be doing is finding 10 inbound links, so search engines can find the site and start indexing! After all, referral sales is the goal, what leads to sales? Visitors!
How do you find site for links to your store? Read on…
Get ONE-WAY Inbound Links to Your Build a Niche Store Website
First and foremost, WHY do you need to find inbound links? Google, Yahoo and ALL search engines have what are called spiders, or bots. They have creative names like Googlebot, or Slurp… and you will eventually see them in your logfiles. Without these bots, your site would not get indexed into the search engines! The best way to get them in faster is by finding a site they already index and get an inbound link to your site! Search engines view these inbound links as referrals… and follow them much quicker! Over time, as you get more links, ie: referrals, your site will gain popularity as an authority in your niche as long as continue to keep the content fresh and unique.
Suggestions:
- At least 1 inbound link to your new sitemap page.
- 9 additional links to various other pages on your site. (Specifically, 10 of your main category pages.)
- Use good anchor text for your links
- Repeat this process of at least 10 links a week for 12 weeks!
Why 10 links/week over 12 weeks? It is important that you don’t just pop up in front of the search engines with thousands of inbounds links to a new site all at once! Build your links slowly… 10 a week is probably a bit too slow, but if you are promoting 10 separate websites, that is 100 a week and very time consuming! Especially if you are developing new niche stores at the same time!
I am not going to reiterate all the why’s of linking to separate pages, but since your site is more than one page, why not get links to many of them? I suggest everyone visit the Earners Blog and read: The Link Building Guide for 2008. Stuart has some fantastic ways to get affiliate type sites, inbound, quality, one way links!
It is this point that I would usually have a 10 ways to get inbound links example, as well as showing the way I do it myself. Truth is… I completely suck at link building! It is time consuming and tedious! It is also REQUIRED if you ever want your site to succeed… I would rather pay someone to get me one way quality links, than spend endless hours doing it myself!
Methods for developing Links to your Niche Site
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Use a Paid Directory Listing Service like Submitedge. They have a staff of link developers that get this done for you at a very cheap cost! Right now, $15 gets you 100 directory listings in PR0-PR7 directories, with 10 different anchor text links!
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If you prefer not to pay for directory listings, go to the SubmitEdge directory list, and visit the
750 directories one at a time, submitting the forms yourself.
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Use a Directory Submitter like the one included with
WebCEO. (Free or Paid Webmaster software) If you choose this route, MAKE SURE you don’t submit the same url to every directory in one sitting! Complete the form in the software for one page of your site, and choose 10 directories to submit to. Go back a week later, change the form and URL information, and submit to 10 different directories. Repeat this process until all your main categories are listed in the directories they offer.
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Create a Squidoo Lens page like
this TODAY. Starting today, build a LENS based on your experience with Build a Niche Store! Just like a blog, you will visit your squidoo lens page each week and talk about what you are doing to further your BANS sites! List your sites, list your experiences, list info about yourself! The important thing… Start NOW! Plan on spending a good hour or so building your first lens… do it right and use it often!
Start a Lens Today
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In addition to creating a lens based on your BANS experience, you can also add more lenses to your account! Why not start a new lens for every niche store you create? They take less than 10 minutes to setup and expose you to other related lenses, which may get your site more inbound links!
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Visit blogs related to your niche market, bookmark them and read for 5 minutes every day! Make it a point to learn a little bit more every day. As you continue reading on those blogs… start leaving comments to posts that are truthfully helping you out. In your posts, mention that you run a site, <link here> and you didn’t even realize that about <your niche>. Don’t do this only for links and get yourself tagged as a spammer, only comment on truthfully helpful posts. If the site has the no-follow tags removed, you will get great link juice! (
List of DO-Follow Blogs) To find related blogs - Google: “niche” + “powered by wordpress” or any other favorite blog software.
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Search for link clouds (Like the niche directory link in my menu) that are selling cheap, or giving away free one-way, links! You DO NOT have to be linked from a PR8 site to get indexed… Open Google and search for: “niche” + “suggest a word” (
example for golf) Look through the list of sites that run word clouds, and you will likely find several pages that are either free, or give you a long term one way link for $1. Many even have PR, just a couple examples below…
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Do you already have a BANS site running? Add a link to your sidebar! Do this cautiously and sparingly, as too many links to a network of sites all on the same IP address will have negative effects!
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Become a member at the DP forums (forums.digitalpoint.com) Aside from MANY other benefits like buying aged domains, the DP forum has always got several one links available in the linking forum, in exchange for a Digg or Stumble or something similar. For this site, I traded someone $3 for a PR8 homepage review! Granted that PR8 review only stayed on their main page for 2-3 days, but it immediately passed link juice from that site to this one when the first spider came through!
- Finally - MAKE SURE you are a email subscriber to my feed for this site. I am preparing to get back into my free site review each month and I only choose from my list of subscribers! :-)
Really, how you find your links is a discussion that can go on forever. As I said above, I do not do it well myself and simply prefer to task it out to someone else! (College age kids, remember? Its amazing what they will do for .50 a link!)
If ANYONE wants to write a guest post on this subject, I am very open and happy to let you do so!
Mark
Comments
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errr, where is the button to subscribe to your rss feed???
Hi Lyn -
There are several places. First, in the upper right side of the header, there is a subscribe box as well as the rss feed for readers.
There is also a link at the bottom of every post.
I might need to make a bit more visible…
Thanks,
Mark
So Mark, just curious. You say you’d rather pay someone else to do the link-building. So who do you pay? Is it SubmitEdge? A combination of several? How much do you typically pay? Of course, you don’t have to say. But I figure it can’t hurt to ask. =) I too, would like to hear link-building strategies others use as well. Can’t know too much about this subject!
Well, I’ve got my excuses (some good ones, too!)
But too make a long story short, I still haven’t started yet…
Looks like I’ll be starting with Vers.3.
Which brings up 2 questions:
1- Mark, will you be updating this course or adding an addendum for Vers. 3?
2- Attn: Call me curious dept.- did you ever ponder holding off on this course till Vers. 3 was ready?
Seem a like there will be a lot more opportunity with Vers. 3 that will have to be addressed in detail at point down the road…
Thanks,
Ken
@ Josh -
I have a guy I’ve used several times on the DP forum when I launch a new site. He submits to 100 PR5-PR8 directories for $15. His cost includes 100% manual submission over a week long period… and I provide 4-5 anchor links for him to use in the submissions.
@ Ken -
I was hoping to actually get to the install of the BANS software on the same week they released the new version. It was actually somewhat planned…
Due to some bug corrections and further performance enhancements in the software, it will not be released until March 3rd (The week of)… Thus, I could not wait.
BUT… there are several hundred readers here with BANS 1.3 and 2.0 stores that are not performing and this series will help them also.
Besides… I get to focus on how easy it is to upgrade also! :-)
Mark
Mark,
I am new at this. What an ear-full about links. I never realized the importance - but now I do !! Thanks a lot.
Hi again Mark,
I’m still wondering if you plan on providing a text to the videos. My connection is just too slow for me to use them.
I’m following along as best I can from your posts but I know that I am missing a lot of information.
I am hoping that V 3 will help me in some areas.
Sissy
( Carol wrote My connection is just too slow for me to use them.)
I use RR high speed and still I bog down the connection sometimes when I have alot of my pages open doing things on my sites. I could not imagine trying to do this Bans stuff with dial up ar DSL. I just upgraded to the higher speed to see if It would help me. Lots of patience I don’t have ..good luck Carol
I’m curious about something. You say in the beginning of the post that modifying your template is the most time consuming and has the least effect, so why bother?
But in one of the videos, you showed several examples of sites that had no modifications, straight out of the box and commented on why that was a bad idea.
So which is it?
Personally, I don’t care if it does have the least impact, modifying the template is something I’ll continue doing to every site I set up. Maybe not before I get links, but certainly before I move on to another one.
Just my two cents.
Honey
I think Mark meant that at first to the search engines the look of the site is least important. And since thats who we need to come in first the focus should be on SEO then decoration. Though sometimes its hard to just leave it as as. Build for engines decorate for people and traffic…just my 2 cents worth… Otis
@ Honey -
Actually, Modifying the templates can be BAD for your site if all a site owner is doing is adding a header graphic! I plan on spending a full week on html and modifying templates so you know they are done right. I have seen more people reducing their H1 page titles to a zero sized font, so they dont block their background logo file than I can count! Its a bad thing!
What I meant when I said: “LEAST AMOUNT OF IMPACT on the success of your store at this point in time” is that the 4-6 hours a person would spend creating a header graphic, changing the css styles, and modifying the overall look of the site, would be much better spent launching another site, getting it prepared for traffic, etc, instead! After you have a week or two of raw sites launched… then go back and work on the look.
There is definitely a time for modifying your template! The main reason you WANT to modify your template is to have a visually appealling site for visitors right?
It WILL take a week or two (maybe longer) for a search engine to start delivering targeted traffic… there is plenty of time to work on the look and feel…
All being said - if you have a template you use on sites already, by all means, load it up immediately! I launched a site at 10AM this morning and loaded the template at 10:05 am, but it was already done and didnt require time to setup. Once you have a pool of custom templates that are quickly modified for any site, it is not an isse. For a new user however….
Mark
I have a BANS site created and earning a little each day. Step one complete, taking that first step.
I have started the process of building links to pages within my BANS site.
I will have to check out SubmitEdge because I have too much on my plate right now. And of course it will get busier and busier as I add new BANS sites. Keep the great content coming.
Hello Mark,
Have a question about getting inbound links. I bought directory submission and my bans site was manually submitted to 300 directories. Not all of them will accept of course, but most of them do. So, submitting to directories and getting inbound links - is it the same thing?
Apparently, it takes Google time to find these links (from directories), so even my site was accepted already to about 100 directories, I can see just a few listed in google when I type my-site.com. On the other hand, I used main categories and different anchor texts as well. But question is, when you get your inbound links or submit to directories, should you see this links by doing that: link:my-site.com? As so far, I got nothing for my site.
Thank you,
Mik
Mik -
Try not to use Google to find your links… Google will only show pages that have sufficient PR (PR4 was the last word I heard on that)
Use the syntax: “link:www.yourdomain.com” at places like Yahoo or AlltheWeb.com to check backlinks.
You can also expect a day or two for them to be listed. They have to be indexed before they can list.
Mark
Thank you, Mark.
When I use Yahoo or AlltheWeb with link:my-site.com, it brings plenty, but they’re mostly links from USFreeads, digg, my own site, and a couple of forums, but not actually from any of the directories.
I gather that submitting to directories is the same as getting inbound links.
Another question: these 100 manual directory submissions that you’re going to get for $15, is it all you’re going to do for your site, or you’re going to do any more marketing? And does this guy take more orders ;)? He’s fees seem fair to me and if you trust him, so would I :)
Cheers,
Mik
Hi Mark,
Could you submit your sitemap to Google’s site via the webmaster’s toolkit?
Thanks,
Randy
@ Mik -
i will actually post the guys info over the next day or two. He was swamped whrn I last spoke to him and asked for a chance to get caught up! :-)
@ Randy -
Absolutely - A great practice!
A newbie question from a newbie BANS fan:
What determines good anchor text for your links ?
Thanks,
Jamie
Hi Mark, Thanks for all the info. Good stuff. I am new to the link game and you wrote to get 10 links a week for 12 weeks, and you say you pay someone to submit for 100 links for you. I would also like to outsource this part, and wonder do you get the initial 100 links and move on, or do you also get more every week. Also is that to many too fast so the search engines veiw it unnatural. Thanks in advance for any more info.
Steve
@ Jamie -
Sorry I was so vague on the anchor text… No doubt, you have seen several links, even on this blog (mostly on purpose) with links like “Click Here” or “Try This Link”…
On your original question above, if you look at it, your name, Jamie, is the anchor text of the link. I know by clicking that link, it will lead to Jamie, versus “Click here” leaving the visitor no idea what they are about to click.
The anchor text, or words you use in your active link, should be very descriptive of the site they are leading to. It should also vary and not be the same over and over.
Google has technology in place to recognize the exact same anchor text over and over across hundreds or more links. The more you vary the anchor text, the better off you are.
Hi Mark,
What would you submit your sitemap page to to get it indexed?
Would a program like Brad Callens Directory Submitter be good to use? He has a paid version and free version.
Is submitting articles worth while for back links?
Randy
@ Randy -
I would create a Google webmaster account and list the sitemap in Google Webmaster tools. Aside from that, Yahoo Webmaster and MSN (Live) Webmaster central.
If you submit to a directory (or 100) expect them to take just a bit longer for the backlinks to appear. They will however show over the course of time.
The FASTEST way to get indexed is to locate a site that is indexed often, and get some inbound links.
Articles are EXCELLENT, however, there is a limit on that side as well!! I will touch on content articles very soon, and if you do write a content article, be sure you DO NOT list the article on your site!! Point it to your site, link it to your site, but dont word for word, post it to your site.
Mark
One method that hasn’t been mentioned yet is adding your link to your about me page on eBay. eBay is indexed constantly. When using this technique on one of my bans sites it only took a couple of hours, tops, for google to find the link and visit my site.
It is now one of the first things I do when I am ready to roll out a new store.
Jeff -
You are so very right!! In a previous brainstorming session about finding links, this was one of the ways we discussed!
Great tip!
Hi Mark
Just wanted to say that I’m really impressed (yet again) with coming through these blogs a second time - I’ve added my second BANS site (www.seahorses-for-sale.com) as a sub-domain and am going through the steps again - much quicker this time! The first time I took the easy route and bought $15 dollars worth of directory listings. For the new site I did it manually (and listed some of my non-BANS sites too while I was at it). You’re right - it is pretty tedious, but done in front of the telly with a cold beer it isn’t so bad. It’s also taught me a lot.
Thanks again Mark - I’m lovin’ it!
Inbound Links.
When you are looking to get inbound links or back-links to your sites it is important to aim for sites that have good PR(pagerank). If a site has no PR then it is not considered an authority site and provides little value as far a linking back to your site.
Now there are a few easy ways you can find these sites, if you are interested drop me an email cmark@people.net.au and I will send you a video link which show you how to find these sites.
Its very effective and it works. One of my sites has 48 PR back links to it.
Cheers
Mark
Mark,
I too suck at link building for the same reason you mentioned. It takes too much time! I’m thinking about joining John Leger’s 3waylinks but I’ve read that it can be difficult to get a site approved and I don’t even know the status of BANS sites and his product.
I’m looking forward to the SEO boost V3 will give me and will continue adding quality content as well.
Jeff
@ Jeff
RE: “…John Leger’s 3waylinks but I’ve read that it can be difficult to get a site approved and I don’t even know the status of BANS sites and his product….”
His techsupport has no problem with BANS -
*** as long as it has “acceptable content” ***
(I think that means murder is OK, but no cleavage. ;-)
However, unlesss you have dozens (
@ Jeff
However, unlesss you have dozens (
no more room? ;-0
Mark - I’m getting ready to add some of my sites to directories and noticed that almost all of the ones I’ve seen state they don’t want sites that are mostly affiliate links. BANS sites are, of course, just that. What is your advice on this issue?
Rochelle
Hi Mark,
What happens if you get your links to quickly to your site?
I bought a submission of 500 links at the DP forum.
Randy
@ Randy -
It will take a while for 500 directory links to be indexed by engines, possibly 2-4 months (Good thing)…
Also, most 500 link directory packages you can purchase will submit 100-200 per week, versus all at once.
Hi Mark,
They submitted them all at once.
Any penalty from Google if I get links to fast?
Thanks for all your support.
Randy
@ Randy -
I did a 100 directory submission for one of my sites last week, they show up very slowly, so there is no issue with instant saturation.
Links on regular websites tend to show quicker - links in directories are usually 2-3 or more levels deep that seem to take up to a month to get indexed in some cases.
Nothing to worry about…
Mark
Here’s a great blog you can check out about general making money online http://www.bloggerunleashed.com
Vic talks about BANS and getting backlinks. Check out bookmarking demon; awesome for backlinks!
I use a RSS scraper for my “poor man’s” BANS so I can submit my homesite to bloggingzoom.com
Hi Mark-
I have just started following along with you and have really enjoyed the info you have provided. I am having a hard time understanding how to build inbound links and anchor text. I am a newbie… I have read the Link Building Guide for 2008 and it is alittle over my head. Could you suggest some VERY basic reading on building links before I start to digest the other?
Thank you for any info provided.
Jamie
freesubmissionservice.com
They claim to have submitted my link to 20 popular S.E.’s for free just by typing it in.
The absolute best way I have found to get noticed with inbound links is through two means… first use the Google Webmaster tools and submit an xml site map there.
Then use the social networks. Right now the best ones seem to be Clipmarks, Stumbleupon, Digg and Twitter.
Hi Mark, Could you give some detailed instruction on filling out the form for submitedge. What do you put for info on each line? Thanks..
@ John, here’s Mark’s video on using SubmitEdge
http://www.thenichestorebuilder.com/using-submitedge-for-directory-submission.htm