You Scratch My Back(link) I’ll Scratch Yours

by Alex on October 21, 2010

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Link Building is an essential ingredient in the chaotic horse race that is Business Online. Some take it to excess, they make the rest of us look bad and they end up smelling like ham in a can, or something strangely familiar, and quite frankly we don’t like these people one bit. (at least that’s what I tell myself each time I finish making a payment to them )

Then of course there is the other side of the coin. Some of those online are not even aware that they are building links as they go, and the thought of not leaving value fills them with dread. These people are rare, but they are out there – and more often than not they will smell much nicer, usually florally. Like Lavender in fact.

Building a Link Portfolio

Creating back links is obviously a necessity, and there are a thousand ways you can do this, but one of the most consistent methods of getting quality links is with Web 2.0 Properties.

The reason they are so effective and powerful is the same reason they are called properties, because if built correctly the first time, they become a solid piece of web content that will remain in place for as long as the site exists, which in nearly all cases is indefinite. And like a piece of real estate in the real world, they can be added to, or built upon. But it’s not as simple as just chucking up some content and clicking ‘publish’, not if you want that property to stay there anyway.

Tips on effective Web2.0 link building.

Create them manually! Automated services like SE-Nuke create properties that are more often deleted than kept, and what they do create sucks arse anyway. Anyone who tries to tell you different is making more money from their affiliate commissions than they are from actually using the service.
Treat them like you would a blog post on your own blog. By that I mean, break the post up into sections, give it subheadings, bullet points, add images etc. No one wants to look at a block of text.
Take advantage of the options available to you. Squidoo provide you ‘Modules’ to add Youtube videos, Amazon products etc etc. Utilise these where applicable, and make a conscious effort to make them all applicable – if you get my drift. (for the dummies. Find a Youtube video and link to it, even if it’s a competing affiliates one!)
Maximum of two or three links per page is advised, any more and you risk having the page deleted by admin
Don’t always use the same anchor text. Change up the keywords you optimize in each case.
Do not directly duplicate the content on each page. You can use the same text, but change up the image, paragraph structure etc etc.

Boosting your Linkjuice

I always loved lego! I still do, and I secretly can’t wait until my boy is old enough for me to have an excuse to start buying it again. That’s a few years away now, but in the meantime at least I have my Web2.0 properties to play with.
One of the best things about Web 2.0 back links is that they can be built upon, strengethened if you will. By boosting the SEO of these properties you are increasing the quality and strength of the original backlink, meaning more link juice for your money page!

This process does not really need to be explained once I point out the obvious. When you create a Web2.0 property you get a new URL. So to strengthen this incoming link Simply:

Submit this URL to social bookmarking sites with the applicable tags and descriptions.
Create an RSS feed and submit this to the relevant directories.
Utilise Ping Services
You could also do some blog commenting with this new URL if you wanted to.
The point is, when you build a house with Web2.0, you’d have to be a fool to not add a second story at some point. And a pool.

Link Juice for everyone!

Did you know that Squidoo Lenses are amongst many Web2.0 sites that are Do-Follow?! Another way of getting quality backlinks is to comment on relevant Web2.0 pages. Most of them will have a comments options, and whether of not they are dofollow, many are of high PR and of well standing authority. Adding these sites to your regular blog commenting campaign is actually a great idea anyway!

Ana Hoffman has this to say on the matter,

By the way, Squidoo is a DoFollow site and a huge amount of pages have high PR. These are the commands I use to find the best ones in my niche:

site:squidoo.com “new links plexo” “add to this list”
site:squidoo.com “your keyword” “add to this list”

Take a look at more commands to find the best quality links (although they are not specifically for DoFollow blogs) here: http://www.trafficgenerationcafe.com/one-way-link-building/

So… I would love you to go and comment on or share/like my pages. This is the part of the post that is most applicable to the title because I hope that by showing you the pages I have built, you will return the favour I think I could talk all day about the best way to build a lens or a hub but without seeing it first hand, you’re never going to see the whole picture.

Below I have linked to four of the Web 2.0 properties that I have built for the purposes of ranking for ‘Keyword Winner WordPress Plugin Review’ so you can see first hand what they look like. Feel free to take the bits you like and create your own awesome lens, or hub, or blog, or whatever. Keep in mind that these are all set to be updated with the actual review once I have posted it (tomorrow )

Squidoo.com/KeywordWinnerReview
You can create as many lenses as you like under one account!
Hubpages.com/hub/KeywordWinnerReview
You can create as many Hubs as you like under one account!
KeywordWinner-Review.Blogspot.com
A good blogger blog should have at least three post- at the moment this blog is a bad example.
Again, you can create as many blogs as you like under one account!
KeywordWinnerReview.Tumblr.com
Rather annoying since you need a new account (email address) for each Blog you create

Quick tips for staying out of trouble with Web2.0

You can build as many Web2.0 properties as you like, but if the site is new I would not advise adding links to all of them just yet. Limit this to 5 for starters and as the domain ages edit the pages to include the inbound links. You can still optimize the pages for the search engines though, in fact I recommend this.
Creating an army of properties is not advisable with a brand new niche site (notice the ones I use in the examples here point to a specific page on my site, an aged domain with a PageRank of 2) as it is a sure fire way to get sandboxed. (see my guest post over at TrafficGenerationCafe for further information on the Google Sandbox)

Your Web 2.0 Back Link Action Plan

Go and comment on and share my pages
Build a page on each of the four sites I have listed above, trying to get your primary keyphrase in the URL where possible. Use hyphens if you need to.
Create the post content for each site and change around the sentences and structure of each.
Add images, video, whatever is applicable that will make your Web2.0 site stand out.
Add two outgoing links at the most. One to the page you are building this link for (of course) and one to either your own blog for further information, or another relevant and credible source.*
*If you are linking out to a third party – remember that the more authority they have, the better it is for your on page SEO.
Vary the Anchor text in each case so that you utilise a variety of longtail keyphrases (always continue to use your primary keyword of course)
Eg: My primary keyword is Keyword Winner, but I will vary the wording around this to include phrases like SEO – WORDPRESS – PLUGIN – KEYWORD RESEARCH – REVIEW – BONUS – HOW TO GUIDE etc
Build backlinks on your backlinks
Create an RSS Feed from this new URL and submit it to a variety of RSS Directories
Submit the URL to Social Bookmarking sites. (I use the service below – and recommend them to anyone wanting to take the hassle out of social bookmarking. All submissions are hand done, guaranteeing results everytime! )