Should I start a blog or website first? I believe this is a common question many newbies ask nowadays.

To answer this question, you must first ask yourself what is your objective?

Are you trying to:

- sell your own product?
- make money as an affiliate?
- make money from advertising such as Adsense?
- Or you simply want to share your knowledge with the world (and make some money in the process)?

Sell your own product….

If you are trying to sell your own product, the answer is obvious. You should first have your product website.

You should focus your initial effort in getting traffic from joint venture and advertising, and building a list. You should not waste your time blogging to thin air (assuming you are totally new and has no traffic sources).

BUT as soon as you have a substantial list, say 1000 subscribers, you can start blogging, with 2 intentions in mind: 1) to build relationship and sales, and 2) to build search engine traffic “for the future”.

Make money as an affiliate….

With so many ways to make money as an affiliate, it’s impossible for me to cover the details here. But whichever way you use, starting with a blog is definitely not the fast way and certainly not the way I would recommend.

You can start with a presell website, advertise to get targeted traffic and sales. Or you can start with a squeeze page to build a targeted list.

You should start a blog ONLY when you have a list, and you should blog with 2 intentions in mind: 1) to build relationship with your list and make more sales, and 2) to build more traffic from the search engine.

Make money from advertising such as Adsense….

How about building many blogs on different niches, optimizing them for search engine traffic and monetizing them through Adsense?

Compared to static HTML websites, blog indeed offers a better alternative because you can easily make changes to your blog through templates.

But as your empire gets bigger, you may realize that it becomes troublesome to manage so many blogs, with so many different logins, databases and templates. I believe there are software that you can use to mass manage blogs, especially Wordpress self-hosted blogs. (I don’t use such software. If you have any recommendation, feel free to share it below.)

Note: If you want to use blog for this purpose, remember to remove posting date from the template and DO NOT show any post history by date. The reason is obvious. Since you are not going to update the blog very often, disclosing the posting dates will not do you any good.

Besides static HTML website and blog, another alternative is to start with .php websites. (Note: Wordpress blog is also a PHP website, but here I’m talking about simple PHP website without the need to install or create databases.) The advantage of creating website in .php instead of .html is that you can use the PHP INCLUDE function to build simple templates for your website. If you were to make some changes, you just have to change the templates instead of altering every file. If you understand HTML, you can easily pick up simple PHP language and learn to do it.

Share your knowledge….

Lastly, if you simply want to get online and share your knowledge, I advise you to start with a content website instead of a blog.

Before you think I am anti-blogging, read my explanation below:

If you are good at scrapbooking, you probably have some fundamental skills that you want to share. It will be better if you create something like an online learning center for scrapbooking fans, with organized scrapbooking tutorials that your visitors can study.

You can still have a blog, but it’s more for current issues, latest promotions, etc. Yet again, you should always build a list if you want to start a blog.

In my previous post, I wrote an article on Should I Start A Blog or a Website First? and some of you shared very good comments in the blog. Today I shall attempt to discuss another common question – “Should I build a list?”.

To kick start the discussion, let’s take a look at what I did when I first started online……

I built an info-rich website in an unpopular niche. As the website started getting some traffic, I prepared an email tutorial series, delivered through autoresponder, as a bait to entice visitors to opt-in to my list. Every email tutorial sends the reader back to my website to read the full tutorial that has Adsense ads in it. Within each tutorial, I also try to promote affiliate products. Other than that, I do not follow up with the list anymore.

Did I regret spending time to build the list? Not at all. Despite my lack of maintenance, it is still adding a few hundreds into my pocket every year, until today.

If you are going to spend time and money promoting a website, yet you are not building a list, you are leaving money on the table, period.

But DO NOT build a list for the sake of building one. In the past, I may simply build a list by offering a PLR or MRR ebook, thinking that I will follow up with the list in the future. I never did. Yes, I’m lazy, but I believe most of you are lazy too.

If you were to build a list, you have to know EXACTLY how you intend to monetize the list. Else, list building will really be a waste of time for you.

In my example above, I offered a free tutorial. Those who opt-in are looking forward to that tutorial. When an email tutorial comes to them, they must go online to read the tutorial. And I monetize every tutorial through Adsense and affiliate sales.

I always tell my regular advertisers that if they are spending money to advertise, they should build a list, especially when they are advertising products in the same niche. But they often tell me things like:

“Kenneth, I’m only interested in the money, not in maintaining a list.”

Building a list is one issue, maintaining the list is another.

You can build a list and get more sales out of your existing traffic without providing any form of maintenance.

For example, there are some lists whereby I simply load some standard email tutorials that come with the affiliate product I’m promoting into my autoresponder. People opt-in to get the tutorial and since every tutorial ends up promoting that product, I manage to get some extra affiliate sales. For such lists, I do not provide any form of maintenance. If they want to unsubscribe, they just have to click the unsubscribe link. But very few people will unsubscribe because after the autoresponder series, they won’t hear from me anymore.

I am not saying this is the way you should manage your list. In fact, this may be the worst list management strategy you may hear. But the worst strategy can increase your profit. Moreover, you are not doing something evil or unethical. Your subscribers get free tutorials on the subject they are interested in. You get more affiliate sales. It’s win-win.

Note: Some marketers may teach you to keep blasting offers to your list until they either buy something or unsubscribe. I don’t do that. I want to maximize my profit, but I am not that hungry.

I need to reemphasize that this is not the way you manage ALL your lists. If you are building a list in a niche that you want to establish a name in, you will have to provide lots of support and follow up emails to build relationship with the list. This kind of list will need a lot of maintenance effort, but the potential return is also much higher.

When is the right time to start building a list?

There isn’t a single answer for this.

If you are building a niche site, you may want to wait until the website starts getting consistent traffic. You won’t want to spend too much time preparing the material before the website shows any potential.

But if you are promoting some program big time, you may want to start building a list immediately.

The key is if you foresee a lot of traffic will be coming to your website, always get your opt-in form ready. You’ll want to retain and recycle that traffic instead of letting the traffic flow through your website.

Recently I received an enquiry from one of our members asking me how to advertise her online store. I thought this is an interesting discussion and thus decide to discuss it in our blog today.

First, here’s her question:

————————————————–
Hello Kenneth,

Firstly, I want to tell you that your blog is awesome. Its content is extremely rich. I can spend hours reading your posts and I learned many things with.

I’m Emilie To. I have just acquired this online store www.NiceDigitalGoods.com.

My questions are:

1) To take advantage at most your advertising system, do I write an ad for the whole shop or for a single category or for a particular product?

2) As there are 32 categories and over 380 products in the shop, how to determine in what category, on which product it is necessary to concentrate the efforts of advertising?
————————————————–

Who is your target audience?

As an advertiser or a marketer, the very first question you MUST ask yourself is “Who is your target audience?” or “Who will buy your products?”

(Take a look at her website and see what she is selling www.NiceDigitalGoods.com.)

One extremely common mistake that online store owners make is to think that their target audience is EVERYBODY.

If you are targeting everyone, you are getting no one. Trust me on this!

You mentioned that your online store has 32 categories and 380 products. But seriously, who is likely to buy a dog training ebook from your online store? Someone who wants to train his dog or someone who wants to buy the Master Resale Rights of that ebook?

From my assessment, I feel that your target audience are internet marketers looking to buy MRR (Master Resale Rights) and PLR (Private Label Rights) products for their niche websites.

If so, the answer to your first question would be:

You do not write an ad for the whole shop, single category or a particular product. Instead, you need to write an ad to target internet marketers looking for MRR and PLR products.

What is the Unique Selling Preposition of your website?

Before you start to advertise your online store, you must establish a Unique Selling Preposition (USP) for your website.

Basically, you need to ask yourself, “What’s so special about your website? Why would someone bother to pay attention to it?”

Without a refreshing and attention-grabbing USP, your online store is just another online store started by a newbie who simply install a script and load some products into it. And if I’m a visitor to such an online store, guess what I will say: “DON’T WASTE MY TIME!!”

When deciding on a USP, you need to know what is REALLY a USP. For example, a website selling MRR and PLR products is not a USP. But a website selling such products at $0.99 each may be a USP.

Just to give you some idea, a good USP will make people say: “wow, that’s a great!”.

With that, let me answer your second question:

Forget about the 32 categories and over 380 products in your online stores. You should concentrate your advertising effort is delivering the USP of your online store. You need to tell me people “hey, I’m different. Take a look at me!”

How to get people to opt-in?

I probably repeat this a hundred times, but I still need to say this again… build a list!

This is especially true if you are running an online store.

Look, you may be selling hundred and one things in your online store that people have no need at the moment. But one day, they may need one of your products.

What’s the best way to make them remember you when they need your product or service?

2 answers: Either you keep on spending money to advertise in front of them or get them into your list so that you can remind them of your existence, for free.

Which way do you prefer? The second way of course!

How to get them to opt-in is another challenge. But first, you must make list building your top priority and make sure every visitor is presented with the opt-in offer.

Who am I to teach you about blogger mistakes? I’m not a big-time blogger. Neither has my blog won any award.

But I do know one thing, that is, how to use my blog as a tool to achieve my goal.

I’m telling you this because this is exactly the TOP mistake that many new bloggers make.

Many new bloggers tend to treat their blog as some kind of online holy grail, thinking that as long as they have a blog, traffic will come and they will make money.

What they should do instead is to think of blog as just another a tool. It should be part of the business, not the business.

I know this is a bit theoretical and ‘dry’, but this is an important fundamental that you must understand, if you want to follow my advice.

As you know, I get most of my writing inspiration from our members’ questions. Today’s topic on blogger mistakes is no different.

Here’s the question I received from a member:

“I respect you as a master marketer with great knowledge and insight. Could you have a quick look at my blog, http://membership-millions.com/blog/, and suggest ways to get it really going… and also to start making REAL money??” – Izzy Joseph

I’m not sure how Izzy’s blog is performing now. But if I were to be critical, here are some advice I can think of:

1) Build A Business, Not A Blog

As I said, I don’t consider myself as a blogger. My approach to blogging is from the perspective of a marketer.

To me, blog is one of my marketing tools for my business. In other words, blogging is not my business, and it should not be your business too.

Frankly, I can’t see a business in your blog. What I can see instead is you are trying to write some articles and get people to buy the Clickbank product you’re affiliated to. That’s not a business.

Your domain name is membership-millions.com. If I were you, I will turn the blog into a resource centre that teaches people how to make money from membership. You may write articles that teach people how to start a membership site, how to promote membership sites, etc. You can engage a freelancer to create a membership script to give away.

If you choose to go the membership way, everything you do should be related to membership. Your opt-in freebie should be an ebook about membership. Your articles should be about membership.

If you are afraid that you may not have enough material to write about membership, your worry is unnecessary. Everything about internet marketing can be twisted to link to membership. For example, your little twitter ebook can be renamed to “how to promote your membership with twitter”.

2) Forget About Making Money

Beggars can’t be choosers. New bloggers can’t be choosers too. For a new blog, you must focus on providing useful content and forget about making money.

At the beginning stage, you MUST establish your blog as a useful resource that people can turn to. Promoting affiliate products should be a by-the-way thing.

For example, while teaching people how to promote their membership websites, there may be some traffic tools that you can recommend.

You are more likely to make sales if you focus on providing useful advice rather than focusing on promoting the product.

3) Be Extremely Proactive In List Building

If you have been reading my blog, you should know that I advocate ‘list’ before ‘blog’.

If you haven’t started building a list, you should do it asap.

When I say building a list, I’m not talking about the opt-in form that is currently in your blog. I’m talking about a separate squeeze page that you actively advertise and promote to get people to opt-in.

You need to build your list fast so that these subscribers can become your blog readers. Else you are forever talking to dust.

Check out our list builder script in your members’ area and see how it can help you in this.

4) Practice Search Engine Optimization

Your blog may be SEO ready, but your articles are not, or at least I can’t see how a new blog can get to the top search result for a highly competitive keyword of “How To Make Money Online Fast” with some 1,390,000,000 competitions.

If you don’t understand SEO, learn it. If you have learnt it, practise it.

Build links to your blog. Research your keywords before every post. This is the minimum you should do.

You won’t see immediate effects. But in 3 to 6 months, you will reap what you sow.

These are the immediate things you as a blogger.

Moving ahead, there are tons of things you can do to keep you very busy. For example, you can sell your own product, start your own affiliate program, create a brand for yourself in your niche and a lot more.

The key message I want to put across to you is a blog is just a tool to achieve your goal. Create a game plan and see how a blog can fit into the picture instead of the other way round.

“I have gone to hundreds of these types of sites but still not making money. I downloaded these free ebooks and bonuses but then what do I do with them? Frustrated.”

This is a support ticket I received last week. Does this situation sound familiar to you? I’m sure it happened to you when you were a newbie.

For those of you who are still going through this phase of internet marketing, I’m going to share with you my advice on managing information overload.

Did you notice that I said “this phase” of internet marketing?

Yes, it’s a phase that every newbie will go through. Some survived through this phase. Some are defeated.

Ok, here are my tips on managing information overload:

1) Information Overload Is Good!

Always tell yourself that “information overload is good”.

You see, the truth is, there are only two things that separate you from getting what you want.

The first thing is INFORMATION. The second is ACTION.

So if you are overwhelmed with information, you should be thankful, not frustrated.

2) Get Your Feet Wet

With an overload of information, what you need to do is to TAKE ACTION.

As the old saying goes, you can’t learn to swim without getting your feet wet.

Information will forever be overloading unless you INTERNALIZE the information. And the only way to internalize information is to use it repeatedly.

If you don’t have a website, start one. If you haven’t started promoting any program, start promoting one. You’ll face challenges as you go along. This is when you dig out those pieces of information in your harddisk and see how to put them into practice. In other words, this is when you start internalizing the information.

You will waste some time. You will lose some money. These are just part of the process of getting your feet wet.

3) Mind Your Own Business

The more information you internalize, the more savvy you become. Eventually you will reach a stage when you start to “mind your own business”.

When you start minding your own business, you’ll begin to know how to filter information.

Imagine you being a train station where loads and loads of cargo (information) will reach your station. When you are new, you tend to take in all the cargo because you think they are all important and relevant. But as you start minding your own business, you’ll be selective and take in cargo that can help you grow your business.

As I said, information overload is GOOD. Imagine you being a train station with no cargo train passing by….. (Did you know that all successful people in the world convert themselves into a power train station. They want more trains to pass by so that they can have more selections.)

Note: Newbies can’t start minding their own business from day one. They have to go through the ‘information overload’ phase and the ‘getting your feet wet’ phase. Reason: they have too little information and experience to decide what their own business is. So if you are a newbie, get your feet wet first.

4) Always Take An Inventory Of What You Know / Have

My last advice for managing information overload is to make it a habit to take an inventory of what you already know or have.

If you understand how the universe works, you’ll know that everything happens for a reason and is intended to help you achieve what you want.

At any point of time if you feel lost, always look around you and see what is it that you know or have that can help you to move on. You’ll be surprised that the last piece of information you need is right there with you.

Again, that shows that information overload is good.

First thing first, what is an SEO Backlink? How is it different from backlink?

Quoting the definition from Wikipedia, “Backlinks are incoming links to a website or web page.”

Technically, a backlink looks like this:

<a href=”http://yourdomain.com”>whatever text or can be the url itself</a>

Backlinks are important, especially in determining the PageRank of your web page. But to rank high in organic search result, especially in Google, the most popular search engine, you need more than just backlink. You need SEO Backlink.

The difference?

Here’s my definition of SEO Backlink: “SEO backlinks are incoming links to a website or web page, with keywords in the link title (a.k.a anchor text).”

Technically, an SEO backlink looks like this:

<a href=”http://yourdomain.com”>keywords to rank in search engine</a>

For example, a website may have lots of backlinks but it may not be able to rank high in Google for any keyword it wishes. To rank high for a particular keyword, say “buy iphone”, the website needs to have lots of backlinks with “buy iphone” in their anchor texts.

A Classic Example Showing The Power Of SEO Backlinks

In the SEO world, there is a classic example that can quickly show you the importance of SEO backlink.

The example is…. “click here”.

If you haven’t known the answer, guess who ranks #1 in Google for the phrase “click here”?

It’s the Adobe Reader download page.

If you study that download page, you’ll realize that you can’t find the phrase “click here” on that webpage at all, not in the meta tag, title tag or within the content!

So why does this webpage rank #1 for “click here”?

There is only one reason: tons of other websites are linking to this webpage with the anchor text “click here” or “click here to download”.

By the way, the #1 position for “click here to download” is also the Adobe Reader download page.

Are you seeing the light now?

Get Ready For A Revolutionary One-Way Link Building System

Over the past 1 year, I’ve been working extremely hard on a powerful one-way link building system that can help you to build not just a few hundreds but unlimited backlinks for unlimited domains. (You know that I run hundreds of niche sites. If this system can satisfy my needs, I guess it can satisfy most marketers’ needs.)

The system is now completed and it is now undergoing beta testing with some 130 LeadsLeap members. Thanks to all the feedbacks from the beta members, we’re busy improving the system. I’ll keep you’re informed when the system is ready.

In the coming weeks, I’m going to establish a free SEO tutorial series in our blog. Today is part 1 of the SEO tutorial. I hope this free tutorial series will give you a clear idea how to get your website rank top in Google search engine.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Practicing SEO means getting your website to rank top in the organic search engine result for a particular keyword phrase so as to get endless flow of free traffic to your website.

Imagine if you sell gifts, and you rank #1 in Google’s search result for “buy cheap Christmas presents”. What can that do to your sales?

Different search engines have different search algorithm. In the SEO industry, we are mainly concerned about getting top ranking in Google because Googles owns more than 80% of the search engine market share.

Who am I to teach SEO?

If you are new to this blog or LeadsLeap, you may be wondering whether I’m qualified to teach you anything about SEO. If you have the same doubt, just google for “free leads generation system” or “leads generation system” and see who is in the top 10. These are just two of the thousands of first page I have on Google.

How to get my website rank top in Google?

This is the most common question, but it is a poor question. Why? Because you are likely to be ranking top in Google already. Just type your entire domain name in Google. Is your website in the first page? Better question please…..

How to get my website rank top for a particular keyword phrase in Google?

Technically, you can get any web page (not just website) into the first page of Google by building lots of backlinks to that web page using that particular keyword phrase as the anchor text.

For example, if you want to rank top for the keyword phrase “buy cheap Christmas presents”, you need to have lots of backlinks to your web page using “buy cheap Christmas presents” as the anchor text.

For more understanding, read this classic example.

If so, can I forget about all other things and just focus on link building?

You can, but if you work on ‘other factors’ at the same time, you don’t have to build that many backlinks. And the ‘other factors’ are definitely easier to accomplish than link building.

What are the ‘other factors’?

The ‘other factors’ basically involve making your web page more relevant to the keyword phrase you are optimizing.

By the way, did you notice that I always use the word web page instead of website?

Google views every web page as independent content, meaning technically, if you have a website about dog, you can add a web page about stomach pain and get that web page to rank top for stomach pain, even though your website is about dog!

Don’t agree? Just look at Wikipedia.com and Ezinearticles.com. They have articles in all kinds of categories. But almost all of them are ranking well in Google.

Ok, back to the ‘other factors’. Here are a list of the other factors that are fundamental in boosting your search engine result.

‘Other factors’ #1 – The title tag

In a html source code, a title tag looks something like this:

<title>Title of your web page</title>

If you want to optimize for “buy cheap Christmas presents”, you must include “buy cheap Christmas presents” in the title tag, as near to the starting line as possible.

‘Other factors’ #2 – Keywords in the description meta tag

In a html source code, a description meta tag looks something like this:

<meta name=”Description” content=”Your Description About The Page.”>

If you want to optimize for “buy cheap Christmas presents”, you must include “buy cheap Christmas presents” in the description meta tag, as near to the starting line as possible.

‘Other factors’ #3 – Keywords in the url

The best is to have a website named buycheapChristmaspresents.com. But if you have many keywords to optimize, buying a domain name for each of them can be very costly. If so, you should at least name the web page as yourdomain.com/buy-cheap-Christmas-presents.html

‘Other factors’ #4 – Keywords within the content

If you want to optimize for “buy cheap Christmas presents”, try to include “buy cheap Christmas presents” at least once in the first paragraph, once in the last paragraph and a few within the content.

Actually there is no strict rule on this but minimally, you should include the exact keyword at least once in the entire content.

 ’Other factors’ #5 – Website authority

If you have been reading up on SEO, you must have heard of Authority Site. The idea is if your site is an Authority Site, the search engine will send tons of traffic for all kinds of keyword phrases to you, pretty much like what Wikipedia and Ezinearticle have established now.

Website authority is at domain level. Meaning if your domain is an authority site, all other web pages in this domain will benefit.

2 important factors that affect website authority are

1) The age of the site

There is nothing you can do with the age of your site. You just have to be patience, and you need to have a long term vision for your website. Don’t build one site, chuck it away after 3 months and start another one.

2) The amount of backlinks to the homepage and internal pages, especially backlinks from other authority sites.

The difference between SEO backlinks (as discussed earlier) and backlinks for site authority (as mentioned here) is that the former is keyword specific, i.e., you have to include the keywords in the anchor text. For backlinks to boost site authority, any dofollow backlink will count. They can be keyword-specific anchor link or simply a URL link. Of course, all the SEO backlinks that you’ve established will help to boost your site authority.

Fundamentally, that’s all you need to know about SEO. I’m serious! Armed with these basic knowledge, I already gained hundreds of top positions in Google.

In the next SEO tutorial, we will look at some common SEO mistakes webmasters make. Who knows, you can be making those mistakes too.

In this article, I’m going to document some important SEO mistakes that I came across. Visit this page regularly because I’m going to update it from time to time. Whenever I come across a new mistake that worth noting, I will list it here.

Simply avoiding these mistakes can drastically improve your search engine ranking.

Let’s start with the most common mistake of all……

1. Going after competitive keywords

General keywords are usually competitive keywords. If you do not conduct any form of keyword research, chances are you will think of keywords that are too general and hence too competitive.

For example, if a person runs an internet marketing related blog, he may want to optimize his blog for “make money online” (which has 149 million competing webpages!!). Someone running a Forex website may want to optimize his site for “forex trading” (which has 11 million competing webpages!!).

Aiming for competitive keywords with huge demand is not wrong, but it’s too ambitious. You may be building links like mad, but still wonder why you are not seeing any improvement in your search engine ranking.

The secret here is to go for keywords with some demand and low competition.

I’m not going to go into the details of how to do keyword research because I’ve written about it in Long Tail Keyword Research – A Step-By-Step Guide.

2. Optimizing for too many different keyword phrases per webpage

Don’t be overly ambitious and try to optimize too many keyword phrases for one webpage (including homepage).

For example, I’ve seen a marketer trying to optimize his homepage for “make money online fast”, “affiliate marketing for newbies” and “internet marketing strategies”.

Assuming the keywords have low competition “which I doubt so”, how is he going to include all these keywords into his title tag, which is an important factor in search engine optimization (Read SEO Tutorial Part 1 for details)?

The story will be different if he tries to optimize for “proven ways to make money online fast”, “ways to make money online”, “ways to make money online fast”, “make money online fast”. In this approach, it may seem that he is also trying to optimize many keyword phrases, but technically, all the keyword phrases are linked.

He can have a title tag of “proven ways to make money online fast”. For link building, he can start with “proven ways to make money online fast” and “ways to make money online fast”, which may be an easy target to shoot. Then he can challenge harder keywords such as “ways to make money online” and “make money online fast” and eventually “make money online”. The best part is, his link building effort will help to prove the ranking for all the keywords.

Let me share with you a real-life example. For LeadsLeap.com, our aim is to get to the top rank for “lead generation”. But we started with a longer keyword phrase of “free lead generation system”, and then slowly work our way up. When building links, we began with “free lead generation system”, then move on to “lead generation system” and then to “lead generation”. See the point?

As of today, we are in the first page for keywords like “free lead generation system”, “free lead generation”, “lead generation system” and even “free lead system”. We can optimize for several keywords at one time because they are all related, and we start with long tail keywords.

Lastly I want to emphasize that a website can be built to target unlimited keywords, but EACH webpage in a website, including the homepage, should only be built to target limited number of keywords, preferably linked keywords. If you have 2 keyword phrases that are totally different, you should prepare 2 articles and build 2 webpages for each of them.

3. Poor onpage optimization

This is usually a newbie’s mistake, where his webpage is not optimized for the keyword he is targeting. For example, the title tag may not include the keyword he is trying to optimize, or worse still the content doesn’t have the keyword at all. (Read SEO Tutorial Part 1 for details).

4. Dynamic links

You may want to note that search engines treat dynamic links as unique webpages.

For example, to Google,

http://domain.com/blog/?p=1 is one webpage;

http://domain.com/blog/?p=2 is another webpage.

This may seem obvious since default Wordpress links look like this, but not so obvious in some cases.

A typical scenario is when you want to track the click-through. For example, if you post an article in Ezinearticles and you want to track the click-through, your link may look like this:

http://domain.com/my-article.php?track=1234

To Google,

http://domain.com/my-article.php?track=1234 is one webpage;

http://domain.com/my-article.php is another webpage!!!!

So from link building standpoint, you are building links for http://domain.com/my-article.php?track=1234, not http://domain.com/my-article.php.

5. SEO unfriendly website structure

Lastly, you may want to note that what you see on your webpage may not be what the search engine spider sees.

Case 1 – iframe

Some webpages are built using iframe. Without going into the details, iframe is simply a html code that allows a webpage to show contents from one or more webpages.

For example, webpage A may be full of contents, but if you view the source code, you can only see two links, one to webpage B and one to webpage C. What you see in webpage A is actually contents from B and C. To search engine spiders, webpage A has no content!

Case 2 – javascript

Similarly, some webpages may be drawing contents through javascripts. To site visitors, the webpage is full of content, but if you look at the source code, the webpage is just a bunch of javascript codes.

This is common in some plug and play systems, where you are promised to have instant online store or instant website, but those kinds of websites are only good for advertisement-generated traffic. They cannot be optimized for search engine traffic at all! Be careful when you buy into such a system.

Case 3 – excessive use of Wordpress plugins

For those of you who have your own self-hosted Wordpress blog, you will know that the market has tons of plugins that you can use on your blog, and some of them claim to boost your search engine ranking.

My advice is, know your fundamentals well before using them.

I have seen a blog with 2 different title tags, 2 different meta descriptions and 2 different meta keywords for every webpage. I believe they are generated by different plugins. The blogger may have installed 2 SEO plugins and both are trying to “optimize” the page.

I have also seen a blog with an “index,follow” meta tag and a “noindex,nofollow” meta tag, both on the same page! No one in his right mind will do that, but it can be possible if you use different kinds of plugins that work independently from each other to achieve different objectives.

Ok, that’s all for today. I’ll continue to add more common SEO mistakes when I come across them.

Next week, in Part 3 of our SEO tutorial series, I’m going to discuss ALL ABOUT LINK BUILDING.

If you have any questions or doubt about link building, post them below before next Friday. I will try to cover them in the next post.

In this tutorial, my aim is to cover everything you need to know about SEO link building, including ways to build backlinks and common questions you may have.

Before I begin, let’s me quickly go through some fundamentals.

- Link building is about building links FROM other websites to YOUR website, not from YOUR website to OTHER websites. You may laugh, but many newbies can’t even get this idea right.

- Next fundamental. In the SEO world, we often use the word backlink, which refers to links from OTHER websites TO your website. If you link to other websites, that’s NOT a backlink to you.

- Last fundamental. SEO link building is not just about building backlinks. It’s about building SEO backlinks. (Read this article on the difference between a backlink and an SEO backlink.)

Once you are clear on the fundamentals, let’s move on to the exciting part……

Ways To Build Backlinks

1) Google’s answer to link building

Officially, Google wants you to create great contents and/or services in your website, so that people can see the value in your website and link to you.

If you strictly follow this strategy, it may take you a long time before you can see any result.

But there are ways to accelerate the process and I shall list them below:

- Create link bait. For example, write an article on 101 ways to do something or a long list of resources. This kind of article will usually arouse people’s interest within your niche and thus link to that article. If you have a blog, put your link bait article in the Popular Article listing. The idea is to get more people to read that article and link to it.

- Provide a useful online application on your website, so that people will naturally link to you in their blogs or forums.

- Distribute free templates or scripts of any kind, such as Wordpress theme, website template, free script, free plugin etc, with a backlink to website. When people use them, they will have to link to you.

The rest of the methods are not recommended by Google. But they are proven to work and are very likely to continue working for many years to come.

2) Effective textbook ways to build backlinks

Just pick up any SEO ebook and you’ll see these link building strategies:

- Distribute articles to article directories, aka article marketing.

- Post comments in blogs.

- Post in forums.

- Create pages in Blogspot, Squidoo, Hubpages and other social networking sites.

- Adding stories to Digg, Propeller and other social bookmarking sites.

- Press release.

- Submit your link to non-reciprocal link directories.

- Exchange links with friends or other webmasters, through article exchange or blogroll exchange. Though Google doesn’t like reciprocal links, reciprocal links still count. Just don’t over do it. What Google frowns is EXCESSIVE reciprocal links.

3) Other seldom-mentioned but effective ways to build backlinks

- Create accounts in social networking sites and membership sites that show your profile in public (there are thousands of them out there, with high PR) and include backlinks in your profile. You can create as many accounts as you like. (This method is extremely spammy, but it works.)

- Create your own linking network within your domains. This is applicable to those with lots of domains. You can divide your domains into groups and cross link them. Just make sure that they are not reciprocal links. (This method can be very powerful!)

- Create a simple software and submit it to hundreds of software directories, with a backlink to your website. Most software directories have high PR. These are great backlinks for you.

4) Buy links

Although Google says “do not buy links”, buying links still work. If you want backlinks from high PR web pages (not website), buying links seems to be the only option for most people.

But use it at your own risk. I doubt Google has an algorithm to catch you. In most cases, websites are caught because someone reports it to Google.

5) Participate in link building systems

- Link exchange networks

This is the earliest form of link building system, where webmasters create a link directory on their websites and link to one another. Such links are categorized under reciprocal links (i.e. I link to you, you link to me).

This kind of link building system is infamous and Google hates it because it doesn’t provide any value other than boosting search engine ranking.

There are rumours that Google ignores exchanged links (or reciprocal links). I doubt it. Google may discount reciprocal links, but it doesn’t ignore such links.

Honestly, I am not a fan of link exchange and have never tried any. My advice is stay away from such networks because there are better and safer linking systems out there.

- 3-way link networks

Instead of “I link to you, you link to me”, 3-way link networks work by linking A to B, B to C and C back to A. To Google, these are not reciprocal links.

This is my preferred link building network and I have used it for years. The only downside is such a linking network can only build backlinks to the homepage. If you want to build backlinks to internal pages, aka deep linking, you’ll have to resort to the 3rd option.

- Content syndication system

In such a system, you will post articles to a network of blogs or websites within the system. You can view this as another form of article marketing, except that the submission process is much simplified since you are doing it through a centralized system. This is my favorite link building strategies because I can build unlimited backlinks to unlimited web pages.

Common Questions About Link Building

1) Do nofollow links count?

No. Here’s what Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, wrote “The essential thing you need to know is that nofollow links don’t help sites rank higher in Google’s search results.”

So when you build links, make sure that that link is not a nofollow link. You can easily identify nofollow links using Firefox plugins such as SearchStatus.

2) Do links from PR 0 sites count?

Yes. There is a myth going around saying that links from PR 0 sites don’t count. It’s a myth. What doesn’t count is if that link is from a web page that is NOT indexed by Google. If a web page is indexed by Google, it doesn’t matter whether the web page has PR 0 or PR 10. They will all help in your search engine ranking, but to different degrees of course.

Some experts say you should only post articles to popular article directories. I say NO. Distribute your articles to as many article directories as possible. I’ve gotten websites into top search results solely through article marketing alone. All links count, even if they have no PR.

3) Do links from unrelated contents count?

Yes. This is another common myth. Links from related content MAY score better, but links from unrelated links definitely counts.

4) Do links from duplicated contents count?

Yes. Links from unique contents MAY score better, but links from duplicated contents definitely count.

The only concern here is because the content is duplicated, Google may not index that the web page. As I said, links from un-indexed pages do not count.

“Kenneth, are you trying to say  Google penalizes duplicated contents?”

I wouldn’t say Google penalize duplicated contents. What happen is when Google indexes many web pages with the same content, it will only show some of the web pages and keep the rest in its sandbox. The priority usually goes to those websites with high PR. So let’s say you distribute an article to 300 article directories, probably only 200 of them are indexed. The other 100 may not be indexed and thus those links are not counted.

5) What is the relationship between PageRank and link building?

Technically, PageRank (PR) is like a vote. If a web page with high PR links to your web page, that link will carry more votes and thus add more to the PR of your web page. 0 PR doesn’t mean that web page carries no vote, it just carries lesser votes.

One thing to note is PageRank is web page specific. A PR 8 website doesn’t mean all its web pages have PR 8. So if you happen to buy links, make sure you pay for links from web pages with high PR, not just websites with high PR.

6) When submitting to link directories, can I go for reciprocal link option?

If you have done submissions to link directories, you will know that there are 3 options, free, reciprocal and paid. Don’t go for the reciprocal option. This is because over time, some of these directories may close down and you may end up having lots of bad links on your website, which can harm you SEO ranking and even get your website delisted.

I think I have more or less covered all you need to know about SEO link building. If you have other question about link building, just post your question below.

In this tutorial, my aim is to show you how to SEO a website from scratch, with step-by-step guide that you can follow.

Before I begin, I want to say, “forget about how to SEO a website”. You never SEO a website. You SEO a web page. When every web page on your website is optimized for search engine, the website is considered optimized.

I’m not trying to play around with words. It’s important that you understand the difference.

Now let’s move on to the step by step guide….

Assuming you have a new website or blog, with a homepage and a couple of other content pages. Here’re what you need to do to SEO your website or blog:

1) Set your target

Remember this: You will never know where to shoot if you do not have a target.

In SEO, your target is your keyword phrase (aka anchor texts). This is where keyword research comes in.

You need to decide what keyword phrase you want to optimize for every web page that you wish to rank in the search engine.

Every web page, including the homepage, should be optimized for one (or at most three) keyword phrase. Be focused.

If you want to target more keyword phrases, you should add more web pages to your website, instead of trying to make one web page optimized for different keywords.

2) Get the fundamentals right

Check and make sure that the followings are correctly done for every web page:

- Keyword phrase found in title tag
- Keyword phrase found in description meta tag
- Keyword phrase found in the url (if possible)
- Keyword phrase found within the content

Read Free SEO Tutorial (Part 1) – The Fundamentals for details.

3) Build backlinks to the homepage

The strategies to build backlinks to the homepage is different from the strategies to build backlinks to the internal pages because of 2 reasons:

1. Some link building methods can only be used to build backlinks to the homepage. For example:

- Submitting your website to link directories
- 3 way link

2. Some link building methods are too tedious and it’s almost impossible for you to do them for all your web pages. For example:

- Press release
- Many other methods explained in SEO Link Building – Free SEO Tutorial (Part 3)

Regardless of how tough or how tedious the method is, do all of them for your homepage. You need to give your website homepage a backlink boost in order to build up your website authority as explained in Free SEO Tutorial (Part 1) – The Fundamentals.

4) Build backlinks to the internal web pages.

It’s almost impossible to build backlinks for every internal web page, unless you run a popular site with lots of people pinging and digging your pages.

So let’s be realistic.

Personally I will start with 5 internal pages and build backlinks to them.

I prefer to build backlinks to internal pages via just one method – article marketing. (I’m not too keen on other spammy methods).

Choose 5 internal pages, prepare 5 new articles, submit them to hundreds of article directories and build backlinks to these 5 internal pages. (Note: You should have done this for your homepage in Step 3. If not, make sure that you do it for your homepage too.)

If you have an account with ArticleMarketer, LinkVana and/or ezArticleLink (coming soon), life will be a lot easier.

Whenever time allows, find 5 other internal pages and repeat the process.

5) Be patient and spread your eggs

Search engines trust aged sites. Unless you buy an aged domain, there is nothing you can do about the age of your domain. All you can do is Step 1 to 4 and then….. wait, trusting that things will happen eventually. Like it or not, waiting is one of the most important process in SEO, that’s why it’s our Step 5!

In the mean time, if you are building niche content websites, continue to build more sites and rinse and repeat Step 1 – 4. Some websites will turn out to be winners while some may just survive. If you only plan to have one website and  intend to live and die with it, then while waiting, you should establish other ways to get traffic. The whole idea is to spread your eggs.