Step 6: Get the traffic

This is probably the most critical part of this process but unfortunately it is the one thing that most people give up on. Whenever I hear that people aren’t making it online the main reason is always because they aren’t getting enough traffic. If you can get this right then you will be streets ahead of the rest of those struggling to make it online. Once you have the traffic then it means that all you need to do is tweak your pages to improve conversions.

Getting traffic can be a lot of work but it is well worth the effort. We concentrate mostly on organic traffic – in other words free traffic from search engines. If you have experience with Pay Per Click then by all means use that to get traffic to your product review pages. It doesn’t matter where the traffic comes from – the most important thing is that it is targeted traffic. You want people coming to your site who are interested in what you have to say and want to buy what you have to offer.

What are backlinks?

Google ranks web pages in their search engine based on a number of factors – the only problem with that is that no one outside of Google really knows what those factors are exactly. However, most generally agree that what makes a site rank well is the number of backlinks pointing to that website.

A backlink is a link on someone else’s website that points to your website. Google thinks that if a lot of important websites are linking to your website then your website must be important. And Google will rank you higher in their search engine as a result. And the higher you are ranked, the more traffic you are likely to get to your site. And the more traffic you get, the more money you are likely to make.

However, it is not so much the number of backlinks but the quality of those backlinks. So the more important the site that links to you the more important your site is considered in the eyes of Google and the more likely you are to rank on the first page of Google. So getting 10 good quality backlinks is oftentimes better than getting hundreds of poor quality backlinks.

And just to make it even more complicated, the keyword or keyword phrase used in that backlink is important too as it will determine where you are ranked in Google for that keyword.

Let’s use an example to make it a little simpler. Say my site is about dog products and I want to rank in the #1 spot in Google for the search term ‘dog beds’. My goal will be to get as many other websites to link to me using that keyword phrase in their link. So, on their website they might have a link that looks like this – Dog Beds – and that blue link links back to my website.

So ultimately, your goal is to get other websites to link to you using the keywords you want to rank for in Google. (This is where your keyword list from Step 2 comes in handy).

In the words of Google, “In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.”

So how do you get backlinks and traffic?

We use a number of methods but these are our favorites:

1. Guest Blogging

2. Blog Comments

3. Adding content

4. Contests

5. Forum posting

6. Press releases

7. Social bookmarking/networking

8. Best Blog

These methods are super solid high quality methods of getting backlinks and traffic. When you use these methods you will be focusing on quality rather than quantity.

You don’t have to use every method listed above but you should choose at least three. And at least one of the three should be Guest Blogging and this is the one we are really going to be focusing on in this ebook. If you want detailed information on the other methods just refer to our 7 Super Powerful Methods for Increasing Traffic to Your Blog ebook which you can download for free if you don’t already have it.

Guest Blogging

The goal with guest blogging is to take an article that you wrote and give it to another website owner to place on their blog. In that article you include two or three links back to your product reviews. It’s kind of a win-win for both parties – they get a free well written article and you get a few backlinks and possibly some traffic back to your site.

Now I know we call this “guest blogging” but you don’t have to limit yourself to only submitting articles to other bloggers. Any type of website is fine – it doesn’t have to be a blog and in fact, you can often get better backlinks from regular websites which is why we often focus on them first before going to bloggers.

Just keep in mind that this is a slow build-up of backlinks but honestly this one is well worth the effort. It will build strong backlinks that Google will love.

But because this is a slow build-up, you need to work on other methods of traffic building at the same time so ensure you refer to our 7 Super Powerful Methods for Increasing Traffic to Your Blog ebook and apply some of the other methods.

Things to consider

A prospective site owner will most likely take a look at your website before agreeing to take an article – after all they will be including a link on their website to your website. So consider the following before starting to send emails to prospective sites:

1. Does your website look professional?

2. Is your website still under construction? – A site may disregard you if your site

   looks unfinished.

3. Do you already have well written articles on your website? – A site will

   probably look at the articles on your website to gauge how well they are

   written.

4. Is your site full of spammy ads and pop-ups?

Finding Sites to Submit Articles To

When we first started searching for sites we found it quite difficult and had about a 1 in 30 response rate. When we started to use the following technique the response increased dramatically.

So firstly, here is what we don’t do:

• We don’t look for merchant/shopping cart websites – these sites generally either don’t take articles or they are big enough to have their own writers.

• We don’t look for sites that are in direct competition to us – in other words I wouldn’t go looking for any sites that already sell cordless drills.

So here is what we do:

• We look for sites that already accept articles or have articles on their website (and we don’t mean article directories).

To find these sites we just type in variations of our keywords with the words ‘submit article’ or ‘articles’ in the Google search field.

BUT we don’t just use our keywords as this is very limiting. Instead we look at the big picture. For instance, cordless drills of this type are generally used by do-it- yourselfers and people at home for fixing things around the house. So I would go searching for home related sites like home decor, home improvement or DIY type sites. If we take the cordless drills example we might type in the following search phrases in Google to find these types of websites:

• cordless drills submit article

• home improvement articles

• do it yourself submit article

• handyman articles

• home decor article

• home renovation submit articles

• home design submit article

• home decor articles

• home hints submit article

Another way to find sites is by typing in the keyword ‘newsletters’ as a variation (eg. ‘home improvement newsletters’. There are thousands of websites that send out newsletters and would love content to add. Ensure that they also place the newsletter on their website otherwise you won’t get the value of the links.

Once you have finished with using the keyword ‘newsletters’ then you can start using the keyword ‘blogs’ or ‘blog’ or ‘guest blogger’. So you would start searching for ‘home renovation blog submit articles’ or ‘home hints blog articles’ and so on. Or alternatively you could start searching using the Google blog search which will only search for blogs:

http://blogsearch.google.com/?hl=en&tab=wb

You can see how many variations of the keywords you can use to find sites willing to accept articles. With time it gets easier and easier and you will find that your response rate gets better and better.

The Criteria for Selecting Sites

We don’t choose a site simply because they accept articles. We also ensure that they are strong in the eyes of Google or are sites that are getting lots of traffic.

We determine the strength of a site by using the Google Pagerank Tool. If the site has a pagerank of at least 3 on their home page then we will add that site to our list.

If the site doesn’t have a pagerank of 3 or more but still gets good traffic then we will add them to our list. We can tell if a blog gets a lot of traffic by looking at how many comments are left. If they regularly get 20 or more comments left on their blog then they have an active blog with lots of regular visitors stopping by. These are good blogs to add articles to as your article will get lots of views and hopefully a lot of people clicking through to your site.

Sending the email

Once we have a list of prospective sites we then email them. We have a standard email that we use and we are constantly adjusting it. (You can see a couple of examples in Attachment 5 at the end of this ebook.)

Basically we just start off by asking if they are currently accepting articles, then tell them that we are willing to provide them with a couple of unique well written articles. We also add that in return we would like two to three links back to our website within each article.

We often give them some topic ideas but also let them know that they can choose a topic if they like.

Once we have a positive response

When we get an email back to say they want an article we immediately respond to them to let them know that we will get to work on the article.

We then go through our bank of articles if we have already had some articles written up and rework one so that it suits the site. If none are suitable we will generally write our own.

We then add our links and send it back to the website. Usually we send two articles to each website but sometimes three if they are a particularly strong website.

Article Topics

Because you are promoting Amazon products the guest articles you write need to relate in some way to your product. In this case our product is a cordless drill so we need to write up guest posts that relate to that topic.

The best types of posts are:

• How-to’s
• Top 7 Tips (or whatever number you like)
• What to Look for…
• What is…

So for our cordless drill review our article topics might include:

• How to choose a cordless drill

• What to look for when buying a cordless drill

• How to clean your cordless drill

• 7 Tips for buying a cordless drill

• How to maintain your cordless drill

• What is the best drill for home handymen?

Helpful articles are what any website owner craves. They want this type of content on their blog or website so if you can write this type of informative article they will snap it up.

How to Write Guest Articles

You write your guest articles exactly the same way you write any other piece of content on your blog.

The only difference is that you need to include keywords in the guest article that you want to rank for. So say for instance that I want to rank for the keyword “Panasonic EY6432GQKW”. In my article I would need to include this keyword at least once. So it might read like this:

Top 7 Tips for Choosing a Cordless Drill

“When choosing a cordless drill one thing you need to consider is the number of volts. The greater the volts the more powerful the drill. The downside to this however is that the greater the volts the heavier the battery and therefore the heavier the drill. One of the best drills we’ve found that provides a good balance of weight to power ratio is the Panasonic EY6432GQKW. This drill…..etc, etc.”

Wherever possible, try to include at least three keywords in the article.

Should You Write the Articles Yourself?

You can write the articles yourself or have them professionally written by a writer in Elance. It will just depend on how good that writer is. Some are better than others. We used to write all our guest articles ourselves until we finally found a good writer who did the job better than us.

Just be aware that the site owner will probably look at your site first and check out the quality of your articles. They will probably base their decision on whether to take your article by looking at the quality of your articles on your blog. If you end up giving them an article that doesn’t match the quality of those on your blog then they will most likely reject the article.

The article you send to them has to be good. It has to be as good as anything you put on your own site – in fact, it often has to be better. So my advice is that unless you have a really good writer, you should write your own guest articles wherever possible.

However, if you want to give the Elance writers a go then you can use the following example as a guide for writing up your job proposal. This is how we write them up:

10 Articles Required at 500+ Words on Cordless Drills

We would like 10 articles written at 500+ words on cordless drills. The topics are as follows:

• • • How to choose a cordless drill

    • What to look for when buying a cordless drill

    • How to clean your cordless drill

    • 7 Tips for buying a cordless drill

    • Etc, etc.

That’s it really. We don’t tell them to use keywords in specific places or provide any detail on what we want in each article. We leave it to them. We also add the basic info such as – it should be unique content, must be informative and written naturally.

We will usually accept at least two different writers for each project. That way we get two unique articles on the same topic.

The articles will cost anywhere between $6 and $15 each.

When choosing a writer in Elance go for one that has had extensive feedback and has a number of repeat buyers. Don’t just choose the cheapest – you get what you pay for when it comes to Elance writers.

Adding Links to Your Articles

The final step you need to take before you send your article to the blog or website owner is to add a few links to your article.

Now assuming you are using Microsoft Word you simply highlight the keyword/s you want to rank for, then right click your mouse and click the Hyperlink option. Then paste in the url of your product review page.

Hopefully you have added at least three keywords in your article. These are the keywords you want to add a link to. So the paragraph we wrote previously in this section might look like this with our link included:

Top 7 Tips for Choosing a Cordless Drill

“When choosing a cordless drill one thing you need to consider are the number of volts. The greater the volts the more powerful the drill. The downside to this however is that the greater the volts the heavier the battery and therefore the heavier the drill. One of the best drills we’ve found that provides a good balance of weight to power ratio is the Panasonic EY6432GQKW. This drill…..etc, etc.”

You then add another one or two links in the article and that’s it! You can now send your article off.

Just remember, this guest blogging process is a numbers game. You might email 100 websites and only get 10 responses or you might get more. Just keep at it…it will be worth it!