I was doing some blog searches and I found ping-o-matic. This is a sweet utility that lets various search engines know that your blog has been updated. Some posts that I have read suggest that you should “ping” each time your blog is updated. Anyway, try it out. It is free and could pull in some extra traffic. Oh, and if you have an RSS (really simple syndication) on your site, you can broadcast that as well.
This post doesn’t really have anything to do with online business or affiliate marketing, per se. However, I believe that it would help anyone to radically transform their thinking about the people around them (both business and personal relationships). The book is called Leadership and Self Deception (Getting out of the Box) by the Arbinger Institute. I just finished it while on a mini vacation to the mountains. It got me thinking about how so many businesses build up personal and corporate walls for protection, all the while becoming less and less functional as a whole unit. In order to truly succeed in business, these walls need to be reviewed, discussed and torn down (potentially painful). Even in the online world, we deal with people everyday, whether that be a blog commenter, customer, or support desk. Each one of these communication channels typically has a person attached at the other side. How do we view that person in light of what we are trying to accomplish? Do we truly see them as a person just like us, or do we see them as a tool to get our “mission” accomplished? This book enlightens the reader about this concept. I would highly recommend it.
For those of you new to SEO (Search Engine Optimization), a back link is simply a link from another site to yours. Basically, there are two kinds of back links; one is when you link back to the site that links to you (typically called a reciprical link), and the other is to have only incoming links on any given page. These links are called one-way links, and from my reading, most search engines like to see them more than they do reciprical links.
From my experience, building back links is a lot of work, but there are tools you can use to help automate and speed the process. I use a piece of software called Link Machine, which I have referenced on my software page. Some SEO experts don’t link using software, as they say it can affect your ranking in search engines like Google. I don’t discredit this, and agree that it is probably the “cleanest” way to build back links. However, I have also met some REALLY successful people who exclusively use software to help manage their back links. The point is…do what fits your schedule, budget and expertise.
One concept that can accelerate one-way links to your site is article distribution. James Martell calls it the Pad Technique. It works like this…write or have written an article about 1000-1500 words in length. Find on topic websites and ask the webmaster if they would like some free content for their site, providing they keep the links in place. In your article, you have placed roughly 3-6 links back to various places on your site. Voila, you now have one way back links! This is STILL a lot of work, but can pay off huge if done correctly.