Vinny O'Hare

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Website Traffic

Where Did These Backlinks Come From

On Tuesday we had our monthly Affiliate Summit meetup and we started talking about backlinks. We usually talk about this topic all the time but this time around we talked about checking backlinks. Actually I was glad to see people are looking at backlinks since Google uses them in part to rank their websites in the search engine.

Someone brought up that he noticed that one of his keyword rankings had some funny things going on. The top website ranking for the keyword had under 10 backlinks but the second site had about 1008.  I think he said the 3rd site had like 5 or so. We are not talking about a very competitive niche so it didn't take a lot of keywords to rank well.

His question was how does a site with 10 backlinks beat out a site with 1008 backlinks. The answer to me was obvious but to someone new I could see why it would be confusing. Without knowing the exact details I blurted out that it was because the second site bought 1000 backlinks from someone and they really only had 8 real backlinks.
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How Do You Come Up With Content For A Website

One of the questions I am asked on a persistent basis is about website or blog content. People want to know how they can come come up with topic ideas and where to get good content. While I am at the point where I just figure out the content phrases and hand them off to a writer that isn't the way I started.

Whenever I make up a website the first thing I do is take my keyword list and set up about 10-20 Google alerts. Google alerts is a pretty cool way to get content ideas and also a good way to find websites that will exchange links and content with you. Take your keyword phrase's with “quotes” around it and enter them into Google alerts and you will have content ideas delivered into your email box the next day.

Every morning I will get 10-20 emails with 2 or 3 links in each that mention the keyword phrase and if the topic is hot you will get more. It only takes a few minutes to give a quick glance over the emails and look to see if they are a good match. You can get some good ideas for content this way. I will look over the emails and end up with a topic that will allow me to create a whole page and maybe two. If you don't want to be overwhelmed with looking through all the emails just choose one keyword to work that day and let the others sit in your inbox for another day. By the time you are ready for the next subject you will have more emails to work with.

If the story is hot at the moment I will create the page myself and then alert the other pages that I found in the alerts. This is done either through commenting on their site and include my link as a reference or I will send an email to the website owner and tell them that their piece was great and that I have a similar article. Maybe hint at a future guest post or to trade links back and forth. Something will usually come from it, if not during this exchange the ice has been broken for future stuff. They may even know another webmaster in the niche that would also like to work together.

Outsourcing Your Content Writing

If I am in no hurry to get the content up I will usually hire a writer. I will get together a bunch of keyword phrases and put up a job on Elance.com or more recently I have been using IWriter.com. While both are good services I am happy using ELance for larger jobs but that is only because I have used them more frequently. After you use either of these services you get to know some writers that are good and you make sure you invite them to do the next job. It is also not a good idea to settle for the cheapest writer as odds are you will get lousy content back. You want to plan your job with as many details as possible. I always choose writers from the USA and pay a little more than have articles written by someone that their first language is not English. It never works out and saving a few bucks on content that is going to be on your website for years just is not worth it.

Get Your Words Transcribed

If it is a topic that you are knowledgeable about and you don't feel like typing out the information you can always use a voice transcription service. It may sound dumb but if you are lazy like me and you type slow you can do a voice recording. Hook up a headphone and mic to your computer and peak the content for your pages. I know I can talk 10 times faster than I can type. I load up a program called Audacity (Free) and make some audio files. After I am done I upload the files to speechpad.com and get them transcribed. It is cheaper than hiring a writer and I know the content isn't some plagiarized copy that has been spun ten times to Sunday.

You will end up with some pretty good content this way. Odds are you will surprise yourself with the results, I know that every time I get the content back I am amazed at how accurate the content is and since you talk faster than you can type (and think at the same time) you end up with twice as much quality content than if you had hired a writer.

 

Getting Traffic To A Website

One thing that I am asked about all the time is how you get traffic to a website.

I tell people that there is no quick way and that it is a series of things that get me traffic. Most of the time a website actually hurts itself and gets penalized. I more or less find the reason why the site is not ranking well and I fix that problem first. Sometimes websites don't do basic SEO and that will hurt them. Sometimes website owners don't know what they should rank for or track what is working and what isn't. If a website owner doesn't know these answers they are missing opportunities to get traffic and money from that traffic. Getting a few links to a website and doing some social media work can come a long way when it comes to improving a website ranking and actually get traffic.

Your website needs two things, a way to track your website visitors and a way to find out what people are searching for. For tracking visitors I use Google analytics and for seeing what people are looking for I use a combination of things like the Google adwords tool and/or SEM Rush. The thing that you want to do is make really good pages that people are searching for and solve their problem. This may be by linking to your product or an affiliate site that sells it.

My goal is to make a good page that builds trust and have the user sign up for my email newsletter. Repeat traffic is easier to convert since you have built trust already. In the process I also want to build a loyal following that will come back to my site and tell their friends about it. Every website needs a few pages like about us, contact, privacy policy etc.

The about us page should be about how you are going to help the user and then some personal stuff about you. I find that making the page personal helps a lot. It shows your readers that you are real.

I will make videos for YouTube and have my website url in the description so people watching the video come to my site. I will use Twitter and Facebook also to build a following. All these things add up to traffic.

Most website owners need to get links to their website. Most have no idea how or why they need this. What I suggest is writing articles about your niche and finding other website owners to give that content to put it on their site with a link or two back to your site within the article.

You can also get links back to your site by making the best article ever and putting it on your own site and alerting the media to it. Try to get to know your local newspaper reporter and when you have news let him know. It is a good two way street to be living on.