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Building Article Backlinks – EZA Submission

June 8th, 2010 · Backlinks

I finally received my article set for Site 2 this morning. The 3 rewrites were all 87%+ unique from each other so that was good. The writing quality was also good although I always make edits for better flow.

So I spent this morning editing the two sets of articles for my 2 sites and picked an inner page to target in my links in addition to the link that will go to my homepage. I went ahead and submitted one version of each article set to EZA with the two backlinks. Even though the articles rewrites are all 80%+ unique, just to be safe, I will wait for EZA to approve my submission before posting the other 2 versions of the articles. I don’t know how EZA assesses uniqueness so I would rather not take any chances since they are picky.

While I wait for EZA’s approval I will spin an article for Site 2 (Site 1 spun article is complete). After that I should have all the necessary materials ready to go. Despite the fact that I had the article sets written up, there is still alot of work involved in this process. I probably spent about an hour editing the article sets and will spend at least 2 hours total spinning two articles. I am slow, but I also try for good quality so it’s worth it for now. I’m not sure I could ever outsource a job like this and feel comfortable with the results (except maybe to James the Super eLancer).

By the way, here is an update on rankings as well as the current ranking of the inner pages that will also be linked out to:

Site 1: Home page is #15 for kw; Inner page is #194 for kw

Site 2: Home page is #133 for kw; Inner page is #284 for kw

I picked the inner pages based on what was ranking best (site 1) or what had good potential sale-wise (site 2, product review). Notice that Site 2 has seen a nice improvement in ranking since I first posted (was #314 a week ago). No clue why, just hope it holds.

That’s my update for today. Hopefully I will have all my articles posted by the end of the week and then I can start sending out spun submissions for backlinks starting next week. I started this experiment to distract me from our not-so-fun homebuying experience and I have to say the distraction has helped, so that is good. Hopefully the results will be an added bonus.

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Building Article Backlinks – Spin and Wait

June 7th, 2010 · Backlinks

It’s a week now since I ordered my articles and I am still waiting on the set for Site 2. The set for Site 1 was ready on Thursday. I’m not sure how the articles at GetArticlesDone.com are distributed to the writers but I know some sites have a list of article titles and the writers choose what they want. I have to wonder if all the writers are avoiding my title request like the plague – whatever!

While I am waiting I decided to go ahead and spin an article for Site 1 that was already posted on EZA. I have two versions spun now, one with nested (level 2) spins and one with just top level spins. ArticleBot cannot accept nested spins so I will use one version for it and the nested version for Automatic Article Submitter and ArticleRanks.

Unfortunately, in Magic Article Rewriter there is no way to check the amount of uniqueness you have generated so what I do is spin a few articles and compare them to each other using DupeFree Pro. I ended up with a uniqueness of 50-60%. I think some people claim to get alot higher but that has been about as good as it gets for me.

Tomorrow I will try to spin an article for Site 2 while I wait on the rest of my articles. That way I will be ready to go for the most part except for some editing of the new articles.

So to recap, I have ordered 2 sets of 3 article rewrites (one set per site). I will post these rewrites (which should be 75%+unique) to EZA, InfoBarrel, and Squidoo with links back to the respective site (Site 1 or Site 2, homepage and inner page). I will then take my spun articles (older articles that were already posted to EZA) and submit those using 2 submitters and ArticleRanks with links back to the 3 articles I have just posted to EZA, Info Barrel, and Squidoo in the hope that the indirect link juice will increase my site rankings without any negative effects (sandbox).

I’ve backlinked my backlinks in the past, but I’ve never done a clean experiment like this so I look forward to seeing the results. Hopefully some brave writer at GAD.com will throw themselves on their sword and actually write up the second set of articles soon. Until then we will wait!

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Building Backlinks with Articles – Article Order

June 4th, 2010 · Backlinks

Background on building backlinks with articles.

I have received one set of articles back (site 1)  from GetArticlesDone.com but still waiting for the second set. The first set wasn’t bad and should only require some minor editing so that is good. The 3 rewrites (one article rewritten 2 times) were at least 80% unique so I end up with 3 x 500 word articles for $3.32 each. Not bad. Hopefully the second set for Site 2 are good also.

I have decided I will post the three articles I am having written to EZA, Info Barrel, and Squidoo with links back to the corresponding site homepage and to an inner page. I will then take an EZA article I already have posted for each site, spin it, and then link back to those 3 properties. The idea is to juice those pages linking to my site to hopefully avoid alot of the rank dancing that happens when I link too much directly to my site.

In the past I still linked back to my site with some of the higher PR, more popular article directories and pointed the majority of the other links to EZA, but this time I think I will see what just juicing my links does. I also will not have to worry about dripping the links out like I do when linking back to my sites so this test goes a bit faster. Since I haven’t done this exact routine before I am interested to see what happens.

I have a busy weekend planned so I will probably get started on Monday. Next week is also the last week of school so I’ll need to move fast.

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May Earnings Posted

June 2nd, 2010 · My Earnings

I posted my May earnings. Not terrible, not great.

My adsense was down a bit which isn’t surprising as that only represents my main niche site and that site has fallen off Page 1. My eHow earnings were back up after a large dip last month which is good. I also added Amazon sales to this month’s earnings and had a very nice surprise when I sold 3 items from a site I am just starting to promote (site 2 from this post).

I’ve been at this for 19 months now and I’m not sure how to feel about my progress. I certainly expected to be doing better by now but I also have not been working consistently. And I’ve made ALOT of mistakes.

That said, I’m still not feeling very confident in what I am doing. Even when I have made what look like good decisions on sites and/or keywords, those haven’t panned out. And despite what some people say, I think there is alot of luck involved in internet marketing. And the best way to get lucky is volume, much like the lottery. The more tickets you buy, the better your odds. Likewise, the “real” people I see making money have put out alot of sites/content and can then run with the stuff that works and jettison the rest.

So Lord willing, in September, I hope to start getting more content out there. Not like 100 sites because that is not the direction I want to go, but clearly I need to cast a wider net.

On the flip side, when I include earnings from my old personal site (not included in earnings posted here), I made close to $400 last month which was all basically passive income. Yes, I would like to make more. But if I can do nothing all month and make a few hundred dollars then I really can’t complain.

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Building Backlinks with Articles – 2 Sites

June 1st, 2010 · Backlinks

So I mentioned in my last post that I was frustrated with our house buying process and needed a diversion. So I have decided to do some article backlinking to two of my sites which have not received too much attention yet and track my results here.

First, I have been making article marketing/submitting as the main focus of my backlinking efforts recently. The reason is because I feel it is likely the safest, easiest, and cheapest method. Safe because I feel it is less likely to succumb to spammers and have your efforts disappear than say forum profiles or blog commenting. Easy because once you know your targets and have your accounts, you can repeat the process – no searching for new places to create profiles or leave comments. Cheap for basically the same reasons – once you are set up you can just keep re-using  the same tools and methods. That’s not to say I don’t find alot of value with other methods, but using articles for backlinks just suits me better for now.

Here is the background information on the 2 sites I will be focusing on.

Site 1
Keyword.com domain
Current Ranking = #12 in Google for main KW
Current BLs in YSE = 9
Competition (PR on Pg1) = 7,7,3,3,2,2,3,3,5,3

Site 2
Keyword.com domain
Current Ranking = #314 in Google for main KW
Current BLs in YSE = 61
Competition (PR on Pg1) = -,3,4,1,1,5,4,3,0,3

(YSE = yahoo site explorer, inter-domain linking excluded from values)

Don’t get too excited that these are keyword.com domains, the search amounts are fairly low. That’s another story. But the fact that they are KW.com domains should make them easier to rank, I hope.

Site 1 actually ranked on Page 2 with no content (just WP installed), so the overall competition is probably not as bad as it looks by PR. So far the backlinking performed includes 2 Ezine articles and some social bookmarking. The site is monetized with Infolinks and Amazon although my original intention was for it to be an Adsense site. I’m still trying to decide whether I should add Adsense now or not. The Amazon links are secondary – this is an informational site where some physical products could be used.

Site 2 has never ranked well and I am starting to wonder why. An inner page is ranking at #99 in Google for the main keyword while the homepage is at #314. The backlinking so far includes 2 Ezine articles, some social bookmarking, and a blog commenting package. I think the blog comments were from a Scrapebox run (WSO) and I am wondering if those comments are not being smiled upon by Google, hence the bad ranking? This site is product-based and earned ~$71 on Amazon from some longtail traffic, so it has potential.

That is the site background, now here is my basic plan. I have ordered 2 sets of UAW articles from GetArticlesDone.com (GAD) for $19.90. That will give me a 500 word article plus 2 rewrites for each site. I have only used GAD a few times and the quality varies so I am worried I may have to do some editing, specifically b/c these 2 sites are technical. I really only need 400 words but ordered 500 words to give me some editing (deleting) room. Last time I ordered one of these UAW sets the uniqueness was quite high so I am counting on that again.

So I should have 3 semi-unique articles for each site. I will publish 1 to EZA, 1 to Info Barrel, and the last one I am still thinking about, but it will likely be a Hubpage or Squidoo. Then I will spin the EZA article and submit to various article directories and blogs using Automatic Article Submitter, ArticleBot, and ArticleRanks (see my ArticleRanks review). I will either link back to my site or back to the other EZA articles. OR, I may spin one of the EZA articles I already have for these sites and link back to the new EZA, IB, and Hubpage/Squidoo – I’m still deciding.

I will work out my exact plan over the next few days as I wait to receive my articles. This will be a busy week for me but I hope to make some progress once the articles come in.

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