Now, I knew that Free For All (FFA) sites are frowned upon…. so why would link building packages like this be any different.  So I haven’t personally used the services myself.

However, on reading this months Net Effect I see that they have some cautions to consider when using these services.  What they do say is the following:

1. Backlinks are a MUST to improve the rankings of your site in the Search Engine Results
2. You don’t need hundreds, or even thousands, of backlinks to your site though
3. You need highly targetted, high quality, well placed links back to your site.

Sure, you can pay for backlinks to your site — just be careful about where those links are from and how they link to your site.

Many link building services will offer to submit your site to directories.  The team from Stompernet advise the following on using directories:

Aside from the major directories like DMOZ, Yahoo! and Best of the Web, very few get any real traffic today.  In my [Jerry West, Stompernet Faculty Member] testing, I have seen a HUGE drop off in the quality of directories that are currently available.  Many directories are being sold to marketing firms and the current listings are either being dropped or the links are worthless.  Google has also removed the “submit your site to directories” in their Webmaster guidelines, so Google is “cooling off” in giving value to directory submissions.

So, if you’ve found a service that offers only directory submissions as their submission service – it possibly isn’t worth the effort – do your homework.  You can manually submit your site to DMOZ, Yahoo! and Best of the Web without much effort.

In following posts, I’ll discuss these services a little more.  For now, I wanted to share some great strategies that I’ve found work really well for my sites… and are relatively easy for anyone to implement….

1. Use the blogging facilities on high ranking social networks
Use the correct anchor text to link back to your site.  The anchor text — the text that shows as the link — should have your keywords in it.

Link to pages on your site, not just your home page.

Sites that seem work really well are Ecademy and, if you have a BlogTalkRadio show, the Blog Talk Radio blog.

2. Article Marketing
Using articles, with the Author resource box correctly set out, is incredibly effective.  The best directories to post on are:

• EZine Articles
• Qassia
• Associated Content (and you can earn some money here)

You should take one article and post variations of this article to these directories.  That way you avoid any duplicate content penalties.

If you want a wider distribution, I use the Free submission service for Article Marketer as well.

3. Blogging
My favorite! Create a blog and generate high quality content.  Use your blog to link your sales pages or website.

Better yet!  Make your website on the blogging platform.

To really juice up your blogs indexing, if you’re using WordPress, install Ultimate Plugins Smart Update Pinger and notify these directories at least when you add a new post:

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://rpc.wpkeys.com

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.britblog.com

http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://ping.fakapster.com/rpc

http://www.blogoon.net/ping/

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://api.feedster.com/ping.php

Of course, one of the great strategies is to take your blog posts and write a short article about it and submit it to the article directories, directing readers back to your blog post for the whole story.

If you’re not sure how to install your blog and don’t want to pay someone (like me) to do it for you, check out WordPress Unleashed….

4. Create Squidoo Lenses and Hubpages
Another favorite of mine…. I’m not as active on Hubpages, but I really like Squidoo.

Create a Squidoo lens about your topic and link back to your website, pages or blog.  Squidoo ranks well in the Search Engine results and I found that my site was often found for my lens before it was found for itself.

Hubpages are the same — they use a different interface and system.

These are just 4 things that I use to help the rankings on my sites and they are very effective.  In my next post, I’ll talk about other methods I use including Social Bookmarking.

Please let me know what works for you by leaving a comment – you’ll also get the benefit of the backlink from my site.

Image via Wikipedia

An interesting debate (I suppose you could call it that) is surfacing about Internet Marketers using Twitter.

What’s the fuss about? Well, any one who is a “honourable” Internet Marketer will know that we are often “tarred with the same brush” as the “spammers”, charlatans and scammers that abound on the ‘Net. Certainly, I held this kind of belief before I did my research on starting an online business. However, after a LOT of research and searching, I have found that whilst there are scammers and spammers, many Internet Marketers are doing the right thing, creating valuable products and, quite rightly, making a living by marketing their creations on the Internet.

The issue is though that there is a portion of the Internet community that appears to hold all Internet Marketers in contempt and refuse to believe that Internet Marketers could in fact contribute anything worthwhile.

Today, in a blog post titled Wake Up Call: Web 2.0 Wouldn’t Exist Without Internet Marketers, John Reese felt compelled to respond to two blog posts in a fairly strong manner.

The two blog posts referenced by John are Is Twitter Vulnerable To Marketer Attack? (by Mark Hopkins from mashable) and Pending Sign Of The Twitter Apocalypse: It’s Being Talked About By Internet Marketers (by blogger Duncan Riley from The Inquisitr).

These posts indicate that the writers feel that an “invasion of Internet Marketers” is akin to an apocalypse. Duncans post references John Reese’s invitation to his subscriber list to join him on Twitter……

John has responded in his blog post and references the actual text of his invitation email which clearly states:

“Observe how others post and you’ll quickly learn the culture, etiquette, and uses for Twitter.”

Seems pretty clear to me that John isn’t inviting his “Internet Marketing Mates” to come and blast everyone with offers….. also, take a look at Johns Public Twitter profile – I don’t believe that John has really promoted any of his “stuff” via Twitter. In fact, on June 12, John sent a series of Tweets likening the use of Social Media Advertising to promoting a MLM at a dinner party…. (to my mind it’s like going to a social mixer and trying to sell everyone life insurance). In fact, I followed avidly the other day a discussion between John, @coachdeb and @jpmicek (peripherally) on Twitter about the use of YouTube videos on your own website…. fascinating stuff.

Sure there are people who abuse Twitter. Just the other day I ‘unfollowed’ someone who continually “begged” others to follow them. This individual was following over 22,000 people and had less than 1000 followers at the time. Their pitiful tweets to some of the Twitter “gurus” along the lines of “Would you follow me, I promise to be interesting” were not only annoying, they were embarrassing.

What have many of us done with this annoying individual? We’ve unfollowed them – no more nuisance. So what if an Internet Marketer sends a marketing tweet? You don’t have to follow them, and if they don’t have an audience then they are likely to cease and desist the activities.

One question I ask is whether the people who are condemning Internet Marketers foray into Twitter actually basing their condemnation on fact, or perceived reality?

Another question is how did Duncan receive the email invitation? Did he receive it because he is a John Reese subscriber?

Another point to note is what set’s a blogger apart from an Internet Marketer really? If that blogger is making money from their blogging efforts, even indirectly, can’t they be considered Internet Marketers themselves? Ed Dale is the first commenter on Marks posts, and that comment asks didn’t Mark use Twitter as a marketing tool to advertise his blog post? Interested thought Ed….

Rip2It is a package that consists of products and services to generate 3rd Party Residual income. Rip2It was created originally by Pat Lovell to take advantage of Pay-Per-Click Earnings, in approximately 2003. The premise of a Rip2It site is that it is a BillBoard site for a specific niche. Billboard, in that it provides useful information about the topic being searched for and products to fill that need. The site is populated with Pay-Per-Click ads, as well as third party products from Clickbank and Amazon (too name two providers), as standard.

As a Rip2It customer, we receive a certain number of pre-made niche sites each month, pre-populated with our affiliate ids for the different suppliers. All we have to do is, put the site on our hosting platform (included in the Rip2It package); choose an appropriate domain name, or sub domain; and start blogging and article marketing. As the sites already come with articles, a little bit of work must be done to personalise them and ensure that they are unique, but all of the hard work is done for us. No page generation, no link generation – it’s just all there. If we want, we can add our own niche product to the site. So if I have a great product that I have created that fits the theme of the niche site I’ve just engaged, all I need do is log in to my administration area on the site, add my product and voila! it’s active.

There were many “A-Ha” moments for both Stuart and I during the day, but the one thing I truly didn’t realise is that the pre-made sites are based on hungry niches that Seans team identify through the corporate world, research and then develop! Wow! That’s a lot of work.

The Rip2It package also allows us to request a number of unique sites each month. So, in our wanderings through the Internet, we are always on the lookout for questions that need answering – we use this information to request a unique site, which Seans team then generates for us. Now, this isn’t just a matter of the Rip2It team throwing together whatever they have on hand that may relate to the topic requested, they research it, write articles and develop the site accordingly.

AND….. on top of that, the Rip2It system allows you to create as many sites as you like! These don’t come with articles etc, but with a little bit of hard work, these can be generated.

The Rip2It Team are dedicated to helping people succeed. The package they have put together is great and will, if used correctly, generate 3rd Party Residual income.

I took the opportunity to interview Sean Roach, the “George Cloonie of the Internet Marketing World”. I hope you enjoy the Interview as much as I did.

Who is Sean Roach? If you haven’t seen Sean speak at an event, then meet Sean Roach by watching this video.

The three traffic exchanges that I have used consistently are Instant Buzz, Traffic Swarm and Top Surfer. I have had great success with these programs and seen some very interesting sites as well.

Over the weekend, I decided to try out 6 more exchanges. Initially, I signed up to one, but after a little bit I decided to try out the others too. The results I received were very encouraging as well.

What is a Traffic Exchange?

A Traffic Exchange is a site where you can display web sites / pages of your choice and you “surf” to view sites displayed by others. While you are surfing, you receive credits that you can redeem against your site displays. Fairly simple….

However, “surfing” on Traffic Exchanges can be time consuming for a small return. I recognised that very early on. However, I love to just “potter” on the Internet and surf sites to find things of interest. So, I use Traffic Exchanges to serve me pages that may or may not be of interest…. and I have found several pages of interest.

The other thing I do is to get my husband or one of the kids to do some exchange surfing. This provides interesting results as each of them are looking for different things.

The other thing I do is to open several exchanges in different TABs in Firefox, this allows me to load pages and surf a little quicker. I still review the pages that are presented before moving to the next page in the Exchange.

One of the things I have found when using Traffic Exchanges is the range of quality in websites. This in itself is truly beneficial – I see what I like and what I hate. The one thing that has astounded me is the number of web pages that are meant to be a Call To Action and do absolutely nothing, say nothing and are poorly designed.

The pages I dislike the most are the ones that provide a sign up form with no explanation of what you will get or what they are selling. Why would anyone fill in the form? Does it really work?

Using Traffic Exchanges can be quite beneficial, when used properly. Not only do you earn credits to display your own sites, you may find something of interest or you may find page designs that work better than others.

I recommend using the following Traffic Exchanges:

Traffic Splash

Dragon Surf

Advertising Know How by Robert Puddy

I Love Hits

Hit Safari

Fast Easy Traffic

Traffic Swarm

Instant Buzz

Top Surfer