John Cow dot Com » backlinks

Link Boosting and WIN $10 000! – JOHNCOWtv Episode 2

Jason Katzenback — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 19:12:02 +0000

Well it has been a full week since our beloved COW was stolen from us (as witnessed in JOHNCOWtv Episode 1) and sadly we have not heard a single word from the authorities or the COWnappers. We are still hopeful that COW is safe and unharmed but we also a little concerned. We are moving forward still and in fact we want to celebrate with all of our readers what it is COW represents and stands for (too many things to write about in this post, that is for sure) and as a result we are giving away…

>> $10 000 CASH! <<

That’s right… we are not going to let these COWnappers ruin us and destroy this for our readers.

The rules are simple… watch the video and we announce the winner in the video. We selected a name from the list of email subscribers and picked one random winner. The only exception is we are not publishing the name, we are not emailing the person and they have to contact us within 24 hours of this post…

NO EXCEPTIONS!

If you do not hear your name or do not contact us within 24 hours… we are keeping all of it… and believe me Audrey can always find ways to spend that money!

So don’t email us or comment below that it is unfair if you do not hear your name or contact us in time.. remember NO EXCEPTIONS!

I also share a powerful strategy in this episode called “LinkBoosting”… which I know you will find useful!

So watch the video and see if you are a lucky winner!

Click Here to Add JOHNCOWtv to Your YouTube

Want Your Website or Business Spotlighted in the Next Episode of JOHNCOWtv?

If you would like to be spotlighted on JOHNCOWtv it is easy… simply send us something with your business name or logo on it (ball caps, winter caps, t-shirts, coffee cups)… OR… something cool (we like gadgets and PS3 video games ) and tell us what you want to have mentioned. We will also add the sponsor message in the text of the post.

Mailing Address: 645 Queen Street East 2nd Floor, SSM, Ontario Canada, P6A2A6

Traffic, Subscribers and Backlinks From Guest Posting

Jason Katzenback — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 10:16:32 +0000

This is a Guest Post by Shannon Lilly blogger over at CowBlogger.com. Check out his blog and subscribe to his mooalicious blog right now!

If you have any doubts about guest posting on another blog then today is your lucky day! I have guest posted on all the top blogs including JohnChow and A MarketingPilgrim among many smaller ones. I am a Guest Post Pro you could say, I have some useful tips for you to check out in regards to guest posting. Lets begin this mooalicious guest post!

The first point I want to make is how important it is to present the guest post in a quality manner. Anything other then a professional post simply will not do in the blogosphere today, if you want to be taken seriously you need to present it professionally. Remember when guest posting your main goal is to convince these people on another blog to give you a shot and click over to your blog and or subscribe to your RSS.

If you don’t present the post professionally you might as well forget the whole thing…

Secondly use the guest post to your advantage, link to your own blog in it but no more then 2 times or the post will most likely be rejected because bloggers don’t usually like to link-out to other blogs because they are competitors. Additionally don’t be afraid to take one of those 2 links andÂ ask the readers to subscribe to your RSS Feed directly from the guest-post. I have found this to work excellent and if you can get away with it (DO IT!).

If the post goes live on a popular blog you have the possibility of the RSS Feed being picked up by RSS Sites / Bots and of course gaining subscribers from the blog your posting on, especially if they use any FireFox RSS plugins!

The point is “Use the guest post to your advantage”.

Its sort of ironic that I would be making a guest post about guest posting is it not?

Thirdly bring something new to the table, take this guest post for example sure Guest Posting has been talked about for ages but what I did was bring a friendly twist to the subject and get you thinking about the guest posting you do.

I don’t know that I can say such a twist has ever been put on a guest post before, have you?

Guest posting really is all about being different, I can’t tell you how many great and negative comments I have had on my guest posts because of either bringing something new to the table or nothing new at all.

However don’t let that deter you, even if the post is not something 100% new or unique… If its published then its still a great way to get new bloggers to listen to your blogging voice!

They could very well have never heard about what your telling them. Don’t assume everyone knows something because the majority believes they do, there are people who don’t know anything and you could be the only source they find!

Plus a Guest Post can look great on a writers resume!

So how about it, do you believe guest posting is important? Would you attempt guest posting on smaller blogs or would you stick with the big ones only?

Moo below and let us know!

9 Ways to Create Worthwhile Backlinks To Your Blog

Jason Katzenback — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 10:04:50 +0000

This is a guest post written by Ryan Mclean of Smarter Wealth .NET

Backlinks are a key ingredient to any successful blog. Having a link back to your blog is like having a ‘vote’ towards you blog in the search engines. Backlinks have become even more important now with the mysterious “Google Pagerank”. Backlinks are awesome also because they not only help your search engine ranks but they also provide links all over the web for people to find your site, and you want people to find your site because this equals more money.

So if you need backlinks in order to have a successful blog then you better be 100% sure that you get as many backlinks to your site as is humanly possible. The more backlinks the more likely people are going to come to your site and the more ‘votes’ you get in search engines meaning the higher ranked you will be in the search engines.

Firstly how do you find out how many backlinks you have?

This is a good question and there are many free tools out there that can show you how many backlinks you have. I recommend the SEOPro free link checker (Click here to check it out) as it is one I use and I find works quite well.

Now I know that I currently have 1,247 backlinks to my blog which I have gained in the last 1 and 1/2 months of blogging (because previously my blog was foolswealth.com so I lost all the backlinks from the first 4-5 months).

So I have set the goal of getting 3,000 backlinks. I have set myself the goal of doing this before the end of October

So how can you get backlinks to your blog?

1. Comment Other Blogs

Commenting on “Do Follow” Blogs (blogs that allow your links in comments to be tracked by search engines) is one of the best ways to build up links. Doing this alone I would need to ad 1,750 comments which is 29 comments per day (which I could probably do), but I will comment a lot plus use other methods. This is by far the easiest way to get backlinks to your site. It helps to insert key words into your “name” when you comment because that is the text that will be linked back to your site. But don’t spam it and write something crazy. Personally I often write “Ryan @ Smarter Wealth” when commenting.

2. Do Link Exchange

Using forums such as Digital Point forum is a great place to find people to exchange links with. You place a link to their site on your blog and in return they will link to your blog. One for one, win-win situation. I will definately be doing some of this to gain some extra links.

3. Link to Other Blogs and Much as You Can

You know how when you give people presents often they will want to give you something back? Well linking for a blog is like giving that blog and present and it is likely (if they are a blog around the same size or smaller than yours) they will link back. So pass out as many links as possible (without flooding your blog with them) and then hopefully you will get some link love back.

4. Write Guest Posts

Writing guest posts guarantees you a link back to your blog with quality content to back it up. Write guests posts and submit them to blog owners. You might get lucky with a few. This is great because it now only drives traffic to your site through that blogs readers but it also gives you a link of two with relevant content relating to your blog.

5. Write Articles for Free Article Websites

Writing articles for free ezine articles is a great way to build backlinks because every time someone uses your article on their website they have to put in a footer which you have created linking back to your site. Just a tip though, avoid posting the articles you have written for your blog in these free articles databases because duplicate content can decrease your SEO rankings. I will write unique articles JUST for free ezine articles and so should you A great site to submit them is www.ezinearticles.com

6. Top Commentors List

Many sites have a ‘top commentors’ list (I have one of Smarter Wealth) by being active on blogs you can easily make it onto this list which will give a link back to your site. This is a great way to get a high pagerank link to your website because it is often just the homepage that will have a high pagerank. They higher the pagerank of the page your link in on then the better it is for you. It is like if the pope said you were awesome (pagerank 10/10) it would be worth more than if some average punk said you were awesome (pagerank 0/10).

7. Forum Posting

Many forums allow you to have a signature (which you can include a link back to your site). Write good content in forums with a catchy signature and people will visit your site. You can even pay people about $0.10 per post to post in forums. So you can get 100 links back to your site for just $10 (or less with a little bargaining).

8. Linking Between Your Own Sites

If you have more than one site then you have the perfect opportunity to link to each of your sites through each other. Put a link in the sidebar, write a post about your other blog, include links to relevant articles where appropriate. Use your multiple sites to your advantage by linking them up.

9. Write Quality Content

I left this one till last because it is probably the easiest way you can create links to your site. Because if you write quality content then people will naturally link to you and that means you don’t have to do any of the linking work. Continually write good quality content and submit them to social media sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon and if people like them they will link to them. A-List bloggers such as Darren from Problogger must get hundreds (if not thousands) of organic links everyday.

So using these techniques you should be able to build hundreds of links back to your site and help give it ‘votes’ to increase your rankings in the search engines, increase your google pagerank and also to provide links so people can find your site.

Bite Me for more traffic

Jason Katzenback — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:42:13 +0000

Okay, so we know we need backlinks and we need to be commenting on other blogs. We know it is not all about the search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN anymore… by the way who the heck searches with MSN anyway… seriously?

Whoaaa… Hold on Cow, what do you mean it is not about the search engines anymore?

Good, we had hoped you would ask that question.

Take a look at the social communities from Alexa’s top 500 sites (yes, we know that Alexa stats are debatable but they still give you an idea). There are sites such as: Facebook, YouTube, Friendster, Flicker, hi5, Myspace and more… just to name a few. These sites are all getting traffic that is very comparable to Google and the wonderful thing is these sites are begging you to give them content. The other thing is there are hundreds of these type sites being added daily and many of them get stampedes of traffic very quickly.

You see, we can spend hours of our days, banging our horns against our keyboards, or in some cases throwing them across the room to do everything we can to keep that traffic coming into our sites but the fact (or at least we think it is a fact) is that we are at times our own worse enemy when it comes to this. We read something or hear that something works and so we do it, but the problem is…

That Is ALL We Do!

We get excited and see that it works and so we stick to that only and do the the same thing over and over again… and at first it works but then it plateau’s and eventually starts to droop like a saggy utter.

Think about any new traffic tool that comes out. People will often slam them right out of the gate, saying…

“we are NOT using that, we are sticking to what we know works”

…but the problem is they are not seeing the big picture. These tools are never intended to be the end all be all of traffic and neither should any one source be the end all be all of your traffic. If it is, then you run a huge risk that if they change something, it could destroy your existence on the web. We should all be constantly looking for different ways to increase our grazing areas. When these new tools come out, test them out, see how they fit into your business. If they work, then use them, if not then drop them.

This is true for relying on any one source of traffic such as Google, Stumbleupon or any other one site. The trick is that you need to be as diversified as possible and always look for new opportunities. Yes of course you want to provide excellent content and reasons for your readers to return but what about grabbing new readers? Are you constantly looking out for new opportunities of places to get more readers… more traffic… more mooney?

Do You Like Sloppy Seconds?

Over here we are not totally keen on the idea of getting sloppy seconds. And waiting until everyone is using or recommending something is just like that. You get in after the spammers have ruined it for you. The fantastic thing is there are 1000’s of these type sites popping up all the time. Some of them are new and some have been around a while but the spammers have not exploited them yet.

A great example of a site we started using not too long ago is feedbite.com (hence the title of this post). Now we are not telling you this site sends a flood of traffic, but it does send some, and the effort to set it up was literally minutes, so the return on time investment is worth it. Now by sharing this site, it will probably start to get abused… but who cares, we will find others to use.

What we really like about this site is that it uses your rss feed and so once you set it up, you are done. It is not like Stumbleupon and Digg, were you have to have the content submitted each time manually, of course it does not get the traffic those send either.

The links do not have a nofollow tag.. which is a bonus and people can vote up or down you content so it gets on the front page. Google Also seems to respond good to it.

So breaking it down, feedbite.com may not roll in the traffic like crazy, but it does bring in traffic and any extra traffic is great… especially when it is so easy so easy to set up.

Now back up for a second. Our point here is not to promote feedbite, this is not a paid review or anything like that. Instead it is simply a process for you to consider implementing, a process that expands your pastures and also grows your backlinks to your blog. Lets call it the…

Cow Traffic Diversification Process

…and it goes like this…

Once a week go to http://www.go2web20.net/ and look at the tags “Bookmarking”, “Blogging”, and “RSS” (need to do that separately)
Check out some of the new “Web 2.0″ sites and look for ones that you can post public accessible content on.
Submit your rss feed (if allowed), content, pictures, videos or whatever else they allow BUT (and a big one at that) make sure that if you are adding content such as a post, that you add a link back to your blog with a call to action (read the post “Using Content to get Traffic” for more on that).
Check your stats in a week…. Look to see if that site sent traffic to your site. If it sends traffic, keep it and expand your use of it… if it doesn’t then drop it and move on.

This is powerful because it helps expand your reach and the side benefit is Google loves the variety in backlinks to your blog. You also do not have to update the content here regularly like your own blog…. Unless of course you see loads of traffic from it then you will want to take advantage of that (we would anyway).

Go try it out and let us know how it goes.