SEO Backlinks 101: Exactly How to Build Backlinks to any Page, Post, or Video
I don’t know why I’ve never done this post before… detailing exactly how I build backlinks to every page or post or video that I create for one of my sites. I’m also going to show you exactly how I keep track of my different pages, and how I track the rankings of my pages so that I can go back and build more backlinks if I have to.
Note: I will update this post whenever I change how I build backlinks, so whatever you read on this page, it’s my exact current backlinking methods… you’re welcome.
As you might have experienced yourself, getting your main domain and home page ranked for it’s main keyword phrase is a lot easier than getting your inner pages ranked for their individual keywords. I struggled for a long time trying to figure out the most cost-effective way(in both time and money) of building backlinks to each individual page that I created… sometimes it’s tempting to just keep building pages because backlinking is so boring, but if each page that you create isn’t generating any traffic for you, you’ve completely wasted your time in even creating it. So, one page that you’ve effectively built backlinks to is worth 10-100x more than 10 pages without any backlinks built to them.
Okay… let’s do this:
Steps to Effective SEO Backlinks: Exactly How to Build Backlinks Correctly
Step 1: You need your on-page stuff done correctly before you build any backlinks. So, you should have your keyword phrase in your page title, the URL, the first paragraph(or ‘description’ if you’re using the Platinum SEO plugin), and at least once in a heading tag, preferably an H1 tag. That part is something you probably already knew.
Step 2(optional): If you’ve read through much of my stuff, you know I like to create a Youtube video for each page/post/article that I make for one of my sites. Use common sense- if a video won’t really enhance the specific content than skip it. All of my videos are very simple powerpoint-style videos that are really easy to make. Once I’ve uploaded the video to Youtube, I use the first line of the video description to link back to the exact page that I based the video on. Then, I will embed the video back on the original article page on my own site. This will increase visitor engagement which will give you a higher avg. time on site, and a lower bounce rate when someone lands on one of your pages. The other big benefit is that you can build backlinks to the Youtube video itself and claim another spot in the top 10 Google results.
Step 3: 5 Build My Rank submissions. This is the first step I take after publishing a page. BMR is a blog network that let’s you write a post of 150 words in which you can add a backlink back to the page of your choice. The post is then published to one of their high-PR blogs, which results in a contextual, one-way backlink back to your page- which is the highest quality type of backlink you can get. People that don’t understand this think that it’s way too much work to write 150 words for just one backlink, but these BMR links are extremely high quality, and 1 BMR backlink is worth several hundred article directory backlinks. If I’ve made a video for a page, I’ll do 5 BMR backlinks to the video itself. You can build backlinks inside of BMR to Youtube videos simply by setting one of your allowed projects to www.youtube.com.
Step 4: A Unique Article Wizard submission. UAW is an indispensable part of my backlinking strategy. It’s kind of the opposite of BMR, in that it gives you a lot of backlinks, usually several hundred, from just one submission. These backlinks however, aren’t nearly as high quality as BMR backlinks. But, despite what people say, the more backlinks the better, and this just diversifies the backlinks pointing back to your page. To do a UAW submission, you write 3 versions of a 300 word article that each have the same number of paragraphs, and then the “wizard” spins the paragraphs together to give you a ton of different versions of your article. Then the articles are sent out to the massive directory of article networks that UAW submits to, resulting in a bunch of backlinks to your page. Make sure that you set the number of submissions each day to no more than 10, and probably 5 if your site is under a year old. The nice thing about UAW, is you can link to 2 web properties in your resource box, and so I use each submission to link back to my article, and then to the Youtube video I’ve made for that article. For some reason, UAW links work incredibly well for Youtube videos- pretty much every Youtube video I’ve made for one of my niche sites that I’ve linked to from UAW ranks in the top ten for it’s keyword phrase- sometimes not in the top ten of Google results, but always in the top 10 if I search in Youtube itself, which is just another traffic avenue for your site.
Step 5: Syndicate your article. I wait a couple of days so that I know my article has been indexed by Google, and then I take it and submit it to EzineArticles, GoArticles, and ArticleBase. I don’t do this for the backlinks from the directories themselves, I do it because sometimes the article will get picked up by a site owner in the same niche, and they’ll publish it on their site while keeping my resource box intact that links back to my article on my own site. When this happens, you’ll get 100% natural contextual links back to your page- which is as good as it gets. So, if you’re smart, you’ll take the time every few weeks to simply check where your articles have been published, so that you can contact that site owner and offer them first priority on your content whenever you have a new article(all this means is that you’ll send them your new articles before you put them into the directories). If you’re following me, you’ll be building your own network of syndication partners that can result in your articles instantly being read by thousands of people each time you write one.
Tips for getting your articles syndicated: To increase your chances of a publisher using your article on their site, you’ll want your articles to be 900-1,300 words. If that blows your mind, all I can tell you is that it just takes practice…. it will get much easier the more you do it and it’s really not that many words once you get good at writing. The other thing is to make your articles 100% informative and helpful- no selling within your article, that’s what your resource box is for. If you’re mentioning your site or your product in the article, no site owner is going to publish it.
Step 6: Wait 3 weeks. After I’ve written an article, I post its details and what I’ve done in a spreadsheet. I have a spreadsheet for each separate site, this keeps things organized. Then, using Market Samurai’s ‘Rank Tracker’ module, I enter the keywords the article is based on so I can monitor the results. On the weekends, I take a few hours to check on the different articles that are 3-4 weeks old at that point, and I see where they’re at in the rankings. Most of the time they’ll be in the top 10 by then or at least approaching it. If they’re not really moving then I’ll do steps 2 and 3 again. I do have a favorite Fiverr gig that I’ll also sometimes use at this point, which I’ve had really good results with when I’ve used it. You can see the gig here…
If you’re serious about building sites and getting pages ranked, I would highly recommend getting the full version of Market Samurai so that you can use it to track your rankings in one place, besides it being the best keyword finding tool there is. Also, to track your articles like I mentioned, I recommend you setup a Google Docs spreadsheet that looks like this:
Click to see full image
Other random tips: Personally I have seen a big difference in how easy it is to get an inner page ranked once the site itself has 30+ pages of content on it. Another thing that seems to make a difference is adding an article at least every 2 weeks. So, if you have a site that’s doing well, it is well worth your time to build it up beyond 30 pages, and then to at least come back and add a page every two weeks.
What to do now:
- If you liked this post, please share it on Facebook or your favorite social network.
- Take action… put these steps into action. Yes I know it sounds like a lot of work for every page of content you create, but it’s just as important as creating the page itself unless you don’t want anyone to ever see it.
- I know I’ll get asked this a lot after this post, so if you only afford to start with one link network, I would start with Build My Rank- plus they have a free trial to start out with.
- If you’re wondering about something I said, leave a comment or question in the comments below…
26 Responses to “SEO Backlinks 101: Exactly How to Build Backlinks to any Page, Post, or Video”
brian
thanks for this post. are you doing all your own submissions and article writing for backlinking ? It would be a full time job for me just to do the backlinking. I guess you could do 1 fiverr job for BMR and UAW for each post so $10 per post without having to do own submissions or subscribe to the services.
Regarding BMR do they allow you to switch the URLS within your plan whenever you want ?
Nate
Brian- Yeah I outsource most of it. For UAW submissions Content Authority will do re-writes of articles really cheap, but I do a decent amount of BMR submissions myself when I’m just sitting around watching TV.
Yes, BMR let’s you “archive” a site/project so that you can use that spot with another domain, but it doesn’t delete the site info so that you can make the site active again if you want. And you don’t lose any backlinks that have been indexed when you archive a site.
Matt
Nice work Nate, I have been following your advice and went with UAW, like you say may backlinks but all seem to be low quality, but i must say that it really did give my site a boost.
When you talk about 30+ pages and posting every 2 weeks, is that just what you have experienced or something that is commonly known?
Keep up the good work.
Matt
Nate
Matt- yeah I’ve definitely seen it with my own sites, and then the fact that Google obviously loves bigger sites.
Sheyi Shobayo
Nate, dunno if you’ve answered this but I want you to tell me.. About BMR, lets assume I have 5 domains which is their minimum and i want to build links to them. Is it possible for me to write 5 articles for each site and submit daily? Which means 5 links to each site daily.
Thanks
Nate
Sheyi- you can build 10 links per day to each domain. Actually, you can build 100 to each one each day, but BMR only allows 10 actual submissions to go live to each domain each day. Did that answer your question?
Sheyi Shobayo
Thanks Nate for answering that. So you mean if I write 100 posts for a domain, BMR will only allow 10 to go live per day? That means the 5 domains can get 50 posts per day (which means 10 links to each site)?
Let me know if I am also right with the understanding.
Sheyi
Nate
That’s correct. You could have 50 posts max going live each day… 10 to each domain. But, you wouldn’t really want more than 10 getting indexed each day for one site anyways- I set it to only 1 per day for a new site.
Sheyi Shobayo
Whao, then it’s gonna cost money even though I target 50 articles per day. I cant write them myself so it’s hell going to be 1 article per day for each domain.
I have my eyes on BMR and I am going to use them soonest.
Thanks for your time. I appreciate
Alan's Internet Marketing
Hiya Nate, trying your spreadsheet to keep on top of things with my sites. What do you do to track and monitor your rankings (if you don’t mind me asking
Nate
I use Market Samurai- it has a module in it called Rank Tracker, and you enter your domains and then the keywords you’re trying to rank for and it shows you exactly where they’re all it in the SERPs.
brian
just thought I would pass on a link to a very extensive test results of the main article/blog networks….its not my site or anything but it was very good and thought I would pass it on as it will save you time http://imimpact.com/blog-network-roundup-review/
Nate
Thanks Brian- I’ve read Shane’s reviews and they’re good. The comments almost have more valuable info than the post themselves.
chris
Nate – Great post man. I think it goes to show what can be accomplished by taking some action every day.
Quick question – Are you spinning your articles before you submit them to Ezine, GoArt and ArtBase?
Just wondering if I can squeeze a little more time out of the day for other things besides spinning articles.
Keep up the good work.
Best,
Chris
Nate
Thanks Chris. I don’t spin articles at all, ever. You don’t need to change your articles whatsoever to submit them to the directories, as long as you wait until Google has indexed the article on your own site first.
Alan's Internet Marketing
Thanks Nate, will use it. Been really enjoying your posts and listened to an interview with Trent – wicked stuff. Will pick up a few bits through your links as a thank you.
Nate
Thanks Alan- I appreciate it.
vpidkowich@gmail.com
Not sure if anyone has mentioned this in the blog yet but BMR posts could only cost you a buck:
http://www.buildmyrankposts.com/
Nate
That’s a great resource- thanks for sharing that.
vpidkowich@gmail.com
Nate, regarding the submission to ezine, article base and go articles, do the articles link back to the original article on the site its promoting? I have had ezine deny some articles because they said it needs to link back to other content because their readers want different content rather than to see the same stuff.
Regards,
Victor
Nate
Yeah I usually link back to the same article, and then the homepage. I’ve had a few people email me and say they’ve been having issues with that, but I haven’t I don’t know what’s going on.
Gema
Hi Nate, I’ve got a question regarding link velocity.
You said for example that won’t do 1 link per day for new sites. That’s 1 link per day to the website or 1 link per day to each webpage?
Another thing, I’ve heard wonders about SEnukeX. Have you ever tried?
Thanks, Numa
Nate
I haven’t tried SEnukeX. The guys in the BTF forums have beens saying it’s not nearly as effective, and I don’t go after anything that competitive anyways.
For a new site, I will set BMR for just one submission a day. With a UAW submission, I’ll set it for 5 submissions per day so that it’s a slow drip feed over a month or two.
Nathanel
Hello Nate,
Do you just make 5 BMR post and let it make 1 link a day for 5 days and wait three weeks? So for the 3 week you only have 5 bmr link for site ?
So lets say my site has 4 page, I make 20 BMR post (5 for each) ,let it drip 1 per day for 5 days and wait three weeks. Is this correct?
For the UAW, 1 post direct backlink to the site @ 10 bl per page ? or per site ?
I am hoping to apply this method to my niche site, but I am quite new . I been to quite a few site and I really like the way you give out information. Facts after facts like a newspaper.
Thanks
Nathanel
Nate
Okay- so if you have a 4 page site, write 5 posts per page, set it for 1 submission a day, and it would take 20 days for them all to be submitted. See what it’s doing after 3 weeks, but all the links obviously won’t have been posted by then, so if it’s making progress just wait a few more weeks and then reevaluate. With UAW, I set each submission to 5 or 10 per day, whether the site is new or older. I like the slower feed of links a lot better.
Nathanel
Ah ok , so 1 bmr link for the entire domain for 20 days. For the evaluation, are you using the rank tracker in Market Samurai(MS) ? I am using sescout and rank tracker in MS. Its just sometimes the Rank Tracker in MS is way off :/
Thanks again for clearing up the backlink with BMR and UAW