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7 Places to Get Backlinks and Build Blog Authority

For online marketers, blog promotion is all about link building. Well, mostly. No matter what you do, your ultimate goal should be to get more links to boost authority of your blog.

As you may already know, that helps your search engine rankings and also get you referral traffic from the originating sites or blogs.

Note: Before building links, it helps if you optimize your blog first. Fortunately, nowadays most of the work is just one time process. Although keyword research and content production are on-going activities. You can read more about this in my guide on Whitehat SEO for blogs.

In this blog post, let’s focus on getting traffic and increasing authority from search engine standpoint.

1. Other blogs
Blogging is about communication and interaction. Most blogs have enabled comments feature, so you may be able to participate and leave your comment. Don’t underestimate blogs with nofollow, they may send you potential traffic too. People who have seen what you have to say and click through are nothing but interested readers.

Guest blogging and link baiting are two other methods to get backlinks from blogs.

2. Forums (discussion boards)
The thing about links from forums or discussion boards is not about transferring authority by spamming the forums with as many posts as possible. The signature link at the bottom of each of your contribution is a chance to get your blog seen, but…

Building credibility in the forums is very important if you want to get other forum regulars to click and go to your blog.

3. PR sites
Press release is still an effective way to not only reach out to other media, but also to get inbound links from high authority sites.

Nowadays, the value of the links makes bloggers use it solely for link building. The extra exposure is a bonus. Done right, exposures certainly are more valuable but those can be hard to achieve if you have no experience in pitching a story to editors.

4. News sites
Getting into New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other huge news sites is a dream come true for all bloggers, but you may not start at that level.

There are lots of smaller news sites that are hungry for stories and may accept submission. Getting your own weekly column and bringing steady stream of traffic and backlinks to your site are not as hard as you think. After all, you are already a writer for your blog.

5. Directories
Directories, blog specific or not, are still great for inbound links. If you can get into DMOZ, or can afford Yahoo directory, they may help boost the authority of your blog.

Forget about the traffic from directories. Most of them won’t send you many visitors, but they are still great for backlinks.

6. Social media sites
Social media are all the rage nowadays. While some of them start to put nofollow attribute to the a tag, they may still worth the effort.

Social bookmarking sites, for instance, have the potential to send you hundreds, if not thousands, of unique visitors overnight. Generally, they have short attention span though. You may not be able to turn them into customers or make them click on the ads because they are quite savvy.

Despite what others have said about social media sites, there are ways to make use of this type of traffic. At the very least, it may help you increase page views, which is good for advertisers who appreciate branding.

7. .edu and .gov sites
These sites deserve their own mention because search engines weight links from these TLDs (top level domains) more than others. Some SEO experts may disagree, and it may at best be a small difference.

But still, getting links from these sites, especially those with aged domains and high authority can only mean good things. If nothing else, consider those links as a balance for your link network or profile across multiple TLDs.

I know there are more sites for blog promotion and to get inbound links. If you have others in mind, feel free to share with us. Also, what are your favorites?

Project Launchpad: PSD To WordPress

Remember back in early July when I described how change was on the horizon for Performancing? Well, not much has changed since then but I am trying to take steps to bring most of your ideas as well as mine to the forefront. One of the ideas I proposed was something called Project Launchpad. Here is what Project Launchpad is all about. The Hive is filled with an abundant amount of talent, so much so that most of the members are launching their own projects. As a way of saying thanks to them for being a part of this wonderful community, I will be featuring projects from time to time from these individuals. These projects may consist of services, new websites, software, ebooks, etc. If you are interested in having your project seen by almost 10,000 RSS subscribers and thousands more unique visitors, join the Hive and become part of the collective.

With that said, I want to congratulate Lachy (pronounced Locky) better known as eversuns on the hive for being the first one to be featured on project launchpad.

Lachy has recently launched a PSD to WordPress design service which takes a user given PSD design mock up and then slices it up into a WordPress theme. Although the domain name threw me for a loop (PSDtoWordPress.com, thought he was making WordPress.com themes) Lachy was quick to note that the themes are for the stand alone version of WordPress. I recently interviewed Lachy to get a sense of what this service is all about. Truthfully, there are many services just like his but I wanted to find out what makes his different than the rest.

JeffC – First off, who designed PSD To WordPress because the design is beautiful?

Lachy – A wonderful designer by the name of Chris Rowe. You can see his portfolio over at Onvo.co.uk.

JeffC – Considering there are a number of PSD to Website services available, what are some points of difference that you offer?

Lachy – That’s true, there are a whole load of PSD to Website services available, but how many are dedicated to WordPress? Not many. The PSD to Website services might have some guy that learned how to code for wordpress that afternoon because they have a client that needs it, but we are dedicated to WordPress!

JeffC – How much demand have you seen for a service such as yours. Considering that if someone has the skills to create a PSD sketch of a particular design, don’t they already have the skills to create it into a usable design?

Lachy – The demand is huge! I’ve worked with a few other PSD to Website services and the percentage of WordPress clients is very high. Some of the PSD to Website services are companies that make their living off these sites. Hopefully, that will be me in a few years. A designer can design a wonderful PSD, but a high percentage of them don’t even know what xHTML stands for!

There is a big difference between knowing how to code xHTML / CSS and slicing it in Photoshop and telling it to save you an HTML file.

JeffC – I noticed that the checkout system for your service has a variable rate depending on the circumstances selected by the customer. What is the cheapest price available for customers and if I wanted the bells and whistles, how much are we talking?

Lachy – If you are just after a basic WordPress package, with 4 pages or less (Homepage, Blog, Single, Page template) and a 10 day turnaround you can get that price down to $230. If you need it done in 1 day it’s $400. But we keep the default on 3 with $300. This quote is quite basic, if you need a lot more pages, an options page, plugin integration the price starts to go up a bit, but we discuss that in email and try to give the client the best deal for their budget.


Two examples of Lachy’s work. CastleAccess.com and Georanking.com

JeffC – So lets say I pay you the amount listed on your website for the project. What happens if I am not satisfied with the work? Do you offer any type of guarantees or money back offers?

Lachy – I think an excerpt from the About Us page summarizes that. “We rest assured on our ability to turn your design into your dream WordPress theme so much, that we are willing to give your money back if you aren’t satisfied with it for any reason. If for some reason we can’t do the order, or you need to cancel the order before we’ve started, you’ll get every last penny back with no questions asked.”

We will do our very best to satisfy you, and if you’re not, we will try fix the problem. But if worst comes to worst, we will refund you, but you will not get the completed project files.

JeffC – Seems fair enough. Out of curiosity, I know Automattic is not too keen with people using WordPress as part of their domain name. Have they approached you about possible trademark issues?

Lachy – I came across that just after launch. Extremely disappointed! They have not approached me, but with the amount of WordPress related websites out there, with WordPress in the domain, I don’t think they will have too much of a problem. If they email me, we will sort it out there.

JeffC – You obviously know a bit about design, coding etc. What sort of tips can you provide to the readers of Performancing that relate to WordPress or the use of Photoshop?

Lachy – Read read read! I recommend heading down, going through the WordPress codex, downloading themes from quality makers like “Smashing Magazine” and looking at their code. Then just practice, practice and practice a little more.

Conclusion:

As mentioned previously, there are plenty of individuals as well as design firms that specialize in turning PSD files into usable websites. Some of these firms claim they can do PSD to XHTML in 24 hours or less. Lachy has a beautiful website and a very simple order form on his side of the coin. From all of us here at Performancing, we wish him the best of luck on his endeavor.

Before you go, Lachy has provided a special discount code for Performancing.com readers. This coupon code is available to whom ever wants to use it. When checking out, use the code PERF01. This code will net you 10% off your total.

If you end up being one of Lachy’s customers, don’t forget to come back to this post and tell us about your experience.

Excluding Pages In WordPress

One of the annoying things that I dislike about WordPress is the inability to exclude certain pages that I create from showing up in the navigation area of my theme. Granted, I could manually exclude these pages via the wp_list_pages template tag but that is a bit mundane.

Introducing Exclude Pages. This plugin written by Simon Wheatley is exactly what the doctor ordered. Once installed, a check box is added to the page creation/editing panel. If selected, the page will be included in the navigation and other user menus. If unchecked, the page is excluded from not only the navigation menus, but on other menus you may have such as in the sidebar. That doesn’t mean you won’t be able to hard link to those items for sidebar usage.

Although the official plugin page states that the plugin is compatible up to version 2.5, I gave it a try on my local install of WordPress 2.6.2 and it worked without a hitch. Perhaps at some point in the future, we’ll be able to create specific navigation links or separate navigation from actual pages without the need to exclude page IDs.

Let me know in the comments if this tip helped you out and if you would like to see more posts like these in the future.

The “King Of The Hill” Approach To Maintaining Authority

One strategy (intentional or not) that I’ve noticed coming out of established and powerful blogs is to speak dismissively and/or condescendingly about posts on lesser blogs.

Take this recent post from The Truth About Cars where the author takes a two pronged approach.

  1. He ridicules the content of the post without directly criticizing it, implying that it is riddled with fallacies, and…
  2. He flatters his readership by effectively saying “but I don’t need to point out the problems, because even you can…”

Now, I’m not advocating this strategy, but I did want to point out that it is effective on a psychological level. It’s the “king of the hill” approach – you stay at the top of the hill by knocking your oncoming competitors down the hill. It works on your readers because it re-affirms what they already believe in their minds: that you are smarter than the other guys.

But notice how little work it takes.

As an authority, you don’t really have to offer reasoned criticism. You leave that to your readers. And by passing the buck to your readers, you establish several things. First, you establish tribalistic triumphalism – even the lowest of us (not the leader, but even the readers) are smarter than the other guy’s leader. Second, you establish superiority as a leader by not dignifying your competitor with a reasoned response. Third, you establish trust with your readers by entrusting them with the glorious task of defeating your competitor.

So let me ask: do you think this is a good strategy or could it backfire?

Making Money Online BWE Panel Notes

BloggingBasics101 attended the recently concluded BlogWorldExpo which featured a panel on Making Money Online With A Blog. The post describes some of the advice given by Brian Clark, Darren Rowse, Jeremy Shoemaker, Zac Johnson, and John Chow. One tidbit of information that I thought was interesting:

Each of the men discussing making money on your blog work up to 12 hours a day writing and maintaining their sites.

Lots and lots of hard work but as these bloggers show, the hard work can pay off. How long do you work on your own blog each day?

Stylish WordPress Theme – Under Water

After browsing through a ton of free themes that are released for WordPress every month, it is easy to see that the same styles, layouts, etc, are usually the norm. However, I came across a cool looking theme that doesn’t have the greatest source code but will provide a unique look for your blog.

The theme is called Under Water. Under Water is a two column theme sporting a blue, white, purple, grey and black color scheme. It’s fixed width and widget ready.

There are a couple of things I really enjoy about this theme. The first is the navigation. The navigation reminds me of those banners you see hanging from the rafters inside of arenas. The search box is not your normal rectangle but instead is a stylish graphic that blends in with the navigation graphics. One thing that should pop out at you is the post layout. The date of the post is presented in a curvy graphic to the left of the post while the bottom right section of the post has a ‘page turning‘ type of look to it. The sidebar is styled with graphics with one of the corners being curved. In total, this theme has many graphical elements that most other WordPress themes don’t have. Even the footer looks good.

If you’d like to see a live demo of this theme, click here. To download this theme, visit the themes homepage.

Blast From The Past: WordPress 0.71

Out of cruiosities sake, I browsed to the WordPress release archive and picked out the oldest version available which is 0.71 released on May 27th, 2003. I use WampServer on my PC which lets me turn my machine into a local web server. Because this version of WordPress is so old, I ended up having to install an older version of Apache (2.0.63) along side an older version of PHP (4.4.8). Come along for the ride as we look at WordPress when it was just a baby.

My initial reaction to seeing the WordPress administration area was filled with amusement. In this archaic version of the software, there is no dashboard, no fancy boxes and no area dedicated for news from within the WordPress community. Upon entering the administration area, the first thing that is loaded is the Post/Edit screens allowing you to get right to work on creating content. The following screenshot is what the write panel looks like.

For those of you wondering what the editor formatting buttons looked like, here you go.

Configuring this version of WordPress is of course much simpler than todays version. To highlight just how simple configuring WordPress was, look at the configuration options in the following screenshot.

Next up is category configuration. The interface provides a quick and easy way to add or delete categories. In today’s version of WordPress, categories that are deleted which contain posts within them are moved to a category called Uncategorized. In WordPress 0.71, posts were moved to a General category. Also, there is no way to configure a category slug or various other options we take for granted today.

Editing templates in WordPress 0.71 is a rudimentary process but it’s nice to see that the live template editor in .71 is still available in todays version of WordPress. For the developers out their or for those curious, here is some of the code that appears in the live template editor.

Next up is the link manager. Even the old link manager had support for importing blog rolls. Also worthy of note is that WordPress .71 also had a Link This bookmarklet to easily add links to your blogroll. There is a somewhat humorous message at the bottom when describing the bookmarklet: “You can drag link this to your toolbar and when you click it a window will pop up that will allow you to add whatever site you’re on to your links! Right now this only works on Mozilla or Netscape, but we’re working on it.”


Interestingly, the next link in the administration panel is called My Profile. Clicking it actually opens a new window and doesn’t load the configuration options within the admin panel. In fact, the window now opens up in a static sized FireFox window that is really annoying. Thankfully, that is not the case in todays version of WordPress. Here is what the profile manager looked like.

The next two links in the administration panel are View Site and Logout. In this screenshot, you can get a glimpse as to the administration navigation.

Conclusion:

I was not aware of WordPress or in this case, B2 at the time. I was still caught up in the PostNuke, PHP-Nuke and e107 content management systems. I never became aware of WordPress until 2007. I always find it interesting to dive into the WordPress Codex to see articles for versions of WordPress that are 3-4 years old to see the thought process of that time period. As you can tell, WordPress has evolved significantly in the past 5 years in all aspects. Bits and pieces of .71 are still in 2.6.2 in some way or another and I believe WordPress will continue to blow us away in the months and years to come.

Do you have any nostalgic moments relating to WordPress? Perhaps you have memories of what things used to be like before WordPress 2.6.2? Tell me how you first came about using WordPress in the comments!

Latest Jobs Via Performancing Job Board

Considering the pay cuts over at b5media tacked onto numerous layoffs at other blogging networks, I thought it would be a good idea to take some time out every Sunday to highlight the most recent job offerings that have been submitted to the Performancing Job Board. Lets take a look at what we have this week.

Bloggers Required: Instablogs Blog Network is inviting professional Bloggers to contribute to blogs on Technology, Entertainment, and Lifestyle. The key to this role is that you are creative, an expert in online search/research and can bust out a 100-word blurb or 1000-word feature at the drop of a hat.

Expanding Network looking for pithy, experienced, funny…etc etc, bloggers…: We are expanding our network of sites and are looking for freelance writers with talent and experience to work with our existing team. They are currently looking for bloggers with expertise in the following areas: Gadgets/Tech, Mens Lifestyle/Design/Mens Fashion, Movies, and Music.

GirlSustainable.com Looking for a new blogger: The chosen blogger(s) will be responsible for 4-6 posts per week, averaging 300-350 words. The content of each post will mostly be at your desecration; however the topic will need to ‘fit’ into the theme of the site. All posts will be submitted in wordpress with a corresponding picture.

If any of these job offerings sound like something you’re interested in, stop by the Blog Offers forum and inquire from within. Also, if you are an employer looking for ways in which to advertise your job offering, register an account and publish your job offer on our forum as it routinely receives quite a bit of traffic.