Backlinks pay a very important role in gaining high rankings for any website.

This post shows how you can analyse current links from your competitors to gain you an advantage.

Google:

Google in recent years has limited the amount of backlinks they show, simply to reduce or make it harder for you to keep an eye on what your competitors are upto.

In order to view some of the links, simply use the link: (link command) in Google, for example:

link:www.myurl.com

The only true way to view the majority of backlinks within Google is to use the Google Webmaster Tools: www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
This is a great tool, which not only shows backlinks, but also gives you an insight into potential SEO issues on the site, from 404 error pages to a faulty robots.txt file.

However, we are talking about links, so going back on topic the links can be found within the category ‘Your Site on the Web’, then click on ‘Links to your Site’. The list of internal URLs will be listed, along with the link count next to each URL, clicking on the number will give you a breakdown of each external link.

Unfortunately, you can only use Google Webmaster Tools on your own websites, so you cannot analyse your competitor backlinks. Although this is still a great tool, as it clearly shows which deep URLs within your site require more linking weight, it will almost certainly display URL which you were not aware were linking to you.

Yahoo Site Explorer:

In my opinion, this is one of the better tools for showing the majority of links: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
Just insert your, or your competitors URL in the top search box and view the ‘Inlinks’ button, this figure displays all links, both internal and external. To show only the backlinks into a site, just click on the ‘Inlinks’ button and select ‘except from this domain’ from Show Inlinks drop down box. YOu now have a list of all external link coming into the website. This can be used to view competitor backlinks too!

Link Diagnosis:

http://www.linkdiagnosis.com/ is a great little tool. It gets its data from Yahoo Site Explorer, but reports back:
If the site was unavailable to check for link, any missing links, good links and if the link uses a ‘nofollow’ tag, which basically means for SEO purposes the link isn’t much use.

Link diagnosis will only report back one link per domain, unlike Yahoo which will show all links (sitewide) there are both advantages and disadvantages to accessing this data, depending the task to are trying to perform.

There are other tools which I’ll add to shortly, however if you know of any better ones please advise within the comments.

Articles are a great way to improve site rankings and increase awareness.  Rankings will increase due to additional content being created for the site, but if you also choose to distribute articles they have the additional benefit of increasing backlinks, which is a major factor for high rankings.

Articles can be used to monitize a blog, if you are the blog owner you may wish to follow these guidelines:

1) Create unique articles with targeted phrases
2) Ensure the articles make sense to the user, do not over optimise for the spiders as it will become unreadable.
3) Write naturally, with good grammar and spell check.
4) Try to create articles with more than 500 words
5) Choose a catchy, unique title. This is very important to attract the user, and is also used as the anchor text within ’some’ distribution sites, so include you main keywords too.
6) Choose a topic carefully, some topics will generate more interest than others.
7) Insert social bookmarking buttons to enable readers to digg, stumble etc.
8) Link to the articles from other deep pages within the blog.
9) Add the article pages to your XML sitemaps for faster indexing.

When submitting the article to other blogs, or distribution sites consider the following:

1) If allowed, insert one or two in-line links back to your website.
2) Insert links back to your site within the signature section.   
     Also insert the URL as a link, for example: http://www.monetize-online.com as some scraping sites will leave this in.
3) Make sure the landing page is ’spot on’ a good landing page will mean better conversion rates.
4) Use RSS feeds to promote the articles.
5) Build a reputation by submitting as many articles as possible.
6) Digg, Stumble etc you articles on other sites.

There are also lots of copywriters being paid by blogger to generate articles for their site, if you are a great writer, full of inspiration you could generate a good income from this alone.

From the article you can insert affiliate links to encourage product purchases, also generate AdSense income based around the articles.

I find the following two sites good for article distribution:

http://www.articletrader.com/
http://ezinearticles.com/

Can you recommend other article websites?
Please feel free to add any more ideas within the comments below.

Online businesses can be very tricky and difficult to make a living. A lot of time and sometimes luck is required to suceed. Most people can find the time, but the luck hardly ever appears!  Well I’ve learnt not to bank on any luck, but instead create avenues where opportunities, not luck arise.

So how do I do this? Well, you’ve heard the saying ‘you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours’?
If you apply this online, overtime you will see the benefits and you won’t require any luck

The web is a resource for sharing information and learning, if you keep this in mind most money making opportunities will evolve on there own.

I’m a great believer of helping and providing advice online, here are some real life examples that have gained me additional income when I least expected it.:

1) I set up a blog for free for a friend of a friend, I didn’t realise but he knew a number of businesses and he now recommends me all the time. So from one free blog which took a few hours of my time, has resolved in lots of contacts and business.

2) Reviews – Writing reviews about products I’m interested in has led to paid reviews and free products. Initially I had only set out writing reviews for general content, but soon became a regular income.

3) Even simple linking to other sites with no requests to link back has led to finance. Marketing agencies crawl backlinks of their competitors to seek out link opportunities for their clients. By linking to a few high profile sites within your industry allows your site to be picked up via the agencies link analysis tools. They then contact you where you can negotiate fees for advertising their clients on your website – easy income ;-)

So tell us, what back scratching have you done online, and has it paid off?

A theme is the layout / design of a blog.

It is important to select a theme that fits the ideas of your blog at the beginning of your project. Simply because you should be planning in front and know what layout you require.

Another minor reason is that screenshots maybe taken of the blog and displayed on other sites, changing the theme just makes the site a little dis-orientated when users click on the image and are then faced with a different looking site.

Point to consider may include:

1) Navigation – do you require drop down navigation links.
2) Widget Ready – Premium themes are built so you can just insert a widget you require.
3) Ad Space – will you be inserting banners or ads, if so you need the space to fit them in.
4) Ready optimised

There are many places where you can find themes, I’m currently compiling a list of my favourites which I’ll add shortly, so bookmark this page and check back soon.

In the mean time, if you have any great themes you wish to show off, please add them in the comments.

I’ve been asked many times in the past how often should posts be written?
My answer is always as often as possible, as long as:

1) The posts are written using unique content
2) The posts are worth writing about

Apart from links, the one most important element a search engine spider likes in new unique content on a regular basis. Think of it as a pet, the more you feed it, the friendlier it becomes and the more it follows you about. If Google knows you can fill its index with unique quality content it will keep returning to see what else it can crawl, stop providing content (feeding) for long period of time, it will go elsewhere and not return as frequently, just like a pet will always goto the one who feeds it and pays it the most attention.

Another important point is the timing of the post. If you are writing about a new camera you should investigate and write about the product before it comes available the market, by then you will have a good blog history on the product and should almost always outrank your competitors as you had the unique product content online first, with a longer history (in Google). Only the massive sites may  outrank you in this situation, or sites with more links in with the product text as the anchor link.

Additionally the more posts you write, the larger your blog will come, meaning:

1) More exposure and web presence.
2) Better Google rankings. Larger sites rank much higher than small sites.
3)Improved internal link count. One of Googles ranking factors is internal link text, creating additional pages mean more internal links via navigation and in-line links.

In terms of creating a blog to make money online, the more pages / content created means more opportunities to earn extra cash via product affiliates, AdSense, banners etc.

If you have anymore ideas on the importance of posts please comment below

If your just getting into writing blogs, the most important choice you need to make is the platform you intend to use to create the blog.

There are a few blog platforms to choose, the most common ones being Wordpress, Blogger and Drupal.

I have used Blogger in the past, but Wordpress is my preferred choice of blogging platforms. It’s backend is so simple to use and you can have a blog up and running within minutes…well, OK within 30 minutes!

So, what makes Wordpress so GREAT! Well its hard to list all the points, but these are my top 10 reasons:

1) Open Source, so its being improved all the time. There have been a few know security issues, but if you keep upto date with the latest version you shouldn’t encounter any problems.
2) Permalinks, allows you create SEO friendly URLS with no experience of URL rewrites required. So instead of having variables within the URL, you can create static looking ones like: http://www.monetize-online.com/make-money-online/
3) Media, upload images into the media library without the requirements of continually having to use separate FTP programs. Its a simple and fast process.
4) Widgets, allow you to easily insert components into the design (similar to plug-ins) for example blogrolls, archive links can be added or removed with ease.
5) Plug-ins, if you’re looking for a feature to add into the blog, for example a calendar, a featured content rotators or any other gizmo that will make you blog look the business then plug-ins are for you. Most are free and can be installed and inuse within minutes. Creating these plug-ins for a traditional website would cost a lot in time and money.
6) Posts / Pages, Wordpress needn’t look like a blog, by disabling the posts and just using the pages it could look like any other website, or vice versa.
7) Contributors, creating a blog for money can become tedious as your always trying to generate unique content, all the time. With Wordpress you can easily add other authors and contributions. Privileges can be set so they can add content to the blog but not disrupt the actual design or layout.
8) Tagging, creating tags create additional pages which can be indexed by Google, although this creates duplicates and have seen now harm caused, in fact a lot of my tag pages appear higher up the search engines than my posts. Its a great method of doubling the size of a blog without too much effort.
9) Themes, my favourite part. The themes (template designs) available for Wordpress are varied, some are free and some are paid. Personally I would purchase a professional theme from the start. If you intend to make money from the blog, the blog needs to look good and keep your users interested. The advantage of themes is you simply upload and click a button, that it, the new theme is installed. One tip though – turn off your plug-ins when converting across to a ne theme, the install will be a lot smoother.
10) Oh and its totally free, so go and download Wordpress for yourself.
I don’t have a vast experience with other platforms, simply because Wordpress works for me and has never let me down. So this money making blog will mainly focus on wordpress techniques, and on occasionally divert to other platforms.

So what are your favourite features or reasons why you use wordpress?
Please comment below:

If you are new to blogging hosting a site can be a daunting task. Well, don’t be put off, as the only hard work is initially finding a host worth going with.

Hosting is very competitive and if you do your research the very best hosts can be just as cheap in price as the ‘cheap and nasty’ hosts that provide no service at all or are continually experiencing down time!

So what should you choose when looking to host your blog?
Here is a run down of my Top 10 Features when looking for a Host:

1) Ensure the host uses Linux (they may also use Windows Servers) but for blogging Linux is a must as all good blogging platforms require Linux (not Windows)
2) View the Up-time Stats. This is the amount of time the Server stays running throughout the year – Look for 99.9% up-time.
3) Find a host that offers packages to suit your requirements. If you are starting a blog, you may become hooked and wish to create many more blogs. Bear this is mind, so enquire to see if you can add on domains or easily upgrade to a more expensive hosting package when the time suits you.
4) Go for a host that offers unlimited Bandwidth and Disk Space – If you blog becomes a great success you may require a fair chunk of bandwidth – you want to know that the site will remain running and no costs incurred due to bandwidth restrictions. A similar approach to disk space, you should have plenty, but double check no restriction apply.
5) Back-end Control Panel – For example, C-Panel or Helm. These allow you the user to perform tasks without the requirement of the host provider. For example, within the back-end you should be able to perform common tasks, such as creating new email accounts, file uploads, creating sub-domains or add-on domains, install additional software like Wordpress, Drupal etc..
6) Hosts Age? Check that they have been around a few years. I know I shouldn’t put a new host down, but I would rather go with a host who has good history than a new start-up host. The main reason being that an old host should have ironed out any server issues and have good procedures in place. A new hosting provider may be a little green, and experience more problems. If the host has a problem, you blog will have a problem!
7) Software Policy – Ask the host if there are limitation on the software you can install. For example you may wish to install a rewrite .dll, in which some hosts may have issues with this, whilst others may already have it, or allow you to install such software.
8) Pricing – Check the past history, you don’t want to sign up for a host that will up their prices at random or on a frequent basis.
9) Reputation – Go with an experienced users advice. I chose my site via a friend you has multiple sites running on the same host. I listened and took his advice. Im glad I did :-)
10) Most importantly SUPPORT. Try to ask other users who host on the same package what the providers support is like. I was once with a host who support was useless, 2 to 3 days to get an answer is not good enough when a problem arises that you need to fix immediately.

There are more things to look out for, but in my opinion the above are the essentials.

So here comes my Sales Pitch. Taking the above points into consideration I cannot praise my current hosts enough. I have hosted with them for over a year now and have never experienced downtime or had any issues what so ever. The support is superb, they have answered all my support emails within 15 minutes of posting, no matter the time of day, or night! Who are they you ask?

Host Gator

Creating a blog to make money online is fairly easy. As long as you have an interest or an in-depth knowledge of the content you are writing about.

Most people jump in and start a blog on what they think is going to generate them the most money online, where in actual fact if you concentrate on what you know best, money will still be made, and generated more easily.

Write about something you are interested in or feel passionate about. If you just try to target the high money subjects, for example finance, loans, insurance, mortgages which you may have no interest or experience  in. Creating unique content will become extremely difficult and you’ll soon find yourself loosing interest, especially if your online earnings are slow or minimal.

Whatever subject you choose, these are always opportunities to make money online from a blog you are passionate about. For example, if you enjoy gardening and create a successful blog you may attract interest from local garden centres wishing to advertise, or you could write product reviews. If you become a good reviewer local stores may invite you to write about there products for cash or goods.

One of the most profitable ways to make an online income is via affiliate marketing, which this blog will go into great depth. With the above example, product reviews could be written on the high monetized subjects, including garden sheds, lawn mowers, garden furniture etc. An affiliate link could be created from a popular affiliate program, or via an online e-commerce site selling the products you wish to affiliate with.

Ad space within the blog will also provide an income, from banners to PPC (AdSense). However with AdSense, this is where a high target page would generate more income, for example create a page on “Insurance for your Garden Tools” with AdSense linking to insurance sites will create more on your cost per click, than AdSense on a page talking about garden seeds!

The key to success for generating online money from a blog is to gain targeted traffic to your website, with quality traffic money via the above should come easily.

Targeted traffic is the key to online success. If you target the correct keywords, making money online will become much easier.

It won’t happen overnight, but creating a permanent page which targets keywords that gain searches will drive traffic to your website.

Depending on how competitive these phrases are will depend on the time and investment required to gain high rankings within Google and other search engines.

If you are just starting out with a small site, it is pretty much pointless going after the huge phrases at first, for example ‘car insurance’ or ‘loans’ – 99.9% these types of phrases will gain you no traffic due to the competitive nature and other high profile websites already ranking for them.

Targeting the ‘long tail’ phrase will be much easier to rank, and therefore profitable far quicker.  For example, ‘cheapest car insurance company’ or ‘small business loans’ – still competitive but much more realistic to rank for with a certain budget and time scale implemented.

These examples are very competitive, but are there to give you an indication that you shouldn’t be targeting just the one word phrase, in fact research has shown that more and more searchers are starting to use ‘long tail’ phrases, mainly because web users are becoming more ‘web savvy’ and know exactly what they are looking for, most users know that by typing in two to three keyphrases within one search query will provide them with more accurate results.

So there you have the importance of keyword selection, but where do you obtain the traffic figures from? Hmm this is a good question and I have yet to find an accurate solution, or two keyword research tools that provide the same numbers!

Part 2 will provide you with some keyword tool I have found useful.