Steve Mills - Online Entrepreuership with the SPOKE system

Use google Alerts to add backlink Power

One of the most important parts to your SEO campaign for your websites should be the building of backlinks. Finding quality backlinks has always been a tedious task, sifting through search results, finding blogs and forums and social media sites with relative content to your niche.

Recently though I have been automating the process and using the power of google to send me backlink opportunities to my inbox everyday for free. I have set up a program using Google Alerts to keep track of all of my topics on the web, and tell me when new content is available that I can backlink.

I have so far found it an excellent way to keep up to date with what people are saying about my own domain, as well as keeping track of the different market niches that I have sites in.

AN EXAMPLE
An example is that if you have a site on “yoga advice” then you would create a Google Alert for these keywords. Google will then send you an email when a new link or content related to this is published on the internet.

It’s a fantastic way to be informed about your area, BUT it is also a great way to find potential linking partners to set up backlinks with.  With Google Alerts you will easily get 10 – 30 links per day, depending on how popular your niche is.

BLOG LINKING STRATEGY

I have found that an even better way to find blogs that allow you to leave a comment is to setup a google alert specifically for blogs and set the alert to search for “yoga” “leave a comment”. This will send a list of all blogs in your niche that you can leave a comment straight to your inbox. You can set the alerts to be sent to you daily, weekly or as they happen (as google indexes the page).

There are a few considerations to take into account when commenting on blogs as a back linking strategy. The first is the search relevance of the site that you are linking to. I recommend installing the SEOQuake plug-in as it provides information on Alexa Ranking, Google Pagerank and Number of Backlinks to a site, plus heaps of other relevant information for you to decide if it is in your best interest to backlink to a site. This great SEO plug-in can be attached to your browser and will give you helpful SEO information on the link or links you’re viewing.

Use the SEOQuake plug-in in conjunction with Google to sort through the results and find the ones with the highest PR, traffic and backlinks. The more knowledge you have the easier and more effective your link building will become.

Keep in mind that finding quality backlinks is one of the most tedious jobs in being a webmaster. It can take a long time, and a good deal of patience. By using this google alerts system you are taking a lot of the legwork out the equation, which will allow you to focus on backlink creation more consistently. Persistence pays off in this area, and soon your site will get noticed and start to rank higher.

Is your business sustainable?

I have been doing a lot of work over the past few months on the business GreenMortgages.com.au. It’s a great business, as it gives environmental organisations a rebate when you get a loan from them. They also help people refinance so that they can green their home with solar power and water saving features. Good worthwhile stuff.

But all of this immersion in the ideas sustainability has got me thinking, where else can the idea of sustainability be applied? Sustainability is a word that doesn’t only apply to the environment, it can also apply to of your family, your working habits, your business. We live in an extremely fast paced and connected society now, and with that increased pace comes the ability to work as long and as hard as we want to. It also allows others to connect with us all of the time, and to place demands on our time and energy when they choose.

I have spoken to a few friends recently who have just moved on from working for companies that demand 80 hours + a week from employees and still ask for more. These are talented guys, creative and hard workers as well. If you look at this situation objectively, there are benefits to the business (increased production, meeting of deadlines) in doing this. But if they choose this course of action there are also consequences. The business starts to burn out their most valuable resource(you would think), their employees. They will take more sick days, they will start doing less then their best. They will start leaving the company.
The work situation is only sustainable if there is a steady stream of young people who are willing to take on those conditions and expectations, until they too are burnt out.

There another way of thinking about sustainability in business as well.

How depended are your revenue streams on the actions of others?
I am not talking about customers, as they are always what a business is ultimately dependent on, I am talking more about channels that customers can access your products and services.

For example, some online business’s rely entirely on Google adsense for revenue. Even if this does work for a time, the problem is that your business becomes reliant on the policies and politics of Google, and their continued support of the program. If Google changes their mind, or decides that they will half the advertising fees that get paid via adsense, then there is not a lot you can do about it. Unless you have an exit strategy or diversified income streams, this single point of failure could spell the end of your viable business in an instant.

This has already happened with EBay sellers in the past year. Businesses sprang up that were 100% reliant on having cheap listings in eBay stores. EBay was allowing anybody to set up an ecommerce presence , and have items on permanent sale for 10 cents listing fee. Seemed to good to be true for those that wanted a cheap, networked way of selling goods. And it was….

As soon as EBay realised that sellers were making a mint while they were making 10 cents an item, the quickly upped the prices. The result, a mass exodus and close down of eBay stores, with sellers moving to other online auction and ecommerce solutions, or consolidating their stores to a smaller size.

You won’t here about this in any of EBay’s online marketing, but if you scroll back through the message boards on MyEbay about 18 months ago, you will see the storm that erupted.

The businesses that thrived during this time were those that had used Ebay to build their own, independent online presence. They had directed the ebay traffic through to their own domains, collected their customer data on an external database to compile mailing lists, and set up their own online stores on their own sites.

I’d love to hear from my readers what people are doing out there to make their businesses more sustainable….