This is the final part of the series, ‘Getting Started the Right Way in Internet Marketing’. This article will focus on one very important part of off-page SEO namely linking.

The previous article was all about backlinking. The more backlinks coming from reputable sites and blogs pointing to your website the higher will be your site’s search engine ranking. The coveted target is to get your website listed on the first page of Google, preferably in the number 1 spot (it is said the number 1 spot on Google for any keyword receives on average 41% of all the traffic).

Steady backlink building will gradually push your website up the rankings. But there is a way to speed the process up.

Do more than just build backlinks from reputable sites and blogs pointing to your website. Make these reputable sites and blogs point to each other also. Suppose you wish to target the keyword, ‘Betta fish diseases’.

You can build web 2.0 properties like Squidoo, Hubpages, Blogger, WordPress and Weebly sites with articles containing the anchor text ‘Betta fish diseases’ hyperlinked to point back to your website.

To increase the ‘link juice’ of these links, have articles within each web 2.0 property point to another web 2.0 property also. For instance, the Squidoo lens could have a link pointing to the Weebly site (besides pointing back to your site). The Weebly site (which also points back to your site) has a link pointing to the Hubpages hub. Then the hub points to your website as well as back to the Squidoo lens. This is called a link wheel.

Each keyword you target should have its own link wheel with links pointing back to the web page on your website where you have an article with the targeted keyword as the title. Each web 2.0 property is like a spoke in the link wheel. And the more spokes you have the more ‘link juice’ goes back to your website.

The most powerful effect of the link wheel is that it connects each of your web 2.0 properties with each other and each one back to your website. Then when the search engine spider finds one of these web 2.0 properties, it will be led to the next one and the one after that and so on. Building link wheels is a powerful way to boost your search engine rankings because the spiders find your site easily with all the links leading it from one site to another and eventually back to yours.

That concludes the 9-part series on ‘Getting Started the Right Way in Internet Marketing’. Now all that is left is for you to take action by applying each of the ten parts one by one.

The previous article in this series was about on-page SEO (Search Engine Optimization). This article will focus on the other aspect of SEO, namely off-page SEO. Combining these two aspects of SEO will almost guarantee a high ranking in the search engines for your web page.

Off-page SEO is highly dependent upon one thing – links from other websites to your web page. Generally, the more links you get, the higher your search engine ranking. But there are several conditions to that. These conditions mostly revolve around one main characteristic – the natural appearance of these links.

What do the search engines consider naturally appearing links?

Here are three criteria:

1. They must be from different IP addresses
2. They must have varied anchor texts
3. They must appear gradually over time.

So the most important thing to do to increase the ranking of a web page would be to create links back to it that fulfill these three criteria. Here’s how to do it.

To make backlinks come from various IP addresses, post links to different websites that are of the same topic or niche as your web page. One good way to do that would be to search on Google for the main keyword of your niche + blogs or + forums or + news etc.

 For example, if your web page is on keeping betta fish, search for Betta fish keeping blog or Betta fish keeping forum. Then visit the websites that are listed in the first and second results page and look for places you could leave a comment, ask a question or post an entry. Usually blogs, forums and news portals allow you to leave your name, email and website with your comment. By inserting your website URL, you will gain a backlink from that blog or forum to your web page or website.

Another thing to do is to create these websites yourself. Search engines have high regard for certain web 2.0 properties like Squidoo, Hubpages Wetpaint, Weebly, LiveJournal etc. Likewise, they also rank certain social bookmarking sites very highly, like Digg, Delicious, Technorati, Stumbleupon and so on.

 By creating your own websites on these web 2.0 properties and leaving entries on these social bookmarking sites, you will be getting backlinks from varied IP addresses. However, you must abide by the rules of these web 2.0 properties because most of them frown upon too many backlinks in one website you create and you might find your website suspended.

One more thing most people do to create backlinks from various IP addresses is to write articles and post them in different article directories. The top article directories that the search engines favor are EzineArticles, GoArticles, Articlesbase and Buzzle.

Next, you need to vary your anchor texts. The best anchor text would be the one containing the keyword you are trying to rank for. Suppose you want to have your web page appear on page one of Google for the term ‘Betta fish diseases’ then you would use the this term to hyperlink back to your web page. But if this is overdone and there are no other anchor texts used, this throws up a red flag to the search engines. So vary anchor texts by including some generic ones like ‘Click Here’.

Finally, create these links over time. If a few hundred backlinks are done all of a sudden, it does not appear natural. But building links over time will result in a gradual increase in search engine rankings for your web page or website.

This article is about getting free, organic traffic from the Search Engines. Most people know that there are three major Search Engines, namely Google, Yahoo and Bing (formerly MSN). Each Search Engine’s algorithm is different but their core structure is the same. That’s why if a site is ranked well in one Search Engine, it would probably be quite close to the top in the other ones, too.

So the question is, how does one get a website to the top of Google, Yahoo or Bing? No one, except those select few working in these Search Engine companies knows the exact algorithm they use to determine the rankings of websites. But through experience, webmasters can make fairly intelligent guesses. That’s how the whole science of Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) came about.

Generally, there are two parts to SEO. Firstly, there is on-page SEO and secondly, there is off-page SEO. Search Engines rank each individual web page, not just a website. Therefore, on-page SEO refers to what is on the web page that will cause the Search Engine algorithm to rank it highly. Likewise, off-page SEO refers to the factors outside of that web page that cause it to rank well in the Search Engines.

This article will focus on on-page SEO.

As far as on-page SEO is concerned, the two most important things the Search Engines look for are firstly, the title tag and secondly, the content on the web page. Title tags are also called h1 tags in HTML or computer language. The text that you type within the opening h1 tag and the closing h1 tag is the title for the article. This is the primary thing the Search Engines look at to determine what a web page is about. Thus, if a web page is about sports cars, a title might be ‘The Top Ten Selling Sports Cars in 2009’.

Good on-page SEO is where the title matches what many people are searching for in that niche. Therefore, in the title above, if there are many people searching for ‘top ten selling sports cars 2009’ or ‘top selling sports car’ or ‘best selling sports car’ or ‘top ten sports cars’ and the like, the web page above would rank highly in the Search Engines. This is why keyword research (that was explained in part 2 of this series of articles) is so important. Accurate keyword research will dig out the search terms most people are using in any particular niche.

Besides the title tag, there are two other tags which are less important. They are the description tag and the keyword tag. The description tag refers to what the web page is about and the keyword tag comprises of the main keywords that characterize the content on the web page. These two are not as important as the title tag, so as long as you ensure the main keywords that are in the title are also in the description and keyword tags, it would be fine. In the example above, the main keywords would be ‘top’, ‘selling’, ‘sports cars’ and ‘2009’.

Naturally, what follows the title would be the content of the article. Search Engine algorithms have become more sophisticated today compared to the past. In the past, webmasters could get away with illogical stuffing of the main keyword into the article and the Search Engines would rank them highly simply because the main keyword appeared many times (whether the article made much sense or not). But these days, Search Engines use Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) and other techniques to ensure that the content of the article does make sense and provides information of value to the reader before it ranks it highly.

Therefore, the best way to ensure the Search Engines rank your web page highly is to provide good content in line with the title of the article. As long as the content is relevant and provides value, the Search Engines will rank it favorably.

It is said that traffic is the lifeblood of your business in Internet Marketing. And that is true. Every Internet marketer could do with more traffic. As covered in the last two parts of this series, there are paid methods and there are free methods to generate traffic. The basic difference between them is that paid methods generally produce faster and more targeted results whereas free methods tend to produce slower results and sometimes less targeted ones. So the key to using free methods effectively is to make them as targeted as possible.

That is where your keyword research comes in. Remember the long tail keywords you have compiled in the previous parts of this series? These long tail keywords ensure that only people searching for those particular things are going to click on your links. That brings up the most important essence of all free traffic generations methods – Links.

All free generation methods can be boiled down to one basic activity – putting links in strategic websites. The more links you have in these strategic websites pointing back to your website, the better it is. This is what Internet marketers call ‘link juice’ or ‘link love’. When the search engines find a link on another website pointing to yours, it counts it as a ‘vote’ for your website, indicating that your website is important in the eyes of the other website. The more links (or ‘votes’) you get from other websites, the more important your website is and the higher it ranks in the search engines. The ultimate aim of all free traffic generation methods is to get your website ranked number one (the first listed website on page One of the SERP) or at least be listed on the first page of the SERP for any particular keyword.

But there is a word of caution. The search engines frown upon a website that gets a huge surge of links pointing to itself all of a sudden (like a hundred in a day). The reason is that it does not appear natural. There are certain legitimate occasions when this might happen, for example a big media event that highlights one website and every news portal, fan’s website and social media site points to it all on the same day. In such a case, the search engines will push that website on to page One for a few days and then when the buzz over that website dies down (and no new links are pointing to it), then it is removed from page One. That is not what you’d like to see happening to your website.

To avoid that, you need to build up the number of links pointing to your website naturally. ‘Naturally’ to the search engines means two things – a gradual buildup of links over time and links using different anchor texts pointing to your site. Of course it is still important to use your long tail keyword as the anchor text but you should also drop links with other related terms about 30% of the time. For instance, if your long tail keyword is ‘fast treatment for head lice’, then related terms may be ‘head lice cure’, ‘treating head lice’ or ‘head lice remedy’. You may even use very general terms like ‘click here’ or the raw URL of your website.

In terms of how to drop links, there are literally hundreds of ways. And that will be the topic of the next article.

This article will touch on ways to generate traffic. If you
recall, part 1 of this series was about finding long tail
keywords keywords related to your niche. Using the methods
outlined there, you would have a list of such keywords. Now is
the time to use them. Also, if you had done paid traffic
generation methods in the last part (part 4) of this series, you
would also know which keywords made you money. These are also
the keywords to use in today’s traffic generation methods.

This article will focus on the free traffic generation methods.
Everyone likes free stuff but as mentioned in the last article,
there are pros and cons to free traffic generation methods. The
most important and crucial part about using free traffic
generation methods is getting the right keywords. If you target
wrong keywords, you are dead in the water even before starting.
It’s that important.

So please review part 1 of this series to make sure you get your
keywords right. In essence, right (or good) keywords are those
which fulfill these criteria:

1. They are used by people (searchers in search engines) who
want to buy something in your niche. Obviously, a keyword phrase
with the word ‘free’ in it is not what you want to target.

2. They are precise in meaning. That’s why Internet Marketers
go for long tail keywords (those that have at least three words
in the phrase). Long tail keywords are very precise. You know
exactly what the searcher is looking for and therefore can
provide it to him.

3. They must be words that are connected to a compelling need.
Everyone has needs but not every need is compelling. Compelling
needs are those which have to do with relieving pain or enhancing
pleasure. For example, ‘get rid of head lice’ is a good keyword
phrase that is about a compelling need.

4. They must have a high search count and low SERP count
(defined in part 1). How high and how low is a matter of choice.
Obviously, the higher the search count and the lower the SERP
count, the better the keyword.

5. Page 1 of Google for the keyword phrase must not have too
many exact matches or be full of websites with a high page rank
(PR). There are 10 results on page 1. If a majority of these
are websites with exact matches in their descriptions or titles,
that is a bad sign. Likewise, if a majority of the page 1
websites have a PR of 4 or higher, that’s a bad sign, too.

You can find out the page rank of any webpage by using Firefox’s
page rank plugin.

Once you have a list of keywords that fulfill these 5 criteria,
then it is possible to generate some massive traffic (depending
on the niche). And the good thing is that all the traffic is
free.

The next article will focus on the actual free traffic generation
methods to use.