Welcome to the 2nd Issue: The Importance of Backlinks

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1) What's New At The Shared Self Publishing Experience

Traffic is up, pages are being added. Watch how a website can grow.


2) Big news about my other site

It's been recognized as one of the top 1% highest traffic sites on the web. Could how I got there help YOU get there?


3) FEATURE ARTICLE: Backlinks: Weaving Yourself to the World Wide Web

Is your site woven to the Web or is it hanging by a thread? The search engines care...and you should too!


4) Action Plan: How to Score Some Backlinks NOW

I know of a few easy ways to get other sites to link to yours. Take a look.


5) New Pages on the Site

When you signed up for the newsletter, you were promised an update on new pages to the site. Here they are.

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Functionality Alerts!
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If any links in this newsletter don't work, it's probably because your email software cuts off the link text at a line break, then prints the rest of the link as plain text. To use one of these links, try copying the WHOLE link then pasting it into your browser.

This email was designed to be read in an email reader that reads html. If you don't have one or yours is turned off, this letter might not look great but I'm guessing you're still smart enough to make sense of what I'm saying!
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1) WHAT'S NEW AT THE SHARED SELF PUBLISHING EXPERIENCE

Welcome. The site has been "live" for two months, and this is my second newsletter. 35 new self publishing accounts have been added to the site since the first letter, resulting in 70 new pages. (Each page has a Comments page.)

Since this newsletter is about internet marketing and building search engine traffic, I'm going to provide regular "traffic updates," so you can see how a site that's built for traffic grows. Here's the first update...

There are about 180 pages on the site now. At the time of the last newsletter there were about 110.

Last month 20 searchers found pages on the site through Google. This month 117 did.

Last month 43 searchers found pages through MSN/Live. This month 67 did.

Yahoo is aware of 10 internet pages that link to the site. (Don't forget to read this month's feature article on the subject of backlinks!)

In total, there were 4627 page views during May. That's almost 26 page views for the average page on the site.

Stat of the month: 29 visitors surfed to The Shared Self Publishing Experience from my other site.


2) BIG INTERNET MARKETING NEWS AT MY OTHER SITE

This newsletter is all about your internet presence, and if you've subscribed you're taking it on faith that I know something about the subject.

Well, good news. You no longer have to rely on faith. There's proof!

I started my first site, Best Children's Books - Find, Read or Write, in March, 2006.

So, just over two years later, I'm proud to have it acknowledged as among the top 1% trafficked sites on the internet. Wanna see?

(This list is put out by my web-host-and-so-much-more, Site Build It. They crow about 500 of their sites that make the top 1%. To find my site, click to the "Miscellaneous" grouping. And you might have to be patient for the page to load. 500 sites makes it a long page.)

Granted, the ranking doesn't make me Yahoo or Amazon, but I think top 1% is pretty good for a one man site. I used the Site Build It tools to create Best Children's Books (as well as The Shared Self Publishing Experience) without any help from anyone, all from the comfort of my own keyboard.

And hey, while you're looking at those 500 sites, notice one other thing: they all have domain names that contain a popular search term, don't they? Hmm. Does yours?


3) FEATURE ARTICLE: BACKLINKS: WEAVING YOURSELF TO THE WORLD WIDE WEB

Not so long ago, the word "surfing" made more sense when describing the internet experience. Folks did most of their navigating by "riding" from one site to the next.

We still use the term "surf," but most of what we do on the net is search. Instead of depending on some webmaster to help us decide where we should go next, we know where we want to go next...we just need help finding it. So we search.

I'm reading the most fascinating book. It's called, "The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture."

Think back to the pre-Google days. Search was pretty hit or miss. (With some of the other search engines, search is still pretty hit or miss.) What made/makes Google so different? Get ready for the most important vocabulary word you've never heard of.

Bibliometrics

Google's founders were academics, grad students at Stanford. They could see that the primitive state of Search at the time was kind of pathetic. While it was already possible for a search engine to index every single page on the web, what the engines of the time couldn't do was separate pages with good information from pages with cruddy information.

You could trick people searching for stereo equipment into visiting your porn website just by hiding the word stereo all over your website (in a way that search engines would see but visitors wouldn't. Like behind all the fleshy pictures).

The Google guys wanted to build a smarter search engine. Enter bibliometrics.

The academic world is awash with research papers. Professors have to "publish or perish." Grad students have to write their theses.

Let's say you're studying astronomy and you want to know the latest thoughts on the chemical composition of Jupiter's moons. You're confronted with 670 papers - averaging 60 pages in length - published in the last 3 years. How will you know the crackpots from the geniuses? Must you read them all?

Academic papers are loaded with footnotes to other papers. Bibliometrics operates on the theory that the academic papers that are cited most often by other academic papers are likely the best papers on the subject. The guy who wrote the paper theorizing that the moon Phobos is made of cheese? He's not cited by the others at all.

Because of bibliometrics, you don't have to wade through the first 50 pages of his paper only to find out that the punchline is Monterrey Jack. You just have to determine which papers are the most frequently cited and read those.

The Genius of Google

These guys (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) noticed that the web posed the same problem as published academia: separating the wheat from the chaff. But they noticed something else that no one else did.

Links are like footnotes. They cite another site!

The genius of Page and Brin was in realizing that the Web was already telling us which pages were important; we just weren't listening. They set about creating a new way to "read" the web and measure the relative importance of each website and page.

So even though Google has done more than anything else to turn the Web from Surf to Search, Google determines the importance of your site by measuring its "surfability." How many different paths are there to your site? The more paths - that is, the more backlinks - the higher you go in the search rankings.

(Just to clarify, a backlink is simply a link from another site to your site.)

So while an actual link to your site can generally bring in anywhere from a trickle to a slow, steady stream of traffic on its own, the real value of backlinks is in what they tell search engines about the importance of your site. They say:

"See? Other sites like me!"

There's another way of thinking about it too: links are what weave you to the Web. Are you part of that World, or is your dearth of backlinks leaving you hanging by a thread?

Want to check how "woven" your site is? On my online book marketing page, the first step is checking your "linkpop" (link popularity). Find out what your number is...then grow it!

Note: It's also important to know that the search engines don't see all backlinks as created equal. But let's save that subject for a future newsletter. Maybe next month!

Other Search Ranking Criteria

I don't want anyone quoting me as claiming that backlinks are the only criteria Google uses in determining search rankings. It's just the oldest and probably the most important. Estimates are that Google uses some 200 measures in their search ranking algorithm - which they keep as secret as Coke keeps their formula.

Now, don't think that backlinks are the answer to all your traffic woes.

For one thing, it doesn't matter how many backlinks lead to your site; your book 100 Uses For Vinegar isn't going to come up on a search for electronic dog collars. But here's the thing...

It might not come up on a search for cleaning with vinegar either - despite the fact that nearly half your book is about that subject! Why?

(Sorry if that paragraph seems a overemphasized. It's just that I happen to think it's the most important thing to know about marketing your book on the Web. You need to know not just what the Web can do for you, but what it can't.)

Google knows no more about your book's contents than it does about John Grisham's. Google is in the business of making web searchers happy by steering them to free information. So when someone searches cleaning with vinegar, Google sends them to a site that offers lots of information about cleaning with vinegar.

Not to a book site that sells a book that claims to offer lots of information about cleaning with vinegar.

For a site that does little more than promote a book, i.e. does not offer a lot of free information, the best hope is that it will be found for the search books about cleaning with vinegar.

Translation: for a site to get significant traffic, it needs not only backlinks to validate it (bibliometrics, remember?), but it needs to be a source of significant information on a commonly searched subject. A site devoted to promoting a single book or a single non-famous author is, by definition, a site on a narrowly searched subject. It's destined to receive only minimal search engine traffic.

Taking Action to Improve Your Search Rankings

In the next section of the newsletter, I'm going to suggest some ways to improve your link popularity quickly. But before you go there and do that, I want you to ask yourself if that's the best way to make use of your time.

I just Googled uses for vinegar. 413,000 web pages were reported back. I think we can agree that even if adding backlinks improves your ranking fom 401,353 to 153,104...you're not that much better off. The lack of information on your site about anything but your book is always going to keep you from achieving a useful ranking for a widely used search term.

(Of course, if those new backlinks boost you from #31 to #3 on books about vinegar, then they certainly were worth worth something.)

So think about this: do I need new backlinks, or do I need a new website?

If you need new backlinks, take the action steps below. If you need a new website...

Consider visiting my other website, Best Children's Books - Find, Read or Write, where I write extensively about the philosophy of website creation that has made that site so successful. Or, if you already have heard a little about the Site Build It approach to building well-trafficked sites, go check them out personally.


4) HOW TO SCORE BACKLINKS AND IMPROVE YOUR "LINKPOP" - 5 ACTION STEPS

Now that you understand the importance of links to your site in determining your search rankings, it's time to get yourself some more of them!

1) If you haven't already, go post your book at Self Publishers Place.

That site attracts traffic in much the same way that The Shared Self Publishing Experience does: by having visitors create tons of free "content" (information) for the search engines to find!

Like this site, Self Publishers Place gives you a page of your own, as well as a link to your site and/or blog. You won't have to write about your self publishing experience; you just write about your wonderful book!

2) Register for Site Build It's Value Exchange. (The form to register is at the bottom of the page.)

This one's a no-brainer. A great way to get links to your site is to offer links from your site in exchange. Value Exchange is a no-cost registry for site owners interested in making such deals! Swap links with other sites related to your subject matter.

A tip: swap links only with sites you visit and like the looks of. Don't trade integrity for a link!

3) Link to yourself. One of the benefits of having more than one website is the ability to link to yourself! If you have more than one website - or if you're considering building a broader website - remember that one of the benefits is exchanging links with yourself to increase search rankings for both sites!

Stick with the rules of effective linking even when linking to yourself:

a) find a context to link in - don't link from your home appliance site to your Uses For Vinegar site without a good reason. If vinegar cleans better cooled in a nice refrigerator than at room temperature, there's your reason.
b) link text is important. If you want extra oomph from a link, the blue link text shouldn't say, "Click here." Google would rather read text that relates to the linked-to site's subject matter. So have the blue link text say, "refrigerated vinegar cleans better."

4) Find free directories to list in. Start by opening SBI's search tool. (I apologize if it resizes your browser for a moment. It always does that to me, too.)

Now click "Search It" and ignore the new page that comes up. Instead, find the little Search It search box in a new browser window.

In the Step 1 dropdown, scroll to the bottom. Click "Specialty Hubs & Directories." In the Step 2 dropdown, select either "SE Guide to Topical Directories" or "ISEDB Directory Database."

Great. Now in Step 3, experiment with different search terms. "Books" or "self published books" would be good places to start. Also, try search terms that relate to your book's subject matter, i.e. fiction or vinegar.

Skip Step 4 and run the search. Read the resulting page, then, at the bottom, click to your results.

Besides "surfing," directories were the main way folks navigated the Web in the pre-Search days. These days, a directory is something of a quaint relic. But it's a quaint relic that provides a link!

Browse. Find directories that offer a link to your site for free. Most of the free directories will try to upgrade you to a paid link, but don't let them! The paid links are a little more valuable (better visibility to the search engines), but they aren't worth the outrageous prices. Settle for free.

The gist of how this works is you register, provide your email address, then create a listing. A listing usually consists of a title and some supporting text. This becomes your directory listing, complete with link to your site. Some listings are approved automatically, some take time.

It's a bit of a hassle, but it can help those search rankings!

5) Think about purchasing a paid link from The Shared Self Publishing Experience. Instead of the outrageous prices you've just been quoted from the directories (Yahoo charges $299 a year!!!), my Premium Links are 3 bucks for the first year (currently), and with no automatic renewal. If you don't choose to renew, you won't be renewed.

What makes a Premium Link valuable? Well, we were going to discuss the different values of links next month, but here's one criteria: the closer a link is to a site's home page, the more value the search engines ascribe to it. My Premium Links reside just one click from my home page, while all the self publishing experiences posted to the site are two clicks away.

Interested? Get 'em here. The form is at the bottom of the page. Don't forget to look at the sample listing to understand the format.

6) Now that you know links have value, think about the links from your site. You can benefit my site by linking to it from your site. But you can benefit my site AND your site by linking to YOUR page on my site.

By linking to your page (and not someone else's) you're telling the search engines that your page on my site is more important than any of the other pages. That gives more value to the link that comes back to your site from mine. Make sense?

Lots to do. I hope you do it!


5) NEW PAGES ON THE SITE

When you signed up for the newsletter you were promised updates on new self publishing stories posted to the site. There have been 35 posts in the last month, too many for me to describe, so I'm just going to list them by url.

First, this month's feature site. Since this newsletter is about the internet marketing of your work, I need to direct you to this particular self publisher's story. The focus of her marketing IS the internet, and she comes to many of the same conclusions I come to. She seems quite successful doing what she's doing! Visit

Moving on...Each url below reflects the title given by the author to their self publishing experience (minus the punctuation). To visit a page, paste into your browser's address bar the characters

then paste in the characters for the particular page that catches your eye. And don't forget to rate and comment!

self-publishing-works-for-me.html

the-story-i-had-to-tell.html

what-youre-not-publicizing-my-book.html

better-than-a-shrink.html

with-regards-to-promotion-and-self-publishing.html

from-art-words.html

its-all-wrong-yet-its-all-write.html

publishing-my-book.html

the-harveyville-fun-times-story.html

in-my-mothers-words.html

accidental-success.html

how-to-make-a-book-on-caregiving-different.html

simple-process-but-long-process.html

lulucom-creator-has-seaworthy-life-as-permanent-passenger.html

there-are-no-accidents.html

the-journey1.html

slow-burn-persistence-patience-marketing.html

write-on-.html

getting-the-word-out.html

giving-books-away.html

things-to-think-about-as-you-write-and-promote-your-book.html

pod-requires-focus-and-grit.html

all-i-needed-was-a-barcode.html

caterino-publishing-from-idea-to-reality.html

male-golfer-gives-birth.html

coming-at-it-sideways.html

all-my-familys-interesting-scandals-including-the-weird-stuff-in-the-freezer.html

self-publishing-look-before-you-leap.html

determined-effort-so-tenacious-it-negates-yuck-destiny.html

if-i-only-had-a-brain-injury-how-a-concussion-took-away-my-ability-to-read-and-made-me-an-author.html

writing-is-an-art-but-publishing-is-a-business.html

only-you-can-be-the-best-publicity-agent-for-your-work.html

what-authors-should-know-about-marketing.html


WRAPPING UP

Please remember that this newsletter is perfectly suitable for forwarding to your self published friends and acquaintances! You can also recommend to them that they sign up for the newsletter on The Shared Self Publishing Experience home page. Also remember to tell those folks they can post to the site in return for a link to their site!


THANK YOU