Self-promotional backlinks – which don’t annoy

For important new developments at todaydotcom check out my update : is today a scam?

The importance of backlinks we have discussed before. Many sites allow you to link to your own sites – two that I use are hubpages and today.com which are sites which pay you to blog. Today particularly require that to earn their payment per post the content must be original and not self-promotional. This appears to confuse people – and yet although many of my posts promote other sites I have none have them been flagged.

1-Feb-09 Update – today has now tightened up and will not pay the per post fee if you have a link to any site you own or to any article on hubpages , AC and similar sites.  You still get the traffic payment.

What’s the secret – write an original article, related to the same topic – add a link somewhere – not an obvious one – just a link with the text that you are are trying to rank for in Google. There’s a link in this paragraph which is relevant to the broad topic of making money blogging but this post would get approved if I had a blog on the theme of making money online at today.com

Approaches to avoid :

• quoting content – even if you wrote it and can do so legitamtely – and saying something like “read more here” or “for more information click here”;
• disguising links by hiding them in a full-stop (period) or linking in a misleading manner i.e. using a misleading anchored text – this is against Adsense’s TOS anyway;

You must provide original and complete information for the reader without them needing to leave the site that they are on.  I generally write about topics I know well on these  blogs I find know well.  Every post on my two today.com blogs has been approved and here are some of examples of promotional posts which are acceptable:

Christmas in Australia

Underground in Coober Pedy

Child Star in Australia

Note too that not every post does have promotional backlinks – the overall pattern matters too. Sometimes I don’t link out at all – sometimes I link to authority sites such as commercial businesses

Basically every post stands alone if you have an interest you can read it from start to finish without needing to click. The link is vaguely related to the content matter though – which makes it a valuable backlink to have in Google’s eyes  – the links to my sites in this post are less valuable because this blog isn’t really about travelling or Australia!

What’s a Backlink?

Now just to take a step back –  I’ve been asked more than once in forums and elsewhere “whats a backlink”.  The answer is simple people, its just a link to another place – a piece of underlined text (usually) – which when you click or hover your mouse over it shows another web-page.

3 Simple Steps to Create A Backlink

An example is easiest:

1. type in the worlds “Baby Boomer Gear”,
2. highlight the words and then click the chain (link) in WordPress (or most other on and off line writing packages these days including hubpages)
3. it asks me for the url – if I then copy or type in http://www.cafepress.com/babyboomerbuzz
4. the end result will looks like Baby Boomer Gear and Maren has an anchored backlink for her Baby Boomer store!

Thanks for the question Maren – the only dumb questions are the unasked ones you know!