How to Build Authority and Become an Authority Blogger

Think of online authority as your online reputation; the higher your authority, the more people will pay attention to you as a bloggers, and to your content.

Authority also comes with its set of advantages: higher authority blogs tend to rank better on the SERP, have better index-times, have better traffic, better revenues, get more direct traffic, and generally tend to do better, all things considered.

So the question then is, how do you go about building an authority blog?

1. By using content to build online authority: in a post-Panda and a post-Penguin world – I am of course referring to Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithms – quality content has become the cornerstone of success online. The more quality content that goes on your website, the more regular you are with posting quality content, the quicker you’ll build your authority.

2. Keyword optimization: choosing and ranking for the right keywords is essential. Ranking for keywords which have less competition, or long-tail keywords or phrases can help building and solidify your authority on the internet. This is actually an integral part of your content-creation strategy.

3. Choosing the right niche: One of the best ways to build authority is to strategize and focus all your efforts on a specific niche. What this means is to choose and focus a particular niche, a very specific niche that interests you (and one which you have ample knowledge about), and one that you will want to write on, because all your content-creation efforts will be focused on this particular niche.

4. Getting hard-earned backlinks: Getting backlinks is the cornerstone of any good SEO strategy. It is essential to get backlinks from high-PR and authority sources; if a more well-established blog links to you, it means that you’re doing something right! Before Google Panda and Penguin ever saw the light of day, it used to be easier to get backlinks, but it isn’t anymore. Now, getting quality backlinks involves producing great content that it worth linking back to!

5. Be the first to provide news and updates: One of the most effective ways of building authority is to be the first one who provides readers with breaking news and important industry-related updates in your niche. This will allow you to get a lot of exposure – especially for hot/trending keywords – and natural backlinks. Sources that usually break news first in their niche are also regarded to be authority sources.

6. Be a guest blogger: This, for me, is one of the best, most-effective ways of establishing and solidifying authority AND getting the word out about yourself (plus the backlinks aren’t bad either!). Look for other authority, established and high-PR blogs in your niche, and approach them for guest-posting opportunities. Write a great piece on any topic, which helps put you across as someone who knows what he’s talking about.

7. Build your authority on social media: Building authority on social media is an essential and integral part of building your online authority. Think of social media as one of the numerous ways that people can find your content. If you have a strong presence on the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and G+, you will (a) be able to bring traffic to your blog and get exposure, and (b) it will be a good representative of your overall authority as well. Social media authority is usually determined by numbers, such as the number of people subscribed to/following you, or the ‘likes’ on your Facebook page.

8. Credibility and reliability: If you want to be seen as an authority figure in your niche, you need to be seen as someone who is reliable, credible and trustworthy. This should reflect in any content that you create. Provide your readership with content that is highly-relevant to them, and which helps put you forth as a credible and reliable source of information.

9. Post comments on other blogs regularly: This work in a way that is similar to guest blogs – with a few differences, such as the fact that guest-posts are much more detailed and are much more effective in building authority. However posting valuable, insightful and thought-provoking comments on other blogs, comments which help take the conversation ahead or provide a unique perspective for instance, on authority and well-established blogs, should also help build your own authority. Plus it also gives you the chance to be noticed by the big boys in your niche.

Five Reasons Why Affiliate Marketing Businesses Fail

As you may already know, affiliate marketing can be a very lucrative way of making money online! However the number of affiliate marketers who fail at their attempts at affiliate marketing is alarming, to say the least!

The fact is that it shouldn’t be like this, as affiliate marketing is usually very simple, provided you get your basics right, and follow a set of best-practices associated with affiliate marketing.

Here is some insight into why people fail at affiliate marketing, and what you need to do in order to succeed with your affiliate marketing efforts:

Reason 1: People fail at affiliate marketing because of lack of strategy

Do not think of affiliate marketing as ‘easy money’; it is anything but! Affiliate marketing requires a certain amount of planning and it is essential to have a solid strategy in place, with regards to what you intend to do, what you want to achieve, short-terms and long-term goals and objectives, and how you’re going to reach those objectives from an affiliate marketing point-of-view. I guess what I’m saying is that having a gameplan of some sorts is extremely essential!

Reason 2: Affiliate marketers fail because they don’t choose the right niche

This is one of the most important decisions that you’ll need to take, not to mention one of the first ones as well! Be very careful when choosing your niche when it comes to affiliate marketing, as the success or failure of your affiliate marketing business hinges on your decision at this point. Ideally, choose a niche that you’re interested in, and one that you would be interested in promoting and spending a large amount of time promoting.

Reason 3: People fail at affiliate marketing because their offer isn’t good enough

While the statement above is quite self-explanatory, it is also important to know that you should test a different number of offers out there to see which works best for you, especially in terms of conversion rate and revenues. At this point, a bit of A/B testing will allow you to test different offers, compare the results and see which yields the best results. A few things though: do give time to each offer in order to get exposure before moving on to the next offer.

Reason 4: People fail at affiliate marketing because they lack the required motivation

Yes, it’s as simple as that. Affiliate marketing requires constant and continuous input from the marketer, it certainly isn’t a ‘make-money-on-autopilot’ thing! You need to look for better offers, look for better products to promote, look for better ways to promote, and update your website/blog on a continual basis. For this purpose, you need to be motivated for what you do. And let’s leave aside the affiliate aspect of it for a second: for any business venture to be successful, it is important to have the right mindset and the mentality for it.

Reason 5: Affiliate marketers don’t work on building authority

Another ingredient, essential to any successful affiliate marketing business, is authority. As a matter of fact, it’s all about authority in affiliate marketing; in order to be able to sell something to someone, you need to have the authority that would make people believe you, and your offer. Anyone who has access to the internet now knows how things work, and it is naïve to believe that putting up a bunch of links and banner ads will be enough for people to buy it. If you seriously want to make money from affiliate marketing, you need to have an ample amount of knowledge and information about what you’re selling, and you need to be able to communicate what you know effectively. For this purpose, it is important to build your authority. People will be automatically more inclined to buy from someone who knows what he’s talking about!

Best Ways of Building Backlinks in 2013

Apart from some of the traditional methods of building backlinks, which we can still use with great effect in 2013, here are is my list of a few great ways of building valuable backlinks in 2013:

1. Create Great Content: Great content was, and will always be the most effective backlink building strategy. If you consistently create excellent, high-quality and highly-relevant content on your website, and then market your content effectively, it will provide you with the opportunity to build backlinks effortlessly, as people that come across it will want to link to your content, or share it on social mediums. Create content that your readers simply cannot resist sharing, and other bloggers find so invaluable, they are forced to link to you!

2. Share Great Content: Another solid strategy to build backlinks includes sharing content from other (external) sources. One great way to do this is to perhaps share the top stories from your niche on a weekly basis, or set a day, any day in the week, for a ‘best of the week’ post, where you could put up some of the best links, resources and articles that you come across. Doing so will not only provide your readers with excellent information (and hence giving you more shares and backlinks), the people you link to may also return the favor by linking back to you. (As is probably clear, it is important to post content that is relevant to the people in your niche).

3. Guest Blogging: Guest blogging rose to fame in last year as one of the most effective ways of building backlinks. However given the fact that it’s been started to get abused as a backlink-building strategy, AND the fact that Google will introduce measures to counter this abuse sooner rather than later – which may change its effectiveness – safe guest blogging, following the best-practices, will still yield excellent results as far as building high-PR backlinks goes.

4. Make Videos: Making and sharing videos was, is and will be one of the best ways of creating backlinks! It’s incredibly simple to make videos, and you don’t even need expensive or high-end equipment for it, contrary to popular belief. Above all, a single video can be put up on a multiple number of video-hosting websites, which means that not only do these videos have a lot of potential to be shared by users of each of these websites (Youtube, Vimeo, MetaCafe, DailyMotion, etc), your videos also have the potential to go viral (and be seen by thousands!). Look into making videos to build backlinks.

5. Blog Comments: Like guest posting, posting comments – valuable, insightful, and thought-provoking comments – on other authority and high-PR blogs within your niche was and still is an excellent strategy to create backlinks. My recommendations, as far as ‘blog commenting as a link-building strategy’ are as follows: find relevant, authority blogs in your niche (similar to yours), read their content, and use these blogs to leave thoughtful comments on their post, along with a URL of your own blog. Some blogs use certain plugins (such as CommentLuv) and give you’re a do-follow backlinks to your blog or one of its posts. Always remember to put in the link to your blog in the ‘URL’ field, and refrain from posting spam comments or even one-liners such as ‘thanks for this post’.

6. Social Media: Social media’s rise in prominence since the turn of the decade, and especially in 2012, has been nothing short of phenomenal! Facebook, the undisputed king of social networks, crossed the 1 billion users mark (yes, billion, with a ‘b’!). Similarly, the likes of Twitter and Pinterest (and even G+) boasted similarly-impressive numbers. What this means for you, is an excellent opportunity to build backlinks!

7. Social Bookmarking: Lastly, a word on social bookmarking and whether it is still a viable backlink-creation method and if it should be a part of your backlink strategy or not. The answer to both these questions is yes it is, and yes it should be! Social bookmark websites – such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Delicious and Reddit – organize external links and articles according to different interests. Users simply go on these websites, find their interests, and look through the sites and article and share them with others as well! Submit your content on these social bookmarking websites.

Your Turn: What backlink-building strategies do you think will be effective in 2013? Leave your comments below!

Increase Your Facebook Reach in a Post-EdgeRank Era

It is now a well-known fact that Facebook Pages have seen an obvious reduction in their reach, with a small percentage of people are actually in direct interaction with the page’s content. In fact according to published statistics, the aforementioned percentage is said to be around somewhere between 12%-16%.

These changes can be owed to a recent algorithm update introduced by Facebook, called the EdgeRank. EdgeRank is an interesting algorithm. In short, EdgeRank dictates or determines what stories appear in each user’s newsfeeds, based on a little something called’ Edges’. Without going into too much details or technical nitty gritties, an Edge is any action that takes place on Facebook, and is made of of 3 elements called Affinity, Weight and Time Decay. (You can read all about it, in detail, on link 1 and link 2).  

But I digress. What it means is that you are reaching out to just a small percentage of your followers, and only a small number of the fans on your Facebook page can actually see your updates and your posts.

At the end of the day, all this comes down to three things: (a) giving up from using Facebook altogether, (b) paying Facebook to increase your reach and reach out to a larger number of fans, or (c) increase your reach using a vast array of different methods.

This article, of course, deals with the third option.

So then, what can you do in order to increase your Facebook reach, despite EdgeRank?

1. Improve your EdgeRank

As I mentioned before, EdgeRank is made up of a combination of factors, all of which determine which of your posts gets more visibility in your fan’s newsfeeds. One proven way to increase your Facebook page’s EdgeRank (and hence reach out to a larger number of your fans) is through posting multimedia-rich content and updates. Another way is to post updates (text-based, multimedia, etc.) that naturally garner a large response from your fans, and your fans interact (like, share, comment) with it. You could also use Facebook Questions (polls) as well. The takeaway from all this is that in order to improve your EdgeRank, it is essential to post engaging content, that is highly relevant to your fans, and would be of interest and use to them.

2. Work on getting more likes on your page

While it is generally believed that a smaller but a more targeted and engaged audience is better than having a large number of uninterested and untargeted Facebook fans, getting more ‘Likes’ on your page is still essential, as it directly correlates with how active your page is, as well as with the number of people who see your posts and updates and interact with them. It is therefore important to get a large amount of targeted likes on your Facebook page. In fact, Promoted Posts (more on that in a bit) also require Facebook pages to have a certain number of likes before the ability to sign up for it. Therefore try coming up with different ways and techniques that you can use in order to increase the number of fans on your Facebook page (giveaways in exchange for likes, putting your Facebook page URL on all print and business material.

3. Refrain from using social media dashboards…

Or third-part tools to manage your Facebook page. Yes, tools such as HootSuite and the like make life easier for page owners/managers, as these let you schedule updates, and easily manage and post to a multiple number of pages or accounts. However it is said that such tools also have a negative impact on your Facebook EdgeRank, as well as your page’s reach. If you want to improve your EdgeRank and attain the ability to reach out to a larger number of your fans, it is a trade-off that you’ll have to make. Or you could look into alternatives such as the one mentioned in the link above.

4. Sponsored or paid-for posts

With the introduction and changes to EdgeRank, you are actually required to pay Facebook just to reach out to more of your fans. You can buy ads, or have your page or its posts ‘Sponsored’ which will then show up as Sponsored Stories on the timelines of people you’ve targeted. If you’ve got the budget, and something to promote, it might be a good idea to look into this. Promoted posts are cheap, and come with a plethora of options as well, which allows you to create a promotion that will get you a good response, plenty of activity, and hopefully, more likes as well. Mobile ads are also worth looking into.

5. Other ways of increasing fan interaction

…includes things such as posting at the right time, such as when the people that you are targeting are actually on the internet, repurposing content, using humor and/or controversy to garner a larger response (remember, even negative publicity is good publicity!), and sharing useful links and information from external sources as well (other than your own website).

I would love hearing from you about this: what techniques or things do you use in order to increase your Facebook page’s reach and increase the activity on your page? What are your counter-EdgeRank tips for Facebook fanpage owners?

Essentials for Blogging Success

Hello, I’m Sean Levinstein and I welcome you on my blog, where I intend to write on Internet Marketing, SEO, blogging, and various ways of making money online.

I’ll start things off with my list of essential elements of successful blogs. It is a list of things that I feel every successful blog and blogger should have. So without further ado, let’s get straight to business.

1. Great content: Great, valuable content is where it all pretty much starts, as far as blogs are concerned. Make sure that you choose the right niche – something that interests you, make sure that you do your research on a regular basis – things people are interested to hear about in that niche, and valuable keywords, and finally, concentrate all your efforts in producing quality and valuable content – content that is unique, relevant, and highly-informative for your readers.

2. Great design: Looks are as important as content. Having an online presence that looks great will be essential, which is why it is important to either have someone (a professional) design your website, or choose Wordpress, along with an attractive-looking theme to go with it. Wordpress themes are usually pretty cheap (or even free!), and can completely change the look or appearance of your blog. The best part is that Wordpress themes are available for all kinds of blogs. Check Themeforest for a great collection of Wordpress themes.

3. A great CMS: Speaking of Wordpress, it is essential to choose a good CMS for your blog as well. I personally think that if you go the self-hosted route, nothing quite beats or even matches up to the brilliant and ease-of-use of Wordpress. It’s free, open source, easy to use, extremely simple to manage, comes with a powerful backend/dashboard, gives you complete control over all aspects of your blog, is extremely SEO friendly, and has a ginormous library of free and paid-for plugins and themes that enhance its functionality and appearance. However two of its biggest competitors – namely Drupal or Joomla – might also be worth looking at (here’s a comparison).

4. Encourage comments: One of the best reasons for having a blog is that it allows you to speak and engage with other like-minded people out there on the internet. Which is why it is a good idea to encourage comments on your blog. Encourage your readers to post comments on your blog, and leave their thoughts and their feedback. Make it easy for people to do so. Your comments box should be present right beneath the post. Don’t ask readers to jump through a lot of hoops to post a simple comment – just a name and email ID would do. In addition, you might also want to look into using something like the CommentLuv plugin or the Disqus plugin to enhance and improve the functionality of your blog.

4. Building relationships: This is a two-part process: building relationships with other bloggers, as well as your readers. As far as the latter is concerned, inviting people to post comments (as mentioned in point # 4 above) and replying to their comments is the best way. On the other hand, you could look to build and cultivate relationships with other bloggers through social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus), as well as by linking to their content, sharing their content, leaving comments on their blog posts (valuable and thoughtful comments), and so on. With the passage of time, after you’ve made a name for yourself (as well as some authority), you’ll find that these relationships prove to be invaluable to you!

5. Building lists: We now move on to a couple of ways to generate traffic, one of which is list-building – an invaluable source for many bloggers to get targeted traffic to their blogs. List-building refers to the practice of capturing your visitors email address, by allowing them to subscribe to your blog and your posts. All you need to do is add a subscription box on your blog for this purpose, which asks for the name and email ID of anyone who wishes to do so – there are plenty of plugins on Wordpress which will allow you to do this.

6. Social media presence: The importance of social media cannot be ignored, and it is essential for every bloggers to have a strong presence on the likes of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus, etc. Maintain a separate social media account for each of your blogs, and post updates to each page regularly, build more likes, and engage with your fans. Use a social media management dashboard like HootSuite to easily manage all your profiles from a single window. Add ‘like’, ‘share’, ‘retweet’ and ‘+1’ buttons on your blog as well, so that your readers can share your posts and the content easily on their social media profiles.

7. Content guidelines: All content that goes on your blog should follow strict and stringent content guidelines or content best-practices, regardless of whether it is written by you or someone else. This includes elements such as (but not limited to): breaking your copy down into digestible chunks, using multimedia, checking your copy for factual or grammatical errors, putting important bits of text in bold, using bullets for points or lists, accrediting the original source if copying/taking something from an external source, writing attractive and compelling headlines, and so on and so forth.

8. SEO best-practices: Search Engine Optimization is extremely important for the well-being of any blog. It is an integral cog of a well-run blog. SEO strategies allow you to optimize your blog for human visitors, as well as maximum search engine visibility. SEO involves a lot of different on-page and off-page techniques – such as keyword research and implementation, building backlinks, external and internal linking, etc. – and it might be a good idea to look for local SEO firms or freelancers to whom you could outsource your SEO to.