SERP Rank Update

Using Backlinks To Increase SERP Rank and Page Views

It’s been a while since I discussed in detail my thoughts and results from my previous post on increasing eHow SERP rank. Some of that is because I’ve been busy with numerous projects that come up from time to time. Part of it is because of the recent turmoil at eHow and with many of the writers there. Some of it is even recently due to my confusion relating to the apparent changing of the eHow earnings algorithm.

I’m not sure that the algorithm has been permanently changed however because since my post on the subject my CPM has been climbing back up. It bottomed somewhere around the 22nd of January at around $7 per 1000 page views but is now back up to around $8.25 as of this writing. This is squarely lower than in each of my past full months at eHow but it isn’t quite as low as I thought it might go. I suspect and hope that the algorithm or earnings well affected by the eHow UK mess which was getting worked on during the middle of the month.

Regardless however, as I mentioned in my past publication my mega-backlinking mission to my eHow articles have brought increased page views with little to no extra article publishing on the site. I only published two articles on eHow since early November. I’ll try to break this all down in a future article I’m afraid. I want to see how the month closes out.

Getting Anchored Backlinks To Increase Google Rankings

In the past I've discussed anchored backlinks and how they boost SERP rank. This information is neither novel nor unique. This knowledge is in fact known by many people who both make a living online and by those who dabble and fail. Most people know to rank well in the search engines you have to both have on page SEO focused on researched and deliberately targeted keywords and that you need to have backlinks pointing to your publications. The trouble is most people either just don’t obtain those backlinks or they simply don’t know how to go about a backlink mission.

I discussed at the time a friend’s article posted on eHow on the topic of honeymoon showers. At the time I said that this article had the potential to make probably around $5 per month max if it was optimized and ranked at the top of Google. When I stated this the article was ranked number 9 on page 1 for its main keyword. Since that time she tweaked her article to be more SEO friendly. I linked to the article with an anchored backlink once or twice, she did also from a couple other sites as did another friend… it’s been about three months and I almost forgot about this experiment but I decided to run a check on the article’s SERP rank and what did I find? An across the board improvement in the ranking of this article for all main variations of the article’s main keyword.

On October 14, 2009 this article ranked:
• 1st for “How To Host A Honeymoon Shower”
• 1st for “Host A Honeymoon Shower”
• 7th for “A honeymoon shower”
• 9th for “honeymoon shower”

Today, January 28, 2010 this article with some backlinks (very few backlinks actually) this article ranks:
• 1st for “How To Host A Honeymoon Shower”
• 1st for “Host A Honeymoon Shower”
• 1st for “A Honeymoon Shower”
• 3rd for “Honeymoon Shower”

That’s an excellent improvement and likely will bring this article up to the top of the SERPs for a multitude of long-tail searches related to her main keyword. Again, this article probably isn’t a huge moneymaker due to potential traffic and CPC as demonstrated by Gs Keyword Tool but with a few backlinks I bet it gets a lot more page views today and probably more money today than it did three months ago.

Incidentally the two pages still out ranking her for “Honeymoon Shower” are PR1 and PR0 pages and only one appear to even be optimized for search engines at all. A few more backlinks and this eHow article (which is a PR3 by the way) could easily be number one for the main keyword.

Is My SERP Rank Increasing?
I’ve also discussed a few of my personal SERP Rank goals as they relate to my main longevity blog. Currently I want to get my site: How To Live Longer to the rank well for the phrase “how to live longer”. In the past I stated a few other phrases I wanted it to rank for. “Longer Life” was the first I mentioned back in October in my post titled build residual income with anchored backlinks. This is the same article in which I discuss the Honeymoon Showers article (BTW).

In that article I noted that I currently ranked:
• 2nd for “how to live a longer life”
• 2nd for “live a longer life”
• 8th for “a longer life”
• 22nd for “longer life”

Today for the same terms I rank:
• 3rd for “how to live a longer life”
• 2nd for “live a longer life”
• 3rd for “a longer life”
• 4th for “longer life”

That’s a nice improvement and though I can’t say I’ve gotten to the maximum estimate for earnings because of this climb in the SERPs, I can say that my overall organic search traffic for “live longer” related searches is up a lot. In the month preceding my stated SERP rank goal for my main keyword I received 205 entrances via search to my main blog page on my longevity blog. According to G Analytics this was from 41 different keywords.

Over the next two months I built up a ton of backlinks to my main page and deep post pages using a variety of “longevity” related anchored backlinks. As you can see above, as my main keywords ranking improved, so too did my entrances via search to the main page from all the various long-tail searches. It’s only been a little over three months but the last month I have had 628 entrances via search to just my main blog page via 62 different keywords.

Basically in three months my anchored backlinking campaign increased my search traffic more than 200 percent and increased my long-tail search traffic by about 50%. I even started getting ranked for a new search term that I will be heavily backlinking over the next 30-60 days: “How To Live Longer”. In the month before my campaign this keyword brought one visitor to my blog; in the past 30 days however this one keyword brought 300 visitors to the blog… and I’m still on page two! In fact this keyword ranks 18th in the SERPs. I can’t wait to get this to page one.

Improving SERP Rank – Making Goals

I share this with you for two reasons. This is fun for me and form of entertainment when I don’t feel like writing articles or generating backlinks but also to refine my opinion on what is working and how to do it better. I also hope that you reading this come to understand that increasing your SERP rank is not complicated; it just takes time and work. It just takes anchored backlinks.

What are you doing next, you might ask. How can I do the same? The answer to this is simple. Court at the Keyword Academy recently identified a challenge to single out 30 URLs that get little traffic and to build five backlinks to each of those articles over 30 days. I won’t rehash the terms though, go to his site and read about the backlink experiment for yourself. Regardless of his experiment however I’ve been doing just that for some time and will continue to do so.

How To Build Backlinks – My Evolving Strategy

I have recently identified about 10 articles on my longevity blog which make good money and which get decent traffic. I am sending backlinks like a storm to them. I have also identified roughly 15-20 eHow articles (my best performing articles) and am doing the same for them. Sending more backlinks to them will cause them to appear in searches more often and will increase them money they make.

Recently I’ve identified 33 articles on InfoBarrel that I published between late November and early January that mostly send backlinks to my blog and my eHow articles. These 33 articles in fact send about 55 backlinks to my articles on eHow and my Longevity blog. I feel these articles could earn more money on their own so I will be sending backlinks to them over the next 30 days as well.

This is how you increase your SERP rank and increase organic traffic. Publish a lot of stuff and identify the articles which appear to perform well and send backlinks to them… then send backlinks to those articles as well.

Here’s my pattern for how to build backlinks as it stands now. Keep in mind this is not set in stone.

An article on eHow is backlinked by an article on my blog. An InfoBarrel article then backlinks both the eHow article and the blog post. Then an article directory submission backlinks the InfoBarrel article, the blog post, and the eHow article. From this point on I have three articles (out of four that I wrote) that can make money, my eHow article, my blog post, and my InfoBarrel article. Each one has between one and three backlinks and this can be increased further by simply adding an extra layer of an additional directory such as eZine articles, Squidoo, or GoArticles.

Personally I also backlink my moneymakers with ArticleBast, SelfGrowth, and Buzzle though these get less of my time for now. That’s how I did it. And if you’re wondering if it’s worth it then give it a few months of hard work and see if you get addicted to seeing traffic growth via search engines that grows 20-30% month over month consistently. This growth comes purely from increasing SERP rank and an increasing volume of long-tail traffic. Get to work on building those backlinks; they work.