Many people use web 2.0 sites as part of their linking strategy because they’re considered authority sites. But most of these users are missing the mark altogether and using this strategy all wrong.

First, let’s talk about what makes an authority site, well… an authority.

An authority site is a site that, among other things:

-Ranks well in the search engines

-Ranks quickly for new keywords and pages

-Is trusted for it’s content

-Is trusted for it’s links and anchor text

-And is spidered almost instantly

Some examples of authority sites would be Squidoo, Facebook, Hubpages, Wordpress.org etc.

Here’s a typical scenario…

A webmaster looking to get a link from an authority site such as Squidoo would, first write a content rich article, then go to Squidoo and create a Lens (a page) and link that page back to the home page of the site they are trying to get ranked.

There are several major mistakes that have been made in this process.

First mistake: Most likely, the keyword or keyword phrase being used in the article, is the main keyword for the site, since the page on the site that is being targeted is the main page or home page.

Second mistake: They are linking directly to the home page of the site.

These are mistakes because: The main keyword of the site is too difficult to rank for, it is most likely too general of a term to bring any qualified traffic, and there’s no link juice on the page to pass on to your home page, even if it is an authority site.

Second, the main page of your site is going to be too general and therefore too difficult to get ranked.

You may be thinking, ok… what if I am targeting a more specific keyword phrase and pointing my Lens to an inner page of my site?

Well, you’re halfway there

Here’s what I do and it works tremendously well.

Write a unique and informative article optimized for a second tier keyword phrase – and by optimized I don’t mean spammy, I mean a very human friendly and readable article. This would be considered a money phrase because it is more targeted and more likely to lead to a sale then a general term. It is also much easier to get ranked for.

Create a Squidoo Lens like before, using the new article and link that article to a Second Tier category or money page on your site that is optimized for that phrase.

Then, and here’s where the magic comes in, write 3 or 4 similar, unique, but much shorter articles optimized for the same keyword phrase and place those on Other Authority sites such as Hubpages or Wordpress and link those articles to your Squidoo Lens.

The chances of that lens now ranking in the top ten on Google for that keyword phrase have just increased at least tenfold!

You can mix and match this strategy to capture more than one spot in the top ten as well.

For example, now write another article optimized for the same keyword phrase as before and place it on a Hubpages page linking again to your Second Tier category or money page.

Then write 3 or 4 shorter article targeting the same keyword phrase and place them on Different Authority sites, one could even be Squidoo, and link those back to your Hubpages page.

Just like with the Squidoo results before, the chances of the Hubpages page ranking in the same top ten as the Squidoo page has just increased tremendously.

So now you have a Squidoo Lens and a Hubpages page both appearing in the top ten results for the same money phrase!

By capturing the first 2-3 spots in the top ten search results, you could easily get 60% of all traffic to the search engine for that phrase!

To take this one step further, now bookmark those 3-4 shorter articles using bookmarking sites like Digg, Stumble Upon etc.

No need to worry about being banned from the bookmarking sites because you’re not bookmarking your own site over and over, you’re bookmarking different pages on authority sites.

When you’re finished, why not twitter you’re new pages as well?

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Tags: Anchor Text, First Mistake, Hubpages, Informative Article, Keyword, keywords, Many People, Multiple Listings, Phrase, Search Engines, traffic, Typical Scenario

This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 5:54 pm and is filed under Building Links. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.