From Google, With Love…

I don’t often say this in a blog post. Right now, I want you to stop whatever you’re doing and focus 100% on what I’m about to discuss. That’s because I’m about to reveal one of those nuggets I’ve learned which has helped me earn a six-figure income on the Internet.

I’m not into “overhyping”, so when I say something is important, it really is important.

Today I want to talk about Google and how to use this search engine to build up your online empire. Let me explain…

The Concept of “Google Love”

You’ve probably heard this before. There are a number of websites that Google absolutely loves. Typically they’ll rank pages from these sites high in their search engine results which sends them lots of web traffic.

Most of these sites are usually owned by people who control 100% of the content that’s created. On the other hand, there are a small number of “content-driven sites” where you can create an account, post an article (or video), and receive the high rankings of “Google Love.”

The technique is highly effective because you’re piggybacking on the high search engine rankings each of these sites have with Google. Instead of having to worry about search engine optimization, all you have to do is regularly post content to these sites and you can direct all of this web traffic back to your online business.

In a way, you’re leveraging the success of these sites and using it for your benefit.

Forget the Fads, Focus on the Philosophy

Before we get into the individual sites that I’m currently using, I want to quickly explain something…

The sites that receive “Google love” are constantly changing. At different points in the last few years, Google has preferred content from article directories, blogs, web 2.0 properties, social media sites, or video sharing sites.

To be honest, it’s kind of mind-boggling to figure out which site Google currently loves. My solution to all this is simple… Focus on the philosophy, not the fad.

If you cut through all the hype, you would find that Google is obsessed with giving its users a quality experience with the results from its search engine. It has zero loyalty to any individual site or web property. And once Google feels a certain site is ‘gaming the system,’ it’s quick to drop this site’s listings from the search results.

Now as you’ve heard me explain, I’m a huge fan in Internet Marketing Hacking. I’m all for creating short cuts and maximizing your results. But with the said, my advice is to focus on creating quality content rather than obsess over what Google prefers.

My recommendation is simple. Take a few hours each month to learn which sites Google prefers in their search results. Then create content on these sites and have it point back to your lead magnet page.

But overall, all you really need to know is that Google will always like certain sites. This will always change. And it’s up to you to learn about these changes, then adapt them into your Internet Marketing plan.

What’s Working Right NOW?

Okay, now that you understand my basic philosophy behind “Google Love”, let’s go over a few sites that are currently popular. On each of the following, I direct almost all of my traffic back to my opt-in page. However, you adapt this technique to create backlinks to your online business.

Here are the sites that are still currently popular in the Google search results:

EzineArticles.com- Contrary to what you might have heard, article marketing is not dead. You can still create a massive amount of traffic with a steady schedule of publishing articles on EzineArticles.com.

The trick to this site is to target high volume, low competition keywords. Specifically, you want to go after the long-tail, problem-centric keywords. You won’t have any success with article marketing if you’re only targeting one or two-word phrases. I recommend that you mix in articles that target the longer keyword phrases, while also going for some of the more competitive terms.

YouTube.com- Video marketing is still in its “wild west phase.” You can take advantage of this by creating videos that target extremely competitive phrases. Since not many people are using YouTube to market their sites, you can easily pick up massive amounts of traffic with very little work.

To get started, I recommend you take all your content and simply record an audio version. Add some slides, then use a free tool like Windows Media Maker to create a simple video (Once again, I recommend you read my post on leveraging content for more about recycling your existing content)

Squidoo.com- I want to get this out of the way. I used to be heavy into using Squidoo, but I stopped once Google purged a lot of their pages in its results. But I’ve been told by a number of people that this site is still an extremely effective way to create long-term traffic to your online business.

Right now, I’m in the planning phase of using Squidoo. From what I’ve learned, you can easily snatch up a good amount of traffic by creating specific pages around certain keyword clusters. Again, I don’t have a lot of information, but I will let you know more once I’ve fully tested this technique.

Blogger.com, WordPress.com, and Wetpaint.com– There are a number of free hosted blogs that provide an excellent way to build backlinks and drive traffic to your site. While most people avoid sites like this, I recommend you use them as a way to build a stream of traffic to your opt-in page/and or blog.

The trick with these blogs is to post unique content. You can easily do this by lightly editing your pre-existing content or reworking articles that have “Private Label Rights.”

Implementing This Technique

There’s a reason that this article was vague on some of the details. The “take-away” I hope you get from it is to understand that Google will always have a preference for content from specific websites. So it would be a mistake to tell you to only focus on certain web properties, because this technique might not work in a few months.

What I recommend is simple. Pay close attention to where people are posting their content. Then test this site out and see if it can drive traffic back to your online business. Furthermore, you should regularly do a search for your target keywords. See which sites are ranking high. If you see the same “content-driven” site popping up a number of times, then create an account and start posting your own content.

Perhaps you’ll find the next big thing that nobody else is using.

Take Action. Get Results.