Building links is an important part of promoting your website(s) and building an online presence. The more you get involved in different places around the web the more you will be noticed and the more traffic you will ultimately get. This is what you might call the “Prolific Principle”. The more prolific you are, the more your “presence” will grow.

This applies to content – publish as much fresh, original content as you can – and it applies to links pointing to your web properties. Be prolific – get out there – a lot.

In an article published a couple years ago on the HubSpot Blog Peter Caputa compares the link building process to passing through the “grades” you go through in high school. The article is called Did You Graduate From Link Building High School Yet?

Peter suggests to really master this process will take 4 years (like it does in high school), and that you have to move through the stages gradually. I think this is probably an exaggeration. If you get good advice you should be able to move through the stages quite a bit more quickly than that, and I believe the stages overlap more than he suggests. Nevertheless, the article makes some good suggestions. Here is my summary with comments of my own…

In Stage 1 (Grade 9) you should build links that don’t require anyone else’s help. These links include directory listings, many of which you can get for free, and references on social media sites where (among other things) you can create a profile – also for free.

I would add to this you should try to get at least one or two links from established sites that will result in your site being indexed as quickly as possible – perhaps from a friend or colleague. If you own a local business look for local business directories. Not only can you get listed there, but you can find other people you might exchange links with.

In Stage 2 (Grade 10) you should launch a business blog and begin adding content on a regular basis. Then start publishing articles on sites like Ezinearticles.com, GoArticles.com and others. You can use a submission service like SubmitYourArticle.com for distribution to a large number of sites.

As I outline in a previous post about article marketing this is a good way to get links (by adding them to your “resource box” on each article) and to build a reputation as an “expert” in your field. Of course this requires writing original, interesting articles. If you are stumped for original content you can just do reviews of other people’s articles or products (like this article) or you might consider using an article writing service like Textbrokers.

In Stage 3 (Grade 11) you should start networking with as many people as possible who share your interests. The object is to make yourself visible. This requires participation and “engagement”.

One way of doing this is to find a number of bloggers in your niche and start making meaningful comments on their posts. This is called blog commenting.

This will gradually introduce you to fellow bloggers and your link in each comment will attract a small amount of traffic from other commenters or readers. Once you gain enough confidence you can approach some of the bloggers you have met this way to do a guest post on their blog. That way you can leverage their readership to enhance your own visibility.

By this stage your blog should have a fair bit of valuable content so you should register it with as many blog networks as possible. MyBlogLog.com is a good place to start. This will help you meet other bloggers with similar interests and will give you some tools for tracking your traffic as it gradually grows.

You can also use other social media to gain visibility for specific blog posts. Digg and Stumbleupon are good places to start. You can also post references (and links) to specific blog posts on your Facebook wall, Twitter, and wherever else is appropriate.

Remember, the objective here is to build connections with key people and use the connections to build visibility. Content is the key. Build content on your blogs, in articles, and with guest posts.

In Stage 4 (Grade 12) you become a power blogger creating all kinds of content: articles, training courses, white papers, webinars and videos. All of these things attract readers, links, and subscribers. If you have done it correctly you should be an important, highly visible part of a vibrant community, and you should be at the top of the search engine results for your most important keywords.

The eternal question for web marketers is How do you get people to come to your website? It doesn’t matter if you are selling a product like cell phones, a service like landscaping, your own info-products like ebooks or DVDs, or your own original music. It doesn’t matter. To be successful online you have to get people to come to your website. You have to get traffic.

One powerful way is to build your web presence by spreading information about your products or services around the web. You have to reach people where they are. If people in your target audience are not at your website (yet), you have to go where they are and try to draw them in.

We’re not talking about advertising here – although advertising is important and certainly works.

We’re talking about offering free information that people are interested in reading or listening to or viewing. This is what we call compelling content – stuff that people are interested in and that addresses needs or desires or interests that your target audience have.

But creating this kind of content has HUGE problems!

1. Many of us do not have the time or talent to produce compelling content.

2. Hiring other people to write articles or produce interesting, informative audio presentations or videos for you may be too expensive.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a simple solution to this problem.

Well, believe it or not, there is a simple solution and it is staring you in the face.

You can use other people’s (free) content to draw your prospects to your websites.

Using other people’s content

We’re not talking about stealing content and putting your own name on it. No, we’re talking about aggregating other people’s content and associating yourself with it – exactly the way Google does.

In case you haven’t noticed, Google doesn’t produce any significant content themselves. They take the stuff you and I produce and aggregate it in their search results pages. Then they run ads on these results pages and make billions of dollars.

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could do something similar? Well, you can. You can aggregate content focused on your own niche to create a valuable resource that people interested in your niche will visit.

Sources for this kind of content are almost limitless. Here are just two of them:

- Articles from sources like Ezinearticles.com, focused on your keywords

- Videos from sources like Youtube.com, focused on your keywords

The trick is to select content (articles, videos, blog posts) that are focused on your target keywords. Make sure to punch up the titles and introductory remarks so they contain the keywords you want to focus on. Then build links to your aggregating site to improve its performance with the search engines.

Claiming Pre-Written Content as Your Own

Another common source of pre-written content is what are called Private Label Rights articles, or PLR. These are available from various sources on the web, usually at dirt cheap prices.

Unfortunately the quality of PLR articles is usually pretty bad. They are often old, rehashed and repackaged, and have probably been published many times on other sites. Unless you intend to edit them extensively PLR articles are pretty much useless.

Other sources such as BlogEasy offer regular installments of pre-written content for specific niches. The initial niche being focused on by

I have been working for years on different systems to make blogging easier and more effective. BlogEasy is the easiest and best system I have seen for accomplishing this goal. We wrote this program from the ground up, and are now beta testing it.

If you are a Real Estate agent, blogging on a regular and consistent basis is one important way to keep yourself in front of your customers and prospects. But coming up with original, interesting and relevant content for your blog is difficult and time-consuming.

BlogEasy solves the content problem

Subscribing to BlogEasy gives you access to regular, original and unique content that you can post in your blog.

Yes, that’s right. BlogEasy gives you actual articles, reports, summaries and even videos that you can publish in your own blog on a regular basis.

Content problem solved!

How do we do it?

It’s pretty simple actually. Our staff do the research and writing for you. Every month we create a number of new articles on a variety of relevant Real Estate topics and then we make those articles available to our members for republishing. Something like a “newswire service”.

Articles are available on topics such as:

• Real Estate Advice
• Real Estate News
• Green Tips for Homeowners
• Renovation Tips
• Real Estate Trends

These are not just any old articles. They are professionally written and edited by our staff. They are informative, focused on real estate topics and optimized for the major search engines.

See sample blog posts that have been created by BlogEasy.

Wait…There’s More…
BlogEasy Makes Your Articles Unique

Each article is also specially programmed so each published version of each article is a unique version. How do we do that?

First, we build in what are commonly known as spin variables – different versions of words, phrases and sentences. The program randomly chooses a unique combination of these variations each time it generates a new version of the article.

Second, we include what we call location variables. We make sure your location is mentioned in the article a number of times. For example, if an article is about “Home renovations”, and you are in Seattle we include keyword phrases such as…

Seattle home renovations
Home renovations in Seattle
Seattle homeowners

You can use this feature to target any location you want. You can even enter as many as three different versions of the same location name – for example…

Toronto home renovations
Home renovations in the GTA
Greater Toronto homeowners

This is a completely unique feature of the BlogEasy system. The combination of these two programming techniques makes sure that every article you publish is both unique and localized.

And that’s not all…
Remote publishing using BlogEasy

BlogEasy not only provides you with great original content, but it can publish that content directly to your blog without you actually having to go to the blog. In fact, if you have more than one blog, BlogEasy can publish a unique version of each article to each of your blogs. All without you having to go to each blog, log in, and post the content.

Did you catch the significance of that last point? BlogEasy lets you post unique, original, localized articles to as many as five blogs…all from one control panel.

BlogEasy makes it incredibly easy to finally get serious about maintaining a top notch real estate blog optimized for your local business.

Promote your business with these
Free “Green” reprintable articles

Green Tips for Homeowners

Green Tips for Homeowners is a series of short articles about “hot” green topics that agents can use for publishing in newsletters, blogs and other promotional materials.

New articles in this series are made available every month.

Subscribers to Green Tips for Homeowners will immediately receive 5 original articles at absolutely no cost.

Future monthly installments will also be sent to you free of charge as long as you remain a member of AgentMapIt.

The package also includes suggestions on using these articles in email promotions, reprinting them in your own blog, or incorporating them into your own promotional programs.

Sign up here – It’s Free!
Free sign up includes
Free AgentMapIt Silver Membership