Happy Holidays everyone! I really wish you guys and your families the very best this holiday season and endless success for all your online endeavors.

I really want to thank you all of you for reading my ramblings and all the support and participation on the blog and I look forward to interacting with you more in the coming year!

Internet Marketing – Link Building Affirmations

Never forget that the cornerstone of Internet Marketing is link building. The main way to Page 1 of SERPS (Search Engine Page Results) is via quality backlinks from other sites with relevant keywords in the anchor text.

Manual Link Building vs. Natural Link Building

Manual link building is basically building links via manual efforts, such as with, articles, reciprocal linking, directories, blog comments etc, as opposed to natural links when other’s link to your content and web pages on their own.

It looks like the scrooges have spoken, and manual link building doesn’t work! HA HA!! Meanwhile I am LMAO all the way to page 1 of SERPS!

Lately I am seeing posts in the blogosphere that manual link building is dead, and those links are worthless, and these links don’t work anymore and that it’s a waste of time to build links manually, blah, blah, blah.

Well, I beg to differ, because several of my niche sites sit high in SERPS, a few on page 1 for their keywords and this blog is on page 2 with over 52,000,000 competition primarily from manual link building.

Now, I do get lots of link luv for this blog and that really helps, and I am not saying those natural links aren’t fantastic and wonderful, but what I am saying is that you can rise to page 1 of SERPS with manual link building only and sometimes manual link building is the only and best option for Internet marketing!

The Difference Between Blogs/Flagships and Niche-Affiliate Sites

Often times, a flagship blog like this one will get a good share of natural backlink link luv from the blog community, since there is a lot of interaction with other bloggers and the blog model usually brings about more opportunities for natural link building overall, but in most cases this alone is not enough to rank page 1 anyway.

And, when it comes to affiliate marketing websites, or small niche sites, natural link building can be elusive, unless your Laptop Mag or CNET. So, you are not left with many other options but manual link building, such as with articles, forums, blog comments and directories.

And, yes those links still work!!!

I have several niche sites that are sitting high in SERPS, with all manual link building and not one natural link. And, yes this includes directories, because depending on the directory, those links do still work, contrary to the hype. And, in reality all I really care about is results as they are always the proof of what works and what doesn’t!

Manual Link Building Time Strategy:

40% – Article Marketing
25% - Reciprocal Link Exchange/Blogroll (home page & within content links)
25% - Social Bookmark Links & Forum Sig links & Blog comment links
10% - Directories – 2 Free Directory Submission Softwares

Plus some random links, such as press releases and Squidoo lenses as listed in 13 Ways to Link Building.

In conclusion, just build links everyday! Use your anchor text and get all the links you can get, including some of those no-follows, that Google ignores but Yahoo, MSN and Live still follow and those search engines do bring website traffic as well.

And, don’t worry about the scrooges of Internet Marketing, they are probably just lazy, and while they are waiting for those natural links, and bitching about what doesn’t work, we’ll be building links and laughing our way to page 1!!