Until you come up with a MySpace-like idea, the biggest factor that will determine your ability to make money with websites is your ability to generate links. Every major search engine will rank your pages based on how many sites are linking to yours.

This article is the story and methods I used to get 20,024 backlinks in the last six months - the life of this site. As an interesting side-note, Google Webmaster Tools has me for 10,011 links and Google is extremely picky about what they count. I consider this to be an even bigger accomplishment than the 20,024 shown by Yahoo.

Is Content Really King?

Almost everywhere you can find information about internet marketing, you will be told that content is king. I see people preaching in forums and websites all the time:

• “Add more pages and you’ll get more search engine traffic - content is king.”
• “Search engines have voracious appetites for information. If you create enough content you can get search engine hits by the thousands - content is king.”

The problem is that those two statements just aren’t true. Search engines don’t have voracious appetites for information, they just want to return the most relevant search results possible. Adding more pages to your site won’t do anything if Google, Yahoo, and msn (msn gets small letters because they’re a ridiculous joke) think you have a garbage site.

Content Is King If It Generates A Load Of Links

Creating content just to create content won’t do anything for you. Creating content that gets linked to is the true ruler of the onlineverse (definitely not a word). I decided in the beginning that I would try to create content that helped people as much as possible. I believed that this would lead to more links from other people - it’s all about good karma. I built this site around that philosophy.

When I created my article ‘5263 Words On Starting A Profitable Blog‘, my blog was two weeks old and was getting less than 10 visitors per day. I actually got a few emails asking why I wrote such a long, exhaustive article. A few of the comments on the article itself say stuff like, “…Why did you write that much? And no, I didn’t read it, but good job I guess…”

I took some heat for taking the time to write an article like that, especially because I didn’t have any traffic back then. Here’s a special note to all the haters: That article has been linked to 1,591 times according to Yahoo Site Explorer, and 1,377 times according to Google Webmaster Tools.

P.S. - Neither one of those services report every single link.

Taking the time to create content that stands out in a crowd will always generate more links than throwing something up each day. Here are some link numbers from Google Webmaster Tools for some of the posts and pages I put a lot of time and thought into:

• 5263 Words On Starting A Profitable Blog - 1,377 links
• The D-List - 399 links
• 102 Ways To Make Your Site A Back-Link Superstar - 214 links
• 9 Common Reasons For Losing Or Never Getting Search Engine Rankings - 72 links
• Offsite Search Engine Optimization - The Effective SEO - 68 links
• Preparing For The Next PageRank Update - 62 links
• 10 Simple Ways To Get Banned By Google - 34 links

Keep in mind that many of these links were generated in the beginning, back when no one knew who I was. You can stand out in a crowd if you’re willing to take some extra time to write interesting articles that don’t fit the norm. The next generation of my ‘5263 Words On Starting A Profitable Blog‘ article will probably be 10,000+ words and will get linked to a lot more than the original. It doesn’t matter what type of website you have - put your heart behind it and you will get the rewards.

Methods I Used To Get 20,024 Links

I’m not going to try to act like all those links generated themselves strictly because of the content of this site. Quite a few of them did, but quite a few of them didn’t.

Looking back, I could have generated a lot more links in that time period if I would have been more focused and determined. I could have used each of my methods a lot more, and I just plain didn’t, especially in the beginning. I’m not going to list out all of my methods here, I’m only going to list the ones that contributed the most towards the 20,024.

Writing Articles For Free Article Directories
I don’t know exactly how many links I’ve been able to get with this method, but my gut feeling tells me that this was my most productive method. I think I probably have about 5,000 or so links from creating articles. I wrote a lesson on this method that you can find here: How To Make Your Posts 500% More Powerful With Only 25% More Work. I use Article Marketer to distribute the articles for me.

This is the one area that I haven’t put enough into. I could have done a lot more of this, and if I did I would have had a lot more links at this point. Lately I’ve been doing a lot more of this, and my link numbers have responded accordingly.

Using The D-List
I have commented on most of the blogs that are on the D-List, and that added a few hundred links to my arsenal. There are some really great blogs on there, and I took the time to leave comments that added to the conversation. You get a real backlink when you leave comments on these sites. I have some great relationships that I was able to form with some of the DoFollowers from the list, and that has led to even more links.

Being A Blog
Your entire site doesn’t need to be a blog. However, if it isn’t, I would still add a blog to it. Each time I click the ‘Publish’ button I get some automatic links. Make sure you use Technorati tags or Ultimate Tag Warrior tags.

Blog Carnivals
Each week I take the article that I think was my best and submit it to as many ‘make money online’ blog carnivals as I can find. I use BlogCarnival.com to find the carnivals. Explanation: blog carnivals basically are group writing projects. There are carnivals for almost every industry out there. You submit your article to the carnival, and it gets listed with everyone else that submitted.

Each week I get some links from this method. Most of the time, the carnivals will link to your article and your homepage so you normally get two links.

The Rest Of My Methods

I have outlined all of the methods I use in this post: 102 Ways To Make Your Site A Back-Link Superstar. In order to make the post you’re reading now more focused, I only listed the ones the contributed the most. The ‘102 Ways’ post can be used to expand the way you think about links. They really aren’t as difficult to get as most people believe.

Summary And The Snowball Effect

When your website is new, you will feel like no one is reading it and that no one is linking to it. Every great website has had to go through that. The people that turn sites into cash printing machines are the ones that believe in themselves enough to put their hearts into it before there are any benefits.

Using easy link building techniques like articles and the D-List will help you while you’re trying to gain traction. This will get your traffic going and will begin to develop your search engine exposure. Search engine traffic will lead to more webmasters and bloggers linking to your content. More links lead to more traffic which leads to more links which leads to more traffic.

The snowball-like nature of the internet is what allows a regular person to reach an enormous audience. If you feel like no one cares about your work, join the club. Almost every profitable site once belonged to it.