New Business Up and 'jogging': genre/link building dilemma

[cpmhere]

Hello everyone. I finally launched my new website and product last month and am very excited to move into the new stage of building my business. I have a great product I developed myself over the course of a year, a blog with 200 posts, discussion forums, and a one day workshop I will teach for the first time this coming April!

Here is my site:
http://wisdomangermanagement.com

So far all is well, except....

The dilemma I'm having is how to network and thus build backlinks. My genre is anger management, and it's not a sexy topic, nobody wants to talk about anger. My platform is alternative, 'mindfulness' approach, but still I'm having a hard time coming up with a good strategy for getting quality backlinks to my site.

I've tried contacting hundreds of therapists, and only received a few responses, but no backlinks. I regularly add content to my site, comment on other blogs, and have done several guest posts, but I've run out of sites to request guest post on. I've written articles for all the major content farm sites, paid for links in dozens of link directories, and posted in lots of forums.

My search engine rankings for 'anger management' reached page 4 of google, and since has tappered off to the end of page six- page seven is coming soon I can feel it.

I've hit a wall with my seo/backlinking, so I posted here to see if anyone might have any ideas to inform and help me re-invent and my strategy.

Thanks for reading, and you have any ideas I'd love to hear them.

[Phil Tanny]

Hello everyone. I finally launched my new website and product last month and am very excited to move into the new stage of building my business.

Congrats!

My genre is anger management, and it's not a sexy topic, nobody wants to talk about anger. My platform is alternative, 'mindfulness' approach,

Mindfulness is a great topic, very useful stuff!

It's also a broader topic than anger management, which seems to offer you an opening to many different audiences.

As just one example, there is an active community of Eckhart Tolle students on the net. I used to spend time on this forum...

http://eckhart-tolle-forum.inner-growth.info/

While they aren't focused on anger specifically, they are often angry :-) and enjoy discussing mindfulness all day long. I'd guess there are many such communities, and that becoming part of their conversations might open up some relevant partnership opportunities for you. Plus, there are the forum signature links.

I've tried contacting hundreds of therapists, and only received a few responses, but no backlinks.

Imho, cold calling strangers on the net is officially dead as a business building strategy. In the early days, the net was a small town, and folks found these unexpected contacts fun. These days the net is the world's biggest city, and folks are focused on pushing away contact they didn't initiate themselves. This is even more true for the kind of successful folks who could provide quality back links.

If you wish to continue with cold calling, you'll have to be more creative, and more persistent. Personally, I'd put this off until your site has reached the stage where you are a peer of the people who can provide quality links.

I might put it off forever. The difference between them discovering you on their own, and you "spamming" (not what it is, but how it is often perceived) them is truly vast.

Hey, you've got over 2,000 links already, nice work, you're well on your way. Just keep hitting the nail on the head, over and over.

I've written articles for all the major content farm sites,

How many articles roughly?

and posted in lots of forums.

Hmm, maybe this will help? You can use this site to get an idea of how much traffic a forum has. http://Compete.com The basic reports are free. Becoming a well known and respected personality on the highest traffic forums can't hurt.

Have you given thought to creating link bait? You know, like a page called "Top Ten Ways To Control Your Anger".

One quick thing to do is to make it easier for happy readers to link to your site. I have a free "link to this site" tool you can add to the end of all your articles if you wish. You can also stick your link inside the tool and share it with others.

Here's a link building tips article that probably has some ideas you haven't tried yet. It's been around awhile, perhaps you've seen it.

http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml

As you well know, sometimes less is more. Perhaps taking a break from working so hard, getting some quality time off, and focusing on doing truly nothing for a bit might inspire the kind of original creative ideas that are often necessary to get the viral link train up and running.

I just spent most of the winter here in Florida out in the woods all day almost every day, clearing my mind of huge piles of crap, and I must say, it really really helped. Sometimes on the net, the harder we work, the behinder we get.

We're all VERY jaded aren't we?, and it's usually only the truly original ideas that will get us fired up, and telling our friends etc. Your mindfulness expertise may well be exactly the tool you need to make that creative breakthrough.

Best of luck!

Phil

[cpmhere]

Hi Phil. What a great response, full of excellent suggestions and insights. It's funny you suggested taking time off; i'm heading out this very morning for a week down south - I'm living in Sao Paulo for six months, came here to get away from my life in Canada and focus on this business - to a beach city called Florionopolis, to relax and have some space from it all. Although I am taking my computer and will still work, it will be a break from the long days on the computer, allowing things to settle, as you said.

Thanks for your insights about cold calling. I was getting that feeling, and thinking of abandoning the strategy altogether. Personally I don't read things people send me, ever, so why would others? It seems we are overwhelmed times ten with information and we choose what we consume by finding it on our own. So that's a bunch of time I can stop wasting right there...

I have started to connect more with mindfulness communities in my networking. I got signed on yesterday with Toronto Mindfulness, an online community of mindfulness professionals who network. So that kind of thing is probably a good way to go. I'll check out the eckhare tolle forms, that sounds interesting. There are probably other mindfulness forums I can participate in as well.

I wrote around forty articles for hubpages, squidoo, and about 20 other content sites. However I read an article a couple weeks ago about how google just dropped the content farms from their rankings, and the article was saying they have lost most of their link juice.

Thank you for your offer of your link sharing tool. I have share tools at the bottom of my articles so that should be good. I recently installed a comments component - my site is a joomla site which doesn't have native comments - which has a very attractive presentation including share tools.

I've used that compete tool and it was helpful. It's probably worth a revisit to see how things have changed since I first checked. I'll read the seotools article now, looking forward to what it has to say..

Your help is much appreciated

[ChristineCobb]

You could choose 2 or 3 people to whom you sent requests and:
--sign up for their list
--comment on their blog posts with meaty, valuable info
--retweet their tweets
--add likes or comments on Facebook
--post a blog review of their product
--become active in their forum

In other words, get on their radar screen and go through the Know-Like-Trust stages. You could then interview them on a teleseminar or Blog Talk Radio show. (BTW--Blog Talk Radio is good for SEO also).

[Phil Tanny]

It's funny you suggested taking time off; i'm heading out this very morning for a week down south -

Excellent, have fun!

to a beach city called Florionopolis, to relax and have some space from it all.

You're living on a beach?? Hoo boy, now I'm getting really angry that you mentioned that.

Thanks for your insights about cold calling. I was getting that feeling, and thinking of abandoning the strategy altogether.

Maybe there's a way to make it work, that would be great. But I don't know what it is myself. No matter what I write, what I offer, who I send it too, always a waste of time.

Personally I don't read things people send me, ever, so why would others?

People read things from their friends, so the trick is to be a friend before we make our proposal. So social networking may be the way to proceed. We're doing it here and now of course.

I have started to connect more with mindfulness communities in my networking.

Neato, go for it. Mindfulness, psychology, health issues, it seems an endless opportunity for you.

There's a really interesting connection between mindfulness and internet business. A lack of mindfulness is the source of most of our consumer economy, imho. So, if you teach everybody mindfulness, our customers will wander off in to contentment, our net businesses will collapse, and it'll be all your fault. And then all of us here on the forum will be REALLY ANGRY with you!! Then you can sell us the class.

There are probably other mindfulness forums I can participate in as well.

Mindfulness forums are interesting. Big groups of people writing endlessly about the limits of thought, with plenty of spicey personality conflict seasonings included. I do it myself fairly often, and enjoy the ridiculous irony of it.

However I read an article a couple weeks ago about how google just dropped the content farms from their rankings, and the article was saying they have lost most of their link juice.

I heard this rumor as well, and it makes sense. Most link tactics meet this fate sooner or later. Any time we can vote for ourselves, the engines will smell election fraud.

Thank you for your offer of your link sharing tool. I have share tools at the bottom of my articles so that should be good.

Those share tools surely do work technically, and are in very wide use, but they're not much in the compelling call to action department.

A real share tool should be customizable with your own personality, grab the reader's attention, give them a big hug, and beg for their support. That is, it should sell them on doing what you want them to do.

A real share tool should also sell itself, so that while your readers are grabbing your link, they're also grabbing your share tool to install on every page of their own sites, with your link inside.

And then, when their readers see that share tool too, and grab it for themselves as well, it's still got your link inside. And virally so on...

It's fun to meet somebody who is interested in both mindfulness AND net biz, it's usually one or the other. Glad to meet ya, hope to see you around.

[cpmhere]

Chris; Great suggestions! I'm figuring this out slowly that I need to really connect with people and build relationships. There are no 'quick paths', which is as it should be really. Thanks for the reminder, and I'll put it to good use.

[cpmhere]

Great post once again Phil!! Lot's of food for though here, and some good chuckles too Your trajectory for my business is truly visionary!

I don't know about custom share tools. I searched google a couple of pages and only see this for facebook and twitter icons. I think I know what you mean though. Create an attractive button, and allow people to download it, and it has my link coded in...? It sounds like a great idea.

[Phil Tanny]

Ok, I found a problem. You're too nice, and I'm not getting angry enough. I think it's all that mindfulness you're doing. You'd better cut it out if you want this business to succeed.

Sorry, working way too many hours, getting slap happy silly here.

Sorry again, regarding share tools, I've been talking in a clueless, confusing and vague manner. Trying to say, I have the share tool I described, and will share it with you if that is of interest.

You asked about getting more links. One good source are your happy readers, as you already know.

What I'm suggesting is that if you want these happy readers to go beyond being just happy, to actually taking the action you desire, you may want to give them some encouragement.

You could do this within your current setup just by putting your photo at the bottom of each article, with a quick friendly cheerful sentence begging for a link. "Ask for the sale", so to speak.

However it's worded, the basic message can be...

"See my photo, I'm a human being, not a web page. If you enjoyed this page, I just did something for you. If you are able to do something for me in return, it would mean a lot to me, be a big help, and will be greatly appreciated!"

Or other words to that effect.

You came here, and asked for help building links. So, ask your readers for help too.

Our share tool is customizable, so you can do all this within the share tool itself. But obviously, you can also do this requesting next to the share tool you already have.

The one thing our tool can do, that I believe yours can't, is be a viral link builder. Here's how that works.

Your readers can grab the share tool off your site, and install it on their site. A link to your site is within your share tool, so you get a link from every page of their site.

So now we're on your reader's site. Their readers can also grab the share tool, and install it on their own sites, and it still contains your link. Anybody who sees your share tool on any site on the net can grab it, and install it, containing your link.

Thus, the share tool becomes a viral thingy containing your link that people pass around, from one site to the next.

It won't explode your traffic or anything, but it's one more easy thing to do that can be working for you for years to come.

Anyway, point being, other than being a jolly jokester etc, this is probably the best thing I have to offer in response to your question.

[jgant]

Great site.

For more backlinks try blog commenting. Find blogs that have dofollow commenting enabled (Lynn Terry's blog is dofollow).

Read the post and then post a quality comment.

You can get started fast by going to the CommentLuvNetwork. Enter your keyword and tons of blogs will get listed that have dofollow comments. You can use related keywords if you like as well such as 'health', 'self-help', etc.

CommentLuv works by linking to your most recent blog post. Most blogs in the CommentLuv Network offer a dofollow link to your recent post. This is a great and easy method for links, but the downside is that your links are always to your recent blog post.

Mix it up by finding other dofollow blogs where you can then link to your home page. Seek out high PR URLs to get some coveted high PR links.

All other suggestions set out above are good as well.

[cpmhere]

Ok, I found a problem. You're too nice, and I'm not getting angry enough. I think it's all that mindfulness you're doing. You'd better cut it out if you want this business to succeed.

Actually I have a little bit of social difficulty, the being too nice thing, it's true. I struggle knowing how to respond to people. It slows me way down with the social networking...

Thanks very much for offering to share your share tool. Is there someplace where I can see it working? It sounds like a great idea...