Video, Penguin, and Backlinks

Published: Thu, 07/12/12

I know I am! It's HOT but we're just entering our stormy season so there's a promise of rain each night. (Please, please - RAIN!)

While I'm doing a little dance hoping for some moisture, I've got some tips for you related to the use of video, an update on something I've done regarding Penguin, a new backlinking tip and a lens building service you really need to try.

VIDEO

There's no question that video can make a great backlink for your site or lenses. You can also share information in a way that you can't do in a block of text.

Some people would actually prefer to do all of their content by video while us happy-writer types often struggle to come up with a way to use video. ("Ew...my voice out loud for the world to hear?" or "I have no clue how to even do a video - where do people get those slides they use?")

Then there's the challenge of ranking when someone (or 10, 20, 30 someones) has already done a video on that product. Sometimes, if you're not the first one in, you're wasting your time doing a video on a specific product at all.

Which makes Gaz's new product very helpful. As Gaz and I both specialize in Amazon, he was kind enough to let me test out the product he's launching today. I've been playing around with it for awhile now and it's a powerful tool for those who want to explore the potential of using video for backlinks and traffic to their sites.

What makes it so special? It combines three tools to help you find products on Amazon related to YOUR niche where there is not currently a video already ranking on the first page of Google. This means that it helps you find potential products where you may be able to rank a video very quickly for something other people haven't yet used video to promote.

It will also help you find keyword domain names you can use to build sites around those products.

The tool itself is fast and easy to use. A few clicks of a button, weed out the products that already have a video and you end up with a whole list of products in your category that could use some video attention. Then you just get busy making those videos!

Okay - that's where you get stuck, right? (Not some of you - I've seen some amazing videos done from some coaching students recently. You video lovers are going to appreciate this tool immediately.)

For the easiest videos almost anyone could make, use a free screen capture tool like one of these:

Come up with some important information to share about the product. Bring the Amazon photos up for the product - one in each tab on your browser if there are multiple pictures. Bring important pages of the online manual up in other tabs on your browser. Attach a microphone to your computer (or speak into your built in mic but test the sound quality). Organize the tabs in your browser to line up with the things you want to say about the product. Start recording your screen. Talk about your important product notes while you move your browser through the product images and the information you want to highlight in the manual. Save the video, make sure the playback looks good. Convert, if necessary, to a format for YouTube, upload the video and bookmark it in a few places.

You can also embed those videos in your own review posts or lenses.

If you want to give it a try, get Amazon Treasure Hunter and get busy!

PENGUIN

Still struggling with Penguin? Me, too. Just one site was hit and I've truly believed that it had to do with lack of anchor text diversity - too many "such and such reviews" instead of "click here" or my straight URL.

However, nothing I've done has moved the site much at all until this past week. PLEASE understand - I am not a Penguin expert. I don't think there are any at the moment. However, I do want to share what I've done and what happened right afterwards. How you decide to act on this information is up to you - just tread carefully.

First, I watched these two videos:

I'm not sure I believed EVERYTHING in them but they gave me some new steps to try. I'd been very focused on off-page SEO because I was sure that was my problem but I digested the info in those videos and did the following:

Removed meta keywords from my header.php file (they were just variations of my main keyword and aren't used by Google anyway)
Removed the Category widget from my side bar (I'm not indexing those pages anyway, why send them link juice?)
Removed the Recent Comments widget from my side bar
Changed all my H2 subtitles to exclude the product name and used more human-friendly subtitles

My site had ranked #1-3 for my main keyword before Penguin and went to #200+ after. It's been bouncing between #195-200+ ever since. However, some inner pages have held firm and that's why I thought the issue was backlinks.

The first review post that was crawled by Google after I made the above changes moved up to #1 for the main keyword for that inner page (ahead of Amazon again!) AND to #105 for my site's main keyword - the highest I've been for the main keyword since Penguin. Traffic and sales have been up a bit, too. I'm waiting for the other pages to be crawled to see if there are further improvements.

Do with that what you will.

SCOOP.IT FOR BACKLINKS AND TRAFFIC

I've just started playing around with Scoop.it as a place to get more backlinks for my lenses and sites. Fortunately, these things are getting indexed in less than an hour! Unfortunately...it's addictive. :)

The site lets you curate content from around the web around a central topic of your choice. You don't have to do any writing or formatting at all:

Register for an account.
Log in and hover your mouse over My Topics in the top navigation menu.
Click on Create a Topic and fill in the requested details. Go with a long tail, non commercial title - something related to your niche but not "such and such reviews".
Click Go.
Drag the scoop.it widget to your browser bookmark toolbar.
Start browsing the web for quality content about your topic. Click on the scoop.it widget in your browser toolbar to add the page to your Topic. The widget will automatically grab the page title, meta description and images. Make sure all the boxes are filled out and Publish the page to your scoop.
Browse to one of your lenses or a page on your site and use the scoop.it widget to add that to the Topic, too.

You can have as many different Scoops going as you want.

Any time you're browsing the web and find something to add to your Topics, click on that widget and add it to the site. There are some scoops hitting PR3 and PR4 just by curating content around a niche. The links are nofollow but you can still build up traffic, too, as these can rank well over time. Plus, it's kind of fun!

LENS BUILDING SERVICE

My favorite lens builder is BACK! She's been on a long journey traveling across the states for the past several months and I have missed her dearly. She'd barely unpacked a suitcase before I sent over my first few orders for Squidoo Niche Blaster lenses. She does an amazing job and the first set she built for me as soon as she landed made its first sales yesterday. Yay!

If you're interested in having someone build QUALITY Squidoo Niche Blaster lenses for you, visit her order page here: Squidoo Niche Blaster Outsourcing

That's all for this email. Another long one but hopefully packed with some useful information.

Next week - a site building service offered by someone I've been mentoring. He's doing some amazing, quality sites and if you've been reading my emails you know I'm very selective about my outsourcers. He's building me my first completely outsourced site right now - that's how much I trust him. He's just putting the finishing touches on some outstanding orders and he and his team will be ready for more shortly.

Keep your eye on the calendar. Summer will be over before you know it and online shopping will pick up. Get your content ready!

Sincerely,

Erica Stone
erica@extremereviewer.com