Whether you wish to achieve high rankings in Google for topics like RC racing or dog training, backlinking is absolutely essential. In today’s world, simply putting content on a website doesn’t work anymore. Backlinking must enter the picture if you wish to increase your visitors and advertising revenue.

Over 10 years in the online marketing business has taught me that traffic equals money. If you can regularly pull in targeted traffic, you can easily make significant amounts of money. But is it really possible to get a steady stream of traffic without spamming Google or spending hours publicizing your website online?

The answer is yes, and backlinking can do the trick.

The PAD Technique

Without a doubt, the PAD (Professional Article Distribution) technique is the best way to craft a successful backlinking campaign. I developed this system near the end of the link sharing boom when it became clear that new techniques would have to be used to rank highly in search engines.

It should be noted that this is not the same thing as article marketing, which makes use of duplicate content. Search engines will penalize you for this. Instead, the focus is on constructing high-quality content that can bring you new visitors and quality backlinks.

There are four main steps to the PAD technique, and they are as follows:

• Selecting quality websites to host your articles on
• Crafting interesting, informative articles
• Selecting appropriate anchor text
• Being “picky” about where to host your articles

A good PAD campaign can take some time and energy to set up, but the rewards can make it completely worth it.

Step 1: Find appropriate websites

The PAD technique is all about targeted article distribution, meaning that you’ll have to find the best sites on which to host your articles. However, this does not necessarily mean websites that are the same topic as your article.

Instead of asking competitors to host your articles, ask related and relevant websites that might feature similar topics.

Some examples of this might be:

1. Asking a website that markets cell phones to host an article for their audience about how they get savings on roaming charges for long distance calls
2. Asking a website that talks about family to host an article for their audience that offers tips on how they can use Skype to connect with their loved ones
3. Asking a website that discusses saving money to host an article for their audience that offers advice on how to reduce long distance expenses.

Step 2: Craft an article

Although writing articles for yourself can be a good solution if you are knowledgeable about the subject, I personally prefer outsourcing for this. Paying others to write your articles can save time and effort, and it allows you to multitask much more easily.

Websites such as Elance can allow you to find freelance writers who can write high-quality articles for an inexpensive price in a short amount of time.

Step 3: Select two landing pages for your website

In your articles, you will link to certain pages on your website with quality anchor text (more on that later). It is important to select appropriate landing pages that push your visitors to do what you wish them to do on your website.

• If you want visitors to subscribe, place a sign-up form “above the fold.”
• If you are looking to sell something, send them to a review page
• If you wish to develop returning visitors, direct them to interesting content

Step 4: Construct a list of anchor text keywords

Search engines such as Google rely on anchor text when they build their search engine rankings, whether they are for car insurance quotes, to lift chair reviews, inflatable boats, wood routers, doll houses, or even arc welders. With the PAD technique, it is important to select quality anchor text so that Google will rank your websites high in their search engine listings.

Think about the types of people that might visit your website and consider what they would type into Google when searching for your website. For example, a specific group of people might type “long distance services” rather than “long distance plans.”

I use a fantastic tool called Google AdWords’ Keyword Tool to help me with this. It doesn’t cost anything, and it gives you a handy list of keywords that you can rely on for building your list of anchor text keywords.

(Tip: Place at least two links to your website in each article)

Step 5: Check the quality of your articles

Although it sounds somewhat cliché, content is still king. Ensure that your articles are high quality, informative, and easy to read.

• If you can`t think of an article topic, ask the webmaster whose website you wish to place the article on.
• Consider the website you are writing for when you write your article.
• Utilize short paragraphs, bullets, subheadings, and a significant amount of white space.

Step 6: Write a killer headline

Try to hook your readers with a quality headline to get them to read the rest of the article. Having a funny headline can be good, but you’ll want to keep it short – less than 10 words is generally considered good.

Tip: Consider the webmasters as well when you write the headlines.

Step 7: Place anchor text throughout the article

Although content is the most important thing in the PAD technique, anchor text is also crucial. Include relevant anchor text throughout your article, and ensure that the webmaster doesn’t remove or change the anchor text when they publish your article.

Step 8: Create connections with webmasters

The nice thing about the PAD technique is that it can be repeated over and over again. For this reason, it is a good idea to build quality relationships with the webmasters that publish your articles. If your goal is to rank highly in search engines such as Google for keywords like Golden technologies lift chairs, inflatable boats, Bowflex dumbbells, or long distance, try to build a quality relationship with webmasters so that they will publish more of your articles.

Step 9: Follow up with the webmasters

It’s easy for webmasters to get busy and forget about publishing your articles.
If they haven’t posted your article in about a week, feel free to send them a friendly reminder via email – they have probably just forgotten.

Step 10: Repeat the technique

Repetition is the best way to be successful with the PAD technique. Concentrate on getting a high volume of articles out before you take a break.

You should also analyze the good parts and bad parts of the current articles in your campaign. If you can tell what went wrong and what went right with your past articles, you will have greater success when you send out your next articles.

How the PAD technique has worked for me

Ever since 2004, I have made use of as well as taught this technique. For myself and many of my students, it has led to great success in the online marketing world.

About James

James Martell is a successful author, podcaster, and speaker. He’s a leading expert in affiliate marketing and outsourcing as well as a specialist in SEO. James is host of the Affiliate Buzz podcast on WebmasterRadio.FM (the first ever and longest running podcast about the affiliate industry), and creator of the Affiliate Marketers SUPER BootCamp where he teaches others how to make money with affiliate marketing. He lives in White Rock BC, a seaside suburb of Vancouver on west coast of Canada with his wife, Arlene.

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