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Many people get frustrated when they optimize their website’s content only to find that it doesn’t make a great deal of difference to their search engine rankings.

The truth is that there is only so much that you can do with on-page optimization.

If you’re really serious about achieving top search engine rankings then you must make developing your link network a major priority.

In this video I’ll show you how to use the promotion module in Market Samurai to find good opportunities to create legitimate back links to your website.

Specifically, the three strategies we’ll be looking at in this video are:

(1) Finding relevant blogs to post genuine comments on
(2) Finding relevant forums to participate in
(3) Finding Web 2.0 pages to post comments on

Whether it’s a blog, a forum or a Web 2.0 page, the strategy is basically the same.

First you find an article online that is relevant to your website.

Next you choose to add a comment to the article.

To do this, you first type in an appropriate comment.

Next you enter your name and title including keywords if appropriate

You then enter your email address

And finally, you enter your web site URL .

When you post your comment, you will create a link that points back to your website. This is called a backlink

This backlink can provide you with traffic and potentially help improve your ranking in the search engines.

So let’s head over to Market Samurai to find out how we can find opportunities for creating backlinks.

To get started I’ll just come down here and click the ‘Promotion’ icon.

Now you’ll notice that I’m currently using my keyword ‘piano for beginners’ to look for backlinking opportunities.

The first thing I’m going to look for are blogs that I might be able to read and make comments on.

There are a number of options available here. I can choose the google blog search option, and I can also elect to search specifically for Wordpress blogs.

And down here I have access to two databases containing sites that often support follow links so I’ll include them as well.

Now all I have to do is come over here and click the ‘Find Backlinks’ button.

Market Samurai now goes out and finds blogs which are related to my keyword ‘piano for beginners’.

If I want to analyse a site in more detail, all I have to do is come down here and can click the ‘Analyze’ button.

And for this particular website, I can see that this site does not support follow links, however it does support pingbacks.

I can also see that the page rank of the website is 0 and currently it has 0 back links.

If I want to visit a particular blog that sounds like it might be relevant, all you have to do is come over here and click the title.

Market Samurai will then open up a new window and display the website.

I can then review the blog and if i have something to say that is relevant I can leave a comment and depending on how the site is set up, I might be able to include the URL of my website.

The simple rule for leaving comments on someone else’s blog is that you should alway try and add genuine value to their site.

So instead of writing a comment that is simply an excuse to try and get a link, take the time to write a comment that adds a useful insight to their blog post.

Basically, the better the quality of your comment the more notice you’ll receive from the readers of the blog.

Once you’ve entered your comment you can just come up here and click this button to close the window.

Now in addition to finding blogs to post comments on, I can also look for Web 2.0 sites such as Squidoo lenses, Hubpages, weebly.com, scribd and even yahoo answers.

So first of all, let me uncheck these boxes...

...and now I’m going to look for some Squidoo lenses that are related to ‘piano for beginners’.

I’ll just select this check box and then come over here and once again click the ‘Find Backlinks’ button.

Now if I want to analyse all of these lenses, all I have to do is come down here and click the ‘Analyse All’ button.

And to sort these lenses by their page rank or number of backlinks, all I have to do is click on the appropriate column header.

Now you might notice that all links from Squidoo make use of the ‘No Follow’ attribute which Google introduced as a way to reduce comment spamming.

This means that you probably won’t enhance your page rank by getting links from these pages, however, it is still worth making appropriate comments on these Web 2.0 sites because when you make a good comment, people might click on your link and visit your website, so it can be a valuable source of additional traffic.

So the process of exploring our Squidoo lenses is the same as it was for blogs. I simply click on a link and then I can explore the Squidoo lens and make a comment if it’s appropriate.

When I’m done, I just close this window and return to Market Samurai.

And the final option over here is the Forum search. If I wanted to find a list of forums that are related to my keyword phrase, all I have to do choose one or more of these options which relate to different types of forum. For this example I’m going to use the Google Forum search.

So once again, I’ll just come down here and click the Find Backlinks button.

I can then analyze these forums and sort them by page rank.

Then to visit the forums I just come over here and click on this link.

In order to make a comment in a forum, you’ll usually have to register and then you may or may not be allowed to include a link to your website in your signature. That all depends on the rules of the forum.

If you are allowed to include your website address in your signature, the best way to create forum backlinks is to genuinely participate in the forum community - And remember to always try and add genuine value.

So as you can see, Market Samurai makes it extremely easy to find blogs, forums and web 2.0 sites on which you can leave comments and thereby create backlinks to your own website.