Creating Your Own Web 2.0 Backlinks
I've written several articles in the past about the traditional ways to acquire links to your website, which include blog comments, forum posts and link exchanges with other sites within your industry. In my next few posts, I'm going to discuss Web 2.0 backlinks. Creating this kind of backlink is another method to get links to your website to help boost your ranking with Google. This particular method is unlike my previous posts about link exchanges with strangers. Instead, you will learn how, where, and why to create other mini-sites that link back to your main site. As a reminder: back links are important. A link from a strong site is like a vote of coolness for your website. The stronger the site, the more influence that vote has with Google rankings.
When people first learn about the method Google uses to rank sites in its search results, more than a few probably think "I'll make several websites, point them at each other, dominate the Google rankings and then dive into my swimming pole of money like Scrooge McDuck." There are two main problems with this, mainly that it takes a huge investment in time and money.
The time investment is obvious: building and maintaining a decent website can be a grueling process. The money issue comes from the fact that Google is aware that people try this tactic, so they ignore links to a website from other websites hosted by the same IP address. You would have to have a different hosting plan on different servers for each one of your sites in order to make this method work. I'm far too busy and cheap to make either one of these things happen.
The basic concept of making your own backlinks is getting a little bit easier thanks to "web 2.0″ sites like Squidoo.com and Hubpages.com . Sites like these make it fairly simple to make a small, single-page "micro site" with content about any topic you want. A lot of SEO professionals call the links created from these sites "Web 2.0 Backlinks". These types of sites virtually eliminate the two problems addressed above, as they are easy to make (once you get the hang of it) and they are free. With sites such as these, you can create your personal army of tiny micro-sites that can contain a link to your main site. The reason I'm going to do a different post for Squidoo and Hub is because they are not always the most intuitive sites to use. (Just ask Lizzy.) It's important to understand the different building blocks to make links from the micro-site count as votes in Google's eyes. In addition, keep in mind these are not one-shot solutions. Micro-sites like these are like house plants and require a little bit of time and periodic fertilizing to keep them alive.
What kind of web 2.0 backlinks are right for you?
If you're wondering what type of content to write about, write about whatever people could be searching for that you would like to lead them to you. If you write science fiction books, it's probably not a bad idea to write a few pages about those. Lizzy writes romance ebooks so I made a Squidoo page about… wait for it… Romance eBooks at http://www.squidoo.com/romance-ebooks . Her books are popular with young adult readers so I made a page about young adult authors at http://www.squidoo.com/young-adult-ro... . Now there are two sites about topics related to Lizzy with links to Lizzy's site. Since I keep them up-to-date - and they're not hosted on our server – Google counts them as votes (not huge votes but votes nonetheless) and all is right with the world. Web 2.0 backlinks at their finest and easiest.
Are web 2.0 backlinks worth the time?
If the question in your mind isn't "what should I write about?" but rather "are making these worth it?" then the answer for you may likely be no. Most people don't pay much attention to their search engine rankings and therefore don't care about things like this. However, if you're the type of person who monitors their search engine rankings and is tired of trying to negotiate more link exchanges (more sympathetic I could not be), then the idea of being anti-social and creating your own link may sound like the greatest thing ever.
I'll probably end up doing several more web 2.0 backlinks posts but my first two will be a Squidoo article and video this week (Thursday) and a Hub page article and video next week. As always, feel free to shoot me any question and you'll receive my uneducated but honest opinion. 
