BANS: Building Targeted Links and Authority

By becoming involved in specific communities you can promote your BANS sites, build links, and possibly make money all at the same time! Build buzz for your BANS site AND your blog!

This is installment #6 of “Watch Me Build a Niche Site From Scratch”, and since our BANS test site still has a google penalty and/or is in the “Google Sandbox” (read the last installment) - we’re going to start building some more “targeted” links back to our BANS niche store. We’re not going to see results overnight with this, but over time this can and will dramatically help our store with both relevant backlinks and possibly traffic!

If you are building BANS stores (or any niche sites) there are two communities you should know about right now.

Both of the communities above allow you to “author” your own targeted pages (as many as you want) on specific (or broad) niche topics. Want to become an expert of learning guitar? Maybe you love origami? Write about travel topics, cars, or sports! Whatever you choose, these niche pages have the ability to promote your BANS or Build a Niche Store better than anything you’ve seen. Why build a single link when you can build an entire relevant page! And the best part is, if your page is successuful (on hubpages or squidoo) you can earn money there too!!

First view the pages that I created for our BANS test store as part of our series “Watch me Build a BANS Niche Store from Scratch“:

My Used Cell Phones Squidoo “Lens”

My Used Cell Phones “Hub”

The process of building your own page is nearly identical at both Squidoo and HubPages. Select a (not already taken) name, click “ok”, add “modules”, publish! Both sites have similar modules, “text”, “Amazon”, “eBay”, “polls”, and more. Squidoo has more robust modules since they’ve been around longer, both sites allow you to pull images from flickr. Both sites allow you to earn commissions from affiliate sales, but at HubPages you actually get to enter your Amazon, Adsense, and eBay affiliate ID’s for direct commissions. Squidoo I believe pays you a percentage.

At both sites when you build a page (”hub” or “lens) it’s like you’re building a mini web site all on one page. You squeeze as much original content in as you can about the subject, then add relevant modules for either additional content or relevant monetizations (like items from eBay or Amazon). The give and take of Squidoo and HubPages is no different than submitting articles to Ezine Articles or working the Entrecard system. Creating a page is great, but you are expected to promote it a bit by commenting on other people’s pages or using the forums. This will raise your “score” (hubpages) and “rank” (squidoo). You “could” spend as much time modifying these pages as you do an entire blog or BANS store - I recommend that you try not to lose yourself in these as you will quickly lose 1/2 a day (they are addictive!). I could write dozens of posts just on the ins and outs of creating Squidoo lenses and HubPages hubs.

The thing that’s unique about these community type “all-in-one” promo pages are all the different things they can be used for. You are building a targeted keyword laden page containing new original content that can obtain it’s own pagerank over time and promoting it. Within that page is a link to your BANS site, you could even link several pages within your niche store. You can link back to your relevant blog(s), web sites, forums, or whatever else you have. If you promote well you can build traffic to both these pages AND your BANS store.

The potential is unlimited because you can created UNLMITED hubpages and lenses at both these sites. For instance, I created the default page about “used cell phones” at both Squidoo and HubPages which links to my BANS store, and my cell phone blog. Backlink, traffic, and monetization all at once! But, I could create many, many more pages on specific topies linking back to BANS content pages, BANS product pages - linking to specific accessories, cell phones, plans, parts, and more! Imagine a dozen pages on Squidoo and a dozen pages on HubPages all pointing to a BANS site home page and deep linking inside pages! If you promote these pages well and become an authority in these communities the targeted links you cultivate will gain their own pagerank and become better for the health of your BANS site than hundreds of blog comments or forum posts!

Have a special way you drive traffic to your BANS site? Comment now!

Tags: BANS, hubpages, links, niche store, promotion, squidoo, traffic, tutorial