Using Document Sharing Sites to Build Quality Backlinks to Your Website

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Introduction

I am about to show you a rare traffic method that will boost your article marketing skills in no time at all and little effort. This method is called ‘document sharing’. You can get a lot of traffic from document sharing websites and they’re a great alternative to article marketing directories like ezinearticles.com. Search engines love document sharing websites. With document sharing sites I am able to outrank Ezinearticles, Goarticles, Buzzle, Article Dashboard, WordPress.com, Blogger, HubPages, Squidoo and other article directory or Web 2.0 websites. There is really no comparison. Document sharing wins and is the focus of the majority my efforts now. I have found that most marketers that are article centric are mostly unaware that document sharing sites are out there. Those that do don’t know how to truly capitalize on them. In this post I will show you what I do to quickly get just about 90% of my articles to the first page of Google.

Document Sharing

Document sharing websites are sites that allow you to upload your articles as PDF’s, Word, and Powerpoint presentation (and others). Most of these websites also allow generous use of anchor text, adding a ton of value in terms of traditional article marketing.

Document Sharing vs Article Marketing

My definition of article marketing is the type of article marketing most of us are familiar with. Submitting tons of articles to Ezinearticles, Goarticles, Article Dashboard, etc. then building links to them with the hopes that some of them will rank on Google. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I’ve done a ton of article marketing (Over 500 articles published on Ezinearticles and thousands on others). Now that I’ve found document sharing I hardly ever submit to standard directories like Ezinearticles any longer. Document sharing is so strong that it is the centerpoint of my article marketing strategy.

Reasons Article Sharing is So Much Better

* Google loves the article sharing sites. Google really favors the document sharing sites. For some time I struggled to get my Ezine articles to rank. It was hit and miss, mostly miss. If I was ever lucky, maybe 10-15% of the articles I promoted ever moved to the first page of the big G. With document sharing articles, I’m darn near guaranteed to rank high for a fraction of the effort. My documents generally rank higher than my articles on all other directories or Web 2.0 sites. Matter of fact I am easily able to get 90% of the document articles I promote to the first page of Google.
* Indexed much faster. The majority of the documents I promote are indexed on Google within a few hours and often as in a few minutes! These are not temporary either. The positions hold and then climb fast when I point a few basic links at them.
* No waiting for approval. The big article directories like Ezinearticles and Buzzle sometimes take days or even weeks to approve your articles. With document sharing websites, there is no waiting period, just upload the articles and you’re in good shape
* Live links. Unlike most article directories, document sharing sites don’t limit live links to the bottom of your article in the resource box. You are allowed to add live links throughout your article… the beginning, middle, end… wherever you choose. This boosts search engine rankings as well as click through rates. You can also promote affiliate links if you choose (the only exception to this is Scribd).
* Don’t need unique content. I have many documents ranking high by just using PLR material. As long as you have distribution rights you can submit PLR content. This can save you a ton of time because you no longer have to write dozens or even hundreds of unique articles. Can PLR material rank highly even though the content can already be found on the internet? You bet! Contrary to what some may say, duplicate content CAN and WILL rank highly (especially when posting to document sharing sites). Just make sure if you’re using PLR content that the material is of high quality and follows the basic rules of being helpful and informative.
* Images are allowed. Adding clickable images to your documents adds to the overall appearance of your articles and ultimately higher click-through rates.

Best Document Sharing Sites

The following are my favorite document sharing sites. Keep in mind that this is by no means a complete list… they are simply my favorites and the ones I’ve had the most success with so far. Feel free to experiment with other document sharing sites too (I’ve listed some of the more popular ones as well).

Top 3 Personal Favorites:

1. Docstoc (http://www.docstoc.com)

Docstoc is by far my favorite document sharing site. Google seems to love these guys and I consistently rank on the first page of the serps for my Docstoc articles. They are very marketer friendly and allow a liberal use of anchor text in your documents. Docstoc also has a cool feature called DocCash that allows you to add your Adsense account to your Docstoc account and they split the profits with you.

Here’s how to setup DocCash in case that interests you:

1. Log into your Adsense account
2. Click on Adsense Setup
3. Click on Channels
4. Click on URL Channels
5. Click + Add New URL Channels
6. Enter docstoc.com and click Add Channels Docstoc rocks! But please don’t saturate this site with spam or subpar articles. Keep the quality high and Docstoc will continue to be an outstanding resource for all article marketers to benefit from long term.

2. Scribd (http://www.scrib.com) I have to be honest, I have a love/hate relationship with Scribd. I almost didn’t include them in my ‘favorites’ list because of this. However, used correctly Scribd can be an incredible source of traffic which is why I decided to include them.

But be warned: Using Scribd incorrectly will result in your accounts being banned and all your documents removed. Google loves Scribd just as much, if not more, than Docstoc. And there was a time when you could upload hundreds of article documents with live links and everything was cool. Then a certain “popular” internet marketing class recommended Scrib to their students and that’s when the site got bombarded with spam. Scribd took swift action and deleted any accounts that looked even remotely promotional. Thousands of documents were eliminated and a lot of marketer’s had all their hard work vanish practically overnight. Very similar to what a lot of marketers experienced with Squidoo. I had only one account deleted but my other ones survived. Maybe I was lucky. But I think a lot of it has to do with my “surviving” accounts having articles that are focused on being helpful and informative rather that “salesy” or promotional.

If you’re going to use Scribd make sure that your articles do not have a promotional vibe to them and only use live anchor text once (and make sure that link goes to an informative blog or website, not a sales page). Even then there is no guarantee that your Scribd account won’t get deleted. My suggestion if you’re going to use Scribd: Start off slowly and test the waters. Give them what they want – quality, helpful content. Create separate accounts for different niches and see what happens. Many of my Scribd documents are still going strong so I know it’s still possible to benefit from this great resource.

3. Slideshare (http://www.slideshare.com) Slideshare is a really cool site because you can upload Powerpoint presentations as well as PDF or Word documents. Don’t have Powerpoint? No big deal, just focus on uploading PDFs or Word docs. But if you know how to use Powerpoint then using Slideshare to upload your slide presentations is a great way to go. Also, like most document sharing sites Slideshare gets a lot of Google love!

Other Document Sharing Sites:

The following sites are ones that I’ve either dabbled in or haven’t personally used but have heard other marketers reporting success. Feel free to try these sites as well. Who knows, you may find that some of them do just as well or better than my personal top three.

1. Authorstream (http://www.authorstream.com)
Similar to Slideshare but they only allow you to upload slide presentations, (no PDFs or Word documents).
2. Calameo (http://www.calameo.com)
I’ve heard other article marketers swear by Calameo. The few Calameo articles I’ve uploaded have all done very well in the search engine rankings with very little effort on my part. Personally I think their viewing format is a bit awkward so I haven’t used them much. Word or Open Office documents seem to work better than PDFs.
3. Edocr (http://www.edocr.com)
4. Isuu (http://www.isuu.com)
5. Yudu (http://www.yudu.com)
6. Esnips (http://www.esnips.com)
7. Slideboom (http://www.slideboom.com)

WARNING! Just a quick word of caution guys… please don’t spam these sites with poor quality articles loaded with affiliate links. If these document sharing communities sense that they are being invaded by a bunch of inconsiderate marketers then they will probably take steps to delete accounts, change the TOS and basically make it difficult for any article that is even remotely promotional to be accepted. This already happened to some degree with Scribd. Let’s treat these sites with respect and offer high quality information that adds real value. That way we can all enjoy the benefits of these awesome resources for months and years to come!

How To Create Your Document

You can’t upload any old article document and expect it to magically get a massive amount of traffic. You have to pay close attention to how you optimize your documents. Do this correctly and you’ll benefit from traffic directly from the document sharing sites as well as top search engine placement. This is easy to do, you just need to pay attention to certain basic details like the following:

Article length:

I’ve found that 400-600 words works best. Font size: The vast majority of documents I see on these sites are using font that is way too small, making it hard to read online. I’ve found that a font size of 14-16 pts creates an ideal viewing format.

Title:

Save your document to your computer using the exact title you want (make sure the keyword phrase you want to rank for is included). Many of the document sharing sites automatically create a title using whatever text you originally saved your article as. I also put the title at the top of my document using a slightly larger font than the body of my article.

Anchor Text:

I like to use anchor text approximately three times in my documents. Remember, most document sharing sites will allow you to use anchor text throughout your articles. Unlike EZA or other popular article directories, you’re not restricted to just placing your anchor text at the bottom of the article in the resource box. Use anchor text in the beginning and middle of your articles as well. LSI Keywords: Create keyword-rich documents by liberally using LSI keywords throughout your articles. LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) simply means using words and phrases that are related to your main keyword. For example, if your main keyword phrase is dog then LSI keywords may include puppy, canine, pet, etc. If you write naturally then LSI keywords will usually automatically come out.

Adding a Footer:

I’ve noticed that a lot of the more popular documents use a footer in their documents. I decided to try this myself and noticed a boost in my search engine rankings.

I’m not sure why this is, but it’s so easy to do you might as well add footer to your documents too. Here’s an easy way to create a footer for your article documents:

- Create a text document using Open Office. If you don’t have Open Office you can download if for free here. Open Office is a great alternative if you don’t have Word. Open Office documents can easily be saved as PDFs too (more on using Open Office later).
- Click on Insert at the top
- Click on footer
- Choose default
- In the footer space provided, simply write or paste the title of your document. It will show up at the bottom of each page of your document.

Using Open Office To Create Text Document And PDFs

As mentioned earlier, I like to use Open Office to create my article documents. It’s a great alternative if you don’t have Microsoft Word. It’s very user friendly and you can download it free here. With Open Office you can create a Text document or save your article as a PDF. If you want a PDF with clickable links you must use the Open Office built in PDF exporter. Here’s how it works…

Creating a text document:

- Open the Open Office software
- Click on Text Document
- Create your article
- Remember to change the font size to 14-16 pts
- Use the Hyperlink button to create live links
- Click on File
- Click Save

Creating a PDF:

Follow the exact same steps as above except instead of clicking Save click Export as PDF. You will now have a PDF file with clickable links in it.

Should you create PDFs or text documents? I’ve yet to see a difference in search engine rankings or click through rates for either, so it’s really just a matter of personal preference. I’ve done both successfully.

Creating an Ebook or Report

Another option is to upload a free ebook or short report embedded with affiliate links. You can create it yourself or use PLR content, just make sure it’s high quality. If you choose a popular niche like relationships, weight loss, fitness, etc., there is a good chance you’ll get a lot of people downloading your ebook/report. The document sharing sites are active communities with members who are regularly searching for quality ebooks. Each site has it’s own culture… research what the hot niches are and give them what they want! And of course you’ll get a ton of downloads once you’ve reached a top position in the search engines as well.

How To Load Your Document

Loading your documents to the different sites is very simple and straight forward. Every site is slightly different so I’m not going to go into the exact steps required with each individual site. Just follow the instructions on each site and you should be fine. However, most document sharing sites have the following elements in common that you should be aware of when loading your articles.

Adding Your Tags:

Most sites will have an area where you can add descriptive tags. Proper tags are very important and you should provide around 30 of them for each document. Here are some easy ways to get plenty of appropriate descriptive tags: Google Keyword Tool. I’m sure most of you are familiar with this tool. If not, go here and type in your main keyword phrase and choose some keywords with a high monthly Global Search Volume. Google Wonder Wheel. This underused tool is especially good for finding great LSI keywords. Here’s how to use the Google Wonder Wheel: – Go to the Google search bar and do a search for your keyword phrase. – Click on Show options in the upper left of the page – Look at the menu on the left side and find Standard view – Under Standard view click on Wonder wheel You can now choose any of the keywords that show up on the first page or continue to dig deeper by clicking on the various phrases you see in the wheel. Youtube. Type in your keyword and do a search for videos that have a lot of views. Click on Description and you’ll see a bunch of tags listed. Use some of these.

Adding Your Descriptions:

Again, most document sharing sites will have an area where you can post a description of your article. Don’t rush through this… treat the description almost like a mini-article. This is the first thing people searching the document sharing sites will see and I believe it contributes to search engine rankings as well. Your descriptions should be very catchy, around 100-200 words and have plenty of LSI keywords. Of course include your main keyword phrase at the beginning and 1-2 more times in the body of the description. Sometimes I just use the first paragraph or two of my article and just edit it by adding a few extra keywords.

Make Public:

Many of the sites will offer you an option under Privacy of listing your documents as public or private. Always be sure to check Public.

Your Profile:

Boost your credibility by taking a few minutes and filling out your profile and adding a photo.

How Many Documents To Upload?

There is no absolute rule as far as how many documents you should upload. That being said, my philosophy is the more the better… as long as the quality is still high. If you have a niche that you know is profitable then by all means submit as many articles to the document sharing sites as possible. There is a strong chance you’ll be able to rank highly for the majority of your keywords. When I was submitting hundreds of articles to EZA, only a small fraction of them were getting any kind of significant traffic. Most of that traffic was directly from people searching the EZA directory and that only lasts about a day. I spent a lot of time building backlinks to my articles in an effort to get them to rank high on Google. Only a small fraction ever made it to the first page, maybe 10-15%. With document sharing sites I’m able to get close to 90% of my articles to the first page of Google! This is a huge difference. So the reality is I can upload a fraction of the articles I used to with EZA but with far greater returns for my efforts. Also, with document sharing sites remember that you don’t necessarily need to write totally unique content. By using quality PLR material you can upload a lot more articles because you’re not spending hours and hours writing fresh content.

Multiple Accounts

It’s important that you create totally separate accounts with different pen names for each individual niche you’re promoting. Why? Because you look a lot more like a credible expert in a field if you just focus on one niche at a time. If someone searches for other articles written by you and sees that you’re jumping all over the place and writing about relationships, weight loss, internet marketing, etc., it takes away from the credible expert factor. Also, creating multiple accounts gives you a bit more security. If one of your accounts gets deleted you still have others ones as back up and you won’t lose all your hard work. This is unlikely to happen as most document sharing sites like Docstoc are very relaxed about promotional marketing documents as long as the quality is there. But things can change (as they did with Scribd) and it’s a good idea to be prepared. Only submit quality articles, spread your documents/niches over multiple accounts and everything should be fine.

Boosting Your Search Engine Rankings

Just mention the word backlinks and a lot of article marketers will cringe and run the other way! Backlinking often brings to mind hours upon hours of tedious and repetitive tasks with the hopes of maybe inching forward in the search engine rankings. That’s certainly how it was for me when I was building backlinks to my articles on ‘regular’ article marketing directories. Does the above scenario sound familiar? If so, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find that boosting the search engine rankings for your document sharing site articles is MUCH easier!

As I’ve mentioned earlier, Google loves document sharing sites and responds VERY favorably to any extra backlink building you may do. If you have a backlink building approach that you’re comfortable with then by all means apply it to your document sharing articles. I’m certain you’ll get much better results for a fraction of the work. And the great thing is you won’t have to spent countless hours building hundreds or even thousands of backlinks. I know this may sound too good to be true, but in fact I can often can get an article ranked on the first page with only a couple social bookmarks and a handful of high PR profile backlinks (like Angela’s packets – more on that later).

The following steps are what I personally use to consistently rank on the first page of Google for almost 90% of my document sharing articles. This is a proven backlink building strategy that will work for you too.

* Ping your document. Immediately after uploading your article, ping the article url at either Pingler, Pingomatic, or Pingoat.
* Social bookmarking. No need to get carried away here, just sumbit to Digg and Reddit. Yep, just those two. As a matter of fact, I can usually get my articles indexed in the first hour or two (and often in a few minutes) by simply submitting to Digg. Your Digg submissions will usually get indexed quickly as well. Later on if you want to give your document another boost go ahead and submit to some of the other social bookmarking sites too. Socialmarker works fine for this.
* High PR profile page backlinks. I specifically use Angela’s backlink packets for this. If you don’t know what Angela’s backlink packets are you can check them out here (only $5 per month). However, the problem with using these profile page backlinks is that many of them are not spidered by Google for weeks or months (or often never). If Google doesn’t know they exist then your backlinks are not going to be count. This is why you’ll hear many people saying that these types of backlinks are worthless. Not true. They are very effective BUT you have to make sure they get spidered and indexed by Google as quickly as possible.

Here is a method I use to get my profile page backlinks indexed quickly:

RSS feed method. This involves creating RSS feeds out of your profile backlink urls. This isn’t as technical as it may sound.

It’s actually quite simple and I’ve outlined the steps below:

- Create your profile backlinks as instructed in Angela’s packets. I automate this process by using a great software called Linking Loophole. It saves me a ton of time and I highly recommend it if it’s in your budget (it costs $1 to try it for 5 days here).
- Copy and paste each individual profile page url that you create into a text file for easy reference.
- Go to HTML2RSS and register a free account (this is a free service that allows you to take all your profile urls and mash them into one RSS feed that you can submit to the RSS aggregators).
- Once you’ve created your free account, click on URLs 2 feed
- Copy and paste your profile urls into the space provided (only add 15-20 urls at a time. Any more than that and the site becomes unreliable in creating a feed).
- Click on Create RSS Now!
- You will now have a new RSS feed url that is made up of your combined profile backlinks. You can now promote your new RSS feed to the RSS aggregators. This will get your profile backlinks spidered and indexed very quickly. You only have to submit your feeds to the aggregators once.

Here are two ways to do this:

A. Post manually to the RSS aggregators. Here is a list of some of the best RSS aggregators:

* BadRSS.com
* Friendfeed.com
* Feedraider.com
* Feedage.com
* Rss2.com
* RssMountain.com
* Postrank.com

B. Use software to automate your RSS feed submissions. I recommend Badassrss (It costs $1 to try it for 3 days here). Two other good ones are RSS Feeds Submit or RSSBot. If you really want to save time, I recommend using one of the RSS submitters listed above. Of course if you’re on a tight budget then it’s perfectly fine to do these tasks manually. That’s how I did it in the beginning. But once you can afford it then it just makes sense to use some of these tools to make your life easier.

Some details on how to create profile backlinks:

If you’re using Angela’s backlink packets (or any other profile style backlinks) there is a certain formula I follow that seems to be very effective. For each profile I create, I usually add 4 links with different anchor text. I know that some people even add more.

Alternative backlinking process:

There is another way to get your profile page backlinks indexed very quickly that involves using a free Blogger blog and there is no software required. I was going to outline the method here but then realized it wouldn’t be fair to the creator of this method who is also a fellow Warrior Forum member. The course that teaches this method only costs $7 and has a money back guarantee. If you’re interested click here to visit the sales page. It’s a pretty cool method and I highly recommend checking it out here.

Ok, let’s recap the 5 step basic backlink building strategy:

1. Ping your document url
2. Submit to Digg and Reddit.
3. Create some profile page backlinks using Angela’s backlink packets (1-2 packets to start is good).
4. Create RSS feeds out of your profile page urls and submit to the RSS aggregators.
5. If needed, create some more profile page backlinks (but no more than twice per week).

That’s it. Rinse and repeat the above steps for your other article documents and the majority of the time you’ll hit the first page of Google rather quickly. Of course you need to be realistic about the keyword phrases you’re targeting. Don’t expect to get the #1 slot for ridiculously competitive terms like weight loss, etc. But for keyword phrases that have a competition of 200,000 in quotes or a bit higher is definitely very realistic. With the document sharing sites it’s common to see your document get indexed VERY quickly… often in an hour or so. Then the “Google dance” will kick in and it may disappear for a couple days and come back at a higher position. The basic rules of article marketing still apply to document sharing sites. The big advantage of these sites is that it’s much easier to get high rankings than with “traditional” article marketing directories. But it can still take some time and patience especially with the more competitive keywords. That being said, you are definitely going to get much better and faster results with your backlink building than with any other article marketing directory. I’m thrilled about my results and I’m sure you will be too. I now have total confidence that I’m going to be properly rewarded for my efforts and that I’m not just shooting in the dark.

Note: The above backlink building strategy is not written in stone.
As mentioned earlier, if you have your own method of backlinking you’re comfortable with then by all means use it. The method I outlined here is one I’m comfortable with and I know it works. Plus I use software to automate many of the tasks so it goes pretty fast.

Conclusion

Are you starting to see the power of document sharing? I hope you’re getting excited about the possibilities that are about to open up for you with this method. Imagine having dozens or even hundreds of your article documents at the top of Google, all bringing you sales and residual income for months or even years! Document sharing is hands down one of the best ways to get your articles consistently, quickly and easily to the front page of Google.

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