Denise wrote about getting backlinks from Amazon, by writing a review of a book, and posting your profile on Amazon, with links to your site and blogs, over at our Build a Better Blog.

Since your site or blog is judged to be important by the search engines such as Google if great big important sites (like Amazon) link to you, this makes sense. Here’s some excerpts from the article, Backlinks from Amazon.com

Maybe I’m missing something here and web/SEO gurus who know way more about this can add to my limited knowledge, but if you were to set up a profile on Amazon.com that includes a link to your blog, then post book reviews, create Listmania lists and guides, wouldn’t that help your pagerank?

At the very least it can help create awareness for you and your business. If your review is substantial and provocative, a reader might click on the link for your name. That takes them to your profile and if that’s compelling, they may click on the link to your blog. Over the weekend I posted a review of Tom Antion’s book The Ultimate Guide to Electronic Marketing for Small Business.  I’m going to make a point to post book reviews from here on out and see if it makes any difference.

Do you use this as a way to drive traffic to your blog?  If so, what’s your experience?

Hate to admit this, but the astute people over at Amazon even sent me an email asking me to review the last 3 books I bought from them, and I ignored it, or rather put on my ‘to do’ list (that never gets done because it isn’t on my ‘urgent’ list).

Okay, okay, now I get why this is so important.

The Blog Squad Announces…

          Win an iPod Contest

We’re giving away 2 iPod nanos and a sleek Razer mouse
to celebrate the first year of our "Build a Better
Blog" ebook and Conversations with Experts TeleSeries.

iPod Contest:

Here’s how you can win an iPod nano loaded with our
entire Conversations with Experts TeleSeries! To
celebrate The Blog Squad’s first anniversary, Denise
and I are giving away 2 iPod nanos, plus a sleek Razer
Copperhead mouse. There are 3 ways you can win:

1. Subscribe to our ezine, Savvy eBiz Tips. All new
   subscribers are automatically entered into a random
   drawing for 1 iPod nano, preloaded with 44+ hours of
   Conversations with Experts.  Use this link to
   subscribe and enter the contest:

http://snipurl.com/SeBT_Contest

2. Enter by contributing your answer to this question:
   "In your experience, what is the most important
    marketing skill a professional must master to be
    effective in the years to come?"

We will judge the winning answer based on relevance,
utility, creativity, and "smart and savviness."

Use this link to enter your answer:

http://snipurl.com/Question_Contest

3. If you are already a Savvy eBiz Tips subscriber,
   you can win by referring the most number of friends
   and colleagues who sign up. This prize is a sleek Razer
   Copperhead mouse, the mouse that is so fast and precise,
   you will save your wrist action.  Use this link to
   make your referrals: 

http://snipurl.com/Contest_Referral

The Blog Squad’s free weekly ezine, Savvy eBiz Tips,
gives action-oriented steps for streamlining online
marketing tasks, including those for blogs,
newsletters, websites, and e-commerce systems.

We’ll be drawing the iPod and Razer mouse winners
the first week of May.

Good-luck!

Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff
The Blog Squad

Here’s a great article which describes why submitting your articles to online article directories is the thing to do for any small biz owner or professional.

It’s a post by Soni Pitts over on Squidoo and you can read it by going here.

Article Marketing is the web-based crossroads where content-hungry demand meets information-rich supply. Whether you’re a writer, a solopreneur, a regular office joe or just someone with a headful of useful knowledge, article marketing is a great way to trade information for public credit and recognition through a process that has the potential to provide amazing returns.

Don’t miss reading the full article, it’s worth it.

Steve Rubel, master blogger (www.micropersuasion.com), cites a great article on 16 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog, by John Percy. Since Denise and I wrote an article by the same name, I checked it out. Well, it was our great article, the very same as appears on page 103 of our ebook, Build a Better Blog.

Checking further, the blog where Steve found the post turns out to be a "splog", a blog that reprints copy on the web in hopes of generating key word traffic, supposedly for spam purposes. That blog doesn’t allow comments, so my investigation hit a dead end.

So I left a comment to Steve. He is an ethical sort who writes one of the best blogs around and would never misrepresent or misquote, at least not intentionally. I found other comments indicating that the so-called author John Percy has nothing to do with the blog that printed the article.

This is the first time I’ve heard about a ‘splog’ and I’m only guessing at the definition.

In any case, John Percy, wherever you are, I hope you’ll speak up and let Steve and his huge readership know that proper credit to this article belong to The Blog Squad, yours truly and Denise Wakeman.

Plagarism is up there with imitation as a form of flattery. My guess is that the Blogosphere will cry ‘foul’ and sort this out in a matter of a few days. Blogs and bloggers like to set the records straight and are able to do so fast, fast, fast.

What about you, dear readers? Have you been ‘splogged’ yet?