Thanks for all your replies and comments on the survey! I really appreciate it, and it looks like linking is the overwhelming winner for the moment. 
Last week, on Friday actually I got down to business, collected my thoughts and lenses and grabbed a group of lenses I really wanted to focus on. My goal is to get these 14 lenses to the first page of Google.
Once you get a lot of lenses it’s pretty easy to lose focus on the actions that drive you toward your goal, and much easier to just keep doing the stuff you like (which for me is building new lenses lol). Let’s take a look at what these lenses were doing on Friday ~ 10/16. (some of these are old and some are new, some have better kw than other ~ and some I picked new keywords to focus on)
3 Were on Page 1 for main keyword.
4 were not even indexed
2 were ranking on page 3 or lower
5 were indexed but no where to be found
Here’s what I did on Friday ~ yes, just this past Friday.
1. Submitted posts to 4 different free ad blogs. I used all the links in 1 post ~ just did a best gifts for type of post, and then split the lenses into gift types ~ outdoor, the cook, kids etc. I then wrote a quick paragraph about each item and linked back to the lens using my keywords as the anchor text.
2. Sent a total of 18 posts out using 1 Way Links, but the posts went out a few a day over a couple days. You can only have 3 links per article, but they can be within the content of the article, so I basically pulled apart the article I used on the free ad blogs and broke it down into specific product groups ~I titled my posts things like: Gifts for outdoor lovers, gifts for cooks, gifts from the kitchen ~ something like that, and then linked to 3 different lenses using the appropriate keywords as the anchor text.
Today I checked through my lenses ~ so I could write this post and see how things did ~ otherwise I would NOT have checked my stats til the end of the week. 
5 lenses on page 1 for keywords (2 of which were not indexed on Friday)
2 lenses up from page 3 to page 2
1 was indexed
5 still MIA and
1 still not indexed
This can tell you a few things, and it tells me some interesting stuff, not sure what it all means yet, but it’s interesting none the less.
The 5 MIA lenses are all lenses I built last year. They’ve sat around for a year not doing anything, and I haven’t really done anything with them. I’m not sure I’m going to put a lot of work into them though, because it seems my newer lenses are much easier to get moving around.
When you get some numbers like this you have to take a minute and think. “What am I doing to do now?”. You really have two choices. You can spend time trying to get your MIA lenses ranking or you can build more links to your lenses you can find and bring them up to the top of the first page.
Once you’ve made your decision you need a goal and a plan of action.
Goal: I’ve decided to work on getting the ones that are doing something all in the top 5 and create a few more lenses so I can meet the goal from a couple posts ago to have 10 lenses in the top 5.
Plan of action:
1. Write articles for the lenses that are working and new lenses created submit to EZA
2. Send out another round of posts through 1 way links. (if you have UAW you could use this just as easily)
3. For new lenses ~ 1 round of posts on free ad blogs (at least 4 different ones)
4. Post to my blog for current and new lenses (using anchor text for the links ALWAYS)
Then we’ll check in a week or so and see how things are doing. Don’t make this too complicated. Linking is NOT complicated, it’s just boring and tedious. 
If things are still not where I want them in a week guess what I’ll do? The same exact thing that is listed above, I’ll just do it all over again. Rinse and repeat. Once the lens is done, it’s just about creating enough backlinks to get your lens to move up the search engine rankings to where you want it.
BIG NOTE
There are tons and tons of ways to create backlinks. Do not spend a million years researching all the ways you can create links to your lenses ~ just try some different ways and see what you like. Then do that!!
You do not have to do what I do, I do it because it’s what I like to do, and it works for me. I personally don’t use much bookmarking because I don’t see a lot of return for the time I spend doing it ~ granted I don’t have software that does that for me so it is very time consuming. If you’ve seen good results with bookmarking, then do it!! If you’ve had great results with putting up a hub for your topic then do it, whatever it is that you find you like enough to keep doing, and it works KEEP DOING IT.
Here’s what I have learned over the last couple years (and it may just be me, but I’m pretty sure it’s not)
If I don’t like doing it ~ I won’t.
Doesn’t mean I’m a bad person, or I’m lazy, or whatever ~ it just is. It is nearly impossible for me to motivate myself and stay focused on tasks I just don’t like to do. (which is probably why my dishes are never done lol)
Backlinking happens to be one of those things for me ~ however, there are enough ways to build links that I’ve found a few that I actually enjoy doing, and can stay focused on. Those are the ones I do. Luckily for me they happen to work lol. So please, don’t try to force yourself into doing something that makes you miserable ~ you just won’t do it, you’ll find reasons to walk away from your computer, you’ll get discouraged because things aren’t working and you’ll eventually believe this whole stupid internet marketing thing just doesn’t work for me. Well it truly can, just stick with stuff you can tolerate ~ of find someone else to do the things you hate.
Stay tuned ~ I’m going to put together a post that links to all the posts on different kinds of linking as well as some of my other resources for linking ~ that way you can easily find what you’re looking for all in one place. Then I’ll keep adding to that post as new resources are created.
If there are specific aspects or questions you have about linking please ask them in the comment section. I’ll be glad to answer there or create a post to answer your questions.
Also ~ make good use of the search feature on this blog (right hand sidebar, just below the sign up box) ~ it can really help you find the answer to questions.
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