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Rochelle
Of the many ways you can get backlinks to your Build A Niche Store (aka BANS) sites have you thought about using Kaboodle? I know I didn’t and I use Kaboodle quite a bit to make lists.
If you are scratching your head wondering what Kaboodle is I’ll give a brief explanation. Kaboodle is a site where you can create lists of items. These can be wishlists (things you want for Christmas or your birthday), shopping lists (things you are going to buy), or lists for any other reason you can think of.
So, how does this relate to your BANS site? You can submit pages from your sites to Kaboodle with little effort on your part. Making your Kaboodle lists public (which I will detail in the instructions) means people searching for like items may come across your lists. It also means the list items may be found in search engine searches.
Yesterday was the first time I added any of my BANS site pages to Kaboodle. It took less than 12 hours for Google to show results from my Kaboodle list. Pretty nifty!
As a side note, if you haven’t heard of Kaboodle before it is an excellent way to create wishlists of items from any web site. I use it to compile items my children want for Christmas and then email their wishlists to grandparents.
My instructions to use Kaboodle to promote BANS sites |
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Step One
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| Go to Kaboodle and create an account (if you don’t yet have one). | |
| Note: Do not choose the Skip all steps option immediately after signing up. You can skip steps one and two of the sign up process but do NOT skip step three. Step three is critical to promoting your sites. | |
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When you get to a screen that looks like this one make sure you click the ‘Get the buttons‘ button to install Kaboodle in your toolbar:
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| There are a few ways you can add Kaboodle to your browser. I use the Firefox extension and it works great. | |
| After you install Kaboodle you should see Kaboodle in your browser’s toolbar. You may need to restart your browser for this to happen. | |
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I have two ways to use Kaboodle. I have a Kaboodle toolbar (which I don’t use and turn off) and I have two buttons on my main toolbar. Find which works best for you. Here is an image of my Kaboodle buttons:
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| Step Two | |
| Go to the store that you want to promote. Do not log in to Admin, just go to the store itself. | |
| Browse through your categories until you find one you want to promote. For these instructions I will use my Not Only Ringtones store as an example. | |
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Step Three
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Add your site’s category page to Kaboodle by clicking the ‘Add to Kaboodle‘ button or link. In my case I am clicking on this button:
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| You will be taken away from your site and sent to Kaboodle. You may need to log in to your account or it may take you directly to your account if you are already logged in. | |
| Step Four | |
| Choose the attributes for the page you are submitting. | |
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If this is the first page from your site that you are submitting you will want to create a new list. Click on the ‘Create a new list‘ link:
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For my example I named my new list ‘Cell Phones and Ringtones‘. |
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| Step Five | |
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After you click on ‘Create a new list‘ a new set of options will become available. Make sure you make your list public so that any one (including search engines) can see your list. The options I chose for my example are: |
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| Step Five | |
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Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the ‘fix details‘ link near the bottom as this will show additional options:
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| Step Six | |
| Review each option and change them to whatever you like (the additional options available after you click the ‘fix details’ link will show up under the link you clicked): | |
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| Step Seven | |
| Scroll back to the top of the page to ‘Review Item.’ This is how your site’s page will be displayed in Kaboodle. If you don’t like how it looks you can edit any aspect of it until you are satisfied with the results. | |
| There are two more things to do before you are done. First, enter a comment. What you say will be up to you. For this example I entered, "This is a great place to find parts and accessories for just about any cell phone." | |
| Next, enter keywords and phrases in the ‘Item Tags‘ section. Use as many as you’d like and be specific. For this example I entered, "cell phone, cell phones, cell phone parts, cell phone accessories, cell phone accessory." | |
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When you are satisfied with the results scroll down to the bottom and click the ‘Submit‘ button:
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| After you click submit you will be returned to your site. | |
| Step Seven | |
| Repeat the above steps for as many pages as you want to submit from your store. | |
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Note: When you add pages to an existing Kaboodle list you will notice the option to ‘Select a section‘ or ‘Create new section.’ I do not know what this is so I leave setting at default:
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done
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There you have it. An easy way to share your site on Kaboodle.
After I wrote these instructions I added 10 pages from my Not Only Ringtones store to a Kaboodle list. It took me 16 minutes to add the 10 pages. I’m sure this time will be less as I get better at this.
Rochelle
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Thanks Rochelle for this great idea and instructions. I totally suck at getting links, this will help out a lot!
Adrienne
Brilliant, Rochelle! I digg it.
Nice! Many thanks for your efforts. Your instructions are very clear and easy to follow.
Thanks Rochelle, just got a Kaboodle link up for my new website, http://www.bestgpssite.com - didn’t know about this service so owe it to you and your working brain for this idea.
cheers
Graham
Graham - As much as I’d like to take credit for this idea I can’t. I saw it one someone else’s blog. But he pretty much said, “List your pages on Kaboodle” and left it to each reader to figure out how to accomplish this. I took it a step further by explaining exactly how to do this.
I have other promotional methods that I’ll be writing instructions to over the next few weeks.
Rochelle
Thanks Rochelle….every little bit helps.
Al
Hi Rochelle,
I am a little confused about adding subsequent pages. Do you mean to begin an entirely new “List” for each new page in our website? (I got one page added, and then got confused about adding more…looks like a great tool)
Yael
Yael - I’m glad you asked because if this confuses you then it confuses others. No, do not create a new list for every page. Create one list for each niche store. Then add additional pages from a store to the list you created for it.
If this doesn’t answer your question please let me know.
Rochelle
Thanks Rochelle,
I tried adding more pages and it works nicely. I am digging into my Child Safety Products site and inserting additions for each category. Great idea to get more in depth links.
Yael
You Rock Rochelle, I cannot wait to try this one out. You instructions are clear and they have photos (for people like myself) I Dugg it! Waiting for your new series.
Thank you so much. This was a lot easier than it looked at first !
Is there a way for me to see someones list. Just can’t visualize how the list on Kaboodle will look using Bans site, Joette
Joette,
Sorry, I would show you what it looked like but my Kaboodle account got banned and my list went bye-bye. If you use this method do so sparingly!
Rochelle
Thanks, Rochelle - as usual, another helpful posting for us noobs.
And thanks for the warning - I’m sorry to hear Kaboodle banned you.
Will you be able to re-apply?
James,
If you get banned from Kaboodle then you do need to reapply using a different email address (I think, it’s been a while since I did this). But you will lose all the lists you created, and the information on them, for the account that got banned.
Rochelle
Good to know. Thank You for everything. Have a good summer. Enjoy. Joette
What a PITA!
Still, a free link is a free link, so I guess it’s worth having several online personas. Today I think I’ll be ‘Mandy’…
Hi R,
What a great site you have created-Well done-If I may ask how did you get banned from Kaboodle? Is this a learning curve we might all experience,or do you have advice in this area-Keep up the work you are a Machine!!
John
Thanks you! I added my site http://www.carspartsforsale.com, to kaboodle. lets see how it works!
Thanks nice article.
I just submitted my site - to kaboodle.
Getting back link is one of the difficult and challenging aspect for any webmaster. I have a site which sell beds. The fact that along with back links kaboodle do sent visitors to the website makes it more delightful. Thanks for the share
Rochelle I just came upon this post of yours, it is absolutely fabulous!! Well written and extremely easy to follow!
Thank you for taking the time to help your fellow BANS storeowners with this excellent post!
Best of luck to you!