Step 1 - Welcome!

OK, first things first. To get links to your site (backlinks), you need to have some available Link Credit (LC). LC is the currency that our members use to "trade" links.

There are two ways to get LC:

1. Add our Link Display Code to your sites and earn LC for the links you display. Note that only pages with a Google PageRank of 1 or more will be accepted for displaying links.
2. Purchace a monthly subscription, to any amount of LC that you choose.

You can choose either method, or combine both. Your LC will be automatically spent on backlinks.

Your Dashboard

Once you log in, you will arrive at your Dashboard. This is an overview of your account and it is divided in two sections. On the left (in blue) you will see your site(s) that you have added to your account. On the right (in orange) you will see a list of your backlink campaigns if you have added any. Below those is your Latest Updates area, where your recent account activity is shown

Step 2 - Add a site

Click "Link Display Codes" in the main menu. On this page, you need to select which of the available codes to download. This depends on what your website runs on. Here are the choices and a brief explanation of each:

• WordPress 2.2+ - If you have a WordPress blog, we provide a plugin that you can simply extract to your plugins folder, then activate in your WordPress admin
• WordPress 2.8+ - Newer versions of WordPress have a different way of dealing with plugins. Use this one for installations of version 2.8 or higher
• Joomla 1.5 - If you have a Joomla site, we provide a ready-to-install module that you can publish in any of the module positions on your site
• Joomla 1.0 - Same as above, but you should select this one if you have a legacy (1.0.x) Joomla installation.
• Drupal 6+ - If you have a site that runs Drupal 6 or later, use this. Installation is simply a case of extracting the files to your modules folder, then activating it in the administration
• PHP 4+ - If your website is coded in PHP (4.1.0+) but not one of the above systems, you should choose this option. We provide a short script that you paste into your PHP code wherever you want to display links

Simply click the appropriate module to download it (or to generate the script for pasting in the case of PHP). We recommend that you publish the module/code on all pages of your site, although only pages that have a Google PageRank of 1 or more will be allowed to display links.

Step 3 - Configuring and activating a site

After publishing the module or script, you should see the message "Please log in to Automatic Backlinks and activate this site" displayed on your site. If your site or CMS uses a caching system, then make sure that it does not cache content for longer than 60 minutes, as this prevents our Link Display Code from operating normally.

If you log back in to Automatic Backlinks, you should see a new site entry in the left hand side of your dashboard.

Click "Activate" to enable your site. You must select the topic and the main language of the site (if your site has multiple languages, select the dominant one, you can change the language for individual pages later on). You can also adjust other settings on this page such as how the links you display will look, and from which topics you will accept links. We recommend only selecting topics that are similar to that of your own site.

Once you're happy with your settings, click "Save and activate" and you'll be taken back to your dashboard.

Your site is now active. Any pages on your site with PR1 or above will gradually be discovered and added. You can view the pages that have been added, as well as the links placed on them by clicking the "View Pages" button on your site overview. If you want you can also add pages manually by clicking the "Manually add page" button on your site's Pages screen.

After a short while, we will start placing links on your pages, which will earn you Link Credit. Please see our FAQ for a breakdown of how much you earn per link.

Step 4 - Creating a Link Campaign

Now that you've set yourself up to earn Link Credit, you need somewhere to spend it!
To create a new campaign, click the link from the right-hand side of the dashboard. You need to give your campaign a name, choose the topic of the site that the campaign will be linking to (the site you want to get ranked higher), and the main language of the site. You also need to specify up to 5 topics from the topics list. These should be topics that are similar to your own site, since we will be placing your links on these sites.

Once you're happy with your campaign settings, click "Save". On this next page, you get to create Link Variations. These will be your backlinks. It is important that you choose text that includes the keywords that you want to rank higher for. For example, if you have a company that sells and fixes powerboats, you might want to create link variations that look like this:

We recommend creating at least 4-8 variations for each URL, since a lot of links with the exact same anchor text can look suspicious to search engines. Vary them but keep the same overall theme

Congratulations! You're all set to start earning Link Credit, and spending it on your campaign

Here's a few things to remember:

• It can take a while before you start seeing links placed on your pages (no more than a few hours, but usually much sooner). Be patient!
• In general, the stricter you set your site or campaign settings, the less links you will be able to receive. Relax your settings if this becomes a problem.
• The activation message that appears when you first add a site can stay visible for a while after you activate the site. This is due to caching (both ours and potentially your own site's cache as well). Just be patient, and the message will disappear soon enough.
• Check our FAQ if you have any questions not answered here. If you still can't find what you're looking for, then contact us.