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While banner ads were the internet advertising craze of the 1990’s, small, discreet text link ads are the preferred choice among marketers and webmasters alike. Banner ads were popular because they stood out and they received high click-through rates from people viewing them.

But now, website visitors are more informed, and have been conditioned to ignore these kinds of obvious advertising. Unless you have a company with high brand-name recognition and deep pockets, you need to spend your marketing dollars in a way that translates into more visitors and greater sales.

If you are a website owner looking to increase traffic to your site, you can choose from many forms of advertising. You can list your program with an affiliate market place such as Commission Junction or ShareBucks. You can bid on keywords using Google’s Adwords program or Yahoo’s Content Match which are guaranteed to bring a flood of new visitors to your doorstep. You can also purchase banner ads on a CPM basis from individual websites that serve your target demographic.

Many of these programs succeed in bringing you both the quantity and quality of new visitors you desire. However, the cost of each program is significant. Even, a simple 468×60 banner on the homepage of a popular website could cost hundreds or thousands of dollars a month. With that in mind, let’s consider a cheaper, equally effective, search engine-friendly form of website promotion – static text links.

Static text links are cropping up everywhere across the net. You can find them in search results, emails, forums, articles, and even personal blogs. They have the advantage of being small and unobtrusive. They don’t scream out “I’m an ad – Please click me!” They often receive higher click-through rates than the massive skyscraper ads appearing right next to them. They are also much cheaper than picture and video ads.

Buying link-only ads or text links with small descriptions can be a cost-effective way of promoting your site. You can buy links from a market place, which gives you more selection (at a slightly higher price). Or you can buy links directly from your target advertiser. Links can be bought for as little as $5 a month. You often have the choice of buying a link on a single page or buying site-wide links.

An added advantage to static text link advertising is the increase in one-way links to your site that are indexed by the search engines. Buying a few well-placed ads on a web page with a high Google PageRank, can increase your website PageRank substantially, and within just a few months. Of course, you will also get some human visitors who will follow those links to your website.

It is never best to put all your eggs in one basket and rely solely on one form of advertising. But if your budget is small, text link advertising should be an integral part of your marketing campaign.

You can also increase your search engine rankings and your traffic through free advertising. You can post and answer threads in a few forums that allow you to include a link to your website. There are many such forums that are indexed by the search engine spiders. Many site owners write articles and submit them to article directories with a few links to their websites in the “About the Author” resource box. This is an excellent way to position yourself as an authority in your field while bringing in targeted visitors to your site.

In all, there are many different ways to promote your website online. If you have the money, you can buy quality traffic and increase your search engine positioning quickly. If you are not working with a large marketing budget, cheap paid text links and free links posted in forums and article directories will get you nice results over a longer time span.

Google is by far the most important search engine on the net. To rise to the top of their search engine, you need to improve your link popularity and you need to understand how they measure your link popularity (over 50% of all search engine traffic comes from Google, and if you can rise to the top, you will likely rise to the top of all the other search engines as well).

Link popularity is defined as the number of sites that are linking to your site. Some websites have thousands or even millions of sites linking to them, while others might have only a few. The search engines use the number of inbound links your site has as a measure of how important your site is, which translates into your search engine ranking.

The actual number of links to your site is not the only variable used to calculate your link popularity. The search engines also examine the relevance of the links to the subject matter of your site. For example, if a website that sells vitamins has 4,000 inbound links, but the source of most of the links are websites that have nothing to do with vitamins, then the algorithm that search engines use to determine link popularity will take that into account, and the link popularity score will not be very good.

It is possible for a website with a relatively small number of quality inbound links to be ranked higher than a site with a bunch of irrelevant or insignificant links. If I have a website that offers quotes for auto insurance, and I have 800 quality inbound links, then I might receive a much higher search engine ranking than another mortgage site that has 3,000 links that stem from link farms or Free For All (FFA) pages.

If you try to acquire inbound by using link farms or FFA pages, not only will it hurt your search engine ranking, but you might get permanently removed from the search engine listings. Links farms are sites where you can instantly exchange links with all the sites listed in that directory. FFA pages are pointless link directories. The search engines usually discount any links that come from either of these sources.

Now that we understand what link popularity is and how it works, we need to look specifically at how Google measures it. They use a number of variables in their algorithm to calculate your overall link score. The higher your score, the higher you will be ranked in the search listings.

One factor that Google uses in their algorithm, obviously, is the total number of sites linking to you. The more links you have, the higher your score will be. However, their algorithm is a little more complicated than that, and it is possible for a website with fewer links to be ranked higher than a website that has more links.

The reason for this is because Google also measures the quality of your links. If your website is about vitamins, and the site linking to you is a video game site, then that is not considered a quality link. The link still helps your score, but the link would help your score much more if it were from a website whose subject matter is the same as yours.

Also, Google gives a higher score to a link if it comes from a page that has actual content that relates to your keywords. For example, if your site is about jewelry, and another jewelry website has posted a link to your site on their links page, that link is not as valuable as a link to your site coming from a blog or a message board where a lot of information about jewelry is being written or discussed.

Also, they give an even higher score to a link if it contains anchor text that matches one of the keywords that describes your site. For example, if I have a site that sells lawnmowers, and a blog about lawnmowers has posted a link to my site, it helps my score even more if the link text (also known as anchor text) is LAWNMOWERS. To learn more about anchor text, go to a search engine and look up ANCHOR TEXT and you will be able to learn about it.

Another factor used by Google to score your link popularity is the diversity of keywords contained on sites linking to you. For example, if you have a site that sells handbags, and all the links to your site are from other sites that contain nothing but the keyword HANDBAGS, Google considers that to be abnormal. To get a higher score, you need to have links coming from sites that contain a variety of keywords related to handbags, such as BUY HANDBAGS, LEATHER HANDBAGS, etc.

It is difficult to increase your link popularity, but now that you understand how your score is calculated, you can devise a plan to improve your score. You might want to consider posting to forums and blogs that contain information that is related to your site, and when you post, include a link to your site.

Any online business that’s serious about getting noticed needs to adopt link exchange. It’s because this popular marketing tool represents better search engine ranking, more visibility and popularity on the Internet.

What is it all about?

Link exchange basically entails exchanging banners and links with other sites that have associated content. This greatly improves one’s chances at getting more site traffic as well as advertising each other’s sites. Most of these link exchange programs are available free of cost. Once you find a website which has similar content you can contact the respective webmaster or site owner to request for their link to your site. In this way you can get more and more links to your site.

Targeted traffic

The reason why link exchange is so great is because by linking to relevant sites, you stand better chances at obtaining targeted traffic. This means that the traffic you receive on your site is already partially interested in what you are selling. This means your site can have better chances at selling its products online. By adopting link exchange programs you can in fact increase sales conversions on your site!

Paid or free

Many websites will offer you link exchange programs for an upfront fee. It’s mostly because such sites are far more popular than other sites. By having your links on their site or getting access to their links, you stand better chances at gaining more traffic to your website. The ones that offer link exchange free of cost will usually be the less popular ones. However such sites will need to have at least a little bit of information that is similar to your site. It’s because popular search engines determine page rankings based on the number of relevant sites you link with. Otherwise you will have to churn out at least a million hits – an impossible task, especially for a small startup company.

Quantity is not the only factor

Most of the popular search engines will determine your page ranking based on the number of inbound or on-way links as compared to the reciprocal or two-way links. Thus your link exchange program needs to focus more on one-way links to gain better page rankings.

Tips to get better results

First and foremost, try to keep the links as short and crisp as possible. Make sure to avoid using capital letters for all the words on the link – it affects readability. As an ethical practice, never delete any link exchange partner from your site, after they have placed your link on their site. When you perform follow-ups with the webmaster, you need to showcase why having your link on their site can be beneficial to them.

If you want to learn more, do not hesitate to visit the link attached. You will definitely be satisfied with what you can get from there.

Learn how to get 4 easy backlinks, from quality websites, with no approval required.

Building backlinks can be an arduous process. The most common free methods are directory submissions, article submissions, comment posting and social bookmarking.

However, articles take time to write, and writers’ block can be hard to shake off. Directory submissions are hard to get approved for new Page Rank Zero sites. Comment posting can be a good option. And social bookmarking doesn’t always increase traffic unless many users bookmark it.

Fortunately, there are some easier ways to get links, and I shall be listing them in a short series of articles.

For this first article, I shall describe using public information about your site to gain backlinks.

Domain information tools such as whois.net, Alexa and domaintools.com maintain information about virtually every domain. As a result, every domain will have a backlink from these sites. However, the search engines won’t know about all these pages unless they’re informed of them. Therefore, webmasters who’ve registered new domains can gain some free backlinks by merely pointing links at these pages. These links can be hosted on blogs, forums or any other sites that is already indexed.

As an example, I have recently registered the domain dawjee.com, and would like to add some backlinks to it. In order to get them from whois.net, Alexa and domaintools.com, I need to place the following links on indexed pages (e.g. my blog):

http://www.whois.net/whois_new.cgi?d=dawjee&tld=com

http://whois.domaintools.com/dawjee.com

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/?url=dawjee.com

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/tr…ils/dawjee.com

In order to get the search engines to index pages for other domains, simply replace dawjee.com in the links above.

This list of top 10 strategies for building links is based on my own experience of building links to my sites throughout the years. It is important to keep in mind that when it comes to SEO, nothing is set in stone. SEO is a cat-and-mouse game, so I will revise this list from time to time as the field continues to evolve.

Please note that the order in which these methods are listed do not necessarily reflect their order of effectiveness. Some methods may work better than others for certain sites.

1. Submit to web directories

Submitting to web directories is a vital part of every successful link building campaign. Apart from driving traffic to your website through direct referrals, web directories provide static, one-way links to your site, boosting your link popularity and improving your rankings on the major search engines like Google and Yahoo.

It is important to note that not all directory listings are equal. Listings from trusted, established directories like Yahoo! and DMOZ are more valuable than those from the thousands of others on the net. All else being equal, a link from a directory focused on your niche is worth more than one from a general directories.

Submit to both free and paid directories. Free directories provide one-way links to your site with no strings attached, but they can take forever to review your link. Paid listings can be a good investment if the fees are reasonable and the pages on which your link will reside have decent PRs. Your sites will be listed with fewer competing links on paid directories.

2. Write articles and press releases

Submitting your article to directories is a highly effective way to build one-way links to your site. First, you write a thoughtful and informative article on an topic in your area of expertise. Then you submit it to article directories to be read by the general public and reprinted on other web sites. Appended to the end of your article is a resource box which contain links to your site and email address.

While there are hundreds or even thousands of article directories on the web, you should focus on writing a high quality article and submitting to a handful of the more popular ones. Having your article published on a top directory can be worth more than a hundred less reputable ones. If you write something that people find useful, they may pick it up and reprint it on their blogs, newsletters, etc. This is how a quality article propagates virally in cyberspace– it virtually distributes itself without your having to manually submit to a thousand article directories.

3. Exchange links with related sites

Online forums like Digitalpoint are an excellent place to find reciprocal linking partners. Avoid sending out spammy e-mail solicitations like those generated by many SEO software programs. I get dozens of these everyday.

4. Make use of social bookmarking sites

Social bookmarking sites help bring together internet users from every corner of the world into a virtual global village. Submitting content to sites like Digg.com, YouTube.com and Del.icio.us can bring lots of visitors in a hurry.

It is important to understand that sites like Digg and YouTube are not necessarily shock sites. Although there is some publicity to be gained from the shock value of an article or video, one must not resort to tasteless and offensive materials to gain attention. There is only so much value in the attention gotten by being the village idiot.

5. Buy text links on other sites

Although link buying is somewhat an unnatural way to build links, it may be the only way to increase your link popularity if your site is not unique or interesting enough to get people to link to you on their own. Most commercial sites fall into this category.

You should buy links in a way that simulates natural linking as much as possible. Buy text links from sites that are related to yours. Vary anchor texts and descriptions. Buy links from internal as well as home pages. Buy links from both high- and low-PR sites (which can be gotten at a bargain prices).

6. Participate in online forums

Sharing knowledge can be a very powerful way to establish your online presence and credibility. If you check your backlinks on search engines like Google and Yahoo!, you may notice that a number of them come from the signatures of forum posts, that is, if you post in forums. Most forums allow signature links. I don’t participate in forums that don’t as allowing them is the least the forums can do to compensate me for contributing to their contents.

7. Write testimonials and reviews.

Writing a glowing review about a product or service and submitting to your vendor or service provider can give you a very high quality link back to your site. But this strategy can prove time-consuming as many vendors publish only a handful of testimonials from their customers. Don’t waste your time by sending a testimonial to a vendor who does not have a “Testimonials” page on their site. When submitting a review or testimonial, don’t forget to mention to your vendor that they should be feel free to publish your comments on their site (along with a link to your site).

8. Ask vendors and clients to link to your site.

I once bought a $350 script package and asked my vendor if they could feature my site as site made with their script. They obliged and gave me a PR7 text link from their site. Since the link is worth at least $40 a month, my initial investement for the script has paid for itself many times over. Besides the SEO benefits, it is responsible for thousands of visitors to my site a month through direct clicks. The moral of the story: don’t be afraid to ask. The worse that could happen is that they say “no”.

9. Blogging

Setting up a blog is a no-brainer. Even if you’ve no web designing experience whatsoever, you have a blog up and running in no time. Blogs allows for a more informal setting to get your words across. So, it’s much easier to write a blog entry than an article to submit to article directories. Use your blog to share knowlege, voice opinions, connect with others with similar interests, and of course, to link to your other sites.

Avoid spamming blog networks like Blogger and MySpace. These spam blogs (“splogs”) are a waste of time as they will not get much attention from people and will yield little, if any, SEO benefits. Write about something you know and have a genuine interest in. Focus on quality rather than quantity.

10. Content is king.

Yes, content is still king. In fact, content is by far the most important of the ten strategies I’ve mentioned. Having fresh, unique, engaging content is an excellent way to attract natural linking from other sites. This is the type of links that search engines like.

You may have heard of the buzz phrase, link-baiting, that is being tossed around in the SEO community nowadays. The idea is to get others to link to you voluntarily, perhaps by causing some type of sensation or controversy on YouTube, Digg, the message boards, or whatever. Link-baiting, in my opinion, is no more than a new play on the old “content is king” mantra.

For most web surfers Search engines are the gateway to the Internet; they are the first tool your potential customers are likely to use to find the products and services they need. So part of your internet marketing strategy must be improving your search rankings. Increasingly search engines are looking at Link Popularity to measure the worth of your site. This is why link popularity is so crucial to climbing up the search engine results.

Search engines are discretionary, giving status and ranking to sites that have links to their pages from related, quality sites. It’s a simple formula, but a very important one. More links to your site from ‘authority sites’ = greater link popularity = higher position in search engine results. Google created the system, and now virtually all the most popular search engines employ it to rank your web pages in their indexes.

The more commonly used your keyword is, the harder it will be to achieve link popularity, but without achieving this step, it is almost certain your site will never rank highly on any search engine. But don’t be discouraged; there are tried and true ways of achieving link popularity using the most competitive keywords.

There are a few things you should be aware of. The first is that just linking up with a large number of other websites will not achieve link popularity. In fact, it may have quite the opposite effect. This is particularly true when pertaining to websites that are nothing more than ‘link farms’ – pages containing line after line of indiscriminate links. Search engines may aggressively discriminate against your website if you are associated with a link farm, so steer clear of them!

The next thing to bear in mind is the quality of the site you are linking to. Never link to a page you have reservations about your visitors seeing. The last thing you want your website to appear as is indiscriminate and cheap. Linking to sites of poor quality will only lessen your link popularity, if not completely destroy it.

So let’s get to what you need to do to achieve supreme link popularity and improve your rankings to stellar status on all the popular search engines.

The first step, and the fastest way to get your foot in the door, is to get a listing in a popular directory, such as Open Directory Project and Yahoo. If your site is business-related, you will want to be listed on Yahoo, and despite the fact that it will cost you around $300 a year, it will be money well spent. If your site is non-commercial, the listing will be free, but it will take time and follow-up to actually get it listed. Open Directory gives you a free listing whether you are business-related or non-commercial, but be prepared to make a lot of follow-up inquiries before you see your site listed.

You are aiming to get listed in the highest level of appropriate category, and this just takes some common sense. For example, if your company ships Alpaca wool from an Alpaca farm located in the middle of Nowhere, Tiny State, do NOT submit your listing to ‘Retailers from Nowhere, Tiny State.’ BIG MISTAKE! All you have to do is look a little deeper and submit your listing to the ‘Fine Alpaca Wool’ category. You will not only associate yourself with culture and quality, but you will be listed in a national category.

The next step after you have attained directory listings is to locate other quality sites that will increase your link popularity. Try to find sites that are in some way related to yours, so not only will your link popularity increase, but your customer base may also be expanded. You want to avoid your competitors and look for sites that are useful to your site’s visitors. Let’s look at the Alpaca Wool site example. Linking up to a site that sells knitting supplies would be helpful to your visitors, and the chances of the knitting supply site wanting to link up to your site are also greater. By linking to a related site that will be relevant to your website’s traffic, you are increasing both of your site’s business prospects and both of your sites’ link popularity.

Not all sites want to link to other sites, so you will have to do some research when you are looking for possible linking partners. Google is an excellent starting place for your search. Make sure you enter keywords that you think quality customers will also enter to find your own site. Remember, your criteria are quality, highly ranked, non-competing websites that have a links or resources page. Go to these sites and objectively assess them. Look at the quality of the product, the graphics, and the ease of use. Then check out the other sites they are linked to, and determine if your own site would fit in with the crowd.

When you decide you have found a good prospect, you must set out to woo them. The first thing to do is to add a link on your own links page to their site. This is an essential first step; it shows good faith, and ups your chances significantly of their reciprocity. After you have added their link, you must contact the webmaster of their site. Since this is almost always done by email, you want to make sure it is immediately clear that your message is not junk mail. This requires that you tell them right off the bat that you have added a link to their page on your site. A hook like this almost always insures the reader will read on.

Next, be sure to be flattering and let them know how much you appreciate their website. Make sure you emphasize that you have actually visited their site, and that their site is not just a random pick. Give them the address of your links page, and ask them to check out the link for themselves. It’s a good idea to mention that they will not only benefit from the increased traffic your website will direct their way, but you will also increase their link popularity. Briefly, explain why link popularity is so essential, but do this in a sentence or two so you don’t sound like a professor! Finally, tell them you would greatly appreciate if they would reciprocally add a link on their own links page to your website.

Go through this process with as many appropriate sites as you can find, bearing in mind the criteria of quality and non-competitiveness. After you have emailed all relevant sites, be sure to check these website frequently to see if they have added a link to your page. Give it about a month, and if no link appears, try another charming email. Then give it another month, and if your site is still absent from their links page, it’s time to remove their link from your own links page. The only time you want to pursue a link further than this is if you believe a site is crucial to your link popularity and your business needs. Just remember to keep all your communications complimentary and cordial.

Then set up a schedule to check your ranking in search engines frequently to see if your link popularity has improved. This is not achievable in the blink of an eye. It will take some time and a good deal of work. There is no way around the labor-intensive quality of improving your link popularity, which is why search engines regard it with such importance.

By the way, make sure you have a beautiful, streamlined site or you will never persuade anyone to link up to you. Be prepared to keep plugging away at this process, as long as it takes, until you achieve link popularity stardom!

One of the most debated topics in online marketing. We have all done it in the past and were told for years of the pros of reciprocal link exchanging. It seems like a perfect utopian way of doing business. I add your link to my site and you add my link to yours. To understand if link exchanges are dead we need to explore the reason behind link exchanges and what sort of effects they have for websites.

According to Google, a link exchange is like giving a ‘vote’ to another website, you are in a way ‘vouching’ for this site by adding a link to them. Google reads this link on your site and gives credit to that site. The premise according to Google, is to make webmasters exceptional and dynamic websites which would have other webmasters naturally link to you.

There we always these that try to cheat the system by exchanging links with any and all sites. By link exchanging in this way, you will be trying to influence search engine results to enhance your site page rank and position. This is not a good idea and your site can even be penalised, by this and/or exchanging links with ‘bad neighbourhoods’. The penalties can be severe including banning from the Google search engine.

All over the world webmasters are painfully beginning to realise that their receipical link exchanges have been discontinued and as a result their position on search engines have dropped. Were these sites penalised? It is against Googles policy to try and attain higher position by trying to ‘fool’ the system. Best thing to do if you feel you may have been penalised is remove all of these reciepical link exchanges. When you do add a link of another website to yours, use google ‘no follow’ tag which will not allow the link to be spidered by Google and therefore not count against your site.

It is best to only add sites you feel would be beneficial to visitors of your site. Don’t try and ‘cheat’ the search engines. Let the value of your site speak for itself and people would want to link to you.

Backlinks For Website Promotion

So you have built this website and you are wondering what to do next. How do I get visitors, how do I drive traffic, and how on earth to I make money. These questions are being asked by thousands, and for the most part remain unanswered. I believe what happens to most of us, is that we get so excited about building that first site, that we automatically think it will work on auto-pilot, just like we were told by the so called gurus.

Well, believe me it just is not that simple. After you have constructed your site, there is still plenty of work to do. You need to make the effort to get visitors to your site, sort of like an invite. Once you have sent out the invite, you task now becomes to convert them into a customer. Now these two tasks is where the real effort begins to have a successful site.

Traffic, traffic, traffic, did I mention traffic. Lets face it, if you had a brick and mortar store front with no traffic, you’re dead in the water. With out traffic, no business can survive. So, we need visitors to our site, and we need a plan to get them there.

It will be easy to say “advertise”. Create a budget, and buy ad after ad, and hope for the best. Well to me that would be a huge mistake, unless of course you have deep pockets and can afford the huge risk for little return. I for one can not do that, although I can say, “been there, done that”.

I will say though, “backlinks”. Backlinks are important for every web page. Sure anybody can make the argument about keywords, content or adwords, but backlinks are vital to the success or failure of your website. Acquiring backlinks has never been an easy task. Posting on forums, submitting to directories, buying or subscribing to get links, what ever your approach, it takes time and effort.

Backlinks are important to climb the page ranking in the search engines. Backlinks tell the search engines that you have a site of interest to others who have linked to it. Your marketing campaign for your sites, has to include the effort of obtaining links. Links can be bought or you can obtain them for free, simply by listing in directories. Beware though, that submitting to directories takes time, a very tedious task.

Any promotional effort for your site has to be obtaining those one way links, not the reciprical links that get lessen the quality of your site to the search engines. You want the one way links, pointing to your site. A terrific way to obtain the one way link is to write a simple article about you niche. I am not talking a promotional piece, but something the reader has interest in…just like you are doing here. If you just read that last sentence, you then have an interest in this article. You hope the article you write gets picked up by others and used as conten, all with a link to your website.

So, start focus your website promotion, for the first couple of months, on getting those quality backlinks!

For more information and Free Quality On e Way Links visit

http://psicoli.qassia.com/

Paid links are a major topic of discussion after Google penalized many sites for buying and selling links. Sites that would buy and sell links had their PR and listings reduced. The result was a fierce debate across the Internet marketing community about the ethics of paid links.

Are Paid Links Black Hat?

The only reason paid links is now considered Black Hat SEO is because Google changed the rules. Before the middle to end of 2007, selling links was not black hat. The main point is that Google dominates the search market and we must care about being indexed by Google. Google has changed the rules many times over there years. They changed the weight of meta tags, link exchanges, directories and social bookmarking. Each time Google makes a change, the SEO industry simply adjusts.

Its All About Risk

It all comes down to a question of risk. Link buying and selling has not stopped, but just gone underground. People aren’t openly talking about it, but they still do it. Those who are conservative in their SEO will want to avoid paid links. If a competitor researches your links, and reports you, you make get penalized by Google. There are many who are still buying link, getting away with it, and making good money from it. Its just a choice about risk. There is no need to get wrapped up in the debate of the ethics, or if Google is right or wrong. Simply, paid links get results and Google does not like that. You have to ask yourself if your willing to gamble your site’s rankings to get ahead.

SEO is all about results and keeping up with Google. Google is constantly changing, and when it does, you need to keep up to stay ahead. So, it time to adjust. Change your strategies. Risk when you can risk, but protect your legit and important sites by not buying links. For some sites, the risk is too high. Paid links get results, but come with a series of possible side effects if you get caught. The important thing is having the knowledge and making an informed decision. Understand people are getting reported and everyday.

Should a Site Buy Links?

The answer isn’t easy. The rules can be bent, and if you do, you may receive great results. If you get caught, you must understand the consequences and face them. You can make cash either way. It all depends on your strategy. It’ s possible to make great money online without having to buy paid links. At the end of the day, producing quality content that will generate natural links is the best way to build links. Don’t make your ranking 100% manipulated, but provide something for those who find you in Google. And as always, do the standard methods of link building: comments, articles, social sites. Stop taking short cuts and try to produce real high PR one way links because your site is just that great. That type of content will guarantee success. Those with great sites don’t have to be concerned about paid links.

Being the gateway to the Internet is not the only purpose that search engines serve. Search engines are also the first tool that potential customers use to find the products, services, and information they need on the internet.

For this reason, link popularity is very imperative. Heres why: If customers do not find your website, your chances of maximizing your online sales are slim to none.

Id bet you are wondering what is the importance of the popularity of a link! Heres your one word answer -plenty-! Link popularity refers to the ranking assigned to your website by the search engines, and it determines the ranking your page gets when keywords are entered into a search engine. So, I am sure you are next question would probably be Well, how do I make my link popular?

Good question. Search engines are discretionary, giving status and ranking to sites that have links to their pages from related, quality sites. It’s a really simple formula, but a very important one. Google created the system, and now virtually all the most popular search engines employ the same formula to rank your web pages in their indexes.

The more commonly used your keyword is, the harder it will be to achieve link popularity. Without achieving this very important step, it is almost certain your site wont ever rank highly on any search engine. However, before you get discouraged, consider the fact that there are tried and true ways of achieving link popularity using only the most competitive keywords.

There are a few things to keep in mind. Link popularity is not achieved by just linking up with a large number of other websites. In fact, it may backfire and have quite the opposite effect.

Most typically this is true when pertaining to websites that contain line after line of indiscriminate links, or “link farms”. It has been the tendency of search engines to aggressively discriminate against your website if you are associated with a link farm, so stay away from them!

The next thing to consider is the quality of the site you are linking to. Do not ever link to a page that you would have reservations about your visitors seeing. That would make your site look cheap and indiscriminate, which I do not think would be the look to go for. Linking to sites of poor quality not only fail to increase your link popularity, it may just destroy it altogether.

So let’s get right to it. Lets discuss what you need to do to achieve supreme link popularity and improve your rankings to stellar status on all the popular search engines.

The first step, and the fastest way to get your foot in the door, is to get a listing in a popular directory, such as Open Directory Project and Yahoo. If your site is business-related, you will want to be listed on Yahoo, and despite the fact that it will cost you around $300 a year, it will be money well spent, and you most assuredly wont regret it.

The listing is free if your site is noncommercial, but it takes time and follow-up to actually get it listed. Open Directory is another popular director. It gives you a free listing whether you are business-related or non-commercial. However, be prepared to make a lot of follow-up inquiries before you see your site listed.

Getting listed on the lightest level of appropriate category takes some common sense. Heres what I mean: Lets say your company ships Alpaca wool from an Alpaca farm located in the middle of Nowhere, Tiny State. Do NOT submit your listing to “Retailers from Nowhere, Tiny State.” HUGE MISTAKE!

You have to look a little deeper and think a little bigger. You would submit your listing to the “Fine Alpaca Wool” category. This is doubly effective because not only will you associate yourself with culture and quality, but you will also be listed in a national category.

The next step after having attained directory listings, is to locate other quality sites that will increase your link popularity and link with them. Finding quality sites that are in some way related to yours increases your link popularity in addition to expanding your customer base. Of course you want to avoid your competitors and look for sites that are useful to your site’s visitors.

Let’s look at the Alpaca Wool site example again. Linking up to a site that sells knitting supplies would be helpful to your visitors, and the chances of the knitting supply site wanting to link up to your site are also greater.

As a result of your linking to a related site thats relevant to your web site’s traffic, you are increasing both companies site’s business prospects – and both companies sites’ link popularity. Teamwork makes the dream work.

Before we all break out and sing We Are The World, lets keep in mind that not all sites want to link to other sites. Proper research is necessary when you are looking for possible linking partners, and theres no better place than Google to start your search. Make sure you enter keywords that you think quality customers will also enter to find your site.

Also remember your criteria are: quality, highly ranked, non-competing websites that have a links or resources page. Go to these sites and objectively assess them. Look at the level of quality of the product, the graphics, and the ease of use. Then check out the other sites they are linked to, and determine how well or if your own site would fit in with the crowd.

Not unlike dating, when you decide you have found a good prospect, you must set out to woo them. The first thing to do is to add a link on your own links page to their site. This is a very important first step; it not only shows good faith, but it also ups your chances significantly of their reciprocity.

After adding their link, contact the webmaster of their site. This is almost always done by email, so you want to make sure it is immediately clear that your message is not junk mail (EVERYBODY hates junk mail). With this in mind, there is a requirement that you tell them right off the bat that you have added a link to their page on your site. A hook like this almost always insures the reader will read on.

Again, not unlike dating, be sure to be flattering and let them know how much you appreciate their website. Emphasize that you have actually visited their site, and that time and consideration went into your picking their site. Give them the address of your links page, and ask them to check out the link for themselves.

Be sure to mention that they will not only benefit from the increased traffic your website will direct their way, but you will also increase their link popularity. Briefly, explain why link popularity is so essential, but do this in a sentence or two or you will come off like a professor! Finally, tell them reciprocally adding your link on their own website would be as appreciated as it would be mutually beneficial.

Repeat this process with as many appropriate sites as you can find, bearing in mind the criteria of quality and non-competitiveness. After emailing all relevant sites, remember to check these website frequently to see if they have added a link to your page. Give it about four weeks, and if no link appears, try another charming email.

Then give it another four weeks, and if your site is still missing from their links page, it’s time to remove their link from your own links page. The only time you want to pursue a link any further than this is if you believe a site is absolutely crucial to your link popularity and your business needs. Remember to keep all your communications professional, complimentary, and cordial.

Set up a consistent schedule to check your ranking in the search engines to see if your link popularity has improved. This is not an over-night process. Just like anything else worth having, it will take some time and a good deal of work. There is no escaping the labor-intensive quality of improving your link popularity, which is why search engines regard it with such importance, and so should you.

I thought this might go without saying, but to be on the safe side – make sure you have a beautiful, streamlined site or you will never persuade anyone to link up to you. Just as you would not link up with a bad looking or poor quality site. Considering that in most cases nothing worth having comes easy, be prepared to keep plugging away at this process until you reach your goals.