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As we all know link building is a tedious process which no webmaster likes to do, it takes time and effort to build a good amount of inbound links in order to draw some relevant traffic from the search engines, the only problem is that not every webmaster knows how to do it right; since most webmasters tend to be quite lazy the thought of requesting relevant reciprocal link exchanges comes to mind and we immediately think of automated link exchange networks, while this worked some time in the past, as of today, this has become an ineffective link building technique which offers close to no benefit to the surfer, specially when several low quality sites appear in your link list.

Since the weight given to reciprocals went down it is important to focus on one way links but how do we obtain these type of inbound links?, again since we have picked lazy webmasters as our example we can deduct that the next obvious course of action would be to buy links, yes, this is the lazy people’s way out, while acquiring several highly ranked links would be quite expensive such webmasters also take high risks of being discovered by Google’s algorithm and being banned from the search engine result pages, so the question pops once again what should we do?

Now that we have established some of the wrong ways to acquire links lets suggest some great link building techniques which can result to be quite controversial but this is the goal we are after, you see, if people are not interested in your content or if they have seen it over and over they are very likely to hit the “back” button of their browsers which is not a good thing according to Google’s analytics software; if you have used this tracking method you know that they measure the “stickiness” of a site by recording the amount of time visitors spend in your site and the number of times they “bounce back” to the search engines.

In order to gain inbound links we must place ourselves (and our sites for that matter) in the center of an ongoing discussion, now this doesn’t mean we should register in many forums and spam it with link posts, that is not what this method suggest, instead you can find a good discussion topic which is sure to grab people’s attention, for instance:

- Write an article about an ongoing discussion related to your niche. If you had a science site it would be a great idea to research current science news such as the recent controversial article which talks about “Evangelical Scientists trying to Refute the laws of Gravity with a new -Intelligent Falling- Theory”, now this specific article is extremely controversial since you will have several people trying to explain the laws of gravity through science and others through faith or unconventional methods. Since you wouldn’t be the first writing about it you can use it in a blog and then add your particular point of view which should have enough “spice” to trigger a discussion, but be very careful since you don’t want to create a bad reputation for your site.

- If adding your own point of view to this article is not your style you can try to find a “funny side” to this story and either write about it, make a funny Photoshop picture related to it or even make a short video and post it on Youtube, quoting your site at the beginning and the end of the video. Social sites can be quite explosive as far as the attention your material can get so make sure to post it there to build huge amounts of back links.

Twisting hot stories (without breaking any law) and adding your point of view can sure be controversial once you use social sites to spread your word, that’s why it is recommended to offer an RSS feed to your comments and articles, you can also use Press Release sites to get unparalleled attention, but what ever you do make sure to be ready for the amount of feedback you will get from your target audience.

As you see republishing a controversial article does nothing for your site but adding “extra material” to it is ultimately what gives it value and will help you get valuable one-way links. Make sure to make your site easy to link to by formatting your URL properly, you don’t want to have a great article linked to an address such as ” http://yoursite.com/index.php?458ref=abcd&cont=4454″ as you see this is not an intuitive and easy to link to URL.

Do this with several controversial (but relevant) stories and you will see massive amounts of one-way links coming your way.

The aim of a reciprocal linking strategy is usually twofold: First to attract visitors from the linking partner to your own site and, secondly, to improve your page ranking with the search engines. A higher page ranking, especially with Google, indicates more relevance when inquiries are made on a given keyword. Relevance encourages the search engines to send free, targeted traffic to your website.

Important Considerations

1. Build online relationships. Exchanging links with other relevant websites is a great way to start building partnerships with other website owners and may open the door for future joint venture requests.

2. Build your link popularity. Most search engines view sites that have many links to them as being important. So, the more sites that link to your site, the higher your site might rank. But again, make sure that all reciprocal links are relevant to your site or the search engines will penalize you.

3. Avoid exchanging links with sites that have a huge link directory. If your site is listed on page 43 in your category of another site’s link directory, few people will ever see your link. Although a link will be generated to your site for the search engines, you will not receive much traffic from the link exchange. Try to exchange links with sites where your link will be displayed on the first, or at the most, the second page of another site’s link directory.

4. Don’t exchange links with everybody that asks. What advantage is there in exchanging links with a site that sells wedding favors when your site is about dog training? Anyone that visits the wedding favor site will be looking for information concerning weddings, not dog training, and very few will click on your link regardless of how high the page rank is for the wedding site. The key here is to exchange links only with sites that are relevant to your site or to your keywords.

5. The main goal of any linking strategy is to get more traffic to a website. Reciprocal linking can work for or against you in this matter depending on the site that you exchange links with. If you exchange links with sites that receive a lot of traffic, some of that traffic may be diverted to your site. On the other hand, if you exchange links with a low traffic site, you may divert some of your traffic to the other site without seeing a similar return. The solution is to exchange reciprocal links with a site with a page rank no lower than one level below yours and to try to exchange links with many sites with a higher page rank. Ideally, you would seek to exchange links with sites that have at least a PR 4.

How To Set Up A Link Page

The optimum way to set up a link page is to enter all links manually. Yes, it is time consuming but when you are starting out, this is the best way to do it.

You would first need to set up a page on your website just for your link categories. You can call this page anything you like such as Links, My Partners, Link Partners, My Link Partners, etc. Set up this page with the major categories and subcategories that are relevant to your site. Then, set up a page for each subcategory that will contain the actual links. Test to be sure that whenever anyone clicks on a subcategory that they are taken to the appropriate link page.

Prepare a short 3 – 5 line ad about your website or your product and include the URL to your website. This should be in HTML code for easy uploading. Each linking company has their own procedure, but generally, each time you ask to exchange links, you’ll need to copy and paste the other website’s HTML code onto your link page under the correct category and subcategory. You will then need to upload the updated page to your website.

Once this is done, let the other website know on which of your pages they can find their link. If the other website owner approves the link exchange, they should add your link to their link page and inform you on exactly what page you can find it.

Check to make sure that your link has been added to their site. If they have not added your link, you have the option of contacting the website owner as to why or of removing their link from your site.

Mention reciprocal linking on any internet marketing forum and you will be sure to get a barrage of heated replies. There is a continual debate about the advantages and disadvantages involved in reciprocal linking and both sides make convincing statements.

If you do decide to get involved in reciprocal linking, join only well established link exchanges that allow you to approve or disapprove the link. Avoid link farms or link exchanges that will automatically exchange your link with their entire database regardless of the relevancy to your website.

Joomla Link exchange is the procedure of exchanging text links or banner links between websites. The use of Joomla link exchange helps improve traffic, through numerous inbound links so users on other websites can click through. Exchanging links is usually a free process, which makes link exchanges cost effective. Another advantage of exchanging links is that it helps improve placement in the search engines.
Joomla Link exchange has been used by webmasters for years as a means of direct marketing. Recently, this practice has increased more popularity among webmasters due to the fact search engines prefer websites that have many inbound links, thus improving positions in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). To the search engines, this is a correct means of determining the importance of websites.
There are various ways to initiate Joomla link exchange with another website. The primary way of beginning Joomla link exchange is to email another webmaster and ask to exchange links. Another way to find websites looking to exchange links is to visit webmaster discussion boards. These websites have Joomla link exchange forums or Joomla link exchange directories where webmasters can request link exchanges from a specific category or have open requests to allow any website to exchange a link.
With the importance of Joomla link exchange, many types of link exchange websites have emerged as a source for webmasters. There are 2 types of Joomla link exchange directories. Paid directories make the process of exchanging links easier, but cost money and usually require software to be placed on the webmasters website to assist with the link exchange. Free Joomla link exchange directories have no cost, except they require the webmaster to manually add each website. Webmasters can have total control over links when part of a free link exchange.
Recently some marketing companies have stated that search engines are no longer placing a heavy significance on reciprocal links. The consensus is that popularity of a website is now measured by incoming one way links. The experts also agree that in addition to having numerous inbound links, the relevance of the linking websites is very important. Joomla Link exchange between complimenting websites is important. Webmasters do not have to link straight with competitors, but should link with websites that have industry relevance. Having a website link with no relevance could potentially negatively affect Search Engine Result Pages.
Websites that have completed many Joomla link exchanges will usually experience increased traffic through direct clicks and search engine results. There are various ways for webmasters to find linking websites through direct email contact or Joomla link exchange directories. It is important for webmasters to check the relevancy of the links that are being adding as links that have little or no relevance might negatively affect their placement. The use of Joomla link exchange by webmasters will continue to be an important and useful means of marketing websites and improving search engine placement.

There are several things you can do to strengthen your internet marketing business and link building is certainly one of them. Although it can be a difficult method for search engine optimization, it can also be one of the most valuable pieces to your success. When done correctly, you will receive more traffic to your site than you know what to do with.

Link building consists of getting other sites to place your web site link on their site. In return, you usually have to place their link on your site. Sometimes you can find one way links, which are by far the best for you. This consists of a site putting your link on their site without you having to do so in return. Typically this is done because you have done a good deed for them in some manner.

The key to link building is finding quality internet marketing businesses to exchange links with. To benefit from link trades you typically will want to exchange with sites that have a Google page rank equal to or greater than your site.

Trading links with other sites, however, is not the only method to link building. If you have the money to spend, buying links can be beneficial to your business because you can purchase according to quality. Obviously it will cost you more for better quality links, but you will know exactly what you are getting. You just have to determine if it is worth it to you to spend money when there are so many free methods available.

Another option is through article writing. You may not have realized it yet, but writing articles is a great way to build links and get backlinks pointing to your site. By writing an article with a resource box included, you will have your web site link within the resource box. This gives people an opportunity to easily be directed to your site if they like your article. After writing an article, submit it to as many article directories as you can and watch the traffic flow in.

Lastly, writing testimonials can be a way of getting your name and link out on the web as well. By writing testimonials for your web hosting company, article writer, program coordinator, or anybody else that has helped you, you are benefiting them as well as yourself. This is a great way to potentially get linked with a large web site.

Link building is a vital piece to having success with your internet marketing business. It can drastically increase your traffic volume in a short period of time. The more methods you use, the better opportunity you have of people seeing your link on the web.

So tell the truth, were you popular in high school? Did you have a lot of friends, and a wide social circle? Were you an athlete? Did your accomplishments extend far outside the halls of your alma mater to neighboring schools and counties? If so, then congratulations; you’re probably in the minority of those reading this article. What does this example have to do with link popularity you ask; more than you think.

Just as in high school, on the World Wide Web, your website is known by the company it keeps. Link to the wrong site or “hang with the wrong crowd” and you could be ostracized by the search engine community before you even begin. Achieve quality inbound links from a wide range of popular kids on the internet, however, and watch your site’s online profile soar. Sounds simple, and it is, if you know what to do to climb the online social ladder that is Link Popularity.

But before we get to that, what exactly is Link Popularity? Simply defined, Link Popularity is a measure of the quantity and quality of other web sites that link to your site on the internet at any given time. It is considered an off-the-page criteria that is greatly utilized by search engines to determine the overall importance and quality of your site to the online community. Because of its impartial nature, a site with a very high number of incoming links is usually viewed as highly relevant to the online community at large and thus highly visible within relevant search engine results. Whereas a content-poor site will attract fewer incoming links and thus hold little value to the same visitors.

What is the current link popularity of your site today? Take a moment to enter your site url at popular free link tool www.linkpopularity.com, then come back for the rest of this article…..

Still there, good! The results probably weren’t what you had hoped for though, where they? Not to worry; probably the biggest threat to you obtaining a high link popularity score for your site is relying on old information. To that end, below is a quick 10-step CURRENT process that can be implemented immediately to increase your site’s overall link popularity:

Step 1 – SUBMIT YOUR SITE TO OPEN DIRECTORY (DMOZ) AND YAHOO – Although neither of these sites are the 800 lb. gorillas they used to be, any link from these sites is going to increase your online profile immediately and very visibly. Find your appropriate category in both sites and submit for free with DMOZ and invest the $299 for a yearly indexing with Yahoo. Although DMOZ is still incredibly slow in adding new sites, keep at it, find the appropriate editor and send him cookies or flowers if necessary (couldn’t hurt?) then be patient.

Step 2 – ADD YOUR KEYWORDS TO THE LINKING ANCHOR TEXT – When at all possible, try to have an on-point relevant keyword phrase used as the linking text within any inbound link your seek for your site. If all you can manage is your site name or your url, that is certainly fine. But if you are selling toothbrushes to Eskimos, then “Eskimo toothbrushes for sale” as the linking keyword phrase from one site to yours is always the way to go.

Step 3 – WRITE ARTICLES AND SUBMIT PRESS RELEASES – Hey, look what I am doing right now! I could be watching ESPN, but I am writing this article instead. Write articles and submit press releases when you have a personnel change, introduce or upgrade a service or product or when you have a topic of interest you wish to share with the online world web community. Don’t have a blog? Get one! This is a simple way to get your articles and press releases out for indexing and review. Make sure to include links to your site where appropriate and watch your link popularity grow and grow.

Step 4 – FIND OUT WHO LINKS TO YOUR COMPETITORS – Go to Google.com and enter this into this search query: link:www.yourcompetitor.com. Do the same for Yahoo by entering linkdomain:www.your-competitor.com -site:www.your-competitor.com into the search field. Seek out the sites linking to your competitors and convince them to link to you instead. You win TWICE with this approach. You gain a quality link and an increase in your overall popularity while your competitor LOSES a link and achieves a lower popularity score in return.

Step 5 – CREATE AN AFFILIATE PROGRAM – Nothing generates quality, inbound links to your site faster than an established, commission-paying affiliate program. Whether your site is product or service-based, an affiliate program can be just the thing that takes your site and its link popularity to new heights. Visit www.CommissionJunction.com or www.LinkShare.com to set-up a new affiliate program of your design today and watch your online profile grow by leaps and bounds.

Step 6 – DEEP LINK YOUR SITE – This step is vastly overlooked by even the most savvy of online marketers initiating a new link popularity campaign. Make sure that links you seek out or solicit don’t just link to your home page, but ALL pages of your website. This process has numerous benefits including expanding your overall online link profile as well as generating unique Google PageRank values for each and every one of your site’s pages instead of just your home page.

Step 7 – SIGN UP ON GUESTBOOKS AND FORUMS – If you don’t participate in forums on your site topic or remember to sign-in when visiting a new site for the first time, now is the time to make such actions a habit. Always post a message or participate in a forum thread whenever possible and include a link to your site in your signature where appropriate. These “sig” files do get indexed and really add up, especially if the site forum in question is something highly regarded in your specific industry.

Step 8 – CONTACT RECIPROCAL LINKS BY PHONE NOT EMAIL – You would be shocked how successful this really is. More people are inclined to respond to your request when you introduce yourself by phone and let them know that you were visiting their site. Tell the person you are linking to their site, asking permission of course, and then politely ask for a link back. Cement the request by following up by email; then wait for the links to roll-in (oh, and get rid of the form letters; they don’t work!).

Step 9 – AVOID LINK FARMS AND LINK EXCHANGES – Reputation on the web is more important than ever. Again, just like friendships in high school, it’s better to have fewer higher-quality links to your site than hundreds of off-point, non-relevant links that do nothing to enhance the overall experience of the online community. Stay away, far away, from companies promising you hundreds of links to your site overnight. At best you don’t need the links, and at worst, you could be banned by the major search engines altogether.

Step 10 – DOWNLOAD THE GOOGLE TOOLBAR – This very simple technique allows you to view all potential link partners by the very important Google PageRank score (1-10) that is viewable in this browser. Use the toolbar to keep tabs on your own site’s PageRank score, than seek out complimentary, highly relevant linking partners that have a Google PageRank score of 6 or higher whenever possible. Convince a handful of high Google PageRank sites to link back to you and watch your site take off.

Remember, just like in high school, you and your site will be known by the company kept. Follow the simple, ten step plan outlined above, and you will be well on your way to achieving real, measured, lasting success online. Be the popular site on the block today; it’s easier then you think. Go ahead, be popular!

With a big number of link exchange scripts on the market it is vitally important to know what factors differ a good script from a script that will waste link building campaign and threaten the success of your whole site’s existence. You can use this review as a list of checkpoints to qualify any link exchange tool for professionalism and effectivity.

Crucial factors of link building:
(1) Quality and relevancy of link partners.
(2) SEO nature of link exchange directory and its pages.
(3) Expenses on link building and link management.
(4) Link exchange conversions.

Let’s make a step by step testdrive for Auto Link Exchanger over these points so that you could apply the same strategy for estimating other link building solutions.

(1) Quality and relevancy of link partners.

No doubts. The quality of links is a huge advantage. Search engines will not penalize a site for having backlinks on bad sites as you physically cannot control all sites that link to you. But if you are reciprocating to these sites and these sites don’t have relation to your niche or don’t have much trust – your link building can become a big trouble.

When Google is estimating the page to which you are reciprocating, their bots take into account (a) page rank of that page, (b) trust rank of the site, (c) relevancy. Auto Link Exchanger applies the same principles as its searching algorithm finds relevant sites and places link on pages that are nicely indexed and properly represent their niche. You can even choose Auto Link Exchanger’s setting to pick sites that are higher than PR 2 or 3 or 5 – up to you.

(2) SEO nature of link exchange directory and its pages.

The old days when links could be piled on category pages are over. Search engines will not penalize you for it. But those who use the latest SEO fashion to create link directory pages get solid advantage over those who create old style SEO-weak directories.

Close to a must today is having keywords in category titles, descriptions, URLs, in the content on the pages. Plus it is also crucial to blend relevant content with links right on the pages. Pages should have RSS feeds.

Auto Link Exchanger automated all these factors. With a number of settings made the tool is automatically creating SEO-wise pages, updates RSS feeds to search engines, delivers relevant news on pages and blends them with links. Also gives extra visibility to links by automatically showing PR picture and Alexa Rank close to each site.

(3) Expenses on link building and link management.

Link exchange is expensive: find links, exchange them, create link directory, control the links on other sites – this can turn into a big monthly budget on SEO team. You can cut down these expenses if you do all these jobs yourself, but you must be prepared to spend most of your daily time on this job.

Auto Link Exchanger automates most of the link building processes that include: building link directory, integrating necessary SEO elements into it, finding link partners, managing link exchange, controlling the backlinks. The only aspect that site owner should do with Auto Link Exchanger is installing the script and making its settings.

(4) Link exchange conversions.

Link exchange conversions are one of the biggest despairs of link building. Old-fashioned procedure of sending beggy email and waiting when someone will build links with your site gives very low conversions. Even if you make your emails customized it gives around 10% of clicks on these emails, and only part of opened emails will give you link exchanges. This results in very low percentage of successful link exchange conversions.

Auto Link Exchanger uses revolutionary principle of finding link partners that gives 50-60% link exchange conversions. And this is without sending beggy emails. The tool is shortcutting you directly to the pages and your links get on them – webmasters just need to approve which happens within first 15 minutes – up to several days. In some niches 80% conversions were reached with Auto Link Exchanger’s link building.

Using the same factors you can scale the value of other link building solutions on the market.

And if you want to test advantages of Auto Link Exchanger in action, you can get a free copy of this tool

The very common issue I noticed in Link Building is the fear that site can be penalized by Google for unethical link building. But the thing is that who will decide the tactics you are following are ethical or not. This is where you need to implement your common sense when building links for your site.

Let’s take it like this- You come across a technique and discuss whether it’s “ethical or unethical”. However, somewhere in your mind you are thinking that implementing this technique can help you to get traffic. Think again and again- if still you feel it can be beneficial for your site, don’t worry about being penalized.

Why am I assuring you? I have a reason. Google is not the only search engine as there are many more in competition. People always talk about Google because it’s a major one but not all-in-all. Being a supreme, Google will never do anything which can down their reputation in the market. But yes, you should care about the quality of work you are doing, not about Google.

For instance 1: You have a site related to SEO services and you exchange link with a game site or adult site which makes no sense for you or your site pointing to sites like this. Then this could be a reason that Google devalue your link.

For instance 2: When people buy links from thematic and quality sites, there is no reason to get penalized. Getting paid links from link broker and non thematic site can’t help you in any way- neither in increasing ranking nor traffic. In such cases also Google can’t give value to your link.

Being penalized for anything is different from being devalued. Google knows it very well that webmaster’s use number of techniques to rank high and there is no certain rule through which a site can get ranked. So they never penalize you until and unless you are doing something bad, illegal, immoral.

Everyone has their own methods and style in which they are comfortable, but not everything works out the way we hope especially in SEO. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. Hence, Without Google’s fear opt the techniques which you feel would really be and experience the result.

You are at that point in life where you want to build your home based internet business. You’ve read countless ads about getting rich quick. You have heard terms such as “Article Submission” and “Linking”. This should get you started.

Link Popularity

The founders of Google believed in a term called “citation authority”. They found that the more that academic papers cited another person’s work, the more likely that the cited work represented an authority on the subject.

Similarly, when a lot of websites would link to a given site, it is very likely that the given site is an authority for the topic. The “topic” is whatever those links say it is. If 25 sites link to another site with the term “railroading” it’s likely that this page is an important page for train information.

Consequently, many schemes were born, such as mini-sites, site networks, link farms, and reciprocal linking. It didn’t take long for webmasters who wanted to rank well for certain terms to learn that they needed a lot of links with their chosen keyword phrases to improve their rankings in the search engines.

Reciprocal Linking

Reciprocal links are links you trade with other sites (you add their link, they add yours) in order to build link popularity. In other words, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch your back in return. There are many online services, group exchanges, and software available to help you link up with webmasters that can enhance your product. As a result, many sites have grown sizeable directories on topics that have nothing to do with their area of expertise, simply because those other sites were willing to trade links with them.

Here is where you use the old noodle in selecting reciprocal linking partners. If your website talks about trains, you would not wish to link with a website that focuses on cats. Leave the cat fanciers to go meow elsewhere.

A lot of webmasters will still use this to link their sites containing nothing but garbage with your website, which you might want oriented to a given class of users. You ought to constantly monitor your reciprocal link requests for garbage. Accepting any or all link exchange requests could penalize you for the goal of obtaining good search engine ranking.

Does reciprocal linking work? The answer is doubtful. In the past, search engines have tended to count a link as a link, regardless of the subject matter of the originating site. Search engines are now tending to look for more ways to determine which sites are truly expert and which ones are simply manipulating their way to the top. Link relevance is sure to come into play. Some say it is already starting to affect rankings.

Mutual Linking

Mutual linking is a bit different from reciprocal linking. Mutual linking is where the content of each site actually benefits the content of a link partner’s site. If you sell automobiles, you may want to recommend other sites for tires, and still other sites for automobile financing. You may even maintain a directory of tire and battery service shops. This is useful information for your visitors, who are likely to need these services in the future. It makes sense for these sites to also recommend your automobile dealership and link to your site. While it’s technically still a reciprocal link, it has a mutual benefit for both sites.

To re-emphasize what we stated earlier, while you might make a case that visitors to your automobile dealership site might actually need stuff on gambling, forget about linking to such sites. They only make your site look unprofessional. You should avoid links such as these at all costs.

if you link to a site that the search engines consider a “bad neighborhood,” it could seriously damage your website. That innocent-looking pet accessories site may be cloaking (hiding links or text), or participating in other linking schemes and it just hasn’t been caught yet.

Should I Hide All My Outgoing Links?

We don’t recommend it. Many feel that Google’s Florida update (in Nov. 2003), adding relevant outgoing links seems to have a positive effect on rankings. Besides, if you hide or block their links, and they hide or block yours, what’s the point of participating in a reciprocal linking program at all?

So. What Will Happen if I Do Reciprocal Linking?

If you are looking to build long-term rankings (and real business links that can attract customers), it takes more work and creativity than just sending out automated emails or joining a linking program. Give your site an advantage by giving people a reason to link to it. Is it a helpful tool, a guide, an industry-specific directory, or some other useful content that people will feel good about recommending on their site? If your site is worth linking to, you won’t have to rely as much on swapping links as a promotion strategy.

Happy linking!

When you are trying to promote your website, you want to make
sure that you make as few mistakes as possible. However, there
are a lot of mistakes people commit when making link exchanges
that can be costly for their websites. Read the following ways
to avoid making those costly link exchange mistakes:

1. Avoid Long URLs If your URL is really long and wraps to
another page it will be broken and essentially useless because
people will not be able to link to your page. As a result, make
your URL as short as possible in order to avoid this problem. If
there is no way that you can avoid this, make sure you provide
the clearest directions possible on how to cut and paste into a
browser. Just know that by doing this, you are cutting down the
percentage of people who will be willing to jump through the
necessary hoops to access your site.

2. Only Link After You Have Been Linked to If you link first
then you might be forgotten. Don’t allow this to happen.
Instead, make sure you have received your link and notification
before you link to the other website. If you link first you
might simply be forgotten and never linked to, so this is a
scenario you want to avoid at all costs because every link is
important to your website’s search engine ranking.

3. Assuming You Have Links Do the research and know for sure
whether you have links to your web page out in cyberspace or
not. Do not assume for whatever reason that people are linking
to your site simply because they agreed to or you have a linking
software program. Instead, make sure you find out where you
stand in the search engines and how many people are linking to
you.

4. Don’t Allow Redirects If another site says that they are
linking to you but the link has something funny going on, don’t
allow it. A true link should not use redirects or other sneaky
tricks designed to rob you of the link’s benefit.

Follow these above suggestions to avoid some very common link
exchanges pitfalls. Everyone on the Internet is not interested
in helping you further your business, but rather in furthering
their own. Because of this fact, you have to make sure that your
links are being placed in cyberspace and pointing back to you
rather than other websites

Visit 1any.com for Anchor Text Links

Just a few short years ago, there was a web page description tag called the Meta Keywords tag. It quickly became popular with unscrupulous web masters incorrectly applying keywords in an effort to rank better in the search engines. Google, and many top search engines ended up discounting, and ultimately ignoring keywords. It is still important to include this in your page, but for different reasons.

Increasingly, search engines have been placing more importance on a websites “connectivity” to other websites to determine how important, or relevant, your site is. This connectivity is done through linking. A link is like vote of confidence (in the eyes of the search engine) that says, “This site counts.” The more links you have coming into your site means the more “votes of confidence” that your site is worth a visit. Majority rules, democracy in action!

Who stuffed the ballot box?

Again, unscrupulous types have figured out a way to circumvent the system in an effort to gain position in the search engines. The technique was to build massive amounts of inbound links quickly, triggering the search engines to point to your site. The most effective way for the spammers (for lack of a better term) to accomplish this “fast linking” was to band together and form reciprocal linking pools, co-ops, alliances, and partnerships. The majority could no longer be counted on to vote correctly. How true!

Google quickly caught on to this method and had to make a decision. It was decided that the majority could not be trusted, and therefore their vote will be discounted. In fact, reciprocal links from sites that have a page rank of PR1-3 don’t even count anymore. What’s more, associating your site with large reciprocal link swapping programs could potentially cause the search engines to label your site as “unreliable” and have a negative effect on your over all web position.

Educated Voters Rule!

There is a new Vote in town, and it is called the “One Way Link.” It’s not really new, it’s just more important today. The search engines have determined that if someone is willing to “vote” for your site and receive nothing in return, than you must be worth a visit.

Every link into your site has a “value” or “weight” that is assigned by the search engines. Mathematically, it is very possible (even probable) for a dozen One Way links to have more value than 100 reciprocal links. Think of it as the “New Math” on the web.

The Hanging Chad….

“So why not go out and purchase some great One Way links and be done with it?” Is a question I get almost every day. The answer is simple. Google has a patent (yes, a patent!) on its method of determining a web sites overall valuation and relevance. Buying links circumvents their methods, and can absolutely result in being ejected from the search results altogether. What would happen if you woke up tomorrow and your website was no longer in Google?

In addition, that same group of unscrupulous types has come up with all kinds of methods to use the same tactics to turn those link pools into artificial looking One Way links. Google is a lot like the IRS – When they catch you cheating you loose.

The Votes are in.

1.Do not delete your reciprocal link inventory, or discontinue building reciprocal links. Just realize that they do not have the same impact. Swap links with sites that you feel bring value to your web visitor. Exchanging links is considered “natural” in the eyes of the search engines – that’s a good thing.
2.Focus on building quality one way inbound links from sites that are in the same content arena as you.
3.If you are involved in any unnatural link building practices you need to ask yourself if the risk is worth the reward.
4.Provide outbound links to resources that are similar to your sites content.
5.Consult your SEO consultant if you have any questions – they have your best interests in mind.
6.Get creative – there is more to linking than just directories and websites.

Linking Ideas: Articles, Press Releases, Testimonials, Interviews, Contests, Forum and Blog participation, Social networks, Google Video deployment, and talk to every vendor (with a website) you pay for services, and tell them they owe you a link!

Author Bio: David Tucker has been working with various aspects of Search Engine Optimization since 1996. Feel free to contact Netrafic for more information on Search Engine and Internet Marketing

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