Advanced Link Checks

By James Mahony

You should be able to find several indispensable facts about SEO in the following paragraphs. If there's at least one fact you didn't know before, imagine the difference it might make.

View the source of each and every page: is there JavaScript and CSS on the page? Remember that spiders may not index pages that have more than 10k or so of JavaScript or CSS embedded in them. Spiders don't enjoy getting tangled up in JavaScript. So as a general rule you should avoid putting out prompts and alerts using JavaScript every time that a page loads. Because of this rule, it is also wise to avoid link partners who do so on the pages that they link to you from. If anything looks fishy, it probably is.

CSS won't give you many problems. If you are going to use CSS, it is best to link to it from another source. Create a separate CSS page and use the tag to work it into the head of your HTML. This method will keep your file size down considerably, and since you will probably be using the same CSS on several pages, decrease your bandwidth usage. Normally a large quantity of CSS within the document isn't indicative of any suspicious behavior on the part of the linker. If you feel that you are, indeed, suffering from the fact that the site uses such an excessive proportion of CSS on the page itself, suggest to the webmaster that he/she may want to create an external CSS document and link to it in his/her header.

Check that you're still on the domain you clicked on a link to, and you haven't moved to another site or a subdomain. Some people will move you to another domain while telling that's their site and your link is there, relying on you not checking the address bar. This trick is all too common and happens to folks who are new to SEO every single day. This sad fact will continue until people begin to catch it every time.

If you don't have accurate details regarding SEO, then you might make a bad choice on the subject. Don't let that happen: keep reading.

If the domain has changed, delete your backlink to the site in question immediately and then email the webmaster with your complaint. If the webmaster does not fix the problem you may
even want to request that they remove the link as the site may wind up discredited as a link farm or some such thing that you do not want to be associated with for fear of being banned from many popular search engines with technology used to combat link farms.

On a related subject, when you check your back links, make sure that these links appear in legitimate places. If the site is completely dedicated to linking to other sites and doesn't seem to be a directory or something similar you will want to get your link removed as soon as possible. There is no time when one link is worth the risk of being permanently banned from any popular search engine. Aside from the traffic that you will lose from that one search engine, you may wind up "red flagged" so to speak. It seems to be common practice among search engines that
if one finds faulty activity the rest seem to find out soon afterwards.

Overall, if it seems dodgy, leave it alone. It's better to sacrifice one link in caution than to destroy your site's rankings by accepting one you're not sure of. There are hundreds of situations aside from link farms that can and will give you trouble. It would be impossible to list every scam as there are people who make their living (or seem to anyway) in creating and executing these scams. Whenever there is a new form of "SEO" technology that "can't fail," you should watch out because it is almost guaranteed to blow up in your face. The only truly powerful and guaranteed method of SEO is to make your site valuable to your visitors and then let it fall where it may in the realm of the search engine.

It is difficult, after you have optimized your pages and submitted them to search engines and directories, to sit back and wait, but there is not much that can be done aside from attempting to accumulate links from good, solid places. The work that you have done is bound to pay off sooner or later as long as you stay honest. When it comes to the world of SEO, honesty is, indeed, the best policy.

When word gets around about your command of SEO facts, others who need to know about SEO will start to actively seek you out.

About The Author:

James Mahony is the founder of http://www.searchmama.com - A site dedicated to Search Engine Optimization SEO Tips http://www.thedomaintycoons.com
http://www.articlesforwebsitecontent.com

Search Engine Optimization for the Rest of Us

By Nowshade Kabir

When you have launched your website, whether it is an eCommerce store or a corporate promotional site, you must have set certain goals regarding the quantity of traffic you are expecting to have on your site. If you did not pursue your goal with specific web promotional marketing strategies, chances are there you are not very happy with the results you have achieved so far. Although, there are numerous web promotional methods available to your
disposal, optimization of your webpages for search engines is the uncontested leader in this field. If you sell products or services through your website, it is even more so for you. Consider this. Out of various possibilities which include: going to a shop, calling a shop, etc. the prospective buyer decided to search for the product online. Then he or she used certain key-phrase to make a query on a search engine and then among other sites, he or she chose yours to click in. As a seller this is the kind of visitors you need for your site! Search engines have more than twice the e-commerce conversion rate of other traffic acquisition sources. You can get these results for your site with the help of search engine optimization.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

SEO is a set of actions carried out with a webpage to improve visibility of that webpage in search engines. The goal is to ensure top places in the search engine results for a specific query.

How important are the search engines? Data show 81 percent of Internet users find the sites they're looking for through search engines. Over 57% of Internet users search the Internet everyday. Up to 500 Million searches take place in a day. 55% of all Internet purchases originate at a search engine as oppose to 9 percent from banners. These statistics are pretty convincing, but surprisingly, according to StatMarket.com only 7 percent of websites are visible by search engines.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can really bring amazing results. Our page http://trade-leads.rusbiz.com recently started to show on the first page of Google for the search phrase "trade leads". Within the last month we have noticed almost 30 percent increase of traffic to this page which is pretty much inline with the available statistics. If your optimization efforts started to bear fruits and you ended up on the second or third page of Google search, you can expect a dramatic increase of almost 5 times more traffic than before and after two months it can be over 9 times! An upward move from 2nd and 3rd pages to the much coveted first page will bring an increase of around 30 percent. Along with the traffic the conversion rate - the quantity of actual purchases - also goes up significantly.

Your position within the first page also makes a lot of difference. The top positioned web page in the sponsored - paid advertisement - receives 50 percent of all clicks and first three top ranked web pages garner 60 percent of all clicks.

Once you have decided to go for search engine optimization, your next step is to figure out for which search engine you should work on optimizing your site. After all there are so many search engines out there!

If you look at the latest statistics available for the month of November, 2005 compiled by Nielsen/NetRatings it, probably, won't be any surprise to you that Google at present has the most search market share. There were 5.1 billion searches done in November. Out of 60 search engines monitored, Google had a share of 46.3 percent,Yahoo - 23.4 percent, MSN - 11.4 percent, AOL - 6.9 percent, Ask Jeeves with its other affiliations MyWay, Teoma, Iwon and search sites of Excite Network has a combined share of around 6 percent, etc. This clearly shows that Google is the undisputed leader among search engines at this moment. That's why in your quest of getting more traffic to your site, you have to emphasize on Google. Other key indicators which favor Google as well are:

. Google is most favored by business people - 82.9 percent of all business users make their queries through Google.

. The Google users are more educated. They are more likely to have a college degree.

. The Google users are from higher income groups.

As mentioned earlier search engine optimization is a set of actions that you have to take regarding your web pages. Here are the key steps of the process:

Select keywords for search engine ranking
1. Make a list of keywords that you think buyers might use to search for products and services you sell.
2. Use a Thesaurus to check synonyms of the words and phrases that you have chosen. You may come up with additional keywords.
3. Eliminate all single words from the list!
4. Go to several of your competitors' websites and check out what keywords they are focusing on by viewing the HTML source of the pages.
5. Now go to Yahoo! pay per click search marketing site Overture, which has an excellent keyword selection tool. Google also has a similar tool located at
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox.
6. Get the search phrases or terms that are popular enough and fall into your criteria from above mentioned lists.
7. Check where you stand with these keywords or key phrases in main search engines. Find the needed tool for this here. http://www.marketleap.com/verify/default.htm.
8. Now try to find whether you should use your keyword in singular or plural, or which one of the two similar search terms or phrases are more desirable by going to the following page:
http://www.onfocus.com/googlesmack/down.asp. Remember, studies show that conversion rate for plural words are in general higher than singular!
9. Now that you have a number of keywords, cluster two to three of them for one single page. Remember, every page of your site should be built surrounding one single theme and focused on
maximum two to three keywords.

Optimize the pages for keywords

Place keywords in Title tag, Meta description, Alt tags, Heading tags, Comment tags. Here is an example:

<title>Search Engine Optimization for the Rest of Us</title>
<meta name="description" content="Article about search engine ranking at ezine.rusbiz.com">
<meta name="keywords" content="search engine ranking, optimizing web pages for keywords, SEO steps">
<meta name="author" content="Nowshade Kabir">
<meta name="copyright" content="Nowshade Kabir">
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow">

Create content

Now develop informative content using these keywords. Use your key words in headlines and alt tag of the pictures. Make sure that you don't over do it! If you stuff keywords more than
necessary for a normal text, search engines can ban your site for keyword spamming. Here is a tool for checking density of keywords on a page: http://www.gorank.com/seotools/. Maximum
preferable density is 3-5 percent.

Submit to search tools

Effective promotion of a website starts with submission of the site to various search tools available on the Internet. There are two different types of search tools - search engines and
directories. Search engines index their listings based on the information retrieved by their spiders which crawl through the hyper links constantly looking for new websites. The directory
listings are compiled by human editors from the URLs submitted to the directory. If your website is listed in the directories you can be sure that the spiders of different search engines
sooner or later will index your site. That's why you should start submitting your website to the directories. The major directories are GMOZ, Yahoo!, LookSmart, etc.

Link popularity

The quantity of links in different websites pointing to your sites is called link popularity of your website. The more popular is your site the more links you get from other websites and vice
versa. Link popularity is one of the key factors that search engines consider in their search algorithm while indexing a website. What would be the rank of a website in a search result
depends on its link popularity in a very big way. Work on getting as many backward links as possible, preferably from the web pages with higher page ranking than yours.

Track ranking

Search engine optimization requires constant monitoring and updating. Don't forget that the competitors are working relentlessly on achieving high positions. The search algorithms are also constantly changing and improving. That's why every now and then you should check out how your site is doing.

Track traffic

If your work started to bring good results and you are getting more traffic, but the visitors are not taking expected actions, this means, you probably have selected wrong keywords. Start all
over again with keywords analysis.

Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing web pages for natural or organic - as they are also called - searches. Once you are certain that you have done everything possible to
achieve maximum results in this sphere, you should consider pay per click marketing with Google, Yahoo and MSN. Effective web promotion requires a combination of both of these two search engine marketing strategies.

About the author:

Nowshade Kabir is the CEO of Rusbiz.com, a global B2B Portal, which helps companies build web store, buy and sell products and services using eMarketplace, eCatalog and other features. Rusbiz also offers website development packages: http://www.rusbiz.com/design_package.html

Where Are Your Articles Being Published?

By Bill Platt

There are a few article directory software programs in the marketplace. Some are great, some are good, and some stink to high heaven, for the writer and for the website owners.

In an ideal world, all article management software would be easy- to-use for the webmaster. Also in an ideal world, the submission process would be fast and easy for the writer. But, this is not an ideal world.

In today's article hungry marketplace, there are literally hundreds of websites where you can submit your articles.

Three Types of Article Directories

There are three kinds of article directories:

* Stand-Alone Directories of Articles Available for Reprint
* Stand-Alone Directories of Articles Available for Reading
* Article Directories Inside of a Website, with Articles Available for Reading

With these different kinds of directories, you will find different categories of webmasters. This distinction is more important than you think.

* Corporate Owners
* Independent Online Business Webmasters
* Hobbyist Webmasters

Personally, I own two article directories. One has nearly 2500 articles in it, and the other has nearly 5000 articles in it.

Both of mine are of the first type, Stand-Alone Directories of Articles Available for Reprint. But, I am not a corporate owner.
I am an independent online business webmaster.

The reason why the type of owner is important is that the type of owner will determine where your articles will be published today AND tomorrow.

Corporate owners have a bottomless supply of web server space available to them. In the corporate category, these directories are the most important:

* http://www.ezinearticles.com/

* http://www.goarticles.com/

* http://www.ideamarketers.com/

* http://www.uniterra.com/

Directory Owner Budgets

Most new article directory owners have a small budget for web hosting, and therefore, they have a limited amount of web server hard drive space.

Most of these new directory owners have jumped into their website with both feet hoping to cash in on their Google Adsense revenue.

After a few months, the truth will crash them into the wall.

On http://www.articles4reprint.com/, I have more than 4500 articles live. I have another 1000 articles pending my approval. Generally, it takes 30 seconds to approve one article. So, the
articles currently pending on this site will require an investment of another 8.5 hours to bring up-to-date. One day a couple of weeks back, I spent 19 straight hours approving articles on this site. I am not going to stop taking submissions to this article directory site, but it does require a lot of my time to maintain.

Perhaps I am exceptional. I will spend the hours required to approve articles, but will the next person?

I started this site with a basic account. I have had to upgrade my web hosting package three times to be able to continue accepting articles to the site. Will the next person make this kind of commitment?

The payoff for operating a website like this one is the Adsense revenue developed from hosting such a wide range of content on the website. In the case of the http://www.articles4reprint.com/
website, I am currently generating only $40 per month on my Adsense account. Will the next person consider this a fair trade of time for money? Likely not.

I Know This Is My Business, But Don't Take My Word For It

At various times, I submit articles to various directories. The distinction of "at various times" is actually important. Websites that were accepting direct submissions from me six months ago are no longer accepting submissions from anyone.

Writers want to believe that they can just crank out hundreds of articles, generating hundreds of links back to their websites. Sometimes they can, and at other times, they cannot.

It comes down to this. Every website where I submit articles has a human moderator at the other end of the transaction, and they have the right to choose what materials they will use and what materials they will not use. Each webmaster can also consider whether the time required for the approval process will help their bottom line.

These big article directories no longer accept articles from anyone. Also shown is the last date an article was added to the site.

* http://www.article-emporium.com/ - December 2005
* http://www.articletime.com/ - December 2005
* http://www.learnthis.info/ - August 2005
* http://www.family-content.com/ - May 2005
* http://www.certificate.net/wwio/ - April 2003

Many smaller directories have also stopped taking articles. In most cases, the websites show that they accept articles, but you never realize that they are not printing your articles until you
look or until you hit the Submit button on the Submission Form. Or, you can continue submitting to them, never realizing that you are wasting your time, until you go to search the website for your articles.

http://www.articlefinders.com/ says that they have a monster backlog and they are not taking new articles until they get caught up.

http://www.marketingtroll.co.uk/ seems to indicate that they are still accepting articles, but they have not published a new article since May of 2005.

Folks, I could go on forever. I could literally show you hundreds of directories that seem to be accepting articles, but they have not published any new articles in months or years.

Generally, Mailing Lists on the Major List Servers Deliver Better Results

Article distribution email groups on Yahoo and Google generally provide good results, but they fall into disuse almost as frequently as web article directories.

Here, I will show the subscriber count of the Article Distribution Group, the last time an article was published through the list, and the URL for the list.

1003 - September 2003 -

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ArticlePublisher/
560 - September 2001 -

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ArticlePublish
2002 - December 2000 -

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/articles_archives
752 - June 2005 -

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreeWrites
474 - December 2000 -

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/The-Article-Depot
465 - August 2003 -

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WriteQualityContent

The following article distribution group is active, but there is no moderator to review your posts:

1390 - June 2005 -

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ReprintArticles-Paradise

(the only people who can submit to this list are those who were not moderated at the time the list owner disappeared.)

In Conclusion...

If you are distributing your own articles to a house list, check back from time to time to make sure that they are actually using your articles. Always verify your results. Don't waste your time
submitting articles to people who will not even look at your articles.

About The Author :

Bill Platt is the owner of http://thephantomwriters.com/link-builder.pl

Get Traffic Jams With Referral Links On Your Website

By Anton Cheranev

Are you running an Internet business and looking for a way to boost the traffic to your website? Would you like to increase your opt-in subscribers, get more referrals, quality leads and receive valuable feedback? Well you can, through the fastest growing marketing tool available - referral links. Referral links may cause traffic jams on your website, but in a good way. Internet businesses need website traffic in order to be successful. The more referral links to your website, the more visitors stop in to look around. The math is simple. Referral links plus visitors equal purchase and profits.

According to a recent online study, over 50% of Internet users have visited websites through referral links. Referral links can bring the best website traffic jams when the referral is coming from a reliable source and can mean a world of difference when it comes to converting a website visitor to a customer. The whole purpose to having referral links is to drive visitors to your website and encourage them to stay long enough to see what products or services you have to offer them.Then it is up to you to convert that visitor into a valued customer.

Most business owners greatly depend on their website to generate a substantial part of their income. Some website business owners depend on the success of their website to supplement their income while some depend on their website for their entire income, whether it is making direct sales or by generating leads to spread interest in your website's services or products. As with many website businesses, visitors are more likely to zip through your website without reading your site or making any purchases. This happens most often when the website has no eye-catching images or information. This is a common problem among website business owners and can be very frustrating. So, the million-dollar question is this - How do you turn your visitors into customers? The answer to this question can have a tremendous affect on the success of your business website.

Turning your website visitors into customers is a "Conversion." When someone visits your website and does not provide any realbenefit, such as making a purchase, inquiry, or subscribing toyour newsletter or any other effects that may become a sales lead. You must convert these visitors into customers by offering them exceptional deals or incentives. Simply put, you must make them an offer they cannot refuse. After all, you have invested a great deal of time and money into getting your website up and running. Now you must invest the time and effort into getting your target audience to visit your website and opt-in to receive future specials and updates. You must think of every visitor as being a potential customer, it's up to you to convert them, drive them in, and keep them coming back.

Website business owners often measure their success in terms of conversions, not just increased website traffic. Converting a visitor into a customer that makes a purchase of products or services will create a profit. Businesses need to create profits in order to survive or else there would be no business. More customers are more relevant to business websites than mere
visitors are, although visitors may eventually become a customer. Not only should you, as a website owner, focus on driving more people to your website, but also you need to focus on getting the right people in there. You need to find your target audience and go after them with everything you have. Lure them to your website by showing them that you have what they are looking for, what they need.

You want those potential customers who will likely become sales leads and create a profit so you can have a great Return on Investment (ROI) for all your money, time and effort you have
invested into creating your website. This is why providing referral links on your website is so important. As a business website owner, you need to generate your own traffic and promote your website business to the best of your ability. Although referral links may only account for a small portion of website traffic, they do have a big conversion rate and they are a very wise investment of your time.

About The Author:

Don't pay a dime for any ebook, marketing course or software program until you've read this
groundbreaking document... Get everything you need to make money online including over 30 time-saving, profit-producing, influence-expanding tools and software programs absolutely *FREE*... Check Out :
http://www.myinstanthomebusiness.com/dotcomology.html

How To Take The Pain Out Of Publishing Your Ezine

By Silvia Hartmann

99% of all ezines are not "being a reporter" on current events; that is the first and most important thing to understand.

This means that you don't have to be publishing your ezine one day before the "deadline" of when you've decided you'll be sending it out, and going into a great tizzy over the whole thing.

Most ezines are highly topical and related to a business, a market or futher products and services of one kind or the other, and their function is to keep customers in touch, as well as to convert interested parties into customers.

This gives you a constantly "rolling" audience of old hands and newbies, and an ebb and flow of subscribers and unsubscribers.

There are certain evergreen topics in any context that you can always write about, and write about over and over again, from many different angles, and it will always be interesting and well received.

This is the key to successful ezine publishing.

It's not so much about "news", but about enjoyable content - and that can be as old as the hills, including a 2000 year old quote from a Roman senator; if it is interesting to your target audience, it is applicable, and it can become an ezine article.

With that understood, the production of an ezine can change, and it can become far more manageable.

Tip 1: Prepare a number of issues in advance so you have at least 3-6 in hand and ready to go, all the time. That's what columnists do so they don't go mad and explode from the stress of constantly trying to beat deadlines.

Tip 2: An ezine does NOT need more than ONE GOOD ARTICLE, tip, suggestion etc. In this day and age, people do not sit around with email as though it was the Times Magazine. Too long and too much content, and they'll put it aside for later, and later never comes as you well know with your own email.

Tip 3: As you're the publisher, you can have a flexible schedule. Base your ezine on something manageable, weekly, bi-monthly, but be flexible within this to suit yourself and take things like public holidays, major events in your market like the SuperBowl or the Olympics into consideration.

Tip 4: You can have a "news space" in your ezine which you can fill with news, or leave blank and just send out the prepared column you have already waiting to go. You don't always have to
have some amazing news item in every newsletter, that's way too stressful (and probably even too much for your audience!)

Tip 5: Make it as easy for yourself as possible! Don't go mad over mail merging or complicated html formatting if it's a challenge - it isn't necessary. There are people having fantastically successful newslists and ezines who stalwardly send in plain text, without any bells and whistles, but the content is good and it's appreciated all around.

Tip 6: Remember your floating audience and go back to basics every third newsletter. Advanced subscribers never mind going over the basics again, and it's essential for the new subscribers. So this may be YOUR ezine No. 266, but how many people were even there for the first 100?

Tip 7: If you are planning to have a commercial newsletter that carries advertisements, include advertisements right from the start and as a matter of course. It is the easiest thing to add a short advertisement for a book on http://amazon.com/ with your own affiliate link in the "ad space section", even if you have only 3 subscribers at present. Then, it is there, and later, when you have 3 million subscribers, you can rent out a space that already exists without disturbing your recipients or changing the format.

Tip 8: On that topic, pick a format and stick with it. That makes it MUCH easier to prepare and send newsletters on a regular basis and takes the stress right out of it. Something like: Personal greeting - Advert - Article - News - Advert, for example. That way, you just need to fill in each one and that's easy. Customers also LIKE a format they can trust and it relieves THEIR stress, just the same.

To sum up: Make it easy for yourself with pre-prepared, ready to go, ready formatted ezines that just need a "season's greeting" or a short topical comment to make them right up to date. Have a number of them in hand so you can take a holiday when you want to; keep it short and sweet and stick to a simple formula.

That's what the professionals do and if you do the same, you'll find having a top quality, interesting email newsletter or ezine that goes out on time, a breeze.

(c) Silvia Hartmann 2006

About The Author:

Silvia Hartmann is the author of MindMillion
and the creator of the amazing 60 Second Wealth Booster series
to increase intelligence, reduce stress and exercise the
wealthy brain. You can take part for FREE at
http://MindMillion.com/60/

15 Tips To Drive Traffic To Your Blog

By David Riewe

There are many factors that make blogs much better than normal WebPages including the speed at which blogs are indexed, ability to submit to blog directories & normal directories, pings and track backs. All these little things can help drive more traffic to blogs. Here are 15 popular techniques you can use:

1.) Create at least four keyword posts per day. Most of the top blogs such as Boing Boing, Daily Kos, and Instapundit (with literally tens of thousands of visitors per day) publish an average of 30 small 100-150 word posts per day according to "Secrets of the A-list Bloggers: Lots of Short Posts" by http://TNL.net

2.) Submit to My Yahoo! When you submit your own RSS to My Yahoo it is indexed by Yahoo.

3.) Submit to Google's Reader. When you submit your own blog RSS to Google's Reader the Google Blog Search will index your site.

4.) Add a relevant link directory to your blog and trade links like a demon possessed! Although it may take more time than simply submitting to a search engine one time, this method is perhaps the best way to drive traffic to your site. Use software such as Zeus to speed up the link trading process.

5.) Use ping sites like ping-o-matic. Ping your site every time you add a new post.

6.) Submit your blog to traditional search engines such as AltaVista, and MSN.

7.) Submit your blog to traditional directories such as DMOZ. Directories (particularly DMOZ) increase relevance with Google. DMOZ is very picky, but what do you have to lose by trying?

8.) Submit to as many RSS Directories and Search Engines as possible. This is a simple but repetitive process that can be done with software such as RSS SUBMIT.

9.) Comment on other blogs. Do not just leave short, lazy comments like "I agree." Leave well thought out replies that will force readers to wonder "who wrote this?"

10.) Use track backs. If there is a blog that you refer to or quote and it is highly relevant to your subject, leave a track back. It increases your link popularity and may even score a few interested readers from the linked site.

11.) Go offline. Use newspaper ads, public bulletin boards, business cards, even stickers to let as many people as possible know your blog exists.

12.) Ad a link to your blog in your e-mail signature block.

13.) Use Groups (Usenet). Find a relevant group on Google groups, Yahoo groups, MSN groups or any of the thousands of other FREE group services and find like minded people and talk with them. Make sure your use your blog URL like it is your name.

14.) Use Forums. Forums are one of the best places to go for advice. Go to forums and find problems to solve. Make sure you leave your blog name, but be tactful about it; some forums get annoyed with those who selfishly drop a few links to their own site and leave.

15.) Tag your website. Tagging is a new idea that has erupted across the web. Sites like http://Del.icio.us, Technorati and many others have a social feature that allows you to place your article under keywords or "tags" that everyone interested in that tag can see.

Although these are some of the most popular ways to drive traffic to your blog, do not limit your self to tips and lists. Use your imagination and you will come up with thousands of ways to drive traffic to your blog!

About The Author:

David Riewe - Internet Marketer and Publisher
http://www.free-online-course.com

Article Directory, Anyone?

By Gina Capatar

Yes, it's the hype of the century; everywhere you turn you'll see and hear of article directories sprouting like mushrooms. There's practically a new article directory site being introduced in the World Wide Web almost every second.

It is probably because of the usefulness of these kinds of sites to the general public, to the webmaster and to people/products needing exposure. An article directory has it all!

Talk about having free resource on almost any topic imaginable. Article directories hoard articles ranging from DIY's, Xbox launches, inspirational quotes, love and relationships advice, beauty tips, iPod's latest, personality quizzes, legal guidance, resource on divorce, gay and lesbian concerns and even on the extremes, issues concerning terrorism. It's like having a wiki of what everyone knows and thinks of.

The usefulness of article directories to the general public is outdone by its worth to a marketer. An article directory is a free and an inexpensive way for an internet marketer to promote his/her product or service by just writing helpful and useful articles and making use of the resource box to promote his/her goods. It can be done by any marketer in just a matter of hours or minutes for some. You don't have to be a whiz at writing, all you have to do is share what you know and that'll be effective enough. A word of caution though, don't waste your time writing Press Releases because your chance of reprint is 0-0.1%. Article directories don't like them and worst, readers of articles hate them.

What about the value of article directories to the people who own them, a.k.a the webmasters? Why are webmasters opting to shift from their usual projects to create an article directory?Simple! Article directories exemplify the best kind of website that Search Engines love the most. Article directories are teeming with fresh content everyday, and they are constantly updated. Not to mention, the keywords crammed into each article are simply divine especially when you are affiliated with Google Adsense. There is no other kind of website that can par with having an article directory.

I have seen and watched the ever increasing popularity of article directories; there was a time when there were just about 20 or 30 article directories found on the internet. Before, only a few took the time to diligently pursue the creation of these directories and only a few were brave enough to pay for hosting and domain services just to become repositories of what people have written about. They were among the first to recognize the benefits and advantages of having an article directory.

Among the first article directories were:

Ezinearticles.com
iSnare.com
GoArticles.com
ArticleCity.com

By now, most likely, they are handling hundreds or thousands of articles submitted everyday and reaping the rewards of being the firsts in the most promising field of article directories.

With all these and probably more, I'll say, "Article Directories, anyone?"

About The Author:

Gina Marie Capatar owns an article directory site containing articles for women http://allwomencentral.com. She has also been a part of http://www.isnare.com where she got ideas to build her own article directory.

How To Use Web Directories To Boost Traffic To Your Site

By Robert Burko

You just got your website online. Everything is setup and you're ready to go. Excitement is high and the time has come to open your virtual doors to the millions and millions of Internet users around the globe. You put out the cyber welcome mat and declare your site ready for action. But, instead of sitting and watching the users trample over one another to get to your site, you see little to no traffic.

Don't worry! This is something every webmaster goes through and is to be expected. (Well, webmasters in the late 90's expected to launch their site and be millionaires the next morning, but times have changed since those wonderful days!)

But there are some quick and easy things you can do to begin building your 'link network,' which will ultimately help drive traffic to your site. Since the Internet's conception, the notion has been that sites link to one another, while web surfers click from place to place. Thus, the challenge begins: Get your site linked to as many others as possible.

You can start contacting other websites offering to trade links (but be prepared to invest a lot of time); you can buy links (but be prepared to fork out some cash); you can join link-trading programs (but be prepared to get a lot of irrelevant sites linking to you); or you can start submitting your website to web directories.

What Is A Web Directory?
A web directory is a compilation of sites organized by category or topic. Most web directories have multiple levels of categories, progressing from general to highly specific. In addition, a web directory editor will likely have to approve your site, lending it at a certain degree of credibility. Being listed in a directory ensures that if a web surfer finds their way into a specific category, they don't just see your competitors, they see you! And, if they can see your link, they can click it, producing traffic to your site.

A Web Directory Listing Helps with SEO
If you have a website, you undoubtedly know the importance of ranking well in Google and other major search engines. These search engines count links from other sites as votes for your
site, which helps determine your ranking, or position in the search results. There are a lot of other parts of the algorithm and this brief explanation doesn't do it justice. However, it serves the point that links improve your ranking, and that's something every website owner needs to know.

A link in a directory that is spidered by Google (and a lot are) will count as a vote for your site. This improves your ranking, and yet again helps drive traffic to your site. It's important to note that not all directories help with SEO. Sometimes, a web directory will link to your site through a special URL that is often a programming CGI script. If the URL is not a direct link to your site, then the search engines don't count it as a vote. Therefore, it's best to pick directories that offer a direct one-way link to your site. (This way, you get more bang for your buck: traffic from the directory and improved search engine ranking.)

Relevancy Matters
If you trade links with random sites, then you are theoretically building your 'link network,' but you are sacrificing the quality of that network. Web searchers who are looking for information on a particular topic often use resources that link to a variety of sites related to what they seek. This makes web directories the perfect destination.

Since directories are categorized by topics, a person can arrive in the directory and have one-click access to a variety of resources. You definitely want to be one of those resources! Plus, when the other search engines pick up your link, it will count for more since it is surrounded by relevant content, which is most likely filled with your important keywords.

As you build your link network, you'll continue to see increased traffic. And if you use web directories as your vehicle, you are essentially paving more paths to your site. Several good submissions in popular directories will help get you rolling. The best part is that many directories are free, so this jump start won't even hurt your bottom line.

Good luck and happy submitting!

About The Author:

Robert Burko is president and founder of Eliteweb.cc (http://www.eliteweb.cc), an Internet portal featuring a best-of-the-web search engine and a comprehensive search-engine-friendly web directory (http://www.eliteweb.cc/directory/).

Five Common Myths About Search Engine Submission

By Donald Nelson

Search engine submission is a matter that often mystifies those who are new to the Internet. It is natural to scratch your head and wonder how you will get your website listed on the major
search engines. If you ask someone how to go about getting your site listed you are likely to hear many misconceptions about search engine submission. You may even be taken for a ride and end up needlessly parting with some hard earned cash. So, before this happens to you let's examine some of the most common myths surrounding search engine submission.

1. Search engine submission is a very important matter

It would indeed seem that you submitting your site to the search engines is of utmost importance. After all, if your site is not in the search engines then how will anybody find you?
Sure, you have to be included in the search engines but that doesn't necessarily mean that you will have to actively "submit" your site. This is because search engines use their "spiders", or robotic search programs to scour the Internet looking for new pages. If another site, that is already included in the search engines, links to yours, then when a search engine spider visits that site, it will follow the link to your site and gather your information.

So, if you are building a new site make sure that you get some links to your sites from already established sites. Ask your webmaster, your friends, other organizations and complementary
sites for links. This will be enough to get you listed in the major search engines. You may still want to submit your site to make sure, but consider the other points before you go ahead

2. There are thousands of search engines that you should be listed in

"Get listed in 300,000 search engines" read the headlines for some submission advertisements. If you look at the traffic logs of most websites you will see that the lion's share of traffic comes from a handful of search locations, such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves. There just aren't thousands of search sites on the Internet. So, don't pay money to be listed on these sites. Oftentimes, the sites referred to in these advertisements are seldom-visited free-for-all links pages. If you get listed on such a page you will not get much traffic, but you will get a lot of spam.

Concentrate on the major search engines and don't worry about the non-existent phantoms referred to in the advertisements.

3. Monthly submission to search engines is a must

In the early days of the Internet, the companies that handled search engine submission warned the public that sites can be easily lost from search engine indexes and that to prevent this from happening it is important to resubmit your site every months. They also said that this was a good way to let search engines know about new additions to your pages.

It is not very likely that your site will disappear from a search engine for no reason at all. If your site is "down" for a considerable amount of time then it might be possible for your site to be dropped from the listings, but otherwise this rarely happens.

Also, you don't have to resubmit your site to notify search engines about changes to your page or pages. The spiders of search engines regularly revisit pages that are already in the index. You can in fact create a "robots" meta tag and give instructions such as "revisit every 15 days" and this will accomplish the job better than a resubmission.

4. Automatic submissions are useless and you must submit manually

There is often a hot debate about whether manual submissions are better than automatic submissions. For Yahoo, MSN and Google it is now better to do it with a manual submission because all of these engines require you to fill in a code word that is displayed on the screen. These search engines instituted this procedure to block out automated spam submissions. So, for the giants of search, manual submission is the way to go.

What about the secondary sites? There are smaller search engines and directories. Some of them can be useful to you, especially if they represent a particular geographic area or business niche that you are aiming for. If the list of these secondary engines and directories becomes too large, then you may want to consider automated submission. There are some programs that do this or you can find submission services that are free or inexpensive, which brings us to the last myth.

5. You should be prepared to spend a lot of money to get proper submission

If you look at the first point you will see that you probably don't have to do any submission at all to get your site listed in Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves. These are the search engines that will provide you with 90% of your visitors. So, do you really want to spend a good amount of money to reach the last 5 or 10 per cent of your possible visitors? Look around for a free or inexpensive service to take care of the secondary search engines, and if there are smaller search engines that are very important to your business, then visit them yourself and submit your listing. Save your money for other important tasks.

About The Author:

Donald Nelson is a web developer, editor and social worker. He is the director of A1 Optimization http://www.a1-optimization.com a firm providing low cost search engine optimization, submission and web promotion services. He is the principal editor at the A1-Article Directory, http://www.a1-articledirectory.com

Online Directories: The Real Direction Of The Internet

By Adrian Lawrence

Back in the early days of the Internet, there were only human-edited directories. These were found primarily in specialized browsers like the Archie or Veronica systems. Later, Yahoo! used the same basic idea to create a descriptive listing of websites. This was the birth of the first major online directory for the public World Wide Web.

Online directories have been around since the first days of the Internet, and without them and search engines we'd have no simple way of navigating through the sites. Today, there are thousands of directories online, which can make it very confusing to determine which are giving you the best quality information.

In fact, many online directories are no better than junk. Unfortunately, with Google's AdSense program, it has become very profitable in some cases to put together a directory just so you can run ads on it. These sites are automated and certainly no better than you might think.

The best directories are the ones edited by dedicated humans, not dedicated servers. That's because a human being knows what you really need to know, while a computer doesn't care. Examples of these are Yahoo!, which has a search engine component, but still maintains its directory content; and Dmoz, an open directory run by volunteers that also has pretty good
quality content. These directories, and the many quality paid directories that exist, will be around for a very long time.

Search Engines or Directories: What's The Difference?

To understand why directories may be the future of online searching, you should understand the difference between a search engine and a directory.

Search engines catalogue the full text of a web site. This text is stored in a database and made fully searchable. The nformation appearing next to a link is dependent upon the metatag information in the web page, or upon the section of the text where the search term first appears. There is no human intervention, and no guarantee of quality.

A directory is quite different. Human editors place each site in the directory. They've gone out and examined the sites in question, put data together to clarify what the site's really
about, and ranked it more fairly than a search engine could. And the new generation of directories includes wiki technologies and content that helps define a topic as well as show you where to go for further information.

What About Wikis?

Wikis are community-edited informational sites, and they're showing up all over the place. The first was Wikipedia, recently known for an act of vandalism that made up one person's background. This incident was heavily covered in the media, and may have coloured the opinions of many people. However, this incident was atypical of wikis. Nature magazine
and other science editors recently did a quick review of Wikipedia's science content, and determined that it was at least as accurate and up to date as the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Wikis are proving themselves to be both valuable and accurate. They are also a great place to go for directory-style and in-text links to sites to deepen your information. Pretty soon, a wiki is going to be a natural place to go to search for information on just about anything.

Paid Versus Unpaid Directories

There are both paid and unpaid directories as well. Some of these directories are basically clones of Dmoz and other popular directory sites; this means the owner licensed with the directory to duplicate it, and then sold advertising on it. The site owner gets directory content with little or no work on his part, as well as the advertising revenue.

Not all unpaid directories are like that, of course, but you do get what you pay for. A paid directory is both original and human edited. It can also afford to pay for extras like advertising and marketing, ensuring the directory is known by the public. Paid directories can also employ SEO experts who can work toward raising the search engine rating of the site, and traffic experts who can monitor and increase the traffic to the website.

In the long run, listing with all the unpaid directories is okay, but listing with paid directories gives you an edge. And in today's marketplace, you need every edge you can get.

About The Author:

Adrian Lawrence is the webmaster of Indexplex a leading web directory http://www.indexplex.com . Please feel free to republish this article provided this resource box remains together with a working hyperlink.

Choosing The Right Directory

By Adrian Lawrence

When you're looking for the right directory to list in or to use for research, it can be a nightmare. Everyone thinks of Yahoo!, of course, but there are quite literally thousands of other directories out there, many specialized, others not. How can you tell the difference?

By being educated on what you're looking for. When you're looking for the right directories to list in, use the following guidelines.

1. Everyone lists in free directories. Why not? You can list in as many as you want, and you're not losing anything by doing so. Free directories include Yahoo! and Dmoz, as well as hundreds of others who either use their own listings or license listings from Yahoo! and Dmoz. You shouldn't stop here, though, especially if you're running a commercial website.
2. The more directories you're listed in, the more inbound links to your website you've got. And the more inbound links your website has, the higher the search engines will rank your page. Make sure when you create your directory listing to use your keywords in the text; in some search engines, this will help your ranking as well.
3. Some of the free directories are not being listed well by Google and other standard search engines. This is not because of some nefarious competitive advantage, but because the free directories often look like search engine spam or because they don't optimize their sites well. The paid directories are careful to watch for this; after all, the more hits they get, the more they can charge for their services.
4. After listing in all the free directories - which you should, as it costs you nothing but a little time - you should start listing in the better paid directories. Even though you have to pay to get in them, they give you an edge that the free ones don't. For one thing, they're more exclusive, and customers won't be looking at your competitors as much. For another, as noted above, the directory will probably place higher in a search engine. And they tend to be specialized. If you sell medical equipment, listing in a medical equipment directory will almost certainly be a worthwhile investment.
5. If you list in really good and specific directories with proven traffic from customers you want to draw, you're investing your money in the right place. A few good quality links will draw the perfect customers for your business. Finding the right directory is hard, but search for directories that specialize in your industry and in industries that cross into yours; for instance, if you provide medical equipment, don't overlook listings for scientific and laboratory equipment.
6. The next generation of directories is here now. With sites like MSN's Small Business Directory, targeted searching for exactly what you want is easier than ever before. In addition,
   many of the newer directories offer you additional small business tools, more information, specialized content for your industry, and many other services. You'll only find these with paid directories.

About The Author:

Adrian Lawrence is the webmaster of Indexplex a leading web directory http://www.indexplex.com . Please feel free to republish this article provided this resource box remains together with a working hyperlink.

Getting The Best Links From Authority Sites

By Bruce Swedal

We all know back links are a big factor in ranking higher in search engines. It used to be simple to get links by submitting to every directory and your rankings would climb. It is quickly becoming more difficult to move up in search rankings. Directories are still important, but it is becoming more important to be discriminating when evaluating which ones to submit to. You need to be selective and in some cases willing to pay review fees.

The first source for an authority link is DMOZ. It is a free directory, but most that submit there do not get accepted. DMOZ is very strict on evaluating websites for submissions. They look for established sites with unique content and completely unique offerings when there are millions of competing websites is difficult to accomplish. Submit here and forget about it. It will be months before your site is evaluated and they will not inform you when it is.

The next best source for authority links would be a few web directories with authority. There are a few in this category that I would recommend. Those being JoeAnt.com, AuthorityDirectory.com, Abilogic.com and dir.yahoo.com. Quality paid directories such as these are wonderful resources, because they are kept updated, well categorized and promoted. The fees incurred are for the time involved in reviewing your site for admission. They can keep the spam out because with quality directories there is no guarantee of admission. So follow the guidelines when submitting.

I have always thought that one of the best place to look for links are by searching for the sites that link to your competition. If these hub sites are willing to link to your competitor, they are more than likely willing to link to you. It is a good idea to try getting links from these resources that have shown the willingness to link to sites like yours in the past.

The next place to look for authority links may be from authority blog sites. These can be a great source of excellent links. It can also backfire on you so be careful. Authority blog sites get a great deal of traffic so if you make comments that are considered off topic or spam just to get a link, many visitors will see it. This could get you a bad reputation and hurt your credibility, especially if the blog covers a related topic. Do not spam authority blogs and keep comments on topic.

Perhaps the last quality place to look for authority links would be school or government sites. Getting a link from these sources is not an easy task and generally requires that you know a friend or relative working there. Other ways to get these links are by offering a freebie to them in return, by volunteering as a speaker or making a donation.

If you try some of the tips outlined here you are assured of getting at least one authority link to your website which will help your website rank higher in the search engine results. Some of the tips are definitely more difficult than others so reflect on this. Are you a webmaster that gives up easily or one that will work to get your website ranked higher?

About The Author:

The Authority Directory (http://www.authoritydirectory.com/ ) is a valuable resource in every online-marketing campaign. Most comprehensive link building campaigns begin with the Authority Directory Submit (http://www.authoritydirectory.com/submit.php?c=20 )

The Get Links Guide

By Bruce Swedal

Links are basically online votes for your website. As you get more votes, your website is viewed more favorably by search engines and you enjoy higher rankings.

Each of those links can have more or less importance. If you get linked to from a very popular site more of that strength is passed on to your site. Just like campaigning for office in the real world. Getting that backing from a auto union is much more valuable than getting your next door neighbors vote.

So how do you get these links? There are many different ways and several different search engine specialists that will give you their particular take on it. I say make it simple. Get the links you want by asking for them.

Sending out a couple hundred thousand emails asking for a link would not only be considered spam. It would also be ignored by the webmasters that received the email.

A more effective way of getting links to your website is through directories. Quality directories categorize and review websites for a small fee. Then after a successful review the directory will list your website with a link. This is perhaps the easiest and quickest way to get links to your website. These are the best places to request links.

A different way to get inbound links is by writing articles and submitting them to online sites that publish articles. If the article is good quality and gets accepted you can get a link back to your website within the resource box.

Something that you should remember when working on links is many bad links don't equal one quality link. Remember that links carry different weights as we previously discussed.

Link building is also a mostly hands-on process. It takes time and is never truly complete. As long as you have a quality website that you want to remain popular, you will need to be working on building links to your site.

Think of these tips a starting point for a first-rate link building campaign. There are some other methods, but the ones listed here are very effective and where most focus.

About The Author:

The path to an web presence for your website begins at The http://www.authoritydirectory.com/submit.php Authority Directory Submissions page. Take a minute to look at The http://www.authoritydirectory.com/ Authority Directory.

Link Building - How To Get More Inbound Links For Your Website

By Trevor John

Link building is maybe one of the least glamorous yet most important things you can do for your website. Without links pointing to your site, it's unlikely that anyone will ever find you.

So how do you get inbound links?

Most of the time, by asking for them!

Who you ask and how you ask them will make all the difference. You can't just send out hundreds or thousands of emails asking for a link. Apart from these emails being classed as spam, the chances of an email out of the blue being acted on by another webmaster is close to zero.

One way to get inbound links is to search out the small directories that are lurking everywhere on the internet. They classify websites and give a comment or description of the site. Many of these directory sites will list you for free (or a small fee), although the largest of them, such as Yahoo, will charge quite a lot of money. But then if your site is good enough to be listed in Yahoo, that will be recognized by the search engine spiders and you'll likely get a boost in your page rankings.

Another way to get inbound links is by writing articles and submitting them to places like Ezine Articles. You'll get a link back to your website once your article is accepted and as other sites start using the articles you've submitted, you'll get links back from them. You don't need to have got a top grade in English at school. You just need to be able to talk clearly about your subject - much as if you were explaining it to a friend over a coffee.

You can also get links back to your site when you post in forums. Make your posts good quality and people will be happy to click the link in your signature if it's relevant to the forums topic.

About The Author:

Get your free link building report for lots more ideas and ways of getting inbound links to your website: http://replymagic.com/link-building.html

Google And Relevance Of Links

By David Andrew Smith

All the literature, articles, experts and e-zines devoted to Search Engine Optimisation inform us that links to websites are graded as to importance by the page rank of the linking site and the relevance of its content to the content on the other site. Reciprocal links are of no importance especially with regard to Google although they are not penalised. The higher the page rank of the linking site the better. So we are constantly berated to seek out these high ranking sites to get them to provide a backlink to our own sites. Often they also intimate how you can go about this but when reading on you are never given a definitive plan of for example how to convince the BBC to link to your own site.

I cannot give any ideas as to how to achieve this either. Even if you did manage to get a backlink from the BBC site to your own website, would the link be considered relevant unless the website also had some connection with news, tv, radio or sport? As apparently Google looks at the overall content and not just the small part where the link is situated. So I personally have stopped trying to achieve such links.

Running a website with a page rank of 4, I am personally inundated with requests from other webmasters to provide them with a reciprocal link. They always use the same standard argument ...'you will appreciate the importance of links to search engine positioning'... . Where have these people been the last two years? I always reply to them positively by refusing the reciprocal link but suggest that I will place a link to them if they can give me a good reasoned argument as to why I should. To date I have had not a single reply. Webmasters would be better off by simply asking for a backlink and not offering a worthless reciprocal link. I am quite happy to accommodate someone who asks nicely with a reasoned argument. So webmasters out there take note.

Returning to the idea of relevant backlinks. The majority of my own backlinks are achieved by writing articles which provide quite reasonable page rank and absolute relevance because I am writing about the content of my website. The only downside to article writing and having the articles widely distributed is the penalty of duplicate content. Google will only take one of the sources and count it as a relevant backlink whilst the majority of the other search engines will often count all the places where the article has been published. Despite this article writing is still the best and easiest way of getting good backlinks. It might however take anything up to six months before Google will recognise this as a backlink.

About the Author:

David Smith is the owner of a contract cleaning company Sparkle Cleaning Services UK Ltd to be found at http://www.wesparkle.co.uk . He has built and runs this site as well as organising the cleaning contracts generated from the website.

The Battle For Website Traffic.

By R. Martin

Building traffic to your site is getting harder by the week. Wouldn't it be easier to let other people build traffic for you? You are thinking "But, THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE"!

Well, it IS possible.

It may be counterintuitive.

But, in fact, it's actually far EASIER than trying to fight it out for traffic peanuts.

What it boils down to is 1 simple FACT: They key to the success of all goods, services, websites, marketing, & traffic all lie in:

THE VALUE PROPOSITION.

In fact, this is they key to 90% of all OFFLINE businesses' success too. The best stuff rises to the top in ALL markets. People who are impressed by a purchase tell their friends. And they tell their friends. The chain continues. Let's take a look at the automobile market to show you an almost perfect example of this phenomenon.

Honda started importing cars to the United States in the 1970s. At first, the cars weren't as good as other models. But they kept at it, kept researching consumer tastes & preferences. And most importantly, kept improving their PRODUCT. Not with extra bells and whistles that only interest dorky engineers. But by offering real value that the consumer actually consumed.

People say Honda marketed better than the other car companies. I couldn't disagree more!

Why did Honda sell a TON of Accords last year? Because the cars rock. They sell for roughly the same price as their competitors. But, their QUALITY is off the charts!

Think about it:

Why would you pay $27,000 for a competitor's product that will break in 5 years, when you could instead, buy a new shiny Honda Accord that will last far beyond 120,000 miles. You will be happy, but, your social standing starts to take a hold.

You actually TELL other people how great your shiny new Accord is. How long it lasts, how nice it handles, & how much money you saved by buying a car that lasts twice as long as your last one.

You look better to your friends & they appreciate the information. This has been going on since the beginning of time.

The online world isn't THAT different than the offline world. Your website traffic is people. And links are made by other webmasters (who are people too!). If your content is awesome & there is a large volume of it on your site, people will LOVE to link to you. It's that simple.

Fact: People come out with sites in extremely established "competitive" categories that blow away the competition. Their Alexa rankings shoot to top 1000 in under a month. It happens all the time. Because their sites are awesome &amp; people can't wait to break the news to their friends of this cool new site they found. That's how it works.

So what should you do...

Really develop your website's content. If your site is about mortgages, make it the #1 looking #1 functioning & #1 value producing site in your market. Make it a true category killer.

Make it a site where people love to comeback to & feel good about passing on. Stuff it FULL of amazing content about mortgage brokers, refinancing, and projected payments.

Put a directory section on there, but only approve the bestlinks online about mortgages. Add the best links yourself. Same with your article section: add 75 kick-butt informative articles about "How to save $238/month on your next mortgage" and more.

Get in depth & offer great content.

You WILL get linked to by partners, competitors, college professors (.edu links!) & more.

Offer the best stuff you can get your hands on, or write it personally if necessary.

Post great content with high excellent value. Surf the site yourself. Ask: Would you surf this site? Fix it until you would. Make it your homepage and don't quit until you are getting 500,000 visitors a day.

About The Author:

Richard Martin writes for http://www.websitetuts.com/. You can learn more about website
building, online marketing tactics, & website traffic today by visiting:

Free Article Submission Directory, And Article Submission Software

By Peter Nisbet

A free article submission directory is your free pass to the stars. If you write or purchase articles for your own website only, then you will be losing out on what the whole world of article marketing can offer you. Article marketing is probably now the most widely used traffic generation strategy on the internet and if you are not using it you will likely fall behind your competitors.

Article marketing is a strategy involving the submission of articles to online article databases called Article Directories, and these too are growing by the day. However, not all article directories are equal: more on that later. For now, let's think on what gains are to be made by submitting your article to a directory. This might be a piece of work that has taken you days to compose, or you may even have paid for it. Why, then, should you submit to a directory so that everybody can read it for free.

What you have to consider is why you wrote it. Why did you write that article? Was it to sell and make money from it? Unlikely, since there are a lot of writers better than you are that fail to achieve that. Was it to provide content for your website, perhaps even devoting a specific page to it as I have done here? That is the main reason for people writing articles.

True, good writers write articles to submit to article directories, but that is not the major use for them. Statistics show that most articles are written as content for web pages. So why? Why only write for your own web page? Why NOT write for article directories, when your article will be published on a number of websites that article directories, in essence, are? In fact your article will be published on a lot more directories than you submit to due the relationship between various groups of directories that interchange articles.

Don't you realise that you get a one way back-link to a web page of your choice from every directory that accepts your article? Not only that, but if a reader likes what you wrote, they might copy your article to their website and provide you with another one-way link. If you know anything about Page Rank and link density, you will understand just how important and valuable a link to your site without any reciprocation is in internet marketing.

So far, we have discussed links and Page Rank: we haven't even thought of the benefits of the links to your page web pages that readers can physically click on to visit your page. The traffic that article submission can provide is immense.

Here is my Number One tip. Write an article, or purchase one from an article ghostwriter. Make a few changes to it, or even purchase two versions from the ghostwriter, one for submission and the other for your website. Then submit the article to as many article directories as possible, and create a web page for your own version of the same article (that should contain some extra information).

Direct readers to that web page, and not only make your offer on it, but provide an opt-in form so that visitors can register for your newsletter or whatever you are offering in exchange for their first name and email address. It might all sound simple, but it takes some work. Once done however, it can be effective.

About The Author:

Pete is an ackowledged expert on his subject and http://www.articleservices.com.articlesubmission.html provides further information on article directory submissions.

Link Building & Link Baiting Strategies For A Successful SEO Campaign

By Randy Zlobec

Link building refers to search engine optimization strategies in which one way back links to a website are created. By generating links from related and authoritative sites back to your own website you not only encourage extra web traffic, you increase your page rankings in search engine results pages. Some of the most successful link building techniques are article marketing, blogging, forum posting and paid advertising on related and high traffic websites.

The importance of one way links cannot be over emphasized. Reciprocal linking is now seen for what it is - a deceptive strategy. Also rapid, artificial development of one way links is suspect so it is far better to create your links gradually as one would expect of natural website and back link development. Organic SEO strategies will not trigger any alarms in the search engines and can be used in a focused and accelerated way to expedite the marketing advantages.

Article marketing is one of the most effective ways to build back links to your website. It is better to use a couple of high traffic article directories than to submit your articles to hundreds or even thousands of directories as this will create an enormous amount of duplicate content which is devalued by the search engine algorithms. It is also a mistake to put articles on your website that you have used for article marketing purposes because this would create duplicate content on your website. While you certainly want the benefit of back links to increase your search engine results page (SERP) rank you need to take into account other factors which can affect your SERP position such as duplicate content.

Blogging, forum posting and paid advertising on relevant websites can also provide excellent one way links to your website. You can write blog articles on your own blog as well as writing comments and articles on other people's blogs that link back to your website. Forums will generally not allow you to directly link to your website in the posting itself, however you can use a link to your site as a signature under your post which can be just as effective as an embedded back link. Placing paid ads on high traffic, related and authoritative sites can also provide one way links back to your website which is likely to both increase the number of visitors as well as your SERP position.

Link baiting is an indirect link building strategy in that you do not directly place the links but encourage others to link back to your site or, more specifically, a particular article or page on your site. Link baiting is achieved by writing interesting, informative, humorous or controversial articles that others are likely to link to from their websites or blogs. Ask yourself what information you can offer that will benefit others and tempt them to link back to the information. Controversy and disagreement are always popular, running an online contest is another link bait technique, so too is writing free how-to reports, providing free access to an online software program, or doing something new on the internet that is interesting or helpful and grabs attention. Writing or editing informational articles for online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia can also be an effective link bait technique.

Link building and link baiting are both effective search engine optimization strategies as well as traffic building techniques. If you strategically link one way from relevant websites back to your own, you will gradually improve your SERP rank as well as increase the number of visitors to your site and therefore your profitability. You cannot optimize your website effectively and ignore the importance of back links. It is becoming increasingly difficult to manipulate Google and other search engines by using artificial strategies so it is very important to create natural links in order to gain lasting benefits in terms of search engine results rank. Link building and link baiting are helpful and beneficial SEO strategies. If you use them wisely, they can significantly increase the positioning of your website on the search engines and consequently the ability of your site to be profitable and successful.

About The Author:

Link Building http://www.semgorilla.com & Link Baiting By Randy Zlobec a Search Engine Optimization Specialist and Author of Sem Gorilla

Build Website Linking Through Common Sense And Good Manners

By Gerald Brown

Good manners apply online as well as off. This is especially true when requesting website link exchanges.

Imagine you are at a social gathering where you have the opportunity to meet a lot of interesting executives connected to your line of business or work.

You are talking with a small group of like minded individuals and you are discussing a topic of common interest. Suddenly another guest joins the group and within seconds diverts the conversation to talking about himself, his company and why those in this group should work or do business with his company. The group soon breaks up disinterested at the aggressive individual.

The guy who selfishly butted in now looks for another little group to do the same again, with the same results - no one is interested, as he tries to dominate the conversation!

The better way for this executive would be to respect the others; by not being pushy; contribute to the conversation yet wrap his sales message within what he says. In other words, he is showing he is a good guy to get to know. This way he is building up credibility. The conversation continues and at the appropriate moment, name cards are willingly exchanged.

Requesting Link Exchanges

When you request a link exchange it is a bit like the above scenario -- most requests are similar to the aggressive guy, and just say: "link to my web site and you give me a link in return", without further explanation. That is Selfish.

Put yourself in the recipient's position as they ask themself:

* Do I know you and your site?

* Why should I exchange a link?

* Do we have common interest in our sites' subject matter so that we mutually benefit?

* Are we on equal footing - meaning, is your link page of the same Page Rank as mine? - This is important to know. Why? Because search engines (SE's) gives lesser credibility to links from a lower page rank, especially if the subject of the two pages are not related. On the other hand, SE's give greater weighting when page subjects are the same and highly focused.

All your link exchange requests should include:

- your site's main subject area

- your link page "page rank"

- be polite and cordial in your e-mail request (usually sent to the "webmaster" or as specified on their site, and

- that you have placed the reciprocal link already on your site first before making the request as a goodwill gesture (and remove it if the request is turned down).

About The Author:

Gerald Brown, a long time British expatriate and resident of Crete, heads up "Brits in Crete" -
http://www.britsincrete.net - a comprehensive resource with advice and targeted links for those expatriates who plan to relocate and live in Crete, Greece.

Article Promotion Tips And Traps

By Prakash Jain

A great way to get highly targeted traffic plus relevant one-way backlinks to your site is through writing and submitting unique articles. Submitting these articles to free article directories or other websites that accept article submission will reward your website with valuable visits and backlinks.

Your article submission will reap visitors, so make sure you keep your website content easy to read as well as relevant and useful to your viewers. When search engines decide who to give the highest ranks to, they look at and weigh a few different factors. These factors include links, but also content as well. Search engines have a tendency to place the websites with the best content at the top of the rankings list.

The whole reason to submit articles to directories in the first place is to generate a bunch of one way links pointing back to your site, which will in turn increase your daily traffic. Free article directories love your article submissions - if you give them an article/content they reward you with one-way links.

Make sure your articles are as effective as possible. Don't forget to put your name at the end, and take credit for your articles. Place the URL correctly in the resource box in order for it to get counted properly - you wouldn't want to be making all your submission efforts in vain.

Spend time when planning the short pitch that your resource box gives. Create a strong call to action so that people will want to click to visit your site - give them a good reason to click. If your resource box doesn't sell the idea of visiting your website or engaging in your offer effectively, some of the benefits of your article and article submission will be put to waste.

When writing the article itself, follow a few simple guidelines. Don't write in the third person narrative. Write the article as if you were directly talking to the reader. This makes it more personable, and will allow you to build a strong relationship with the reader. Give yourself credit when it's due, if you've accomplished something that is worth mentioning, do it. You'll want to create a positive image for yourself in the minds of the reader, you want their trust.

Always be sure to double check the links in your resource box. There's nothing worse than getting a great article out there only to find out that the HTML was coded wrong so the link is broken.

About The Author:

Prakash Jain Run a Articles Directory , You Can Also Find More Articles on http://www.articles-hub.com

Building Links To Your Site: Vital For Seo Success, Part 1

By Adrian Adams

With any online business, generating traffic to view the products or services you have to offer is essential. Since the World Wide Web is a huge arena, you can bet there is plenty of competition out there. It doesn't matter how great of an item you have to offer if people don't find out about it. To get your business the recognition it deserves, it is vital that you understand the various techniques for building links to your site.

If you want to rank well on the search engines, you have to have quality backlinks from other websites. Without quality backlinks to your site, you will not be able to rank well on the search engines. The good news is that there are lots of ways to build links to your site. Some of the ways to building these links are going to cost you money, but some of the most successful ways really won't cost you anything more than your time.

One of first places you want to start is with submitting your website to the various web directories. There are 100's of web directories that will give you a free listing for your website. The most important thing to do when submitting your site to web directories is to read the instructions. If you don't follow the instructions, your listing will likely be denied.

There are also many places on the internet where you can submit articles for free. The articles can be informational in nature but they can't be a direct advertisement for your business. However, at the bottom of the articles you can add a section that provides information about yourself and a link to your website if they want more information. Article marketing is one of the best ways to get quality one way links to your site.

About The Author:

Our SEO friendly directory helps increase site popularity: http://www.samoris.com/ Submit your site today!

One Way Links Are Given And Accepted With Love And Are For Ever.-Grab Them!

By Kanaga Siva

Unlike Reciprocal Links, One-Way Links also known as Inbound Links are obtained by you or in fact given to you with Love and for ever. Yes,they have come to stay. One-Way Link is a link pointing to your website from another site. You do not have to link back to that website. In other words you need not reciprocate. One-Way Links play a vital role in increasing your Link Popularity.

Link Popularity is a measure of the number of sites of quality and relevance that point to your website. The more number of such sites, the higher will your page rank be.

Search Engines consider One-Way Links superior to Reciprocal Links because the website that links to your site without getting a link back, endorses the fact that yours is a website of quality.

Webmasters are known to adopt various methods to artificially increase the Link Popularity of their websites, such as purchasing of high PR links. Search Engines have now become aware of this and hence major Search Engines appear to be devaluing sites that solely depend on reciprocal links.

Good Reciprocal Links are often obtained by begging and are in some instances not permanent due to unethical practices of some webmasters. On the other hand One-Way Links have a different story to tell.

1. If your website has good content and valuable information, other webmasters will link to your site, because they Love and appreciate the contents of your site. You thus get a permanent One-Way Link more often with the same theme as that of your website.

2. I have posted about 550 articles in my website written by other webmasters, because I Love those articles and would like my visitors too, to appreciate and benefit from these articles. Similarly several hundreds of webmasters have published my articles in their Directories, Ezines, Newsletters and Websites for the same reason.

Writing expert articles of quality, that are informative and educative, sincerely from your heart is appreciated by the audience. The result is that your articles are often sought after and published by webmasters. Thus you are given a permanent One-Way Link with Love.

3. Listing in Web Directories is another great way of securing One-Way Links. In addition to well known Directories such as Yahoo Directory (charges a fee for guaranteed listing), The Open Project Directory (DMOZ), and Joe Ant Directory, there are several other Secondary Directories that Love to list your website without requesting a link back. A list of these Directories can be obtained by going into the Search Engines. By submitting your website to the relevant category in these directories you are assured of a high quality relevant One-Way Link that will be there for ever.

Furthermore there are several high PR Directories who Love to list your website but charge a fee for listing. Get listed and you are again assured of a quality relevant One Way Link for ever.

4. If you have purchased a product and like the product, write a good testimonial about the product and send it across to the webmaster or vendor concerned with your URL in it. He would be thankful to you and would Love to publish your testimonial, thereby giving you a One-Way Link.

In addition to these methods there are additional ways in obtaining one way links by posting relevant comments in Forums, Blogs and submitting Press Releases etc.

To increase their link popularity, webmasters endeavor to acquire as many quality reciprocal links or one way links. For reasons already indicated Webmasters Love one-way links and Search Engines appear to Love them even more.

The manner in which One-Way Links are obtained can be viewed from a different perspective altogether.

Webmasters Love your website and link it to theirs. They love your articles and post it in theirs. They love your product and write a glowing testimony. Directories love your quality website and list it. You love them in return for giving you a One-Way Link for ever. On the other hand in reciprocal links exchange or link trade as some term it the whole approach revolves around begging and bargaining.

The more number of relevant one way links you obtain, the greater and faster your chances of increasing your link popularity and climbing up the Page Rank ladder. The benefits of a high page rank are numerous. So the earlier you start to capitalize on these On-Way Links that are given for ever with love, the happier you are going to be.

About The Author:

Copyright © 2006 Kanaga Siva. Kanaga Siva has a wealth of experience in Marketing and also running a Home Based Business. Visit his Website Business From Home http://www.business-fromhome.com for Articles, Resources, Ideas and Advise to start a Home Based Business

SEO: The Power Of The Inbound Link

By Scott Lindsay

Link building can be a difficult part of any Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. It may even be harder trying to maintain a list of those who are linking to your site.

Did you know that search engines have made this a bit easier for online business to monitor?While the procedure for each search engine may be slightly different you can learn about many of the most successful inbound links you have to your website.

For the purpose of this article I will use the Google search engine. In order to check for inbound links I will use one of my websites www.highpowersites.com. I begin by typing the word link in the search window of the search engine followed by the website name. In the end it looks like this: link: www.highpowersites.com for your website it would look like link: www.yoursitename.com

In this search there were over 10,000 inbound links on the web. This tells me the site is doing well and it helps me see which sites that feature the link are the highest ranking. If you visit other search engines you can learn how to access information about site rankings by visiting a section typically called `Advance Search Options".

The affects of inbounds links shouldn't be minimized and the use of a free article directory can help spread the word about your site through inbound links. A diverse selection of expert articles is very helpful in improving SEO strategies.

Certainly there are a variety of SEO strategies to consider, but inbound links may provide a significant number of impressions and an improved number of site visitations, which can dramatically improve conversion rate with potential customers.

A great number of links to your website is often viewed by search engines as a means of gauging improved trust. Improved trust in your website will improve your site rankings.

When you have significant inbound links it means that search engine spiders comb through your site more often gaining new and valuable information that can help your overall site ranking.

Beyond free article directories a website owner might simply request affiliated websites to include a link to his/her website as a courtesy. This is not an uncommon practice and provides greater visibility for your website.

The use of a forum or blog can also provide positive inbound links for your website. This is accomplished by either posting information that may benefit readers followed by a link to a section of your website that deals with the issue or by simply placing a link in the signature box on your forum post.

About The Author:

Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with HighPowerSites at: http://www.highpowersites.com. Start your own ebook business with BooksWealth at: http://www.bookswealth.com

Turbocharge Your Links With Killer Anchor Text

By John Buchanan

These days, everyone knows that, to get top rankings in any of the engines, your site needs links. Not just any links, but links from quality sites and lots of them. One thing I have noticed is that for many webmasters that are newer to SEO, they often over look the importance of "anchor text" or "link text" as it is often called.

If you are unfamiliar with these terms, let me give you an example below.

This is Anchor Text

In the above example, the text "This is Anchor Text" is the anchor text. Anchor text is simply the text used as the clickable portion of a link. A while back (a few years now), the engines decided that, quite often, the text used as the anchor text of a link was a description of the target page. So, knowing this, they decided to start looking at the anchor text of links to a page an incorporating what those links "said" about the page into the algorithms used to rank pages.

To this day, Google still seems to give the most weight to anchor text, but all the engines use it to some extent.

It's also important to understand that the anchor text of an inbound link (at least today) still applies to that specific PAGE, not to the entire site.

What does this mean? Well, it means that, to get the absolute most bang for your buck out of each and every link pointed to your site, you should do your best to make sure that the anchor text used for each inbound link is relevant to the page that link is pointing to. This applies not only to external links (those from a different site pointing to a page within your site), but to internal links as well (those links pointing from one page of your site to another page on your site).

Internal anchor text is an area that a VERY large percentage of webmasters don't fully take advantage of. These are the links that you have full control over, so you should do everything you can to make sure that the anchor text for each and every internal link in your site best reflects the target keywords for the page it's pointing to.

The same goes for "homepage" links. What is your homepage about? I would bet that for 99% of the people reading this article, the topic of your homepage is NOT about "homes". So why is it that the vast majority of webmasters still utilize the anchor text "home" or "homepage" etc. when linking to their homepage? Don't you think it would make more sense for the anchor text of that link to be relevant to the page it's pointing to? After all, the homepage of most sites tends to target the most competitive phrases of that market don't they? So why wouldn't you want to get the most possible use of all those internal links pointing to your homepage by using some more appropriate and relevant link text?

Quite often I have seen the proper and improper use of anchor text be the difference between which page(s) make it to the top of the results and which ones end up on pages 2 and on. Where do you want to be?

See you at the top!

About The Author:

John Buchanan is a veteran search engine optimization specialist with over 9 years experience. For more information, visit his site at http://www.sesecrets.com or his newest site http://www.seovideoanalysis.com where he will provide you with a professional SEO Video Website Analysis of your site.

Does Your Web Site Need a Workout?

By Kalena Jordan

Here's an analogy for you. Yesterday, I was working my butt off in the gym on the cardio machines, panting wildly with sweat dripping off me and my face as red as a beet. Not the most attractive sight, but I figure, you're at the gym to work out right? I might as well "go hard" or "go home", as they say.

As I looked around me, I could see all these people simply going through the motions. There they were, minus perspiration in their shiny new lycra and expensive gym shoes, casually walking on the treadmill or lazily turning the wheels on a bike while reading a book or glued to the TV screens in front of them. Only a few seemed to be there for the actual purpose of working out. The rest seemed to be there to check out the talent or to simply keep up the appearance of fitness, while doing the bare minimum.

Huh? I don't get it. Why have these gym bimbos paid so much money for a gym membership and all the related gear if they aren't going to take full advantage of their investment?

Then it struck me - these gymbos were just like those companies who spend thousands of dollars on a shiny new website with all the bells and whistles like graphic design, blogs, shopping carts, web analytics, the lot and then fail to take advantage of it. I see it so often, regardless of company size. Web sites that could easily be bringing in loads of traffic and revenue simply wasting away because nobody can be bothered tracking visitor activity, analyzing trends or checking for search engine compatibility and usability.

These companies are simply keeping up appearances, investing heavily in Internet technology because their competitors are doing the same. But no thought has gone into the search engine compatibility of the site, how usable it is for visitors or whether it meets accessibility guidelines. They don't look at their site statistics, they don't check for broken links and they sure as heck don't investigate why their sites aren't converting traffic into customers. What a waste!

Is your web site working hard enough for you? Run it through the following 20 point fitness assessment to find out:

• Is your site fully search engine compatible? Are all your pages being indexed by the major search engines?
  
  
• Do you track your visitor statistics on a regular basis? Do you use the information provided by your visitor statistics to improve your site?
  
  
• Is your web site accessible to visually-impaired visitors? Does it meet the international standards set down by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)?
  
  
• Do you know which sites and search engines provide you with the most traffic? Do you use this information to increase your traffic further?
  
  
• Do you track the source of all reported errors in your site statistics and fix them promptly?
  
  
• Do you know which keywords your site was found for in the search engines? Have you conducted keyword research to determine what search terms your target markets are looking for so you can optimize for them?
  
  
• Does your web site HTML code validate to W3 standards? Do you check for validation regularly?
  
  
• Does your site contain zero broken links? Do you check for and fix broken links regularly?
  
  
• Has your site been fully search engine optimized to integrate your target search terms into your Page Titles, META Tags and visible page text?
  
  
• Have you created and submitted an XML sitemap to Google Sitemaps?
  
  
• Have you created and submitted a sitemap to Yahoo Site Explorer?
  
  
• Have you checked to see if your site meets Google's Webmaster Guidelines?
  
  
• Do you measure your visitor sign-ups and conversions on a regular basis? Do you tweak your landing page copy to increase the conversion rates?
  
  
• Is your site navigation intuitive and are your visitors following the navigation paths you intended?
  
  
• Do you encourage feedback from your site visitors and provide an obvious way for them to provide such feedback?
  
  
• Are there at least 250 words of text on your home page to satisfy search engines?
  
  
• Does your site contain a visible, text-based site map to aid user navigation?
  
  
• Do you have an ongoing link building campaign running to secure more incoming links to your site and improve your site's link popularity score?
  
  
• Does your site have a high percentage of repeat visitors? Are the majority of your visitors staying on your site for more than a minute?
  
  
• Do your search engine referrals and site traffic figures grow each month?

Unless you can answer yes to all the questions in the above checklist, your web site is not working hard enough for you and needs a workout. Get to it!

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About the Author:

Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running a daily Search Engine Advice Column, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.

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Seo Techniques ~ Choosing The Right Link Exchange Partners For You

By David Bain

It is an acknowledged fact in search engine optimization that you have to have many quality links that point to your web site if you want your web site's rank to soar. Consequently, link building is one of the most important SEO techniques.

Aside from promoting your web site, however, links are also very useful tools in increasing web traffic through direct link clicks. People are typically fond of following links through when they think them relevant to their information needs. Web stats would often reveal that inbound links from other web sites have a major impact on the volume of web traffic.

However, quality inbound links take time to accumulate. A new web site has no hope of increasing backlinks quickly for the links to matter. Web masters are united in their desire to want high page ranking and enormous web traffic, and all of them want these now. Subsequently, what web masters do is contact other web masters for the purpose of exchanging links. But some of them do these with not enough consideration on the repute and purpose of the site they link to. This negligence could lead to minor and major repercussions.

Sinning by association

Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are. This is an old adage that says the company you keep reflects on you. In the case of the internet and link building in particular, where your backlinks originate has a bearing on your web site.

Aside from influencing your link popularity and the volume of web traffic your site generates, your link partners can positively or negatively reflect on your web site. As a case
in point, if you link to web sites that are under the bad graces of the search engines due to spamming and some such violations, your web site could suffer the brunt of the consequences together with the erring web site. Just such a filtering policy is currently in the works for Google.

Backlinks in vain

Some web administrators happily link up to other web sites without due consideration to the quality of the links they are getting. Before you consider accepting the request of another web administrator to link up with your site through one-way or reciprocal links, ask where your links are going to be placed and how they will appear. It is better for your web site ranking if your links appear in the guise of anchor texts composed of your keywords and positioned within the content of the web page. If this is not possible, make sure that the links you have still contain your keywords in the other web site's link portion.

Even with the assurance from the other web master that your link will be placed in an advantageous position, do not take his or her word for it. Do your own research and see for
yourself how links are generally placed in the web site. There are certain web masters who make links hard to find. There are also others whose pages are so full of links that you cannot hope to compete for their visitors' attention.

Backlinks that matter

Quality inbound linking is better for your web site than indiscriminate link building. Search engines like Google place a premium on the popularity and rank of the web sites where your
link come from. They also take into account the relevance of the other web site to your own. Consequently, be sure to choose only highly regarded web sites that have content relevant to yours when choosing which web sites to link up with.

About The Author:

David Bain is the founder of the free report "Top 10 Search Engine Optimization Mistakes". Visit http://www.Top10SEOMistakes.com to download the report today.

Building Links To Your Website - How To Do It - And How Not To Do It

By David Bain

Back-link building or creating inbound links has become a great preoccupation for web masters and search engine optimization professionals. Backlinks or inbound links are links found on another web site that would lead anyone clicking it to your web site. Backlinks have grown so important that software for auto linking have become just one of the many link building tools in the search engine optimization arsenal.

--- Why are inbound links so important ---

Links leading to your site create the impression that your web site has something worthy and relevant to say and offer. It doesn't matter whether or not you agree with this generalization. The search engines do - and that's what matters! In the formula - the algorithm - that search engine use to quantify whether or not a web page is important, relevant links into that page is extremely important.

Inbound links from quality and relevant web sites give your site high link popularity ratings and the search engines will let this count towards your page ranking. The more inbound links you have from these quality and relevant web sites, the higher your link popularity becomes, and the more they enhance your total page ranking.

--- Valuable inbound links ---

Let's now talk about the quality and relevance of the web sites from which you should obtain these backlinks. A web site is quality web site when it has a high link popularity and page rank itself. The more reputable the web site is, the higher its quality and the more valuable it would be to have an inbound link from that site to your web site.

--- Build links from relevant web sites ---

A relevant web site is one that operates in a similar or the same industry as yours. Say you are running a web site that sells antiques. In this case, inbound links from other online antiques stores or web sites that provide information on antiques are more relevant than inbound links from pet shops as an example.

You have to remember that the quality and relevance of your inbound links are more important than quantity of inbound links. Of course the ideal arrangement would be to have many quality and relevant links, but failing that, you should aim for quality and relevant backlinks rather than countless weak inbound links.

--- Reciprocal linking ---

Some web masters solicit inbound links from other web masters through reciprocal linking. Reciprocal linking happens when one web site contains a link to another web site that also contains a link back to the former web site. This was the ideal arrangement for web site administrators were are having a hard time obtaining inbound links; that is, however, until search engines became more aware of the practice.

Now, search engines consider inbound links and outbound links together when grading link popularity and page ranking. The former raises your score while the latter often actively dilutes it. This new scoring system could be detrimental to web sites whose SEO strategy hinges on reciprocal linking without consideration to the quality and relevance of the other web sites it's reciprocally linked to. If your web sites are linked to unpopular and irrelevant web sites, then the inbound links that these generate do not count much, if at all. On the other hand, the outbound links that point to these same web sites would still be counted against you. The result is decreased link popularity and page ranking.

--- Link farms and site interlinking ---

To obtain inbound links, some web masters have stooped to building web pages or sites that provide only one-way links to other web pages or sites. Others have created other web sites which are heavily linked to the original web site. Creation of link farms is intentional SEO practice while site interlinking usually is mere ignorant practice. However, both of these practices are unacceptable backlink building strategies that have corresponding consequences.

--- The link building problem ---

Search Engines are becoming more and more aware of 'underhand' practices from Search Engine Optimization companies who artificially raise the prominence of their clients' websites by obtaining links from low reputable sources. Although this may help in the short-term, it could result in a high number of penalties being applied to the website that is being artificially lifted.

--- The link building solution ---

There is only one way to build links to your website in a manner that will be respected by search engines in the longer term. And that's the quality orientated slow and steady approach. Any other way could significantly harm your online business in the future.

About The Author:

David Bain is founder of the internet marketing training company http://www.PurpleInternetMarketing.com. Purple Internet Marketing offers Internet marketing seminars, One-to-one Internet Marketing Training and provide E-Business Strategy Consulting. Visit their site today to find out more.

7 Steps To Running a Killer Link Exchanging Campaign

By Anik Singal

It's no secret that one of the best ways to get traffic online is to trade links with other related websites. Not only does this help you get targeted traffic, but it helps with your search engine optimization as well.

Well, there's a right way to link exchange and a wrong way - if you want the most out of your linking, then be sure to follow these 7 steps:

1. Develop a spreadsheet file (in Excel) and create the following columns:

Website URL
E-mail
Contact Name
Website PR (we'll talk about how to figure this out in a minute)

Contact 1
Response to Contact 1

Contact 2
Response to Contact 2

Contact 3
Response to Contact 3

2. Finding a Website's PR.

Go to Google and download the free toolbar. This toolbar has a feature on it that will tell you the PR for any website you visit. If you plan on optimizing your website for search engines, this tool is a MUST.

3. Choosing websites to link to.

Go to any search engine and start typing in keywords for which you'd like to rank highly. Visit each website and add them to your excel file. Once you hit 50 websites, spend some time contacting them. We recommend contacting each website personally and not using any automated software (it's very easy to see when someone uses software).

There are many programs out there that will do a mass link exchange mailing, but we strongly advise you NOT to use them (at least in the beginning). These programs can get you in a lot of trouble with SPAM laws. Also, if each email is personal, you are MUCH more likely to get a link back.

4. Write your contact email.

Make sure to address the email to someone specific. Always insert some details that you enjoyed about the site. It's evidence that you actually visited the site and made a conscious decision to link to it. Briefly introduce your website, and send them the URL of your link to their site. Finally, ask for a link back to your site.

TIP: Give them specific directions on how to link back to you, what keywords to use, and what URL to link to. It always helps to give them the exact HTML coding that they would need.

5. Respond to replies.

If you get an acceptance of your offer: Thank them, and add them to a separate Excel file. This will become a list of people you will constantly stay in touch with (to submit articles, free viral reports, etc.). Register the reply in your "Reply to Contact 1" section. This way you will know NOT to send a follow-up email.

If the person rejects your offer: Add that note to your Excel file so that you don't contact them again. A good technique is to highlight that entire row with a red highlighter so there's no danger of a mistake.

If you get no reply: Follow step 6.

6. Send follow-up e-mails.

Wait one week to follow-up with those who have not replied. This is the second contact. In this e-mail, state that you wrote to them the prior week. Rephrase the email to keep it fresh.

Wait for replies, then repeat Step 5. Do not contact a "no-reply" website a third time unless you have a very good reason to.

7. Find more web sites.

After finishing your initial batch of 50, repeat the process for another 50. Once you begin getting incoming links, you will slowly start seeing similar "link exchange requests" coming to you. This will decrease your leg work.

There you have it - those are the 7 simple steps to starting an effective link exchanging campaign. Remember, a small percentage actually accept and respond, that's OK. The trick to getting lots of links is to send lots of requests so make this a daily habit.

About the Author:

This article has been authored by Anik Singal, an extremely successful and young internet entrepreneur and affiliate marketing consultant. Anik has developed his own affiliate marketing system that helped him earn over $10,466 in 60 days - Enroll in his FREE course today...
http://www.AffiliateClassroom.com/free-course.html

Three Divine Secrets To Perfect Backlinks

By Mikael Rieck

As you have surely already read many times - getting links to your site is the solely most critical factor to determine your success for ranking well in the search engines. The big G (Google) has changed the way the rank sites from factors on the specific site to external factors giving you site credibility by wanting to link to it.

Ranking high in Google should be your number one priority if you are planning on getting your targeted traffic from the search engines. But as much as you want to rank well in Google so does everyone else and that makes it so much harder to accomplish. But if can possibly achieve it the rewards will follow.

Tips #1: Track your traffic and results. Before you start your linking campaign you should consider how you are going to track your effort. Working hard on building different types of links and not having a clue what works and what doesn't is just plain stupid. When you know what works and what doesn't it is much easier to focus your time and there by achieve a better result faster.

You will need to find a way to a) see what sites that sends your traffic and what sites that send you buyers (traffic that converts into sales or opt-ins). This information is SO VALUABLE that it must not be ignored.

If you go to Google and search for "free traffic analyzer" you will surely find a couple of site that can provide you with simple tools that will get the job done. On the other hand you might want to consider finding a more professional tool for the job so that you (over time) are able to track some of the more specific things that you will need in order to not only make sure you rank well but that your page will also convert the people actually visiting it.

A tool that I have had good experience using is the tool that Google provides named Google Analytics. It is free and has a lot of features. You are also able to combine it with your Adwords account if you are using PPC to drive traffic to your site.

Tips #2: Be consistent over a period of time. Things don't happen over night. Most search engines will take months before giving your site the full credit for the links you have attained. Surely you can see some benefit for links in days or weeks but often it is temporary and your should expect your rankings to jump up an down in the SEs for a few months to come (and this is if we don't factor in the changes that your competition will surely make on their sites in the same period of time).

So be sure to place links on sites where you can expect them to stay for months (and preferably years).

But that is not all. Even though you have build up a great number of quality links you will need to do a minimum effort in building more and more links to your site over time. This can be done in many ways that won't take up much of your time but make sure that you don't ever stop the effort completely. The strength you have build will erode over time so make sure that you keep adding "votes" to your site.

Tips #3: Be aware of outbound links. Most sites and pages have links pointing to other sites or other internal pages. The fewer links the page which you will have your link placed on the better. The effect the page has on your link (and therefore page) will decrease with the number of outbound links places on the site. You can say that the links share the pagerank of the page.

The best possible link you can get will be from a relevant page with a high PR and great rankings in the search engines and where the link to your site is the only one present. This is not something that you will often experience!!

A way to achieve a situation close to this is when you write great articles and have them posted on high quality websites. Here you will often see some internal links but for the most part the link to your site (in the reference section of the article you wrote) will be the only outbound link.

Writing great content articles and having them exposed on the right sites can do wonders for your ranking. So if you're not Shakespeare you might want to consider finding a ghost writer to do the job for you. Sure you can end up paying $30-$50 for a good article (800-1000 words) but if it will end up sending you more customers because of the improved ranking it might be a
great investment.

About The Author:

Mikael Rieck Kousgaard is a self thought SEO entrepreneur and has helped a great many people get good rankings for their sites. Constantly testing out different ways and products to increase an online profit and has currently got a good eye on the WELLNESS industry
(http://www.mrieck.com/wellness/)

Blog Traffic Tips - Get More Blog Traffic

By Jeff Phelps

Blog traffic is crucial if you are in the business of making money with your blog. If your blog traffic is low, chances are so is your revenue. So how do you increase your blog traffic? Easy if you follow these basic steps:

Post On Niche Related Forums

Please don't spam. Search for the forums that can be added to the niche that you wish to promote. Carefully study the entire discussed topic and relate it to the questions asked during the discussion. The discussion can also answer personal questions. Make sure that in every discussion made, you put a small resource box at the end of it to serve as a link to your blog
(not always your homepage). Many forums will have you tossed if all you do is promote affiliate products, so don't do it! It is necessary to put your bio in every end of your postings with a
relevant keyword link back to your blog. Do not pursue with some of the forums that do not allow the posting of a resource box.

Write Your Own Content

You can pass an article or web content in many websites. Usually, these sites are free and if you are cash tight, you can pass your own made web contents initially. Writing your own web content will save you a ton of cash, but will also cost you a lot of time. There are freelance writers that will do the work for you, but there is something to be said about having your own personally written content. Therefore, it is wise to do your own article. The article that you will be writing must match the niche of your blog. Put knowledge that you know into every writings, you can discuss tips, tricks, guidelines that you get from your own life experiences. This will encourage your blog traffic to frequently visit your site.

Get Involved In Link Exchanges

This is the most effective way to bring traffic in your blog. This is a careful study of all the links shown on the search engines. It is important to secure the sites that are linked to you to have topics same to your blog. Blog traffic is generated if the same subject is seen on the recommendation by the site that you share your subject with. There will be an increased
chance of reaching the highest rank with the benefit of linking with other site or search engines. Both sites exchanging links will benefit from this exercise. Don't get involved with "link farms". Send an email to the blogger you wish to exchange links with and simply ask if they are willing to exchange links. You will be surprised how many say yes. Also, if you create well written, highly niche targeted posts, bloggers will link to that post creating tons of "search-engine loved" one way links.

Create A Newsletter

If you have regular blog traffic, you must develop a newsletter for your readers. Your newsletter can be either on weekly or monthly basis. This can sometimes seem too difficult for the new blogger, but this is the time to use those freelance writers. Have them write 5-10 articles on your niche, and use those as your newsletter. You should only put a small resources
box after every article. The small box will serve as the link back to your blog. This will surely increase your blog traffic and returning visitors. If your customers like it, they may
even recommend you to their friends, relatives and colleagues.

Join Traffic Exchanges

This is another form of exchange links allowing the member to view each other's blog posts by surfing. By surfing to the blog, you are gaining points, the more you surf the more points
you receive. You are also given an option to gain credits. This will not produce much blog traffic but it will obtain the names for your visitors by using squeeze pages. If you display Google
Adsense on your site, be careful joining traffic exchanges as it can violate Google's TOS.

Follow thes 5 steps and watch your blog traffic grow. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen. Stay patient, stay focused and work hard to increase your blog traffic.

About The Author:

Don't give up, success is right around the corner. Check out my blog for more
http://rugjeff.com/187/blog-traffic-analysis-tips/ and get your
http://elands1.com/12/profitable-business-internet-marketing-opportunity/
seen.

Why You Should Strive to Create More Than Just Back Links

By Trey Pennewell

I read a message on a forum the a while back where a new
webmaster was asking for suggestions regarding article
submissions to create back links. The person asked how long the
articles should be, how many hyperlinks to include, and other
questions about article submissions. I was quite surprised by
some of the responses that this poster received.

What Sort of Advice Was Given...

It was actually recommended that articles only need to be 250
words long and that the person asking the question should include
4-5 hyperlinks. Another person suggested to write a 500-word
article and to include many hyperlinks, because the only purpose
of the articles were to create back links.

There is some truth to this... A person could write a short
article and get it submitted to many article directories. And,
simply generating back links is one way that a webmaster can
increase his or her position in the search engine rankings.

But, writing a 250-word article will probably not result in that
webmaster being considered an expert on the topic that he or she
is writing about.

Experts In Their Fields

Taking the time to create an informative and helpful article will
help a person to be considered an expert in his or her field.
Imagine for a moment if some of the most famous names on the
Internet were to only write brief articles to generate back
links. Would Matt Cutts (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/) receive
the recognition that he does if he just scribbled a few sentences
here and there? Would Joel Comm (http://www.joelcomm.com/) be
considered an Adsense expert without writing informative how-to
articles and books for those wanting to make money from Adsense?
Would you know or care who Robin Nobles
(http://www.searchengineworkshops.com/) was if she did not create
in-depth articles about search engine optimization? Would you
even be bothering to read this article?

You can generate a bit of traffic by creating back links by
hammering out low-quality articles. But, if you want to be known
as an expert, you need to take a different approach and provide
the quality information people are seeking. If you have
information and expertise that others are unable to find on the
Internet, then you will get many more visitors as a result of
writing an article.

If you are looking for more than simple back links to your site,
then it is worth it to take the time to write a high-quality
article. A high quality article, that is written with the reader
in mind --- not the search engines --- is more likely to actually
get clicks (human visitors) into your site. This is what
separates the very successful webmasters from those who are
simply getting by.

To be known as an expert or an authority in your area requires
articles and information that human beings will actually read.
After reading this kind of article, a person will think to
himself "This author has the information that I am looking for"
and the reader will then visit the writer's website.

How To Succeed With Article Marketing

A well-written article can be submitted to literally thousands of
publishers of ezines, newsletters, and free reprint article sites
and can result in dozens and sometimes hundreds of back links for
a website. Now, not every publisher will pick up your article,
but for the ones that do, you get a back link. More important
than the back links though is the number of people that will cite
your article, forward it to their friends, and reference it in
their own articles that they are distributing.

These high-quality articles are how a webmaster becomes known as
an "authority" on a topic. When you write for the reader and
offer something of real value, you will reap the rewards with a
huge influx of traffic to your website.

How To Fail With Article Marketing

Generalized junk articles that are filled with hyperlinks and
self promotion will only result in a few back links, and people
who actually read those less-than-quality articles are not very
likely to ever visit your site.

Poorly written articles are also unlikely to get published in
ezines and newsletters where you can reach potentially thousands
of readers in a single day.

The worst thing about the low-quality junk articles is that if
people do read them, they might always think of you as a "junk
peddler", and most people don't buy from people whom they
perceive as "junk peddlers".

As a webmaster, you need to decide for yourself what goals you
have in mind for your article submission campaign. If you limit
yourself to only generating back links, you will not see the full
potential of visitors and traffic that you could be getting to
your website.

A Final Thought...

An article that is good enough to wind up on sites like
http://www.About.com can give you a huge and consistent growth in
traffic for some time to come. Articles that are picked up by
large newsletters like http://www.SiteProNews.com can deliver
thousands of visitors to your website in a day, add to your
credentials as an "authority" website, and will create a
situation where your website is one of the first places that
people turn to for information in your field.

The bottom line is that if you write for the human reader instead
of the search engines, you will be rewarded with many more
visitors, and you can gain an authority status among your
visitors.

The choice is yours. You can spend an extra hour or two creating
a high-quality article that will be published on more websites
creating more back links to your website, establish you as an
authority in your field, and allow you to see thousands of
visitors in a day when your article is published in one or a
dozen ezines. Or you can save the extra hour or two and pray that
your limited efforts will amount to anything of real value.

About the Author:

Trey Pennewell is a writer who creates articles that will be used
to develop links for the clients of the Links And Traffic.com
inbound link development services. Trey even practices what he
preaches - his own articles have appeared on hundreds of great
quality websites. Trey writes on several topics that are related
to the target markets of Links And Traffic customers. Feel free
to use this article on your website, so long as all links remain
clickable. http://www.LinksAndTraffic.com

The Link Popularity Every Website Needs

The Link Popularity Every Website Needs

David Fishman

One of the important ways of getting traffic is to post to
forums, search engines pick up and index forum posts very
frequently, when posting be sure to add many keyword rich
content and topics to each post. This will help provide popular
keywords for your site. Good link popularity is important
because it can increase the visitor traffic to your web page.
Getting good quality incoming links back to your website is an
excellent way of getting visitors that are targeted to your
website. If you are selling niche products, you will need to
get links from other sites that are related to the products or
services you are selling.

Building links to your website is not as difficult as everyone
believes, you will need many hours dedicating your time to get
the job done properly. Since Search Engine's are placing more
and more emphasis on "link popularity" as part of their search
engine ranking algorithms, webmasters should definitely invest
some time building quality back links to their site. Spend the
time building one way and reciprocal links, it is time
consuming and it will take a long time but in the end it is
worth it.

Finding the right partner to exchange links with is equally as
important. To increase link popularity it is necessary to
conduct the link exchanges with other webmasters. To increase
your traffic and ultimately your revenue, it is certainly worth
your while to put some serious effort into reciprocal link
exchanging.

Everyday more and more webmasters enter into the world of
search engine optimization, after doing some research and
reading a few SEO news articles or forum posts everyone move
ahead and starts optimizing their sites. First of all, you'll
need 3 things to be taken care of: on-site optimization, search
engine submission and some major work on link popularity
building. There's plenty of information about internal web page
optimization on the internet, and it's not a secret how to
submit all your web pages to Google or Yahoo. Nowadays link
popularity is being considered to be the most important step of
the search engine optimization process. Building links is one of
the most import function a webmaster has, many webmasters do not
spend the correct amount of time to marketing their website,
this is critical for search engine optimization .

Google's Page Rank is a measuring tool that helps Internet
surfers know how popular a website is compared to other
websites. Google uses link popularity as its most important
factor in ranking sites. If you are have link on website with
high Page Rank 4 or more, Google will count this as a link back
to your site. As we all know Google uses their Page Rank
technology to calculate the number of links that point to your
web pages, it is uses many different factors to determine your
page ranking. It is well known that a listing in the Yahoo and
DMOZ directory will give you a good boost in Page Rank.

About The Author:

http://www.linknetics.com is software that
helps http://www.linknetics.com/reciprocal-link-exchange.html

Turn a one-night-stand with Google into a long-term relationship

Turn a one-night-stand with Google into a long-term relationship

Diane Metz

Google is like a girlfriend who wont talk. You're dying
to woo her, but when you ask her what she likes, she bats her
eyelashes and keeps quiet.

Now of course, Google isn't going to talk anytime soon about
what goes into (and comes out of) its notorious algorithm "" its
proprietary secret formula for calculating which pages will get
listed when someone types in a search phrase.

Ah, but we SEO specialists and experts have our ways of figuring
out what that seemingly fickle gal named Google likes and what
she could care less about.

And, ahem, things have changed since 2001.

Google seems to be a lot more subtle and isn't charmed by
obvious overtures like:

* Keyword stuffing "" Yes, an alarming number of webmasters
still do this and think they"(tm)re getting away with something.
If you haven't been penalized yet, it's because
you've moved onto other tactics that your competitors are
also employing. But it's only a matter of time before what
separates you from the competition will come down to keyword
stuffing and guess who ain't gonna get asked to dance
anymore? Hint: It's spelled Y-O-U.

* Reciprocal linking campaigns "" If you're still relying on
this, trash it right now. You're wasting time, money and
server space. And you're spamming. You've probably got
hundreds of worthless inbound links from PR0 sites. And Google
will (if it hasn't already) recognize the "~footprint" or
template left behind by your link exchange software. Maybe you
think you're being creative by naming your link pages
something like "Cool Stuff I Really Like". But once the clothes
come off and Google inspects the actual page, that savvy
gal's gonna know she's seen this one-trick pony before.

* Article exchange programs "" Strip it down and what you've
got is a ramped up link exchange program, with a bunch of extra
words around the links. Keep chasing this one and you'll end
up right back where you started when mass link exchanges started
to crumble. Yeah, Google's been around the block before on
this one. Think you can fool Google by doing 3-way linking, 4-way
or even 5-way linking if you can manage it? Don't take
this the wrong way, but Google is smarter than you. By a
landslide.

* Article and content spinning programs "" If you think software
that spins articles into "~unique content" will fool Google,
keep dreaming. But please, keep your fantasies to yourself. The
idea of writing just one article, popping it into a software
program that will generate new phrases and shuffle around
paragraphs, then spit out 100 versions of the same article"¦well,
that's a brilliant idea. But Google is even more brilliant.
Check out anything written on the shingle theory and you'll
know that Google is no dumb blonde. Shoot. There's nothing
more deadly than a desirable female with brains, is there?

So what's left? Well, in today's competition to seduce
Google, the web sites that radiate natural charm and staying
power will win in the end.

Natural charm means that you appeal to both visitors and spiders.
This isn't a new idea, but it's more important than ever.
Because while the search engines get savvier and savvier, so do
Internet users and shoppers. And there are plenty of sites out
there who deliver the best user experience while attaining high
search engine rankings.

You can "" and should "" do the same. Instead of spending 3 hours
trying to adjust your title tag just so, why not write one so
that people who are looking at a search engine results page will
actually click on your link. That is the first of many obvious
goals, isn't it?

There's also a lot to be said about staying power. After all,
you are in this for long haul, aren't you? If you're
looking for a short-term relationship with Google, there are
plenty of tricks to get ranked fast and then drop like
yesterday's drawers.

But staying power ahhh, that's what Google is really into
these days. Register your domain for more than a year or two.
After all, if you're planning to be around for a while,
you're going to want your domain for a long time.

Of course, we now know that Google likes combing through domain
registration information. And we really think that certain
subtleties like age of domain are becoming not-so-subtle factors
anymore in the race for first-page rankings.

Finally, think about all that time you're investing "" I
mean, wasting "" on tactics like article exchanges and linking
programs. Instead, spend that time hunting down sites that will
actually want to do one-way links to you. They do exist, but you
have to find them yourself, not with a program.

Yes, this will take a little bit of work, and you may actually
have to pick up the phone to negotiate with a real person. But a
one-way link from even a lowly PR2 site or page will carry more
weight than 5 dozen 2-way or 3-way links from PR-whatever pages.
Trust me, those pages that are involved in mass linking programs
"" I mean, schemes "" will eventually drop to PR0 if they
haven't already.

So that's it. Be honest, charming, hard working and stick
around for a while. You'll win the girl "" er, Google ""
every time.

About the Author:

Contact author & SEO specialist Diane Metz to write free,
exclusive content for your website. Her sites include
Crown CD Duplication (http://www.crowncd.com/),
which also specializes in CD replication
(http://www.crowncd.com/cd_replication.html)
for online and offline marketers.

Do Links Increase My Ranking On Search Engines?

Article written by: David Fishman

Increasing links as a method to get your serps increase is a positive thing. You can ask youself the question, though, is just but, links should you get so this can happen? Is it possible to have to many links? Link marketing is the use of links to boost traffic to your website as otherwise as to
develop it could be that your position on the se. You will need to do both to accomplish success. If you want to increase it could be that your search engine rank, accomplish on your links.

Is there a set number I should shoot for?

There is no real set integer. It's not having ten or twenty or getting a 100. It is definitely about having the right kind of links coming to the webpage. As an instance, you need to consider both reciprocal links as well as those that are the best type of link is a one way link. One way links create traffic to your site and not letting the customers get lured away with additional links on the webpage. Link exchanging, when placed correctly and applied in the correct way can help as well.

Beyond this, you will want to achieve with having good favorableness links. The links should be related in some way to your internet site. You will need to search for webmasters that offers similar, but should not have the same information as on your site.

If you are thinking about how many links you should allow pointing to your website, the correct denomination to go with is as much as you possibly can do. When getting them make sure they are of good quality, well researched links, not just a link that is not in the same theme. Make sure they provide for both reciprocal and links that are one way. Use them properly and your business really can improve from them.

About The Author:

David Marc Fishman is the owner of linknetics.com. The link marketing software that promotes http://www.linknetics.com and http://www.linknetics.com

Is Having Back Links Important To Your Website?

Article written by: David Fishman

Using links as a practice to get your websites search engine position increased, is a positive thing. Many people ask the same question, how many links will you need to have this happen?Can you have too many? Link promotion is the use of links to build traffic to your internet site as well as to develop your search engine position. This goes together. You want to increase your position on the search engines and your links.

Links, How many do I need?

That there is no actual set amount. It's not having ten or twenty or trying to get to a 100. Its about having the correct type of links coming to your internet site. As an example, you will need to understand about both reciprocal links and the best type of link which is one way links. One way links create traffic to your site without having the visitors click away from your site with additional links on your internet site. Link exchanging, when performed correctly and applied in the right overall manner can help as well.

Beyond this, you will want to accomplish this by having good types links. The links should be related in some way to your website. This mean you will nee to find webmasters that offer similar, but should not have the same information that appears your site.

The amount of links you should have pointing to the site, the accurate count to go with this is as many as possible. Try to be sure that they are good, well researched links, so they are not poor links. Make sure they offer both reciprocal and one way links. Use them the right way and your business will really improve from using them.

So if you use reciprocal link exchange and one way links in your link market portfolio and have patients your website will get the search engine rankings you desire.

About The Author:

David Marc Fishman created linknetics to help people with websites create and manage their link marketing portfolio using http://www.linknetics.com and http://www.linknetics.com

Google's PR 0 And Link Exchange Difficulties

By Tracy Weber

With your brand new, professional looking website up and ready
for the masses, using link exchanges can be a powerful way to
drive high quality traffic to your website and provide useful
content for your readers. Unfortunately, having a newly built
website creates a number of hurdles you must cross before
reciprocal linking becomes an easier process. Learn to spot
these roadblocks up front and you will break through the PR 0
barriers.

Why do I have a PR of 0?

Google Page Rank (PR) is given to websites approximately once
every quarter to determine their level of importance on a scale
of 1-10. Many factors determine PR, most of which Google keeps
very secret. It is during this time when Google has yet to rank
your website that you will show a PR of 0 in the Foxfire Google
toolbar.

Why Does a PR of 0 Matter?

One aspect of backlinking to websites that greatly affects your
PR is the quality of the pages you are linked to. For instance:
linking your car parts website to ten dog grooming websites
will not give your PR much of a boost due to lack of relevance,
but if you link to several websites that are also automobile
related, it will send your PR in the right direction.

Many webmasters look at the requesting website's PR before they
will complete a link exchange fearing that a low PR will bring
their website page rank down. Though this is not really the
case, it is a hurdle you must cross.

What to do about it?

Unfortunately, the PR of 0 will not change until Google updates
their page ranks, but you can push through the next few months
by doing the following:

1. Run the numbers. There are several tools available to help
lessen the burden of manually searching for link partners. I
suggest using one of these to help find a large pool to start
from. Set a goal to send a determined number of link requests
each day. I generally look for 50 matches, sort quickly by web
title for relevance and apply to the link exchange forms that
match my content. Even if you only get one response a day, you
are still building quality reciprocal links.

Note: If you see they have a PR restriction, honor it and put
them in a category for the future.

2. Build relationships. If you know a Webmaster with a site
relevant to yours, send a personal note requesting a link
exchange. Many website owners are willing to help out if they
know the quality of the site.

3. Build one-way links by sending out articles, posting in
newsgroups or by building a profile on high traffic sites such
as MySpace. Commenting in newsgroups or on high traffic sites
and adding a comment about your website in your signature file
(making sure the link is active) gives you backlinks to your
website from those pages.

Having an initial PR of 0 is a reality all new webmasters must
face, but if you forge ahead, building a high quality link
exchange network, you will be pleasantly surprised when Google
makes it's page rank updates. Don't be discouraged and don't
give up. Soon you will be in a position to easily gain
reciprocal links to other websites with content your readers
will value. This will give you both a steady stream of targeted
traffic from your partner sites, and a high quality, content
rich website as well.

About The Author: Tracy Weber the successful owner of the
eProZone Internet Article Directory http://eprozone.com , has
written unbiased reviews of link exchange tools to make the
process run more smoothly.
http://www.eprozone.com/Article/Link-Exchange-Product-Reviews-/20

Reciprocal Link Exchange - Getting The Killer Results

By Bill Smith

New businesses start out with a lot of vigor when it comes to website promotion. However, after a while, they tend to fall back and find it difficult to promote their website. This article details on how to tackle the reciprocal link exchange with ease.

Search for related websites:
I use Arelis software to search the web for potential candidates. You can search based on your keyword(s) to find sites of interest. eg., if you run a business site, you can search for "Business link exchange" and pull the results from Arelis. Visit each site and make sure it has at least a PR or 4 or more. The higher the PR, the better your chances of being placed on a page which will have a decent PR. Remember it is the quality of links that matter, not quantity.

Request a link:
Arelis can pull the email address from the sites. From within Arelis, it is easy to send a note to the webmaster requesting a link. Webmasters who agree for link exchange will either upload your link or send you their code. Promptly add their code to your link page and write back.

The next time around you can search for a different keyword in Arelis ex "Credit link exchange" and then pull the results. Arelis can pull a maximum of 5000 results. You might want to leave your PC on while the process is running.

Verify links:
Arelis also has a built in feature to verify your active links. Once a week, make sure you verify all your link partners. If you find your link is missing, promptly notify the webmaster.

Relevant linking:
Link to relevant sites only. Ex, if you have a debt consolidation business, focus your link exchange campaign on debt consolidation, debt counseling, debt management and credit repair sites. True, each site will pass PR but related sites will pass more PR. Using software allows you to search for links, send notifications, as well as verify links in a heartbeat. The time you save can be used to gain more links or concentrate on other aspects of your business.

About The Author:

Bill A Smith is a web strategist for http://www.americreditservices.com/ For link exchange tips and resources visit http://www.americreditservices.com/reciprocal-link-exchange.

How To Produce The PERFECT Viral Ebook

By Harvey Segal

Viral marketing is probably the number one method for generating traffic and sales - IF it is set up properly.

Take the case of a viral ebook - which means a book that can be passed from one person to another bringing benefits (profits) for each party in turn.

How is this achieved ?

The basic concept is that the book contains links to affiliate products. When a reader of the book makes a purchase from a link then the affiliate receives the commission.

The creator of such a book will allow some of the links to be 'rebranded' which means a person(who we will refer to as the rebrander) can replace them with his own affiliate codes thus collecting commission. This is the obvious incentive for him to pass the book around and begin the viral progression.

If we want to maximize the benefits for everyone and create the perfect viral ebook we need to have THREE key factors in place.

1) Wide Distribution

There are many permutations in the ways that you can offer an ebook. It can be free or paid, and for either option you can charge for rebranding or offer it free; plus you can have part customization or full customization. On top of that, for a paid book you can offer resale rights and even the right to grant resale rights.

Let's keep it simple.

What we want is the widest possible distribution so that we get the most commission from the affiliate links.

So we will have a FREE book and FREE rebranding rights.

2) Quality Affiliate Links

It goes without saying that your book should contain good content on a topic of interest.

But will readers click on those affiliate links ?

The answer is 'NO' if you copy the poor example of many authors, for instance:

- have you ever opened an ebook and been faced with a barrage of affiliate links ?

- or seen affiliate products which have nothing to do with the theme of the book ? For example in a book about hypnotism you get a link to a web hosting company.

So what is the best way ?

The secret is to have highly relevant links and weave them naturally into the content in a low key style without appearing to push for a sale. So when you discuss a particular topic and want to show where more detail can be found, or how a particular problem can be solved, that's where you can mention the affiliate product as a source of further information. If you want to see really good examples of how to do this read the free book at the end of this article.

See - that last sentence was an ACTUAL working example of how to weave in a link.

3) Maximum Return For Both Parties

You need to get the rebranding balance right.

If you give away an ebook and allow all the affiliate links to be rebranded that is a great deal for the rebrander - but what do you get out of it ? No affiliate commission, just subscribers maybe for your mailing list if you have a sign-up form in the book.

Conversely if you hand out only a few affiliate links for rebranding then that provides little incentive for the rebrander to distribute the book.

Ideally what you want is the maximum motivation for your rebrander which would be

* to allow free rebranding
* to allow ALL the links to be rebranded

but in a way that you can still benefit.

Can that be possible ?

Fortunately it is, using any of 3 different methods

* if the links in the book are for your own products

* If the links are for products for which you have resale rights

* If the links are for 2-tier affiliate programs so that you collect the 2nd tier commission when a rebrander, who has signed up under you, makes a sale

And so, if you use these techniques you can begin a viral marketing campaign which will continue to generate traffic and sales with little on-going effort on your part.

EXCEPT for two issues we need to resolve

1) What happens if everyone rebrands the book and only makes purchases from their own copy ?

Well, I have found that in practice only a minority (say 10%) will take the time to rebrand a book which means that the majority (90%) will be reading your book and purchasing from YOUR links.

So only 10% will be 'lost' to you . . . or are they ?

2) Suppose you plan to produce a viral book. It's about a popular topic - so it's bound to have a wide circulation - but you can't find any of the three types of suitable links to put in the book, i.e. links to a product of your own, to products with resale rights or for 2-tier affiliate programs.

Is there a solution ?

Yes - there are answers to both problems in my book "101 SuperTips" - they are actually tips 100 and 101.

As you might expect this book is free, with valuable information linking to highly relevant products, and you can rebrand it, again for free.

By all the rules above it's a candidate, I hope you agree, for 'the perfect viral ebook' and a profitable source of revenue for you.

About the Author:

Harvey is the author of several viral ebooks including 101 SuperTips, a collection of unique Internet Marketing tips, at http://www.supertips.com/101/

Are You Hung-Up On Page Rank And Back Links?

By Tony Simpson

It's unfortunate that many website owners are so hung-up on Page Rank, they'll rarely if ever, link to a site with a page rank lower than their own.

I'm frequently approached by other website owners who it's clear want to exchange links with one of my websites for no other reason than its Page Rank and so they can get more back links to their own website.

That's my experience with quite a few of my own websites. It's not until you get around a Page Rank 4 do back links come without you having to go and find them.

Back link requests tend to come more from sites with Low Page Rank wanting to improve search engine ranking by getting back links from higher ranking websites. They're also frequently from websites that offer no relevant content to your visitors and are from totally unrelated areas.

Many website owners have read a little about why and how to gain back links, then set about gaining as many as possible from any site that will give them one in return. They know it's important to gain back links, but what they forget or never knew, is it serves little purpose if they're of poor quality.

Poor Quality Back Links are from Unrelated Websites with Low Link Value.

I was reminded recently of the Google Page Rank obsession by one of my linking partners. I had advised them that because of some necessary changes to my website I had moved their back link to another page.

The website owner quickly emailed to tell me they had checked the page rank on the new page and finding it to be lower, advised me there was little point in them continuing to have a back link to my site.

Although we had been linking for over a year, it only served to prove they were not linking to my site because of its great content or because of its value to their visitors, but just for the Page Rank. When I advised them that their Page Rank check must have been in error because the page was the same PR as the previous one, they retained the back link to my site.

The obsession with Page Rank and how many back links a website has, led Google to put limits on this information.

For those of you obsessed with back linking by Page Rank you probably know that it only gets updated about every 3 months. Google also no longer reveals the true number of back links to a web site. Limiting information about back links is also something other search engines are starting to do.

An article of mine published on over 17,000 Websites Gained only 4 back links in any of the major search engines.

I recently proved the limits placed on information about back links and the discounting of back links, after one of my articles got taken up on over 17,000 websites. Since the article has a back link to my website, in theory that should mean 17,000 back links to my website.

A popular tool for checking back links among other things was a software tool called Optilink. Its popularity became such a problem for Google that they set about trying to detect its electronic signature and then blocking it when people used it.

It looks as if in the past months, that Google have been successful, because Optilink has been disabled by the developer from conducting queries on Google for back links. It's also no longer able to do queries on back links with MSN or Yahoo and the only one left now is the minor search engine Hotbot.

I'm only telling you all this, because it proves how obsessed many website owners have become about checking for back links to their websites and checking Google Page Rank of potential and existing link partners.

But are these web site owners right to be hung-up about Page Rank and Back Links and are you one of them?

What if I could prove to you that the value of back links from another website is not just about Page Rank. That in fact back links from Low PR sites could be of more value to you than back links from High PR sites. Would you believe me?

No, well if you want the proof you'll need to read another article called: "How Low PR Web Sites Can Improve Search Engine Ranking" by Andy Theekson who advises on Search Engine Optimization.

The article shows how the value of back links from other websites is not just about Page Rank but also how many other outbound links there are from the same page.

It was possible to show how a back link from a PR 2 web page can be of equal or greater value than a back link from a web page with a PR 7, 8, 9 or even 10.

The article should be read by anyone who only looks for back links from High PR sites.

It's often said that people don't value what they get for free and only value what they have to pay for. This may also be true of back links since the website owners who value them the most will often buy links.

Many website owners who have the cash will buy links, or to be more correct with terminology, buy text links from websites with High PR pages. Some people would argue this is cheating and trying to buy links to improve search engine ranking.

The cost to buy text links varies widely from $5 to $30 per month for a PR 4 link up to $50/mnth for a PR 5 text link. They become progressively more expensive up to PR 8, when in some cases, you can expect to pay several $100's per month.

So why would people pay these prices to buy text links on high PR pages?

Is it for the traffic they expect to get by being on a high ranking and assumed high traffic page, or is it to gain from an improved search engine ranking for their own website?

If they want traffic there are cheaper ways, even if you include Pay Per Click where even at 50 cents per click your $1000 would give you 2,000 targeted visitors per month.

When you buy text links there are no guarantees you'll get traffic and you're paying for the text link not by the click but by the month, regardless of what traffic you get.

So I would suggest that someone who is going to buy text links obviously believes they're going to improve search engine ranking for their website.

But are people who buy text links getting value for money?

For the answer to that question you'll need to read the continuing part of this article: "Can You Buy Text Links And Get Value for Money?"

About The Author:

Tony Simpson, Advises on Website Design, Promotion and Optimization. The continuing part of this article is at: http://www.webpageaddons.com/stp/buytextlinks1 - "Can You Buy Text Links And Get Value for Money?"

Reciprocal Link Building That Works

By Shawn Pringle

We all know the value of getting links to our site. Links bring you traffic from related sites and boost your search engine rank, which brings you, umm, more traffic. So, basically, links = traffic.

However, gone are the days of simply asking for a link (in exchange for a link from your site) and actually getting one. These days, bland reciprocal link requests such as these almost never yield any benefit because they are simply ignored. Think about this old-school approach from the email recipient's point of view to understand why your link requests are ignored.

Webmasters of quality sites, the ones you want to get links from, are constantly dealing with link requests. 9 times out of 10 the webmaster simply sees "Link Exchange" and deletes the email. I know I do. I have more important things to do than to entertain requests that are most likely for sites that are not even relevant to mine.

And like most webmasters, I don't give the link requester the chance to even prove if it is relevant (meaning, I don't read the email). I've seen so many of these emails that they seem to hit the "Deleted Items" folder as fast as the Viagra spam emails.

So, this is the first hurdle, getting your email read. If your subject line resembles a link request at all, busy webmasters will see it as such and simply delete it. You have to put yourselves in their shoes. What would get you to read the email?

Well, how about starting off by telling them what YOU can do for THEM, instead of the other way around. This simple tactic works much better. Which one would you open:

A) Subject: "Exchange links with xyz.com"
B) Subject: "Love your site! As my way of saying thanks."

In the body of the email you can introduce yourself and your site, and explain what you are trying to accomplish with your site.

Now, the following method varies slightly depending on what type of site you have that you are trying to get links for. Most sites fall into 2 categories: content sites and e-commerce sites. Is your site offering valuable content to your visitors (such as information on the best local golf courses), or is your site selling something (software or an ebook or something)? Your site will be one of these types.

If it's a content site then the process of acquiring links is much easier, because you simply have to convince the potential link partner that your site would be of value to them and their visitors. You could use an email such as:

"Hi there,

I just saw your site at _______ and think it's a great resource for our new _____ site. Our _____ site is unique because ______(here is where you would stress the value of your site)_________. Check it out at _________. Since our ____ site is like nothing else on the net, and we are quickly becoming the favorite resource for ____.

I am going to add your link to my site in a prominent location (with few outbounds on your link page) and was wondering if you would do the same.

The traffic we can send each other will be highly targeted and both of our visitors would appreciate and benefit from this link swap.

Again my site is at _________. Check it out!

Let me know if you would like me to add your link to the site.

Thanks!

____ (name)"

This type of email works well, and should net you a bunch of links if your content site truly is of value to the email recipient and his/her visitors.

Now, if your site falls under the second category, an e-commerce site, you need to put a little more work into your requests using the following approach. The body of the email would go on to explain that, as your way of saying thanks for a great site, you would like to offer them a complimentary copy of your ebook.or a copy of your software.or provide a service to them (copywriting, ebook design, graphic design).whatever.in exchange for a link from their site. If they link to your site, you will provide them with something in return, other than simply a link back from your site.

And it doesn't have to be your main product either. You can put together a valuable little bonus for link partners, or you can acquire master resell rights to something that you think would be of interest to them and offer them this. The key is to be creative. If you think about it just a little bit, I'm sure you can come up with something to give away in exchange for some highly valuable links.

I have used this tactic successfully several times and it always works beautifully. People love this because there's actually something in it for them, unlike the dozen other boring reciprocal link requests they simply deleted. Trust me, it works.

But the key is that you have to approach the right sites - RELEVANT SITES. I can't stress this enough. You cannot simply use this tactic as a blanket approach and send out as many emails as you can. If you do that, there goes the personalization and credibility you are hoping comes across in your email. You have to find only relevant sites that are truly valuable to you as a link partner.

And if your goal is simply to get top search engine rankings and not just the desire to have a ton of links pointing to your site, you don't have to send out hundreds of these requests - if they are properly targeted. This is especially true if you are in a relatively untapped niche market, because only a handful of the right links will get you top search engine rankings. After you get these links you will get listed at the top of MSN in a couple days, Yahoo in a couple weeks, and Google in a couple months. They all index and rank pages differently, but they share a common trait in that they all place an extremely high value on relevant backlinks. More so than any other SEO tactic out there, in fact.

So, how do you find relevant sites? Well, ideally these sites would not only be relevant but also would have a decent Page Rank as well as few outbound links on the page you would like to be linked from. As a rule of thumb, the higher the Page Rank and the fewer the outbound links the better. The PR Prowler program does exactly this. It allows you to enter in the keywords that relate to your site and specify a minimum Page Rank for your potential link partners, then it returns a list of highly valuable and, more importantly, relevant link partners for you and shows you the value of each one as a link partner. It can also email these sites from within the program(and customize each email), so you just have to craft your message and click "Send".

Bottom line: You have to be smart when you approach sites these days. With all the spam laws and email regulations in place, not to mention the resource drain on all those involved, you must only contact relevant sites to get links back to you. And by doing this in a creative fashion whereby the email recipient actually gets something of value in return for a simple link on their site you increase your chances of landing these valuable links tenfold. Not only does this boost your link popularity and search engine rank, but these relevant links are great traffic generators in and of themselves. It's a double-whammy, and an internet marketing tactic you should not take lightly.

Put some work into your link requests, and it will pay off in the end.

About the Author:

Shawn Pringle is the owner and founder of TopNet Solutions and he has been promoting various web sites online for over 5 years using a variety of clever tactics. His PR Prowler software is used by hundreds of savvy webmasters to find highly relevant link partners.

10 Mistakes To Avoid When Setting Up A Link Directory

By Tony Simpson

When adding a link directory to a web site there are a few important guidelines to observe. Ignore them and it could affect your ability to build traffic through reciprocal links and ranking with the search engines. I know, because I made some of these mistakes and didn't have anyone to offer any advice or tell me what I'm about to tell you.

1. Don't create a directory page with all your links on one page.

You should have no more than 30 - 40 links to a page. The reason is that some sites will not link to you if a page you put their link on has too many links, because it dilutes the value of the link to them. To understand why, you need to know about Google Page Rank and how it's passed to another site from your link page. That's a subject too lengthy for this topic.

2. Plan your link directory on paper first.

Decide what names you are going to give each category in your link directory. Make the names fit with the theme of your site and try to avoid adding categories which are nothing to do with
what your site is about.

For example if your site is about Making Candles and Candle Accessories, don't have link categories for Computers & Games, or Search Engine Optimization etc. The reason is that if you
want your site to achieve a good ranking with the search engines your site should be built tightly around your theme, in this example Candles.

3. Only link to web sites that relate to your site theme.

Make sure other sites have something to offer your visitors. This refers to item 2. If you don't have categories for unrelated topics, you'll be less tempted to link to them because you don't have a category to put them in.

4. Choose names for link categories that you want to use now and in the future.

This is because you can't easily change them later on. Once the pages are created by your link manager software, it will use the category names you give it. So if you have a category called
"Candle Power" it will create an html page called Candle-Power.html or something similar, using your category name. Once this page is found and indexed by the search engines, in time it will gain Page Rank.

If later, you change the category name to "Candle Lights" the link manager software will create a new page called Candle-Lights.html and you will lose the page rank you had gained for the earlier page. If your link partners linked to you because the page you put them on had a good page rank, renaming the page will cause this page rank to fall to zero. As a result your link partners may drop the link they have back to you, which is not what you ever want to happen.

5. Avoid having sub-categories or sub sub-categories in your directory.

The reason for this is again to do with how search engines will rank your directory pages. If your directory pages are more than two levels or two clicks away from your main index or home page they will either not be indexed by some search engines, or if they are indexed they will achieve a lower ranking. Some web sites will not link to you if the page you are to put the link on is more than 2 clicks away from your home page because these webmasters know what I've just told you.

6. Ensure each page of your link directory has a link back to your home page.

Once again the reason for this is to do with how search engines will rank your directory pages, so make sure these links are in place.

7. Don't be obsessed at linking only to websites with a good search engine ranking.

Look first at whether the site has anything to offer your visitors. If it has poor or unrelated content don't link to it. If it has good related content that compliments your own content but has zero or low page rank, consider linking to it. Later on you may be glad you provided a link, when it's page rank improves.

8. Don't use link directory software that doesn't automatically check links.

Link directory software must be able to check links to your web site are still present on other sites. Doing link checking manually can be tedious and you have to remember to do it. Software that you can set a schedule to check links and automatically send out emails to webmasters when links are not found will save you a lot of time. Link management software that will automatically suspend links and delete them if they are repeatedly not found is an added bonus.

9. Don't use standard templates that come with any link manager.

Link directory management software comes with standard templates that you must modify to match the look and design of your own web site. This requires you know something about editing a web page using an HTML editor. Also don't use the standard email templates, personalize them in some way, even if it's only to add your name.

10. Don't assume you're finished once you've set up your link directory.

Once you've done all the things I've suggested, you must test and retest every aspect to ensure everything is working properly, before visitors arrive.

This means making an add a link request, as if you were a visitor to your own web site. Setting up test links and making sure these links are being checked by the software so it detects when links are removed or defective. Making sure it sends out email notices correctly and check the formatting is correct when they are received. You should also check you can make backups of your link directory database and be able to restore it in the event of a problem.

About The Author:

Tony Simpson is a Web Designer and Search Engine Optimizer who brings a touch of reality to building a Web Business. It's a No-Hype, No B.S approach from his own 5 years of experience. He provides advice, product reviews and products at Web Page Add Ons, Making Automation of Your Web Site Work for You.

Build Killer Link Popularity with Syndicated Articles

By Scott Hawksworth

There are many schools of thought on how to build strong backlinks to a Web site. Some webmasters build reciprocal links, while others register their site in many directories. Still others do both of those, and rent links as well!

But one method used by a growing number of webmasters is that of building link popularity through the syndication of original articles. Syndicated articles are becoming increasingly popular because article syndication builds permanent links from many different, topically related, keyword rich pages. There are several steps one can take in order to ensure that an article is syndicated as much as possible, and that the links from those syndications are of the highest quality.

1) Write High Quality Articles

The amount of syndication an article receives is directly proportional to the demand for that type of article. Higher quality articles will prove more valuable to webmasters looking to reprint articles. Perfect spelling and grammar are requisite in order to ensure the widest syndication possible. Webmasters will be more inclined to reprint well-researched and well-written articles. Most articles are not of the highest quality, so a higher quality article will stand out significantly.

Articles should be more than simply a place to put a link in a resource box. The goal of article writing should be to make the article itself interesting. An interesting article can be syndicated on websites with high traffic and PageRank. Increasing article syndication will cause the link in the resource box to be copied by many Web sites.

In addition to building more links with higher quality articles, webmasters will find that quality content articles will result in an immediate traffic increase to a site. An article that is appealing to readers will naturally attract a large readership. The more readers an article has, the more likely those readers are to click on the link in the resource box.

2) Manually Submit to Related Sites

Another technique used by many webmasters to increase an article's syndication is to submit articles to related sites. The best syndications and links come from quality sites in a specific niche, not simply article banks. For example, there are many Web sites that will only accept business-related articles. Any webmaster of a business-related website looking to build link popularity should write an article concerning business and submit it to these sites. Potentially, other business sites could take note of a high quality business article and syndicate it on their sites (which are all related under the unique subject of business). Doing this will build topically related links which can improve a Web site's search engine rankings dramatically.

3) Write a Compelling Title

Articles have to be interesting in order to get the readers to scroll down to the resource box, or inspire webmasters to reprint the article on their Web site. The best way to draw a wide variety of readers is to have a compelling title. Catchy titles and sometimes even controversial titles can draw more readers. Coupling a compelling title with a high quality article is an excellent way to attract readers specifically looking for articles to syndicate.

Article topics should also be interesting. If a website is focused on a specific subject, an article about an interesting element of that subject will be syndicated more than a general article. For example, there may be hundreds of available articles about mortgage refinancing, but how many articles focus on ways financial advisors will try to manipulate someone seeking to refinance?

4) Stay Organized

Time should be taken when finding article sites to submit to. There are many Web sites that have large lists of article sites that accept submissions. A good technique is to submit articles to all of the article sites in a list and check later to see if those articles have been syndicated. Searching for the title of the article submitted in quotations on Google will show where exactly it has been reprinted. Backlink searches on MSN and Yahoo! can also be helpful. Building a solid list of verified article sites can help maximize article syndication and also time efficiency.

Some article sites only accept submissions via e-mail. Some SEOs shy away from e-mailing articles because it is more time consuming and often involves the creation of a biography and picture submission. E-mail submission article sites however are often more inclined to only reprint articles of high quality, and thus these types of sites' articles are often widely syndicated.

5) Write a Killer Resource Box

The heart and soul of a syndicated article is its resource box. The anchor text and link destination of the links in the articles should be varied. Varying anchor text will help avoid penalties in search engine rankings and create higher-value links. Often changing the resource box after submitting to each site proves beneficial. An article about dogs with the anchor text "dogs" should be varied with anchor text like "puppies" for the other article submissions. Using technology such as latent semantic analysis, search engines will notice "dog" and "puppy" as related words, but will not penalize the site for having unnatural links (e.g., if all of the links used "dog" as anchor text). This same effect can be achieved by varying the link target. Linking the first half of the article submissions to page A, and the second half to page B will avoid penalties from search engines like Google. Articles are a proven way to get links, but if a new site suddenly acquires 100 links to the same place in a short time, search engines might penalize it.

Article submission is a great way to get high quality links from topically related sites. The more effort and care given to an article that is submitted, the more syndication potential an article has. Compelling titles, high-quality content, and interesting topics will all improve the syndication of an article. Varying backlink text and destinations can also help avoid heavy penalties from search engines. Some SEOs believe that only traditional directory submissions and link swapping are effective methods of building links. I, however, am a firm believer in the power of a well-written article to deliver a large number of topically related links to any fledgling site.

About the Author:

Scott Hawksworth works for Andy Hagans Link Building as a link popularity building campaign manager. See http://www.andyhagans.com for more information.

Paid directory submission - what you should know

By Lakhya Phukan

Every online business needs traffic, which comes with increased visibility on the web. One great way to get noticed is to get listed in the major directories. Links from good directories increases your site's visibility many fold.

There are thousands of web directories on the net and selecting the good ones to submit your site can be a time consuming task. Also there are free directories and paid directories. You need to submit to both types of directories.

The following checklist is for paid directory submission only. This checklist will help you choose the best and worthwhile paid directories on the net.

Submission Check List:

1. Check out if the directory is indexed in major search engines.
2. Check the robots.txt file. Make sure that search engine bots are allowed to crawl the pages where you intend to put your listing. Check the Meta tags to make sure that search engine spiders are not prevented from following links in it. A Meta tag with noindex/nofollow will not be indexed or spidered and links in that page are not followed by bots.
3. Check if the directory is being maintained regularly. Visit the directory from time to time to see if errors are getting corrected, site information is getting updated and the like. In short, look for positive activity on the directory.
4. Check if the listings in category pages match in theme and content or not. Directories with tight focus on relevant grouping of web sites are useful for visitors and tend to show up frequently in SERPs for keyword searches.
5. Check out the age of the directory. Do a whois search http://www.whois.net to get this information. Many new directories vanish after a few months due to lack of maintenance and promotion. With older directories you can at least be sure that you listing will remain visible for a reasonable period.
6. Check if the directory consists of too many empty categories - it is not useful for visitors and also does not send a too good signal to the SEs about the directory. Think twice before submitting to such directories.
7. Check if the contact information is available on the site. Proper businesses will provide you with some kind of contact information.
8. Check the Alexa rank of the directory - it is not accurate, yet you can get an idea of traffic the directory receives. Look for directories with decreasing Alexa Rank as it indicates that the directory is getting popular.
9. Check if the directory provides SE friendly urls. No JavaScript link or redirection. Also watch out for dynamic urls. Sometimes search engines find it difficult indexing or recognizing dynamic urls with parameters like http://www.<examplesite>.com/index.html?cat=1&p=12... An example of SE friendly URL is http://www.hedir.com/business.html
10. Check whether category pages have too many outgoing links. If your link is one of 100 links on a page, visitors will find it difficult to locate your site.

About the Author

Lakhya Phukan is the webmaster of Hedir Web Directory.

How Do You Know When You Have Enough Backlinks?

By John Taylor

We all know just how important it is to get as many incoming links as possible. The top search engines love backlinks; and you don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that link popularity plays an important role in their ranking algorithms.

Incoming links aren't just important to the search engines. The more links that you have that link directly to your site, the more opportunities there are for people to click them. Every opportunity to click a link is an opportunity to get a visitor to your web site.

So, if the "arrow" is your targeted visitor, then the incoming link is your bow. Now, I'm not suggesting for a moment that you take up archery! But I am suggesting that you get as many bowmen as possible to send targeted traffic to your site.

How do you know when you have enough bowmen?

How many incoming links is enough?

Here's a step by step process to get you the answer...

1. Choose your primary keyword and run off to your favourite search engine and run a search.



2. Identify the URL at the very top, the number one position, and copy the URL to your clipboard.



3. Now open another browser window and get to this page: http://www.link-advantage.com/popularity and paste the #1 URL from the search engine window into the search box. Don't click the "check" button just yet.



4. Go back to your search engine window and click to page two and capture the URL that is in the top of that page (#11 in the overall results).



5. Return to the Link-Advantage.com window and paste the #11 URL into one of the additional search comparison boxes.



6. Enter your own site's URL in one of the remaining boxes and then click the "check" button.

Now look carefully at the results. You now have two targets to aim for. You know how many links you need to beat the site that holds the #1 position; and you know how many links to get your site into the top ten position on that important first page of the results for your keyword.

Surprisingly, now you know what you are aiming for, you are much more likely to succeed and by using the http://www.link-advantage.com/popularity you have an easy way of keeping score.

In my link building experience, having a clear target and measuring progress can be a great motivator. However, it's important not to feel overwhelmed when you first start and see that you're going to need thousands of backlinks. Just set yourself a realistic target to aim for within your first week, or month, and get started.

Building link popularity isn't a one-off project, it's an ongoing and important part of building long term traffic.

Copyright John Taylor PhD September 2005 - All rights reserved.

About The Author:

To learn more information about Link Building & Link Popularity I strongly recommend that you visit http://www.Link-Advantage.com

Build SEO Links & Web Traffic With Content Distribution

By Joel Walsh

Many website owners and SEOs (search engine optimizers) believe that trading links is the most effective way to build the hundreds of links necessary for good search-engine ranking. But there's another way to build links that deserves your attention: content distribution.

A time-honored way of getting one-way inbound links to your website is to distribute content, usually articles, for other websites to publish in exchange for a backlink. Most often, the backlink is included in an "author's resource box," which is a brief "about the author" paragraph promoting the author's site.

Content distribution has usually been thought of as a website promotion strategy rather than an SEO or link-building strategy. But there are good reasons for adding content distribution to your SEO toolkit.

SEO Benefits of Distributing Content vs. Reciprocal Linking Alone

* Links come faster. You send an email with your article to a relevant website owner. That's it. No adding links to your site and then checking and re-checking for compliance. That means you can get more links from the time and resources you spend on link-building.

* Links are not always available through reciprocal linking. Many website owners simply refuse to do reciprocal linking. Content distribution is one way to reach this large segment of website owners.

* Links are one-way. Many SEO experts believe that reciprocal links may be "dampened" by the search engines; i.e., they will not help you rank as high as one-way links. Of course, reciprocal links are still valuable, there's a just a question of how valuable they really are.

* Links per page are fewer. Many SEO experts believe that the higher the number of links per page, the less SEO value each link has. When a website publishes an article, the author's backlink is often the only live link to another website on that page.

Distinct Non-SEO Benefits of Distributing Content

What makes content distribution a truly special method of link building is that it's the only method where the non-SEO benefits may even outweigh the SEO benefits:

* Website building. If you create special content for your link-building campaign, you can publish it on your site. As a general rule, the more content your site has, the more search engine traffic it will receive. Just publish the article and get it indexed in search engines before distributing it, which should help you to outrank your republishers in search engines for that same content.

* Traffic generation. The links in distributed content generate traffic in the form of highly qualified leads: people who liked what you had to say. Distributing content gets you traffic even when it doesn't get you a link. If your article gets picked up by a large-circulation email newsletter, you will get a flood of highly qualified traffic.

* Authority. Distributing content is the only linking campaign method that can make the recipient website and its owners appear authoritative. There are thousands of internet gurus who owe their lucrative reputations entirely to the articles they've distributed.

* Mindshare. Distributing articles is the only linking campaign method that can help you spread an idea. This makes article distribution invaluable for launching new products or services.

Drawbacks of Content Distribution

Of course, nothing good ever came easy. Any website owners who are looking for SEO magic beans will be disappointed by content distribution:

* Desired anchor text is not always available. Unfortunately, the content management systems most widely in place today make it easier for website owners to accept content as text rather than HTML. This means that many website owners simply have their content management system convert a URL into a live link, rather than taking the time to code in the anchor text. Still, an experienced content distributor can usually find ways around this problem to make sure that many if not most of the links use anchor text.

* Results are variable. Content distribution is not quite as sure a thing as reciprocal linking. The site that publishes your article has to like not only your site, but also your article. This is especially true for the passively-generated links that come from content clearinghouse websites. But results can vary the other way, too: an article that catches on will yield more links than you ever could have gotten through the same investment in reciprocal linking. In order to minimize the risk of content not catching on with website owners, you should make sure your content is high-quality, and also plan for a large content distribution campaign: the more content you try, the more likely you are to find a winner.

* Requires significant investment. You need high-quality content, expertise in content distribution, and quite a few work-hours to distribute the content and track the results. Of course, the cost has to be weighed against the cost of reciprocal linking, which is also significant. These costs can be mitigated by outsourcing the entire process from soup to nuts to a content distribution specialist. Costs of outsourcing content distribution compare favorably with costs of outsourcing reciprocal link building.

* Requires special expertise. There are numerous newbie pitfalls to distributing content, from improperly formatting articles to writing a bad introductory email to accompany content submissions. You generally have to have done numerous campaigns to truly get the feel for it. Again, this requirement has to be weighed against the real-world requirement of special expertise in other link campaign methods. Again, this drawback can be mitigated by outsourcing your project to a specialist.

In short, there are benefits to both reciprocal linking and content distribution. All things being equal, you should use both. Still, content distribution is the only one method that carries substantial non-SEO benefits as well. Plus, a professionally managed content distribution campaign may even yield greater SEO results than reciprocal linking would for the same investment.

You owe it to yourself or your clients to add content distribution to your SEO-toolkit--before the owner of the next highest-ranking site finds out about it.

About The Author:

Joel Walsh is the owner of UpMarket Content, offering a fully managed content distribution campaign guaranteed to get you at least one hundred one-way inbound links for every three pages of content via his website content distribution package.

Internet Directories to Improve Link Popularity

By Olivia Lambeth

You can jumpstart your link campaign by getting directory links. Building links, by listing your website in the search engines and directories, is one way of increasing your link popularity, especially if yours is a new site or one with no inbound links.

However, you should choose your directories and search engines well. But, the shortage of inbound links puts your site at a severe disadvantage because link analysis is an important part of every search engine's ranking algorithm.

So, you can overcome this disadvantage by getting a few quality links. And a good way to start is to get listed in as many directories as you can. There are many directories out there, and the more you can get into, the better. If you have a business related website, and it can't be accepted by non-for-profit directories, then you should try submitting it into business directories and should be prepared to pay a small fee for it. A good strategy is to contact a site that doesn't offer advertising or paid listing and offer a small amount of money in return for a link.

Chances are that few will be willing to accept your link. A few that you should try and get your site listed in, are Open Directory (http://www.dmoz.org), Yahoo(http://www.yahoo.com), LookSmart (http://www.looksmart.com), Zeal (http://www.zeal.com), Joeant (http://www.joeant.com) and Business.com (http://www.business.com), Discount-Search.com (http://www.discount-search.com) or any other business directory if your site doesn't qualify for free submission.

And these directories and search engines are gold mines as linking partners, waiting and begging to be mined by an enterprising and prospecting webmaster. The most obvious Internet directory to start with, when beginning a comprehensive link search, is the well-known DMOZ directory. Its complete category and sub-category classification system makes it convenient for any website owner to find numerous sites within their area of business.

With DMOZ, there's no need to contact them for link exchanges if you're concerned about loss of visitor traffic to their sites. However, if you're not listed in the DMOZ directory, you can still find the category where your site would probably be included. And the process remains the same for finding link partners, whether your site is listed or not.

Another directory that is good is The Yahoo! Directory which has many of the same sites in its list as DMOZ. This is inevitable. There are, however, many sites listed in Yahoo! that are not part of the Open Directory Project. And this fact opens up many more possibilities for the webmaster.

When you go to the Yahoo! Directory, you must first go to your category, if you're already listed. But if you're site is not listed, you should select the most probable one. However, keep in mind that the listings are in alphabetical order, and may not have the same descriptions as the DMOZ directory. Then, use the same procedure as before, and your list of potential linking partners
will grow larger.

A third important Internet directory is the Google Directory. They use listings supplied by the Open Directory Project and the listings are very similar to those found in DMOZ. But, Google is different in that it orders the results from the highest PageRank listing to the lowest, making your sorting that much easier. Though, it should be remembered that some of the PageRanks on display are most probably out of date, and may not reflect the site's current PageRank.

But, if exchanges, for higher PageRank purposes are important to your site, then the Google directory is the answer to what you're seeking. However, as a general rule, don't let PageRank determine your linking partners. It's far more important to make your site helpful, for your visitors and customers.

And, since directories are an excellent source of theme related link partners for any website, you should use a major one for the search such as DMOZ, the Yahoo! Directory, or the Google Directory. So, finding potential linking partners is very easy when you use the major directories or search engines.

--------------------------------------------------------

About the Author:

Olivia Lambeth is a creative and multi-talented fashion designer and has worked with reputed Fashion Houses for the past 12 years. She specialised in Casual Wears but nevertheless her unique design for Formal and hand work is worth mentioning. Her site is at http://www.discount-search.com/

SEO And The Outsourcing Of Inbound Link Building

By Christoph Puetz

Search Engine Optimization nowadays has a lot to do with building inbound links to your website. Building inbound links is a cumbersome tasks and webmasters have always been looking for shortcuts to do this. Webmasters buy links (as advertising as an example) or contact other webmasters to exchange links with them. The need for inbound links has created a new business opportunity in the search engine optimization industry. The outsourcing of link building emerged from the fact that many inbound links mean a high search engine ranking and/or a high Google PageRank.

There are many different ways of building inbound links. Outsourcing this tasks can save the webmaster a lot of time but it comes with a price tag. Businesses offering to take over the link building process often maintain and operate a large network of domains and websites and just add 'your' link to their sites. These sites are often referred to as link farms.

Others buy links on 3rd party websites for you. They often have build up a portfolio of websites/webmasters they work with. The quality of these links is often questionable and a long-term benefit does not exist. It either continues to cost the webmaster money to keep the links alive or his website might get punished by Google and other search engines if the linking websites are recognized as part of commercial search engine spamming. Punished means that either the link to a site does not have any value at all or depending on the situation the site linked to gets removed from the search engine index (worse case scenario) if other factors are involved that lead to the conclusion that search engine spamming is going on.

Outsourcing of link building also takes away the control of who is linking to a website from the webmaster. The webmaster usually just pays for X number of links but there is no option to have industry related websites link to his site (= increased value of a link). It is also difficult to verify how many links to a website have really been established from the service provider. Another difficulty is to verify how long the established links are staying in place. The danger of being over-charged is very high.

Since link building has become a profitable business opportunity search engines are aware of what is going on and are putting countermeasures in place. These are not things visible to the webmaster or explained on the search engines website. These are factors that are worked into the algorithm. Search engines use the human control factor more and more often to increase the value of the search index. Chances are that if a webmaster uses an outsourced link building strategy that at one point the campaign value goes south (turns sour).

Inbound link building should be an organic process that shows a slowly increasing number of links pointing to a certain website. Getting a high number of inbound links within a very short period will raise a warning flag at search engines. Honest webmasters will stay away from these tactics to avoid putting the success of a website at risk when there are better ways of building inbound links.

About The Author:

Christoph Puetz is a successful entrepreneur and international book author. Examples of his search engine optimization work can be found at http://www.smallbusinessland.com and http://www.webhostingreport.net

SEO One-way Web Links: 5 Strategies

By Joel Walsh

With so much talk about search engines putting a damper on direct reciprocal links, the hunt for the elusive one-way inbound link is on.

As someone who works with small business website owners, I've heard just about every inbound-linking scheme there is. In the end, I've only seen five strategies that really work consistently for getting hundreds of links.

Less Effective One-Way Link Strategies

Yet there's perennial interest in alternative linking strategies. They range from bad to OK, but none offer as much potential as the five major ways of getting links.

* Link farms never seem to die. The latest variations try to pass themselves off as viral marketing, but are really a sort of endless pyramid scheme: you link to me, so I link to someone else, who links to someone else, and on and on down the line. Link farms can get you delisted from search engine indexes, so don't even try them.

* Affiliates can provide you with one-way inbound links if you use affiliate software that links directly to your site rather than through a redirect. But many, many affiliates are now placing all their affiliate links in redirects of their own invention, to help protect their commissions from pirates who will simply apply to the program themselves to get a discount.

* Posting to web forums and blogs regularly will get you one-way inbound links, but they'll only have search-engine value a small percentage of the time. Many blogs and bulletin boards use search-engine-unfriendly dynamic file formats, automatically encase links in script, or use robot instructions to prevent spiders from following links.

* Many one-way inbound linking strategies fall into the great-if-you-are-lucky-enough-to-get it category, such as winning a web award or being featured on a high-PageRank website just for being so great.

* Other one-way incoming link strategies are in the this-will-take-forever-to-get-anywhere category, such as offering to provide testimonials to all your vendors in exchange for a link to your site. (Hint: If you can get more than twenty links that way, you probably need to simplify your supply chain.)

Now, on to the five major ways of getting large numbers of one-way inbound links. Some are better than others, but they all have more potential than some of the more madcapped strategies. Of course, none is a good strategy all on its own. You have to understand all five strategies in order to really gain a distinct advantage in the one-way link hunt.

1. Waiting for Inbound Links

If you have good content you will eventually get one-way inbound links naturally, without asking. Organic, freely given links are an essential part of any SEO strategy. But you cannot rely on them, for two reasons:

* Unfortunately, "eventually" can be a very long time.

* Worse, there is a vicious cycle: you can't get search engine traffic, or other non-paid traffic, without inbound links; yet without inbound links or search engine traffic, how is anyone going to find you to give you inbound links?

2. Triangulating for Inbound Links

Search engines will have a tough time dampening reciprocal links if the reciprocation is not direct. To get links to one website you offer in exchange a link from another website you also control. This would seem to be a mostly foolproof way of defeating the link-dampening ambitions of Google and the rest. If you have more than one website, you probably are already employing this linking method. There are only a few drawbacks:

* You need to have more than one website in the same general category of interest or the links won't be relevant.

* The work required to set up this kind of arrangement and verify compliance is not insignificant. The process cannot be automated to the same extent as direct one-to-one reciprocal linking.

* As with traditional reciprocal links, a very big drawback is that the links are mostly on "Resources" pages that are just lists of links. There's only a small chance of getting significant traffic from these links. Plus, any "Resource" page may well eventually become an easy target for link dampening, if that hasn't happened already.

3. Submitting to Directories

They are the legendary fairy lands of SEO: PageRank-passing, no-fee-charging, and actually well-run directories of relevant links. Yes, they really do exist. An SEO acquaintance tells me he knows 200 good ones just off the top of his head. Plus, there are other kinds of directories: directories of affiliate programs, of websites using a certain content management system, of websites whose owners are members of this or that group, of websites accepting PayPal, etc. etc.

Ah, a link in a PageRank-passing link directory: it's a good deal if you can get it. But let's say you do get links from all 200 such directories and a hundred more from the little niche directories--now what?

4. Paying for Inbound Links

Buying and selling text links on high-PageRank web pages has become big business. Buying good traffic-generating "clean" links is a great alternative to pay-per-click advertising, which confers no SEO benefit. But, there are a number of pitfalls of relying primarily on paid links for SEO:

* The cost of the hundreds of links required for substantial search engine traffic can become prohibitive.

* As soon as you stop paying, you lose your link--you are essentially renting rather than owning, with no "link equity" building up.

* Google is actively trying to dampen the impact of paid links on rankings, as revealed in various patent filings. A website can try to mask the fact that the links are paid, but how well it does that is out of your control.

* Given Google's mission to dampen paid links' effectiveness, paid link buyers have an interest in verifying that a potential paid link partner is "passing PageRank." But identifying appropriate PageRank-passing paid link partners is quite a task in itself.

* Google also has a stated mission of dampening the value of any "artificial" links. Having most of your links on PageRank 3 or higher web pages would seem to be a dead give-away that your links are "artificial," since the vast majority of web pages (note: not necessarily websites, but their pages) are PageRank 1 or lower. Meanwhile, buying PageRank 0 or 1 links would have
so little impact on a site's PageRank that it would not be worth the expense.

5. Distributing Content

All of the above four inbound-link-generating methods really do work. But it is the fifth method of getting one-way inbound links that is the most promising: distributing content

The idea is simple: you give other websites content to put on their sites in exchange for a link to your site, usually in an "author's resource box," an "about the author" paragraph at the end of the article.

The beauty of distributing content for links is that the links generally generate more traffic than links on a "resources" page. Plus, your article will pre-sell readers on the value of your site.

The downside, of course, is that it's no small amount of work to create original content and then distribute it to hundreds of website owners. But nothing good ever came easy. And on the internet, one-way inbound links are a very good thing.

About The Author:

Joel Walsh is the head content writer for UpMarket Content. Get more information on website content promotion.

Anatomy Of A Reciprocal Linking Campaign

By John Taylor

Reciprocal linking means forming partnerships with other sites who place a link from their Web pages to yours. You then give them a similar link in return.

When you look for people to swap links with, make sure that you don't reduce the quality or content of your own site. You don't want users to click straight through without reading your content; you want them to take action on your own site rather than have them leave empty handed.

One way to stop them from running away too quickly is to create a "Webmasters Resource Page" and link to that page from your homepage. This doesn't take away from the content on your homepage and the links are just one click away rather than being buried deep within the site, giving value to your partners.

In any case, you want to be sure that your site is more than just a page full of links. If your site contains more links than content, it will look like a link farm and it will certainly not be attractive to webmasters, search engines or users.

Picking your partner

Your link partners should be sites your target market will visit. Think about your product and its subject area and brainstorm to determine where people interested in your product might be looking online.

For example, if you're trying to shift your book about blackjack strategy, it makes sense that the people visiting online casinos would make great customers. Online casinos then could be good partners. Identify top-ranked, high quality casino sites and find the email address, telephone number and snail mail address of their webmasters.

You can also identify your competitors and see where they trade links. After all why reinvent the wheel when you can use your competitors hard work!

Seven Top Tips For Requesting reciprocal Links...

1. Before you contact webmasters, place a link to their site on your resource page to assure them that you will actually provide a quality link.



2. Create a subject line that will encourage them to read your message rather than deleting it - you don't want them to think you're spamming them. (Something about their site or product is sure to capture their attention; they will open it, thinking you're a potential customer.) Hint -subscribe to their ezine and then reply using the ezine subject line as the subject of your reply.



3. Begin your message by talking about your visit to their site and what you found interesting about it. Detail your product or service in one line and ask them to exchange links with you.



4. Tell them in detail where you have placed their link, include the precise URL, tell them where to find their link on the page and emphasize that it is only one click away from your homepage.



5. Tell them that if you don't hear back from them in a specific number of days, you will consider that to a negative response and that you will remove their link from your site. Give them enough time to respond but don't leave it open ended.




6. Sending a reciprocal link request by email is becoming less and less effective due to Spam filters and the high volume of email traffic received by webmasters of busy sites. Try sending your request on a postcard or better still make a phone call.



7. Tell the webmaster how they will benefit from the reciprocal linking arrangement - explain what's in it for them and use your selling and persuasion skills!

Copyright John Taylor PhD August 2005 - All rights reserved.

About The Author:

To learn more information about reciprocal linking I strongly recommend that you visit
http://www.Link-Advantage.com

Get One-way Inbound Links: The 5 Major Strategies

By Joel Walsh

Do you know all the major strategies for getting valuable one-way inbound links?

With search engines putting a damper on direct reciprocal links, the hunt for the elusive one way inbound link is on.

As someone who works with small business website owners, I've heard just about every inbound-linking scheme there is. In the end, I've only seen five strategies that really work consistently for getting hundreds of links. Yet there's perennial interest in alternative linking strategies. Why? Perhaps because the five major effective strategies involve a certain amount of hard work, and for many people, SEO is an endless magic bean hunt.

Let's look at some of the supposedly easier alternatives:

* Link farms never seem to die. The latest variations try to pass themselves off as viral marketing, but are really a sort of endless pyramid scheme: you link to me, I link to someone else, who links to someone else, and on and on down the line. If you think this will work, let's just say I admire your ability to maintain a childlike innocence despite all the mean names I'm sure everyone calls you.

* Many one-way inbound linking strategies fall into the great-if-you-are-lucky-enough-to-get-it category, such as winning a web award or being featured on a high-PageRank website just for being so great.

* Other one-way incoming link strategies are in the this-will-take-forever-to-get-anywhere category, such as offering to provide testimonials to all your vendors in exchange for a link to your site. (Hint: If you can get more than twenty links that way, you probably need to simplify your supply line.)

* Other linking methods are slightly less practical, like engendering the hatred of billions of people so they'll all link to you with "miserable failure" in the link anchor text so that--ha! ha!--you'll show up in searches for "miserable failure"--and probably other keywords as well since you'll have such great link popularity at that point (ha! ha!).

Now, on to the five major ways of getting large numbers of one-way inbound links. Some are better than others, but they all have more potential than some of the more madcapped strategies. Of course, none is a good strategy all on its own. You have to understand all five strategies in order to really gain a distinct advantage in the one-way link hunt.

1. Waiting for Inbound Links

If you have good content you will eventually get one-way inbound links naturally, without asking. Organic, freely given links are an essential part of any SEO strategy. But you cannot rely on them, for two reasons:

a. Unfortunately, "eventually" can be a very long time.

b. There is a vicious cycle: you can't get search engine traffic, or other non-paid traffic, without inbound links; yet without inbound links or search engine traffic, how is anyone going to find you to give you inbound links?

2. Triangulating for Inbound Links

Search engines will have a tough time dampening reciprocal links if the reciprocation is not direct. To get links to one website you offer in exchange a link from another website you also control. This would seem to be a mostly foolproof way of defeating the link-dampening ambitions of Google and the rest. If you have more than one website, you probably are already employing this linking method. There are only a few drawbacks:

* You need to have more than one website. Stop laughing! There really are businesses that only have one website! In fact, they may be your clients someday.

* The work required to set up this kind of arrangement and verify compliance is not insignificant. The process cannot be automated to the same extent as direct one-to-one reciprocal linking.

* As with traditional reciprocal links, a very big drawback is that the links are mostly on "Resources" pages that are just lists of links. There's only a small chance of getting significant traffic from these links. Plus, any "Resource" page may well eventually become an easy target for link dampening, if that hasn't happened already.

3. Submitting for Incoming Links

They are the legendary fairy lands of SEO: PageRank-passing, no-fee-charging, non-corrupt and actually well-run directories of relevant links. Yes, they really do exist. An SEO friend tells me he knows 200 good ones just off the top of his head. Plus, there are other kinds of directories: directories of affiliate programs, of websites using a certain content management system, of websites whose owners are members of this or that group, of websites accepting PayPal, etc. etc.

Ah, a link in a PageRank-passing link directory: it's a good deal if you can get it. But let's say you do get links from all 200 such directories and a hundred more from the little niche directories--now what?

4. Paying for Inbound Links

Buying and selling text links on high-PageRank web pages has become big business. Buying good traffic-generating "clean" links is a great alternative to pay-per-click advertising, which confers no SEO benefit. But, there are a number of pitfalls of relying primarily on paid links for SEO:

a. The cost of the hundreds of links required for substantial search engine traffic can become prohibitive.

b. As soon as you stop paying, you lose your link--you are essentially renting rather than owning, with no "link equity" building up.

c. Google is actively trying to dampen the impact of paid links on rankings, as revealed in various patent filings.

d. Given Google's mission to dampen paid links' effectiveness, paid link buyers have an interest in verifying that a potential paid link partner is "passing PageRank." But identifying appropriate PageRank-passing paid link partners is quite a task in itself.

e. Google is actively trying to dampen the impact of any "artificial" linking campaign. Having most of your links on PageRank 3 or higher web pages would seem to be a dead give-away that your links are "artificial," since the vast majority of web pages (note: not necessarily websites, but their pages) are PageRank 1 or lower. Meanwhile, buying PageRank 0 or 1 links would have so little impact on a site's PageRank that it would not be worth the expense.

All of the above four inbound-link-generating methods really do work. But it is the fifth method of getting one-way inbound links that is the most promising.

Distributing Content for One-Way Inbound Links

A time-honored way of getting one-way inbound links is to distribute content, usually articles, for other websites to publish in exchange for a backlink. Usually, the backlink is included in an "author's resource box," which is a brief "about the author" paragraph promoting the author's site. If done right, content distribution is almost always the most cost-effective way to get one way inbound links.

Myths about distributing content for inbound links

Given the enormous value of distributing content for inbound links, the big question is: why isn't everybody doing it? Part of the problem is the ignorance about properly conducting a content distribution linking campaign. Here are some common myths:

Myth: The "Duplicate content penalty."

Some webmasters worry that if the content on their sites is suddenly on hundreds of other sites, search engines will inflict a "duplicate content penalty." Why is this ridiculous?

* If this were true, every major newspaper and news portal website would now be de-indexed from the search engines, since they all carry "duplicate content" from the news wires such as Reuters and the Associated Press.

* Thousands of self-promoting internet gurus have proven that distributing content is an effective method of improving search engine rank.

* Even more thousands of content websites have proven that republishing this content does not carry any search engine penalty.

* True, the first website to publish an article often seems to be favored by search engines, ranking higher for the same content in searches than higher-PageRank pages with the same content. But the "duplicate" pages do show up in the search engine results, even if lower than the original site. Meanwhile, the reprint content has no effect on the ranking of a site's other pages.

* The only duplicate content penalty is for duplication of content across pages of a single website. Meanwhile, there is a sort of "copyright theft" penalty, whereby someone who copies
content without permission can be manually removed from search engine indexes out of respect for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. But that penalty is only for flagrant theft, not minor mistakes in attributing reprint content.

Myth: Distribution is for article clearinghouse websites only.

There are over 100 popular, high-traffic websites that act as clearinghouses for content made available for redistribution. These websites include isnare.com, amazines.com, and goarticles.com.

Submitting content to these sites is useful since good content will subsequently be picked up by other sites from them, generating valuable backlinks.

So, what's the problem with content clearinghouse websites? Many novice content-distributors believe that these are the only websites to which content should be submitted.

These novices then are upset when the article clearinghouse websites, with tens of thousands of articles each with a backlink, pass negligible PageRank.

But to maximize PageRank-passing links, you have to submit articles to webmasters individually.

Myth: Any content will do.

* Fact: it should be obvious that many website owners, jealous of their link popularity, will only republish exceptionally high-quality content. For articles, this means a unique point of view and solid information that cannot be found just anywhere, ideally presented in compelling language in a web-optimized format by a professional published writer. You can conduct a content distribution campaign with bad content, but you'll be handicapping yourself from the start.

* Fact: A content distribution campaign requires skillful planning. The most likely relevant categories of websites to republish articles must be identified. Relevance of republishing websites has to be balanced against the number of potential republishing websites both when creating content to distribute and when targeting sites for distribution. For instance, our own article marketing campaigns target not just sites focusing on web content, but also broad categories of interest, such as: web design, webmaster issues, writing, marketing, business, website promotion, and SEO. To maximize success, articles have to be custom-written for each category, and refined for sub-categories such as accessible web design, affiliate webmaster issues, freelance writing, and web marketing.

* Fact: You need at least three different articles of varying lengths and focus to have a shot at targeting high-PageRank-websites effectively. Many experienced article marketers recommend having 25 or more articles on hand to maximize results.

Distinct non-SEO benefits of distributing content for inbound links

Content distribution in exchange for backlinks predates SEO. In fact, for many content distributors, these non-SEO benefits are the primary goals:

* Traffic generation. More than any other method of getting links, the links in distributed content generate traffic. Distributing content gets you traffic even when it doesn't get you a link. If your article gets picked up by a large-circulation email newsletter, you will get a flood of highly qualified traffic.

* Authority. Distributing content is the only linking campaign method that can make the recipient website and its owners appear authoritative. There are thousands of internet gurus who owe their lucrative reputations entirely to the articles they've distributed.

* Mindshare. Distributing articles is the only linking campaign method that can help you spread an idea. This makes article distribution invaluable for launching new products or services.


Drawbacks of Content Distribution

Of course, nothing good ever came easy. Any website owners who are looking for SEO magic beans will be disappointed by content distribution:

* Results are variable. Content distribution is not quite as sure a thing as buying links. You cannot say for sure at the outset how much of an investment it will require to get X number of links with X PageRank. Of course, this variability is one reason why links from content distribution may appear less "artificial" to search engines.

* Requires significant investment. You need high-quality content, expertise in content distribution, and quite a few work-hours to distribute the content and track the results. These costs can be mitigated by outsourcing the entire process from soup to nuts to a content distribution specialist. Further, the cost has to be weighed against the cost of other link campaigns, which is also significant.

* Requires special expertise. There are numerous newbie pitfalls to distributing content, from improperly formatting articles to writing a bad introductory email to accompany content submissions. You generally have to have done numerous campaigns to truly get the feel for it. Again, this drawback can be mitigated by outsourcing your project to a specialist. And again, this requirement has to be weighed against the real-world requirement of special expertise in other link campaign methods.

In conclusion, there are a number of ways of getting one-way inbound links, and if you're smart, you'll use all of them. Still, there's only one method that carries substantial non-SEO benefits as well, and that's content distribution. I know, I know: focusing on content just feels like you're giving in to Google. But don't fight it. When it comes to getting high search engine rankings through content, you know you want it.


About The Author:

Joel Walsh is the owner of UpMarket Content, where you can get a content distribution campaign guaranteed to get you at least one hundred one-way inbound links for every three articles: http://upmarketcontent.com/website-promotion-package.htm

Writing Articles To Build Your Online Presence

By Jeremy Hershberger

One of the most effective (and free!) ways to get noticed on the web is to write articles. Even if you have no writing experience, it is easier than you may think, even fun. You can write an article on just about anything you want and choose how you want to publish it.

The best way to start is to write about a subject you understand thoroughly, such as the subject of your ezine if you have one.

Use a search engine to research what you want to write about, and browse some online discussion forums which relate to your subject to gain additional knowledge.

There are article-writing ebooks and other literature available on the web that can provide you with useful advice if you are intimidated to write your first article. Just do some web searches to see what you can find. Some of the literature is free, some isn't.

As you conduct your research, begin writing a rough draft immediately while ideas are still fresh in your mind. You can revise, edit and rearrange later. Your article doesn't have to be perfect, as long as it is presentable and easily readable.

Keep your lines formatted to about 60 characters. The 'Lucida Console' font uses the same amount of space for each character, so you could use it then set your margins accordingly in your word processor program.

I use Notepad which uses Lucida Console by default. I turn off word-wrap and set the window size to where I want it and hit 'enter' as my text fills a line. You may come up with a method that works better for you.

When your article is finished, you'll need to add what is called a "resource box" at the end. This is where you place a few lines which include your name, as well as anything you'd like to offer your readers.

You should make your resource box stand out by placing a line of asterisks or hyphens above and below it, for example:

*************************************************
Copyright © 2005 [your name]
[email address if you wish]
[several lines to advertise your website, ezine, offer
freebies, etc]
*************************************************

When you feel comfortable with your article and ready to publish, you can choose from several different options available to you. You can use all if you so choose:

* Article Directories
* Ezines
* Article Announcement Lists

Article directories are websites that you can submit your article to. They will review it then publish it on their site, making your name and links in your resource box available to all who are interested in the information you provide.

You get an added benefit of having your website's search engine ranking increase as your link is placed in more and more article directories! It all depends on how much time you want to spend submitting to the hundreds of available directories on the web.

You can also browse ezine directories, searching for ezines relating to your article's subject. Look for those which indicate they accept article submissions.

Send a polite email to the publisher asking to submit your article, and include the article. If you prefer, send it as an attachment.

There are also article announcement lists which you can submit your article to. These can be found by doing a web search for 'article announcement lists'. You have to subscribe to the list before you can post to it.

When posting to an announcement list, include in your email your rules for reprinting your article, such as allowing it to only be reprinted if no changes are made and only as long as your resource box is included. These rules are up to you, ultimately.

You can also use submission websites or software such as EzineAnnouncer which are designed to submit your article to a large number of places, cutting down on time you have to spend doing it manually. These programs come with a price, so look them up and decide for yourself if they are worth it to you.

Read this article again, and formulate a plan based on the advice given. The methods outlined above will get you well on your way to boosting your online presence, and you will be surprised by how effective they are.

About the Author:

Jeremy Hershberger is webmaster of his Plug-In Profit Site, a money-making website you can have built and customized just for you on your own domain, 100% ready to take orders and pull in massive residual profits. See: http://www.online-income-solutions.com/pips.html

Increasing Link Popularity

By Paul Buckley

Search engines are the gateway to the Internet; they are
the first tool that potential customers use to find the
products and services they need. This is why link
popularity is so imperative. If the customers do not find
your website, you have no possibilities of making any
sales.

You're probably wondering what the blazes is popular about
a link! Well, in a word - 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, you're probably
wondering, how do I make my link popular?

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. 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 is 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!


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About the Author:

Published by Paul Buckley of The Profit Eye
Copyright © 2005 Paul Buckley

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Great Ways To Obtain Link Popularity

By Ronald Gibson

I hate reciprocal linking.

It is such a hassle. Even specialized reciprocal linking
sites don't really help all that much. Many of the link
requests that I do get are from poker sites that are
totally irrelevant to my site's content. Most of the sites
that I would like to link to don't respond. Some sites
supposedly do respond, but, when I search their sites, I
can't find my link anywhere. It is just so totally and
completely frustrating.

Link popularity is a major factor in search engine
rankings. How does someone like me, who despises
reciprocal linking, go about improving my site's link
popularity?

Fortunately for me, I have discovered two ways to do
exactly that. They are blogging and submitting articles.

I added the Work At Home Ideas
Blog(http://www.affiliateutopia.com/blog/) to my website
two weeks ago. Search engines love content and blogs are
about the easiest way to add fresh content to your site.
But, how can a blog improve your site's link popularity?
Most blogs feature their own RSS or XML feed. If a visitor
to your blog likes your content, then he just might decide
to syndicate your content on his website. In the past two
weeks, my blog's XML feed has been hit more than 150 times.
I expect to get at least some new links out of that.

Writing articles and submitting them to article directories
is another great way to get more links pointing back to
your site. You can place your own "resource box"(similar
to the one at the bottom of this article) at the bottom of
your articles. Your resource box wiil contain a link back
to your website. The article directory will publish your
article and--BAM-you have an instant link back to your
website. Submitting articles is a great way to get your
site's popularity going like gangbusters.

Here are some outstanding article directories that you
should be submitting to:
IdeaMarketers -- http://www.ideamarketers.com/
EzineArticles -- http://www.ezinearticles.com/
GoArticles -- http://www.goarticles.com/
ISnare -- http://www.isnare.com/
Internet Home Business Articles--
http://www.internethomebusinessarticles.com/

Here is a little tip for your article submissions. Many
article directories allow you to enter HTML code in your
articles. This gives you the ability to control the anchor
text of your site's link in the resource box of your
article. The anchor text of your link serve as keywords
for the search engines. Use a keyword research tool, such
as Good Keywords(http://www.goodkeywords.com/), to vary
your anchor text from week to week. By doing this, you
will rapidly build up a number of keywords for your site.

By using your blog's RSS or XML feed and submitting
articles, you can increase the link poularity of your
website without all of the hassles of reciprocal linking.

Copyright 2005 Ronald Gibson

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About the Author:

Ronald Gibson is a Web Designer and Web Marketer. He is
the Webmaster of AffiliateUtopia.com, which offers
information about some of the best money making
opportunities on the Web. For more information, visit:
http://www.affiliateutopia.com/

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