Link Exchange Tips

2005-04-16T22:37:00.000-07:00

Linking strategies to skyrocket to the top of Google.

If you dont know already, one of the key success factors to getting loads of free Google traffic to your website is increasing page rank. So just how do you increase your page rank? Well, its all in the linking.

To be honest I never could quite figure this Google thing out, how it ranks good sites from bad sites. One day it all clicked for me and its so simple when you look at it from Googles point of view. Google keeps its customers by providing relevant sites to your search queries. How does it choose the best sites for what you are looking for? Well, first of all it needs to be relevant (key words) and secondly it needs to be useful and of high quality. One way Google knows to measure quality is by the amount of links referring to your site. It stands to reason a site referred to by 100 websites may be more useful than a site referred by just a few right?

So how can we increase our sites chances of shooting up the search engine rankings with incoming links?

The quality of the links you receive is very important. Choose websites that firstly are related and preferably with a higher page rank than your site. The higher the quality link the higher page rank you will receive. In other words getting a link from Amazon.com is going to be worth more than a link on your daughters home page.

Basically there are 3 types of links, Outbound links which are easily added to your site, Reciprocal links where site A links to site B and site B links back to site A, and finally inbound links. These inbound links are the most important of all.

Let me describe how to get links in order of their importance.

How to get incoming links

1.Write articles like this one. Choose a topic you know and write up a short 500 word articles with a link back to your website and post it to article directories. Not only are these one-way links but other websites will pick it up and post one way links on their websites. Google gives you a big tick for each one way link!

2.Viral marketing. Ask other website owners directly if they would like to post your article either on their website or include it as part of their newsletter. If its a good article chances are readers will in turn pass this on to other readers providing advertising for both you and the other Webmaster. Like a virus, it spreads to more and more readers who may post the article, providing more one-way links.

3.Post to forums related to your area and include a link in your signature file. It is critical to join in the discussion and not blatantly advertise, as this can look unprofessional and self-gratifying. Add value to the discussion and simply provide a link in your signature. Visit some forums and see who you would link to in the discussion and try and copy what they did right.

How to get reciprocal links

Ask Webmasters directly. These are a little easier to ask for as its clear you are providing them also with a link. Best to first link to their website, then personalize the contact commenting about something on their website specifically. I have found personally calling them if you have the contact phone number the best method. My friend David Newton at www.simplysolo.com has found this an invaluable way to gain in excess of 1,000 inbound links for his site.
Simplified it should go like this:

a.Find a relevant site as a potential link partner. TipTry entering this into google your keyword or phrase + add url. This will then list the most popular sites that will allow you to link back to them.

b.Firstly create a link to their website

c.Contact them directly showing them your link to them with url of their site and something you liked about their site, something unique. Compliments can only help here.

d.Schedule to follow them up in one months time and try again if necessary. Best to keep a spreadsheet

Of course not all will link to you and its a bit of a numbers game but you can get results. Its better to personalize your contact than mass e-mailing a general group of websites.

Dont forget to always be polite and keep up a schedule where you will aim to get say ten or twenty links out there per week. You will then have quite a collection after a few months and traffic should start flowing to your site.

2005-04-13T17:39:00.000-07:00

Non-Reciprocal Link Building For Higher Search Engine Positioning

Its no SEO secret that inbound links to your site are an important part of any complete search engine positioning strategy. Youve undoubtedly received numerous emails touting the benefits of exchanging links with other websites. Provided that the sites are related, reciprocal linking can definitely help you in your quest for higher rankings however, establishing quality non-reciprocal links to your website will provide added weight and many of the tactics used in developing these links have built-in relevancy.

There are two main advantages to non-reciprocal links as opposed to reciprocal links. The first is that these links will hold more weight, as they arent reciprocated (the search engines can detect whether links are reciprocal). The second advantage is that they dont have to be monitored as closely as reciprocal links. With reciprocal links one has to be aware of unethical webmasters who will take links down or use other tactics to insure that the search engines dont see the links pages. You have to be aware of these events so that you can remove their links from your site if warranted however with non-reciprocal links you dont have to be as concerned as youre not linking to them.

These are far from the only benefits of non-reciprocal link building but they are two of the most beneficial for your site and for you as its webmaster. But how do you get something for nothing? Why would someone want to link to you in exchange for no links back? Keep in mind the acronym TANSTAAFL (There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch). In short, youre not going to get something for nothing but its well worth the something youll have to put in.

So non-reciprocal links are beneficial to your search engine positioning campaignbut how do you do it? There are a number of tactics that will work. Here are a few of the more successful:

Write Good Content
Its shocking but some people will actually link to your site because it is a valuable resource that their visitors may find interesting or useful. The search engines initially gave incoming links value based on the belief that sites with incoming links tended to be sites that others find worth linking to. People actually linked to sites simply because they found the content useful. Believe it or not this practice still exists today.

If you have a quality site with great content, preferably updated regularly, others in your industry should naturally link to you. Its also appropriate to ask other webmasters to link to your site either through direct contact or by posting a page on your site, which provides images and/or link details. If you get even one link out of your efforts it was worth the 5 or so minutes it should take to put up the page.

Directory Listings
Provided that youre willing to invest a bit of time and money, directory listings are probably the easiest way to get non-reciprocal links. Provided that youre site has some value to it and is not offensive, most directories will list it though usually there is a review fee involved.

There are the well know directories such as the Yahoo! Directory (http://dir.yahoo.com/) however you may find that the price tag for a guaranteed review from Yahoo! at $299 to be a bit more than you wanted to spend for a single listing. Another major player in the directory world is the Open Directory Project (or DMOZ) (http://www.dmoz.org/) however you may find that with volunteer editors, your site can take many months to get listed, if at all.

Fortunately there are many secondary directories and there are also literally thousands of topic-specific directories that can provide valuable listings. In fact, topic-specific directory listings can in many ways be considered more valuable in that the link to your site is entirely relevant and also, you should get some quality targeted traffic from your listing provided that the directory itself ranks well.

How much you should pay for a specific listing is debatable depending on the industry, the value of the link, etc. however topical directory listings are usually somewhere around $30-$100/yr in the majority of cases. If your link will be placed on a page with a good PageRank and will fewer than 50 or so other sites it is worth considering.

Article Submissions
As youre reading this article you should certainly be able to infer that I personally am a fan of writing articles as a form of non-reciprocal link building. Articles provide perhaps the best of all worlds in that they provide valuable and entirely relevant links and also can be a great source of targeted traffic.

That said, articles are also the most time consuming of link building efforts. One must consider the time it takes to write the article, find sites to publish it and also the submission of the articles to all these sites. As a tip, when you find sites you wish to submit your article to add them to a folder in your Favorites (or Bookmarks for those of us using Firefox). If you decide to publish more articles in the future (and you probably will) its certainly helpful to start with a list of the places youre submitting to rather than having to find them all again down the road.

When youre writing your article there are a few considerations that you should make. One of the biggest benefits of articles as a link building measure is that the links are relevant in that they are about the topic of your site. Why not insure that your titles and content are written such that they add further weight for your targeted keywords. If you look at the title of this article Non-Reciprocal Link Building For Higher Search Engine Positioning youll notice that the phrase search engine positioning (our main targeted phrase) is present. Additionally the phrase is repeated periodically in the content area. This will add relevancy to this article and our targeted phrase. If you look in the credits below youll notice that the anchor text linking to our site is Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning (assuming that the site on which you are reading this article allowed for HTML submissions otherwise the link should simply be the http format). This will add additional relevancy tying that phrase to our site.

Because the Beanstalk website is still in the sandbox on Google it is unable to rank for this highly competitive phrase however you may notice that currently the #11 ranking page is one of our articles. This alone should demonstrate that these articles can pick up relevancy. Once Beanstalk is out of the sandbox on Google we will have many highly relevancy links that are strong enough to rank #11 on their own. You can do the same provided that you treat writing your articles the same as your content. It must contain your targeted keywords and it must read well.

Additionally, you are going to want to search for many related websites to submit to. You can visit the search engines themselves to find related sites (in our case we would run a search such as search engine positioning articles submit) or you can use a program like PR Prowler (http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/resources/recommended/pr-prowler.htm) to find the links and also insure a minimum PageRank on the sites you are submitting to.

If you decide to publish more than one article I would further recommend that you add to your list with each submission. Take a few minutes before you submit and find an additional 5+ sites to submit your articles to. Youll find your link popularity and rankings will reward you for it.

Summary
Of course there are many additional tactics you can use to get non-reciprocal links including paid links, press releases, etc. however those noted above are the ones which will produce the most consistently over time and while they can be time consuming, are well worth the effort.

I wish you the very best of luck in developing your non-reciprocal links and in increasing your search engine positioning. It will take time; it will take energy; but done right it will be very rewarding.

2005-04-11T17:34:00.000-07:00

Multiply Your Links

I feel the most effective way to get people to link to your web site is by offering web masters the option of giving away your free stuff. In exchange, they link to your web site. Why would other web masters want to do this? They may want give away a freebie to draw traffic to their web site. They also may not have the time, knowledge or skills to give away certain types of electronic freebies from their web site.

Your links will just keep multiplying. When a web master offers your freebie to his or her visitors. Those visitors may
decide to also give away your freebie. And so on and so on... The more people that link to your web site the more
traffic you'll get. Below are four of the most popular types of freebies given away on the internet to increase traffic.

Free Software

Offer free software from your web site. The software could be freeware, shareware or demos.

Free Online Services

Offer a free online service from your web site. The online service could be an e-mail account, search engine submission
or e-mail consulting, etc.

Free Information

Offer valuable free information from your web site. The information could be a report, article, e-book, online audio
recording or e-mail course, etc.

Free Affiliate Program

Offer a free affiliate program from your web site. The affiliate program could be pay per sale, click through, two tiered, etc.

Now, I know, there are many other ways to get links like trading or exchanging links with other web sites or
joining a banner exchange. You can also do joint ventures or cross promoting. I feel these are not as effective as
multiplying your links. I hope this article can help you increase traffic to your web site.