The Traffic Builder Way

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What is all the Buzz about LinkedIn and Does It Work?

Gepost door admin op 17/03/2008
Toegevoegd onder: The Traffic Builder Way

Have you received invitations to join an online networking website? These new websites have created quite a buzz as the next big thing. People brag about having thousands of ‘links’ on LinkedIn.com. But this article attempts to explain what value, if any, derives from these networks. Basically, people are driven by the system to forge networks with complete strangers. One of the founders of LinkedIN, Konstantin, posted a message on another forum that was filled with idealistic platitudes that do not match the reality of LinkedIn. Here is my response to him.

KONSTANTIN: the feedback our customer service receives indicates quite clearly that most regular business people are taking aback when receiving invitations from strangers.

MIKE: Simply put, those business people do not belong in LinkedIN. People who want to be a remote island and only hear from people they know are not part of a network. They are discrete modules and demonstrate they are ignorant of the value in expanding their network, yes, to complete strangers who have better ideas, fresher ideas, and innovations they have not considered yet.

KONSTANTIN: The practice of inviting other users to connect even though they are strangers is bad for everyone-it undermines among casual users the trust in LinkedIn as a useful tool, and it doesn’t help thee sender’s reputation either. If not at least 80-90% of existing LinkedIn users accept your invitations, think about what this is doing to your reputation.

MIKE: LinkedIN creates its own frenzy to accumulate strangers into networks by limiting people to see only profiles of those who are in 4 degrees of the user. There are over 3.5 million users of the system, but, for example, I can only reach 2 million of them. What am I missing in the other 1.5 million? I don’t have any contacts to top-tier investment banks or hedge funds, and in order to develop even a contact name, I, like every other user of LinkedIN, have to reach out to strangers who have third degree contacts with the type of firms I want to reach.

From the outset, LinkedIN intentionally sought to undermine the value of having only closely affiliated friends and colleagues in a network by limiting the ability of people to see beyond their narrow circle. There is no reason that a general search should not cover EVERY SINGLE profile in LinkedIN. By limiting us to the fourth degree contacts, everyone has an incentive to do whatever is necessary to bring the fourth degree contacts up to the total 3.5 million users if possible.

Again, if there are people who don’t want to be contacted, they really have no business joining LinkedIN. It detracts from the rest of us who actually know the value of a network and of networking — which means expanding the size of one’s network.

KONSTANTIN: Other sites have failed to attract a business audience beyond networkers-LinkedIn is the first that appeals to the broad segment of relationship managers. We are trying to create the biggest possible tent and tolerate all behavior that falls within the bounds of the LinkedIn user agreement. Most of our users only invite people they know well. However, if a small minority of 1,000’s of users doesn’t show respect to the majority of millions and it affects how LinkedIn is perceived by mainstream business users, we will be forced into the awkward position of bouncer to protect our users from people violating the LinkedIn user agreement.

We have VPs or CEOs of 498 of the Fortune 500 on LinkedIn-I don’t see them inviting strangers to add some links to their connection. If we want toemulate successful business behavior, let’s start by studying those who have made it to the top . . .

MIKE: When someone reaches the level of VP or CEO of a Fortune 500 company, he or she has a built-in network and does not need to use LinkedIN, period. But for the small businessman, and those who aspire to be more than what they are today, then your LinkedIN system distorts preferences to the point that it gives every single user significant incentives to add as many strangers to his network as possible. It is all because you will not allow users to reach out and contact other users directly, and because you limit the results that show up in searches to only four degrees. Honestly Konstantin, did you put ANY thought into the limitations of your system before you launched it on the web? No wonder I have a problem getting many of my past co-workers to join LinkedIN, because they perceive it as a gimmick with no value, since their own narrow circle of friends cannot provide the business opportunities they seek.

EzineArticles Expert Author Dr. Michael A. S. Guth

Michael is a trilingual (English, German, French) transactional lawyer and financial manager with fifteen years experience and legal expertise in the areas of mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures; securities regulation and hedge fund creation; and deal structuring / business transactions. To further compliment his legal skill set, Michael is an experienced investment banker having worked within the top tier investment banks, namely Credit Suisse First Boston and Deutsche Bank, for an international clientele. He played an instrumental role in developing an index-tracking fund and answered technical questions on fund management marketing calls. He advised clients on pre-IPO investments, stock repurchases, and using structured finance products to manage risk. More recently, he directed the risk management and financial control groups for two trading floors.

See his web page at http://riskmgmt.biz

Counters: The Importance Of Tracking Your Visitors

Gepost door admin op 28/01/2008
Toegevoegd onder: The Traffic Builder Way

When trying to optimize your website, you will need to gather all the information about the few visitors that you now have. This will help you make improvements to your site and increase your traffic. One of the best ways to gather this statistical data is through the use of a counter.

Some of you may not know that dropping a counter onto each page of your website will not only show you the number of hits to that page, but also logs tidbits of important information too.

The following is a list of some of the data that is collected from a stat-counter.

Screen Resolution:

Knowing the screen resolution tells you how the majority of visitors view your web pages. For example: If your design is based around 800 x 600 screen resolution, and the majority of you visitors use a 1024 x 768 resolution, you may want to redesign your layout.

Keyword:

If a visitor was directed to your site by a search engine, then knowing the search term used will help in optimizing your page around important keywords relevant to you sites topic.

Length Of Visit:

This is important that if everyone is showing up to your site, but doesn’t seem to stay, then check for slow loading of you page or some other reason that might turn away visitors.

Enter-Page/ Exit-Page

If your visitors are leaving from the same page they first come to, then you will need to figure out why they are not visiting other pages. Maybe the links to the other pages are hidden by are toomuch clutter, too small or non-descriptive.

Returning Visitors:

This will help you determine which pages your visitors find important. You can then concentrate more effort on those topics.

There are many more tidbits of statistical data a stat-counter can provide, and best of all you can get them for free. Theses services are provided for the benefit of building back links, and in hopes to sell you upgrades.

If you think that a counter looks tacky, you have the option to make it invisible. This will still enable you to collect important statistical data without your visitors seeing the counter itself.

Conclusion:

So if your serious about getting more traffic, you must first learn all you can from the traffic you already have, and a free stat-counter is one of the best places to start.

Visit the authors informational site about Home Based Businesses

The Important Tips of Creating Useful Links From Your Site

Gepost door admin op 18/01/2008
Toegevoegd onder: The Traffic Builder Way

Linking is an important job that any webmasters need to do in order to get their web site noticed by internet users. Internet is made up by websites linking each other creating a huge network. So It makes sense that the most visited web sites will be the ones with more links to them.

Although it may appear that it is easy to create link from and to your website there some things that webmasters need to put in mind when doing the linking job.

These are several linking tips that you can use:

Provide visitors with links to other sites similar to yours or a meta-index of links that would be of interest to your target market. If you sell something make sure that you don’t link with your competitors. The best way is that you add the sites that will complement your products and services. It will be preferrable if the site have an affiliate program that you can join so that you can monetize from your outgoing traffic.

Do not put outbound links on your home page. Place them down a level or two after the visitors have seen all the information you want them to see before you provide the links away from your site. Your home page should mostly direct the visitors to one of your own page before thay can leave.

Links can be incorporated in two ways. The first is where clicking the link loads the new page in the same browser window. It replaces the content of your page with the content of the linked page.

The second and more preferred method is to have the link open a new browser. Your page stays where it is and the content from the linked page opens up in the new browser window. This is preferred because once visitors are finished with the new page, they can close the new browser window and your page is still in the old browser window.

Try exchanging links with others so you receive a link from their site to your site. As long as the links are of value to your visitor, people will come back to see if you have found any new and interesting sites from them to visit.

You might consider asking if visitors would be interested in being notified when you update your list of links or just make updates to your site in general. By offering this, if they choose to do so, you have the opportunity to send people an email message and remind them about your site while presenting them with new information about what might be going on with your site.

Linking itself could be categorized as viral marketing process as the action will build up your link popularity in Search Engine which in return increases your web site ranking position as the time goes by. Of course you can get your as well instant traffic when you get your link from some popular high traffic web site.

Heri Rosyadi is an internet marketing expert with over 5 years of experience in internet marketing. Visit http://www.Mytrafficstrategies.ws and get a free copy of his eReport on “30 Amazing Advertising Tips” and subscribe to his online newsletter to receive his latest online promotion tips, methods and ideas.

Link Exchange

Gepost door admin op 12/01/2008
Toegevoegd onder: The Traffic Builder Way

A Link exchange is a great way to market your website in a very cost effective manner! You want to generate more hits to your website but need a good source? For one thing you can create a link exchange with other website owners to generate these hits. Why? For one thing, doing this will allow potential customers who may not otherwise find you site to browse through it! Here’s a little information.

You can create on your website, a “Link to Us” page where other website owners can link their site to yours. Why allow that? Well, its quite simple. By allowing them to link to you, you can link your site to theirs. This will provide another stream of potential customers. This link exchange can be quite an effective means for marketing your website.

When developing and marketing a website your ultimate goal is to find ways to put your web address out there so people can click on it and be right there where your information, tools, products, or whatever is. Using this type of “Link to Us” link exchange you have to do little work. Other website owners will link their site to yours and that’s that. Its pretty much automated.

In the business of websites, finding the most cost effective way to advertise or market your product is key. But, beyond this, doing so in the most time effective way is important as well. Link Exchange is an enormously effective way of achieving both of these scenarios. By linking your site to another is a simple link to the next dimension of customers. Finding these customers is important and getting them cheaply and easily is the ultimate goal.

Keith Mallinson is author of the article exchange newsletter, offering
subscribers up to date information on all aspects of article submissions and use
of free articles for search engine
optimization http://www.article-exchange.com

John Reese’s Top Traffic Secrets!

Gepost door admin op 03/11/2007
Toegevoegd onder: The Traffic Builder Way

Track all sources of traffic generation.

John Reese stresses the need to track where all traffic comes from and at what cost. It is crucial to know exactly how many sales, newsletter sign-ups, or other leads your particular marketing campaigns generating. This enables you to work smarter and not harder. By tracking all traffic to your site you can make twice as much while working fifty percent less.

Content is King

On the internet, people are searching for one thing……. Content! Load your website with as much content as possible. Then, continuously add content. Search engines love information and they will love your site if you’ve got lots of it. There’s plenty of free content for the taking on the internet. You can load up your site with articles from article directories like ezinearticles.com. Or, you could be like John and use content from the public domain. Or, you can use content that is in the creative commons. This type is now easier than ever to find now that Yahoo and others have come out with a search engine designed specifically for content that is in the creative commons.

I have one site that has around 25,000 pages and receives about 2,500 visitors a day. The vast majority of this traffic comes from the search engines. Are you starting to see how powerful this can be?

An affiliate program is critical to maximum traffic and sales. Lots of internet marketers don’t take advantage of this powerful traffic-generating technique. An affiliate program allows you to have your own personal salesman spread all over the web. The best part about it is that there is absolutely no risk involved but tons of traffic and sales to gain. Your website simply cannot grow to its full potential without an effective affiliate program.

Banner Ads

John Reese advocates the use of banner ads during a time when they are largely an untapped marketing source. Banner ads are one of the most overlooked sources of targeted traffic online.

Also, banner ads are now one of the cheapest sources of targeted traffic. In the late 1990’s during the dot-com boom, people were selling banner ads for $40 and $50 CPM. Then the dot-com bubble hit and these rates hit the floor. You can now buy banner ads dirt cheap, at $1 to $1.50 CPM. This is $1 for 1,000 banner impressions. The key here is to find the perfect place to advertise that will send targeted, willing to buy customers to your site.

Create viral reports that can quickly spread around the internet. This method works best when you have an affiliate program. Allow others to brand your report in order to encourage its distribution.
A quality free report can be a powerful promoter when passed around the internet. This same phenomenon can occur when you submit your articles to article directories and popular newsletters.

Take advantage of your virtual real estate.

Take advantage of the different parts of your website. Don’t let any of your web pages go to waste. You can do this by adding a link to another one of your web sites or pages on your thank-you or sales confirmation pages. If you have articles on your site, place links to related articles on the bottom of the page. The longer you keep a visitor at your web site, the more valuable they become.

It is very important to funnel traffic from within the multiple sites you may have.

Continually seek out other web sites to link to you. Now, we’re not just talking about any kind of link here, but powerful, traffic-generating links from respected sites. Here are some quick suggestions:

Send a related web site an article that you have written and allow them to display it on their website with a resource box at the end. Offer to exchange articles and tell them about the benefits of doing so.

Allow multiple, related web sites to distribute your free e-book or report. All web masters are looking to add value to their web site, why not make it easy for them.

There are unlimited possibilities, be creative!

Online group participation can produce a no-cost stream of traffic and sales.

Get involved in email discussion lists, online groups and forums that are related to your target market. Becoming involved in discussions makes you very credible. Traffic from forums can produce a much higher sales conversion rate.

This method can produce quite a bit of sales for you just by helping others out. Not to mention, you’ll learn a lot along the way.

Alli Ross is the wacky marketing chick at StickyArticle.com , where you can submit your article for free exposure.She also publishes a blog packed with power-packed traffic tips at TrafficOverload .

7 Tips for Using Your FAQ Pages to Generate Free Traffic

Gepost door admin op 25/10/2007
Toegevoegd onder: The Traffic Builder Way

FAQ pages are an often overlooked way to generate free traffic to your website. Many people don’t realize the potential they have. Here are seven tips for using your FAQ page for traffic.

1. Put each question, and answer to that question on a seperate keyword rich page. By doing this you are developing content for your website that is on topic, search engine friendly, and easy for the visitor to find, both from your website and in the search engines.

2. Research keywords people are using to find information on the topic of your website, these are the FAQ’s you should be answering as well as the questions asked by your customers. Many times it is easier to rank well in the search engines for these terms. Answer common questions on the topic of your website, not just questions about your product.

3. When doing your keyword research use phrases like “how to”, “learn”, and other phrases a person might use when looking for information on a specific topic.

4. Put the chosen keyword people are using to search for your topic in the title of the page, and naturally within the body of the page. Make the page simple with little or no graphics and a link back to both the index of your FAQ and your home page.

5. Use keyword rich link text to link to your individual FAQ pages. Link text will help any page to rank higher in the search engines

6. Make an index page with a link to all the FAQ pages you have created. This would like a little mini site map for both the visitor and the search engines to index your FAQ pages.

7. Use keyword rich link text to link to your FAQ index page. For example if your website is on the topic of SAearch Engine Optimization you could use “SEO Terms and FAQ’s” for your link text instead of just FAQ’s.

Everyone should have a FAQ or “terms” page to help bring in traffic that is searching for your topic. FAQ pages also provide valuable content for website visitors who are looking for information on a specific topic, or a term related to that topic.

Leah J. Bradshaw is the author of the Free Targeted Traffic Report; “Jumpstart Your Traffic in as Little as 10 Days”. She also authors a Moms Free Traffic Blog to help work at home moms get free traffic.

Alexa: Why You Should be Using the Toolbar

Gepost door admin op 14/10/2007
Toegevoegd onder: The Traffic Builder Way

Why on earth would anyone want to install a piece of spyware onto their Web browser? No sensible right minded person would …unless you are a webmaster and you want to improve your SERPS ranking that is.

The Alexa toolbar is not “technically” spyware as it doesn’t retrieve any private or personal information. It does however log all the sites you visit and as webmasters we can use this to our advantage. It uses this information to compile traffic ranking statistics and a relational list. The relational list is very useful as it shows what other sites people who have looked the current website have also visited. Alexa is owned by Amazon and it is possible to make your own Alexa toolbar with your Amazon affiliate code included. You can then place this on your site and get credited when anyone buys through Amazon using the Amazon button on the toolbar you’ve distributed, it is also possible to include a link to your site in the toolbar.

Alexa ranks sites from 1 to 5,000,000 and sometimes higher. Ranking 1 has the most traffic and so on, anything below 250,000 and you should be getting some decent traffic levels. This information can be used to determine how well your advertising campaigns are going and how traffic levels are growing over a period of time. This information can also be used to determine how you rivals are doing and keep you one step ahead of them. The Alexa information is also picked up by other search engines so you benefit from an increase in you SERPS as your site progresses up the rankings .

One drawback of the Alexa toolbar is that it only works on Internet Explorer and not the tool of choice for most webmasters Firefox. However I personally feel this is a small price to pay for the benefits I get when using the tool bar for research and to check my sites daily. Checking the stats of your own site has a positive impact on your Alexa ranking as the toolbar is not generally used by the general public so every extra hit from a browser with the tool bar installed is valuable. I have 1 site that is almost exclusively used by webmasters , As webmasters are the people who use Alexa more than any other group 500 page views a day are enough to get this site into the top 500,000 Another site that has 3 times the traffic but the visitors are mostly the general public so this site is languishing in the 2,000,000 ‘s.

Why not try an experiment for a month, Download the toolbar and monitor one of your sites, once you see the data you get and the way it can be used you won’t know how you survived without it.

Mark Thompson ran an IT consultancy in London for many years . He now live in Spain and runs an number of websites including The Links Factory.

Generating Traffic - The Text Link Prevails

Gepost door admin op 04/10/2007
Toegevoegd onder: The Traffic Builder Way

The Internet is growing at an exponential rate, resulting from greater masses attempting to earn an income from the Computer Revolution. It doesn’t take long for a developer to realize the magnitude of increasing competition, when attempting to obtain more visitors. How much competition exists? The fact is, when this article was written, “Whois,” reported 65,443,044 active Domains existed. Additionally, 446,308 Domains where, “on-hold,” and 1,184,180 Domains where created by 18:00 EST (1). While this information does not illustrate direct competition for a given niche, it’s apparent that any type of Website created will have modest rivalry.

The Business model of an Internet Website is relatively simple; increasing traffic means increasing revenue. However, with the growing number of Websites, it will become more difficult to obtain greater traffic. So how is traffic disbursed on the Internet? Traffic disbursement can be isolated to two primary sources: Search Engine Queries and Incoming links.

Search Engines have evolved greatly in the past few years. However, the principal is still the same. A Search Engine Spider travels through virtual space analyzing Webpages’ encountered and assessing their premise. Spiders can quickly route through deeply routed pages within any given Website and index them within a Database. In addition, they can assess which Websites change frequently, and retrieve new data on a scheduled basis. Because of their ability to quickly assess pages and their changes, they offer the internet community one of the most valuable resources, “The ability to accurately locate documents of interest”.

Based on the fundamentals of Search Engine’s, developer’s can increase Search Engine traffic by offering more content and resources. As relevant pages and resources are added to a Website, the premise of the Website becomes more apparent. In addition, expanded queries will match relevant pages displaying new content.

The other source of Internet Traffic, “incoming links,” can benefit a developer in several ways. First and most obvious, we can achieve greater traffic from the visitor of Websites displaying the incoming links. Also, if used properly, incoming links that are text based (Anchor Text) help Search Engine Spiders determine the premise of a Web-page. Finally, the total number of incoming links improves rapport with Search Engines (2).

Because some Search Engines poses the tools and resources to quickly archive numerous pages and their data, they have begun to utilize, “Anchor Text,” to leverage their Search Engine Results. The most famous example, of this technology being implemented, is the Apple QuickTime Download page showing as number one in Google for a search query of, “Click Here”. The term, “Click Here,” cannot be found anywhere on the visible page or Source Code. So why is it number one? Because the Developer linked the words, “Click Here,” to the download page from many pages with good rapport (High Google PR). Naturally, this is pure speculation, as only the Google Engineers could explain exactly why it is number one accurately. However, most are probably familiar with the famous Google Bomb of, “Miserable Failure”. A large number of people linked, “Miserable Failure,” to the Official White House Web-page of President George W. Bush. As a result, George ranks number one on Google for the search term.

Text links can be acquired through paying for placement or through exchanges with other Webmasters. For the most part, paid links will generate a lot more traffic then exchange links. This is due solely to placement. In a typical link exchange, the incoming links are placed on, “Weak,” pages that receive little traffic. In contrast, advertised links will be presented on prominent pages with a lot of visitors. Moreover, a lot of speculation exists regarding how the major three Search Engines treat reciprocal links. Some believe they cancel-out one another, as a vote. This speculation suggests that, “one-way,” incoming links provide the greatest benefit.

Bombing, as illustrated in the above examples, has created a large market for the purchase of Text Links. As a matter of fact, text link advertising is soaring right now. A number of people now offer broker services, connecting text link publishers with people wishing to advertise. It has gotten so big the Major search engines are beginning to demonstrate concern. Matt Cutts, a developer for Google, has offered some insight on the matter (3). Acknowledging that many Websites rely on the sale of ad space for income, he explains how this method of calculating the premise of a page has greatly improved Search Results for all the major Search Engines, and selling links hurts this technology.

Matt suggests that sold links should include an additional tag, “rel=nofollow,” to tell Spiders not to count the vote. The Consequences of not including the tag means that Google may not pass PageRank with links coming from the site selling the links. Essentially, purchased links that do not include that tag will eventually become worthless for Search Engine recognition.

Outside of paid advertising, it would require something really special to acquire incoming links. With practical reasoning, a developer would have to either create something very useful to the Internet community, or offer valuable information that will be referenced by others often. What ever method is conjured, it’s obvious in this point of time, the text link prevails for traffic generation.

(1)Whois Source: Detailed Domain Counts and Internet Statistic (http://www.whois.sc/internet-statistics/).

(2)Google: Google Technology (http://www.google.com/technology/).

(3) Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO: Text Links and PageRank (http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/text-links-and-pagerank/).

Michael Medeiros is the developer of Mjmls. Michael has an extensive background in Business and Advertising. He offers Internet Advertising Solutions through free classifieds, a Website Directory, and Text Advertising Programs.

Power Packed Linking Strategies - Part Two

Gepost door admin op 28/09/2007
Toegevoegd onder: The Traffic Builder Way

The keyword marketing guide to a linking strategy that packs real punching power.

This is the second in a series of three articles showing you how to find a suitable linking strategy for your website and put it to work for you.

Link strategy number one: The Front Page Link Swap.

The most important page on your site is naturally the home page and as this is the page that is most often pointed to by internal and external links this is the page that carries the most “linking power”. This is more usually called “page rank” (Google) or “Yahoo Web rank” (Yahoo).

Important note: If you are promoting an e-book, guide, tutorial or you are using a similar marketing technique then you should make your links come back to the promotional page and not your home page. As this is the page that you will want to go out and compete for you in the search engines.

The way that linking algorithms is of course a closely guarded secret, however it’s known that the more links that you have on a page the less “linking power” is assigned to each link on the page. Thus a links page with 75 links on it is going to give little benefit in link boost and also a small amount of traffic, it is after all competing with 74 other links.

This is where the front page link swap is such a powerful strategy.

By swapping a link from your homepage with a link from another site of equal or greater linking power you are getting a far bigger return in terms of both the link value and traffic than you would for exchanging links on a buried links page.

The downside is that to find willing and co operative webmasters to do the exchange is very time consuming.

Just as you would in your regular business dealings you should make time to seek out potential front page link swap partners. The traffic rewards will really pay dividends.

Link strategy number two. The One Way Directory Link.

As the power of the link goes up as more and more search engines use it as a method of ranking sites so directories are cashing in on a charge to be listed. What was once a free resource has now become an expensive link gathering exercise.

Still the most important free directory entry is http://www.dmoz.org but these days the waiting list seems to be forever. Seek out directories and place your links at every opportunity. Industry portals are a great linking source.

Link strategy number three. The Strategic Article Link.

This type of link packs the biggest punch of all.

Writing an article on your favourite subject can give you many benefits not least in credibility and giving you recognition as an authority on your chosen subject. It is by far the best way of gaining links and traffic to your site.

The technique is to write an article of five to six hundred words on a subject that you are knowledgeable about. Get several of your trusted friends to proof read and contribute and then refine it into a readable style.

Remember that writing for the web is totally different than writing for other media types. Surfing is a solitary experience for most and it’s important that you capture your reader’s attention and imagination.

For this type of article don’t worry about stuffing it with keywords in your page title and headings, you are not writing for search engines. The aim is to make a highly readable piece that will be distributed throughout all of the websites related to your subject matter in your industry.

So you can’t write? It’s well worth your while to hunt around and find a good copywriter that you can work with. The return on investment is 1000 times what you would ever get from advertising in your local rag.

About The Author

Tony Cooper is the Internet Marketing manager at http://www.keywordmarketing.com Building web sites that achieve tangible and accountable results.

tony@keywordmarketing.com

How to Create Your Own Link Campaign

Gepost door admin op 13/09/2007
Toegevoegd onder: The Traffic Builder Way

There are many different reasons out there fore creating a link campaign; after all, it can benefit you in so many different internet marketing strategies. In fact, links – especially one way links, but all links do count – are among the most determining factors for your rank among search engine spiders and indexers.

Since links are one of the vital components to the algorithm used by Google and the other big search engines, the creation of links for your website should be a major part of the efforts that you put forward.

The first step to accomplishing this is to understand that there are different kinds of links, all with their own values, strategies, and uses. While all links do have their importance, some create better results than others. By understanding them, you’ll be able to ensure the right kind of link campaign is working in your favor.

• Reciprocal links – these types of links occur when two sites exchange links so that each one has a link to the other’s site.

• One-way links – also known as inbound or in-bound links, these occur when a site links to another’s without receiving a link in return.

One of the most common strategies for links is reciprocal linking. When done correctly, however, this link strategy can be extremely time consuming. It has to do with searching throughout the internet for sites that are relevant to your own website’s cause, and then contacting their webmasters to request an exchange of links.

This communication has to be a personalized e-mail to each and every one of the webmasters, not just a spam-style form letter. Naturally, they will all have the same elements to them, but they all need to be geared directly toward the site in question, or no webmaster will even consider it.

An example of a successful reciprocal link request email can be as follows:

Dear Mr. Doe, webmaster of gwidgetsRus.com,

As I searched through quality sites with topics relevant to my own for a link exchange, I came across your Gwidgets R Us website. I am writing to request an exchange of links between your site and my own. Below is my site’s information. Please feel welcome to have a look at what we are all about before making your decision.

Title: Online Gwidgets
URL: http://www.onlinegwidgets.com

Description: Online Gwidgets provides educational information about gwidgets to its visitors, and sells both gwidgets and their parts for fair prices.

If you are indeed interested in this link exchange, please reply with the precise information you’d like me to post on my site, and where you’d like it placed.

If you are not interested in this link exchange, your lack of reply will be enough to make your intentions known.

Thank you kindly for your attention and time.

Bob Smith

bobsmith@onlinegwidgets.com
www.onlinegwidgets.com

When and if you receive some replies to your email, it is important that you add their links as quickly as you can, and confirm this addition by sending them another email with a link to where they can find their addition.

Of course, you will need to check the sites of your partners as well, to make sure that they have added the link when they said they would. Furthermore, you’ll need to check up on them frequently to make sure that they continue to link you, and that they have not dropped your link over time, or closed down altogether. While the majority of webmasters are completely honest individuals, there are those out there who will try to take advantage of your partnership to create a one-way, not reciprocal link to their own sites.

In-bound or one way links are the most coveted links as they give the best results with search engines. However, many people find them too daunting to try to achieve. The truth about inbound links, however, is that they’re not at all difficult to obtain.

The easiest source of inbound links is by using directory submissions. There are a large number of free directories out there where you can submit your site. This submission is worth the time and effort for as many as you can.

There are also fee-based directories out there. Depending on your budget, this may be worth your while as well, as long as they have categories relevant to the subject of your website.

Press releases and articles that mention your site are also valuable sources of exposure and one-way links. Find free submission sites all over the web and start writing!

Copyright 2006 Mark Nenadic

Mark is the director and face behind FifteenDegrees-North http://www.15dn.com, where you will find articles and resources to help with SEO, marketing and Web design.

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