Internet and Businesses Articles

Link Popularity refers to the number of links coming from other web sites to your web site (also called inbound links). The competition between search engines and webmasters has led the search engines to find new ways to measure the importance of a site. Google has been responsible for introducing link popularity as an important aspect in its algorithms. For instance, if Google reads your site and sees many inbound links from related web sites it interprets each link as a "vote" that your site is good and as a result gives you a boost in your ranking.

If you want to improve search engine rankings with link popularity it is important that the bulk of the inbound links that point to your site are coming from other quality sites; in this case quality is better than quantity because the search engines look at the page ranks of the sites that are linking to you – the higher, the better.

Do and Don'ts

Avoid Link Farms at all costs. These are sites that exist for the sole purpose of linking to other web sites without any regard to relevancy or quality, and in the world of linking, "more isn't merrier". In fact, Google has started punishing web sites that have link-farm pages so the reward is definitely not worth the risk.

Avoid links from non-related sites. Links from sites that have no relevance to your own site most likely won’t bring good results so if you have a health-related you shouldn’t be linked to a site selling power tools. The search engines can recognize "who" is linking to you and they tend to ignore irrelevant links. The links that you have pointing to your site must be quality, related links that belong to the same category.

Exchange links with popular sites. When you exchange links with other web sites make sure that the site is one that will be useful to your visitors. The rule of thumb is this: If your link to their site is useful to your visitors, then you can safely assume that a link from their site to yours will be useful to their visitors as well.

Linking Tips

1. Start by doing a search of your top keywords in the search engines. Visit the top 100 sites and choose the ones that best relate to yours. Then contact the webmaster with a personal note and tell him/her that you like their site and why. Let them know that you will be putting a link in your site pointing to theirs and suggest a reciprocal link pointing to you explaining how his/her visitors would benefit. It's also good to make suggestions on where on their site your link would be best placed.

2. You can also set up a link script on your web site. This is where visitors can go to automatically enter into an exchange with you by adding their link. Of course, you will need to approve the link and make sure that it is a site you want to be associated with before you accepting.

3. Look at the web sites of your competition. What sites are linking to them? Visit those sites and contact their webmasters.

4. When you exchange links with another site make sure that you use your keywords in the text of your link. Google gives a lot of importance to the link text itself. This will go a long way to helping the search engines determine what your site is about and relevancy.

5. Write and distribute articles and include in the author's resource box at the end of the article the information about you, your business and a link to your web site. When your article is submitted to the many article banks online an inbound link is created.

6. Post in forums that are related to your web site and use a signature file that contains a link to your site. Again, the content of the forum post must be related to your site in some way. Make sure that what you have to say is important to the discussion that is taking place.

7. Getting your site listed in as many directories as possible will also increase your link popularity. There are many directories where you can get your site listed for free but most of them have a fee. Don't forget to look for directories that specialize in your topic or category.

Written by Monica Villarreal. For more information and tips on how to build a popular website that humans and search engines love visit: http://www.websitedesigngenius.com

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.

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

“Submit to 10,000 Search Engines” or “Submit to over 200,000 Search Engines”. This kind of ads should attract customers. It looks great to submit to so many search engines. Submission software is offered that helps to submit hundreds of websites to hundreds of search engines during several hours. What is a realistic, possible result of all these nice tools? The achieved link popularity is near Zero, but the mail box is filled by the autoresponders from the mass of FFA (Free for all) search engines.

Which Search Engines count?

Only a few of the many search engines really count! 99,9 % of all those who go on-line to find something use one of the 18 top search engines. Scrub The Web provides this information in it’s member area. Yahoo, MSN Search and Google are the top three search engines according to Alexa Ranking. Alta Vista and AllTheWeb – also famous search engines - belong to Yahoo and are supplied by Yahoo.

If Link Popularity of a website is measured by the services that provide this information, only the Link Popularity of a website at Google, MSN, Yahoo, AllTheWeb, Alta Vista or Hot Bot is displayed. This shows that only a few search engines really count for Link Popularity. It is not necessary to submit to thousands of search engines, but to the few important search engines in the right way.

Manual work instead of automated submissions

Yahoo search demands that a submitter of websites has to be logged in a Yahoo email address before the submission can start. Submitting to MSN is only possible after typing of a code that is presented in a window. Google says that it is not necessary to submit a site to their search engines. Their spiders crawl the web and can find the websites. Google offers anyway an Add URL page and does not penalize repeated submissions. It seems that Google Sitemaps is a recommendable tool for webmasters to improve the chance that websites get indexed.

Submissions to directories

Submissions to directories result in good quality links to the website. The Open Directory Project is the most important of all directories. It is very difficult to get a site listed in this Number 1 directory. Repeated submissions are necessary. Google favours websites that are listed in The Open Directory Project. The Yahoo Directory comes next but it is expensive. The websites of vilesilencer and trendmetrix list hundreds of good directories. A lot of them are free and of high quality. They are spidered by the major search engines. This high quality links are not only good for boosting the Link Popularity, but of the Google PageRank.

Quality counts

The conclusion is that only the quality of the links counts that can be gained from search engines and directories to the website. Submissions to thousands of search engines are a loss of time and resources. Most of the work has to be done manually. Good results can be achieved, but it is a question of time, rather in months than in a days.

Lil Waldner is a business economist. She is experienced in project management and marketing. She has worked as editor of newspapers and she has written booklets and essays with economic and public issues. Visit her web site: AGM International Home Business: http://www.store-owner.com/owner/lwmall

Link popularity means the number of incoming links pointing to your website. This is one of the criterical factor that rank the search results. If you are have link on website with high PageRank (PR4+), you will benefit from it and your ranking will boost.

Im recently looking at ways to increase my link popularity, then I find a good article at SeoChat.com

Web Links from the Search Engines Perspective

It gives a clear definition for different link terms. Let me summaries a bit here

- reciprocal links are link exchange between 2 sites. Site A have link to Site B and vice versa

- one way link are one way, Site A links to Site B, but Site B has no link to Site A

- trianglar links are one way link among 3 sites

It is not advisable to have too many reciprocal links. Yes it can be nature to have reciprocal links, but too much simply means you are suspected to do it on purpose (to boost link popularity)

On the other hand, outgoing links to good and relevant sites can also be benefitical to your website. So, dont bother to put more relevant links with great contents in your pages.

As a conclusion after the link popularity studies, here's my view on it:

1. more links to relevent sites with rich content, and good PageRank.

2. a little link exchange is acceptable, but dont make it over half of your links

3. limit the max number of links to 80 in your link page. Split it if too many.

4. a better appoarch to gain link popularity is by writing EzineArticles.

More of my articles can be found on my SEO tips website.

You can find more SEO tips to make money online here
http://make-money-online.softbath.net

My Homepage
http://www.softbath.net

One of the important factors in ranking high in search engine results is link popularity. It is not enough to just have the best website in the world--other sites have to point back to you. The thought is that if your site is good enough for others to link to you, then you must have a great site.

How do I increase link popularity?

Building link popularity is hard work. You've searched endlessly. You've sent every reciprocal link email you can think of. What else can you do? Surprisingly, writing articles on your topic can lead you to a wealth of link popularity.

What are the benefits of writing articles?

Think about it. If you write articles, you get to use them on your website and you build your website content. You can also submit your articles to other sites. With both methods you get a lot in return:

*You build your content. More is better when it comes to site content.

*You promote your website. With more keyword-rich text on more pages, you will increase the number of pages indexed by the search engines.

*Other websites link back to your website content. Sites focused on related topics link back to you.

*You receive a link back to your website from the site you submitted the article to. Remember to include a link in all guest articles you submit.

*You become an authority on your topic. Search engines reward sites with a larger number of inbound links from sites dealing with similar topics.

What do I write articles about?

The saying goes "write about what you know." Sometimes it takes thinking in a creative way to open the door to a new route for link popularity success. Think of what your visitors might be looking for. Why do they come to your site? What can you help them with when they arrive on your website? Answer their questions about your topic. We all search to find information, so give them what they are looking for.

So what are they looking for? That is easy enough to find out. Review your web server logs to see what keywords and phrases your visitors are using when they find your site through the search engines. Run your own searches using those keywords. What kinds of sites are returned in the search engine listings? Pay attention to visitor feedback. Know your visitors. Answer the questions they are asking, or even those questions they do not know yet to ask

Most importantly, write because you have something to say. If in the process of building your content and inbound links, you benefit your readers with your content, all the better in terms of providing visitor satisfaction. This is the best reason to write, which is the way of the web, to seek out and share information.

Where do you put articles?

On your site. The first and obvious answer is to put them on your site. After all, you have all this knowledge; why not share it with your visitors? You may want to create an Articles page on your site. This will give you a place to put your articles, and any new ones that you write. Make sure to add this new page into your site navigation, and especially to add it to your sitemap page. Add a link to your main articles page on your sitemap, and a link to each new article on your articles page, and you are on your way to having your good content indexed. Make sure your visitors and the search engine robots can find your new pages.

Adding article content not only answers your visitors' questions, it adds to your website. Your visitors will have a richer experience with your site when there is more content. Not only can they buy the widgets you are selling, but they can also learn more about how to select widgets, exciting news from the world of widgets, and so on.

The more pages you add to your website, the better chance the already visiting search engine robots will also pick up your new pages to be indexed. More pages mean more links. Be sure to make an archive of your articles on your website. Always keep your pages in directories close to the root of your site for optimum indexing by the search engine robots.

Submit to the search engines. As always you will want to submit your new pages to the mainstream search engines and directories. In addition, look for specialized, topical directories that deal with your particular subject. There are also many general business directories available.

Submit guest articles. In addition to submitting your articles to the various search engines and directories, think about submitting the articles themselves. Submit your articles to sites that accept guest articles. It may take a little detective work to find some of these locations. You can start small, submitting to lesser-known portals seeking information on your topic. Some sites are focused on one topic; others need articles about all sorts of topics. Get searching and you should be able to come up with a healthy list of sites to submit to. Searching in Google and in categories in Yahoo! and ODP (Open Directory Project/Dmoz) would be helpful.

Once you are featured as a guest writer on a website, you will notice that most sites archive these articles. How many articles can you write? How many articles are archived and linked? How many different search engines indexed those pages? You get the idea.

Always include a bio of the author, article re-print instructions, copyright information and a link back to your website. Add an active link in your link text in your submission or request one for your listing. Be aware of dynamically generated pages--a static URL also increases the chance that the article you have submitted has the optimum chance of indexing by the search engine robots.

What if I don't write?

What if writing is just not your thing? You are in luck, because there are sites out there that have free content and articles available to you. When you add them to your site, you still build the content on your website.

Legitimate links, no spam

The best part is that your new links are all legitimate and not just junk links. You add important information to your site, and that is good for your visitors and good for your image. Naturally, using your keyword phrases in your Title/META tags and the text of your articles as you would in your regularly optimized pages makes sense for good search engine ranking.

It will pay off

Be creative when writing articles and submitting your content for linking, it takes hard work but will be worth it in the long run.

Resources

*General Content

EZinearticles.com (free content/submit articles)

http://www.ezinearticles.com/

GoArticles (free content/submit articles)

http://www.goarticles.com

ArticleCity (free content/submit articles)

http://www.articlecity.com/

World Wide Information Outlet (free content/submit articles)

http://www.certificate.net/wwio/

*Marketing Articles

IdeaMarketers.com (free content/submit articles)

http://www.ideamarketers.com/

Marketing Seek (submit articles)

http://www.marketing-seek.com/articles/index.shtml

*Business Articles

BPubs (submit articles)

http://www.bpubs.com/

*Internet and Web

Web Source (free articles)

http://www.web-source.net/free_articles.htm

*Site Carrying Links To Free Content Sites

Freesticky (free content)

http://www.freesticky.com/

Daria Goetsch is the founder and Search Engine Marketing Consultant for Search Innovation Marketing, a Search Engine Marketing company serving small businesses. She has specialized in Search Engine Optimization since 1998, including three years as the Search Engine Specialist for O'Reilly Media, Inc., a technical book publishing company.

Copyright © 2002-2005 Search Innovation Marketing. http://www.searchinnovation.com All Rights Reserved.

Permission to reprint this article is granted if the article is reproduced in its entirety, without editing, including the bio information. Please include a hyperlink to http://www.searchinnovation.com when using this article in newsletters or online.

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

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/

Among the many things you need to worry about for high search engine rankings,link popularity is among the most important. Link popularity refers the how many other websites on the internet link back to your website. The more websites link back to yours, the more popular your website will be with search engines. Let's explore a great free method of increasing your link popularity.

Want the hard way or the easy way?

The hard way to increase your link popularity is to take the time to visit hundreds of websites, put a link to their website on your site and then ask them to link back to your web site. This method works but it is very time consuming and often only produces mediocre results.

An option that isn't free but works for getting one way links back to your website is using link brokers. Two services out there to get you started are linkadage.com and textlinkbrokers.com. These sites offer you the chance to find high traffic website owners who will put keyword rich one way links to your website in return for money.

Write an article and get a link

The easy way to get one way links to your web site is to write articles on topics you know, then include a resource box at the bottom of the article that includes a link or two back to your web site. The webmaster or ezine publisher gets useful content they can offer to their customers and you get a valuable link back to your website without having to reciprocate. This is a win win proposition.

But I'm not a writer!

I can almost guarantee that you know things other people want to know. It could be almost anything. Write about things you know and the writing will take care of itself. Using a word processor, you can make sure your article is spell checked and has proper grammer. You don't have to write a book. You only need between 300 and 400 words to be able to deal effectively on a topic.

Decide to take action today

For years, I had read about the benefits of writing articles to get people to my website and for years I put it off because I didn't consider myself a writer. Once I made the decision to take action and write, the benefits have far outweighed any fear I had about writing. Determine to take action and just do it! Sit down right now and write your first article. You won't regret it!

Joe Duchesne is a partner is a web hosting service at http://www.yowlingbuilder.com that offers an easy to use web site builder(http://www.yowling.com/) that allows even the complete beginner to create a professional website in no time at all.

Reprint freely as long as both links in this resource box are live.

Link popularity is just one of the ways you can try to promote your website with the intention of getting to the top of the search engines.

Obviously in this day and age it’s just about impossible to get to the top of the search engines if you have a new website from a standing start.

In fact large companies will now use the services of a professional Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) company to help them get to the top.

And still have no guarantees that it will get there!

It takes time, dedication and patience to achieve this and it certainly won’t happen overnight. Sometimes you’ll be doing things that just don’t seem to show results but if you are doing work now that will bear fruit in the future then success is more of a reality.

What you need to ask yourself is...

What am I prepared to do to make my online presence successful for the long term?

And how much am I willing to invest in time and money to achieve this outcome?

See, quite often we want everything to happen for us immediately. In fact most of our societies now expect instant results or instant gratification. The reality on the other hand is very different.

To build a strong, sturdy house that is designed to last a lifetime, more planning and work goes into laying down the foundations of the building than what is seen above ground.

The foundations are what the house sits on but the work done and the financial cost are mostly unseen. Creating a long term business may require you to outlay more effort and investment in time and money to see the results down the track.

That unfortunately is an unknown but persistence and taking regular positive action will ultimately lead to success.

The moral of is to remind ourselves that Rome wasn’t built in a day but great things can happen when you plan for the long term and lay down a great foundation.

How much time and effort are you putting into your business to get it where you want it to be, and if its not enough time, you need to ask yourself why you aren’t committing yourself wholly.

Look at the big picture and take the essential steps to reach your goals today!

Tamra Forde
Marketing Director
Freedom Business Opportunity
http://www.freedombusinessopportunity.com

When Paypal's official Web site no longer ranked #1 in Google on a search for "paypal," it was obvious that Google had become more aggressive in penalizing sites with "unnatural" backlink anchor text. Although the high-profile Paypal example has since been rectified, thousands of webmasters are suffering the consequences of not ranking for even their official company name, let alone their top keywords. It is important for search engine optimizers to understand both how anchor text penalties are being applied and how LSI ensures that anchor text variance will not dilute a link popularity building campaign.

Anchor Text Penalties

In the past year, webmasters have found that the aggressive link popularity building tactics that work well in search engines such as Yahoo! do not fare well in Google. Google has implemented several features to filter out sites that appear to have an unnatural backlink structure; one of these features seems to be specifically penalizing sites with unnatural backlink anchor text.

It has always been an SEO best practice to use descriptive anchor text in both external and internal links. But search engine optimizers have often focused on a single keyword phrase when choosing anchor text, especially if their topic has one keyword that receives vastly more traffic than any secondary keywords. Since good links are hard to come by, they do not want to "waste" any of those backlinks with anchor text that does not contain their main keyword.

The drawback to this approach is that it can be interpreted as unnatural by a search engine. A site with organic, passively-obtained backlinks will have a wide variety of backlink anchor text variations such as: "official site title," "keyword," "keyword synonym," "www.thesite.com" and even "click here." If the vast majority of a site's backlink anchor text is simply "keyword," it is obvious to an algorithm that the link popularity was not obtained organically.

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) Basics

Let's now touch upon the myth I mentioned before, that if a backlink's anchor text does not contain your Web site's main keyword, its power is wasted. The concept of latent semantic indexing, which may be more fully implemented by major search engines in the near future, will prove this myth to be false.

Latent semantic indexing can help overcome the "vocabulary mismatch" problem when a human uses a search engine. Individual words do not always provide reliable evidence about the conceptual meaning of a document. For instance, a Web page that is highly relevant to the term "laptop" may never use the term "notebook," however it is clear to a human being that "notebook" is often used as a synonym for "laptop."

While it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the mathematics behind LSI, its implications for search algorithms are simple. LSI can use statistical techniques to create a semantic analysis for any given query topic. In practice, this means that a page can be considered relevant for a particular keyword, even if it does not contain that keyword. For instance, a page that is considered relevant for "laptop" can also be considered relevant for "notebook" even if it does not contain the word "notebook," if LSI determines that "notebook" is semantically related to "laptop."

The principle can be applied to backlinks as well. Backlinks with anchor text that do not contain your Web site's main keyword, but instead contain a synonym or related word, may still be giving your site a bonus for the main keyword.

Link Popularity Building Best Practice: Vary Your Anchor Text

The recent increase in penalties given to sites with unnatural backlink anchor text, along with the possible implementation of LSI, should give webmasters motivation to vary their backlink anchor text heavily. Rather than seeking to only obtain links using their main keyword, webmasters should include synonyms, variations and related words. Certainly no single keyword variation should be used the majority of the time; rather, the text of all links should vary widely, just as they would if the links were obtained passively. This will ensure a site's improvement in the SERPs, without drawing a penalty flag.

Andy Hagans is a search engine optimization consultant who specializes in link popularity building and risk management. Visit http://www.andyhagans.com for more information. See http://www.andyhagans.com/link-building.php for more information on Mr. Hagans' link building services.

Link popularity is very important these days for all websites since most major search engines look at link popularity has a tool for ranking your site in there search results as well as the quality of your websites content keyword wise. Link popularity is a great way to gaining targeted visitors to your website. This article is going to show you easy and free and effective ways to increase your websites link popularity.

The purpose of having a website is to get visitors to your website to enable you to reach you websites goal that maybe to make a sale of your product or service.

here are a couple of free and effective ways to increase your websites link popularity and the best thing it is free.

1) Submit your website to directories - Directories are by far the most popular way to increase any websites link popularity since they are so many directories out there and they are usually free for any webmaster to add there website url. You need to find directories that pass Google page rank and that are search engine friendly you can find this out usually by looking at links that are on the directory that have direct links websites not a redirecting url. A example of such directory is mine Sorve.com Directory

Directories are also great for gaining highly targeted visitors to your website if you submit your site in the right category since people actually search directories to find relevant websites to what they are searching for.

2) Forum Signatures - This is another method you gaining link popularity this can be dine by link to your website from your signature in the forum. Make sure you hyperlink your website to the main keyword's that your website relates to e.g. Search Engine Directory

3) Link Exchanges - This is another popular way to increase any websites link popularity by exchanging website links with relevant websites to yours this is a hard way to gain link popularity but it has been made easy to exchange links with sites by link exchange sites such as linkexchanged.com or linkmarket.net but you can also ask website owners to link with your site by just emailing the webmaster in most cases they will like to link with you if you have a there link already on your link exchange page and if they find your website useful to there viewers.

4) Writing Articles - writing articles that enable other website owners to publish them o there website is another way to gain link popularity like what I have done. This you will have a Authors biography or resource box on the bottom of your article that contains your websites link so when someone publishes your article on your website you will gain a nice one-way link to your website and also if your readers find your article interesting they are most likely going to checkout your website.

5) Link To Us - provide a page on your website for people that find your website interesting to add your website link to your website here is a example http://www.sorve.com/link.html (Link To Us).

6) Just Ask - Ask anyone that owns a website you know just to add you link or add just add a couple of lines to your website such as: "Please help us by add our link to your site" Hyperlink it to your link to us page or link exchange page.

These are most probably most common ways for you to increase your website link popularity and gain more visitors from those links or from search engines. So start gaining links to your website and get the traffic that you deserve.

Good Luck

Martin has been making a living with affiliate revenue for the past couple of years you can by joining Martin's Webmasters Newsletter for free.

Add your website links for free to Sorve.com Directory and also Search Engine Directory- http://www.searchwiz.org/

What is 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.

Why is it so important?

Links from high traffic websites furnish you with constant stream of visitors. Other website marketing efforts i.e. email marketing, might give good influx of visitors while the campaign lasts but the quantity diminishes once the campaign is over. Links are a different story! Once a link is installed, it might start bringing a steady flow of visitors all the time, depending on the website where the link was placed.

Link popularity is also crucial to search engine ranking of your website. Search engines, especially Google, claim that link popularity is one of the key factors that they consider in their search algorithm while indexing a website. What would be the rank of a website in a search result depend on its link popularity in a very big way.

So, how can you conduct an effective link popularity development campaign and build traffic for your website?

Content is the king

Prior to start a link popularity campaign, you should seriously question yourself, what would be the reason for the other sites to post a link pointing to your website? Most high traffic sites are quite picky about putting links, and won’t do it without any apparent reason.

If your site boasts quality content that the visitors of other sites might find valuable, chances are there that those sites would be interested in posting a link of your site on their relevant web pages. High quality content that gets updated regularly will definitely help you getting more links and subsequently more visitors. If even you are just a web store, you can still add much sought-after content to your site, such as, detail product information, articles related to the specific products, comparison tables, etc.

If it is really difficult to get relevant content for your website, try getting a valuable tool that might be interesting for visitors and incorporate it to your website. You must have noticed that free search engine submission forms are common on Search Engine Optimization sites. Giveaways like e-books, white papers, articles and other freebies are also good for creating interest to a website.

Submit website to various directories

When your new website is up and running, first thing you should do is to submit your site to many search directories such as, Yahoo!, DMOZ etc. available on the Internet. Not only, this will help you get quality backward links to your site, this is also the fastest method for your site to get crawled by search engines spiders and get indexed by them.

Don’t underestimate the value of the many regional and industry specific directories. Try submitting your site as many as possible relevant local directories. Examples of these directories are municipal business directory, local chamber of commerce directory etc.

If you are a seller of, for example, metal related products; get your site enlisted in as many metal industry associated directories as you can manage.

Get reciprocal links

Since backward links are so important, building link popularity by exchanging links with other websites should be a priority in your online marketing effort.

Which are the websites that you should consider to get backward links to your website? Your objective should be – not just having any backward link from any site, the sites that you are getting reciprocal link has to be relevant to the content of your website as well. First of all, if you get a link from a website which has nothing in common with your site, you, most probably, will not receive any traffic from that site. The second and most important issue is – the search engines, while calculating your website’s rank in a specific keyword search result, consider, mainly, the backward links which are relevant to your site.

Search engine Google uses a unique Page rank system to determine how relevant your website is. Your site's Page Rank depends on backward links to your site. However, if the page from where your website gets the backward link has more outbound links then incoming ones, the value of this link gets reduced. A link to your site will have the biggest impact on your Page rank:

• If the page itself has a good page rank.

• There are very few outbound links from the page.

To check out your site's Page rank, download the Google Toolbar from http://toolbar.google.com/ and install. After that, go to your website. On the tool bar, you will see the rank of your index page in a scale of 0 to 10. The rating is considered good if it is five or more.

Make sure, while exchanging links you select the websites that have page rank no less than yours.

How to find the websites that you should swap links with?

The easiest way is to check out the backward links to the website of your most prominent Internet based competitor or industry leader of your field. Other option is to run a search based on the most relevant keywords to your website and check out backward links to the first ten websites.

In the search box of Google, Altavista and AllTheWeb type link: and then the URL of the site to view all the sites that have backward links to this site. Visit these sites to find the best one to exchange links and then contact them with a nice email.

I will also suggest you to check out the number of visitors the site receives before offering a link swap. The tool that will help you figuring out the quantity of traffic a site gets, you can download from http://download.alexa.com/ by clicking on the button “Free Tool Bar”. This is also a very good tool to analyze web traffic. The tool also shows which other similar sites people tend to visit alongside with the site that you are viewing now.

If a site gets significantly less visitors than yours, what is the point of having a link form that site?

While looking for websites to swap links, don’t forget about your partners, suppliers and buyers. These sites are capable of bringing major traffic and are indeed relevant to your site’s subject matter!

Your link popularity campaign should also include the following methods. However, mind it, these techniques require tedious work from your side.

Issue Press Releases

Press releases are a good way of exposing your website to mass and increase your link popularity. Whenever you are coming up with a new product or service, overhauling your website, adding new elements to your site or conducting a seminar, etc. you should issue a press release. It is also a very cost effective method of getting publicity for your site. To broadcast your press release you can use one of the free media release sites: http://www.prweb.com

Write Articles

If you are dedicated to popularize your website, you must have substantial knowledge of the subject related to your website. Why not, write articles on your subjects of expertise and circulate them on the Internet and post on your website? Apart from this will add good content to your website, if other websites and newsletters publish your articles, you will get free publicity and increase your link popularity.

Build an Affiliate Program

If you sell a product or service through your website, you should seriously consider developing an affiliate program for your site. An affiliate program is when a visitor from your affiliate’s site comes to your site using the link that you provided to the affiliate and buy something; the affiliate will get a commission from you. The affiliate program can expand your business substantially. Since your affiliates require posting your links on their sites, this increases your link popularity as well.

Participate in Discussion Groups and Forums

This is also a great way of increasing your link popularity. There are literally thousands of discussion groups and forums on every conceivable subject on the Internet. You should actively participate in some of them, those which are most relevant to your area of expertise. The signature along with your website address that you post there while asking a question or answering to a question also boosts your link popularity.

Link Exchange Programs

You can also participate one of the link swap programs available on the Internet. Unfortunately, most of the automated link exchange offers that you receive through them are random and irrelevant to your site. But, however, I would suggest you to give them a try, as chances are there that you still might receive some good offers. You can also actively search for sites to swap links in their directories.

Development of link popularity is an on going process. You have to work on this constantly. But, the outcome that you might achieve from your endeavor also could be significant.

About The Author

Nowshade Kabir, Ph.D., is the founder, primary developer and present CEO, of Rusbiz.com, a global business to business e-commerce portal with feature like storefronts, aggregated catalog, e-marketplace, trade leads, internal messaging system supply chain solutions, etc. With a doctorate in Information Technology, Dr. Kabir has worked an advisor to government projects and has over 12 years experience in International Trade. An author of many B2B and business related articles; he publishes a bi-weekly E-zine for online business community. You can subscribe to his newsletter free of charge from his website.

nowshade@rusbiz.com

A Brief Introduction To Link Popularity

As webmasters research various ways to get more traffic to their site one method that is gaining more and more publicity is Link Popularity. Link Popularity is the number of links that point to your website as measured by the search engines. In theory if your site has many sites linking to it then it is considered to be a valuable resource on the particular topic so the search engines will give it a higher ranking.

The Problem

As with many rules/laws eventually people found a way to manipulate it. Sites were created solely to build the link popularity of other sites. These sites are called ‘Link Farms’ and contributed to the pollution of search engine results. They increased the search engine rankings of many sites that did not deserve the position they received.

Eventually the search engines caught on to this deception and some such as Google adjusted their algorithms accordingly. Google now penalizes websites associated with Link Farms imposing penalties they deem appropriate based on the site and the scenario. Many people that felt the effects of this penalization were fairly innocent, well that is if you consider ignorance to be an alibi. They simply did not know that what they were doing was wrong; some even paid for SEO services and were victims of bad services.

As the search engines change their algorithms aiming to reduce fraudulent activities by webmasters, more and more ways are conceived to manipulate them, and so the battle continues.

An Honest Link Building Strategy

Getting quality links to your site from related resources is not always as easy as some make it sound. The key word here is ‘quality’. It is a very time consuming process and involves the following steps:

* Search for quality sites that are related to yours.
* Contact the Webmaster of the related site.
* Wait for a response from them.
* Swap links if the response is positive.

There are also some automated methods of doing this that speed up the process, however, I would not recommend any of them and hence won’t list them in this article.

So you have started your link building campaign and are hopefully seeing the results. Now you say this is great but how can I make this process more efficient and effective without risking your good standings with the search engines.

Here is the solution.

The Smart Way To Build Link Popularity.

One thing webmasters are always looking for, and find hard to refuse, is good quality content. If you are knowledgeable on a particular topic that is related to your site, writing informative articles is a great way to gain your website additional link popularity. If you are reading this article and are not reading it on http://www.lilengine.com then there is your proof.

If you don’t consider yourself a writer don’t worry, you don’t have to be. Get your article in the best shape you possibly can and then have others, who you consider to be better at writing than you are, look it over. Make your edits and there you go.

How is writing articles efficient and effective?

Well-written articles do take time to produce but as you write more you will get better and will find that it starts to take less and less time. This method offers several more benefits than the linking method listed above. These are as follows:

* Articles are, in most cases, permanent additions to sites.
* Writing Articles demonstrates your knowledge of various industry related topics and this helps to build credibility.
* If users are interested enough to read your entire article then there’s a very good chance that they will click on your link to visit your site in hopes of learning more or even just out of curiosity.
* You are able to include several links with articles. You can have several links in the resource box also known as the bylines as well as in any ‘appropriate’ spots in the article.
* You have the ‘option’ of including your affiliate links in the article if it includes information on that resource.
* You also get to add this content to your own website.
* If you include reprint information in the bylines then others that read the article, and feel it would be a valuable addition to their site, will add it and then it becomes almost viral. It spreads even though you are not doing a thing.

Summary

Building link popularity is a vital part to your search engine ranking and should be approached in either of the two methods listed above that you feel is more appropriate for your individual situation. The benefits from writing, however, far outweigh those of requesting reciprocal links in most situations. Hopefully this article has helped to shed some light on this and will encourage more knowledgeable people to start sharing their knowledge with others. For more information on Link Popularity visit http://www.lilengine.com

About The Author

Alec Duncan is the founder of http://www.lilengine.com, a search engine optimization resource site. Visit http://www.lilengine.com and also visit their new Web Hosting resource section at http://webhosting.lilengine.com.

With all the buzz going on about the importance of a site's link popularity, the "look and feel" of your Add URL page (or whatever you have named your add URL page) has taken on an increased importance as well.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate the look and feel of your site's Add URL page?

During the research phase of creating my "Link Popularity IQ" Web site, I encountered Add URL pages that spanned the full spectrum of a possible look and feel rating of 1 to 10.

The "Look" of Your Add URL Page

When you are ready to design (or re-design) your site's Add URL page, make sure that the quality of that design is as high as possible. Possible link partners visiting your site's Add URL page may very well make a snap judgement of the quality of your site based solely on the look of that one page.

Make sure you pay just as much attention to the look of your Add URL page as you do to what you consider the most important pages on your site.

The "Feel" of Your Add URL Page

The feel of your Add URL page is just as important as its look. If the "how to link to us" instructions on your Add URL page are not 100% clear and easy to understand, your potential link partner may simply go on to the next site on her list of possible partners.

Take the time to create an Add URL page that contains easy-to-understand instructions on how the link exchange process should be done.

An Example of a Quality Add URL Page

I hope you won't think it pretentious of me for saying that the Add URL page on my site is an example of an Add URL page that deserves a look and feel rating of 8 to 10.

I invite you to visit my Add URL page (http://wwww.lpiq.com/add-url) and judge for yourself.

A Free Add URL Template

If you like the look and feel of my Add URL page, you are invited to check out my free Add URL Page Template (http://www.lpiq.com/template).

Please feel free to use the template as an aid when designing or re-designing your own Add URL page.

Summary

You should strive for a look and feel rating of between 8 and 10 for your own Add URL page. If you can attain a look and feel rating of 10 for your own Add URL page, so much the better. The extra time you take now to do it right will pay off handsomely in the future for the link popularity of your site.

About The Author

Bob Hampton designs and builds his own Websites. His most recent site is Link Popularity IQ (http://www.lpiq.com/lpiq). He invites you to test your knowledge of link popularity by taking his free Link Popularity IQ Test (http://www.lpiq.com/test).

There are many different ways to improve link popularity for your Website. One of the most effective ways to improve your site's link popularity is by writing articles for publication on other related Web sites and in other related newsletters or Ezines.

In this article, I will be sharing 10 techniques I use when I am writing articles to improve link popularity for one of my Websites.

Let's use this article as an example. I have two goals in mind as I start writing this article, a primary goal and a secondary goal.

My primary goal is to inform you, my reader, about how to improve link popularity for your Website.

My secondary goal is to improve link popularity for one of my own Websites.

If, after having read this article, you can say to yourself that this article was informative and it gave you one or more ideas about how to improve link popularity for your own Website, then I will have achieved my primary goal.

If, after having written this article, I can say to myself that this article was written well enough, and was informative enough, to persuade Webmasters and newsletter or Ezine publishers to reprint this article on their Website or in their newsletter or Ezine, then I will have achieved my secondary goal.

If I do achieve my primary goal, my secondary goal will be achieved as well - you will have been informed and the other publishers will realize that and will reprint this article in order to inform their readers as well.

Now, on to achieving my primary goal, informing you...

How to Improve Link Popularity by Writing Articles

1. Before writing your article, have definite goals in mind. Ask yourself what you want to accomplish by writing this article.

Since you are now reading an article about how to improve link popularity for your Website, that should be one of your goals. I'll leave you to decide what other goals you want to achieve by writing your article.

2. Have well thought out ideas for the beginning, middle and ending of your article.

For this article, the purpose of my beginning was to inform you about an effective way to improve link popularity for your Website.

The purpose of the middle of this article is to inform you about how you can use this effective way to improve link popularity for your own Website.

The purpose of the ending of this article will be to provide you with a way to learn more on this topic and, to achieve my secondary goal, to improve link popularity for my own Website.

3. Include your most important keyword in the title of your article. You will notice that I have used the keyword phrase "improve link popularity" in the title of this article. This will improve the odds that your article will become indexed and listed by search engines.

4. Use your important keyword throughout the content of your article. Again, you will notice that I have used the keyword phrase "improve link popularity" several times throughout the content of this article. Again, this is for the purpose of getting this article indexed and listed by search engines.

5. Write your article as if you were speaking directly to your best friend about a topic that both you and she are passionate about. Don't try to impress her with your knowledge of the topic. Simply provide her with your thoughts on the subject, using easy-to-understand words and phrases.

6. After you have written your article, leave it alone for a day or two before coming back to it. Using a fresh pair of eyes, read your article to see if the content flows in a logical, easy-to-understand manner. Then proofread your article for typos. Make any necessary corrections.

7. After you have written and proofread your article, publish it on your own Website. Include a resource box at the bottom of your Web page that informs Webmasters and newsletter or Ezine publishers that they are free to reprint your article. This is, after all, the focus of this article on how to improve link popularity for your Website.

8. If you publish a newsletter or Ezine, also publish your article in it as well. If it is a lengthy article, publish part of the article in your newsletter or Ezine and provide a link to the complete article that is published on your Website.

9. Include a resource box at the end of your article that provides a little information about you and an invitation for your readers to visit your Website. Some readers will go to your Website, read your other articles, and choose to reprint some of those as well. This is a definite bonus when you are writing an article to improve link popularity for your Website.

10. Submit your article to Websites that archive articles that are available for reprinting on other Websites and in other newsletters or Ezines. My favorite Website for archiving my articles and for obtaining articles written about how to improve link popularity is ArticleCity.com, located at http://www.articlecity.com/. Other archives can be located by searching on "free articles for reprint" or something similar.

Summary

It took me about two hours to write this article. When you are passionate about the topic you are writing about, the words just seem to flow from your brain to your article.

If you are passionate about the topic of your article, you will be able to write an informative article which will be reprinted by Webmasters and newsletter or Ezine publishers and that will help to improve link popularity for your Website.

Bob Hampton LPIQ.com

About The Author

Bob designs and builds his own Websites. His most recent site is Link Popularity IQ (http://www.lpiq.com/lpiq). He invites you to test your knowledge of link popularity by taking his free Link Popularity IQ Test (http://www.lpiq.com/test).

Introduction

“Link Popularity” – these words may have caught your attention several times while you have been searching the Internet for tips on optimizing your website for top search engine rankings. Link popularity means popularizing a particular link of a website by increasing the number of websites that link to that site. Nowadays link popularity is being considered to be the most important step of the search engine optimization process. You cannot imagine getting good ranks in the top search engines especially Google without following an effective link popularity plan.

Link Popularity Basics

Google gives a lot of importance to the number of websites that link to a website. In order to get the number of websites that link to a site, just type in a domain name in this manner link:www.your-domain.com in the search box and the number that returns is the number of incoming links to your site. On the basis of the number of incoming links to a website along with various other factors, Google provides points within 1-10 to that website. These points or PageRank in the language of Google is like a measuring tool that helps the Internet surfers to know about the online popularity of that website. The PageRank of a website can be obtained from the PageRank Toolbar of Google which can be easily downloaded from the Google website. (http://toolbar.google.com/)

Link Popularity Methods

Link Popularity can be done through different methods like

* Reciprocal Link Exchange Programs among websites
* Posting messages of your websites on various message boards and guest books
* Publishing articles about your website or company in other websites.

1. Reciprocal Link Exchange Program

Definition -

Reciprocal Link Exchange Program is the most popular and commonly followed method for implementing the link popularity plan of a website and getting the desired results.

Reciprocal Link Exchange Program Steps -

A reciprocal link exchange program deals in exchanging of links with several websites. This program involves several steps that need to be followed which have been described below:

Step 1 –

Link exchange for a website is usually done with websites of the same industry as well as with the websites of other industries. For example, if your website is all about finance, you should be on the lookout for websites that deal in finance along with other websites that are not related to finance. So the first and foremost step is to find prospective link partners/websites that offer reciprocal link exchange programs. You can do this easily by typing in the industry related keywords (e.g. “personal finance”, “financial expert”) in the Google search box. And you can find out the websites offering link exchange out of the search results thus generated.

Step 2 -

Always try to exchange links with websites having Google PR (PageRank) of 4 or more. Here the PR 4 criteria is applicable for both index page as well as the links page of a website.

Step 3 –

You have to look for the link exchange details of each of the websites. The link exchange details lets you know how the website wants to its link to appear in your links page, where to send your link exchange details, etc. The details generally include the website’s link code, email address to send your information. Sometimes you may have to submit your link information through a form provided in the website.

Step 4 –

Now, create an html page containing the list of link partners that you have searched and saved so far. Name this html page as Resources/Partners/Links/Interesting Websites, etc. and provide a link to this links page in the index page of your website. Make sure that your links page is either 1 click or maximum of two clicks away from the index page otherwise prospective link partners may not be interested in reciprocating your link.

Step 5 –

Prepare the link code for your website that you would send or submit through a form to the prospective link partners. A sample link code is given below:

Search Engine Optimization - Offering search engine optimization services.

Always try to include potential keywords for your website in the link text that is the text between the anchor tag () as well as in the description provided against the link text. Always go for text links instead of banner ads because Google gives a lot of importance to the anchor text of the incoming links.

Step 6 –

Target to get maximum of the incoming links towards the home page of your website as it is the most significant page of your website that leads to the other pages of your website. This means you have to request the link partners to link to your index page. Ensure that a good navigation exists within your website so that all the pages are accessible from one particular page of your website. And that all the link texts/anchor texts in your website contain the most important keywords related to your business. This helps in improving the link popularity of your website.

Step 7 –

After preparing the link code for your website, you have to approach the prospective link partners through email requesting them to accept your link exchange offer and place a link to your website in their links page.

Step 8 -

Lastly you have to submit these links pages to the search engines especially Google where your link has been placed by your link partners. (http://www.google.com/addurl.html)

2. Message Board Link Popularity Program –

Link popularity can also be pursued by posting your website link message to the message boards and guest books. In this method you have pay more attention towards the selection of message boards and guest books. Always select message boards and guest books that have a PageRank of 4 or more and have already been indexed by Google. It is also necessary to submit the URLS generated after posting messages to the search engines. For example, say www.online-message-board.com is one of the popular message boards where you want to post your website link. After posting your website link at www.online-message-board.com, the message board will generate a particular URL say www.online-message-board.com/your-website-link.html which contains the particular information about your site. Submit this URL in various search engines so as to boost the link popularity of your site.

3. Other Methods of Increasing Link Popularity -

You can also improve the link popularity of your site by publishing articles or write-ups regarding your company or website in other websites. And make sure you do not forget to include a link to your website in these articles or write-ups. In this way your link becomes visible to the search engine robots. Paid ads also help in your link popularity plan.

Conclusion

In this paper, we have tried to explain the link popularity basics along with various methods for pursuing the link popularity campaigns for your website. Being a vital parameter of your search engine optimization plan, you need to make a link popularity plan and follow it strictly so that your website finds place within the top 10 results of all the important search engines, especially Google.

About The Author

Vudatala Meena is the Co-Founder & Managing Director of Search Engine Optimization Guru Pvt. Ltd. (http://www.searchengine-optimization-guru.com), a premiere Search Engine Optimization and Marketing (SEO/SEM) consultancy firm, catering to clients which range from Fortune 500 to small home business start-ups. Our services include Top 10 SE rankings, Pay Per Click (PPC) targeted traffic campaign, Paid Listing Management, Keyword Advertizing. She can be contacted at meena@searchengine-optimization-guru.com

The most difficult area of SEO is building link popularity. You may be thinking why? Because there are no easy ways to build link popularity. In this article I will tell you how to get links and how to find them.

First thing you must do is find a web site that you would like to trade links with. How do you find them? You can join link exchanges like www.linkexchangeit.com or you can search the search engine with keywords related to your site. Remember RELATED sites only! Let's say your site is about cars, so you would search with keywords like car body repair, car, SUVS, trucks, vans, etc or let's say your site is about games, so you would search with keywords like checkers, card games, chess, online games, etc. Now that you know what to do go and search for sites RELATED to yours and ask for a link exchange.

You could send them this email below if you like.

Dear (Put there name here),

Thanks for taking the time to read my email.

My name is (Put your full name here), I came cross your site today while I was searching on AOL and really like your site. I love the (put something here you like about there site here). Your site and our site is somewhat the same, so I was wondering if you would like to exchange links with our site (put your URL here). Our site is about (put what your site is about here).

By chance is your news section at http://www.there-web-site-here.com/news.html a good place that you could put my link at?

If you have any questions or need anything feel free to contact me at put-email@here.com or call me at (put area code here) 777-7777.

Try to find out the site owner's name and if they have a phone number listed on the site call that number, you will get much better results that way because they know you are not some spamming robot that emails every site they come a cross. Download Google's Toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com) to make sure that inbound links are from decent sites, with a minimum of 1 on the toolbar. The higher the PageRank the better. Also remember that your homepage is not the only part of your site that you can get links for, so try to get links to other pages on your site. This will allow robots to spider your site better and have more ways in.

Here is more tips on how to get more links to your site.

1) Link to them first

2) Put no more than 20 links on your links page if you use one.

3) Use categories on your links page.

Matt Colyer began as a SEO Specialist in 1997. He founded http://www.superiorwebmaster.com/ in 2004 as a source of articles and tutorials for Web site owners looking to improve their Web site.

Getting quality links to your site from related web resources can be very difficult. It is a time consuming process and requires careful research. There are two ways to build your link popularity; 1 Make your site attractive to webmasters or 2 go out and hunt them down your self.

Getting webmasters to come to you:

Having lots of useful content on your web site such as informative articles, online tools, studies, etc will make another webmasters what to link to your web site knowing that you will not only help their site's traffic and link popularity, but adding content to their own web site.

Sometimes you may even get webmasters that like your site so much that they will link to your homepage or to certain web pages that they think their visitors will find useful because this adds to the usefulness of their own site by providing useful links.

Keep it clean by avoiding tricks (Blocking access via robots.txt to robots, linking out with JavaScript, etc.) meant to keep your site from transferring Page Rank to other webmaster's web sites and link to your links page on every page of your site.

Sometimes you will get requests for link exchanges with web sites that are not related to your site’s topic, these sites should be ignored and you should focus on only related web sites.

Hunting link partners down your self:

Type your keyword phrases into a search engine and wait for the results. The web sites you see on the first few web pages of the search engine results should be your main targets and should be looked at. Visit their site to see if you can find the site owners name and email them asking to exchange links, remember to email them at the right email address, don't email the email address that's for support.

Type your keywords or phrases into the search engine and see who links to the sites that come up first. After finding a few sites that link to the sites that rank high on your keyword phrases email them and ask if they would be interested in a link exchange. This is great if you can get both the top sites that rank for your keyword phrases and the sites that link to the top sites because not only do you have the top sites linking to you, but also the site sites that made them get there in the first place.

Some webmasters use link exchange programs such as www.linkexchangeit.com, these link exchange program help you find link partners easier because the sites are cauterized into their related topics, so you don't have to search for them.

Use those rules and you should do just fine! Just remember to take your time and don't use automated software, instead hand pick the sites that you link to.

Matt Colyer began as a SEO Specialist in 1997. He founded http://www.superiorwebmaster.com/ in 2004 as a source of articles and tutorials for Web site owners looking to improve their Web site.

More and more search engines rank your web pages based on the number of links that point to your web site (link popularity). Google uses link popularity as its most important factor in ranking sites. HotBot, AltaVista, MSN, Inktomi, and others also use link popularity in their formulas.

In the near future every major search engine will use link popularity, so developing and maintaining good link exchange campaigns are essential to the success of your business. Also, finding the right partner to exchange links with is equally as important as becoming a member of a link farm can be devastating to your long term search goals.

Your exchange link partner should be reputable in the industry, and should provide links back to you on pages that have a high page rank.
The end goal is to have the greatest number of websites pointing to you saying on the link itself, “Your Company – Offering (insert your key phrases here)”.

For a good ranking on Google, Inktomi and Altivista, you need good links that point to your site. If you develop a strong content oriented site you can persuade thousands of other webmasters to link to you or to trade links with you. If you want to do it yourself, all you need is the right content, the right email letter, and a keen eye for finding sites that well link to your site.

The key is to develop content people want to link to and then get out there and make the contacts by visiting people's sites, sending out personalized emails to webmasters of sites you have visited, and networking in discussion groups.

You can also make posts in forums related to your industry to increase your link popularity. Just do a search on any search engine with your industry + forums or discussions and you should be able to find a few discussion boards where you can make posts.

Make sure that you find a way to participate on the discussion as opposed to just posting an ad that's not related to what people are talking about.
Another way that you can greatly increase the link popularity of your website is by publishing articles. There are literally thousands of ezine and newsletter publishers that would love to publish your article on their ezine.

Again, if you search for ezines related to your industry you should find plenty of places where you can submit an article and see it bring lots of targeted traffic. Make sure you place your resource box at the bottom of the article and require publishers to keep it there.

That's it for now. For more info on how you could Get a High Ranking on Google in 3 Days, Visit www.WebProfitSecrets.com/FastonGoogle

Marcio Dias is an established Web Marketing Specialist who has taken dozens of sites from obscurity to millions of visitors per year in as little as a few months. Visit his main site at: http://www.webprofitsecrets.com?s=ea

What is link popularity?

Link Popularity is simply the total number of pages that link to your website. Most search engines, including Google, consider that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote of confidence for the other page. Therefore, the likelihood of you being the best source of information for their searchers is directly linked to the number of votes you have. It is therefore safe to assume that the higher the number of pages linking to your website, the higher you will be ranked on the search engines. Link popularity has become a critical success factor for search engine optimization within popular search engines.

How does link popularity work?

Good link popularity is important because it can boost your rankings within search engines, increasing the number of visitors to your website. There are 3 important factors to keep in mind:

Relevancy

An incoming link is considered to be relevant if it relates to your web page. For example, if you sell office furniture online, relevant incoming links could include: furniture manufacturers, interior designers, competitors in other states or countries, etc.

Keywords

Keywords make the relevancy of your site obvious to the search engines. Make sure that incoming links contain the keywords that best describe your site. For example: Brisbane Office Furniture Sales.

Quality

The quality of links is just as important as the number of links. Only high ranking websites can influence your visibility within search engines. You will be penalized for suspicious looking links from unrelated web pages or too many links from low ranking web pages.

How can I discover my link popularity?

Our Link Popularity Checker: http://www.kintek.com.au/tools/link-popularity-checker.php will show a summary of your link popularity in the four most popular search engines. Alternatively, another easy way to find this out is to type link: followed by your full web address with no spaces, into a search engine and you will receive a list of web sites currently pointing to you.

How can I improve my link popularity?

A few quick tips:

Talk to your suppliers and other related industry partners and arrange to cross link.

Analyse the incoming links you already have and make sure they contain the keywords that best describe your site.

Examine the link popularity of your well ranked competition. Once you discover who's linking to them, find out if you can get a link to your website as well.

Don't forget - content is king. Link popularity is only useful if your website already provides relevant, keyword rich, information.

Talita operates a family web development firm based in sunny Brisbane, Australia. She enjoys sharing her knowledge and expertise in web design, ecommerce, email marketing and search engine optimisation. Visit her business website, Kintek: http://www.kintek.com.au/

When I first started out in Internet marketing, reciprocal linking was one of the techniques that I was required to master.

Left, right and center gurus were telling me of the importance of having my website link on as much websites as possible. But most did not say how to go about doing it.

After contacting several webmasters with the aim of exchanging links, all flatly refused. Maybe it was because I was on a free host or maybe I was still green in the business.

I tried several different ways but they all had the same result. Nada. Zilch. No links coming my way. Then I found it. The best linking strategy.

It was so simple I could not believe it. And it was right there under my nose. Many successful marketers were using it and accomplishing much. What was that secret weapon ? Article writing.

Writing articles and submitting them to article banks, directories and content sites will increase your link popularity. And it is all for free.

All you have to do is write an informative article which contains valuable information for your target audience. After editing, proofreading and formatting you can now submit it for the world to see.

You can go to most search engines and type in “submit your -------- article” and you will find thousands if not millions of places to submit to. Choose those that suit your topic the best.

Over a period of time, your work will start appearing on websites and ezines (Electronic newsletters) online. After reading your article, your prospect may visit your website if they are interested.

After doing this for some time, you will notice the difference. Your articles will start appearing on websites with your link in the resource box. And soon your link popularity goes up which in turn boosts your search engine rankings.

Writing articles is the ultimate linking strategy. Start doing it today and you may soon find your link on hundreds of websites.

Copyright © Nicholas Dixon

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